Welsh Journals

OWEN GLYNDWR. By A. G. BRADLEY. OWEN GLYNDWR was no wild Welsh chieftain but a highly educated man of good estate. He took his name from the commote of Glyndyfrdwy, and must have owned that of the neighbouring Edeyrnion with Corwen as its chief centre. He was also lord of the commote of Cynllaeth and his chief seat was at Sycharth in its heart. Roughly speaking, his territory ran east and west from near Llangollen, in the commote of Nanheudwy, to the Corwen neighbourhood, and north and south from the dividing watershed of the Dee and Clwyd to Llanrhaiadr-Mochnant and the junction of the Rhaiadr and Tanat. For this is not only a modern county boundary, but seems to have formed the recognised division between Upper and Lower Powys. The tragic and romantic circumstances under which Owen's great great grand- father is stated to have acquired the adjoining territories of Glyndyfrdwy and Cynllaeth are briefly these: The said ancestor was the uncle of two lads who were the joint heirs to practically the whole of Powys Fadog. As minors, they fell under the guardianship of Edward I during the last struggle for Welsh independence. The King, according to current custom, handed over their wardship with its perquisites and possibilities to Earl Warren and Roger Mortimer. Under their fostering care both the boys disappeared, it was said, into a hole in the Dee, near Holt Castle, and the wicked lords annexed their property. Earl Warren, however, seems to have been smitten with a partial measure of remorse, and at the final settlement of Welsh affairs at Rhuddlan by Edward I, (1284), contrived that a portion of these lands, namely, those of Glyndyfrdwy and Cynllaeth, should be restored to the family then represented by an uncle. Now Owen Glyndwr's father, Griffith Vychan, held them in direct descent from this uncle, who was known as Y Baron Gwyn, or the White Baron; and Owen himself, as his father's eldest son succeeded in due course. His mother was the daughter of a