Renewal and Reformation

Professor Glanmor Williams (1920-2005) pointed out that there were two schools of Welsh history: the Liberal-progressive, best represented by the politician and journalist W.Llewellyn Williams (1867-1922); and the nationalist, founded by the poet and co-founder of Plaid Cymru Saunders Lewis (1893-1985), who was sent to jail for his part in setting fire to the RAF bombing school established in the Lleyn in 1936. The first ruled the roost until the Second World War; and in book Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation, Wales c. 1415-1642, Williams recognised the current popularity of the second in 1987.Plaid Cymru was founded in 1920. In 1966, in a General Election I (as an Englishman) remember for the Labour landslide in favour of Harold Wilson, the first Plaid M.P. was elected in Wales, to represent Carmarthen. This was Gwynfor Evans, whose one-volume history of Wales Land of My Fathers appeared in 1974. For the Liberal progressives Owain Glyndwr’s revolt was foolish and unrealistic.; and the Tudors were the saviours of the nation, just as Lloyd-George was later. For Evans, Owain Glyndwr was a hero, betrayed by the Quisling Davy Gam – the prototype for Shakespeare’s Fluellen. The Tudors were a disastrous aberration from the straight and narrow path taken by the Swiss, towards independence. Lloyd-George was brilliant, but ultimately sold out the Welsh.In 1979, in a moment of madness, I bought a week in a time-share development in Wales. I had not previously heard about the phenomenon of militant Welsh nationalism, but within a short space of time, the Sons of Glyndŵr (Meibion Glyndŵr) began bombing English-owned holiday homes in Wales, and eight were destroyed in that year alone. The campaign continued on and off until 1990. Since 1990, the group has ceased to be active; but there is now a Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, with an ever growing list of devolved powers; and, as of 2012 the Welsh National Party (Plaid Cymru) held 11 seats of 60 seats there, as well as 1 of 4 Welsh seats in the European Parliament and 3 of 40 Welsh seats in the Westminster Parliament. They retained the European seat in the election who results were announced yesterday (26 May 2014); and have about 10% of the vote in purely British elections.Glanmor Williams’s account of the period between the outbreak of Glyndwr’s revolt and the outbreak of the English Civil War is magisterial. Thoroughly researched, it is above all balanced and original. For him both the Liberal-progressives and the nationalists overstated the importance of political and constitutional (and even religious) changes during the Tudor period in Wales. He stressed the importance of the continuity in social and economic conditions throughout the period, in particular the continuing dominance of the Welsh gentry.

This is a volume from the History of Wales series by Oxford University Press. Having read the previous volume in the series (Rees Davies's "Age of Conquest - Wales 1063-1415"), I chose this following volume to complete my introduction to medieval Wales.These are detailed textbooks that cover their period in a comprehensive fashion. The books are very much in the same format and tradition of Oxford University Press's series on the History of England. So, we have a rather densely-packed text with long paragraphs, but there are many riches within. Some of the chapters are strictly chronological, where events within Wales and those beyond the border are given a distinctively Welsh context; but some are subject-specific, such as government, the law, the church, social relations, etc. There is a well-written explanation of the 1536 Act of Union, for instance, from which I learned a great deal.From the angle of an Englishman, the subjects that arise in the history of Wales are very much the same that arise in the history of England. Discussions about religious and economic developments, for example, mirror those over the border. But there are, of course, clear differences too. The medieval Welsh had different legal and political traditions that are fully discussed, and the author also illuminates his argument with numerous references to the Welsh poets of the period. This is not a device that an Englishman, say, would necessarily use when writing of the history of his own country; their use in this volume demonstrates again a different historiographical tradition from England, for in Wales poets have been seen and revered as, albeit subjective, chroniclers of their times.As I have said above, this volume has very much a standard (though detailed) textbook feel to it, and is consequently unlikely to contain anything that is particularly controversial. It is encyclopaedic in scope for the period that it covers. If it has a fault (apart from the long densely-packed paragraphs), it is that there are few case studies that are provided in any detail. (The same author's later volume on "Wales and the Reformation", which I am presently reading, shows how well he can tell a detailed story about a specific issue.) But, if you are looking for both an introductory and a detailed study of Wales during this period, then you cannot go far wrong by choosing this volume.

fascinating book on a rather obscure period of Welsh History (once it got past the Glyndwr revolt. Excellent book ion the series, very quickly dispatched