35 - Wales

Summary

Despite its small size and limited population – increasing from over a quarter of a million in the mid-sixteenth century to somewhere over 360,000 by 1670 – a complex of interrelated social, linguistic, cultural and educational differences makes it impossible to speak of ‘a’ history of the book in Wales during this period.

Although the great majority of the population of Wales consisted of illiterate monoglot Welsh-speakers, there were important geographical and social exceptions. The long-established Englishries such as south Gower and, more particularly, south Pembrokeshire were monoglot English areas which had little or no contact with Welsh Wales, a feature emphasized by the Pembrokeshire antiquarian George Owen (1552–1613) who noted that the inhabitants of south Pembrokeshire kept ‘their language among themselves without receiving the Welsh speech or learning any part thereof’. These areas were always open to printed books in English. In 1535, for example, the servant of William Barlow (Prior of Haverfordwest but soon to be the first Protestant Bishop of St David’s) was seized for possessing an English New Testament and similar books. In 1621 itinerants who attempted to sell books (probably the new godly chapbooks) near Haverfordwest were arrested on an unfounded suspicion of dispersing ‘popishe bookes’.