CHAPTER 22
On 16 September 1400, Owen Glendower ( Owain Glyndwr ), who claimed to be descended from the old Kings of Powys, was proclaimed Prince of Wales by a small group of followers. Despite attempts to douse the flames of revolt before they got out of control, the Glendower rebellion spread quickly and grew in strength. In 1404, he was crowned at Machynlleth, while shortly afterwards, at Harlech Castle, he called the first Welsh Parliament. This body declared that from then onward, Wales was to be independent from England and it was to have its own laws. These would be based on the laws of Howell Dda ( c. AD 880–950), the 9th-century King of Dyfed, whose son Owen’s genealogies are preserved in the Harleian 3859 Manuscript. The old British Church, too, was to be restored, with the Norman monasteries closed and their clergy expelled.
Glendower may have been a Welsh Nationalist, but he had English allies. Principal among these were Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Had these allies coordinated better and not overreached themselves, Glendower might have succeeded in obtaining a certain degree of independence, perhaps as a restored Prince of Powys. As it was, the three hatched a radical plan that would never have been accepted by the ordinary English peasants, let alone the majority of barons. They proposed in secret that once they had defeated the King (Henry IV), they would partition England between them. Glendower would rule over the whole of Wales as well as the English Marcher counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and part of Gloucestershire; the north of England would go to Henry Percy; and Edmund Mortimer would take over what was left of England south of the River Trent. It was a bold plan and even they, when sober, must have had doubts as to whether they could make it happen; yet in 1403 it did look as if they might be successful. Aided by the French and with a promise of further help from the Scots, Glendower caught Henry on the back foot.
This dire situation for the English monarch turned around when he defeated the army sent from Northumbria before it could have a chance of linking up with Glandower’s forces. Harry ‘Hotspur’, the son of the Duke of Northumberland, was killed and the rebel alliance shattered. Glendower, however, was still making advances in Wales, and it was left to ‘Prince Hal’, then the official Prince of Wales, but better known as as Henry V, to sort out the problem.
Hal realized that trying to engage Glendower in battle was pointless. All that was necessary was to deprive him of a power base. Therefore, he set about the reconquest of Wales, bit by bit, castle by castle. Eventually, in 1409, Glendower’s last stronghold of Harlech Castle fell to the English. His family was captured and sent to the Tower of London and imprisonment from which they would never emerge alive. Glendower himself was never actually captured, but he was a broken man. A fugitive for the rest of his life, he was rumoured to have died from natural causes around 1415.
The Glendower rebellion, although it failed in its objectives, had important consequences for both sides. Not all of the Welsh had flocked to Hal’s banner, with many, particularly in the South, regarding him as a destructive nuisance. Indeed, Prince Hal had much support among Wales’s yeoman archers, many of whom had fathers and grandfathers who had fought for England at the battles of Crécy and Poitiers. This loyalty to the official Prince of Wales was reinforced as he earned a reputation as a good soldier who led his men personally into battle. It was noted with satisfaction that he was willing to risk his own life as well as theirs.
A formidable opponent of Glendower’s and staunch supporter of Prince Hal was a Welsh captain called Dafydd ap Llywelyn ap Hywel Fychan ap Hywel ap Einion Sais, better known simply as ‘Davy Gam’. His family had long been retainers of Prince Hal’s mother’s family, the de Bohun Earls of Hereford, who were also Lords of Brecon. His local knowledge and support proved very important in putting down the rebellion. Indeed, Prince Hal knew him personally and had paid a large ransom for his freedom when, at one point, he was captured by Glendower’s men. Consequently, when Hal, as Henry V, took the English army to France in 1415, Davy Gam went with him in command of a retinue of Welsh archers.
