Wales

by William Watkin Davies

The publication of Bishop Morgan's Bible is the outstanding event of the transition period, but Edmund Prys is the outstanding personality. He represents, in his own person, all that was good in the Welsh Reformation, with also just a little that was bad. This interesting man was probably born at Tyddyn Du, in the lovely vale of Maentwrog, in the year 1544. He was therefore a child of the Reformation. Of his early years but little is known; and it is only surmise which leads us to think that he was educated by Sion Tudor at St. Asaph. That he was of good birth is certain; and that he found a kindly patron in Dean Goodman, ever ready to befriend a promising young Welshman, is extremely likely. He became a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, in the same year that Bishop Morgan entered that college. Cambridge was the intellectual home of Protestantism in England; and at the time of Prys's residence at the University, the famous Puritan leader, Thomas Cartwright, occupied the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity. While yet an undergraduate, Prys was ordained deacon, at Conington in Cambridgeshire. At the same time, too, he seems to have come into contact with Whitgift. In 1568, at Ely, he was ordained priest, by Bishop Cox. In 1572 he was presented to the living of Festiniog and Maentwrog, the parish in which he had been born; but apparently he did not deem it necessary to visit the place. He continued to reside at Cambridge, where, in 1574, we read of his being appointed Preacher of St. John's. Two years later he was made Rector of Ludlow; but although he held the living until 1579, he did not live there for more than a few weeks. In 1576 he had been made Archdeacon of Merioneth, as well as Canon of Bangor; and when to these were added, in 1580, the parishes of Llanenddwyn and Llanddwywe, he seems to have settled down in Wales to the life of a busy and conscientious priest. As Archdeacon he had the whole country, from Criccieth to Machynlleth, under his charge.

Edmund Prys appears to have discharged faithfully the duties connected with his various offices down to his death in 1623. Although a Justice of the Peace, the tall handsome figure of the Archdeacon was welcome in the houses of all his poorer parishioners. He was a great scholar, well versed, it was said, in eight languages. Wales possessed, at that time, a notable band of Hebrew scholars, men who knew not only Hebrew, but Syriac, Arabic, and Chaldaic as well. It is, of course, as an author that the fame of Edmund Prys endures. That he was master of a sound Welsh prose style is apparent from the few fragments of his writing which remains; but he left no prose works behind him. It is as a poet, and especially as the composer of a metrical version of the Psalms, that he will always be remembered. He wrote much poetry of every description, the topics ranging from Heaven to tobacco. Most of it is interesting, and some of it beautiful; but it seldom rises much above a common level of mediocrity. It is upon the Psalms, and upon them alone, that his reputation rests. Hymn singing in public worship was the peculiar product of the Reformation; for although a few magnificent hymns had been composed in the Middle Ages, by men like St. Bernard, they occupied no conspicuous place. In churches and monasteries chanting had been universal; but the popular hymn, which the whole congregation sang in its own language, was unknown. It would hardly be going too far to say that, upon the use which it made of the hymn, the early success of the Reformation depended. German Protestants marched into battle shouting the great hymns of Luther. The French Huguenots sang those of Clement Marot and Marguerite de Valois. The sombre Calvinist services of Geneva were transformed under the influence of the hymns introduced by Beza. In England a metrical version of a few of the Psalms had been published by Sternhold, Groom of the Robes to Henry VIII, in 1548. Then in 1562 appeared the version of John Hopkins, which, for a hundred and fifty years, remained the only hymn-book possessed by the English Church. For years no special tunes were composed to be sung with the new hymns; they were simply set to the airs of popular songs and ballads. Edmund Prys published his Welsh Metrical Psalms in 1621. Something similar, but on a much smaller scale, had been attempted previously by Dafydd Ddu Hiraddug, and by Edmund Kyffin; but Prys greatly excelled them in mastery of rhythm and rhyme. The metre is quasi-ballad, simple and direct, the very thing that would appeal to the uneducated. It is not surprising to hear that, in a very few years, the plowman in the field, and the shepherd on the mountain side, were singing lustily the Psalms of Edmund Prys.

