Ipublicatione. . 
 
 CDe union or england 
 and males. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS, B.C.L., M,P. 
 
 From the "Transactions"', Session k^oj-oS. 
 
 LONDON : ISSUED BY THE SOCIETY, 
 NEW STONE BUILDINGS, 64 CHANCERY LANE. 
 
Qf0rnEU llniucrsity Hibrarg 
 
 Stijata, SJew ^nrfe 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE BEQUEST OF 
 
 WILLARD FISKE 
 
 LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1668-1883 
 1905 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DA 720.W722 
 
 Union of England and Wales. 
 
 3 1924 028 053 308 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028053308 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES ' 
 
 By W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS, B.C.L., M.P. 
 
 "My next example is "Wales. This country was said to be reduced 
 by Henry the Third. It was said more truly to be so by Edward the 
 First. But though then conquered, it was not looked upon as any 
 part of the realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that 
 may have been, was destroyed ; and no good one was substituted in. 
 its place. The care of that tract was put into the hands of lords 
 marchers — a form of government of a very singular kind ; a strange 
 heterogeneous monster, something between hostility and government ; 
 perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the modes of those 
 times, to that of a commander-in-chief at present, to whom all civil 
 power is granted as secondary. The manners of the Welsh nation 
 followed the genius of the government ; the people were ferocious, 
 restive, savage, and uncultivated ; sometimes composed, never 
 pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder ; and it 
 kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. Benefits from it to 
 the State there were none. Wales was only knowri''to England by 
 incursion and invasion. 
 
 " Sir, during that state of things, parliament was not idle. They 
 attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by all sorts of 
 
 rigorous laws In short, when the statute book was not 
 
 quite so much swelled as it is now, you find no less than fifteen acts 
 of penal regulation on the subject of Wales. 
 
 "Here we rub our hands — ^a fine body of precedents for the 
 authority of parliament and the use of it ! — I admit it fully ; and 
 pray add likewise to these precedents, that all the while Wales rid 
 this kingdom like an incubus ; that it was an unprofitable and 
 oppressive burden ; and that an Englishman travelling in that 
 country could not go six yards from the high road without being 
 murdered. 
 
 "The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not, until after 
 
 1 Read (in part) before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 
 at 64 Chancery Lane, on 8 May 1908 ; Chairman, J. Herbert Lewis, 
 Esq., M.P., Junior Lord of the Treasury. 
 
Z THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 two hundred years, discovered that, by an eternal law. Providence 
 has decreed vexation to violence, and poverty to rapine. Your 
 ancestors 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 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. A 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 yet 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 Parlia- 
 ment. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided, 
 obedience was restored, peace, order, and civilisation followed in the 
 train of liberty. — When the day-star of the English constitution had 
 arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and without : — 
 
 "Simul alba nautis 
 Stella refulsit, 
 Defluit saxis agitatus humor : 
 
 Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
 Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto 
 Unda recumbit." 
 
 Burke : Speech on Conciliation loith America, pp. 484-6. 
 
 Lecky, ■writing of the effects of the Act of Union of 
 1707 upon the national character and social condition of 
 the Scottish people, asserts that " there are very few 
 instances on record in which a nation passed in so short a 
 time from a state of barbarism to a state of civilisation, in 
 which the tendencies and leading features of the national 
 character were so profoundly modified, and in which the 
 separate causes of the change are so clearly discernible.'" 
 Burke, in the glowing passage cited above from his speech 
 
 ' Lecky, History of England, vol. ii, p. 320. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. S 
 
 on "Conciliation with America", may have allowed his 
 enthusiasm for the British constitution to carry him too 
 far. Some of his references to the course of events in 
 Wales are inexact, and his description of the destruction 
 of barbarism at the brightness of the coming of English 
 liberty is too roseate for the historian's prose. Yet in 
 substance the great orator's account is borne out by the 
 facts of the case. Never was there a country seemingly 
 more unfit for freedom than was the Wales of Henry VIII ; 
 never was statesmanship more speedily and more abidingly 
 justified of a bold and generous experiment. "An old and 
 haughty nation, proud in arms" became converted, in the 
 course of a single generation, into a peaceful and indus- 
 trious people. A country which for centuries had been 
 desolated by private feuds, where anarchy and lawlessness 
 had been universal, and where an appeal to a court of 
 justice had been looked upon as the sign of a craven spirit, 
 was suddenly transformed, as if by magic, into the home 
 of a people whose respect for, and obedience to, the law 
 were only equalled by their eagerness to have recourse to 
 it in every cause, however great or however trivial. 
 
 "A better people to govern than the Welsh Europe 
 holdeth not", was the testimony of Sir Renry Sidney, 
 whom Queen Elizabeth sent to govern Wales as President 
 of the Court of the Marches. Sidney took an intelligent 
 and sympathetic interest in the people whom he ruled. 
 It was owing to his advice and active encouragement that 
 Dr. Powel published, in 1584, his History of Gamhria. In 
 the preface Dr. Powel bears witness to the change that had 
 been wrought in Wales by the legislation of Henry VIII. 
 
 " Concerning the alteration of the estate, there was never 
 anie thing so beneficiall to the common people of Wales as the 
 uniting of the countrie to the crowne and kingdom of England, 
 whereby not onlie the maladie and hurt of the dissention that 
 
4 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 oftened happened between the Princes of the countrie, which 
 they ruled, is now taken awaie, but also an uniformitie of 
 government established, whereby all controversies are ex- 
 amined, heard, and decided within the countrie : so that now 
 the countrie of Wales (I dare boldly affirm it) is in as good 
 order for quietness & obedience as anie country in Europe : 
 for if the rulers & teachers be good & doo their duties, the 
 people are willing to learn, readie to obeie, & loath to offend 
 or displease." 
 
 "Surely those lawes have brought Wales to great civil- 
 itie for that evill government that was here in ould time," 
 wrote another Elizabethan,' "for it is as safe travailing 
 for a stranger here in Wales as in any part of Christen- 
 dome, whereas in old time it is said robberies & murthers 
 were very common." In another passage'' he is even more 
 emphatic. " No other country in England so flourished in 
 one hundred yeares as Wales hath don, sithence the 
 government of H. 7 to this tyme, insomuch that if o'' 
 ffathers weare nowe lyvinge they would thinke it som 
 straunge cuntrey inhabited with a forran Nation, so 
 altered is the cuntrey & cuntreymen, the people changed 
 in hertt w"'in and the land altered in hewe w"'out, from 
 evill to good, and from badd to better." 
 
 Another witness, who knew the country intimately and 
 who was by no means too favourably inclined to the 
 "Welshery", may be cited. In 1575, Gerard, the Vice- 
 President of the Court of the Council of the Marches, and 
 afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland, prepared a memo- 
 randum for Elizabeth's ministers, entitled "A Discourse 
 on the State of Wales." He is emphatic in his testimony 
 to the good order prevailing in the Principality. "At this 
 dale", he wrote : 
 
 1 George Owen's "Dialogue of the Government of Wales" (1595), 
 reprinted in Part iii of Owen's Pembrokeshire, pp. 91-92, 
 ^ Ibid., p. 56. 
 
THK UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 5 
 
 "It is to be affirmed that in Wales luiiversallie are as civille 
 people & obedient to lawe as are in England. Throughowte 
 Wales in every respect Justice embrased and with as indifferent 
 trialles executed as in England, during the tyme of her 
 Majestes Reigne, except 3° or 4°' petty Corners, Noe treason 
 hard of, very seldome murder, in vi years togeather, vnneth 
 on Robbery (committed by the highe waye) harde of. Stealinge 
 of cattell is the chief evill that generall moste annoyeth 
 the countrey." 
 
 An even more authoritative and striking testimony to the 
 miraculous change which had been effected in Wales was 
 borne by the preamble to the statute 21 Jac. i, c. 10. The 
 laws of Wales, it is said, were for the most part agreeable 
 to those of England, and were obeyed "with great alac- 
 rity", and the greatness of the "quiet" which prevailed 
 was used as an argument against "any further change or 
 innovation". 
 
 It is only necessary to refer to Sir John Wynn's History 
 of the Gwydir Family, and to Lord Herbert of Cherbury's 
 fragment of Autobiography, to realise the revolution which 
 had occurred in the social condition of Wales in the course 
 of less than half-a-century. Sir John Wynn's description 
 of the state of Carnarvonshire and Denbighshire after the 
 close of the Wars of the Eoses — the endless bloody 
 quarrels which were carried on from generation to genera- 
 tion, the private wars that went on unchecked by any 
 government, and the consequent insecurity of life and 
 property — shows that the arm of the law was powerless 
 and that the whole country had sunk into hopeless anarchy. 
 Sooner than live in constant hostility with his hereditary 
 enemies in Carnarvonshire, Sir John's great-grandfather 
 migrated to the wilds of Denbighshire, where he dwelt 
 surrounded by outlaws. It was better, he said, to live in 
 obscurity in the valley of the Conway than to be at con- 
 tinual strife with his kinsmen and neighbours in his native 
 
O THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 county of Carnarvon. Lord Herbert's great-grandfather. 
 Sir Richard Herbert of Montgomery, who died in 1539, was 
 "a great suppressor of rebels, thieves, and outlaws"; and 
 his son by his second wife, Edward Herbert, who con- 
 tinued his work in Mid-Wales, is said to have been "noted 
 to be a great enemy to the outlaws and thieves of his time, 
 who robbed in great numbers in the mountains of Mont- 
 gomeryshire, for the suppressinge of whom he went both 
 day and night to the places where they were.'" The 
 traditions of the Wynn and Herbert families are amply 
 confirmed by references in the State Papers, and by the 
 poems of contemporary Welsh bards. It will be the aim 
 of this paper to describe the steps by which this startling 
 change in the condition of Wales, and in the character of 
 the people, was effected in so short a time. Whatever 
 view be taken of the wisdom of the general policy of 
 Henry VIII, it cannot be denied that in the case of Wales 
 the statesmanship of those who conceived and carried out 
 a novel and audacious experiment was triumphantly vin- 
 dicated. 
 
 There is one curious feature which distinguishes the 
 Union of Wales with England from that of Scotland and 
 that of Ireland. It is notorious that the Act of Union of 
 1801 was never popular in Ireland. It was passed through 
 the Irish Parliament with difiiculty, and it has remained 
 a festering sore in the political and social life of the people. 
 Nor was the Scottish Act of Union popular at the time in 
 Scotland. Burton has shown how, for one or two genera- 
 tions, it was bitterly resented by nearly all classes. 
 Smollett, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and Sir 
 Walter Scott, in the early years of the last century, 
 detested it. Scotland became reconciled to the Union 
 
 1 Lord Herbert's Autobioyraphy, Ward and Lock's edition, pp. 14-15. 
 
THE UNION 01' EKGLAUD AND WALES. 7 
 
 only when it became prosperous. It was the effect of the 
 commercial clauses that made incorporation with the 
 "predominant partner" tolerable. "The sacrifice of a 
 nationality", observes Lecky,' "is a measure which 
 naturally produces such intense and such enduring discon- 
 tent that it never should be exacted unless it can be 
 accompanied by some political or material advantages that 
 are so great, and at the same time so evident, as to prove 
 a corrective." 
 
 The Union of Wales with England was never unpopular 
 in Wales. There are, indeed, indications that the English 
 Parliament and English ministers were somewhat doubt- 
 ful of its wisdom and uncertain of its effect. In Wales 
 itself it was heartily welcomed, and in the course of the 
 four centuries that have since elapsed there has never been 
 a petition, or an application, or a demand from the people 
 of Wales for its repeal. If tradition is to be relied on, 
 the Union was a boon that was granted to Wales at the 
 request of certain enlightened Welshmen of that age. 
 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his History of the Reign of 
 Henry VIII, sets out at length a curious address, or 
 petition, which is said to have been despatched to the 
 King. It is not known who the author or authors of the 
 petition may have been. As it was, probably, found by 
 Lord Herbert among his family papers, it may be con- 
 jectured that either his grandfather, Edward Herbert, or 
 his great-grandfather. Sir Eichard Herbert of Mont- 
 gomery, was in some way concerned in it. Nicholas, in 
 his Annals of the Counties of Wales, presumably on the 
 authority of Theophilus Jones, the historian of Brecon- 
 shire, states that its author was Sir John Price, or Prys, 
 of Brecon : — 
 
 1 History of England, vol. ii, p. 308. 
 
THE UNION 01* ENGLAND AND WALHS. 
 
 " May it please your Highness, 
 
 "We, on the part of your Highnesses subjects, inhabiting 
 that portion of the island which our invaders first called Wales, 
 most humbly prostrate at your Highnesses feet, do crave to be 
 received and adopted into the same laws, and privileges, which 
 your other subjects enjoy: Neither shall it hinder us (we hope) 
 that we have lived so long under our own. For as they were 
 both enacted by authority of our ancient law-givers, and obeyed 
 for many successions of ages, we trust your Highness will 
 pardon us, if we thought it neither easy nor safe so, suddenly 
 to relinquish them. We shall not presume yet to compare them 
 with these now used, and less shall we contest how good and 
 equal in themselves they are. Only if the defence of them and 
 our liberty against the Romans, Saxons, and Danes for so 
 many hundred years, and lastly against the Normans, as long 
 as they pretended no title but the sword, was thought just and 
 
 honourable, we presume it will not be infamous now 
 
 So that we crave pardon. Sir, if we say it was fit for the honour 
 of your dominions that some part of it should never be con- 
 quered. We then in the name of whatsoever in your 
 Highnesses possession hath in any age held out against all 
 invaders, do here voluntarily resign and humble ourselves to 
 that sovrignty, which we acknowledge so well invested in 
 your Highness. Nor is this the first time ; we have always 
 attended on occasion to unite ourselves to the greater and 
 better parts of the island. 
 
 "But as the kings of this realm, weary of their attempts in 
 person against us did formerly give not only our country to 
 those who could conquer it, but permitted them Jwa regalia 
 within their several precincts ; so it was impossible to come to 
 an agreement, while so many that undertook this work usurped 
 martial and absolute power and jurisdiction in all they acquired 
 without establishing any equal justice. And that all offenders 
 flying from one lordship marcher (for so they were termed) to 
 another did both avoid the punishment of the law, and easily 
 commit those robberies which formerly tainted the honour of 
 our parts, So that until the rigorous laws not only of the 
 several conquerors of England, but the attempters on our 
 parts, were brought to an equal moderation, no union, how 
 much soever affected by us, could ensue. 
 
 "Therefore, and not sooner, we submitted ourselves to 
 Edward the first, a prince who made both many and equaller 
 laws than any before him, therefore we defended his son 
 
TSE UNION OF ENGtLANt) AND WALES. 9 
 
 Edward the second, when not only the English forsook him, 
 but ourselves might have recovered our former liberty, had we 
 desired it. Therefore we got victories for Edward the third, 
 and stood firm during all the dissensions of this realm to his 
 grandchild and successor Kichard the second. Only if some 
 amongst us resisted Henry the fourth, your Highness may 
 better suppose the reason than we tell it, though divers for- 
 rigners openly refusing to treat with him as a sovreign and 
 lawful prince, have sufficiently published it. We did not 
 yet decline a due obedience to Henry the fifth, though in 
 doubtful times, we cannot deny but many refractory persons 
 have appeared. Howsoever, we never joined ourselves with 
 the English rebels or took occasion thereby to recover our 
 liberty, though in Richard the second's time, and during all 
 the civil wars betwixt Lancaster and York, much occasion 
 was given. For adhering to the House of York, which we 
 conceived the better title, we conserved our devotion still to 
 the Crown, until your Highnesses father's time, who (bearing 
 his name and blood from us) was the more cheerfully assisted 
 by our predecessors in his title to the crown, which your High- 
 ness doth presently enjoy. And thus. Sir, if we gave anciently 
 proof of a generous courage in defending our laws and country, 
 we have given no less proof of a loyal fidelity since we first 
 rendered ourselves. In so much that we may truly affirm, that 
 after our acceptance of the condition given us by Edward the 
 first, we have omitted no occasion of performing the duty of 
 loving subjects. Neither is there anything that comforts us 
 more than that all those controversies about succession (which 
 so long wasted this land) are determined in your Highnesses 
 person, in whom we acknowledge both Houses to be happily 
 united. 
 
