Part 5 (1/2)

They obtained equal political privileges. The laws which denied them residence in the garrison towns in Wales, or the holding of land in England, came to an end. The whole of the country, s.h.i.+re ground and march ground, was divided into one system of s.h.i.+res and given representation in Parliament, by the Act of Union of 1535. It is called an Act of Union because, by it, Wales and England were united on equal terms.

Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, and Carmarthen had been s.h.i.+res since I 284; and small portions of Glamorgan and Pembroke had been governed like s.h.i.+res, so that some Tudor writers call them counties. The chief difference between a s.h.i.+re and a lords.h.i.+p is that the king's writ runs to the s.h.i.+re, but not to the lords.h.i.+p. The king administers the law in the s.h.i.+re, through the sheriff; the lord administers the law in the lords.h.i.+p through his own officials.

In 1535 the marches of Wales were turned into s.h.i.+re ground. The bulk of them went to make seven new s.h.i.+res--Pembroke, Glamorgan, Monmouth, Brecon, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh. The others were added to the older English and Welsh counties. Of these, those added to Shrops.h.i.+re and Herefords.h.i.+re and Gloucesters.h.i.+re became part of England. Monmouth also was declared to be an English s.h.i.+re, for judicial purposes; but it has remained st.u.r.dily Welsh, and now it is practically regarded by Parliament as part of Wales. The whole country was now governed in the same way, and Wales was represented, like England, in Parliament. No attempt had been made to do this before, except by the first English Prince of Wales, the weak and unfortunate Edward II.

Of even greater value than political equality was the new reign of law. The Tudors used the Star Chamber, the Court of Wales, and the Great Sessions of Wales, to make all equal before the law. To the Star Chamber they summoned a n.o.ble who was still too powerful for the court of law.

But it was the Court of Wales that did most work. It was held at Ludlow. It had very able presidents, men like Bishop Lee, the Earl of Pembroke, and Sir Henry Sidney. Bishop Lee struck terror into the whole Welsh march, between 1534 and 1543. Before his time a lord would keep murderers and robbers at his castle, protect them, and perhaps share their spoil. But no man could keep a felon out of the reach of Bishop Rowland Lee. If he could not get them alive he got their dead bodies; and you might have seen processions of men carrying sacks on ponies--they were dead men who were to swing on Ludlow gibbets. But, severe as Lee was, the peasant was glad that he could go to the Court at Ludlow instead of going to the court of a march lord, as he had to do before 1535. The s.h.i.+re had been much better governed than the lords.h.i.+p. When the lords.h.i.+p of Mawddwy was added to the s.h.i.+re of Merioneth in 1535, the officers of the s.h.i.+re found that it was a nest of brigands and outlaws.

In the more peaceful and humane days of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Henry Sidney became President of the Court of Wales. He was one of the best men of the day; and he was proud of ruling Wales and the border counties, ”a third part of this realm,” because his high office made him able ”to do good every day.”

Besides the Court of Wales for the whole country, a court of justice was held in each of four groups of s.h.i.+res; and these courts were called the Great Sessions of Wales. So, though the law was the same for everybody, Wales had a separate system to itself, partly because there was so much to do, and partly because the central courts in London were so far away. Much was also done to get wise and learned justices of the peace, and fair juries.

By the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, one may say that Wales rejoiced in the following:

1. There was no hatred between England and Wales; the Welsh gentry served the Queen on land and sea, and the people were more happy and contented than they had been since the time of Llywelyn.

2. There was no danger of private war between lords, to which the peasant might be summoned. The brigands which infested parts of the country had been cleared away.

3. The law of land had been fixed. It was determined that land was to go to the eldest son, according to the English fas.h.i.+on. All the land became the property of some landlord, and it was decided who was a landowner, and who was not. The Welsh freemen were held to own their land; the Welsh serfs, the descendants of an old conquered race, sometimes became owners and sometimes tenants. They all thought that Henry VII., the Welsh victor of Bosworth, had set them free.

4. The Tudors trusted their people, and called upon them to govern and to administer justice themselves. The squires were to be justices, the freemen were to be jurors; the s.h.i.+re was to look after the militia, and the parish after the poor.

CHAPTER XVIII--THE REFORMATION

The Reformation in England was, to begin with, a purely political movement. Henry VIII. wished to rule his people in his own way, in religion as well as in politics; and, eventually, he became Supreme Head of the Church as well as the king of the country. His new power brought changes. It was necessary to reform the Church, and the wealth of the monasteries tempted him to do it. There was a new spirit of enquiry, and the King was led on by that spirit, with dilatory and hesitating steps, to examine old creeds. The religious fervour of the Reformation had caught the people; and the King stood still, if he did not turn back.

