The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wales, by W. Watkin Davies

From the low chain of sand dunes which fringes the north-eastern coast of France can be discerned, on a day of ordinary brightness, the great cliffs of Kent. Frequently they are overhung by the dark and damp canopy which has given to our island the evil reputation of being the home of eternal mist and night. But occasionally the sun strikes them, and they appear brilliantly white and alluring. To the French shore have come, in the course of centuries, wave after wave of wandering peoples; men impelled by every sort of motive, fear of stronger foes, love of plunder, and eagerness for adventure. They have come; they have seen the beckoning white cliffs so enticing in their mystery, and have crossed over and essayed to make them their { 8} own. Thither only the other day came the ruthless German, bent upon striking at the tiny heart of so vast an Empire. Thither a hundred years before came Napoleon, reluctant that any part of Europe should challenge his overlordship. Thither eight centuries earlier had come the polished and adventurous Norman, eager to win broad acres and martial renown beyond the sea. Still earlier had come the Danes, plunderers rather than settlers, but men who nevertheless left an abiding mark upon the heterogeneous population of the island. The Danes had but followed in the wake of the German tribes who had come over, conquered, and bestowed a new name upon the larger and more fertile part of Britain. It is with the arrival of these last-named people that the history of England begins; but the history of Wales must be traced to a far earlier origin. Indeed, we can trace the descent of the people who now inhabit the hills and valleys of the westernmost parts of Britain to those dim prehistoric times about which only geology, ethnology, philology, and archæology can enlighten us. And at an even earlier date than that this country was inhabited by man: but the ice of the north descended upon the { 9} land, and all the higher forms of life became extinct. Between the men of the pre-glacial and the men of the post-glacial age in Britain no link has as yet been discovered.

The Britain revealed to our eyes when science first raises the curtain is not the Britain which we to-day know. The mountains were higher, and the chalk hills had not assumed their present smooth and rounded shape. It was not then an island, but part of a mighty continent, parts of which are now submerged beneath the waters of the North Sea, the English Channel, and the Atlantic. In all probability a great river flowed through what are now the Straits of Dover. The climate, however, apparently, did not differ to any marked degree from that which now prevails. Over this continent roamed many animals, some of which are entirely extinct, and others which have long since fled either to the colder north or to the warmer south. They included the mammoth, the cave lion, the bear, the rhinoceros, the hyena, the hippopotamus, the bison, the reindeer, the elk, and the wild horse. The men who lived with, and hunted, these beasts were very low in the scale of civilization. Indeed the only evidence of the possession by them of any { 10} culture at all is a number of sketches or paintings of animals upon the walls of caves and on domestic utensils. The art displayed in these figures is extremely rudimentary, and between them and the pictures seen at a modern exhibition the gulf is a wide one; but the primitive artist undoubtedly possessed one sovereign merit—he left the beholder in no doubt as to the meaning of the picture! To these earliest inhabitants of Britain the name Men of the Old Stone Age has been given. Their sense of the artistic must have been far more highly developed than their sense of the comfortable. Their dwellings were caves, and those without any sort of furniture. Of manufactures they knew nothing: they neither wove cloth nor moulded clay. Their clothing must have consisted of the skins of the animals which they killed; and as the evidence seems to indicate that they were not cannibals, the same animals must have provided them with food. Since they knew nothing about the use of metals, all their hunting and all their fighting must have been carried on with weapons of stone; and indeed a plentiful stock of their arrow heads and axes has survived. To this period it is quite impossible to assign even an approximate { 11} date: it may have been as late as ten thousand years ago, but it may just as easily have been a hundred thousand.

When the snow and the ice had departed and left a country which men could once again inhabit, the outward aspect of Britain had greatly altered. It was now an island, differing only in minor details from the Britain which we now know. With the restoration of a milder climate man returned. But the great beasts did not come back; and henceforth we hear only of the dog, the horse, the ox, the sheep, the pig, the goat, and the wolf. The age which then opened is known as the Neolithic, or New Stone Age. The use of metals had not yet been discovered, and all weapons and tools were still made of stone; but there was a marked improvement in their manufacture. The type of civilization was evidently higher. Hunting and fishing, together with incessant fighting, were still the chief occupations of man; but to these pursuits had now been added the tending of flocks and herds. The art of weaving, too, had been discovered, and skins had made way for brightly-coloured cloth garments. Pots, jugs, and dishes of every variety were baked, many of them accurate and graceful in their outline. { 12} Finally, the people of the New Stone Age had learned to be agriculturists; and that led them to abandon nomadic habits for fixed settlements where, in time, villages came to be built. Many of these earliest villages were built in lakes, and traces of them have been discovered in Wales in Llangorse Lake and in Llyn Llydaw. Who these people were is a question which cannot be answered with even the slightest degree of certitude. Indeed the whole problem of race in those early times is so obscure as to make a study of it almost altogether barren and unprofitable. One thing only is certain, and that is that throughout the New Stone Age the people who dwelt in Britain were not Celts. As not a word of their language has survived, it is difficult to determine whether they were members of the great family called Aryans, to which the whole present population of Europe, with the exception of Finns, Turks, and Hungarians, belongs. Of these people it is probable that three successive waves arrived. In many things they differed, but were alike in being all extremely dark. Their descendants constitute the most pronounced element in the population of modern Wales.

The traditional name for the men of the { 13} New Stone Age is the Iberians. Before the Celtic invasion a more or less homogeneous people inhabited the British Isles, France, Spain, and northern Italy. The use of the term "Mediterranean" as a substitute for Iberian has been suggested. To its use there is only one real objection, and that is that it is almost wholly devoid of meaning. Some recent writers, rejecting both these terms, have used the term "Hamitic," a family of languages closely allied to the Semitic. This novel theory has been based upon two grounds: (1) The Irish and Welsh languages, although drawing their vocabulary from Celtic or Aryan sources, have a syntax paralleled in Berber and Egyptian. No one who has seen them can fail to perceive the remarkable similarity between the physiognomy of the Berber peoples of northern Africa and the prevailing type of South Wales Welshman. (2) There is identity of culture and of religion not only between the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain and those of North Africa, but also between them and the people of Egypt and Babylon. A high stage of civilization was attained by these people. The building of Stonehenge would in itself be proof enough of their engineering skill. It is likely that there was { 14} continuous contact between Britain in those days and the great cradles of civilization—the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates—and that traders brought to the distant isle not only foreign wares but new knowledge and up-to-date ideas.

When, or how, the Stone Age passed into the Age of Bronze we do not know. Bronze was used in Egypt at least as early as the fourth millennium B.C., and in all likelihood it was introduced into Britain in the ordinary course of trade. Whencesoever it came, there can be no doubt that it speedily wrought a complete revolution in men's way of living. In Britain bronze was not the only metal to be largely used. There were famous gold mines in Ireland, copper in Wales, and tin in Cornwall. The men of the New Stone Age had displayed none of their predecessors' love of drawing; but they immediately evinced a most remarkable aptitude for working in gold and bronze. Torques, rings, and bracelets of extreme beauty have been discovered belonging to this period. As the country was sparsely populated there was room enough for wave after wave of immigrants. The newcomers would not be regarded altogether as foreigners, for in race, language, and { 15} civilization the inhabitants of both sides of the English Channel were identical. Thus the new mingled peaceably with the old without any of the fierce struggles which form so hideous an aspect of the later migrations.

But this period of calm was soon to be interrupted. A new people appeared on the scene, a branch of the great Celtic people to whom for purposes of identification and differentiation the name Goidels has been given. These people were more warlike than the older inhabitants of the island; nevertheless there was no settled policy of extermination or even of expropriation. But slow and silent pressure did its work. The Iberians were gradually pushed into the remoter corners of the west, and especially into the mountainous region which we now call Wales.

It is unnecessary perhaps to impress upon, the reader that there never was at any time anything resembling a Celtic Empire, or even a Celtic nation. It is only the name which we give to a branch of the Aryan or Indo-European family of races which migrated at a very early date from central Asia to the banks of the Rhine, the Main, and the Danube. They became known to the Greeks of classical times, who called them Hyperboreans. A { 16} martial folk they were, delighting in combat, and always thirsting for fresh conquests, for glory, and for plunder. Their first struggle was with the Germanic tribes, whom they eventually subjugated. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a writer of the first century B.C. refers to Germany as a Celtic territory. But after a time the Germans turned on their masters and expelled them from what had been their first European home, the region which lies between the Elbe and the Rhine.

It is but natural that wandering nations should in all ages have felt attracted by France. To those, particularly, who came from the arid and frozen steppes of Russia, or from the wind-swept Scandinavian lands, its sunny plains, its fine rivers, its fields so well adapted for the cultivation of grain, its gentle hills on whose slopes the vine flourishes so luxuriantly, must have seemed a veritable paradise. It is therefore not in the least surprising that, from the earliest dawn of history, race should have striven with race for the possession of so fair an inheritance. Among the first invaders within the period of recorded history were the Celts, who invaded France somewhere about the year 600 B.C. Their second invasion occurred some time after 300 B.C. This time { 17} they swept over the whole country from the Channel to the Bay of Biscay, and from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The land was then called Gaul; and these were the people against whom the whole might of Rome was directed under the leadership of Julius Cæsar. Invaders and invaded were closely akin in blood. After a stubborn resistance the whole country was subjugated. Latin civilization was speedily assimilated, and Gaul became, after a time, more Roman almost than Rome itself. Even at this distant date, nowhere is it more easy to enter into the spirit of ancient Rome than within the gaunt and gigantic amphitheatre of Arles, by the exquisite Maison Carrée of Nimes, and beneath the stupendous aqueduct of Pont du Gard. But as the power of Rome declined new torrents of invaders swept into Gaul in successive waves, Burgundian giving place to Visigoth, and Visigoth to Frank.

Meanwhile the Celts who had been living on the banks of the Danube had not been idle. For them the path of sunshine and ease led in the direction of Italy and the Balkan Peninsula. Italy, more even than France, has at all times possessed a wonderful, though quite explicable, fascination for the northern { 18} nations. Its fine climate, the fertility of its soil, its high state of cultivation and its accumulated riches have proved an irresistible attraction. From the picturesque pages of Livy it is easy to gather that the steady progress of the invaders, the forcing of the Alpine barrier, the march across the northern plain, the pouring through the passes of the Apennines, the capture of Clusium, and finally the holding to ransom of Rome itself, made a profound and indelible impression upon the Romans. It is altogether to the credit of the Celts that they respected the superior civilization which they found in the lands south of the Alps, and that they committed no crimes or outrages like those perpetrated at a later date by Vandals and Huns.

These Celtic tribes, having conquered Macedon and Thessaly, accepted an invitation from Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, and crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor. With their aid Nicomedes speedily defeated his enemies; but it was not long before he had good reason to repent of having brought to the country such formidable allies. The Celts had brought with them their families and all their belongings, and now they settled down on both sides of the river Halys. There they formed a state { 19} called Galatia, and became the terror of all their neighbours. Incensed with Mithridates the Great on account of his treachery, they allied themselves with the Romans in the war against him, and after that they remained a Roman client state. Even then they retained their language; and we have it on the authority of St. Jerome that six centuries later the same tongue was spoken on the banks of the Halys as on the banks of the Moselle. With their language they also retained their customs and character; but recent commentators have perhaps been too ready to find evidence of the instability and impressionableness of the modern Welshman in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians!

From France the step was a comparatively easy one into Spain. But once across the Pyrenees, the forward march of the Celts was stubbornly contested. The country was in the hands of a queer assortment of people, consisting of a pre-Aryan race, Iberians, Ligurians, and Phœnicians. Nothing could, however, resist the Celtic advance; and ere long we find them firmly planted in Portugal and among the hills of Galicia and the Asturias.

It will be seen from this that the invasion { 20} of Britain by the Goidels was but part of a mighty movement of expansion carried out by the Celts in many different countries. Britain they probably reached sometime about the year 800 B.C. Soon the tin mines of Cornwall acquired something like European fame, and men of enterprise like Pythias came from the ports of the Mediterranean to seek the pearls and the gold so dear to the luxurious inhabitants of southern lands. But it was not until Gaul had become a Roman province, peaceful and well-ordered, and traversed by excellent roads, that Britain came to be regarded as a place within the ordinary range of commercial intercourse.

The last wave of invaders to enter Britain anterior to the coming of the Romans were the Brythons, another branch of the Celtic family. It is probable that they came from north-eastern Gaul at a date which we cannot fix with any precision, but which must have been some time between the fourth and first century B.C. The people found by them in Britain were but poor fighters, and the resistance offered by them to the Brythonic invaders was feeble and brief. They were speedily conquered, and pushed back into the countries of the north and west. At what { 21} date they first came to Wales we do not know; but before the end of the Roman occupation we find them living in what is now Montgomeryshire. The Brythons differed in many ways from their predecessors. They were tall, well formed, with long yellow hair, faces shaved clean except for a moustache, light complexioned, agile of limb, and hardy. While excelling in war they were not unmindful of the arts of peace. They were an artistic people, and the weapons and ornaments which they wrought in various metals, as well as their enamel work, are exquisite in design and workmanship. Many of their spindles, their loom-weights, and their weaving combs have survived. Julius Cæsar draws attention to their superb horsemanship. They had also made some headway in the art of boat building. Yet despite the advanced stage of civilization indicated by these things, their mode of life was barbarous. Their huts show practically no advance upon those of earlier people, being circular in shape, with floors of clays and walls of timber and wattle, the interstices being filled with mud. Almost invariably the hut consisted of a single room, in which the whole family laid itself down to sleep, covered with woollen blankets and rugs made of the { 22} skins of animals. They knew the value of trade; and before the coming of the Romans used a coinage. The language which they spoke is the direct ancestor of that spoken to-day in Wales and Brittany, just as the Goidelic branch of the parent Celtic tongue is the ancestor of Erse and Gaelic.

CHAPTER II

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION

Julius Cæsar's two invasions of Britain could not have made much difference in the mode of life of the inhabitants of the country. They paid their tribute, and were left alone; and after a time even the tribute seems to have been forgotten. All that remained of his conquest was the graphic, though incomplete, account which Cæsar left of Britain in his "Gallic War," and the lingering memory of this remote outpost of the Empire, a memory which awakened into life at a later date and inspired ambitious emperors and generals with a desire for conquest.

After the final departure of Cæsar it was well-nigh a hundred years before the Romans again interfered with the Britons. The period between 54 B.C. and A.D. 43 is obscure in the annals of the island. No doubt commercial intercourse with Gaul was constant, and Roman culture must have percolated slowly { 24} into the country by that channel. The names of some of the British kings who ruled have come down to us, and among them Shakespeare's Cymbeline. It was in the year A.D. 43, during the reign of the emperor Claudius, that the Roman general Aulus Plautius set out at the head of four legions to re-conquer Britain. While the campaign was still in progress the emperor himself arrived; but his sojourn was only sixteen days in duration, and to him belongs none of the credit for the conquest. It was against Caratacus and Togodumnus, sons of the late king Cunobelinus, that Aulus Plautius directed his march. Their capital was Camulodunum, the modern Colchester. Many of the neighbouring tribes espoused the Roman cause; and in four years' time Aulus was able to return to Rome, having completed the task of conquering south-eastern England from Kent to Norfolk.

The next Roman leader to be sent to Britain was Publius Ostorius Scapula; and under him the theatre of war shifted to the north and west, those parts of the island which had hitherto remained practically unexplored. The nature of the struggle likewise changed. The tribes hitherto encountered by the { 25} Romans were closely akin to the people of Gaul, and their civilization also was very similar in quality. They were people who valued peace and commerce, and who, when they had recovered from the first shock of outraged independence, were content to become Roman tributaries. But the tribes inhabiting the Welsh mountains were far less civilized. Of trade they knew practically nothing, and very little about the settled pursuit of agriculture. But they loved freedom, and were prepared again and again to rise in its defence. The first task which Ostorius set himself was the conquest of the Decangi who dwelt, according to Tacitus, on the shore of the Irish Sea. He raided their territory; but before anything like a conquest had been effected he was called away to deal with the far more turbulent and warlike Silures of the south. These were the inhabitants of Monmouth and Glamorgan; and they were now under the leadership of the famous Caratacus. This able man had concluded an alliance with the neighbouring Ordovices, and the united tribes were able to offer a stiff resistance to Roman aggression. It was not until the war had lasted many years, and Caratacus had won several victories, { 26} that the persistence and the superior science of Ostorius were rewarded with success. The site of the final battle is uncertain, but it may well have been near Church Stretton at the spot now called Caer Caradoc. At this battle Caratacus was defeated and taken prisoner, later to be led in triumph through the streets of Rome. This was probably in the year A.D. 51. To keep the Silures in subjection the first of the great Roman forts in Wales was erected at Caerleon on the river Usk.

Following on the death of Ostorius in A.D. 52 the Silures recovered a degree of liberty; but with the arrival of a new Roman general, Quintus Veranius, in A.D. 58, the struggle began afresh. Veranius, however, died in a few months before he had accomplished anything, and his place was taken by the truly great Suetonius Paulinus. This consummate general adopted the plan of building strong forts at various strategic points all over Britain, from which the legions could control the surrounding country. Two of these forts were placed close to the Welsh border, one at Deva (Chester), the other at Viroconium (Wroxeter). Chester for many generations after its foundation was the base of operations for all military expeditions launched against { 27} North Wales. The great desire of Suetonius was to conquer the hitherto unmolested isle of Mona (Anglesey). There was the home of the Druids, the last remnants of the cruel custodians of Celtic learning, protected by the surrounding sea, and by the great mountain barrier of Snowdonia. Flat-bottomed boats were constructed, and the soldiers safely conveyed across the Menai Straits. There the legionaries were for a moment appalled by the weird sight of Druids drawn up in a body, with uplifted arms calling down curses upon the heads of the profane invaders, while women with dishevelled hair and with lighted torches in their hands ran in and out among the ranks. But the fear of the soldiers was but momentary. They pressed forward, completely routed the opposing army, burnt their camp, cut down the sacred groves of oak, and cleared away the last emblems of Druidism. Thus perished a barbarous superstition which had long outlived its utility. It was just at this juncture that news was brought to Suetonius of the great rebellion of the Iceni under queen Boudicca, and the massacre of thousands of Roman settlers at Camulodunum and Verulanium. Without a moment's delay he commenced his march back to the { 28} south-west. In quelling the rising he was completely successful; but Wales saw him no more, as he was recalled to Rome in the following year.

A period of peace ensued; and it was not until A.D. 71 in the reign of Vespasian, who had himself served in Britain under Aulus Plautius, that the forward policy was resumed. Of the course of events in the succeeding years our knowledge is imperfect; but it appears that the Silures were completely beaten by the soldier-author Frontinus in A.D. 78. To the famous Agricola was left the task of crushing the Ordovices. He dealt with them so severely that they were left completely without power to rebel again. Having disposed of them, he proceeded to Anglesey; and with the final subjugation of that island the conquest of Wales was complete.

The task of organizing Wales on Roman lines then proceeded apace. South-eastern Britain, together with the midlands, had finally acquiesced in the Roman domination; and those parts of the country were left almost entirely without garrisons. With Wales it was otherwise, and throughout its history the Roman occupation was largely military in character. Except for its mines { 29} Wales was a poor country, and there was little to tempt such Romans as desired to settle for life in Britain to make it their home. The towns that came to be built in Wales were therefore military rather than civil. But whatever their character and purpose they were both numerous and important. The most important of them perhaps was Chester, long the home of the Twentieth Legion, from which it derived its Welsh name Caer Lleon (Fort of the Legion). Chester became the permanent home of the legion; and around the fort a thriving town arose, with baths, theatre, and all those amenities considered so essential by the Romans. There the legionaries lived, there they married, and there they died. From Chester the great road which was called Watling Street ran straight to London, and thence to the channel ports. Another road connected the place with York (Eboracum), the most important Roman city in Britain. A third road led to Wroxeter; while from it another branched off, and ran along the hillsides to Conway (Caerhun) and Carnarvon (Segontium). In North Wales were several forts, but with the exception of Carnarvon no towns of any note. The extreme north was well guarded by the twin { 30} fortresses of Conway and Carnarvon. The mountains and valleys of Merioneth were kept in subjection by the triangle formed by Tomen-y-Mur near Festiniog, Caergai near Bala, and Pennal near Machynlleth. Roman roads must have been fairly numerous in Wales, but they are extremely difficult to trace at the present day. It is quite certain that the great majority of mountain tracks pointed out to the credulous modern tourist as Roman roads belong to comparatively late mediæval times. A road ran from Conway over the mountains to Tomen-y-Mur, Caergai, and Pennal, and then on to South Wales. This is known as Sarn Helen, and in several places can be clearly traced. There was also another road leading from Tomen-y-Mur to Chester. In Mid-Wales were the forts of Caersws, Caerflos, Y Gaer, and Castell Collen. The passage of the Teifi was guarded by Llanio. On the Towy was Carmarthen (Maridunum). In Pembrokeshire there do not seem to have been Roman settlements or roads; in all probability the country was left to its own devices just as Cornwall was. On the upper reaches of the Towy stood Llandovery. Thence a road led to Gaer near Brecon, then following the valley of the Usk to { 31} Abergavenny and Caerleon. Beyond Caerleon, between the Usk and the Wye, lay Caerwent (Venta Silurum), where so much of archæological and historical interest has recently been discovered. On the Bristol Channel there were forts at Cardiff, and at the mouths of the Neath and the Loughor. Connecting the main roads no doubt were many smaller ones, some of them mere tracks across the mountain passes. The infinite pains which the Romans would take to render even one of these less important ways easy and safe is proved by the marvellous "Roman Steps" which lead over Drws Ardudwy from the coast to the high plateau on which stands Tomen-y-Mur.

The question of the extent and durability of Roman influence in Wales is part of the larger question of its extent and durability in Britain as a whole. Whether it persisted right through the English invasions, so that early mediæval institutions can be regarded as having Rome and not the forests of Germany as their home is a question still warmly debated. To what extent Britain, as apart from Wales, had been Romanized it is difficult to determine; for the English invasions were exceedingly destructive, and the invaders { 32} little better than savage barbarians. But in Wales the problem assumes a somewhat different form; for the tide of English invasion was stemmed at the foot of the Welsh hills. It was a new Brythonic invasion from the north, as well as the arrival of fugitives from the midlands, that modified the conditions left by the Romans in Wales. Emphasis has been laid by scholars upon the purely military character of the occupation. With the exception of Caerwent and Wroxeter there were no civilian towns; and that most typical product of Roman civilization, the villa, was altogether absent from Wales. On the other hand, it must be pointed out that, although the language remained Celtic, a very large number of words had been borrowed from Latin, and those words by no means confined to the department of warfare. They are words which point clearly to an advance in culture and civilization, in book learning, and in religion. But it is true that political and legal terms remained purely Celtic. It is known that the minerals of Wales were extensively worked by the Romans—copper from Anglesey, gold from Merioneth, and iron from Monmouth. One thing is certain: Wales at the departure of the Romans was a highly civilized land, { 33} civilized in its political ideas and in its laws, and Christian in its religion. A love of literature, of art, of independence, and of unity had been so firmly rooted that, despite the welter of lawlessness and bloodshed which the unhappy country had to endure during the succeeding eight hundred years, they persisted through it all. Wales was to enjoy nothing comparable with the tranquillity and the good government of the Roman period until the great Tudor sovereigns began to turn their thoughts to the little land from which they derived the best part of their blood.

CHAPTER III

SEEKING FOR UNITY

The period between the departure of the Romans and the coming of the Normans was one of political chaos. Wales almost immediately became divided, rival kings and chieftains ruling over different parts of the country. To follow in any detail the petty strivings of these men would be pure waste of time. They fought for no principle; neither are there any signs of nobility of purpose or of a wide and enlightened patriotism. Only the faintest outline of the political history of Wales during the period need be given.

Great as were the benefits conferred upon Britain by the Romans, in one respect their rule had been harmful—they had accustomed the subject people to rely upon them for the defence of the island. It was always the policy of Rome to draw soldiers from one province and to send them to garrison another province in some distant part of the far-flung { 35} Empire. The martial ardour of the British youth was not quenched; but instead of serving in Britain and so learning to defend their own land, they were sent across the Pyrenees, to the Danube, and into Asia Minor. When the Empire itself began to be torn with political dissensions in the later years of the fourth century, adventurous Roman generals began to aspire to the higher positions. One of these, a Spanish soldier, Maximus by name (in Welsh legend Macsen Wledig), rose against the emperor Gratian. In Britain he collected a large army with which he defeated and slew Gratian. In A.D. 388, however, he was himself overthrown at Aquileia. The great soldier Stilicho was appealed to by the despairing Britons, harassed by foes on every side; but all the forces at his disposal were needed for the more urgent task of protecting the older and more valuable frontiers of the Empire.

For purposes of defence Britain had been divided into two provinces—the north, commanded by a Dux Britannorum, or, as he was called in Welsh, the Gwledig ; and the south-east, commanded by the Count of the Saxon Shore. Of these the first is the more important in Welsh history. The most famous holder of the office was Cunedda. His seat of { 36} government originally was in the north; but being compelled to give way to the Picts, he led his Brythons into Wales, where he established himself at Deganwy on the Irish Sea. One of the greatest of Cunedda's descendants was Maelgwn Gwynedd. He perceived that if Wales remained composed of a number of petty independent principalities no other fate could possibly await it than to be swallowed up piecemeal by the foreigners. Accordingly, partly by argument and partly by artifice, he persuaded the other chieftains to acknowledge him as the heir to Roman power, and to bow to his overlord ship. This was about the year A.D. 550. Nevertheless the Saxon advance continued. Under their leader Ceawlin they marched up the Severn valley; and, in the year 577, won a great victory at Deorham, the result of which was that they reached the Bristol Channel, thus cutting off the inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall for ever from their kindred in Wales. Some little time later Ethelfrith, king of the Angles, marched against Chester, won a battle there in 613, and established his power as far as the Irish Sea. This meant that a wedge was driven in between the people of Wales and the Welsh people of Strathclyde. Meanwhile all along the border { 37} English power was being consolidated under the able and vigorous kings of Mercia; and soon Offa's Dyke was raised to mark the boundary. Thus by the middle of the seventh century Wales had assumed what were to remain to all intents and purposes ever afterwards its geographical limits. Internally the country was forming itself into the principal territorial divisions which remained until superseded by the shire system of Edward I. The extreme north was called Gwynedd. Next came Powys, roughly corresponding to our Montgomeryshire. Modern Cardiganshire was called Ceredigion. Corresponding to Pembrokeshire was Dyfed. Carmarthen represents the ancient Deheubarth, and Glamorgan the ancient Morganwg; while between the Usk and the Wye was the principality of Gwent.

By the close of the eighth century the struggle between Celt and Saxon had abated somewhat of its severity; but no sooner was the strife over than the Danes appeared on the scene, a menace alike to England and to Wales. The most famous of Welsh champions in the fight against the Danes was Rhodri Fawr, whose reign began in 844. In many respects Rhodri resembles his great contemporary Alfred of Wessex. He consolidated his power, { 38} built a fleet, and kept the invaders at bay. But after his death in 877 dissension and discord again prevailed. The Danes renewed their attacks; and the famous law-giver Howel Dda proved quite incapable of dealing adequately with the situation. Howel died when things were at their worst, leaving one child, his daughter Angharad. Fortunately this girl was married to a man of commanding personality, Llewelyn ap Seisyll, a good statesman and a capable soldier. He succeeded in bringing the whole of Wales under his sway, in restoring order, and in keeping out both Danish and Saxon invaders. But towards the close of his life, in 1022, the Danes again arrived in renewed strength; and the old king's successor, Griffith ap Llewelyn, became a fugitive, while anarchy prevailed throughout the land. Llewelyn, however, proved to be one of the greatest rulers that Wales has ever had. In 1038 he returned from exile, overcame all resistance, drove back the Mercians, deposed the reigning pretenders, and made himself undisputed ruler of the whole country from the Dee to the Severn. Griffith was a man of wide vision who looked beyond the frontiers of Wales. He perceived that the great enemy of his country was Harold of { 39} Wessex; and in order to be strong enough to resist him he married Eadgyth the daughter of Harold's great rival Aelfgar, earl of Mercia. For some time Griffith was successful; but in 1063 Harold organised a campaign on a big scale. He himself marched into Wales from Bristol; while Tostig, with another army, invaded Gwynedd. Wales was harried with fire and sword; and in the midst of it all Griffith was murdered by one of his own discontented followers. But the English conqueror had only just placed the country under the government of Griffith's two brothers, Bleddyn and Rhiwallon, when he was summoned to attend to sterner tasks by the death of Edward the Confessor.

