The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [30]
Impersonations of his dead rival were not all that Henry IV had to contend with. Shakespeare calls the first decade of his reign ‘a scrambling and unquiet time’ because it witnessed a series of rebellions against the King.
Henry believed that young March would be an obvious focus for malcontents, and because of this he ordered that the boy be kindly treated but kept under house arrest in the care of a governess. To this post the King appointed his cousin Constance of York, Countess of Gloucester, whose husband had been executed in 1400 for plotting Henry’s death. As we shall see, she was an unwise choice.
A far greater threat came at this time from Wales. Owen Glendower was an obscure Welshman, a descendant of the princes of Powys, who had studied law in London before serving Bolingbroke as a squire, in which capacity he demonstrated extraordinary martial abilities. By 1400 he was living in a moated wooden manor house at Sycarth in Wales with his wife and a brood of children, but in that year he quarrelled over possession of a minor Marcher property with one of the King’s councillors, Lord Grey de Ruthin, and this led to a serious rift with Henry IV. Glendower appealed to the Welsh to support him and began calling himself Prince of Wales, at which the King had him proclaimed an outlaw. Thereafter, Glendower inspired the Welsh people to revolt against English rule, and made efforts to drive the invaders out of Wales. The English hated and feared him, and his guerrilla warfare and devious but deadly strategies earned him the reputation of being a wizard.
Owen was a man of great ability and charisma, and by 1404 his power in Wales was such that he was able to summon a Welsh parliament. In that same year he made a treaty with France and secured French aid against the English.
In June 1402, Glendower scored a great victory over the English at Pilleth in Radnorshire, and had the good fortune to capture Sir Edmund Mortimer, March’s uncle. Mortimer, an important Marcher baron, was a considerable prize and a potential bargaining counter, and he was treated with great courtesy by his captor. He soon came under Glendower’s spell and, already resentful of his nephew’s claim having been passed over, abandoned his allegiance to Henry IV, entered into an alliance with Glendower and was given the hand of his daughter Katherine in marriage.
Henry IV was by no means anxious to ransom Mortimer, much to the chagrin of the elderly but formidable Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and the Earl’s son, the brave and volatile Harry Percy, nicknamed ‘Hotspur’, who was married to March’s aunt, Elizabeth Mortimer. The Percies, powerful lords in the north, were a constant thorn in Henry’s side and he feared they would form a coalition with the disaffected Mortimer, which is exactly what did happen when Glendower made much of Henry’s failure to ransom his kinsman, fanning the flames of Mortimer’s disaffection.
In December 1402, from his base in Radnorshire, Mortimer informed his tenants and supporters that he and Glendower intended to rescue Richard II, restore him to the throne, and secure for Glendower his rights in Wales. If Richard was indeed dead, then March, ‘my honoured nephew, who is rightful heir to the crown’, would be made king. Mortimer then appealed to Hotspur for support, which was readily given, and very soon the northerners were rising in revolt against Henry IV.
This led to open warfare between the King and the Percies. Hotspur sent a formal defiance to the ‘Duke of Lancaster’, accusing him of breaking his promises not to harm Richard, levy high