The revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, which had begun some three months before the fifteenth century opened, belongs really to the history of the fourteenth century; the next chapter in the history of Wales begins as the revolt drew to a close and the comment that ‘modern Wales begins in 1410’ has in it a measure of truth. The revolt can justly be described as the most important event between Edward I’s conquest of Gwynedd in 1282 and the first Act of Union of 1536 and the description of it as ‘the massive protest of a conquered people’ and as the completion of the Edwardian conquest places it firmly in its historical context. Its end marks a significant point in the history of medieval and early modern Wales and is a reminder that the traditional bench-mark of 1485 is, in many ways, irrelevant in Welsh terms, even if that year did see the triumph of a dynasty of Welsh extraction and the accession to the English throne of the great-grandson of a man who had been in rebellion with Glyn Dwr. The ending of the revolt marks the beginning of a change in the attitudes and perceptions of the Welsh political nation; the vision of the restoration of an ancient independence was replaced by the urge to work within a wider political dimension.
The end of the revolt was a gradual process. As early as 1406 some communities had submitted and the last great raid into Shropshire was defeated in 1410. Owain himself may have died in 1415, but his son Maredudd tried to carry on the fight, parts of north Wales being far from pacified during the second decade of the century. It was feared that the fugitive Lollard leader, Sir John Oldcastle, was in league with Maredudd and there was talk of a possible Scottish landing in support of them. It may not be without significance that Oldcastle was captured in Powys in 1417 and the revolt really only ended when Maredudd ab Owain accepted a royal pardon in 1421. There were surprisingly few reprisals; individuals made their peace from an early stage and communities were able to purchase forgiveness. After his accession in 1413 Henry V, anxious to embark on a campaign in France and concerned about the possibility of a Lollard rising, combined firmness with conciliation, going so far as to offer a pardon to Owain himself. Arrears were cancelled, an enquiry into the revolt and its consequences held and money was earmarked for the replacement of livestock to help communities in north Wales get back on their feet.
Against this conciliatory response, however, must be set the penal legislation rushed through parliament in 1401 and 1402. Although these statutes have been accurately described as racist, it may be fair to add the rider that they were essentially a panic reaction and many of them were a repetition of a series of ordinances promulgated by Edward I in the 1290s. Once the revolt was over and men had made their peace they were usually a dead letter. The plain truth was that both the king and the marcher lords needed the leaders of the native community; neither Principality nor lordship could function without their cooperation, particularly at the local level. Some were formally granted denizen-ship or English legal status, but most men of substance returned to favour without much trouble; the men who governed at the local level after the revolt tended to be those who had done so before. The penal statutes were not, however, always ignored; they could be used to further personal rivalries, as in 1433, when Owain Glyn Dwr’s son-in-law, Sir John Scudamore, was dismissed from all his offices through the machinations of Edmund Beaufort. From time to time during the century the statutes were confirmed, while English burgesses regularly called for their enforcement.
Not all Welshmen joined Glyn D\vr. Many remained loyal to the crown or to their lords and allegiances were often dictated by the rivalries of local politics. Some joined the revolt but had the foresight to make their peace before most of their fellows and profited as a result. The short-term economic consequences were disastrous; it had been a war of attrition, won in the end by the superior resources of the English crown. Neither side had shown any mercy, even to the Church, for cathedrals and abbeys were among the victims. Many towns and their property had been prime targets and even Carmarthen, the administrative headquarters of the southern Principality, had been sacked. Yet, despite the havoc wrought by Glyn Dwr, much of the physical damage was soon repaired. And the long-term consequences should not be exaggerated; account rolls record the flight of bondmen, depopulated communities and arable land let for grazing, but the roots of this decline lay in the years before 1400. Its causes were, in reality, among the causes of the revolt itself.
Wales in the fifteenth century was not a coherent political or administrative unit; it never had been. There was not even any precise territorial definition.
