Chapter I: HAVE told you much about princes and soldiers, but very little about (1)

the lowly life of peasants, and the trade of towns.

The conquest of Wales, by Norman baron and English king, tended to raise the serf to the level of the freeman. The chief causes of the rise of the serf were the following:

1 The ignorance of the English officials. The Norman baron very often paid close attention to the privileges of the classes he ruled, and the Welsh freeman retained his superiority. But the English officials—and Edward II. found that they were far too numerous in Wales—often refused to distinguish between a Welshman who was an innate freeman and a Welshman who lived on a serf maenol. Their aim was to make them all pay the same tax.

2. The fall in the value of money. At the time of the Norman Conquest, silver coins were rare, and their value high. But, in exchange for cloth and wool, of arrows and spears, of mountain ponies and cattle, coins came in great numbers, and it was easier for the serf to earn them. That is the value of coins became less.

This was a great boon to all who were bound to pay fixed sums—the freeman who paid to the king the dues he used to pay to his prince, the serf who paid to his lord a sum of money instead of service. All ancient servitude, political and economic, was commuted for money; as the money became easier to get, the serf became the more free.

3. The rise of towns and the growth of commerce. We must not, however, think of commerce as if it had been first brought by the Normans. There had been roads and coins in Roman times. The Danes had been traders, probably, before they became pirates and invaders. Timber, millstones, cattle, coarse cloth, and arrow-heads crossed the Severn eastwards before the Normans saw it; and corn was carried westward. There were close relations, political and commercial, between Wales and Ireland from very early times.

But the Norman and English Conquests revived and quickened trade. Towns rose, regular markets were established, and the barons who took tolls protected the merchants who paid them. Every baron had a castle, every castle needed a walled town, and a town cannot live except by trade. In the town the baron did not ask a Welshman whether he had been free or serf; the townsmen were strangers, and they welcomed the serf who came to work.

4. The monk and the friar. The bard was a freeman born, a skilled weaver of courteous phrases, not a churlish _taeog_. The monk or friar might be a serf. They worked like serfs, and ennobled labour. The Church condemned serfdom, and we find chapters giving their serfs freedom.

5. The Scotch and French wars of the English kings gave employment to hosts of bowmen and of men-at-arms, and to the numerous attendants required to look after the horses by means of which the army moved. The greater use of infantry after the reign of Edward I. caused a greater demand for the peasant; and the use of the cheap long-bow gave him a value in war. There were five thousand Welsh archers and spearmen on the field of Cressy. In these and other ways the serf was becoming free.

You would expect a gradual, almost unconscious struggle, between the serf and his lord for political power. The struggle came, but it was conscious and very fierce. It was brought about by a terrible pestilence, known as the Black Death. This plague came slowly and steadily from the East; in 1348 it reached Bristol, and it probably swept away one half of the people of the towns of Wales. It was not the towns alone that it visited; it came to the mountain glens as well. It was a most deadly disease. It killed, for one thing, because people believed that they would die. They saw the dark spots on the skin before they became feverish; they recognised the black mark of the Death and they gave themselves up for lost.

Labourers became very scarce. They claimed higher wages. The lords tried to drag them back into serfdom; they tried to force them by law to take the old wage. On both sides of the Severn the labourers took arms, and waged war against their lords. The peasant war in England is called the Peasant Revolt; the peasant war in Wales is sometimes called the revolt of Owen Glendower.

A change came over the rebellions in Wales. At first, the rebellions were those of Llywelyn’s country; the allies who had deserted him, and then turned against Edward, like Rees ap Meredith; or his own followers, like Madoc, who said he was his son; or men he had protected, like Maelgwn Vychan in Pembroke. Later on, under Edward II. and Edward III., the rebellions were against the march lords, and the king was looked upon as a protector—such as the rebellion of Llywelyn Bren against the Clares and Mortimers in Glamorgan in 1316. But the wilder spirits went to the French wars, and fought for both sides. With the assassination of Owen of Wales in 1378, the last of Llywelyn’s near relatives to dream of restoring the independence of Wales, the rebellions against the King of England came to an end.

When they broke out again, it was not in Snowdon or Ceredigion; the old dominions of Llywelyn were almost unwilling to rise. The new revolts were in the march lands, and especially in the towns.

XV OWEN GLENDOWER

THE English baron in Wales tried to add to his possessions by encroaching on the lands of the Welsh freemen. His estate always remained the same, because it all went to the eldest son, according to what is called primogeniture; their lands, on the other hand, were divided between the sons according to what is called gavelkind. He also, by laws they did not understand, took the waste land—forest and mountain. As one man can more easily watch his interest than many, the baron succeeded; but the freemen felt that they were being robbed.

The tenants of the barons were restless and rebellious; they said they were free, that they would not work as serfs, that they would not bring food rents, but that they would pay a fixed rent for every acre they held.

At Ruthin, in the Vale of Clwyd, there was a baron called Lord Grey; and in the valley of the Dee there was a Welsh squire called Owen Glendower. Their lands met, and Grey took part of Owen’s sheep walk. Owen had been a law student at Westminster, and he had served Henry of Lancaster. In 1399 Richard II. had been dethroned, and the barons had made Henry of Lancaster king as Henry IV. Owen saw, however, that the king was too weak to curb his lawless barons, and in 1400 he attacked Lord Grey, and burnt Ruthin.

