🐉 Modern Wales was written down 600 years before it existed📜By a Welshman who vanished in mountain🏔️

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]There's a letter in Paris, 620 years old. [music] The Wales it imagined was only built in our lifetimes. It was written by a Welshman who vanished [music] into the mountains, never to be seen again. The English crown thought he had failed. He hadn't. This is the story of Owain Glyndwr. [music] For 122 years, Wales had lived under the English crown. Edward the First had taken Wales in 1282. [music] The Welsh laws of Hywel Dda were set aside. The land of the Welsh was in the [music] crown's hands. The country existed, but it wasn't its own. Owain Glyndwr was a Welsh lord, descended from the old princes of Powys and Deheubarth.

[00:00:39]In 1400, a man called Lord Grey of Ruthin stole a piece of his land. Grey held back [music] the king's summons.

[00:00:46]Glyndwr never got the chance to plead his case. So, on the 16th [music] of September, he raised his banner above the valley of Glyndyfrdwy. He declared himself Prince of Wales. He was in his [music] 40s. The Welsh came to him from every valley. From the slate mountains in the north, all the way to the coast.

[00:01:03][music] In 1401, his small Welsh force broke an English army on a hillside. The first Welsh victory in over 100 years.

[00:01:12]His forces took Conwy back. They took Harlech back. Then walked into Aberystwyth. By 1404, most of Wales answered to Owain. That year, he did something no Welsh prince had done before. He summoned every commote in Wales to send envoys to Machynlleth. A small Welsh town in the shadow of Eryri.

[00:01:32]Four envoys from every commote. They came down valley roads and over mountain passes. They gathered in a stone hall that is [music] still standing today.

[00:01:41]You can walk into it. They crowned him Prince of Wales. France sent envoys.

[00:01:46]Spain stood with him. Scotland, too.

[00:01:49]Three foreign nations recognizing Wales as Wales. Two years later, at Pennal in Merionethshire, Owain dictated a letter to the king of France.

[00:01:59]31st of March, 1406, [music] sealed in red wax. He told Charles the VI what Wales would be, an independent Welsh church, free of Canterbury, [music] two Welsh universities, one in the north, one in the south, so that Welsh children would never again have to leave [music] their country to learn.

[00:02:17]The Welsh language recognized in law, spoken in the church and the courts, written into the contracts, Welsh people governing themselves in their own tongue, by their own laws, all of it written down. This is what Wales would one day become, but Henry the IV would not have it. He sent army after army. By 1408, Aberystwyth [music] had fallen back to the English crown. By 1409, Harlech. At Harlech, the crown took his wife Margaret, [music] his daughter Catherine, his grandchildren, too. A Welsh princess [music] and her children held in stone.

[00:02:53]They died there, all of them. By 1412, Owain was alone in the mountains. He vanished into the high country. He was never captured, and no one in Wales ever turned him in. Not a farmer, not a shepherd, not a neighbor. For 600 years, Wales had no parliament. Welsh children were beaten in school for speaking [music] their own language, but the letter survived. In Paris, in the Archives Nationales, where it still is.

[00:03:21]The wax is still red. You can ask to see it. 600 years later, in 1999, the Welsh [music] got their assembly back. In 2020, they named it the Senedd, the Parliament of Wales. The Welsh language is now official, spoken in the courts, written into law. Welsh universities serve the north and the south. Every word Owain wrote in 1406 [music] has come true. It took 614 years. He didn't fail. He kept the vision alive for the future [music] of Wales. We exist to bring these stories to the next generation and to help teach the world who we are. Be part of us at proudofus.co.uk/support.

[00:04:02]Be proud of us.