 " To your Highness therefore we ofi'er all obedience, desiring 
 only that we may be defended against the insults of our 
 malignant censurers. For we are not the ofi'spring of the run- 
 away Britains (as they term us) but natives of a country which, 
 besides defending itself, received all those who came to us for 
 succours. Give us then, Sir, permission to say that they wrong 
 us much who pretend our country was not inhabited before 
 them, or that it failed in a due piety, when it was so hospitable 
 to all that fled thither for refuge : Which also will be more 
 credible when it shall be remembered that even our highest 
 mountains furnish good beef and mutton, not only to all the 
 inhabitants, but supply England in great quantity. We humbly 
 
lO THE TJNiOK OF ENGLANt) AND WALES. 
 
 beseech your Highness therefore that this note may be taken 
 from us. As for our language, though it seems harsh, it is that 
 yet which was spoken anciently, not only in this island but in 
 France ; some dialects whereof therefore remain still amongst 
 the Bas-Bretons there, and here in Cornwall. Neither will any 
 man doubt it when he shall find those words of the ancient 
 Gaulish language repeated by the Latin authors, to signify the 
 same thing amongst us to-day : Nor shall it be a disparagement 
 (we hope) that it is spoken so much in the throat, since the 
 Florentine and Spaniard aflfect this pronunciation, as believing 
 words that sound so deep proceed from the heart. So that if 
 we have retained this language longer than the more northern 
 inhabitants of this island (whose speech appears manifestly to 
 be a kind of English, and consequently introduced by the 
 Saxons) we hope it will be no imputation to us : your High- 
 ness will have but the more tongues to serve you : It shall not 
 hinder us to study English, when it were but to learn how we 
 might the better serve and obey your Highness : To whose 
 laws we most humbly desire again to be adopted, and doubt 
 not, but if in all countries the mountains have afforded as 
 eminent wits and spirits as any other part, ours also by your 
 Highnesses good favour and employment may receive that 
 esteem." 
 
 The reason for the instantaneous and permanent popu- 
 larity of the Union in Wales lay in the fact that it did not 
 entail any "sacrifice of nationality", as was to some 
 extent the case with Scotland and Ireland. "Wales 
 became, for the first time, a coherent and organised 
 country ; before that time it was not even a geographical 
 expression. It might have been expected that Welshmen, 
 whose devotion to their mother-tongue has always been 
 profound and passionate, would have resented its super- 
 session as the official language of the Principality by 
 English. The reference in the preamble of the Act of 
 Union to the Welsh tongue is not flattering or even true, 
 and there can be little doubt that neither King Henry nor 
 his ministers regarded with any great measure of forbear- 
 ance the prolongation of its life. On the other hand, we 
 
THE tJNION Oi* ENGLANt) AND WALES. 11 
 
 need not suppose that the ostracism of the vernacular 
 tongue was as complete in official circles as it afterwards 
 became. The Justices of the Peace who were entrusted 
 with the task of administering the law were probably 
 nearly all Welsh-speaking Welshmen, for the gentry of 
 Wales only abandoned "the old fair treasure of their 
 native speech" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' 
 Gerard mentions the fact that one of his judicial colleagues 
 on the Court of the Marches knew Welsh, and Elizabeth's 
 ministers early became impressed with the desirability of 
 having Welsh-speaking judges in Wales. Sir John Price, 
 the champion and inspirer of the Act of Union, was the 
 author of the first book ever printed in Welsh. ^ Queen 
 Elizabeth, acting under the advice of Sir William Cecil, 
 himself the third in descent from a genuine old Welsh 
 family — the Seisyllts of Allt-yr-ynys — was a patron of 
 Welsh letters. Early in her reign the Scriptures were 
 ordered to be translated into Welsh. "If it please God 
 once to send them the Bible in their owne language, 
 according to the godlie lawes alreadie established," wrote 
 Dr. Powel, in his Preface to the History of Cambria, "the 
 countrie of Wales will be comparable to anie countrie in 
 England." Within a few years his pious wish was fulfilled . 
 Bishop Morgan's Welsh Bible appeared in 1588, and it (for 
 it became the foundation of the Authorised Version of 
 1622) has remained ever since the canon of Welsh prose. 
 Dr. Johnson, in his Tour in the Hebrides,' stated that in his 
 time (1773) " there were lately some who thought it reason- 
 
 1 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, for example, was sent to the wilds of 
 Denbighshire in order that he might learn Welsh in his boyhood. 
 
 2 Oil Syniuyr pen pob Cymero, printed in London, 1546. For an 
 excellent account of Sir John and the proofs of his authorship of the 
 first Welsh book, see J. H. Davies's edition of Oil Synwyr in the Guild 
 of Graduates Series (Jarvis and Foster, Bangor). 
 
 3 At p. 85. 
 
12 THE TTNION OB" ENGLANt) ATSt) ■WALBS. 
 
 able to refuse them (the Highlanders) a version of the Holy 
 Scriptures that they might have no monument of their 
 native tongue ". Maurice Kyffin , in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 mentions that he had lately come across a cleric in an 
 Eisteddfod, who uttered similar "devilish" sentiments 
 about Welsh/ But, fortunately, the statesmen of Eliza- 
 beth took a more generous and enlightened view of the 
 part which the language should play in the national life of 
 Wales. 
 
 Similarly, it might have been expected that Welshmen 
 would have preferred to cling to the old laws and customs 
 of the country than to adopt a strange system of land 
 tenure and a law of inheritance to which they were averse. 
 But though the Welsh peasant has never quite grasped 
 the conditions of English land tenure or appreciated the 
 justice or utility of the law of primogeniture, there never 
 has been any feeling of hostility to the Union because it 
 was accompanied by these changes. Never, indeed, was 
 there such a violent change effected with so little resistance. 
 The Welsh are essentially a conservative race, who are 
 keenly sensitive to the living influence of the past. Yet 
 they passively allowed King Henry to break with Rome, 
 to dissolve the monasteries, and to alter the religious ser- 
 vices, to place the Welsh language under an of&cial ban, 
 to extirpate the old Welsh laws and customs, and to revo- 
 lutionise the whole social and political condition of the 
 country, without a protest or a murmur. The reason for 
 this tame acceptance of their Sovereign's will was twofold. 
 First, there was the passionate loyalty to the Welsh 
 dynasty, a far more potent force with Welshmen of the 
 sixteenth century than we are sometimes disposed to 
 credit. "All the waters of Wye will not wash away your 
 
 1 At p. xiv in the "Preface to the Reader" in his Deffyniad Ffydd 
 Ec/hoys Loegr, Guild of Graduates Reprints, 1908 (Jarvis and Foster). 
 
THE TTNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 13 
 
 Majesty's Welsh blood", exclaimed Fluellen to Henry V. 
 What was a jest to the playwright was sober earnest to 
 the countrymen of the Tudors. Secondly, these changes 
 were accompanied by those "material and political advan- 
 tages" which are said to act as a "corrective" in such 
 cases. Wales, even more than England, had sufEered from 
 "lack of governance" in the fifteenth century : — 
 
 "Ni a roem yr awr yma 
 Dreth aur am lywodraeth dda," ' 
 
 wearily exclaimed Llawdden, in the midst of the unrest of 
 the Wars of the Roses. "Good government" was what 
 Wales wanted, and it was a source of peculiar pride to 
 Welshmen that they obtained it from a Welsh dynasty. 
 
 George Owen, who understood Wales and Welshmen as 
 few men have done, comments on the paradox of a con- 
 servative people accepting, with cordial readiness, the 
 gravest changes in their estate. In his Dialogue on the 
 Government of Wales'' lie makes BarthoU draw his interlocu- 
 tor's attention to this singular fact. 
 
 "Bar: 1 much marvaile how upon the first alteracion of the govern- 
 ment of Wales (when King Henry VIII utterlie abolished 
 the Welsh lawes and brought in the English lawes) the counties 
 received the same quietlie and w"'out great grudging and some 
 rebellion ; for new government and alteration of auntient lawes 
 is not easily receaved into any commonwealth w"'out tumultes, 
 and innovation in government is accounted very dangerous in a 
 common wealth. And yet I heare not of you y' Wales repined 
 at altering their Lawes or inducing a new government." 
 
 " Demetus : So it is dangerous to alter any thing in a well governed 
 
 1 ''We would give this hour a gold tax for good government." 
 
 2 P. 91, Part iii, of Oicen's Pembrokeshire. Cf . also Ibid., p. 53 : " Wheras 
 before the sayd statute of Henry VIII wee in Wales had no such 
 officers (as J.P.'s), nor any o" man almost of o' Nation that bare any 
 authoritye in the comen-wealth. But such officers as wee had in 
 Wales were for the most part straungers of other cuntreys lyving on 
 the spoyle of the poor afflicted Welshmen." 
 
14 TH£ UNION 01" ENGiiAND AND WALES. 
 
 Commonwealth such as Wales then was not. But to such as 
 live in bondage and slaverie, innovacions'and alteracions from 
 Crueltie to Justice are sweet and pleasant: and then we y" poore 
 Welshmen y* were cruellie oppressed by o' governors, I mean 
 the Strangers that were Stewards Justices Sherifes and others, 
 who had law to judg as pleased them, and not to justifie as we 
 deserved, were very glad of those new lawes, and embraced the 
 same w"* joyfull hartes : and this caused those Lawes to be re- 
 ceaved so quietlie, wheras in times past many a bloudie battaile 
 was fought before they receaved the cruell English Lawes and 
 Lawgivers wherew"" they were oppressed." 
 
 Wales after the Conquest. 
 
 Before the reign of Henry VIII the Principality of 
 Wales was much smaller and less important than it has 
 since become. After the fall of Llewelyn, in 1282, the 
 Principality was annexed to the English Crown, and 
 divided into the "three ancient • shires of North Wales", 
 viz., Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth. Flint, which 
 was at one time a parcel of the palatine county of Chester, 
 was finally annexed to Wales in the reign of Edward II. 
 Carmarthen and Cardigan, alone of the districts of South 
 Wales, became shire-ground in the time of Edward I, with 
 their own sheriffs and courts. The rest of Wales was 
 called "The Marches", which was governed by one hun- 
 dred and forty-three Lords Marchers. These included 
 the ancient Welsh principality of Powys, though in one 
 respect it seems to have differed from the ordinary Lord- 
 ship Marcher. George Owen, in the Treatise of Lordshipps 
 Marchers in Wales,' gives an account, which is worth re- 
 calling here, though some doubt is cast on his entire 
 accuracy by his most recent and scholarly editor : — "" 
 
 1 Owen's Pembrokeshire, Part iii, pp. 1.54-5. 
 
 2 See note 4 on p. 156 of Owen's Pembrokeshire, Part iii, and Egerton 
 Phillimore's note on p. 246. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 15 
 
 " The auncient lord thereof, Griffith y" sone of Meredith ap 
 Blethin, seeing y" kings of England and y= other English lords to 
 prepare themselves to make a conquest of Wales, in discretion 
 and pollioye, submitted himself to Henry y" first, & yelded to 
 hold all his country of Powys, of y" kings of England in chief, 
 as y" English Lords Marchers did, & to do y"' king y" like ser- 
 vice . . . Thereupon he was sufi'ered by y" king to enjoye all 
 his auncient inheritance in Wales . . . and was by Henry y" 
 first created Lord of Powys, and made baron of y" Parliament of 
 England, whose heir female, afterwards named Hawis Gadarne, 
 fell to be y" kinges ward .... who bestowed her in marriage 
 upon a valiant gentleman of y" kinges named John Charlton. 
 ... So that, diflfering in this from many parts of Wales, where 
 the Lords Marchers granted new manors to their followers irre- 
 spective of the old cantref or commote division, in this lordship 
 of Powys, and y" rest of y" auncient members hereof, y" com- 
 motes remain intier and whole in bounds, and retayne y" 
 auntient names without alteration to this day." 
 
 A Court Baron was held in each commote, but there 
 was no Manor "holden of yt", no division into knight's 
 fees, carucates, or ploughlands, or oxlands/ 
 
 Though the ancient Gwynedd, as well as Cardigan and 
 Carmarthen, were held by the Crown after the death of 
 Llewelyn, their internal organisation was in this respect 
 similar to that of Powys. "The like shall you find in all 
 y" principalitye y* lands in y" countreys of Anglesey, Car- 
 narvon, Merioneth, Flint, Carmarthen, and Cardigan." 
 
 The distinctive mark of a Lordship Marcher was the 
 castle, for it was the badge and symbol that the neigh- 
 bouring lands had beea won by conquest. "There is scarce 
 a castle in Wales, being in number 143 castles, but is 
 knowne att this day to have been builded by some English 
 lord or other.'" Brevis domini regis non currit in Wallia 
 was true of all the Lordships Marchers except the county 
 palatine of Pembroke, "which was counted part of 
 England, and, therefore, called Little England beyond 
 
 I Owen's Pembrokeshire, Part iii, p. 157. ^ Ibid., p. 171. 
 
16 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Wales. Neither was there any sheriff or other officers of y'= 
 king to execute any of y'= kinges writs or precepts in Wales 
 
 Therefore these lordes themselves were forced 
 
 of necessity to execute lawes of soverayne governors over 
 their tenants and people in those strange countreys and 
 lordships subdued by them.'" 
 
 Naturally^ as there were one hundred and forty-three 
 Lords Marchers exercising semi-regal authority in various 
 parts of Wales, great diversity of law and practice pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 "The said Lords Marchers, being English lords, executed y'' 
 English lawes for y'' most part within their lordships, and 
 brought y* most part of y" lands of y" said lordships to be 
 English tenure, and passed y'^ same according to y'= lawes of 
 England, viz., by ffine &c,, and such parts as they left to y' 
 auncient inhabitants of y" country to possesse, being for y" 
 most part y" barrenest soiles, was permitted by some lordes to 
 be holden by y'^ old Welsh custome as to passe y" same by sur- 
 render in court, which they called in their country language 
 kof llys^ and ystyn yalen^ whereof this word of ystynnol was de- 
 rived, and where such custome was permitted, there is noe deed 
 to be found of any lands of that nature before .... They 
 brought in y'^ execution of y" English lawes in every Lordship 
 Marcher in Wales, saving that they permitted unto y° auncient 
 tenants certeyn poynts of y'' old Welsh lawes, which were nothing 
 noysome to y" lords nor repugnant to y" lawes of England 
 ... under y" name of customes, among which was graunted 
 y'' use of Gavelkind for parting y" lands by surrender in court, 
 and not by fine, feoffment, and livery of seisin and atturnement 
 which were ceremonies were never known nor required by 
 y'' auncient lawes of Wales. . . . This was used onelie amongst 
 y" Welshmen that were permitted to enjoye their auncient lands 
 in some Lordships Marchers, for y" lordes were not able to 
 bring with them sufficient nomber of people to inhabit y'' whole 
 countreys they subdued ; but where the Lords parted y" 
 
 1 Owen's Pemb7-okesMre, Part iii, p. 139. 
 ^ Cof Llys, the record of the court. 
 
 2 Estyn iaien, the delivery of the rod. the usual symbol in English 
 copyholds. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 17 
 
 Englishmen yt came with them, and gave them lands, the 
 said Welsh customes were not used, but they held all their 
 lands according to the lawes of England, and y'> eldest sonne 
 had y" whole inheritance, and for this cause, in many lordships 
 there was a Welsh court for y" Welshmen by themselves, where 
 their Welsh customes were observed, and y" Englishmen had 
 another court apart for themselves: and in common speech 
 among them, y' one part is yet to this day called y" Englishrie 
 and y" other part y"^ Welshrie. Examples whereof you shall find 
 in Gower ; in Coity Anglicana and Coity Wallia ; and Avaa 
 Anglicana and A. van Wallicana ; English Talgarth and Welsh 
 Talgarth ; and in Narberth . . . Alsoe in Forinseca Kidwelly 
 Anglicana and Comota Kidwelly Wallicana, and Llanstephan 
 Dominium Wallicanum and Llanstephan Dominium Anglica- 
 num, and in many other lordships in Wales : where you shall 
 commonly find y" land in y'' one to be of y" Welsh tenure 
 and auntientlie was partible betweene brothers and surren- 
 dered in court, and in y" other of English tenure, and always 
 passed by feoffment and other conveyances att y" common law 
 before Wales was shire ground."' 
 
 In other lordships again, though gavelkind prevailed, 
 land would pass by feoffment, and not by surrender, and 
 these were called "lands of English tenure and Welch 
 dole". But "many lordes did utterly extirpat both Welsh 
 lawes and Welsh dole, and wrought all as in England : 
 and these matters and customes were permitted or denied 
 in every lordship as pleased y^ first conquerors thereof". 
 
 Cells of St. John of Jerusalem did not originally have 
 the same privileges as Lords Marchers by conquest, but 
 gradually by grant and custom they attained a like position. 
 " To hold in capite in Wales in auncient time was sufficient 
 to make a Lord Marcher, and of necessity the Lord thereof 
 was forced to take upon him y" regall authority of a Lord 
 Marcher." 
 
