Short History of Wales Part 4

The conquest of Wales, by Norman baron and English king, tended to raise the serf to the level of the freeman. The chief causes of the rise of the serf were the following:

1 The ignorance of the English officials. The Norman baron very often paid close attention to the privileges of the cla.s.ses he ruled, and the Welsh freeman retained his superiority. But the English officials--and Edward II. found that they were far too numerous in Wales--often refused to distinguish between a Welshman who was an innate freeman and a Welshman who lived on a serf maenol. Their aim was to make them all pay the same tax.

2. The fall in the value of money. At the time of the Norman Conquest, silver coins were rare, and their value high. But, in exchange for cloth and wool, of arrows and spears, of mountain ponies and cattle, coins came in great numbers, and it was easier for the serf to earn them. That is the value of coins became less.

This was a great boon to all who were bound to pay fixed sums--the freeman who paid to the king the dues he used to pay to his prince, the serf who paid to his lord a sum of money instead of service. All ancient servitude, political and economic, was commuted for money; as the money became easier to get, the serf became the more free.

3. The rise of towns and the growth of commerce. We must not, however, think of commerce as if it had been first brought by the Normans. There had been roads and coins in Roman times. The Danes had been traders, probably, before they became pirates and invaders.

Timber, millstones, cattle, coa.r.s.e cloth, and arrow-heads crossed the Severn eastwards before the Normans saw it; and corn was carried westward. There were close relations, political and commercial, between Wales and Ireland from very early times.

But the Norman and English Conquests revived and quickened trade.

Towns rose, regular markets were established, and the barons who took tolls protected the merchants who paid them. Every baron had a castle, every castle needed a walled town, and a town cannot live except by trade. In the town the baron did not ask a Welshman whether he had been free or serf; the townsmen were strangers, and they welcomed the serf who came to work.

4. The monk and the friar. The bard was a freeman born, a skilled weaver of courteous phrases, not a churlish taeog. The monk or friar might be a serf. They worked like serfs, and enn.o.bled labour. The Church condemned serfdom, and we find chapters giving their serfs freedom.

5. The Scotch and French wars of the English kings gave employment to hosts of bowmen and of men-at-arms, and to the numerous attendants required to look after the horses by means of which the army moved.

The greater use of infantry after the reign of Edward I. caused a greater demand for the peasant; and the use of the cheap long-bow gave him a value in war. There were five thousand Welsh archers and spearmen on the field of Cressy. In these and other ways the serf was becoming free.

You would expect a gradual, almost unconscious struggle, between the serf and his lord for political power. The struggle came, but it was conscious and very fierce. It was brought about by a terrible pestilence, known as the Black Death. This plague came slowly and steadily from the East; in 1348 it reached Bristol, and it probably swept away one half of the people of the towns of Wales. It was not the towns alone that it visited; it came to the mountain glens as well. It was a most deadly disease. It killed, for one thing, because people believed that they would die. They saw the dark spots on the skin before they became feverish; they recognised the black mark of the Death and they gave themselves up for lost.

Labourers became very scarce. They claimed higher wages. The lords tried to drag them back into serfdom; they tried to force them by law to take the old wage. On both sides of the Severn the labourers took arms, and waged war against their lords. The peasant war in England is called the Peasant Revolt; the peasant war in Wales is sometimes called the revolt of Owen Glendower.

A change came over the rebellions in Wales. At first, the rebellions were those of Llywelyn's country; the allies who had deserted him, and then turned against Edward, like Rees ap Meredith; or his own followers, like Madoc, who said he was his son; or men he had protected, like Maelgwn Vychan in Pembroke. Later on, under Edward II. and Edward III., the rebellions were against the march lords, and the king was looked upon as a protector--such as the rebellion of Llywelyn Bren against the Clares and Mortimers in Glamorgan in 1316.

But the wilder spirits went to the French wars, and fought for both sides. With the a.s.sa.s.sination of Owen of Wales in 1378, the last of Llywelyn's near relatives to dream of restoring the independence of Wales, the rebellions against the King of England came to an end.

When they broke out again, it was not in Snowdon or Ceredigion; the old dominions of Llywelyn were almost unwilling to rise. The new revolts were in the march lands, and especially in the towns.

CHAPTER XV--OWEN GLENDOWER

The English baron in Wales tried to add to his possessions by encroaching on the lands of the Welsh freemen. His estate always remained the same, because it all went to the eldest son, according to what is called primogeniture; their lands, on the other hand, were divided between the sons according to what is called gavelkind. He also, by laws they did not understand, took the waste land--forest and mountain. As one man can more easily watch his interest than many, the baron succeeded; but the freemen felt that they were being robbed.

