It has been already observed, that monastic establishments were not generally popular among the Cambrians. They reminded them too sensibly of the haughty domination of those Norman lords, who had parcelled out the country amongst them, and hoped to extenuate their crimes by the building and endowment of religious houses. But the memory of what was gained by force or fraud, was not to be effaced by multiplying shrines and priories--great crimes were not to be buried under abbey walls. To every free-born Cambrian, the sight of an abbey appeared like a monument of his country’s degradation and bondage, for it was difficult to separate in his mind the blessings of religion from the galling yoke of oppression; he saw that what was at first gained by force of arms, was to be retained by the yet stronger hand of spiritual despotism. The ecclesiastical power was at times more efficient in subjugating a chief, than all that a feudal baron could carry with him into the field; and when both united for the purpose of conquest, their strength was irresistible, the result certain; and the hatred of the oppressed was naturally roused against the grinding sense of a twofold oppression. Superstition was a mighty engine. An austere old writer gives us the following instance of its working in this golden age of the Church:--“The yeare after this, Gruffyth, son to Conan ap Owen Gwyneth, a nobleman, died, and was buried in a monke’s cowle at the Abbey of Conway; and so were all the nobles, for the most part, of that time buried. For they were made to believe by the old monkes and friers, that that strange weed was a sure defence betwixt their soulis and hell, howsoever they died. And all this baggage and superstition received they with monkes and friers, a few yeares before that, _out of England_. For the _first_ abbey or frier-house that we read of in Wales, sith the destruction of the noble house of <g>Bangor</g>, which savered not of Romish dregges, was the Twy Gwyn, built the yeare 1146; and after that they swarmed like bees through all the countrie; for then the Cleargie had forgotten the lesson that they had receaved from the noble clerk, Ambrosius Telesinus, who, writing in the yeare 540, when the right Christian faith, which <g>Joseph of Arimathea</g> taught at the isle of Avalon, reigned in this land, before the proud and bloodthirsty monke <g>Augustine</g> infested it with the Romish doctrine, in a certaine ode hath these verses in <g>Welsh</g>, which may be thus Englished, almost word for word:-- “Wo be to that priest yborne, That will not cleanlie weed his corne, And preach his charge among! Wo be to that <g>Sheepherd</g>, I saie, That will not watch his flocke alwaie, As to his office doth belong! Wo be to him, that doth not keepe From Romish Wolves his simple sheepe, With Staffe and weapon stronge!