The south and east were made up of those marcher lordships which were the result of Norman invasion and conquest in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; the rest of the country, shired and in the possession of the crown since the thirteenth century, formed the Principality. Most marcher lordships had changed hands on several occasions and some concentration of ownership had already begun. Several were in the possession of the duchy of Lancaster and had therefore passed to the crown in 1399; the process of concentration continued in the fifteenth century, and in 1425 Richard Plantagenet, duke of York, inherited the great Mortimer complex of lordships with an annual value of nearly £3,000 on the death of his mother. On the accession of York’s son to the throne as Edward IV in 1461 these lands all became permanently attached to the crown. Other families with extensive interests in the March were the FitzAlans, earls of Arundel, and the Staffords, who became dukes of Buckingham. By 1485, a substantial part of the March was in the direct possession of the crown, but this did not lead to any practical strengthening of royal government since each lordship retained its identity and its autonomy.
The main aims of royal government under Henry V were to bring about financial and economic recovery and to restore the revenue to something approaching its level before the revolt, and the same was true of marcher administration; for those magnates who were marcher lords the revenue from their Welsh lands formed a substantial part of their income. In the short term the various administrations were not unsuccessful but this was not to endure. There may have been a measure of recovery from the immediate effects of the rebellion but the underlying problems, which went back well into the fourteenth century, were less easily solved; indeed, under the existing system of government they may well have been insoluble.
The death of Henry V in 1422 removed a strong and active ruler and the minority of Henry VI saw a gradual increase in magnate power in the Principality. Effective government depended on the careful exercise of patronage and in the royal lands a great deal of this was available. Henry V had taken much care in making appointments but towards the end of the minority an increasing number of local offices in north Wales, hitherto the preserve of the leaders of the native community, were being granted to members of the royal household, and with the assumption of personal rule by Henry VI in 1437 the floodgates were opened. By 1450 the north was dominated by the king’s household, particularly by those of its members who came from Cheshire; in south Wales the household did not profit in the same way, partly because of the influence of such magnates as Edmund Beaufort and the duke of York, but the choice of officials came increasingly to reflect the power and influence of factions at the centre and the use of patronage was more and more the result of external political factors. An active prince entrusted with the royal lands in Wales might have made a difference but after 1413 no prince of Wales was of full age. Nor was the March much better; seignorial income was declining steadily and several lordships were bedevilled by long minorities. Magnate lords were generally absentees who came to depend increasingly on local deputies. There were sporadic attempts to impose some kind of administrative order but there could be no substitute for constant supervision by a vigorous resident lord.
The deputies of absentee officials were drawn from the leaders of the native community. Given effective supervision there would have been nothing wrong in this, but the problem was that under Henry VI the government of the realm, faced with a war in France that it could not win and beset by factional rivalries, could not supervise the periphery. Many parts of Wales fell more and more under the control of local landowners; the most blatant example was the Carmarthenshire gentleman, Gruffydd ap Nicholas, who, with the aid of his sons, during the 1440s and 1450s, ruled the south-west, ostensibly in the name of Henry VI but in reality as his personal satrapy. He had enjoyed the patronage of Edmund Beaufort and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, but by the time Gloucester fell from power and died in 1447 he no longer needed a patron. He was able to ignore the authorities almost completely at a time when tensions at the centre were leading inexorably to civil war. He was the most prominent of these local potentates, but there were many others like him; in the south-east the outstanding Welsh leader was the Gwent knight, Sir William ap Thomas of Raglan, who held various offices in the Principality and the March. No such figure emerged in the north; here the grip of the royal household, under the supervision of its controller, Sir Thomas Stanley, was secure and was strengthened by marriage alliances with local notables.
It was the Yorkist victory in 1461 and the consequent accession of Edward IV that led to a new initiative to deal with the problem of the government of Wales. Edward’s key supporter there was Sir William Herbert of Raglan, the son of Sir William ap Thomas. By 1468 most of Wales was under his direct control and the poet Lewis Glyn Cothi described him as ‘King Edward’s master-lock’. Raised to the peerage in 1461, he was created earl of Pembroke in 1468. From now on the king would leave his lands and interests in Wales in the care of a trusted servant who was one of the most powerful men in the realm. Herbert’s rapid rise had made him many enemies, particularly the earl of Warwick, who also had interests in Wales, and Warwick’s change of allegiance in 1469 led to Herbert’s defeat at Banbury and subsequent execution. His place in Wales was taken by the king’s younger brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, but when Edward recovered the throne in 1471 he made his young son, Edward, prince of Wales and sent him to Ludlow with a council to advise him and rule in his name. After Edward IV’s death in 1483 Gloucester, first as protector of the young Edward V and then as king himself, tried to continue his brother’s policy by entrusting Wales to the duke of Buckingham, but within a few months of Richard’s seizure of the throne Buckingham had led an unsuccessful revolt and been executed.
