Wales: History, Politics, Culture

  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 We...

  Only Nixon could go to China . . . Prior to the Norman Conquest, Wales had managed to largely preserve its independence, albeit in a somewhat chaotic form. It had its own language, literature and legal system. The country’s weakness lay in its political fragmentation, a situation the Normans were quick to exploit. In the south, the invaders were held up for a time by the policies and military prowess of the Lord Rhys and his successors.   In the north, various attempts were made to create a unified Welsh state. Unfortunately, the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in 1282 marked the end of that venture and for Welsh independence in general. But not of Welshness. At first, the new regime appeared to work. The language continued in common usage and while the English criminal law was introduced, the Welsh civil law was not abolished. Nevertheless, the fourteenth century was a time of growing social and racial tension in Wales. The crisis had many contributory factors: a ...