CHAPTER XI

THE CIVIL WAR

The Great Civil War was the last occasion on which Welshmen have fought upon the soil of their native land. The old order was giving place to the new. 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.

It is well known that, at the outbreak of the war, the cleavage between the partisans {170} of Charles and those of Parliament followed geographical, racial, and professional, rather than social, lines. To say that the upper classes were for the King, and the lower classes for the Commons, would contain rather more fiction than truth. At most all that can be said is that the aristocracy, the squirearchy, and the peasantry, were, on the whole, favourable to the King; while the substantial farmers, and the trading and commercial classes were mainly inclined towards Parliament. Large numbers of all these classes were, however, to be found on both sides. But the geographical division is far more clear and certain. If a line be drawn from Hull to Gloucester, and then on to Plymouth, it can be said roughly that all the country to the east and south of it was for Parliament, and everything to the west and north for Charles. It is further to be observed that High Churchmen and Catholics favoured the Royalist cause, while the Dissenters were to a man upholders of the Commons. About the attitude of Wales there was, from the very first, no question: it was well nigh unanimously Royalist. Why that should have been so it is difficult to explain; except on the facile assumption {171} that the Welsh people were either preternaturally enlightened or else preternaturally stupid. 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. The cleavage which was shortly to appear in Wales between the upper and the lower classes had not as yet manifested itself. The day was not far distant when the upper classes would be English in speech, Tory in politics, and Anglican in religion, while the middle and lower classes would be Welsh in speech, Liberal in politics, and Nonconformist in religion. In Charles I's reign, however, all were united; and when the leaders of the nation declared for the King, none of their tenants held back. The day of the power of the preacher had not {172} yet dawned; but the poet was widely influential, and with hardly an exception the bards were enthusiastic Royalists. A few discordant notes were, of course, heard. Two Welshmen put their names to the death warrant of Charles. One of them had been a brave Roundhead soldier, and afterwards served the Commonwealth in an important capacity. The other stood high on account of his wisdom in the councils of the victorious party. There was also Morgan Llwyd, the author of _Llyfr y Tri Aderyn_, a Fifth Monarchy Man, and the finest Welsh intellect of the age. But these men were exceptions; and to paint them as representatives of a democracy sighing for freedom, and for the blessings of Parliamentary supremacy, is a grotesque travesty of the situation. Leaders they undoubtedly were, but leaders of posterity, rather than of their contemporaries.

If it is difficult to account for the affection of Wales for the Stuarts, it is easy to explain its dislike of Parliament. 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. Puritanism was hateful to the people, as being even more remote than Anglicanism from the old religious ceremonial for which they still had a warm corner in their hearts. Wales was, in those days, a merry country, full of mirth and joviality. Games and good cheer were loved by all. There was much superstition, much dissoluteness, much profanity, but this only made the people the more resentful of the chilling and sobering touch of Puritanism. The old Wales of the Middle Ages was still alive, and the fountains of imagination, art, and romance had not yet been frozen. There was no Welsh printing-press in existence; and even if there had been, the people were, on the whole, far too ignorant to understand a noble appeal to their latent love of liberty contained in such a work as Milton's _Areopagitica_. Of the great principles for which both parties in the war were fighting--respect for law and {174} supremacy of Parliament, on the side of the Roundheads; control of the Executive by the King, and supremacy of the Episcopal Church, on the side of the Royalists--they knew nothing. Such ideas were too complex for them. What they could understand was the ancient loyalty of subject to Prince; and in following Charles they acted ingenuously, and according to their lights. Parliament, they instinctively felt, was not fighting the battle of the poor man, nor of the squire; and Wales was inhabited almost exclusively by these two classes. In so far as it was fighting for a class at all, it was fighting for the trader; and trade was, as yet, of little account in the life of Wales. It was thus in the "Celtic Fringe," in Wales, in Scotland, in Cumberland, and in Cornwall, that Charles found the fullest measure of support; and it is interesting to remember that, when war broke out between King and States-General in France a hundred and fifty years later, it was among the Celts of Brittany that Louis XVI found his most steadfast support.

