In 1969, it was the opinion of my grandmother in Swansea that the new Prince of Wales was a beautiful boy. I have no idea where this idea came from, but it was not a view shared with the rest of the family, who relished any opportunity to pointedly walk out when the British National Anthem was played. In those days it happened quite a lot: at the end of most movies, in concerts and when the TV ended for the night. The Welsh national anthem, of course, was different. For this we stood – all the better to belt out the words alongside the everyone else in the vicinity.
The new Prince of Wales’ inauguration in Caernarvon Castle that year was followed by a tour of his new principality, and I expect my grandmother joined the throngs waving flags at the roadside as he passed; while the rest of us annexed a generous area of the deserted beach with our windbreak and new principality that summer, and my family celebrated in the republican way by not waiting by the roadside with a flag, but by staking out a particularly large hinterland with our windbreak on the nearly deserted beach.
Today I discovered that my grandmother would have felt at home in seventeenth century Wales, since it too was overwhelmingly Royalist, and this book on Early Modern Wales devotes a chapter to consider why. One important reason was the Welsh felt that with the Union of Wales and England initiated by a Welsh king (or at least the son of a Welsh king, Henry VII) they were, at last, now equal to the English. And this, furthermore, was the fulfilment of a Bardic prophecy. Welsh genealogists had traced back Henry VII’s ancestry to Owain Tudor, one of the ancient Welsh princes, and the bards had been predicted that one day a Welsh king would rise again and rule again over all Britain.
Another reason was the fondness of the Welsh for the more superstitious parts of the old established church. They liked appealing to the saints, the reassurance of the rosary, the festivals and the Holy wells, and had been reluctant to give them up. Charles I felt similarly, so with the Civil War,the Welsh felt an affinity to the Royalist cause.
However, there were some, like Morgan Llwyd, who were on the Parliamentarian side. For them, the Welsh were the original British who had converted early to Christianity, and were therefore his chosen people – and that only by having a republic could God’s dominion on earth be realised.
As an enthusiastic Congregationalist, then, I think my Grandmother would have had a dilemma if she’d been around in the seventeenth century. Royalist or Parliamentarian? Like a lot of people I believe she’d have found it hard to come down on one side.
Clare Dudman 