CALM BEFORE THE STORM
With the death of Edward I Wales settled down to a long period of
comparative tranquillity. The next eighty years were as peaceful a
time as the unhappy country had enjoyed for centuries. Edward II was
now on the throne of England; and his Welsh birth, his mild
disposition, and his obvious desire to deal justly with the
Principality caused him to be regarded with trust and even with
affection. On two occasions during the reign the new Welsh shires
were allowed to send representatives to the English Parliament. All
forms of lawlessness were sternly repressed. The consequence was
that the Welsh people began, as they had never done before, to turn
their attention to trade and the accumulation of wealth. The
fourteenth century witnessed a great increase in industry and
commerce all over Western Europe, and both England and Wales
participated in the {102} increase. Edward III conferred a most
precious benefit upon Wales by bringing it within the scope of the
Statute of Staple. In 1332 Shrewsbury and Carmarthen were
constituted staple towns for the Principality. Then came the Black
Death, which swept over England and Wales in the year 1349. The
amount of immediate distress which it occasioned was immense; but
some of its results were good. The fact that among the labouring
classes the rate of mortality had been something like fifty per cent.
made labour very scarce; and in spite of the efforts of Parliament to
control the situation by means of Statutes of Labourers, the economic
and social position of the villeins was immensely improved. But it
was not in Wales only that Welshmen were bettering their position;
they were covering themselves with glory on all the great
battlefields of Europe. The fourteenth century was the age of the
long bow; with it the finest victories of the Hundred Years' War were
won; and the home of the long bow was Wales. The weapon had been in
use for a long time in border wars, and its superiority to the cross
bow had been clearly demonstrated. The Black Prince, who became
Prince of Wales in 1343, was immensely {103} popular in the
Principality, and a large body of archers and spearmen from Wales
followed him to the French wars. At Crécy there were five thousand
Welsh troops; and it was at the close of that battle that the Prince
assumed the crest and the motto which ever since have been worn by
all Princes of Wales. No lover of English literature is ever likely
to forget the pages in which Shakespeare has drawn an amusing but
kindly caricature of the Welshmen who distinguished themselves on the
field of Agincourt. But it was not only in the armies of their own
sovereign that Welshmen were to be found; they were, throughout the
fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, among the most famous
mercenary troops in Europe. Many of them fought in the French armies
against the Black Prince and against Henry V. Owen of Wales, the
friend of the great _condottiere_ Bertrand du Guesclin, won much fame
as the leader of a Free Company. This Owen, however, was much more
than a successful mercenary captain: he remembered the land of his
birth; and the great ambition of his life was to win back Welsh
independence with the assistance of France and Spain.
The Black Death had very adversely affected {104} the monastic life
of Wales. Even in the thirteenth century--the golden age of
monasticism--Wales was too poor a country to support such princely
foundations as Fountains or St. Albans. Its monasteries were, for
the most part, small, drawing what wealth they possessed from acres
of barren mountain land. As we have already seen, Wales, from the
first coming of Christianity into the country, had its monastic
foundations. So far back as the sixth century, those of Bangor
Iscoed and Llantwit Major were famous throughout Christendom. The
rule of St. Benedict, which dates from that century, seems to have
found much favour in Wales; for in South Wales alone there were some
fifteen Benedictine houses, one of them being an abbey, and the
remaining ones priories. Soon, however, these priories fell into
evil odour; for they were "alien" in the sense that they belonged to
some foreign abbey whose abbot used them merely for the purpose of
augmenting his revenues. The great Cluniac reformation of the tenth
century had singularly little influence upon the religious life of
Wales, and only three priories were established in the country. The
lives of the monks who inhabited them were notoriously {105} lax, and
gave considerable scandal even in that age of easy morals. It was
the Cistercian Order, however, that seems to have won the religious
heart of the Welsh people. All the most famous religious houses in
Wales--Strata Florida, Strata Marcella, Aberconway, Valle Crucis,
Basingwerk, Cwm Hir, Margam, Whitland, Neath, Dore, Grace Dieu,
Tintern, Cymer, and Llantarnan--were Cistercian. For the most part
the monks favoured the cause of national independence. They were not
great scholars, nor did any particular sanctity pertain to their
lives; but they were excellent farmers, their conduct was at least
decent, they were witnesses after their fashion to the value of the
spiritual life, and they occasionally wrote chronicles like the
_Annales Cambriæ_ and the _Brut_ which are invaluable to the
historian of to-day.
The Friars, too, found a warm welcome in many parts of Wales. The
Cistercian monks were to be found in remote and lonely valleys, or on
the edge of high and bleak moorlands; the Friars, on the other hand,
were to be found in the towns, among the busiest haunts of men.
Towns in Wales were few and insignificant, so we do not find the
Friars occupying the position of importance which they so {106} soon
acquired in England. Nevertheless the Dominicans had houses at
Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon, Haverfordwest, and Cardiff, while the
Franciscans were to be found at Carmarthen, Cardiff, and Llan Vaes.
In addition to the two great Orders, there was a settlement of White
Friars (Carmelites) at Denbigh, and one of the Austin Friars at
Newport. In Wales all the Friars seem to have been energetic
preachers and lecturers; and in that way they did much to diffuse
what learning they themselves were possessed of among the common
people.
The Black Death greatly reduced the numbers of the monks. Their
rents fell very considerably in value, and they consequently became
extremely poor. Nevertheless the second half of the fourteenth
century witnessed a remarkable religious awakening in the country.
There was a new and enquiring spirit abroad, and Wales turned an
interested, and occasionally a sympathetic, ear to the teaching of
the Lollards. The Catholic Church, as represented by its two great
officers, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, had so often
shown itself to be the enemy of Welsh liberty that the people of
Wales listened with much favour to the teaching of Walter Brute,
{107} one of Wycliffe's disciples, when he began to preach in the
Marches in 1391. That the official religion had fallen into
considerable contempt in Wales is indicated by the insulting tone of
many of the triads in which it was the fashion of the day for
literary men to express themselves. "Three things are objects of
derision," says one of these, "an old hag displaying her finery, an
old man trying to show his agility, and an old priest drunk."
Another tells us that "Three things there are which he who can may
love--a fat priest singing Mass, the cry of a soul in the clutches of
the Fiend, and an English song."
In the quarrel between Richard II and his barons the sympathy of
Wales was with the king; and it was in Wales that the final struggle
between the unhappy monarch and Henry Bolingbroke took place. The
king, who had been in Ireland, landed at Milford Haven, to find that
Henry was with an army at Bristol. By a forced march he reached
Conway; and then travelled from castle to castle in North Wales
looking for support. He met Henry at Flint, surrendered, and was
first deposed and afterwards murdered. Then Henry IV ruled in his
stead. From the beginning of his reign the new king seems to {108}
have regarded Wales with a good deal of suspicion and dislike. After
a long period of mild government, a note of severity again makes
itself audible in the statutes passed dealing exclusively with Wales.
There is a harsh and aggressive flavour in their very
titles--"Certain restraints laid on Welshmen," "The Lords Marchers to
keep ward in their castles," "Welshmen shall not purchase lands in
England," "Englishmen shall not be convict in Wales," "As to
minstrels and vagabonds in Wales," "Welshmen not to carry arms," "No
armour or victuals to be carried into Wales," "Welshmen not to have
castles," "No Welshman shall bear office in Wales," "Castles and
walled towns in Wales to be kept by Englishmen," "Englishmen married
to Welsh women not to have office in Wales," etc. It was in such an
atmosphere of mutual suspicion and dislike that the rebellion of Owen
Glyndwr broke out.
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