realisation of the childhood and suffering of Christ, the humanity of God. This may be illustrated by the following poem by a Welsh friar of the thirteenth century, Madawc ap Gwallter:-- "A Son is given us, A kind Son is born ... A Son to save us, The best of Sons. A God, a man, And the God a man With the same faculties. A great little giant, A strong puny potentate Of pale cheeks. Richly poor Our father and brother, Exalted, lowly, Honey of minds; With the ox and ass, The Lord of life Lies in a manger; And a heap of straw As a chair, Clothed in tatters; Velvet He wants not, Nor white ermine-- To cover Him; Around His couch Rags were seen Instead of fine linen." I do not know the dates of the foundations of the Welsh Franciscan houses; the dates given in Mr. Newell's scholarly "History of the Church in Wales" are impossible. Llanfaes is said to have been established by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, and Franciscan influence would come to Wales through Thomas the Welshman, Bishop of St. David's (1247), who had been lecturer to the Franciscans at Oxford, and was famous for his piety and learning. Another Franciscan I wish to mention is Friar John the Welshman, who in his old age was employed to negotiate with the Welsh in 1282. He had studied and taught at Oxford and Paris, and made a creditable show beside such intellectual giants as Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, his contemporaries. The widespread and lasting popularity of his works is shown by the large number of manuscripts and early printed editions which have come down to us. But his chief interest and life-work was the popularisation of knowledge in the service of morality. He devoted his energies to training up lecturers who should go to the Franciscan friaries in the chief towns in England and Wales and teach friars and clergy the art of popular preaching. Friar John of Wales was one of the chief inspirers of the "University Extension" movement of the Middle Ages. These popular preachers or lecturers did not do much for the advancement of sound learning, because they did not study any science for its own sake, but only for the moral lessons they could find in it. But, to rouse some intellectual interest in the people at large, and stimulate their moral sense, was a work not unworthy of the universities; and this aim was to some degree attained. One of the favourite ways of spending a holiday in the Middle Ages was to go and hear a friar preach. Here is a summary of a friar's sermon constructed after the method of Friar John of Wales, on the relative merits of the Ass and the Pig. "The pig and the ass live not the same life: for the pig during his life does no good, but eats and swills and sleeps; but when he is dead, then do men make much of him. The ass is hard at work all his days and does good service to many; but when he dies, there is no profit. And that is the way of the world. Some do no good thing while they live, but eat and drink and wax fat, and then they are dragged off to the larder of hell, and others enrich themselves with their goods. Whereby I know that those, who for God's sake live the life of holy poverty, shall never lack substance, because their heavenly Father has pigs to kill. For as the good man before the season will kill a pig or two to give puddings to his children, so will our Lord kill those hardened sinners before their time, and give their goods to the children of God. So the psalmist says: 'The bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days,' because they do no work to keep their bodies healthy. Nothing is so healthful for body and soul as honest work. Work is the life of man, the guardian of health; work drives away sin, and makes people sleep well at night. Work is the strength of feebleness, the health of sickness, the salvation of men,--quickener of the senses, foe of sloth, nurse of happiness, a duty in the young and in the old a merit. Therefore it is better to be an ass than a pig." One of the most able of these "extension lecturers" was another Welshman--probably a native of Cardiff--Friar John David, whose lectures at Hereford were so successful that after a year both the friars and the clergy of the city declared he was indispensable, and petitioned for his reappointment. He became the head of the Franciscan province of England, and lies buried among the ruins of the church of the Grey Friars in Cardiff. VI LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD AND THE BARONS' WAR Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the history of England and the history of Wales are so closely bound up together that it is impossible to study either apart from the other. In illustration of this general statement I will ask you to consider briefly the history of twelve years, from 1255 to 1267--a period of special interest to us, because these are the years in which Llywelyn's power was founded and built up. In 1255 occurred three events of great importance to Wales: (1) Llywelyn overthrew his brothers in battle; (2) Edward Longshanks took possession of his Chester estates; (3) Edmund Crouchback was formally proclaimed king of Sicily. 1. David, younger son of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, died in 1246, leaving no descendants, and the Principality was seized by the three sons of his elder brother Gruffydd--Owain the Red, Llywelyn, and David. For some years they held together, because Henry III. opposed the accession of any of them, claiming the Principality as a lapsed fief under a treaty made with the last prince, David ap Llywelyn. But after a time the king accepted the homage and recognised the rights of the sons of Gruffydd. Being thus freed from direct hostility of the English king, the joint rulers soon quarrelled, and came to open war in 1255. "By the instigation of the devil," says the Brut y Tywysogion, "a great dissension arose between the sons of Gruffydd--namely, Owain the Red and David on the one side, and Llywelyn on the other. And thereupon Llywelyn and his men awaited without fear, trusting in God, at Bryn Derwin the cruel coming of his brother accompanied by a vast army, and before the end of one hour Owain was taken and David fled, after many of the army were killed and others captured, and the rest had taken to flight. And then Owain the Red was imprisoned; and Llywelyn took possession of the territory of Owain and David without any opposition." Thus Gwynedd was united under one ruler. 2. It was the policy of Henry III. to collect the earldoms into the hands of his relations. Thus the great palatine earldom of Chester, having lapsed to the Crown through failure of heirs, was granted in 1254 to the king's eldest son, Edward. Besides Chester and its dependencies Edward received Montgomery and the royal lands in South Wales (Cardigan and Carmarthen), Ireland and Gascony--in fact all the territory outside England over which the king had rights. These possessions were calculated to give the heir to the throne a varied experience and splendid training in the art of government. Edward was in need of such training, as the story of his early years shows. He was only sixteen years of age in 1255, but in the Middle Ages men lived short lives and matured very early. Edward was married in 1254, and had much experience in war and statesmanship before he was twenty. It was a wild time, and young Edward was among the wildest spirits; as he rode through the country, accompanied by his two hundred followers--mostly rollicking and arrogant foreign adventurers--who robbed and devastated the land, and thrashed and even mutilated passers-by for fun, people looked forward with great fear to the accession of such a ruffian. A few years of responsibility, and failure, soon changed him into the noblest and most law-abiding of the Plantagenets. It was Wales which gave him his first lesson. He first tried his hand at the reorganisation of the "Middle Country," making it "shire-land," introducing the English law and administrative system; the same policy was put in force in Cardigan and Carmarthen, which formed one shire with a Shiremoot and the usual institutions of an English county. Some Welshmen had already petitioned the king for the introduction of English law into Wales, complaining that by Welsh law the crime of the guilty is visited on the innocent relations. At best it was a task which required very careful management, and Edward and his advisers were as yet quite unfitted for it, prone as they were to violent methods, having an insolent contempt for all customs and habits which differed from those to which they were used, and all classes except their own. The result is thus expressed by the Welsh chronicler: After Edward returned to England, "the nobles of Wales came to Llywelyn, having been robbed of their liberties and made captives, and declared they would rather be killed in war for their liberty than suffer themselves to be trampled on by strangers. And Llywelyn was moved at their tears, and invaded the Middle Country and subdued it all before the end of the week." In this work Llywelyn was assisted by descendants of Rhys, the princes of South Wales, who in Cardigan suffered from Prince Edward's policy in the same way as the men of the Middle Country or Four Cantreds. This union of North and South Wales is one of the special characteristics of the struggle under Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. That the Welsh of the North should join those of the South was, notes Matthew Paris, "a circumstance nev