The Choices of Llanrwst: The Town Which Opted Out of a War and Into a Cave

This is particularly true of the Middle Ages, when there were no standing armies. Just militia made up of people compelled to leave the fields to fight for their Lord and Master. Which leads us beautifully to what happened in Llanrwst - an anomaly not only in the Glyndŵr Rising, but perhaps all war everywhere.

Llanrwst was (and is) an important town in North Wales, sitting strategically in the long valley between Conwy and Betws-y-Coed. The town held a market charter, which meant that the economy of an entire region rested on all that was bought and sold there.

Fifty years before the Rising, Black Death swept across the world. An estimated two thirds of the population of Europe died of plague during those dark days.

In 1350, it reached Llanrwst. There were no survivors.

But dead people leave wills, especially those running successful businesses in a market town. Llanrwst's plague pits might have been filled, and nature reclaiming its once vibrant center, yet out in the world were those with documentation to say that they now owned property there.

Sons and daughters, distant relatives and other survivors, who had left Llanrwst before the devastation, began to return in the aftermath of the Black Death. It wasn't instant. Nothing messes with the administration of a nation like most of its population succumbing to plague, and much of the rest not being where they should be.

Flee or die had been a strong mantra.

Sooner or later though, even the displaced have to attempt to rebuild their lives. They send word home. They learn what happened and make inquiries about their inheritance. Crown officials track them down. The descendents of Llanrwst's destroyed denizens came back to raise their town from the ruins, make their fortunes and - almost incidentally - rebuild the shattered economy of Denbighshire and Conwy.

How often did they return to find family members still in situ?  Skeletal remains, dangerous artifacts of plague surrounding, all needing to be deposed before anything could spring up anew. Their parents' possessions consigned to fire with all the emotional turmoil that sparked, coupled with a determination to continue.

Then there were business matters. Suppliers sought out, so many gone to the same terrible epidemic. Customers alerted that it was safe to emerge from the mountains. People needing confidence to forsake their rural isolation in order to return to market, entering again a bustling epicenter whose very vibrancy had allowed plague to pass and flourish.

It must have felt cursed. Yet the Llanrwst people slowly built their town into a blessing. They still had the charter. That document alone spelled economic survival for this region.

Each merchant alone couldn't hope to secure business amongst the English communities - so many here as plantation settlers, in walled cities presided over by a daisy chain of intimidating Norman castles, all along the North Welsh coast - but a federation of Llanrwst retailers might just pull it off.

The Llanrwst merchants worked together. A consortium of them bravely approached the garrisons, making their proposals, negotiating terms.

Back home, the rest of the town knew this was make or break time. Decades had now passed. There was no returning to the lives they'd given up in the wake of plague.  The older people were about to learn if their hard work and sacrifice had been worth it; if they could now justify fulfilling the tenets of their own parents' wills, or if they'd condemned their off-spring to poverty and a lost cause.

Hope held the market square, all eyes upon the road to Llanrwst from the garrison at Conwy.

Decades of hope, faith and work rendered worth it. Relief, as a palpable thing, flooded so many emotions, chasing tension from the town.

Not everyone had a contract, but that didn't matter. So used now to working together - solidarity in feeding newcomers, raising homes and stores, building businesses and passing on custom being the only way for Llanrwst to have returned from the ruins - it was understood from the onset that those traders with contracts would assist those without.

This was just the beginning; a springboard from which other lucrative business opportunities would arise. It would be no good if some traders closed their shops and left now, just because they weren't favored in the first round of negotiation. Not if the market town needed to retain that veneer of vibrancy, which injected confidence for their customers.

There would be more opportunities. For now, the celebrations could be felt across the town. The whole of Llanrwst would benefit. Finally it was going to be alright.

But they'd been looking in the wrong direction. Waiting for messages upon the wrong road. Facing north, instead of turning south to see what was occurring just the other side of the mountain.

His ever growing makeshift army circled back around, hurtling up the road from Betws-y-Coed and into the market town. He was ruthless in his precision. Any merchant with an English contract saw stock and property reduced to ashes. Left standing between each inferno were those who'd thought themselves so unlucky just weeks before.

Glyndŵr's message was clear. Support the English - sustain them in their Occupation - and be utterly ruined. Then he and his rebel army left.

Those businesses still standing sustained the town; all banded together to house the dispossessed, rebuilding homes and stores. Stock and supplies were shared, practically communally, between retailers. The quicker Llanrwst could seem safe and vibrant, the better. All of their livelihoods depended upon that.

By now, news of the Glyndŵr Rising had long since reached the English garrisons. It was downright occupying every thought and venture, as commanders rushed to put it down.

In Conwy Castle, the pressure was on to seek out Glyndŵr's stongholds, and to suppress all Welsh towns and villages deemed hotbeds of rebellion. Amidst the missives of intelligence about his movements - and where sympathies for his cause were rife - came another from Llanrwst, cancelling all contracts so recently drawn up and signed.

Heard loud and clear, the signal: Llanrwst was a nest of rebel sympathizers; a center for dissent.

That's when Henry IV descended in all due vengeance upon the nation. Mustering a vast English force at Shrewsbury, the monarch chased Glyndŵr's shadow all over Wales before marching into Llanrwst.

Furious with frustration, the English king arrived Hell bent upon teaching the rebellious Welsh a lesson that they'd never forget.