The reign of Henry VI has often been seen as a period of particular violence and disorder in Wales; the most graphic picture is that drawn by Sir John Wynn of Gwydir, writing at the end of the sixteenth century. He depicted north Wales as a society in which men had had to take the law into their own hands to survive because the whole mechanism of public order had broken down. There is similar evidence from other parts of the country; in the Stafford lordship of Caus in 1454 a Welsh mercenary was employed to protect the tenants and in Flintshire a fairly high level of violence is reflected in the records of the justiciar of Chester’s sessions. Perhaps the worst example of disorder was the county of Merioneth in the Principality, where order and royal government seem to have collapsed entirely during the 1450s; the county, described by one historian as ‘ungoverned and ungovernable’, had ceased to yield any revenue at all.
The 1440s and 1450s were certainly decades of violence and lawlessness and this has tended to be blamed on the Glyn D\vr revolt. But it is simplistic to talk of anarchy and a complete collapse of order and government; there was just as much disorder in many parts of England at this time. Among the reasons for the lack of public order in Wales was the absence of magnate officials in the Principality and of magnate lords in the March. They operated through deputies, who tended to be drawn from leading local families with local interests and ambitions, and who were only too ready to use office to further their ends. But the behaviour of the leaders of the native community must not be dismissed solely as gratuitous lawlessness and the pursuit of personal ambition. Very often local rivalry was part of a quest for stability and for a dominance which only one protagonist could enjoy. And the various administrative units were not completely self-contained; even in the fourteenth century there had been arrangements between lordships for extradition of fugitives, hot pursuit and the punishment of captured felons, and there were also formal agreements for the settlement of disputes.
The texts of several of these from the fifteenth century survive and there are also references in accounts to the traditional Welsh method of negotiation between different jurisdictions, namely the Day of the March or meeting of representatives on the common border. One practice which has often been seen as a contributory factor to the decline of public order in the southern counties and lordships was that of redeeming or dissolving the Great Sessions; an announcement that such sessions would be held would be followed by negotiations which would lead to the crown or the lord agreeing to accept a lump sum equivalent to the anticipated profits. In the lordship of Brecon in 1418—19, for example, the sessions were redeemed for 2,000 marks and in Carmarthenshire between 1422 and 1485 only twelve out of fifty-two sessions ran their full course. But redemption had more to do with revenue than with buying off justice; in both Principality and March there was already a hierarchy of courts which went on being held and this practice was, in effect, a form of taxation at a time when the traditional sources of seignorial income were yielding less and less.
There were various discussions of Welsh problems in the 1440s and 1450s but nothing positive was done by the crown to solve them; with royal authority in the state it was in under Henry VI, it was difficult to contain or control the activities of such men as Gruffydd ap Nicholas. It was only with the rise of William Herbert that there was a powerful royal representative actually resident in Wales; in these circumstances effective local rule and authority fell naturally into the hands of the leaders of the native community and it was these men who formed the Welsh political nation. Their power and influence rested on traditional leadership, the tenure of local office, descent and kinship links and, increasingly, landed wealth and economic power. They could be described as a squirearchy or as gentry, but the Welsh term uchelwyr is probably more accurate. The support of this class had been crucial for Owain Glyn Dwr; now they gradually gained control of the levers of power in both Principality and March, and although few were to emulate Gruffydd ap Nicholas in creating personal fiefdoms, many prospered, often beyond the confines of Wales. The outstanding example is William Herbert, but there are many others. The Dwnn family from Kidwelly played a prominent part in the south-west. Henry Dwnn had been an active supporter of Owain Glyn Dwr; his grandson Gruffydd, involved as a very young man in the revolt, was to have a distinguished record of military service in France, and one of Gruffydd’s sons, John, held various offices at court in addition to Wales. He was knighted in 1471 and acquired extensive lands in England as well as being sent on diplomatic missions by Henry VII. He commissioned a triptych, now in the National Gallery, from no less a painter than Hans Memlinc. Such men, together with William Griffith of Penrhyn in north Wales, were the outstanding members of their class; but there were scores of other landowners of ancient lineage and local influence without whom there would have been no government at all.
