It was famous before, but it was first used with effect in the last Welsh
wars. It was used to break the lines of the Snowdon lances and pikes, so
that the mail-clad cavalry might dash in. But later on, the same bows
were used to bring the nobles of France down.
From the Welsh war on, archers and infantry became important; battles
ceased to be what they had been so long—the shock of mail-clad knights
meeting each other at full charge.
The long-bow made noble and peasant equal on the field of battle. The
revolution was made complete later on by gunpowder.
XIV
THE RISE OF THE PEASANT
I HAVE told you much about princes and soldiers, but very little about
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.
The Literary Meeting is a kind of secular Sunday School. The rules of
alliterative poetry and the study of Welsh literature and history, and
sometimes of more general knowledge, take the place of the study of
Jewish history, and psalm, and gospel. The Literary Meetings feed the
Eisteddvod.
The Eisteddvod passed through the same phases as the nation. It was an
aspect of the court of the prince during the Middle Ages. In Tudor times
it was used partly to please the people, but chiefly to regulate the
bards by forcing them to qualify for a degree—a sure method of moderating
their patriotism and of diminishing their number. In modern times the
Eisteddvod is a great democratic meeting, and it is the most
characteristic of all Welsh institutions. Its chairing of the bards is
an ancient ceremony; its _gorsedd_ of bards is probably modern. But the
people themselves still remain the judges of poetry; they care very
little whether a poet has won a chair or not, while a _gorsedd_ degree
probably does him more harm than good.
Elementary education, in its modern sense, began with the circulating
schools of Griffith Jones of Llanddowror in 1730. They were exceedingly
successful because the instruction was given in Welsh, and they stopped
after teaching 150,000 to read not because there was no demand for them,
but on account of a dispute about their endowments in 1779, eighteen
years after Griffith Jones’ death. They were followed by voluntary
schools, very often kept by illiterate teachers.
Between 1846 and 1848 two organisations—the Welsh Education Committee and
the Cambrian Society—were formed; and they developed, respectively, the
national schools and the British schools. After the Education Act of
1870, the schools became voluntary or Board; education gradually became
compulsory and free; and in 1902 an attempt was made to give the whole
system a unity and to connect it with the ordinary system of local
government.
The training of teachers became a matter of the highest importance. In
1846 a college for this purpose was established at Brecon, and then
removed to Swansea. From 1848 to 1862, colleges were established at
Carmarthen, Carnarvon, and Bangor.
The history of secondary education is longer. It was served, after the
dissolution of the monasteries, by endowed schools—like that of the
Friars at Bangor—and by proprietary schools. By the Education Act of
1889, a complete system of secondary schools, under popular control, was
established. Two of the endowed schools still remain—Brecon, founded by
the religionists of the Reformation, and Llandovery, the Welsh school
founded by a patriot of modern times.
It was principally for the ministry of religion that secondary schools
and colleges were first established. Schools were founded in many
districts, and important colleges at Lampeter (degree-granting),
Carmarthen, Brecon, Bala, Trevecca, Pontypool, Llangollen, Haverfordwest.
Many of these have a long history.
Higher education had been the dream of many centuries. Owen Glendower
had thought of establishing two new universities at the beginning of the
period of the Revival of Letters; among his supporters were many of the
Welsh students who led in the great faction fights of mediæval Oxford.
Oliver Cromwell and Richard Baxter had thought of Welsh higher education.
But nothing was done. In the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth
until 1870, the Test Act shut the doors of the old Universities to most
Welshmen; the new University of London did not teach, it only examined;
the Scotch Universities, to which Welsh students crowded, were very far.
In 1872, chiefly through the exertions of Sir Hugh Owen, the University
College of Wales was opened at Aberystwyth, and maintained for ten years
by support from the people. The Government helped, and two new colleges
were added—the University College of South Wales at Cardiff in 1883, and
the University College of North Wales at Bangor in 1884. In 1893 Queen
Victoria gave a charter which formed the three colleges into the
University of Wales. Lord Aberdare, its first Chancellor, lived to see
it in thorough working order. On Lord Aberdare’s death, the Prince of
Wales was elected Chancellor in 1896; and when he ascended the throne in
1901, the present Prince of Wales became Chancellor.
The tendency of the whole system of Welsh education is towards greater
unity. There is a dual government of the secondary schools and of the
colleges, the one by the Central Board and the other by the University
Court—a historical accident which is now a blemish on the system. The
Training Colleges are still outside the University, but they are
gravitating rapidly towards it. The theological colleges are necessarily
independent, but the University offers their students a course in arts,
so that they can specialise on theology and its kindred subjects. The
ideal system is: an efficient and patriotic University regulating the
whole work of the secondary and elementary schools, guided by the
willingness of the County Councils, or of an education authority
appointed by them, to provide means.
