This chapter focuses on changes in language policy in Wales between the 1960s and the present. The discussion illustrates how drawing on the concept of state tradition can help to explain why it has been possible for a general policy trajectory that has been increasingly supportive of the Welsh language to emerge during this period. However, the chapter argues that the concept of state tradition seems somewhat constrained in explaining more specific and detailed episodes in the development of language policy in Wales over recent decades. In particular, it is less able to explain why specific policies were adopted at particular junctures. Building on this, the chapter contributes to the volume by demonstrating how the insights of the state traditions and language regimes framework could be deepened if supplemented with a more explicit focus on how institutional factors across multiple levels of government can shape language policy choices, particularly in relation to regional or minority languages such as Welsh.

This chapter presents on overview of present-day Welsh English(es) with a focus on regional variation and diachronic developments over the past fifty years. The Anglicisation of Wales has progressed in several phases over the centuries, which is why the accents and dialects of English in Wales are regionally distinctive, the Welsh language and neighbouring English English dialects impacting them to different degrees. The chapter takes the Survey of Anglo-Welsh dialects (Parry 1999) as a starting point and uses corpus and survey data compiled in the twenty-first century as well as recent research publications, thereby examining the main trends of development in the different domains of English. Phonological variation and change are described across a broad North–South continuum, whereas in morphosyntax the greatest differences can be found between the predominantly English-speaking Southeast and the bilingual, historically Welsh-dominant North and West Wales. In regional lexicon, sociolinguistically and nationally salient items are relatively few, originating from both Welsh and English. Finally, the chapter draws attention to recent research, and highlights some caveats and future directions for the study of English in Wales.

International pressures, Brexit and the resurgence of nationalism have created new divides in the regions of the United Kingdom. Brendan O’Leary examines the impact of Conservative policy in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, focusing on how prime ministers have handled campaigns and support for Scottish independence, the ruling coalitions in Wales, and also the new post-Brexit framework and demographic pressures in Northern Ireland. The chapter ends with a dire overall evaluation of the condition of the union as a result of Conservative policy.

Owain Glyndwr (died c. 1416) was the last Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales. In 1400 he led a rebellion against king Henry IV and English rule in Wales. In 1406 he addressed a letter, now known as the Pennal Letter, to king Charles VI of France asking for support in persuading the schismatic pope Benedict XIII to help Wales to exist as an independent state with a Church and universities of its own.

Chapter 4 commences a survey of the Court of Requests’ litigants. Drawing data out of the entire Court archive, it charts the origins of cases and clients in counties across English-governed territories and the status identifiers ascribed to both petitioners and defendants. The demography of this Court is characterised by considerable geographical and social breadth; this was a truly ‘national’ tribunal, accessible to everyone from poor widows and humble craftsmen to civic officials and the landed classes. The chapter puts these findings into dialogue with the scholarship on the relative litigiousness of English regions and on wealth distribution in early modernity. Finally, the chapter tests the claim that Requests was the ‘poor man’s court’, asking whether we can identify truly impoverished individuals among the standard social categorisations appearing in court records. It argues that royal justice could serve litigants of more humble status, though this observation will be qualified in following chapters.

Chapter 2 surveys the system of courts that emerged around the early Tudor monarchs. Examining ordinances for the organisation of the royal Council from the late medieval period, it reveals earlier precedents for prioritising justice-giving, particularly to poor suitors, within the central administration. Further procedural models are identified in the established central Court of Chancery, its procedure under English bills and its reference to conscience in decision-making, and in the arbitration of disputes by regional magnates. Turning to royal conciliar justice, the chapter outlines the administrative and judicial capacities of the councils in the North and in the Welsh Marches. Finally, it sets out the development of two offshoots of the royal Council by the very end of the fifteenth century: the council or court in the Star Chamber at Westminster and the Court of Requests within the attendant royal household.

