The alliance concluded at Aberdaron was destined to be short-lived; for the Percies were crushed by Henry at the battle of Shrewsbury. Owen has been repeatedly blamed for wasting time in ravaging South Wales instead of keeping tryst with his allies, and joining them before the king's forces had come upon the scene. The censure is probably undeserved. It was vital to the success of their plans that South Wales should be left {118} behind them incapable of further resistance; and, furthermore, it is likely that the Percies had, at the last moment, altered their plans and marched on Shrewsbury, instead of meeting Owen in the vicinity of Ludlow. But we cannot so readily exonerate Owen from blame for neglecting to fall upon the king's army, tired and disorganized as it must have been after the battle. Not to do so was the greatest blunder of his whole career. Prince Henry, afterwards to become so famous as the victor of Agincourt and the conqueror of France, had now been appointed Lieutenant of Wales, and the war was carried on with increased vigour and ruthlessness. Henry ravaged North Wales, and burned to the ground Owen's home of Sycherth. Nevertheless the power of Owen steadily increased. In 1404 he summoned Parliaments to Dolgelly and Machynlleth. These Parliaments were not a revival of Llewelyn's Council of Princes, but deliberate imitations of the English Parliament. He was now styling himself "Owen by the grace of God Prince of Wales"; and he was treated by foreign potentates as sovereign of an independent country. He had his own Great Seal, his Privy Seal, his chancery, and his courts of law. He concluded an {119} alliance with France in January 1405, and some time later a force of fifteen hundred Frenchmen landed at Milford, and captured Carmarthen. They remained in Wales until early in the following year; but the assistance which they rendered to the national cause appears to have been negligible. But the friendship between Owen and Charles of France continued; and in 1406, in a letter addressed from Pennal, we find Owen telling the French king what his aims were, _i.e._, to create a Wales territorially free, to create an independent Welsh Church, and to create two Universities, one for North, and one for South Wales.