CHAPTER IV

RELIGION, LAW, ETC.

Legends have accumulated freely about the early history of Christianity in Britain. According to one tradition St. Paul himself visited the island. According to another tradition Joseph of Arimathea was the first to bring the glad tidings, as the beautiful ruins of the chapel dedicated to his memory at Glastonbury testify. A third legend tells how Bran, the father of Caratacus, accompanied his captive son to Rome, became a convert to Christianity, then returned to his native land as a missionary, to become known ever after as Bran the Blessed. All, however, that we can say with certainty is that Christianity had made good progress in Britain many years before its adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire early in the fourth century. We have some detailed information, which is probably authentic, about the lives of the first British martyrs Alban, Aaron, and Julius; { 41} and we know that there were British bishops present at the Council of Arles in the year 314. The earliest Christian building that has been discovered is the one at Silchester. Of the progress of the new religion in Wales one must speak with greater caution. Wales had been the last home of the Druids, and the people clung long to their old mythology. Centuries even after the adoption of Christianity the old deities—Llud, Merlin, Ceridwen, Coil, Olwen—shared in popular estimation the fame of the newer saints of the Christian calendar. It is also well known that the Roman soldiers were the men who clung longest to the ancient paganism; and it was by the soldier, rather than by the civil servant or the trader, that the Empire was represented in Wales. We should probably be fairly near the mark if we said that there were no Christian churches in Wales prior to the fifth century.

When Christianity did arrive in Wales it came in the form of monasticism. This was not the type of monasticism which became so famous afterwards under the name Benedictinism. Its pattern was not found at Monte Cassino but in the Egyptian desert, where abbots ruled over a number of associated, but otherwise independent, cells. From Egypt { 42} the fashion had travelled to St. Honorat, one of the beautiful isles of Lérins off the French coast, now a favourite resort of visitors from Cannes. There the great St. Patrick himself lived for a time; and a painting on the walls of the monastic refectory commemorates his expulsion of all venomous reptiles from the island. From Lérins the new ideal spread to Arles and the cities of Provence; then up the Rhone valley and to Tours, where it received a warm welcome from St. Martin. It then came to Britain where it struck root and, in the course of the succeeding two centuries, produced a large number of saints, the most celebrated of whom were David, Patrick, and Columba. That the British Church was full of vigour is proved by the rise of Pelagius at the beginning of the fifth century, and the heresy associated with his name; for the presence of heretics in a Church always indicates life, just as orthodoxy indicates apathy and indifference. So firm a hold did this type of Christian life lay upon the Celtic people of the British Isles that, despite the pressure of the Roman Church, it lingered on well into the twelfth century.

This early Celtic Christianity was, in many respects, an exceedingly beautiful thing. Never { 43} has the world beheld more perfect missionaries than the spiritual and tender-hearted preachers who took the Gospel across stormy seas, amid countless perils, to Britain, Ireland, Scotland, parts of Germany, and even distant Iceland. To Christians of the West, Iona ought surely to be a spot scarcely less sacred than Rome itself. But little priestly pomp pertained to these early preachers; gentleness, simplicity, and faith were their most pronounced qualities. Their meekness overcame every obstacle, from the ferocity of wild beasts to the more dangerous ferocity of savage men. They knew little or nothing about rules and discipline, and there is hardly a trace of Latin order and love of law perceptible in their genius. As saints they were superb; but their churchmanship was indifferent. It was the Roman and the Teuton who built the splendid edifice of the mediæval Catholic Church. The Christian communities of the Celts were too mystical and too spiritual to attempt to compress the Almighty into human formulas; they could produce holy men, and they could produce heretics, but defenders of the Faith they could not produce. To appreciate the immense difference it is only necessary to contrast the generous and genial character of Columba { 44} with that of the hard, grasping, and narrow Augustine! From the year 664, when the famous Synod of Whitby met, the Celtic Church in Wales and the Roman Church in England each went its own way, until the sword of the Norman accomplished that which the eloquence of Augustine had failed to do, and the two Churches were merged into one. It is unfortunate that our knowledge of the famous Celtic Christians of the fifth century is so scanty. It was eminently an age of saints—Dewi, Cybi, Padarn, Illtud, Dyfrig, Cadog—and a host of others whose names have been perpetuated in hundreds of churches up and down the countryside. In the Celtic schools, too, were found scholars who represented the very flower of the culture of the period, far finer than anything that the England of the day could show.

When we turn from the political annals of Wales to such topics as legal and social institutions we find that materials for forming a conception of what life was then like are fairly abundant. By far the most important source is the so-called Laws of Howel Dda. Historians have now long been convinced of the importance of the study of legal institutions, and of the assistance which such study { 45} affords to the student of ordinary social history. There have been illustrious pioneers in the field, like Maine, Seebohm, Maitland, Pollock, and Vinogradoff. Codes of law, from India to Ireland, have been carefully analysed and compared, and from them decayed and vanished civilizations have been reconstructed.

We find that, from the sixth century to the tenth, most of the rulers of western Europe were busy codifying the laws of the people over whom they ruled. For the greater part their work consisted of codifying in the strict sense of the word; that is to say, the collecting together of existing customs, and the setting of them forth clearly and dogmatically, with but a small infusion of new matter. Law was deemed to be something already in existence, something to be ascertained rather than something to be created. This theory is the foundation upon which the whole subsequent legal development of England was based. Judges exist to ascertain the law; and it is only indirectly, and often by means of convenient fictions, that they make new law. It is in this sense that the pre-Norman rulers of France, England, and Wales are law-makers. In Wales the work of codification was performed by Howel Dda, a prince who ruled in Dyfed, { 46} as we have already seen, during the troubled period of Danish invaders. The fashion of code-making had already been set. The first conspicuous example of it was the codification of the Frankish laws by Charlemagne. But long before his time there had been Anglo-Saxon codes. Thus in 596 Æthelbert had codified the laws of Kent. Sometime between 688 and 725 Ine had codified those of the West Saxons. Then came the last and the greatest of the English pre-Norman codifiers, King Cnut. As to how far foreign influences played a part in the formation of these English and Welsh codes, scholars are divided in opinion. The great Corpus Juris of Justinian had been given to the world before the earliest of the British or English codes; and long before Justinian's day there prevailed, throughout the Roman Empire, an admirably ordered system of jurisprudence. This system must have prevailed in Britain during the period of Roman occupation; and it could not possibly have failed to influence for all time the minds of the people by familiarising them with certain legal conceptions. Furthermore ecclesiastical influences were powerful. The Church had its Canon Law, the peculiar Law of a society far more civilized than the world { 47} around it; and consciously or unconsciously the princes who designed the secular codes must have learned much from it.

Doubt has been thrown upon the truth of the tradition which tells of the making of the laws of Howel Dda; but here historical scepticism seems to have overrun its legitimate limits. As we have already seen, codification was the fashion of the times; and there is no inherent improbability in Howel's having done precisely what all his royal contemporaries were doing. A century ago Welsh historians were credulous almost to the point of imbecility. They belonged to the pre-critical days of historical writing, above which only a towering genius like Gibbon could rise. Then arose the great reaction, and it became the fashion to doubt almost everything, and especially anything that was picturesque and intimate in the records of the past. Even the existence of such undoubtedly historical characters as Saint David and King Arthur was disbelieved by these over-zealous critics. At last, however, the pendulum, after swinging so violently from one side to the other, is beginning to right itself; and the result is that we are coming to accept as true, or at least as possibly true, much that had been { 48} rejected and derided by the last generation of scholars.

The story goes that Howel, a somewhat feeble prince reigning with his brothers in Dyfed, and sorely distressed by the invasions of the Danes, began to turn his mind to the peaceful pursuit of the jurist. He summoned four men from each cantref in his dominions to meet at the Tŷ Gwyn (White House) on the river Taf in Carmarthenshire. There, as the fruit of their deliberations, was drawn up what is known in Welsh as "Hên Lyfr y Tygwyn" (The old Book of the White House). The manuscript itself as written by Archdeacon Blegwryd has not come down to us. For our knowledge of its contents we are dependent upon copies of a much later date, agreeing in substance though differing in many details; and containing, no doubt, the accretions of later times. The "Old Book" is divisible into three parts—the Venedotian Code, the Demetian Code, and the Gwentian Code—each part representing the customary law which prevailed in a particular part of Wales. It is probable that the laws were originally written in Latin, for the Archdeacon was the most famous scholar of his day in all Wales. The tradition that the new code was taken to Rome, { 49} and submitted to the Pope for his approval, can scarcely be true, as the chronological difficulties in the way of its acceptance are well-nigh insuperable. Howel probably did pay a visit to Rome; but the visit must have been anterior to the historic meeting at the Tygwyn. The society which we see depicted in the codes is still tribal, that is to say its whole foundation, the status of individuals as well as all the rights of property, was based upon blood relationship. The feudal system, in the perfected form which we associate with the Normans in the early Middle Ages, did not exist in Wales; but some of the principles of feudalism were undoubtedly there. Perhaps the most important characteristic of the feudal system is the supremacy of the monarch, and the dependence upon him of a long chain of persons, all differing in status, and each dependent upon the one above him. This we find in Wales. There were princes reigning in the various divisions of the country, each of them, to all intents and purposes, independent of all the others. But they all acknowledged the overlordship of the King of Gwynedd; while he, in turn, acknowledged the overlordship of the King of England. Much as this state of things { 50} conflicts with modern political notions, there was nothing curious about it in times when every crowned head in Europe acknowledged the spiritual headship of the Pope and the secular headship of the Emperor.

By the time we are dealing with the country enclosed by the sea, the estuaries of the Dee and Severn, and by Offa's Dyke, had come to be known as Cymru, the name which it has borne among Welshmen ever since. The land was divided into districts called cantrefs and cymwds , the boundaries of which had long been fixed. Of these two divisions the cymwd is by far the more important; for it was the real unit of organization and local government. The cantref was probably an area over which an Arglwydd (Lord) ruled. This Lord was appointed by the King. Occasionally we find several cantrefs ruled by the same Lord, who then assumes the more high-sounding title of Tywysog (Prince); and sometimes even Brenin (King). Within the cantref would be two or more cymwds , in each of which would be certain officials appointed by the lord of the cantref . These officials were in charge of the various governmental functions; and the most important of them were the Maer (Mayor), and the { 51} Canghellor (Chancellor). In each cymwd also there was a court of law, over which a judge presided. To avoid confusion it must be borne in mind that these territorial divisions, and these officials, were governmental, and that side by side with them other divisions, based upon kindred, existed. Thus the Laws speak not only of the Lord of a cantref , but also of a Pencenedl . The Lord was an officer appointed by the King, while the Pencenedl was the head of his own tribe or clan, and owed his appointment to no one. When we turn to consider the ranks into which the people were divided, we find that status counts for everything. The main division was that between tribesmen and non-tribesmen, between Cymry and men of alien birth. The tribesmen themselves were divided as follows: (1) Men of royal or princely caste. (2) Men of noble birth. (3) Ordinary free tribesmen. (4) Unfree persons corresponding to the villeins of English law. (5) Slaves in the strict sense of the term. The alien, however high his birth in his own land, could never find a way into the ranks of the Cymry except by long residence, or sometimes by inter-marriage stretching over several generations. The kindred ( cenedl ) was a self-governing { 52} unit, having at its head a Pencenedl , a personage who, as we have seen, was born and not made. Below was an aggregate of families each under its own head of the household ( Penteulu ) who bore a strong resemblance to the paterfamilias of Roman law. The cenedl , or kindred, consisted of all descendants from a common ancestor down to the ninth generation.

Each kindred group had a certain holding of land. This holding was called a Gwely . It was the common possession of the whole tribe, who held it jointly as far as the great-grandchildren of the common ancestor, after the death of whom a complicated system of division would again begin. On his coming of age every member of the tribe was allotted a portion of the land to till; and he also became the possessor of certain rights in the common or waste land of the tribe, as well as the possessor of a certain number of cattle. Needless to say, since the land belonged to the tribe, it could not be alienated by individuals. But side by side with tribal property went private property even in land; and all such property could be alienated freely.

The position of women, on the whole, appears to have been a favourable one. Up { 53} to the age of twelve the young girl lived with her parents, but after that she was deemed of age, and became entitled to a share of the property of her kindred. She was then free to bestow herself in marriage. A marriage was usually made by solemn plight of faith, together with a religious ceremony; but any proof of an intention to live together was considered sufficient. And just as the making of a marriage was a very simple matter, so also was the dissolution of one. Husband and wife could separate at any moment, and the subsequent marriage of either operated as a divorce. The wife brought certain dower to her husband, and the rules affecting such dower are laid down with meticulous care in the Laws of Howel.

The law relating to crime in Wales was very similar to the law prevailing in England at about the same date. There were three main divisions or classifications, dealing respectively with murder, assault, and arson. By murder was meant the killing of a free fellow-Welshman; to kill an alien was certainly not thought to be a crime, and it well might be a meritorious action. The killing of a slave belonging to another man was an offence like any other damaging of property. { 54} Before the kings had gained sufficient strength to be able to make the avenging of murder a public concern regulated by royal justice, the family of the murdered man was considered responsible for avenging his death; and such a blood-feud might last many years, and result in innumerable deaths. When the blood-feud had been superseded by a proper administration of justice, murder became punishable by a fine, the fine varying according to the position and quality of the murdered man. In the Welsh laws this blood-money is called galanas . Thus the price of the life of a Penteulu was fixed at a hundred and eighty-nine cows, that of an ordinary freeman at sixty-three cows, that of a slave at four cows. The price of a woman's life was half that of a man's. The whole of the murderer's family was responsible for paying the price of his murder; and if payment was not made, the murderer's life was forfeit. The murder of a near kinsman was regarded as much more heinous than the murder of a stranger, and in this case the murderer was cast out of his tribe for ever.

Just as every man's life had its price, so every man's honour had likewise its price; and an insult ( saraad ) was a punishable { 55} offence. Here again the price varied according to the station of the insulted man. In those times, when villages were built entirely of wood and other highly inflammable material, it was natural that special laws should be enacted to deal with the use and abuse of fire. Fire seems to have been regarded very much as we regard a dangerous animal—we may keep it if we so desire, but if we do so it is at our peril, and we become responsible for any damage it may cause by its escape.

As in all early legal systems the laws relating to contract in Wales were extremely formal, the validity of an agreement depending entirely upon the strict observance of certain procedure. One curious point is that practically everything had a fixed price. This was the price at which the thing could be bought or sold, and it was the price exacted by way of fine from a person who happened to injure or destroy it. The onus of guaranteeing the good condition of an article, or the good health of an animal, seems to have rested entirely upon the seller, so that the English legal maxim caveat emptor would have to be reversed in ancient Wales.

Using the materials afforded by the Laws of Howel alone, it would be possible to paint { 56} a fairly full and accurate picture of life in Wales in the early Middle Ages. In addition to this source, however, we are fortunate in possessing a document of unique interest and great charm, a document which, though certainly later in date, does reflect the life of the country before it had become very greatly altered by Norman modes. This document is the account by Giraldus Cambrensis of his journey round Wales in 1188. In this journey Gerald was the companion of Baldwin Archbishop of Canterbury. The ostensible object of the tour was to invite the princes and people of Wales to join in the Crusade against Saladin; but one cannot but suspect that Baldwin's real object was to establish the authority of Canterbury over the four Welsh sees. In order to do this he wished to celebrate Mass in each of the Welsh cathedrals—Llandaff, St. David's, Bangor, and St. Asaph—and in so doing he visited practically every corner in the country. Gerald is one of the most interesting men of his age. He was born in 1148 in the beautiful castle of Manorbier on the coast of Pembroke, the son of a Norman father and a Welsh mother. He was highly educated after the manner of the age, having studied at Paris, { 57} and on one occasion having read a composition of his own before an admiring academic audience at Oxford. In 1188 he was an archdeacon, and the great objects of his life—to acquire for himself the bishopric of St. David's, and to convert that bishopric into an independent archbishopric of Wales—were already formed in his mind.

The pilgrimage of Baldwin and Gerald began at Radnor, where they were officially received by the Lord Rees, one of the ablest of mediæval Welsh rulers. From Radnor they crossed the Wye into Brecon, of which Gerald was Archdeacon. Thence they proceeded eastwards, past Llanthony to Abergavenny. From Abergavenny they went to Usk, from Usk to Caerleon, and from Caerleon to Newport. There they turned to the west, and visited Cardiff, Margam, Swansea, Kidwelly, Carmarthen, Whitland, Haverfordwest; and so to the Vale of Roses at St. David's. They then directed their steps towards the north, following the river Teifi as far as Lampeter. At Strata Florida they spent a night; then proceeding past Llanddewi they came to Llanbadarn where another night was spent. Continuing in a northerly direction they reached the shores of the Dovey, then { 58} as now the boundary between North and South Wales. From the boat which carried them across the broad estuary they would behold the great mountains of Gwynedd—Cader Idris towering right above them, and the fine peak of Snowdon blue in the distance; while out to sea they would discern the low outline of Bardsey Island, the burial place of countless pilgrims and saints. They landed at Towyn, followed the coast of Merioneth through Barmouth and Harlech, and then struck across Carnarvonshire from Criccieth to Nevin, where they spent Palm Sunday. Their next stopping-place was Carnarvon, and from that town they went to Bangor. Not content to leave any part of the country unvisited, they next crossed the Menai Straits into Anglesey. Returning to the mainland, they followed the coast to Conway and Deganwy; then they entered the lovely Vale of Clwyd, where they were entertained by the son of Owen Gwynedd in his castle of Rhuddlan. From Rhuddlan they went to St. Asaph, and then on to Chester. They had then reached the most northern point in their itinerary; and so, turning southwards, they visited in succession Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Wenlock, Ludlow, Leominster, and Hereford. { 59} The effect of the Archbishop's sermons could not have been particularly profound; for only some three thousand men took the cross, and in fact none of them ever quitted their native land.

But if the journey achieved nothing for the Holy Land, it did much for the modern historian. Gerald was no dry analyst, but a man who knew instinctively how to write. No such vivid descriptions, and no such sketches of character were penned in Britain throughout the Middle Ages. Gerald is a veritable prose Chaucer. He possessed a seeing eye, and was always quick to seize upon a trait of character, and to note an interesting custom. He was also tremendously fond of gossip; and the more marvellous the tale the greater his delight in relating it. His attitude towards the Welsh people was somewhat supercilious; he regarded them with a queer mixture of sympathy and contempt. Nevertheless the picture which he paints is not an unpleasing one. They were a people well advanced in civilization, though decidedly less polished and cultivated than the Normans. Their chief pursuits were pastoral; and for recreation they preferred fighting to aught else, and next to that { 60} hunting. They delighted in music and oratory. They were brave, frugal, hospitable, and witty. Their reverence for religion, and for everything which bore the stamp of antiquity, was extreme. But side by side with these virtues were vices of a by no means amiable character. They were careless of truth, unreliable, lacking in persistence, quarrelsome, litigious, and intensely superstitious. In fact the pages of Giraldus are the locus classicus of the "perfidious Welshman" who has been the butt of shallow writers in modern times.

With their love of battle and of sport the mediæval Welsh were a hardy and a comely race. Both men and women wore their hair short; and the men shaved their faces, except for the upper lip. Cleanliness was one of their outstanding characteristics. They indulged freely in the bath, a habit which perhaps had been handed down from Roman times. Of their teeth they took the utmost care, cleaning them several times in the course of a day. Owen M. Edwards has thus admirably summarized what Gerald tells us about the domestic habits of the people: "The great hall rose among the cowsheds and sheepfolds. Its hospitable door was always open. 'No one of this nation ever { 61} begs'; the wayfarer lays his arms down at the door and enters as an honoured guest. Water is offered. If he allows his feet to be washed, he means to stay over night; if he refuses, he wishes to partake of a meal only. In each family the harp was played, and this was the chief means of entertaining guests. The principal meal was prepared at sunset. The hall was strewn with fresh rushes. The guests and members of the family sat down in messes of three, and partook of thin oaten cakes, broth, and chopped meat from wooden bowls and trenchers. The host and hostess attended to the wants of every one, and themselves partook last. Towards evening the hall was laid out for sleeping. The beds were arranged around the walls—rushes covered with the coarse cloth manufactured in the country. In the middle of the hall the peat or wood fire burnt night and day."

CHAPTER V

THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE

The Norman Conquest of 1066 was almost as epoch-making in the history of Wales as it was in that of England. In Wales its effects were as decisive, though very different, as they were in the neighbouring country. In England the first and most important result was the unification of the whole country under a strong central government vested in the person of the king. Prior to the Conquest there had been a steady movement in the direction of unity; and at different times, under a particularly strong monarch, it had almost been achieved. But such unity was at best precarious; and the great earls of Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria were, to all intents and purposes, independent princes. William the Conqueror, partly from design, partly by accident, broke up these mighty earldoms. This was the beginning of a long struggle between the king and the great feudatories, a struggle which ended with { 63} victory for monarchy and centralization. England in consequence became definitely and for ever one country, with one ruler and one law. This unity is precisely what Wales failed to achieve, and the failure is the greatest tragedy in its history. Before the Norman Conquest Wales had been divided into three great divisions—Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth; and although the rulers of the other two divisions yielded a grudging theoretical homage to the lord of Gwynedd, he exercised in practice no authority over them. With the coming of the Normans the supreme test had arrived. The Welsh people were presented, as so many other nations have been presented before and since, with two alternatives: they might sink all differences in the presence of alien enemies, and by forming themselves into one powerful State successfully resist invasion and so preserve their independence; or, in the alternative, remain divided and consequently prove an easy prey to their foes. Before this test the Welsh people failed. The princes showed that they set greater store upon their own glory and dignity than upon the safety of the country as a whole; and time and again they refused to lay aside their rivalries and jealousies in order to present a united { 64} front to the enemy. A love of liberty and independence had been born, and they were to inspire a desperate resistance against overwhelming odds on several occasions; but the one condition absolutely essential if independence was to be preserved the Welsh princes were not willing to accept. And so the people of Wales, turning their backs upon this splendid opportunity, began to tread that long road of political failure and futility which made them ultimately a mere appanage of England, and which, but for the efforts of bards and men of letters in the creation of a precious national literature, would have led inevitably to the total extinction of the Welsh nation.

This testing time begins with the Conqueror's famous winter march of 1070 from York to Chester, and ends with the proclamation of Edward II as Prince of Wales at Carnarvon in 1301. In the course of this period of well nigh two centuries and a half there were years of comparative tranquillity; but on the whole it appears to us like one long incessant struggle. It divides itself naturally into two. In the first period we find the Norman barons conducting campaigns in Wales in their own private interest, each one { 65} fighting for himself, and taking possession of as much land as he could lay hands on and retain. It was no more a war of England against Wales than the adventure of the Conqueror had been a war of Normandy against England. It was part of the policy of the first Norman kings to direct the embarrassing and overflowing martial energy of their followers into the innocuous channel of the Welsh wars. Whether they destroyed the Welsh, or whether the Welsh destroyed them, was matter of indifference to their royal master. But this period is of short duration; and is followed at once by another, in which we find the King of England himself taking an interest in the conquest of Wales, and not infrequently leading expeditions in person into its mountain recesses. It was the astute Henry I who began to see that the barons who had established themselves in Wales might easily grow so powerful as to be able successfully to defy the royal will. Indeed at one period it did seem as if that fine soldier and politician, Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, would succeed in winning the allegiance of all the Welsh princes, and in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom of the West, which would be completely independent { 66} of England. In this there would have been nothing impossible, or even unusual. It was the kind of thing that the Normans had been doing in various parts of Europe in the course of the preceding hundred years; and if the Duke of Normandy had succeeded in creating a Norman-English kingdom, why should not the Earl of Shrewsbury succeed in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom. The scheme failed through jealousy on the part of the other Norman barons, the Welsh people's love of independence, and the hostility of the Norman and Angevin kings.

By the year 1070 the conquest of England by William I was complete, and all the available sequestrated lands had been divided among his followers. But the land hunger of the barons was unappeased; and in order that he might have time to consolidate and to organize his new kingdom, William directed their attention to Wales. That country possessed three obvious gates by which invading armies might enter. The first was Chester, which William himself had visited, and from which the great mountains of Gwynedd could be clearly discerned. The second was Shrewsbury, from which a broad and fertile valley stretched right into the { 67} heart of Powys. The third was Hereford, the natural starting point for the conquest of Deheubarth. At each of these points William stationed one of his barons—at Chester the rapacious Hugh the Wolf, at Shrewsbury the able Roger of Montgomery, at Hereford William Fitz Osbern. Using these three towns, at each of which a strong castle was erected, as bases of operations, the earls, in the course of the next fifty years, advanced step by step into the country. Their object was to possess themselves of all the level and fertile land; and their method of conquest was the castle. Opposition to them was always fierce, but seldom united or well advised. The three original barons were soon joined by others; and ere long chains of fortresses stretched out from Shrewsbury, Chester, Hereford, Gloucester, and Cardiff. The English border was thereby studded with them; and so was the whole of South Wales from Gloucester and Hereford to Pembroke and Aberystwyth. They brought with them traders, architects, and craftsmen; and a numerous colony of Flemings made Pembrokeshire their home. At the end of this period of advance it was recognized that to the Normans belonged the Marches, the fertile plains, { 68} and the eastern and southern slopes of the mountains; while the rest—a land of dizzy peaks, narrow valleys, and bleak moorland—remained in the hands of the Welsh people.

The records of these years of conquest are interesting and sometimes thrilling, but neither edifying nor instructive. They are replete with martial exploits and deeds of daring. Battles are fought, and castles are stormed and burned with wearisome monotony. On both sides there was cruelty and treachery in abundance. A few names stand out as deserving of remembrance. The men who did most to stem the on-coming tide of Norman invasion were Griffith ap Conan, and Griffith ap Rees, both of whom died in the year 1137. The former ruled in Gwynedd, and the latter in Deheubarth; and to a far greater degree than any other Welsh princes of the period they perceived how absolutely essential unity was if Wales was to be saved from becoming a Norman fief. By this time the Welsh had learnt much of the Normans' military art. They fought clad, like their foes, in complete armour; and they knew how to build, how to defend, and how to attack stone castles. Thus the disparity in equipment, which had at first made Welsh armies an easy prey to { 69} much smaller bodies of Normans, was disappearing. In 1136, the year after the death of Henry I, a great pitched battle was fought at Cardigan between Griffith ap Rees and a league of Norman barons formed in order to crush him; and in this battle the Welsh were victorious. The Normans retreated, and were obliged to abandon much of the land and several of the castles which they had previously held. This is the high-water mark of the power of the Norman barons as distinct from that of the Norman kings.

An even greater ruler then ascended the throne of Gwynedd, the famous Owen Gwynedd, fine soldier, far-sighted statesman, friend of poets, and patron of monks. He perceived, dimly at least, the utter hopelessness of the struggle, which had now begun in earnest, against incorporation in the English kingdom, unless complete national unity could at once be achieved. Henry II now sat on the throne of England; for the times of Stephen and Matilda, so helpful to the enemies of England, were over. Owen persuaded most of the Welsh chieftains to acknowledge his supremacy; and he made an alliance with the princely house of Dinevor, the rulers of South Wales. But for the utter selfishness and the { 70} treachery of his brother there is no knowing but that something like a united Wales might have emerged before the close of Owen's reign. Never was unity so sorely needed; for one of the first enterprises upon which Henry II embarked, when he had made his throne secure, was the subjugation of Wales. But Henry's first venture was unsuccessful. Starting from Chester, he penetrated as far as Rhuddlan; but was there confronted with the great mountain mass of Snowdonia, stretching right into the sea at the Penmaenmawr. He occupied Anglesey, however; but so fierce was the opposition with which he was met that he deemed it wise to come to terms with Owen, and to withdraw.