The rebellion that had long been smouldering burst into a flame all over the country. Owen was at once welcomed by the bard, the friar, and the peasant. The bard hailed his star as that of the heir of the princes, who had come to deliver his country. The friar welcomed him as the friend of the poor and of learning; and unruly students from Oxford, then the centre of a great intellectual awakening, flocked home to march under his banner. The peasant welcomed him as his protector against the steward of his lord. The main strength of the movement was the peasant revolt; and Welsh poets, like the English ones, sang the praises of the ploughman and of the plough.

Owen’s success was most rapid, so rapid that it was put down to magic. In four years the whole of Wales recognised him as its prince. Henry IV. and Prince Henry came to Wales, made rapid marches and retook castles, punished the friars of Llan Vaes and the monks of Strata Florida. But their victories led to nothing, and the storms fought against them. Owen’s victories were used to the full—that of the Vyrnwy was followed by an agreement with Grey of Ruthin, that of Bryn Glas by an alliance with the Mortimers. His marches were nearly all triumphant; he was welcomed along the whole line of the marches by the peasants to the furthest corners of Gwent.

Owen was wise enough to see that no abiding power can be based on a popular rising. He tried to establish a government that the King of England could not overthrow. He had three institutions in mind—an independent Wales, governed by him as Prince in a Parliament of representatives of the commotes; an independent Welsh Church, with an Archbishop of St David’s at its head; and an independent system of learning and civilisation, guided by two Universities, one in North Wales and one in South Wales.

The new Wales was to be safeguarded by four alliances—with the English barons, with the Pope, with Scotland, and with France. He failed to save the Percies from their defeat at Shrewsbury in 1403; but he based all his plans on an alliance with the Mortimers, the enemies of Lancaster and the Percies. The head of the Mortimer family had died in Ireland in 1398, and had left four young children. They were the real heirs to the crown, and Owen meant to win their throne for them. Their uncle, Edmund Mortimer, married Glendower’s daughter. But the young Earl of March, the elder of the Mortimer boys, had no ambition, and a plot to bring him and his brother to Owen failed.

The Papacy had always proved to be a broken reed for Welsh princes; but Owen’s alliance with Peter de Luna, the anti-Pope Benedict XIII., gave a certain amount of prestige to his title. The alliance with Scotland, based on common kinship, could bring him no help at that time: because it was torn between two factions during the reign of the weak Robert III.; and the next king, the poet James I., was captured at sea and put into an English prison.

The French alliance was much more promising; it would give what Owen wanted most—siege engines, a fleet, and an army of trained soldiers. Charles VI. of France, the father-in-law of the deposed Richard, refused to make peace with the usurper Henry; his fleet protected the Welsh coast, and in 1405 a French army of 2,800 men landed at Milford.

Owen struggled on, with waning power, until his death in 1415. He came too soon for success, while the power of the House of Lancaster was increasing.

Of all figures in the history of Wales, that of Owen Glendower is the most striking and the most popular. The place of his grave is unknown, his lineage and the date of his death a matter of conjecture; there is much mystery about even his most brilliant years. But his majestic figure, his wisdom, and his ideals remained in the memory of his country. His ghost wandered, it was said, around Valle Crucis. His spirit, more than that of any hero of the past, seems to follow his people on their onward march. This is not on account of his political ideals, but because he was the champion of the peasant and of education.

XVI THE WARS OF THE ROSES

THE reign of Henry V. was a reign of brilliant victories in France, and the reign of Henry VI. one of disastrous defeats. During both reigns the lords were becoming more powerful in Wales as well as in England. The hold of the king over them became weaker every year; they packed the Parliament, they appointed the Council, they overawed the law courts. If a man wanted security, he must wear the badge of some lord, and fight for him when called upon to do so. In the marches of Wales there were more than a hundred lords holding castle and court; and it was easy for a robber or a murderer to escape from one lordship to the other, or even to find a welcome and protection. In Wales and in the marches the lords preyed upon their weaker neighbours, and the country became full of private war.

The selfish families, all fighting for more land and more power, gradually formed themselves into two parties—the parties of the Red Rose and of the White Rose. The leading family in the Red Rose party was that of Lancaster, represented by the saintly King Henry VI.; the leading family in the White Rose party was that of York. In the Wars of the Roses, York and Lancaster fought over the crown, and those who supported them over a castle or an estate.

Wales was divided. The west was for Lancaster, from Pembroke to Harlech, and from Harlech to Anglesey. The east was for York, from Cardiff and Raglan to Wigmore, and from Wigmore to Chirk. Lancaster held estates in Wales and on the border—the castles of Hereford, Skenfrith, Ogmore, and Kidwelly being centres of strength and wealth. York’s chief country was the march of Wales, with Ludlow as its centre. The Welsh barons took sides according to their interests. Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, held the west for his half-brother, the king. Sir William Herbert, who was very powerful in the country south of the Mortimers, took the side of his powerful neighbour. Others wavered, especially Grey of Ruthin and the Stanleys in North Wales.

