The Pennal Letter

By markontour, March 10, 2024

The inspiration for today’s blog is ‘The Pennal Letter’ – a double-A3 sized piece of parchment, penned in Latin in March 1406 by Welsh hero, Owain Glyndwr, and addressed to Charles VI, King of France. Last weekend I spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon viewing a replica of the manuscript in the Canolfan Owain Glyndwr, and then following a trail around Machyllneth and beyond which charts the 10 year period when Glyndwr threw off English colonial shackles and briefly established Wales as an independent nation. (Nb there is an accompanying podcast for this blog).

When I last visited the Canolfan there wasn’t much to see, just a well-preserved fourteenth century hall and a plaque testifying that this was the site of the first Welsh parliament 600 years ago. Today the building boasts a fantastic bookshop devoted to Wales and the Welsh language, an engrossing audio tour of the Senedd (parliament) house, various community spaces, and a friendly, warm cafe. Centre stage is a 600 year old letter from a Welsh baron to the most powerful monarch in Europe.

Owain Glyndwr hadn’t been in the habit of corresponding with Kings. For most of his four decades up to 1604, Glyndwr had lived the life of a minor Welsh nobleman, dutifully serving in the army of his colonial master – the Kings of England – and studying at the Inns of Court in London as preparation for managing his baronial estate in mid-Wales.

From September 1400 to his disappearance from public record around 1412, however, Glyndwr led a major rebellion which threatened not only to end Saxon/Norman dominance of Wales, but to topple Henry IV from the English throne itself.

At the revolt’s peak in 1404, Glyndwr’s guerilla army had smashed the odds, united Wales and taken control of many of the key castles which Henry IV and his predecessors had used to dominate their western subjects. Most momentously, this included Harlech, which still stands as a mighty fortress to this day.

Peasants flocked to Glyndwr’s red dragon in anger at Henry IV’s attempt to roll-back on meagre wage and rights gains they had made at the end of the fourteenth century when plague had wiped out a third of the population, making labourers scarce and strengthening the hand of those who survived.

Welsh merchants, too, were quick to throw in their lot with Glyndwr, in order to over-turn their discrimantory exclusion from the market-towns established around the English King’s Welsh castles, blocking them from the most profitable trade.

Even the landed gentry, the only class in Wales which arguably had a stake in English rule, largely backed Glyndwr, in protest at their second class status within the English legal system, especially if they were unfortunate enough to come into conflict with the powerful ‘Marcher Lords’, given almost unchecked power over vast lands throughout what is today the English-Welsh border.

Indeed, it was the failure of the English courts to recognise a blatant grab of some of his mid-Wales lands by the De Grey family that had propelled Owain Glyndwr himself into furious rebellion.

Societal unity, allied to surprise and the existing insecurity of Henry IV’s own position as King (a small matter of usurping Richard II to grab the throne), enabled an ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered Welsh army to do what had never been done before and unify the hirtherto disparate fiefdoms of Wales against the English crown.

Having established military dominance, Glyndwr sought to establish civil rule, calling 4 representatives of every community in Wales to attend a Senedd (parliament) in the mid-west town of Machyllneth.

That Senedd took a series of momentous decisions, including to separate ecclesiastic Wales from the Church of England, instructing that all priests should speak Welsh and be educated in Wales, and seeking to establish two universities to train clergy and civil servants alike (at that time there were only 20 universities in the whole of Europe, and none in Wales).

Which brings us to The Pennal Letter. Two years later, in 1406, things weren’t going so well for the nascent Welsh state. Henry IV had put down the Percy rebellion in England, captured the heir to the Scottish throne (the future James 1) and been able to marshall his troops and begin a serious fightback, often led by his son, the future Henry V.

Glyndwr needed help. He had previously bolstered his unexpected military success with astute diplomacy, calling in aid from England’s perennial enemy, Scotland, and securing significant defections from Henry IV’s own ranks. Most notable of these was the Mortimer family. Glyndwr offered to support their claim to the English throne if they backed him as Prince of Wales – against Henry IV’s attempt to impose his son in that position. But that did mean Glyndwr’s rebellion had grown significantly in scope – Henry IV was now fighting not just from a western province but for his throne and his life.

Now he sought to bring the regional superpower, France, into the fray and in a letter written in a church in the small Welsh town of Pennal, which I also visited last weekend, Glyndwr put his offer to Charles VI.

The Pennal Letter wisely starts with the usual obsequiousness for addressing a monarch, along with lamentation at how Wales was oppressed by England:

“Most serene Prince, you have deemed it worthy on the humble recommendation sent to learn how my nation, for many years now elapsed, has been oppressed by the fury of the barbarous Saxons. Whence because they had the government over us and, indeed, because of that fact itself, it seemed reasonable with them to trample upon us.”