In 1157 Henry came a second time, but with no better results. Twelve years later he led his armies into Wales for the third time, on this occasion starting from Oswestry, and crossing the mountains into the upper valley of the Dee. At Corwen Owen's army was drawn up in readiness, an army fairly representative of the whole of Wales. Before the English could reach him, however, the wind and the rain had done their work upon the invaders. Baggage was washed away, and to obtain adequate supplies became an { 71} impossibility. Angry and disappointed, Henry was obliged hurriedly to retreat. This was the crowning triumph of Owen Gwynedd's life. He had successfully withstood one of the very greatest of English kings. In the November of the same year he died, and was buried in Bangor cathedral.

In the years which immediately followed the death of Owen the dominating figure in Welsh politics was Rees ap Griffith, prince of Deheubarth, the "Lord Rees" as he was generally and familiarly styled. He inherited Owen's policy of unity and consolidation; but this time the work was to proceed from Cardigan, and not from the mountains of the North. The task of repelling the advance of the Normans was now less formidable than it had ever been; for the conquest of Ireland had begun, and the more turbulent and adventurous spirits were finding there an outlet for their energies in just the same way as their grandfathers had done in Wales. When king Henry II passed through Wales on his way to Ireland, he was met by the Lord Rees, and an amicable understanding was arrived at between them. In 1174 Rees was able to give proof of his friendship by assisting Henry to crush a revolt of his barons. { 72} Slowly but steadily Rees extended his sway over all the princes and barons of the South; and even over Merioneth beyond the Dovey, the natural boundary between his dominions and those of the princes of Gwynedd. Not only was Rees a great warrior, and an able statesman; he was also a munificent and discriminating patron of culture. An Eisteddfod which he held at Cardigan in 1176 has become famous. There poets and musicians from every part of Wales competed; and so just were the awards that the prize for music was won by the South, and that for poetry by the North.

The closing decade of the twelfth century saw the accession to the throne of Gwynedd of the ablest statesman in the whole history of mediæval Wales. This was Llewelyn, known to English and Welsh historians alike as Llewelyn the Great. It was no novel spectacle to see one of the Welsh thrones occupied by a fine soldier; and great as Llewelyn undoubtedly was in that respect, he was no greater than some of his predecessors and some of his successors. Where he outshines all competitors is in his clear reading of the signs of the times, in his understanding of the politics of England as well as Wales, and in his firm { 73} grasp of a policy which was no fantastic dream but a theory possible of attainment. His long reign of forty-six years (1194-1240) divides itself naturally into some half-dozen periods. In the first period (1194-1201) Llewelyn is fully absorbed in the task of making himself secure on the throne of Gwynedd. His difficulty was with the members of his own family, and with Prince Gwenwynwyn of Powys. The emergence of Gwynedd from the obscurity which had recently overtaken it was also beheld with jealous eyes by the princes of the South. But from all these difficulties Llewelyn soon emerged triumphant. In the course of the struggle he had, however, learnt one thing, and that was that the only hope for Wales lay in submission to the king of England, a submission which would involve only an acknowledgment of overlordship, without the abandonment of one single title of substantial independence. He perceived clearly that to fight for the shadow would probably lead to the loss of the substance; especially as it had now been proved beyond all possibility of doubt that the Welsh princes never would submit permanently and peacefully to one of their own order.

The second period in Llewelyn's reign opens with his marriage to Joan, daughter of King John. The marriage alliance carried with it a political alliance as well. Llewelyn used the brief breathing space which this alliance brought him to the best possible advantage. He made his position in Gwynedd secure, overran Powys, and carried his victorious army as far south as Aberystwyth. There he met the southern princes, and agreed to divide Cardigan with them. Then turning northwards he marched against Ranulf, Earl of Chester, whose castles of Deganwy, Rhuddlan, Holywell, and Mold he captured.

In the meantime John had been viewing the victorious career of his son-in-law with surprise and displeasure. A strong and united Wales was a thing which no king of England could tolerate. In the third period of his reign, therefore, between 1212 and 1215, we find John and Llewelyn in opposition to one another. Twice in the course of one summer did John invade North Wales, penetrating on the second occasion as far as Bangor, where, characteristically enough, he burned the Cathedral, and held the Bishop to ransom. So hard pressed was Llewelyn that he was obliged to send Joan to make full submission to { 75} her father on his behalf. But the tide soon turned. The other Welsh chieftains were greatly alarmed at John's manifest intention to dispossess them; and placing themselves under Llewelyn they begged him to lead them. John had also quarrelled with Rome; and the great Innocent III, who then held the Papacy, absolved Llewelyn and the other Welsh princes from their allegiance to the English king. Events in England were also most propitious; for John had by now come into serious conflict with his own nobility, and was soon to be compelled to concede all their demands by the Charter. With the English barons Llewelyn made an alliance; and Magna Carta, when it was eventually signed, contained clauses dealing exclusively with Wales. One of these clauses consisted of a promise that all Welshmen dispossessed of their lands or liberty should recover them. Another declared that all disputes were to be decided in England by English law, in the Marches by March law, and in Wales by Welsh law.

In the year 1213 John had convened a council, in which some have seen the germ out of which grew the future English Parliament. The same idea seems to have found place in the mind of Llewelyn; for on two occasions { 76} he summoned together all the princes of Wales, and all the wise men. So far as we know there was no process of election, and certainly no trace of the principle of representation; nevertheless this council was a distinct advance politically upon anything that had been seen in Wales before. The princes were to act as judges, and all questions of policy were to be debated by them with the assistance of the wise men. The first of these councils assembled at Aberdovey, a convenient meeting-place for Gwynedd, Powys, and the South. The decrees of the council were to be upheld by force; and when Gwenwynwyn of Powys soon after refused to obey, he was instantly crushed and deprived of his lands.

In order to strengthen himself still further, and at the same time to erect a bulwark between him and England, Llewelyn cemented his alliance with the powerful lords of the Marches by giving one of his daughters in marriage to Reginald de Braose, and the other to Ralph Mortimer. This lady Gladys, who married Mortimer, became the ancestress of Elizabeth of York, the mother of Henry VIII. Thus in the veins of the greatest of the Tudors there flowed some of the blood of the ancient royal house of Cunedda.

In the next period of his reign, between 1215 and 1226, we find Llewelyn at war with the Marshalls, the able and warlike Earls of Pembroke. William Marshall was as able a statesman as Llewelyn himself. His aim was to put an end to the turmoil into which England had been plunged by the struggle between king and barons. He was in favour of the Charter; but at the same time it seemed to him that the supremacy of a king was to be preferred to the lawless self-seeking of the great earls. He believed that the welfare of England demanded the existence of a strong central Government; and in this he was unquestionably right. In truth, Marshall was striving to achieve in England the very same thing that Llewelyn had been striving to achieve in Wales. With the death of John, and the accession of the innocent and untried Henry III, the power of the barons began to decline. Unfortunately the great Marshall died in 1219; and a vigorous war broke out between his son and Llewelyn. After some years, however, the younger Marshall lost the favour of the king; and Llewelyn, always quick to adjust his policy to a changed situation, at once concluded an alliance with him. Against such an alliance { 78} nothing could stand in Wales. Every castle in the country, with the solitary exception of Carmarthen, fell into their hands, and the king's army was defeated in a great battle at Grosmont.

With the victory of Grosmont the period of Llewelyn's aggressive policy comes to an end. Henceforward he is on the defensive, feeling the on-coming of old age, and desiring above all things to render Wales secure against disintegration after his death. Llewelyn had read correctly the lesson of the past. He knew that, as soon as the strong hand of an able ruler had been removed, the fruits of his policy had been dissipated by his mediocre successors. What he now desired so ardently was to build a Welsh State upon foundations so secure that it would not be overthrown by incapacity on the part of its sovereign. The definite announcement of Llewelyn's policy of dependence upon England produced two parties in Wales, one of them antagonistic to such dependence, the other favourable to it. This ultimately proved to be the rock upon which the plan was wrecked; but it was not until after the death of Llewelyn that the failure of his policy became apparent. While he lived, his genius and his { 79} prestige were sufficient to compel the reluctant acquiescence even of those princes who most strongly disapproved of his policy. An agreement was made with the English king, whereby Wales was to preserve its independence, while its Prince acknowledged his dependence, in the feudal sense, upon England. There was to be perpetual peace between the two kingdoms; and Wales was to support England in all foreign wars.

Llewelyn's eldest son, Griffith, an able and energetic young man, who would naturally have inherited his father's throne, was strongly opposed to the policy which had been adopted. In his view Welsh independence ought to be absolute and complete; and no political dealings with England fought to be carried on at all except on a footing of equality. The young prince was consequently looked upon as the natural leader of the war party. With what reluctance we do not know, Llewelyn made up his mind that Griffith should not inherit his throne, but that it should go to Davydd, the younger of his sons, an effeminate and peace-loving boy. With this purpose in view the aged Prince summoned again the Council of Princes to meet, this time at the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. There { 80} Davydd was duly nominated, and the oaths of allegiance of all the assembled chieftains taken. This was in 1238; and two years later Llewelyn died, and was buried in the monastery of Aberconway.

In the brief intervals of peace which he had enjoyed in the course of his long and strong reign, Llewelyn had proved himself not unmindful of the things of the intellect and the spirit. The Cistercian monks found in him a warm friend. It was at their home of Strata Florida that he summoned the last of his councils; and it was at their home on the slopes of the Conway that he came to sleep his last sleep. While he was reigning, the mendicant Orders had also come to Wales for the first time; and they, likewise, especially the Franciscan Friars, found in him a sympathetic protector; and it was by his favour that they acquired their beautiful home at Llan Vaes in Anglesey. We have seen how he negotiated with the Pope. With the desire of the Welsh Church to be completely independent of Canterbury he was in full sympathy, although he never went so far as to lay claims to the power of appointing Welsh bishops. Like almost all the greater Welsh princes he delighted in music and { 81} poetry, and was a munificent patron of the bard and the minstrel.

In accordance with the decree of the Council Davydd ascended his father's throne, and set himself to walk the path marked out for him. But the task which the great Llewelyn had barely been able to accomplish was far beyond the strength of his less able and less popular son. His brother Griffith had already been suspected of harbouring disloyal thoughts and had been immured by his father in the castle of Criccieth. In 1241 Davydd went to Gloucester, one of the three cities at which the kings of England used regularly to meet their advisers in council, and there did homage to Henry III. Then his real troubles began. The extreme nationalists were determined to put an end to the policy of dependence; and in the person of the imprisoned Griffith they knew that they would find an able and enthusiastic champion. And not only was Davydd opposed by the Welsh diehards; he also found enemies in many of the border princes and barons, who resented the supremacy of Gwynedd. Griffith's wife Senena was free; and she was chosen by the party of opposition to go to the king and plead her husband's cause. Henry III was sufficiently { 82} crafty to discern the opportunity of maintaining a state of discord in Wales, by playing off the one brother against the other. He accordingly decreed that both Davydd and Griffith should come to court, and have their differences settled by Welsh law. It soon became obvious, however, that Henry was not to be trusted by either party. He marched towards Chester, and then commenced to negotiate with Davydd. The king's terms were accepted; and Davydd went with Henry to London, and again swore allegiance. Meanwhile Griffith had been set at liberty. But his liberty was of short duration. Henry imprisoned him in the Tower of London where, in 1244, he met his death while attempting to escape.

In the summer of 1245 Henry gathered together a large army, and marched against North Wales. Deganwy was reached, and a new castle built there. This was waste of valuable time, and ere the work was completed the king found that Davydd had secured powerful allies in the form of famine and winter storms. It was the same old story that could be told of so many of the English invasions of Wales in the Middle—a swift and irresistible advance in { 83} summer, a long halt, then the oncoming of winter followed by a retreat which very frequently became a rout. In the next year Davydd died, and was laid to rest in his father's grave at Aberconway, whither, some time later, the body of his brother Griffith was also brought.

With the death of Davydd a disputed succession again arose. The two most obvious claimants, since Davydd had left no children, were Griffith's two sons, Owen Goch and Llewelyn. But Ralph Mortimer also claimed the throne through his wife Gladys, daughter of Llewelyn the Great; and when he died a few months later he transmitted his claims to his son Roger. An entirely new candidate, however, appeared on the scene in the person of the young Prince Edward, son of Henry III and heir to the English throne. The claim was vague, resting upon the agreement come to between Senena on behalf of Griffith, and Henry. In effect all that was claimed by Edward was the territory held by Llewelyn ap Griffith, which comprised the four cantrefs between the Dee and the Conway—Rhos, Rhuvonig, Dyffryn Clwyd, and Tegeingl—and certain lands south of the Dovey; and these he obtained. In Gwynedd Owen and { 84} Llewelyn now became joint rulers; and when they had done homage to the English king, they remained unmolested. Llewelyn had inherited a large measure of his grandfather's ability and force of character; and owing to the possession of these qualities he soon began to take the lead in affairs. With high and low alike he was immensely popular. This roused the jealousy of his two brothers, Owen and Davydd, and they rose in revolt against him. But from the start Llewelyn proved himself a most capable soldier. The rebels were swiftly defeated; Davydd escaped, and fled to the English court; while Owen was imprisoned. By the end of the year 1255 Llewelyn was without a rival in the North.

CHAPTER VI

WALES CONQUERED

Between Prince Edward and Llewelyn, in so far as the latter represented his grandfather's policy, there was no fundamental conflict of ideal. The essence of that policy was that Wales should remain independent and united, but within the bounds of allegiance to the King of England. To the modern man, who has inherited from the century of the Reformation the conception of national sovereignty, such a position may appear to be an impossible one; but to the man of the Middle Ages, accustomed as he was to the underlying principles of feudalism, there was nothing at all paradoxical in the position. Now in recent years we have again learned the soundness of the principle; and it has become the foundation upon which the British Empire rests. There are many of the elements of real tragedy in this mighty conflict between Edward and Llewelyn. Both were able, { 86} valiant, sincere, and high-minded men. Both were statesmen of more than ordinary capacity. It is hard that a modus vivendi should not have been discovered between them; and it looks as if some cruel Fate had placed each of them in a false position of inevitable hostility the one towards the other. To Edward the Welsh appeared in the light only of rebellious subjects. They owed him fealty; and with the strict sense of feudal obligations which, with Edward, amounted almost to an obsession, he viewed their disobedience as the breach of a legal and a moral duty. "The last survivor of that race of traitors" were the words with which the Parliament of Shrewsbury described Davydd, Llewelyn's brother. To Llewelyn and the people of Wales, on the other hand, the struggle was that of an independent State, fighting for the preservation of its independence against the encroachments of a powerful neighbour. It was unfortunate that Edward had come to think of Llewelyn as shifty and faithless, and that Llewelyn had come to think of Edward as cruel, crafty, and deceitful. The two men regarded one another with intense personal hatred and suspicion; and an accommodation which might have proved fairly easy of { 87} attainment in an atmosphere of goodwill and confidence, was rendered quite impossible by the atmosphere of dislike and distrust in which negotiations were conducted.

The trouble began when Henry III presented his son Edward, then a boy of sixteen, with the palatine earldom of Chester, upon the extinction of the great Norman family by which it had hitherto been held. This grant carried with it, as we have seen, certain lands in Wales—the Four Cantrefs, and the lands between the Dovey and Carmarthen Bay. These lands were recent acquisitions of the English Crown; and it was with extreme reluctance that the chieftains of Gwynedd had acquiesced. Nevertheless, all might have been well but for the ruthless policy of anglicisation upon which Edward's officials immediately embarked. Professor Tout is undoubtedly right when he says that "the germ of all Edward's later Welsh policy lies in his early attempts to establish the shire system in his Welsh estates." He might have added with equal truth that therein lies too the germ of all Edward's subsequent troubles in Wales; for the introduction of the shire system meant the substitution of English law for the laws of Howel, a new and different division of the { 88} country for administrative purposes, and eventually the imposition of English manners and the English language upon the Welsh people.

The brutality of the soldiers left by Edward in the Four Cantrefs infuriated the inhabitants so that they rose in rebellion, and appealed to Llewelyn for help. Llewelyn knew that it would be impolitic for him to go to their assistance; but his chivalrous and patriotic soul was stirred to its depths by their tale of outrage and oppression, and reluctantly he agreed to go. Within the course of a few days the whole country from the Conway to the Dee was overrun. But Llewelyn knew that it would not be possible to confine the struggle within one locality. The whole might of England would be brought against him; and to resist such overwhelming power the united efforts of the whole of Wales would be required. It was thus that Llewelyn, from being the avenger of the wrongs of the people of a small province, came to be the champion of the whole of Wales. The country rose with rare unanimity; and Llewelyn moved on irresistibly towards Chester, where Edward was stationed, impotent in the face of the superior power of his foes. Edward appealed to his father for help; but at first the appeal { 89} was met only with a rebuke. In 1257, however, Henry came to his assistance with a big army. He succeeded in reaching Deganwy; but further he was unable to penetrate, and his retreat was disastrous. Indeed the only effect of the whole campaign was to demonstrate to all waverers the feebleness of Henry and the strength of Llewelyn.

Llewelyn was now as powerful as any Welsh prince had ever been; while England was in the throes of the bitter struggle between the king and the barons led by Simon de Montfort. An alliance was concluded between the Welsh and Simon; and the defeat and capture of Henry at Lewes in May 1258 gave Llewelyn a respite in which to consolidate his gains and to strengthen his position. So long as England remained disunited Llewelyn was perfectly secure, but the death of Simon, and the triumph of the king, altered the whole situation. This Llewelyn knew perfectly well, for he was no idle dreamer; and he was then, as indeed always, willing to come to terms with the king upon the old conditions—Wales to be independent, and the Prince of Wales to do homage to the King of England. In September 1267 Henry led an army to Shrewsbury; and with them came the legate Ottobon, { 90} for the purpose of negotiating with Llewelyn. The Welsh prince had now, for some years, been excommunicated. Indeed, throughout the long struggle the Church proved itself to be the implacable enemy of Welsh independence. Recognizing the hopelessness and the futility of war against the whole strength of England, Llewelyn, at Shrewsbury, came to terms with Henry; and four days afterwards the terms were embodied in the Treaty of Montgomery. Llewelyn was to do homage to Henry, and to pay him an indemnity. His own position as Prince of Wales was recognized; and he was to retain possession of the Four Cantrefs. This was the position in 1273, when Henry III died.

The accession of Edward I completely altered the situation. He and Llewelyn were ancient enemies, and each was, from the first, on the lookout for assault and aggressions on the part of the other. Edward was crowned in London, upon his return from the Holy Land in August 1274. In accordance with feudal usage he summoned the King of Scotland and the Prince of Wales to do homage to him. Alexander of Scotland obeyed and went; but Llewelyn refused. He sought to justify his refusal on the ground that Edward had proved so faithless in the past that he dare { 91} not venture his life inside the English capital; furthermore he accused Edward of having broken the Treaty of Montgomery. A year elapsed; and then Edward came to Chester, and again summoned Llewelyn to his presence. Acting on the advice of his council, Llewelyn refused to go; and Edward returned to London in deep displeasure. At this juncture Fate played into the hands of the English king. Llewelyn was betrothed to Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort, at that time living with her mother in France. It was arranged that she should come over in 1275 for the purpose of getting married; but on the way she was captured by a vessel from Bristol and taken to London, where Edward kept her in captivity. The crafty monarch saw his opportunity. Eleanor should not become the wife of Llewelyn until the latter had performed the long-delayed act of homage. This condition Llewelyn indignantly refused; and in 1277 war began. The English army moved in four divisions, one from Chester, one from Shrewsbury, one from Hereford, and one from Carmarthen. South Wales was speedily reduced to subjection; and Llewelyn presently found himself besieged in the fastnesses of Snowdonia, an army hemming him { 92} in on the land side, while a fleet from the Cinque Ports rendered escape by sea impossible. Perceiving that further resistance would be useless, in November 1277 he signed the Treaty of Rhuddlan in Edward's presence. The terms of the treaty were severe—an indemnity of fifty thousand marks, the restoration of the Four Cantrefs, a yearly rent to be paid for Anglesey, all barons except those of Snowdon to hold their lands of the English king, the title Prince of Wales to cease with Llewelyn's life, and Llewelyn to come to England once every year to do homage. It was made a condition that the inhabitants of the Four Cantrefs were to be allowed to retain their old customs, and to be judged by their own laws. Eleanor was then released; and her marriage to Llewelyn took place at Worcester in October 1278.

It is well known by all historians and statesmen that a too severe treaty is always the parent of new wars, and the Treaty of Rhuddlan was undoubtedly too severe. The latent discontent which was felt throughout Wales, and especially in the North, was greatly exacerbated by the oppressive administration of the king's Welsh lands by his officials. Justice was denied. Englishmen { 93} might murder and steal with impunity so long as their victims were only Welsh. Offices were sold; and extortionate fines were exacted. The old Welsh laws were disregarded, the excuse being that they conflicted with the king's superior sense of justice. So terrible was the oppression, and so impossible was it to obtain redress by constitutional means, that in 1282 revolts broke out in many parts of the country. Llewelyn had scrupulously abstained from giving the least encouragement to any of these revolts; but once they had broken out of their own accord, he perceived how essential it was that they should be directed by one mind, and placed himself at their head.

This time Edward determined to make an end of his troublesome vassal, and to crush the independent power of the Welsh chieftain once and for all. Llewelyn prepared himself to meet the enormous English army which was marching against him, his mind filled with evil forebodings, and his heart heavy with sorrow at the recent death of his wife. The meddlesome Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, after first excommunicating Llewelyn, tried to mediate. But Edward insisted upon unconditional surrender, and { 94} that Llewelyn would not stoop to make. Meanwhile winter was coming on, and Edward had only succeeded in reaching Penmaenmawr. To try to penetrate the towering mountain barrier of Arfon at that season of the year would be reckless folly; and so he retreated to Rhuddlan to await the return of spring.

Accorded this brief respite, Llewelyn paid what was intended to be a flying visit to South Wales, in order to encourage his allies. In a lonely dell near Builth, on December 11th, the last Prince of Wales was slain in a chance skirmish with some Cheshire soldiers who were quite ignorant of his identity. He was refused Christian burial by the Archbishop; and whether his body eventually found a resting place within the sacred precincts of Cwm Hir, as tradition says it did, we have no means of ascertaining.

With the death of Llewelyn the rebellion instantly collapsed, except that his brother Davydd, who had once betrayed him, kept up a show of resistance in the heart of Snowdonia. But in March 1284 he was betrayed and captured, and sent by Edward in chains to Shrewsbury to abide his trial. Davydd was unquestionably a bad man; but it is difficult to conceive of any degree of turpitude { 95} meriting the dreadful penalties which were inflicted upon him. A special Parliament was summoned to meet at Shrewsbury; and it was this body, representing, as we may fairly assume that it did, the finest intellect and character in the England of the day, that, sitting in cold blood, condemned the hapless prisoner to be drawn at the tails of horses through the streets of Shrewsbury, to be hanged, to be disembowelled while still alive, then to be quartered and beheaded. English historians have been known to contrast the superior civilization of the England of Edward I with the barbarity of the Wales of Llewelyn. One might well invite them to think the matter over afresh in the light of the doings of the Parliament of Shrewsbury. About the native Welsh princes, Owen M. Edwards has finely and truly said that "they had never tortured a prisoner, or betrayed a guest, or wreaked inhuman vengeance on a fallen enemy."

Wales was now conquered, and the "English Justinian" could proceed with the task of organization. In this work he was keenly interested, as is vouched for by the fact that he spent the greater part of the succeeding two years in the country. From Rhuddlan, { 96} in 1284, he issued the great Statute of Wales which, until the changes wrought by Henry VIII, remained the foundation upon which the government of Wales rested. The shire principle was extended. In the north Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth were made into shires, under the jurisdiction of the Justice of Snowdon. Likewise Flint became a shire under the jurisdiction of the Justice of Chester. In the south Cardigan and Carmarthen were made shires under the Justice of South Wales. There were to be County Courts as in England; and twice every year the new official, the sheriff, was to make his tourn through the commotes. The main body of Welsh law was to remain in force; but it was subject to a good deal of modification. For the protection of the land, and especially for the subjugation of Llewelyn's stronghold of Gwynedd, a circle of the newly-devised concentric castles was built—Conway, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, Criccieth, and Harlech. In order to break the old tribal system, and in order to anglicise the population as much as possible, the growth of towns was encouraged. These were given special privileges by Royal Charter. Cardigan, Builth, Montgomery, Welshpool, Rhuddlan, Aberystwyth, Carnarvon, Conway, Criccieth, { 97} Harlech, Caerwys, Beaumaris, and Newburgh were among those which received charters from Edward I; while Edward II gave charters to Bala, Llanfyllin, Cardiff, Usk, Caerleon, Newport, Cowbridge, and Neath.

In 1284 Edward, accompanied by his wife Eleanor, made a tour of the Principality. At the beginning of the tour Edward, the first English Prince of Wales, had been born; and, according to tradition, had been presented by his father publicly to the people of Carnarvon. From Carnarvon the royal progress wended its way to Nevin, where a splendid tournament was held. From Nevin it proceeded to Aberystwyth, and thence to St. David, and finally to Bristol.

But Edward was destined never to find rest in his relations with either Scotland or Wales. In 1294 a rebellion broke out, caused by the injustice of the new sheriffs. It was fairly general, breaking out simultaneously in Dyfed in Glamorgan, and in the North. Again the king led an army to Conway; and in a comparatively short time the rebellion was quelled. It was not, however, altogether fruitless. Edward seems to have realised that his policy was goading the country into revolt, and that a greater measure of clemency would serve { 98} his interests better. At all events administration became, for a time at least, more pure and less harsh. The last attempt to win independence for Wales in the reign of Edward I was, curiously enough, made by a Norman lord, Sir Thomas Turberville. He entered into an agreement with the French, by which he was to bring Wales to their assistance in their war against England, the reward for this service being the Principality itself. Before anything had been done, however, the plot was discovered; and Turberville's head was placed to rot on the Tower of London.

The question whether the Edwardian conquest was a benefit or a misfortune to Wales in the long run is one to which no certain answer can be given. In so far as it put an end to the rivalries and the internecine strife which, for centuries, had convulsed the land, it was an unalloyed blessing. But there were signs that Welshmen had already learnt the lesson of the past; and that they were willing, without the drastic measures applied to them from without, to set their own house in order. The multiplication of small States is now, no doubt, an evil; but the same cannot be said with confidence about the Middle Ages. The { 99} assertion of writers, unable themselves to read a line of Welsh, that the culture of England in the latter half of the thirteenth century was superior to that of Wales is certainly untrue. Indeed the direct contrary is the fact. Welsh literature, both prose and poetry, was far ahead of that of England; and the Welsh language had attained a decidedly higher stage of development. Welsh customs were "barbarous" only in the sense in which all that is strange is considered barbarous by the man of insular mind. We have now learned (and it is our good fortune that we have learned) that a nation can live its own free life of the mind and the spirit while forming, for political purposes, part of a larger body called a State; but it does not follow that, in the thirteenth century, a nation could exist at all without enjoying a large measure of political independence, if not sovereignty itself. Llewelyn may have been crafty, proud, and impulsive; but it is equally true that Edward was harsh, perfidious, and a narrow legalist always thinking in terms of strict feudal law. His plea that the amending or abrogating of Welsh laws was for the good of the Welsh people themselves is the excuse which strong empires have always made use { 100} of when seeking to justify the subjugation and assimilation of small nations. He talked much about justice; but this justice, which sounded so fair in theory, resolved itself in practice into the oppression and cruelty of ruthless and unsympathetic foreign officials. At heart what Edward most desired was not that Welshmen should remain Welshmen and be at peace with him, but that they should as quickly as possible be turned into Englishmen. It has been noted that in the towns which Edward founded in Wales English was the language of the people down to the close of the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER VII

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

With the death of Edward I Wales settled down to a long period of comparative tranquillity. The next eighty years were as peaceful a time as the unhappy country had enjoyed for centuries. Edward II was now on the throne of England; and his Welsh birth, his mild disposition, and his obvious desire to deal justly with the Principality caused him to be regarded with trust and even with affection. On two occasions during the reign the new Welsh shires were allowed to send representatives to the English Parliament. All forms of lawlessness were sternly repressed. The consequence was that the Welsh people began, as they had never done before, to turn their attention to trade and the accumulation of wealth. The fourteenth century witnessed a great increase in industry and commerce all over Western Europe, and both England and Wales participated in the { 102} increase. Edward III conferred a most precious benefit upon Wales by bringing it within the scope of the Statute of Staple. In 1332 Shrewsbury and Carmarthen were constituted staple towns for the Principality. Then came the Black Death, which swept over England and Wales in the year 1349. The amount of immediate distress which it occasioned was immense; but some of its results were good. The fact that among the labouring classes the rate of mortality had been something like fifty per cent. made labour very scarce; and in spite of the efforts of Parliament to control the situation by means of Statutes of Labourers, the economic and social position of the villeins was immensely improved. But it was not in Wales only that Welshmen were bettering their position; they were covering themselves with glory on all the great battlefields of Europe. The fourteenth century was the age of the long bow; with it the finest victories of the Hundred Years' War were won; and the home of the long bow was Wales. The weapon had been in use for a long time in border wars, and its superiority to the cross bow had been clearly demonstrated. The Black Prince, who became Prince of Wales in 1343, was immensely { 103} popular in the Principality, and a large body of archers and spearmen from Wales followed him to the French wars. At Crécy there were five thousand Welsh troops; and it was at the close of that battle that the Prince assumed the crest and the motto which ever since have been worn by all Princes of Wales. No lover of English literature is ever likely to forget the pages in which Shakespeare has drawn an amusing but kindly caricature of the Welshmen who distinguished themselves on the field of Agincourt. But it was not only in the armies of their own sovereign that Welshmen were to be found; they were, throughout the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, among the most famous mercenary troops in Europe. Many of them fought in the French armies against the Black Prince and against Henry V. Owen of Wales, the friend of the great condottiere Bertrand du Guesclin, won much fame as the leader of a Free Company. This Owen, however, was much more than a successful mercenary captain: he remembered the land of his birth; and the great ambition of his life was to win back Welsh independence with the assistance of France and Spain.