Judicious marriages lay behind the rise of many Welsh landed families; perhaps the outstanding example is the great house of Mostyn in Flintshire which, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, built up an extensive estate throughout north Wales by four successive marriages to heiresses. Alliances were carefully planned and, as the fifteenth century progressed, families who dominated particular regions came to look further afield when choosing partners for their sons and daughters, so that such marriages could involve more than one generation or more than one child. Marriage often meant land; this was the period when the process of estate building, which had begun for some families in the fourteenth century, gathered momentum. A recently discovered cartulary lists the lands in Gwynedd which William Griffith had purchased and which made him the greatest landed proprietor in north-west Wales; he also purchased land to provide an inheritance for one of his illegitimate sons. Other emergent estates included Peniarth in Merioneth, Clenennau in southern Caernarfonshire and Rhydodyn in Carmarthenshire; indeed, the same process may be seen in operation all over Wales as what had been hereditary land was being snapped up by enterprising neighbours. Some free tenants were drawing ahead of their fellows and would in time join the ranks of the gentry; others, who already enjoyed local power and influence, were adding substantially to their holdings. Hundreds of deeds in collections of family papers bear witness to this process.
These were the social and political leaders of the native community, and their economic power was increasing. They were also the nourishers and custodians of the native cultural tradition. The century between 1450 and 1550 is one of the great periods of Welsh poetry and the work of the professional poets revolved around the uchelwyr. Some, indeed, were poets themselves, since every gentleman was expected to have at least an acquaintance with the strict metres of Welsh poetry. In the middle of the century Gruffydd ap Nicholas, a prominent patron, presided over an eisteddfod at Carmarthen which revised the traditional metres. The output of poetry from this period comes from all over Wales and the poets travelled widely, visiting their patrons in their houses. This was the age of poets like Guto’r Glyn, Lewis Glyn Cothi, Gutun Owain, Dafydd Nanmor, Dafydd ab Edmwnd and Tudur Aled; many of these came themselves from the ranks of the uchelwyr and they served a long and rigorous apprenticeship. Their art was based on patronage; they praised the patron’s lineage, generosity and courage; they sought gifts from him; and they mourned his death. They gave expression to the social values of the society in which they lived. Within a strict metrical framework they produced great poetry and their work sheds light on contemporary social and political attitudes.
Another integral part of native culture was Welsh law. The introduction of English legal procedure in the Principality at the conquest did not mean the eclipse of native jurisprudence, particularly in the southern counties and the March, and the legal texts written in the fifteenth century are practical rather than antiquarian in their emphasis. There are examples in contemporary judicial records of the use of Welsh procedure; it survived in both criminal and civil actions and it was at its strongest in the field of real property. The Welsh procedure known as conveyance in tir prid, which had evolved as a way around the inalienability of hereditary Welsh land, played an important part in the growth of landed estates, as the deeds in so many collections of family papers reveal. Until 1536 the law of Hywel Dda had its distinct place in Welsh life, and no Welsh gentleman, particularly in the March or the southern counties, could afford to be ignorant of its provisions.
The long-term effects of the mid-fourteenth-century plague had been exacerbated by the revolt and these effects showed themselves particularly in the position of the bondmen. These formed a minority in the population but they bore the heaviest burden of dues and services, although most of the latter had by now been commuted to cash payments. By the fifteenth century bond status had, in the Principality at least, become a means of raising revenue. The bondman had been subject to various restrictions, but these could now be easily circumvented on payment of a fine. Some deeds record the sale of bondmen, but what was probably conveyed was the land where the bondman’s holding was situated and possibly the right to his labour. Nor did bond status necessarily mean poverty; in 1481—2 a bondman from Anglesey had goods valued at £26 18s 4d, had married his daughters to free men and had himself married the daughter of one of the leaders of the local community. On the other hand there were many free tenants who can only be described as indigent. But bond townships in the Principality had yielded a substantial portion of the crown’s revenue from Wales and since the late fourteenth century these had been a wasting asset. Bondmen were leaving; in the northern counties, some townships had been completely depopulated and their arable lands had to be let for grazing. The return of fugitive bondmen was suggested after the revolt, but this would have been a pointless exercise. The income had to be replaced by grants negotiated with the native community.