 The greatest of the Lordships Marchers were the County 
 Palatine of Pembroke and the lordship of Glamorgan, 
 
 1 Otven's Pembrokeshire, Part iii, pp. 144-7. 
 
18 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 which were organised on the same lines as English 
 counties. The county of Pembroke was, however, less 
 extensive than the English-speaking part of modern 
 Pembrokeshire. It did not include Lamphey, Haverford- 
 west, Walwyn's Castle, Slebech, and War berth. Dewis- 
 land was under the Bishop, and Kemmes was a separate 
 lordship.' It had one limitation which did not apply to 
 any other Lordship Marcher — the king's writ ran through 
 its territory. The lordship of Glamorgan was also smaller 
 than the modern county. The lordship of Gower was 
 outside its boundaries as well as the "Blainau", the hill 
 districts where the Welsh dwelt under their own chiefs 
 and enjoyed their own laws and customs. The Lordship, 
 from the time when Robert of Gloucester married Eitz- 
 hamon's daughter, became an appanage of the great 
 western earldom. The Lordship proper, the Corpus 
 Comitatus, consisted of thirty-six knight's fees which did 
 suit to the castle of CardifP, where the sheriff held his 
 monthly court, and the Chancellor on the day following 
 for "matters of conscience". The "members" consisted of 
 the twelve chief lordships, which had like regal jurisdic- 
 tion, except that a writ of error lay to the Chancery of 
 Glamorgan, and that the suitors, and not the presiding 
 of&cer, were judges. The possessions of the Cathedral of 
 Llandaff and of the religious houses were also held of the 
 Lord, who even claimed to have the gift of the bishopric.^ 
 The towns were few, small, and of little importance. 
 They sprang up around the baronial castle, and partook 
 more of the character of English garrisons than of centres 
 
 1 Tout's " Welsh Shires", Y Cymmrodor, vol. ix, pt. ii. 
 
 ^ Tout, supra, and ^see an instructive and learned article by Dr. 
 Henry Owen, " English Law in Wales and the Marches," T Cymmrodor, 
 vol. xiv. As to the claim to the gift of the see, vide J, E. Morris's 
 Welsh Wars of Edioard I. 
 
THE UNION OV ENGLAND AND WALES. 19 
 
 of trade and comuierce. "Although most of the inhabi- 
 tants of those towns are become now more Welsh in 
 language and manner of living", wrote George Owen, in 
 his Treatise of the Lordshipps Marchers, "yet doe manye 
 retayne y'= English names, and most places about those 
 townes doe give great libertyes to Englishmen of those 
 townes.'" Some years earlier, in 1587, John Penry, the 
 first Welsh Nonconformist, said that "there is never a 
 market town in Wales where English is not as rife as 
 Welsh". They held their liberties by charter from their 
 lords, and were governed by mayors and bailifPs, or by 
 stewards. 
 
 The existence of so many Lords Marchers, armed with 
 such absolute authority,'' was a source of grave danger 
 both to the King's power and to the good condition of the 
 people of Wales. So powerful, indeed, did the Lords 
 Marchers become, that, to an extent hardly appreciated 
 by English historians, they turned the scale in every 
 political crisis in England,^ and made and unmade dynas- 
 ties at their caprice. Edward I was strong enough to 
 maintain some semblance of authority over them. The 
 first statute of Westminster (3 Edw. I, c. 17) enacted that 
 the King who is sovereign Lord over all shall do right 
 there {i.e., in the Marches) unto such as will complain, 
 and after the death of Llewelyn, he showed that he did 
 not intend them to be mere idle words. He actively inter- 
 
 ' Oweris Pembrokeshire, Part iii, p. 168. Cf. Ibid., p. 103. 
 
 2 For the powers of the Lords Marchers, see Dr. Owen's article on 
 ''English Law in Wales and the Marches," I' Cymmrodor, vol. xiv. 
 
 3 Morris, Welsh Wars of Edward I, p. ^21. "Such a position [as 
 Lord of Glamorgan] influenced the Clare's status as a feudal baron of 
 England. A baron who owed to the King the'service of more than 
 four hundred and fifty knights, in addition to being Lord of 
 Glamorgan, simply held the balance of power in any crisis against 
 the Crown." 
 
20 THE UNION or ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 fei-ed in the dispute which had arisen between the Earl of 
 Grloucester as Lord of Glamorgan and the Earl of Hereford, 
 and decided it as judge, as if the two earls were only- 
 ordinary subjects/ Edward III, who had in early life 
 experienced the dangers that might arise to the English 
 throne from the over-grown power of the Mortimers and 
 the other Lords Marchers, enacted (28 Edw. Ill, e. 2) that 
 "all the Lords of the Marches of Wales shall be per- 
 petually attending and annexed to the Crown of England, 
 as they and their ancestors have been at all times past, and 
 not to the Principality of Wales". He, like his grand- 
 father, was determined to show that the King had more 
 than a mere semblance of authority over his subjects in 
 the Marches. In 1331 he sent commissioners to inquire 
 into the acts of Richard de Peshale and Alinia, his wife, 
 the daughter and heiress of William de Breos, the Lord of 
 Gower.^ But such occasional exercises of feudal suzerainty 
 were not sufficient to keep the authority of the Lords 
 Marchers within bounds. Mr. Justice Stephen^ aptly 
 compares their position to that of "the small rajahs to 
 whom much of the territory of the Panjab and North 
 West Provinces still belong". Twenty-one of them sat in 
 Parliament in virtue of their Welsh lordships in the reigns 
 of the first three Edwards, although, so destructive had 
 been their wars, in the time of George Owen, "onlie 
 j^bergavenny att this day still continueth his place and 
 name, and in y^ line and blood of y" first conqueror 
 thereof".' In the meantime they had played their 
 
 1 For a detailed and interesting account of Edward's attempt to 
 cnrb the powers and privileges of the Lords Marchers by taking ad- 
 vantage of the feud between the two Earls, see c. vi of J. E. Morris's 
 Welsh li'ars of Edward I. 
 
 - Clark's Cartae et alia Munimenta de Glamorgan, i, 279-282. 
 
 ^ History of Criminal Law. 
 
 "* "Treatise of Lordshipps Marchers in Wales," Owen's Pemb., iii,p. 170. 
 
THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 21 
 
 vigorous and decisive part in the affairs of England. The 
 House of York derived its chief support from Wales and 
 the Marches,' where, as heirs to the Mortimers, they were 
 not only the most powerful of the Lords Marchers, but as 
 the descendants of Gladys Ddu, the daughter of Llewelyn 
 the Great, they were regarded with singular affection by 
 Welsh bards and people. Henry Bolingbroke was not 
 only Duke of Lancaster, and in that capacity a Lord 
 Marcher, but as Earl of Hereford he owned vast 
 possessions in a district which was largely Welsh,' and 
 which was claimed to be under the jurisdiction of the 
 Court of the Marches in late Stuart times. Warwick the 
 King-maker was head of the great Marcher house of 
 Neville ; the Duke of Buckingham was Lord of Brecknock 
 as well as chief justice and chamberlain of South and 
 North Wales, and his undoing was largely due to his 
 failure to enlist the co-operation of Rhys ap Thomas 
 in his adventure ;' and the later phases of the Wars 
 of the Roses were to some extent a contest for 
 supremacy in Wales and the Marches of the Yorkish 
 and Lancastrian Earls of Pembroke. In truth, the 
 Wars of the Roses were to an unsuspected degree a 
 March quarrel. The political motive for their outbreak 
 has always been regarded as inadequate. The ambition of 
 Richard of York, and the fiery spirit of his son Edward, 
 may account for the part they played ; but why should 
 they have succeeded in embroiling all England in their 
 rivalry with the House of Lancaster ? The key to the 
 mystery lies in the politics of the Welsh Marches. There 
 
 1 See, e.g., the Petition to Hen. VIII, supva. 
 
 2 For a detailed and curious account of the English conquest 
 of West Herefordshire see Mr. Egerton Phillimore in Owen's Pemhr., 
 Part iii, pp. 264-276. 
 
 3 See Gairdner's Michard III, p. 219, 
 
22 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 the Barons had been acciistomed to private wars. After 
 the rebelhon of Glendower the country had never settled 
 down; the Kind's authority was shadowy, unreal, and 
 seldom enforced ; each Lord Marcher did what seemed 
 good in his own eyes. Henry of Lancaster and Eichard 
 of York were rivals in the Marches, and the Wars of the 
 Roses were only March wars on a larger scale. The 
 majority of the persons who were prominently engaged in 
 them were Marcher lords, or they held similar positions 
 on the Scottish march. The troops employed were very 
 largely drawn from the marches of Wales. The scale was 
 finally turned when Welshmen withdrew from their tradi- 
 tional loyalty to the House of York and transferred their 
 allegiance to Lancaster. Had Prince Edward been spared 
 after Tewkesbury, the course of English history would 
 have been different. By his death Henry Tudor, "Ml 
 Gadwaladr, paladr per", " of the line of Cadwaladr of the 
 beautiful shaft", became the representative of the House 
 of Lancaster. Howel Aerddren, in his " Ode to Patrick ", 
 sang — ^ 
 
 "Thy descent was purer than Baron or Duke's, for it fell 
 
 from a Briton, 
 "The Welsh will all flock to thee, — subdue thou England and 
 
 despoil her men." 
 
 The chance of avenging the Conquest of 1282 and of 
 placing a Welshman of the royal line on the English 
 throne was sufiicient to rally all Welshmen to the Lan- 
 castrian standard. Hitherto they had been fighting for 
 feudal lord or baron; for a Mortimer, for a Neville, or 
 a Eitz-alan. At Bosworth they fought for a kinsman of 
 
 1 Aberystwyth MSS. I am indebted for this and other citations 
 from the fifteenth century poets to an excellent unpublished paper 
 by Mr. W. Garmon Jones, of Liverpool University, on " Wales in the 
 Fifteenth Century". 
 
The Union of England and wales. 23 
 
 Glyndwr, a prince descended from the royal stock of 
 North and South Wales. The force of the popular enthu- 
 siasm carried the Welsh chiefs and the Lords Marchers 
 on its sweeping tide. Buckingham plotted against Eichard, 
 and fled to his tenants at Brecon when pursued by the 
 wrath of the King. Ehys ap Thomas of Dinevor, whose 
 grandfather, GrriflBth ap Nicholas, had fallen for the White 
 Rose at Mortimer's Cross, cast aside the prejudices of his 
 youth and cordially espoused the cause of Henry Tudor. 
 No one can read the account of the landing of Henry at 
 Milford Haven, of his progress through Wales gathering 
 adherents, and of his crowning triumph at Bosworth Field, 
 without being impressed with the fact that without the 
 enthusiasm of his countrymen such an adventure would 
 have been impossible. It is estimated that the total 
 number of men whom Henry commanded at Bosworth was 
 only five thousand.^ He had had no time to collect troops 
 in England, even had he been able to levy any adherents. 
 The fortnight that had elapsed since his landing had 
 mainly been spent in Wales. Lord Stanley, though married 
 to Henry's mother, took no part in the battle. Sir William 
 Stanley's desertion, which turned the fortune of the day, 
 brought the Welshmen of North Wales to the support of 
 their countryman. Sir William's subsequent career shows 
 that he was no keen partisan of the Tudor. It is no wild 
 conjecture that his desertion of Eichard was due to the 
 temper of his Welsh followers. For months before the 
 Welsh bards had been exhorting their countrymen to fight 
 
 1 Gairdner's Richard III, p. 2:in. Of these, according to Polydore 
 Virgil, five hundred had joined at Newport (Salop) under Sir Gilbert 
 Talbot. What means Henry employed to gather Welsh troops may 
 be inferred from a very curious letter which he sent to his kinsman 
 John ap Meredith on his landing at Milford flaven, and which is 
 given in Wynne's History of the Qwydir Family, pp. 55-6. 
 
24 
 
 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND IVAtBS. 
 
 for the Tudor. In their mystical "brudiau", or rhyming 
 prophecies, they had predicted the victory of Henry. He 
 was the grandson of Owen Tudor, and was not Owen of the 
 Eed Hand to return from over seas to deliver his country- 
 men — 
 
 "Tame the Saxon, forgive not one single traitor. 
 When the Bull comes from the far land of battle, 
 Let the far-splitting spear shed the blood of the Saxon on the 
 stubble." 
 
 Such was the spirit of the exhortations which were 
 addressed by the bards to their eager countrymen. lu 
 England Henry Tudor might be accepted as the repre- 
 sentative of the Eed Rose. To Welshmen he was one of 
 their own race. One of the three standards' under which 
 he fought at Bosworth was the Red Dragon of Wales. 
 Englishmen might regard his marriage with Elizabeth 
 Plantagenet as the union of the two roses. Welshmen 
 regarded it as the union of the descendant of the Lord 
 Rhys of Dinevor with the heiress of Llewelyn the Great.^ 
 
 ^ The first banner was emblazoned with the figure of St. George, 
 the second with the Red Dragon of Cadwaladr, "a red fiery dragon 
 beaten upon white and green sarcanet" (Hall, 423), and the third 
 with the dun cow of the Tudors. 
 
 2 The following table shows the Tudor descent from Lord Rhys : — 
 
 Lord Rhys 
 
 I 
 Griffith 
 
 Owen 
 
 Meredith 
 I 
 
 Owen 
 
 Llewelyn 
 
 I 
 Thomas 
 
 Owen 
 d. s.p. 
 
 I 
 
 Elen 
 
 = Griffith Vychan 
 
 Owen Glyndwr 
 
 I 
 Elinor 
 
 =(1 ) Wm. Griffith de La Pole 
 ^(2) Tudiir ap Gronw 
 
 I 
 Meredith 
 
 I 
 Tudor 
 
 I 
 Owen Tudor 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 25 
 
 Henry himself was careful to foster this idea. He refused 
 to base his title to the English throne only or mainly on 
 his Lancastrian descent, or his Yorkish marriage, or his 
 Parliamentary title. He claimed the crown of England 
 by right of conquest. Alone of English sovereigns he was 
 crowned on the field of battle. His first act on entering 
 London was an assertion of his title by conquest. "He 
 went first into St. Paul's Church, where, not meaning 
 that the people should forget too soon that he came in by 
 battle", said Bacon,' "he made offertory of his standards, 
 and had orizons and Te Deum sung." Henry's insistence 
 on his title by conquest has puzzled English historians, 
 from Bacon downwards, who have chosen to regard his 
 accession as the natural and inevitable outcome of the 
 Wars of the Roses. Henry himself never forgot his 
 Welsh blood, or the services which his countrymen 
 rendered to him at the erisis of his fortunes. After 
 ascending the throne he sent a commission to Wales to 
 inquire into and publish his Welsh descent.^ This is said 
 to have been due to his sensitiveness to the charge that he 
 was of a mean and ignoble lineage. It is more probable 
 that he wished to proclaim to the world that he was 
 descended from the Welsh princely line, and to conciliate 
 the Welsh by showing that a scion of the house of 
 Cadwaladr sat on the English throne. Mr. Pollard' has 
 revived an old legend that the Tudors "were a Welsh 
 family of modest means and doubtful antecedents. They 
 claimed, it is true, descent from Cadwaladr, and their 
 
 1 Bacon's Henry VII, Spedding's edition, vol. vi, p. 32. 
 
 2 For the pedigree of the Tudors, as found by the Commissioners, 
 see Powel's History of Cambria. 
 
 3 Pollard's Henry VIII, p. 5. Hall makes King Richard, in his 
 address to his troops at Bosworth, call him "an unknown Welshman, 
 whose father I never knew, nor him personally saw". 
 
26 THE UNION or ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 pedigree was as long and quite as veracious as most Welsh 
 genealogies." It is, perhaps, little to the purpose to trace 
 in detail the Tudor line. Suffice it to say that the Tudors 
 were descended, though not in the male line, from the old 
 Welsh princes, that their antecedents were not douhtful, 
 and that whatever Mr. Pollard may think of Welsh 
 genealogies, those who have constantly to use and test 
 them have arrived at a very different conclusion as to their 
 trustworthiness, until they reach the dim and distant 
 centuries of the Christian era. What is of interest is 
 that Henry should have been anxious to proclaim his 
 Welsh descent. He called his eldest son Arthur after 
 the Cymric national hero. A foreign writer, writing in 
 1500, said of the Welsh that "they may now be said 
 to have recovered their former independence, for the 
 most wise and fortunate Henry VII is a Welshman".' 
 Henry VII did not feel secure on his throne for many 
 years. Bacon remarks that he never slaked in his hostility 
 to the House of York. When the impostors, Lambert 
 Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, invaded the realm, it was to 
 Wales that he largely turned for support.^ England had 
 become to a large extent a settled country. Even the 
 destructive Wars of the Roses had hardly affected the 
 common people. So little interest was there felt in the 
 quai-rel that in the decisive and final battle of the war only 
 some ten thousand combatants were engaged. But Wales 
 was in different case. It was given up to the pursuit of 
 arms as a profession. The restrictive acts of Henry IV, 
 passed during and after the rebellion of Glendower, had 
 remained a dead letter. They were only meant to apply 
 
 ' An Italian Relation of the Island of England, published by the 
 Camden Society. 
 
