England and Wales The Story of Wales

It is August 7th, 1485.

This is Mill Bay in the far west of Pembrokeshire.

A young nobleman is sailing to the land of his fathers.

He's been in exile in France.

His mission is to capture the crown of England.

He may be half English and a quarter French,

but he makes no secret of the fact that this is the land of his birth.

For the first time a self-proclaimed Welshman will be King of England.

Under the dynasty that he starts,

Wales will be united with England

and for every generation of Welsh people to come,

the consequences will be immense.

But what exactly that means in the coming two-and-a-half centuries,

will depend on who you are.

Whether you're a wealthy landowner or one of the ordinary people.

Henry Tudor is sailing to Wales to meet his destiny,

a battle with the English King Richard at Bosworth.

BELL TOLLS

It's the culmination of a bloody struggle for the English crown

between two power-hungry clans, York against Lancaster

the Wars of the Roses.

And Henry comes proclaiming his Welsh blood,

and asking his fellow countrymen to take up arms with him.

En route, his supporters sew a homemade flag for Henry's army

the Tudor colours of green and white

with the fire-breathing Red Dragon of Wales.

But if Henry thinks the Welsh peasants and the Welsh gentry

will flock instantly to his side, he'll have to think again.

Wales is in a pitiful state and has been for 200 years.

No proper institutions, no court, no capital,

no real means of steering her own destiny.

And that's before you factor in the Black Death,

which has wiped out a quarter of her population,

the endless failed harvests and terrible suffering.

So is there any cause for hope?

Not really. The son of destiny, Owain Glyndwr,

has risen up and been defeated.

As Henry sends his lieutenants out to rally the Welsh gentry

they move into a land where life for the werin-bobol, the peasants,

is as nasty and short as it is anywhere in Europe.

But Wales is different in one crucial way, as a conquered country,

even its wealthiest families are excluded from power

and influence in the highest courts of the land.

If there are some small signs of progress since the days of Glyndwr,

in church life, architecture and poetry,

they hardly amount to a great leap forward.

In the towns and villages Henry's forces pass through,

Haverfordwest, Fagwr Lwyd, Cardigan,

people's lives are dominated by age-old rituals and beliefs.

After the defeat of Glyndwr, some are bound to wonder

if a new Son of Destiny is on the march.

But perhaps it's the gentry above all who might be persuaded

that Henry Tudor is the man to restore their fortunes.

When he reaches Aberystwyth,

Henry's path turns eastwards towards the heart of England,

and his knights are bringing back to him promises of support.

All the same, the people's response is rather lukewarm.

There's a story I'd like to share, it's a local tradition really,

which hints at how tricky things really were for Henry,

He's on his way from Machynlleth to Welshpool,

and he stays the night here, at this house.

It's called Mathafarn.

It's owned by a man called, wait for it,

Dafydd Llwyd ap Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.

Let's call him Dafydd for short.

Dafydd is a poet but he also has the gift of prophecy, or so it's said.

So, it's a perfectly natural thing for Henry to ask him the question,

"Will I gain the crown of England?"

Dafydd simply can't answer, until his wife chips in and says,

"You might as well say yes because,

"let's face it, is he fails, he's not coming back here."

So, in these parts at least,

confidence in Henry is rather fragile.

Still, the only way for Henry now is forward, to his destiny at Bosworth.

But if Wales is slow to come to Henry's side,

his English allies are even slower.

Right up until the decisive moment of the battle,

the fate of the whole enterprise, and Dafydd's prophesy, is in doubt.

Henry's army is outnumbered by at least two to one,

but Richard divides his forces into three groups.

In contrast, Henry keeps his force together

to withstand the initial attack.

Richard still has men in reserve

so he orders his second group to attack.

But the men don't move. Has the King been betrayed?

Richard gambles his life by charging across the battlefield

to try to kill Henry.

The move backfires.

Richard and his bodyguards get separated from the rest of his army.

More of the uncommitted troops join Henry's side.

And one of Henry's lieutenants

drives a spear through the King's heart.

So who kills Richard? Who delivers that fatal blow?

We'll never know, but there's a potential clue carved into this bed.

It belongs to a Welsh nobleman called Rhys ap Thomas.

One look at it, tells you that he's a man of means.

I want to look at the intricate carving around the edge of the bed,

it tells us the story of Rhys ap Thomas' rather exciting life.

And focus on this section here, two knights charging at other.

A horse here which has lost its shoe.

That could easily be a reference to Richard,

who was famously unhorsed in the Battle of Bosworth

and in Shakespeare's version of events cries out,

"A horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

So is this the bed of a man who killed a king?

