Emerging from the sombre plantations that darken the greater part of the rise, the road, terraced on the shoulders of the hills, runs down to Glyndyfrdwy, passing the toll-house of that name, and coming to the village where the “Sun” inn stands on the left, on entering. This is the little “pot-house called the ‘Rising Sun,’” mentioned by Colonel Birch-Reynardson, one of the places where the Holyhead Mail changed horses when he took the reins. Across the river is Llansaintffraid, which gave a name to a toll-house here—one of the few that have been demolished.
At the other end of Glyndyfrdwy, passing that pretty, tree-shaded anglers’ house, the “Berwyn Arms,” the hills recede and the valley opens out. The Mail at one time changed here. In those days it was called the “New Inn.” Just before the scenery becomes comparatively homely, two strikingly prominent hills or tumuli, at a short distance from one another, are seen overhanging the Dee. The second of them, standing isolated and crowned with a spindly group of fir trees, is known as “Owain Glyndwr’s Mount,” and there are those among the great Owain’s worshippers who still affect to see the foundations of his house in the rolling meadow beneath.
Owain Glyndwr is one of the greatest and latest of Welsh national heroes, and the valley of the Dee is especially linked with his memory. It could scarce be otherwise, for his name of Glyndwr was a territorial one, and derived from his ancestral estate situated here at Glyndyfrdwy and for some miles along the Dee between Berwyn and Corwen.
It was in the year 1400 that Owain rose in rebellion and set all Wales aflame against the English. He was no hot-headed patriot, rising for the mere idea of throwing off a foreign yoke, but a man who had suffered wrongs and sought redress in vain. Lord Grey of Ruthin, one of the powerful Lords Marchers, had seized a portion of his land, held it by force of arms, despite the decision of the Courts in London, and represented the injured man to be a rebel who refused the feudal duty of sending help to aid the King against his opening campaign against the Scots. Hitherto he had been no rebel, but a loyal supporter of the English rule, at that time long established firmly in Wales. Not only so, but he had moved in the Court circles of that day, and was not only an educated gentleman, but a personage of wealth, consequence, and influence in his own country, and precisely one to be well treated by politic rulers.