 2 See the account given in the Cambrian Register of Sir Rhys ap 
 Thomas's conduct during the Simnel insurrection. 
 
The union op England and wales. 27 
 
 to the old possessions of the Prince of Snowdon, and few 
 will now be found to deny that they were ultra vires. The 
 domains of the Lords Marchers were untouched by thein. 
 It is difficult to estimate whether the "ancient counties" 
 or the districts under the Lords Marchers were the most 
 disturbed and distracted in the fifteenth century. In the 
 previous century Dafydd ap Gwilym, and even lolo Goch, 
 who became the bard of Glyndwr, sang of a peaceful and 
 industrious Wales. The rebellion of Glyndwr, the French 
 Wars, and the Civil Wars that followed, had thrown the 
 whole country into confusion and anarchy. The History 
 of the Gkvydir Family describes what took place in 
 Carnarvon, which was "shire ground". In the time of 
 Henry VIII Bishop Rowland Lee complained that Cardigan 
 and Merioneth, though shire-ground, were not less dis- 
 turbed than the Marches. In the anarchy that prevailed 
 each Lord Marcher had become a semi-independent king- 
 let, who maintained a large retinue of armed followers. 
 A malefactor had only to fly over the border of his lordship 
 to be welcomed with open arms by a neighbouring Lord 
 Marcher. "The government and royall jurisdiction of y'^ 
 said Lords Marchers (which was in most places executed 
 most injuriouslie by bad partial 1 and covetous ministers) 
 was found to be most noysome and rather a cause to urge 
 ye subjects to rebell than to preserve and keep in quiet- 
 ness -f country people."' In England, Henry VII dealt 
 vigorously with great nobles who kept too many retainers. 
 In Wales he did nothing. He allowed Rhys ap Thomas 
 to become the most powerful man that South Wales had 
 produced since the Lord Rhys. Sir Rhys's whole force 
 was always at the King's command, whether it was to put 
 down a pretender or to aid his sovereign over seas. 
 
 1 Desm-iption of Wales, p. i'O. 
 
28 THE tJUION of ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Henry VII never forgot that Wales was the most martial 
 portion of his realm ; he tried to attach it to himself by 
 appeals to its racial pride ; and "gave in chardge to his 
 soone Prynce Henry that he showld have a spetiall care 
 for the benefitt of his owne Nation and Countrymen the 
 Welshmen".' 
 
 The Court of the Council of the Marches. 
 
 The first attempt to bring Wales into better order was 
 made in the reign of Edward IV. True to the Vorkist 
 policy of "governance", Edward determined to establish a 
 Court in the Marches of Wales which would put down 
 lawlessness with a strong hand, and, by bringing near to 
 the people something in the nature of a centralised govern- 
 ment, help to remove some of the evils under which the 
 land was groaning. That the people of Wales, then as 
 now, were amenable to good government is apparent from 
 the complaints of the bards who, martial though they were, 
 showed that they were yearning for the dawn of better 
 days. "Nifyn un dyn ofni Duw", "there is none that will 
 fear God", was the bitter complaint of Dafydd Llwyd ap 
 Llewelyn. The story of the foundation of the Court of 
 the Council of the Marches was sketched by Dr. Powel 
 in his History of Cambria in 1584. Dr. Powel was in 
 touch with Sir Henry Sidney and the other officials of the 
 Court, and his account must have been derived from 
 intimate contact with those that had made a study of its 
 history. At all events it is certain that recent investi- 
 gations have not materially corrected any statements made 
 by the old historian, or added appreciably to our infor- 
 mation." 
 
 ' George Owen's Dialogue in Oioen's Pembrokeshire, Part iii, p. 39. 
 2 The first attempt in recent times to investigate the story of " The 
 Court of the President and Council of Wales and the Marches " was 
 
Me union of England and wales. 29 
 
 "King Edward the Fourth", said Powel— 
 
 "using much the faithful! service of the Welshmen meant the 
 reformation of the estate of Wales, and the establishment of a 
 court within that Principalitie, and therefore he sent the bishop 
 of Worcester, and the Earle of Rivers, with the prince of Wales, 
 to the countrie, to the end he might understand how to pro- 
 ceed in his proposed reformation. But the trowbles and dis- 
 quietnesse of his owne subjects, and the shortness of his time 
 sufficed him to doo little or nothing in that behalfe.''^ 
 
 It is now ascertained that the Prince's Court in the 
 Marches was first constituted about the year 1471. But 
 Edward IV does not appear to have done much more than 
 establish the Court at Ludlow. Of real power the Court 
 seems to have had little. The youth of the Prince, the 
 novelty of the undertaking, and the indifference of the 
 King, combined to make it of little importance in the 
 "estate of Wales". 
 
 Henry VII, like his predecessor, "using much the 
 faithfull service of the Welshmen", put into effect 
 the design of the Yorkist king. In 1493 he sent Prince 
 Arthur to hold his court at Ludlow, but it was only 
 in 1501 that he began to develop his policy. In that 
 year he sent a remai-kable man, William Smyth, Bishop 
 of Lincoln, to Ludlow as the first real Lord President 
 of the Court of the Council of the Marches. "This 
 Bushope", said Gerard in his "Discourse" already cited, "is 
 the first Lord President of Walles found in the Eecordes, 
 
 made by the late Judge David Lewis, whose valuable paper appeared 
 in volume xii of the Cymmrodor Magazine. This was supplemented 
 by the extremely interesting "Further Notes" of Mr. Lleufer Thomas 
 in the subsequent volume. Dr. Henry Owen's " English Law in Wales 
 and the Marches", which has already been cited, (vol. xiv of the 
 Cymmrodor), also dealt with the same subject. Still later. Miss Skele 
 has dealt exhaustively with the whole history of the Court in her 
 learned and careful work, entitled, The Council in the Marches of 
 Wales. 
 * Powel's Historic of Cambria, p. 389. 
 
30 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 who was sent by Henry VII in the seventeenth year 
 of his rayiie to be Lord President of Prince Arthur's 
 Counsaille in the Principalite of Walles and Marches of 
 the same. And so continewed Lord President untill the 
 4th yare of Henry VIII. He was the founder of Brasenose 
 College, Oxford.'" The only record of the powers of the 
 Council is to be found in Gerard's "Discourse".^ "They 
 had instructions geven them which was in effect to 
 execute .lustice vpon all felons and prayers of Cattell in 
 thenglishe adjoyning Counties upon all felonies there or in 
 any parte of Wales comitted, to suppresse and ponishe 
 by fEyne and ymprisonment Eowtes, Riottes, vnlawfuU 
 assemblies, assaultes, affraies, extorc'ons, and exac'cons and 
 to heare the complaintes as well of all poor welshe per- 
 son nes oppressed or wronged in any cause as to those 
 enhabitinge in thenglish Counties adjoyninge. They had 
 aucthoritie by Comission of Oyer and terminer and speciall 
 gaole deliverie throughowte Wales and in those Englishe 
 counties adjoyninge." 
 
 Dr. Powel adds that among "other wise and expert 
 counsellors" the King appointed "Sir Richard Poole, his 
 kinsman, which was his cheefe chamberlains". Sir 
 Richard Pole, the father of Cardinal Pole, was the lineal 
 descendant of the Princes of Powys,^ and would therefore 
 
 ^ His portrait is in the Hall of Brasenose, where he is described as 
 "primus Wallie praeses". 
 
 2 State Papers, Dom., Eliz,, vol. 107, No. 21 . 
 
 '^ As late as 1534 Martin de Cornooa reported that the whole of 
 
 Wales was devoted to the house of Pole. State Papers, vol. vii, 1040. 
 
 The genealogy of the Poles is thus given in the Book of Oolden Qrove, 
 
 L 1647, now in the Record Office : — 
 
 Owen Cyfeiliog 
 
 i 
 Owen 
 
 I 
 Sir Gilbert Poole, s.-g.-grandfather of 
 
 \a 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 31 
 
 have peculiar authority over the Welsh of Mid-Wales. 
 Bishop Smith, true to Henry's policy of conciliating the 
 Welsh, did not resort to coercive measures. He rather 
 endeavoured to win the afFection of his master's turbulent 
 kinsmen by dispensing hospitality on a lavish scale at the 
 Prince's Court, and by making the Welsh chiefs and the 
 Lords Marchers feel tliat Arthur was not the representative 
 of an alien authority, but was in reality the Prince of 
 Wales. That his administration was at least partially 
 successful is evident from the increasing loyalty of Wales. 
 "And see the Government of Wales was continued under 
 y^ Lords Marchei-s until y"= time of Henry VII", wrote 
 George Owen, "in whose time y'' Welshmen willinglie sub- 
 mitted themselves in hart to his highness being paternallie 
 of their auncient princes of y'= British line, in such sort 
 that they who in former times were termede soe disobedient 
 to y^ crowne of England (and against whom y^ kings of 
 England promulged such unnaturall and extreame lawes, 
 as never did any prince did y" like against his subjects) 
 grewe so quiett that King Henry VIII in his tyme did 
 well perceave y' y'= people and countrey of Wales might be 
 governed by lawes as y'= subjects of England, and not by 
 thraldome and crueltye used by y*^ Lords Marchers." 
 
 George Owen, however, was speaking after the event. 
 There were still many difficulties to be overcome, still many 
 ghosts to be laid, before Wales was to be granted the boon 
 
 \a 
 David Vaux=Margaret, dau. Griffith 
 I Meredydd Llewelyn 
 
 Geoflfrey Poole 
 
 Sir Richard Poole, K.G. = Margaret, Countess 
 I of Salisbury 
 
 I I 
 
 Lord Montague. Cardinal Pole, etc. 
 
32 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 of equal treatment with England. With the death of 
 Prince Arthur, in 1502, King Henry seems to have lost his 
 interest in the Court of the Marches. Young Henry was 
 created Prince of Wales in 1503, but he never visited 
 Wales or held his Court in the Marches. Bishop Smith, 
 however, remained at his post till Henry VII's death in 
 1509. He continued, nominally, as President till his own 
 death in 1514, but the latter years of his life were almost 
 entirely spent in his diocese of Lincoln. 
 
 There was no break of continuity in the tenui-e of the 
 Presidency. Bishop Smith was succeeded by Bishop Blyth 
 of Lichfield, and Bishop Vescie or Voysey of Exeter. Henry 
 VIII, in spite of his father's "charge", up to 1525 had 
 paid little attention to the affairs of Wales. He had never 
 visited the country, the Statute Book was bare even of 
 mention of the affairs of the Principality, the Court of 
 Ludlow became a mere shadow and a name. The King 
 during the first years of his reign seems to have been 
 content with playing the royal part in the national 
 pageant. As he was willing to allow his foreign and 
 domestic policy to be directed by Wolsey, so he was 
 content to allow "Father Rhys", as he familiarly called 
 Sir "Rhys ap Thomas, practically to rule South Wales. 
 Sir Rhys not only held the enormous Dinevor estates, 
 but he was Chief Justice and Chamberlain of South Wales. 
 The rest of Wales and the Marches were administered in 
 haphazard fashion as in the days of his father. As long 
 as Sir Rhys lived, the power of the Court of Ludlow over 
 South Wales was of the most shadowy character. But in 
 1525 Sir Rhys ap Thomas died, and with him died the old 
 regime. There is nothing so remarkable in the history of 
 Henry VIII as the growth of his mind, of his power, and 
 of his statesmanlike vigor, almost every year after the first 
 dozen joyous, careless years of his reign. It was, no doubt, 
 
THE TJNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 38 
 
 the death of Sir Ehys that first directed his attention to 
 Wales. He probably knew but little of the internal con- 
 dition of the country. There are no records in the earlier 
 State Papers of his reign dealing with the Principality. 
 But by 1625 the masterful and jealous character of the King 
 had begun to assert itself. Several years after, Sir Thomas 
 More addressed a prophetic warning to Cromwell about 
 the character of the master from whose service More was 
 then retiring. "Master Cromwell", he said, "you are now 
 entered into the service of a most noble, wise, and liberal 
 prince ; if you will follow my poor advice, you shall in 
 your counsel-giving to his Grace ever tell him what he 
 ought to do, but never what he is able to do. For if a lion 
 knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule 
 him.'" Ever since the fall of Buckingham, Henry was 
 learning what he could do. He realised that a despot 
 must ever cut the heads of the tallest poppies. Wolsey 
 he trusted fully almost to his death ; More at one time 
 he loved. All that we know of his bearing towards Sir 
 Rhys ap Thomas goes to show that he looked upon him 
 as a faithful and necessary minister for the government 
 of Wales. But, with Sir Rhys's death, Henry's strong, 
 vigorous mind began to address itself to the question of 
 Wales. His first act was characteristic. He refused to 
 continue Sir Rhys's grandson — a young man who was 
 married to a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk — in his 
 offices, but appointed Lord Ferrers of Chartley, afterwards 
 the first Viscount Hereford, as his successor. He paid a 
 visit in person to Ludlow, accompanied by his daughter 
 Mary, who was unofficially styled the Princess of Wales. 
 At Ludlow Mary remained till 1528, when she was recalled 
 in disgrace owing to the King's divorce proceedings against 
 
 J Rooper, Life of Sir T. More (ed. 1729), p. 69, 
 
■.i4! THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 her ill-fated mother, Catherine of Arragon. It may be 
 that the King's only intention in and after 1625 was to 
 curb tiie overweening power of the Dinevor family. But 
 there is one reference in the State Papers which suggests 
 that already, after the installation of the Princess Mary at 
 Ludlow, the King was forming other and greater designs. 
 In a letter dated 9 January 1526, Lord Ferrers wrote to 
 the Lord President of the Council at Ludlow, that — 
 
 " When his Lordship was first admitted Lord President of the 
 Princess's Council, my Lord Legate (Wolsey) instructed the 
 writer and others of that Council that no subpoenaes should 
 be directed into Wales or the Marches, but every cause be 
 first tried before the stewards and officers there, the appeal to 
 lie afterwards to his Lordship and other Commissioners. 
 Subpoenaes are now served in Carmarthen and Cardigan, in 
 spite of the proclamations, the like of which was never seen 
 before." 
 
 The writer concludes : "And now both shires saith 
 plainly that they will not pay one groat at this present 
 Candlemas next coming, nor never after, if any man do 
 appear otherwise than they have been accumed, but they 
 had liever ryn into the woods.'" 
 
 It would be interesting to know more of the circum- 
 stances attending this complaint. No reference is to be 
 found to it later, and it would therefore seem that a stop 
 was put to the attempt of the Ludlow Court to exercise 
 original jurisdiction over the old counties and the marches 
 of Wales. But the fact that the attempt was made, soon 
 after the King's visit to Ludlow, is, perhaps, indicative of 
 the ulterior object which the King had even then vaguely 
 formed, but which was only destined to bring forth fruit 
 after many days. Lord Ferrers was not only Chamberlain 
 of South Wales, he was also a great Lord Marcher, and 
 his letter breathes a spirit of jealousy of the Ludlow 
 
 I State Papers, Henry VIII. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES, 35 
 
 Court's interference in the Marches as well as in the 
 Counties of Carmarthen and Cardigan. If Henry had 
 formed any such design, he was constrained by the rapid 
 course of great events in England to forego it for the 
 time. After the little flash of energy displayed in 1526, 
 the Court of the Marches sank once more into lethargy. 
 In 1528, when the uncertain position of the Princess M!ary 
 had no doubt afPected the authority of her Council, a 
 petition was sent to Ludlow by the bailiff and burgesses 
 of Brecon complaining that justice was not kept, that the 
 King's tenants were impoverished, and his revenues de- 
 cayed. The reply of the Council, while it indicates that 
 the state of things was better than it had been, did 
 not attempt to deny the facts mentioned in the petition. 
 
