1:00pm Thursday 6th August 2009
“HE died upon the top of Lawton’s Hope Hill in Herefordshire.” Writing about 20 years after the disappearance of Owain Glyndwr, Italian scholar Tito Livio was confident of the claim because locals had confirmed its truth at the time.
By autumn 1415 the Great Welsh Rebel was in fear for his life, not expecting a pardon from Henry V, and living out a miserable and lonely existence in deserted places and caves.
Although this appraisal of Owain’s condition was probably accurate, it reckoned without the solace which the battle-weary warrior drew from visiting his Herefordshire daughters.
Margaret, the youngest, was married to Roger of Monnington-on-Wye, Janet to Lord John of Croft Castle, and Alice, the eldest, to Sir John Scudamore of Kentchurch Court, who also owned land at Monnington Straddel. The two ‘Monningtons’ have caused confusion in the quest to find the site of Glyndwr’s burial.
And for the 60-year-old leader of the rebellion against English authority in Wales, it all represented a very sad fall from grace.
Tracing his descent from impeccable Welsh princely stock, Owain Glyndwr had been proclaimed Prince of Wales in 1400. The early years of his uprising against the usurper King Henry IV boasted famous victories at Plynlimon, near the source of the River Wye, and at Pilleth, by Knighton.
Here he had taken prisoner the highly influential Edmund Mortimer. There were spectacular successes in South Wales, notably at Carmarthen, and the northern castles of Aberystwyth, Conway, Criccieth and Harlech were captured.
Crowned in his parliament house at Macchynlleth, Glyndwr was at the height of his powers in 1406; the treaty he signed with the Earl of Northumberland and Mortimer consolidated the aim of dividing Henry’s kingdom between themselves.
A failed march on Worcester with his band of allies from France, however, had presaged a turning of the tide.
Besieged in the stronghold of Harlech Castle, Mortimer died, and his wife Catharine, Owain’s daughter, his Mortimer grandchildren and his wife Margaret Hanmer were captured. News of the death from neglect in the Tower of London four years later of Margaret and two grandaughters completed Owain’s sense of desolation and failure.
Now shorn of his trademark forked beard, the depleted figure would shuffle between Kentchurch Court and Croft Castle in the shadowy grey cowl of a friar.
When he was at Hergest in the domain of his kinsman Vaughan, he would probably be disguised in the garb of a shepherd. Drained of his fabled strength and existing in a makeshift hut, we are told, Glyndwr was ultimately taken ill on the slopes of Lawton’s Hope and unceremoniously bundled into a cart.
Some of the gradients on the walk are not for the less robust, but if we take them slowly, we can trace the spectre of the bearded recluse.
Though the field paths are not perhaps popularly trodden, rights of way are clearly defined and well maintained, apart from one field edge at the time of writing. There are fine views, especially from unsung Westhope Common.
Between Lawton’s Hope Wood, with its shy deer, and the old Roman Road running through Canon Pyon, we cross the start of the route of Owain Glyndwr’s final, unseemly journey.
In the care of a couple of wizened retainers, the story is that the Welshman’s broken shell of a body was bound for The Golden Valley via Tillington, Kenchester, Eaton Bishop and Shenmore.
There were people there who knew the secret of the location ordained for his final resting place.
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