Then Glyndwr really gets down to business, if Charles VI would provide military aid to Wales, Glyndwr would recognise the French King’s candidate for Pope, at a time when Europe was split over who was the true leader of the Catholic church: the Avignon-based Benedict VIII, or the Vatican’s Martin V.

“But now most serene Prince, you have in many ways from your innate goodness informed me and my subjects very clearly and graciously concerning the recognition of the true Vicar of Christ. I, in truth, rejoice with a full heart on account of that information of Your Excellency, and because inasmuch from this information I understood that the Lord Benedict, the Supreme Pontifex, intends to work for the promotion of a union in the Church of God with all his possible strength. Confident indeed in his right and intending to agree with you as far as is possible for me, I recognise him as the true Vicar of Christ, on my own behalf and on behalf of my subjects by these letters patent.”

With Henry IV backing the Italian Pope, Glyndwr was offering Charles VI a gold-plated deal – not only a chance to overthrow his English rival, but to strengthen the alliance behind the French Pope.

Glyndwr’s motivation in this offer went beyond simple need for military aid. He also wished to free the Welsh church from control by the Archbishop of Cantebury, and thus the Pennal Letter continues:

“because, most excellent Prince, the metropolitan church of St Davids (centre of the Welsh church then and now) was compelled by the barbarous fury of those reigning in this country to obey the Church of Cantebury and, defacto, still remains in this subjection many other disabilities are known to have been suffered by the Church of Wales because of these barbarians.. For being crushed by the fury of the barbarous Saxons, who usurped for themselves the land of Wales, they trampled upon the Church of St David’s and made her a hand-maiden to the Church of Cantebury.”

It is interesting that as Glyndwr extrapolates on his plan in this regard, he proposes that several diocese that are part of modern-day England should be brought under the jurisdiction of the Church of Wales, including

“the undermentioned suffragan churches, Exter, Bath, Hereford, Worcester, Leicester – which See is now translated to the churches of Coventry and Lichfield”.

It is very Middle Ages how casually after this Glyndwr proposes the brutal torture of Henry IV and his followers:

“Again, that the Lord Benedict shall brand as heretics and cause to be tourtured in the usual manner, Henry of Lancaster, the Intruder of the Kingdom of England and the usurper of the crown of the same Kingdom and his adherents. In that of their own free will they have burned, or have caused to be burnt, so many cathederals, convents and parish churches. That they have savagely hung, beheaded and quartered arch-bishops, bishops, prelates priests, religious men as madmen or beggars, or caused the same to be done.”

Without shame, in the next clause Glyndwr asks for assurances that Pope Benedict will absolve Glyndwr of any taint of sin in carrying out such acts of retribution:

“Again that the same Lord Benedict shall grant us, our heirs, subjects and adherents, of whatsoever nation they may be, that wage war against the aforesaid intruder and usurper, as long as they hold the orthodox faith, full remission of all our sins and that the remission shall continue as long as the wars continue between us, our heirs and our subjects and the aforesaid Henry, his heirs and subjects, shall endure.”

With that, the Prince of Wales signs off with a couple of extra lines of monarch-praising:

That as you deemed worthy to raise us out of darkness into light, similarly you will wish to extirpate and remove violence and oppression from the Church and from my subjects, as you are well able to. And may the son of the glorious Virgin long preserve Your Majesty in the promised prosperity. Dated at Pennal, the last day of March 1406. Yours avowedly Owain, Prince of Wales.”

Charles VI was happy to agree on all fronts and some French support followed, but it was not enough and Henry IV continued to steadily win back his castles. By 1409 the last Glyndwr stronghold – Harlech – fell. Mortimer, the rebellion’s strongest aristocrat, was killed and Glyndwr’s wife, Margaret, was captured.

Glyndwr himself remained at large, and continued to prosecute guerilla warfare up until 2012, after which he simply disappears from the historical record. Welsh legend has it that Glyndwr melted into the Eryri mountains, joining that other scourge of the Saxons, King Arthur, to wait for such a time as he was needed again to fight Wales’ cause. Henry IV was never, at least, to have the satisfaction of proclaiming his rival dead.

It took a further 500 years for most of the aims of The Pennal Letter to be realised, with the Welsh church only gaining Parliamentary approval for independence from Cantebury under a Welsh Prime Minster of Great Britain, Lloyd George, in 1914 (although war delayed the actual separation until 1920). Despite the central importance of Wales’ coal and iron fields in the Industrial Revolution, Wales only gained its first university in 1883 (although when Wrexham gained a university it named itself in Glyndwr’s honour) and the Welsh language continued to be persecuted until a Welsh Assembly was finally established in 1999.

All of which are reasons why Owain Glyndwr continues to be celebrated in Wales to this day – most fittingly in the town where he had a really good stab at establishing Wales as a nation for the first time.