THE REFORMATION
Wales and England were now one in law; and it consequently followed
that all statutes passed by Parliament were applicable to the
Principality, unless expressly stated not to be so. No reservations
had been made, as were afterwards made as to religion, laws, and
education, in the matter of the Scottish Union. In every step,
therefore, of the Reformation Settlement, Wales was obliged to share;
and there can be no doubt at all that the Reformation was unpopular
in Wales, and that the Anglican Church, as it emerged at the close of
the reign of Elizabeth, had made for itself no place in the hearts of
the people. At the same time it would be easy to exaggerate the
reluctance with which Wales accepted the many religious changes of
the Tudor period. The picture which some recent writers have drawn
of a Wales deprived of the ancient religion to which it was devoted,
{146} and of a Church plundered while faithfully discharging its
functions, is as fanciful and as devoid of truth for Wales as it
would be for England. The truth is that, long before the
Reformation, the Roman Church in Wales had lost all real hold upon
the minds and hearts of the people. All that remained was a
sentimental loyalty, and an immense amount of the grossest
superstition. When the harsh and tactless agents of Thomas Cromwell
visited the parishes and abbeys of Wales, defacing churches,
plundering monks, and destroying miracle-working images, the
prevailing feeling was not that religion was being insulted, but that
superstitious beliefs, tenaciously held, were being flouted. Indeed
the very fact that Wales was so ill-prepared for the Reformation is,
in itself, the most convincing proof of the scandalous way in which
the ancient Church had neglected its duties. So great was the
intellectual and moral torpor into which the people had sunk that it
took more than a century for the new doctrines to penetrate their
minds. Theirs was the most abject and deplorable of all conditions
of slavery, the condition in which the slave does not even desire to
be free. The new Anglican Church, which was mainly the creation of
{147} Elizabethan statutes, it is true, also failed. Upon its
predecessor it was an immense improvement; but it lacked the intense
emotionalism which alone could stir the Welsh heart; and, moreover,
it came to Wales in alien guise, speaking a foreign tongue. It was
not until the Bible in Welsh had saturated into the minds of all
classes, and until the intense appeal of Puritanism had been heard in
the land, that Wales became, what it continued afterwards to be for
two centuries and a half, a country in which religion was the primary
concern of all the people.
Nor is it right to say that the dissolution of the monasteries
inflicted a cruel blow upon Wales. It is perfectly true that, in the
Middle Ages, the Welsh monastery had been, on the whole, favourable
to the cause of national independence, in contradistinction to the
bishop, who was almost invariably an English agent. But the day was
long past when the monastery was the school, the hospital, the
alms-house, and the common friend of the whole country-side. It is
possible, though by no means certain, that the tenant of monastic
land enjoyed an easier existence than his neighbour on the land of a
lay lord; but that was the sole benefit which remained, a {148}
singularly poor excuse for the considerable endowments held by the
monks. The truth is that the dissolution of the monasteries was a
good thing in itself; the blunder and the crime consisted in the use
to which the confiscated property was put. This might have gone to
found schools, to endow charitable institutions, and to provide land
for the landless; instead of that it was recklessly bestowed upon
courtiers, upon the new families who were serving the Tudor
sovereigns so well, and upon nobles whose estates were already
sufficiently large. There were no really wealthy monastic
foundations in Wales at all: their revenue was under £200 a year; and
they were consequently dissolved with the smaller monasteries.
The agents sent to Wales by Cromwell for the purpose of putting down
superstitious practices, and removing idolatrous emblems, performed
their task with the minimum of tact, and sometimes with shameful
rapacity and greed. One of the worst was Bishop Barlow, who was sent
to the diocese of St. David's, the most hallowed ground in Wales.
Himself a time-serving cleric of the type of Cranmer, he had no
sympathy with persons who were unable to keep pace with his own
religious instability. The religious sentiment, {149} which had
gathered for centuries about the Cathedral of St. David, meant
nothing to him. He sought to transfer the see to Carmarthen. At one
moment he insulted the memory of St. David, at another he denied that
such a man had ever existed. He tore the roof from the beautiful
Bishop's Palace, and with the proceeds provided marriage portions for
his five daughters, all of whom were married to bishops. So
consistent was he in his thieving, that it is with considerable
suspicion that one reads his lamentations about the "barbarity," and
the "idolatry," of the people for whom, he argues, it would be waste
of money to repair churches.