 With the insurrection of Ehys ap Grif&th at Carmar- 
 then, in 1529, it is not proposed to deal here.' The story 
 is long and complicated. It served to bring home to the 
 King the disorderly condition of the Principality. It 
 shewed, too, that the Council of Ludlow was too weak to 
 deal with such cases of turbulence. Lord Ferrers, as a 
 Lord Marcher, may have disliked to enhance the reputa- 
 tion of the Council. It is certain at least that, for what^ 
 ever reason, the young chief was sent to answer for his 
 misdemeanours before the Star Chamber in London. 
 That the Council at Ludlow continued to be impotent in 
 the face of the growing anarchy in Wales is shown by a 
 letter of one Thomas Phillips to Cromwell, in 1531. It is 
 interesting because, with the exception of the letters con- 
 cerning Rhys ap G-riflBth's insurrections, it is the first 
 intimation the English Government had of the real state 
 of things in Wales. In it he pleads that such a Council 
 be established in the Marches, that the best officer in 
 
 1 For an account of Rhys ap Griffith's "affray", see the writer's 
 article in I' Cymmrodor, vol, xvi. 
 
36 THK UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Wales should quake if found in default.' A still more 
 important letter, because it pointed out one of the defects 
 of the existing system, was sent to Cromwell, in 1533, by 
 Sir Edward Croft, an official of the Council, and Vice- 
 Chamberlain of South Wales. Wales, he said, was "far 
 out of order", and many murders in Oswestry and Powys 
 had gone unpunished, because the President, being a cleric, 
 had no power to inflict the penalty of death. He wished 
 "some man to be sent down to us to use the sword of 
 justice where he shall see cause, throughout the Princi- 
 pality. Otherwise the Welsh will wax so wild, it will not 
 be easy to bring them to order again.'" In the same year 
 Thomas Croft wrote that "more than a hundred have been 
 slain in the Marches of Wales since the Bishop of Exeter 
 was President there, and not one of them punished".^ 
 
 The prayers of Phillips and of the Crofts were speedily 
 answered. In 1534 a man was sent to succeed the Bishop 
 of Exeter as Lord President of the Council, who left the 
 stamp of his personality upon it and its work, and who 
 made the terror of his name felt through all the Marches 
 of Wales. Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, only held 
 the office of President for nine years, no long period in the 
 life of a nation, but so dominant was his character and so 
 unresting his energy that he will ever be regarded as the 
 most famous in the list of Presidents, and as the adminis- 
 trator who left an abiding impress on the history of 
 Wales. Gerard, in his second " Discourse", describes him 
 as " stowte of nature, readie witted, roughe in speeche, 
 not affable to any of the walshrie, an extreme severe 
 ponisher of offenders, desirous to gayne (as he did in 
 deede) credit with the king and comendac'on for his ser- 
 vice".* Froude states that he was "the last survivor of 
 
 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. v, 991. 2 7^,-^^ ^qJ_ ^j^ 2IO. 
 
 3 Ibid., 946. ^ State Papers, Dom., Eliz., vol. 107, No. 10. 
 
THE tJNION OV ENGLAND AND WALES. 37 
 
 the old martial prelates, fitter for harness than for bishop's 
 robes, for a court of justice than a court of theology, more 
 at home at the head of his troopers chasing cattle-stealers 
 in the gorges of Llangollen tha?) hunting heretics to the 
 stake, or chasing formulas in the arduous defiles of con- 
 troversy".' He had come to the fore as Henry's agent in 
 the divorce controversy and in the suppression of the 
 smaller monasteries. It was believed that it was he that 
 performed the marriage ceremony between the King and 
 Anne Boleyn. Though he took the King's side against 
 the Pope, he was far removed from Protestantism. One 
 of Cromwell's correspondents calls him "an earthly beast, 
 a mole, and an enemy to all godly learning into the office 
 of his damnation — a papist, an idolater, and a fleshly 
 priest".^ The stout Bishop laid no claim to superior 
 sanctity, or even to any rigid, ceremonious observance of 
 the duties of his ecclesiastical position. "I was never 
 hitherto in the pulpit", he wrote to Cromwell as late as 
 1534. But if he neglected his diocese and his priestly 
 functions, he spent the revenues of his see in carrying out 
 the duties of his secular office. He was not deterred by 
 the old canonical rule that a cleric should not shed blood. 
 His extant letters to Cromwell, giving authentic informa- 
 tion to the government, betray his qualities and their 
 defects. His breezy personality, after the course of nearly 
 four centuries, lives in and through them. He is 
 thoroughly human, especially in his love for open-air 
 sport. We find him sending to his patron a present of 
 partridges, doubtless the prize of his own skill. In one 
 letter he records that he has "just killed a great buck". 
 In another he begs Cromwell to send to him " a warrant 
 for a stag in the forest of Wyer". 
 
 1 History of England, vol. iii, 229. 
 
 2 State Papers, Hen. VIII. 
 
38 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Eowland Lee soon set to show the robbers and thieves 
 
 of the borders that he was not afraid to inflict the death 
 
 penalty. In July 1534 we find him writing : — 
 
 "The Walshe above Schroysbury be very besy, and as I am 
 informed doo bryno divers howses and doo grett disspeles 
 whiche cannot be withowte the consente of sum hedes, whose 
 hedes if I may knewe justly the trenges I shall make ake and 
 folew your preceptes, not thayreof to fayle, god beyng my good 
 lorde."! 
 
 By the following year he was able to report that the 
 "Welshmen of Shrewsbury" had been brought "into a 
 reasonable staye touching such roberyes and other malefacts 
 as were there used", and that he had "hanged four of the 
 best blood in the county of Shropshire ".° In December 
 1535 his activities ranged from Presteign and Hereford to 
 Chepstow and Monmouth. In the following month he 
 describes with great gusto the hanging of thieves at Lud- 
 low on market day. "If he {i.e. the thief) be taken, he 
 playeth his pageant." He feels that his stern policy of 
 repression has made him a marked man, but he does not 
 shrink from the dangers attendant upon his position. 
 "Although the thieves have hangid me by imaginacion, 
 yet I truste to be even with them shorteley in very dede." 
 In June 1536 he was in Montgomeryshire, where was 
 gathered together "a certain cluster or company of 
 thieves and murderers" whom he was resolved to put 
 down. No doubt the rigour of his administration and the 
 summariness of his methods have been exaggerated, both by 
 contemporaries and by posterity. But the times were rude, 
 and justice was at best but roughly administered. We 
 may discount, with Froude, the statement that seventy-two 
 thousand malefactors suifered the extreme penalty of the 
 law in the reign of Henry VIII, but even so careful a 
 
 1 State Papers, Hen. VIII, vol. vii, No. 940. 
 
 - Nov. 6, 1535: State Papers, vol. vii, p. 529, No. 1393. 
 
The tJNlON OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 39 
 
 writer as Stubbs speaks of Henry's "holocausts" of victims.' 
 Similarly we may discredit the loose statement of Ellis 
 Griffith, a contemporary soldier, who wrote an account 
 of his own times, that under the Bishop's rule five thousand 
 men were hanged in the Marches of Wales within the space 
 of six years. ^ When one remembers that the population 
 of Wales was only about one-sixleenth of that of England, 
 aiid that these victims were said to have fallen in less than a 
 sixth of Henry's reign, the proportion of Welsh malefactors 
 becomes incredible. None the less, it is perfectly evident 
 that thieves and murderers were hanged in batches, with- 
 out regard to persons, and without very much respect for 
 the forms of law. Lee was enjoined by Cromwell that 
 "indifferent justice must be ministered to poor and rich 
 according to their demerits". This injunction he faith- 
 fully obeyed, and for the first time since the death of 
 Llewelyn the law began to be respected in Wales and the 
 Marches. Gerard, in his "Discourse", written thirty-two 
 years after the Bishop's death, gives unstinted praise to 
 his administration : — 
 
 "They spent their hoUe tyme in travellings yeerlie eythr 
 throughe Wales or a great parte of the same in causes towch- 
 inge Civill government, and by that travell knewe the people 
 and founde theire disposicon, favored and preferred to 
 auctoritie and office in theire countreys suche howe meane of 
 lyvinge soever they were, as they founde diligente and willinge 
 to serve in discoveringe and tryinge owte of offences and 
 offenders. Theye likewise deforced and discountenanced 
 others, of howe greate callinge and possessions soever they 
 were, beinge of contrarie disposicon. This stoute bushoppes 
 dealinge and the terror that the vertue of learninge workethe 
 
 1 Stubb's Med. and Mod. History, p. 304. 
 
 ^ Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans, in his Introduction (p. x) to the Mostyn 
 MSS., published by the Historical MSS. Commission, gives this among 
 other tempting extracts from the writings of the Soldier of Calais. It 
 is a pity that at least the portion dealing with contemporary events is 
 not published and translated. 
 
40 THE UNION OF BNGLAffD AND WALIiS. 
 
 in the siibjecte when he perceiveth that he is governed under a 
 lerned magistrate, within iij or iiij yeres generallie so terrified 
 theyme, as the verie feare of punishment rather than the 
 desire or love that the people hadd to chamige their walshrie 
 wroughte first in theym the obedience theye nowe bee grown 
 into. Then was this Counsell and theire proceedinges as 
 moche feared, reverenced and hadd in estimacion of the 
 walshrie as at this daye the Starre Chamber of the English."^ 
 
 Without subscribing to every word of this eulogy of 
 the Bishop and his co-adjutors— putting a good deal of it 
 down to the natural tendency of the official to magnify his 
 ofB.ce or the institution to which he belongs, and the 
 attraction which anything in the shape of "strong and 
 resolute government" has for a certain type of mind — it 
 bears witness to the indelible mark left by Rowland Lee 
 on the administration of Wales. Firm government, 
 rigorous administration of justice, and absolute fearless- 
 ness in enforcing law and order were indispensable to 
 Wales of that period ; and those boons she obtained from 
 Rowland Lee. 
 
 The condition of Wales, or of those parts of Wales 
 visited by him, as described by the Lord President in 
 his letters to Cromwell, was deplorable. In a letter, 
 written in the first year of his presidency, he gives a 
 graphic illustration of the state of the country. In the 
 lordship of Magor alone there were at the time living 
 unpunished, under the protection of Sir Walter Herbert, 
 five malefactors who had committed wilful murder, 
 eighteen who had committed murder, and twenty thieves 
 and outlaws who had committed every variety of crime.' 
 The evils of Arthel and Commortha were rife. Both cus- 
 toms had an honest and legitimate origin. They had 
 become more than a peril to the state ; they were a 
 
 1 State Papers, Dom., Eliz., vol. 107, No. 10. 
 
 2 Wright's History of Ludlow, 383. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 41 
 
 festering sore in the body politic. To Arthel or Arddel 
 a man was to vouch or become surety for him or for his 
 good behaviour. It was a recognised and indeed highly 
 necessary procedure under the laws of Howel Dda.' It 
 gradually grew to be a gross abuse. The Lords Marchers 
 "avouched" murderers and outlaws, and so surrounded 
 themselves with a bodyguard of lawless ruffians. So 
 deeply-rooted and wide-spread was this evil that even 
 the new Lord President found it impossible to eradicate it 
 without having recourse to legislation. Section 13 of 
 26 Henry VIII, c. 6, which was passed in 1534, soon after 
 Rowland Lee came to the Marches, was doubtless enacted 
 owing to the representations of the Bishop. 
 
 " And where heretofore upon divers Murthers, Robberies 
 and Felonies perpetrated and done, as well within the Lord- 
 ships Marchers of Wales as in other places in Wales without 
 the same Lordships, the offenders divers Times flee and escape 
 from the same Lordship or other Place where such offence was 
 committed, and have repaired and resorted into another Lord- 
 ship Marcher, and there by the aid Comfort and Favour of the 
 said Lord of the same Lordship, or his Officer or Officers, have 
 been abiding and resiant, into which Lordships the same Lords 
 Marchers have and do pretend a Custom and Privilege that 
 
 none of the King's Ministers may enter to pursue 
 
 apprehend and attach any such offender," 
 
 it is enacted that the officers of the Council of the Marches 
 shall have authority to follow the offender and bring him 
 back to the jurisdiction of the lord where the offence was 
 committed.^ 
 
 The practice of Commortha {cymhorth^help) had its 
 origin in the practice of co-aration — a custom which 
 has to some extent survived even to our own times in 
 rural Wales. "GymmortJias are assemblies of people to 
 
 1 Wade Evans, Welsh Mediaeval Lmv, at pp. 88, 234, and 325 ; 
 Owen's Ancient Laws of Wales, pp. 935-6. 
 
 2 Bowen's Statutes of Wales, p. 62. 
 
42 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WAtES. 
 
 assist a neighbour in any work.'" It was easy for the 
 lawless Lords Marchers to take advantage of the old cus- 
 tom to further their own interests, or to make it a cloak 
 to conceal an illegal assembly, or, sometimes, to extort an 
 illegal exaction. So great had the evil become that by 
 section 6 of the Statute already referred to it was enacted 
 
 " that no person or persons from henceforth, without licence of 
 the said Comm"'^ in writing, shall within Wales or the Marches 
 of the same, or in any Shires adjoining to the same, require, 
 procure, gather, or levy any Commorth, Bydale, Tenant's Ale, 
 or other Collection or Exaction of Goods, Chattels, Money, or 
 any other Thing, under colour of marrying, or suffering of their 
 Children saying or singing their first Masses or Gospels, of any 
 Priests or Clerks, or for Redemption of any Murther, or any 
 other Felony, or for any other Manner of Cause, by what Name 
 
 or Names soever they shall be called and that no 
 
 Person or Persons shall hereafter at any Time cast any Thing 
 into any Court within Wales, or in the Lordships Marchers of 
 the same, by the Mean or Name of an Arthel, by Reason 
 whereof the Court may be letted, disturbed, or discontinued 
 for that Time, upon Pain of one whole year's imprisonment." 
 
 In spite of this statutory prohibition, so inveterate was 
 the custom,'' that one George Matthew of Glamorgan 
 obtained, in 1536, greatly to the Lord President's annoy- 
 ance, the King's licence to hold Gommortha. "He is so 
 befriended", commented Lee in a letter to Cromwell, 
 "that it will run through all Wales to his advantage to 
 the amount of one hundred marks." 
 
 We find echoes, too, in Lee's letters of the vendetta, 
 which Sir John Wynne described in fuller detail in his 
 History of the Gwydir Family, between the Trevors and 
 
 1 Pennant's Tour in Wales, iii, 353. There was one exception in 
 the Statute to the prohibition of commortha, viz., in the case of the 
 loss of property by fire. 
 
 '^ Though it was forbidden to gather a Commorth "under colour of 
 marrying", it is curious to find that the practice (under the name of 
 "tnith" or "neithior'') has survived down to our own days. 
 
*ltE UNION Oi* ENGLAND AND WALES. 43 
 
 Kyffins of Oswestry. John Trevor was summoned before 
 the Council for assisting to burn a man's house in Chirk- 
 land. Through negligence, or worse, he contrived to 
 escape. He fled "to the wood" with an outlaw named 
 Eobert ap Morice. Lee begs Cromwell to see that no 
 pardon is made out to them.' 
 
 The abduction of heiresses, which is always a sign of 
 social anarchy, was not uncommon, and was tolerated by 
 public opinion.^ Bishop Lee gives an account of the 
 abduction of a widow named Joan ap Hoell from the 
 church at Llanwarne by one Roger Morgan. In the 
 following month the abductor was tried before a jury at 
 Gloucester, and, to the Bishop's intense chagrin, was 
 acquitted.^ "When it came to the trial of the Morgans", 
 wrote Lee to Cromwell, "the rest of the gentlemen could 
 not be found in the town by the sheriff, so were fain to 
 take such as remained, who against the evidence acquitted 
 the Morgans . . . Mr. Justice Porte will confess the 
 premises to be true, as I willed him and his associate at 
 the assizes, Mr. Montague, to cess good fines upon the 
 gentlemen that departed of their disobedience.'" The 
 unwillingness or fear of juries to do their duty honestly in 
 such trials was notorious. "Though at the late Assizes 
 [at Chester] many bills, well supported, were put into the 
 'greate enqueste' [grand jury], yet contrary to their duty 
 they have found murders to be manslaughters and riots to 
 be misbehaviours.'" The Bishop promptly committed the 
 grand jury to prison "for their lightness". He added, to 
 
 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. x, 453. 
 
 2 "This is a vice common to Wales, and for its reformation we 
 caused the trial to be made, but all the honest persons we had 
 appointed absented themselves." Lee to Cromwell, 28 February 1538. 
 
 3 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. xiii, Pt. i, p. 128, No. 37. 
 * Lee to Cromwell, Ibid., vol. xiii, Pt. i, 371. 
 
 ^ State Papers, vol. xiii, Pt. i, 1411. 
 
44 THE UNION OF ENGtiAND ANt) WALES. 
 
 defend himself against a possible charge of harshness, 
 
 that if the country was to be kept in order, punishment 
 
 must be inflicted, for by the common law things so far out 
 
 of order could never be redressed. 
 
 Another story, which is given in some detail in the 
 
 State Papers, presents a vivid illustration of the condition 
 
 of Wales at the time. It relates to a scapegrace scion 
 
 of a great N"orman- Welsh family, Robert Stradling of 
 
 Glamorganshire. His confession, taken at Bewdley on 
 
 28 September 1535, is thus suQimarised:— 
 
 "About two years ago took part with his father-in-law, Watkyn 
 Lougher, who disputed certain lands with Charles Turbill. 
 Confesses to having kept one Lewes of North Wales and one 
 Griffith of Caermarthenshire, who robbed and murdered Piers 
 Dere, for five or six weeks in his house, and they gave him one 
 royal of Dere's. Killed Gitto Jenkyn, who quarrelled with 
 him while coursing at the White Crosse, on the said lands in 
 variance. Was outlawed, and to escape the search, boarded 
 with six persons a balinger of Pastowe in the haven near the 
 Abbey of Neath, and made the mariners put to sea for three 
 weeks. Did no harm to anyone. Landed at Milford Haven, 
 and went to Waterford in the latter end of April. Hearing 
 that proclamations were made in Wales against him returned."^ 
 
 Lee v?as no believer in any policy but that of repression. 
 