One battle was fought between the Welsh Yorkists and the Welsh Lancastrians. This was the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, near Wigmore, in February 1461. The victor was the young Duke of York, who was crowned king as Edward IV. later in the year. An old man, Owen Tudor, the father of Jasper Tudor, and the grandfather of the boy who was “to rule after them all” as Henry VII., was taken prisoner. They took him to Hereford, and there they cut his head off and set it on the market cross. The battles of the Wars of the Roses were very cruel ones; the noble prisoners that had been taken, even children of tender age, were murdered in cold blood on the evening of the battle. “By God’s blood,” said one, as he killed a child, “thy father slew mine, and so will I do thee.”

The Welsh barons led their men to nearly all the important battles. North Wales archers, wearing the three feathers of the Prince of Wales, fought for Lancaster in the snow at the great defeat of Towton on the Palm Sunday of 1461; the archers of Gwent, led by Herbert, fought vainly for York at the battle of Edgecote, in the summer of 1469. And the Welsh waverer and traitor was seen in battle also—Grey of Ruthin led the van for Lancaster at the battle of Northampton in 1460, and caused the battle to be lost by deserting to York at the be ginning of the fighting. In Wales itself, also, the war was fought bitterly; and the stubborn defence of Harlech for the Lancastrians became famous through the whole country. The last battle fought between Lancaster and York was the battle of Tewkesbury, in May 1471, and Lancaster lost it; the Prince of Wales, the king’s only son, was killed; and his heroic mother, Margaret of Anjou, gave the struggle up. A young Welsh noble—Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond—became the Lancastrian heir. The fortunes of his house were hopeless, however; and his uncle, Jasper, sent him in safety to Brittany.

The Yorkist kings, Edward IV. and Richard III., in spite of cruelty and murder, ruled well. They broke the power of the barons, and they made the people rich—by maintaining peace, by repressing piracy, by protecting the woollen industry of the towns.

In Wales their rule was for peace and order. They made a Court for Wales at Ludlow, the home of their race. From Ludlow they began to force the barons to do justice and to obey the king. It seemed as if the rule of the Yorkists was to be a long one, for they were very popular in London and the towns.

But the nobles were not willing to see their power taken from them day by day. Jasper Tudor appealed to the loyalty of the Welsh, and the men of West Wales wanted a king of their own blood; for the laws had been made unjust to them ever since the time of Owen Glendower.

Many attempts were made, and they failed. But at last, on August 7, 1485, the fugitive Earl of Richmond came to Milford Haven. He marched on to the valley of the Teivy, and he was joined by Sir Rees ap Thomas, and an army of South Wales men; he journeyed on through the valley of the Severn, and the North Wales men joined him; English nobles joined him as he marched by Shrewsbury, Stafford, Lichfield, and Tamworth. Richard’s army was also on the march. At Bosworth, August 22, 1485, the two armies met in the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. Richard fought fiercely, wearing his crown; and when he was defeated and killed, the crown was placed on Henry’s head.

The people of England did not care who ruled, Richard or Henry, as long as he kept order, for they were very tired of civil war. But the people of Wales welcomed Henry as a Welshman who would rule them kindly and justly.

XVII TUDOR ORDER

THE Tudors—Henry VII., his son, Henry VIII., and his three grandchildren, Edward VI. and Mary and Elizabeth—ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603. Under them the people became united, law-abiding, patriotic, and prosperous. The Tudor period is justly regarded as the most glorious in British history, with its great statesmen, its great adventurers, and its great poets.

The Tudors were loyally supported by Wales, by the military strength of men like Sir Rees ap Thomas or the Earl of Pembroke, and by the diplomatic skill of the Cecils. Under their rule—hard and unmerciful, but just and efficient—the law became strong enough to crush the mightiest and to shield the weakest. Welshmen found that, even under their own sovereigns, their ancient language was regarded as a hindrance and their patriotism as a possible source of trouble; but they obtained the privileges of an equal race, and they were pleased to regard themselves as a dominant one.

They obtained equal political privileges. The laws which denied them residence in the garrison towns in Wales, or the holding of land in England, came to an end. The whole of the country, shire ground and march ground, was divided into one system of shires and given representation in Parliament, by the Act of Union of 1535. It is called an Act of Union because, by it, Wales and England were united on equal terms.

Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, and Carmarthen had been shires since I 284; and small portions of Glamorgan and Pembroke had been governed like shires, so that some Tudor writers call them counties. The chief difference between a shire and a lordship is that the king’s writ runs to the shire, but not to the lordship. The king administers the law in the shire, through the sheriff; the lord administers the law in the lordship through his own officials.

In 1535 the marches of Wales were turned into shire ground. The bulk of them went to make seven new shires—Pembroke, Glamorgan, Monmouth, Brecon, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh. The others were added to the older English and Welsh counties. Of these, those added to Shropshire and Herefordshire and Gloucestershire became part of England. Monmouth also was declared to be an English shire, for judicial purposes; but it has remained sturdily Welsh, and now it is practically regarded by Parliament as part of Wales. The whole country was now governed in the same way, and Wales was represented, like England, in Parliament. No attempt had been made to do this before, except by the first English Prince of Wales, the weak and unfortunate Edward II.

