Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/283

Rh fortunes of the once powerful and popular Church in Wales had sunk,—in 1811 there were only English speaking prelates to be found, whilst the abuses of non-residence, pluralities and even nepotism were rampant everywhere. As instances of this clerical corruption then prevailing in Wales, mention may be made of the cases of Richard Watson (d. 1816), the non-resident bishop of Llandaff, who rarely visited his diocese during an episcopate of thirty years; and of another English divine who held the deanery, the chancellorship and nine livings in a North Welsh see, his curates-in-charge being paid out of Queen Anne's Bounty, a fund expressly intended for the benefit of impoverished livings. An honourable exception to the indolent and rapacious divines of this stamp was Thomas Burgess (bishop of St Davids), to whose exertions is mainly due the foundation of St David's College at Lampeter in 1822, an institution erected to provide a better and cheaper education for intending Welsh clergymen. The foundation of Lampeter College was one of the earliest signs of a new era of revived vigour and better government within the Church, although it was not till 1870 that, by Mr Gladstone's appointment of Dr Joshua Hughes to the see of St Asaph, the special claims of the Welsh Church were officially recognized, and the old Elizabethan policy was one more reverted to after a lapse of nearly two hundred years. After 1870 Welsh ecclesiastical appointments were made in a more truly national spirit, and this official acknowledgment of the peculiar duties and claims of the Church in Wales largely helped to win back no small amount of the strength and popularity that had been lost during Georgian times.

With the old national Church enthralled by English political prelates, and consequently hindered from ministering to the special needs of the people, the progress of dissent throughout the Principality was naturally rapid. Although primary education was largely supplied by the many Church schools in all parts of Wales, yet it was in the three most important denominations—the Congregationalists, the Baptists and the Calvinistic Methodists (that new-born sect of which the Church herself was the unwilling parent)—that almost all Welsh spiritual development was to be found during the first half of the 19th century. Thus between the year 1811 (the date of the Methodist secession) and 1832 (the year of the great Reform Bill), the number of dissenting chapels had risen from 945 to 1428: a truly marvellous increase even allowing for the speedy growth of population, since every chapel so built had of necessity to be well attended in order to render it self-supporting. From this religious guidance of the people by the well-organized forces of dissent, it was but a step to political ascendancy, and as the various constitutional changes from the Reform Bill onward began to lower the elective franchise, and thus to throw more and more power into the hands of the working classes, that spirit of radicalism, which is peculiarly associated with political dissent, began to assert itself powerfully throughout the country. As early as the reign of William IV. there appeared the weekly Times of Wales (Amserau Cymry), founded and edited by the able William Rees, who may be styled the father of the Welsh political press; and the success of Rees's venture was so marked that other journals, arranged to suit the special tenets of each sect, speedily sprang into existence. In the year 1870—a date that for many reasons marks the opening of an important era in modern Welsh history—the dissenting bodies of Wales were supporting two quarterly, sixteen monthly and ten weekly papers, all published in the vernacular and all read largely by peasants, colliers and artisans. With so powerful a press behind it, it is no wonder that Welsh political dissent was largely responsible for the changed attitude of the Imperial government in its treatment of the Principality—as evinced in the Sunday Closing Act of 1881, a measure which was very dear to the strong temperance party in Wales, and in the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, granted by Lord Salisbury's government in 1889. It was certainly owing to the pressure of Welsh political dissent that Lord Rosebery's cabinet issued the Welsh Land Tenure Commission in 1893—an inquiry which did much to exonerate the Welsh squirearchy from a number of vague

charges of extortion and sectarian oppression, and that Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet appointed the Welsh Church Commission (21st June 1906). This Commission was authorized to “inquire into the origin, nature, amount and application of the temporalities, endowments and other properties of the Church of England in Wales and Monmouthshire; and into the provision made and the work done by the Churches of all denominations in Wales and Monmouthshire for the spiritual welfare of the people, and the extent to which the people avail themselves of such provision.” The Report and Memoranda of the Commission were published on the 2nd of December 1910.

Mention must be made of the Rebecca riots in 1843-1844 in South Wales, wherein many toll gates were destroyed by mobs of countrymen dressed in female garb, “as the daughters of Rebecca about to possess the gates of their enemies”, and the Anti-Tithe agitation of 1885-1886—largely traceable to the inflammatory language used concerning clerical tithe by certain organs of the vernacular press—which led to some disorderly scenes between distraining parties of police and crowds of excited peasants in the more remote rural districts. There have been occasional strikes accompanied by acts of lawlessness in the industrial and mining districts of Glamorganshire, and also amongst the workmen employed in the quarries of Gwynedd.

The University College of Wales was founded at Aberystwyth in 1872; that of South Wales at Cardiff in 1883; and of North Wales at Bangor in 1884. In 1889 the system of intermediate schools, arranged to form an educational link between the primary schools and the colleges, was inaugurated. In November 1893 the University of Wales was incorporated by royal charter, with Lord Aberdare (d. 1895) as its first chancellor. All the religious bodies, including the Church, have been extremely active in educational and pastoral work; whilst the peculiar religious movement known as a revival (Diwygiad) has occurred from time to time throughout the Principality, notably in the years 1859 and 1904.

But the most remarkable phenomenon in modern Wales has been the evident growth of a strong national sentiment, the evolution of a new Welsh Renaissance, which demanded special recognition of the Principality's claims by the Imperial parliament. This revived spirit of nationalism was by outsiders sometimes associated, quite erroneously, with the aims and actions of the Welsh parliamentary party, the spokesmen of political dissent in Wales, yet in reality this sentiment was shared equally by the clergy of the Established Church, and by a large number of the laity within its fold. Nor is the question of the vernacular itself of necessity bound up with this new movement, for Wales is essentially a bi-lingual country, wherein every educated Cymro speaks and writes English with ease, and where also large towns and whole districts—such as Cardiff, south Monmouth, the Vale of Glamorgan, Gower, south Glamorgan, south Pembroke, east Flint, Radnorshire and Breconshire—remain practically monoglot English-speaking. Nor are the Welsh landowners and gentry devoid of this new spirit of nationalism, and although some generations ago they ceased as a body to speak the native tongue, they have shown a strong disposition to study once more the ancient language and literature of their country. It is true that a Young Wales party has arisen, which seeks to narrow this movement to the exclusion of English ideas and influences; and it is also true that there is a party which is abnormally suspicious of and hostile to this Welsh Renaissance; but in the main it is correct to say that the bulk of the Welsh nation remains content to assert its views and requirements in a reasonable manner. How wide-spread and enthusiastic is this true spirit of nationalism amongst all classes and sects of Welsh society to-day may be observed at the great meetings of the National Eisteddfod, which is held on alternate years in North and South Wales at some important centre, and at which the immense crowds collected and the interest displayed make a deep impression on the Anglo-Saxon or foreign visitors. The sincere, if somewhat narrow-minded religious feelings, the devotion manifested by all classes towards the land of their fathers, the extraordinary