THE CIVIL WAR
The Great Civil War was the last occasion on which Welshmen have
fought upon the soil of their native land. The old order was giving
place to the new. Henceforward the heroes of Wales were not
soldiers, but poets, scholars, and, above all, preachers. A last
flicker of the old martial spirit, the old lust of battle, is seen in
the struggle between King and Parliament. To write the history of
Wales between 1642 and 1649 would simply be to narrate the incidents
of the Civil War, for no part of the country played a more prominent
part in the contest than did the Principality. Here, however, it
must suffice to disentangle from the rest that which was peculiarly
Welsh, and to draw attention to a few Welshmen who rendered
themselves illustrious.
It is well known that, at the outbreak of the war, the cleavage
between the partisans {170} of Charles and those of Parliament
followed geographical, racial, and professional, rather than social,
lines. To say that the upper classes were for the King, and the
lower classes for the Commons, would contain rather more fiction than
truth. At most all that can be said is that the aristocracy, the
squirearchy, and the peasantry, were, on the whole, favourable to the
King; while the substantial farmers, and the trading and commercial
classes were mainly inclined towards Parliament. Large numbers of
all these classes were, however, to be found on both sides. But the
geographical division is far more clear and certain. If a line be
drawn from Hull to Gloucester, and then on to Plymouth, it can be
said roughly that all the country to the east and south of it was for
Parliament, and everything to the west and north for Charles. It is
further to be observed that High Churchmen and Catholics favoured the
Royalist cause, while the Dissenters were to a man upholders of the
Commons. About the attitude of Wales there was, from the very first,
no question: it was well nigh unanimously Royalist. Why that should
have been so it is difficult to explain; except on the facile
assumption {171} that the Welsh people were either preternaturally
enlightened or else preternaturally stupid. The Tudors had been of
Welsh blood, and the intense loyalty which they evoked in Welsh
hearts was only natural; but the Stuarts were only remotely descended
from Welsh ancestors, and in most respects were more thoroughly alien
than pure Englishmen would have been. Nor had they conferred any
benefits upon Wales. Neither James I nor Charles I had ever as much
as professed to take any interest in the affairs of the country. In
spite of this, however, in no part of their dominions did the early
Stuarts meet with a more blind and thorough-going loyalty. The
cleavage which was shortly to appear in Wales between the upper and
the lower classes had not as yet manifested itself. The day was not
far distant when the upper classes would be English in speech, Tory
in politics, and Anglican in religion, while the middle and lower
classes would be Welsh in speech, Liberal in politics, and
Nonconformist in religion. In Charles I's reign, however, all were
united; and when the leaders of the nation declared for the King,
none of their tenants held back. The day of the power of the
preacher had not {172} yet dawned; but the poet was widely
influential, and with hardly an exception the bards were enthusiastic
Royalists. A few discordant notes were, of course, heard. Two
Welshmen put their names to the death warrant of Charles. One of
them had been a brave Roundhead soldier, and afterwards served the
Commonwealth in an important capacity. The other stood high on
account of his wisdom in the councils of the victorious party. There
was also Morgan Llwyd, the author of _Llyfr y Tri Aderyn_, a Fifth
Monarchy Man, and the finest Welsh intellect of the age. But these
men were exceptions; and to paint them as representatives of a
democracy sighing for freedom, and for the blessings of Parliamentary
supremacy, is a grotesque travesty of the situation. Leaders they
undoubtedly were, but leaders of posterity, rather than of their
contemporaries.
If it is difficult to account for the affection of Wales for the
Stuarts, it is easy to explain its dislike of Parliament. As we have
had occasion already to observe, Parliament was not an indigenous
growth in Wales, but a foreign importation. It was never evolved out
of the political consciousness of the people. Moreover, all that the
Welsh people knew {173} about it up to that time was that it was the
foreign body which passed laws making such drastic alterations in the
customs of their country, forbidding them to speak Welsh, forbidding
them to go to Mass, and most unfairly and inexplicably ordering that
the whole of the father's estate was to go to the eldest son.
