BBC - History - Wales under the Tudors (original) (raw)

Welsh roots

The Tudor king Henry VII was descended in direct male succession from Ednyfed Fychan, seneschal (steward) of Llywelyn the Great. Henry’s ancestor had provided the same services to the greatest of the Welsh princes as Walter the Steward, founder of the Stuart dynasty, had provided for Robert Bruce, the greatest of the Scottish kings. Thus, it could be claimed that the Stuart dynasty had been preceded on the throne of England by a dynasty which could also claim the Stuart title.

The Tudor surname first appeared in the ancestry of Henry VII in the 1420s, when Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur ap Goronwy ap Tudur ap Goronwy ap Ednyfed Fychan abandoned the Welsh patronymic system and adopted a fixed surname. Had he, as was generally the custom, adopted his father’s name, the English throne would have been occupied for a century by the Maredudd dynasty. He opted instead for his grandfather’s name – a prescient choice, for Tudur or Tudor comes from the Brythonic tud (territory) and rhi (king).

Henry Tudor was, as Edward IV put it, ‘the only imp now left of Henry VI’s brood’.

Owain Tudor included among his cousins some of the most devoted allies of Owain Glyndwr, whose long rebellion against Henry IV did not come to an end until circa 1412, and, as a Welshman, he was subject to the Penal Laws, which forbade the Welsh from carrying arms and from living in incorporated boroughs. Nevertheless, by the late 1420s, Owain was a member of the bodyguard of the dowager queen Catherine (daughter of Charles VI, King of France) whose husband, Henry V, had died in 1422.

There is evidence which suggests that Owain and Catherine married in 1429. The marriage was secret, and although perhaps it was not illegal, it was certainly audacious. Two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were born of the marriage. They were half-brothers of Henry VI, and were among the most loyal supporters of the Lancastrian dynasty in its struggle against the House of York

The House of York, in turn, was descended through the Mortimer family not from the seneschal of Llywelyn the Great, but from Llywelyn the Great himself.

Henry VI ennobled his half brothers. Edmund became earl of Richmond and was married to Margaret Beaufort, the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the progenitor of the house of Lancaster. Jasper became earl of Pembroke and by 1460 had collected so many offices in Wales that he had become the virtual viceroy of the country. Edmund died in November 1456. On 28 January 1457, his widow, who had just attained her fourteenth birthday, gave birth to a son, Henry Tudor, at her brother-in-law’s castle of Pembroke.

Henry Tudor spent his childhood at Raglan Castle, the home of William Herbert, a leading Yorkist – a castle which was an important centre of Welsh cultural activity. Following the murder of Henry VI and his son, Edward, in 1471, Henry Tudor became a figure of importance for he was, as Edward IV put it, ‘the only imp now left of Henry VI’s brood’.

It was concern for his safety that led Jasper, Henry’s guardian, to take his 14-year-old nephew into exile in mainland Europe. Fourteen years later, Henry and Jasper sailed from the mouth of the Seine to the Milford Haven Waterway, a voyage which led to Henry’s victory over the House of York at Bosworth and his coronation as Henry VII.

The Tudor dynasty

Older Welsh tradition claimed that Bosworth was a Welsh victory and that the accession of Henry VII represented the fulfilment of the prophecies of Welsh seers since the time of Merlin. It is unlikely, however, that Henry VII interpreted his victory in such a way.

It was not a matter of the Tudors identifying themselves with Wales, but rather of the Welsh identifying themselves with the Tudors. Indeed, it may be doubted whether Elizabeth I had more interest in the cradle of her line at Penmynydd in Anglesey than Elizabeth II has on the cradle of hers at Saxe-Coburg.

There was little advantage in Henry VII vaunting his Welsh connections in London, where love of things Welsh was hardly rampant.

The Plantagenet kings were frequent visitors to Wales. Stuart kings were less frequent visitors and Hanoverian kings even less so, but visits by members of the Windsor dynasty have been legion. In this regard, the outstanding exceptions were the Tudor monarchs, not one of whom set foot in Wales.

Tudor enthusiasts among Welsh historians delighted in portraying Henry VII’s court as a place where the Welsh were held in high regard, but there was little advantage in the king vaunting his Welsh connections in London, where love of things Welsh was hardly rampant. By descent, Henry VII was a quarter Welsh, a quarter French and half English, and it was his English blood that gave him a claim to the throne of England.

The Welsh connections of the king received almost as much attention in the court of the Yorkist, Edward IV, as they did in that of Henry VII. Indeed, the historian, David Powel, claimed in 1584 that Henry VIII inherited England from his father, heir to John of Gaunt and Edward III, and Wales from his mother, heiress to the Mortimers and Llywelyn the Great.