The rough chronological boundaries of this chapter will be 1800 and 1921. These are defined by the structure of the United Kingdom, which itself defined the key questions in constitutional history that were discussed in this period. In 1800 the island of Ireland, all thirty-two counties, joined Great Britain, which had been formed in 1707 by the Union between Scotland and England. This was the period of the maximum extent of the United Kingdom. In 1921, following the negotiations at the end of the Irish War of Independence, the island of Ireland was partitioned, twenty-six counties forming the Irish Free State and the six remaining counties in the north-east constituting Northern Ireland. The government of Northern Ireland was subject to a scheme of devolution under the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. This had provided for both northern and southern parliaments, only the former was established.1 It remained in place until the imposition of direct rule in 1972. The nineteenth century, therefore, was an age of two unions and this had huge significance for constitutional developments.2 Not only were the Unions themselves matters of great controversy but the three kingdoms, four nations, posed immense problems in relation to questions of church and state, local government, the land and the issue of the extension of the franchise. The constitutional development of the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland was complex. The Union state incorporated several constitutional traditions and understandings of the constitution, and a range of challenges to its integrity. The British constitution, most often seen in terms of an English constitutional tradition, was thought of by contemporaries implicitly and explicitly in a comparative context.

‘For Wales – see England’. For much of the period since the Annexation of 1284, the constitutional history of Wales might be summed up neatly in this oft-quoted, and rather dismissive, line from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.1 Edward I’s settlement set the parameters within which Wales was to operate in terms of government, the administration of the law and the role of the Church, for 250 years; and the so-called ‘Act of Union’ (1536 and 1543) carried the process further, assimilating governmental and legal practice in Wales further to the English model. Yet, as this chapter will suggest, ‘For Wales – see England’ does not tell the full story of Wales’s constitutional history. During the nineteenth century, as a viable strain of political nationalism grew up in the principality, its proponents looked to the example of Ireland as a pattern on which to model their demands. During the twentieth, it was Scotland that provided the inspiration for politicians now anxious for a greater measure of devolution – something finally achieved in 1997. If the first five centuries after annexation saw Wales sublimated to English constitutional imperatives, the nineteenth and the twentieth saw Wales define its own nationhood by active engagement with the other smaller nations within the United Kingdom. In this chapter these three phases of Welsh constitutional development will be examined in turn, and it will be suggested that the Wales which received a degree of institutional independence in 1997 was a very British creation.

The concept of nation in the United Kingdom is famously ambiguous. It has no juridical value but is a central element in constitutional debates. It can refer to either the whole state or to one of its component parts, England, Scotland, Wales and a part of Ireland. The name of the state, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, lacks a corresponding adjective; as Richard Rose remarks, ‘No one speaks of the “Ukes” as a nation’.1

The UK is an ‘evolved’ state1 that has become a devolved state. It was created by a series of bilateral arrangements to become a ‘state of unions’.2 The centre is key to how any state develops, extending its authority over a wider geography, whether by enforcing uniformity or permitting diversity. The rationale for each union has changed over time, reflecting the changing views on how the UK should stay together as a multi-national state.

Historically, the idea of Britain is closely tied to Wales and the Welsh people, who saw themselves as the sovereign rulers of the island nation of Britain, cruelly dispossessed by the Saxons. This chapter traces the historical processes by which the kingdom of England first asserted and then legally established its right to include Wales within the nation of England, appropriating Britishness as a proxy for Englishness. This ideological strategy, first normalised by the Tudors and resisted through Welsh literary production, continues to the present day. In the twentieth century, the rise of Anglophone writing in Wales challenged the link between the Welsh language and Welsh nationhood, but increasing immigration and the achievement of devolution in 1999 encouraged a more inclusive and multilingual national identity. Though political devolution has enabled Wales to define itself as a substate nation within a federated state, the ideological impetus to claim Britishness for itself continues across the border in England.

This chapter examines the potential impact of Brexit on the future of the Union, providing a snapshot of public opinion and attitudes as the full implications of the UK’s departure start to become clear. In the first section, an overview of devolution in the UK is provided. In the second section, data on public opinion are provided from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as consideration of attitudes to the Union in England and to Irish unification in Ireland. In the third section, the case of Northern Ireland is examined in more depth. In conclusion, it is argued that the future of the Union depends upon a combination of factors: the UK government’s policy towards Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; the economic impact of Brexit; demographic change in Northern Ireland; and attitudes in Ireland to unification.