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Ysbyty Ifan is a appealing little apple in the foothills of Snowdonia, aloof south of the day-tripper honeypots of Betws-y-coed.

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The apple sits astride the old bound amid Denbighshire and Caernarfonshire. The Conwy river is little added than a beck at this point, chattering over its adamant bed, but it was already the abuttals amid the heartland of Gwynedd and the ‘Middle Kingdom’ of north-east Wales.

This was the advanced band in the final attempt for Welsh ability in the 1280s.

Ysbyty Ifan was the home of the Knights of St John and gave accommodation to pilgrims and outlaws. Later on, a bounded ancestors provided some of the foundation stones for avant-garde Wales as we apperceive it. It is at the affection of so abundant of our history – so why do so few bodies apperceive area it is?

Saints, soldier monks and altar thieves

The aboriginal abbey in Ysbyty Ifan was congenital by the Knights of St John, the Knights Hospitallers, who had a auberge there. The Knights of St John were soldier monks, vowed to assure pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. But they additionally cared for pilgrims nearer home. Their auberge at Ysbyty Ifan is on the age-old crusade avenue from Bangor-on-Dee and Holywell in north-east Wales to Bardsey, the island of 20,000 saints in the far north-west.

These were the routes that brought pilgrims to Wales, and that knitted Wales into the apple of western Christendom.

Not alone pilgrims begin accommodation there. The Knights had the advantage of sanctuary, but abominably it could be abused. In the 15th century, in the afflicted time afterwards the Glyndwr uprising, Ysbyty Ifan was one of the hideouts of some of Wales’ best acclaimed outlaws, the belled Red Bandits of Dinas Mawddwy.

Writing at the end of the 16th century, Sir John Wynn of Gwydir said Ysbyty Ifan had been “a bowl of thieves and murderers”. But a new aurora was breaking for Wales, and the bodies of Ysbyty Ifan were at the affection of the revolution.

The Red Dragon leads the way

In the abbey at Ysbyty Ifan are the tombs of some of the founding fathers and mothers of avant-garde Wales. An elaborately carved cantankerous amidst by backcountry leaves and bake-apple commemorates Marared ferch Hywel, who affiliated Hywel ap Cynwrig of Plas Iolyn, a big abode aloof to the east of the village. His grandfathering Cynwrig ap Llywarch is remembered by addition slab with a brand and shield.

Marared and Hywel’s great-grandson was Rhys ap Maredudd of Foelas, addition big abode on the outskirts of the village. In the summer of 1485, he took a bounded army to accommodated adolescent Henry Tudor on his way to claiming Richard III. It was Rhys who agitated the banderole of the Red Dragon of Cadwaladr on the battlefield at Bosworth. Some of the Welsh poets alike said that it was Rhys who absolutely asleep Richard III.

Journalistic exaggeration, maybe – but the ancestors did able-bodied out of the Tudor victory. Their bounded ability and their landed acreage grew. Wales did able-bodied out of the Tudors, too. Henry never came aback to the acreage of his birth, but he did his best to lift the punishments that had been imposed on the Welsh in avengement for the Glyndwr uprising.

With a Welsh baron on the throne, Welsh men and women flocked to London in chase of acclaim and fortune. Rhys’ son Robert was one of them. He seems to acquire advised at Oxford but he never accomplished his degree, admitting the poets declared him as accomplished in Hebrew as able-bodied as Latin. This ability be journalistic exaggeration afresh – but if it was true, it would accomplish Robert one of the leaders of the Renaissance in Wales.

He became the abundant Cardinal Wolsey’s claimed clergyman and cross-bearer. Apparently he was additionally able to accord the abundant man some admired acknowledged advice. He never absent his bounded roots, though. His figure lies in the abbey alongside his father’s. The effigies acquire been aged and damaged but they are acutely the memorials of Actual Important People.

Rhys is in armour, a brand at his side. His son wears the abounding apparel of a priest. By their ancillary is a elegantly-dressed woman. She is usually articular as Rhys’s wife Lowri, but her head-dress is a fashionably French beanie from the 1520s. Is this absolutely Robert’s wife, Mared?

Yes, he was a priest – but, like abounding of the Welsh clergy, he was additionally married, and he fathered at atomic 16 children. Two of them became abbots of the Cistercian abbey abreast Conwy, and founded families of their own. Shock, horror, aspersion – or a businesslike accepting that a career in the abbey should not debar you from relationships and ancestors life?

No-one in Wales seems to acquire been agog on the changes of the Reformation, but accounting families like Robert’s would acquire heard about reformers like Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, who signalled their bounce of Rome by accepting married. Religious ameliorate ability action some advantages to Mared and her ancestors at Foelas.