 The common law was insufficient, and exceptional measures 
 
 had to be taken. "If one thief shall try another, all we 
 
 have begun is foredone.'" He tells with glee how he 
 
 hanged a dead thief on a gallows for a warning, and how 
 
 three hundred people followed to see the carriage of the 
 
 thief in a sack, "the manner whereof had not been before". 
 
 "All thieves in Wales quake for fear, and there is but one 
 
 thief, of name Hugh Dui-aunt, whom we trust to have 
 
 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. ix, 465. In the end Lee recom- 
 mended him for the King's pardon, because he was " a proper man 
 and a good archer and willing to pay a reasonable fine". Ihid., ix, 
 126, 160. 
 
 2 Ibid., X, 4.54 ; 12 March 1536. 
 
THK union op EBtGLAND AND WALES. 45 
 
 shortly. Wales is brought to that state that one thief 
 taketh another, and one cow keepeth another, as Lewis my 
 servant shall inform you.'" Holding such views of the in- 
 adequacy of the ordinary law, and of the necessity of stern 
 and repressive administration, unhampered by the limita- 
 tions of the common law, the Lord President cannot be 
 regarded as the inspirer, or even a supporter, of the legis- 
 lation of 1535 and 1542. The spirit and policy of the 
 Bishop are reflected rather in the legislation of 1534, 
 which strengthened the arm of the government in the 
 repression of crime, and enlarged its powers to maintain 
 law and order. It is beyond question that the Bishop had 
 no hand in any constructive legislation which had for its 
 object the association of the people of Wales with the 
 government of their country. 
 
 By 26 Henry VEII, c. 4, it was enacted that as 
 
 "Divers adherents friends and kinsfolk to muidereis and 
 felons have resorted to jurors, and have suborned them to 
 acquit divers murderers felons and accessories openly and 
 notoriously known, contrary to equity and justice," 
 
 power should be vested in the Lord President to send 
 the recalcitrant jurors to prison^ — a power which Bishop 
 Lee was prompt to use, as we have seen, four years later 
 at Chester. By another enactment of the same year 
 (26 Henry VIII, c. 6, s. 6) the Justices of Gaol Delivery and 
 of the Peace in any English shire next to the district in 
 Wales where a crime had been committed were empowered 
 to try and punish the offender.' 
 
 Lee, so far from wishing to extend the common law of 
 England to Wales, was rather disposed, as has already 
 been seen, to suspend it altogether. Ellis Griffith ex- 
 pressly states that the Statute, 26 Henry VIII, c. 6, was 
 
 ^ State Papers, x,di. '^ Bowen' a Utatutes of Wales, 58. '^ Ibid.,bl-2. 
 
46 THE UNION 01* ENGLAND ANi) WAtEg. 
 
 passed at the instigation of Bishop Eowland. Its pre- 
 amble describes, in sonorous English, the condition of 
 Wales as viewed by him : — 
 
 "Forasmuch as the People of Wales aiid the Marches of the 
 same, not dreading the good and wholesome Laws and Statutes 
 of this Realm, have of longtime continued and persevered in 
 Perpetration and Commission of divers and manifold Thefts, 
 Murthers, Rebellions, Wilful Burnings of Houses and other 
 scelerous Deeds and abominable Malefacts, to the high Dis- 
 pleasure of God, Inquietation of the King's w^ell-disposed 
 Subjects, and Disturbance of the Public Weal, which Malefacts 
 and scelerous Deeds be so rooted and fixed in the same people, 
 that they be not like to cease, unless some sharp Correction 
 and Punishment for Redress and Amputation of the Premisses 
 be provided, according to the demerits of the Offenders,"i 
 
 it is therefore enacted that all persons, when duly sum- 
 moned, should appear at the courts within the Lordships 
 Marchers upon penalty of a fine ; if any officers in the 
 Lordships Marchers illegally imprisoned any person, the 
 Council of the Marches should have power to levy a fine 
 of not less than 6s. 8d. for every day of wrongful imprison- 
 ment ; no weapons should be brought within two miles of 
 any court, fair, town, church, or other assembly; no 
 person, without the licence of the Council, should levy 
 commorth, etc. ; arthel should be discontinued ; felonies 
 committed in Wales should be triable in the next adjoining 
 English county; and the officers of all Lordships Marchers 
 should aid in securing culprits fleeing from one lordship to 
 another upon penalty of a fine. 
 
 Another enactment of the same year throws a signifi- 
 cant light on the unruly condition of the Welsh Border. 
 By 28 Henry VIII, c. 11, Welshmen were punished for 
 attempting any assaults or affrays upon the inhabitants of 
 Herefordshire, Shropshire, or Gloucestershire, who had 
 been "beaten, mayhemed, grievously wounded, and some- 
 
 '■ Boweu's Statutes of Wales, pp. 54-62. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 47 
 
 times murdered", by one year's imprisonment "without 
 redemption".' 
 
 So far we may conclude, even if we had not the positive 
 contemporary evidence of Ellis Griffith to the same effect, 
 that the legislation relating to Wales was due to the 
 initiative of the new Lord President. It was designed to 
 deal directly and practically with the state of lawless 
 anarchy which prevailed in Wales and the Marches. Its 
 only object was to repress crime, and to punish offenders 
 against the law. It showed no gleam of recognition of 
 the fact that the condition of Wales was due to any other 
 cause than the inherent viciousness of its inhabitants, 
 'fmalefacts and scelerous deeds" were so "rooted and 
 fixed" in the people that only the most vigorous disci- 
 pline could eradicate the evil. The laws to which Wales 
 was subject were "good and wholesome", and all that was 
 required was their more effective administration. Such, 
 therefore, we may take it, was the policy of Bishop Row- 
 land Lee, a strong man, a resolute administrator, imbued 
 with a contemptuous pity for the "Welsliery", honestly 
 desirous of dragooning them into a better conduct and 
 condition, but a ruler who lacked the higher qualities of 
 statesmanship, not endowed with sufficient imagination to 
 penetrate into the root and origin of the evils under which 
 the country was suffering, or to "know what shall chance 
 in time coming", and bereft of that sympathy with the 
 subject people without which even justice loses all its 
 healing grace. 
 
 Grant of a Constitution. 
 
 In 1535 we notice a new spirit animating the policy of 
 the English Government in Wales, a spirit wholly alien 
 to the rough, practical, and unimaginative temper of the 
 I Bowen's Statutes of Wales, p. 63, 
 
48 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Lord President. Henceforward, in the legislation dealing 
 with Wales there are evidences of a larger grasp, a more 
 daring statesmanship, a more adventurous spirit to "make 
 or mar". The first Act of 1535 (27 Henry VIII, c. 6) 
 empowered the Lord Chancellor to appoint Justices of the 
 Peace for the eight ancient counties of the Principality. 
 The justices were authorised to hold their sessions and the 
 sheriffs to execute their processes. At first blush this 
 would appear to be only the characteristic Tudor remedy 
 for the "indifferent ministration" of justice, but in reality 
 it constituted a very real and even daring advance. To 
 allow the law to be administered by Justices of the Peace 
 was to allow it to be administered by men of Welsh descent 
 and of Welsh sympathies. Up to that time, as George Owen 
 points out, there was hardly a single Welshman entrusted 
 with authority in Wales. The "men on the spot" were 
 filled with dismal forebodings as to the result that would 
 ensue from the Government's rash proceedings. It may 
 be that Bishop Rowland Lee was not consulted by the 
 Government as to the administration of the law in the 
 eight ancient counties, but he had an opportunity in 1636 
 of expressing his views as to the competence of the 
 "Welshery"to be associated with the government of their 
 own country. In that year John Scudamore, Sheriff of 
 Hereford, wanted to know if he was to consider as shire- 
 ground certain Marches of Wales annexed to his shire.' 
 Scudamore, however, was suspect. He was a descendant 
 of Owen Glyndwr, and was "dwelling nigh the Welshery 
 and kynned and alyed in the same". So far from trusting 
 the Sheriff, Lee asked Cromwell that Scudamore should be 
 put out of the commission.' "There are", the Lord Presi- 
 dent gravely informed the Secretary of State, "very few 
 Welsh in Wales above Brecknock who have £10 in land, 
 1 State^Papers, Henry VllI, vol. xii, 1338. ^ Ibid., xi, 1255. 
 
THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 49 
 
 and their discretion is less than their land." By this time 
 still further changes were in the air. The Act of 1535 had 
 decreed that the rest of what is now called Wales should 
 he turned into shire-ground. The good Bishop is full of 
 gloomy predictions as to "the bearing of thieves" if the 
 Statute goes forward. Cardigan and Merioneth, he points 
 out, are as disorderly as the worst parts of Wales, although 
 they are shire-ground.' Even in the ancient counties them- 
 selves the Government's decision to appoint justices of the 
 peace was viewed with dismay. Among the State Papers 
 there is to be found a document entitled : "Articles proving 
 that it shall be hurtful to the commonwealth of the three 
 shires in North Wales, viz., Anglesey, Carnarvon, and 
 Merioneth,. to have justices of the peace therein." The 
 justices will be dangerous, partiality will increase, the 
 inhabitants are poor and quarrelsome, and most of the 
 gentlemen are "bearers of thieves and misruled persons".^ 
 Sir Richard Bulkeley, of Anglesey, was of the same 
 opinion, and begged Cromwell to stop the Lord Chancellor 
 from appointing any Justices of the Peace within the three 
 shires of North Wales. 
 
 The second Act of 1535 (27 Henry VIII, c. 7) abolished 
 all the old cruel and barbarous forest customs, which 
 enabled the Lords Marchers to punish persons who were 
 travelling through a forest without a token, and without 
 being "yearly tributors", with a "grievous fine or reward", 
 and if twenty-four feet out of the highway, with forfeiture 
 of their money or the loss of one of their hands.' 
 
 The preamble to the "Act for making of Justices of 
 Peace in Wales" (27 Henry VIII, c. 5) stated that it was 
 passed "to the intent that one Order of ministering of his 
 Laws should be had observed and used in the same as in 
 
 1 State Papers, x, 453. ^ Ibid., xi, r,25, 
 
 n ^^ . rt. . . f Trr . i__ on ni 
 
 ' state i'apers, x, 106. 
 
 3 Bowen's Statutes of Wales, pp. 69-7L^ 
 
50 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 other places of this Realm of England is had and used". 
 Henceforth that was the aim of English statesmanship. 
 Henry VIII and his ministers had a wholesome belief in 
 the merits of English institutions. They had come to the 
 conclusion that what was good for England was also good 
 for Wales. They refused to credit "the Welshery" with 
 a double dose of original sin. Shortsighted administrators 
 and timorous officials warned them in vain of the folly of 
 applying institutions, which might work well in orderly and 
 civilised England, to a disturbed and lawless country like 
 Wales. They refused to believe that Welsh gentlemen, 
 when entrusted with the powers of Justices of the Peace, 
 would prove more corrupt, more partial, or more negligent 
 than their fellows in England. They showed a robust 
 faith even in Welsh juries, in spite of Rowland Lee's 
 sardonic comment that to set a Welshman to judge a 
 Welshman was to set a thief to try a thief. At a time 
 when the Lord President was only at the beginning of his 
 task of repression, when courier after courier brought 
 news of the disorderly and anarchical condition of the 
 Principality, and when every official was calling for a 
 more rigorous administration of the existing law, the 
 English Parliament passed one of the most liberal and 
 the most courageous Act which has ever been laid to the 
 credit of the British legislature. 27 Hen. VIII, c. 26, 
 which finally incorporated Wales with England, is described 
 as "An Act for Laws and justice to be ministered in Wales 
 in like form as it is in this Realm". The preamble ran 
 as follows : — 
 
 "Albeit the Dominion Principality and Country of Wales 
 justly and righteously is, and ever hath been incorporated 
 annexed united and subject to and under the Imperial Crown 
 of this Realm as a very Member and Joint of the same, whereof 
 the King's most Royal Majesty of Meer Droit, and very Right, 
 is very Head King Lord and Ruler ; yet notwithstanding 
 
THK UNION OJ)' ENGLAND AND WALES. 51 
 
 because that in the same Country, Principality, and Dominion 
 divers Rights Usages Laws and Customs be far iliscrepant 
 from the Laws and Customs of this Realm, and also because 
 that the People of the same Dominion have and do daily use a 
 speech nothing like, nor consouate to the natural Mother 
 Tongue used within this Realm, sonie rude and ignorant 
 People have made distinction and Diversity between the King's 
 Subjects of this Realm, and his Subjects of the said Dominion 
 and Principality of Wales, whereby great Discord Variance 
 Division Murmur and Sedition hath grown between his said 
 Subjects. His Highness therefore of a singular Zeal Love and 
 Favour that he beareth towards his Subjects of his said Do- 
 minion of Wales, minding and intending io reduce them to the 
 perfect Order Notice and Knowledge of his Laws of this his 
 Realm, and utterly to extirp all and singular the sinister 
 Usages and Customs diflfering from the same, and to bring the 
 said Subjects of this his Realm and of his said Dominion 
 
 of Wales to an amicable Concord and Unity, hath 
 
 ordained, enacted, and established" 
 
 that Wales should be henceforth "incorporated united and 
 annexed" to England, and that all natives of Wales should 
 enjoy and inherit "all and singular Freedoms Liberties 
 Rights Privileges and Laws" of his subjects. 
 
 All laws, including the law of inheritance, "without 
 division or partition", were to be henceforth after the 
 form of England.' Forty-four of the Lordships Marcher 
 were united to English shires ; certain others were united 
 to the existing Welsh shires; still others were to be 
 "severed and divided into certain particular counties or 
 
 1 This provision of p. 2 seems to be inconsistent with that of s. 35, 
 which enacted that lands "to be departed and departable among 
 issues and heirs male shall still- so continue". "The intention evi- 
 dently was", says Mr. Ivor Bowen in the Introduction to the Statutes 
 of Wales, at p. 59, "that persons who retired upon any right under 
 the ancient Welsh system of tenure were called upon to prove that it 
 existed before the time of legal memory. The apparent variance was, 
 however remedied by the complete abolition of Welsh customs and 
 rules of descent in 1542." But even after 1542 the Welsh custom of 
 inheritance died hard. (See, e.c/., 7 and 8 Will. Ill, c. 38.) 
 
52 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 shires", which were then for the first time created, viz. : 
 Monmouth, Brecknock, Eadnor, Montgomery, and Den- 
 bigh. Thejboundaries of certain of the Welsh and Border 
 counties were altered, and the Lord Chancellor was em- 
 powered to appoint Justices of the Peace for the four 
 newly-created Welsh _ counties. The Justices and all 
 officials were to use only English in discharging their 
 duties, upon pain of forfeiting their offices. 
 
 "No Person or Persons that use the Welsh Speech or 
 Language shall have or enjoy any Manner Office or Pees 
 within this Realm of England Wales or other the King's 
 Dominion, upon pain of forfeiting the same OflSees or Fees, 
 unless he or they use and exercise the English Speech or 
 Language." ^ 
 
 The Lord Chancellor was authorised to appoint Com- 
 missioners to divide the shires of Carmarthen, Pembroke, 
 Cardigan, Monmouth, Brecknock, Eadnor, Montgomery, 
 
 1 Though s. 20 has never been abolished, and it would therefore 
 appear to be illegal to conduct proceedings in a law court in Welsh, 
 it has, perhaps, never been rigorously enforced, and of late years it 
 has become practically obsolete. Of one Edward Davies, Gerard 
 wrote to Walsingham, in 1575 : "He hath been the Queen's Attorney 
 in the marches and is well learned and can speke the Welche Tonge, 
 but no Welche man. Note that it were verie conveniente that one of 
 the Justices of assizes did understande the Welche tonge, for now 
 the justice of assise must vse some interpreter. And therefore many 
 tymes the evidence is tolde according to the mynde of the Interpreter 
 whereby the evidence is expounded contrarie to that w'='' is saide by 
 the examynate, and so the Judge gyveth a wronge charge." The 
 practical "convenience" of a Judge being acquainted with Welsh has 
 long been recognised in the appointment of County Court Judges in 
 Wales. The present writer has, on more than one occasion, examined 
 and cross-examined witnesses in Welsh without the intervention of 
 an interpreter, and Mr. Justice Phillimore once invited counsel to 
 address a jury at Lampeter in Welsh — an invitation which was, 
 however, declined. The one real grievance which Welsh litigants 
 labour under at present is that they have to pay the interpreter's fee 
 for translating their evidence into English. Such a charge should 
 surely be borne by the State. 
 
THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 53 
 
 Grlamoi-gan, and Denbigh into hundreds, and another 
 Commission to inquire "all and singular Laws, Usages and 
 Customs used within the same Dominion and Country of 
 Wales", and such as may be thought by the King and 
 Council "requisite and necessary" should remain.' For 
 the first time Parliamentary representation was given to 
 Wales" — one knight to sit for each of the shires, except 
 Monmouth, which had two representatives, and one burgess 
 for each shire town, except the shire town of Merioneth, 
 which was exempted from the privilege. "Such fees as 
 other Knights and Burgesses of the Parliament have been 
 allowed" were to be paid to the new members ; so that the 
 representatives of Wales are the only members of Parlia- 
 ment for whose payment express statutory provision has 
 been made.' The rights and privileges of the Lords 
 Marchers were swept away, except that they were to 
 continue to hold Courts Baron, Courts Leet, and Law-days, 
 and to retain certain privileges, such as treasure-trove. 
 
 With the usual confidence of Tudor Parliaments in the 
 sovereign, power was granted to the King for three years 
 after the dissolution of Parliament to suspend or repeal 
 the Act. It is a tribute to the success of the Act that the 
 King never used the authority entrusted to him by Parlia- 
 ment. As has already been seen, neither good Bishop 
 Lee, nor the other officials, were greatly enamoured of the 
 liberal policy embodied in the Act, and they advised the 
 King to postpone the appointment of Justices of the 
 Peace. But, as far as is known, not even the Lord 
 
 ' No records of these Commissions are extant, though s. 3 of the 
 Act of 1542 would seem to imply that, at least, the first set of Com- 
 missioners did their work. 
 
 2 Except in two of Edward II's Parliaments, in 1322 and 1327. 
 
 2 By 35 Henry VIII, c. 11, provision was made for the payment of 
 4s. to every knight of the shire, and 2s. a day "unto every Citizen 
 Burgess" from Wales by the Sheriflfs and Mayors. 
 
54 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 President went to the length of advising the King to 
 repeal the Act. In the following year (1536) a short Act 
 was passed giving power to the King during the next three 
 years to determine the limits of the "Welsh shires, and to 
 name the shire towns (28 Henry VIIT, c. 3). For some 
 reason or other — partly no doubt owing to the lack of 
 sympathy with the policy felt and expressed by Bishop 
 Lee and the other officials— it was found impossible to 
 get the work done within the prescribed time. In 1539 it 
 was found necessary to extend the time for another three 
 years (31 Henry VIII, c. II), and it was only in 1542 that 
 the last of the three Acts which created modern Wales 
 was passed. 
 
 34 and 35 Henry VIII, c. 26, "An Act for certain ordi- 
 nances in the King's Dominion and Principality of Wales," 
 marked the passing away of the old order and the old 
 school of statesmanship. It did away, finally and com- 
 pletely, with the Lordships Marchers, and with the abuses 
 which were associated with their existence. It gave to 
 Wales the geographical limits which she still retains, and 
 if the institations which it called into being have now 
 disappeared, they existed, one for a century and a half, and 
 another for well-nigh three centuries, and left an indelible 
 impress on the development of the Welsh people. It made 
 the "resolute Government" of Bishop Lee unnecessary and 
 anomalous, and Wales neither saw nor required his like 
 again. The stout Bishop's friends and coadjutors did not 
 live to see the end of their order. Mr. Justice Bnglefield, 
 "for lernnige ancl discreete modest behavoor comparable 
 with any in the Eealme",' had died in 1537. Bishop 
 Rowland had felt his loss keenly, and begged Cromwell to 
 replace him with "someone of lerning and experience. I 
 
 1 Gerard's Discourse. 
 
The union o^ England and wales. 55 
 
 shall do my part while my rude carcass shall endure. 
 Remember the commonwealth of these parts, which if I 
 have not help will decay again". In 1539 Sir Eichard 
 Herbert died— "the best of his name I know" said Lee. 
 "I have as great a loss of him as though I had lost one 
 of my arms, in Governing Powes, Kery, Kedewen, and 
 Cloonesland". Next year he lost Sir William Sulyard 
 and Mr. Justice Porte. Nor did the good Bishop himself 
 long survive his colleagues. The toil, which he said had 
 "brought many honest men to their death", was soon to 
 bring his own "rude carcass" to the dust. About the end 
 of January 1543 he died at the College of St. Chad's, 
 Shrewsbury, of which his brother was Dean, and was 
 buried in St. Chad's Church. He died at the zenith of 
 his fame, when his work was done. He had upheld the 
 arm of law and order in a time of anarchy. He had 
 carried the terror of his name to the wilds of Melenith 
 and Arwystli. He had meted out justice without favour, 
 if without mercy. By the success of his stern adminis- 
 tration he had made it possible for the far-sighted 
 statesmen of Henry VIII to apply to Wales the healing 
 policy of trust and confidence. Had he failed, the conces- 
 sions of 1535 and 1542 might have been made impossible, 
 because they would almost certainly have been misunder- 
 stood. He had bridged over the transition period between 
 chaos and ordered liberty. He died at a fortunate junc- 
 ture for his after-fame. He disliked and distrusted the 
 policy of which the Act of 1542 was the climax, the 
 coping-stone.' His distrust of "the Welshery" was 
 
 ' The Bishop was asked in 1540 to set the Commissioners to work 
 on the delimitation of Denbighshire and to give his opinion as to the 
 expediency of the change. He sourly replied that he was not privy of 
 any such commission, and trusted that his opinion would not be 
 required, "for I am not of that perfectness to know what shall chance 
 in time coming ". 
 
56 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 ineradicable, and he was too old to learn the lesson 
 which not even the genius of Burke or the eloquence of 
 Bright has sufficed to make clear to the world : that force 
 is no remedy, and repression is "ill husbandry". He had 
 done what he could to postpone the day when Wales would 
 be on a political equality with England. Had he survived, 
 it may well be doubted if he would not have retarded rather 
 than expedited the development of Wales into a law-abiding 
 and contented portion of the realm. His rough and ready 
 methods, however admirable in times of anarchy, would 
 have provoked hostility to the law in the brighter days 
 that were about to dawn on Wales. His rude justice 
 would have inevitably brought him into conflict with those 
 who were to be responsible for the government of the new 
 Wales. He had little faith in Justices of the Peace or in 
 jurors, and doubtless he would have used the supervising 
 powers of the Court of the Marches to the utmost in order 
 to restrain what, to him, would appear the partiality of 
 justices or the corruption of juries. His Court at Ludlow 
 was modelled on the example of the Star Chamber. For 
 at least a century after his death it was, if not popular, at 
 least not actively unpopular in Wales. Down to the reign 
 of James I it undoubtedly did valuable work in the Princi- 
 pality. This it was able to do because it was neither 
 meddlesome nor mischievous. It worked harmoniously 
 with the ordinary courts, and it did not interfere unduly 
 or capriciously with the discretion of Justices of the Peace 
 and other officers of the law. But with a suspicious and 
 sceptical Lord President at Ludlow, things would have 
 fared very differently, and Bishop Rowland would probably 
 have involved the Court of the Marches in as much unpopu- 
 larity as afterwards brought about the downfall of its 
 exemplar and prototype, the Star Chamber. 
 
 The Act of 1542 consists of one hundred and thirty 
 sections. It recites that it was passed "at the humble 
 
*HE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 67 
 
 suit and petition" of the people of Wales, but no record 
 of the petition is extant.' By dividing Wales into twelve 
 counties, Monmouthshire, which was and has continued to 
 be Welsh in blood, sympathy, and language, was excluded 
 from the geographical area of the Principality.^ The 
 twelve counties of Wales were to consist of the eight 
 ancient counties^ and the four new shires created by the 
 Act of 1536. The division of the shires into hundreds 
 by the Commission appointed under the previous Act 
 was confirmed. By section 4, statutory recognition was 
 accorded to the Court of the Council of the Marches : — 
 
 "There shall be and remain a President and Council in 
 the said Dominion and Principality of Wales, and the Marches 
 of the same, with all Officers, Clerks, and Incidents to the 
 same in Manner and Form as hath been heretofore used and 
 accustomed ; which President and Council shall have Power 
 and Authority to hear and determine, by their Wisdoms and 
 Discretions, such causes and matters as be or hereafter shall 
 be assigned to them by the King's Majesty, as heretofore hath 
 been accustomed and used." 
 
 It is true that in previous Statutes, such as 26 Henry VIII, 
 c. 4, and 26 Henry VIII, c. 6, the Court and the Lord 
 President had been mentioned, and to some extent there- 
 fore their existence and powers had been regularised. 
 But the Councils of the North and of the West (the former 
 of which had been created by the King after the sup- 
 
 ^ It may be that the petition referred to is the one already cited 
 from Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII. But the wording of the 
 petition would seem to preclude that possibility, and to make it 
 certain that that petition was presented to the King before 153.5. 
 
 2 It is curious with what persistence the people of Wales have climg 
 to Monmouthshire as a Welsh county. George Owen, in his Dialogue 
 {Owen's Pembrokeshire, Part iii, p. 39), speaks of Wales as having been 
 divided into thirteen counties. Shakespeare makes Fluellen speak 
 of Monmouth as a Welsh town. Stephen Hughes, in the preface to 
 one of his publications printed in the reign of Charles II, refers (as is 
 commonly done in Wales still) to the thirteen counties of Wales. Of 
 recent years, for the purposes of educational administration, Mon- 
 mouthshire has been recognised as forming part of Wales. 
 
58 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND ■WALfiS. 
 
 pression of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536) had been 
 mentioned, together with the Ludlow Court, in the Subsidy- 
 Act of 1540 (32 Henry VEII, c. 50, which was not enrolled 
 in Chancery) . But they were simply mentioned as being 
 a source of expense to the King, though the existence of 
 the Ludlow Court is justified on the ground that poor and 
 rich thereby "have undelayed Justice daylye administered 
 unto them". But the direct and regular recognition in 
 the Statute of the Court of the Marches, which had been 
 called into existence by the exercise of the King's pre- 
 rogative, placed it in a difPerent category from the Council 
 of the North and the Star Chamber. It fell, with the other 
 prerogative Courts, before the reforming energy of the Long 
 Parliament, but, while the others fell to rise no more, the 
 Court of the Marches was revived at the Restoration. It 
 had, however, survived its real usefulness, and at the Revo- 
 lution of 1688 it finally passed out of existence. 
 
 Side by side, however, with the Court of the Marches, 
 there was created a new system of Courts, called "the 
 King's Great Sessions in Wales". The twelve counties 
 of Wales were divided into the four circuits of Chester, 
 Carnarvon, Carmarthen, and Brecknock, and the Sessions 
 were directed to be held twice a year in each of the twelve 
 counties. The Justice of Chester, with a salary of £100 a 
 year, was to hold his Sessions in Plint, Denbigh, and 
 Montgomery ; the Justice of Carnarvon, with a salary of 
 £50, in Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth ; the Justice 
 of Carmarthen, with a salary of £50, in Cardigan, Pem- 
 broke, and Carmarthen ; and the Justice of Brecknock, with 
 a salary of £50, in Brecknock, Radnor, and Glamorgan.^ 
 
 'In 1575 another Justice was added to each circuit, by 18 Eliz., c. 8. 
 Burke, in his speech on Economical Reform, denounced the extrava- 
 gance of a system which permitted eight judges to Wales, while twelve 
 were able to cope with the legal work of England. 
 
TdE TTNiON Of EJfGtLANb ANt) WALfiS. 5& 
 
 Each Session was to last six days. The Justices were to 
 hold pleas of the Crown, pleas of Assizes, and all other 
 pleas and actions, real, personal, and mixed, and to minis- 
 ter common justice to all the King's subjects according to 
 the laws of England. An appeal lay from the Great 
 Sessions to the Court of the Marches in pleas personal, 
 and in pleas real or mixed to the English Justices of the 
 King's Bench. Though the Court of the Marches had a 
 concurrent as well as an appellate jurisdiction, there does 
 not seem to have been any great conflict between the two 
 courts. This is contrary to what might have been 
 expected, especially when it is remembered with what 
 jealousy the Courts of Westminster viewed the Court of 
 the Marches. The Common Law Courts of Westminster 
 were actuated by the natural hostility of fixed and ordinary 
 courts to exceptional and prerogative courts. It is true, 
 as has already been pointed out, that the Court of the 
 Marches, difEering in this from the Council of the North, 
 did receive statutory recognition in 1542. But the juris- 
 diction of the Ludlow Court was wider and more compre- 
 hensive than that of its sister body, which had no appellate 
 jurisdiction, and which could not punish treason. But 
 while the Westminster Courts were unremitting in their 
 hostility, and never rested till they had shorn it of much 
 of its power, dignity, and jurisdiction, it is significant that 
 there is no evidence of a similar jealousy and apprehension 
 being felt by the Courts of Great Sessions. This is all the 
 more remarkable as we find Lord Ferrers, as early as 1526, 
 when the Ludlow Court was nothing like as powerful as it 
 afterwards became, complaining of the extension of its 
 jurisdiction to Carmarthen and Cardigan. 
 
 The reason for this somewhat curious fact is not far to 
 seek. In the first place, the Justices of the Great Sessions 
 were members of the Court of the Marches. The Chief 
 
60 THE TjNiON OP ENGiiANb AND WALES. 
 
 Justice of Chester was often the Vice-President of the 
 Court, and was looked upon as its principal legal member. 
 Moreover, the litigious work of the Principality could not 
 be disposed of in the twelve days a year, which was the 
 time fixed by the Statute for the hearing of cases in Great 
 Sessions, and therefore there was always legitimate work 
 for the Court of Ludlow to transact. "Generallye it is the 
 very place of refuge for the poore oppressed of this Countrey 
 of Wales to flye unto" — so George Owen, in 1594, makes 
 Demetus say, in his Dialogue on the Government of Wales^ — 
 "and for this cause it is as greatly frequented with suytes 
 as any one Court at Westminster whatsoever, the more for 
 that it is the best cheape Court in England for fees, and 
 there is great speed made in tryall of all causes". Jt had 
 the defect of its qualities. The very cheapness of the pro- 
 cesses increased the number of vexatious and trivial suits 
 and of attorneys, and in time this led to the undue exten- 
 sion of the Court's jurisdiction. But, on the whole, at 
 least during the sixteenth century, the Court of the 
 Marches performed a useful and necessary part in the trial 
 of actions. Even as late as 1641 the Court found an 
 ardent apologist, who defended it with force and point.^ 
 Of the Courts of Great Sessions, it need only be said 
 that they did their work, to the general satisfaction of 
 litigants and public, till 1830, when they were abolished, 
 and the two circuits of North and South Wales were added 
 to the English Assize system.^ 
 
 Sheriffs for each of the twelve counties were to be 
 appointed yearly by the Crown out of three names which 
 
 ^ Omeris Pembrokeshire, Part iii, p. 23 seq. 
 
 2 "Provisions for a court to be established in yf ales", Bridgivater 
 Papers, Welsh Council, p. 19. 
 
 ' An excellent account of the events which led to the abolition of 
 the Courts of Great Sessions will be found in Rhys and Jones's Welsh 
 People, pp. 387-891. 
 
*HE tJNiON OF ENGLAND ANt) WALES. 6l 
 
 were to be submitted by the President of the Council. 
 The sheriffs were to hold their county and hundred courts 
 monthly, and over their actions the President and the 
 Council kept strict observation. Nearly all the Welsh 
 sheriffs were members of the Council, and they were 
 bound to execute all lawful commands of the Lord 
 President and the Council. If we may trust the Dialogue 
 of George Owen, which contains the best description we 
 have of the functions of the Council of the Marches and 
 its relations with the other local Courts and officials of 
 Wales, sheriffs had tried, by placing a wrong construction 
 on sections 73 and 74 of the Act of 1542, to erect new 
 Hundred Courts for the purpose of extoi'tion. The Council 
 had fined sheriffs for such practices, and in Brecknock- 
 shire, at least, the evil had been nipped in the bud. But, 
 up to the last days of the Council, its relations with the 
 sheriffs were not cordial, and during the presidency of the 
 Earl of Bridgwater (1631) there were instances where the 
 sheriffs flatly refused to carry out the Council's orders. 
 
 By section 53 it was enacted that Justices of the Peace 
 and of the Quorum, and one custos rotulorum, should be 
 appointed for each county by the Lord Chancellor, on the 
 advice of the President and the Council. By section 55 
 the number of such justices was limited to eight for each 
 county — no doubt on account of the difficulty which was 
 experienced, or feared, of finding a greater number of men 
 of substance, position, and education to fill such posts. 
 The limitation on the number of Justices was not removed 
 till 1693 (5 William and Mary, c. 4) . The Justices of the 
 Peace were to hold their Sessions four times a year. The 
 Lord President was, in practice, the Lord Lieutenant for 
 the twelve counties of Wales, and most of the high officials 
 of the Council were on the commission of the peace for 
 each of the Welsh counties. 
 
