Wales

by William Watkin Davies

On his death bed, we are told, Henry VII "gave in charge to his son Prince Henry that he should have a special care for the benefit of his own nation and countrymen, the Welshmen." However that may be, the new king seems to have paid no great heed to the injunction. He had never been sent by his father to keep Court at Ludlow; and he was quite content to leave things to the care of the Council, and the faithful Rhys. But as he grew older, and as the fascination of politics began to lay hold upon him, Henry began to think about the neglected Principality. Complaints were constantly reaching his ears of the anarchy which prevailed there; how the whole land was infested with bandits; how life and property were no longer safe. In 1525 the king visited Ludlow in person, taking with him the Princess Mary. There the Princess remained until 1528, when she was recalled owing to the divorce proceedings which had been instituted against her mother. Again, for a period, Wales appears to have been forgotten; for Henry was fully engaged in the mighty task of "breaking the bonds of Rome," and laying the foundations of the English Reformation. So bad did things become, that one of the king's justices was beset and murdered when on circuit in Merionethshire; and in 1529 there was an insurrection at Carmarthen. But it was the darkest hour, and the dawn was at hand.

In 1534 Henry appointed Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, to be Lord President; and for the next nine years he held his Court at Ludlow. Of the administration of this able, jovial, energetic, and ruthless man it is not necessary to say much; let it suffice that, in the comparatively brief period during which he held office, he educed order out of chaos, and caused the law to be feared and obeyed, not only in the Marches, but in the remotest corners of Wales. Gangs of robbers were mercilessly hunted down. High and low were punished with exemplary severity. The qualms which ecclesiastics affected to feel against the shedding of blood counted for naught with the martial prelate. According to one authority he hanged as many as five thousand malefactors, and that at a time when the total population of Wales could hardly have exceeded 125,000. For the Common Law, and especially for the jury system, he avowed the most extreme contempt. How absurd, he used to remark, to expect thieves to convict a thief! Harsh he may have been; but his harshness achieved its purpose. He found Wales turbulent, lawless, and rebellious, a land in which it was well nigh impossible to pursue a peaceful calling. He left it orderly and tranquil, loyal to its sovereign, and ready to play its part in what was to prove to be the most glorious period in British history.

But it was not upon a policy of stern repression alone that Henry depended for the pacification of Wales. He was too great a statesman for any such thing. He knew full well that leniency on the part of a feeble and ineffective government might be misrepresented and be followed by disastrous consequences, but that going hand in hand with a rigorous punishment of disorderly persons it would prove successful. It is the policy which liberal statesmen have always advocated, and which tyrants have disregarded to their own undoing. The policy of conciliation upon which the king now embarked is sometimes referred to as the Act of Union with Wales. This, however, is misleading, for there is no Act upon the Statute Book which bears such a name. It is, nevertheless, generally descriptive of a series of statutes, the first passed in 1535 and the last in 1542, which gave to Wales a new constitution.

