Hello, I have run along a supposed quote from the English Parliament to Owain Glyndwr, and was curious about whether is was ever actually said. The quote being "What care we for these barefoot rascals?". I have been trying to find an origin for the quote, but the best I get is a quote from an old TV show "Battlefield Brittan".
The source you are looking for is the Continuatio Eulogii – the continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum, a rather controversial chronicle of unknown authorship which survives in a single MS covering the years 1364-1413, much of which was probably compiled after 1428.
This suggests that, when Glyndwr appeared before the English parliament in 1400-01 – requesting its intervention in a dispute he was having with Lord Grey of Ruthin– John Trevor, who was
"the bishop of St Asaph advised that they should not altogether dismiss the comander Owain, lest by chance the Welsh should rise. And concerning this the members of the parliament said that they did not care about barefooted buffoons."
Trevor knew what he was talking about; he was a Welshman - he had Anglicised his name from Ieuan Trefor – whose brother was married to Isabel ferch Gruffudd, Glyndwr's sister.
According to Alicia Marchant, the original Latin – Et illi de parliamento dixerunt se de scurris nudipedibus non curare – suggests an ethnic slur against "a communal group that is ridiculous, laughable, silly and backward."
What is essentially the same story, without the controversial quote, also appears in An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.
As is the way with chronicle sources in this period, it would be unwise to presume the exact words you are interested in were ever actually uttered in parliament; it would be safer to assume that they represent the chroniclers' view of the opinions of the contemporary House of Lords concerning Welshmen, and also of the resentments that underpinned the rebellion Glyndwr launched shortly thereafter.
Sources
Alicia Marchant, "Mech harm upon ye borderes of Ynglond": Imagining the revolt of Owain Glyndwr in English Chronicle Narratives 1400 to c.1580, unpublished University of Western Australia PhD thesis, 2011
Alicia Marchant, The Revolt of Owain Glyndwr in Medieval English Chronicles (2014)
A good recent discussion of problems with the Continuatio Eulogii by G.B. Snow appears in the English Historical Review, 119 (2004).