Next page: Renewal and reformation

Renewal and reformation

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It’s additionally annual canonizing that Robert’s assignment for Cardinal Wolsey would acquire brought him into abutting acquaintance with the Cardinal’s clandestine secretary – none added than Thomas Cromwell, artist of the Acts of Abutment and the English Reformation. Henry VIII was beneath emotionally complex with Wales than his ancestor had been, but in the crisis afterward the alienation of his alliance and the breach with the Catholic church, he was acutely acquainted of the crisis of aggression through Wales. Afterwards all, this was how his ancestor had acquired a kingdom.

Wales was apparent as a agrarian and anarchic country, clumsily controlled by the Marcher Lords. How accurate this was, we may never know. But it is absolutely accurate that the Welsh bodies were disturbing beneath acknowledged disadvantages that amounted to a action of ageism in our own country. We were not accustomed to alive and barter in towns. We could not become magistrates or government officials. We had no aldermanic representation. We were angry to an anachronous acknowledged arrangement with no achievability of reform.

By now, Thomas Cromwell had survived Wolsey’s abatement and was Henry VIII’s right-hand man.

He took the admonition of Welsh bodies in London – men like Robert ap Rhys, who told him that what Wales bare was capitalism and abutment with England. By the time the Act of Abutment was anesthetized in 1536, Robert had been asleep for added than two years, but his admonition charge acquire helped to appearance Cromwell’s policies.

We are so acclimated to apropos the Acts of Abutment as a betrayal of our ability that we balloon that they were accustomed with accessible accoutrements in 16th-century Wales. They were advised to accumulate Wales loyal. Possibly one of the affidavit why the Welsh accustomed religious change was that they had so abundant to lose if the Acts of Abutment were broken up.

The Red Doctor

If Cromwell formed carefully with Robert ap Rhys, he would acquire accepted all about the wife and the 16 accouchement aback home in Ysbyty Ifan. And he would about absolutely acquire been alien to adolescent Ellis, the additional son and the brightest. Ellis took his grandfather’s name as one of the contemporary English surnames – his ancestor was Robert ap Rhys and Ellis fabricated this into Ellis Price.

Like his father, Ellis went to university – in his case, to Cambridge. Unlike his father, he acquired several degrees, and acquired his doctorate in 1534, aback he was alone 22. He was nicknamed Y Doctor Coch, ‘the Red Doctor’. It’s about affected that this was because he was so appreciative of his doctorate that he wore his red bookish clothes on every accessible occasion. A bit like cutting your favourite team’s football shirt in bed, maybe? As we will see, though, there could be addition annual for his nickname.

The afterward year, Cromwell beatific adolescent Ellis as one of his inspectors of monasteries in arctic Wales. It wasn’t a abundant success. His adolescent commissioners begin him a bit of a trial. He showed off about his agency in the taverns. According to one of the added commissioners, he took his “concubine” with him (actually, it could acquire been his aboriginal wife Catherine Conway of Bodrhyddan). Ironically, one of the things he was declared to be blockage up on was how able-bodied the monks were befitting their vows of celibacy.

Again, we acquire to bethink that Cromwell knew Ellis and his ancestors well. Was he sending coded letters to the clergy of arctic Wales by sending the son of a priest to audit them? It was at about this time that the clergy of Gwynedd wrote to Cromwell answer how difficult their lives would be if they were affected to abstracted from their wives. They would be clumsy to action accommodation or advice the poor.

Ellis absent his abode on the agency but Cromwell acutely still anticipation the adolescent man had potential. In 1538 he was one of the men entrusted with the acute assignment of dismantling some of Wales’s best accepted crusade shrines.

Most of us nowadays would sympathise with the medieval peasants in places like Penrhys who saw their admired statues taken abroad and their little shrines destroyed. But you additionally acquire to see things from the angle of the reformers. Aback Ellis went to Llandderfel in arctic Wales, he begin added than 500 bodies aggregate there on St Derfel’s Day.

According to Ellis’ account, they believed that the bronze (not God, not alike the saint) had the ability to accomplishment the accursed from hell. Alike an accepted Catholic would acquire said that was a alarming misunderstanding.

Ellis dealt with it by the simple adjustment of removing the statue. The abbey and aggregation approved to buy him off with £40 (a huge sum in those canicule – apparently agnate to over £100k in avant-garde money) but he could not be deterred.

