W. Watkin Davies

“ Those little plain square buildings, scattered so profusely all over Wales, so ugly in the eyes of the tourist, yet so sacred to those who dwell around them; what was the secret of their power and their charm? To-day there are many competing institutions—the school, the college, the club, and the library; but in those days the chapel was everything. In the pulpit the artistic soul of Wales found its full expression, as it {214} has never quite succeeded in doing anywhere else. Its poetry (if we except its hymns) , good as much of it is, never even approaches the very best. ”

“ A love of literature, of art, of independence, and of unity had been so firmly rooted that, despite the welter of lawlessness and bloodshed which the unhappy country had to endure during the succeeding eight hundred years, they persisted through it all. Wales was to enjoy nothing comparable with the tranquillity and the good government of the Roman period until the great Tudor sovereigns began to turn their thoughts to the little land from which they derived the best part of their blood. ”

“ Latin civilization was speedily assimilated, and Gaul became, after a time, more Roman almost than Rome itself. Even at this distant date, nowhere is it more easy to enter into the spirit of ancient Rome than within the gaunt and gigantic amphitheatre of Arles, by the exquisite Maison Carrée of Nimes, and beneath the stupendous aqueduct of Pont du Gard. But as the power of Rome declined new torrents of invaders swept into Gaul in successive waves, Burgundian giving place to Visigoth, and Visigoth to Frank. ”

“ Henceforward the heroes of Wales were not soldiers, but poets, scholars, and, above all, preachers. A last flicker of the old martial spirit, the old lust of battle, is seen in the struggle between King and Parliament. To write the history of Wales between 1642 and 1649 would simply be to narrate the incidents of the Civil War, for no part of the country played a more prominent part in the contest than did the Principality. Here, however, it must suffice to disentangle from the rest that which was peculiarly Welsh, and to draw attention to a few Welshmen who rendered themselves illustrious. ”

“ No one felt more keenly, or with a greater sense of shame, the degraded condition of the people of Wales at the time. Although a staunch Royalist and Churchman, he was filled with the stern Puritan love of righteousness, and an ardent desire to convince his countrymen of the evil of their ways. Like Edmund Prys he bethought him of the Welshman's intense love of poetry and music. Why, instead of singing profane ditties, should the people not sing songs of an edifying character? ”

“ When the men were at some distance it would bark at the dogs; but when the men drew near it again fled, and ceased to bark. And they followed the boar until they beheld a great and noble fortress newly built, where before they had never seen either stone or building. And the boar ran swiftly to the fortress, the dogs following it. And when the boar and the dogs had entered the fort they wondered at seeing a fortress where previously they had seen no building. And from the top of the throne they gazed, and listened for the dogs. ”

“ Between Prince Edward and Llewelyn, in so far as the latter represented his grandfather's policy, there was no fundamental conflict of ideal. The essence of that policy was that Wales should remain independent and united, but within the bounds of allegiance to the King of England. To the modern man, who has inherited from the century of the Reformation the conception of national sovereignty, such a position may appear to be an impossible one; but to the man of the Middle Ages, accustomed as he was to the underlying principles of feudalism, there was nothing at all paradoxical in the position. ”

“ The Welsh people were presented, as so many other nations have been presented before and since, with two alternatives: they might sink all differences in the presence of alien enemies, and by forming themselves into one powerful State successfully resist invasion and so preserve their independence; or, in the alternative, remain divided and consequently prove an easy prey to their foes. Before this test the Welsh people failed. The princes showed that they set greater store upon their own glory and dignity than upon the safety of the country as a whole ”

“ The vast majority of the nation are satisfied that equality of opportunity for all the inhabitants of the British Isles, irrespective of race, has been achieved, and that in literature, in art, in music, in scholarship, in the professions, in politics, and in commerce there is nothing to hinder a Welshman from winning any distinction he may merit. ”

“ Indeed the very fact that Wales was so ill-prepared for the Reformation is, in itself, the most convincing proof of the scandalous way in which the ancient Church had neglected its duties. So great was the intellectual and moral torpor into which the people had sunk that it took more than a century for the new doctrines to penetrate their minds. ”

“ In the great fight which began in 1832, and which occupied eighty years, Wales came out victorious in religion, in politics, in education, and in social matters. Even industrialism, the most potent foe of nationality, was kept at bay; and between it and the Welsh spirit the contest still goes on. With the Industrial Revolution itself, enormous as its influence was, we need not concern ourselves here; for in Wales it followed practically the same course as in England. The mineral wealth of Wales had been tapped by the Romans ”