The Black Death had very adversely affected { 104} the monastic life of Wales. Even in the thirteenth century—the golden age of monasticism—Wales was too poor a country to support such princely foundations as Fountains or St. Albans. Its monasteries were, for the most part, small, drawing what wealth they possessed from acres of barren mountain land. As we have already seen, Wales, from the first coming of Christianity into the country, had its monastic foundations. So far back as the sixth century, those of Bangor Iscoed and Llantwit Major were famous throughout Christendom. The rule of St. Benedict, which dates from that century, seems to have found much favour in Wales; for in South Wales alone there were some fifteen Benedictine houses, one of them being an abbey, and the remaining ones priories. Soon, however, these priories fell into evil odour; for they were "alien" in the sense that they belonged to some foreign abbey whose abbot used them merely for the purpose of augmenting his revenues. The great Cluniac reformation of the tenth century had singularly little influence upon the religious life of Wales, and only three priories were established in the country. The lives of the monks who inhabited them were notoriously { 105} lax, and gave considerable scandal even in that age of easy morals. It was the Cistercian Order, however, that seems to have won the religious heart of the Welsh people. All the most famous religious houses in Wales—Strata Florida, Strata Marcella, Aberconway, Valle Crucis, Basingwerk, Cwm Hir, Margam, Whitland, Neath, Dore, Grace Dieu, Tintern, Cymer, and Llantarnan—were Cistercian. For the most part the monks favoured the cause of national independence. They were not great scholars, nor did any particular sanctity pertain to their lives; but they were excellent farmers, their conduct was at least decent, they were witnesses after their fashion to the value of the spiritual life, and they occasionally wrote chronicles like the Annales Cambriæ and the Brut which are invaluable to the historian of to-day.

The Friars, too, found a warm welcome in many parts of Wales. The Cistercian monks were to be found in remote and lonely valleys, or on the edge of high and bleak moorlands; the Friars, on the other hand, were to be found in the towns, among the busiest haunts of men. Towns in Wales were few and insignificant, so we do not find the Friars occupying the position of importance which they so { 106} soon acquired in England. Nevertheless the Dominicans had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon, Haverfordwest, and Cardiff, while the Franciscans were to be found at Carmarthen, Cardiff, and Llan Vaes. In addition to the two great Orders, there was a settlement of White Friars (Carmelites) at Denbigh, and one of the Austin Friars at Newport. In Wales all the Friars seem to have been energetic preachers and lecturers; and in that way they did much to diffuse what learning they themselves were possessed of among the common people.

The Black Death greatly reduced the numbers of the monks. Their rents fell very considerably in value, and they consequently became extremely poor. Nevertheless the second half of the fourteenth century witnessed a remarkable religious awakening in the country. There was a new and enquiring spirit abroad, and Wales turned an interested, and occasionally a sympathetic, ear to the teaching of the Lollards. The Catholic Church, as represented by its two great officers, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, had so often shown itself to be the enemy of Welsh liberty that the people of Wales listened with much favour to the teaching of Walter Brute, { 107} one of Wycliffe's disciples, when he began to preach in the Marches in 1391. That the official religion had fallen into considerable contempt in Wales is indicated by the insulting tone of many of the triads in which it was the fashion of the day for literary men to express themselves. "Three things are objects of derision," says one of these, "an old hag displaying her finery, an old man trying to show his agility, and an old priest drunk." Another tells us that "Three things there are which he who can may love—a fat priest singing Mass, the cry of a soul in the clutches of the Fiend, and an English song."

In the quarrel between Richard II and his barons the sympathy of Wales was with the king; and it was in Wales that the final struggle between the unhappy monarch and Henry Bolingbroke took place. The king, who had been in Ireland, landed at Milford Haven, to find that Henry was with an army at Bristol. By a forced march he reached Conway; and then travelled from castle to castle in North Wales looking for support. He met Henry at Flint, surrendered, and was first deposed and afterwards murdered. Then Henry IV ruled in his stead. From the beginning of his reign the new king seems to { 108} have regarded Wales with a good deal of suspicion and dislike. After a long period of mild government, a note of severity again makes itself audible in the statutes passed dealing exclusively with Wales. There is a harsh and aggressive flavour in their very titles—"Certain restraints laid on Welshmen," "The Lords Marchers to keep ward in their castles," "Welshmen shall not purchase lands in England," "Englishmen shall not be convict in Wales," "As to minstrels and vagabonds in Wales," "Welshmen not to carry arms," "No armour or victuals to be carried into Wales," "Welshmen not to have castles," "No Welshman shall bear office in Wales," "Castles and walled towns in Wales to be kept by Englishmen," "Englishmen married to Welsh women not to have office in Wales," etc. It was in such an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and dislike that the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr broke out.

CHAPTER VIII

OWEN GLYNDWR

In the long roll of Welsh history which we have been unfolding there are many illustrious names—Cunedda Wledig, Howel Dda, Owen Gwynedd, the Lord Rees, Llewelyn Fawr, and Llewelyn the last Prince of Wales: but of all the men of the Middle Ages no one has so touched the heart and fired the imagination of Wales as Owen Glyndwr. For all Welsh people he stands alone and supreme, the ideal Welshman of all time. Both the beginning and the end of his life are shrouded in obscurity. It was only for some half-dozen years that he occupied a foremost place in the politics of his day. He left behind him no solid gain of any kind, but at best a vague tradition and an unrealised dream. Yet in spite of all that his hold upon his countrymen has never relaxed; and when the bonds in which the national spirit had been confined for more than three hundred years were beginning to break { 110} in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was his name that was invoked, and his dreams that were recalled. Gardiner once said that the two typical Englishmen of all time were Shakespeare and Oliver Cromwell; the one in the realm of thought, the other in the realm of action. Wales owes no such divided allegiance: the Welsh spirit at its best is typified in one man—Owen Glyndwr. Owen was a direct descendant of the princely house of Powys, a line of princes which had played a none too illustrious part in the struggle for independence. The family was a wealthy one, and Owen spent his early years in passing from one of his father's country houses to the other. The real home of the family was the exquisitely beautiful Glyndyfrdwy, a narrow valley through which the limpid waters of the Dee flow between thickly wooded banks, above which rise the heather-clad slopes of the Berwyns. Close at hand are Valle Crucis and Dinas Bran; and not far off is the entrance to the fertile and lovely Vale of Clwyd. Even the year of Owen's birth is uncertain. Tradition varies; but the best evidence at our disposal points to 1359 as the date. Wealthy and well-connected young men in those days used frequently to study law for some years { 111} at the Inns of Court, a training which was regarded as more aristocratic than residence at the University of Oxford. Owen seems to have gone up to London, and to have spent some time in listening to cases argued in Westminster Hall, then the home of the Common Law Courts. Shakespeare is probably right when he makes Owen lay claim to the possession of the best culture of the day—

"I can speak English, lord, as well as you;
For I was trained up in the English court;
Where, being but young, I framed to the harp
Many an English ditty lovely well,
And gave the tongue a helpful ornament."

The pursuit of Law is not commonly associated by us with either poetry or romance; nevertheless it is in the Courts that Owen seems to have met his future wife, the daughter of Sir David Hanmer, one of the Justices of the King's Bench. The wedding probably took place in 1380, when Owen was only twenty-one years old. The period of legal training was followed by a course of training in the use of arms. In 1385 Owen followed Richard II to Scotland, where he won much credit by his prowess in the field. But it is { 112} a mistake to imagine that he was ever a blind partisan of Richard. Later, when it became opportune to profess belief in the existence of Richard in order to imperil the throne of his successor, Owen was perfectly willing to do so; but in these early years, long before it had ever occurred to him that he might lead a Welsh revolt against England, he was a follower of Henry Bolingbroke, and, if tradition speaks correctly, one of his esquires. According to another account he also was, at one period, esquire to his neighbour the Earl of Arundel, lord of Oswestry, Chirk, and Cynllaith. How many years were spent in this sort of novitiate we have no means of ascertaining; all we know for certain is that, before 1400, Owen was living the customary life of a Welsh country gentleman, at his two houses of Glyndyfrdwy and Sycherth.

Wales at that time was seething with discontent; a discontent which was partly political, and partly social. The country was warmly attached to King Richard, and looked upon Henry IV as a usurper and an assassin. It was also being borne in upon the people that England was now determined to extirpate the Welsh language, and to destroy finally every trace of Welsh nationality. The fourteenth { 113} century had witnessed in many of the countries of Western Europe a rapid development of the national spirit, and both England and Wales were among those which had participated in it. In addition to political grievances, there were also social grievances, felt more especially in the South. But even when we have taken all these things into full account, the universality, the spontaneity, and the warmth of the rebellion of 1401 remain something of a mystery. One thing is certain, and that is that Wales was solidly behind Owen; and that it was the North and the middle parts of the country, regions in which political preponderated over social grievances, which led the revolt.

The great rebellion began with a personal quarrel between Owen and his arrogant neighbour Lord Grey of Ruthin. In 1400 the king had summoned Owen to assist him in his Scottish expedition. The summons had been entrusted to Lord Grey to deliver; but he, wishing to sow discord between Henry and Owen, neglected to transmit it. The king was angry with Owen, and with greater justice Owen was angry with Grey. Owen's wrath took the eloquent form of a merciless raid upon his enemy's estates, in the course of { 114} which certain members of his household were slain. Grey, determined to retaliate, gathered together his forces and marched against Glyndyfrdwy. But the whole country was now up in arms; and supported by a strong body of followers, Owen was able to burn the town of Ruthin to the ground. Owen then openly declared himself the deliverer of Wales from the English yoke; and so serious a view did the king take of the situation that, without delay, he marched into Carnarvonshire. He was greatly incensed; and his anger was proved by the burning, without any provocation, of the house of the Franciscans at Llan Vaes. Owen, not strong enough as yet to meet the king in battle, retired into the mountain recesses, and Henry had to content himself with declaring all his lands forfeited. Meanwhile the flame of rebellion spread; and Owen was joined not only by people from every part of Wales, but by young Welshmen from Oxford, from London, and from beyond the seas. He had now planted his standard of the red dragon on the slopes of Plinlimmon; and there, safe from the clutches of all invading armies, he proceeded with the task of organization, making frequent dashes into the neighbouring counties, and capturing towns, castles, { 115} and abbeys. The capture of the strong castle of Conway by nephews of Owen in the spring of 1401 brought Henry again to Wales, this time accompanied by Earl Percy. Conway was quickly recaptured. Percy, after marching through Carnarvonshire, reached the foot of Cader Idris, where he won a victory. Nevertheless the crushing of the rebellion, and the capture of Owen, seemed to be as remote as ever. In the autumn of the same year the energetic and persistent king came again, marched through Merionethshire, harried Cardiganshire, and stabled his horses near the high altar of the abbey of Strata Florida. Owen meanwhile hung on the skirts of his army, capturing stragglers, and cutting off supplies; and again the baffled monarch was compelled to return to his own country.

Up to the close of 1401 Owen had been nothing more than a guerrilla leader who, had he been captured, might with perfect justice have been put to death as a rebel. And had that fate befallen him then, his career would have but little interest save for the curious and the professional student. It was the next two years that proved that Owen was a statesman of the first rank, as well as an able military leader. He began at once to look { 116} out for suitable alliances, and in making them he met with marked success. His early enemy, Lord Grey, fell a prisoner into his hands, and was converted into an ally by marriage with one of Owen's daughters. At the same time successful negotiations were entered into with the native chieftains of Ireland, the French king, the king of Scotland, and the discontented Percies. At the battle of Bryn Glas Edmund Mortimer was captured. He, likewise, was married to one of the Welsh leader's daughters, and encouraged to desert Henry, and to claim the throne of England for his own nephew the Earl of March. For the third time Henry marched into Wales, this time with an immense army. But the elusive and ubiquitous Glyndwr could nowhere be brought to bay; and wind, rain, and floods played havoc with the English hosts. Henry had now quarrelled openly with the Percies. Owen, Mortimer, and Percy Hotspur met on the shore of remote and desolate Aberdaron; and there they agreed upon a plan for the tripartite division of England and Wales.

Owen was then at the height of his power, but in the very hour of triumph he on two occasions only barely escaped death at the hand of an assassin. On the first occasion he { 117} was walking with his cousin Howel Sele in his park at Nannau near Dolgelly. Suddenly a doe appeared, and Owen called upon Howel to shoot. But the faithless Howel turned his bow against Owen; and the arrow glanced off from the coat of mail which he invariably wore beneath his ordinary dress. From that hour no man ever saw Howel Sele; but years afterwards a human skeleton was discovered in a hollow tree close to the spot where the encounter must have taken place. The second attempt was made by Davydd Gam. He had come to Machynlleth to attend the Parliament which Owen had summoned there. Fortunately for him, as well as for his intended victim, the plot was discovered, and Davydd lived to meet a more honourable death on the field of Agincourt.

The alliance concluded at Aberdaron was destined to be short-lived; for the Percies were crushed by Henry at the battle of Shrewsbury. Owen has been repeatedly blamed for wasting time in ravaging South Wales instead of keeping tryst with his allies, and joining them before the king's forces had come upon the scene. The censure is probably undeserved. It was vital to the success of their plans that South Wales should be left { 118} behind them incapable of further resistance; and, furthermore, it is likely that the Percies had, at the last moment, altered their plans and marched on Shrewsbury, instead of meeting Owen in the vicinity of Ludlow. But we cannot so readily exonerate Owen from blame for neglecting to fall upon the king's army, tired and disorganized as it must have been after the battle. Not to do so was the greatest blunder of his whole career.

Prince Henry, afterwards to become so famous as the victor of Agincourt and the conqueror of France, had now been appointed Lieutenant of Wales, and the war was carried on with increased vigour and ruthlessness. Henry ravaged North Wales, and burned to the ground Owen's home of Sycherth. Nevertheless the power of Owen steadily increased. In 1404 he summoned Parliaments to Dolgelly and Machynlleth. These Parliaments were not a revival of Llewelyn's Council of Princes, but deliberate imitations of the English Parliament. He was now styling himself "Owen by the grace of God Prince of Wales"; and he was treated by foreign potentates as sovereign of an independent country. He had his own Great Seal, his Privy Seal, his chancery, and his courts of law. He concluded an { 119} alliance with France in January 1405, and some time later a force of fifteen hundred Frenchmen landed at Milford, and captured Carmarthen. They remained in Wales until early in the following year; but the assistance which they rendered to the national cause appears to have been negligible. But the friendship between Owen and Charles of France continued; and in 1406, in a letter addressed from Pennal, we find Owen telling the French king what his aims were, i.e. , to create a Wales territorially free, to create an independent Welsh Church, and to create two Universities, one for North, and one for South Wales.

Owen had also succeeded in winning the support of the Pope, or rather of one of the Popes; for those were the days of the Great Schism, and there were rival claimants for the throne of St. Peter. Owen decided to withdraw the spiritual allegiance of Wales from the Roman Pope, Gregory XII, and to transfer it to Peter de Luna, then dwelling in Avignon, and calling himself Pope Benedict XIII. In return, of course, Owen expected the Pope to acknowledge the independence of Wales. John Trevor, bishop of St. Asaph, had already gone over to the nationalist side; and Owen, { 120} with the Pope's consent, nominated Llewelyn Bifort to the see of Bangor. Apparently this prelate was never recognised by the English Church; but he was present some years later at the Council of Constance, signing himself as "Ludovicus Bangorensis." In the North Wales dioceses, at least, the national party was supreme between 1404 and 1408, and in a lesser degree in those of the South as well.

The project of founding two national Universities, it seems, never found any sort of realization in Owen's day, nor indeed for close upon five centuries afterwards. But the plan in itself is sufficient to rebut the ridiculous calumny that Owen was an uncivilized barbarian. It is a pity that the age which saw the founding of Universities at St. Andrews, Prague, Vienna, Louvain, Cracow, Cologne, Padua, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Erfurt, Pesth, Würtzburg, and Rostock, should not have witnessed the founding of one in Wales as well. What a difference the existence of such an institution would have made in the national character, and in the whole outlook of the people, we can only regretfully conjecture. For centuries young Welshmen flocked eagerly to Oxford, to Cambridge, and to some of the { 121} famous European seats of learning; but the culture of Wales ran in other channels, undisciplined and amateurish, and, despite its wonderful charm and fascination, lacking in classic restraint and breadth of outlook.

Owen's success reached its culmination in 1405. From that time on his star was steadily on the wane, although for years he kept up a brave, and sometimes successful, resistance. A plan to secure the person of the young Earl of March, and to proclaim him King of England, miscarried. Slowly but surely the pressure of Henry's armies, and those of the Lords Marchers, was beginning to tell. Most of the grievances of the peasants had wisely been redressed, and they longed for the time when they could till their fields in peace, unmolested by the armies of either friend or foe. Owen's high ideals were beyond the comprehension of the selfish and illiterate labouring classes upon whom he had depended for his strength; and they now deserted in hundreds from his camp. The general débâcle was assisted by the young Henry's policy of studied clemency. He was no foreigner, but a rival Prince of Wales; and he strove to prove that he cared just as much as did Owen for the welfare of his Welsh subjects. The abbot of Valle { 122} Crucis was perfectly right when he told Owen that he had risen a century too soon.

In the closing years of his life Owen was no better than a fugitive. Indeed, so completely had all traces of rebellion disappeared, that no particular effort was made to effect his capture. Where he lived, and how he lived, was unknown to his contemporaries as it is to us. Sometimes he would appear, clad as a common labourer; then vanish again, and not be seen for months. In its poverty and its loneliness it is a pathetic close to so splendid and so romantic a career. The young Henry had succeeded his father as King of England in 1413, and in 1415 he offered a free pardon to Owen. The pardon was, however, refused. That is the last fact which we know about the fallen leader. When he died, or where he is buried, we do not know; but a tradition, to which perhaps some credence may be given, tells us that at the end he came home to his beloved Glyndyfrdwy, and that his bones lie close by at Corwen. All his friends had long since been dispersed; some were dead, some languished in English prisons, others were living abroad in exile. Of the State which Owen had attempted to construct not a vestige remained, and the ideals which he had { 123} cherished remained for centuries forgotten. But in tradition his name always loomed large on both sides of the border. How powerfully he had impressed the people of England is proved by the place which is accorded to him by Shakespeare. The Glendower of the great dramatist is a compound of cunning and simplicity, of amiability and uncouthness; but his considered verdict is that—

"In faith he is a worthy gentleman,
Exceeding well read, and profited
In strange concealments; valiant as a lion,
And wondrous affable, and as bountiful
As mines of India."

CHAPTER IX

WALES AND THE TUDORS

The seventy years which followed the death of Owen Glyndwr was, both for England and for Wales, as miserable a period as any in their whole history. Owing to the untimely death of Henry V, the feeble Henry VI became king; and he had not been long on the throne before the bitter feud between Yorkists and Lancastrians broke out. During the Wars of the Roses the arm of government was paralysed, and the strong did what appeared right in his own eyes. Many Welshmen found life in the English armies abroad more tolerable than life in Wales; while of those who remained at home, too many became bandits like the Highlanders in the reign of George II. Both Yorkists and Lancastrians had interests in Wales. Edward IV was a Mortimer, a descendant of Prince Llewelyn, and the seat of his strength was the country around Ludlow. The chief Lancastrian stronghold { 125} in Wales was the coast, from Pembroke to Anglesey. Thus Wales was divided against itself. At Mortimer's Cross, in 1461, Welshmen fought against Welshmen; and Owen Tudor was captured, and afterwards beheaded at Hereford, in accordance with the fate meted out to the vanquished in those barbarous days. Harlech castle, which had been the last fortress to fly the flag of Glyndwr, and which at a later date was to be the last of Charles I's strongholds to surrender, held out stubbornly for Lancaster. "I held a castle in France," boasted Davydd ap Sinion, its defender, "until every old woman in Wales had heard of it. I will hold a castle in Wales until every old woman in France has heard of it." The boast was a vain one. Harlech fell; but the siege had given to the world one of the finest marching songs ever sung by man.

The eyes of Welshmen and Englishmen alike were now beginning to be turned to that house of Tudor, whose head had lost his life after Mortimer's Cross. Owen Tudor had married Catherine, the widow of king Henry V. There had been two children of the marriage, Edmund and Jasper, the former Earl of Richmond, and the latter Earl of Pembroke. Edmund had married Margaret Beaufort, heiress of John { 126} of Gaunt; and to them a son, called Henry, had been born. This young lad was now living in exile in Brittany, and it was there that emissaries from England sought him out from time to time, telling him how the country was groaning under the evils of the times, and how all common men were yearning for the advent of a strong ruler who would restore peace and ordered government. The cruelties of the usurper Richard III brought matters to a head. At length the cautious Henry was convinced of the possibility of success. In 1485 he landed at Haverfordwest, and marched to Cardigan. The greater part of South Wales at once declared for him. Then he marched north, passing through Machynlleth, Newtown, Welshpool, and Shrewsbury. North Wales was held by the Stanleys; and it was only at the last moment that they declared for Henry. The crisis was reached on Bosworth Field, where, in the space of a few hours, Richard lost both his throne and his life, and Henry was proclaimed king in his stead. At long last the prophecies of the Welsh bards had been fulfilled: a Welsh prince had ascended the throne of England. A year later the new king married Elizabeth of York, a descendant, as we have already seen, of { 127} the great Llewelyn. From his mother, therefore, as well as from his father, Henry VIII inherited Welsh blood; and it is little to be wondered at that he paid so much attention to the affairs of the Principality. It was noted by all that the first Tudor sovereign refused to rest his claim to the throne upon anything except conquest. Upon his entrance into London after the battle of Bosworth he proceeded in state to St. Paul's, and there had a solemn Te Deum sung for his victory. It was as much a Welsh conquest of England as the expedition of 1066 was a Norman conquest of England. A considerable part of Henry's army had been composed of Welshmen, and one of the three standards displayed by him upon the field bore the device of the famous red dragon. His first-born son was christened Arthur.

Such being Henry VII's solicitude to demonstrate his Welsh origin, it is disappointing to find that he did so little for the Principality in the course of his reign. On the whole the country was neglected. By means of the Star Chamber, and the statutes against Livery and Maintenance, Henry crushed the English nobles, the "over-mighty subjects" who had been troubling the peace of the realm { 128} so sorely. But although the Welsh, and especially the border lords, were at least as turbulent and as contemptuous of all law, he allowed them to remain unmolested; and one of them—Sir Rhys ap Thomas—came to wield almost despotic power throughout South Wales. This able, ambitious, and politic man appears to have been a great favourite with both the first two Tudor sovereigns. He had enthusiastically espoused the cause of Henry of Richmond when he was as yet a landless adventurer; and it was mainly owing to his influence that Henry's reception in South Wales had been so very cordial and unanimous. So powerful did he become after Henry's coronation, that an old Welsh couplet tells us that: "The king owns the whole island—except that part which belongs to Sir Rhys." In Henry VII's reign his favour, if anything, was enhanced. Familiarly he was alluded to as "Father Rhys." The extensive Dinevor estates were his; while in addition he held the offices of Chief Justice, and Chamberlain, of South Wales. So great was his power that he could snap his fingers in the face of the Court of the Marches, which sat impotent at Ludlow. Sir Rhys died in 1525, on the eve of momentous changes in English politics. { 129} His death marks the close of an epoch in the history of Wales.

In the year 1493 Henry sent his eldest son Arthur to hold his Court at Ludlow. The ancient castle there, with its round Temple chapel within, whose well-preserved walls still look so grand and imposing, is the centre of Welsh political life throughout the Tudor period. It was the great age of government by council. An attempt to circumscribe the power of the Popes by such means had been one of the burning topics of discussion within the Church all through the fifteenth century. The Yorkish and Tudor kings saw in the council a perfect instrument of arbitrary power, by which the deficiencies of the Common Law could be corrected, and by which the authority of the central government could be made to prevail against feudal lawlessness. The Court of Star Chamber, long before its final abolition by the Long Parliament, had won the hatred of all lovers of justice and good government; but it must never be forgotten that, in the early years of its existence, this same Council was the great upholder of law, and the sole effective protector of the weak against the strong. The Tudor Councils—Star Chamber, High Commission, of the North, { 130} of the Welsh Marches—were above the ordinary law, in the sense that they administered a sort of criminal equity. It was a drastic and a dangerous remedy to use; but it was none too drastic for the evils of the day; and only the most pedantic believers in liberty could condemn it.

Edward IV, and not Henry VII, was the first type of the new Renaissance sovereign to rule in England; and he it was who first created the Court of the Welsh Marches, in 1471. But the troubles of those chaotic years were greater even than such a body could deal with, and consequently we find it doing practically nothing. In 1501 William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln and founder of Brasenose College, became the first real Lord President of the Court of the Council of the Marches. Unhappily Prince Arthur died in 1502, and during the remainder of his reign Henry paid no attention whatsoever to Wales. The policy pursued by Smyth was one of conciliation; and as a result of his government, there was at least a growth in loyalty, if not in public order. He retained his office until his death in 1514, but does not appear to have resided at Ludlow after 1509, the year of Henry VII's death.

On his death bed, we are told, Henry VII "gave in charge to his son Prince Henry that he should have a special care for the benefit of his own nation and countrymen, the Welshmen." However that may be, the new king seems to have paid no great heed to the injunction. He had never been sent by his father to keep Court at Ludlow; and he was quite content to leave things to the care of the Council, and the faithful Rhys. But as he grew older, and as the fascination of politics began to lay hold upon him, Henry began to think about the neglected Principality. Complaints were constantly reaching his ears of the anarchy which prevailed there; how the whole land was infested with bandits; how life and property were no longer safe. In 1525 the king visited Ludlow in person, taking with him the Princess Mary. There the Princess remained until 1528, when she was recalled owing to the divorce proceedings which had been instituted against her mother. Again, for a period, Wales appears to have been forgotten; for Henry was fully engaged in the mighty task of "breaking the bonds of Rome," and laying the foundations of the English Reformation. So bad did things become, that one of the king's justices was beset and { 132} murdered when on circuit in Merionethshire; and in 1529 there was an insurrection at Carmarthen. But it was the darkest hour, and the dawn was at hand.

In 1534 Henry appointed Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, to be Lord President; and for the next nine years he held his Court at Ludlow. Of the administration of this able, jovial, energetic, and ruthless man it is not necessary to say much; let it suffice that, in the comparatively brief period during which he held office, he educed order out of chaos, and caused the law to be feared and obeyed, not only in the Marches, but in the remotest corners of Wales. Gangs of robbers were mercilessly hunted down. High and low were punished with exemplary severity. The qualms which ecclesiastics affected to feel against the shedding of blood counted for naught with the martial prelate. According to one authority he hanged as many as five thousand malefactors, and that at a time when the total population of Wales could hardly have exceeded 125,000. For the Common Law, and especially for the jury system, he avowed the most extreme contempt. How absurd, he used to remark, to expect thieves to convict a thief! Harsh he may have been; { 133} but his harshness achieved its purpose. He found Wales turbulent, lawless, and rebellious, a land in which it was well nigh impossible to pursue a peaceful calling. He left it orderly and tranquil, loyal to its sovereign, and ready to play its part in what was to prove to be the most glorious period in British history.

