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The revolution in England proved likewise the occasion of an insurrection in Wales. Owen Glendour, or Glendourduy, descended from the ancient princes of that country, had become obnoxious on account of his attachment to Richard: and Reginald, Lord Gray of Ruthyn, who was closely connected with the new king, and who enjoyed a great fortune in the marches of Wales, thought the opportunity favorable for oppressing his neighbor, and taking possession of his estate. [***] Glendour, provoked at the injustice, and still more at the indignity, recovered possession by the sword; [****] Henry sent assistance to Gray; [*****] the Welsh took part with Glendour: a troublesome and tedious war was kindled, which Glendour long sustained by his valor and activity, aided by the natural strength of the country, and the untamed spirit of its inhabitants.

     * Rymer, vol. viii. p. 142, 152, 219.

     ** Rymer, vol. viii. p. 110, 111.

     *** Vita Ric. Sec. p. 171, 172

     **** Walsing, p. 364.

As Glendour committed devastations promiscuously on all the English, he infested the estate of the earl of Marche; and Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle to that nobleman, led out the retainers of the family, and gave battle to the Welsh chieftain: his troops were routed, and he was taken prisoner:[*] at the same time, the earl himself, who had been allowed to retire to his castle of Wigmore, and who, though a mere boy, took the field with his followers, fell also into Glendour’s hands, and was carried by him into Wales.[**] As Henry dreaded and hated all the family of Marche, he allowed the earl to remain in captivity; and though that young nobleman was nearly allied to the Piercies, to whose assistance he himself had owed his crown, he refused to the earl of Northumberland permission to treat of his ransom with Glendour.

The uncertainty in which Henry’s affairs stood during a long time with France, as well as the confusions incident to all great changes in government, tempted the Scots to make incursions into England; and Henry, desirous of taking revenge upon them, but afraid of rendering his new government unpopular by requiring great supplies from his subjects, summoned at Westminster a council of the peers, without the commons, and laid before them the state of his affairs.[***] The military part of the feudal constitution was now much decayed: there remained only so much of that fabric as affected the civil rights and properties of men: and the peers here undertook, but voluntarily, to attend the king in an expedition against Scotland, each of them at the head of a certain number of his retainers. [****] Henry conducted this army to Edinburgh, of which he easily made himself master; and he there summoned Robert III. to do homage to him for his crown.[*****] But finding that the Scots would neither submit nor give him battle, he returned in three weeks, after making this useless bravado; and he disbanded his army.

1402.

In the subsequent season, Archibald, earl of Douglas, at the head of twelve thousand men, and attended by many of the principal nobility of Scotland, made an irruption into England, and committed devastations on the northern counties. On his return home, he was overtaken by the Piercies, at Homeldom, on the borders of England, and a fierce battle ensued, where the Scots were totally routed. Douglas himself was taken prisoner; as was Mordc, earl of Fife, son of the duke of Albany, and nephew of the Scottish king, with the earls of Angus, Murray, and Orkney, and many others of the gentry and nobility. [******] | When Henry received intelligence of this victory, he sent the earl of Northumberland orders not to ransom his prisoners, which that nobleman regarded as his right by the laws of war received in that age. The king intended to detain them, that he might be able by their means to make an advantageous peace with Scotland; but by this policy he gave a fresh disgust to the family of Piercy.

     * Dugdale, vol. i. p. 150.

     ** Dugdale, vol. i. p. 151.

     *** Rymer, vol. viii. p. 125, 126.

     **** Rymer, Vol. viii. p.. 125.

     ****** Walsing p. 336. Vita Ric. Sec p. 180. Chron.
     Otterborne. p. 237.

1403.

The obligations which Henry had owed to Northumberland, were of a kind the most likely to produce ingratitude on the one side, and discontent on the other. The sovereign naturally became jealous of that power which had advanced him to the throne; and the subject was not easily satisfied in the returns which he thought so great a favor had merited. Though Henry, on his accession, had bestowed the office of constable on Northumberland for life,[*] and conferred other gifts on that family, these favors were regarded as their due; the refusal of any other request was deemed an injury.

     * Rymer, vol. viii. p. 89.

The impatient spirit of Harry Piercy, and the factious disposition of the earl of Worcester, younger brother of Northumberland, inflamed the discontents of that nobleman; and the precarious title of Henry tempted him to seek revenge, by overturning that throne which he had at first established. He entered into a correspondence with Glendour: he gave liberty to the earl of Douglas, and made an alliance with that martial chief: he roused up all his partisans to arms; and such unlimited authority at that time belonged to the great families, that the same men, whom, a few years before, he had conducted against Richard, now followed his standard in opposition to Henry. When war was ready to break out, Northumberland was seized with a sudden illness at Berwick: and young Piercy, taking the command of the troops, marched towards Shrewsbury, in order to join his forces with those of Glendour, The king had happily a small army on foot, with which he had intended to act against the Scots; and knowing the importance of celerity in all civil wars, he instantly hurried down, that he might give battle to the rebels. He approached Piercy near Shrewsbury, before that nobleman was joined by Glendour; and the policy of one leader, and impatience of the other, made them hasten to a general engagement.

The evening before the battle, Piercy sent a manifesto to Henry, in which he renounced his allegiance, set that prince at defiance, and, in the name of his father and uncle, as well as his own, enumerated all the grievances of which, he pretended, the nation had reason to complain; He upbraided him with the perjury of which he had been guilty, when, on landing at Ravenspur, he had sworn upon the Gospels, before the earl of Northumberland, that he had no other intension than to recover the duchy of Lancaster, and that he would ever remain a faithful subject to King Richard. He aggravated his guilt in first dethroning, then murdering that prince, and in usurping on the title of the house of Mortimer, to whom, both by lineal succession, and by declarations of parliament, the throne, when vacant by Richard’s demise, did of right belong. He complained of his cruel policy in allowing the young earl of Marche, whom he ought to regard as his sovereign, to remain a captive in the hands of his enemies, and in even refusing to all his friends permission to treat of his ransom; He charged him again with perjury in loading the nation with heavy taxes, after having sworn that, without the utmost necessity, he would never levy any impositions upon them. And he reproached him with the arts employed in procuring favorable elections into parliament; arts which he himself had before imputed as a crime to Richard, and which he had made one chief reason of that prince’s arraignment and deposition.[*] This manifesto was well calculated to inflame the quarrel between the parties: the bravery of the two leaders promised an obstinate engagement; and the equality of the armies, being each about twelve thousand men, a number which was not unmanageable by the commanders, gave reason to expect a great effusion of blood on both sides, and a very doubtful issue to the combat.