WALES AND THE TUDORS
The seventy years which followed the death of Owen Glyndwr was, both
for England and for Wales, as miserable a period as any in their
whole history. Owing to the untimely death of Henry V, the feeble
Henry VI became king; and he had not been long on the throne before
the bitter feud between Yorkists and Lancastrians broke out. During
the Wars of the Roses the arm of government was paralysed, and the
strong did what appeared right in his own eyes. Many Welshmen found
life in the English armies abroad more tolerable than life in Wales;
while of those who remained at home, too many became bandits like the
Highlanders in the reign of George II. Both Yorkists and
Lancastrians had interests in Wales. Edward IV was a Mortimer, a
descendant of Prince Llewelyn, and the seat of his strength was the
country around Ludlow. The chief Lancastrian stronghold {125} in
Wales was the coast, from Pembroke to Anglesey. Thus Wales was
divided against itself. At Mortimer's Cross, in 1461, Welshmen
fought against Welshmen; and Owen Tudor was captured, and afterwards
beheaded at Hereford, in accordance with the fate meted out to the
vanquished in those barbarous days. Harlech castle, which had been
the last fortress to fly the flag of Glyndwr, and which at a later
date was to be the last of Charles I's strongholds to surrender, held
out stubbornly for Lancaster. "I held a castle in France," boasted
Davydd ap Sinion, its defender, "until every old woman in Wales had
heard of it. I will hold a castle in Wales until every old woman in
France has heard of it." The boast was a vain one. Harlech fell;
but the siege had given to the world one of the finest marching songs
ever sung by man.
The eyes of Welshmen and Englishmen alike were now beginning to be
turned to that house of Tudor, whose head had lost his life after
Mortimer's Cross. Owen Tudor had married Catherine, the widow of
king Henry V. There had been two children of the marriage, Edmund
and Jasper, the former Earl of Richmond, and the latter Earl of
Pembroke. Edmund had married Margaret Beaufort, heiress of John
{126} of Gaunt; and to them a son, called Henry, had been born. This
young lad was now living in exile in Brittany, and it was there that
emissaries from England sought him out from time to time, telling him
how the country was groaning under the evils of the times, and how
all common men were yearning for the advent of a strong ruler who
would restore peace and ordered government. The cruelties of the
usurper Richard III brought matters to a head. At length the
cautious Henry was convinced of the possibility of success. In 1485
he landed at Haverfordwest, and marched to Cardigan. The greater
part of South Wales at once declared for him. Then he marched north,
passing through Machynlleth, Newtown, Welshpool, and Shrewsbury.
North Wales was held by the Stanleys; and it was only at the last
moment that they declared for Henry. The crisis was reached on
Bosworth Field, where, in the space of a few hours, Richard lost both
his throne and his life, and Henry was proclaimed king in his stead.
At long last the prophecies of the Welsh bards had been fulfilled: a
Welsh prince had ascended the throne of England. A year later the
new king married Elizabeth of York, a descendant, as we have already
seen, of {127} the great Llewelyn. From his mother, therefore, as
well as from his father, Henry VIII inherited Welsh blood; and it is
little to be wondered at that he paid so much attention to the
affairs of the Principality. It was noted by all that the first
Tudor sovereign refused to rest his claim to the throne upon anything
except conquest. Upon his entrance into London after the battle of
Bosworth he proceeded in state to St. Paul's, and there had a solemn
_Te Deum_ sung for his victory. It was as much a Welsh conquest of
England as the expedition of 1066 was a Norman conquest of England.
A considerable part of Henry's army had been composed of Welshmen,
and one of the three standards displayed by him upon the field bore
the device of the famous red dragon. His first-born son was
christened Arthur.
Such being Henry VII's solicitude to demonstrate his Welsh origin, it
is disappointing to find that he did so little for the Principality
in the course of his reign. On the whole the country was neglected.
