Editing Saunders Lewis (section)

==''{{lang|cy|Tân yn Llŷn}}'' 1936==

Welsh nationalism was ignited in 1936 when the UK Government settled on establishing an [[RAF]] training camp and aerodrome at [[Penyberth]]<ref>[[RAF Penrhos]]</ref> on the [[Llŷn Peninsula]] in [[Gwynedd]]. The events surrounding the protest, known as ''{{lang|cy|Tân yn Llŷn}}'' ("Fire in Llŷn"), helped define ''{{lang|cy|Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru}}''.<ref name="Davies_593">{{harvp|Davies|1994a|p=593}}</ref> The UK Government settled on Llŷn as the site for its training camp after similar proposed sites in [[Northumberland]] and [[Dorset]] met with protests.<ref name="Davies_592">{{harvp|Davies|1994a|p=592}}</ref>

However, Prime Minister [[Stanley Baldwin]] refused to hear the case against building this "bombing school" in Wales, despite a deputation representing 500,000 Welsh protesters.<ref name="Davies_592"/> Protest against the project was summed up by Lewis when he wrote that the UK Government was intent upon turning one of the "essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature" into a place for promoting a "barbaric" method of warfare.<ref name="Davies_592"/> Construction of this military academy began exactly 400 years after the passage of the [[Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542]].<ref name="Davies_592"/>

On 8 September 1936, the building was set on fire and in the investigations which followed Saunders Lewis, [[Lewis Valentine]], and [[David John Williams|D.&nbsp;J. Williams]] claimed responsibility.<ref name="Davies_592"/> They were tried at Caernarfon, where the jury failed to agree on a verdict. The case was then sent to be retried at the [[Old Bailey]] in London, where "the Three" were convicted, and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. On their release from [[Wormwood Scrubs (HM Prison)|Wormwood Scrubs]], they were greeted as heroes by 15,000 Welsh people at a pavilion in [[Caernarfon]].<ref name="Davies_592"/>

[[File:Llosgi'r Ysgol Fomio - The Burning of the Bombing School - geograph.org.uk - 356846.jpg|thumb|''{{lang|cy|Llosgi'r Ysgol Fomio}}'': "The Burning of the Bombing School"]]

Many Welsh people were angered by the judge's scornful treatment of the Welsh language, by the decision to move the trial to London, and by the decision of University College, Swansea, to dismiss Lewis from his post before he had been found guilty.<ref name="Davies_593"/> [[Dafydd Glyn Jones]] wrote of the fire that it was "the first time in five centuries that Wales struck back at England with a measure of violence... To the Welsh people, who had long ceased to believe that they had it in them, it was a profound shock."<ref name="Davies_593"/>

However, despite the acclaim the events of ''{{lang|cy|Tân yn Llŷn}}'' generated, by 1938 Lewis's concept of ''{{lang|cy|perchentyaeth}}'' ("home ownership") had been firmly rejected as ''not'' a fundamental tenet of the party. In 1939 Lewis resigned as ''{{lang|cy|Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru}}'' president, saying that Wales was not ready to accept the leadership of a Roman Catholic.<ref name="Davies_593"/>

Although Lewis was the son and grandson of prominent [[Presbyterian Church of Wales|Welsh Calvinistic Methodist]] ministers, he had converted to [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholicism]] in 1932.