The Principality and the March

Portrait of Henry VII© The Wales that came under the authority of Henry VII in 1485 was a divided country. Somewhat less than a half of it constituted the Principality - essentially the territories which, before Edward I’s conquest in 1282, had consistently been under native Welsh rule.

Most of the east and much of the south constituted the March – a network of semi-independent lordships which had resulted from piecemeal invasions of Wales by Norman knights and from grants made by Edward I following the conquest.

The Act of ‘Union’ of 1536, was, in the Welsh context, the most significant piece of secular legislation passed during the Tudor era.

While the Marchia Wallie (the Norman-controlled part) of late 14th-century Wales had been dominated by a handful of families – the most prominent of which were the Mortimers, the Fitzalans, the Bohuns, the Beauchamps, the Despensers and the Mowbrays – the most striking feature of subsequent years was the English crown’s acquisition of marcher-lordships.

The seizure of the English throne by Henry Bolingbroke in 1399 meant that the Lancaster lordships became crown territories. Even more significant was the seizure of the crown by Edward of York in 1461, which meant that the extensive Mortimer lordships also passed into the possession of the crown.

In 1489, Ludlow, the caput (head) of the one-time Mortimer lordships, became the seat of what evolved into the Council of the King in the Dominion and Principality of Wales and the Marches, a council which was not finally abolished until 1689.

Henry VII acquired further lordships – Newport and Brecon, for example, which he seized following the execution of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham in 1521. By the 1530s, of the major lordships only Abergavenny, Chepstow and Gower were outside the direct control of the English crown. Thus the scene was set for what was, in the Welsh context, the most significant piece of secular legislation passed during the Tudor era: the Act of ‘Union’ of 1536.

The 'Act of Union’

Woodcut of Henry VIII in his council chamber© In February 1536, the English parliament passed 'Act 27 Hen.VII xxvi – clause 26 of the acts passed in the 27th year of the reign of Henry VII'. This was the 'Act of Union' although it was not known as such until 1901, when the historian, Owen M Edwards, made tentative use of the title.

The title is misleading, for it suggests that the statute was of the same nature as were the statutes which united Scotland with England in 1707 and Ireland with Britain in 1801, statutes which expressed the will of two partners.

Arguably, what was accomplished was not the union of England and Wales but of the Principality and the March.

The Welsh 'Act of Union’ was passed solely by the parliament of England, a body wholly lacking representatives from Wales. Furthermore, the preamble to the statute claimed that Wales was already ‘incorporated, annexed, united and subiecte to and under the imperialle Crown of this Realme as a very member…of the same’.

Indeed, it can be argued that what was accomplished in 1536 was not the union of England and Wales but the union of the Principality and the March, for the administrative system established in the Principality in 1284 was extended to the new counties carved out of the March, and it came to be considered that the Principality embraced Wales in its entirety.

Central to the statute was the abolition of any legal distinction between the English and the Welsh. Welsh law – the 'Law of Hywel Dda' – still existed in some parts of Wales, although it had long ceased to be a complete expression of the legal values of the Welsh. Following the passage of the statute, the Welsh, in the eyes of the law, were English. However, it would be equally valid to argue, as there was no longer any advantage in boasting of the condition of being English, that henceforth everybody living in Wales was Welsh.

For centuries, the ‘Union’ was considered to be an unmixed blessing to Wales. It was certainly a blessing for the rising class of Welsh gentry. As justices of the peace, they dominated local government. As members of parliament, profitable and entertaining doors were opened to them in London. Because the statute had abolished partible inheritance (division of legacy amongst heirs) and enthroned primogeniture (inheritance by the first born son), their efforts to built up their estates were facilitated. So rapidly did they seize their opportunities that the Wales of the Tudor era saw a marked widening between social classes.

Praise of the 'Act of Union’ survived the 16th century. Indeed, it is only in the mid-20th century that it began to attract criticism, as much for its economic and social implications as for its national and cultural consequences. The praise reached its peak with the comments of Edmund Burke in 1780: ‘As from that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided….peace, order and civilization followed in the train of liberty.'

It would, however, be equally apposite to quote another of Burke’s speeches: ‘When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is the….self-complacency of the superior, which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own favour.'

Reformation and revolution

The 'Act of Union' was part of the intensification of the sovereignty of the crown – the essence of what Geoffrey Elton described as ‘the Tudor Revolution’. An even more central part of that revolution was Henry VIII’s abolition of the authority of the Pope within his territories, for, in doing so, the king was declaring that his kingdom was a totally sovereign state.

Evidence for the initial reaction in Wales is sparse, although it is unlikely that the anti-papal legislation was welcomed in so traditionalist a nation, where there was not, as there was in the more urban areas of England, a tradition of regarding the Pope as a focus of xenophobic feeling.