The rise of the educational system is the most striking and the most
interesting chapter in Welsh history. But the facts are so numerous and
the development is so sudden that, in spite of one, it becomes a mere
list of acts and dates.
XXIV
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
THE French Revolution was condemned by Britain, and the voices raised in
its favour in Wales were few. The excesses of the Revolution, and the
widespread fear of a Napoleonic invasion, caused a strong reaction
against progress. The years immediately after were years of great
suffering, but the very suffering prepared the way for the progress of
the future, because it made men willing to leave their own districts and
to move into the coal and slate districts, where wages were high enough
to enable them to live.
The first demand was for political enfranchisement. In 1832, in 1867,
and in 1884 the franchise was extended, and every interest found a voice
in Parliament. But, with the exception of the sharp struggle between the
tenant and landlord after the Reform Act of 1867, the effects of
enfranchisement on Wales have been very few. Two Acts alone have been
passed as purely Welsh Acts—the Sunday Closing Act, and the Intermediate
Education Act. In Parliament, the voice of Wales is weak even though
unanimous; it can be outvoted by the capital or by four English
provincial towns. Until quite recently its semi-independence—due to
geography and past history—was looked upon as a source of weakness to the
Empire rather than of strength. Its love for the past appeals to the one
political party, its desire for progress to the other, but its
distinctive ideals and its separate language are looked upon, at the very
least, as political misfortunes. Education and justice have suffered
from official want of toleration; the appointment of a County Court judge
who could not speak Welsh, within living memory, has been justified by
Government on the ground that Englishmen resident in Wales object to
being tried by a Welsh judge.
Far more important to Wales than the Reform Acts are the Local Government
Acts which followed them. When the Reform Act of 1884 added the
agricultural labourer to the electors of representatives in Parliament,
every interest had a voice. A further extension of the franchise would
not affect the balance of parties, it was thought; and a British
Parliament has no time or desire to think of sentiment or theoretical
perfection. The Parliament found it had too much to do, the multiplicity
of interests made it impossible to pay effective attention to them. The
result has been that half a century of extension of the franchise has
been followed by half a century of extension of local government. The
County Council Act came in 1888, and the Local Government Act in 1894.
Of all parts of Britain, Wales had least local government, and needed
most. Its justices of the peace were alien in religion, race, and
sympathy; they were either country squires who had lost touch with the
people, or English and Scotch capitalists who, with rare exceptions, took
no trouble to understand the people they governed, or to learn their
language. The vestry meeting had been active enough during the early
part of the eighteenth century; but religious difficulties made it
impossible for a semi-ecclesiastical institution to represent a parish.
The Tudor policy had separated the people from the greater land-owners;
the iron masters and coal-owners had not yet become part of the people;
there was not a single institution except the Eisteddvod where all
classes met.
In no part of the country was local government so warmly welcomed, and no
part of the country was more ready for it. One thing the peasants had
been allowed to do—they could build schools and colleges, churches and
chapels. They had filled the country with these—their architecture,
finance, government, are those of the peasant. The religious revivals
had left organisers and institutions. Four or five religious bodies had
a system of institutions—parish, district, county, central. All these
were thoroughly democratic in character. When the Local Government Acts
were passed, there was hardly a Welshman of full age and average ability
who had not been a delegate or in authority; and those of striking
ability, if they could afford the time, continually sat in some little
council or other and watched over the interests of some institution.
It was from among these trained men that the councillors for the new
county, district, and parish senates were elected. The work of the
councils, especially that of the County Council, has been very difficult;
and when the time comes to write their history, the historian will have
to set himself to explain why the first councils were served by men who
had extraordinary tact for government and great skill in financial
matters. In the lower councils the village Hampden’s eloquence is
modified by the chilling responsibility for the rates, but the Parish
Councils have already, in many places, made up for the negligence of
generations of sleepy magistrates and officials.
With a great difference, it is true, Wales under local government is
Wales back again in the times of the princes. The parish is roughly the
maenol, the district is the commote or the cantrev, the shire is the
little kingdom—like Ceredigion or Morgannwg—which fought so sturdily
against any attempt to subject it.
The local councils were fortunate in the time of their appearance. They
came at a period characterised by an intense desire for a better system
of education, and at a time of rapidly growing prosperity. A heavy rate
was possible, and the people were willing to bear it. The County
Councils were able to build over seventy intermediate schools within a
few years; and that at a time when both elementary and higher education
made heavy demands on what was still a comparatively poor county. The
District Councils were able to lower the amount of outdoor relief
considerably, and without causing any real hardship, for they had
knowledge of their districts as well as the philanthropy that comes
naturally to man when he grants other people’s money. The Parish
Councils have become the guardians of public paths; they have begun to
provide parish libraries, and the little parish senate educates its
constituency and brings its wisdom to bear upon a number of practical
questions, such as cottage gardens and fairs.