All over Wales, there are now people who who're happy to see

the Tudor triumph at Bosworth as a Welsh triumph.

And Henry is genuinely indebted to Rhys ap Thomas

and those Welsh landowners who've supported him.

Henry himself comes from Welsh gentry stock,

the Tudors of North-West Wales, and they're one remarkable family.

Henry Tudor would have grown up with tales of this place.

This is Penmynydd in Anglesey.

It's one of the seats of his family,

who'd served the Welsh princes three centuries before,

and fought for their cousin, Owain Glyndwr,

in his great uprising.

And Henry no doubt would have been intrigued to learn

how his grandfather had met his grandmother.

Owen Tudor, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur,

had fought for the English King Henry V.

After Henry's death, Owen somehow managed to catch the eye of Henry's widow,

Catherine of Valois, Queen Catherine.

The story is, they were at a dance together, he was a bit drunk,

she took a fancy to him. That's Welsh charm for you.

But let's pause a second because

there's a danger that we're getting slightly carried away.

Henry VII, Henry Tudor, the great Welsh hero. Is he?

It's not clear, he's a quarter Welsh,

yes, he is born in Wales, he spends most of his life away from Wales,

there's no evidence that he can speak or understand Welsh.

Yes he does have a red dragon on his banner, but he has lots of banners.

And it is a detail on his royal crest.

I think it's fair to say,

he takes the English crown for himself and for his family,

it's not some great act of liberation for the Welsh people.

In effect, he becomes just another English king.

And yet, that royal magic seems to do the trick

because what happens is,

the people of Wales believe, they desperately want to believe,

that they have a special connection with Henry Tudor,

and not just with him, but with his son and grandchildren,

the future Tudor kings and queens, from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I.

And it's the vigour of that Tudor bloodline which transforms England

from a bit of a backward kingdom to a major world power.

So I'm going to dare to suggest that the British Empire starts here.

Henry's first son is born the year after Bosworth.

Henry calls him Arthur,

a name linked by now with claims to the English throne

but one steeped in ancient Welsh history too.

Henry sends Arthur here to Ludlow in the Welsh Marches

and makes him Prince of Wales.

He's going to be schooled for his future as a monarch

by ruling a Principality. And it's a complex task.

Though Wales has been conquered and subdued,

things are still different here.

Even the Marches, the most accessible parts of the country

aren't part of the English legal system.

They're governed by the Council of the Marches

which has its headquarters in Ludlow.

The plan is to get the young Prince Arthur to run it.

In 1501, Arthur marries Catherine of Aragon.

But following year, he dies suddenly.

When his younger brother, Henry, inherits the crown,

and his brother's wife, the anomalies of governing Wales

become to prove unacceptable to a King who keeps his realm safe

by firm, central control.

But Henry VIII has plenty of other things on his mind.

Famously, religion and marriage, and it's 20 years into his reign

before he's able to sort out the matter of Wales.

This is where the story of Wales changes course.

It's a seismic change, set out in this act of parliament

demanded by Henry VIII.

It joins the government and legal systems of England and Wales.

In other words, it is an Act Of Union.

And for the first time in history, this document is on Welsh soil,

here at the Natural History Museum in Cardiff.

And I have to say, as a Welshman,

it is a very powerful experience to be able to touch this document.

And to read some of its content, for example,

"Henceforth, no Person or Persons

"that use the Welsh Speech or Language

"shall have or enjoy any Manner Office or Fees within this Realm,

"unless he or they use and exercise the English Speech or Language."

So simple and so unthreatening, laid out before me here.

And yet, this is the most important document

in the entire Story of Wales.

While I'm at the Museum here in St Fagan's,

I'm taking the chance to learn more about this essential chapter

in our story from Professor Geraint Jenkins.

Well, Geraint, here we have, I think,

one of the prime symbols of the Act of Union. What is it?

It is indeed. It's a Justice's chair from the 16th century.

It's an emblem really of the new Wales that is dawning,

a new Wales in which English becomes the language of law and administration,

and English becomes the language of the courts.

Let us imagine, Huw, that you broke the law,

that you stole a handkerchief and were brought before your betters,

an English Justice coming in from England,

who'd sit in judgement on you. You, a monoglot Welsh speaker,

would not understand a word of the proceedings,

but you'd give your evidence in Welsh and it would be translated into English.

When the verdict arrives, and the judge condemns you to death,

you would then be hearing the verdict,

and hearing the condemnatory address from the Chief Justice

in a language you do not understand.