An equally thorough, but much more honest and satisfactory, agent of
the Reformation was Ellis Price, popularly known in North Wales as
the "Red Doctor." He was a Welshman, and a kindly individual who
seems to have entertained much good-natured contempt for all forms of
religion. He destroyed superstitious relics; but did not plunder
churches in order to enrich himself. We possess the reports which he
sent to Cromwell; and no impartial reader can peruse them without
coming to the conclusion that the Welsh people were indeed sunk in
the deepest ignorance and {150} the most abject superstition. One of
the idols with which Price had to deal has earned for itself a tragic
fame. This was an immense wooden image of Derfel Gadarn, clothed in
complete armour, which stood in the church of Llandderfel in
Merionethshire. So popular was this figure, says Price in a letter
to Cromwell, that people "come daily in pilgrimage to him, some with
kine, some with oxen and horses, and the rest with money, insomuch
that there were five or six hundred, to a man's estimation, that
offered to the said image the fifth day of this month of April. The
innocent people hath been sore allured and enticed to worship,
insomuch that there is a common saying amongst them that, whosoever
will offer anything to the image of Derfel Gadarn, he hath power to
fetch him or them that so offer, out of hell." Cromwell commanded
that the image should be sent to London, and an offer of the
parishioners to ransom it for forty pounds was rejected. Its arrival
in the metropolis was opportune. A Welsh prophecy had declared that,
one day, Derfel Gadarn would set a forest on fire. The prophecy was
now to be fulfilled. The great doll was hewn in pieces, and used to
burn a friar of the name of Forest, who had denied the royal
supremacy!
{151}
Whatever may have been the feelings with which the Welsh people
regarded the religious innovations, there can be no doubt at all that
they readily acquiesced in them. In Wales there was no Pilgrimage of
Grace, nor any plots against the English Government. The old
religion lingered on, no doubt, in obscure corners, just as it did in
the remote valleys of Cumberland; but it was abroad, and not in
Wales, that the Welsh defenders of Romanism distinguished themselves.
At Douai, and after its foundation in 1578 at the English College at
Rome as well, scholarly and devout Welsh Catholics like Morgan
Phillips, Owen Lewis, and Dr. Morris of Clynog, were busy training
priests for the English mission field. So great became their
influence at Rome that the peace of the College there was troubled by
perennial feuds between English and Welsh. It was the great age of
the Society of Jesus. Those devoted, able, daring and unscrupulous
missionaries were winning fame for themselves in every corner of the
world; and they were at work in England and Wales. But in the Welsh
Catholics they met, from the outset, with strenuous opponents, and a
long battle raged between them. Two other Welsh Catholics, belonging
to a younger generation, {152} were John Roberts of Trawsfynydd, and
John Jones of Llanfynach, better known as Father Leander. These two
had been contemporaries at St. John's College, Oxford, another
contemporary and friend of theirs being Archbishop Laud. At that
time they were Protestants, at least in name; but subsequently were
converted by the Jesuits. A natural antipathy seems to have existed
in the sixteenth century between all Welshmen and the Jesuits; and it
was not long before Roberts and Leander went over to the
Benedictines. Roberts founded a Benedictine seminary at Douai; and
in 1605 the Benedictine College of St. Gregory was opened there, an
institution which for many years was to wield immense influence
within the Catholic Church. At the time the Benedictine Order was
represented in England by only a single monk; and the reinforcement
which came from the Welshmen Roberts, Leander, and David Barker of
Abergavenny, was both timely and decisive. But although ardent
Catholics, these Welsh exiles remained always loyal to the Tudors.
With conspirators and assassins they would have no dealings. They
believed in the restoration of Catholicism in England, not by murder,
not by foreign invasion, but by peaceful {153} propaganda and by that
alone. They are an interesting and an amiable circle; and time has
clothed them with that fascination with which it appears to be the
special and inalienable privilege of leaders of lost causes to be
endued.