Yet that legislation, and later more radical moves such as the dissolution of the monasteries, the attack upon chantries and the introduction of an English-language Prayer Book, incited no uprisings in Wales as they did in northern England and in Cornwall. That may be because of the Welsh gentry’s instinctive loyalty towards the Tudor monarchy, but it was also a consequence of the reign of terror inflicted upon Wales in the 1530s by Rowland Lee, president of the Council of the Marches.

It was a myth that Protestantism was the re-embodiment of the beliefs of early Welsh Christianity, whose purity had been defiled by Romish practices.

Indeed, in seeking to understand the course of the Reformation in Wales, the increasing power of the agents of the English crown must always be borne in mind. Initially, attitudes in Wales were probably very similar to attitudes in Ireland.

In Ireland, however, the power of the English crown was limited, and there the coercive power of the English authorities was not strong enough to bar entry to those members of Roman Catholic orders who were determined upon campaigns to ensure that the Irish remained loyal to the faith of their forefathers. In Wales, that coercive power was sufficient to ensure that no such campaigns would be launched.

There were, nonetheless, more constructive elements in the story of how the Welsh came to accept the Henrican and Elizabethan religious settlements. Chief among them were the efforts of a handful of Welsh Humanists who were determined that the central tenets of Protestantism would be accessible to the Welsh people, the vast majority of whom knew no language other than Welsh.

There was John Price, who in 1546, published the first book in the Welsh language; William Salesbury who in 1561 published a Welsh translation of the main texts of the English Prayer Book and in 1567 was mainly responsible for the first Welsh edition of the New Testament; and, above all, there was William Morgan who in 1588 published the entire Bible in Welsh, using language so exalted that his work remains the object of veneration.

The publication was prepared in obedience to a statute of 1563 which commanded that a Welsh version of the Bible and the Prayer Book should be available in every one of the parish churches of Wales. (The statute was somewhat ironic, for it meant that parliament was authorizing the use of the Welsh language in spiritual matters barely a generation after the 'Act of Union’ had banned its use in secular matters.)

Equally important was the fading of the myth that Protestantism was ‘the English religion’. It was replaced by another myth: that Protestantism was the re-embodiment of the beliefs of early Welsh Christianity, whose purity had been defiled by the Romish practices imposed upon it following St Augustine’s arrival at Canterbury.

Thus, by becoming Protestants, the Welsh were not embracing a new and dangerous heresy; rather were they returning to the faith of their forefathers, a faith which sprang directly from the era of the Apostles, for tradition maintained that it was Joseph of Arimathea who had converted the Britons to Christianity.

The Tudor legacy

It was the events of the Tudor reign that ensured that the subsequent history of Wales was a happier story than was the subsequent history of Ireland. The 'Act of Union’, although it can be seen as an arbitrary act of annexation, brought about a single citizenship in Wales, a boon of immense significance.

The Tudor era, with its atmosphere of limited tolerance, was a time of fascinating cultural advance in Wales.

The Act united the country within itself, thus ensuring that the notion of a Welsh nation could be developed into a viable concept. While banning the public use of Welsh might appear to be an act of cultural genocide, the later, more benign, policy towards the use of the language in worship goes a long way to explain why Welsh today is a far more widely spoken language than is Irish.

The more settled conditions brought about through Tudor legal and administrative agencies ensured the growth of an economy in Wales which would be the mainstay of its inhabitants until the country was overwhelmed by industrialisation almost three centuries later.

The dissolution of the monasteries, the greatest cultural loss that can be attributed to the Reformation, endowed the Wales with the ruins which in the late 18th century made the country the heartland of the picturesque movement.

While the Tudor era was certainly not one of total free enquiry, its atmosphere of limited tolerance did cause it to be, in Wales, an era of fascinating cultural advance. It is surely not the business of historians to put an era into a credit or a debit column, but, if it were their business, there can be little doubt about the column in which the Tudor era in Wales should be placed.

Find out more

Books

A History of Wales by John Davies (Penguin, 2007)

The Making of the Tudor Dynasty by RA Griffith and RS Thomas (Sutton, 1985)

'The Union of England and Wales' by William Rees ( Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1937)

Aspects of Welsh History by Glyn Roberts (University of Wales Press, 1989)

A History of Modern Wales by David Williams (John Murray, 1977)

Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales c.1415-1642 by Glanmor Williams (Clarendon Press, 1987)

Wales and the Reformation by Glanmor Williams (University of Wales Press, 1997)

About the author

John Davies is a native of the Rhondda. He taught at the University Colleges of Swansea and Aberystwyth and was the warden of Neuadd Pantycelyn, Aberystwyth, for 18 years. His publications include 'Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute', 'Hanes Cymru', 'A History of Wales', 'Broadcasting and the BBC in Wales' and 'The Making of Wales'. He is the consultant editor and co-editor of the forthcoming 'Encyclopaedia of Wales'.