after the name of their founder; between 700 and 1000 they were
generally dedicated to the archangel Michael--there are several
Llanvihangels {1} in Wales; after 1000 new churches were dedicated to
Mary, the Mother of Christ--we have many Llanvairs. {2}

Times of civil strife, or of popular indifference, came over and over
again; and the old paganism tried to reassert itself. And time after
time the name of Christ was sounded again by men who thought they had
seen Him. In the twelfth century the Cistercian monk came to say
that the world was bad, that prayer saved the soul, and that labour
was noble. {3} He was followed by the Franciscan friar, who said
that deeds of mercy and love should be added to prayer, that Christ
had been a poor man, and that men should help each other, not only in
saving souls, but in healing sickness and relieving pain. In the
fifteenth century the Lollard came to say that the Church was too
rich, and that it had become blind to the truth, and Walter Brute
said that men were to be justified by faith in Christ, not by the
worship of images or by the merit of saints. In the sixteenth
century came the Protestant, and the sway of Rome over Wales came to
an end; Bishop Morgan translated the Bible into Welsh, and John Penry
yearned for the preaching of the Gospel in Wales. The Jesuit
followed, calling himself by the name of Jesus, to try to win the
country back again to Rome. Robert Jones toiled and schemed, and
some laid down their lives. The Puritan came in the seventeenth
century to demand simple worship, and Morgan Lloyd thought that the
second advent of Christ was at hand. The Revivalist came in the
eighteenth century, and, in the name of Christ, aroused the people of
Wales to a new life of thought.

After all this, you will be surprised to learn that many of the old