It was not until Elizabeth had been for some years on the throne that
any attempt was made to provide the Welsh people with a substitute
for the religion of which they had been deprived. The legal
continuity of the Church was maintained; but little else remained.
Benefices were poor, and the priests few and ignorant. The people
sank deeper and deeper into spiritual indifference. As late as 1585
a well-qualified observer could write that "Many places in Wales,
yea, whole counties, have not a single Christian within them, but
live like animals, most of them knowing nothing of righteousness, but
merely keeping the name of Christ in memory." The scandalous extent
to which pluralism existed, despite the Pluralities Act of Edward VI,
left large numbers of parishes without any sort of spiritual
ministration. Even the great Edmund Prys did not scruple to be at
the same time Rector of Maentwrog, Festiniog, Llandudno, and Ludlow,
as well as Archdeacon {154} of Merioneth, and Canon and Prebendary of
Bangor. He soon resigned Ludlow, but only to acquire the additional
livings of Llanenddwyn and Llanddwywe, as well as a stall at St.
Asaph. Fortunately for the country, a few Welshmen were
conscientious and enlightened believers in the Reformed Faith; and
they beheld with sorrow the plight to which Wales had been brought.
They perceived that the only way in which the people could be raised
and cleansed was by giving them the Bible in their own language. So
far back as 1546 Sir John Price of Brecon had translated a few
Biblical passages into the vernacular, and in 1551 William Salesbury
translated the Gospels and the Epistles. In 1563 Parliament passed
an Act commanding the Welsh Bishops, together with the Bishop of
Hereford, under penalties, to have a complete edition of the Bible in
Welsh ready by 1566. A Welsh version of the new Prayer Book was
issued in 1567. But it was not until the appearance of Bishop
Morgan's translation of the Scriptures, in 1588, that the Bible began
to be a popular book in Wales, and to influence the minds of the
people. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the
influence exercised by Morgan's Bible. Not only did it, in time,
{155} rouse the people from religious lethargy, but it did for the
Welsh language what Luther's Bible did for Germany--it became the
canon of Welsh prose, fixing for centuries its idiom, its diction,
and its style. Morgan was ably assisted in the work by men like
David Powel of Ruabon, Edmund Prys, and Dr. John Davies of Mallwyd.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, was sympathetic, and Gabriel
Goodman, a native of Ruthin, who was at the time Dean of Westminster,
rendered financial assistance.
The publication of Bishop Morgan's Bible is the outstanding event of
the transition period, but Edmund Prys is the outstanding
personality. He represents, in his own person, all that was good in
the Welsh Reformation, with also just a little that was bad. This
interesting man was probably born at Tyddyn Du, in the lovely vale of
Maentwrog, in the year 1544. He was therefore a child of the
Reformation. Of his early years but little is known; and it is only
surmise which leads us to think that he was educated by Sion Tudor at
St. Asaph. That he was of good birth is certain; and that he found a
kindly patron in Dean Goodman, ever ready to befriend a promising
young Welshman, is extremely {156} likely. He became a sizar of St.
John's College, Cambridge, in the same year that Bishop Morgan
entered that college. Cambridge was the intellectual home of
Protestantism in England; and at the time of Prys's residence at the
University, the famous Puritan leader, Thomas Cartwright, occupied
the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity. While yet an undergraduate,
Prys was ordained deacon, at Conington in Cambridgeshire. At the
same time, too, he seems to have come into contact with Whitgift. In
1568, at Ely, he was ordained priest, by Bishop Cox. In 1572 he was
presented to the living of Festiniog and Maentwrog, the parish in
which he had been born; but apparently he did not deem it necessary
to visit the place. He continued to reside at Cambridge, where, in
1574, we read of his being appointed _Preacher_ of St. John's. Two
years later he was made Rector of Ludlow; but although he held the
living until 1579, he did not live there for more than a few weeks.
In 1576 he had been made Archdeacon of Merioneth, as well as Canon of
Bangor; and when to these were added, in 1580, the parishes of
Llanenddwyn and Llanddwywe, he seems to have settled down in Wales to
the life of a busy and conscientious {157} priest. As Archdeacon he
had the whole country, from Criccieth to Machynlleth, under his
charge.
