n disgust. A fresh
inroad of Henry on his return from Scotland again failed to bring Owen to
battle, and the negotiations which he carried on during the following
winter were a mere blind to cover preparations for a new attack. So strong
had Glyndwr become in 1402 that in June he was able to face an English
army in the open field at Brynglas and to defeat it with a loss of a
thousand men. The king again marched to the border to revenge this blow.
But the storms which met him as he entered the hills, storms which his
archers ascribed to the magic powers of Owen, ruined his army, and he was
forced to withdraw as of old. A raid over the northern border distracted
the English forces. A Scottish army entered England with the impostor who
bore Richard's name, and though it was utterly defeated by Henry Percy in
September at Homildon Hill the respite had served Owen well. He sallied
out from the inaccessible fastnesses in which he had held Henry at bay to
win victories which were followed by the adhesion of all North Wales and
of great part of South Wales to his cause.

[Sidenote: The Percies]

What gave life to these attacks and conspiracies was the hostility of
France. The influence of the Duke of Burgundy was still strong enough to
prevent any formal hostilities, but the war party was gaining more and
more the ascendant. Its head, the Duke of Orleans, had fanned the growing
flame by sending a formal defiance to Henry the Fourth as the murderer of
Richard. French knights were among the prisoners whom the Percies took at
Homildon Hill; and it may have been through their intervention that the
Percies themselves were now brought into correspondence with the court of
France. No house had played a greater part in the overthrow of Richard, or
had been more richly rewarded by the new king. But old grudges existed
between the house of Percy and the house of Lancaster. The Earl of
Northumberland had been at bitter variance with John of Gaunt; and though
a common dread of Richard's enmity had thrown the Percies and Henry
together the new king and his powerful subjects were soon parted again.
Henry had ground indeed for distrust. The death of Richard left the young
Mortimer, Earl of March, next claimant in blood of the crown, and the king
had shown his sense of this danger by imprisoning the earl and his sisters
in the Tower. But this imprisonment made their uncle, Sir Edmund Mortimer,
the representative of their house; and Edmund wi