"And when that tyrant John had our subversion vow'd,

. To bis dnbridled will our necks we never bow'd: Nor to his mighty son; whose host we did enforce (His succours cutting off) to eat their warlike horse.

"Uutil all-ruling Heaven would have us to resign:

When that brave prince, the last of all the British line,

Lewellin; Griffith's son, unluckily was slain,

5. As fate had spar'd our fall till Edward Longshank's reign.

Yet to the stock of Brute so true we ever were,
We would permit no prince, unless a native here.
Which, that most prudent king perceiving, wisely
thought

To satisfy our wills, and to Caernarvon brought
His queen being great with child, ev'n ready down
to lie,
[apply.
Then to his purpos'd end doth all his powers
"Through every part of Wales he to the nobles
sent,

That they unto his court should come incontinent, Of things that much concern'd the country to debate:

But now behold the power of unavoided fate! "When thus unto his will he fitly them had won, [son. At her expected hour the queen brought forth a And to this great design, all happ'ning as he would, [could)

He (his intended course that clerkly manage Thus quaintly trains us on: since he perceiv'd us prone

Here only to be rul'd by princes of our own,
Our naturalness therein he greatly did approve;
And publicly protests, that for the ancient love
He ever bare to Wales, they all should plainly see,
That he had found out one, their sovereign lord

[born)

to be; Com'n of the race of kings, and (in their country Could not one English word: of which he durst be

sworn.

Besides, his upright heart, and innocence was such, [touch As that (he was assur'd) black envy could not His spotless life in aught. Poor we (that not espy His subtilty herein) in plain simplicity, [refuse: Soon bound ourselves by oath, his choice not to When as that crafty king, his little child dot chuse, Young Edward, born in Wales, and of Caernarvon call'd: [thrall'd. Thus by the English craft, we Britons were en"Yet in thine own behalf, dear country, dare to [way. Thou long as powerful wer't as England every And if she overmuch should seek thee to imbase, Tell her, thou art the nurse of all the British race And he that was by Heaven appointed to unite (After that tedious war) the red rose and the white; A Tudor was of thine, and native of thy Mon, From whom descends that king now sitting on her [please This speech, by Snowdon made, so lucky was to Both parties, and them both with such content

say,

throne."

Into the Irish sea then all those rills that ran, In Snowdon's praise to speak immediately began ; Lewenny, Lynan next, then Gwelly gave it out, And Kerriog her compeer, soon told it all about: So did their sister nymphs, that into Mena strain; The flood that doth divide Mon from the Cambrian main.

It Gorway greatly prais'd and Seint it loudly sung. So, mighty Snowdon's speech was through Caernar❤ von rung:

came,

That scarcely such a noise to Mon from Mena [same, When with his puissant troops for conquest of the On bridges made of boats, the Roman powers her sought,

Or Edward to her sack his English armies brought: That Mona strangely stirr'd great Snowdon's praise to hear, Although the stock of Troy to her was ever dear; Yet (from her proper worth) as she before all other §. Was call'd (in former times) her country Cain, bria's mother,

Persuaded was thereby her praises to pursue, Or by neglect, to lose what to herself was due, A sign to Neptune sent, his boist'rous rage to slake; Which suddainly becalm'd, thus of herself she spake; [long "What one of all the isles to Cambria doth be(To Britain, I might say, and yet not do her wrong)

Doth equal me in soil, so good for grass and grain? As should my Wales (where still Brute's offspring doth remain)

That mighty store of men, yet more of beasts doth breed,

By famine or by war constrained be to need, And England's neighbouring shires their succour would deny ;

My only self her wants could plenteously supply. "What island is there found upon the Irish

coast,

[most, In which that kingdom seems to be delighted And seek you all along the rough Vergivian shore, Where the encount'ring tides outrageously do roar) That bows not at my beck, as they to me did owe The duty subjects should unto their sovereign show; §. So that th' Eubonian Man, a kingdom long time known,

Which wisely hath been rul'd by princes of her own, In my alliance joys, as in th' Albanian scas The Arrans", and by them the scatter'd Eubides11 | Rejoice even at my name; and put on mirthful cheer, [hear. When of my good estate they by the sea-nymphs "Sometimes within my shades, in many an ancient wood, [stood, Whose often-twined tops great Phoebus' fires with 5. The fearless British priests, under an aged oak, Taking a milk-white bull, unstrained with the yoke,

[tree And with an ax of gold, from that Jove-sacred The misleto cut down; then with a bende knee On th' unhew'd altar laid, put to the hallow'd fires : [expires, And whilst in the sharp flame the trembling flesh As their strong fury mov'd (when all the rest adore)

Pronouncing their desires the sacrifice before,

11 Isles upon the west of Scotland.

R

St. Helen's wondrous way

By Festeneog in the confines of Caernarvon and Merioneth is this high-way of note; so called by the British, and supposed made by that Helen, mother to Constantine (among her other good deeds) of whom to the last song before.

As level as the lake until the general flood.

