OUR NEXT EVENT 27/02/2024

Published: 22 February 2024

'OWAIN GLYN DWR'S REBELLION: THE ARCHIPELAGIC CONTEXT'

ABOUT THE PAPER

The rebellion of Owain Glyn Dŵr (d.c.1415) was perhaps the single greatest test faced by Henry IV (d.1413). The rising not only presented a major military challenge, it drew in a host of the king’s enemies. Disaffected English nobles such as the Percies of Northumberland and the Mortimers of Wigmore were directly engaged in the conflict, others such as the Valois and Stewarts were more peripherally involved in the struggle. Unsurprisingly, the rebellion has been the subject of considerable historical interest. For instance, scholars have underlined the significance of Glyn Dŵr’s connections with the Mortimers and highlighted the importance of Cambro-French military links in this period. Equally, though on a much smaller scale than that of France, historians have noted Glyn Dŵr’s negotiations with Scotland’s ruling Stewart dynasty. Less attention, by comparison, has been devotede to exploring Glyn Dŵr’s links with Ireland. In November 1401, the Welsh rebel famously penned letters to a number of unnamed Irish lords. These letters appear to have been intercepted en route to Ireland and the attempt to enlist Irish aid has been dismissed by one notable historian as an ‘unmitigated disaster’. This paper seeks to explore this Irish dimension in more detail. It challenges the notion that Glyn Dŵr’s overtures to the Irish were wholly unrealistic and argues that his efforts to recruit military support from Ireland need to be viewed in a wider context that encompasses the world of the Irish Sea, Anglo-Irish relations, and Ireland’s evolving relationship with Scotland.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Simon Egan graduated with a BA in History and Modern Irish from University College Cork (UCC) in 2011. Soon after this he began his doctoral studies at UCC and was awarded a PhD in History in 2016. From 2017-18, he held a research fellowship from the Society for Renaissnace Studies and from 2018-20 he held a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Reseach Fellowship at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Egan taught at Trinity College Dublin from 2020 to 2022 and joined the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at QUB in 2023.

His research focuses on the history and culture of later medieval Ireland, c.1100-c.1600. He is particularly interested in exploring:

-Gaelic and Gaelicized lordship
-the evolving relationship between Ireland and Scotland during the period
-how events in this wider Gaelic world shaped the politics of the wider archipelago

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