The Wise Man of Pencader
During his Welsh campaign, Henry II asked one of his allies what he thought the future of Wales would look like.
1163
King Henry II 1154-1189
During his Welsh campaign, Henry II asked one of his allies what he thought the future of Wales would look like.
1163
King Henry II 1154-1189
In 1157, Henry II of England opened a determined campaign to subdue Wales to the English crown. Resistance was strong: so much so that Wales was not finally subdued until 1282. According to Gerald de Barri (1146-1223), Bishop of St David’s, by 1163 Henry still felt sufficiently unsure of himself to ask one of his few Welsh allies what he thought of England’s chances.
WHEN in our own lifetime Henry the Second, King of the English, was conducting an expedition into South Wales against this nation, he was stationed at Pencader, which means Chair-head.* Here he consulted a certain elderly person of the same people, a man who, through the national vice,* had (Welshman though he was) joined himself to the king against other Welshmen. The king asked him what he thought of the royal army and of the power of the rebel people to withstand it, and urged him to make clear to him his opinion about the outcome of the war.
He answered: “The Welsh nation, O king, may now, as many a time in the past, its sins requiring it, be harassed and in great part broken down and crippled by your armed might and that of others. Yet it will not be utterly blotted out because of the wrath of man, not unless the wrath of God also go with it. Nor, whatever may happen in regard to the larger realm, do I think that any other nation than this of Wales, or any other tongue, shall in the day of strict account before the Most High Judge answer for this corner of the earth.”
* Pencader is a small village in Carmarthenshire, southwest Wales.
* That is, infighting. Gerald was a quarter Welsh himself, and inclined to think poorly of Welsh dynastic squabbling and of throwing in with the Normans.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.