Of even greater value than political equality was the new reign of law. The Tudors used the Star Chamber, the Court of Wales, and the Great Sessions of Wales, to make all equal before the law. To the Star Chamber they summoned a noble who was still too powerful for the court of law.

But it was the Court of Wales that did most work. It was held at Ludlow. It had very able presidents, men like Bishop Lee, the Earl of Pembroke, and Sir Henry Sidney. Bishop Lee struck terror into the whole Welsh march, between 1534 and 1543. Before his time a lord would keep murderers and robbers at his castle, protect them, and perhaps share their spoil. But no man could keep a felon out of the reach of Bishop Rowland Lee. If he could not get them alive he got their dead bodies; and you might have seen processions of men carrying sacks on ponies—they were dead men who were to swing on Ludlow gibbets. But, severe as Lee was, the peasant was glad that he could go to the Court at Ludlow instead of going to the court of a march lord, as he had to do before 1535. The shire had been much better governed than the lordship. When the lordship of Mawddwy was added to the shire of Merioneth in 1535, the officers of the shire found that it was a nest of brigands and outlaws.

In the more peaceful and humane days of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Henry Sidney became President of the Court of Wales. He was one of the best men of the day; and he was proud of ruling Wales and the border counties, “a third part of this realm,” because his high office made him able “to do good every day.”

Besides the Court of Wales for the whole country, a court of justice was held in each of four groups of shires; and these courts were called the Great Sessions of Wales. So, though the law was the same for everybody, Wales had a separate system to itself, partly because there was so much to do, and partly because the central courts in London were so far away. Much was also done to get wise and learned justices of the peace, and fair juries.

By the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, one may say that Wales rejoiced in the following:

1. There was no hatred between England and Wales; the Welsh gentry served the Queen on land and sea, and the people were more happy and contented than they had been since the time of Llywelyn.

2. There was no danger of private war between lords, to which the peasant might be summoned. The brigands which infested parts of the country had been cleared away.

3. The law of land had been fixed. It was determined that land was to go to the eldest son, according to the English fashion. All the land became the property of some landlord, and it was decided who was a landowner, and who was not. The Welsh freemen were held to own their land; the Welsh serfs, the descendants of an old conquered race, sometimes became owners and sometimes tenants. They all thought that Henry VII., the Welsh victor of Bosworth, had set them free.

4. The Tudors trusted their people, and called upon them to govern and to administer justice themselves. The squires were to be justices, the freemen were to be jurors; the shire was to look after the militia, and the parish after the poor.

XVIII THE REFORMATION

THE Reformation in England was, to begin with, a purely political movement. Henry VIII. wished to rule his people in his own way, in religion as well as in politics; and, eventually, he became Supreme Head of the Church as well as the king of the country. His new power brought changes. It was necessary to reform the Church, and the wealth of the monasteries tempted him to do it. There was a new spirit of enquiry, and the King was led on by that spirit, with dilatory and hesitating steps, to examine old creeds. The religious fervour of the Reformation had caught the people; and the King stood still, if he did not turn back.

But his ministers had no misgivings. Thomas Cromwell tried to hurry the Reformation on—the monasteries were dissolved, the Bible was translated, and the sway of Rome was disowned. The king appointed the bishops, decided church cases, and even determined what the creed of his country was to be. Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., made the movement a doctrinal one, and forced it on with equal vigour.

Wales looked on, with indifference and apathy at first, and then with murmurs. The movement had no attraction: it had many causes of offence. In England the political movement became a patriotic, an intellectual, and a religious movement; and it succeeded. In Ireland, also, it was political, but it could not appeal to patriotism, because it was an English movement; and it failed. In Wales, it was neither welcomed nor opposed; it was simply tolerated, and with a bad grace.

For one thing, it brought English instead of Latin into public worship. Latin, the old language of prayer and even of sermon, was venerated, though not understood. But English was not only not understood, it was also regarded as inferior to Welsh. The Tudors’ dislike of various tongues was as strong as their dislike of various jurisdictions. Henry VIII., in giving Welshmen the Act of 1535, says that the tongue of Owen Tudor is “nothing like ne consonant to the natural mother-tongue used within this realm,” and enacts that all officials in Wales shall speak English. And, in the same spirit, the Welshman was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was now open to him, but that he must seek it in English, or not at all.

Again, the reformers—men of the type of Bishop Barlow—despised and shocked a people they never understood. The sanctity of St David’s, the theme of the best poets of the Middle Ages and the goal of generations of pilgrims, was described by its Protestant bishop—who unroofed the palace in order to get the lead—as a desolate angle frequented only by vagabond pilgrims. A Welshman is not appealed to by what is an insult to his country and a shock to his religion at the same time. The relics were ruthlessly swept away; they were taken possession of by the agents of Cromwell and destroyed, or sent to London. The images carried in the village processions were lost—the images that could keep the superstitious Welshman from hell, or even bring him back from it, or heal his diseases, or keep his cattle from the murrain, and his crops from blight. I only know of one of those relics that can still be seen. It is the healing cup of Nant Eos, a mere fragment of wood. The people’s faith in the relics can be estimated from the fact that the cup has been used within the last century.

