as the leader of a Free Company. This Owen, however, was much more than a successful mercenary captain: he remembered the land of his birth; and the great ambition of his life was to win back Welsh independence with the assistance of France and Spain. The Black Death had very adversely affected {104} the monastic life of Wales. Even in the thirteenth century--the golden age of monasticism--Wales was too poor a country to support such princely foundations as Fountains or St. Albans. Its monasteries were, for the most part, small, drawing what wealth they possessed from acres of barren mountain land. As we have already seen, Wales, from the first coming of Christianity into the country, had its monastic foundations. So far back as the sixth century, those of Bangor Iscoed and Llantwit Major were famous throughout Christendom. The rule of St. Benedict, which dates from that century, seems to have found much favour in Wales; for in South Wales alone there were some fifteen Benedictine houses, one of them being an abbey, and the remaining ones priories. Soon, however, these priories fell into evil odour; for they were "alien" in the sense that they belonged to some foreign abbey whose abbot used them merely for the purpose of augmenting his revenues. The great Cluniac reformation of the tenth century had singularly little influence upon the religious life of Wales, and only three priories were established in the country. The lives of the monks who inhabited them were notoriously {105} lax, and gave considerable scandal even in that age of easy morals. It was the Cistercian Order, however, that seems to have won the religious heart of the Welsh people. All the most famous religious houses in Wales--Strata Florida, Strata Marcella, Aberconway, Valle Crucis, Basingwerk, Cwm Hir, Margam, Whitland, Neath, Dore, Grace Dieu, Tintern, Cymer, and Llantarnan--were Cistercian. For the most part the monks favoured the cause of national independence. They were not great scholars, nor did any particular sanctity pertain to their lives; but they were excellent farmers, their conduct was at least decent, they were witnesses after their fashion to the value of the spiritual life, and they occasionally wrote chronicles like the _Annales Cambriæ_ and the _Brut_ which are invaluable to the historian of to-day.