Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/109

 are, but the Celt has set a deep mark even upon these. It was only by the union of the Welsh with Montfort, himself a Breton and a Celt, that the barons won their first Parliament. Montfort's victory was mainly due to his alliance with his bosom friend, the handsome and accomplished Prince Llewelyn. When the barons fell to fighting one another for weary years during the wars of the Roses, it was Henry Tudor, the son of a Welsh squire, supported by Welshmen, who ended that long and dreary conflict, and founded what Ranke, the great historian of the Reformation period, calls the most capable dynasty that sat on the English throne. Then kings were kings, not puppets like the two first Georges, or idiots like the third, or perfumed rakes like the fourth, or expensive ornaments and figureheads like the court of Victoria. This Celtic dynasty of Tudors really ruled. Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth set their imprint deep and indelible on English history. Gray, in his spirited Pindaric ode, The Bard, thus refers to the Tudor rulers of Britain:—