Again, the monasteries were dissolved. The wealth of the monasteries, their meadows and barns and sheep-runs and fish ponds, were coveted by the rich; the poor thought of them as sources of alms. The monks were good landlords; and they gave freely, not only the comforts of religion, but of their medicinal herbs and stores of food. The Welsh monasteries were not so rich as those of England, and they were all dissolved among the lesser monasteries—those with an income under £200 a year. But though none of them were very rich, they nearly all had almost £200 a year. Their loss affected the whole country, as each part of Wales had one or two of them—Tintern, Margam, Neath, and Whitland in the south; Strata Florida, Cwm Hir, Ystrad Marchell, and the Vanner in central Wales; and Basingwerk and Maenan in the north.

The Reformation brought the poorer classes in Wales, not only insults to their national and religious feelings, but material loss. It appealed only to the English bishops who had adopted the new Protestant tenets, and to the Welsh and English landowners who had lost their reverence for relics, and had learnt to hunger for land.

The movement was a severe strain on the loyalty of the Welshman to the Tudors, but he had learnt to look to the king for guidances and he suffered in silence. Mary was welcomed, and no Welsh blood was shed for the Protestant faith. The passive resistance to the Reformation might have broken out into a rebellion if a leader had come.

In Elizabeth’s reign two attempts were made to disturb the religious settlement. One was made by the Jesuits—the wonderful society established to check the Reformation movement and to lead a reaction against it. In 1583 John Bennett came to North Wales; in 1595 Robert Jones came to Raglan; and several Welsh Jesuits suffered martyrdom. The other attempt was that of John Penry, who wished to appeal to the intellect of the people by means of the pulpit and the printing press. The apostle of the new creed was crushed, like those who wished to revive the old; he was put to death as a traitor in 1593, after a short life of importunate pleading that he might preach the Gospel in Wales.

Before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, however, the Welsh language was recognised. The last school founded, that of Ruthin in 1595, was to have a master who could teach and preach in Welsh. And in 1588 there had appeared, by the help of Archbishop Whitgift, the Welsh Bible of William Morgan. It was the appearance of this Bible that aroused the first real welcome to the Reformation. But the Reformation that gave England a Spenser and a Shakespeare aroused no new life in Wales, not a single hymn or a single prayer.

XIX THE CIVIL WAR

AFTER the Tudors came the Stuarts. The Tudors did what their people wanted; the king and the people, between them, crushed the nobles. The Stuarts did what they thought right, and they did not try to please the people. Under the Tudors, there was harmony between Crown and Parliament; and Elizabeth left a prosperous people with strong views about their rights and their religion. But James I., and especially his son Charles I., tried to change law and religion. From the Tudor period of unity, then, we come to the Stuart period of strife.

From 1603 to 1642 the struggle went on in Parliament. The Welsh Members nearly all supported the king, and the Welsh people followed the Welsh gentry in strong loyalty. The most famous Welshman of the period was John Williams, who became Archbishop of York and Lord Keeper. He was a wise man; he saw that both sides were a little in the wrong; and if any one could have kept the peace between them, he could have done it. But the king did not quite trust him, and the Parliament almost despised him; and this happens often to wise men who get between two angry parties.

From 1642 to 1646, the First Civil War was waged. This was a war between the king and the Parliament over taxation, militia, and religion. The south-east, and London especially, were for Parliament; the wilder parts, especially Wales, were for the king. The only important part of Wales that declared for Parliament was the southern part of Pembrokeshire, which had been English ever since the reign of Henry II.

Wales was important to the king for two reasons. For one thing, it could give him an army, and he came, time after time, to get a new one. When he unfurled his flag and began the war at Nottingham in 1642, he came to Shrewsbury, and there five thousand Welshmen joined him. With these and others he marched against London, fighting the battle of Edgehill on the way. While the king made many attempts to get London until 1644, and while the New Model army attacked him between 1645 and 1647, the Welsh fought in nearly all his battles, their infantry suffering heavily in the two greatest battles, Marston Moor and Naseby. The war went on in Wales itself also—Rupert and Gerard being the chief Royalist leaders, and Middleton and Michael Jones being the chief Parliamentary ones. No great battles were fought, but there were several skirmishes, and much taking and retaking of castles and towns.

Wales was important to the king, also, because it commanded the two ways to Ireland. The King thought, almost to the last, that an Irish army would save him. Welsh garrisons held the two ports for Ireland, Chester and Bristol. Bristol was stormed by a great midnight assault, and Chester was forced to yield. In March 1647 Harlech yielded, and the war came to an end. By that time the king was a prisoner in the hands of the army.

