Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Works Frequently Cited
- Introduction: Imagining Owain Glyndŵr and the Welsh Rebellion: English Medieval Chronicles in Context
- I Narrative Strategies and Literary Traditions
- II Imagining the Rebellion
- Conclusions: A Multiplicity of Voices: Reading the Narratives of the Welsh Revolt
- Appendix: Translations
- Bibliography
- Index
- York Medieval Press: Publications
3 - ‘Ay in hilles and in mounteynes’: Spatial Structure and Representations of Space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Works Frequently Cited
- Introduction: Imagining Owain Glyndŵr and the Welsh Rebellion: English Medieval Chronicles in Context
- I Narrative Strategies and Literary Traditions
- II Imagining the Rebellion
- Conclusions: A Multiplicity of Voices: Reading the Narratives of the Welsh Revolt
- Appendix: Translations
- Bibliography
- Index
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Summary
Heerewith, they [the Percys, Edmund Mortimer and Owain Glyndŵr] by their deputies in the houſe of the Archedeacon of Bangor, deuided the Realme amongſt them, cauſing a tripartite Indenture to be made and ſealed with their ſeales, by the couenauntes wherof, al England from Seuerne and Trent, South, & Eaſtward, was aſſigned to the Earle of Marche. All Wales, and the landes beyond Seuerne Weſtward, were appoynted to Owen Glendor: and all the remnaunt from Trent Northewarde, to the Lorde Percy.
Published in 1577, Holinshed’s account of the tripartite division of England and Wales into spatially distinct units by individuals acting on behalf of the rebel leaders foregrounds issues of representation of space and spatiality in the narratives of the revolt. Holinshed’s narrative description of the carving up of England and Wales is explicitly spatial and the end product is maplike in its division of space. Certainly Shakespeare, who used Holinshed as a source, imagined the use of a map in Henry IV Part One; Glendower announcing ‘Come, here’s the map: shall we divide our right …?’ In the Tripartite Indenture, the division of England and Wales was symbolic only, and part of a plan that first required that the king of England be overthrown.
It was a plan that was never accomplished; Holinshed provides a lengthy account of the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 soon afterwards, at which Henry (Hotspur) Percy is dramatically killed, after shouts of ‘Eſperance Percy!’. Immediately following his account of the Tripartite Indenture, Holinshed continues his narrative, providing reasons as to why the indenture did not come to fruition:
[The indenture] was done (as ſome haue ſayd) through a fooliſhe credite giuen to a vayne prophecie, as though King Henry was the Moldewarp, cured of Gods owne mouth, and they three were the Dragon, the Lion, and the Wolfe, whyche ſhould deuide this Realme betwene them. Such is the deuiation (ſayth Hall) and not diuination of thoſe blinde and fantaſticall dreames of the Welch propheſiers.
The linking of future-time (prophecy) and future-space (a tripartite England and Wales) here was important and something Halle also included in his account of the Tripartite Indenture. It was a lesson in not getting too far ahead of oneself in reconfiguring space.
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- Information
- The Revolt of Owain Glyndwr in Medieval English Chronicles , pp. 91 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014