OWAIN'S CHILDREN - WELSH BANDITS 1411-1555
The Glyndŵr rebellion, between 1400 and 1412, involved guerilla raids, with Owain Glyndŵr using woods and mountains as secure bases for attacks. After the defeat of the last national rebellion in Wales and the disappearance of Owain Glyndŵr, many of the rebel soldiers became outlaws. They were referred to as 'gwerin Owain' (Owain’s children or folk). Indeed, it became very difficult for the Welsh to live within the law after the Penal Code had been passed during the Revolt by Parliament against the Welsh:
'It is ordained . . . that no Englishman shall be convicted by any Welshman . . . within the land of Wales. It is ordained . . . that from henceforth no Welshman shall be armed or bear defensible armour.'
One of the first such outlaws that we come across is Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Gruffudd, a Welsh bandit and former rebel. He wrote several letters from his hideout in Dyffryn Clwyd to Lord Reginald Grey (1411). In the letters he states that he is willing to submit in return for seemingly outrageous demands: a royal charter of pardon, an important local office, and military service overseas.
Robin Hood was celebrated in drama, ballad and legend. Owain’s Children became celebrated in poetry and song. Welsh outlaw tradition includes poetry composed by the outlaws themselves. The poet, Llywelyn ap Moel y Pantri (d.1440) of Llanwddyn, Powys, was a Glyndŵr rebel turned outlaw and he wrote several poems about his band, the outlaws of Coed-y-Graig. The most notable is ‘The Battle of Waun Gaseg’ which is a frivolous and self-mocking account of his band’s ignominious flight from more than a hundred horsemen:
'A happy band on the hill slope Were we that day, in high hope, All at stretch and in good heart, Resolute to play our part, With doughty deeds in winning fame, In men’s mouth’s for Owain’s name.'
There survives a verse of folk song about one of these outlaws, entitled 'Marwnad yr Hedydd' (The Elegy of the Lark): 'Mi a glywais fod yr hedydd Wedi marw ar y mynydd, Pe gwyddwn i mai gwir y geirie Awn â gyrr o wŷr ag arfe, I gyrchu corff yr hedydd adre.
'I have heard that the lark Has died on the mountain, If I knew that the words were true I would take an armed band of men, To bring the lark’s body home.'
The 'hedydd' would appear to be the alias of an outlaw leader and it is possible that it could be either Owain Glyndŵr (the place of whose death is unknown) or the famous outlaw,Dafydd ap Siancyn (fl. mid-fifteenth century).
As the fifteenth century wore on, the number of outlaws in Wales was increased by soldiers returning from the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) in France, well-versed in pillage androbbery. The Wars of the Roses (1455–85) greatly added to the numbers of outlaws because the armies brought desolation and, when defeated, would take to the woods. One of their number was the most celebrated outlaw of this period, Dafydd ap Siancyn (Siencyn) ap Dafydd ap y Crach of the Vale of Conwy. He was a captain on the Lancastrian side and a poet, who became an outlaw for a period during the reign of Edward IV. He was also the grandson of Rhys Gethin, one of Owain Glyndŵr's captains and was related to the Tudors. He and his followers were clad in green (perhaps a connection with the Lincoln Green of Robin Hood?). On seeing these individuals at night dressed in green the local people, according to Sir John Wynn (c.1580), would take them for fairies and run away. Tudur Penllyn (c.1420–85) wrote a 'cywydd' in praise of Dafydd ap Siancyn, describing his eyrie at Carreg-y-gwalch, Llanrwst:
'Cai Hir y coed ir a’r dail . . . Dy gastell ydyw’r gelli, Derw dôl yw dy dyrau di.'
The tall Sir Kay of the lush trees and the leaves . . . Your castle is the depth of the forest, Your towers, the oaks of the vale.'
The hero’s woodland hideout is the equivalent of an Arthurian court and fortress. Ieuan ap Gruffudd Leiaf, says his the outlaws’ court, roofed with green foliage is like the glass house of Merlin; he is a golden warrior-knight of Rhos, his men are raid-loving ‘adar o greim ar dir Grwst’, 'birds of crime on the land of St Grwst'. Llywelyn ab y Moel described his own outlaw hideout in romance terms: a castle with turrets and tapestries of leaves. The outlaw seems to have been assimable to romantic and courtly associations in Welsh poetry to a degree that does not happen in the extant English tradition.
Another Lancastrian soldier and poet turned outlaw was Lewys Glyn Cothi or Llywelyn y Glyn (c.1420–89). Aftertaking part in the Lancastrian defeat at Mortimer’s Cross (1461), he fled and became an outlaw on the eastern slopes of Pumlumon, Cardiganshire. In one 'cywydd', he mentions that hehad been an outlaw before with Owain ap Gruffudd ap Nicolas in Gwynedd, possibly as early as 1442: '
A mi’n nhiredd Gwynedd gynt Yn herwa, yno hirhynt, Owain i gadw fy einioes Ei aur a’i win im a roes.' '
When in the lands of Gwynedd of yore I was an outlaw, there a long time, Owain to save my life Gave me his gold and wine.'