XXV
THE WALES OF TO-DAY
THE most striking characteristic of the Wales of to-day is its
unity—self-conscious and self-reliant. The presence of this unity is
felt by all, though it may be explained in different ways. It cannot be
explained by race; for the population of the west midlands and the north
of England, possibly of the whole of it, have been made up of the same
elements. It cannot be explained by language—nearly one half of the
Welsh people speak no Welsh. Some attribute it to the inexorable laws of
geography and climate, others to the fatalism of history. Others
frivolously put it down to modern football. But no one who knows Wales
is ignorant of it.
The modern unity of the Welsh people—seen occasionally in a function of
the University, or at a national Eisteddvod, or in a conference of the
County Councils—has become a fact in spite of many difficulties.
One difficulty has been the absence of a capital. The office of the
University and the National Museum are at Cardiff, in the extreme south;
the National Library is at Aberystwyth, on the western sea. The thriving
industries, the densely populated districts, and the frequent and active
railways, are in the extreme south or in the extreme north; and they are
separated by five or six shires of pastures and sheep-runs, without large
towns, and with comparatively few railways. In the three southern
counties—Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Carmarthen—the population is between
two and six people to 10 acres, and the industrial population is from
twelve to three times the number of the agricultural. In the central
counties—Brecon, Radnor, Cardigan, Merioneth, Montgomery—the population
is below one for 10 acres; the industrial and agricultural population are
about equal, except in Radnor, where the agricultural is more than two to
one. Though Merioneth has more sheep even than Brecon—and each of them
has nearly 400,000—its industrial population, owing to the slate
districts, is double the agricultural. The population begins to thicken
again as we get nearer the slate, limestone, and coal districts. In
Denbigh it is two to the 10 acres, in Carnarvon it is three, and in Flint
it rises to four or five. In these northern counties the industrial
population is double or treble the agricultural. The fertile western
counties of Pembroke and Anglesey come between the industrial and grazing
counties in density of population. {4}
Unity has arisen in spite of differences caused by the intensity of a
religious revival, an intensity that periodically renews its strength.
The Welsh are divided into sects, and the bitterness of sectarian
differences occasionally invades politics and education. But there are
two ever-present antidotes. One is the Welsh sense of humour, the
nearest relative or the best friend of toleration. The other is the
hymn—creed has been turned into song, and that is at least half way to
turning it into life; the heresy hunter is disarmed by the poetry of the
hymn, and its music has charms to soothe the sectarian breast. The
co-operation of all in the work of local government has also enlarged
sympathy.
Unity has arisen in spite of the bilingual difficulty. Rather more than
one half of the people now habitually speak English. For three centuries
an Act—a dead letter from the beginning—ordered all Government officials
to speak English; for many generations, until recently, Welsh children
were not taught Welsh in schools, and they could not be taught English.
The bilingual difficulty is now at an end. The two languages are taught
in the schools, and as living languages. It is clear, on the one hand,
that every one should learn English, the language of the Empire and of
commerce. It is also clear that, on account of its own beauty as well as
that of the great literature it enshrines, Welsh should be taught in
every school throughout Wales.
Next to its unity, a characteristic of modern Wales is its democratic
feeling. It is a country with a thoughtful and intelligent peasantry,
and it is a country without a middle class. There is a very small upper
class—the old Welsh land-owning families who once, before they turned
their backs on Welsh literature, led the country. They have never been
hated or despised, they are simply ignored. Their tendency now is to
come into touch with the people, and they are always welcomed. But a
middle class, in the English sense, does not exist. The wealthier
industrial class is bound by the closest ties of sympathy to the farmer
and labourer. The farmer’s holding is generally small—from 50 to 250
acres—and he always treats his servants and labourers as equals.
The three great levelling causes—religion, industry, {5} and
education—have been at work in Wales in recent years. Education helps
and is helped by equality. In town and country alike all Welsh children
attend the same schools—elementary and secondary; and they proceed, those
that do proceed, to the same University, and a university is essentially
a levelling institution. The dialects, as well as the literary language,
are recognised; and no dialect has a stigma. In this respect Wales is
more like Scotland than England.
There is one other characteristic of modern Wales—a certain pride, not so
much in what has been done, but in what is going to be done. Wales is
small, though not much smaller than Palestine, or Holland, or
Switzerland, and every part of it knows the other. There is a healthy
rivalry between its towns and between its colleges; each town can show
that it has done something for Wales in the past—by means of its
industries, or school, or press. In the strong feeling of unity there is
ambition to surpass, and each part lives in the light of the action of
the other parts.
The day is a day of incessant activity—industrial, educational, literary,
and political. What is true in the life of the individual is true in the
life of a nation—a day of hard work is a happy day and a day of hope.