Welsh Rosicrucians of the sixteenth century

Critics of wikipedia worry about the site's pernicious influence on research and discourse. A complete lack of editorial control means that information is unverified and often entirely unsubstantiated. Because of its inbuilt ease of accessibility and use, young people in particular are prone to over-reliance on it: distinctions between reliable and unreliable sources are neglected.

Those critics can jump in a lake. Without such "untrustworthy" websites I would know hardly any more now than I did this morning about the seafaring prowess of the Welsh.

In the sixteenth century, the royal court in London had not yet evolved into its modern, basically Scottish, form. Under the Tudors it was rather on the Welsh side. In 1578 John Dee, a London-born Welshman, mathematician, magician and proto-Rosicrucian, advised Elizabeth I on her own claims to North America, claims which were clearly prior and thus superior to those of the upstart Spanish.

Elizabeth's claims would have been poor indeed if supported only by the adventures of Saxon sailors. As Dee assured her, King Arthur had conquered Frisland (as in "Freezeland", a sort of confused amalgam of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes) and had sailed west to "Estotiland", what we now think of as Labrador.

Later, in 1170, Madoc, the son of the king of Wales, and the first Adam of the "moon-eyed" Welshmen of Fort Mountain, Georgia, mentioned in the previous post, had explored the entire east coast of the present-day United States, down to Florida. Indeed the Madoc story seems largely to have been propagated by an alliance of Rosicrucians and Angl0-Welsh imperialists. The Rosicrucian connection is something I really must mull over.

I am happy to report that there is no danger that the internet will fail us in these researches. That is guaranteed by the fact that the story involves pirates, and Welsh pirates enjoy internet exposure at least equal to that enjoyed by pirates of other nations.

This information has been gleaned mostly from an essay, "Welsh Wizard and British Empire", by Glyn A. Williams. Williams also passes on a joke which reliably got the Tudor court going. Heaven was filling up with Welshmen, much to the discomfiture of those already installed. So St Peter hired an angel to stand outside the gates and shout "Rarebit".