The Second Civil War, in 1648 and 1649, was a struggle between the two sections of the victorious army. The Parliament wished to establish one religion, the army said that every man must be allowed to worship God as he liked. One was called the Presbyterian ideal, the other the Independent. The army was led by Cromwell, and Parliament was overawed. Then the Presbyterian parts rose in revolt—Kent, Pembrokeshire, and the lowlands of Scotland. The New Model army marched against the Welsh, in order to break the connection between the northern and southern Presbyterians. The Welsh generals were Laugharne, Poyer, and Powell, who had all fought for Parliament in the first war. They were defeated at St Fagans, near Cardiff, and then driven into Pembroke. They determined to hold out to the last within its walls. Cromwell besieged them, and the great feature of the war was the siege of Pembroke. Walls and castles like those of Pembroke had become useless because of gunpowder. But Cromwell could not at once bring his guns so far. His difficulties were increasing daily: the Parliament was trying to come to terms with the king, all Wales around him was disaffected, the Scotch had crossed the border and were marching on London. After many weeks of assaults and desperate defence, the guns came and the old walls were battered down. Pembroke Castle, whose great round tower still stands, had protected William Marshall against Llywelyn and had enabled an important district to remain a “little England beyond Wales,” was the last mediæval castle to take an important part in war. The Scotch were soon defeated at the battle of Preston, and the king was brought to trial and put to death, the death-warrant being signed by two Welshmen—John Jones of Merioneth and Thomas Wogan of Cardigan. The date of Charles’ execution is January 20, 1649.

The Commonwealth was established immediately, and Wales was looked upon with much distrust—the Presbyterian parts and the Royalist parts—by the new Government. It was represented in the English Parliaments, it is true, but its representatives were often English, and practically appointed by the Government. When the country was put under the military dictatorship of the major-generals, Harrison was sent to rule Wales.

Honest attempts were made to give it an efficient clergy; but the zeal of Vavasour Powel aroused much opposition. Wales either clung tenaciously to its old religion; or, if it changed it, the changes were extreme. Though the country generally returned to its old life and thought at the Restoration in 1660, much of the new life of the Commonwealth remained: congregations of Independents still met; Quaker ideals survived all persecution; and even the mysticism of Morgan Lloyd permeated the slowly awakening thought of the peasants whom, in his dreams, he saw welcoming the second advent of Christ.

XX THE GREAT REVOLUTION

EXCEPT to the reader who is of a legal or antiquarian turn of mind, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the least interesting in the history of Wales—the very centuries that are the most glorious and the most stirring in the history of England. The older historians stop when they come to the year 1284, and sometimes give a hasty outline of a few rebellions up to 1535. They then give the Welsh a glowing testimonial as a law-abiding and loyal people, and find them too uninteresting to write any more about them.

The history of Wales does, indeed, appear to be nothing more than the gradual disappearance of Welsh institutions. The Court of Wales was restored with the king in 1660; but its work had been done, and it came to an end in 1689. The Great Sessions came to an end in 1830; and, though we now see that their disappearance was a mistake, the bill abolishing them passed through Parliament without a division. The last difference between England and Wales was deleted; and if Wales has no separate existence left, why should we write or read its history?

Because the two centuries of apparent settlement and sleep were the period of a silent revolution, more important, if our aim is to explain the living present rather than the dead past, than all the exciting plots and battles of the House of Cunedda from the rise of Maelgwn to the fall of the last Llywelyn. During these centuries, the history of Wales ceases to be the history of princes and nobles, it becomes the history of the people. Owen Glendower’s few years of power were a kind of prophecy; but Owen once appeared to the abbot of Valle Crucis, so tradition says, to declare that he had come before his time. We pass then, very gradually, from the history of a privileged class, speaking literary Welsh, with a literature famous for the wealth of its imagination and the artistic beauty of its form—we pass on to the history of a peasantry, rude and ignorant at first, retaining the servile traits of centuries of subjection, but gradually becoming self-reliant, prosperous, and thoughtful.

The real history of a nation is shown by its literature. Its records and its chronicles are but the notes and comments of various ages. In the period of the princes and nobles, you can trace the rise and decline of a great literature; watch how it gathers strength and beauty from Cynddelw to Dafydd ap Gwilym, and how the strength begins to fail and the beauty to wane, from Dafydd ap Gwilym to Tudur Aled. In the period of the people, from Tudor times on, the peasants tried at first to imitate the poetry of the past; then they began to write and think in their own way. It is not my aim to explain the periods of Welsh literature now; I am going to do that in another book. But, as I have mentioned three typical poets in the period of the princes, I will also mention three poets in the period of the people.

In 1579 Rees Prichard was born; in 1717, Williams Pant y Celyn; in 1832, Islwyn. We have, in these three, writers typical of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries respectively. Rees Prichard, still affectionately remembered in every Welsh home as the “Old Vicar,” wrote stanzas in the dialect of the Vale of Towy—rough, full of peasant phrases and mangled English words; and he wrote them, not in books, but on the memory of the people. In the same valley, a century later, Williams Pant y Celyn wrote hymns, melodious and inspiring, of great poetic beauty, though with a trace of dialect; they were written and published, but they also haunted every ear that heard them. Beyond the Black Mountains, in the hills of West Monmouth, after another century, Islwyn wrote odes without a trace of dialect; they were written and remained for some time in manuscript; when published, they met with a welcome which shows clearly that Islwyn is the typical poet of modern Welsh thought. If you wish to see and realise the rise of the Welsh peasant, pass from the homely stanzas of the good Old Vicar’s _Welshmen’s Candle_ to the poetic theology of Pant y Celyn, and from that to the poetic philosophy of Islwyn, where concentrated intensity of thought is expressed in a style that is, at any rate at its best, superior to the best work of the poets of the princes.

