The seventy years which followed the death of Owen Glyndwr was, both for England and for Wales, as miserable a period as any in their whole history. Owing to the untimely death of Henry V, the feeble Henry VI became king; and he had not been long on the throne before the bitter feud between Yorkists and Lancastrians broke out. During the Wars of the Roses the arm of government was paralysed, and the strong did what appeared right in his own eyes. Many Welshmen found life in the English armies abroad more tolerable than life in Wales; while of those who remained at home, too many became bandits like the Highlanders in the reign of George II. Both Yorkists and Lancastrians had interests in Wales. Edward IV was a Mortimer, a descendant of Prince Llewelyn, and the seat of his strength was the country around Ludlow. The chief Lancastrian stronghold {125} in Wales was the coast, from Pembroke to Anglesey. Thus Wales was divided against itself. At Mortimer's Cross, in 1461, Welshmen fought against Welshmen; and Owen Tudor was captured, and afterwards beheaded at Hereford, in accordance with the fate meted out to the vanquished in those barbarous days. Harlech castle, which had been the last fortress to fly the flag of Glyndwr, and which at a later date was to be the last of Charles I's strongholds to surrender, held out stubbornly for Lancaster. "I held a castle in France," boasted Davydd ap Sinion, its defender, "until every old woman in Wales had heard of it. I will hold a castle in Wales until every old woman in France has heard of it." The boast was a vain one. Harlech fell; but the siege had given to the world one of the finest marching songs ever sung by man.