So is the opinion of some divines (f), that, until after the flood, were no mountains, but that by congestion of sand, earth, and such stuff as we now see hills strangely fraughted with, in the waters they were first cast up. But in that true secretary of divinity and nature, Selomoh (g) speaking as in the person of Wisdom, you read; "Before the mountains were founded, and before the hills I was formed," that is, before the world's beginning; and in holy writ (h) elsewhere, "the mountains ascend, and the valleys descend to the place where thou didst found them ;" good authorities to justify mountains before the flood. The same question hath been of isles, but I will peremptorily determine neither.

And with stern Eolus' blasts, like Thetis waxing rank.

The south-west wind constrained between two hills on both sides of the lake, sometimes so violently fills the river out of the lake's store, that both have been affirmed (but somewhat against truth) never to be disturbed, or overflow, but upon tempestuous blasts, whereas indeed (as Powel delivers) they are overfilled with rain and laudfloods, as well as other waters; but most of all moved by that impetuous wind.

Still Delos like, wherein a wandering isle doth float.

Of this isle in the water on top of Snowdon, and on one side eels, trouts, and perches, in another lake there, Girald is witness. Let him perform his word; I will not be his surety for it. The author alludes to that state of Delos, which is feigned (i) before it was with pillars fastened in the

sea for Latona's child birth.

That with the term of Welsh the English now imbase.

For this name of Welsh is unknown to the British themselves, and imposed on them, as an ancient and common opinion is, by the Saxons, calling them Walsh, i. e. strangers. Others fabulously have talk of Wallo and Wandolena, whence it should be derived. But you shall come nearer truth, if, upon the community of name, customs, and original, 'twixt the Gauls and Britons, you conjecture them called Walsh, as it were Gualsh (the W. oftentimes being instead of the Gu.) which | expresses them to be Gauls rather than strangers; although in the Saxon (which is (k) observed) it

(f) His post alios refragatur B. Pererius ad Genes. 1. quæst. 101.

(g) Prov. 8.

(h) Ps. 104.

(1) Pindar. ap. Strabon. lib. 10,

(4) Buchanan. Scotic, Hist. 2

barbarous, perhaps in such kind as in this kingdom the name of Frenchman (/), hath by inclusion comprehended all kind of aliens.

Was little Britain call'd

See a touch of this in the passage of the virgins to the eighth song. Others affirm, that under Constantine (m), of our Britons colonies were there placed; and from some of these the name of that now dukedom, to have had its beginning. There be also that will justify the British name to have been in that tract long before (n), and for proof cite Dionysius Afer (0), and Pliny (p); but for the first, it is not likely that he ever meant that continent, but this of ours, as the learned tell you; and for Pliny, seeing he reckons his Britons of Gaul in the confines of the now France, and lower Germany, it is as unlikely that betwixt them and little Bretagne should be any such habitude. You want not authority, affirming that our Britons from them (9), before they from ours, had deduction of this national title; but my belief admits it not. The surer opinion is to refer the name unto those Britons, which (being expelled the island at the entry of the Saxous) got them new habitation in this maritime part, as beside other authority an express assertion is in an old fragment of a French history (r), which you may join with most worthy Camden's treatise on this matter; whither (for a learned declaration of it) I send you.

Forewarned was in dreams that of the Britons' reign.

Cadwallader, driven to forsake this land, especially by reason of plague and famine tyrannising among his subjects, joined with continual erup tions of the English, retired himself into little Bretagne, to his cozen Alan, there king: where in a dream he was admonished by an angel (I justify it but by the story) that a period of the British empire was now come, and until time of Merlin's prophecy, given to king Arthur, his country or posterity should have no restitution; and farther, that he should take his journey to Rome, where, for a transitory, he might receive an eternal kingdom. Alan, upon report of this vision, compares it with the eagle's prophecies, the Sibyl's verses, and Merlin; nor found he but all were concording in prediction of this ceasing of the British monarchy. Through his advice, therefore, and a prepared affection, Cadwallader takes voyage to Rome, received of P.P. Sergius, with holy tincture, the name of Peter, and within very short time there died; his body very lately under pope Gregory the XIII. was found buried by S. Peter's tomb (), where it yet remains; and White of Basingstoke says, he had a piece of his raiment, of a chesnut colour, taken up (with the corpse) uncorrupted;

(1) Bract. lib. 3. tract. 2. cap. 15. Leg. Gul. Conquest. & D. Coke in Cas. Calvin. (m) Malmesb. de gest. reg. 1.

(n) Paul Merul. Cosmog, part 2. 1. 3. c. 31. (0) Vid. Eustath. ad eundem.

(p) Hist. Nat. lib. 4. cap. 17. quem super Ligerim Britannos hos sitos dixisse, miror P. Merulam tam constantèr affirmâsse.