The first step was taken in 1535, when an Act was passed empowering the Lord Chancellor to appoint Justices of the Peace for the counties of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, Carmarthen, Pembroke, and Glamorgan. At first sight there does not seem to be anything very revolutionary in this; but those who held authority in Wales at the time thought otherwise, and duly registered their protest against the Act. To them it was apparent that this was but the thin end of the wedge, and that the outcome of it would be the entrusting to the Welsh people full power to govern themselves. Henry's next Act was an attack upon the privileges of the Lords Marchers, a policy which was to be followed until the Marches had been completely abolished. The third, and most comprehensive, Act of the same year had for its object the complete breaking down of all barriers between England and Wales. Henry's aim is perfectly clear: he was no believer in Welsh self-determination; all that he desired was that Wales should be swallowed up by England. Welshmen were undoubtedly to acquire all the privileges of Englishmen, but on one condition—they were to become Englishmen. The Preamble of the Act of 1535 states that the king desires to "extirp all and singular the sinister Usages and Customs" which prevailed in Wales; and in order that that might be accomplished, Wales was henceforth to be "incorporated, united, and annexed" to England. All laws were thenceforward to be the laws of England. This involved, among other things, the adoption of the principle of primogeniture in place of the old Welsh custom of equal division among all the sons. The Lordships Marcher were practically abolished, parts of them being united to England, and the remainder distributed between the newly created shires of Monmouth, Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh. Henry realised, as all statesmen of conquering nations have realised, that the most powerful obstacle in the way of the assimilation of a small nation by a larger one is the continued existence of a native language. Deprive a nation of its language, and deprivation of national consciousness will be relatively easy. But allow the language to live, and no power on earth can ever kill the national spirit. It is therefore not surprising to read in the Act that "No Person or Persons that use the Welsh Speech or Language shall have or enjoy any Manner Office or Fees within this Realm of England, Wales or other the King's Dominions, upon pain of forfeiting the same Offices or Fees, unless he or they use and exercise the English Speech or Language." Except in Edward IPs two Parliaments of 1322 and 1327 Wales had never been represented in the English House of Commons. Now it was enacted that every shire should send one knight to Parliament, and that every county town, excepting that of Merioneth, should send one burgess. These representatives were to be paid the usual fees for attendance.

In 1542 an Act bearing the simple title, "For certain ordinances in the King's Majesty's Dominions and Principality of Wales," was passed. This statute reaches what was, for those times, the portentous length of a hundred and thirty clauses; but it is neither verbose nor ambiguous. Indeed it is one of the most comprehensive, and one of the most ably drafted, statutes ever enacted. It finally abolished the Lordships Marcher. It gave Wales the geographical limits which it has ever since retained, dividing the country into twelve shires, and cutting off Monmouth. It placed upon a statutory foundation the Court of the Council of the Marches; a Court which, save for a brief period of suspension during the Commonwealth, remained active down to 1688. It created a new legal system for Wales by instituting the Court of Great Sessions, a legal system which persisted until 1830. It introduced a system of local government, dividing the shires into hundreds, and providing for lords-lieutenant, sheriffs, coroners, constables, and bailiffs.

The chief interest in Welsh affairs after 1534 centres in the Council. It was not so prominent after the death of Rowland Lee, when the country had become peaceful and law-abiding; but its general supervision over all Welsh affairs, both legal and administrative, was constant and unflagging. At first the Council had no fixed abode, and we hear of its sitting at Shrewsbury, Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Hartlebury, Oswestry, Wrexham, and Bewdley; but at last it came to be fixed at Ludlow. Here, during the next hundred years, assembled much that was intellectual, fashionable, and splendid in Tudor and Stuart society. It was, as we have seen, the home of Prince Arthur, the eldest child of Henry VII, and of Mary, the eldest child of Henry VIII. Here, for twenty-seven years, lived Sir Henry Sidney, soldier, scholar, and statesman. Here his even more famous son, Philip Sidney, and his daughter Mary, spent the early part of their lives. It had among its guests for shorter periods the poet Churchyard, the Puritan Richard Baxter, and the Royalist Samuel Butler. But the thing which has cast an undying glamour over the place is the fact that, in 1634, John Milton witnessed in the old castle the first performance of his masque Comus. The Presidents of the Council were, at first, all ecclesiastics; but in the reign of Edward VI a layman, Robert Dudley, was appointed; and except for an interlude during the reign of Mary that remained the practice. The chief function of the Council was to supervise the work of all Welsh officials, and to hear all manner of "extortions, maintenance, imbraceries, oppressions, conspiracies, escapes, corruptions, falsehoods, and all other evil doings, defaults, and misdemeanours of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, stewards, lieutenants, escheators, coroners, gaolers, clerks, and other officers and ministers of justice." It had power to issue proclamations, and to assess fines. Unhappily it had too, in company with the other prerogative courts of the Tudors, the power to use torture in order to elicit confessions. The Lord President was, almost invariably, Lord-Lieutenant of the twelve Welsh shires. In legal matters strictly so called the Council exercised a concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Great Sessions, and an appellate jurisdiction in personal actions. It is not true to say that the Court of Great Sessions exercised no equity jurisdiction; but it is a fact that by far the greater number of Welsh equity cases were heard at Ludlow.