At the upper levels of society, among the uchelwyr, there was no lack of visible wealth; indeed, the patronage of poets was itself a form of conspicuous consumption. The poets describe a world of tables groaning under imported delicacies, of fine houses and of increasing domestic comfort; in the early years of the century the poet Sion Cent, a severe critic of his age and society, summarised the values of this class when he asked what would avail their houses, wine-cellars, horses and hounds and trips to England when no man could expect more than seven feet of earth. These men were confident and comfortable, a fact reflected in the many houses which survive, built of stone in the north and west and timber in the east. Below these men a class of substantial tenants was emerging; the whole pattern of land tenure had changed. In what was essentially an upland economy there was much poverty but also wealth; the fact that wine from Spain and spices from the east could find their way to the tables of squires in Cardiganshire or Anglesey bears witness to this. Increasing prosperity was also reflected in the rebuilding and embellishment of churches, especially in the north-east, possibly the most flourishing part of Wales. Although the finest churches there, like Wrexham, Mold and Gresford, owed much to the generosity of the Stanleys and Margaret Beaufort, the double-nave churches of the Vale of Clwyd and, elsewhere in Wales, churches like Clynnog Fawr, Holyhead, Tenby and St John’s, Cardiff, are further evidence of recovery.
The main products of Wales were cloth and cattle. The export of wool had been replaced to a large extent by cloth and this was reflected in the existence of many fulling mills; depopulation had led to more land being given over to grazing, and this led in turn to a greater emphasis on sheep farming. The most highly organised cloth industry was in the town of Ruthin; the Grey family, lords of Ruthin, were among the most capable and efficient of the marcher lords. Large quantities of cattle were exported on the hoof to England and even some poets had experience of droving. The mineral wealth of Wales, in the form of lead, coal and slate, was already being exploited on a small scale, and woods and forests played a significant part in the economy. But the concept of a full-time industrial labour force had not emerged; industrial workers and most craftsmen were usually smallholders as well, with a continuing stake in the soil. The principal exports of Wales were wool, hides and cloth; the main imports were wine, salt, iron and luxury goods. Every coastal and estuarine town was a port but the most important ones were Beaumaris in the north and Carmarthen, Haverfordwest and Tenby in the south-west; they traded with Brittany, Spain and Portugal, as well as with England, Scotland and Ireland. Towns were essentially market and service centres, with the possible exception of Wrexham, which was the largest and most flourishing town in north Wales and a centre of metal working. The other leading towns which were regional commercial centres included Cardiff, Brecon, Carmarthen, Denbigh and Newtown; other towns had a more local catchment area, while some were little more than villages. Prosperous burgesses of English stock continued to buy land. The Conwy burgess Bartholomew de Bolde built up a substantial estate by the patient accumulation of small pieces of Welsh hereditary land in the lower Conwy valley, while in Beaumaris William Bulkeley from Cheshire bought up burgages in the town and then extended his activities into rural Anglesey. His eldest son married the only daughter and heiress of Bartholomew de Bolde and the Bulkeleys of Beaumaris thus became a major power in north Wales; within a generation they had become part of the fabric of Anglesey society and were receiving the plaudits of the poets.
The fifteenth century was not generally an age of intense religious devotion. The rebuilding and extension of churches were as much an expression of civic pride or of aristocratic or seignorial generosity as of piety. For most of the century no Welshmen were appointed to bishoprics and few to cathedral dignities; able and ambitious Welsh churchmen had to make their careers in England, usually as canon lawyers. Among the parish clergy were to be found prosperous members of uchehvr families; these men were patrons of the poets and their way of life, as reflected in contemporary poetry, was highly secular. But most of the clergy were not far removed, in means or education, from the mass of their parishioners. Many monasteries were facing increasing economic difficulties and their estates were coming more and more under the control of leading local gentry, many of whom, in the next century, were to reap a rich harvest at the Dissolution. There is little or no evidence of Lollard activity in Wales after the capture of Sir John Oldcastle, but there is no evidence either of any intellectual ferment or intense spiritual life; the Church functioned, but it cannot be described as militant or triumphant. For most of the Welsh, popular religion was a matter of usage and habit. Pilgrimage centres like St David’s and Bardsey retained their popularity, while some ventured further afield, particularly to Santiago de Compostella. There is a substantial body of religious poetry, but it is rarely of great intensity or devotion. Of education we know little. Some of the monasteries may have maintained schools; there were grammar schools at Oswestry and Haverfordwest, while Sir John Wynn referred to his great-grandfather having been put to school at Caernarfon to learn reading, writing, English and Latin. In 1406 Owain Glyn Divr had sought the establishment by the pope of two universities, one in the north and one in the south, but Wales was to have no such institution until the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, many of the deeds and other documents which survive from the fifteenth century are evidence of lay literacy and most of the uchelnyr and many burgesses must have been literate, as were the poets.
