Owen Glyndwr, once Prince of Wales, was now reduced to hide himself in the caves and fastnesses of the country, to avoid the pursuit of his enemies. He was concealed and supported for some time by Ednyfed Ap Aron, in a cave near the sea-side, at Llangelynin, in Merionethshire, still called Ogof Owain. { 88a} The danger past, he again blazed forth in the destruction of a territory he had once aspired to govern; sometimes a fugitive, enduring hunger, thirst, and every privation; at others revelling as a conqueror, on the spoils of his countrymen and former friends. At last his depredations became so general and so indiscriminate that he feared every one, and became as “a wild man, and his hand was against every man, and every man’s hand was against him.” Being thus driven by his fears from solitary places, and at length died for lack of sustenance. { 88b}
Thus ignobly perished Owen Ap Gryffydd Fychan, commonly known by the name of Owen Glyndwr—a man who, from trifling causes, had conceived more determined hostility against the English, and had conducted that hostility with more consummate skill, than any other general the Welch had ever produced. In his early career he was uniformly victorious: he was proclaimed Prince of Wales with the sanction of the chief men of the country, made alliances with princes, and exercised his authority with becoming dignity; but now—
“Mighty victor, mighty Lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies; No pitying heart, no eye t’ afford A tear to grace his obsequies.”
Owen Glyndwr was one of those fiery meteors which Providence sometimes permits to visit the earth, for the instruction of mankind, and to show us the vanity of all sublunary things: astonishing the world with their splendour, they blaze for a short time; and as suddenly decline, and sink into obscurity. Such, in our own horizon, have been Glyndwr and Cromwell, and in later times Bonaparte. Their course was brilliant, but short; and as their greatness grew, so did their suspicions and their fears; until, at last, life itself became burdensome, and the end of their career was clouded by disappointment, misery, and despair.
But Owen Glyndwr had more legitimate reasons to plead than either of his compeers. Deprived of a part of his patrimony by power, and unable to obtain redress by law, he took the law into his own hands, and had recourse to force. Success produced ambition, which proved his overthrow.