In the years immediately preceding the outbreak of war a Welshman stood high in the counsels of Charles I; and at one time it looked as if this man might play the part {175} played in the French Revolution by Mirabeau, namely, that of mediator between King and Parliament. This able man was the Lord Keeper, John Williams. He has suffered the usual fate of all mediators, and been abused by the two parties which he sought to reconcile; but an impartial judge will accord to him a high place in the annals of British statesmanship. He was born in 1582 at Conway, of an ancient and respected Welsh family, and was educated first at Ruthin, then at Oxford, where he had a singularly brilliant academic career. It does not seem to have been difficult in those days for Welshmen to secure high positions in the Church: we have already come across the case of Gabriel Goodman, who became Dean of Westminster. John Williams likewise became Dean of Westminster, in 1620, and left there a fitting memorial of himself in the cedar panelling which he caused to be put in the Jerusalem Chamber. He was Court Chaplain, high in favour with the royal favourite Buckingham, and with both James I and Charles. In 1621 he was made Lord Keeper and Bishop of Lincoln. That he seems to have shared to the full the artistic tastes of the Court is proved not only by his work in {176} the Jerusalem Chamber, but also by the beautiful chapel, with its exquisite stained glass windows, which he built for Lincoln College, Oxford. In politics his influence, at this time, was a moderating one; and his opposition to the reckless foreign policy of the hour lost him the favour of Buckingham; while his opposition to the tyranny of the High Commission won for him the enmity of Laud. In 1625 he was deprived of his offices; and in 1637 this penalty was followed by a heavy fine, imprisonment, and suspension from his ecclesiastical functions, the charge being that he had revealed the King's secrets, and tampered with witnesses. Whether the accusation was well-founded or not we cannot tell; but remembering the sordid official life of so great a man as Bacon, we cannot safely dismiss it as impossible, or even unlikely.

Williams was an ambitious man; and he felt the loss of royal favour keenly. Like Wentworth he determined to become an out-and-out supporter of the King. In 1640 he was released from prison; and as a reward for his strenuous support of the royal prerogative, and of episcopacy, was in the following year made Archbishop of York. So intemperate was he in his defence of the new position in {177} politics which he had taken up that he was committed to the Tower, by order of the House of Commons. On the outbreak of hostilities, however, we find him at large, assisting the King both with money and advice. The portrait of Williams which Clarendon paints is an exceedingly unpleasant one. He acknowledges him to have been a man of wit and learning; but adds that he was "of a proud, restless, and over-weening spirit, a very imperious and fiery temper, and a very corrupt nature." All this is probably true. Let us, however, be just to him and concede that he was sincere, kind-hearted, and loyal; and that, on most occasions, the advice which he tendered was sound. Wales, of course, had its own representatives in the House of Commons; and these must have sat with the other Members through the stormy scenes which preluded the passing of the Petition of Right, and the even more stormy scenes which attended the Grand Remonstrance. But all through the long contest the Welsh Members were, with hardly an exception, firm on the side of the King. And not only did they support the King in the lobby, they also followed him on to the field of battle. Two of {178} them--William Herbert of Cardiff, and Charles Price of Radnor--died for the cause. Nine others bore arms for Charles--William Price of Rhiwlas, John Bodville, Richard Herbert, Henry Vaughan of Derwydd, Sir Edward Stradling, Richard Jones of Trewern, Francis Lloyd of Maesyvelin, Sir John Stepney, and Herbert Price of Brecon. Of all the Welsh Members only Sir Thomas Middleton and Henry Herbert sided consistently with Parliament. Sir John Price of Newtown, after suffering much for the King, went over to the side of Parliament; and Hugh Owen of Orielton repeatedly changed sides.

In order to see clearly what part was played by Wales in the fight, it is convenient to adhere to the customary division of the war into three periods. The first period opens with the battle of Edgehill on October 23, 1642, and closes with the death of Pym in December 1643. The second period begins with the entry of the Scottish army into England in January 1644, and ends with the King's flight to the Scottish camp in April 1646. These two periods taken together constitute what is sometimes called the First Civil War. The third period, or the Second Civil War, begins with the escape of Charles {179} in November 1647, and ends with his execution in January 1649.