If I were to tell you the reasons for this change, I would be writing, in a slightly different form, what I have already written in this book about early Welsh history. The fall of Llywelyn, the Black Death, Owen Glendower’s ideals and the Tudor legislation, all prepared the way.

The long-bow and gunpowder, we have seen, made the peasant as important as the noble in war. The long-bow made the coat of mail useless, gunpowder made the castle useless—the defence of the privileges of the Middle Ages departed.

Ideas of equality were advanced. They were looked upon at first as truths applicable only to a perfect and impossible condition, and their discoverers were ignored, if not hanged or burnt. But they always became a reality, and were victorious in the end. Take the truths discovered or championed by Welshmen. Walter Brute rediscovered the theory of justification by faith—that all men are equal in the sight of God, and that no lord could be responsible for them. Bishop Pecock advocated the doctrine of toleration—that reason, not persecution, should rule. John Penry claimed that the people had a right to discuss publicly the questions that vitally affected them. The history of the past shows that the apostles were condemned, the life of the present shows that their ideas lived.

Industry and commerce became more free. In Tudor times piracy was repressed, the march lordships were abolished, the privileges of the towns ceased to fetter manufacture, trade with England became free. In Stuart times roads were made, the industries depending on wool revived, and the industries of Britain began to move westwards towards the iron and the coal. In the Hanoverian period waste lands were enclosed, the slate mines of the north and the coal pits of the south were opened.

The Tudors succeeded in getting the upper classes to speak English, and to turn their backs on Welsh life. The peasant was left supreme: he knew not what to do at first, but light soon came.

Pass through Wales, and you will see the life of both periods—the ruined castles and the ruined monasteries of the old; the quarries and pits, the towns and ports, the churches and chapels, the schools and colleges of the present.

XXI HOWEL HARRIS

IT is difficult to write about religion without giving offence. Religion will come into politics, and must come into history. It has given much, perhaps most, of its strength to modern Wales; it has given it many, if not most, of its political difficulties.

There are periods of religious calm and periods of religious fervour in the life of every nation. I do not know whether it is necessary, but it is certainly the fact—the two periods condemn each other with great energy. With regard to creed—the life of religion—you will find that the periods of energy tend to be Calvinistic—an intense belief that man is a mere instrument in the hands of God, working out plans he does not understand; while in periods of rest it tends to be Arminian—a comfortable belief that man sees his future clearly, and that he can guide it as he likes. With regard to the Church—the body of religion—it is fortunate, in times of calm, if it is established, to keep the spirit of religion alive; it is fortunate, in times of fervour, if it is free, in order that the new life may give it a more perfect shape.

Now we must remember that there can be no calm without a little indifference, and that there can be no enthusiasm without a little intolerance. So men call each other fanatics and bigots and hypocrites, because they have not taken the trouble to realise that there is much variety in human character and in the workings of the human mind. Perhaps it is also worth remembering that an institution is not placed at the mercy of a reformer, but gradually changed.

The eighteenth century was a century of indifference in religion in Wales, the nineteenth century was a century of enthusiasm. The Church at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at any rate as far as the higher clergy were concerned, was apathetic to religion, and alive only to selfish interests. The Whig bishops were appointed for political reasons; they hated the Tory principles of the Welsh squires, and they neglected and despised the Welsh people they had never tried to understand. In England, the Defoes and the Swifts of literature were encouraged and utilised by the political parties; in Wales, where clergymen were the only writers, the Whig bishops distrusted them, and silenced them where they could, because they wrote Welsh. The Church did not show more misapplication of revenue than the State, perhaps; but, while the people could not leave the State as a protest against corruption, they could leave the Church. And, during the middle of the eighteenth century, a great national awakening began.

The trumpet blast of the awakening was Howel Harris. He was a Breconshire peasant, of strong passion which became sanctified by a life-long struggle, of devouring ambition which he nearly succeeded in taming to a life of intense service to God. Many bitter things have been said about him, but nothing more bitter than he has said about himself in the volumes of prayers and recriminations he wrote to torture his own soul, and to goad himself into harder work. The fame of his eloquence filled the land, and districts expected his appearance anxiously, as in old times they expected Owen Glendower. Howel Harris was, however, no political agitator. He had an imperious will, and he wished to rule his brethren; he was aggressive and military in spirit; God to him was the Lord of Hosts; he preached the gospel of peace in the uniform of an officer of the militia, and he sent many of his converts to fight abroad in the battles of the century. He had a love of organisation; he established at Trevecca what was partly a religious community, and partly a co-operative manufacturing company. But, wherever he stood to proclaim the wrath of God, no shower of stones or condemnation of minister or justice could make those who heard him forget him, or believe that what he said was wrong.

