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 andmurdered 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;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 of1535 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 Realmof 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 duringthe 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 morefamous 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 masqueComus. 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,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; butsome 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 ofcertiorari, 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 ofenquiry, 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 tyranniesthe 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 sospeedily 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 wasthe 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.
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,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 ofElizabethan 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, asingularly 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,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 andthe 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,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 peacefulpropaganda 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 Archdeaconof 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,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 extremelylikely. 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 appointedPreacherof 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 conscientiouspriest. 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 wasthe 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,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 conceivedto 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;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 HerMajesty 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 "OldVicar," 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;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 calledCanwyll 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,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 cameout 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 hissuccessors; 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 openair. 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.
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 partisansof 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 assumptionthat 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 notyet 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 ofLlyfr 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 knewabout 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'sAreopagitica. Of the great principles for which both parties in the war were fighting—respect for law andsupremacy 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 partplayed 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 inthe 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 inpolitics 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 ofthem—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 Charlesin 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 hisCourt 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 thirdfrom 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 NicholasByron 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 theyounger 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.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 distinctimprovement 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 forthcomingat 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.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 twolatter 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 ofbloodshed, 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 theProtector'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. Underthe 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 thefamous 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, orderedcertain 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.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.