THE EPIPHANY RISING 1399-1400
Some of Richard’s followers had their estates confiscated, and around Christmas 1399 a plot was hatched by the Earls of Salisbury, Huntingdon, Kent, Rutland, Baron Lumley and Baron Despenser (formerly the Earl of Gloucester). Thomas Despenser, Lord of Glamorgan, had previously tried to raise an army in Glamorgan to join Richard II after he landed in Pembroke, but men refused to join him. As a result he was imprisoned for a short time by the new King and his earldom was withdrawn. The dissatisfied nobles planned a Twelfth Night celebration in Henry’s honour, at a tournament in Windsor where he would be assassinated, to restore Richard II. Henry IV and his son Prince Henry and others of the royal household were suffering from an illness which was attributed to poison, and they were still ailing when, early in January 1400, the conspiracy was discovered.
The plotters had taken Windsor Castle, but because they had been betrayed Henry did not ride to Windsor, and began to raise an army in London. The King committed his sons to the keeping of the mayor and citizens of London, but the danger was soon over. When they saw Henry’s army of 20,000 men, the plotters fled westwards and tried to raise support. Lumley was beheaded after trying to seize Cirencester, where Salisbury and Kent were captured. They were also beheaded, without trial, on 7 January. Despenser escaped from Cirencester but was taken at Bristol, trying to take a ship for France, and beheaded without trial on 13 January, while Huntingdon was captured at Pleshey and likewise executed. Despenser’s possessions were confiscated, but his wife Constance was granted for life the greater part of his lands, as she was a relative of Henry IV. She returns in our story as her castles in Glamorgan, such as the great Caerffili, were attacked by Glyndŵr in 1402, and because she herself later plotted against Henry IV.
TROUBLE IN CHESTER
The new King was now very nervous of past supporters of Richard, which did not seem to help Glyndŵr’s case for justice against Lord Grey. The Welsh and the men of Cheshire were also always linked with Richard’s strongest supporters. There was unrest in the garrison city of Chester, where Richard II’s favoured regiment of archers was based. It was also full of outlaws and criminals, who had gained immunity from prosecution in return for making a plea of loyalty (an advowson) to the Earl of Chester. In this manner, the earl could always get ‘volunteers’ for his attacks on Wales. Henry sent his army to Cuddington, just outside Chester where it camped. Peirs Leigh, the Captain of the Chester archers, was recognised and taken as he travelled dressed as a monk, to reconnoitre the King’s strength. He was immediately beheaded. On 10 January, the mob in Chester attacked its castle. Its Chamberlain, Bishop Trefor, was asked to hand over the keys but refused. The mob captured the Eastgate and took down the displayed head of Peirs Leigh, marching with it around the town, trying to gain supporters. After a week of hostilities, Bishop Trefor managed to restore order.
THE MURDER OF RICHARD II
The Duke of Gloucester had been a leader of the Lords Appellant, enemies of Richard II in the successful rebellion of 1388. When Richard managed to break their power in 1397, the Duke was imprisoned in Calais, but murdered (probably smothered) in gaol before his trial for treason. The Duke was Bolingbroke’s uncle. This act had dramatically increased Richard’s unpopularity amongst his nobles. (Thomas Despenser soon after killed Gloucester’s son and heir.) According to Froissart, Richard II saw the murderers of Gloucester being killed, from his cell, and thus despairingly knew he would never be allowed freedom.
The Earl of Northumberland had asked how Richard should be treated, as Henry was ‘resolved to spare his life’ and the Lords decided unanimously that he should be kept under guard in a secure place. From the Tower, Richard was taken to Pontefract Castle, disguised as a friar, shortly before the end of 1399. The Epiphany Plot had highlighted the danger of allowing Richard to live. Early in February, the Privy Council decreed that if Richard II was still alive, he should be brought to ‘a secure place’, and if he was dead, his body should be shown to the people. Henry IV was unnerved by the earls’ revolt and the happenings in Chester, and by 14 February, Richard II was dead in Pontefract Castle, either starved or smothered. He left no issue. One account tells us that Sir Piers Exton and eight guards bludgeoned Richard to death. Rumours persisted into the reign of Henry V that Richard was alive, however, serving as a focus for discontent against the new Lancastrian dynasty. The dead King’s body was displayed in the old St Paul’s Cathedral on 2 February 1400, and he was buried in Kings Langley Church on 6 March. (Henry V, to silence the rumours of Richard’s survival, decided to have the body moved to Westminster Abbey in 1413, buried next to his first wife Anne).