Puritanism was hateful to the people, as being even more remote than
Anglicanism from the old religious ceremonial for which they still
had a warm corner in their hearts. Wales was, in those days, a merry
country, full of mirth and joviality. Games and good cheer were
loved by all. There was much superstition, much dissoluteness, much
profanity, but this only made the people the more resentful of the
chilling and sobering touch of Puritanism. The old Wales of the
Middle Ages was still alive, and the fountains of imagination, art,
and romance had not yet been frozen. There was no Welsh
printing-press in existence; and even if there had been, the people
were, on the whole, far too ignorant to understand a noble appeal to
their latent love of liberty contained in such a work as Milton's
_Areopagitica_. Of the great principles for which both parties in
the war were fighting--respect for law and {174} supremacy of
Parliament, on the side of the Roundheads; control of the Executive
by the King, and supremacy of the Episcopal Church, on the side of
the Royalists--they knew nothing. Such ideas were too complex for
them. What they could understand was the ancient loyalty of subject
to Prince; and in following Charles they acted ingenuously, and
according to their lights. Parliament, they instinctively felt, was
not fighting the battle of the poor man, nor of the squire; and Wales
was inhabited almost exclusively by these two classes. In so far as
it was fighting for a class at all, it was fighting for the trader;
and trade was, as yet, of little account in the life of Wales. It
was thus in the "Celtic Fringe," in Wales, in Scotland, in
Cumberland, and in Cornwall, that Charles found the fullest measure
of support; and it is interesting to remember that, when war broke
out between King and States-General in France a hundred and fifty
years later, it was among the Celts of Brittany that Louis XVI found
his most steadfast support.
In the years immediately preceding the outbreak of war a Welshman
stood high in the counsels of Charles I; and at one time it looked as
if this man might play the part {175} played in the French Revolution
by Mirabeau, namely, that of mediator between King and Parliament.
This able man was the Lord Keeper, John Williams. He has suffered
the usual fate of all mediators, and been abused by the two parties
which he sought to reconcile; but an impartial judge will accord to
him a high place in the annals of British statesmanship. He was born
in 1582 at Conway, of an ancient and respected Welsh family, and was
educated first at Ruthin, then at Oxford, where he had a singularly
brilliant academic career. It does not seem to have been difficult
in those days for Welshmen to secure high positions in the Church: we
have already come across the case of Gabriel Goodman, who became Dean
of Westminster. John Williams likewise became Dean of Westminster,
in 1620, and left there a fitting memorial of himself in the cedar
panelling which he caused to be put in the Jerusalem Chamber. He was
Court Chaplain, high in favour with the royal favourite Buckingham,
and with both James I and Charles. In 1621 he was made Lord Keeper
and Bishop of Lincoln. That he seems to have shared to the full the
artistic tastes of the Court is proved not only by his work in {176}
the Jerusalem Chamber, but also by the beautiful chapel, with its
exquisite stained glass windows, which he built for Lincoln College,
Oxford. In politics his influence, at this time, was a moderating
one; and his opposition to the reckless foreign policy of the hour
lost him the favour of Buckingham; while his opposition to the
tyranny of the High Commission won for him the enmity of Laud. In
1625 he was deprived of his offices; and in 1637 this penalty was
followed by a heavy fine, imprisonment, and suspension from his
ecclesiastical functions, the charge being that he had revealed the
King's secrets, and tampered with witnesses. Whether the accusation
was well-founded or not we cannot tell; but remembering the sordid
official life of so great a man as Bacon, we cannot safely dismiss it
as impossible, or even unlikely.
Williams was an ambitious man; and he felt the loss of royal favour
keenly. Like Wentworth he determined to become an out-and-out
supporter of the King. In 1640 he was released from prison; and as a
reward for his strenuous support of the royal prerogative, and of
episcopacy, was in the following year made Archbishop of York. So
intemperate was he in his defence of the new position in {177}
politics which he had taken up that he was committed to the Tower, by
order of the House of Commons. On the outbreak of hostilities,
however, we find him at large, assisting the King both with money and
advice. The portrait of Williams which Clarendon paints is an
exceedingly unpleasant one. He acknowledges him to have been a man
of wit and learning; but adds that he was "of a proud, restless, and
over-weening spirit, a very imperious and fiery temper, and a very
corrupt nature." All this is probably true. Let us, however, be
just to him and concede that he was sincere, kind-hearted, and loyal;
and that, on most occasions, the advice which he tendered was sound.