The part of the Act of 1542 which was entirely new was that which created the King's Court of Great Sessions. English law had been introduced into Wales; but its administration was to be distinct and separate. The Great Sessions possessed all the powers of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, and its practice was the same as that in use at Westminster. It was also endowed with complete criminal jurisdiction. Wales was divided into four Circuits—Chester, which included Denbigh, Flint, and Montgomery; North Wales, which included Carnarvon, Anglesey, and Merioneth; Brecknock, which included the county of that name, together with Radnor and Glamorgan; and Carmarthen, which also included Cardigan and Pembroke. Each of these Circuits had, at first, one judge; but some time later an extra one was added. These judges were, on the whole, competent men; and a large number of them afterwards attained to the highest legal positions in England. Among them we find such famous legal luminaries as Bradshaw, Jeffreys, Willes, Lyndhurst, Kenyon, Mansfield, Wright, Herbert, Dallas, Best, Jackyll, and Verney. The strongest objection which could be made to them was that few of their number could speak Welsh, and that at a time when little else was spoken at all in Wales. All members of the English Bar were free to practise in Wales; but counsel were mainly drawn from the Oxford and the Northern Circuits. The Court sat twice every year—spring and autumn—in each county town, and the duration of the session was fixed at six days. After the abolition, in 1688, of the Council, Chancery work began to be taken to London; and from the beginning of the eighteenth century we find the English courts endeavouring, mainly by the use of certiorari, to attract thither other cases as well. Frequent attacks were launched in Parliament against the administration of justice in Wales; and several sound theoretical arguments were advanced against the Great Sessions. But in spite of a commission of enquiry, which sat in 1817, we have no real evidence to justify our holding the system to have been a failure. Nevertheless the Great Sessions were abolished in 1830, after attempts to amend them had been made in 1769, in 1793, and in 1824. It is worthy of note that their abolition was opposed by all the Welsh Members of Parliament save one, by almost all the judges, and by practically all counsel who practised in the courts.

We have already seen that the Act set up a system of local government. This comprised the various officers we have named; and furthermore County Courts with jurisdiction over small amounts, and Vestries in which the parishioners learnt the art of self-government.

That Henry VIII's Welsh policy was immediately successful, if we omit that part of it which concerned religion, is abundantly evident. Two centuries later Edmund Burke, in the course of his great speech on Conciliation with America, cites Wales as an example which proves the truth of the rule which he is inculcating. "Your ancestors," he said, "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. 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 get 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 Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided, obedience was restored, peace, order, and civilization followed in the train of liberty. When the day star of the English constitution had risen in their hearts, all was harmony within and without." Burke's eloquent contention is, in the main, perfectly right; yet we should be going too far if we attributed the tranquillity which so speedily ensued to the grant of a constitution alone. At least three other factors have to be taken into account—(1) The termination of the Wars of the Roses, which had been productive of anarchy in England as well as in Wales. (2) The fact that Rowland Lee had done his work so thoroughly that evil-doers were cowed. (3) The fact that Wales looked upon the Tudor monarchs as Welsh people, and upon their supremacy as a victory of Wales over England. The Union marks the beginning of a new and better chapter in the history of Wales. The Principality shook itself free from the fetters of the Middle Ages, and took its place, shoulder to shoulder, with England as a democratic self-governing country. All previous efforts on the part of Welshmen and Englishmen to set up a unitary State had been failures. From time to time some man of exceptional character, like Llewelyn or Glyndwr, would arise, and, for a brief space, succeed in uniting all the petty chieftains in obedience to himself. But such unity had always been precarious, depending entirely upon the personality of the man who had brought it about, and with whose death it vanished. It is palpable that, throughout the Middle Ages, the greatest Welsh defect was 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.