Welsh soldiers, who had played an active part in the French wars in the fourteenth century, continued to do so. Many saw service in France under Henry V and his son and they included some who had followed Owain Glyn Dwr a few years earlier. Welsh participation continued throughout the wars and some captains had distinguished careers, among them Sir Richard Gethin of Builth, Gruffydd Dwnn and Matthew Gough, as well as the young William Herbert. Many of them, particularly Gough, were rewarded for their services with lands in Normandy, although these riches evaporated when the French recovered the province in 1450. The poets at home were well aware of their patrons’ exploits across the Channel and there are many references in their work; indeed Guto’r Glyn was himself a soldier in France. The French wars have often been seen as a source of wealth for their leading participants, but no Welsh family seems to have gained financially or territorially. What military service did bring, however, were patronage and useful contacts. Men like Gethin and Herbert came back from France with a far wider circle of acquaintance, and they had often come to the attention of leading commanders; this could be extremely valuable in the future, since a highly placed patron could make or break a political or military career. The other consequence of service in France was the availability of a large pool of military experience which was to benefit both sides when the English civil war broke out in 1455.
These wars in England brought Wales into the mainstream of English politics and its leaders on to the English political stage. William Herbert’s father had been a prominent figure in the affairs of south-east Wales, but Herbert was a great deal more. Both factions had a Welsh power base; the Principality, being crown territory, was largely Lancastrian, as were the duchy of Lancaster lordships like Monmouth and Kidwelly. The former Mortimer lordships were obviously Yorkist, but there were exceptions on both sides; loyalties might often be dictated by local power struggles or even by the sides taken during the Glyn Dwr revolt. And allegiance might often be the result of personal convenience; Gruffydd ap Nicholas claimed to be loyal to the house of Lancaster but this only persisted as long as weak royal government left him in control. When Edmund Tudor was sent to south Wales by Margaret of Anjou in 1456, hostilities soon followed. The other marcher lords went their own way; the Staffords were Lancastrians, while the lord of Glamorgan was the earl of Warwick, who was guided entirely by self-interest. The Stanley family in Cheshire and north Wales also looked to its own advantage. But if the foci of dynastic and political loyalties in England were the houses of Lancaster and York, in Wales they were in practice Jasper Tudor and William Herbert, both of whom held at different times the title of earl of Pembroke.
Following the Yorkist victory at Mortimer’s Cross in 1461, Jasper Tudor fled to Ireland, while Herbert mopped up Lancastrian resistance in Wales. Like most contemporary commanders, Herbert was ruthless, and he and his men were much feared in England; however, the fact that he was Welsh meant that he was admired by his compatriots, and Guto’r Glyn called on him to unite Wales and expel the English. Both he and Jasper made extensive use of the poets for propaganda purposes. This may suggest that the poets were nothing more than time-servers who sang for their paymasters; but their loyalties were to Wales, rather than to York or Lancaster, and many of them sang to patrons on both sides. The death of Herbert after his defeat at Banbury in 1469, along with that of many of his Welsh followers, was mourned by the poets as a national disaster.