Wales, of course, had its own representatives in the House of
Commons; and these must have sat with the other Members through the
stormy scenes which preluded the passing of the Petition of Right,
and the even more stormy scenes which attended the Grand
Remonstrance. But all through the long contest the Welsh Members
were, with hardly an exception, firm on the side of the King. And
not only did they support the King in the lobby, they also followed
him on to the field of battle. Two of {178} them--William Herbert of
Cardiff, and Charles Price of Radnor--died for the cause. Nine
others bore arms for Charles--William Price of Rhiwlas, John
Bodville, Richard Herbert, Henry Vaughan of Derwydd, Sir Edward
Stradling, Richard Jones of Trewern, Francis Lloyd of Maesyvelin, Sir
John Stepney, and Herbert Price of Brecon. Of all the Welsh Members
only Sir Thomas Middleton and Henry Herbert sided consistently with
Parliament. Sir John Price of Newtown, after suffering much for the
King, went over to the side of Parliament; and Hugh Owen of Orielton
repeatedly changed sides.
In order to see clearly what part was played by Wales in the fight,
it is convenient to adhere to the customary division of the war into
three periods. The first period opens with the battle of Edgehill on
October 23, 1642, and closes with the death of Pym in December 1643.
The second period begins with the entry of the Scottish army into
England in January 1644, and ends with the King's flight to the
Scottish camp in April 1646. These two periods taken together
constitute what is sometimes called the First Civil War. The third
period, or the Second Civil War, begins with the escape of Charles
{179} in November 1647, and ends with his execution in January 1649.
At the opening of the war, and indeed down to the spring of 1644,
Charles took up the offensive. He held the whole of the North, as
well as all the West; and his strategy consisted in converging
attacks upon London. During the whole of this period his firmest
base, and his best recruiting ground, was Wales. Immediately after
the unfurling of his standard at Nottingham, on August 22, Charles
had marched to Shrewsbury, resolving, in the words of Clarendon, "to
sit down near the borders of Wales, where the power of Parliament had
been least prevalent, and where some regiments of foot were levying
for his service." It was an excellent situation to occupy, in the
very centre of the border country, and with easy communications with
the two Royalist strongholds of Chester and Worcester. Before the
end of September Worcester had surrendered to the Parliamentary
General Essex, and its garrison, led by Prince Rupert, had marched
through the Welsh border and joined the King at Shrewsbury. The
King's expectation of help from Wales had, in the meantime, not been
disappointed. The gentry had flocked to his {180} Court to assure
him of their devotion, and then returned to their homes to raise
recruits. At least five thousand Welshmen responded to the appeal, a
number so unexpectedly large that Charles had neither sufficient arms
for them, nor sufficient money wherewith to buy provisions. Indeed,
so badly was the King provided with weapons that, at the opening of
the campaign, he seems to have had in his possession only some eight
hundred muskets, five hundred pairs of pistols, and two hundred
swords. Thus reinforced, and consoled for the loss of Worcester by
the news that Lord Herbert had captured Cardiff Castle, Charles
decided to make straight for London, rightly believing that the
capture of the metropolis would completely paralyze his opponents.
At Edgehill, not far from Banbury, his path was intercepted by the
Parliamentary army under Essex. An indecisive battle was fought.
The King was obliged to abandon his intention of reaching London: but
Oxford was occupied; and it became thenceforward the Royalist capital.
In the following year, 1643, we again find the King attacking, this
time with three separate armies, one advancing from the North, the
other from Cornwall, and the third {181} from Wales. Those parts of
the country were solidly Royalist except that Hull held out for
Parliament in the north-east, Gloucester in the west, and Plymouth in
the south-west. The attempts of the Royalist forces of South Wales
to cross the border were foiled, with much bloodshed, by Essex at
Highnam; while their future advance was rendered more difficult by
the Parliamentary occupation of Chepstow and Monmouth. South Wales
was thus shut in between the Parliamentary fortresses of Gloucester,
Chepstow, and Monmouth to the east, and Pembroke to the west.
