As contribution to the restoration campaign, I republish the below written by Radical Republican David Lawrence in:
http://repwblic.informe.com/y-
Before I get back to the point, it is worth noting the happy coincidence of the seat of the Welsh Government being located in ' Cardiff Bay ' which is colloquially nick named ' Tiger Bay.' Most people think that this has something to do with big cats stalking the streets of Cardiff preying upon the helpless citizens innocently going about their own lives ... and in a way it does ... the original ' tygers ' lurked amongst the reeds in the swampy sea marshes alongside the estuaries feeding down into the Severn Sea : in the 16th century Wales became subject to the rule of the English Parliament where English MP's pursued their own interests and took control over the various exports from the South Wales' ports and auctioned them off so that Bristol's merchants effectively owned the Severn Sea and this is why Cardiff the largest borough in Wales at the time went into a sudden serious decline : the burghers of Cardiff had ships but no cargo - so they turned to piracy : and that is why " sailing the Severn Seas " became a reference to being an experienced sailor - it meant that you had faced the " The Tygers " and got home safely to Bristol. It seems that the original " tygers " hunted down becalmed or slowly moving sailing ships by pretending to be going out fishing, overtaking them in rowing boats from behind ... but where does the word come from ? Medieval bestiaries and heraldries were full of certain mythical beasts described in various ways with various spellings : in English the word was " tyger " and in Welsh the spelling was " teigr " - and the meaning in 16c Welsh of " teigradd " - " tigerish " - was " cruel." When pictured in bestiaries tygers are usually depicted attacking a horseman from behind who has stolen a cub from its mother ( see story below ) and they were reputed to live in marshlands around rivers - but the natural beast was often mixed up with the fabulously dangerous mythical beast the " mantyger " which is another spelling of " Manticore " - " the man-slayer." This then is the imagery summoned up by putting the Welsh Assembly in " Tiger Bay " : murderous thieves lurking in a swamp ... mmm
P.S. Gethin is a kind and generous man, knowledgable about history and full of feelings for the poor souls preyed upon by the pirates of Tiger Bay who took a percentage from the income of every English enterprise that sailed the Severn Seas and beyond. Since theirs is a Welsh operation - and he is very proud of everything Welsh - I have asked him to donate the variant Welsh flag which he designed originally for the Crachwyr - but they politely declined it - for the use of the politicians in the Senedd as a way for them to celebrate these historical associations with the location of their building by hoisting this high over it :
Since this slight detour turned into a holiday excursion, I have decided to say a little more about the ' tygers ' because their reputation as ' murderous thieves lurking in a swamp ' is not the full story, which is an historical lesson in politics. When Henry VIII wanted to get rid of his wife there were several political benefits not least to say a chance to cash in. First of all by the Act of Appeals and then by the Act Of Supremacy 1534 he controlled his most dangerous critics by making himself head of the newly created Church of England and then because they would not be silenced he made death the penalty for anyone complaining about his making himself an absolute dictator by passing the Treasons Act of 1534. The Welsh however still kept on criticizing him and we were not only not living inside the Kingdom of England, and therefore only partially under Henry VIII's control because some was ruled by the Marcher Lords, our ports offered a potential place for Catholic armies from Spain and France to land and invade England. So to silence his Welsh critics and as a matter of security against foreign rulers licensed by the pope to suppress his heresy, he supressed the Marcher Lordships and placed Wales firmly under the control of the crown by the ' Laws in Wales Acts ' of 1535 & 1542 which created The Principality of Wales from which he could also draw a private income ( actual final political union with England took place in 1624 when the so-called " Henry VIII Clause " and the thirty odd Penal Laws imposed since Owain Glyndwr's rebellion of 1404 were repealed.)
Wales was now subjected to both taxation by the English Parliament ( in exchange for Wales having MP's in the House of Commons ) and to being plundered by the monarchy : Welsh merchants not only lost their financial edge in commerce but also found English merchants able to seize control of their trade and carry it in their ships. The poor of Wales who had often been dependent upon not just charity but employment from the Catholic church were now economically marginalized by the aristocracy who seized the Catholic church's land and property - but this marginalization had already been under way beforehand as the marshes and fens bordering the Severn Sea were enclosed and drained and defended from flooding. This was going on all over England and Wales and those who had lived by fishing and fouling for centuries in the tidal marshes and inland fens were often accused of criminality in order to justify depriving them of their way of life by draining these commons which were subject to flooding - and they were commonly called ' tygers ' in reference to the dangerous beast that according to medieval bestiaries dwelt in such places.