GLYNDŴR’S DISPUTE WITH LORD GREY
In 1397, the Lord of Glyndŵr and his wife had been granted the services of a confessor ‘in the hour of death’ (reported in the registers of Pope Boniface IX). In 1399, Glyndŵr’s estates brought in about 300 marks a year, with retainers and servants enabling a luxurious lifestyle. (300 marks, in terms of relative earnings, would be around £1.1 million pounds today.) Suddenly, in 1399, everything began to go wrong. Glyndŵr and many of his followers came from the Welsh uchelwyr, the high men or nobility, equivalent to the English squirearchy. They had generally adapted loyalty to the crown and its marcher barons, in return for settled tenancies of their hereditary estates. However, they were suffering heavy taxation, often discriminated against legally, and were always aware that their lands, theirs by right, had been taken from them by power. They knew of the creeping takeover of Wales since the Normans came, and its acceleration since the death of Llywelyn II. They also knew, from the long history of conflict with their neighbour, that they could not trust the Norman- French-English any more than the Saxons. There was a sense of ‘this far, and no further’ amongst the uchelwyr. Any further attempts to move them out of their lands would meet resistance.
The Annales Henrici quarti (written in St Albans) claimed that the Glyndŵr war was instigated by a long-running territorial dispute, which Parliament failed to redress, between the Lord of Dyffryn Clwyd ‘Reynold Grey’, and Glyndŵr, over lands which Glyndŵr owned called Croesau (Crosses) in the parish of Bryneglwys. Under Richard II the case had been found in favour of Glyndŵr, but on the usurpation of Bolingbroke Lord Grey again seized land at Derwen, south of Ruthin. Glyndŵr responded, registering his grievances with Parliament several times in 1399.
In 1400 a bandit named Gruffydd ap Dafydd ap Gruffydd was operating on Glyndŵr’s lands at Glyndfrdwy. Bishop Trefor of St Asaf tried to lure him away with an offer of becoming master forester or bailiff on the nearby estates of the Earl of Arundel at Chirk. Gruffydd agreed to negotiate under a safe conduct in Oswestry, under the terms that he could not be arrested ‘in Chirkland’. However, he was warned that he would be lured outside Chirkland and taken as a thief. The two men accompanying him stole horses from Lord Grey’s park, and they managed to escape the trap. Gruffydd hid on Grey’s estate at Duffryn Clwyd, carrying on robbing horses and supplies, and sheltered by Grey’s Welsh tenants. Gruffydd wrote to Grey, letting him know that he would retaliate if any of Grey’s tenants were hurt for aiding him. Grey responded threatening him with hanging, his letter ending:
But we hope we shall do you a privy thing
A rope, a ladder and a ring
High on the gallows for to swing
And this shall be your ending
And He that made thee be there to helping
And we on our behalf shall be well willing
For thy letter is knowledging.
Details of the correspondence are in Hingeston, and interestingly Gruffydd ap Dafydd states that he is under the protection of Maredudd ab Owain, one of Glyndŵr’s sons. After answering the letter, on 23 June 1400 Grey wrote to the Prince of Wales stating that he had received the Privy Seal and letters asking him to ‘appease the misgovernance and the riot which is herein begun in North Wales’ but asking for a ‘more plainer commission than I have yet.’ Grey sent copies of the letters to Prince Henry at Chester Castle, warning him that the King’s officers in North Wales were ‘kin to these rebels’ and asking for strong action. This implicated Glyndŵr as the relevant most blameworthy King’s officer, in fact a ‘tenant-in-capite’ to the King for the estates where Gruffydd had been active.