Meanwhile Sir Thomas Middleton, and Brereton, were overrunning
Cheshire and North Wales, capturing one Royalist fortress after
another. In siege warfare the Parliamentarians enjoyed an easy and
decisive superiority, for they alone possessed heavy artillery. A
Royalist army arrived from Ireland, but it was defeated with heavy
loss at Nantwich; and soon only Chester held out for the King in that
part of the country. Charles, who was gifted with a considerable
amount of military insight and acumen, perceived the importance of
Chester, not only as a rallying place for Wales, but also as a gate
to Ireland; and he sent Sir Nicholas {182} Byron to command the
garrison, and to take general charge of Cheshire and Shropshire.
Although Byron only just succeeded in holding his own, he at least
had the satisfaction of knowing that he was keeping a large
Parliamentary army occupied in watching him, and so making it
impossible for it to march against the King. South Wales had been
entrusted by Charles to the care of Lord Herbert, eldest son of the
Marquis of Worcester, a man personally popular, but a Catholic, and
without military training. As compensation, however, for his
defects, there was the fact that his father was reputed to be the
wealthiest man in the kingdom; and his son's army was fitted out, and
maintained, entirely at his own private cost. It took him but little
time to raise an army of fifteen hundred foot and five hundred horse,
all well and sufficiently armed. The close of the year 1643 saw the
King still in a good position; and as for Wales it was, with the
exception of two or three places in Pembrokeshire, solidly Royalist,
while only Gloucester prevented Charles from being master of the
whole Severn valley.
With the beginning of the year 1644, however, things began to alter.
Many of the {183} younger and more ardent Parliamentarians were
growing impatient of the dilatory method of their own leaders. They
fancied that such men as Essex did not really desire to crush the
King once and for all. New men, of the type of Cromwell, Ireton, and
Harrison, were coming to the front. The result was that now, for the
first time, Parliament began to take the offensive, and to direct its
armies against those parts of the country which were most loyal to
Charles. This explains the strategy of the next two years. In 1644
the North was won, as the result of the victory of Marston Moor; and
in 1645 the Midlands were won, as the result of Naseby. In Wales the
year 1644 opened with an attack by Lord Herbert upon the
Parliamentary stronghold of Pembroke. The attempt was repulsed; and
in the succeeding weeks Laugharne, then a staunch Roundhead, made
sure of South Wales, capturing Haverfordwest, Tenby, Carew, and
Carmarthen. An attempt to recover the lost ground was made by
Gerard, aided by some Irish levies; but so oppressive was the conduct
of these wild and undisciplined troops that the affections of the
greater part of South Wales were permanently alienated from the
Royalist cause. {184} Some months later Gerard was relieved of his
command; but the evil had been done. Meanwhile Laugharne was
pursuing his victorious course; and before the close of the year
Monmouth, Brecon, and Newcastle Emlyn had fallen into the hands of
Parliament.
By this time Rupert had had conferred upon him the title of President
of Wales. In February he was at Chester, where applications for help
reached him from every quarter. One of the most importunate appeals
came from Newark, and thither he decided to go, having appointed the
cultured, but ineffective, Sir John Mennes governor of the three
northern Welsh counties in his absence. The Royalist cause in North
Wales was now beginning to be badly shaken. In September the
Roundheads won a great victory at Montgomery, as a result of which
the castle fell into their hands. Archbishop Williams, tired and
hopeless, was endeavouring to make Conway a refuge for fugitives
fleeing from the advancing foe. After the defeat of Marston Moor the
disorderly remnants of the King's broken army flocked into Wales,
pillaging and rioting, and completing the work of alienating the
native inhabitants.
In 1645, however, there was a distinct {185} improvement in the
King's fortunes in Wales. Gerard captured Haverfordwest, Picton, and
Carew in May, and routed the Parliamentarians of Pembrokeshire. But
in June came the King's crushing defeat at Naseby, where the greater
part of the Royalist infantry had been Welsh. From the scene of his
defeat Charles once more came to Wales to look for another army. But
the last great pitched battle had been fought; henceforward the war
was made up of sieges and skirmishes. Gerard was still successful;
and in quick succession defeated Sir John Price at Llanidloes,
Middleton near Oswestry, and Laugharne at Newcastle Emlyn. As a
result of these victories the castles of Llanidloes and Cardigan
again became Royalist. This time, however, Charles found the Welsh
people less eager to listen to his appeals, so bitter was their
resentment at the treatment which they had experienced at the hands
of the dissolute troopers of Rupert and Gerard. Nevertheless from
the Monmouthshire and from the Glamorganshire squires came renewed
promises of aid. But even the influence of their landlords failed
now to induce the common people to enlist in the King's army.