But it was not upon a policy of stern repression alone that Henry depended for the pacification of Wales. He was too great a statesman for any such thing. He knew full well that leniency on the part of a feeble and ineffective government might be misrepresented and be followed by disastrous consequences, but that going hand in hand with a rigorous punishment of disorderly persons it would prove successful. It is the policy which liberal statesmen have always advocated, and which tyrants have disregarded to their own undoing. The policy of conciliation upon which the king now embarked is sometimes referred to as the Act of Union with Wales. This, however, is misleading, for there is no Act upon the Statute Book which bears such a name. It is, nevertheless, generally descriptive of a series of statutes, the first passed in 1535 and the last in 1542, which gave to Wales a new constitution.

The first step was taken in 1535, when an Act was passed empowering the Lord Chancellor to appoint Justices of the Peace for the counties of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, Carmarthen, Pembroke, and Glamorgan. At first sight there does not seem to be anything very revolutionary in this; but those who held authority in Wales at the time thought otherwise, and duly registered their protest against the Act. To them it was apparent that this was but the thin end of the wedge, and that the outcome of it would be the entrusting to the Welsh people full power to govern themselves. Henry's next Act was an attack upon the privileges of the Lords Marchers, a policy which was to be followed until the Marches had been completely abolished. The third, and most comprehensive, Act of the same year had for its object the complete breaking down of all barriers between England and Wales. Henry's aim is perfectly clear: he was no believer in Welsh self-determination; all that he desired was that Wales should be swallowed up by England. Welshmen were undoubtedly to acquire all the privileges of Englishmen, but on one condition—they were to become Englishmen. The Preamble of the Act of { 135} 1535 states that the king desires to "extirp all and singular the sinister Usages and Customs" which prevailed in Wales; and in order that that might be accomplished, Wales was henceforth to be "incorporated, united, and annexed" to England. All laws were thenceforward to be the laws of England. This involved, among other things, the adoption of the principle of primogeniture in place of the old Welsh custom of equal division among all the sons. The Lordships Marcher were practically abolished, parts of them being united to England, and the remainder distributed between the newly created shires of Monmouth, Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh. Henry realised, as all statesmen of conquering nations have realised, that the most powerful obstacle in the way of the assimilation of a small nation by a larger one is the continued existence of a native language. Deprive a nation of its language, and deprivation of national consciousness will be relatively easy. But allow the language to live, and no power on earth can ever kill the national spirit. It is therefore not surprising to read in the Act that "No Person or Persons that use the Welsh Speech or Language shall have or enjoy any Manner Office or Fees within this Realm { 136} of England, Wales or other the King's Dominions, upon pain of forfeiting the same Offices or Fees, unless he or they use and exercise the English Speech or Language." Except in Edward IPs two Parliaments of 1322 and 1327 Wales had never been represented in the English House of Commons. Now it was enacted that every shire should send one knight to Parliament, and that every county town, excepting that of Merioneth, should send one burgess. These representatives were to be paid the usual fees for attendance.

In 1542 an Act bearing the simple title, "For certain ordinances in the King's Majesty's Dominions and Principality of Wales," was passed. This statute reaches what was, for those times, the portentous length of a hundred and thirty clauses; but it is neither verbose nor ambiguous. Indeed it is one of the most comprehensive, and one of the most ably drafted, statutes ever enacted. It finally abolished the Lordships Marcher. It gave Wales the geographical limits which it has ever since retained, dividing the country into twelve shires, and cutting off Monmouth. It placed upon a statutory foundation the Court of the Council of the Marches; a Court which, save for a brief period of suspension during { 137} the Commonwealth, remained active down to 1688. It created a new legal system for Wales by instituting the Court of Great Sessions, a legal system which persisted until 1830. It introduced a system of local government, dividing the shires into hundreds, and providing for lords-lieutenant, sheriffs, coroners, constables, and bailiffs.

The chief interest in Welsh affairs after 1534 centres in the Council. It was not so prominent after the death of Rowland Lee, when the country had become peaceful and law-abiding; but its general supervision over all Welsh affairs, both legal and administrative, was constant and unflagging. At first the Council had no fixed abode, and we hear of its sitting at Shrewsbury, Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Hartlebury, Oswestry, Wrexham, and Bewdley; but at last it came to be fixed at Ludlow. Here, during the next hundred years, assembled much that was intellectual, fashionable, and splendid in Tudor and Stuart society. It was, as we have seen, the home of Prince Arthur, the eldest child of Henry VII, and of Mary, the eldest child of Henry VIII. Here, for twenty-seven years, lived Sir Henry Sidney, soldier, scholar, and statesman. Here his even more { 138} famous son, Philip Sidney, and his daughter Mary, spent the early part of their lives. It had among its guests for shorter periods the poet Churchyard, the Puritan Richard Baxter, and the Royalist Samuel Butler. But the thing which has cast an undying glamour over the place is the fact that, in 1634, John Milton witnessed in the old castle the first performance of his masque Comus . The Presidents of the Council were, at first, all ecclesiastics; but in the reign of Edward VI a layman, Robert Dudley, was appointed; and except for an interlude during the reign of Mary that remained the practice. The chief function of the Council was to supervise the work of all Welsh officials, and to hear all manner of "extortions, maintenance, imbraceries, oppressions, conspiracies, escapes, corruptions, falsehoods, and all other evil doings, defaults, and misdemeanours of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, stewards, lieutenants, escheators, coroners, gaolers, clerks, and other officers and ministers of justice." It had power to issue proclamations, and to assess fines. Unhappily it had too, in company with the other prerogative courts of the Tudors, the power to use torture in order to elicit confessions. The Lord President was, { 139} almost invariably, Lord-Lieutenant of the twelve Welsh shires. In legal matters strictly so called the Council exercised a concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Great Sessions, and an appellate jurisdiction in personal actions. It is not true to say that the Court of Great Sessions exercised no equity jurisdiction; but it is a fact that by far the greater number of Welsh equity cases were heard at Ludlow.

The part of the Act of 1542 which was entirely new was that which created the King's Court of Great Sessions. English law had been introduced into Wales; but its administration was to be distinct and separate. The Great Sessions possessed all the powers of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, and its practice was the same as that in use at Westminster. It was also endowed with complete criminal jurisdiction. Wales was divided into four Circuits—Chester, which included Denbigh, Flint, and Montgomery; North Wales, which included Carnarvon, Anglesey, and Merioneth; Brecknock, which included the county of that name, together with Radnor and Glamorgan; and Carmarthen, which also included Cardigan and Pembroke. Each of these Circuits had, at first, one judge; but { 140} some time later an extra one was added. These judges were, on the whole, competent men; and a large number of them afterwards attained to the highest legal positions in England. Among them we find such famous legal luminaries as Bradshaw, Jeffreys, Willes, Lyndhurst, Kenyon, Mansfield, Wright, Herbert, Dallas, Best, Jackyll, and Verney. The strongest objection which could be made to them was that few of their number could speak Welsh, and that at a time when little else was spoken at all in Wales. All members of the English Bar were free to practise in Wales; but counsel were mainly drawn from the Oxford and the Northern Circuits. The Court sat twice every year—spring and autumn—in each county town, and the duration of the session was fixed at six days. After the abolition, in 1688, of the Council, Chancery work began to be taken to London; and from the beginning of the eighteenth century we find the English courts endeavouring, mainly by the use of certiorari , to attract thither other cases as well. Frequent attacks were launched in Parliament against the administration of justice in Wales; and several sound theoretical arguments were advanced against the Great Sessions. But in spite of a commission of { 141} enquiry, which sat in 1817, we have no real evidence to justify our holding the system to have been a failure. Nevertheless the Great Sessions were abolished in 1830, after attempts to amend them had been made in 1769, in 1793, and in 1824. It is worthy of note that their abolition was opposed by all the Welsh Members of Parliament save one, by almost all the judges, and by practically all counsel who practised in the courts.

We have already seen that the Act set up a system of local government. This comprised the various officers we have named; and furthermore County Courts with jurisdiction over small amounts, and Vestries in which the parishioners learnt the art of self-government.

That Henry VIII's Welsh policy was immediately successful, if we omit that part of it which concerned religion, is abundantly evident. Two centuries later Edmund Burke, in the course of his great speech on Conciliation with America, cites Wales as an example which proves the truth of the rule which he is inculcating. "Your ancestors," he said, "did however at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all tyrannies { 142} the least be endured; and that laws made against a whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of English subjects. Political order was established; the military power gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liberties and get no share at all in the fundamental security of these liberties—the grant of their own property—seemed a thing so incongruous that, eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by Act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided, obedience was restored, peace, order, and civilization followed in the train of liberty. When the day star of the English constitution had risen in their hearts, all was harmony within and without." Burke's eloquent contention is, in the main, perfectly right; yet we should be going too far if we attributed the tranquillity which so { 143} speedily ensued to the grant of a constitution alone. At least three other factors have to be taken into account—(1) The termination of the Wars of the Roses, which had been productive of anarchy in England as well as in Wales. (2) The fact that Rowland Lee had done his work so thoroughly that evil-doers were cowed. (3) The fact that Wales looked upon the Tudor monarchs as Welsh people, and upon their supremacy as a victory of Wales over England. The Union marks the beginning of a new and better chapter in the history of Wales. The Principality shook itself free from the fetters of the Middle Ages, and took its place, shoulder to shoulder, with England as a democratic self-governing country. All previous efforts on the part of Welshmen and Englishmen to set up a unitary State had been failures. From time to time some man of exceptional character, like Llewelyn or Glyndwr, would arise, and, for a brief space, succeed in uniting all the petty chieftains in obedience to himself. But such unity had always been precarious, depending entirely upon the personality of the man who had brought it about, and with whose death it vanished. It is palpable that, throughout the Middle Ages, the greatest Welsh defect was { 144} the absence of political genius, the very thing with which England was so abundantly gifted. Institutions like Llewelyn's Council of Princes were without ancestors and without posterity; they were accidents and imitations, and not natural products of Welsh political development. Before such institutions could become stable and strong, Wales had to be brought into the closest union with England, and serve a long period of political apprenticeship.

CHAPTER X

THE REFORMATION

Wales and England were now one in law; and it consequently followed that all statutes passed by Parliament were applicable to the Principality, unless expressly stated not to be so. No reservations had been made, as were afterwards made as to religion, laws, and education, in the matter of the Scottish Union. In every step, therefore, of the Reformation Settlement, Wales was obliged to share; and there can be no doubt at all that the Reformation was unpopular in Wales, and that the Anglican Church, as it emerged at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, had made for itself no place in the hearts of the people. At the same time it would be easy to exaggerate the reluctance with which Wales accepted the many religious changes of the Tudor period. The picture which some recent writers have drawn of a Wales deprived of the ancient religion to which it was devoted, { 146} and of a Church plundered while faithfully discharging its functions, is as fanciful and as devoid of truth for Wales as it would be for England. The truth is that, long before the Reformation, the Roman Church in Wales had lost all real hold upon the minds and hearts of the people. All that remained was a sentimental loyalty, and an immense amount of the grossest superstition. When the harsh and tactless agents of Thomas Cromwell visited the parishes and abbeys of Wales, defacing churches, plundering monks, and destroying miracle-working images, the prevailing feeling was not that religion was being insulted, but that superstitious beliefs, tenaciously held, were being flouted. Indeed the very fact that Wales was so ill-prepared for the Reformation is, in itself, the most convincing proof of the scandalous way in which the ancient Church had neglected its duties. So great was the intellectual and moral torpor into which the people had sunk that it took more than a century for the new doctrines to penetrate their minds. Theirs was the most abject and deplorable of all conditions of slavery, the condition in which the slave does not even desire to be free. The new Anglican Church, which was mainly the creation of { 147} Elizabethan statutes, it is true, also failed. Upon its predecessor it was an immense improvement; but it lacked the intense emotionalism which alone could stir the Welsh heart; and, moreover, it came to Wales in alien guise, speaking a foreign tongue. It was not until the Bible in Welsh had saturated into the minds of all classes, and until the intense appeal of Puritanism had been heard in the land, that Wales became, what it continued afterwards to be for two centuries and a half, a country in which religion was the primary concern of all the people.

Nor is it right to say that the dissolution of the monasteries inflicted a cruel blow upon Wales. It is perfectly true that, in the Middle Ages, the Welsh monastery had been, on the whole, favourable to the cause of national independence, in contradistinction to the bishop, who was almost invariably an English agent. But the day was long past when the monastery was the school, the hospital, the alms-house, and the common friend of the whole country-side. It is possible, though by no means certain, that the tenant of monastic land enjoyed an easier existence than his neighbour on the land of a lay lord; but that was the sole benefit which remained, a { 148} singularly poor excuse for the considerable endowments held by the monks. The truth is that the dissolution of the monasteries was a good thing in itself; the blunder and the crime consisted in the use to which the confiscated property was put. This might have gone to found schools, to endow charitable institutions, and to provide land for the landless; instead of that it was recklessly bestowed upon courtiers, upon the new families who were serving the Tudor sovereigns so well, and upon nobles whose estates were already sufficiently large. There were no really wealthy monastic foundations in Wales at all: their revenue was under £200 a year; and they were consequently dissolved with the smaller monasteries.

The agents sent to Wales by Cromwell for the purpose of putting down superstitious practices, and removing idolatrous emblems, performed their task with the minimum of tact, and sometimes with shameful rapacity and greed. One of the worst was Bishop Barlow, who was sent to the diocese of St. David's, the most hallowed ground in Wales. Himself a time-serving cleric of the type of Cranmer, he had no sympathy with persons who were unable to keep pace with his own religious instability. The religious sentiment, { 149} which had gathered for centuries about the Cathedral of St. David, meant nothing to him. He sought to transfer the see to Carmarthen. At one moment he insulted the memory of St. David, at another he denied that such a man had ever existed. He tore the roof from the beautiful Bishop's Palace, and with the proceeds provided marriage portions for his five daughters, all of whom were married to bishops. So consistent was he in his thieving, that it is with considerable suspicion that one reads his lamentations about the "barbarity," and the "idolatry," of the people for whom, he argues, it would be waste of money to repair churches.

An equally thorough, but much more honest and satisfactory, agent of the Reformation was Ellis Price, popularly known in North Wales as the "Red Doctor." He was a Welshman, and a kindly individual who seems to have entertained much good-natured contempt for all forms of religion. He destroyed superstitious relics; but did not plunder churches in order to enrich himself. We possess the reports which he sent to Cromwell; and no impartial reader can peruse them without coming to the conclusion that the Welsh people were indeed sunk in the deepest ignorance and { 150} the most abject superstition. One of the idols with which Price had to deal has earned for itself a tragic fame. This was an immense wooden image of Derfel Gadarn, clothed in complete armour, which stood in the church of Llandderfel in Merionethshire. So popular was this figure, says Price in a letter to Cromwell, that people "come daily in pilgrimage to him, some with kine, some with oxen and horses, and the rest with money, insomuch that there were five or six hundred, to a man's estimation, that offered to the said image the fifth day of this month of April. The innocent people hath been sore allured and enticed to worship, insomuch that there is a common saying amongst them that, whosoever will offer anything to the image of Derfel Gadarn, he hath power to fetch him or them that so offer, out of hell." Cromwell commanded that the image should be sent to London, and an offer of the parishioners to ransom it for forty pounds was rejected. Its arrival in the metropolis was opportune. A Welsh prophecy had declared that, one day, Derfel Gadarn would set a forest on fire. The prophecy was now to be fulfilled. The great doll was hewn in pieces, and used to burn a friar of the name of Forest, who had denied the royal supremacy!

Whatever may have been the feelings with which the Welsh people regarded the religious innovations, there can be no doubt at all that they readily acquiesced in them. In Wales there was no Pilgrimage of Grace, nor any plots against the English Government. The old religion lingered on, no doubt, in obscure corners, just as it did in the remote valleys of Cumberland; but it was abroad, and not in Wales, that the Welsh defenders of Romanism distinguished themselves. At Douai, and after its foundation in 1578 at the English College at Rome as well, scholarly and devout Welsh Catholics like Morgan Phillips, Owen Lewis, and Dr. Morris of Clynog, were busy training priests for the English mission field. So great became their influence at Rome that the peace of the College there was troubled by perennial feuds between English and Welsh. It was the great age of the Society of Jesus. Those devoted, able, daring and unscrupulous missionaries were winning fame for themselves in every corner of the world; and they were at work in England and Wales. But in the Welsh Catholics they met, from the outset, with strenuous opponents, and a long battle raged between them. Two other Welsh Catholics, belonging to a younger generation, { 152} were John Roberts of Trawsfynydd, and John Jones of Llanfynach, better known as Father Leander. These two had been contemporaries at St. John's College, Oxford, another contemporary and friend of theirs being Archbishop Laud. At that time they were Protestants, at least in name; but subsequently were converted by the Jesuits. A natural antipathy seems to have existed in the sixteenth century between all Welshmen and the Jesuits; and it was not long before Roberts and Leander went over to the Benedictines. Roberts founded a Benedictine seminary at Douai; and in 1605 the Benedictine College of St. Gregory was opened there, an institution which for many years was to wield immense influence within the Catholic Church. At the time the Benedictine Order was represented in England by only a single monk; and the reinforcement which came from the Welshmen Roberts, Leander, and David Barker of Abergavenny, was both timely and decisive. But although ardent Catholics, these Welsh exiles remained always loyal to the Tudors. With conspirators and assassins they would have no dealings. They believed in the restoration of Catholicism in England, not by murder, not by foreign invasion, but by peaceful { 153} propaganda and by that alone. They are an interesting and an amiable circle; and time has clothed them with that fascination with which it appears to be the special and inalienable privilege of leaders of lost causes to be endued.

It was not until Elizabeth had been for some years on the throne that any attempt was made to provide the Welsh people with a substitute for the religion of which they had been deprived. The legal continuity of the Church was maintained; but little else remained. Benefices were poor, and the priests few and ignorant. The people sank deeper and deeper into spiritual indifference. As late as 1585 a well-qualified observer could write that "Many places in Wales, yea, whole counties, have not a single Christian within them, but live like animals, most of them knowing nothing of righteousness, but merely keeping the name of Christ in memory." The scandalous extent to which pluralism existed, despite the Pluralities Act of Edward VI, left large numbers of parishes without any sort of spiritual ministration. Even the great Edmund Prys did not scruple to be at the same time Rector of Maentwrog, Festiniog, Llandudno, and Ludlow, as well as Archdeacon { 154} of Merioneth, and Canon and Prebendary of Bangor. He soon resigned Ludlow, but only to acquire the additional livings of Llanenddwyn and Llanddwywe, as well as a stall at St. Asaph. Fortunately for the country, a few Welshmen were conscientious and enlightened believers in the Reformed Faith; and they beheld with sorrow the plight to which Wales had been brought. They perceived that the only way in which the people could be raised and cleansed was by giving them the Bible in their own language. So far back as 1546 Sir John Price of Brecon had translated a few Biblical passages into the vernacular, and in 1551 William Salesbury translated the Gospels and the Epistles. In 1563 Parliament passed an Act commanding the Welsh Bishops, together with the Bishop of Hereford, under penalties, to have a complete edition of the Bible in Welsh ready by 1566. A Welsh version of the new Prayer Book was issued in 1567. But it was not until the appearance of Bishop Morgan's translation of the Scriptures, in 1588, that the Bible began to be a popular book in Wales, and to influence the minds of the people. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the influence exercised by Morgan's Bible. Not only did it, in time, { 155} rouse the people from religious lethargy, but it did for the Welsh language what Luther's Bible did for Germany—it became the canon of Welsh prose, fixing for centuries its idiom, its diction, and its style. Morgan was ably assisted in the work by men like David Powel of Ruabon, Edmund Prys, and Dr. John Davies of Mallwyd. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, was sympathetic, and Gabriel Goodman, a native of Ruthin, who was at the time Dean of Westminster, rendered financial assistance.

The publication of Bishop Morgan's Bible is the outstanding event of the transition period, but Edmund Prys is the outstanding personality. He represents, in his own person, all that was good in the Welsh Reformation, with also just a little that was bad. This interesting man was probably born at Tyddyn Du, in the lovely vale of Maentwrog, in the year 1544. He was therefore a child of the Reformation. Of his early years but little is known; and it is only surmise which leads us to think that he was educated by Sion Tudor at St. Asaph. That he was of good birth is certain; and that he found a kindly patron in Dean Goodman, ever ready to befriend a promising young Welshman, is extremely { 156} likely. He became a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, in the same year that Bishop Morgan entered that college. Cambridge was the intellectual home of Protestantism in England; and at the time of Prys's residence at the University, the famous Puritan leader, Thomas Cartwright, occupied the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity. While yet an undergraduate, Prys was ordained deacon, at Conington in Cambridgeshire. At the same time, too, he seems to have come into contact with Whitgift. In 1568, at Ely, he was ordained priest, by Bishop Cox. In 1572 he was presented to the living of Festiniog and Maentwrog, the parish in which he had been born; but apparently he did not deem it necessary to visit the place. He continued to reside at Cambridge, where, in 1574, we read of his being appointed Preacher of St. John's. Two years later he was made Rector of Ludlow; but although he held the living until 1579, he did not live there for more than a few weeks. In 1576 he had been made Archdeacon of Merioneth, as well as Canon of Bangor; and when to these were added, in 1580, the parishes of Llanenddwyn and Llanddwywe, he seems to have settled down in Wales to the life of a busy and conscientious { 157} priest. As Archdeacon he had the whole country, from Criccieth to Machynlleth, under his charge.

Edmund Prys appears to have discharged faithfully the duties connected with his various offices down to his death in 1623. Although a Justice of the Peace, the tall handsome figure of the Archdeacon was welcome in the houses of all his poorer parishioners. He was a great scholar, well versed, it was said, in eight languages. Wales possessed, at that time, a notable band of Hebrew scholars, men who knew not only Hebrew, but Syriac, Arabic, and Chaldaic as well. It is, of course, as an author that the fame of Edmund Prys endures. That he was master of a sound Welsh prose style is apparent from the few fragments of his writing which remains; but he left no prose works behind him. It is as a poet, and especially as the composer of a metrical version of the Psalms, that he will always be remembered. He wrote much poetry of every description, the topics ranging from Heaven to tobacco. Most of it is interesting, and some of it beautiful; but it seldom rises much above a common level of mediocrity. It is upon the Psalms, and upon them alone, that his reputation rests. Hymn singing in public worship was { 158} the peculiar product of the Reformation; for although a few magnificent hymns had been composed in the Middle Ages, by men like St. Bernard, they occupied no conspicuous place. In churches and monasteries chanting had been universal; but the popular hymn, which the whole congregation sang in its own language, was unknown. It would hardly be going too far to say that, upon the use which it made of the hymn, the early success of the Reformation depended. German Protestants marched into battle shouting the great hymns of Luther. The French Huguenots sang those of Clement Marot and Marguerite de Valois. The sombre Calvinist services of Geneva were transformed under the influence of the hymns introduced by Beza. In England a metrical version of a few of the Psalms had been published by Sternhold, Groom of the Robes to Henry VIII, in 1548. Then in 1562 appeared the version of John Hopkins, which, for a hundred and fifty years, remained the only hymn-book possessed by the English Church. For years no special tunes were composed to be sung with the new hymns; they were simply set to the airs of popular songs and ballads. Edmund Prys published his Welsh Metrical Psalms in 1621. Something similar, { 159} but on a much smaller scale, had been attempted previously by Dafydd Ddu Hiraddug, and by Edmund Kyffin; but Prys greatly excelled them in mastery of rhythm and rhyme. The metre is quasi-ballad, simple and direct, the very thing that would appeal to the uneducated. It is not surprising to hear that, in a very few years, the plowman in the field, and the shepherd on the mountain side, were singing lustily the Psalms of Edmund Prys.

Another Welshman of the period, who deserves special mention, is the ill-fated John Penry. He was born at Cefnbrith, on the slopes of the Eppynt hills, in the year 1563; and thirty years later he died a traitor's death at the hands of the executioner. But though short, his life was a very full and a very romantic one. The belief that he was, in early years, a Catholic is probably a mistaken one. Almost certainly his parents belonged to the Reformed Church; and it is indubitable that John was sent by them to the ultra-Protestant University of Cambridge. There, at Peterhouse, he perfected himself in all the learning of the day, and also pondered deeply over the condition of his native land. Penry was as religious as Prys, and far more intensely nationalist. The remedy which he conceived { 160} to be the only adequate one to meet with the ills of the time was the appointment of "preachers of the Word," to visit the hamlets and villages, and to awaken the conscience of the people by appealing to them in their own tongue, and in words which they could comprehend. Unfortunately this was the one course which Elizabeth and her ministers were not prepared to sanction. Since "order" was their watchword in religion and in politics, they were afraid of countenancing preachers who would, in all probability, set order at defiance. They knew full well what the effects of popular preaching had been in the neighbouring country of Scotland; and they were fully determined that no unauthorized word should be spoken within a church in England or Wales. Again and again Penry appealed to the Government to employ lay preachers in Wales, sometimes writing privately to Burleigh, sometimes addressing petitions to Parliament through one of the Welsh members. But it was all of no avail; and from being a loyal subject Penry gradually drifted into a position of bitter antagonism to the Government. At no time did he become a rebel, or do anything that could fairly be brought within the scope of the Treason Acts; { 161} nevertheless he undoubtedly did say and write much which would, if it prevailed, have overthrown both Church and State as conceived of by Elizabethan statesmen. He became a relentless opponent of episcopacy; and between 1588 and 1589 the famous Martin Marprelate Tracts were published. After that it was dangerous for him to remain in England, so he fled to Scotland, and while there became an avowed "Separatist." In fundamentals the Separatists did not differ very much from Anglicans; the most important point of difference being their view of the proper connection between Church and State. The Anglican Settlement had the effect of making the Church a mere department of the State, bound hand and foot by Acts of Parliament. Even episcopacy itself as an institution was regarded as deriving its authority exclusively from Parliament. In 1588 Dr. Hammond, Chancellor of the Diocese of London, wrote to Burleigh: "The Bishops of our realm do not (so far as I have ever heard), nor may not, claim to themselves any other authority than is given them by the statute of the 25th of King Henry VIII, recited in the first year of Her Majesty's reign, neither is it reasonable that they should make other claims, for if it had pleased Her { 162} Majesty with the wisdom of the realm to have used no bishops at all, we could not have complained justly of any defect in our Church." The great crime of which John Penry and others were guilty in the eyes of Burleigh and the Queen was not that he was inculcating something contrary to Catholic tradition, but that he was challenging the authority of the State to create its own tradition! Penry, and indeed all the Separatists, stood for a policy diametrically opposed to this. They desired that the Church should be free, with full power to determine its own constitution and its own creed. Theirs was a protest against Tudor absolutism and uniformity, and in favour of a local government in ecclesiastical affairs, which at a later date developed into Congregationalism. Upon Elizabeth, Whitgift, and Cecil, Penry made no impression. Failing to persuade, he proceeded to defy. He drifted farther and farther from the Established Church, until finally he was put upon his trial for treason, condemned, and executed.

