1. There was no hatred between England and Wales; the Welsh gentry served the Queen on land and sea, and the people were more happy and contented than they had been since the time of Llywelyn. 2. There was no danger of private war between lords, to which the peasant might be summoned. The brigands which infested parts of the country had been cleared away. 3. The law of land had been fixed. It was determined that land was to go to the eldest son, according to the English fashion. All the land became the property of some landlord, and it was decided who was a landowner, and who was not. The Welsh freemen were held to own their land; the Welsh serfs, the descendants of an old conquered race, sometimes became owners and sometimes tenants. They all thought that Henry VII., the Welsh victor of Bosworth, had set them free. 4. The Tudors trusted their people, and called upon them to govern and to administer justice themselves. The squires were to be justices, the freemen were to be jurors; the shire was to look after the militia, and the parish after the poor. XVIII THE REFORMATION THE Reformation in England was, to begin with, a purely political movement. Henry VIII. wished to rule his people in his own way, in religion as well as in politics; and, eventually, he became Supreme Head of the Church as well as the king of the country. His new power brought changes. It was necessary to reform the Church, and the wealth of the monasteries tempted him to do it. There was a new spirit of enquiry, and the King was led on by that spirit, with dilatory and hesitating steps, to examine old creeds. The religious fervour of the Reformation had caught the people; and the King stood still, if he did not turn back. But his ministers had no misgivings. Thomas Cromwell tried to hurry the Reformation on—the monasteries were dissolved, the Bible was translated, and the sway of Rome was disowned. The king appointed the bishops, decided church cases, and even determined what the creed of his country was to be. Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., made the movement a doctrinal one, and forced it on with equal vigour. Wales looked on, with indifference and apathy at first, and then with murmurs. The movement had no attraction: it had many causes of offence. In England the political movement became a patriotic, an intellectual, and a religious movement; and it succeeded. In Ireland, also, it was political, but it could not appeal to patriotism, because it was an English movement; and it failed. In Wales, it was neither welcomed nor opposed; it was simply tolerated, and with a bad grace.