To what extent had Protestantism succeeded in gaining the loyalty of the people of Wales by the end of the sixteenth century?.
The implementation of Protestantism during the sixteenth century resembled a modern day rollercoaster ride with lots of ups and downs, sharp corners, twists and turns. With many different rulers during the sixteenth century who had varying religious ideas the extent of the effects Protestantism had firstly in England and then the following effects in Wales very to each other. Something the rulers of the time, being the Tudors did not have to worry about was the loyalty of the Welsh people in the majority.
When Henry Tudor ascended the throne as Henry VII, the foundations of the great Welsh landed-estates had been laid, and much of the day-to-day affairs of the nation was controlled by its landed squires, many of whom had descended from English families and intermarried with their Welsh counterparts. In 1461, this control was exemplified and sanctified, as it were, by the appointment of William Herbert of Raglan in Southeast Wales, to Parliament as Baron Herbert, the first full-blooded Welshman to become part of the English aristocracy and the first in a long tradition that for centuries to come, would zap the Welsh nation of its leaders and men of influence. This loyalty continued under Henry VIII who came to the throne in 1491. Their loyalties would henceforth be with the Crown or Parliament or both, but not with their native country; they would associate the latter with loyalty to the Tudor sovereigns. Even the harsh, repressive measures of Bishop Rowland Lee, appointed President of the Council of Wales in 1534, seemed to have caused no great reaction on the part of the Welsh, whom he seemed to have regarded as little more than "congenital thieves." There was no rebellion, as occurred in Cornwall and Yorkshire, against the great religious changes instituted by the Crown.
