The pursuit of Law is not commonly associated by us with either poetry or romance; nevertheless it is in the Courts that Owen seems to have met his future wife, the daughter of Sir David Hanmer, one of the Justices of the King's Bench. The wedding probably took place in 1380, when Owen was only twenty-one years old. The period of legal training was followed by a course of training in the use of arms. In 1385 Owen followed Richard II to Scotland, where he won much credit by his prowess in the field. But it is {112} a mistake to imagine that he was ever a blind partisan of Richard. Later, when it became opportune to profess belief in the existence of Richard in order to imperil the throne of his successor, Owen was perfectly willing to do so; but in these early years, long before it had ever occurred to him that he might lead a Welsh revolt against England, he was a follower of Henry Bolingbroke, and, if tradition speaks correctly, one of his esquires. According to another account he also was, at one period, esquire to his neighbour the Earl of Arundel, lord of Oswestry, Chirk, and Cynllaith. How many years were spent in this sort of novitiate we have no means of ascertaining; all we know for certain is that, before 1400, Owen was living the customary life of a Welsh country gentleman, at his two houses of Glyndyfrdwy and Sycherth. Wales at that time was seething with discontent; a discontent which was partly political, and partly social. The country was warmly attached to King Richard, and looked upon Henry IV as a usurper and an assassin. It was also being borne in upon the people that England was now determined to extirpate the Welsh language, and to destroy finally every trace of Welsh nationality. The fourteenth {113} century had witnessed in many of the countries of Western Europe a rapid development of the national spirit, and both England and Wales were among those which had participated in it. In addition to political grievances, there were also social grievances, felt more especially in the South. But even when we have taken all these things into full account, the universality, the spontaneity, and the warmth of the rebellion of 1401 remain something of a mystery. One thing is certain, and that is that Wales was solidly behind Owen; and that it was the North and the middle parts of the country, regions in which political preponderated over social grievances, which led the revolt.