Now, you could say that Ellis had an eye to his approaching application affairs and anticipation it was annual casual up on the £40 in adjustment to accumulate his job. Or you could say that he absolutely believed in what he was doing. He had advised at Cambridge, which was acceptable a bit of a axis of abolitionist account by the 1530s. Was he a hypocrite, or an over-enthusiastic adolescent man?

It’s additionally annual canonizing that Ellis’ action worked. T

here could acquire been a bounded apostasy like the Crusade of Grace – but there wasn’t.

When it comes to the Reformation, Wales is a bit like Sherlock Holmes’ dog in the night. The analytical affair about the dog, if you remember, is that it didn’t case – and the acumen why it didn’t case (spoiler active here) is that it recognised a affiliate of the household. There was no absolute activity for change in Wales, but there was actual little accessible attrition either.

One of the affidavit for this is that English reformers like Cromwell chose bounded men to put their behavior into aftereffect – men like Ellis Price.

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Next page: The Red Bandits

The Red Bandits

So area do the Red Bandits appear into the story?

Ellis was nicknamed the Red Doctor.

This may acquire been because of his red doctoral robes, but there is addition accessible explanation, and that is that he had red hair.

And the Red Bandits were so alleged because they too had red hair.

So Rhys ap Maredudd and the Bandits could acquire been cousins – or alike afterpiece than cousins.

Most of what we apperceive about the Bandits comes from the pen of Sir John Wyn of Gwydir.

When he said that “they had to their backstay accompany and receptors, all the country of Merioneth and Powysland”, it was a bright dig at the Foelas ancestors who controlled Ysbyty Ifan and were the bounded rivals of the Wynns.

It is alike accessible that the Bandits formed the amount of the angry force which Rhys took to Bosworth.

After all, one man’s brigand is addition man’s abandon fighter.

Forgotten foundation stones

Ysbyty Ifan and its abbey accommodate some of the foundation stones of avant-garde Wales. The abbey is consistently open.

So why isn’t the apple a abode of avant-garde pilgrimage? Possibly because we acquire such difficulties in cerebration about what happened in Wales in the 16th century.

We are now unpicking a lot of that history. We are acclimated to accepting our own accumulation government – indeed, we now allocution aloof about the ‘Welsh Government’. Some of us appetite to go alike further.

We all acquisition it adamantine to acquire that the Acts of Abutment were what the bodies of Wales wanted, bringing an end to centuries of apartheid-style oppression.

And we acquire such adverse perspectives on the Reformation.

Our abbey traditions accomplish us actual analytical of the backward medieval church, but we additionally acquisition it difficult to acquire that men like Ellis Price had such adversity in introducing change – and that a advocate like Cromwell ability acquire to accept a rather arguable adolescent man as his abettor in arctic Wales because of his family’s connections.

These buildings, these places, are important. They acquaint us about who we are, and who we were.

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But sometimes who we were is not what we anticipate we should acquire been.

We can adhere to what we anticipate care to acquire happened.

Sometimes, though, the historian’s job is to unpick these assumptions and to acquisition added means of attractive at the past. If we can accept who we were, and why we did those things that assume aberrant to us now, we will be bigger able to move on.

That this nation, beneath God, shall acquire a new bearing of abandon …

Why adduce the Gettysburg Address in an commodity about Wales? Well, according to bounded tradition, Abraham Lincoln’s great-grandmother Elen Morris additionally came from Ysbyty Ifan – and her farmhouse, Bryn Gwyn, was already the abundant Rhys ap Maredudd’s home. It lies bare on a adamant clue amid Ysbyty Ifan and Pentrefoelas, the acreage barrio roofless.

But the rowan copse afterglow red with bake-apple forth the lane.

Perhaps the Americans should appear actuality on crusade as well?

Next page: Author contour - Dr Madeleine Gray

Who are you, Dr Madeleine Gray?

I’m what is alleged a Reader in History.

This doesn’t beggarly that I absorb all my time account added people’s books, though.

It’s basically a chief analysis post, but I additionally do a fair bit of teaching.

This is important to me – I get a lot of my best account through alive with my students.

My accepted analysis activity is a analysis of medieval tomb carvings in Wales.

This is what led me to Ysbyty Ifan and the effigies of Rhys ap Maredudd and his family. Tombs aren’t all about afterlife – they are about the memories that accomplish us what we are.

What’s your favourite abode in Wales?

I like my own aback garden and the dupe abaft my house, and the little abstruse valleys on the added ancillary of Caerphilly Mountain.

Further afield, the moors aloft Ysbyty Ifan are wonderful, abundant abandoned spaces crisscrossed with age-old trackways and crusade routes. I haven’t explored them all yet – but I will one day.

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