its own sake,
but only for the moral lessons they could find in it. But, to rouse
some intellectual interest in the people at large, and stimulate their
moral sense, was a work not unworthy of the universities; and this aim
was to some degree attained. One of the favourite ways of spending a
holiday in the Middle Ages was to go and hear a friar preach. Here is
a summary of a friar's sermon constructed after the method of Friar
John of Wales, on the relative merits of the Ass and the Pig.

"The pig and the ass live not the same life: for the pig during his
life does no good, but eats and swills and sleeps; but when he is
dead, then do men make much of him. The ass is hard at work all his
days and does good service to many; but when he dies, there is no
profit. And that is the way of the world. Some do no good thing while
they live, but eat and drink and wax fat, and then they are dragged
off to the larder of hell, and others enrich themselves with their
goods. Whereby I know that those, who for God's sake live the life of
holy poverty, shall never lack substance, because their heavenly
Father has pigs to kill. For as the good man before the season will
kill a pig or two to give puddings to his children, so will our Lord
kill those hardened sinners before their time, and give their goods to
the children of God. So the psalmist says: 'The bloodthirsty and
deceitful men shall not live out half their days,' because they do no
work to keep their bodies healthy. Nothing is so healthful for body
and soul as honest work. Work is the life of man, the guardian of
health; work drives away sin, and makes people sleep well at night.
Work is the strength of feebleness, the health of sickness, the
salvation of men,--quickener of the senses, foe of sloth, nurse of
happiness, a duty in the young and in the old a merit. Therefore it is
better to be an ass than a pig."

One of the most able of these "extension lecturers" was another
Welshman--probably a native of Cardiff--Friar John David, whose
lectures at Hereford were so successful that after a year both the
friars and the clergy of the city declared he was indispensable, and
petitioned for his reappointment. He became the head of the
Franciscan province of England, and lies buried among the ruins of the
church of the Grey Friars in Cardiff.

VI

LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD AND THE BARONS' WAR

Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the history of England
and the histo