By means of the Star Chamber, and the statutes against Livery and
Maintenance, Henry crushed the English nobles, the "over-mighty
subjects" who had been troubling the peace of the realm {128} so
sorely. But although the Welsh, and especially the border lords,
were at least as turbulent and as contemptuous of all law, he allowed
them to remain unmolested; and one of them--Sir Rhys ap Thomas--came
to wield almost despotic power throughout South Wales. This able,
ambitious, and politic man appears to have been a great favourite
with both the first two Tudor sovereigns. He had enthusiastically
espoused the cause of Henry of Richmond when he was as yet a landless
adventurer; and it was mainly owing to his influence that Henry's
reception in South Wales had been so very cordial and unanimous. So
powerful did he become after Henry's coronation, that an old Welsh
couplet tells us that: "The king owns the whole island--except that
part which belongs to Sir Rhys." In Henry VII's reign his favour, if
anything, was enhanced. Familiarly he was alluded to as "Father
Rhys." The extensive Dinevor estates were his; while in addition he
held the offices of Chief Justice, and Chamberlain, of South Wales.
So great was his power that he could snap his fingers in the face of
the Court of the Marches, which sat impotent at Ludlow. Sir Rhys
died in 1525, on the eve of momentous changes in English politics.
{129} His death marks the close of an epoch in the history of Wales.
In the year 1493 Henry sent his eldest son Arthur to hold his Court
at Ludlow. The ancient castle there, with its round Temple chapel
within, whose well-preserved walls still look so grand and imposing,
is the centre of Welsh political life throughout the Tudor period.
It was the great age of government by council. An attempt to
circumscribe the power of the Popes by such means had been one of the
burning topics of discussion within the Church all through the
fifteenth century. The Yorkish and Tudor kings saw in the council a
perfect instrument of arbitrary power, by which the deficiencies of
the Common Law could be corrected, and by which the authority of the
central government could be made to prevail against feudal
lawlessness. The Court of Star Chamber, long before its final
abolition by the Long Parliament, had won the hatred of all lovers of
justice and good government; but it must never be forgotten that, in
the early years of its existence, this same Council was the great
upholder of law, and the sole effective protector of the weak against
the strong. The Tudor Councils--Star Chamber, High Commission, of
the North, {130} of the Welsh Marches--were above the ordinary law,
in the sense that they administered a sort of criminal equity. It
was a drastic and a dangerous remedy to use; but it was none too
drastic for the evils of the day; and only the most pedantic
believers in liberty could condemn it.
Edward IV, and not Henry VII, was the first type of the new
Renaissance sovereign to rule in England; and he it was who first
created the Court of the Welsh Marches, in 1471. But the troubles of
those chaotic years were greater even than such a body could deal
with, and consequently we find it doing practically nothing. In 1501
William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln and founder of Brasenose College,
became the first real Lord President of the Court of the Council of
the Marches. Unhappily Prince Arthur died in 1502, and during the
remainder of his reign Henry paid no attention whatsoever to Wales.
The policy pursued by Smyth was one of conciliation; and as a result
of his government, there was at least a growth in loyalty, if not in
public order. He retained his office until his death in 1514, but
does not appear to have resided at Ludlow after 1509, the year of
Henry VII's death.
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On his death bed, we are told, Henry VII "gave in charge to his son
Prince Henry that he should have a special care for the benefit of
his own nation and countrymen, the Welshmen." However that may be,
the new king seems to have paid no great heed to the injunction. He
had never been sent by his father to keep Court at Ludlow; and he was
quite content to leave things to the care of the Council, and the
faithful Rhys. But as he grew older, and as the fascination of
politics began to lay hold upon him, Henry began to think about the
neglected Principality. Complaints were constantly reaching his ears
of the anarchy which prevailed there; how the whole land was infested
with bandits; how life and property were no longer safe. In 1525 the
king visited Ludlow in person, taking with him the Princess Mary.
There the Princess remained until 1528, when she was recalled owing
to the divorce proceedings which had been instituted against her
mother. Again, for a period, Wales appears to have been forgotten;
for Henry was fully engaged in the mighty task of "breaking the bonds
of Rome," and laying the foundations of the English Reformation. So
bad did things become, that one of the king's justices was beset and
{132} murdered when on circuit in Merionethshire; and in 1529 there
was an insurrection at Carmarthen. But it was the darkest hour, and
the dawn was at hand.