The principle event of this campaign was the Battle of Agincourt, when Henry’s small army of 6,000 men, mostly archers, routed a French force that was at least three times as large. During the end stages of this battle, which was mostly fought on foot, the King went to the aid of his brother Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, who had been wounded. A surge of French knights closed in around them, and the King himself was put in grave danger of being either captured or killed. Fortunately for him, Davy Gam saw what was happening and, along with his son-in-law, Roger Vaughan, and two other Welsh squires, Gruffyd Vaughan and William ap Thomas, he came to the King’s rescue. The fighting was fierce and, in the ensuing melée, both Davy Gam and Roger Vaughan were mortally wounded. The King, however, was saved and went on to win the day. In gratitude to his rescuers, he knighted all four of them on the spot, though Davy Gam and Roger Vaughan may have been already dead by then. Sir William ap Thomas, however, was very much alive and was made a ‘Knight Banneret’. This title, which could only be awarded by a king on a battlefield, was senior to an ordinary knighthood. It meant that Sir William, known on account of the colour of his armour as the ‘Blue Knight of Gwent’, now had the right to raise a retinue in his own name. He and his men fought again at many battles, doing so under his own arms, which would be displayed on a rectangular banner rather than a lance pennant.
Retuning to Wales, Sir William married Gwladys, the daughter of Davy Gam and the widow of Roger Vaughan. She was by all accounts a great beauty, as well as rich, and was known as the ‘Star of Abergavenny’. A widower himself, who had previously been married to another widow, Isabel Bloet, William ap Thomas lived at Raglan Castle. Initially, this belonged to his stepson by his previous marriage, but William used some of Gwladys’ money to buy it outright. In this way, what was to become the ancestral home of one of Britain’s most powerful families was established.* Sir William ap Thomas died in 1445 and was succeeded by his eldest son, William Herbert. A staunch supporter of the Yorkist cause, he was to be a prominent figure in the Wars of the Roses; he fought at both the Battles of Mortimer’s Cross (February 1461) and Towton (March 1461) which put Edward IV on the throne. In 1468, he successfully took Harlech Castle by siege and was created Earl of Pembroke the same year as a reward. This made him the first full-blooded Welshman to receive a peerage since the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Unfortunately, he was not able to enjoy his title for very long as, the following year, he and his brother Richard, after losing the Battle of Edgecote, were both beheaded on the orders of their former ally, the ‘kingmaker’ Earl of Warwick.
Despite this setback, the Herbert family continued to grow in importance. William, Herbert’s eldest legitimate son (another William), later exchanged the Pembroke title for that of Earl of Huntingdon. Upon his death in 1491, Raglan castle – though not his title – passed to his daughter. This might have been the end of their aristocratic pretensions had not the 1st Earl of Pembroke also had an illegitimate son, Sir Richard Herbert of Ewyas. A friend and contemporary of Henry VII and the eventual victor of the Wars of the Roses, he set about rebuilding the family’s fortunes.
After my visit to Raglan Castle, I carried on driving to nearby Abergavenny. I parked the car and then made my way by foot to the parish church of St Mary, which, in the 14th century, was a Benedictine priory. A moderately large structure, it seemed to be in pristine condition in stark contrast to the castle; indeed, it had been refurbished in the not too distant past. Entering through the west door, I proceeded along the southern aisle and presently found myself among a collection of old tombs, each surmounted by one or more effigies. During the late Middle Ages, the Herberts of Raglan had been the principal patrons of this church, and so it is here that many of them and their wives lie buried.
This association began with Sir William ap Thomas, the ‘Blue Knight of Gwent’, whose effigy, along with that of his wife Gwladys, still lies on top of an elaborate tomb of alabaster. Next to this monument was an even finer memorial, this one surmounted by effigies of Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (who along with his brother, the 1st Earl of Pembroke, was beheaded after the Battle of Edgecote) and his wife Margaret. Cut into the wall opposite these two tombs was a third, this one in memory of Sir Richard Herbert of Ewyas. These tombs were on a par with many I had previously seen in Tewkesbury Abbey and, in fact, the entire collection – there are other tombs in the church besides those belonging to the Herbert family – is the finest in Wales. It all spoke of their high status.
On the floor, near these tombs, were a couple of large flagstones. Although unnamed, they were clearly funerary monuments themselves, presumably originally intended to mark the position of graves beneath the church floor. These stones, although not exactly ‘Rosicrucian’ in the normally accepted sense of the word, nevertheless featured floriated crosses of a type I had seen elsewhere in Wales. I wondered, could this be the evidence I was looking for? Were these further connecting links between the older wheel crosses that were on display in Margam and the later 12th-century crucified-rose symbol of the Rosicrucians? In short, were they a transitional style? This, however, was only a taster of what was to come. I was to find something even more interesting on the other side of the church.
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* See Chart 9: The Herbert Earls of Pembroke and the Sidney Family, page 232