The tenants of the barons were restless and rebellious; they said they were free, that they would not work as serfs, that they would not bring food rents, but that they would pay a fixed rent for every acre they held.

At Ruthin, in the Vale of Clwyd, there was a baron called Lord Grey; and in the valley of the Dee there was a Welsh squire called Owen Glendower. Their lands met, and Grey took part of Owen's sheep walk.

Owen had been a law student at Westminster, and he had served Henry of Lancaster. In 1399 Richard II. had been dethroned, and the barons had made Henry of Lancaster king as Henry IV. Owen saw, however, that the king was too weak to curb his lawless barons, and in 1400 he attacked Lord Grey, and burnt Ruthin.

The rebellion that had long been smouldering burst into a flame all over the country. Owen was at once welcomed by the bard, the friar, and the peasant. The bard hailed his star as that of the heir of the princes, who had come to deliver his country. The friar welcomed him as the friend of the poor and of learning; and unruly students from Oxford, then the centre of a great intellectual awakening, flocked home to march under his banner. The peasant welcomed him as his protector against the steward of his lord. The main strength of the movement was the peasant revolt; and Welsh poets, like the English ones, sang the praises of the ploughman and of the plough.

Owen's success was most rapid, so rapid that it was put down to magic. In four years the whole of Wales recognised him as its prince. Henry IV. and Prince Henry came to Wales, made rapid marches and retook castles, punished the friars of Llan Vaes and the monks of Strata Florida. But their victories led to nothing, and the storms fought against them. Owen's victories were used to the full--that of the Vyrnwy was followed by an agreement with Grey of Ruthin, that of Bryn Glas by an alliance with the Mortimers. His marches were nearly all triumphant; he was welcomed along the whole line of the marches by the peasants to the furthest corners of Gwent.

Owen was wise enough to see that no abiding power can be based on a popular rising. He tried to establish a government that the King of England could not overthrow. He had three inst.i.tutions in mind--an independent Wales, governed by him as Prince in a Parliament of representatives of the commotes; an independent Welsh Church, with an Archbishop of St David's at its head; and an independent system of learning and civilisation, guided by two Universities, one in North Wales and one in South Wales.

The new Wales was to he safeguarded by four alliances--with the English barons, with the Pope, with Scotland, and with France. He failed to save the Percies from their defeat at Shrewsbury in 1403; but he based all his plans on an alliance with the Mortimers, the enemies of Lancaster and the Percies. The head of the Mortimer family had died in Ireland in 1398, and had left four young children.

They were the real heirs to the crown, and Owen meant to win their throne for them. Their uncle, Edmund Mortimer, married Glendower's daughter. But the young Earl of March, the elder of the Mortimer boys, had no ambition, and a plot to bring him and his brother to Owen failed.

The Papacy had always proved to be a broken reed for Welsh princes; but Owen's alliance with Peter de Luna, the anti-Pope Benedict XIII., gave a certain amount of prestige to his t.i.tle. The alliance with Scotland, based on common kins.h.i.+p, could bring him no help at that time: because it was torn between two factions during the reign of the weak Robert III.; and the next king, the poet James I., was captured at sea and put into an English prison.

The French alliance was much more promising; it would give what Owen wanted most--siege engines, a fleet, and an army of trained soldiers.

Charles VI. of France, the father-in-law of the deposed Richard, refused to make peace with the usurper Henry; his fleet protected the Welsh coast, and in 1405 a French army of 2,800 men landed at Milford.

Owen struggled on, with waning power, until his death in 1415. He came too soon for success, while the power of the House of Lancaster was increasing.

Of all figures in the history of Wales, that of Owen Glendower is the most striking and the most popular. The place of his grave is unknown, his lineage and the date of his death a matter of conjecture; there is much mystery about even his most brilliant years. But his majestic figure, his wisdom, and his ideals remained in the memory of his country. His ghost wandered, it was said, around Valle Crucis. His spirit, more than that of any hero of the past, seems to follow his people on their onward march. This is not on account of his political ideals, but because he was the champion of the peasant and of education.

CHAPTER XVI--THE WARS OF THE ROSES

The reign of Henry V. was a reign of brilliant victories in France, and the reign of Henry VI. one of disastrous defeats. During both reigns the lords were becoming more powerful in Wales as well as in England. The hold of the king over them became weaker every year; they packed the Parliament, they appointed the Council, they overawed the law courts. If a man wanted security, he must wear the badge of some lord, and fight for him when called upon to do so. In the marches of Wales there were more than a hundred lords holding castle and court; and it was easy for a robber or a murderer to escape from one lords.h.i.+p to the other, or even to find a welcome and protection.

