judicial purposes; but it has remained sturdily Welsh, and now it is
practically regarded by Parliament as part of Wales. The whole
country was now governed in the same way, and Wales was represented,
like England, in Parliament. No attempt had been made to do this
before, except by the first English Prince of Wales, the weak and
unfortunate Edward II.

Of even greater value than political equality was the new reign of
law. The Tudors used the Star Chamber, the Court of Wales, and the
Great Sessions of Wales, to make all equal before the law. To the
Star Chamber they summoned a noble who was still too powerful for the
court of law.

But it was the Court of Wales that did most work. It was held at
Ludlow. It had very able presidents, men like Bishop Lee, the Earl
of Pembroke, and Sir Henry Sidney. Bishop Lee struck terror into the
whole Welsh march, between 1534 and 1543. Before his time a lord
would keep murderers and robbers at his castle, protect them, and
perhaps share their spoil. But no man could keep a felon out of the
reach of Bishop Rowland Lee. If he could not get them alive he got
their dead bodies; and you might have seen processions of men
carrying sacks on ponies--they were dead men who were to swing on
Ludlow gibbets. But, severe as Lee was, the peasant was glad that he
could go to the Court at Ludlow instead of going to the court of a
march lord, as he had to do before 1535. The shire had been much
better governed than the lordship. When the lordship of Mawddwy was
added to the shire of Merioneth in 1535, the officers of the shire
found that it was a nest of brigands and outlaws.

In the more peaceful and humane days of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Henry