But his ministers had no misgivings. Thomas Cromwell tried to hurry the Reformation on--the monasteries were dissolved, the Bible was translated, and the sway of Rome was disowned. The king appointed the bishops, decided church cases, and even determined what the creed of his country was to be. Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., made the movement a doctrinal one, and forced it on with equal vigour.

Wales looked on, with indifference and apathy at first, and then with murmurs. The movement had no attraction: it had many causes of offence. In England the political movement became a patriotic, an intellectual, and a religious movement; and it succeeded. In Ireland, also, it was political, but it could not appeal to patriotism, because it was an English movement; and it failed. In Wales, it was neither welcomed nor opposed; it was simply tolerated, and with a bad grace.

For one thing, it brought English instead of Latin into public wors.h.i.+p. Latin, the old language of prayer and even of sermon, was venerated, though not understood. But English was not only not understood, it was also regarded as inferior to Welsh. The Tudors'

dislike of various tongues was as strong as their dislike of various jurisdictions. Henry VIII., in giving Welshmen the Act of 1535, says that the tongue of Owen Tudor is ”nothing like ne consonant to the natural mother-tongue used within this realm,” and enacts that all officials in Wales shall speak English. And, in the same spirit, the Welshman was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was now open to him, but that he must seek it in English, or not at all.

Again, the reformers--men of the type of Bishop Barlow--despised and shocked a people they never understood. The sanct.i.ty of St David's, the theme of the best poets of the Middle Ages and the goal of generations of pilgrims, was described by its Protestant bishop--who unroofed the palace in order to get the lead--as a desolate angle frequented only by vagabond pilgrims. A Welshman is not appealed to by what is an insult to his country and a shock to his religion at the same time. The relics were ruthlessly swept away; they were taken possession of by the agents of Cromwell and destroyed, or sent to London. The images carried in the village processions were lost-- the images that could keep the superst.i.tious Welshman from h.e.l.l, or even bring him back from it, or heal his diseases, or keep his cattle from the murrain, and his crops from blight. I only know of one of those relics that can still be seen. It is the healing cup of Nant Eos, a mere fragment of wood. The people's faith in the relics can be estimated from the fact that the cup has been used within the last century.

Again, the monasteries were dissolved. The wealth of the monasteries, their meadows and barns and sheep-runs and fish ponds, were coveted by the rich; the poor thought of them as sources of alms. The monks were good landlords; and they gave freely, not only the comforts of religion, but of their medicinal herbs and stores of food. The Welsh monasteries were not so rich as those of England, and they were all dissolved among the lesser monasteries--those with an income under 200 pounds a year. But though none of them were very rich, they nearly all had almost 200 pounds a year. Their loss affected the whole country, as each part of Wales had one or two of them--Tintern, Margam, Neath, and Whitland in the south; Strata Florida, Cwm Hir, Ystrad March.e.l.l, and the Vanner in central Wales; and Basingwerk and Maenan in the north.

The Reformation brought the poorer cla.s.ses in Wales, not only insults to their national and religious feelings, but material loss. It appealed only to the English bishops who had adopted the new Protestant tenets, and to the Welsh and English landowners who had lost their reverence for relics, and had learnt to hunger for land.

The movement was a severe strain on the loyalty of the Welshman to the Tudors, but he had learnt to look to the king for guidances and he suffered in silence. Mary was welcomed, and no Welsh blood was shed for the Protestant faith. The pa.s.sive resistance to the Reformation might have broken out into a rebellion if a leader had come.

In Elizabeth's reign two attempts were made to disturb the religious settlement. One was made by the Jesuits--the wonderful society established to check the Reformation movement and to lead a reaction against it. In 1583 John Bennett came to North Wales; in 1595 Robert Jones came to Raglan; and several Welsh Jesuits suffered martyrdom.

The other attempt was that of John Penry, who wished to appeal to the intellect of the people by means of the pulpit and the printing press. The apostle of the new creed was crushed, like those who wished to revive the old; he was put to death as a traitor in 1593, after a short life of importunate pleading that he might preach the Gospel in Wales.

Before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, however, the Welsh language was recognised. The last school founded, that of Ruthin in 1595, was to have a master who could teach and preach in Welsh. And in 1588 there had appeared, by the help of Archbishop Whitgift, the Welsh Bible of William Morgan. It was the appearance of this Bible that aroused the first real welcome to the Reformation. But the Reformation that gave England a Spenser and a Shakespeare aroused no new life in Wales, not a single hymn or a single prayer.