Owen Glendower Biography

Dromo's Den

GLENDOWER, Owen (?1359-?1416). A Welsh chief, claiming descent from Llewellyn and prominent as an opponent of the English during the reign of Henry IV. He was the last to claim the title of independent Prince of Wales. At first he was a follower of Henry of Lancaster, who succeeded Richard II in 1399, but local troubles forced him into opposition. The Welsh were strongly attached to Richard II and, moved by rumors that Richard was still alive, rose in revolt against Henry (1400). Glendower led this movement and was at first very successful. The King ordered his subjugation and granted his estates to the Earl of Somerset. Though Glendower's forces were inferior in number to those of his adversaries, he was sometimes victorious, chiefly through surprise, ambushes, and the like. Often, however, he was defeated and forced to retire to the hills. In 1402 he drew Lord Grey into an ambush and took him prisoner. A few weeks later Sir Edmund Mortimer, the uncle of the Earl of March, was captured by Glendower, after a battle won by the latter. Treason seems to have been falsely imputed to Mortimer as the cause of his defeat; but Henry IV's suspicions and Glendower's kindness soon made the treason sufficiently real, for Mortimer married one of Glendower's daughters and conspired with him against the English King. At this time Glendower styled himself openly Prince of Wales. In July, 1404, Glendower entered into a treaty with Charles VI of France against the English. Little came of it, for in the following year Glendower sustained severe reverses. For two or three years more his fortunes were somewhat in the ascendant, and then they sank to the ordinary level of the petty warfare of a barbarous mountain chief. On Feb. 24, 1416, Glendower was still alive, but nothing is known about him after that date. His successes show that he had about the highest talents of his class, and he had their faults also. The popular idea of him is to be found in Shakespeare's King Henry IV. From the first he has been a kind of mythical hero, and the lapse of centuries does not-clear up the exact facts of his history. He was the last champion of Welsh independence which the English kings had been steadily stamping out for nearly a century and a half. Consult: Pennant, Tour in Wales (London, 1778); Pauli's Geschichte von England (Hamburg, 1854-58); Wylie, History of Henry IV, 1394-1404 (London, 1889-98); Bradley, Owen Glyndwr: The Last Struggle for Welsh Independence (New York, 1901).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. X (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 41.