In 1534 Henry appointed Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, to be Lord
President; and for the next nine years he held his Court at Ludlow.
Of the administration of this able, jovial, energetic, and ruthless
man it is not necessary to say much; let it suffice that, in the
comparatively brief period during which he held office, he educed
order out of chaos, and caused the law to be feared and obeyed, not
only in the Marches, but in the remotest corners of Wales. Gangs of
robbers were mercilessly hunted down. High and low were punished
with exemplary severity. The qualms which ecclesiastics affected to
feel against the shedding of blood counted for naught with the
martial prelate. According to one authority he hanged as many as
five thousand malefactors, and that at a time when the total
population of Wales could hardly have exceeded 125,000. For the
Common Law, and especially for the jury system, he avowed the most
extreme contempt. How absurd, he used to remark, to expect thieves
to convict a thief! Harsh he may have been; {133} but his harshness
achieved its purpose. He found Wales turbulent, lawless, and
rebellious, a land in which it was well nigh impossible to pursue a
peaceful calling. He left it orderly and tranquil, loyal to its
sovereign, and ready to play its part in what was to prove to be the
most glorious period in British history.
But it was not upon a policy of stern repression alone that Henry
depended for the pacification of Wales. He was too great a statesman
for any such thing. He knew full well that leniency on the part of a
feeble and ineffective government might be misrepresented and be
followed by disastrous consequences, but that going hand in hand with
a rigorous punishment of disorderly persons it would prove
successful. It is the policy which liberal statesmen have always
advocated, and which tyrants have disregarded to their own undoing.
The policy of conciliation upon which the king now embarked is
sometimes referred to as the Act of Union with Wales. This, however,
is misleading, for there is no Act upon the Statute Book which bears
such a name. It is, nevertheless, generally descriptive of a series
of statutes, the first passed in 1535 and the last in 1542, which
gave to Wales a new constitution.
{134}
The first step was taken in 1535, when an Act was passed empowering
the Lord Chancellor to appoint Justices of the Peace for the counties
of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, Carmarthen,
Pembroke, and Glamorgan. At first sight there does not seem to be
anything very revolutionary in this; but those who held authority in
Wales at the time thought otherwise, and duly registered their
protest against the Act. To them it was apparent that this was but
the thin end of the wedge, and that the outcome of it would be the
entrusting to the Welsh people full power to govern themselves.
Henry's next Act was an attack upon the privileges of the Lords
Marchers, a policy which was to be followed until the Marches had
been completely abolished. The third, and most comprehensive, Act of
the same year had for its object the complete breaking down of all
barriers between England and Wales. Henry's aim is perfectly clear:
he was no believer in Welsh self-determination; all that he desired
was that Wales should be swallowed up by England. Welshmen were
undoubtedly to acquire all the privileges of Englishmen, but on one
condition--they were to become Englishmen. The Preamble of the Act
of {135} 1535 states that the king desires to "extirp all and
singular the sinister Usages and Customs" which prevailed in Wales;
and in order that that might be accomplished, Wales was henceforth to
be "incorporated, united, and annexed" to England. All laws were
thenceforward to be the laws of England. This involved, among other
things, the adoption of the principle of primogeniture in place of
the old Welsh custom of equal division among all the sons. The
Lordships Marcher were practically abolished, parts of them being
united to England, and the remainder distributed between the newly
created shires of Monmouth, Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery, and
Denbigh. Henry realised, as all statesmen of conquering nations have
realised, that the most powerful obstacle in the way of the
assimilation of a small nation by a larger one is the continued
existence of a native language. Deprive a nation of its language,
and deprivation of national consciousness will be relatively easy.
But allow the language to live, and no power on earth can ever kill
the national spirit. It is therefore not surprising to read in the
Act that "No Person or Persons that use the Welsh Speech or Language
shall have or enjoy any Manner Office or Fees within this Realm {136}
of England, Wales or other the King's Dominions, upon pain of
forfeiting the same Offices or Fees, unless he or they use and
exercise the English Speech or Language." Except in Edward IPs two
Parliaments of 1322 and 1327 Wales had never been represented in the
English House of Commons. Now it was enacted that every shire should
send one knight to Parliament, and that every county town, excepting
that of Merioneth, should send one burgess. These representatives
were to be paid the usual fees for attendance.