John Penry was a reformer from without; in Vicar Pritchard the Church produced a reformer from within. This interesting and amiable man, commonly known as the "Old { 163} Vicar," was born in 1579, educated like most other Welsh scholars of the seventeenth century at Jesus College, Oxford, and ordained by the Bishop of Colchester in 1602. In the same year he was given the livings of Llandingal and Llandovery; and to these he in 1613 added that of Llanedi. To the higher ecclesiastical dignities he never attained; but in 1626 he was made Chancellor of the Diocese of St. David's. His life was singularly uneventful; and in 1644 he died, leaving in his will land for the purpose of founding a Free Grammar School at Llandovery. No one felt more keenly, or with a greater sense of shame, the degraded condition of the people of Wales at the time. Although a staunch Royalist and Churchman, he was filled with the stern Puritan love of righteousness, and an ardent desire to convince his countrymen of the evil of their ways. Like Edmund Prys he bethought him of the Welshman's intense love of poetry and music. Why, instead of singing profane ditties, should the people not sing songs of an edifying character? He decided to preach without intermission; but to make verse the vehicle of his message. It would be useless to contend that the Vicar was, in any sense, a great poet; { 164} but his versification is at least competent; and the simple stanzas which he composed have an easy swing and flow which makes them admirably adapted for committing to memory by simple and unlettered folk. His collection of religious poems is called Canwyll y Cymry (the Welsh People's Candle); and it was published in four parts, in 1646, 1659, 1670, and 1672, all of them after the death of their author. To us the work is valuable for the light which it sheds upon the manners of the day. If the good Vicar is to be believed, Wales must have been in a most deplorable condition, the people's ignorance gross and sordid, and their morals simply bestial. No Separatist ever painted a darker picture of Wales in the first century of the history of the Anglican Church than did this candid and friendly critic. After a life of faithful service, the Vicar died in 1644.

Before the close of the sixteenth century the future religious boundaries of this country had been clearly marked. The Elizabethan Settlement of religion had aimed at constructing a Church which should be wide enough to include the vast majority of English people. It was frankly a compromise, created with that express purpose. In spite, { 165} however, of the latitude allowed, it had become apparent that for many people it was not wide enough. At one end stood a band of irreconcilable Catholics, who positively refused to conform, preferring to endure all manner of penalties and disabilities. At the other extremity stood an ever-growing body of people who longed for a more thorough Reformation, and who cast longing glances in the direction of Geneva. Already these people were beginning to be known as Puritans; and before the close of her reign Elizabeth had passed a statute to penalize them. A few implacable extremists had been deprived of their preferments in the Church as early as 1567, and had begun to form a Nonconformist Church at the Plumbers' Hall, in London, under the leadership of one Richard Fitz. He was followed by Robert Browne, Barrowe, Greenwood, Penry, and Robinson. These men were Independents. Meanwhile Thomas Helwys had come from Leyden, and had founded a Baptist Church in London. But for a long time the majority of Puritans remained within the Anglican Church; and it was not until the Romanizing policy of Laud, crudely conceived and savagely enforced, had declared itself that they came { 166} out in thousands, and formed Churches of their own.

In Wales Nonconformity, which for three hundred years was to play a dominating part in the religion, education, politics, and literature of the nation, began comparatively late; and it was not until after the Civil War that it acquired much strength. Indeed it has been estimated that, at the Restoration, there were in Wales only a score or so of Nonconformist chapels, each of them having a membership of from two to five hundred. Yet even in the days of small things the Nonconformists played a prominent part; and they included in their number the majority of the patriotic Welshmen of the age. In Wales, even more than in England, it may be said that it was not doctrinal distinctions that led to the rise of Nonconformity; neither was it the question of Church establishment. All the early Welsh Puritan leaders were strictly orthodox, according to the standard of the Prayer Book; and the majority of them were well content that there should be a State Church. It was upon the question of preaching that the first and greatest difficulties arose. The views held so emphatically by John Penry were taken up by his { 167} successors; while Elizabeth's attitude of hostility was even stiffened by Laud. On the shoulders of that narrow and unamiable pedant must be laid the greater part of the blame for the irreparable schism which occurred in the English Church. Laud's lack of understanding of the temper and the needs of Wales is the less excusable inasmuch as he himself had been, from 1621 until 1626, Bishop of St. David's. During the greater part of the time he was non-resident; but he kept always a vigilant eye for recusants in his remote diocese. He also built a chapel in the Bishop's Palace at Abergwili, and actually came down for its consecration. Upon the Welsh Church, in other respects, his episcopate does not appear to have left a trace.

The first Nonconformist Church in Wales was founded in 1639, at Llanfaches in Monmouthshire; and its first Minister was the saintly William Wroth who had been, for thirty-nine years, Rector of the parish. For some time prior to 1639 Laud had been uttering complaints about Wroth's irregular preaching. The utmost limit of his "irregularity" would seem to have consisted in the delivery of an occasional sermon in the open { 168} air. When remonstrated with he offered a vigorous defence, saying: "There are thousands of immortal souls around me thronging to perdition, and should I not use all means likely to succeed to save them." Such zeal must have been highly offensive to the Archbishop; and one is not surprised to hear that Wroth was deprived of his living. This, however, was not going to deter the zealous Rector from preaching; and since he would no longer be allowed to do so in the Parish Church, he would do so elsewhere. Such was the parent Church of Welsh Nonconformity.

But William Wroth was not the only Welsh clergyman to be treated in this fashion. In 1638 William Erbery, Vicar of St. Mary's, Cardiff, was likewise deprived of his living; and became the first Minister of an Independent Church in that city. His curate, Walter Cradock, was deprived of his licence in 1633, and became one of the most influential patriotic teachers of the period. He it was who converted the famous Vavasour Powell, and the even more famous Morgan Llwyd.

CHAPTER XI

THE CIVIL WAR

The Great Civil War was the last occasion on which Welshmen have fought upon the soil of their native land. The old order was giving place to the new. Henceforward the heroes of Wales were not soldiers, but poets, scholars, and, above all, preachers. A last flicker of the old martial spirit, the old lust of battle, is seen in the struggle between King and Parliament. To write the history of Wales between 1642 and 1649 would simply be to narrate the incidents of the Civil War, for no part of the country played a more prominent part in the contest than did the Principality. Here, however, it must suffice to disentangle from the rest that which was peculiarly Welsh, and to draw attention to a few Welshmen who rendered themselves illustrious.

It is well known that, at the outbreak of the war, the cleavage between the partisans { 170} of Charles and those of Parliament followed geographical, racial, and professional, rather than social, lines. To say that the upper classes were for the King, and the lower classes for the Commons, would contain rather more fiction than truth. At most all that can be said is that the aristocracy, the squirearchy, and the peasantry, were, on the whole, favourable to the King; while the substantial farmers, and the trading and commercial classes were mainly inclined towards Parliament. Large numbers of all these classes were, however, to be found on both sides. But the geographical division is far more clear and certain. If a line be drawn from Hull to Gloucester, and then on to Plymouth, it can be said roughly that all the country to the east and south of it was for Parliament, and everything to the west and north for Charles. It is further to be observed that High Churchmen and Catholics favoured the Royalist cause, while the Dissenters were to a man upholders of the Commons. About the attitude of Wales there was, from the very first, no question: it was well nigh unanimously Royalist. Why that should have been so it is difficult to explain; except on the facile assumption { 171} that the Welsh people were either preternaturally enlightened or else preternaturally stupid. The Tudors had been of Welsh blood, and the intense loyalty which they evoked in Welsh hearts was only natural; but the Stuarts were only remotely descended from Welsh ancestors, and in most respects were more thoroughly alien than pure Englishmen would have been. Nor had they conferred any benefits upon Wales. Neither James I nor Charles I had ever as much as professed to take any interest in the affairs of the country. In spite of this, however, in no part of their dominions did the early Stuarts meet with a more blind and thorough-going loyalty. The cleavage which was shortly to appear in Wales between the upper and the lower classes had not as yet manifested itself. The day was not far distant when the upper classes would be English in speech, Tory in politics, and Anglican in religion, while the middle and lower classes would be Welsh in speech, Liberal in politics, and Nonconformist in religion. In Charles I's reign, however, all were united; and when the leaders of the nation declared for the King, none of their tenants held back. The day of the power of the preacher had not { 172} yet dawned; but the poet was widely influential, and with hardly an exception the bards were enthusiastic Royalists. A few discordant notes were, of course, heard. Two Welshmen put their names to the death warrant of Charles. One of them had been a brave Roundhead soldier, and afterwards served the Commonwealth in an important capacity. The other stood high on account of his wisdom in the councils of the victorious party. There was also Morgan Llwyd, the author of Llyfr y Tri Aderyn , a Fifth Monarchy Man, and the finest Welsh intellect of the age. But these men were exceptions; and to paint them as representatives of a democracy sighing for freedom, and for the blessings of Parliamentary supremacy, is a grotesque travesty of the situation. Leaders they undoubtedly were, but leaders of posterity, rather than of their contemporaries.

If it is difficult to account for the affection of Wales for the Stuarts, it is easy to explain its dislike of Parliament. As we have had occasion already to observe, Parliament was not an indigenous growth in Wales, but a foreign importation. It was never evolved out of the political consciousness of the people. Moreover, all that the Welsh people knew { 173} about it up to that time was that it was the foreign body which passed laws making such drastic alterations in the customs of their country, forbidding them to speak Welsh, forbidding them to go to Mass, and most unfairly and inexplicably ordering that the whole of the father's estate was to go to the eldest son. Puritanism was hateful to the people, as being even more remote than Anglicanism from the old religious ceremonial for which they still had a warm corner in their hearts. Wales was, in those days, a merry country, full of mirth and joviality. Games and good cheer were loved by all. There was much superstition, much dissoluteness, much profanity, but this only made the people the more resentful of the chilling and sobering touch of Puritanism. The old Wales of the Middle Ages was still alive, and the fountains of imagination, art, and romance had not yet been frozen. There was no Welsh printing-press in existence; and even if there had been, the people were, on the whole, far too ignorant to understand a noble appeal to their latent love of liberty contained in such a work as Milton's Areopagitica . Of the great principles for which both parties in the war were fighting—respect for law and { 174} supremacy of Parliament, on the side of the Roundheads; control of the Executive by the King, and supremacy of the Episcopal Church, on the side of the Royalists—they knew nothing. Such ideas were too complex for them. What they could understand was the ancient loyalty of subject to Prince; and in following Charles they acted ingenuously, and according to their lights. Parliament, they instinctively felt, was not fighting the battle of the poor man, nor of the squire; and Wales was inhabited almost exclusively by these two classes. In so far as it was fighting for a class at all, it was fighting for the trader; and trade was, as yet, of little account in the life of Wales. It was thus in the "Celtic Fringe," in Wales, in Scotland, in Cumberland, and in Cornwall, that Charles found the fullest measure of support; and it is interesting to remember that, when war broke out between King and States-General in France a hundred and fifty years later, it was among the Celts of Brittany that Louis XVI found his most steadfast support.

In the years immediately preceding the outbreak of war a Welshman stood high in the counsels of Charles I; and at one time it looked as if this man might play the part { 175} played in the French Revolution by Mirabeau, namely, that of mediator between King and Parliament. This able man was the Lord Keeper, John Williams. He has suffered the usual fate of all mediators, and been abused by the two parties which he sought to reconcile; but an impartial judge will accord to him a high place in the annals of British statesmanship. He was born in 1582 at Conway, of an ancient and respected Welsh family, and was educated first at Ruthin, then at Oxford, where he had a singularly brilliant academic career. It does not seem to have been difficult in those days for Welshmen to secure high positions in the Church: we have already come across the case of Gabriel Goodman, who became Dean of Westminster. John Williams likewise became Dean of Westminster, in 1620, and left there a fitting memorial of himself in the cedar panelling which he caused to be put in the Jerusalem Chamber. He was Court Chaplain, high in favour with the royal favourite Buckingham, and with both James I and Charles. In 1621 he was made Lord Keeper and Bishop of Lincoln. That he seems to have shared to the full the artistic tastes of the Court is proved not only by his work in { 176} the Jerusalem Chamber, but also by the beautiful chapel, with its exquisite stained glass windows, which he built for Lincoln College, Oxford. In politics his influence, at this time, was a moderating one; and his opposition to the reckless foreign policy of the hour lost him the favour of Buckingham; while his opposition to the tyranny of the High Commission won for him the enmity of Laud. In 1625 he was deprived of his offices; and in 1637 this penalty was followed by a heavy fine, imprisonment, and suspension from his ecclesiastical functions, the charge being that he had revealed the King's secrets, and tampered with witnesses. Whether the accusation was well-founded or not we cannot tell; but remembering the sordid official life of so great a man as Bacon, we cannot safely dismiss it as impossible, or even unlikely.

Williams was an ambitious man; and he felt the loss of royal favour keenly. Like Wentworth he determined to become an out-and-out supporter of the King. In 1640 he was released from prison; and as a reward for his strenuous support of the royal prerogative, and of episcopacy, was in the following year made Archbishop of York. So intemperate was he in his defence of the new position in { 177} politics which he had taken up that he was committed to the Tower, by order of the House of Commons. On the outbreak of hostilities, however, we find him at large, assisting the King both with money and advice. The portrait of Williams which Clarendon paints is an exceedingly unpleasant one. He acknowledges him to have been a man of wit and learning; but adds that he was "of a proud, restless, and over-weening spirit, a very imperious and fiery temper, and a very corrupt nature." All this is probably true. Let us, however, be just to him and concede that he was sincere, kind-hearted, and loyal; and that, on most occasions, the advice which he tendered was sound. Wales, of course, had its own representatives in the House of Commons; and these must have sat with the other Members through the stormy scenes which preluded the passing of the Petition of Right, and the even more stormy scenes which attended the Grand Remonstrance. But all through the long contest the Welsh Members were, with hardly an exception, firm on the side of the King. And not only did they support the King in the lobby, they also followed him on to the field of battle. Two of { 178} them—William Herbert of Cardiff, and Charles Price of Radnor—died for the cause. Nine others bore arms for Charles—William Price of Rhiwlas, John Bodville, Richard Herbert, Henry Vaughan of Derwydd, Sir Edward Stradling, Richard Jones of Trewern, Francis Lloyd of Maesyvelin, Sir John Stepney, and Herbert Price of Brecon. Of all the Welsh Members only Sir Thomas Middleton and Henry Herbert sided consistently with Parliament. Sir John Price of Newtown, after suffering much for the King, went over to the side of Parliament; and Hugh Owen of Orielton repeatedly changed sides.

In order to see clearly what part was played by Wales in the fight, it is convenient to adhere to the customary division of the war into three periods. The first period opens with the battle of Edgehill on October 23, 1642, and closes with the death of Pym in December 1643. The second period begins with the entry of the Scottish army into England in January 1644, and ends with the King's flight to the Scottish camp in April 1646. These two periods taken together constitute what is sometimes called the First Civil War. The third period, or the Second Civil War, begins with the escape of Charles { 179} in November 1647, and ends with his execution in January 1649.

At the opening of the war, and indeed down to the spring of 1644, Charles took up the offensive. He held the whole of the North, as well as all the West; and his strategy consisted in converging attacks upon London. During the whole of this period his firmest base, and his best recruiting ground, was Wales. Immediately after the unfurling of his standard at Nottingham, on August 22, Charles had marched to Shrewsbury, resolving, in the words of Clarendon, "to sit down near the borders of Wales, where the power of Parliament had been least prevalent, and where some regiments of foot were levying for his service." It was an excellent situation to occupy, in the very centre of the border country, and with easy communications with the two Royalist strongholds of Chester and Worcester. Before the end of September Worcester had surrendered to the Parliamentary General Essex, and its garrison, led by Prince Rupert, had marched through the Welsh border and joined the King at Shrewsbury. The King's expectation of help from Wales had, in the meantime, not been disappointed. The gentry had flocked to his { 180} Court to assure him of their devotion, and then returned to their homes to raise recruits. At least five thousand Welshmen responded to the appeal, a number so unexpectedly large that Charles had neither sufficient arms for them, nor sufficient money wherewith to buy provisions. Indeed, so badly was the King provided with weapons that, at the opening of the campaign, he seems to have had in his possession only some eight hundred muskets, five hundred pairs of pistols, and two hundred swords. Thus reinforced, and consoled for the loss of Worcester by the news that Lord Herbert had captured Cardiff Castle, Charles decided to make straight for London, rightly believing that the capture of the metropolis would completely paralyze his opponents. At Edgehill, not far from Banbury, his path was intercepted by the Parliamentary army under Essex. An indecisive battle was fought. The King was obliged to abandon his intention of reaching London: but Oxford was occupied; and it became thenceforward the Royalist capital.

In the following year, 1643, we again find the King attacking, this time with three separate armies, one advancing from the North, the other from Cornwall, and the third { 181} from Wales. Those parts of the country were solidly Royalist except that Hull held out for Parliament in the north-east, Gloucester in the west, and Plymouth in the south-west. The attempts of the Royalist forces of South Wales to cross the border were foiled, with much bloodshed, by Essex at Highnam; while their future advance was rendered more difficult by the Parliamentary occupation of Chepstow and Monmouth. South Wales was thus shut in between the Parliamentary fortresses of Gloucester, Chepstow, and Monmouth to the east, and Pembroke to the west. Meanwhile Sir Thomas Middleton, and Brereton, were overrunning Cheshire and North Wales, capturing one Royalist fortress after another. In siege warfare the Parliamentarians enjoyed an easy and decisive superiority, for they alone possessed heavy artillery. A Royalist army arrived from Ireland, but it was defeated with heavy loss at Nantwich; and soon only Chester held out for the King in that part of the country. Charles, who was gifted with a considerable amount of military insight and acumen, perceived the importance of Chester, not only as a rallying place for Wales, but also as a gate to Ireland; and he sent Sir Nicholas { 182} Byron to command the garrison, and to take general charge of Cheshire and Shropshire. Although Byron only just succeeded in holding his own, he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he was keeping a large Parliamentary army occupied in watching him, and so making it impossible for it to march against the King. South Wales had been entrusted by Charles to the care of Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Marquis of Worcester, a man personally popular, but a Catholic, and without military training. As compensation, however, for his defects, there was the fact that his father was reputed to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom; and his son's army was fitted out, and maintained, entirely at his own private cost. It took him but little time to raise an army of fifteen hundred foot and five hundred horse, all well and sufficiently armed. The close of the year 1643 saw the King still in a good position; and as for Wales it was, with the exception of two or three places in Pembrokeshire, solidly Royalist, while only Gloucester prevented Charles from being master of the whole Severn valley.

With the beginning of the year 1644, however, things began to alter. Many of the { 183} younger and more ardent Parliamentarians were growing impatient of the dilatory method of their own leaders. They fancied that such men as Essex did not really desire to crush the King once and for all. New men, of the type of Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison, were coming to the front. The result was that now, for the first time, Parliament began to take the offensive, and to direct its armies against those parts of the country which were most loyal to Charles. This explains the strategy of the next two years. In 1644 the North was won, as the result of the victory of Marston Moor; and in 1645 the Midlands were won, as the result of Naseby. In Wales the year 1644 opened with an attack by Lord Herbert upon the Parliamentary stronghold of Pembroke. The attempt was repulsed; and in the succeeding weeks Laugharne, then a staunch Roundhead, made sure of South Wales, capturing Haverfordwest, Tenby, Carew, and Carmarthen. An attempt to recover the lost ground was made by Gerard, aided by some Irish levies; but so oppressive was the conduct of these wild and undisciplined troops that the affections of the greater part of South Wales were permanently alienated from the Royalist cause. { 184} Some months later Gerard was relieved of his command; but the evil had been done. Meanwhile Laugharne was pursuing his victorious course; and before the close of the year Monmouth, Brecon, and Newcastle Emlyn had fallen into the hands of Parliament.

By this time Rupert had had conferred upon him the title of President of Wales. In February he was at Chester, where applications for help reached him from every quarter. One of the most importunate appeals came from Newark, and thither he decided to go, having appointed the cultured, but ineffective, Sir John Mennes governor of the three northern Welsh counties in his absence. The Royalist cause in North Wales was now beginning to be badly shaken. In September the Roundheads won a great victory at Montgomery, as a result of which the castle fell into their hands. Archbishop Williams, tired and hopeless, was endeavouring to make Conway a refuge for fugitives fleeing from the advancing foe. After the defeat of Marston Moor the disorderly remnants of the King's broken army flocked into Wales, pillaging and rioting, and completing the work of alienating the native inhabitants.

In 1645, however, there was a distinct { 185} improvement in the King's fortunes in Wales. Gerard captured Haverfordwest, Picton, and Carew in May, and routed the Parliamentarians of Pembrokeshire. But in June came the King's crushing defeat at Naseby, where the greater part of the Royalist infantry had been Welsh. From the scene of his defeat Charles once more came to Wales to look for another army. But the last great pitched battle had been fought; henceforward the war was made up of sieges and skirmishes. Gerard was still successful; and in quick succession defeated Sir John Price at Llanidloes, Middleton near Oswestry, and Laugharne at Newcastle Emlyn. As a result of these victories the castles of Llanidloes and Cardigan again became Royalist. This time, however, Charles found the Welsh people less eager to listen to his appeals, so bitter was their resentment at the treatment which they had experienced at the hands of the dissolute troopers of Rupert and Gerard. Nevertheless from the Monmouthshire and from the Glamorganshire squires came renewed promises of aid. But even the influence of their landlords failed now to induce the common people to enlist in the King's army. Moreover such recruits as were forthcoming { 186} at all were only to be secured by agreeing to certain conditions. They were to have their own Welsh officers; there must be no demand for payment of arrears; and the obligation to entertain soldiers at free quarters must be limited to a single night. Evidently the ancient spirit of sturdy independence was beginning to be roused from its long sleep! Charles had been waiting impatiently at Raglan; then, bitterly disappointed, he proceeded to Chester, and from its walls witnessed the rout of his cavalry at Rowton Heath. At the beginning of 1646 Chester surrendered to Parliament, and in the whole of Wales Harlech Castle alone remained faithful to Charles.

In April 1646 Charles surrendered himself to the Scottish army, and the First Civil War came to an end. Harlech was still holding out, and it was only in March 1647, just a year after the surrender of Chester, and seven months after Raglan, the last English fortress to fly the Royal standard, had capitulated, that it opened its gates to Mytton. The year 1647 was occupied in fruitless negotiations between King and Parliament, and in bitter controversy and recrimination between Parliament and Army, Presbyterians and Independents. { 187} So divided had the Roundheads become that Charles again took heart, and in 1648 embarked upon the adventure which was to cost him his life—the so-called Second Civil War. Nowhere had the new religious and political controversies raged with greater rancour than in Wales. The supremacy of the Army, and the triumph of the Independents, were contemplated with unconcealed aversion and dismay. Even men like Laugharne, who had been prominent in the war against Charles, now went over to his side. On February 20, Colonel Poyer, Governor of Pembroke Castle, refused to lay down his command in favour of a successor who had been appointed to take his place. Other bodies of troops joined Poyer, who drove the Parliamentary army out of Pembroke. This was the signal for a general revolt throughout Wales. One-half of the Model Army, under the command of Horton, was sent in hot haste to the Principality; and in May it defeated Laugharne and his rebels at St. Fagan's. Before the end of the month Cromwell himself appeared on the scene. The rebels were chased from the open country, and shut up in the castles of Pembroke, Tenby, and Chepstow. The two { 188} latter places were taken without much difficulty, but Pembroke, where Poyer himself commanded, held out until July. Its gallant commander was put to death, to expiate the offence of apostasy, an offence rendered exceptionally heinous by the fact that—to quote the words written by Cromwell at the time—it had been committed "against so much light."

Meanwhile events had been moving quickly in North Wales as well. Byron, with the assistance of Colonel Robinson, had gained possession of Anglesey; but the central figure of the rising in North Wales was the celebrated Sir John Owen of Clenenau. He was a turbulent man, who had done to death the sheriff of Merionethshire with singular brutality. But his undoubted bravery, his bluff manners, and his loyalty made him a popular and a typical figure. Mytton, the successful captor of Harlech, was sent against him, and at the battle of Llandegai Owen was decisively vanquished. With his defeat, and the capture of Pembroke, the Second Civil War in Wales came to a close. Owen had been made prisoner, but through the intercession of Ireton his life was spared.

From the barren, if picturesque, annals of { 189} bloodshed, a war in which, so far as Wales was concerned, no great principle was at stake, it is a relief to turn to the settlement of the country under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and to the work of the few great Welsh Parliamentarians. Colonel John Jones the "Regicide" is deserving at least of passing mention. Brought up in one of the wildest and most remote corners of the Merionethshire mountains, he advanced, by sheer force of character and intellect, to a position of trust in the counsels of Parliament. As soon as war broke out he joined the ranks of the Parliamentary army. We find him representing Merionethshire in the House of Commons in 1647, and again from 1647 to 1653, when he was elected for Denbighshire. No man threw himself with greater zeal into the task of organizing the new army. He was not one of those who, having taken the initial step, cast reluctant glances back. For him there was but one goal—the complete and final victory of Parliament. When this object was attained, he did not hesitate to sit in the Court which sat in judgment upon Charles, nor did he shrink from signing his death warrant. His friendship with Cromwell was cemented by his marriage to the { 190} Protector's sister. In Wales, during the war, and in Ireland after its termination, he was an acute and able agent of Parliament, and on one occasion the House of Commons passed a special resolution, thanking him, and voting him a present of £2000. When the Restoration came, John Jones made no effort to escape from the almost certain doom which awaited him by a timely flight abroad; on the contrary he remained openly in London. He was consigned to the Tower, tried, condemned, and put to death with all the horrible barbarities prescribed by the law in the case of traitors.

The other great Welshman of the day was Morgan Llwyd, and with him the whole history of the Commonwealth in Wales is bound up. The victorious Parliament and army, as one might suppose, regarded Wales with no friendly eye; and during the ensuing years the Principality was governed sternly and unsympathetically. The position of Wales varied with the many constitutional experiments of the period. The Agreement of the People, of 1649, proposed to give the country thirty-five representatives out of a total of four hundred. In the Assembly of 1653 Wales had six representatives. Under { 191} the Instrument of Government, of 1653, thirty-eight Members, out of four hundred, were allotted to it. But in the hour of its triumph Parliament really counted for little in the affairs of the nation, and the representatives of Wales, mostly strangers, hardly counted at all. It was the great day of officialdom, and the land groaned under their heavy hand.

The new Government, and even the great Protector himself, despite his Welsh descent, cared nothing for Wales as a separate nation; and the national spirit would have fared badly but for a small band of true patriots, the foremost of whom was Morgan Llwyd. This wonderful man was born at Cynfal, a substantial farmhouse situated in one of the most romantic of Merionethshire glens, in the year 1619; and he died in 1659. His life, short as it was, marks the transition from the old Wales to the new, from the condition of poverty, strife, and degrading superstition, to that of freedom, peace, and progress. With the execution of John Roberts of Trawsfynydd, in 1610, perished the last champion of Popery in Wales. With the death of Morgan's own grandfather Huw Llwyd, somewhere about 1630, ended the { 192} famous line of poet-magicians who dominated the Welsh mind during the Middle Ages. This Huw Llwyd was, in many respects, a very remarkable man. For many years he had fought on the Continent, in the religious wars of the age; then in his declining years had come to Cynfal, to be the admiration and the terror of his simple neighbours. A belief in witchcraft was then fairly general; and Huw was credited with the possession of unusually extensive authority over the agents of the lower world. In this there was nothing incompatible with a reputation for strict morality, and even sanctity, as one of the very traditions which have been handed down clearly shows. One day Huw was enjoying himself in a tavern in the neighbouring village of Maentwrog. Through the window he descried his friend Archdeacon Edmund Prys go by. Putting his head through the window, he warmly invited him to come in and enjoy the good cheer. The reverend man seems to have been scandalized at the thought; and to show his displeasure he immediately caused two, long horns to grow out of the luckless Huw's head, so that he was unable to withdraw it from the window. Not to be outdone, Huw, that same evening, ordered { 193} certain of the devils over whom he had control, to dip the Archdeacon in the mill stream which ran past his house. Such were the merry pranks which parsons and poets played upon each other in early seventeenth-century Wales!

From this atmosphere of superstition Morgan escaped early, being sent to school with Walter Cradock at Wrexham, then the most enlightened centre in the whole country. From his able teacher he learned all the new ideas of freedom both in religion and in politics; and it is not surprising that, when the Civil War broke out, he should have joined the Parliamentary army, and served as chaplain for several years. While in London he united himself with that wonderful sect called the Fifth Monarchy Men. These men believed that the world was destined to be governed by five great monarchies in succession. Four—Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome—had already been, and were humbled in the dust. The fifth was to be a heavenly kingdom. Christ would himself appear on earth, would free His saints from bondage, and would establish a universal and immutable empire. They believed His advent to be now at hand, and waited for it anxiously day by day. { 194} Their duty, as they conceived of it, was to prepare the way for His coming; and it necessarily followed that an acknowledgment of any earthly monarch must be profane and blasphemous. Fanatical they were, unreasonable they may also have been; but there were no more unflinching upholders of the liberty of the subject, and no better friends of religious toleration. The most influential man in the sect was Harrison, and with his appointment, in 1649, as Governor of South Wales, Morgan Llwyd settled down as pastor at Wrexham.