Now the following is an apochryphal story about a real ' tyger ' - an illiterate fisherman called Rawlins White whose family had been obedient servants to the Catholic church : he probably fell into poverty because of the Reformation and thus found himself living amongst the people in ' the Dumballs ' which is a Viking name that remained after they were driven out or had their settlement of ' Hunmanby ' reconquered by the Welsh and renamed Caertaf c1000 AD. ' The Dumballs ' means an area of tidal creeks and the surrounding marshland that they flooded at spring tides, and about a mile south of medieval Cartaphe where the old Roman road south had had its embankment raising it above the Dumballs eroded away by the meandering River Taphe was the village of Sodrey which stood on a bend of the river called ' Taphe's Pool.' This was the meeting place of the excluded marginalised people known as the ' tygers ' and whilst Sodrey had once been another Viking settlement ( it means ' South Island ' ) before that we suspect that it is the ' Ratostabos ' in an ancient document describing a visit to pre-Roman Britain. Cardiff had become the county town of Glamorganshire in 1536 as part of the new political system and it became a free borough in 1542 and so the tygers were caught up in rapidly changing economic circumstances and a contested political situation in which Glamorganshire's gentry elected the county's MP and Cardiff's burghers elected a borough MP.
The tygers probably earned some extra income by waiting at Taff's Pool ( the meander was cut through and Taff's Pool is now buried under Century Wharf ) using their rowing boats to tow ships coming in from the sea up to the town quay at modern Westgate Street, and likewise they may have approached becalmed ships on the Severn Sea to offer the same or just to beg from them. So perhaps to begin with the tygers' piracy consisted of opportunistic petty theft - but once they began to bring back part or whole cargoes for sale they needed buyers who would sell on the goods. The gentry had the money to purchase the goods and the burghers had ships but no cargoes because the English merchants had gained control of the legitimate trade - so everybody was happy : were they not ? Not Rawlins White : he was not only disturbed by the exploitation of the desperate poverty of the tygers which drove them to risk themselves in such desperate acts of piracy for so little, ( and in which the wealthy merchants and landowners could deny their involvement in piracy and arrest, try and hang any of those unfortunate tygers who proved disobedient because they were also the magistrates and juries ) he was also concerned for the souls of these poor wretches.
Rawlins White had probably been converted to the Protestant cause by Thomas Capper, a radical critic of the high and mighty who had been tried for heresy and burnt at the stake in Cardiff in 1542 by the new Church of England that had now been imposed on Wales in order to suppress Catholicism after the two Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 & 1542. Although illiterate himself Rawlins White had a prodigious ability to memorize words and, when in 1538 Henry VIII ordered the clergy of every parish church to provide one public copy of the ' Great Bible ' for the parishioners to read, he had his son read it to him every day until he could recite huge tracts of it and freely refer to it from memory. He then set out to preach the word and to pray for the tygers and embarked upon his mission to reach every isolated marshland community along the estuaries of the Ely, Taff and Rhymney. He may not have saved many souls but he was clearly very popular with these poverty stricken and marginalised people who were being exploited by the wealthy gentry of Glamorganshire and burghers of Cardiff who were profiting from their piracy : he was not however popular with the gentry and burgers for his preaching against piracy nor with the Church of England for preaching a Christian morality and ethical code binding upon all including the king.
In July 1553, after a brief power struggle to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne to maintain a Protestant succession after Edward VI who had carried the Reformation even further, the Catholic queen Mary came to the throne ( her accession was later celebrated with a play called Respublica in which her flatterers depicted her bringing peace and harmony - a sick joke, she set about murdering her critics as had her father Henry VIII - the restored Catholic church even tortured and killed children in the name of Jesus.) The gentry of Glamorganshire and the burghers of Cardiff shrugged their shoulders : their business was piracy not religion ... but ... Rawlins White kept preaching : he just would not shut up - and this presented those who wanted to remove the man who could potentially lead the tygers and who steadfastedly opposed the high and mighty, preaching repentance for all lest they be damned for what they did and condemned to the fire ... so they damned him for what he did and condemned him to the fire.