In 1542 an Act bearing the simple title, "For certain ordinances in
the King's Majesty's Dominions and Principality of Wales," was
passed. This statute reaches what was, for those times, the
portentous length of a hundred and thirty clauses; but it is neither
verbose nor ambiguous. Indeed it is one of the most comprehensive,
and one of the most ably drafted, statutes ever enacted. It finally
abolished the Lordships Marcher. It gave Wales the geographical
limits which it has ever since retained, dividing the country into
twelve shires, and cutting off Monmouth. It placed upon a statutory
foundation the Court of the Council of the Marches; a Court which,
save for a brief period of suspension during {137} the Commonwealth,
remained active down to 1688. It created a new legal system for
Wales by instituting the Court of Great Sessions, a legal system
which persisted until 1830. It introduced a system of local
government, dividing the shires into hundreds, and providing for
lords-lieutenant, sheriffs, coroners, constables, and bailiffs.
The chief interest in Welsh affairs after 1534 centres in the
Council. It was not so prominent after the death of Rowland Lee,
when the country had become peaceful and law-abiding; but its general
supervision over all Welsh affairs, both legal and administrative,
was constant and unflagging. At first the Council had no fixed
abode, and we hear of its sitting at Shrewsbury, Hereford, Worcester,
Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Hartlebury, Oswestry, Wrexham, and Bewdley;
but at last it came to be fixed at Ludlow. Here, during the next
hundred years, assembled much that was intellectual, fashionable, and
splendid in Tudor and Stuart society. It was, as we have seen, the
home of Prince Arthur, the eldest child of Henry VII, and of Mary,
the eldest child of Henry VIII. Here, for twenty-seven years, lived
Sir Henry Sidney, soldier, scholar, and statesman. Here his even
more {138} famous son, Philip Sidney, and his daughter Mary, spent
the early part of their lives. It had among its guests for shorter
periods the poet Churchyard, the Puritan Richard Baxter, and the
Royalist Samuel Butler. But the thing which has cast an undying
glamour over the place is the fact that, in 1634, John Milton
witnessed in the old castle the first performance of his masque
_Comus_. The Presidents of the Council were, at first, all
ecclesiastics; but in the reign of Edward VI a layman, Robert Dudley,
was appointed; and except for an interlude during the reign of Mary
that remained the practice. The chief function of the Council was to
supervise the work of all Welsh officials, and to hear all manner of
"extortions, maintenance, imbraceries, oppressions, conspiracies,
escapes, corruptions, falsehoods, and all other evil doings,
defaults, and misdemeanours of all sheriffs, justices of the peace,
mayors, bailiffs, stewards, lieutenants, escheators, coroners,
gaolers, clerks, and other officers and ministers of justice." It
had power to issue proclamations, and to assess fines. Unhappily it
had too, in company with the other prerogative courts of the Tudors,
the power to use torture in order to elicit confessions. The Lord
President was, {139} almost invariably, Lord-Lieutenant of the twelve
Welsh shires. In legal matters strictly so called the Council
exercised a concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Great Sessions,
and an appellate jurisdiction in personal actions. It is not true to
say that the Court of Great Sessions exercised no equity
jurisdiction; but it is a fact that by far the greater number of
Welsh equity cases were heard at Ludlow.
