19: The Civil War
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After the Tudors came the Stuarts. The Tudors did what their people
wanted; the king and the people, between them, crushed the nobles.
The Stuarts did what they thought right, and they did not try to
please the people. Under the Tudors, there was harmony between Crown
and Parliament; and Elizabeth left a prosperous people with strong
views about their rights and their religion. But James I., and
especially his son Charles I., tried to change law and religion.
From the Tudor period of unity, then, we come to the Stuart period of
strife.
From 1603 to 1642 the struggle went on in Parliament. The Welsh
Members nearly all supported the king, and the Welsh people followed
the Welsh gentry in strong loyalty. The most famous Welshman of the
period was John Williams, who became Archbishop of York and Lord
Keeper. He was a wise man; he saw that both sides were a little in
the wrong; and if any one could have kept the peace between them, he
could have done it. But the king did not quite trust him, and the
Parliament almost despised him; and this happens often to wise men
who get between two angry parties.
From 1642 to 1646, the First Civil War was waged. This was a war
between the king and the Parliament over taxation, militia, and
religion. The south-east, and London especially, were for
Parliament; the wilder parts, especially Wales, were for the king.
The only important part of Wales that declared for Parliament was the
southern part of Pembrokeshire, which had been English ever since the
reign of Henry II.
Wales was important to the king for two reasons. For one thing, it
could give him an army, and he came, time after time, to get a new
one. When he unfurled his flag and began the war at Nottingham in
1642, he came to Shrewsbury, and there five thousand Welshmen joined
him. With these and others he marched against London, fighting the
battle of Edgehill on the way. While the king made many attempts to
get London until 1644, and while the New Model army attacked him
between 1645 and 1647, the Welsh fought in nearly all his battles,
their infantry suffering heavily in the two greatest battles, Marston
Moor and Naseby. The war went on in Wales itself also—Rupert and
Gerard being the chief Royalist leaders, and Middleton and Michael
Jones being the chief Parliamentary ones. No great battles were
fought, but there were several skirmishes, and much taking and
retaking of castles and towns.
Wales was important to the king, also, because it commanded the two
ways to Ireland. The King thought, almost to the last, that an Irish
army would save him. Welsh garrisons held the two ports for Ireland,
Chester and Bristol. Bristol was stormed by a great midnight
assault, and Chester was forced to yield. In March 1647 Harlech
yielded, and the war came to an end. By that time the king was a
prisoner in the hands of the army.
The Second Civil War, in 1648 and 1649, was a struggle between the
two sections of the victorious army. The Parliament wished to
establish one religion, the army said that every man must be allowed
to worship God as he liked. One was called the Presbyterian ideal,
the other the Independent. The army was led by Cromwell, and
Parliament was overawed. Then the Presbyterian parts rose in revolt-
-Kent, Pembrokeshire, and the lowlands of Scotland. The New Model
army marched against the Welsh, in order to break the connection
between the northern and southern Presbyterians. The Welsh generals
were Laugharne, Poyer, and Powell, who had all fought for Parliament
in the first war. They were defeated at St Fagans, near Cardiff, and
then driven into Pembroke. They determined to hold out to the last
within its walls. Cromwell besieged them, and the great feature of
the war was the siege of Pembroke. Walls and castles like those of
Pembroke had become useless because of gunpowder. But Cromwell could
not at once bring his guns so far. His difficulties were increasing
daily: the Parliament was trying to come to terms with the king, all
Wales around him was disaffected, the Scotch had crossed the border
and were marching on London. After many weeks of assaults and
desperate defence, the guns came and the old walls were battered
down. Pembroke Castle, whose great round tower still stands, had
protected William Marshall against Llywelyn and had enabled an
important district to remain a "little England beyond Wales," was the
last mediaeval castle to take an important part in war. The Scotch
were soon defeated at the battle of Preston, and the king was brought
to trial and put to death, the death-warrant being signed by two
Welshmen—John Jones of Merioneth and Thomas Wogan of Cardigan. The
date of Charles' execution is January 20, 1649.
The Commonwealth was established immediately, and Wales was looked
upon with much distrust—the Presbyterian parts and the Royalist
parts—by the new Government. It was represented in the English
Parliaments, it is true, but its representatives were often English,
and practically appointed by the Government. When the country was
put under the military dictatorship of the major-generals, Harrison
was sent to rule Wales.
Honest attempts were made to give it an efficient clergy; but the
zeal of Vavasour Powel aroused much opposition. Wales either clung
tenaciously to its old religion; or, if it changed it, the changes
were extreme. Though the country generally returned to its old life
and thought at the Restoration in 1660, much of the new life of the
Commonwealth remained: congregations of Independents still met;
Quaker ideals survived all persecution; and even the mysticism of
Morgan Lloyd permeated the slowly awakening thought of the peasants
whom, in his dreams, he saw welcoming the second advent of Christ.
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