Was there not some kind of boiling anger among people about what was going on?

Not really because...

There might have been of course, amongst the werin-bobol,

but it's the gentry that are calling the shots,

and they are the ones who benefit from the Acts of Union,

they see that this is going to help them build estates,

it's going to make them the local governors,

they'll have a voice in Westminster,

they'll become the top dogs in Welsh society.

So they're saying, to all intents and purposes, "Bring it on."

Are there any clear benefits to Wales from the Acts of Union?

If you were a gentleman, certainly there were benefits for Wales,

you look at what the spin doctors for the gentry are saying.

They're saying that Wales and England live in harmony,

that no country in England, that's striking, isn't it?

No country in England has flourished as much as Wales after the Union settlement.

So they knew that they were the major economic beneficiaries of the Union.

Geraint, for the first time, The Act Of Union is on Welsh soil,

what does that mean to you?

I don't know about you, Huw, but I've been having goosebumps,

because this document has had a HUGE psychological effect

on the Welsh people.

We habitually use the phrase, despite ourselves, "England and Wales."

I bet you never say, "Wales and England" any more than I do.

It's a dictum really that starts with the Acts Of Union.

Then again, the fate of the language,

something that's very important to us both

because Welsh is our mother tongue, both of us,

and we worry about the fate of the language.

That again, stems very largely from the language clause in 1536.

So I think this is an Act, which over the centuries,

has embedded itself in our minds and in our hearts and in our souls.

It's very, very important in the Story of Wales,

and I think the Story of Wales would have been very different without it.

It's worth pausing a moment and thinking about the lives of those,

who are subject to Henry's laws.

The population of Wales is just under a quarter of a million,

that's about the size of modern Cardiff.

Nine out of every ten of them don't speak or understand English.

There are some towns with a few thousand residents,

Carmarthen, Haverfordwest, Brecon and Wrexham.

But the vast majority of people live off the land,

away from the towns.

Most people never have the luxury of travelling far

from their own parish.

Their lives are focused on a tight locality,

y filltir sgwar, their own patch,

something that's still so important for many of us in Wales.

Tudor society has a formal structure.

Below the nobles and the gentry, are the yeoman farmers

who own their land and work on it alongside paid labourers.

But the backbone of society, is the class of tenant farmers.

They rent land from the rich, and they can be thrown off it

if they can't pay.

Their families are large, but disease and food shortages mean

that many of their children never survive to adult life.

Mum! Mum!

And in the face of tragedy, they hold to traditional beliefs.

Wales is a Catholic country.

The Welsh are known across Europe

for their devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Their Christian practice sits alongside the faith they have

in more ancient rites and rituals,

like the healing that can be had from holy wells and springs.

But there's a big religious change coming, in the reign of Henry VIII,

driven by his ambitions and by his sex life.

Henry's marriage to Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon,

and then his desire to annul the marriage,

sparks a break with the Pope in Rome.

And Henry uses the split to get his hands not just on a new wife

but also on money and property, and lots of it.

Henry is targeting the monasteries, places like this,

the Abbey of Strata Florida near Tregaron.

He's attacking places which, for centuries,

have been pillars of Welsh life.

Where monks here have chronicled our history

and supported our princes and poets.

What happens is perfectly lawful, Henry's made sure of that,

but he's responsible for the destruction

of some of the greatest buildings in Western Europe.

And they now lie in ruins.

It's an act of state-sponsored vandalism on an epic scale.

And here in Wales, the damage is more extensive

because that link between the monks, who lived in these places,

and Welsh learning and culture, is now broken.

Every part of Wales is affected by Henry's break with the Pope.

It suits those Protestants who want to smash Catholic practices here.

They target six places of key religious significance.

One of them is Penrhys, in the Rhondda.

A miraculous wooden statue of the Virgin Mary

is said to have appeared here.

This modern statue commemorates the tradition.

Henry's enforcer, Thomas Cromwell,

knows that they'll need to move very carefully.

This is one of the holiest places in Wales.

Pilgrims came here, across land and sea, according to the poets,

they came to bathe in the water of the Holy well.

They came here for healing, of body and of mind.

But by the 15th century, there was also a statue of the Virgin Mary,

which was said to have appeared, as if by a miracle.

It was found in an oak tree.

It was the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus in her arms,

she's bending over to kiss him, she's the Queen of Heaven.

But she's also an ordinary peasant woman with her baby in her arms.

I think that was what spoke to the ordinary people of this area,

she was one of theirs.