We have seen that some outlaws hid out in the forests and mountains but others used castles abandoned after damage during the Wars of the Roses. For instance, Lancastrian 'brigands' used Castell Carreg Cennen in Carmarthenshire as their hideout until some 500 men were set to work with crowbars to demolish the castle in 1462. Finally, there was a notorious outlaw near Mold in Flintshire named Rheinallt ap Gruffudd ap Bleddyn (c.1438–65/6) and described by the poet Hywel Cilan as 'braw’r Mars' (the terror of the Marches); according to tradition, he captured the mayor of Chester in 1464 and hanged him from a pillar in his house, y Tŵr.
It is without doubt that these outlaws appealed to a number of poets. The poetry composed in praise of outlaws can be seen as a kind of condemnation of the settled lifestyle of court and city. The bandits were also outside English law, and this gained the sympathy of the bards who on the whole were Anglophobic. The figure of the outlaw in relation to society and culture was inevitably more complex in Wales than in England. We have seen that, in the early thirteenth century, Fouke FitzWaryn was at one time an outlaw, at others a legitimate Marcher lord, and he shifted between Welsh and English political and military alliances. Despite the misery caused by lawlessness, many late medieval Welsh gentry had themselves some experience of banditry. However, late medieval outlaws kept the country in constant chaos, and the people became accustomed to violence through them. Blood feuds were fomented and according to Sir John Wynn: 'so bloody and ireful were quarrels in those days, and the revenge ofthe sword at such liberty as almost nothing was punished by law whatsoever happened.' It is hardly surprising that Sir John claims that no one ‘went abroad but in sort [in a posse] and so armed as if he went to the field to encounter with his enemies’. It is further believed that this period of banditry and lawlessness gave rise to the English rhyme ‘Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief’. It is also possible that the verb 'to welsh' or 'to welch', meaning to abscond without paying, entered the English language at this time: it may have been based upon a Welsh reputation for lawlessness in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Nevertheless, one should be wary of the accounts of this period written by Tudor commentators such as Sir John Wynn. They may well have deliberately painted the picture blacker than it was in order to magnify the supposed Tudor achievement of bringing law and order to Wales. That there were numerous outlaws in fifteenth-century Wales is beyond doubt, but it is unlikely that they were as prevalent as was formerly claimed.
The man credited with the restoration of law and order in Wales is Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. He was appointed by Thomas Cromwell as President of the Council of Wales and the Marches in 1534 and given the task of pacifying the country in readiness for the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–42. He went about his job with great enthusiasm. He was suspicious of every Welshman: as a certain William Gerard informs us, he was ‘not affable to any of the Walshrie, an extreme ponisher of offenders’. He was disgusted at the Laws in Wales Act of 1535, which allowed Welshmen for the first time to become Justices of the Peace. His comment was: ‘If one thief shall try another, all we have here begun is foredone.’ The near-contemporary claim that he hanged 5,000 Welsh felons is exaggerated but it is indicative of the fear he inspired. An example of this is the occasion when he caused the dead body of an outlaw to be ‘brought in a sack trussed upon a horse’ to a market town and hanged on the gallows before a crowd of 300; he gleefully wrote to Cromwell: ‘The manner thereof had not been seen heretofore.’
However, at least one band of outlaws escaped Rowland Lee’s reign of terror: the celebrated Red Bandits of Mawddwy. They were reputed to be descended from Owain Glyndŵr’s rebels and they terrorized the area around the mountainous and inaccessible commote of Mawddwy, now in Gwynedd. Until the nineteenth century there were houses inthe area with scythe blades lodged in the chimneys, said to have been placed there centuries before as protection against the bandits. They gained their epithet from their red hair and the red-haired denizens of the area today are reputed to be their descendants. The commote had traditionally formed part of Powys. However, in 1535, instead of forming part of the newly created shire of Montgomery, it was added to the well-established shire of Merioneth which had been set up in 1284. This, it seems, was done because of the disorder caused by the Red Bandits and it was felt that the settled administration of Merionethshire would be better able to suppress the bandits. According to Thomas Pennant in his 'Tours of Wales' (1778), little time was lost in subduing them. Baron Lewis Owen (High Sheriff of Merioneth, 1554–5) hanged over eighty of them on Christmas Eve, 1554. According to tradition, the mother of two outlaws who were hanged, cursed Baron Owen, saying: ‘These breasts have nurtured other sons who will wash their hands in your heart’s blood.’ Less than a year later (11 October 1555) her surviving sons murdered Baron Owen at Dugoed Mawddwy. However, this did not save the clan of brigands, as it is believed that all the males were executed following this murder.
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