At the opening of the war, and indeed down to the spring of 1644, Charles took up the offensive. He held the whole of the North, as well as all the West; and his strategy consisted in converging attacks upon London. During the whole of this period his firmest base, and his best recruiting ground, was Wales. Immediately after the unfurling of his standard at Nottingham, on August 22, Charles had marched to Shrewsbury, resolving, in the words of Clarendon, "to sit down near the borders of Wales, where the power of Parliament had been least prevalent, and where some regiments of foot were levying for his service." It was an excellent situation to occupy, in the very centre of the border country, and with easy communications with the two Royalist strongholds of Chester and Worcester. Before the end of September Worcester had surrendered to the Parliamentary General Essex, and its garrison, led by Prince Rupert, had marched through the Welsh border and joined the King at Shrewsbury. The King's expectation of help from Wales had, in the meantime, not been disappointed. The gentry had flocked to his {180} Court to assure him of their devotion, and then returned to their homes to raise recruits. At least five thousand Welshmen responded to the appeal, a number so unexpectedly large that Charles had neither sufficient arms for them, nor sufficient money wherewith to buy provisions. Indeed, so badly was the King provided with weapons that, at the opening of the campaign, he seems to have had in his possession only some eight hundred muskets, five hundred pairs of pistols, and two hundred swords. Thus reinforced, and consoled for the loss of Worcester by the news that Lord Herbert had captured Cardiff Castle, Charles decided to make straight for London, rightly believing that the capture of the metropolis would completely paralyze his opponents. At Edgehill, not far from Banbury, his path was intercepted by the Parliamentary army under Essex. An indecisive battle was fought. The King was obliged to abandon his intention of reaching London: but Oxford was occupied; and it became thenceforward the Royalist capital.

In the following year, 1643, we again find the King attacking, this time with three separate armies, one advancing from the North, the other from Cornwall, and the third {181} from Wales. Those parts of the country were solidly Royalist except that Hull held out for Parliament in the north-east, Gloucester in the west, and Plymouth in the south-west. The attempts of the Royalist forces of South Wales to cross the border were foiled, with much bloodshed, by Essex at Highnam; while their future advance was rendered more difficult by the Parliamentary occupation of Chepstow and Monmouth. South Wales was thus shut in between the Parliamentary fortresses of Gloucester, Chepstow, and Monmouth to the east, and Pembroke to the west. Meanwhile Sir Thomas Middleton, and Brereton, were overrunning Cheshire and North Wales, capturing one Royalist fortress after another. In siege warfare the Parliamentarians enjoyed an easy and decisive superiority, for they alone possessed heavy artillery. A Royalist army arrived from Ireland, but it was defeated with heavy loss at Nantwich; and soon only Chester held out for the King in that part of the country. Charles, who was gifted with a considerable amount of military insight and acumen, perceived the importance of Chester, not only as a rallying place for Wales, but also as a gate to Ireland; and he sent Sir Nicholas {182} Byron to command the garrison, and to take general charge of Cheshire and Shropshire. Although Byron only just succeeded in holding his own, he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he was keeping a large Parliamentary army occupied in watching him, and so making it impossible for it to march against the King. South Wales had been entrusted by Charles to the care of Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Marquis of Worcester, a man personally popular, but a Catholic, and without military training. As compensation, however, for his defects, there was the fact that his father was reputed to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom; and his son's army was fitted out, and maintained, entirely at his own private cost. It took him but little time to raise an army of fifteen hundred foot and five hundred horse, all well and sufficiently armed. The close of the year 1643 saw the King still in a good position; and as for Wales it was, with the exception of two or three places in Pembrokeshire, solidly Royalist, while only Gloucester prevented Charles from being master of the whole Severn valley.

With the beginning of the year 1644, however, things began to alter. Many of the {183} younger and more ardent Parliamentarians were growing impatient of the dilatory method of their own leaders. They fancied that such men as Essex did not really desire to crush the King once and for all. New men, of the type of Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison, were coming to the front. The result was that now, for the first time, Parliament began to take the offensive, and to direct its armies against those parts of the country which were most loyal to Charles. This explains the strategy of the next two years. In 1644 the North was won, as the result of the victory of Marston Moor; and in 1645 the Midlands were won, as the result of Naseby. In Wales the year 1644 opened with an attack by Lord Herbert upon the Parliamentary stronghold of Pembroke. The attempt was repulsed; and in the succeeding weeks Laugharne, then a staunch Roundhead, made sure of South Wales, capturing Haverfordwest, Tenby, Carew, and Carmarthen. An attempt to recover the lost ground was made by Gerard, aided by some Irish levies; but so oppressive was the conduct of these wild and undisciplined troops that the affections of the greater part of South Wales were permanently alienated from the Royalist cause. {184} Some months later Gerard was relieved of his command; but the evil had been done. Meanwhile Laugharne was pursuing his victorious course; and before the close of the year Monmouth, Brecon, and Newcastle Emlyn had fallen into the hands of Parliament.

By this time Rupert had had conferred upon him the title of President of Wales. In February he was at Chester, where applications for help reached him from every quarter. One of the most importunate appeals came from Newark, and thither he decided to go, having appointed the cultured, but ineffective, Sir John Mennes governor of the three northern Welsh counties in his absence. The Royalist cause in North Wales was now beginning to be badly shaken. In September the Roundheads won a great victory at Montgomery, as a result of which the castle fell into their hands. Archbishop Williams, tired and hopeless, was endeavouring to make Conway a refuge for fugitives fleeing from the advancing foe. After the defeat of Marston Moor the disorderly remnants of the King's broken army flocked into Wales, pillaging and rioting, and completing the work of alienating the native inhabitants.

In 1645, however, there was a distinct {185} improvement in the King's fortunes in Wales. Gerard captured Haverfordwest, Picton, and Carew in May, and routed the Parliamentarians of Pembrokeshire. But in June came the King's crushing defeat at Naseby, where the greater part of the Royalist infantry had been Welsh. From the scene of his defeat Charles once more came to Wales to look for another army. But the last great pitched battle had been fought; henceforward the war was made up of sieges and skirmishes. Gerard was still successful; and in quick succession defeated Sir John Price at Llanidloes, Middleton near Oswestry, and Laugharne at Newcastle Emlyn. As a result of these victories the castles of Llanidloes and Cardigan again became Royalist. This time, however, Charles found the Welsh people less eager to listen to his appeals, so bitter was their resentment at the treatment which they had experienced at the hands of the dissolute troopers of Rupert and Gerard. Nevertheless from the Monmouthshire and from the Glamorganshire squires came renewed promises of aid. But even the influence of their landlords failed now to induce the common people to enlist in the King's army. Moreover such recruits as were forthcoming {186} at all were only to be secured by agreeing to certain conditions. They were to have their own Welsh officers; there must be no demand for payment of arrears; and the obligation to entertain soldiers at free quarters must be limited to a single night. Evidently the ancient spirit of sturdy independence was beginning to be roused from its long sleep! Charles had been waiting impatiently at Raglan; then, bitterly disappointed, he proceeded to Chester, and from its walls witnessed the rout of his cavalry at Rowton Heath. At the beginning of 1646 Chester surrendered to Parliament, and in the whole of Wales Harlech Castle alone remained faithful to Charles.

In April 1646 Charles surrendered himself to the Scottish army, and the First Civil War came to an end. Harlech was still holding out, and it was only in March 1647, just a year after the surrender of Chester, and seven months after Raglan, the last English fortress to fly the Royal standard, had capitulated, that it opened its gates to Mytton. The year 1647 was occupied in fruitless negotiations between King and Parliament, and in bitter controversy and recrimination between Parliament and Army, Presbyterians and Independents. {187} So divided had the Roundheads become that Charles again took heart, and in 1648 embarked upon the adventure which was to cost him his life--the so-called Second Civil War. Nowhere had the new religious and political controversies raged with greater rancour than in Wales. The supremacy of the Army, and the triumph of the Independents, were contemplated with unconcealed aversion and dismay. Even men like Laugharne, who had been prominent in the war against Charles, now went over to his side. On February 20, Colonel Poyer, Governor of Pembroke Castle, refused to lay down his command in favour of a successor who had been appointed to take his place. Other bodies of troops joined Poyer, who drove the Parliamentary army out of Pembroke. This was the signal for a general revolt throughout Wales. One-half of the Model Army, under the command of Horton, was sent in hot haste to the Principality; and in May it defeated Laugharne and his rebels at St. Fagan's. Before the end of the month Cromwell himself appeared on the scene. The rebels were chased from the open country, and shut up in the castles of Pembroke, Tenby, and Chepstow. The two {188} latter places were taken without much difficulty, but Pembroke, where Poyer himself commanded, held out until July. Its gallant commander was put to death, to expiate the offence of apostasy, an offence rendered exceptionally heinous by the fact that--to quote the words written by Cromwell at the time--it had been committed "against so much light."

Meanwhile events had been moving quickly in North Wales as well. Byron, with the assistance of Colonel Robinson, had gained possession of Anglesey; but the central figure of the rising in North Wales was the celebrated Sir John Owen of Clenenau. He was a turbulent man, who had done to death the sheriff of Merionethshire with singular brutality. But his undoubted bravery, his bluff manners, and his loyalty made him a popular and a typical figure. Mytton, the successful captor of Harlech, was sent against him, and at the battle of Llandegai Owen was decisively vanquished. With his defeat, and the capture of Pembroke, the Second Civil War in Wales came to a close. Owen had been made prisoner, but through the intercession of Ireton his life was spared.

From the barren, if picturesque, annals of {189} bloodshed, a war in which, so far as Wales was concerned, no great principle was at stake, it is a relief to turn to the settlement of the country under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and to the work of the few great Welsh Parliamentarians. Colonel John Jones the "Regicide" is deserving at least of passing mention. Brought up in one of the wildest and most remote corners of the Merionethshire mountains, he advanced, by sheer force of character and intellect, to a position of trust in the counsels of Parliament. As soon as war broke out he joined the ranks of the Parliamentary army. We find him representing Merionethshire in the House of Commons in 1647, and again from 1647 to 1653, when he was elected for Denbighshire. No man threw himself with greater zeal into the task of organizing the new army. He was not one of those who, having taken the initial step, cast reluctant glances back. For him there was but one goal--the complete and final victory of Parliament. When this object was attained, he did not hesitate to sit in the Court which sat in judgment upon Charles, nor did he shrink from signing his death warrant. His friendship with Cromwell was cemented by his marriage to the {190} Protector's sister. In Wales, during the war, and in Ireland after its termination, he was an acute and able agent of Parliament, and on one occasion the House of Commons passed a special resolution, thanking him, and voting him a present of £2000. When the Restoration came, John Jones made no effort to escape from the almost certain doom which awaited him by a timely flight abroad; on the contrary he remained openly in London. He was consigned to the Tower, tried, condemned, and put to death with all the horrible barbarities prescribed by the law in the case of traitors.

The other great Welshman of the day was Morgan Llwyd, and with him the whole history of the Commonwealth in Wales is bound up. The victorious Parliament and army, as one might suppose, regarded Wales with no friendly eye; and during the ensuing years the Principality was governed sternly and unsympathetically. The position of Wales varied with the many constitutional experiments of the period. The Agreement of the People, of 1649, proposed to give the country thirty-five representatives out of a total of four hundred. In the Assembly of 1653 Wales had six representatives. Under {191} the Instrument of Government, of 1653, thirty-eight Members, out of four hundred, were allotted to it. But in the hour of its triumph Parliament really counted for little in the affairs of the nation, and the representatives of Wales, mostly strangers, hardly counted at all. It was the great day of officialdom, and the land groaned under their heavy hand.

The new Government, and even the great Protector himself, despite his Welsh descent, cared nothing for Wales as a separate nation; and the national spirit would have fared badly but for a small band of true patriots, the foremost of whom was Morgan Llwyd. This wonderful man was born at Cynfal, a substantial farmhouse situated in one of the most romantic of Merionethshire glens, in the year 1619; and he died in 1659. His life, short as it was, marks the transition from the old Wales to the new, from the condition of poverty, strife, and degrading superstition, to that of freedom, peace, and progress. With the execution of John Roberts of Trawsfynydd, in 1610, perished the last champion of Popery in Wales. With the death of Morgan's own grandfather Huw Llwyd, somewhere about 1630, ended the {192} famous line of poet-magicians who dominated the Welsh mind during the Middle Ages. This Huw Llwyd was, in many respects, a very remarkable man. For many years he had fought on the Continent, in the religious wars of the age; then in his declining years had come to Cynfal, to be the admiration and the terror of his simple neighbours. A belief in witchcraft was then fairly general; and Huw was credited with the possession of unusually extensive authority over the agents of the lower world. In this there was nothing incompatible with a reputation for strict morality, and even sanctity, as one of the very traditions which have been handed down clearly shows. One day Huw was enjoying himself in a tavern in the neighbouring village of Maentwrog. Through the window he descried his friend Archdeacon Edmund Prys go by. Putting his head through the window, he warmly invited him to come in and enjoy the good cheer. The reverend man seems to have been scandalized at the thought; and to show his displeasure he immediately caused two, long horns to grow out of the luckless Huw's head, so that he was unable to withdraw it from the window. Not to be outdone, Huw, that same evening, ordered {193} certain of the devils over whom he had control, to dip the Archdeacon in the mill stream which ran past his house. Such were the merry pranks which parsons and poets played upon each other in early seventeenth-century Wales!

From this atmosphere of superstition Morgan escaped early, being sent to school with Walter Cradock at Wrexham, then the most enlightened centre in the whole country. From his able teacher he learned all the new ideas of freedom both in religion and in politics; and it is not surprising that, when the Civil War broke out, he should have joined the Parliamentary army, and served as chaplain for several years. While in London he united himself with that wonderful sect called the Fifth Monarchy Men. These men believed that the world was destined to be governed by five great monarchies in succession. Four--Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome--had already been, and were humbled in the dust. The fifth was to be a heavenly kingdom. Christ would himself appear on earth, would free His saints from bondage, and would establish a universal and immutable empire. They believed His advent to be now at hand, and waited for it anxiously day by day. {194} Their duty, as they conceived of it, was to prepare the way for His coming; and it necessarily followed that an acknowledgment of any earthly monarch must be profane and blasphemous. Fanatical they were, unreasonable they may also have been; but there were no more unflinching upholders of the liberty of the subject, and no better friends of religious toleration. The most influential man in the sect was Harrison, and with his appointment, in 1649, as Governor of South Wales, Morgan Llwyd settled down as pastor at Wrexham.

In February 1650 an Act was passed "for the propagation of the Gospel in Wales." Power was given to commissioners to hold an enquiry into the lives of all the Welsh clergy, and to deprive all such as were found to be immoral, incapable, or hostile to the new Government. A large number actually were ejected, and their place taken by a new and specially certified body of preachers. These commissioners were extremely unpopular in Wales, for the country was strongly anti-Puritan; and much of the unpopularity was visited on the new preachers, who were frequently waylaid and beaten. Not much progress appears to have been made; for as {195} late as 1656 we find Berry, who was Major-General, first for North Wales, and afterwards for South, writing to Thurloe--"One great evil I find here, which I know not how to remedy, and that is the want of able preachers. Certainly, if some course be not taken these people will some of them become heathens."

The "Propagation Act" was repealed in 1653; and that brought to a head the antagonism which for some time had existed between Cromwell and the Fifth Monarchists. The Long Parliament was expelled by Cromwell in 1653; and its successor--the Short Parliament--displayed so marked a leaning in the direction of extreme republicanism, that it soon shared the same fate. Harrison, Vavasour Powell, and Morgan Llwyd were now in open opposition to the Protector; and the two Welshmen toured the Principality inciting the people to rise against him. They stood for complete separation of Church and State, for religious toleration, and for a form of pure democracy in which there would be no room for such an office as that of Protector. Their protest against the Protectorate was published in 1655, under the title of "A Word for God." Morgan Llwyd and Powell were the only two leading Welsh preachers to sign it. That {196} the majority of Welsh Roundheads were entirely favourable to Cromwell is proved by the counter protest which was at once issued, a document which was signed by almost all the leading men, including Walter Cradock. We must allow that Harrison and his followers were unfair to Cromwell in impugning his honesty. The great Protector was always sincere; but he had learnt, what successive generations of politicians have all in turn had to learn, that the ideals of Opposition cannot always be made to square with the facts of Office. The Commonwealth was shipwrecked on the rock of national opposition; the vast majority of the nation were, and continued to be, Royalists and Episcopalians.

From that time until his death Morgan Llwyd ceased to play any part in politics. He had always been studiously inclined. In 1653 had been written his great classic, _Llyfr y Tri Aderyn_ (Book of the Three Birds). In the closing years of his life, the mystic tendencies which had always been strong in him got the better of everything else. He translated the writings of Jacob Behmen; and tramped about the hills and valleys of Wales, preaching to the peasantry in their own homes. His influence was immense; {197} and without founding school, or sect, or party, he left a name and an inspiration which remained fresh and potent for generations.

Morgan Llwyd did not survive to see the Restoration; and well was it for him that he did not, for it would have filled him with the most poignant anguish. Most of all would he have been grieved by the manifest signs of joy with which the event was greeted in Wales. The dream of a moral, a religious, an educated, and a democratic Wales was shattered for the time being; it was not to be revived for another hundred years and more. Once again the country sank back into its intellectual torpor, its superstition, and its immorality. The old order was restored:--"The squire dispensed justice, the parson preached loyalty, the bard in remote Nannau praised the life of Charles the First and bewailed his death, and the peasant was told that the world was put right again." In many parts of the land Parliamentarians were pitilessly persecuted. In Merionethshire, where the influence of Morgan Llwyd had been most strong, and where Maes-y-Garnedd, the home of Colonel John Jones, stood in the shadow of the mountains, a sturdy spirit of independence had already been fostered. Determined {198} not to remain at home to be oppressed, a large number of them left Bala in 1682, and sailed for the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. There, from time to time, they were joined by other Welsh people. To the district which they occupied they gave the name of "Meirion," and they became the ancestors of many of the most distinguished citizens of Philadelphia.

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