in praise of his patron is one of the best of that
type; Hywel Swrdwal and Gwilym ab Ieuan Hen.

Eisteddfod of 1451.

5. _The Silver Age of the Cywydd, 1440-1550._--The insurrection of Owen
Glyndwr, though originally the result of a private quarrel, was the
general revolt of a nation against the conquerors whom it hated, and the
English king knew well enough that the discontent with his rule was
fanned by the older and more national Welsh institutions, and by none
more than by the system of wandering bards. The conditions which had
given rise to this system were fast dying out, but the noblemen, who
fortunately were still intensely Welsh, were loth to give up their
family bards, and the bards themselves, never a too industrious class,
were too glad of their freedom and easy life to turn to more profitable
work. We find, therefore, that a law was passed in 1403, the fourth year
of Henry IV.'s reign, prohibiting bards "and other vagrants" from
exercising their profession in Gwynedd or North Wales. This law,
however, like its predecessor in the reign of Edward I., failed utterly
in its purpose. By prohibiting the Welsh noblemen from giving their
patronage to the bards, and, therefore, from distinguishing between the
real bards and the mendicant rhymesters, this law took away the only
safeguard against the latter class, with the result that by about 1450
they had become a pest to the country. About that time there flourished
a poet called Llawdden, who, noticing the very unsatisfactory state of
poetry in Wales, induced his kinsman, Gruffydd ab Nicolas, a nobleman
living in Y Drenewydd (Newtown), to petition Henry VI. for permission to
hold an eisteddfod similar in purpose to the three _Eisteddfodau Dadeni_
of the last period. This famous eisteddfod was held at Caerfyrddin
(Carmarthen) in 1451, and shortly before the actual eisteddfod was held
a "statute" was drawn up under the direction of Llawdden, regulating the
different orders of bards and musicians and setting in order the
_cynghaneddion a mesurau_, the different kinds of alliterative verse to
be presented to the assembled bards at the meeting. Among those present
at that eisteddfod the most distinguished was Dafydd ab Edmwnd, who then
made famous the dictum that the purpose of an eisteddfod was "to bring
to mind the past, to consider the present, and to deliberate about the
future." He, therefore, proposed emendations in "the rules of Welsh
verse," making them mo