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CONTENTS
I The Earliest Inhabitants
II Cymry, Teutons and Normans
III A Conquered People, 1282 - 1485
IV Union, Reformation and Renaissance, 1485 - 1630
V Educational and Religious Movements, 1630 - 1780
VI Economic Development, 1700 - 1850
VII Towards Contemporary Wales, 1780 - 1914
Epilogue : Wales since 1914
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" Chapter V
Educational and religious Movements, 1630-1780
Towards the end of James 1's reign an English Puritan wrote a book which he whimsically called A Consolation for our Grammar Schools. Its main purport was to promote 'the more speedie attaining of our English tongue' as the only effective means of reclaiming 'the ignorant country of Wales', as well as the Irish and the Red Indians, from 'their exceeding ignorance of our holy God and of all true and good learning'. Not that Wales herself was devoid of grammar schools: there were at the time three grammar schools in North Wales and at least twice that many in the south. The registers of four Cambridge colleges for the early seventeenth century show pupils from eleven Welsh schools, and there had been a substantial Welsh colony at Oxford in Glyn Dwr's day. The Inns of Court were even more widely patronised, whether for professional purposes or merely as 'finishing schools'. Why then all this talk about 'the ignorant country of Wales'?
The answer is, of course, that while a small minority was able to acquire fluency in English at grammar school or university, the vast majority spoke what to English ears was unintelligible gibberish. Worse still, it was rooted in pagan antiquity and fostered by a bardic order believed to be direct successors of the ancient druids. An English member of one of James 1's parliaments assured the House that the Welsh were 'an ydolotrous nation and worshippers of divells...thrust out into the mountains where they lived like thiefs and robbers and are to this day the most base, peasantly, perfidious people of the world'.
Fortunately the Welsh in Wales and the English in England do not make up the whole picture: there were also the Welsh in London, thoroughly satisfied with the Tudor settlement but never forgetting their homeland......" (p. 86-7)
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A Short History of WALES
Welsh Life and Customs from prehistoric times
to the present day
A.H. Dodd.
First published by Batsford 1972 as 'Life in Wales'.
New edition John Jones Publishing Ltd 1998.
Paper bound, square spine, 178 pages.
58 monochrome illustrations.
ISBN 978-1-871083-36-1
Price £8.99.
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