Edmund Prys appears to have discharged faithfully the duties
connected with his various offices down to his death in 1623.
Although a Justice of the Peace, the tall handsome figure of the
Archdeacon was welcome in the houses of all his poorer parishioners.
He was a great scholar, well versed, it was said, in eight languages.
Wales possessed, at that time, a notable band of Hebrew scholars, men
who knew not only Hebrew, but Syriac, Arabic, and Chaldaic as well.
It is, of course, as an author that the fame of Edmund Prys endures.
That he was master of a sound Welsh prose style is apparent from the
few fragments of his writing which remains; but he left no prose
works behind him. It is as a poet, and especially as the composer of
a metrical version of the Psalms, that he will always be remembered.
He wrote much poetry of every description, the topics ranging from
Heaven to tobacco. Most of it is interesting, and some of it
beautiful; but it seldom rises much above a common level of
mediocrity. It is upon the Psalms, and upon them alone, that his
reputation rests. Hymn singing in public worship was {158} the
peculiar product of the Reformation; for although a few magnificent
hymns had been composed in the Middle Ages, by men like St. Bernard,
they occupied no conspicuous place. In churches and monasteries
chanting had been universal; but the popular hymn, which the whole
congregation sang in its own language, was unknown. It would hardly
be going too far to say that, upon the use which it made of the hymn,
the early success of the Reformation depended. German Protestants
marched into battle shouting the great hymns of Luther. The French
Huguenots sang those of Clement Marot and Marguerite de Valois. The
sombre Calvinist services of Geneva were transformed under the
influence of the hymns introduced by Beza. In England a metrical
version of a few of the Psalms had been published by Sternhold, Groom
of the Robes to Henry VIII, in 1548. Then in 1562 appeared the
version of John Hopkins, which, for a hundred and fifty years,
remained the only hymn-book possessed by the English Church. For
years no special tunes were composed to be sung with the new hymns;
they were simply set to the airs of popular songs and ballads.
Edmund Prys published his Welsh Metrical Psalms in 1621. Something
similar, {159} but on a much smaller scale, had been attempted
previously by Dafydd Ddu Hiraddug, and by Edmund Kyffin; but Prys
greatly excelled them in mastery of rhythm and rhyme. The metre is
quasi-ballad, simple and direct, the very thing that would appeal to
the uneducated. It is not surprising to hear that, in a very few
years, the plowman in the field, and the shepherd on the mountain
side, were singing lustily the Psalms of Edmund Prys.
Another Welshman of the period, who deserves special mention, is the
ill-fated John Penry. He was born at Cefnbrith, on the slopes of the
Eppynt hills, in the year 1563; and thirty years later he died a
traitor's death at the hands of the executioner. But though short,
his life was a very full and a very romantic one. The belief that he
was, in early years, a Catholic is probably a mistaken one. Almost
certainly his parents belonged to the Reformed Church; and it is
indubitable that John was sent by them to the ultra-Protestant
University of Cambridge. There, at Peterhouse, he perfected himself
in all the learning of the day, and also pondered deeply over the
condition of his native land. Penry was as religious as Prys, and
far more intensely nationalist. The remedy which he conceived {160}
to be the only adequate one to meet with the ills of the time was the
appointment of "preachers of the Word," to visit the hamlets and
villages, and to awaken the conscience of the people by appealing to
them in their own tongue, and in words which they could comprehend.