Moreover such recruits as were forthcoming {186} at all were only to
be secured by agreeing to certain conditions. They were to have
their own Welsh officers; there must be no demand for payment of
arrears; and the obligation to entertain soldiers at free quarters
must be limited to a single night. Evidently the ancient spirit of
sturdy independence was beginning to be roused from its long sleep!
Charles had been waiting impatiently at Raglan; then, bitterly
disappointed, he proceeded to Chester, and from its walls witnessed
the rout of his cavalry at Rowton Heath. At the beginning of 1646
Chester surrendered to Parliament, and in the whole of Wales Harlech
Castle alone remained faithful to Charles.
In April 1646 Charles surrendered himself to the Scottish army, and
the First Civil War came to an end. Harlech was still holding out,
and it was only in March 1647, just a year after the surrender of
Chester, and seven months after Raglan, the last English fortress to
fly the Royal standard, had capitulated, that it opened its gates to
Mytton. The year 1647 was occupied in fruitless negotiations between
King and Parliament, and in bitter controversy and recrimination
between Parliament and Army, Presbyterians and Independents. {187}
So divided had the Roundheads become that Charles again took heart,
and in 1648 embarked upon the adventure which was to cost him his
life--the so-called Second Civil War. Nowhere had the new religious
and political controversies raged with greater rancour than in Wales.
The supremacy of the Army, and the triumph of the Independents, were
contemplated with unconcealed aversion and dismay. Even men like
Laugharne, who had been prominent in the war against Charles, now
went over to his side. On February 20, Colonel Poyer, Governor of
Pembroke Castle, refused to lay down his command in favour of a
successor who had been appointed to take his place. Other bodies of
troops joined Poyer, who drove the Parliamentary army out of
Pembroke. This was the signal for a general revolt throughout Wales.
One-half of the Model Army, under the command of Horton, was sent in
hot haste to the Principality; and in May it defeated Laugharne and
his rebels at St. Fagan's. Before the end of the month Cromwell
himself appeared on the scene. The rebels were chased from the open
country, and shut up in the castles of Pembroke, Tenby, and Chepstow.
The two {188} latter places were taken without much difficulty, but
Pembroke, where Poyer himself commanded, held out until July. Its
gallant commander was put to death, to expiate the offence of
apostasy, an offence rendered exceptionally heinous by the fact
that--to quote the words written by Cromwell at the time--it had been
committed "against so much light."
Meanwhile events had been moving quickly in North Wales as well.
Byron, with the assistance of Colonel Robinson, had gained possession
of Anglesey; but the central figure of the rising in North Wales was
the celebrated Sir John Owen of Clenenau. He was a turbulent man,
who had done to death the sheriff of Merionethshire with singular
brutality. But his undoubted bravery, his bluff manners, and his
loyalty made him a popular and a typical figure. Mytton, the
successful captor of Harlech, was sent against him, and at the battle
of Llandegai Owen was decisively vanquished. With his defeat, and
the capture of Pembroke, the Second Civil War in Wales came to a
close. Owen had been made prisoner, but through the intercession of
Ireton his life was spared.
From the barren, if picturesque, annals of {189} bloodshed, a war in
which, so far as Wales was concerned, no great principle was at
stake, it is a relief to turn to the settlement of the country under
the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and to the work of the few great
Welsh Parliamentarians. Colonel John Jones the "Regicide" is
deserving at least of passing mention. Brought up in one of the
wildest and most remote corners of the Merionethshire mountains, he
advanced, by sheer force of character and intellect, to a position of
trust in the counsels of Parliament. As soon as war broke out he
joined the ranks of the Parliamentary army. We find him representing
Merionethshire in the House of Commons in 1647, and again from 1647
to 1653, when he was elected for Denbighshire. No man threw himself
with greater zeal into the task of organizing the new army. He was
not one of those who, having taken the initial step, cast reluctant
glances back. For him there was but one goal--the complete and final
victory of Parliament. When this object was attained, he did not
hesitate to sit in the Court which sat in judgment upon Charles, nor
did he shrink from signing his death warrant. His friendship with
Cromwell was cemented by his marriage to the {190} Protector's
sister. In Wales, during the war, and in Ireland after its
termination, he was an acute and able agent of Parliament, and on one
occasion the House of Commons passed a special resolution, thanking
him, and voting him a present of £2000. When the Restoration came,
John Jones made no effort to escape from the almost certain doom
which awaited him by a timely flight abroad; on the contrary he
remained openly in London. He was consigned to the Tower, tried,
condemned, and put to death with all the horrible barbarities
prescribed by the law in the case of traitors.
