After the failure of the Glyndwr rebellion, it was inevitable that Wales would be annexed to England. Union had really been achieved by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284; that formal recognition had to wait until 1536 was only because of the troubles faced by English kings in dealing with their territories in France and with their own subjects in England. The conclusion of what is known as the Hundred Years War took care of the first problem, and the conclusion of what is known as the Wars of the Roses took care of the other by the time Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509.

After his great victory at Agincourt, Henry died on one of his French campaigns in 1422; his widow Katherine then married Owen Tudor, from a prominent Anglesey family. The Wars of the Roses involving rival factions for the throne of England began in the reign of the next king, Henry VI. They continued up to Bosworth in 1485 with the defeat of Richard III at the hands of the grandson of Owen Tudor, the Duke of Richmond, who took the crown as Henry VII.

Most of Wales had supported Richmond's rebellion against King Richard and were delighted that the throne was to be occupied by one of Welsh lineage. Henry acknowledged Wales and Welsh support by naming his son and heir Arthur. His daughter, meanwhile, married James IV of Scotland. It was apparent that a united kingdom of Great Britain was rapidly being created by those in power in London. The policy was continued when Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509 after young Arthur's premature death. The problem of Scotland remained a thorn in the side of the early Tudors, but in the meantime Wales could be dealt with permanently.

After Henry VIII had broken with Rome, he felt ready to further show his power as rightful king of Wales as well as England. The first of the Acts of Union (a modern term describing several acts of legislation having to do with Wales) took place in 1536. Its provisions ensured the political annexation of Wales to England, for it gave notice that part of their intent was "[henceforth] . . .to utterly extirpate all and singular the sinister usage and customs differing from the same {English laws]."

In any case, the foundations of the great Welsh landed-estates had already been firmly settled. Much of the day-to-day affairs of the nation were controlled by its landed gentry, many of whom were English or had descended from English families and intermarried with the Welsh. They looked to London for their advancement (they could hardly look elsewhere) Wales was not to get its own capital city until 1955.

The Act authorized the appointments of many of these gentry as Welsh Justices of the Peace, abolished any legal distinction between citizens of Wales and those of England, settled the border by the creation of new counties (out of the old lordships), and gave Wales representation in Parliament.

It was apparent that the Act of 1536 produced no great changes for the common folk of Wales; all the ingredients for its acceptance had been put in place long before. Even the harsh, repressive measures of Bishop Rowland Lee, who had been appointed President of the Council of Wales in 1534, seemed to have caused no great reaction on the part of the Welsh, whom he seemed to have regarded as little more than "congenital thieves." There was no major rebellion, for example, as occurred in Cornwall and Yorkshire, against the great religious changes instituted by the Crown. Either the majority of the people of Wales realized the hopelessness of their position, or their leading citizens were too busy enjoying the fruits of cooperation with London. The continuing struggle would have to wait for a while.

There certainly were major benefits to be gained from close ties with England. The Act opened up opportunities for individual advancement in all walks of life, and hundreds of ambitious Welshmen flocked to London to take full advantage of their chances. Yet, it must be noted that the Act, one of the most important in the whole history of Wales, was passed without consultation with the Welsh people; there was no agreement of a central Welsh authority or parliament, simply because such an authority did not exist.

From this time on, English law would be the only law recognized by the courts of Wales. In addition, for the placing of the administration of Wales in the hands of the Welsh gentry, a class was created, not only fluent in English, but also who would use it in all legal and civil matters. Thus inevitably, before very long, this Welsh ruling class would be divorced from the language and the common folk of their own country.

There is an expression coined in the 19th century that describes a Welshman who pretends to have forgotten his native language or who affects the loss of his national identity in order to succeed in English society or who wishes to be thought well of among his friends. Such a man is known as Dic Sion Dafydd (it is similar in meaning to the American term "Uncle Tom").

In 1561, William Herbert of Raglan, in Southeast Wales was appointed to Parliament. As Baron Herbert, he was the first full-blooded Welshman to become part of the English aristocracy and the first in a long tradition that for centuries to come would result in draining the Welsh nation of its leaders and men and women of influence.

In the military, of course, Welsh mercenaries, no longer fighting under Glyndwr for an independent Wales, were highly sought after; the skills of the Welsh archers in such battles as Agincourt had become legendary. Such examples of allegiance to their commander, the English sovereign, went a long way in dispelling an latent thoughts of independence and helped paved the way for the overwhelming Welsh allegiance to the Tudors. By 1583, in fact, Sir Henry Sidney could write: "A better people to govern than the Welsh [Europe] holdeth not." Welsh men were found in strategic position in legal, military and professional circles. They were in the forefront of England's colonial enterprises, filled leading positions in the Welsh Church (for the first time in many centuries) and in 1571 were successful in having Jesus College, Oxford founded a Welsh college. Thus, according to modern historian Gwyn Williams, they moved upward from a position of junior partners in the Elizabethan state to that of senior partners in the creation of the new and imperial British identity.

After Britain's relatively peaceful conversion to Protestantism, certainly peaceful compared to what transpired on the Continent, threats of invasion from Spain and the fear of a return to what was considered a morally and spiritually bankrupt foreign church (or foreign rule, in the case of Mary and Philip) kept the majority of people in Wales closely allied to their fellow islanders in England. Any measures to make the Counter-Reformation productive in Wales utterly failed. In spite of the activities of a few important Catholic intellectuals, mostly in exile on the Continent, the coercive power of the state kept Wales in the Protestant fold.

When Elizabeth died in 1603, it was a Scottish king who came to the throne of Britain. Outside London, in Wales, there must have been a sense of despair at the end of the Tudor reign: the old prophecy of Welsh supremacy over the island of Britain had not been fulfilled. From that time on, any differences between Wales and England, and the Welsh people and English people, cannot be found in the political arena. In so many ways, they were truly part of the diversity that made up Great Britain, yet the struggle to remain Welsh continued, however fitful, and with good reason.

The social and cultural differences of the Welsh, especially in the matter of their language, kept them apart from their neighbours and made their society seem so strange and "closed" to the rest of Britain, and it is in the language of Wales where the differences are most experienced. To a large extent, language (with its corollary literature), and to a lesser extent the Protestant religion, were the two pillars that kept the struggle for independence alive, as dismal and as hopeless as it seemed after 1536 and even more so after 1603. Both had been helped immeasurably by the fortuitous arrival of and widespread dissemination of the Welsh Bible.