18: The Reformation
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The Reformation in England was, to begin with, a purely political
movement. Henry VIII. wished to rule his people in his own way, in
religion as well as in politics; and, eventually, he became Supreme
Head of the Church as well as the king of the country. His new power
brought changes. It was necessary to reform the Church, and the
wealth of the monasteries tempted him to do it. There was a new
spirit of enquiry, and the King was led on by that spirit, with
dilatory and hesitating steps, to examine old creeds. The religious
fervour of the Reformation had caught the people; and the King stood
still, if he did not turn back.
But his ministers had no misgivings. Thomas Cromwell tried to hurry
the Reformation on—the monasteries were dissolved, the Bible was
translated, and the sway of Rome was disowned. The king appointed
the bishops, decided church cases, and even determined what the creed
of his country was to be. Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., made
the movement a doctrinal one, and forced it on with equal vigour.
Wales looked on, with indifference and apathy at first, and then with
murmurs. The movement had no attraction: it had many causes of
offence. In England the political movement became a patriotic, an
intellectual, and a religious movement; and it succeeded. In
Ireland, also, it was political, but it could not appeal to
patriotism, because it was an English movement; and it failed. In
Wales, it was neither welcomed nor opposed; it was simply tolerated,
and with a bad grace.
For one thing, it brought English instead of Latin into public
worship. Latin, the old language of prayer and even of sermon, was
venerated, though not understood. But English was not only not
understood, it was also regarded as inferior to Welsh. The Tudors'
dislike of various tongues was as strong as their dislike of various
jurisdictions. Henry VIII., in giving Welshmen the Act of 1535, says
that the tongue of Owen Tudor is "nothing like ne consonant to the
natural mother-tongue used within this realm," and enacts that all
officials in Wales shall speak English. And, in the same spirit, the
Welshman was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was now open to him, but
that he must seek it in English, or not at all.
Again, the reformers—men of the type of Bishop Barlow—despised and
shocked a people they never understood. The sanctity of St David's,
the theme of the best poets of the Middle Ages and the goal of
generations of pilgrims, was described by its Protestant bishop—who
unroofed the palace in order to get the lead—as a desolate angle
frequented only by vagabond pilgrims. A Welshman is not appealed to
by what is an insult to his country and a shock to his religion at
the same time. The relics were ruthlessly swept away; they were
taken possession of by the agents of Cromwell and destroyed, or sent
to London. The images carried in the village processions were lost—
the images that could keep the superstitious Welshman from hell, or
even bring him back from it, or heal his diseases, or keep his cattle
from the murrain, and his crops from blight. I only know of one of
those relics that can still be seen. It is the healing cup of Nant
Eos, a mere fragment of wood. The people's faith in the relics can
be estimated from the fact that the cup has been used within the last
century.
Again, the monasteries were dissolved. The wealth of the
monasteries, their meadows and barns and sheep-runs and fish ponds,
were coveted by the rich; the poor thought of them as sources of
alms. The monks were good landlords; and they gave freely, not only
the comforts of religion, but of their medicinal herbs and stores of
food. The Welsh monasteries were not so rich as those of England,
and they were all dissolved among the lesser monasteries—those with
an income under 200 pounds a year. But though none of them were very
rich, they nearly all had almost 200 pounds a year. Their loss
affected the whole country, as each part of Wales had one or two of
them—Tintern, Margam, Neath, and Whitland in the south; Strata
Florida, Cwm Hir, Ystrad Marchell, and the Vanner in central Wales;
and Basingwerk and Maenan in the north.
The Reformation brought the poorer classes in Wales, not only insults
to their national and religious feelings, but material loss. It
appealed only to the English bishops who had adopted the new
Protestant tenets, and to the Welsh and English landowners who had
lost their reverence for relics, and had learnt to hunger for land.
The movement was a severe strain on the loyalty of the Welshman to
the Tudors, but he had learnt to look to the king for guidances and
he suffered in silence. Mary was welcomed, and no Welsh blood was
shed for the Protestant faith. The passive resistance to the
Reformation might have broken out into a rebellion if a leader had
come.
In Elizabeth's reign two attempts were made to disturb the religious
settlement. One was made by the Jesuits—the wonderful society
established to check the Reformation movement and to lead a reaction
against it. In 1583 John Bennett came to North Wales; in 1595 Robert
Jones came to Raglan; and several Welsh Jesuits suffered martyrdom.
The other attempt was that of John Penry, who wished to appeal to the
intellect of the people by means of the pulpit and the printing
press. The apostle of the new creed was crushed, like those who
wished to revive the old; he was put to death as a traitor in 1593,
after a short life of importunate pleading that he might preach the
Gospel in Wales.
Before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, however, the Welsh language
was recognised. The last school founded, that of Ruthin in 1595, was
to have a master who could teach and preach in Welsh. And in 1588
there had appeared, by the help of Archbishop Whitgift, the Welsh
Bible of William Morgan. It was the appearance of this Bible that
aroused the first real welcome to the Reformation. But the
Reformation that gave England a Spenser and a Shakespeare aroused no
new life in Wales, not a single hymn or a single prayer.
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