62 ifsE UNION o* englanC and WALIES. 
 
 A very salutary jurisdiction was exercised by the Council 
 over the various borough courts of Wales. George Owen, 
 in his Dialogue, complains that there were too many 
 corporate towns in Wales having private courts of record 
 for personal actions to any amount. "There are in Wales 
 yet (1594)", he said, "a multitude of very meane villages 
 scarce having six houses or cottages, and yet are allowed 
 for Corporations and Boroughs." As the Council had an 
 appellate jurisdiction in personal actions, it was able to 
 mitigate the evils resulting from the multiplicity of 
 obscure Borough Courts, and in time these Courts seem to 
 have entirely disappeared. 
 
 By section 68 it was enacted that two Coroners should 
 be elected in each shire as in England, and by section 70 
 the Justices of the Peace were empowered to appoint two 
 Chief Constables for the hundred wherein they dwelt. 
 
 Though justice was to be generally administered accord- 
 ing to the English law, it was thought expedient to enact 
 in particular that the^ld Welsh law should be superseded 
 in two points. By section 84 it was forbidden to put a 
 murderer or a felon to his fine, and by section 100 private 
 arrangements between parties in cases of murder and 
 felony were made punishable by fine and imprisonment at 
 the discretion of the President and the Council. By 
 sections 91 and 128 gavelkind was abolished, and the 
 English law of descent was specifically introduced into 
 Wales.' 
 
 Such, in its main outlines, was the policy, daringly con- 
 ceived and consistently carried out, which in the result 
 reduced Wales to a state of order and obedience to the 
 law. It was an experiment, as novel as it was remark- 
 able. English statesmen could point to no precedent for 
 
 ' The full text of the Statute will be found in Bowen's Statutes of 
 Wales, pp. 101-133. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 63 
 
 such a policy, either in ancient or modern times. The 
 case of Ireland was not parallel, for the "Welshery" were 
 entrusted with responsibilities and endowed with privileges 
 which were, for many generations, denied to the " Wild 
 Irish ".^ It was not only a policy without precedent, it 
 was contrary to all the traditions of English statesmanship 
 and to the spirit of the age. It was launched at a time 
 seemingly most inopportune. The whole fabric of society 
 was still in the throes of the convulsion caused by the 
 Reformation; the old faith, the old learning, the old 
 science, were passing away, "like an unsubstantial pageant 
 faded". "The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages 
 were broken up ; old things were passing away ; and the 
 faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a 
 dream.'" The breach with Rome had become complete, 
 and by dissolving the monasteries, Henry had, with regal 
 insolence, brought home the real meaning of the revolution 
 to every part of his realm. Nowhere was the change 
 more unwelcome than in Wales, in those days the home of 
 lost causes and impossible dreams. Whatever may have 
 been its proximate cause, the change in religion and the 
 divorce of the old Queen had much to do with the rebellion 
 of Rhys ap Griffith at Carmarthen, in 1529. Young Rhys 
 had paid the penalty with his head, but his fate was 
 mourned for years after by his friends and country- 
 men. Soothsayers, in the troubled years that followed, 
 used the murder of "the noble young Ris" as an incentive 
 to urge other conspirators to their doom. The whole of 
 Wales was seething with unrest and disaffection against 
 the innovations. The shrine of Dewi Sant was despoiled 
 by a heretic Bishop; the image of Derfel Gadarn was 
 mocked as an idol ; the holiest sanctuaries of the old faith 
 
 ' See, e.g., Lecky's Ireland, pp. 1-4. 
 2 Froude's History of England, c. i. 
 
64 THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 were handed over to the rude hands of secular persons who 
 recked of nothing but their own worldly advancement. It 
 requires no evidence to convince those who know the 
 passionately religious and conservative spirit of the Welsh 
 people that these changes were bitterly resented by them. 
 The commons of the North of England rose against the 
 ruthless King ; for the first and only time the throne of 
 Henry was put in jeopardy. At the time when the 
 Pilgrimage of Grace was most formidable, Chapuys assured 
 his Imperial master that Wales was ripe for revolt. Bishop 
 Rowland Lee was convinced on other grounds that Wales 
 was not ready for the grant of a constitution. He begged 
 the King "not to allow the Statute to go forward". Yet 
 it was at this dark and untoward hour that a constitution 
 was given to Wales. Even the Parliament which granted 
 it was sceptical of the result. It gave the King the power 
 to repeal or suspend it. That power was never exercised. 
 The grant of a free constitution was an instantaneous 
 success. The same "wonderful issue'" attended it in 
 Wales as has since attended it in Canada, in South Africa, 
 in every part of the British dominions where it has been 
 tried. "From that moment" — to adopt the eloquent 
 words of Burke — "as by a charm, the tumults subsided, 
 obedience was restored, peace, order, and civilisation fol- 
 lowed in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the 
 English constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was 
 harmony within and without." 
 
 Almost alone of later commentators, Burke has ascribed 
 the credit of this miraculous achievement to the right 
 source. Gerard, in 1675, with the shortsightedness of 
 an alien of&cial, while recognising the effect, mistook 
 the cause. He set down all the credit to the stern and 
 
 1 Mr. Balfour's speech on the South African Confederation, 
 15 August 1909. 
 
THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. VO 
 
 resolute policy of the "stout Bishop", who had so terrified 
 the people that "within three or four years the fear of 
 punishment wroughte firste in theym the obedience theye 
 nowe have grown into". Subsequent writers have followed 
 Gerard, and Bishop Eowland has come to be regarded as 
 the pacifier and civiliser of Wales. But a calm and dis- 
 passionate review of the circumstances will set the Bishop's 
 achievement in its right perspective. He was in o£Sce for 
 less than nine years, and however vigorous his administra- 
 tion and ruthless his methods, it would require more than 
 nine years of resolute government to change the habits 
 and to transform the character of a whole people. Nor 
 should it be forgotten that the Bishop's energies were 
 limited to the border counties. His letters bear witness 
 to his incessant activities in Cheshire and Shropshire, 
 Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, and occasionally Mon- 
 mouthshire and Brecknockshire. With the rest of Wales 
 he had little or nothing to do. We have no record that he 
 ever visited Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, and Cardi- 
 ganshire in the south, or Merionethshire, Carnarvonshire, 
 and Anglesea in the north. He himself states that 
 Merioneth and Cardigan, though shire ground, were as 
 disturbed and lawless as the borderland, and we know, 
 from Sir John Wynn's lively narrative, that Carnarvon- 
 shire was as turbulent as any portion of Wales. Whatever 
 effect the Bishop's administration may have had in the 
 eastern counties, his influence can hardly have extended to 
 the rest of the Principality, which he never even saw. But 
 not only those parts under the Bishop's rule, but the whole 
 of Wales, settled down to cultivate the arts of peace after 
 the time of Henry VIII. We hear, it is true, of the 
 "Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy" (the Eed Bandits of Maw- 
 ddwy) in the reign of Edward VI ; one of the King's judges 
 even was slain in one of the wild gorges of Merioneth while 
 
66 THE UNIOK OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 he was going circuit. In Gerard's time there were still 
 three or four disturbed and lawless "petty corners", and 
 George Owen specifically mentions the north-east part of 
 Cardiganshire, and the wild districts of Arwystli, as being 
 dangerous to the traveller. But on the whole, and speak- 
 ing generally, Wales became peaceful and law-abiding in 
 the second half of the sixteenth century. The fact that 
 every part of the Principality showed the same tendency 
 at the same time is proof that the influences at work were 
 general and not particular, permanent and not transient. 
 Wales was transfigured; the habits, customs, and even 
 the character — "the Welshery" — of Welshmen were 
 changed, not because of "the fear of punishment", but 
 because the grant of free institutions had removed the 
 causes which had led to the growth of the evils. Dr. 
 David Powel, in his History of Cambria, passed a sounder 
 judgment on the causes which led to the pacification of 
 Wales. "There was never anie thing so beneficiall to 
 the Common people of Wales", he declared, "as the 
 uniting of the countrie to the crowne and kingdom of 
 England," which had resulted in having "an uniformitie 
 of government established." George Owen, also, at the 
 end of Elizabeth's reign, asserted that Wales had been 
 brought to "great civilisation", not by the coercion of a 
 strong ruler, but by the beneficent effect of good and 
 wholesome laws. 
 
 It is less important, though, perhaps, even more interest- 
 ing, to inquire to whom the credit is due for initiating 
 and carrying through the experiment of killing "Welshery" 
 by trusting Welshmen. The Statute of 1542 refers to 
 "petitions" from the people of Wales. One of these has 
 already been given at length. Its author, as has already 
 been said, was probably Sir John Price of Brecon. Sir 
 John's close connection by marriage with Thomas Crom- 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. ' 67 
 
 weir lends colour to the suggestion. If, as the Act 
 relates, the impulse came from Wales, it must have come 
 from some one who had the ear of Henry's ministers, and 
 of all contemporary Welshmen Sir John Price stands out 
 as the man who, by his influence in high quarters and by 
 his confidence in the political capacity and natural 
 generosity of the Welsh people, can with some certainty 
 be named as the inspirer of the liberal policy of Henry VIII 
 towards Wales. 
 
 To Thomas Cromwell, also, some of the credit must 
 be ascribed. His character and career are even more 
 mysterious than those of his master, but of his greatness 
 there can be no question. He was Secretary of State in 
 153-i, when Rowland Lee was sent to Ludlow. He was 
 almost at the zenith of his power when the Act of CJnion 
 was passed. He acquiesced in — perhaps even suggested — 
 the appointment of W elshmen to be Justices of the Peace. 
 Before he fell, in the summer of 1540, the Commission 
 which was to prescribe the limits of the counties, to divide 
 them into hundreds, and to appoint the county towns in 
 Wales — to complete, in fine, the making of Modern Wales 
 
 I The following table, taken from J. H . Davies's edition of Yn y Llyvr 
 hionn, shews the connection of Sir John Price with the Cromwells :— 
 WiUiam Morgan, Henry Wykes, Walter Cromwell 
 
 Bglwyswen Putney I 
 
 I 1 i i 
 
 Morgan Williams, John Williams= Blizabeth= Ehzabeth= 
 
 Putney=Cath- Joan Thomas Morgan 
 
 erine Cromwell. | Cromwell. Williams. 
 
 I Joan Williams= 
 
 Bichard Williams, Sir John Price, 
 
 ancestor of Oli- I 
 
 ver Cromwell. | 
 
 I I 
 
 Gregory. Richard. 
 
 In an earlier note, through inadvertence, Sir John Price's book was said 
 to be entitled Oil Symoyr pen pob Kymero, instead of Yn y Llyvr hwnn, 
 and the mistake was only discovered when the sheet had been printed, 
 
68 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 — had commenced its work. He may not have been the 
 inspirer of the policy, hut he was, at least, a willing and 
 active instrument in carrying it out. Its very novelty and 
 audacity would have appealed to that adventurous spirit, 
 whose motto was "To make or mar". 
 
 But no estimate of the forces at work in the regenera- 
 tion of Wales would be complete which failed to take into 
 account the character and personality of the King. To one 
 school of historians Henry VIII is the very type of a savage 
 and bloodthirsty tyrant, the creature of caprice, the slave 
 of passion, incapable of generous and far-sighted states- 
 manship. In their view, Henry was so bent on pursuing 
 his personal quarrel with Rome, and on enriching himself 
 at the expense of the Church, so taken up with the excite- 
 ments of his changing amours, that he was either blind or 
 indifferent to what was passing in the domain of higher 
 statesmanship, and remained a mere passive and careless 
 spectator of events which he had neither the will nor the 
 capacity to direct and control. To the other school of 
 historians, Henry is the dominant personality of his age, 
 "every inch a king", "the majestic lord who broke the 
 bonds of Rome" not from passion or caprice but from 
 deep and far-sighted design. "The great factor in the 
 whole complication", said Stubbs,' "is the strong, intelli- 
 gent, self-willed force of the king ; that alone seems to 
 give purpose and consistency to the eventful policy of the 
 period ; Henry VIII is neither the puppet of parties, nor 
 the victim of circumstances, nor the shifty politician, nor 
 the capricious tyrant, but a man of light and leading, of 
 power, force, and foresight, a man of opportunities, strata- 
 gems, and surprises, but not the less of iron will and 
 determined purpose ; purpose not at once realised or 
 
 1 Stubbs, Mediaeval and Modern History, pp. 283, 306, etc. 
 
THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. C9 
 
 systematised, but widening, deepening, and strengthening 
 as the way opens before it." He regards Henry "as the 
 main originator of the greatest and most critical changes 
 of his reign", and asserts that "no minister, great or small, 
 after the fall of Wolsey, can claim anything like an original 
 share in determining the royal policy". Such a theory, it 
 is true, necessitates the belief of great development of 
 design and new purpose in the King as his reign proceeded, 
 but the historian does not shrink from adopting that solu- 
 tion. "From the very beginning of his reign he is finding 
 out what he can do." He ruled through his ministers and 
 council, but "on the whole Henry was his own chief 
 counsellor". 
 
 This estimate of the King's character accords with the 
 course of the development of the Welsh policy of his reign. 
 At first Wales was ignored. In 1625, when the death of 
 Sir Rhys ap Thomas forced the affairs of the Principality 
 upon his notice, the King was content merely to revive his 
 father's policy by sending the Princess Mary to hold her 
 court at Ludlow. As he became aware of the anarchy 
 that prevailed, he resorted to stronger measures. He sent 
 Rowland Lee to reduce the land to order. But with in- 
 creasing knowledge came a greater grasp of the situation 
 and a clearer perception of the dimensions of the problem. 
 It maybe that he was stirred to unusual effort by affection 
 for the country from which the Tudors had sprung, and 
 by a belated remembrance of his father's dying charge. 
 He authorised, even if he did not suggest, the grant of a 
 constitution to the distracted land. Had he been a mere 
 passive and listless spectator of events, content to register 
 the decrees of his ministers, the Welsh policy which was 
 commenced in 1634 would have ended with the fall of 
 Cromwell in 1640. By abandoning that policy, Henry 
 would have followed the line of least resistance. The 
 
'70 THE UNION or ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Lord President was reluctant, if not hostile. The other 
 officials in Wales viewed it with alarm and dismay. 
 There was no member of his Council who cared enough 
 about Wales, or who was endowed with sufficient insight 
 and foresight, to urge upon the King the continuance of 
 his progressive policy. It would have been easy for 
 Henry, had he so wished, to exercise the powers conferred 
 upon him by Parliament to suspend or repeal the Statute 
 of 1635. The fact that the policy was neither subversed 
 nor retarded after Cromwell's fall — that, indeed, it was 
 continued, developed, and completed two years after his 
 death — affords the strongest evidence that the King took 
 an active, personal, and intelligent interest in its pro- 
 motion. It has been said that Henry VIII was the 
 greatest king that ever ruled over England, because he 
 always had his own way. In his ecclesiastical policy, in 
 his dealings with Scotland and Ireland, in his relations 
 with the great powers of the Continent, he was invariably 
 fortunate. No Pavia or Innsbriick checked his victorious 
 career. But in no department of government was he more 
 successful than in his dealings with the land of the 
 Tudors ; in no other direction did he display greater 
 qualities of statesmanship. With unerring skill he 
 diagnosed the evils from which the country was suffering. 
 With supreme and serene courage he applied the remedy. 
 His policy was one of inspired common sense, which no 
 statesman, bereft of sympathy and imagination, could have 
 conceived. The stage upon which he was called to display 
 these great qualities was small, and on that account the 
 real magnitude of his achievement has been overlooked. 
 English historians have treated it in a superficial and 
 perfunctory manner, when they have deigned to refer 
 to it at all. The measure of the man is brought to an 
 impartial test in his Welsh policy. Here at least he was 
 
THE UNION OP ENGLAND AND WALES. il 
 
 stirred by no selfish or ignoble motives, and there can be 
 
 no question about his success. Wales became, and has 
 
 ever since remained, a loyal, crimeless, and easily-governed 
 
 portion of the British dominions. In spite of the changes 
 
 which the influx of strangers has wrought in the social 
 
 condition of the industrial districts of South Wales, the 
 
 proud boast of the Welsh poet is still substantially true : 
 
 •' Pa wlad wedi'r siarad sydd 
 Mor Ian a Chymru lonydd ? "^ 
 
 The success of his policy in Wales has had its effect on 
 British policy generally. In after-times it came to be 
 regarded as a precedent and an inspiration, and on the 
 principles upon which Henry VIII proceeded in his 
 pacification of Wales has been based the mighty fabric 
 of the British Empire. 
 
 I "What land, when all is said, so pure as peaceful Wales."