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Owain ap Gruffydd (c. 1354 – c. 1415), commonly known as Owain Glyndŵr or Glyn Dŵr (pronounced [ˈoʊain ɡlɨ̞nˈduːr], anglicised as Owen Glendower), was a Welsh leader, soldier and military commander in the Late Middle Ages, who led a 15-year-long revolt with the aim of ending English rule in Wales. He was an educated lawyer, forming the first Welsh parliament under his rule, and was the last native-born Welshman to claim the title Prince of Wales.In 1400 Owain Glyndŵr, a descendant of several Welsh royal dynasties, had a dispute with a neighbouring English lord that resulted in Glyndŵr claiming his title of Prince of Wales, which instigated the revolt against English rule. In response to the uprising, discriminatory penal laws were implemented against the Welsh people; this deepened public unrest and significantly increased support for Glyndŵr across Wales. In 1404, after a series of successful castle sieges and several battlefield victories against the English, Owain gained control of the country and was proclaimed by his supporters Prince of Wales in the presence of French, Spanish, Scottish and Breton envoys. He summoned a national parliament, where he announced plans to reintroduce the traditional Welsh laws of Hywel Dda, establish an independent Welsh church, and build two universities. Owain formed an alliance with King Charles VI of France; in 1405 a French army landed in Wales to support the rebellion. Under Owain Glyndŵr's leadership, an internationally recognised independent Welsh state was briefly established. It lasted for five years until February 1409, when English forces captured Owain's last remaining strongholds of Aberystwyth Castle and Harlech Castle, effectively ending his territorial rule in Wales. Glyndŵr refused to surrender to the new king Henry V, ignoring two offers of a pardon from the monarch. He retreated to the Welsh hills and mountains with his remaining forces, where he continued to resist English rule by utilising guerrilla tactics. This continued until Owain disappeared in 1415, when one of his supporters, Adam of Usk, recorded that he died of natural causes. He was the wealthiest Welshman in Wales before his downfall.Despite the large bounty placed on him by the English crown, Glyndŵr was never betrayed or captured, and in Welsh culture he acquired a mythical status alongside the likes of Cadwaladr, Cynon ap Clydno and King Arthur as a folk hero awaiting the call to return and liberate his people – "Y Mab Darogan" ('The Foretold Son'). In William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1 he appears as the character Owen Glendower as a king rather than a prince. Early life Owain Glyndŵr was born in 1354 in the northeast Welsh Marches (near the border between Wales and England) to a family of uchelwyr – nobles descended from the pre-conquest native Welsh royal dynasties – in traditional Welsh society. This group moved easily between Welsh and English societies and languages, occupying important offices for the Marcher Lords while maintaining their position as uchelwyr. His father, Gruffydd Fychan II, hereditary Tywysog (Prince) of Powys Fadog and Lord of Glyndyfrdwy, died sometime before 1370, leaving Glyndŵr's mother Elen ferch Tomas ap Llywelyn, a woman with an accent from Ceredigion (Deheubarth) a widow when he was a boy still. Owain Glyndŵr was a direct descendant of several Welsh royal dynasties including the princes of Powys via the House of Mathrafal through his father. Through his mother, he was also a descendant of king John and the kings and princes of Deheubarth as well as the royal House of Dinefwr, the kings and princes of Gwynedd including Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and their cadet branch the House of Aberffraw.The young Owain ap Gruffydd was possibly fostered at the home of David Hanmer, a rising lawyer shortly to be a justice of the King's Bench, or at the home of Richard FitzAlan, 3rd Earl of Arundel. Owain is then thought to have been sent to London to study law at the Inns of Court. He probably studied as a legal apprentice in London, for a period of seven years. He was possibly in London during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. By 1384, he was living in Wales and married to Margaret Hanmer; their marriage took place 1383 in St Chad's Church, Hamner in Clwyd. Although they may have married at an earlier date in the late 1370s according to sources. They started a large family and Owain established himself as the squire of Sycharth and Glyndyfrdwy.Glyndŵr joined the king's military service in 1384 when he undertook garrison duty under the renowned Welshman Sir Gregory Sais, or Sir Degory Sais, on the English–Scottish border at Berwick-upon-Tweed. His surname Sais, meaning 'Englishman' in Welsh, refers to his ability to speak English, not common in Wales at the time. In August 1385, he served King Richard II under the command of John of Gaunt, again in Scotland. In 1386, he was called to give evidence at the High Court of Chivalry, in the Scrope v Grosvenor trial at Chester on 3 September that year. In March 1387, Owain fought as a squire to Richard FitzAlan, 4th Earl of Arundel, in the English Channel at the defeat of a Franco-Spanish-Flemish fleet off the coast of Kent. Upon the death in late 1387 of his father-in-law, Sir David Hanmer, knighted earlier that same year by Richard II, Glyndŵr returned to Wales as executor of his estate. Glyndŵr served as a squire to Henry Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV), son of John of Gaunt, at the short, sharp Battle of Radcot Bridge in December 1387. From 1384 until 1388 he had been active in military service and had gained three full years of military experience in different theatres, and had witnessed some key events and noteworthy people at first hand.King Richard was distracted by a growing conflict with the Lords Appellant from this time on. Glyndŵr's opportunities were further limited by the death of Sir Gregory Sais in 1390 and the sidelining of FitzAlan, and he probably returned to his stable Welsh estates, living there quietly for ten years during his forties. The bard Iolo Goch, himself a Welsh lord, visited Glyndŵr in Sycharth in the 1390s and wrote a number of odes to Owain, praising his host's liberality and writing of Sycharth, "Rare was it there / to see a latch or a lock." Welsh Revolt In the late 1390s, a series of events began to push Owain towards rebellion, in what was later to be called the Welsh Revolt, the Glyndŵr Rising or (within Wales) the Last War of Independence. His neighbour, Baron Grey de Ruthyn, had seized control of some land, for which Glyndŵr appealed to the English Parliament. Owain's petition for redress was ignored. Later, in 1400, Lord Grey informed Glyndŵr too late of a royal command to levy feudal troops for Scottish border service, thus enabling him to call the Welshman a traitor in London court circles. Lord Grey had stature in the royal court of Henry IV. The law courts refused to hear, or the case was delayed because Lord Grey prevented Owain.... Discover the Simon Glyndwr John popular books. 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