Unfortunately this was the one course which Elizabeth and her
ministers were not prepared to sanction. Since "order" was their
watchword in religion and in politics, they were afraid of
countenancing preachers who would, in all probability, set order at
defiance. They knew full well what the effects of popular preaching
had been in the neighbouring country of Scotland; and they were fully
determined that no unauthorized word should be spoken within a church
in England or Wales. Again and again Penry appealed to the
Government to employ lay preachers in Wales, sometimes writing
privately to Burleigh, sometimes addressing petitions to Parliament
through one of the Welsh members. But it was all of no avail; and
from being a loyal subject Penry gradually drifted into a position of
bitter antagonism to the Government. At no time did he become a
rebel, or do anything that could fairly be brought within the scope
of the Treason Acts; {161} nevertheless he undoubtedly did say and
write much which would, if it prevailed, have overthrown both Church
and State as conceived of by Elizabethan statesmen. He became a
relentless opponent of episcopacy; and between 1588 and 1589 the
famous Martin Marprelate Tracts were published. After that it was
dangerous for him to remain in England, so he fled to Scotland, and
while there became an avowed "Separatist." In fundamentals the
Separatists did not differ very much from Anglicans; the most
important point of difference being their view of the proper
connection between Church and State. The Anglican Settlement had the
effect of making the Church a mere department of the State, bound
hand and foot by Acts of Parliament. Even episcopacy itself as an
institution was regarded as deriving its authority exclusively from
Parliament. In 1588 Dr. Hammond, Chancellor of the Diocese of
London, wrote to Burleigh: "The Bishops of our realm do not (so far
as I have ever heard), nor may not, claim to themselves any other
authority than is given them by the statute of the 25th of King Henry
VIII, recited in the first year of Her Majesty's reign, neither is it
reasonable that they should make other claims, for if it had pleased
Her {162} Majesty with the wisdom of the realm to have used no
bishops at all, we could not have complained justly of any defect in
our Church." The great crime of which John Penry and others were
guilty in the eyes of Burleigh and the Queen was not that he was
inculcating something contrary to Catholic tradition, but that he was
challenging the authority of the State to create its own tradition!
Penry, and indeed all the Separatists, stood for a policy
diametrically opposed to this. They desired that the Church should
be free, with full power to determine its own constitution and its
own creed. Theirs was a protest against Tudor absolutism and
uniformity, and in favour of a local government in ecclesiastical
affairs, which at a later date developed into Congregationalism.
Upon Elizabeth, Whitgift, and Cecil, Penry made no impression.
Failing to persuade, he proceeded to defy. He drifted farther and
farther from the Established Church, until finally he was put upon
his trial for treason, condemned, and executed.
John Penry was a reformer from without; in Vicar Pritchard the Church
produced a reformer from within. This interesting and amiable man,
commonly known as the "Old {163} Vicar," was born in 1579, educated
like most other Welsh scholars of the seventeenth century at Jesus
College, Oxford, and ordained by the Bishop of Colchester in 1602.
In the same year he was given the livings of Llandingal and
Llandovery; and to these he in 1613 added that of Llanedi. To the
higher ecclesiastical dignities he never attained; but in 1626 he was
made Chancellor of the Diocese of St. David's. His life was
singularly uneventful; and in 1644 he died, leaving in his will land
for the purpose of founding a Free Grammar School at Llandovery. No
one felt more keenly, or with a greater sense of shame, the degraded
condition of the people of Wales at the time. Although a staunch
Royalist and Churchman, he was filled with the stern Puritan love of
righteousness, and an ardent desire to convince his countrymen of the
evil of their ways. Like Edmund Prys he bethought him of the
Welshman's intense love of poetry and music. Why, instead of singing
profane ditties, should the people not sing songs of an edifying
character? He decided to preach without intermission; but to make
verse the vehicle of his message. It would be useless to contend
that the Vicar was, in any sense, a great poet; {164} but his
versification is at least competent; and the simple stanzas which he
composed have an easy swing and flow which makes them admirably
adapted for committing to memory by simple and unlettered folk. His
collection of religious poems is called _Canwyll y Cymry_ (the Welsh
People's Candle); and it was published in four parts, in 1646, 1659,
1670, and 1672, all of them after the death of their author. To us
the work is valuable for the light which it sheds upon the manners of
the day. If the good Vicar is to be believed, Wales must have been
in a most deplorable condition, the people's ignorance gross and
sordid, and their morals simply bestial. No Separatist ever painted
a darker picture of Wales in the first century of the history of the
Anglican Church than did this candid and friendly critic. After a
life of faithful service, the Vicar died in 1644.