In February 1650 an Act was passed "for the propagation of the Gospel in Wales." Power was given to commissioners to hold an enquiry into the lives of all the Welsh clergy, and to deprive all such as were found to be immoral, incapable, or hostile to the new Government. A large number actually were ejected, and their place taken by a new and specially certified body of preachers. These commissioners were extremely unpopular in Wales, for the country was strongly anti-Puritan; and much of the unpopularity was visited on the new preachers, who were frequently waylaid and beaten. Not much progress appears to have been made; for as { 195} late as 1656 we find Berry, who was Major-General, first for North Wales, and afterwards for South, writing to Thurloe—"One great evil I find here, which I know not how to remedy, and that is the want of able preachers. Certainly, if some course be not taken these people will some of them become heathens."

The "Propagation Act" was repealed in 1653; and that brought to a head the antagonism which for some time had existed between Cromwell and the Fifth Monarchists. The Long Parliament was expelled by Cromwell in 1653; and its successor—the Short Parliament—displayed so marked a leaning in the direction of extreme republicanism, that it soon shared the same fate. Harrison, Vavasour Powell, and Morgan Llwyd were now in open opposition to the Protector; and the two Welshmen toured the Principality inciting the people to rise against him. They stood for complete separation of Church and State, for religious toleration, and for a form of pure democracy in which there would be no room for such an office as that of Protector. Their protest against the Protectorate was published in 1655, under the title of "A Word for God." Morgan Llwyd and Powell were the only two leading Welsh preachers to sign it. That { 196} the majority of Welsh Roundheads were entirely favourable to Cromwell is proved by the counter protest which was at once issued, a document which was signed by almost all the leading men, including Walter Cradock. We must allow that Harrison and his followers were unfair to Cromwell in impugning his honesty. The great Protector was always sincere; but he had learnt, what successive generations of politicians have all in turn had to learn, that the ideals of Opposition cannot always be made to square with the facts of Office. The Commonwealth was shipwrecked on the rock of national opposition; the vast majority of the nation were, and continued to be, Royalists and Episcopalians.

From that time until his death Morgan Llwyd ceased to play any part in politics. He had always been studiously inclined. In 1653 had been written his great classic, Llyfr y Tri Aderyn (Book of the Three Birds). In the closing years of his life, the mystic tendencies which had always been strong in him got the better of everything else. He translated the writings of Jacob Behmen; and tramped about the hills and valleys of Wales, preaching to the peasantry in their own homes. His influence was immense; { 197} and without founding school, or sect, or party, he left a name and an inspiration which remained fresh and potent for generations.

Morgan Llwyd did not survive to see the Restoration; and well was it for him that he did not, for it would have filled him with the most poignant anguish. Most of all would he have been grieved by the manifest signs of joy with which the event was greeted in Wales. The dream of a moral, a religious, an educated, and a democratic Wales was shattered for the time being; it was not to be revived for another hundred years and more. Once again the country sank back into its intellectual torpor, its superstition, and its immorality. The old order was restored:—"The squire dispensed justice, the parson preached loyalty, the bard in remote Nannau praised the life of Charles the First and bewailed his death, and the peasant was told that the world was put right again." In many parts of the land Parliamentarians were pitilessly persecuted. In Merionethshire, where the influence of Morgan Llwyd had been most strong, and where Maes-y-Garnedd, the home of Colonel John Jones, stood in the shadow of the mountains, a sturdy spirit of independence had already been fostered. Determined { 198} not to remain at home to be oppressed, a large number of them left Bala in 1682, and sailed for the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. There, from time to time, they were joined by other Welsh people. To the district which they occupied they gave the name of "Meirion," and they became the ancestors of many of the most distinguished citizens of Philadelphia.

CHAPTER XII

THE REVIVAL

In the making of modern Wales two men stand out pre-eminent, and without rivals—King Henry VIII, and the Revivalist Howel Harris. The former gave to Wales the opportunity of playing an equal part with England in the life of the Empire. The latter roused Wales from its mediæval lethargy into clear realization and appreciation of the opportunity which lay within its grasp. In the darkest hour of its history, in 1916, the British Empire entrusted its fortunes to the care of a Welshman. That Welshman had been made possible by Henry VIII: he was produced by Howel Harris.

Enough has been said already to prove that Nonconformity did not appear in Wales for the first time in the eighteenth century. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 occasioned the ejection from their livings of some two thousand clergy, more than a hundred of whom are said to { 200} have been Welsh. Yet in spite of that, and in spite of the persecution made possible by the Clarendon Code, Dissent continued to exist. The Toleration Act of King William made matters easier; but even then Nonconformity did not thrive. There was nothing peculiarly Welsh about any of the sects; they were merely branches in Wales of bodies English or Continental in origin, thought, and outlook. Long before the time of the Methodist Revival these sects had ceased to be missionary enterprises. They had lost all their evangelical ardour, and were occupied mainly with rancorous disputations about recondite points of theology. For the moral and religious condition into which Wales had fallen, they were almost as much to blame as the Established Church. Even if we accept the most favourable accounts, the condition of the people must have been extremely bad. Few of the lower classes knew how to read. In many churches whole months would elapse without any sermon at all; while in others the parson would read a learned English discourse to a sparse congregation knowing nothing but Welsh. Wesley declared that the people were "as little versed in the principles of Christianity as a Creek or Cherokee { 201} Indian." That the people were completely indifferent to any religious impulse, and that they lived, for the most part, the life of mere animals, is proved by an overwhelming mass of evidence. Of course too much must not be made of the testimony of extreme Puritans, who were scandalized by what they considered desecration of the Sabbath, and by such things as wrestling, dancing, cock-fighting, and drinking. But when all allowance has been made for this prejudice, a terrible indictment can still be drawn up; for the vast majority of the people must have been totally illiterate, extremely superstitious, and without a thought save for the gratification of their bodily needs and desires. North Wales was almost wholly Anglican, there being not more than ten small Nonconformist congregations. In the South Dissenters were more numerous. But at the highest computation we cannot put the total number of Nonconformists in Wales at more than an eighth of the total population.

The awakening came with Howel Harris, a man, like Luther, of tempestuous passions, strong character, wide vision, and magnetic personality. A clear hint had already been given by the Rev. Griffith Jones, Vicar of { 202} Llanddowror, of the method which would have to be employed for the regeneration of Wales. In spite of every discouragement from his fellow clergymen, he had begun the practice of preaching, in a popular style, in the open air, at fairs and wakes and wherever people were gathered together for dissipation. Griffith Jones, however, was an educator rather than a revivalist, and as such we shall have more to say about him in another place. Of the Revival itself he was a precursor, rather than a leading figure.

Howel Harris was born in 1714, at Trevecka in Breconshire. He was educated at the Llwynllwyd Grammar School, and was intended for the Church. But the death of his father made it necessary that he should earn his own living; and for some years he became a schoolmaster. During this period he studied hard, and, what is of more importance in his case, pondered over the evil condition of the people among whom he dwelt. An intense desire was awakened within him to save souls. In 1735 he matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford; but his sojourn at the University was only a few weeks in duration, and he returned to his own home more eager than ever to preach the Gospel. He was { 203} not ordained, neither was he a licensed preacher of any Nonconformist body. On the contrary he was then, and remained all through life, a member of the Church of England. But he began to go on preaching tours into every part of Wales; and this work he continued, without intermission, for the next sixteen years. The life was a strenuous, and even a dangerous, one. On one occasion he writes: "It is now nine weeks since I began to go round South and North Wales, and this week I came home. I have visited in that time thirteen counties, and travelled most of 150 miles every week and discoursed twice every day—sometimes three or four times a day. In this last journey I have not taken off my clothes for seven nights, travelling from one morning to the next evening without any rest above 100 miles, discoursing at midnight, or very early, on the mountains in order to avoid persecution." The closing words have a very modest sound; but it must not be thought that Harris fled from danger; on the contrary it would be nearer the truth to say that he wantonly incurred it. The "persecution" of which he speaks was no figurative expression, but a hard and stern reality. Indeed this period of his life is one { 204} of the most wonderful romances of modern times.

Innumerable examples could be given of the things which Harris endured at the hands of his opponents; and it must be confessed that his own aggressiveness, and the unseasonable moment selected by him for delivering his message, make one feel that his sufferings were, at times, almost deserved. On one occasion a Justice of the Peace, one Marmaduke Gwynn by name, came to hear him, armed with a copy of the Riot Act, but was so impressed with what he heard that he invited him to be a guest at his house. Sometimes his success was complete. "Yesterday," he writes, "was a glorious day: I was at a great feast, and chose to oppose the devil on his own ground; and we discoursed within a few yards of a public house, where diversion was to be. I never tasted more power. I believe some were cut through; many wept, and one fainted; others felt a great trembling, and all were filled with awe." His enemies did not hesitate to issue false reports about him. "Last night and to-day," he says, "I met with no opposition; many are deterred from coming to hear by a report passing for truth, that I really correspond { 205} with the King of Spain, and that £40 are offered for taking me." At Llanbrynmair he finds the people living "like brutes, knowing nothing"; yet so convincing was the message which he delivered, that he left behind him there the nucleus of one of the first and strongest Methodist congregations. On the road from Cemmaes he was roughly hustled and beaten, and followed by a gang of men who cried, "Down with the Roundheads." A woman threw mud at him, calling him a "damned devil"; and he was hounded out of the parish with dogs. At Machynlleth he was beset by an infuriated rabble, headed by an attorney's clerk with mouth "so full of the language of hell as if his name had been legion"; and with him a gentleman and a clergyman whose language was, apparently, in no wise different from that of the clerk! Some years later this same clerk relented; but the parson, to the end of his days, never ceased to allude to the new preachers, in his sermons, as "those wicked Methodists." At Crickhowell Harris was so roughly handled that he was obliged to seek refuge in a friend's house, his clothes torn, his face covered with blood, his head cut in thirteen places, and his body bruised. South Wales seems to { 206} have been decidedly more wicked than the North, and Glamorgan worst of all. An attempt to shoot Harris was made at Swansea and Llandilo; and at Carmarthen a man drew a sword, with the intention of killing him. But the North was bad enough. At Bala (so soon afterwards to become the Oxford of Welsh Nonconformity) he had a very unpleasant time on his second visit to the place. The Vicar raised a great club which he was carrying, and threatened to strike him with it. Not content with that, the reverend man caused a barrel of beer to be placed in the open street, where all comers might freely drink, in order that their will to harm the Revivalist might be strengthened, and their valour enhanced at the cost of their discretion. Nevertheless, in spite of all persecution, the whole country was soon ablaze with the Revival; and people came in hundreds and thousands to hear the preachers. Howel Harris was not alone in the field. About the same time, and quite independently of him, Daniel Rowlands, the eloquent curate of Llangeitho, had begun to preach, and a warm friendship was struck between the two men. Griffith Jones gave the new movement encouraging recognition; and Whitefield who, { 207} by his intense ardour and matchless eloquence, was infusing new life into the religion of England extended the right hand of fellowship. In 1740 Harris made an invaluable convert in the person of William Williams of Pantycelyn, in all probability the greatest hymn writer the world has ever seen, a man who gave imperishable expression to the theology, the ethics, and the ideals of the Revival. Williams was ordained by the Bishop of St. David's; and became curate to that charming and picturesque Welsh historian, Theophilus Evans. But the learned author of Drych y Prif Oesoedd had no liking for his curate's superabundant zeal; and when restraint was put upon his preaching, Williams joined the Methodists.

In 1743 was held at Watford what was probably the first Welsh Methodist Association; and, in the same year, another at Carmarthen. During the first few years there was active partnership between the Welsh Methodists and those of England; and plans were discussed for their unification. Fortunately these plans always failed to commend themselves to the majority, and the two bodies remained apart. By degrees Harris became estranged from all his early { 208} friends and coadjutors. For this he himself was, no doubt, chiefly to blame. He was not an easy man to work with, being jealous, obstinate, and masterful. Furthermore, his theological opinions were undergoing a change, and he had become subject to frequent ecstasies and visions, all of which he regarded as special revelations and tokens of Divine favour. The upshot of it all was that Howel Harris decided to live a life apart, and to form at Trevecka a sort of religious community which he called a Family. Something must be said about this scheme, which engrossed the last twenty-two years of his life (1751-1773) before we return to follow the growth of Methodism in general.

As early as 1736 Harris seems to have cherished the desire to found at Trevecka a community, after the pattern of that of Frank at Halle, or of the Moravians at Herrnhut and Fulneck; but for several years he was altogether absorbed in the work of evangelization. Now, however, he took up the idea with renewed zest. In preparing the house at Trevecka for the reception of the Community, he had the assistance of his friend and adviser Madame Griffith. Residents began to arrive in 1752, and continued to do so, { 209} from time to time, for many years. But the average membership remained throughout somewhere near a hundred. Every member was expected to put all his worldly possessions into a common fund. The concerns of the Family were both religious and industrial. Three services were held every day, and on Sundays four. But industry held almost as important a place in the scheme as religion; and it is this that makes Harris so prominent a figure in the economic and social, as well as in the religious, life of Wales. The first faint indications of the coming Industrial Revolution were beginning to be descried in England; but as yet Wales was almost wholly agricultural and pastoral; and, of course, what industries there were, were carried on in the cottages of the people. In a few short years the enormous mineral wealth of the country would be discovered; and the introduction of the factory system, and the construction of turnpike roads, would alter the whole face of society. More than a century earlier, an Industrial Community had been founded by the Vaughans of Bredwardine, but that had long sunk into oblivion: it was the Trevecka Family that really brought the main ideas of the Industrial Revolution to the doors of { 210} the Welsh people. The industrial pursuits of the new Community were interesting and varied. They picked wool, carded flax, and knitted. A woollen factory was instituted, and a printing-press installed. Harris and his followers were equally interested in the development of the land. He introduced new, and better, methods of growing turnips and corn, and also an improved system of crop rotation.

Our account of this versatile man would not be complete without a word about a most curious, and wholly unexpected, episode in his life. In 1756 the Seven Years' War broke out, and a French invasion of England was deemed to be imminent. Loyal citizens everywhere rushed to arms; and the Breconshire Agricultural Society, with which Harris was intimately connected, offered to form themselves into a troop of light horse. Five members of the Family joined the regular army. They served in Nova Scotia, besieged Louisberg, and fought with Wolfe at Quebec. Four were killed, or died of fever, and one only lived to return to Trevecka. In 1759 Harris joined the local militia; and was made, first an Ensign, and soon afterwards a Captain-Lieutenant. In this capacity he accompanied { 211} the troops to Yarmouth; and he did not return home until 1763, when the Peace of Paris put an end to all danger of invasion.

The last ten years of his life Harris spent quietly with the Family, his calm existence varied only by the assistance which he gave to Lady Huntingdon in founding her Methodist College at Trevecka Isaf. To the end he remained a member of the Episcopal Church; and at his funeral, in July 1773, fifteen clergymen administered the Sacrament to a multitude of twenty thousand people, who had come to show their affection and respect.

By this time congregations of Methodists had grown very numerous in Wales, and the problem of administering to their spiritual needs was becoming a difficult and a pressing one. It was obvious that the few clergy who had joined the Association could not cope with the situation. Large numbers of lay preachers had arisen; but none of them were ordained, nor did they claim the right to administer the Sacraments. The English Church was confronted with the alternative of either making its doors wider, so as to make it possible for the newly converted multitudes to find a congenial home within it; or of keeping its doors rigidly narrow, and so { 212} keeping the people out. The latter course was the one adopted. The leaders of the Church remained stiff, unsympathetic, and aloof. For years the small band of Methodist clergy strove hard to obtain recognition, having to perform the difficult task of restraining the eagerness of their own more extreme followers. To most of them, if not to all, the thought of a break with the Church was extremely repugnant; and they were prepared to go great lengths to make such a thing unnecessary. But on one point they remained firm: the people must have the preaching, and the religious services which they found to be of most spiritual value to them. If the Church could provide this, so much the better; if it refused, then secession must be bravely faced. In 1802 the Rev. Thomas Charles (better known as Charles o'r Bala) issued his Vindication , in which he repudiated the name "Dissenter," proved the absolute identity of the Methodists with the Church in creed, and made a last appeal for recognition. The appeal met with no response; and at the Association which met at Bala in 1811 Charles himself, while still protesting his preference for episcopal ordination, ordained eight preachers, of whom the great John Elias was { 213} one. This implied a definite breach with the Church. The great body of Methodists formed themselves into a new Church, with its own constitution and its own Confession of Faith. It became known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church. But even then six Methodist clergymen refused to quit the Establishment.

Throughout the nineteenth century Nonconformity flourished abundantly in Wales. The Revival had not only produced the Calvinistic Methodists, but had given a new and powerful impetus to the older sects; and between them they claimed the allegiance of the vast majority of Welsh people. The young Welshman, and even more so the foreigner, finds it a little difficult to understand the enormous place which the Chapel filled in the life of Wales during the greater part of the century. Those little plain square buildings, scattered so profusely all over Wales, so ugly in the eyes of the tourist, yet so sacred to those who dwell around them; what was the secret of their power and their charm? To-day there are many competing institutions—the school, the college, the club, and the library; but in those days the chapel was everything. In the pulpit the artistic soul of Wales found its full expression, as it { 214} has never quite succeeded in doing anywhere else. Its poetry (if we except its hymns), good as much of it is, never even approaches the very best. Its painting and its sculpture are almost non-existent. Even in music Wales has not given to the world anything of real distinction, and of abiding value. But between 1780 and 1880 it produced successive generations of preachers, who brought pulpit oratory to a point that has never been surpassed, even if it has been equalled, by any other nation before or since. Even to-day, when oratory has declined, and when there are so many competing attractions, there is nothing that the Welshman loves so well as a Preaching Meeting. Five thousand people will still come together eagerly to the village green on one of these great occasions. At six o'clock in the morning two sermons, averaging each an hour in length, will be delivered. These will be followed, at ten o'clock, by two others of the same length. In the afternoon two more will be delivered. The day will close with yet another two, or sometimes three, such sermons; and the multitude will disperse over hill and moor to their scattered homes, discussing the great feats of oratory to which they have { 215} listened, quoting and conferring with discrimination, and singing, for the twentieth time that day, some favourite hymn.

The accounts which we possess, written by eyewitnesses, of some of the effects produced by the great preachers make marvellous reading. In the hands of a John Elias, a Henry Rees, or a John Jones, the vast congregation, standing before them throughout the long summer hours, would be like clay. From tears to laughter, from ecstatic joy to the profoundest sorrow and the most poignant terror, it would be moved by a word, or even a gesture. So realistic and dramatic was the preaching of John Elias that, on one occasion when he was describing the Almighty letting the arrow fly from his bow, the whole vast audience parted in two in order to allow passage for the shaft. So powerful was the voice of Owen Thomas that, preaching at Bangor his accents could be distinctly heard in Anglesey across the Menai Straits. Needless to say, scenes of the most uncontrolled enthusiasm would prevail. Fear of Hell, and hope of Heaven would alternate in the hearts of the congregation; but in all the utterances of the greatest preachers the dominant note was the compelling love of God in Christ.

In the chapel, and in the federation of chapels, the Welshman learnt the difficult art of self-government. The rule of the parson had been an autocratic one; that of the Nonconformist bodies was, from the first, democratic. Every official, including the Minister himself, was chosen by a direct vote of the whole congregation. Even in a further, and a different, sense Nonconformity was democratic. Its members were mainly drawn from the middle and lower classes; and its Ministers, until well advanced in life, were simple workmen—John Elias a weaver, Christmas Evans a farm servant, John Jones a quarryman, Williams o'r Wern a carpenter. The doors of the Universities were closed against them; and Glyndwr's University of Wales was still an unrealized dream. They were the poor preachers of a poor people.

Did Nonconformity justify its existence? Was the life of Wales cleansed and elevated? The answer of the impartial historian must surely be an emphatic affirmative. Between the itinerary of the preacher Giraldus Cambrensis, and that of the preacher Howel Harris, a period of some five hundred and fifty years intervened; but it is difficult to see that the Welsh people were at all higher, { 217} mentally or morally, at the later date than they were at the earlier one. But add another hundred years, and no chance visitor would suppose that he was seeing the same people.

The indirect effects of Nonconformity were, in their own way, as important as the direct. The Welshman, hitherto so careless and docile in his politics, became thoughtful and independent, having accustomed himself to government by discussion and voting in his chapel. He had learned to read in the Sunday School; and it was not long before he added to his Bible and his commentary a newspaper and a literary and political magazine. Every chapel would have its Literary Society; and by that means new ideas in poetry and music, in science and in philosophy would slowly be disseminated among the people. A modern scholar probably did not go too far when he declared that "Nonconformity found Wales derelict; it has reared up a new nation. It found Wales pagan; it has made her one of the most religious countries in the world. It found Wales ignorant; it has so stimulated her energies that by to-day Welshmen, largely by their own self-sacrifice, have provided for themselves the most complete educational system in Europe."

CHAPTER XIII

THE DAWN

The new spirit which began to manifest itself in Wales in the eighteenth century took various forms. Of these, by far the most important was religion, and with that we have already dealt. The other forms were education, industrialism, politics, and literature; and among these, education claims the first place. It is impossible to make any clear distinction between religion and education; for the chapel, by its Sunday School, its Literary Society, its Bible Class, and its preaching was, for many years, a far more important agent of education than any school or college. Again it is not easy to determine whether that peculiarly Welsh institution, the Eisteddfod, belongs more properly to the domain of education, or to that of literature and art.

Ever since the first coming of Christianity into the country Wales had had its schools. { 219} In an earlier chapter we dwelt upon differences between the Celtic Church and that of Rome; and one of the most conspicuous of these differences was its greater insistence upon the value of culture and knowledge. There were Grammar Schools in Wales in the sixth century, just a hundred years before the establishment by Augustine of the first English school at Canterbury. In the turbulent times of the Middle Ages these schools deteriorated sadly; still the lamp of learning was never wholly extinguished. Such as they were, the mediæval schools were connected with the monasteries, and with the dissolution of those foundations they too ceased to exist. A few Welshmen were always to be found at Oxford, and we have seen how they flocked back to their native land to participate in the rising of Glyndwr. The Tudor union of the two nations made intercourse much more easy; and, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the number of Welsh students at the old Universities greatly increased. They were further encouraged by the establishment of Jesus College, Oxford, a wholly Welsh foundation. But it is needless to say that it was only the sons of the gentry, and young men about to enter upon an { 220} ecclesiastical career, who were able to avail themselves of these advantages. The great bulk of the middle class, and the whole of the lower classes, remained without any sort of direct education.

The Reformation period witnessed the founding of many new Grammar Schools, both in England and Wales. The new Established Church prided itself upon the possession of "sound learning"; and the schools were under its auspices. But these schools were all in the towns; and the instruction given in them was entirely in English, and by teachers who knew not a word of Welsh. The country districts remained untaught, as too did the vast majority of the people who, knowing no English, were unable to profit by the new schools.

Good people in London seemed to have felt an occasional qualm at the thought of the ignorance which prevailed across the Welsh border. For example, we hear of Oliver Cromwell and Richard Baxter playing with the idea of a Welsh University. In the last years of the seventeenth century an effort was made to provide Welsh children with instruction in the English language, and to circulate the Bible, the Prayer Book, { 221} and certain other books in Welsh. Archbishop Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Thomas Gouge, and James Owen founded a society for that purpose; and it was so far successful that about a thousand poor Welsh children were taught every year. In 1701 the work of the society was taken over by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. Lending libraries were formed, charity schools established, and much good work done. All these efforts, however, were eclipsed by the famous "Circulating Schools" of the Rev. Griffith Jones.

This remarkable man, the "morning star of the Revival" as he has been called, was born in 1684, at Cilrhedyn, and educated at the Carmarthen Grammar School. After holding the living of Llandeloi for five years, he became Vicar of Llanddowror. He was fully impressed with the desirability of providing education for the poorer Welsh children, and especially for those whose homes lay in the country districts. As it was clearly not feasible to provide a sufficient number of stationary schools, he hit upon the happy device of having circulating ones. Much help was given to him, and much encouragement in his enterprise by Sir John Phillips, the { 222} pioneer of the Charity Schools movement; by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, and by Madame Bevan of Llacharn. The success of the undertaking was startling, and well-nigh instantaneous. Within ten years a hundred schools had been established; while within thirty years the number had swollen to between three and four thousand. The total number of scholars amounted to a hundred-and-sixty thousand. For the instruction of the teachers a seminary was established. Apart from subscriptions given by benefactors, the whole cost was borne by a collection made in church during the Communion Service. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this enterprise. It helped to preserve Welsh as a literary language. It taught a considerable part of the population to read the Bible. It prepared the way for the Revival which was at the door, and gave to the Revivalists a solid foundation upon which to build. Griffith Jones died in 1761; but the schools went on. In 1780 they were suspended, owing to a lawsuit; but in 1809 the scheme again came into operation.

The next momentous step forward in Welsh education was the starting of Sunday Schools, by Charles of Bala. This was one of the { 223} direct results of the Revival. From that day to the present the influence of these schools has been incalculably great. Children had their place in them; but their primary function was the education of adults. The term "school" when applied to them is somewhat misleading; they were rather small study-circles, presided over by a democratically chosen leader, and, with the Bible as text-book, discussing almost every question pertaining to this world and the next. Sunday Schools were quickly adopted by all the Nonconformist bodies, and by the Episcopal Church as well; and among the former at least church membership implied membership of the school. Owing to this the minds of the people of Wales became saturated with the Scriptures. The geography of Palestine was more familiar to them than that of England. Bible stories, Bible arguments, and Bible metaphors were become interwoven with the very texture of their thought. Huxley once pointed out that no man who possessed a good knowledge of the Bible could be considered uncultured; and Ruskin maintained that to know by heart some of its greatest passages was to make the writing of an undistinguished style impossible. { 224} To these admirable results must be added, in the case of Wales, the training in reasoning, in dialectic, and in controversial fair-play which the Schools supplied.

Coming to the nineteenth century, we find efforts to improve educational facilities in Wales so numerous and so varied as to be positively bewildering. The important date to remember is 1846. Prior to that landmark, efforts of a voluntary kind had been made by the National Society, and by the British Society. In that year a Royal Commission was appointed to make a thorough investigation into the condition of education in the Principality. When the Commission issued its report, a year later, a great outcry was raised in Wales; for it was discovered that it had gone much beyond the limits assigned to it for enquiry, and had made strictures, many of them demonstrably false, and others offensively expressed, upon the moral and religious condition of the people. The enquiry has been known in Wales, ever since, as "Brad y Llyfrau Gleision" (The Treason of the Blue Books). Nevertheless the Commission had done good work in that it had aroused interest in the question of education, and had impressed upon Parliament, and public men generally, the { 225} necessity of dealing with it. There was, in consequence, a decided quickening of the educational life of Wales; and, down to 1870, a steady increase in the number of schools, as well as an improvement in the quality of the teachers. In 1870 the separate history of elementary education in Wales comes to an end; for it was then assimilated in almost every respect to that of England.

An increase in the number of schools and scholars involved an increase also in the number of teachers; and to supply them proved to be one of the most difficult of problems. The salary paid was so low that no man who had been to a University could be expected to accept it. As yet there were no secular colleges in Wales, and but few secondary schools. A few truly excellent secondary schools there were; establishments like Ystrad Meurig, from which, for a considerable period, Bishops used to ordain young men without any additional training. The result was that schoolmasters were generally grossly incompetent, being one-legged army sergeants, or retired sailors, with no knowledge of Wales, and but little knowledge of anything. And not only were they ignorant, but they were also snobs of the most contemptible kind, { 226} toadying to the vicar and the squire, whose henchmen they were, and never hesitating to express their detestation and scorn of everything Welsh. A poor farm boy, who afterwards became one of Oxford's most brilliant scholars, has left, in his inimitable Clych Atgof , a half-amusing, half-pathetic account of his troubles in early life with teachers of this kind.

