EISTEDDFOD GENEDLAETHOL BANGOR. Y Fardd- oniaeth a'i Beirniadaeth. AWDL: " Ymadawiad Arthur" (T. Gwynn Jones); PRYDDEST: "Trys- Cymmrodor. VOL. XVI. "CARED DOETH YR ENCILION." A Welsh Insurrection. By W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS, B.C.L. Oxon. 1902. No passage in the dark and bloody annals of Henry VIII is more obscure than the "conspiracy" which led to the execution of Rhys ap Griffith in December 1531. Froude, who barely mentions the incident, states in a note that"It was a Welsh plot conducted at Islington. The particulars of it I am unable to discover, further than it was a desperate undertaking, encouraged by the uncertainty of succession and by a faith in prophecies, to murder the King. Rice was tried in the Michaelmas term 1531, and executed. His uncle, who passed under the name of Brancetor, was an active revolutionary agent on the Continent in the later years of Henry's reign,"—a statement which teems with a greater number of inaccuracies than is excusable even in the pages of a master of a poignant and dramatic style. In the second volume of the Cambrian Register is published a defence of Rhys ap Griffith, which seems to have been written in 1625 by his great-grandson, Henry Rice of 'History of England, vol. ii, p. 214. B Dynevor. Mr. Edward Owen, who was the first to discover its existence, is of opinion that MS. 14,416 of the Phillips Collection, now in the Cardiff library, is the original from which Fenton published the article in the Register, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Owen is right, for the MS. was originally in the Fenton Collection. But the "defence", though interesting and in many respects important, was only compiled nearly a century after the tragic episode; it was written in an uncritical age, and confessedly in an uncritical spirit-for its admitted and manifest object was to clear the memory of Rhys of a charge of treason, and to appeal to King Charles I for a restoration to royal favour of Rhys's descendants. The writer was without some of the contemporary material which is at our disposal to-day, and in one or two matters, which can be tested by independent evidence, he did less that justice to some of Rhys's friends and contemporaries in order to elicit, by a more startling contrast, the Royal sympathy for Rhys's own sorrows and misfortunes.' The only other 1 As Henry Rice's petition has never been published, though his defence, which is a portion of the same MS., has appeared in the Cambrian Register, we append it here :— "Henry Rice, his petition to King Charles the First. "To the King's most excellent Majesty the humble (sic) of H. Rice servant to the late King's Majesty. "Humbly showing that I have served your Majesty's brother, nowe with God eight years, as howsoever I cannot raise unto myself anie great hope of recompense, though my service had been of longer time and of more valuable employment, yet the cons'n thereof, accompanied with what I shall farther presume herein to represent unto your Majesty, will, I hope, induce your Majesty graciously to commiserate my unhappie condition. My great grandfather, R. G., at the age of 23, was accused and condemned for designing to make your Majesty's auncestor, James the 5th of Scotland, to be King of England, by whose attainder there came to the crowne landes worth £10,000 poundes a year, and a personall estate to the value of £30,000 poundes. Queene Elizabeth, upon the humble suit of my grandfather |