The pilgrimage to Penrhys, its wooden statute

and its holy well, is hugely popular.

Miracles are said to happen here.

It's easy to look back at that now and to write it off as superstition,

but this was the belief which ran right through society,

from kings and princes right down to the peasants.

This belief that,

if you travel to somewhere that holy things have happened,

holy things can happen to you.

But for the Protestant reformers empowered by Henry VIII,

beliefs like these are not just superstitious,

they endanger national security.

For them, the destruction of shrines like this was a priority,

no matter how beautiful they were, no matter how much people love them,

in fact, precisely because they were beautiful and people loved them.

So Thomas Cromwell wrote, in the summer of 1538,

to a local landowner, William Herbert, of St Julian's in Newport,

and told him to come to Penrhys and destroy the shrine.

When he got here, he had an audience.

What he says in his report to Thomas Cromwell is,

"I explained to them what they were doing wrong,

"I told them how they were dishonouring the King and God,

"and I took the statue away. End of problem."

The strange thing about his story is

that it took three weeks to write up the report.

And when he wrote it up,

he said the statue was still in his house in Newport.

Now that statue was hot. It could have sparked a rebellion.

What's he doing with it still in his house?

But if Herbert is having second thoughts

about Penrhys's miraculous statute

there's no evidence that anything comes of them.

The wooden statue is taken to London, and it's burnt to cinders.

The shrine is destroyed, the pilgrimage stopped.

The well of course doesn't dry up and local people keep using it.

They say it's very good for making their butter churn.

And local traditions about the well survive.

You can come here and find there's plenty of water.

You can come here and find there's hardly any water at all.

The locals say the water flows when it wants to.

So there is still something about Penrhys,

for all that Thomas Cromwell felt it was a dangerous place

and needed to be destroyed.

But Penrhys's national significance as a place of healing

and inspiration has been brought to a sudden end.

And the religious upheaval goes on throughout the whole Tudor period.

Let's take a look inside this church

to explain the confusion for so many worshippers.

Henry VIII, when he dies, still considers himself a Catholic,

despite all his troublemaking. His son Edward is a Protestant.

His successor, Mary, is a devout Catholic,

and Elizabeth I, a hard-line Protestant.

What does all that mean for these churches?

Things which have been familiar for centuries,

disappear by Royal Command.

No more shrines, no relics of the saints, no more going on pilgrimage.

Even the language of worship changes,

from Latin to a mix of English and Welsh.

And the most visible signs of change are here. On the walls around us.

Because the churches go from being richly ornate and decorated,

and a splash of colour, to being plain and white and simple.

And then just as people are getting used to that, back comes the colour,

in all its glory. And then not long afterwards, it's gone. Disappeared.

And the walls no longer have a story to tell.

Of course, the church doesn't change everything overnight,

and worshippers don't depend solely on wall paintings

for their understanding of the gospel,

they're already used to hearing sermons in their own language,

but it's vital for them to keep up with these twists and turns

in what they're meant to believe.

The business of religion in Elizabethan Wales

is a matter of life or death. It's as simple as that.

We have acts of violence, foreign threats against the state,

we have security breaches, we have displays of extremism.

No surprise that a toxic mix like that produces its own victims.

Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, is on the throne.

Some of her subjects refuse to give up the Catholic faith.

Richard Gwyn, a school teacher from Montgomeryshire, is one of them.

He causes a local outrage.

Richard Gwyn, in May 1581,

is brought to this Anglican church in Wrexham.

Six men drag him into this building,

they are determined to make him listen to an Anglican sermon.

But he's having none of it.

They bring him to this area, near the pulpit and put him in shackles.

And in a show of defiance, he rattled the chains so loudly

that the voice of the preacher can't be heard.

And for that, Richard Gwyn is punished.

He's taken outside to the public stocks.

Even then he doesn't lose his strength of spirit.

He's taunted by a local Anglican clergyman who says,

"I have as much authority as the Pope in these parts."

Richard Gwyn replies to him very clearly,

"St Peter was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven,

"you've clearly been given the keys to the beer cellar."

Two years later, Gwyn is convicted of attempting to convert others

to the Catholic faith and of treason.

He's brought to the town's Beast Market

to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

It's a cruelly painful and very bloody process,

being butchered while still alive.

When Richard Gwyn is hanged he appears to be dead,

but when he's cut down, he revives

and he remains conscious throughout his disembowelling.

His final words, in a cry of anguish, are these,

"Iesu, trugarha wrthyf", Jesus, have mercy on me.

Four centuries later, in 1970,

the Catholic Church declares that Richard Gwyn is a saint.

