Both Sides the Border ; 1400 A.D.

A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower

By G. A. Henty

This is a brilliant story of the stirring times of the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, when the Scotch, under Douglas, and the Welsh, under Owen Glendower, were attacking the English. The hero of the book lived near the Scotch border, and saw many a hard fight there. Entering the service of Lord Percy, he was sent to Wales, where he was knighted, and where he was captured. Being released, he returned home, and shared in the fatal battle of Shrewsbury.

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PREFACE



THE four opening years of the fifteenth century were among
the most stirring in the history of England. Owen Glendower carried
fire and slaughter among the Welsh marches, captured most of the strong
places held by the English, and foiled three invasions led by the king himself.
The northern borders were invaded by Douglas, who, after devastating a
large portion of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Durham, was defeated and
taken prisoner at the battle of Homildon by the Earl of Northumberland and
his son Hotspur. Then followed the strange and unnatural coalition between the
Percys, Douglas of Scotland, Glendower of Wales, and Sir Edmund Mortimer a coalition
that would assuredly have overthrown the king, erected the young Earl of March as
a puppet monarch under the tutelage of the Percys, and secured the independence of Wales,
had the royal forces arrived one day later at Shrewsbury, and so allowed the
confederate armies to unite. King Henry's victory there, entailing the death of Hotspur
and the capture of Douglas, put an end to this formidable insurrection;
for although the Earl of Northumberland twice subsequently raised the banner of revolt,
these risings were easily crushed ; while Glendower's power waned, and order, never again
to be broken, was at length restored in Wales. The continual state of unrest and chronic
warfare between the inhabitants of both sides of the border was full of adventures
as stirring and romantic as that in which the hero of the story took part.

G. A. HENTY.