From the barren, if picturesque, annals of {189} bloodshed, a war in which, so far as Wales was concerned, no great principle was at stake, it is a relief to turn to the settlement of the country under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and to the work of the few great Welsh Parliamentarians. Colonel John Jones the "Regicide" is deserving at least of passing mention. Brought up in one of the wildest and most remote corners of the Merionethshire mountains, he advanced, by sheer force of character and intellect, to a position of trust in the counsels of Parliament. As soon as war broke out he joined the ranks of the Parliamentary army. We find him representing Merionethshire in the House of Commons in 1647, and again from 1647 to 1653, when he was elected for Denbighshire. No man threw himself with greater zeal into the task of organizing the new army. He was not one of those who, having taken the initial step, cast reluctant glances back. For him there was but one goal--the complete and final victory of Parliament. When this object was attained, he did not hesitate to sit in the Court which sat in judgment upon Charles, nor did he shrink from signing his death warrant. His friendship with Cromwell was cemented by his marriage to the {190} Protector's sister. In Wales, during the war, and in Ireland after its termination, he was an acute and able agent of Parliament, and on one occasion the House of Commons passed a special resolution, thanking him, and voting him a present of £2000. When the Restoration came, John Jones made no effort to escape from the almost certain doom which awaited him by a timely flight abroad; on the contrary he remained openly in London. He was consigned to the Tower, tried, condemned, and put to death with all the horrible barbarities prescribed by the law in the case of traitors. The other great Welshman of the day was Morgan Llwyd, and with him the whole history of the Commonwealth in Wales is bound up. The victorious Parliament and army, as one might suppose, regarded Wales with no friendly eye; and during the ensuing years the Principality was governed sternly and unsympathetically. The position of Wales varied with the many constitutional experiments of the period. The Agreement of the People, of 1649, proposed to give the country thirty-five representatives out of a total of four hundred. In the Assembly of 1653 Wales had six representatives. Under {191} the Instrument of Government, of 1653, thirty-eight Members, out of four hundred, were allotted to it. But in the hour of its triumph Parliament really counted for little in the affairs of the nation, and the representatives of Wales, mostly strangers, hardly counted at all. It was the great day of officialdom, and the land groaned under their heavy hand.