Parliament should have discussed Glyndŵr’s case against Grey in the spring of 1400, but his case was not deemed important enough to be granted a hearing. Bishop John Trefor of St Asaf had been Richard II’s ambassador to Scotland, and pleaded that it could be unwise to provoke a man as well-regarded as Glyndŵr, provoking the response ‘Se de illis scurri nudipedibus non curare?’ (‘What care we for barefoot Welsh curs?’ – ‘scurri’ has been translated as ‘clowns’ but seems to either mean ‘rabble’ or be cod-Latin for ‘curs’ or dogs.) Instead it was asked of Glyndŵr that he grant Lord Grey further concessions. Glyndŵr left London, fuming at the injustice of Parliament. Trefor was also Chamberlain of the Principality of Cheshire, so seemed to know how dangerous it could be to spurn Glyndŵr.
The Vita Ricardi secundi and a fifteenth-century Welsh tract also tell of the withholding by Grey of a summons to a general muster addressed by the King to Glydwr. Reginald de Grey was responsible for issuing and enforcing royal demands in the Northern March. Lord Grey commanded the general muster to fight for Henry IV in Scotland in 1400. Local barons were told to take a certain number of armed men each. However, Grey also delayed summoning Glyndŵr’s levy of men for service in Scotland until the last moment, making it impossible for Glyndŵr to respond as requested, or even send an explanation for his absence. Refusal or failure to respond to an order of the King was deemed treason, so Glyndŵr’s estates would be forfeit until he could prove his loyalty or receive due punishment. The King’s forces returned from Scotland in September 1400, having met with little success. Talbot and Grey were now told to bring Glyndŵr to justice.
Grey invited Glyndŵr to a reconciliation meeting, by letter carried by friars. He realised that Glyndŵr would not trust him after the Gruffydd ap Dafydd affair, so the meeting was arranged at Glyndŵr’s court at Glyndyfrdwy, on condition that Grey only brought thirty armed followers. Grey set off, but another heavily armed party of horsemen followed him later, dispersing into the woodlands around the manor. Glyndŵr met Grey, but the bard Iolo Goch noticed these horsemen crossing the water meadows heading to the manor. He communicated this in an englyn that bemoaned the death of Prince Dafydd, the brother of Llywelyn the Last. The verse recounted Dafydd’s heart jumping out of the funeral flames and blinding his executioner. Glyndŵr realised the problem, made an excuse to the non-Welsh-speaking Grey and left the negotiations room. The oncoming men-at-arms soon attacked the house but Glyndŵr had escaped into the hills. Adam of Usk gives the date of this attempt at entrapment as 21 September 1400, but it must have been shortly before 16 September.
Owen Rhoscomyl states that Earl Talbot from Chirk was also involved in the entrapment scheme and arrived with a large force, attempting to surround Glyndŵr and clearly showing his intent. Glyndŵr escaped with his life and went into hiding, confirming himself a traitor in English eyes. Glyndŵr now decided that there was no justice from the English crown and his life would be permanently in danger from Grey of Ruthin. On 16 September, Glyndŵr Day, he raised the flag of war. King Henry soon confiscated Glyndŵr’s estates, and granted them to John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, Henry’s illegitimate half-brother in 1400. (In 1404 Beaufort became Constable of England, dying in 1410 before he could ever effectively control Glyndŵr’s lands.)
The harsh taxation policies, pursued by the crown and by marcher regimes in Wales, had caused opposition from both tenants and local officials. There were few opportunities for professional advancement available to Welsh laymen and churchmen, and growing resentment of more privileged English settlers, especially those in the towns of the crown lands and the marcher lordships of north-east Wales. All this helped to fuel a broader support for Glyndŵr, as well as the deposition of Richard II.
The laws of the early part of this reign were not conciliatory towards the Welsh. By stat. 2 Hen. IV. Jan. 1401, no person born in Wales of Welsh parentage could purchase land or tenement in or near the cities in the Marches of Wales: he could not henceforth receive the freedom of any city or borough. All Welsh citizens were to produce security for their conduct: they were not to be admitted to any municipal office, nor to wear armour in their town or borough. (Stat. Realm, ii. 124.) No Welshman might purchase land in England, &c. (129.) By stat. 4 Hen. IV., Sept. 30, 1402, Englishmen could not be tried by a Welsh jury in Wales; minstrels, rhymers, wasters, and other vagabonds, were condemned; meetings were not allowed; no Welshman might carry arms: Welshmen were not to have castles; the fortresses were to be manned by English; even Englishmen married to Welshwomen were prohibited from bearing office in Wales or the Marche.
(J.S. Davies, ed. An English Chronicle … Written before the year 1471.)