The part of the Act of 1542 which was entirely new was that which
created the King's Court of Great Sessions. English law had been
introduced into Wales; but its administration was to be distinct and
separate. The Great Sessions possessed all the powers of the King's
Bench and Common Pleas, and its practice was the same as that in use
at Westminster. It was also endowed with complete criminal
jurisdiction. Wales was divided into four Circuits--Chester, which
included Denbigh, Flint, and Montgomery; North Wales, which included
Carnarvon, Anglesey, and Merioneth; Brecknock, which included the
county of that name, together with Radnor and Glamorgan; and
Carmarthen, which also included Cardigan and Pembroke. Each of these
Circuits had, at first, one judge; but {140} some time later an extra
one was added. These judges were, on the whole, competent men; and a
large number of them afterwards attained to the highest legal
positions in England. Among them we find such famous legal
luminaries as Bradshaw, Jeffreys, Willes, Lyndhurst, Kenyon,
Mansfield, Wright, Herbert, Dallas, Best, Jackyll, and Verney. The
strongest objection which could be made to them was that few of their
number could speak Welsh, and that at a time when little else was
spoken at all in Wales. All members of the English Bar were free to
practise in Wales; but counsel were mainly drawn from the Oxford and
the Northern Circuits. The Court sat twice every year--spring and
autumn--in each county town, and the duration of the session was
fixed at six days. After the abolition, in 1688, of the Council,
Chancery work began to be taken to London; and from the beginning of
the eighteenth century we find the English courts endeavouring,
mainly by the use of _certiorari_, to attract thither other cases as
well. Frequent attacks were launched in Parliament against the
administration of justice in Wales; and several sound theoretical
arguments were advanced against the Great Sessions. But in spite of
a commission of {141} enquiry, which sat in 1817, we have no real
evidence to justify our holding the system to have been a failure.
Nevertheless the Great Sessions were abolished in 1830, after
attempts to amend them had been made in 1769, in 1793, and in 1824.
It is worthy of note that their abolition was opposed by all the
Welsh Members of Parliament save one, by almost all the judges, and
by practically all counsel who practised in the courts.
We have already seen that the Act set up a system of local
government. This comprised the various officers we have named; and
furthermore County Courts with jurisdiction over small amounts, and
Vestries in which the parishioners learnt the art of self-government.
That Henry VIII's Welsh policy was immediately successful, if we omit
that part of it which concerned religion, is abundantly evident. Two
centuries later Edmund Burke, in the course of his great speech on
Conciliation with America, cites Wales as an example which proves the
truth of the rule which he is inculcating. "Your ancestors," he
said, "did however at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of
injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all
tyrannies {142} the least be endured; and that laws made against a
whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its
obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII the
course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and
perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the
rights and privileges of English subjects. Political order was
established; the military power gave way to the civil; the marches
were turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right to
English liberties and get no share at all in the fundamental security
of these liberties--the grant of their own property--seemed a thing
so incongruous that, eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth
of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by
counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by Act of Parliament.
From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided, obedience was
restored, peace, order, and civilization followed in the train of
liberty. When the day star of the English constitution had risen in
their hearts, all was harmony within and without." Burke's eloquent
contention is, in the main, perfectly right; yet we should be going
too far if we attributed the tranquillity which so {143} speedily
ensued to the grant of a constitution alone. At least three other
factors have to be taken into account--(1) The termination of the
Wars of the Roses, which had been productive of anarchy in England as
well as in Wales. (2) The fact that Rowland Lee had done his work so
thoroughly that evil-doers were cowed. (3) The fact that Wales
looked upon the Tudor monarchs as Welsh people, and upon their
supremacy as a victory of Wales over England. The Union marks the
beginning of a new and better chapter in the history of Wales. The
Principality shook itself free from the fetters of the Middle Ages,
and took its place, shoulder to shoulder, with England as a
democratic self-governing country. All previous efforts on the part
of Welshmen and Englishmen to set up a unitary State had been
failures. From time to time some man of exceptional character, like
Llewelyn or Glyndwr, would arise, and, for a brief space, succeed in
uniting all the petty chieftains in obedience to himself. But such
unity had always been precarious, depending entirely upon the
personality of the man who had brought it about, and with whose death
it vanished. It is palpable that, throughout the Middle Ages, the
greatest Welsh defect was {144} the absence of political genius, the
very thing with which England was so abundantly gifted. Institutions
like Llewelyn's Council of Princes were without ancestors and without
posterity; they were accidents and imitations, and not natural
products of Welsh political development. Before such institutions
could become stable and strong, Wales had to be brought into the
closest union with England, and serve a long period of political
apprenticeship.
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