This is what happens when there is no separation of powers in the political sytem : Rawlins White's enemies were the political establishment of his day - they were judge and jury, prosecution and defence, confessor and executioner. He was actually in held in jail for months and given an ample opportunity to set a good example to the other tygers by submitting to the authority of those who were exploiting his community - but he refused. When the soldiers dragged him from prison and manhandled him roughly because the officer claimed that he might escape he led them himself to the place of execution. In front of the assembled crowd who were hoping to witness him recanting what he preached and submit to the authorities he arranged the firewood and faggots himself. He urged them to chain him tightly to the stake lest he be tempted not to be obedient to God ( this took place at the cross roads made by Quay St, High St, Church St and St Mary St - facing onto this used to be the Guildhall and St Pyrans Chapel, on the corner stone of which somebody later scratched a memorial to him.) He was required to listen to a sermon from a priest with whom he started arguing because of his lack of knowledge of the scriptures - the heretic correcting the cleric ! Outraged by this the authorities called for him to be burnt immediately, in front of his wife and children and friends - and as the flames and smoke enveloped him many of his friends defied the high and the mighty present and stood with him one last time by pushing past the soldiers and coming forward to briefly reach through the fire to shake his hand : his friend John Dane held his hand for as long as he could stand it ...
Now - be careful of people like me who tell such sentimental stories for a political purpose : read John Dane's eyewitness account in Foxes' Book Of Martyrs, and other better accounts by historians using less ideologically slanted records than that which set these events in their historical context. If you go in via the south door in St Mary Street of the House of Frazer's Howells Department Store you can see the following plaque on the wall of the chapel that was incorporated into the building.
BEFORE LEAVING THE HISTORY BIT I THINK THAT I OUGHT TO NOTE THAT CARDIFF HAS A LONG HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS, POLITICAL AND RACIAL INTOLERANCE AND I VERY MUCH DOUBT THAT IT HAS ENDED : So I think that it is only fair to note the two Catholic martyrs and point out that whilst the high and mighty had declared Wales officially Protestant in 1536, poorer Welsh people in general were not having it : as a general rule you can tell if somebody is Welsh by trying to tell them what to do. It took the Welsh over two hundred years to finally obey the monarchy's demand to stop being Catholics opposed to the Church of England : around 1745, after the Welsh Jacobites had clearly backed the losing side in joining in with the Scottish Jacobites, the Welsh nation took the momentous decision to become - Methodists opposed to the Church of England.
The two Catholic martyrs died on what Cardiffians have dubbed " Death Junction " on the same scaffold on the same day - 22nd July 1679, although the actual site of the gallows was in the angle of the cross roads, between Richmond Road and Crwys Road where the bank stands : there is a blue plaque on the wall opposite the pub and about half a mile away in St Peter's Roman Catholic church there is a pair of stain glass windows commemorating them. The famous part of the story took place after their trial when the under-sheriff finally came to serve the warrant for their execution which was to be the next day : they declined to accept it until they had finished their game of tennis ( this was a medieval ' royal tennys courte ' which was to the side of the Tennis Court Inn, which is now The Owain Glyndwr whose extension called Y Tair Pluen is mostly built over it.)
Philip Evans was a Jesuit priest from Monmouthshire, and after making speeches to the crowd assembled for their execution in Welsh and English, he turned to his friend and said " Adieu, Mr Lloyd, though for a little time, for we shall shortly meet again." and then John Lloyd had to stand and watch him die. John Lloyd was secular priest from Breconshire and before he died he made only a short speech and his last words were " ‘I never was a good speaker in my life." The notable thing I think is that many people came to visit them whilst they were in jail, still defying the high and mighty 143 years after Henry VIII declared his critics to be traitors.
( I thought that I actually had a photo of the stained glass windows erected in St Peter's Roath in 1929 on the 250th anniversary, but no and I can't find any on the internet either but I did came across this page which mentions Evans and Lloyd : there were four Welsh Catholic priests martyred in 1679 -http://lastwelshmartyr.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/330th-anniversary-part-1.html )
