Welsh Journals

A WELSH CHRONICLER IN TUDOR ENGLAND1 THE LATE MR. O'DONNELL, whose generosity and forethought made this lecture possible, expressed the wish that attention should be called, amongst other things, to the nature and importance of the Celtic contribution to the population of England. This contribution can be investigated from two very different standpoints. The first would involve a study of the Saxon invasion and conquest of this island and of the circumstances which led to the more or less gradual absorption of at least some of the conquered Britons into what later became a mixed population. This is not the standpoint from which I propose to approach the subject, but rather it is that other stand- point which takes into account the considerable contribution made to the population of England by people who went there, in com- paratively recent times, from the Celtic lands of Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and even Brittany, if one thinks of the Breton followers of William the Conqueror and some of his successors. He would be a bold man who would attempt, especially in a single lecture, an exhaustive study of such a wide and compli- cated subject. What I propose to do is very much more circumscribed and less ambitious: it is to focus attention on the motives which led so many Welshmen to settle in London in the first half of the sixteenth century and, in particular, to discuss what we know of the career and written work of one such Welshman. His written work, as we shall see, throws light not only on his own activities and on his attitude of mind towards the events and some of the characters of the period in which he lived, but also on those of some others of his fellow countrymen who had left their native land for London. Throughout the Middle Ages there must have been a steady flow of Welshmen going for various reasons-mainly economic-from their own land to England. Many of them, we know, became soldiers in the English armies, and 10,500 Welsh footsoldiers fought in the battle of Falkirk. At least some of these must have settled perma- nently in England. What was once a steady flow of emigrants, however, was swollen into a river in full spate after the accession of the Tudors. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable in the history of 1 This O'Donnell lecture is published in the form in which it was delivered in the University of Edinburgh on 22 April 1955 except for a few minor changes in the text and additions to the notes.