Another Welshman of the period, who deserves special mention, is the ill-fated John Penry. He was born at Cefnbrith, on the slopes of the Eppynt hills, in the year 1563; and thirty years later he died a traitor's death at the hands of the executioner. But though short, his life was a very full and a very romantic one. The belief that he was, in early years, a Catholic is probably a mistaken one. Almost certainly his parents belonged to the Reformed Church; and it is indubitable that John was sent by them to the ultra-Protestant University of Cambridge. There, at Peterhouse, he perfected himself in all the learning of the day, and also pondered deeply over the condition of his native land. Penry was as religious as Prys, and far more intensely nationalist. The remedy which he conceived to be the only adequate one to meet with the ills of the time was the appointment of "preachers of the Word," to visit the hamlets and villages, and to awaken the conscience of the people by appealing to them in their own tongue, and in words which they could comprehend. Unfortunately this was the one course which Elizabeth and her ministers were not prepared to sanction. Since "order" was their watchword in religion and in politics, they were afraid of countenancing preachers who would, in all probability, set order at defiance. They knew full well what the effects of popular preaching had been in the neighbouring country of Scotland; and they were fully determined that no unauthorized word should be spoken within a church in England or Wales. Again and again Penry appealed to the Government to employ lay preachers in Wales, sometimes writing privately to Burleigh, sometimes addressing petitions to Parliament through one of the Welsh members. But it was all of no avail; and from being a loyal subject Penry gradually drifted into a position of bitter antagonism to the Government. At no time did he become a rebel, or do anything that could fairly be brought within the scope of the Treason Acts; nevertheless he undoubtedly did say and write much which would, if it prevailed, have overthrown both Church and State as conceived of by Elizabethan statesmen. He became a relentless opponent of episcopacy; and between 1588 and 1589 the famous Martin Marprelate Tracts were published. After that it was dangerous for him to remain in England, so he fled to Scotland, and while there became an avowed "Separatist." In fundamentals the Separatists did not differ very much from Anglicans; the most important point of difference being their view of the proper connection between Church and State. The Anglican Settlement had the effect of making the Church a mere department of the State, bound hand and foot by Acts of Parliament. Even episcopacy itself as an institution was regarded as deriving its authority exclusively from Parliament. In 1588 Dr. Hammond, Chancellor of the Diocese of London, wrote to Burleigh: "The Bishops of our realm do not (so far as I have ever heard), nor may not, claim to themselves any other authority than is given them by the statute of the 25th of King Henry VIII, recited in the first year of Her Majesty's reign, neither is it reasonable that they should make other claims, for if it had pleased Her Majesty with the wisdom of the realm to have used no bishops at all, we could not have complained justly of any defect in our Church." The great crime of which John Penry and others were guilty in the eyes of Burleigh and the Queen was not that he was inculcating something contrary to Catholic tradition, but that he was challenging the authority of the State to create its own tradition! Penry, and indeed all the Separatists, stood for a policy diametrically opposed to this. They desired that the Church should be free, with full power to determine its own constitution and its own creed. Theirs was a protest against Tudor absolutism and uniformity, and in favour of a local government in ecclesiastical affairs, which at a later date developed into Congregationalism. Upon Elizabeth, Whitgift, and Cecil, Penry made no impression. Failing to persuade, he proceeded to defy. He drifted farther and farther from the Established Church, until finally he was put upon his trial for treason, condemned, and executed.

John Penry was a reformer from without; in Vicar Pritchard the Church produced a reformer from within. This interesting and amiable man, commonly known as the "Old Vicar," was born in 1579, educated like most other Welsh scholars of the seventeenth century at Jesus College, Oxford, and ordained by the Bishop of Colchester in 1602. In the same year he was given the livings of Llandingal and Llandovery; and to these he in 1613 added that of Llanedi. To the higher ecclesiastical dignities he never attained; but in 1626 he was made Chancellor of the Diocese of St. David's. His life was singularly uneventful; and in 1644 he died, leaving in his will land for the purpose of founding a Free Grammar School at Llandovery. 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? He decided to preach without intermission; but to make verse the vehicle of his message. It would be useless to contend that the Vicar was, in any sense, a great poet; but his versification is at least competent; and the simple stanzas which he composed have an easy swing and flow which makes them admirably adapted for committing to memory by simple and unlettered folk. His collection of religious poems is called Canwyll y Cymry (the Welsh People's Candle); and it was published in four parts, in 1646, 1659, 1670, and 1672, all of them after the death of their author. To us the work is valuable for the light which it sheds upon the manners of the day. If the good Vicar is to be believed, Wales must have been in a most deplorable condition, the people's ignorance gross and sordid, and their morals simply bestial. No Separatist ever painted a darker picture of Wales in the first century of the history of the Anglican Church than did this candid and friendly critic. After a life of faithful service, the Vicar died in 1644.