Edward IV’s crushing victory at Tewkesbury in 1471 was, perhaps, the most significant battle in Welsh terms; it meant the extinction of the direct Lancastrian line and for the rest of his life Edward’s position was unchallenged. Jasper and his nephew, Henry Tudor, found asylum in Brittany. But their position had changed dramatically. Jasper had been the leader of the Lancastrian party in Wales and no more than that. Now, however, the young Henry was the nearest Lancastrian claimant to the throne. His mother Margaret Beaufort was the great-grand-daughter of John of Gaunt, while on his father’s side he was descended from the leading lineage in north Wales. The Tudors were the stock of Ednyfed Fychan, the seneschal of the princes of Gwynedd in the first half of the thirteenth century. After the Edwardian conquest the family had been the effective leaders of the native community in the Principality. Their support of Glyn Dwr had brought their dominance to an end, but one of them, Maredudd ap Tudur ap Goronwy, had a son, Owain. Maredudd disappears from the record without trace after the revolt but Owain, after service in France, found his way to court and eventually married Henry V’s widow, Catherine de Valois. They had three sons, Edmund, Jasper and Owen, the last of whom became a monk at Westminster. Henry VI showed much favour to his other half-brothers, making Edmund earl of Richmond and Jasper earl of Pembroke. Now, with the virtual elimination of the house of Lancaster, it was Henry who emerged as its candidate, and during the years of exile Jasper maintained contact with Lancastrian supporters in Wales and built up a party for the future. While Edward IV lived, there was little that could be done but in 1483 the king died suddenly and was succeeded by his young son, Edward V. His younger brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, was entrusted with the regency; the rest of the story is well known.
The seizure of the throne by Gloucester and the disappearance of his nephews changed the political situation completely. It was followed by Buckingham’s abortive revolt; but the duke was unpopular in Wales and little support was forthcoming from there. The circumstances of Richard III’s accession created hostility and suspicion, and high prices following two bad harvests made matters worse. All this breathed new life into the Lancastrian cause, and Henry Tudor’s position changed overnight. Jasper’s years of intrigue in Wales now began to bear fruit and the poets pleaded Henry’s cause. There was in Wales a long tradition of vaticinatory poetry, calling on the mab darogan, or son of prophecy, to arise and redeem his people. Now the poets were singing in this vein, calling on Henry as the messianic leader who would lead the Welsh to victory. An ancient tradition, going back to the tenth century, was being harnessed to a particular cause, with implications for England as well as for Wales. In keeping with the zoomorphic imagery of the vaticinatory tradition Henry was hailed as the Swallow and the Bull. This poetry was not an atavistic Celtic response; it was contemporary political propaganda expressed in a traditional form. As Henry was praised, so was Richard damned, and some poets accused him of the murder of his nephews; at the same time much of this poetry contained an anti-English tone, hailing the mab darogan as the instrument of Welsh vengeance. Opponents of Richard were now making their way to Brittany. After an abortive expedition in the autumn of 1483 Henry landed at Mill Bay on Milford Haven early in August 1485; on his march through Wales he was joined by many with whom Jasper had been in communication, particularly Rhys ap Thomas of Dinefwr, the grandson of Gruffydd ap Nicholas, and now the dominant figure in the south-west. The invaders advanced through Wales and the midlands and, at Bosworth, Richard III was defeated and killed. Henry Tudor, the impecunious exile, became King Henry VII; the intervention of his stepfather, Lord Stanley, and Stanley’s brother, Sir William, was decisive.
The effect of Bosworth on the Welsh imagination was electrifying, and this is reflected in the reaction of the poets. Their feeling was that the son of prophecy had come to his people and that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last native prince, had been avenged, since a Welshman now wore the crown of London. Many Welshmen went to England in search of their fortunes and Bosworth, where Henry had fought under the banner of the red dragon, was seen as a Welsh victory. The question of how Welsh Henry really was is an open one; only one of his four grandparents was Welsh but, having spent some of the formative years of his childhood in the Herbert household at Raglan, it is possible that he did speak the language and he seems to have enjoyed Welsh poetry. The red dragon of Wales became one of the supporters of the royal arms and he named his eldest son Arthur. It is easy to dismiss such gestures as cosmetic but Henry Tudor does seem to have been very aware of his Welsh ancestry, and he knew how great was his debt to many of his Welsh supporters. Those who had stood by him were now rewarded; Jasper, to whom he owed everything, became duke of Bedford and was entrusted with the oversight of Wales and the Marches, although without the authority given by Edward IV to William Herbert or by Richard III to Buckingham. Rhys ap Thomas was also well rewarded and in 1496 he became justiciar of south Wales.
