The True Story of Owen Glendower [pp. 51-59]

TTIE TRUE STORY OF 0 WEN GL ENDO WER.
THE TRUE STORY OF OWEN GLENDOWER.
HE irregular and wild Welshman who figures
as a character in Shakespeare's play of "King
Henry IV." under the name of Owen Glendower is
known to most Americans, and I may say to most
Englishmen too, only to the extent afforded by that
stage-character. This notwithstanding the fact that
Englishmen live next door to Wales, while great
numbers of Americans are either of Welsh birth or
Welsh descent. The English historians do not give
him much room in their tale. Those people whose
knowledge of him is not taken from Shakespeare
generally have an ill-formed notion that he was a
sort of brigand, a half-savage, half-starved, halfnaked Welshman, with loRg hair and the rude manners of a backwoodsman-a medizeval Buffalo Bill
crossed on a Carolina freebooter-who burned, slew,
and took anything he could lay his hands on, aided
by a buccaneering rabble of jail-birds like unto himself. Those who are better informed may look with
incredulity on this statement; but I do not make it
idly, and I affirm that it is not exaggerated. I have
talked of this Welsh hero with numbers of Americans
and Englishmen, and I have invariably found that
their ideas concerning him (if any) belonged to one
of three classes:
i. He was a dreamer, a boaster, a believer in
sorcery and enchantment, and a professed worker in
the supernatural. This is the idea of him derivable
from Shakespeare.
2. He was a robber who dwelt in mountaincaves, and earned his daily bread by plunder. This
idea is that most prevalent where ignorance is
densest.
3. He was a rebel who made a great deal of
trouble for the English King Henry IV., and was
well punished in the end by a miserable old age of
poverty, suffering, privation, and loneliness. This
is an ultra-partisan English idea, not very common
in these days.'
No person who has not studied Welsh history
from the Welsh standpoint is likely to have a just
idea of this man. I purpose to tell his story as it
should be told-as the story of a hero, a man of rare
learning in his time, of polished intellect, the friend
of Dante, the patron of refinement and culture, a
man of vast wealth, of royal blood (if there is such
a thing), and the representative of a resistance to
tyranny hardly less admirable than that of our Revolutionary forefathers.
Great Britain has no people more loyal to the
queen at this day than the inhabitants of the western
counties, which combined are called Wales. Yet for
l It was prevalent in Elizabeth's day. In the last part of the
"Mirrour for Magistrates," imprinted at London by Thomas
Marshe, A. n. 1574, there is a doleful poem in the form of a soliloquy by Glendower, the tenor of which is quite sufficiently
illustrated by the title: " Howe Owen Glendowr seduced by
false prophecyes toke upon him to be Prince of Wales & was
by Henry Prince of England chased to the mountaynes where
He miserablye died for lacke of foode Anno D I4oi."
unnumbered centuries these were a distinct people,
whom Romans, Saxons, and Normans, alike failed
to subdue; and, until Henry VII. came, a Welsh man usually hated an Englishman worse than he did
a Frenchman. That old spirit is pretty nearly dead
now, and it would trouble you to tell at first sight
the difference between a Welshman of the better
class and an Englishman of the same class. There
are several marked differences, but they are not on
the surface. Both men are strong in the opinion,
however, that Victoria is the noblest of womankind,
and both claim her as their own. The Welsh call
your attention to the fact that the queen is a Tudor
as well as a Stuart, which is quite true; and that the
Tudors were Welshmen, which is also undeniable.
The Tudors were Welsh princes in Wales ages be fore Henry VII.'s grandfather married Queen Cath arine and introduced the race into England. There
was a Tudor king of Morganwg in the sixth century
who was the terror of the pagan Saxons who came in
after King Arthur fell. Henry VII. marched through
Wales to his throne over the dead body of Richard
III., who was slain by a Welshman, Sir Rhys ap
Thomas, so Welsh chroniclers claim. Since then
Wales and England have gradually become one, al though the Welsh retain their language-the only
language on earth, they proudly say, which has en dured through forty centuries with a literature all its
own-and they disagree with the English on innu merable points relating to the history of the past.
Books and newspapers are still printed in Welsh;
songs are sung and sermons are preached in Welsh;
and, in relating the story of Owen Glendower from
the Welsh standpoint, I shall not worry the reader
unnecessarily with boxing the chronological compass,
but accept the dates which Welsh writers have for
generations agreed upon.
OWEN GLENDOWER was born in I349, the son of
parents who traced their lineage straight to the loins
of Welsh royalty. His father was from those lords
of Powys who were conspicuous in Norman times,
his mother from Llewellyn the Great, last native
Prince of Wales. According to the traditions of
that superstitious age, the night this child was born
his father's horses were found standing in blood up
to their bellies. How the blood got there, there is
no effort to explain; nor what was done about it, if
anything. The circumstance is related as prefigur ing the sanguinary career of the infant, and not as a
matter to be dealt with in a practical manner. There
were other extraordinary phenomena of a like de scription, according to the old wives: a storm, with
terrific thunder and lightning, and frightful bellow ings of cattle. Shakespeare took up these tales, and
made Glendower boast of them to Hotspur in the
play. And it is this which has postured Glendower
for all time as a superstitious braggart, while Hot spur, on the other hand, appears a cynical doubter
I worthy of these days of Huxley and Darwin. Prob
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