Others in Wales are more in step with the Tudors.

They flourish under the Elizabethan settlement.

The Wynn family establish their seat here in Gwydir Castle,

near Llanrwst in the Conwy Valley. They have quite a history.

Just after the Battle of Bosworth,

one of Henry Tudor's great supporters

Meredith ap Ieuan ap Robert

finds the money to rebuild this castle.

Meredith is descended from the ancient Kings of Gwynedd,

and now he founds this dynasty of his own, the Wynns.

After Henry VIII smashes the monasteries,

the Wynns pop down the road to Maenan Abbey

and find just enough gothic rubble lying around

to build a fine new porch and gardens in the latest style.

One of the best known residents of Gwydir

becomes a real mover and shaker in London.

She's Catrin o Ferain, Katherine of Berain,

and she's famous for marrying four times.

Some say she did murder her first three husbands.

She moves from Wales to London to Antwerp

and back to the Court of Queen Elizabeth,

where she's a trusted confidant.

With six children and scores of well-connected relations,

she becomes known as Mam Cymru, the mother of Wales.

And it's not just Catrin who's making a mark in London.

The Welsh are everywhere,

networking, influencing, socialising.

We can think of them perhaps

as the biggest ethnic group in the city,

thriving in this cultural melting pot, Shakespeare's London.

Queen Elizabeth is more concerned with the Welsh

who stay at home in Wales.

To get them to buy in to her Protestant revolution

she gives them something very precious,

a bible in their own language.

For generations within Wales, the idea was

that Elizabeth had done this out of the kindness of her heart,

out of a particular care for the people of Wales.

Because the Welsh identify very strongly with the Tudor dynasty,

that had originated in Anglesey, that was seen still as a Welsh family.

So they thought that this was an act of particular benevolence.

In reality of course,

Elizabeth and her ministers had very good tactical reasons

for wanting to produce the Bible in Welsh.

Elizabeth was a Protestant queen,

she was facing all kinds of potential threats from abroad,

from Catholic nations, particularly Spain, from the Pope,

so she was intent upon ensuring that the Welsh would become good Protestants.

The Welsh bible is early,

it's only the 13th language in the world to get its own translation.

When we look at the 1588 Bible, you can see its size,

it was a pulpit Bible, it's a large Bible,

it was never intended to be read at home.

It's not the sort of thing you can take with you to bed

and read a chapter before going to sleep.

It was intended for use in the churches,

there were about 1,000 copies printed initially in 1588,

just about enough to supply the parish churches throughout Wales.

And they cost £1 each, which was a lot of money at that time,

they were very often kept chained to the pulpit within churches,

so that they weren't stolen.

Because there were some bible thieves around at that time.

But this, in a way, is the start of a process of making sure

the Welsh people were familiar with the contents of the Bible,

they would hear this Bible from the pulpit every Sunday.

Most of the translation is done here.

Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant is far from any library or centre of learning.

But the task has fallen to the vicar, William Morgan,

who begins the enormous enterprise in the late 1570s.

He was working by himself, night after night,

while also taking charge of his parish.

He was committed to the idea that

it should be the best possible translation,

and that meant going back to the originals.

It meant using the Hebrew Old Testament

and the Greek New Testament.

So it's not surprising that it took him until 1587 to produce a draft

that could go to the printers in London.

Because, at that time, it had to be printed by the Queen's printers.

The print-setters, of course, the typesetters,

probably had no familiarity with the Welsh language whatsoever,

so it was necessary for Morgan to be in there every day,

checking the work and rechecking.

But William Morgan's triumph is not just his attention to detail,

it's also how natural he makes the whole Bible sound in Welsh.

The Welsh that would have been used in the fayre, the marketplace,

the tavern, probably not completely suitable for the Bible,

so one needed to elevate the language a certain amount above that,

and to produce something that was more elegant and more dignified,

but you needed to strike a balance with an everyday language

that people would appreciate and would immediately understand,

so that when they were hearing this Bible in church

it would immediately strike a chord with them,

they would immediately get it in a way that they hadn't before,

because it had been in English or prior to that, in Latin.

"Y mae amser i bob peth

"ac amser i bob ewyllys tan y nefoedd.

"Amser sydd i eni ac amser i farw.

"Ac amser i blannu ac amser i ddiwreiddio y peth a blannwyd."

Nothing resonates more powerfully for me

than the words of the Bible in my mother tongue.

"Amser i wylo ac amser i chwerthin."

And this goes to the heart of William Morgan's towering achievement.