Once Henry was king there was some bardic complaint about the lack of attention given to Wales, but this did not reflect the attitude of the leaders of the community. Their position and influence had not been affected and they knew very well that Henry’s priorities were to restore stability and remain on the throne. For them it was enough that he was there, and there was to be no lack of Welsh support in putting down the risings which occurred from time to time. In 1486 there was a Yorkist insurrection in the lordship of Brecon and the rebels captured Brecon castle; they were suppressed by Sir Rhys ap Thomas, who had been knighted at Bosworth. Henry’s determination to maintain peace and order was shown in 1495 when Sir William Stanley, who had been instrumental in securing his victory at Bosworth and whose brother was his stepfather, was executed for his involvement in the conspiracy of Perkin Warbeck. In 1507 Sir Rhys ap Thomas held a great tournament at Carew castle which symbolised the reconciliation of England and Wales, and to poets throughout the sixteenth century Henry VII was the liberator. The Elizabethan antiquary, George Owen, described him as the ‘Moyses that delyvered us from bondage’. Welshmen began again to be appointed to Welsh bishoprics and loyalty was rewarded at every level of the administration.
By 1485 most of the March was in the possession of the crown, the main exceptions being the Buckingham lordships in the south-east and those of the Stanleys in the north-east. But Henry did not undertake a drastic reorganisation of Welsh government; what he did was to follow the example of Edward IV and try to make the existing system work, at the same time strengthening the position of the crown. The surviving lords were obliged to enter into indentures or formal agreements with the king to maintain order. However, the problem of the multiplicity of jurisdictions remained; although much of the March was in the king’s possession, each lordship was autonomous and there was no central machinery. Henry again imitated Edward IV in sending his eldest son to Ludlow with a council; this council was retained after Arthur’s death in 1502 and from it was eventually derived the council in the Marches of Wales. But the king tended to depend on individuals rather than institutions to control Wales, and in this a significant part was played by Sir Rhys ap Thomas.
The problems of governing Wales were as much financial as administrative. The financial difficulties had a long history, going back to the second half of the fourteenth century. In 1490 steps were taken in north Wales to recover as much revenue as possible; the chamberlain was dismissed and royal servants brought in. The resulting pressure on the community was such that it may have led in 1498 to a revolt in the county of Merioneth. A force of soldiers had to restore order and the community paid a heavy fine. There were similar problems in the March. In 1496 accumulated arrears of over £2,000 had to be written off in the Stafford lordship of Brecon; mounting arrears were one of the worst problems lords had to face. Henry’s response to the problems of north Wales was the granting of a series of charters to the Principality in 1504 and 1507 and to various marcher lordships between 1505 and 1509; these emancipated bondmen and abolished partible succession to land and a number of traditional dues.
These charters were not the result of spontaneous royal generosity to deliver the people of north Wales from ‘miserable servitude’; they were bought by the recipients. There was some doubt as to their validity, but before the matter could be resolved Henry died in 1509. His son, Henry VIII, had little direct interest in Wales and in the first part of his reign he made no changes. He depended on Cardinal Wolsey and Wolsey depended on the traditional leaders in Wales. The key man in the south continued to be Sir Rhys ap Thomas and he remained so until his death in 1525; a similar part was played in north Wales by the third William Griffith of Penrhyn. Griffith ruled with a very heavy hand, arguing that the problems of governing north Wales were such that he had no choice. In the March two prominent figures remained. One of these was Charles Somerset, the illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, third duke of Somerset. He had been among those who landed with Henry Tudor in 1485 and he married William Herbert’s grand-daughter. The other marcher lord was Buckingham, rich, arrogant and unpopular. Buckingham had been on friendly terms with the king, but he offended Wolsey and his overbearing ways added to Henry’s suspicion of a man who was a close enough relative to have an interest in the succession, should the king leave no heir. He was accused of treason and in 1521 he was tried and executed. In a sense the fall of Buckingham marked the end of an era. The age of the marcher magnate was over and practically the whole of the March was now in the king’s hands. It was for Thomas Cromwell to put an end to the anomaly of Wales once and for all; the union legislation of 1536 and 1543 did not so much unite Wales with England as unite Wales within itself.