In Wales and in the marches the lords preyed upon their weaker neighbours, and the country became full of private war.

The selfish families, all fighting for more land and more power, gradually formed themselves into two parties--the parties of the Red Rose and of the White Rose. The leading family in the Red Rose party was that of Lancaster, represented by the saintly King Henry VI.; the leading family in the White Rose party was that of York. In the Wars of the Roses, York and Lancaster fought over the crown, and those who supported them over a castle or an estate.

Wales was divided. The west was for Lancaster, from Pembroke to Harlech, and from Harlech to Anglesey. The east was for York, from Cardiff and Raglan to Wigmore, and from Wigmore to Chirk. Lancaster held estates in Wales and on the border--the castles of Hereford, Skenfrith, Ogmore, and Kidwelly being centres of strength and wealth.

York's chief country was the march of Wales, with Ludlow as its centre. The Welsh barons took sides according to their interests.

Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, held the west for his half-brother, the king. Sir William Herbert, who was very powerful in the country south of the Mortimers, took the side of his powerful neighbour.

Others wavered, especially Grey of Ruthin and the Stanleys in North Wales.

One battle was fought between the Welsh Yorkists and the Welsh Lancastrians. This was the battle of Mortimer's Cross, near Wigmore, in February 1461. The victor was the young Duke of York, who was crowned king as Edward IV. later in the year. An old man, Owen Tudor, the father of Jasper Tudor, and the grandfather of the boy who was "to rule after them all" as Henry VII., was taken prisoner. They took him to Hereford, and there they cut his head off and set it on the market cross. The battles of the Wars of the Roses were very cruel ones; the n.o.ble prisoners that had been taken, even children of tender age, were murdered in cold blood on the evening of the battle.

"By G.o.d's blood," said one, as he killed a child, "thy father slew mine, and so will I do thee."

The Welsh barons led their men to nearly all the important battles.

North Wales archers, wearing the three feathers of the Prince of Wales, fought for Lancaster in the snow at the great defeat of Towton on the Palm Sunday of 1461; the archers of Gwent, led by Herbert, fought vainly for York at the battle of Edgecote, in the summer of 1469. And the Welsh waverer and traitor was seen in battle also-- Grey of Ruthin led the van for Lancaster at the battle of Northampton in 1460, and caused the battle to be lost by deserting to York at the be ginning of the fighting. In Wales itself, also, the war was fought bitterly; and the stubborn defence of Harlech for the Lancastrians became famous through the whole country. The last battle fought between Lancaster and York was the battle of Tewkesbury, in May 1471, and Lancaster lost it; the Prince of Wales, the king's only son, was killed; and his heroic mother, Margaret of Anjou, gave the struggle up. A young Welsh n.o.ble--Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond--became the Lancastrian heir. The fortunes of his house were hopeless, however; and his uncle, Jasper, sent him in safety to Brittany.

The Yorkist kings, Edward IV. and Richard III., in spite of cruelty and murder, ruled well. They broke the power of the barons, and they made the people rich--by maintaining peace, by repressing piracy, by protecting the woollen industry of the towns.

In Wales their rule was for peace and order. They made a Court for Wales at Ludlow, the home of their race. From Ludlow they began to force the barons to do justice and to obey the king. It seemed as if the rule of the Yorkists was to be a long one, for they were very popular in London and the towns.

But the n.o.bles were not willing to see their power taken from them day by day. Jasper Tudor appealed to the loyalty of the Welsh, and the men of West Wales wanted a king of their own blood; for the laws had been made unjust to them ever since the time of Owen Glendower.

Many attempts were made, and they failed. But at last, on August 7, 1485, the fugitive Earl of Richmond came to Milford Haven. He marched on to the valley of the Teivy, and he was joined by Sir Rees ap Thomas, and an army of South Wales men; he journeyed on through the valley of the Severn, and the North Wales men joined him; English n.o.bles joined him as he marched by Shrewsbury, Stafford, Lichfield, and Tamworth. Richard's army was also on the march. At Bosworth, August 22, 1485, the two armies met in the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. Richard fought fiercely, wearing his crown; and when he was defeated and killed, the crown was placed on Henry's head.

The people of England did not care who ruled, Richard or Henry, as long as he kept order, for they were very tired of civil war.

But the people of Wales welcomed Henry as a Welshman who would rule them kindly and justly.

CHAPTER XVII--TUDOR ORDER

The Tudors--Henry VII., his son, Henry VIII., and his three grandchildren, Edward VI. and Mary and Elizabeth--ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603. Under them the people became united, law- abiding, patriotic, and prosperous. The Tudor period is justly regarded as the most glorious in British history, with its great statesmen, its great adventurers, and its great poets.