Before the close of the sixteenth century the future religious boundaries of this country had been clearly marked. The Elizabethan Settlement of religion had aimed at constructing a Church which should be wide enough to include the vast majority of English people. It was frankly a compromise, created with that express purpose. In spite, however, of the latitude allowed, it had become apparent that for many people it was not wide enough. At one end stood a band of irreconcilable Catholics, who positively refused to conform, preferring to endure all manner of penalties and disabilities. At the other extremity stood an ever-growing body of people who longed for a more thorough Reformation, and who cast longing glances in the direction of Geneva. Already these people were beginning to be known as Puritans; and before the close of her reign Elizabeth had passed a statute to penalize them. A few implacable extremists had been deprived of their preferments in the Church as early as 1567, and had begun to form a Nonconformist Church at the Plumbers' Hall, in London, under the leadership of one Richard Fitz. He was followed by Robert Browne, Barrowe, Greenwood, Penry, and Robinson. These men were Independents. Meanwhile Thomas Helwys had come from Leyden, and had founded a Baptist Church in London. But for a long time the majority of Puritans remained within the Anglican Church; and it was not until the Romanizing policy of Laud, crudely conceived and savagely enforced, had declared itself that they came out in thousands, and formed Churches of their own.

In Wales Nonconformity, which for three hundred years was to play a dominating part in the religion, education, politics, and literature of the nation, began comparatively late; and it was not until after the Civil War that it acquired much strength. Indeed it has been estimated that, at the Restoration, there were in Wales only a score or so of Nonconformist chapels, each of them having a membership of from two to five hundred. Yet even in the days of small things the Nonconformists played a prominent part; and they included in their number the majority of the patriotic Welshmen of the age. In Wales, even more than in England, it may be said that it was not doctrinal distinctions that led to the rise of Nonconformity; neither was it the question of Church establishment. All the early Welsh Puritan leaders were strictly orthodox, according to the standard of the Prayer Book; and the majority of them were well content that there should be a State Church. It was upon the question of preaching that the first and greatest difficulties arose. The views held so emphatically by John Penry were taken up by his successors; while Elizabeth's attitude of hostility was even stiffened by Laud. On the shoulders of that narrow and unamiable pedant must be laid the greater part of the blame for the irreparable schism which occurred in the English Church. Laud's lack of understanding of the temper and the needs of Wales is the less excusable inasmuch as he himself had been, from 1621 until 1626, Bishop of St. David's. During the greater part of the time he was non-resident; but he kept always a vigilant eye for recusants in his remote diocese. He also built a chapel in the Bishop's Palace at Abergwili, and actually came down for its consecration. Upon the Welsh Church, in other respects, his episcopate does not appear to have left a trace.

The first Nonconformist Church in Wales was founded in 1639, at Llanfaches in Monmouthshire; and its first Minister was the saintly William Wroth who had been, for thirty-nine years, Rector of the parish. For some time prior to 1639 Laud had been uttering complaints about Wroth's irregular preaching. The utmost limit of his "irregularity" would seem to have consisted in the delivery of an occasional sermon in the open air. When remonstrated with he offered a vigorous defence, saying: "There are thousands of immortal souls around me thronging to perdition, and should I not use all means likely to succeed to save them." Such zeal must have been highly offensive to the Archbishop; and one is not surprised to hear that Wroth was deprived of his living. This, however, was not going to deter the zealous Rector from preaching; and since he would no longer be allowed to do so in the Parish Church, he would do so elsewhere. Such was the parent Church of Welsh Nonconformity.

But William Wroth was not the only Welsh clergyman to be treated in this fashion. In 1638 William Erbery, Vicar of St. Mary's, Cardiff, was likewise deprived of his living; and became the first Minister of an Independent Church in that city. His curate, Walter Cradock, was deprived of his licence in 1633, and became one of the most influential patriotic teachers of the period. He it was who converted the famous Vavasour Powell, and the even more famous Morgan Llwyd.