The History of Oswestry: Comprising the British, Saxon, Norman, and English eras; the topography of the borough; and its ecclesiastical and civic history; with notices of botany, geology, statistics, angling, and biography: to which are added sketches of the environsCathrall, William
History
The History of Oswestry: Comprising the British, Saxon, Norman, and English eras; the topography of the borough; and its ecclesiastical and civic history; with notices of botany, geology, statistics, angling, and biography: to which are added sketches of the environs
Cathrall, William
Natural history -- England -- Shropshire; Oswestry (England) -- History
Reverting to Owain Glyndwr’s career, we see that his escape from the
Shelton Oak, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, did not deter him from fresh
enterprises. Evidently regardless of the ruin of his allies—they, as
Leland tells us, “whom he promised to unite with” at that battle—he
continued to infest the English borders, where he committed great havoc,
the king being unable, from the want of funds, to resist his aggressions.
Owain’s marauding parties committed serious damage to Shrewsbury and
several of the adjoining townships, and extended their ravages as far as
Buildwas Abbey, which they wasted with fire, so that divine service was
for a time discontinued, and the monks were reduced to the greatest
poverty. At length Henry directed a writ to Edward Charlton, Lord Powys,
to raise forces with which to subdue the renewed rebellion; and similar
orders were sent to Lords Arundel and Grey, and Sir Richard L’Strange,
Lord of Knockin, Ellesmere, and other bordering manors. Glyndwr had
despatched to Shrewsbury two of his best officers, Rhys Ddu and Philipot
Scudamore, to command the insurrectionary party; but Lord Powys, having
promptly obeyed the orders of his sovereign, fortified several castles,
and speedily took as prisoners the above-named two leaders, and they were
both soon afterwards executed in London. Holinshed says, that “Glyndwr
himself in the same year, dreading to show his face to any creature, and
finally lacking meat to sustain nature, for mere hunger and lack of food
miserably pined away and died.” He was living, however, six years later,
but in a state of concealment, chiefly at the house of one of his
daughters, married to a gentleman of Herefordshire named Monnington. In
July, 1415, the new king Henry V., anxious to leave his country in
tranquillity before he engaged in the war with France, offered a pardon
to Glyndwr; and this would probably have been accepted by the Cambrian
chieftain, had not the negotiation been interrupted by his death, which
occurred September 30th, 1415, in the 61st year of his age. It is said
that David Holbetch, Steward of the manors of Oswestry, Bromfield, and
Yale, and founder of the Oswestry Free Grammar School, took a
distinguished part in this negotiation, and obtained the promised pardon
for Glyndwr. Tradition states that he was buried in the churchyard of
Monnington-on-Wye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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