The story of religion in the United Kingdom region of Wales is closely bound to her struggle for identity and autonomy to preserve and protect her culture and her language against the encroachments of England, her mighty neighbor to the east. Druidism is the earliest recorded religion in Wales, but the arrival of the Romans and then the spread of Christianity overwhelmed this and other native British cultures. In the 500 years before the invasion of the Normans in 1066, Welsh Christianity flourished, but the new French rulers imposed religious unity by demanding recognition of and obedience to the church headed by the Archbishop in Canterbury. This was reinforced during the Protestant Reformation, when King Henry VIII broke with the pope and the Church in ...