(9) Bed. lib. 1. cap. 3. quem secutus P. Merula. (r) Ex Ms. Coenob. Floriac. edit. per P. Pithæum. (s) Anton Major. ap. Basinstoch. lib. 9. not. 32.

before Edward I. conquered Wales, and, as it seems, from XXVIII. but especially XXXV. of Henry III. his empire enlarged among them, the English king's writ did run there. For when Edward I. sent commission to Reginald of Grey (ƒ), Thomas bishop of St Dewy's, and Walter of Hopton, to inquire of their customs, and by what laws they were ruled, divers cases were upon oath returned, which by, and according to, the king's law, if it were between lords or the princes theinselves, had been determined; if between tenants, then by the lord's seizing it into his hauds, until discovery of the title in his court; but also that none were decided by the laws of Howel Dha. Of them, in Lhuyd's anuotations to the Welsh chronicle, you have some particulars, and in the roll which hath aided me. Touching those other of Molmutius and Martia, somewhat to the ninth

song.

Us to subjection stoop, or make us Britons bear Th' unwieldy Norman yoke

Snowdon properly speaks all for the glory of his country, and follows suppositions of the British story, discording herein with ours. For in Matthew Paris, and Florilegus, under the year co. LXXVIII. I read that the Conqueror subdued Wales, and took homage aud hostages of the princes; so of Henry I. c. c. XIII. Henry 11. in c. c LVII. and other times: Of this Henry II hath been understood that prophecy of Merlin, "When the frecklefaced prince (so was the king) passes over Rhyd Pencarn (g), then should the Welsh forces be weakened." For he, in this expedition against Rees ap Gryffith into South Wales, corning mounted near that ford in Glamorgan, his steed madded with sudden sound of trumpets, on the bank violently, out of the purposed way, carries him through the ford which compared with that of Merlin, gave to the British army no small discomfiture; as a Cambro-Briton (h), then living, hath delivered. But, that their stories and ours are so different in these things, it can be no marvel to any that knows how often it is used among historians (i), to flatter their own nation, and wrong the honour of their enemies. See the first note here for Rufus his time.

And from the English power th' imperial standard took.

Henry of Essex, at this time standard-bearer to Henry II. in a strait at Counsylth, near Flint, cast down the standard, thereby animating the Welsh, and discomfiting the English, adding much danger to the dishonour. He was afterward accused, by Robert of Montfort, of a traitorous design in the action. To clear himself, he challenges the combat: they both, with the royal assent and judicial course by law of arms, enter the lists; where Montfort had the victory, and Essex pardoned for his life; but forfeiting all his substance(k), entered religion,and profess'd in the abbey

(f) Rot. Claus. de ann. 9. Ed. 1, in Archiv. Tur. Londin.

(g) The ford at the rock's head.

(h) Girald. Itinerar. 1. cap. 6.

Or any ear had heard the sound of Florida. About the year C13. c. LXX. Madoc, brother to David ap Owen, prince of Wales, made this sea voyage; and, by probability, those names of Capo de Breton, in Norumbeg, and Penguin, in part of the northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relics of this discovery. So that the Welsh may challenge priority of finding that new world, before the Spaniard, Genoway, and all other mentioned in Lopez, Marinæus, Cortez, and the rest of that kind.

And with that Crogen's name let th' English us、 disgrace.

The first cause of this name, take thus: In one of Henry the second's expeditions into Wales, divers of his camp sent to assay a passage over Offa's dike, at Crogen castle were entertained with prevention by British forces, most of them there slain, and, to present view, yet lying buried. Afterward, this word Crogen (n), the English used to the Welsh, but as remembering cause of revenge for such a slaughter, although time hath made it usual in ignorant mouths for a disgraceful attribute.

To his unbridled will our necks we never bow'd.

Sufficiently justifiable is this of king John, although our monks therein not much discording from British relation, deliver, that he subdued all Wales; especially this northern part unto Snowdon (0), and received XX. hostages for surety of future obedience. For, at first, Lhewelin ap Jorwerth, prince of North-Wales, had by force joined with stratagem the better hand, and compelled the English camp to victual themselves with horseflesh; but afterward indeed, upon a second road made into Wales, king John had the conquest. This compared with those changes ensuing upon the pope's wrongful uncrowning him, his barons' rebellion, and advantages in the meantime taken by the Welsh, proves only, that his winnings here were little better than imaginary, as on a tragic stage. The stories may, but it fits not me, to inform you of large particulars.

As fate had spar'd our fall till Edward Longshank's reign.

But withal observe the truth of story in the meantime. Of all our kings until John, somewhat you have already. After him, Henry III. bad wars with Lheweliu ap Jorwerth; who (a most

(1) Joann. Sarisburiens. Ep. 159. (m) 30 Ed. 3 fol. 20.

(n) Gutyn Owen in Lhewelin ap Jorwerth. (0) Note that North-Wales was the chief princi

Alberic. Gentil. de Arm. Rom. 1. cap. 1.

(*) Guil. de Novo Burgo, lib. 2. c. 5.

tribute, as out of the laws of Howel Dha is noted by doctor Powel.