English Bible, English Revolution; Welsh Bible, no Welsh Revolution

One of the big issues which triggered the Reformation was the question of the Bible. The Roman Catholic Church insisted that it be restricted to Latin, so as to preserve the monopoly of its knowledge to the priestly class and the educated sections of society. By way of contrast Protestant Reformers emphasised the priesthood of all believers and insisted on the need for every Christian to read the Scriptures in his own tongue. A s early as 1380 John Wycliffe began translating the Bible into English but suffered for this in the wake of the upheaval of the Peasants’ Revolt. However, he fared better than William Tyndale who translated the whole Bible and ended up being condemned for heresy in the Netherlands before being executed by strangulation and burning at the stake in 1536.

In Wales the first translation of the New Testament into Welsh was completed in 1567, the first fruits of a 1563 statute requiring a Welsh translation of both the Bible and the Prayer Book to be ready by St David’s Day 1567 for use in services in those parishes where Welsh was in general use. This imperative went against the other trend in Welsh life, which was to exclude Welsh from areas of public life such as the law courts, but it appears that church uniformity was considered more important than linguistic uniformity by Elizabethan policymakers. The 1567 New Testament was largely the work of William Salebury who came in for fierce criticism for some of the language forms (such as mutations) that he used. Such criticism may explain why when the translation of the entire Bible was published in 1588 it was down largely to the work of William Morgan. He translated the Old Testament but did little more than clean up the language of the New that Salebury had completed in order to meet the objections of the Cymricist tendency previously voiced.

Allowing ordinary people too to read the Bible in their own tongue was not, of course the only way of getting the message of the Bible across to the citizenry. Preaching accompanied the Bible translation and had preceded it by many centuries. However, the narrative was carefully controlled by the priestly class of firstly the Roman Catholic Church and then by the Church of England. Henry VIII’s translation of the Bible into English undermined his desire for control because it meant people could read for themselves (or hear read aloud) what the Scriptures actually said. Moreover, Protestant ideas such as the priesthood of all believers and the proliferation of lay preachers undermined the hierarchical control of clerics and the state. Christopher Hill argues that the Bible at this time, especially the Geneva Bible with its highly political marginal notes “came near to being a revolutionist’s handbook.” [i]

But while developments in England culminated in a revolution affecting all areas of English life, and a civil war, the Welsh behaved in a much more restrained and conservative manner. When King Charles I decided in 1629 to do away with parliaments and begin his Personal Rule, the Welsh were generally happy. They approved of actions like levying Ship Money, a form of taxation to fund the navy. Naturally, those powerful people in Wales at risk of piratical attacks and invasions from Ireland and Spain were happy to support this while English critics of the King challenged him in the law courts. They were also content with Archbishop Laud’s (Laud himself being a former Bishop of St David’s) policies to raise the dignity of the services in the Church of England through what many in England regarded as Popish practices. The Welsh became less happy with the Personal Rule as the burden of Ship Money increased and rumours began to circulate of the King recruiting a Catholic army in Ireland even while the Scots were preparing to invade. The Scottish threat forced the King to call a Parliament back to raise money. The Short Parliament lasted only for two months before being dissolved in May 1640. However, the Long Parliament had a life stretching from November 1640 to march 1660. In its earliest months it began the process of initiating revolutionary policies affecting the economic and religious spheres.

Despite this, during the first months of the Long Parliament only one Welsh MP fully supported the King, with the rest remaining, if not hostile then aloof or suspicious. Despite the threat of an Irish invasion in 1641 the enthusiasm for reform among Welsh members declined as attacks on the King’s Prerogative and on the Church of England proceeded. The decline was such that when the King raised his standard at Nottingham in August 1642 – regarded as the beginning of the Civil War – only five Welsh MPs continued to support the Parliamentary cause.[ii]

But while the Welsh didn’t support Parliamentary cause there was little enthusiasm for the King. At best there was studied indifference with few willing to put everything on the line for Charles. This was partly fed by the fact that neither side promoted their cause in Wales through the medium of the Welsh language, the only language understood by the vast majority of ordinary folk. Nevertheless, it was Wales, much like other areas of lesser economic and social progress that enabled the King to pursue the conflict. One of the first things he did after raising his standard at Nottingham was to go to Shrewsbury to review those recruited in north Wales to fight for him. And, as John Davies notes, the King might not even have pursued the war had he not had the backing of rich families such as the Somersets (who owned, among other land and properties, Raglan Castle).

When Parliament had achieved its final victory and the King was put on trial the Commonwealth was proclaimed. The Welsh were not generally enthused, and this was why Wales was regarded by the English leadership as one of “the dark corners of the land.” In 1650, the year after the regicide, the Parliament passed an “Act for the Better Promotion of the Gospel in Wales.” This measure aimed to get rid of unworthy ministers and to replace them with godly ones. Hundreds of the former were dismissed while scores of itinerant preachers were appointed, and a school was established in very urban centre. The leadership in London wanted to bring light to this dark corner of the land, a light which involved not just the promotion of the Gospel but an assault on much of its traditionalism.

A fascinating question arises as to why the English Bible led to what Christopher Hill describes as “The English Revolution” while the Welsh Bible had no parallel effect. John Davies notes that the Welsh translation of the New Testament was carried out “at the Bishop’s Palace at Abergwili, a place which [in 1567] was one of the rare examples, before the establishment of the University of Wales, of a centre cherishing Welsh learning.”[iii] But was it down to the lack of institutions of learning in Wales? England had universities such as Oxford, and that was one of the chief centres of support for the King.  Moreover, Hill argues that the demand for new scientific knowledge, at least in its early stages was met not by the universities but by the merchants and craftsmen. Not in Oxford or Cambridge, but in London, in the vernacular not in Latin, and “virtually ignored by the official intelligentsia.”[iv] The purveyors of the new knowledge were often self-taught and catered for a clientele of merchants, shipbuilders and ship owners, gunners and surveyors.  Hill argues in much of his voluminous work that the English revolution was a capitalist one, and a capitalist revolution requires political philosophies conducive to it. Political philosophies inspired by the Bible and the explosive growth in political tracts fuelled by the printing press enabled new ideas to be found. Thus, it might be that the ultimate reasons for the traditionalism of Wales in the seventeenth century lie in its comparative lack of economic development.

Image shows John Wycliffe's 14th century Bible.

Further reading here and also here.

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[i] Christopher Hill, (2001) The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, Oxford, Clarendon Press, p4

[ii] John Davies, (1993) A History of Wales, London, Penguin, p277

[iii] Ibid, p243

[iv] Hill, op.cit,  p16