Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan or Owain Glyndŵr (c. 1416) was a Welsh nobleman and military commander in the late Middle Ages who led a revolt with the aim of establishing an independent Wales free from English rule. Owain was acclaimed Prince of Wales by his supporters on 16 September 1400, and following initial successes, the rebellion was able to take control of the entirety of the country between 1404 and 1405. However, an increase of English military pressure and the lack of foreign aid resulted in the loss of all rebel territory by 1409, after which Owain continued sporadic resistance until his disappearance from the historical record in 1412. He was never captured, and died in hiding around 1416.
During the year 1400, Owain, a Welsh soldier and Lord of Glyndyfrdwy, had a dispute with his English neighbour Reginald de Grey, a symptom of larger animosity between the Welsh and English in Wales which ultimately led to a national revolt that pitted common Welsh countrymen and nobles against the English military. In response to the rebellion, discriminatory penal laws were implemented against the Welsh people; this deepened civil unrest and significantly increased support for Owain across Wales. Then, in 1404, after a series of successful castle sieges and several battlefield victories for the Welsh, Owain gained control of most of Wales and held a parliament in Machynlleth in the presence of envoys from France, Scotland, the Spanish kingdoms of Castille and Leon, and representatives from every region of Wales. Military aid was given to the rebellion from France, Brittany, and Scotland. Owain wrote in the Pennal Letter of 1406 that he had plans to build two universities, one in North Wales and one in South Wales, and reinstate the traditional Welsh laws of Hywel Dda, and to expand Wales' borders into England, which would have affected the structure of the Church.
The war continued, and over the next several years, the English gradually gained control of large parts of Wales. By 1409 the rebellion’s last remaining castles of Harlech and Aberystwyth had been captured by English forces. Owain refused two royal pardons and retreated to the Welsh hills and mountains with his remaining forces, where he continued to resist English rule by using guerrilla warfare tactics, until his disappearance from the historical record in 1412.
Owain was never captured or killed, and the circumstances surrounding his death are unknown. In Welsh culture he acquired a mythical status alongside Cadwaladr, Cynon ap Clydno and King Arthur as a folk hero, and was seen as the 'Son of Destiny', just as was Owain Lawgoch a few decades earlier. He also appears in William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1 as the character Owen Glendower.
Life before the revolt, c. 1359 – 1400
Background and family Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan was born in or before 1359, the son of Gruffudd Fychan and Elen ferch Tomas. Owain's father's family descended from another, earlier Gruffudd Fychan, younger brother of Llywelyn Fychan, the last lord of Northern Powys, killed alongside Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in the last stage of the Edwardian Conquest of Wales, and ultimately from Madog ap Maredudd, last ruler of a united Powys. Following the Conquest, the earlier Gruffudd Fychan swore fealty to King Edward and was permitted on 12 February 1283 to hold his land of the king by 'Welsh barony', a tenure largely confined to members of the former royal dynasties of Wales under which Gruffudd and his descendants owed the Crown only military service and retained the right to hold court on their lands. Owain's father, the later Gruffudd Fychan, held two lordships at opposite ends of the Berwyn range: that of the vill of Glyndyfrdwy in Meirioneth within the Principality of Wales, and half of Cynllaith in the Marcher lordship of Chirk. Little of Gruffudd's career is recorded, though from 1346 to 1348 he held the stewardship of the Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel's lordship of Oswestry. Gruffudd's own father, Gruffudd Llwyd, was steward of the Crown lordship of Maelor Saesneg in 1331, and married a daughter of John V Lestrange of Knockin, an English nobleman of the Shropshire border. Gruffudd Llwyd abandoned the partible succession customary in native Welsh law in favour of primogeniture in tail on the English model, keeping his estates undivided and his descendants wealthy.