In 1846 there was only one normal college in the whole of Wales. To this were added two Church of England teachers' training colleges, the one at Carmarthen, the other at Bangor; and, in 1862, was established a second normal college. Sir Hugh Owen, one of the most illustrious names in the list of great Welshmen, had begun to agitate for a connecting link between elementary schools and places of higher education. No schools were then founded; but a "North Wales Scholarship Association" was formed; and this afforded much valuable assistance prior to the coming of the County School. The Magna Carta of secondary education in Wales was the Intermediate Education Act of 1889. This Act provided for the levying of a half-penny rate in all the Welsh counties by the County Councils. In every county a joint education committee was to be appointed to { 227} deal with existing endowments and buildings; and, where necessary, to provide new schools under the management of the recently appointed local bodies. In order that greater uniformity might be acquired, a Central Welsh Board was constituted, to which was entrusted the duty of supervising the schools generally, inspecting them, and examining the pupils. The Board continues to exercise some of its functions, but now shares a dual control with the Welsh Department of the Board of Education, a Department which was created as a concession to nationalist aspirations. From the commencement the success of the new Intermediate Schools was phenomenal. Schools starting with ten pupils would, in a dozen years, have two hundred or more. Of large gifts given by the rich there were very few. Apart from grants made by the Government, the schools depended upon the small, but generous, contributions of the poor. In the early days of their history they were admirably served by as devoted and far-sighted a body of teachers as any schools have ever been fortunate enough to possess. Only in recent years has the voice of hostile criticism been heard.

Side by side with reforms in elementary { 228} and secondary education marched the reform of higher education. The Established Church had depended upon Oxford and Cambridge for the training of its clergy; but the Dissenting Churches soon discovered the need of colleges of their own. The first to be founded seems to have been the Academy of Brynllywarch, in 1662. Eventually this was moved to Carmarthen, where it became the progenitor of the present College. We have already had occasion to allude to the founding of a college at Trevecka, by Lady Huntingdon; but this was moved to Cheshunt in 1792. A Welsh Methodist college was, however, opened there in 1842. In 1836 Dr. Lewis Edwards opened a Methodist college for North Wales at Bala. The Episcopal Church, feeling the need of a college at which living would be cheap, opened a college at Lampeter, and that became the first Welsh college possessing the power to confer degrees. Other denominations possessing colleges, many of them dating back to the eighteenth century or even earlier, reorganized them, and, in some cases, transferred them to new localities. In this way the Congregational colleges at Brecon and Bangor, and the Baptist college at Bangor came into existence.

But excellent as was the work done by these seminaries in preparing men for the Christian Ministry, educationally the central theme of interest is the movement which culminated in the foundation of the University of Wales. The idea was as old as Owen Glyndwr; it had been discussed by Cromwell; but it was not until 1853 that a powerful popular agitation was started on its behalf. A memorable meeting was held in London in the following year, attended by Hugh Owen, George Osborne Morgan, Lewis Edwards and others, at which the idea was fully debated. Nothing further, however, was done until 1863, when another meeting was held, at which a resolution in favour of a national University was carried, and an executive committee appointed. An attempt to persuade the authorities of Lampeter to unite in forming one unsectarian University failed; and the committee proceeded with the heavy task of collecting money. From 1871 until his death Sir Hugh Owen gave the whole of his time to this work. The appeal met with a warm response; and in 1872 Aberystwyth College was opened, having been secured literally with the pennies and the shillings of a hard-working peasantry. From the start it was felt to be a real national { 230} possession; and that feeling was deepened by the appointment of the saintly scholar-preacher, Dr. Thomas Charles Edwards, to be its first Principal. For ten years the College received no grant at all from the Treasury; yet it continued to flourish in ever-increasing measure. So successful was the venture that, in 1883, a similar College, for the use of South Wales, was opened at Cardiff; and in 1884 this was followed by one at Bangor. But so far the Colleges had no charter of incorporation, and were without the power to confer degrees. A further agitation in favour of an incorporation of the three Colleges in one University of Wales was set on foot. In this agitation the chief part was played by the Cymmrodorion, a society which, in the course of its long history, has conferred untold benefits upon Wales. When due investigation had been made, and the proposed charter had been fully discussed in Parliament, it was granted; and in 1893 the Welsh University came into being, with Lord Aberdare as its first Chancellor. Its success has been wonderful and sustained, and it is only with difficulty that the Colleges have been able to cope with the many hundreds of students who flock to them. So great has { 231} the pressure been, that it has since been found necessary to found a fourth constituent College, at Swansea. In most respects the Colleges are similar; but a particular branch of knowledge may be provided for in one, and not in the others. Thus Cardiff possesses a Medical School, Aberystwyth a Law School, and Bangor a Theological School. Aberystwyth is also the home of the Welsh Director of Musical Studies, and of the Wilson Chair of International Politics.

The work of the Universities has been helped and stimulated by the establishment of a National Museum at Cardiff, and a National Library at Aberystwyth.

The political awakening in Wales came considerably later than the religious and the educational awakening; and when it did come it was largely as a consequence of the others. We have seen how, in the period of the Civil War, the Principality was almost wholly Royalist; and when two distinct political parties came to be formed at Westminster, in the closing years of the seventeenth century, it gave its steady support to the Tories. It is with shame that the historian is forced to admit that Welsh lawyers like the infamous { 232} Judge Jeffreys were among the most brazen and unscrupulous agents of Stuart tyranny. But just as there were a few Parliamentarians in Wales in the reign of Charles I, so also in the reign of James II there were a few prominent Welshmen, who gave strong support to the Revolution and the Bill of Rights. With the reign of Anne Wales settled down to the quiet Toryism from which it was not roused for over a hundred years. It is interesting to note that, as in the case of France, the first note of discord was heard among the men-of-letters. We hear it in the writings of Jack Glan-y-Gors, and in those of Iolo. But their rebellious sentiments found no echo in the hearts of the people; and the great leaders of the Revival were either strictly non-political, or else Tory. Nor did the French Revolution do much to rouse the country. An almost solitary exception was the philosopher-preacher Richard Price, the supporter of the American rebels, and the defender of the rights of man. He does not occupy a prominent place in history; but the man who occasioned the Reflections on the French Revolution of Burke, and who earned an able vindication from the pen of John Morley, certainly merits a passing allusion.

The Reform Act of 1832, which raised the number of Welsh Members from twenty-seven to thirty-two, seems to have made no alteration in the politics of the country; but soon afterwards the topics which were going to be fought over so passionately before the close of the century, began to emerge and to define themselves—the right of the Welshman to live his own life in his own way, to speak his own language, and to worship in his own chosen mode. It meant the recapturing of the lost dignity of Welsh nationality. In the eighteenth century Welshmen had, almost contentedly, sunk into a position of inferiority, and had never dreamed of asserting their claim to a place of equality in the Empire in which they were now, by law, partners. The cleavage between the newly anglicised gentry, and the middle and lower classes, had become wider; and after the Revival, to the difference of language, was further added the difference of religion. That any Welshman should aspire to occupy a position of trust and distinction would be scouted. Goronwy Owen, a curate in the Church of England, and the greatest Welsh poet, and possibly the greatest prose stylist too, of the eighteenth century, writes in one of his charming letters in 1753: "Do { 234} you ever expect to see a Welshman a Bishop? Sooner would I give credence to the Brut which promises the second coming of Owain Lawgoch than expect ever to see a Welshman holding an office of the least distinction in either Church or State."

South Wales was rapidly becoming industrialized; and the Chartist Movement found there, and even more in the small manufacturing towns of the Severn valley, places like Llanidloes, and Newtown, the home of Robert Owen, many followers. All through the centuries, owing to its geographical position, Wales had been influenced by two things, isolation and contact; isolation from all kindred beyond the seas, and contact with its unfriendly neighbours on the land side. In the ancient Hellenic world the sea united; but for the Celtic races it has been a barrier to divide. Between the Celt of Ireland and the Celt of Wales intercourse was always slight and intermittent; while between the Welshman and the Breton there was hardly any intercourse at all. Unlike his Breton kinsman, the Welshman has never taken kindly to the sea; he has looked at it, and then raised his eyes to the mountains. He became a farmer, and not a fisherman or a sailor; and when he did look out at the great { 235} world he did so through the English window. This geographical isolation led also to a human isolation, which is a very marked characteristic of the Welsh nation. Fortunately the nation had been fully formed before the close of the eighteenth century, otherwise the combined influence of English political, social, and religious ascendancy might have swept away every vestige of the fine cultural inheritance of the past. In the great fight which began in 1832, and which occupied eighty years, Wales came out victorious in religion, in politics, in education, and in social matters. Even industrialism, the most potent foe of nationality, was kept at bay; and between it and the Welsh spirit the contest still goes on. With the Industrial Revolution itself, enormous as its influence was, we need not concern ourselves here; for in Wales it followed practically the same course as in England. The mineral wealth of Wales had been tapped by the Romans; but a new impetus was given to mining by the invention of the steam engine, of improved machinery, and by the new means of transport which came into being in the first half of the nineteenth century. In many parts of the land agriculture had to yield place to quarrying and mining; for there was slate in Carnarvon and Merioneth, copper { 236} in Anglesey, zinc in Denbigh, lead in Flint and Montgomery, gold in Merioneth, silver in Cardigan, and iron and coal in both North and South Wales. At first iron was regarded as the most important, coal being valued only for the part which it played in smelting operations. With the coming of Guest to Dowlais, and of Crashay to Merthyr, towards the close of the eighteenth century, the industry began to expand rapidly in Glamorganshire and Monmouth. It was not until the middle of the following century that the coal industry became important in itself; but once its importance was recognised, it was worked with the utmost energy, and exported to every part of the world. To-day upwards of a quarter of a million men work in the pits, and more than half the total population of Wales is contained in the mining valleys. The majority of these labourers are not Welsh; for to the pits, and to the great ports on the Bristol Channel, immigration has been taking place regularly, and on an enormous scale. Except for the thinly populated counties of Cardigan, Pembroke and Carmarthen, South Wales is no longer Welsh in any sense of the word, and it has ceased to sympathize with the political, the cultural, and the religious ideals of the North. This is the most difficult { 237} problem with which Welsh statesmen are to-day confronted.

While the Chartist Movement was in full swing, the Rebecca Riots broke out. The new roads which had just been constructed were maintained by tolls, which were levied at turnpike gates placed at short intervals along them. As there were no railways, and as the small farmers of Cardigan and Carmarthen had often to carry great quantities of lime, for the fertilization of their land, over thirty or forty miles, the tax became an extremely burdensome one. Finding that protests availed nothing, some of the younger men, in 1843, disguised as women, broke the obnoxious gates in pieces. Their unruly conduct had two beneficial effects—it drew attention to a real grievance, and it taught the Welsh people to look to Parliament to redress their wrongs.

About this time newspapers began to be founded; and their effect upon the political life of the country was immediate and immense. Without exception they were democratic, and nationalist in the wider sense. The history of the Welsh Press is a heroic record. These little papers hardly ever secured a sufficiently big circulation to make them self-supporting. Their owners, themselves far from rich, were true patriots, and { 238} were content to suffer financial loss year after year. Seren Gomer was first started in 1814, and revived in 1818. In 1835 appeared Yr Haul , and Y Diwygiwr . But it was not until Yr Amserau began to appear in 1843, under the editorship of the great poet-preacher Gwilym Hiraethog, that Welsh journalism quite realized what it was capable of doing. At last the Welsh people had found an adequate mouthpiece. Soon the "Letters of the Old Farmer" began to appear in Yr Amserau ; and throughout the troubled, but inspiring, period of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Kossuth, this paper continued to give Wales a democratic and strong liberal lead. It fought energetically for the repeal of the Corn Laws; and it was the first paper to tell the people clearly—"The enemy is the landlord." From that day, down to the outbreak of the Great War, the political history of Wales consists of an unceasing struggle for the freedom of the tenant, and for the freedom of Nonconformity. Meanwhile other papers and journals were being established. Dr. Lewis Edwards founded Y Traetliodydd ; and the articles contributed by him to it, when collected and published in a volume, became the Welsh counterpart of Macaulay's Essays. An able journalist, signing himself "S.R.", { 239} vigorously championed the cause of the poor and the oppressed in his Cronicl . He was a Free Trader, he condemned war, he opposed landlordism, and he advocated a penny postage before anybody else had done so. But perhaps the greatest of all the journalists was Thomas Gee of Denbigh. In 1854 he issued a Welsh Encyclopedia, a mammoth work first issued in parts, and afterwards bound in many volumes, which brought the most up-to-date knowledge into the homes of the people, in their own language, and at a price which they could afford to pay. Three years later he started a weekly paper called Baner Cymru , with which Yr Amserau was amalgamated in 1859. The paper won instant popularity; and when the weekly letter of its political correspondent—"Y Gohebydd"—began to appear, its success was assured. No paper did more for the political emancipation, and education, of the people, and to direct their thoughts towards the House of Commons. It would not be long before they claimed to send Welsh speaking democrats to represent them. The supremacy of the squire and the parson was approaching its end.

The closing years of the nineteenth century, and the early years of the twentieth, saw a wonderful literary efflorescence in Wales. { 240} The Cymru and the Geninen set and maintained a high standard of accuracy, learning, and art. Owen M. Edwards edited cheap reprints of all the Welsh classics; and himself wrote travel books, whose graceful style, delightful humour, and frequent passages of moving eloquence, entitle them to rank with the Reisebilder of Heinrich Heine. The beautiful, but not always idiomatic, prose of the Welsh Bible, had become much more ornate, stiff, and difficult in the hands of Ellis Wynne, whose Bardd Cwsc is, nevertheless, the finest work of creative genius in the Welsh language. Goronwy Owen, and Dr. Lewis Edwards, employed a much more flexible style; but it was not until the rise of Owen Edwards that the full possibilities of Welsh prose, as a vehicle for expressing modern ideas, became manifest. Welsh poetry there had always been an abundance of; starting with the obscure bards of the sixth century, and the Arthurian legends, passing through the warlike minstrels of the Middle Ages, to the sweet, but shallow, love poems of Davydd ap Gwilym. Then came a long period of monotonous and mediocre versifying; until real poetry again began to be produced by Goronwy Owen. A touch of sublimity in an occasional poem of Ishryn, { 241} and the true lyric flavour of much of Ceiriog, place these two men in the front rank of Welsh poets. The older poetry is couched in intricate and artificial metres, the twenty-four varieties of which every bard was expected to show an acquaintance with. But of late there has been a tendency to discard these, and to write more freely and naturally. There are some genuine poets in Wales to-day; but their home seems to be the college lecture-room and not the old home of the bards, the Eisteddfod.

Never has Welsh so flourished as a literary language as at present. At least nineteen weekly Welsh papers are published in Wales, eighteen monthlies, and six quarterlies; in addition to which Liverpool has its own Welsh weekly, the United States one, and Patagonia one. The output of Welsh books is not very large, but it cannot be computed at much less than a hundred in the course of every year. And Welsh is not only widely read, it is also widely spoken. In North Wales, and in at least two counties in the South it is still the language of the home, of the playground, and of public worship. And wherever the Welshman goes he carries his language with him. In America, in Patagonia, in Africa, and in Australia, there are Welsh colonies, with { 242} Welsh societies and Welsh chapels. In the United States alone the number of Welsh chapels is close upon four hundred. In Great Britain, outside Wales, the tale is the same. The numerous Welshmen who have left their own quiet homes in order to push their fortunes in the great cities have never forgotten the traditions of their youth. London has over thirty Welsh places of worship, Liverpool about the same number, Manchester nine, Birmingham four, and Bristol three, while many other English, Scottish, and Irish towns have at least one each.

The political calm of Wales was broken in 1859, the year of the last but one of the great Revivals. There was a General Election, and the tenant farmers of Merioneth decided, for the first time, that they would refuse to vote for the landlord's nominee, and would run a candidate of their own. Ruthless evictions followed; and ere long it had become the settled policy of most of the great estate holders to examine into the political, and even the religious, views of their tenants, and to expel all Radicals and Nonconformists. Persecution, however, only stiffened the determination of the people; and the contest went on. The Reform Act of 1867 helped the democratic movement; and in the following { 243} year Henry Richard was returned at the head of the poll at Merthyr Tydvil. Richard was one of the most able, and most interesting men of the day, and would have been an ornament to any representative assembly. As an advocate of peace he became known all over Europe; and was the first Welshman, in modern times, to occupy an international position. At the same Election seven Liberals were returned for Wales. Fresh evictions followed, and Welsh farmers emigrated in scores to the United States. But a measure of relief was at hand: in 1872 the Ballot Act was passed. From that day Liberalism swept onwards from victory to victory. In 1886 Tom Ellis, the noblest and most far-sighted of the men sent by Wales to Parliament, was elected for Merionethshire. Four years later David Lloyd George became Member for Carnarvonshire, and in the same year Samuel Evans (afterwards to become a famous President of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Court) was elected for Glamorgan.

Wales had now won full political recognition, and its members were in a position to bargain with the Liberal leaders for the inclusion of such measures as Welsh Disestablishment and Disendowment in the party programme. After long waiting, and much acrimonious { 244} discussion, that measure became law in 1914. It was a great act of justice, and its benefits have been felt by the formerly Established Church no less than by the Free Churches. Indeed, one of the most wonderful and hopeful things in the recent history of Wales is the way in which the new Welsh Church has organized itself, and adapted itself to the new situation. It is now a truly national body, with its own Archbishop and a thoroughly democratic constitution, in which the lay element counts for at least as much as the clerical.

Thus from being the last refuge of hunted tribesmen, a land swept time after time by the tide of invasion, Wales has come to be actively and amicably associated with England in her high destinies. Everywhere Welshmen are participating to the uttermost in the wider life of the Empire. In all the professions, in literature, in the arts, in trade, in the Civil Service, in the Army, in the Navy, and in the Diplomatic Corps they are winning distinction for themselves.

The outlook in Wales is full of promise. The old period of antagonism between Welshmen and Englishmen seems, happily, to have come to an end. The democracy has won the day; and all obstacles in the way of the { 245} development of what genius lies hidden in the people have been removed. Home Rule is sometimes spoken of, but it is generally by theorists and doctrinaire pedants. Most patriotic Welshmen would be content with a slightly increased measure of local autonomy. The vast majority of the nation are satisfied that equality of opportunity for all the inhabitants of the British Isles, irrespective of race, has been achieved, and that in literature, in art, in music, in scholarship, in the professions, in politics, and in commerce there is nothing to hinder a Welshman from winning any distinction he may merit. The discordant cry of the extreme nationalist is occasionally heard, with its glorification of all that is vulgar and unworthy of preservation in the Welsh tradition. But this wins little sympathy. As a whole the people have seen a fairer vision than that of an independent Wales: the vision of a Commonwealth living a life of ordered prosperity; upholding and illustrating the great principles of justice, equality, and freedom, to secure which so many eyes have been dimmed with tears and so many fields sodden with blood; a Commonwealth in which Wales, in virtue of its splendid tradition of passionate idealism and of tireless spiritual effort, shall enjoy a foremost place.

APPENDIX

ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES FROM WELSH LITERATURE

The following passages are intended to illustrate within short compass the spirit of the Welsh classical prose writers. For the selection the author is indebted to Mr. John Lloyd's admirable anthology Llyfr Darllen ac Ysgrifennu ; but the translation into English is his own. The attempt to translate Welsh poetry is too difficult to be essayed except by a man of peculiar gifts; and Wales is still waiting for its Edward FitzGerald.

The first passage is from the Mabinogion , a twelfth-century compilation containing a large number of ancient tales of love, romance, and war.

"How long soever they may have been on the way, they came at last to Dyfed, and went in quest of Arberth. They kindled a fire, and began to eat and to hunt, and in that manner spent a month. They assembled their dogs about them, and so remained a year. Now one morning Manawyddan and Pryderi arose to go out hunting, and got their dogs ready to depart from the court. { 247} And some of the dogs behaved in this fashion: they walked ahead, and reached a small bush close by; and as soon as they had reached the bush they instantly fled quickly back, their hair on end, and returned to their masters. 'Let us approach the bush,' said Pryderi, 'that we may see what it contains.' They approached the bush, and when they had approached, beheld a white tree boar rising out of it. Then the dogs, encouraged by the men, rushed upon it. And the boar, for its part, left the bush, and went some distance away from the men. When the men were at some distance it would bark at the dogs; but when the men drew near it again fled, and ceased to bark. And they followed the boar until they beheld a great and noble fortress newly built, where before they had never seen either stone or building. And the boar ran swiftly to the fortress, the dogs following it. And when the boar and the dogs had entered the fort they wondered at seeing a fortress where previously they had seen no building. And from the top of the throne they gazed, and listened for the dogs. But long as they waited they heard not a sound of the dogs. 'My lord,' said Pryderi, 'I will go to the fortress to enquire for the dogs.' 'Truly thou art { 248} ill-advised,' answered he, 'to go to this fort which thou hast never before seen; and if thou wilt follow my advice go thou wilt not. He who hath laid a charm upon the land must have built this fortress here.' 'Yet truly loth am I to lose my dogs,' answered Pryderi. But in spite of the counsel which he had received from Manawyddan, Pryderi would go to the fortress. When he came to it he saw nothing within, neither man nor animal, neither boar nor dogs, house nor courtyard. But in the centre of the fortress he beheld a well of marble, and by its side a golden vessel standing upon a marble slab, and chains stretching upwards towards the sky, the ends of which he could not see. Great was his delight at the beauty of the gold, and at the fine workmanship of the vessel. And he came to the vessel and laid hold of it. And as he laid hold of the vessel his hands stuck to it, and his feet to the slab upon which the vessel stood; and he was bereft of speech, so that he could utter no word. And thus he remained.

Manawyddan waited for him till the close of the day. And in the evening, believing that he should receive no more tidings of Pryderi, nor of the dogs, he returned to the court."

The next passage is from Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsc (Visions of the Sleeping Bard) of Ellis Wynne.

"On a fine afternoon of ripe and sultry summer, I betook me to the summit of one of the mountains of Wales; and with me a telescope, to help my failing sight to see things distant near at hand, and things small large. Through the clear air, and the quiet haze I could discern, far across the Irish Sea, many a delightful sight. At last, after feeding my eyes upon every sort of delight around me until the sun had almost reached his fortress in the west, I laid myself down upon the grass, musing upon the superior beauty and comeliness of the distant lands of whose kindly plains I had caught a glimpse; and envying the happy lot of those who behold their full beauty and had seen the course of the world. And so, by much travail of my eyes, and afterwards of my mind, I became weary, and in company with weariness came my Master Sleep stealthily to bind me; and with his leaden keys he locked the windows of my eyes securely, and also all my other senses. Yet was it useless for him to attempt to lock up the Soul, which can live and travel without the body; for my spirit escaped on wings of fancy out of the locked body."

"The office in which the Old Soldier held his school was a long and narrow building. Around it was a hard and bent form; and connected with it a desk which rested against the wall. One of the first things I noticed was that there was hardly a square inch of the desk's surface upon which a picture, a figure, or a name had not been carved. At the far end of the schoolroom, close to the fire, was the master's desk; and beneath it was a hole which, as I afterwards learnt, was for the master to insert his wooden leg into when he sat down. On my first entrance into the school I saw a strange and novel sight. All the boys were present, some on top of the desk, some on each other's backs playing horses and prancing round the school. One boy—a cripple with a crutch—was trying to mimic the master, sitting at the desk, his crutch thrust through the hole, and calling vainly for order. The scene changed every minute; and everyone shouted for all he was worth except one boy, who stood on top of the desk by the window, dividing his attention between the play and the road by which the master would approach. I felt strangely at the time, and believed that I { 251} had come amongst a most wicked set of boys, and that my mother, if only she knew what they were like, would never allow me to come again. On the other hand I thought it was the best place for fun that I had ever seen. But my predominant feeling at the time was a kind of painful strangeness and shyness; for Wil Bryan had left me by myself, and had joined eagerly in the games. While I was possessed by these feelings I saw the boy at the window put his two fingers to his mouth and give a shrill whistle; and in a twinkling every boy was in his place breathing quickly. I knew perfectly well that I should look foolish enough standing like a cold monument all by myself by the door when the Soldier came in. He passed me without pretending to see me. He looked angry and disturbed; and I perceived at once that the watchman had not sounded the warning sufficiently soon, and that the master had heard all the deafening uproar. He went immediately to his desk, whence he produced a long and powerful cane. I saw the boys bending in readiness, while the Soldier went about the school thrashing cruelly everybody without distinction. I was the only boy who did not taste the cane, and yet I was the only boy that wept, for I was greatly frightened."

NOTE ON BOOKS

Until comparatively recently Welsh historical works were uncritical; and although many of them contain much invaluable information, they must be read with caution. Welsh historical scholarship has, however, made great strides recently, and now there are a few excellent books available, more especially for the Middle Ages. For the later period the most valuable material is still scattered about in old numbers of such publications as the Cymmrodor, Transactions of the Cyminrodorion Society, and the Cambrian Archæological Society, Cymru Traethodydd , Y Geninen , Eisteddfod Transactions , etc.; and locked up in theses written for the post-graduate degrees of the Welsh, and other, Universities. A historian with ability to digest, and above all ability to write, is badly needed to deal with this immense volume of material.

The best general introduction is O. M. Edwards's Wales , in the "Story of the Nations" Series. It is delightfully written, and is always interesting and suggestive. Another good book is Rhŷs and Brynmor Jones's The Welsh People . Gilbert Stone has written an interesting book, Wales , especially valuable for the pre-Norman period.

For the Middle Ages the standard work is Lloyd's History of Wales , in two volumes. It is scholarly and accurate, but unfortunately only takes us down to the Edwardian Conquest. Haverfield's Roman Britain is useful. Seebohm's Tribal System in Wales adopts some exploded theories, but is still essential. Little's Mediæval Wales is brilliant and suggestive. Barbier's Age of Owen Gwynedd is interesting. Morris's Welsh Wars of Edward I is valuable for much besides military affairs. Hugh Williams's learned work on Christianity in Early Britain should be consulted. Other books of interest are Peake's Bronze Age and the Celtic World , and Lewis's Mediæval Boroughs of Snowdonia . Always brilliant, though not always reliable, is Rhoscomyl's Flame Bearers of Welsh History .

Good biographies of mediæval Welshmen are few. Henry Owen's Gerald the Welshman is good; also Bradley's Owen Glyndwr . Tout's Edward I should be consulted, also Wade Evans's St. David .

For later times we begin with Llewelyn Williams's { 253} Making of Modern Wales . It is scholarly, original, and well written; but in parts should be read with great caution. Bowen's Statutes of Wales is invaluable. Other works of value are Skeel, Council of the Welsh Marches , J. H. Davies's Introduction in his edition of the works of Morgan Llwyd; Morrice's Wales in the Seventeenth Century ; D. R. Jones's Y Deffroad Addysgawl; The Welsh University (College Histories Series); Elvet Lewis's Nonconformity in Wales . There are some good biographies, notably: Pollard's Henry VIII ; Pierce's John Penry ; David Jones's Life and Times of Griffith Jones of Llanddowror ; Ambrose Jones's Griffith Jones ; Hughes's Life of Howel Harris ; Jenkins's Thomas Charles of Bala ; Gwynn Jones's Cofiant Thomas Gee Owen Thomas's Cofiant John Jones Talsarn ; Williams's Thomas Charles Edwards ; McCabe's Robert Owen ; W. E. Davies's Sir Hugh Owen .

Welsh history, like that of most countries, requires a study of contemporary literature, both prose and poetry, for its true understanding. The following works will be found most useful: Gildas; The Mabinogion ; Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histories ; Theophilus Evans's Drych y Prif Oesoedd ; Ellis Wynne's Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsc ; Vicar Pritchard's Camvyll y Cymry ; Morgan Llwyd's Llyfr y Tri Aderyn . The letters of the brothers Morris, and of Goronwy Owen are illuminating. For social life the novels of Daniel Owen are invaluable. The numerous poets published by O. M. Edwards in Cyfres y Fil , together with the Introduction contained in the majority of them, are of the utmost importance. Dr. Edward's Traethodau Llenyddol contains many interesting historical essays. Shakespeare's historical plays ought not to be neglected.

For Welsh literature and language the following books should be consulted: Morrice's Manual of Welsh Literature ; Robert Owen's The Eymry ; Griffith's Llenyddiaeth Cymru ; Renan, Poetry of the Celtic Races .

English historians, as a rule, have dealt inadequately, and often ignorantly, with Wales. Bearing this in mind, the student would do well to turn to the Political History of England , Green, Clarendon, Gardiner, and Lecky.

INDEX

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