to remain in force amongst the natives of all Wales, whilst it was henceforth arranged to administer justice in the eight counties by special royal judges, and in the Marches by the officers appointed by the various lords-marchers according to the terms of their tenure. Another distinguishing mark of Edward's policy towards Wales is to be found in the commercial and administrative powers given to the fortified towns, inhabited solely by people of English birth and by Welshmen who acquiesced in English rule. Municipal charters and market privileges were now granted to such towns as Cardiff, Carmarthen, Builth, Cardigan, Montgomery, Aberystwith, Newborough, &c., and this wise policy was continued under Edward II. and Edward III. Many of the turbulent Welsh warriors having now become mercenaries on the continent or else enlisted under the English king, and the whole of the land west of Severn at last enjoying internal peace, the commercial resources of Wales were developed in a manner that had hitherto not been possible. Coal, copper, timber, iron, and especially wool, were exported from the Principality, and by the Statute Staple of 1353 Carmarthen was declared the sole staple for the whole Welsh wool trade, every bale of wool having first to be sealed or “cocketed” at this important town, which during the 14th century may almost be accounted as the English capital of the Principality, so greatly was it favoured by the Plantagenet monarchs. A natural result of this partial treatment of the towns by the king and his vassals was that the English tongue and also English customs became prevalent if not universal in all the towns of Wales, whilst the rural districts remained strongly Cymric in character, language and sympathy.
After more than a century of enforced repose in the land and of prosperity in the towns, all Wales was suddenly convulsed by a wide-spread revolt against the English crown, which reads more like a tale of romance than a piece of sane history. The deposition of Richard II. and the usurpation of Henry IV., combined with the jealousy of the rural inhabitants of Wales against the privileged dwellers of the towns, seem to have rendered the country ripe for rebellion. Upon this troubled scene now appeared Owen Glendower (Owain Glyndwfrdwy: died? 1415), a descendant of the former princes of Powys and a favourite courtier of the late King Richard, smarting under the effect of personal wrongs received from Henry of Lancaster. With a success and speed that contemporary writers deemed miraculous, Owen stirred up his countrymen against the king, and by their aid succeeded in destroying castle after castle, and burning town after town throughout the whole length and breadth of the land between the years 1401 and 1406. In 1402 he routed the forces of the Mortimers at Bryn Glas near Knighton in Maesyfed, where he captured Sir Edmund Mortimer, the uncle and guardian of the legitimate heir to the English throne, the young earl of March. The aims of Owen were described by himself in a letter addressed to Charles VI., king of France, who had hastened to acknowledge the upstart as Prince of Wales and had sent 12,000 troops on his behalf to Milford Haven. In this letter Owen, who was holding his court in Llanbadarn near Aberystwith, demands his own acknowledgment as sovereign of Wales; the calling of a free Welsh parliament on the English model; the independence of the Welsh Church from the control of Canterbury; and the founding of national colleges in Wales itself. An assembly of Welsh nobles was actually summoned to meet in 1406 at Machynlleth in an ancient building still standing and known to this day as “Owen Glendower's Parliament House.” In vain did Henry and his lords-marchers endeavour to suppress the rebellion, and to capture, by fair means or foul, the person of Glendower himself; the princely adventurer seemed to bear a charmed existence, and for a few years Owen was practically master of all Wales. Nevertheless, his rule and power gradually declined, and by the year 1408 Owen himself had disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as he had arisen, and the land once more fell into undisputed possession of the king and his chosen vassals. For Owen's brilliant but brief career and ruthless treatment of English settlers and Anglophil Welshmen, his countrymen had not unnaturally to pay a heavy penalty in the severe statutes which the affrighted parliaments of Henry IV. framed for the protection of the English dwellers in Wales and the border counties, and which were not repealed until the days of the Tudors. Of the part played by the Cymry during the wars of the Roses it is needless to speak, since the period forms a part of English rather than of Welsh history. The Yorkist faction seems to have been strongest in the eastern portion of the Principality, where the Mortimers were all-powerful, but later the close connexion of the house of Lancaster with Owen Tudor, a gentleman of Anglesea (beheaded in 1461) who had married Catherine of France, widow of Henry V., did much to invite Welsh sympathy on behalf of the claims of Henry Tudor his grandson, who claimed the English throne by right of his grandmother. Through the instrumentality of the celebrated Sir Rhys ap Thomas (1451-1527), the wealthiest and the most powerful personage in South Wales, Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, on his landing at Milford Haven in 1485 found the Welsh, ready to rise in his behalf against the usurper Richard III. With an army largely composed of Sir Rhys's adherents, Henry was enabled to face Richard III. at Bosworth, and consequently to obtain the crown of England. Thus did a Welshman revenge the ignominious deaths of Prince Llewelyn and Prince David by becoming two centuries later king of England and prince of Wales.
With the Tudor dynasty firmly seated on the throne, a number of constitutional changes intended to place Welsh subjects on a complete social and political equality with Englishmen have to be recorded. The all-important Act of Union 1536 (27 Henry VIII.), converted the whole of the Marches of Wales into shire ground, and created five new counties: Denbigh, Montgomery, Radnor, Brecknock, or Brecon and Monmouth. At the same time the remaining lordships were added to the English border counties of Gloucester, Shropshire and Hereford, and also to the existing Welsh shires of Cardigan, Carmarthen, Glamorgan and Pembroke, all of which found their boundaries considerably enlarged under this statute. Clause 26 of the same act likewise enacted that the 12 Welsh counties should return 24 members to the English parliament: one for each county, one for the boroughs in each county (except Merioneth), and one for the town and county of Haverfordwest. It is probable that Welsh members attended the parliaments of 1536 and 1539, and certain it is that they were present at the parliament of 1541 and every parliament subsequently held. This act of union was followed in 1542 by an “Act for certain Ordinances in the King's Majesty's Dominion and Principality of Wales” (34 & 35 Henry VIII.), which placed the court of the president and council of Wales and the Marches on a legal footing. This court, with a jurisdiction somewhat similar to that of the Star Chamber, had originally been called into being under Edward IV. with the object of suppressing private feuds and other illegalities amongst the lords-marchers and their retainers. This council of Wales, the headquarters of which had been fixed at Ludlow, undoubtedly did good service on behalf of law and order under such capable presidents as Bishop Rowland Lee and William Herbert, earl of Pembroke; but it had long ceased to be of any practical use, and had in fact become an engine of oppression by the time of the Commonwealth, although it was hot definitely abolished till the revolution of 1688. The act of 1542 also enacted that courts of justice under the name of “The King's Great Sessions in Wales” should sit twice a year in every one of the counties of Wales, except Monmouth, which was thus formally declared an English shire. For this purpose four circuits, two for North and two for South Wales, each circuit containing a convenient group of three counties, were created; whilst justices of the peace and custodes rotulorum for each shire were likewise appointed. At the same time all ancient Welsh laws and customs, which were at variance with the recognized law of England, were now declared illegal, and Cymric land tenure by gavelkind, which had been respected by Edward I., was expressly abolished and its place taken by the ordinary practice of primogeniture. It was also particularly stated that all legal procedure must henceforth be conducted in the English tongue, an arrangement which fell very heavily on poor monoglot Welshmen and appears an especially harsh and
