Extracted from Sir D. Brynmor-Jones, "Morgannwg in Tudor Times," in Historical Sketches of Glamorgan: A Series of Papers Read Before the Glamorgan Society, London (London and Cardiff: Western Mail Limited, 1907).

Physical Condition

In picturing the Morgannwg of the early days of the Tudor times, you must try to realise a country presenting very different outward and visible features from that of to-day. You must imagine a land in which the only buildings that would attract attention were the castles, with a cluster of little houses around them; monasteries, with their outbuildings; parish churches, sturdily built for defence, if need be; and here and there dotted on the landscape the small houses of the freehold tenants and the cot of the servile cultivator of the soil. There were few enclosures. There were extensive forests and marshes.

You must dismiss from your view railways and tramways, and even roads, for such as then existed were mere tracks compared to the magnificent highways we owe to the South Wales Highways Acts of the last century. There was perhaps no, certainly very little, wheeled-traffic. Travelling was done by nearly all classes, except the very poorest, on horseback. There were no hotels, and such inns as existed were of the most miserable description, as well as few and far between. The traveller, even the lord on the king's or his own business had to make his way from castle to castle or abbey, and seek, as a courtesy, a shelter for the night, while the humbler wayfarer had to take his chance of a night's lodging under the hospitable roofs of the smaller gentry or farmers who kept open house.

There were no manufactories or collieries to spoil the aspect, for industry on a large scale had not even commenced. The mountains had only been scratched for coal, or their summit plateaus dug out here and there for peat. The towns were hardly villages in our modern sense. Probably Cardiff had not a population exceeding 1,500, for as late as 1801 its population was only 1,870. The castles were homes as well as fortresses and places of arms. So that, making some allowance, we may find the aspect of the county not untruthfully portrayed in the verses which Dean Conybeare founded on an old triad:

Morgannwg, thy dales are fair,
Proud thy mountains rise in air,
And frequent through the varied scene
Thy white walled mansions glared between.
May the radiant lamp of day
Ever speed its chariot ray
On those walls of glittering white,
Morgannwg, the bards' delight.

Social Condition of Glamorgan

If we turn from the outward appearance of the County to its social features we shall find ourselves in a somewhat strange world. A world in which much that was characteristic of feudalism and chivalry still remain, but in which there have come into notice things that mark the commencement of a new era. The bishops, abbots and clergy, both secular and regular, still form a class apart, bound by their own laws, claiming their old immunity from the jurisdiction of the civil court, and discharging in their own sphere much necessary work of government that the State now undertakes.

Among the laity, class distinctions were marked by broad and obvious lines, not to be passed by the ablest and most ambitious. At the top of the social ladder were the barons and lords, still living in their castles, with households organised on the model of that of the king or prince. Next to them were arising a class of large freeholders, living in manor houses, types of those houses which, greatly enlarged, were to supersede castles as places of residence. For the most part, these men were connected by blood or marriage with the great families of the older baronage, and some were to take their places among the founders of a new aristocracy under the Tudors and the Stuarts.

Belonging to this upper class, but not settled on the land, there were knights, esquires, and men of gentle blood, often cadets of great houses, deprived by the law and custom of primogeniture of all share in the estates of their family. They were, by their position, entirely cut off from the pursuit of trade or commerce, for a rigid custom only allowed them one of two professions -- that of arms, or that of the law -- for at this time entrance into holy orders was not looked upon with much favour. Many of these men became officers or retainers in the household of the head of the family, or one of his allies or friends, and helped in the management of his estates and the command of his soldiers.

Below this upper class with these gradations, there came yeomen, or small freeholders farming their own land; millers, who were persons of great consequence; blacksmiths, indispensable for the traveller, and the superior handicraftsmen of various kinds. In the typical village, and even town, you would observe only two or three fair-sized houses, and you would find that they were probably those of the miller, the blacksmith, and the celibate parish priest, who was certain to be the most interesting man of the three. He was the counsellor of young and old; he said his masses on the appointed days, not over anxious as to the size of his congregation; and, so far as his scanty means allowed, he gave shelter to the benighted traveller, and deemed himself fortunate if he found him one with whom he could refresh his recollection of his school days at the Monastery and his youth at the University. Below these middlemen there were the servile tenants of the manor, labourers, the itinerant hawkers and pedlars, the travelling craftsmen, while, holding a position aloof from all these classes, in the county -- but not of it -- were the bards and the mendicant friars.

But, perhaps, the best way to realise this state of things, would be to ride, say from Cowbridge to Cardiff, and see in imagination, those whom you might meet if you had done so in 1485. The first thing that would strike you is that you come across, men travelling in companies and processions, and in twos and threes, but hardly ever singly. You might meet the lord of Oxwich or Ewenny, going with his lady to visit in state the lord of Cardiff. If you are of knightly degree and have on your golden spurs, call your servant to attention, salute his lordship, doff your hat to his lady, and courteously wait while this procession passes, and you will find that they are accompanied by knights, esquires, pages, men-at-arms, all armed and all clad in the liveries of the lord, of ladies in attendance, and of humbler servants leading horses or mules laden with the luggage of the household.

Then you may meet a lord in armour on sterner business bent, very likely going to quell a disturbance among the Welcherie of the hills, attended by a company of twenty or thirty well-equipped soldiers. And then, again, the Sheriff, with his attorney and clerks, with a posse of the county going to hold his tourn; or perhaps the bishop on a comfortable cob, with his chancellor and secretaries, in staid clerical gowns (though perchance you may catch the gleam of a prudent coat of mail under the episcopal robe), followed by a retinue of servants and a proper escort of sturdy armed men. You would also meet traders, generally travelling in small companies, with strings of led horses or mules laden with packs; farmers taking their cattle and sheep to the market in the town, or to the annual fair of the district; itinerant craftsmen, with the tools of their trade, not fearless of thieves, and the friar whose portly figure somewhat belies the austerity of his vow; and last, but not least, the bard, ready, for a consideration, to recount in indifferent verse the deeds of your illustrious ancestors, sing you a song of your lady love, or beguile your journey with the latest scandal of the county.

But that is the pleasing side of your ride. For there will also obtrude on your attention in unpleasant numbers, ragged and evil-looking men and women; the broken gentleman, still with jaunty airs, his sword his only possession, ready to be hired for any desperate deed; criminals fleeing from justice, the outlaw, the, landless, and the lordless, apprentices who have left their masters, artisans who have been expelled from their guilds, some with and some without their womankind and children, but all of them waifs and strays of humanity -- the sad relics of the storms of the Middle Ages, of pestilence, of cruel legislation, of civic brawls, of private rapine, and of sanguinary and devastating civil wars.

Such is the state of things you must try to realise if you wish to understand the history of the time; to read between the lines of statutes and chronicles, and lists of dates, and the names of battles, and the records of births, marriages and deaths.