Here we are in the church of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant,

where he addresses his flock over many years.

What he does, is he gives the Bible a new credibility,

throughout Wales, as a vehicle of faith.

"Amser I rhyfel ac amser I heddwch."

By the end of Elizabeth's reign,

the Welsh Bible brings the country into a much closer alignment

with the Monarchy and its Protestant settlement.

But not everyone is focused on spiritual matters.

Ports like Tenby are about to enter The Commercial Age.

Dealing in high end goods like gloves and taffeta,

trading with Portugal and Morocco, the merchants of Tenby

are every bit as wealthy as those of any similar port in England.

Tenby's merchants can offer lower tariffs

and boast of more efficient service.

They're making money and living lives of some style and ease.

But away from pockets like this,

commercial development in Wales is slow.

And that holds back the growth of the latest strain of the Protestant faith

which is sweeping through England's trading towns.

It's called Puritanism.

But some well-off families are drawn to this new form of dissent.

Some leave the Church of England

believing it's still too close to Catholicism.

Take the Prichards of Llancaiach Fawr

in the parish of Gelligaer, near Pontypridd.

Colonel Edward Prichard is a devout Puritan.

He joins a Baptist congregation in Eglwysilan.

The Prichards have lived at Llancaiach Fawr for generations.

Their colourful family history offers a real insight

into life in Wales at this time.

Edward has married Mary Mansell daughter of a wealthy family

from Britton Ferry.

Their household boasts 15 servants living in the manor house.

Colonel Prichard's right-hand man is the steward.

What did the bailiff have to say of this?

It's been confirmed by the bailiffs.

Unlike the other servants, he's an educated man who can speak English.

He has a good grasp of husbandry and the law.

Master James, you are to give the court the truth, the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth, so help thee God,

and by the content of this book.

He helps Colonel Prichard in presiding over local court cases.

In the Great Hall at Llancaiach Fawr,

they settle rent disputes and minor misdemeanours.

Aye, indeed it has.

It also seemed to me, good sir, that you are in contempt in some measure...

Dispensing the King's justice, it seems, is part of God's work.

The family does make time for leisure and entertainment.

But Colonel Prichard is about to be caught up in a brutal struggle,

a clash of ideas between two bitterly opposed forces,

a civil war which will shake the foundations of the state,

it will pit Parliament against the Crown

and it will put a king's life in jeopardy.

The Prichards aren't the only well-to-do family,

in this part of south Wales, to become enthusiastic Puritans.

Here in Whitchurch, a very busy suburb of Cardiff today,

the Williams also embraced the cause.

One of Williams' boys marries into the family of Thomas Cromwell,

who used to be Henry VIII's Chief Minister,

and that man's son Oliver decides not to be known as Williams,

but to embrace the Cromwell surname. That's right, Oliver Cromwell.

This is the man who leads the Puritan fight

to overthrow the monarchy.

And it's a bitter irony for him that most people in Wales,

even those who abandoned the Anglican church, like the Prichards,

are on the King's side.

Before hostilities end,

Edward Pritchard will join Parliament's side.

But when Civil War breaks out, his instincts as an Officer of the Crown

impel him to take up arms for the King.

In the middle of the campaign, he'll have a very special dinner guest

here at Llancaiach Fawr, King Charles himself.

It's counter-intuitive for us today,

who think of ourselves as a socialist, left-wing,

republican-esque sort of place,

in fact, we were thoroughbred royalists.

The Welsh actually liked their king, King Charles.

Lots of places in England, of course,

felt that he was doing something seriously wrong

with the government of the whole country,

with the government of the church. There are elements of that in Wales,

yes, but in fact they see King Charles as their king.

Kingship is something that the Welsh have taken on board as their own

since the Tudor period.

What they like even more, I think, is their church.

The Church of England, ironically,

is very much the Church of Wales in this period.

The Church of Wales, which has been thoroughly Cymru-sised,

it's in their own language, their sermons, their liturgy,

their faith, is truly Welsh.

Now Charles, of course, represents the head of that Church.

Parliament looks like it's challenging that Church,

it wants to bring in more of a Puritan type of worship.

Charles's recruiting sergeants are helped further

by the way Parliament talks about the Welsh, simple, ignorant, stupid,

simply following the King because they know no better.

Do you really want to fight and die

for a bunch of people who're calling you an idiot?

The Welsh aren't idiots. But they've backed the losing side.

By 1646, the King is in prison

and the outcome seems to be settled.

Well, not quite!

After the fighting stopped, we get a battle over what the war was about.

