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thence to Oxford or Cambridge and to the Inns of Court at London. And at this very time when the mother tongue was confronted by these cultural and educational forces, Welsh itself as a literary language was in a state of decline. The traditional style and language of the bards had become stultified and this stultification appeared all the greater by the contrast presented between the traditional literature of Wales and the new learning of the Renaissance then making so tremendous an appeal to those young Welshmen who had been educated at the universities. What is more, the growth of printing made for the greater circulation of books in English.1 The invention of printing in itself was a potential danger to the Welsh language in the sixteenth century, as it was to other minority languages in Europe. Account should also be taken of the demographic factor. The population of Tudor Wales was very small, probably not much more than a quarter of a million.2 Thus on the score of the numbers speaking Welsh, the native language was somewhat tenuously preserved. And finally, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, there was no indication that religion would ultimately come to the aid of the language. In 1559 the Elizabethan church settlement established the Church of England, and for some considerable time it must have seemed doubtful whether this alien church could win the majority of the Welsh people from their allegiance to the old Catholic faith. There were, therefore, in Tudor Wales a number of powerful factors, political, economic, social, and cultural which, taken together and considered in relation to the situation of Welsh today, would seem to have placed the Welsh language in a position of jeopardy, a position that it had never before occupied. In the later Middle Ages, it is true, the language had been, to some extent, subject to alien pressures. The gradual conquest of Wales had brought Norman and Anglo-Norman influences to bear upon the country, affecting most of all, as might be expected, the Welsh aristocracy seeking to maintain their position in the new political order. The growth of the cattle and cloth trades with England, especially in the 1 Glanmor Williams. The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff. 1962), p. 527. 8 Professor David Williams has estimated the population of Wales (including Monmouthshire) in 1536 at 278.000; excluding Monmouthshire at 258,000 ('A Note on the Population of Wales, 1536-1801', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies (1937). III. 363); Mr. Leonard Owen's estimate of the population of Wales (excluding Monmouthshire) for the period 1545-63 is 225,826 ('Population of Wales in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1959), p. 113). 8 Glyn Roberts, 'Wales and England Antipathy and Sympathy, 1282-1485'. Welsh History Review, I, 375-496.