Before the close of the sixteenth century the future religious
boundaries of this country had been clearly marked. The Elizabethan
Settlement of religion had aimed at constructing a Church which
should be wide enough to include the vast majority of English people.
It was frankly a compromise, created with that express purpose. In
spite, {165} however, of the latitude allowed, it had become apparent
that for many people it was not wide enough. At one end stood a band
of irreconcilable Catholics, who positively refused to conform,
preferring to endure all manner of penalties and disabilities. At
the other extremity stood an ever-growing body of people who longed
for a more thorough Reformation, and who cast longing glances in the
direction of Geneva. Already these people were beginning to be known
as Puritans; and before the close of her reign Elizabeth had passed a
statute to penalize them. A few implacable extremists had been
deprived of their preferments in the Church as early as 1567, and had
begun to form a Nonconformist Church at the Plumbers' Hall, in
London, under the leadership of one Richard Fitz. He was followed by
Robert Browne, Barrowe, Greenwood, Penry, and Robinson. These men
were Independents. Meanwhile Thomas Helwys had come from Leyden, and
had founded a Baptist Church in London. But for a long time the
majority of Puritans remained within the Anglican Church; and it was
not until the Romanizing policy of Laud, crudely conceived and
savagely enforced, had declared itself that they came {166} out in
thousands, and formed Churches of their own.
In Wales Nonconformity, which for three hundred years was to play a
dominating part in the religion, education, politics, and literature
of the nation, began comparatively late; and it was not until after
the Civil War that it acquired much strength. Indeed it has been
estimated that, at the Restoration, there were in Wales only a score
or so of Nonconformist chapels, each of them having a membership of
from two to five hundred. Yet even in the days of small things the
Nonconformists played a prominent part; and they included in their
number the majority of the patriotic Welshmen of the age. In Wales,
even more than in England, it may be said that it was not doctrinal
distinctions that led to the rise of Nonconformity; neither was it
the question of Church establishment. All the early Welsh Puritan
leaders were strictly orthodox, according to the standard of the
Prayer Book; and the majority of them were well content that there
should be a State Church. It was upon the question of preaching that
the first and greatest difficulties arose. The views held so
emphatically by John Penry were taken up by his {167} successors;
while Elizabeth's attitude of hostility was even stiffened by Laud.
On the shoulders of that narrow and unamiable pedant must be laid the
greater part of the blame for the irreparable schism which occurred
in the English Church. Laud's lack of understanding of the temper
and the needs of Wales is the less excusable inasmuch as he himself
had been, from 1621 until 1626, Bishop of St. David's. During the
greater part of the time he was non-resident; but he kept always a
vigilant eye for recusants in his remote diocese. He also built a
chapel in the Bishop's Palace at Abergwili, and actually came down
for its consecration. Upon the Welsh Church, in other respects, his
episcopate does not appear to have left a trace.
The first Nonconformist Church in Wales was founded in 1639, at
Llanfaches in Monmouthshire; and its first Minister was the saintly
William Wroth who had been, for thirty-nine years, Rector of the
parish. For some time prior to 1639 Laud had been uttering
complaints about Wroth's irregular preaching. The utmost limit of
his "irregularity" would seem to have consisted in the delivery of an
occasional sermon in the open {168} air. When remonstrated with he
offered a vigorous defence, saying: "There are thousands of immortal
souls around me thronging to perdition, and should I not use all
means likely to succeed to save them." Such zeal must have been
highly offensive to the Archbishop; and one is not surprised to hear
that Wroth was deprived of his living. This, however, was not going
to deter the zealous Rector from preaching; and since he would no
longer be allowed to do so in the Parish Church, he would do so
elsewhere. Such was the parent Church of Welsh Nonconformity.
But William Wroth was not the only Welsh clergyman to be treated in
this fashion. In 1638 William Erbery, Vicar of St. Mary's, Cardiff,
was likewise deprived of his living; and became the first Minister of
an Independent Church in that city. His curate, Walter Cradock, was
deprived of his licence in 1633, and became one of the most
influential patriotic teachers of the period. He it was who
converted the famous Vavasour Powell, and the even more famous Morgan
Llwyd.
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