The other great Welshman of the day was Morgan Llwyd, and with him
the whole history of the Commonwealth in Wales is bound up. The
victorious Parliament and army, as one might suppose, regarded Wales
with no friendly eye; and during the ensuing years the Principality
was governed sternly and unsympathetically. The position of Wales
varied with the many constitutional experiments of the period. The
Agreement of the People, of 1649, proposed to give the country
thirty-five representatives out of a total of four hundred. In the
Assembly of 1653 Wales had six representatives. Under {191} the
Instrument of Government, of 1653, thirty-eight Members, out of four
hundred, were allotted to it. But in the hour of its triumph
Parliament really counted for little in the affairs of the nation,
and the representatives of Wales, mostly strangers, hardly counted at
all. It was the great day of officialdom, and the land groaned under
their heavy hand.
The new Government, and even the great Protector himself, despite his
Welsh descent, cared nothing for Wales as a separate nation; and the
national spirit would have fared badly but for a small band of true
patriots, the foremost of whom was Morgan Llwyd. This wonderful man
was born at Cynfal, a substantial farmhouse situated in one of the
most romantic of Merionethshire glens, in the year 1619; and he died
in 1659. His life, short as it was, marks the transition from the
old Wales to the new, from the condition of poverty, strife, and
degrading superstition, to that of freedom, peace, and progress.
With the execution of John Roberts of Trawsfynydd, in 1610, perished
the last champion of Popery in Wales. With the death of Morgan's own
grandfather Huw Llwyd, somewhere about 1630, ended the {192} famous
line of poet-magicians who dominated the Welsh mind during the Middle
Ages. This Huw Llwyd was, in many respects, a very remarkable man.
For many years he had fought on the Continent, in the religious wars
of the age; then in his declining years had come to Cynfal, to be the
admiration and the terror of his simple neighbours. A belief in
witchcraft was then fairly general; and Huw was credited with the
possession of unusually extensive authority over the agents of the
lower world. In this there was nothing incompatible with a
reputation for strict morality, and even sanctity, as one of the very
traditions which have been handed down clearly shows. One day Huw
was enjoying himself in a tavern in the neighbouring village of
Maentwrog. Through the window he descried his friend Archdeacon
Edmund Prys go by. Putting his head through the window, he warmly
invited him to come in and enjoy the good cheer. The reverend man
seems to have been scandalized at the thought; and to show his
displeasure he immediately caused two, long horns to grow out of the
luckless Huw's head, so that he was unable to withdraw it from the
window. Not to be outdone, Huw, that same evening, ordered {193}
certain of the devils over whom he had control, to dip the Archdeacon
in the mill stream which ran past his house. Such were the merry
pranks which parsons and poets played upon each other in early
seventeenth-century Wales!
From this atmosphere of superstition Morgan escaped early, being sent
to school with Walter Cradock at Wrexham, then the most enlightened
centre in the whole country. From his able teacher he learned all
the new ideas of freedom both in religion and in politics; and it is
not surprising that, when the Civil War broke out, he should have
joined the Parliamentary army, and served as chaplain for several
years. While in London he united himself with that wonderful sect
called the Fifth Monarchy Men. These men believed that the world was
destined to be governed by five great monarchies in succession.
Four--Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome--had already been, and were
humbled in the dust. The fifth was to be a heavenly kingdom. Christ
would himself appear on earth, would free His saints from bondage,
and would establish a universal and immutable empire. They believed
His advent to be now at hand, and waited for it anxiously day by day.