Owain's mother Elen descended from Gruffudd, eldest son of the Lord Rhys of Deheubarth, and on the deaths of her uncle and brother, the last males of their dynasty, inherited half the commote of in Ceredigion. She descended also in the female line from the dynasty of Gwynedd, and even from King John through his daughter Joan, wife of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of Gwynedd. Elen and her ancestors likewise held their land by 'Welsh barony'. Owain's direct descent from the three principal Welsh dynasties of the pre-Conquest era made him a singular figure in fourteenth-century Wales. Inheritance and education
Gruffudd Fychan died shortly before 1370, leaving to Owain his estates in Cynllaith and Glyndyfrdwy, after which Owain would be known as 'Owain Glyndŵr'. Owain may have spent his youth after his father's death as a page or esquire in the court of the Fitzalan earls of Arundel; Richard Fitzalan, whom Gruffudd Fychan had served as steward, was sufficiently close with the family to loan £20 to Elen ferch Tomas in 1370. Owain may have been introduced to the earls' court by David Hanmer, an important lawyer from Maelor Saesneg with connection to the earls of Arundel and barons of Powis who was like Owain of mixed English and Welsh background. Gruffudd Fychan's estates may also have been taken into the custody of Hanmer until Owain's majority, with the young Owain having been his ward. Perhaps under the direction of his guardian, Owain may himself have trained in the legal profession for as many as seven years at the Inns of Court towards the end of the reign of Edward III, who died in 1377. However, in the fourteenth century the Inns of Court were, according to J. E. Lloyd, paraphrasing the fifteenth-century judge John Fortescue, "a kind of upper-class university, too expensive for any but the well-to-do and providing an education which was more social than professional." Early career Owain continued in the service of the Fitzalan earls of Arundel following the end of his education. The earl whom his father had served died in 1377, and was succeeded by his son, also named Richard. Owain's service to the younger Richard Fitzalan is one of the most well-attested periods of his career prior to his rebellion. Before the first records of his service to Arundel, however, Owain appears to have been married to Margaret Hanmer, daughter of David Hanmer. The date of this marriage is disputed. The unreliable nineteenth-century antiquarian William Owen dated Owain's marriage to 1383, but R. R. Davies suggested a date in the 1370s whilst Owain was the ward of her father, drawing a parallel with the marriage of Owain's grandfather Gruffudd Llwyd whilst underage with the daughter of his guardian in 1304. Service in Scotland, 1384 – 1385
On 1 March 1384, Owain and his brother Tudur were listed as men-at-arms among the retainers of Sir , guardian of the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed on the English-Scottish border. Gregory Sais was, according to A. D. Carr, "perhaps the greatest of the Welsh captains of this period" and a close confidant of the Black Prince in the Edwardian phase of the Hundred Years' War. Owain also likely became acquainted during his assignment in Berwick with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur, who both would feature prominently in his future. In August 1385, King Richard II launched an inconclusive campaign against Scotland which nevertheless razed and plundered its way to Edinburgh. Owain's participation in this campaign is not recorded in contemporary records, but his participation in it is confirmed by his own testimony in the following year. At the age of twenty-seven, Owain was called to give evidence for the High Court of Chivalry on 3 September 1386 in Chester as part of the proceedings of the Scrope v Grosvenor trial. Richard Scrope brought a suit seeking to determine who could bear a coat of arms blazoned Azure, a bend Or against Robert Grosvenor after he saw Grosvenor displaying arms identical to his own on the Scottish campaign; the case lasted for six years. Owain testified that he had seen Grosvenor bear these arms on the expedition in Scotland and that the arms were generally known to be his in Cheshire and Flintshire, as did his brother Tudur, who was then twenty-four. Owain's brothers-in-law John Hanmer and Robert Puleston, the latter married to Owain's sister Lowri, also testified in this trial and were earlier involved in the same Scottish campaign. These men may have served in this campaign in the retinue of the earl of Arundel, or perhaps been mustered directly by Richard II as part of the sizeable contingent from the county palatine of Chester.
In Arundel's retinue, 1387 Owain and his brother Tudur were mustered in Sandwich on 13 March 1387 as part of the retinue of his old acquaintance, Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel. Since 1385, England had been threatened annually by a French naval invasion from Flanders. On 10 December 1386, Richard II had been given a commission to lead 2500 men in a campaign to pre-emptively strike the Franco-Flemish navy commencing March 1387. King Richard had been stripped of his control over England's government in the Wonderful Parliament a month prior, and Arundel was one of the leading opponents of the king, at the centre of the kingdom's political life. Arundel commanded his men in a fleet as admiral, and routed a predominantly Flemish wine fleet sailing home from La Rochelle in the Battle of Margate on 24 March, England's first notable success at sea since the resumption of war with France. The opposing fleet attempted to break through the English navy to Sluis, but was intercepted and forced to fight or beach at Cadzand shore; the battle's spoils included more than 8000 tuns of Poitevin and Saintongeais wine, flooding the English market. Owain was not knighted by Arundel following the battle, though many of his other squires were; this led R. R. Davies to note that though Owain was "by far the greatest of 'the barons of Wales', he could not even make it to the rank of a knight in England". An early retirement? 1387 – 1400
Owain's father-in-law David Hanmer died in early summer 1387, and by July, Owain had returned to settle the family affairs, just as Arundel began to take action against Robert de Vere, the earl of Oxford and Richard II's favourite. He does not appear to have taken part in any further campaigns under Arundel, as though Owain was enrolled in the earl's retinue at the head of his esquires with the aim of serving in France in 1388, his name was crossed out in the lists, meaning he did not serve. For the next decade, Owain is not mentioned in any surviving records save on 28 June 1397, when the Roman pope Boniface IX granted an indult to Owain and Margaret Hanmer allowing a confessor to grant them plenary remission in the hour of death. J. E. Lloyd, repeated by R. R. Davies, imagined Owain in these years "at ease, wealthy, generous, respected, [and] happy in the life of his home." Ultimately, Owain's hopes for advancement in a military career may have been dashed by the signing of a peace treaty with France in 1389 following Richard II's return to power at Arundel's expense; his other obvious patron, Gregory Sais, died in 1390. No record survives of Owain serving Arundel in an administrative capacity as Gruffudd Fychan served the earl's father, and so the relationship between the two may have at some point cooled.