As far as he was concerned, Llanrwst's loyalty was demonstrably with Glyndŵr. It had been since the start, as testified by letters sent from local garrisons two years before. Moreover, a strike there would send ripples of economic destitution throughout the entire region.

Fabulous! Because this was where support for Glyndŵr was supposed strongest, so close to where the Rising had begun.

Llanrwst's market charter enshrined its status as an independent town. Yet no Anglo-Norman mind could conceive of townsfolk living outside the influence of their local squire. Especially then - a period of tumultuous social change, with the Feudal system, irrevocably destabilized by the Black Death, collapsing about the ears of the ruling elite - when hierarchy was such a hot topic.

Amongst the Anglo-Norman nobles riding alongside King Henry, there were those ready to crush any peasant town claiming self-governance devoid of any aristocratic allegiance. Llanrwst could shove its charter where the sun didn't shine.

The English majority, if they contemplated the Charter at all, dismissed its implications as irrelevant. Casting around for the nearest person perceived to be of gentle birth, that individual's political affiliation was assumed to speak for all else in their vicinity.

Hywel Coetmor - scion of the Princes of Gwynedd - held Cwn Llanerch and Gwydir Castle just down the Betws road. Living so close to Llanrwst and known to worship in its church, the Welsh nobleman's stance was deemed indicative of where the whole town's loyalties lay.

And there were plenty of rumors that Coetmor had aligned with Glyndŵr.

Other stores were plundered for anything of worth, then taken as the spoils of war. The rest destroyed, along with all personal possessions. There was nothing left to sell in the market of Llanrwst. There was nothing left in Llanrwst. Nothing left of Llanrwst.

Except its people.

Some of them were killed in the melee; struck down whilst engaged in futile attempts to defend all that they'd built or been bequeathed, or protecting those they loved. Captured women were raped.

Welsh children falling into English clutches were kept back. Marched out with thousands more youngsters snatched during Henry's progress across the whole country, each one supposed - upon a whim or the most tenuous of evidence - to be the off-spring of known rebels. In theory, they were retained indefinitely as surety for their parents' good behavior.

In practice, they were destined to spend the rest of their lives in some great English home; worked as servants without pay, acquiring the status of chattels when passed between ruling Anglo-Norman families. Those Llanrwst children caught that day were effectively sold into slavery.

But most of Llanrwst's population had fled at the first sign of English soldiers coming. They watched their town's annihilation from the safety of a mountain-side perch. They survived the carnage that ensued, their children held fast beside them.

Henry IV didn't worry too much about them. He wanted some of Llanrwst's people to survive, in order that they might rebuild the market town. After all, he anticipated that Wales would soon be under his dominion again. This region's thriving would ultimately then be his responsibility.

Only now they knew to fear him more than Glyndŵr.  The English king's garrisons - limping on or rebuilt - could expect to be supplied.

Anyone ascending has to do so practically scrambling on all fours, vulnerable to those standing above. Should an army even attempt it, soldiers would have to come single-file. It would be - and proved to be - a death trap for their enemies.

The entire town took to the cave. They took their charter with them.  Forming a human chain to convey up there anything else which could be salvaged from the destruction wrought below. These meager possessions, they held in common.

There were no individual dwellings up there. Just sections of that vast cave claimed by various families, each living in full view of their community. Each counting safety worth the price of privacy; enforcing their own neutrality in the Welsh War of Independence by taking their persons out of reach for both sides.

Prince Hal returned a year later, expecting to find Llanrwst rebuilt. Under suspicion that the market town was still supplying Glyndŵr, he'd already issued orders to his army that the place be once again burned to the ground. Now the sixteen year old war chief was humiliated, his lack of accurate information laid stark before his men. The prince was made to look like he was making it up as he went along.

Quickly ascertaining where the townsfolk were, Prince Hal set off up the mountain side with his men. Some reports suggest it was to snatch their charter. Others to enact a massacre.

But he didn't succeed in either. That easily defensible route upwards was easily defended. Llanrwst forced the English prince and his army to flee for safety back into the valley, out of range of the missiles pummeling them from above.  A few more abortive attempts later, Prince Hal left and never did come back.

Owain Glyndŵr tried another way. Cognizant of the region's economic downturn, unalleviated by Llanrwst's refusal to construct its market, he asked Hywel Coetmor to intercede on his behalf. The Welsh prince knew these people. They apparently trusted him too and/or welcomed his custom in times gone by.

Loyal to Glyndŵr's coronation and cause, Coetmor nonetheless refused. He respected the people of Llanrwst more. Though a frequent visitor to their cave, he never once asked them to join the Rising. Not when Owain was winning, nor even as he held the rest of Wales, nearly in its modern entirety.

Llanrwst remained independent. Hywel Coetmor saw to it that no Welsh challenge to that status ever arose again.

Years, then decades passed with the community still entrenched in their cave above Llanrwst. Some were born there, others died of natural causes. Some lived and died without ever knowing the town they were there to protect. Peace time finally did persuade the townsfolk to rebuild. The market was eventually reinstated.

Yet a century on, there were still a handful of Llanrwst people living in the cave. Remaining above of their own volition, including those too elderly to risk the steep trek down, often counting that communal living as all they knew and wished to forever retain.

Llanrwst went on.