^ y Cpmmrodon THE MAbA/TNE OF THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF CYMMRODORION VOL. XIV. PRODUCED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF I THE' EDITORIAL COMMITTEE. S32 LONDON : ISSUED BY THE SOCIETY, NEW STONE BUILDINGS, 64, CHANCERY LANE. 1901. \JJ1 Devizes : Printed by Geoege Simpson. S CONTENTS. English Law in Wales and the Marches. By Henry Owen, D.C.L.Oxon., F.S.A. ... ... ... 1 Appendix : The State of the Cause concerninge the Lo. President and Counsell in ye Marches of Wales ... ... ... ... ... 33 The Broughtons of Marchwiel. Contribution to the History of the Parish of Marchwiel. By Alfred Neobard Palmer 42 Vita Sancti Kebie. By the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A 86 Salesbury's Dictionary and the Eing's Licence. By J. H Davies, M.A. 96 A Welsh Love Song of the 16th Century. By J. H Davies, M.A. 98 The Expulsion of the Dessi. By Professor Kuno Meyer, Ph.D. ... ... ... ... 101 Side Lights on Welsh Jacobitism. By J. Arthur Price, B.A. ... ... ... ... 136 Supplement : List of Publications. Cmmimrîmr. Vol. XIV. "Cared doeth tr encilion." 1900. 45ngft00 £a)# ín TUafes anò f(Je By HENRY OWEN, D.C.L.Oxon., F.S.A. The histoiy of the administration of English law in Wales and the Marches inay be divided into three periods : — (1) during the gradual conquest of the countrj by the Anglo- and their barons after the Norman lrings ; (2) completion " " of that conquest, when Wales was governed by the Crown through the English Prince of Wales and the Marches were self governed and merely owned feudal to the and from the time of the union subjection king ; (3) of Wales and the Marches to England until the abolition of judicial "Wales." It has been the custom of writers on English history, so far as they think it worth while to refer to the Princi- pality of Wales, to state that Wales was conquered by Edward I. But what Edward conquered was the dominion which was left to the last prince of the Welsh blood royal : the greater part of Wales had been conquered long before, b 2 English Laiu in Wales and the Marches. and remained for centuries under its peculiar jurisdiction quite apart from the realm of England and from the new created Principality of Wales. The effect of the Norman Conquest of England was soon felt in Wales. Norman adventurers, especially after the encouragement of the winning of Glamorgan in the early years of William Rufus, obtained grants from the English king of such lands as could in Wales the Welsh historian they acquire ; " took occasion to remark the king was very liberal of that which was not his own." It has been alleged that these grants were made on the ground of some claim of forfeiture of the Principality to the crown but Edward could show English ; although some reason for his claim of feudal superiority over the dominions of Llewelyn, the earlier charters to the invaders granted to them in plain terms such land as they had " acquired or should thereafter acquire from our enemies the Welsh." 1 These lands came, early in the thirteenth century, to be called the Marches, and the holders of them Lords " " " " Marcher. The words March and Marcher appear in various forms in several European languages. The March was the boundary, and many writers have been led astray by the supposition that the Welsh Marches meant the lands on the borders of England and Wales (that is to as at but as the limits of the old say present constituted) ; Principality shrunk, the Marches followed them, so that we find Lordships Marcher in the farthest parts of Wales. After the prerogatives of the Lords Marcher were vested in the crown by Henry VIII, it was often difíìcult to decide which were or had been Marches ; none could have arisen after Edward had annexed the remnant of the 1 See Rot. Chart., 63 and 666. EnrlishÁ Law in Wales and the Marches. Principality. Some (called Lordships Royal) had been acquired by the king at his own charges, and many were from time to time forfeited to the Crown, especially after of the in he exercised the Wars Roses ; these jurisdiction, not as king, but as dominus Marchice. Although the laws of Henry IV, which deprived Welshmen of their rights and liberties, were directed against the inhabitauts of the Principality and not those of the Marches, it was the latter which, after the union with England, continued to be more disorderly. Some few lordships had been granted to Welshmen who were content to hold their lands of the King of for the of which England ; example, Lordship Powys, became subject to the crown "by submission and not by conquest," retained the Welsh divisions of