“ To-day upwards of a quarter of a million men work in the pits, and more than half the total population of Wales is contained in the mining valleys. The majority of these labourers are not Welsh; for to the pits, and to the great ports on the Bristol Channel, immigration has been taking place regularly, and on an enormous scale. Except for the thinly populated counties of Cardigan, Pembroke and Carmarthen, South Wales is no longer Welsh in any sense of the word, and it has ceased to sympathize with the political, the cultural, and the religious ideals of the North. ”

“ The truth is that, long before the Reformation, the Roman Church in Wales had lost all real hold upon the minds and hearts of the people. All that remained was a sentimental loyalty, and an immense amount of the grossest superstition. When the harsh and tactless agents of Thomas Cromwell visited the parishes and abbeys of Wales, defacing churches, plundering monks, and destroying miracle-working images, the prevailing feeling was not that religion was being insulted, but that superstitious beliefs, tenaciously held, were being flouted. ”

“ The Tudors had been of Welsh blood, and the intense loyalty which they evoked in Welsh hearts was only natural; but the Stuarts were only remotely descended from Welsh ancestors, and in most respects were more thoroughly alien than pure Englishmen would have been. Nor had they conferred any benefits upon Wales. Neither James I nor Charles I had ever as much as professed to take any interest in the affairs of the country. In spite of this, however, in no part of their dominions did the early Stuarts meet with a more blind and thorough-going loyalty. ”

“ SEEKING FOR UNITY
The period between the departure of the Romans and the coming of the Normans was one of political chaos. Wales almost immediately became divided, rival kings and chieftains ruling over different parts of the country. To follow in any detail the petty strivings of these men would be pure waste of time. They fought for no principle; neither are there any signs of nobility of purpose or of a wide and enlightened patriotism. Only the faintest outline of the political history of Wales during the period need be given. ”

“ Gardiner once said that the two typical Englishmen of all time were Shakespeare and Oliver Cromwell; the one in the realm of thought, the other in the realm of action. Wales owes no such divided allegiance: the Welsh spirit at its best is typified in one man—Owen Glyndwr. Owen was a direct descendant of the princely house of Powys, a line of princes which had played a none too illustrious part in the struggle for independence. The family was a wealthy one, and Owen spent his early years in passing from one of his father's country houses to the other. ”

“ It is palpable that, throughout the Middle Ages, the greatest Welsh defect was {144} the absence of political genius, the very thing with which England was so abundantly gifted. Institutions like Llewelyn's Council of Princes were without ancestors and without posterity; they were accidents and imitations, and not natural products of Welsh political development. Before such institutions could become stable and strong, Wales had to be brought into the closest union with England, and serve a long period of political apprenticeship. ”

“ Even in music Wales has not given to the world anything of real distinction, and of abiding value. But between 1780 and 1880 it produced successive generations of preachers, who brought pulpit oratory to a point that has never been surpassed, even if it has been equalled, by any other nation before or since. Even to-day, when oratory has declined, and when there are so many competing attractions, there is nothing that the Welshman loves so well as a Preaching Meeting. Five thousand people will still come together eagerly to the village green on one of these great occasions. ”

“ As we have had occasion already to observe, Parliament was not an indigenous growth in Wales, but a foreign importation. It was never evolved out of the political consciousness of the people. Moreover, all that the Welsh people knew {173} about it up to that time was that it was the foreign body which passed laws making such drastic alterations in the customs of their country, forbidding them to speak Welsh, forbidding them to go to Mass, and most unfairly and inexplicably ordering that the whole of the father's estate was to go to the eldest son. ”

“ England in consequence became definitely and for ever one country, with one ruler and one law. This unity is precisely what Wales failed to achieve, and the failure is the greatest tragedy in its history. Before the Norman Conquest Wales had been divided into three great divisions—Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth; and although the rulers of the other two divisions yielded a grudging theoretical homage to the lord of Gwynedd, he exercised in practice no authority over them. With the coming of the Normans the supreme test had arrived. ”

“ Battles are fought, and castles are stormed and burned with wearisome monotony. On both sides there was cruelty and treachery in abundance. A few names stand out as deserving of remembrance. The men who did most to stem the on-coming tide of Norman invasion were Griffith ap Conan, and Griffith ap Rees, both of whom died in the year 1137. The former ruled in Gwynedd, and the latter in Deheubarth; and to a far greater degree than any other Welsh princes of the period they perceived how absolutely essential unity was if Wales was to be saved from becoming a Norman fief. ”