[14] This letter, which covers many folio pages, has never been printed. It is in indifferent Latin with the usual abbreviations. In the matter of making and elucidating copies of it at the Record Office, Mr. Hubert Hall gave me some valuable assistance, as also did Mr. C. M. Bull.
This document, a transcript of which is in the Record Office, is preserved at Paris among the French government archives and has attached to it by a double string an imperfect yellow seal, bearing the inscription, "Owenus Dei Gratia princeps Walliæ." It is dated the last day of March in the year of our Lord 1406 and "the sixth of our reign." The original is endorsed with a note in Latin to the effect that the above is the letter in which Owen, Prince of Wales, acknowledged obedience to "our Pope."
This year was not a stirring one in Wales. France, to whom Owen was appealing, was in no condition, or at any rate in no mood, to try a serious fall with England. The policy of pin-pricks, to adapt a modern term to the more strenuous form of annoyance in practice in those times, had been pursued with tolerable consistency since the first year of Henry's reign, and the most Christian King had never yet recognised his rival of England as a brother monarch. Richard the Second's child-Queen and widow, Isabel, had, after much haggling, been restored by Henry to France, but that portion of her dower which, according to her marriage settlement, should have been returned with her, was unobtainable. She was married to the Duke of Orleans's eldest son, aged eleven, the greater portion of her dower being a lien on Henry of England for the unpaid balance of the sum above alluded to, an indifferent security. International combats had been going merrily on in the Channel and piratical descents upon either coast were frequent. But this, of course, was not formal war, though a French invasion of England had been one of the chief nightmares of Henry's stormy reign. Internal troubles in France, however, now began somewhat to relax the strained nature of the relationship with England, and Owen's chances of Gallic help grew fainter. His son Griffith, or Griffin, was a prisoner in Henry's hands; he had been committed to the Tower, and by an irony of fate was under the special charge of one of that powerful family to whom his father's old captive, Reginald Grey of Ruthin, belonged. This gentleman, Lord de Grey of Cedmore, so the Issue Rolls of the reign inform us, was paid the sum of three and fourpence a day for Griffin, son of Owen de Glendowdy, and Owen ap Griffith ap Richard, committed to his custody. Another companion in captivity for part of the time, of this "cub of the wolfe from the west," strange to say, was the boy-king of Scotland, who, like most monarchs of that factious and ill-governed country, was probably happier even under such depressing circumstances than if he were at large in his own country, and his life most certainly was much safer.