th the bulk of his forces, and
Minsterworth, the real cause of the disaster, ventured to go to England
and denounce his leader as a traitor. He was forced to flee to France,
where he openly joined the enemy. Seven years later he was captured and
executed.

Minsterworth was not the only traitor. In the earlier part of the war,
there had fought on the English side a grand-nephew of the last
independent Prince of Wales, Sir Owen ap Thomas ap Rhodri,[1] whose
grandfather, Rhodri or Roderick, the youngest brother of the princes
Llewelyn and David, had after the ruin of his house lived obscurely as
a small Cheshire and Gloucestershire landlord. In 1365 Owen was in
France, engaged, no doubt, in one of the free companies, and on his
father's death he returned to defend his inheritance from the claims of
the Charltons of Powys. Having succeeded in this, he returned to
France, and nothing more is heard of him until after the renewal of the
war. In 1370 he appeared as a strenuous partisan of the French. Mindful
of his ancestry he posed as the lawful Prince of Wales, and established
communications with his countrymen, both in France and in Wales.
Anxious to stir up discord in Edward's realm, the French king gladly
upheld his claims. A gallant knight and an impulsive, energetic
partisan, Sir Owen of Wales soon won a place of his own in the history
of his time. In Gwynedd he was celebrated as Owain _Lawgoch,_ Owen of
the Red Hand. Conspiracies in his favour were ruthlessly stamped out,
and a halo of legend and poetry soon encircled his name. In France
Charles entrusted him and another Welshman, named John Wynn, with the
equipment of a fleet at Rouen with which the champion was to descend on
the principality and excite arising. Bad weather caused the complete
destruction of the expedition of the Welsh pretender. Two years later,
however, another fleet was fitted out on his behalf, and in June, 1372,
Owen took possession of Guernsey.

[1] The place of Owen of Wales in history was for the first
time clearly shown by Mr. Edward Owen in _Y Cymmrodor,_
1899-1900, pp. 1-105.

At that time the fortune of war was strongly in favour of France,
though the initial successes of Charles V. were damped by the doubtful
results of the petty struggles which filled the year 1371. During that
year Du Guesclin, the soul of the French attack, ejected the English
from many places in Normandy and Poitou. On the other hand, the English
won th