What does victory mean for the Parliamentarians?

Does it mean that you have the King as a mere figurehead,

with a radically reformed Church?

Wales in particular gets very worried and jittery about what they see

emerging out of Parliament.

Radical voices, calling for the complete transformation

of their beloved Church

into something they simply couldn't recognise any more.

Cromwell's radicalism is alarming his own supporters.

The Mayor of Pembroke is one of them.

He's John Poyer, a merchant,

just the kind of person who's sympathetic to Puritanism.

Surrounded on all sides by Royalists,

he's held the castle for Parliament.

But now he's having second thoughts.

Poyer is wondering, I think, what he's fought for.

He also has an added grievance with Parliament,

they aren't paying him what he feels he's owed,

for standing on their side when he was an island of Parliamentarianism.

Pembroke becomes a springboard for a renewal of the war.

Supporters of the King rise up across the whole of Britain.

This time Poyer is fighting against Parliament.

He's been promised that Royalist reinforcements

are marching across the country to be with him.

What does come his way, however, unfortunately for him,

is Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army,

who sweep through South Wales, defeating Royalist forces as they go,

principally in the Battle of St Fagans,

and end up outside these walls, where they raise a siege.

They don't really have the fire power to demolish the place

and for several weeks, Cromwell is camped outside here

with perhaps 6,000 men.

Poyer and his associates are inside with a few hundred.

From May until July of 1648, the Castle holds firm under siege.

In the end, Cromwell brings up the biggest guns he has

to threaten the mediaeval ramparts.

The game is up.

With two other rebels who've been at his side,

Rowland Laugharne and Rice Powell,

Poyer surrenders himself to Puritan justice.

They are taken before a Court Martial and tried.

They are found guilty of treason, all three of them.

They plead for their lives and the Council of State,

which is the body effectively in charge of the country at this time,

agree that justice will be served if only one of them dies.

And so, they decide to draw lots.

In fact, they have a child choose the lots for them.

On two pieces of paper are written, "Life, given of God"

and the other is blank.

Poyer is the one that pulls the blank sheet of paper from the child's hand.

And she asks him, "Did I do well?"

He looks down at the child and says, "Yes, you have done very well."

GUNSHOTS

Poyer faces the firing squad in April 1649.

And Wales's resistance to Parliament dies with him.

But from Pembroke to here in Caerphilly,

Oliver Cromwell doesn't feel secure

in the land of his fathers quite yet.

He's known as God's Englishman,

some might even call him God's Welshman

but Cromwell, after he winning the Civil War,

in which Caerphilly Castle plays a very small part,

orders his army to slight the castle.

The damage they cause may well be responsible

for the famous leaning of the south-east tower.

Forget Pisa with its 4% drift

Caerphilly can boast fully 10%.

It's worth having a look, if you have the inclination!

Cromwell is determined to get the Welsh to take Puritanism seriously.

His Parliament passes an Act for the Propagation of the Gospel

in benighted Wales.

Scores of mainstream Anglican clergy are thrown out of their churches,

replaced by enthusiasts for the new cause.

But in the end, the calls for a Puritan Wales

will fall on deaf ears.

The monarchy is restored, and the gentry are free to behave

more and more like their English counterparts.

As a new century dawns the distance between them

and the Welsh-speaking werin-bobol seems greater than ever.

Perhaps that's why the Welsh countryside

is seen as a backwater, stagnating economically,

lacking the vitality of urban life

which develops in England in the 1700s.

It's a picture that Nia Powell,

an expert in the agriculture of the time, is keen to challenge.

Quite often, Wales is described as an impoverished country of subsistence,

farmers, well, that's not true at all.

What you find in uplands in particular,

are entrepreneurial farmers, if you like.

And I think that's where the real wealth of Wales lay.

That's an intriguing thought because I've grown up the notion,

obviously the wrong one, that it's the farms down on the valley floor,

which are sort of making the money and it's the poor people at the top.

That's wrong, is it?

Well, I think it's quite interesting, if you look at people's wills,

their wealth at death,

the average wealth of the yeoman in Caernarvonshire,

before 1700, was £26. If you look at the average for a very upland parish,

Beddgelert, where Snowdon lies, the average was £99.

Now that's a colossal difference.

Are you saying there's much more money to be made on the uplands,

than down here on the valley floor?

Well, that's the surprising thing, really.

These upland cattle farmers, with their nose for business,

sense a gap in the market for a new product.

From around 1715 onwards,

the numbers of sheep suddenly started to increase.