If I were writing for antiquarians, and not for those who read history in order to see why things are now as they are, I would write details—important and instructive—about the Church of the eighteenth century, and about the congregations of Dissenters which the seventeenth century handed over to the eighteenth to persecute and despise. The Independents and Baptists sturdily maintained their principles of religious liberty, but they found the century a stiff-necked one, and their congregations were content with merely existing. The Quakers maintained that war was wrong while Britain passed through war fever after war fever—the Seven Years’ War and the wars against Napoleon. Howel Harris’ voice might have been a voice crying in the wilderness, if it had not been for the spiritual life of the existing congregations, conformist and dissenting. Modern ideas in Wales have been profoundly affected by the Quakers, and especially in districts from which, as a sect, they have long passed away.

The voice of Howel Harris called all these to a new life; and it is about that new life, in the variety given it by all the different actors in it, that I want you to think now. It made preaching necessary, for one thing; and it was followed by a century of great pulpit oratory. It profoundly affected literature. It gave Wales, to begin with, a hymn literature that no country in the world has surpassed. The contrast between the Reformation and the Revival is very striking—one gave the people a Church government established by law and a literature of translations, the other gave it institutions of its own making and original living thought. The Revival gave literature in every branch a new strength and greater wealth.

It created a demand for education. Griffith Jones of Llanddowror established a system of circulating schools, the teachers moving from place to place as a room was offered them—sometimes a church and sometimes a barn. Charles of Bala established a system of Sunday Schools, and the whole nation gradually joined it. The Press became active, newspapers appeared. It became quite clear that a new life throbbed in the land.

XXII THE REFORM ACTS

THE new life brought an inevitable demand for a share in the government of the country, and this brought the old order and the new face to face. The political power was entirely in the hands of the squires, alienated from the peasants in many cases by a difference of language, and in most cases by a difference of religion.

The Act of 1535 had, as we have seen, given Wales a representation in Parliament. Each shire had one member only; except Monmouth, which had two. Each shire town had one member, except that of Merioneth; and Haverfordwest was given a member. The county franchise was the forty shilling freehold; it therefore excluded not only those who had no connection with the land, but the copyholder—who was really a landowner, but whose tenure was regarded as base, on account of his villein origin. This copyholder was undoubtedly the descendant of the Welsh serf of mediæval times.

The first Reform Act, that of 1832, was won for the great manufacturing towns of England, but Wales benefited by it. It extended the franchise to the copyholder, and to the farmer paying £50 rent, in the counties; it gave the towns a uniform £10 household franchise. It also brought many of the towns into the system of representation. It raised the number of members from twenty-seven to thirty-two; the agricultural districts getting two, and the mining districts two.

The slight change in representation is a recognition of the growing industries of the country, especially in the coal and iron districts. The coal of the great coalfield of South Wales had been worked as far back as Norman times; but it was in the nineteenth century that the coal and iron industries of South Wales, and the coal and slate industries of North Wales became important. Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport became important ports; and places that few had ever heard of before—like Ystradyfodwg or Blaenau Ffestiniog—became the centres of important industries. But, in 1832, Wales was still mainly pastoral and agricultural; and the Act, though it did much for the towns, left the representation of the counties in the hands of the same class. Still, it was the towns that showed disappointment, as was seen in the Chartism of the wool district of Llanidloes and of the coal district of Newport.

The second Reform Act, of 1867, gave Merthyr Tydvil two representatives instead of one, otherwise it left the distribution of seats as it had been before. But the new extension of the franchise—to the borough householder, the borough £10 lodger, and especially the £12 tenant farmer—gave new classes political power. It was followed by a fierce struggle between the old landed gentry and their tenants, a struggle which was moderated to a certain extent by the Ballot Act of 1870, and by the great migration of the country population to the slate and coal districts.

The rapid rise of the importance of the industrial districts is seen in the third Reform Act of 1885. The country districts represented by the small boroughs of the agricultural counties of Brecon, Cardigan, Pembroke, and Anglesey, were wholly or partly disfranchised. But the slate county of Carnarvonshire had an additional member; and in the coal and iron country, Swansea and Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire had one additional member each, and Glamorgan three.

The third Reform Act enfranchised the agricultural labourer and the country artisan. In England many doubts were expressed about the intelligence or the colour of the politics of the new voter; but, in Wales, most would admit that he was as intelligent as any voter enfranchised before him; all knew there could be no doubt about his politics.

The character of the representation of Wales has entirely changed. The squire gave place to the capitalist, and the capitalist to popular leaders. Wales, whose people blindly followed the gentry in the Great Civil War, is now the most democratic part of Britain.

XXIII EDUCATION

The chief feature of the history of Wales during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the growth of a system of education.

The most democratic, the most perfect, and the most efficient method is still that of the Sunday School. It was well established before the death of Charles of Bala, whose name is most closely connected with it, in 1814. It soon became, and it still remains, a school for the whole people, from children to patriarchs. Its language is that of its district. Its teachers are selected for efficiency—they are easily shifted to the classes which they can teach best; and, if not successful, they go back willingly to the “teachers’ class,” where all are equal. The reputation of a good Sunday School teacher is still the highest degree that can be won in Wales. Plentiful text books of high merit, and an elaborate system of oral and written examinations, mark the last stage in its development.