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THE PATTERN OF POLITICS IN STUART WALES.1 By PROFESSOR A. H. DODD, M.A. I MUST first express my sense of the honour done me by the Council of the Society in inviting me to give this lecture. It is a daunting task to lecture under a foundation devoted to the memory of so great a Cymmrodor (in Ernest Rhys's phrase) as Griffith Hartwell Jones-not least when one is confronted with so high a standard as that set for succeeding lecturers by Dr. Ifor Williams. I cannot follow these distinguished scholars into the Celtic twilight they have both done so much to illuminate my field of study is remote from theirs, and stands in broader daylight, thanks to a succession of historians from Roland Phillips seventy years ago to our own Dr. Thomas Richards. Yet there are still dim patches that need lighting up, especially in the sphere of politics, which entered into Phillips's work only as a background to the Civil War, and with which Dr. Richards is concerned only as an offshoot of Puritan activities. I venture to hope that despite appearances the tract of history we are to explore this evening will be found not wholly alien to the career and interests of Hartwell Jones. Brought up in a purely Welsh part of Wales and sent to an English public school and a Welsh college in an English university; teaching in turn in the Welsh university and then whisked off to the cure of souls in an English parish, where he spent his leisure in those monumental researches into his own Celtic background which have made his name a European one, he seems to me a rare example of how two cultures may be held together by a process not of fusion but of federation. The phase of Welsh history with which I am concerned exhibits, as I hope to persuade you, something of the same character in a different context. This is particularly true of the first half of the century, which has now been sufficiently explored to present a fairly firm outline. Much less work has as yet been done on the post-Restoration period, where we are limited in the main to hypotheses for future testing; but a preliminary glance at the evidence reveals some striking contrasts which must be suggested, however diffidently, in order to throw into bolder relief the signifi- cance of what went before. A brief Tudor prologue will also be needed to complete the perspective. 1 Given in substance as the Hartwell Jones Memorial Lecture, under the title "Welsh politics under the early Stuarts," at a meeting of the Hon. Society in London on 30th May, 1947, Professor W. J. Gruffydd, M.P., in the chair. Passages which had to be omitted under pressure of time have been included, and others have been expanded, especially where fresh material has appeared, but the argument remains unchanged. I am most grateful to the Hon. Secretary and the Hon. Editor for endless patience, kindness and consideration while the work was in preparation. Now Sir Ifor see T.C.S., 1946-7, pp. 28-58.