It may be because of the development of the woollen industry,

but in Snowdonia, the sheep that are noted by travellers,

weren't wool producers. Many of them were black sheep,

and black wool wasn't really favoured for weaving.

But they were noted for the sweetness of their meat.

The strength of the rural economy

is beginning to support business growth in urban Wales.

Places like Denbigh, that produced far, far more gloves

than were ever needed in the whole of Denbighshire.

Wrexham, for instance, which was THE biggest town in Wales.

Wrexham hosts a weekly market

where trade between England and Wales flourishes.

Short-haul drovers, the people who brought animals to the market,

meeting drovers from over the border,

who took them to places like Northampton to fatten up,

London butchers liked what were called Welsh Runts.

Runts because they were small, but they fattened very quickly.

Their meat was considered to be very tender and very good to eat.

Changing tastes are one thing, but the real revolution

for ordinary Welsh people is not to do with farming.

And it comes down south.

Something here is on the move, it's gathering pace

and it's a remarkable phenomenon.

And it's driven by two dynamic forces, religion and education,

and led by two dynamic people, Griffith Jones and Bridget Bevan.

And together they helped to make Wales

one of the most literate countries in the World.

Griffith Jones is the rector of Llanddowror near St Clears.

His idea is to set up a school in one village,

get the people to teach each other to read

and then move on or circulate to a neighbouring hamlet.

You teach your friend here to read, he teaches somebody else to read,

and then somebody else, and on it goes, and on it goes.

And the key thing is, they're doing all this in the only language

that nine out of every ten people understand, Welsh.

Before long, these circulating schools are active in huge numbers.

3,495 schools had been set up...

How many? 3,495? That's an amazing number.

When Griffith Jones dies, his wealthy benefactor, Bridget Bevan,

carries on with the work.

By then, their schools are famous.

A report on them reaches Catherine the Great in Russia.

When you consider the raw figures, they are astounding,

half the population of Wales learns to read in these travelling schools.

It is a towering achievement.

And what is the first thing that most people want to read?

It is the Bible.

For the first time, they're able to study the gospel message

for themselves. And the effect of that,

in this sleepy Carmarthenshire countryside

and much further afield, is electrifying.

It's what we call the Methodist Revival.

Dynamic preachers like Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland

draw thousands to meetings in the open countryside.

Methodism begins as a movement within the Anglican church.

But before long its converts are breaking away

to build their own places of worship.

1740, that's very significant

because it makes this chapel, this cause,

one of the earliest Methodist causes, in this part of Wales.

So let's have a look inside.

One of the features of nonconformist denominations like Methodism

is fervent hymn singing.

The Revival boasts probably the greatest hymn-writer of them all,

William Williams, Pantycelyn.

His words still ring out around our rugby stadiums today.

This old chapel, in the heart of the countryside,

is part of an immense force which transforms life in Wales.

The Methodist preachers who addressed this congregation

revitalised the Christian faith in this country.

They make it a central feature of people's lives.

And while that experience is alien to many people today,

it is certainly part of my family story and many other families too.

And it is, without question, one of the most important chapters

in the story of Wales.

O' chi'n son am Morgan Rhys...

Llew Jones has led the singing in this chapel

for more than half a century.

With a little persuasion, he's agreed to sing for me

the words of Morgan Rhys,

another great local hymn-writer from those days of the Revival.

# Dewch hen ac ieuanc dewch

# At Iesu mae'n llawn bryd. #

So we've reached a significant moment

in our unfolding Story of Wales.

For the first time we can hear an echo of our past,

handed directly from generation to generation,

through people's memory and experience.

This chapter in our story began with the coming of new claimant

to the English throne, descended from a Welsh family.

The Acts of Union passed by his son give the Welsh gentry equality

with their English counterparts, but condemn ordinary people

to justice in a language they don't understand.

It's the Welsh Bible

which binds them closer to the crown and its church.

So when Civil War breaks out,

a Puritan parliament can't persuade them

to join its religious revolution.

It's the remarkable campaign to teach ordinary people to read,

that prepares the ground for a fervent new form of Christianity.

The Welsh embrace it as their own, just as a new rural economy

promises a more prosperous future.

250 years after Henry Tudor marches through Wales

on his way to claim the crown of England,

the drovers are also on the move,

taking their livestock to market in London.

That coupling of England and Wales is now a reality,

but things are changing.

Wales is going to be transformed and become a global leader

in the shaping of a very modern world.

The Open University has produced a free booklet

for you to learn more about the history of the people of Wales.

You can call:

Or go to the website below

and follow the links to the Open University.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd