CHAPTER VII

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

With the death of Edward I Wales settled down to a long period of comparative tranquillity. The next eighty years were as peaceful a time as the unhappy country had enjoyed for centuries. Edward II was now on the throne of England; and his Welsh birth, his mild disposition, and his obvious desire to deal justly with the Principality caused him to be regarded with trust and even with affection. On two occasions during the reign the new Welsh shires were allowed to send representatives to the English Parliament. All forms of lawlessness were sternly repressed. The consequence was that the Welsh people began, as they had never done before, to turn their attention to trade and the accumulation of wealth. The fourteenth century witnessed a great increase in industry and commerce all over Western Europe, and both England and Wales participated in the {102} increase. Edward III conferred a most precious benefit upon Wales by bringing it within the scope of the Statute of Staple. In 1332 Shrewsbury and Carmarthen were constituted staple towns for the Principality. Then came the Black Death, which swept over England and Wales in the year 1349. The amount of immediate distress which it occasioned was immense; but some of its results were good. The fact that among the labouring classes the rate of mortality had been something like fifty per cent. made labour very scarce; and in spite of the efforts of Parliament to control the situation by means of Statutes of Labourers, the economic and social position of the villeins was immensely improved. But it was not in Wales only that Welshmen were bettering their position; they were covering themselves with glory on all the great battlefields of Europe. The fourteenth century was the age of the long bow; with it the finest victories of the Hundred Years' War were won; and the home of the long bow was Wales. The weapon had been in use for a long time in border wars, and its superiority to the cross bow had been clearly demonstrated. The Black Prince, who became Prince of Wales in 1343, was immensely {103} popular in the Principality, and a large body of archers and spearmen from Wales followed him to the French wars. At Crécy there were five thousand Welsh troops; and it was at the close of that battle that the Prince assumed the crest and the motto which ever since have been worn by all Princes of Wales. No lover of English literature is ever likely to forget the pages in which Shakespeare has drawn an amusing but kindly caricature of the Welshmen who distinguished themselves on the field of Agincourt. But it was not only in the armies of their own sovereign that Welshmen were to be found; they were, throughout the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, among the most famous mercenary troops in Europe. Many of them fought in the French armies against the Black Prince and against Henry V. Owen of Wales, the friend of the great _condottiere_ Bertrand du Guesclin, won much fame as the leader of a Free Company. This Owen, however, was much more than a successful mercenary captain: he remembered the land of his birth; and the great ambition of his life was to win back Welsh independence with the assistance of France and Spain.

The Black Death had very adversely affected {104} the monastic life of Wales. Even in the thirteenth century--the golden age of monasticism--Wales was too poor a country to support such princely foundations as Fountains or St. Albans. Its monasteries were, for the most part, small, drawing what wealth they possessed from acres of barren mountain land. As we have already seen, Wales, from the first coming of Christianity into the country, had its monastic foundations. So far back as the sixth century, those of Bangor Iscoed and Llantwit Major were famous throughout Christendom. The rule of St. Benedict, which dates from that century, seems to have found much favour in Wales; for in South Wales alone there were some fifteen Benedictine houses, one of them being an abbey, and the remaining ones priories. Soon, however, these priories fell into evil odour; for they were "alien" in the sense that they belonged to some foreign abbey whose abbot used them merely for the purpose of augmenting his revenues. The great Cluniac reformation of the tenth century had singularly little influence upon the religious life of Wales, and only three priories were established in the country. The lives of the monks who inhabited them were notoriously {105} lax, and gave considerable scandal even in that age of easy morals. It was the Cistercian Order, however, that seems to have won the religious heart of the Welsh people. All the most famous religious houses in Wales--Strata Florida, Strata Marcella, Aberconway, Valle Crucis, Basingwerk, Cwm Hir, Margam, Whitland, Neath, Dore, Grace Dieu, Tintern, Cymer, and Llantarnan--were Cistercian. For the most part the monks favoured the cause of national independence. They were not great scholars, nor did any particular sanctity pertain to their lives; but they were excellent farmers, their conduct was at least decent, they were witnesses after their fashion to the value of the spiritual life, and they occasionally wrote chronicles like the _Annales Cambriæ_ and the _Brut_ which are invaluable to the historian of to-day.

The Friars, too, found a warm welcome in many parts of Wales. The Cistercian monks were to be found in remote and lonely valleys, or on the edge of high and bleak moorlands; the Friars, on the other hand, were to be found in the towns, among the busiest haunts of men. Towns in Wales were few and insignificant, so we do not find the Friars occupying the position of importance which they so {106} soon acquired in England. Nevertheless the Dominicans had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon, Haverfordwest, and Cardiff, while the Franciscans were to be found at Carmarthen, Cardiff, and Llan Vaes. In addition to the two great Orders, there was a settlement of White Friars (Carmelites) at Denbigh, and one of the Austin Friars at Newport. In Wales all the Friars seem to have been energetic preachers and lecturers; and in that way they did much to diffuse what learning they themselves were possessed of among the common people.

The Black Death greatly reduced the numbers of the monks. Their rents fell very considerably in value, and they consequently became extremely poor. Nevertheless the second half of the fourteenth century witnessed a remarkable religious awakening in the country. There was a new and enquiring spirit abroad, and Wales turned an interested, and occasionally a sympathetic, ear to the teaching of the Lollards. The Catholic Church, as represented by its two great officers, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, had so often shown itself to be the enemy of Welsh liberty that the people of Wales listened with much favour to the teaching of Walter Brute, {107} one of Wycliffe's disciples, when he began to preach in the Marches in 1391. That the official religion had fallen into considerable contempt in Wales is indicated by the insulting tone of many of the triads in which it was the fashion of the day for literary men to express themselves. "Three things are objects of derision," says one of these, "an old hag displaying her finery, an old man trying to show his agility, and an old priest drunk." Another tells us that "Three things there are which he who can may love--a fat priest singing Mass, the cry of a soul in the clutches of the Fiend, and an English song."

In the quarrel between Richard II and his barons the sympathy of Wales was with the king; and it was in Wales that the final struggle between the unhappy monarch and Henry Bolingbroke took place. The king, who had been in Ireland, landed at Milford Haven, to find that Henry was with an army at Bristol. By a forced march he reached Conway; and then travelled from castle to castle in North Wales looking for support. He met Henry at Flint, surrendered, and was first deposed and afterwards murdered. Then Henry IV ruled in his stead. From the beginning of his reign the new king seems to {108} have regarded Wales with a good deal of suspicion and dislike. After a long period of mild government, a note of severity again makes itself audible in the statutes passed dealing exclusively with Wales. There is a harsh and aggressive flavour in their very titles--"Certain restraints laid on Welshmen," "The Lords Marchers to keep ward in their castles," "Welshmen shall not purchase lands in England," "Englishmen shall not be convict in Wales," "As to minstrels and vagabonds in Wales," "Welshmen not to carry arms," "No armour or victuals to be carried into Wales," "Welshmen not to have castles," "No Welshman shall bear office in Wales," "Castles and walled towns in Wales to be kept by Englishmen," "Englishmen married to Welsh women not to have office in Wales," etc. It was in such an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and dislike that the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr broke out.

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