land and had courts baron and courts leet for each commote, in the saine manner as the district afterwards included in the Statute of Rhuddlan. It is worth noting that the only Lordship Marcher in Wales in which some of the old prerogatives survive is that of Kemes in ÜSTorth Pembroke- shire, whicli was conquered by Martin de Tours in the of William Rufus and it is to a Lord of Kemes reign ; in the time of Queen Elizabeth, one George Owen, to whose writings we are indebted for the greater part of our knowledge of the rights and privileges of these sovereigns of the land of Wales, for owing to the wholesale destruc- tion of the local records, and the scanty reference to the subject in those of the Crown, the material for the historian is small. The extent of the territory of the Marchers may be estimated by that of the dominions oí Llewelyn annexed by Edward I, for the government of which were framed, in 12 Edward 1, a set of regulations called the Statute of Rhuddlan, or the Statute of Wales. By it were ap- b 2 4 English Lazu in Wales and the Marches. pointed sheriffs for Ang-lesey, Carnarvon and Merioneth, the old inheritance of the Princes of Gwynedd, for Flint, parcel of the Palatinate of Chester which was fìnally annexed to the Principality of Wales temp. Edward II, and for Carmarthen and for Cardigan and Lampeter, i.e. Llanbadarn, by Aberystwyth. To Carnarvon, Merio- neth and Flint, certain cantreds and commotes were assigned, of the others it was merely stated that they should have their present metes and bounds. The three South Wales districts included a part of West Carmar- thenshire which had been obtained by the princes of North Wales after the extinction of the Welsh princes of the South, and nearly the whole of the present county of Cardigan, the only Welsh county which represents an ancient territorial division, and the only part of Wales in which the Welsh had succeeded in driving back the Lords Marcher. The territory comprised in this Statute remained for centuries what was known to English law as " Wales", ruled by Eng-lish law as modified by the Statute, and was, until the death of Arthur Tudor, the son of Henry VII, granted by Charter (as was the Earldom " of Chester) to each heir apparent and to his heirs Kings of England"; nevertheless, the charters to towns were granted by the king- and not by the Prince of Wales. The Prince was solemnly invested with the chaplet ring- and to this the eldest son of the is sceptre ; day sovereign born Duke of Cornwall, but he is created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. All the rest of Modern Wales not " subject to the Statute was the Marches", over which the King was, by 3 Edward I, cap. 17, proclaimed Sovereign Lord, and which, by 28 Edward III, cap. 2, was declared to be attendant on the Crown of Eng-land as heretofore, and not on the Principality of Wales, and under the same term were included the forty-four Lordships which were English Law in Wales and the Marches. 5 added to English counties by the Act of TJnion (27 east of Henry VIII, cap. 26), besides the Lordships Chepstow Bridg-e, which were added to G-loucestershire. The Lordships mentioned in the Act amount to over one hundred. II. The way for the Statute of Wales had been prepared by the Commission which Edward had issued four years previously' (that is to say, after the submission of Llewelyn and before his final revx)lt), to enquire into the laws and customs of the Welsh districts then held by the King\ His father had granted to him in 1254 the palatinate of Chester, una cum conguestu nostro Wallice a in finibus illis, ita tamen quod nunauam separentur Gorona, and Edward had shown a characteristic desire to set in order his possessions, which were practically the later Principality, with the exception of Anglesey and the land of Snowdon, which remained with Llewelyn. The Com- missioners were the Bishop of St. David's andtwo Norman barons. They sat at fìve places and summoned one hundred and witnesses it froni the seventy-two ; appears evidence that even then Welsh law and custom had been affected by those of England. It was the object of the ambition of the Welsh princes to emulate the position of the English king-s, and some of their chief nobles had assumed the state of English barons. The Statute of Wales recites that the Principality, as then remodelled, 4í the land of Snowdon and other our lands in Wales," which had hitherto been subject to the Crown in jure feudali, had then fallen in proprietatis dominium it a distinct ; was thenceforth to be j)ortion of the realm of Engiand, over which the Courts of West- 1 Rot.