{194} Their duty, as they conceived of it, was to prepare the way for
His coming; and it necessarily followed that an acknowledgment of any
earthly monarch must be profane and blasphemous. Fanatical they
were, unreasonable they may also have been; but there were no more
unflinching upholders of the liberty of the subject, and no better
friends of religious toleration. The most influential man in the
sect was Harrison, and with his appointment, in 1649, as Governor of
South Wales, Morgan Llwyd settled down as pastor at Wrexham.
In February 1650 an Act was passed "for the propagation of the Gospel
in Wales." Power was given to commissioners to hold an enquiry into
the lives of all the Welsh clergy, and to deprive all such as were
found to be immoral, incapable, or hostile to the new Government. A
large number actually were ejected, and their place taken by a new
and specially certified body of preachers. These commissioners were
extremely unpopular in Wales, for the country was strongly
anti-Puritan; and much of the unpopularity was visited on the new
preachers, who were frequently waylaid and beaten. Not much progress
appears to have been made; for as {195} late as 1656 we find Berry,
who was Major-General, first for North Wales, and afterwards for
South, writing to Thurloe--"One great evil I find here, which I know
not how to remedy, and that is the want of able preachers.
Certainly, if some course be not taken these people will some of them
become heathens."
The "Propagation Act" was repealed in 1653; and that brought to a
head the antagonism which for some time had existed between Cromwell
and the Fifth Monarchists. The Long Parliament was expelled by
Cromwell in 1653; and its successor--the Short Parliament--displayed
so marked a leaning in the direction of extreme republicanism, that
it soon shared the same fate. Harrison, Vavasour Powell, and Morgan
Llwyd were now in open opposition to the Protector; and the two
Welshmen toured the Principality inciting the people to rise against
him. They stood for complete separation of Church and State, for
religious toleration, and for a form of pure democracy in which there
would be no room for such an office as that of Protector. Their
protest against the Protectorate was published in 1655, under the
title of "A Word for God." Morgan Llwyd and Powell were the only two
leading Welsh preachers to sign it. That {196} the majority of Welsh
Roundheads were entirely favourable to Cromwell is proved by the
counter protest which was at once issued, a document which was signed
by almost all the leading men, including Walter Cradock. We must
allow that Harrison and his followers were unfair to Cromwell in
impugning his honesty. The great Protector was always sincere; but
he had learnt, what successive generations of politicians have all in
turn had to learn, that the ideals of Opposition cannot always be
made to square with the facts of Office. The Commonwealth was
shipwrecked on the rock of national opposition; the vast majority of
the nation were, and continued to be, Royalists and Episcopalians.
From that time until his death Morgan Llwyd ceased to play any part
in politics. He had always been studiously inclined. In 1653 had
been written his great classic, _Llyfr y Tri Aderyn_ (Book of the
Three Birds). In the closing years of his life, the mystic
tendencies which had always been strong in him got the better of
everything else. He translated the writings of Jacob Behmen; and
tramped about the hills and valleys of Wales, preaching to the
peasantry in their own homes. His influence was immense; {197} and
without founding school, or sect, or party, he left a name and an
inspiration which remained fresh and potent for generations.
Morgan Llwyd did not survive to see the Restoration; and well was it
for him that he did not, for it would have filled him with the most
poignant anguish. Most of all would he have been grieved by the
manifest signs of joy with which the event was greeted in Wales. The
dream of a moral, a religious, an educated, and a democratic Wales
was shattered for the time being; it was not to be revived for
another hundred years and more. Once again the country sank back
into its intellectual torpor, its superstition, and its immorality.
The old order was restored:--"The squire dispensed justice, the
parson preached loyalty, the bard in remote Nannau praised the life
of Charles the First and bewailed his death, and the peasant was told
that the world was put right again." In many parts of the land
Parliamentarians were pitilessly persecuted. In Merionethshire,
where the influence of Morgan Llwyd had been most strong, and where
Maes-y-Garnedd, the home of Colonel John Jones, stood in the shadow
of the mountains, a sturdy spirit of independence had already been
fostered. Determined {198} not to remain at home to be oppressed, a
large number of them left Bala in 1682, and sailed for the Quaker
colony of Pennsylvania. There, from time to time, they were joined
by other Welsh people. To the district which they occupied they gave
the name of "Meirion," and they became the ancestors of many of the
most distinguished citizens of Philadelphia.
{199}