And the Crown Property Land Market in South-East Wales in The
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Crown Property and the Land Market in South-East Wales in the Sixteenth Century By MADELEINE GRAY T IS rlow nearly twenty years since John well-documented segment of the whole' Kew disrupted the placid lives of those land market, though with increasing aware- I engaged in the compilation of intermi- ness of the limited scope of their findings. nable theses on 'The dispersal of monastic The paucity of sources is particularly land' (or, more recently, 'of Crown land') unfortunate since we have no justification 'in Blankshire' with his declaration that it for assuming that the pattern of landholding was pointless to study the market in Crown and land ownership which prevailed in the property in isolation from the land market better-documented lowland areas of south- as a whole.: From his findings on the east England necessarily extended to the land market in Devon it appeared that upland zone of the north and west; this is conclusions on the social and economic even more so for Wales, where the Acts of mobility of individuals and groups based Union of 1536 and 1543 were only partly on their acquisition of Crown land might successful in imposing English land law in grossly misrepresent the true position since a country whose concepts of land ownership they ignored the extent to which such were, in theory, completely different. It is individuals and groups may have sold other possible to supplement the information on property, whether to invest in Crown land this area from deeds enrolled in central or for other reasons, and also fail to take courts of record, notably those on the dorse account of the purchase of land from other of the Close Rolls, 3 but these enrolments sources by different individuals or groups. are uncalendared and largely unindexed and Dr Kew was fortunate in that his chosen as a result present considerable difficulties county had not only ample collections of to the researcher. One way of approaching private deeds but also a unique set of Quarter the problem, the approach which has been Sessions enrolments of conveyances by adopted in this study, seemed to be to use bargain and sale under the Statute of these enrolled deeds and such estate papers Enrolments. In the absence of such sources, as have survived to place the acquisition of particularly in the counties of the north and Crown land by local families in the context west where even private deeds for this of their acquisitions from other sources and period are scarce, historians have continued the development and administration of their to study the market in Crown property as a whole estates. Such an approach would be facilitated by the brief indexes to the Close Rolls compiled at the time of enrolment, ' This article is based on the writer's thesis 'Tile dispersal of Crown property in Monmouthshire, 15oo-t6o3', Wales PhD 1984 ch. 3 which index purchasers of property (ii). For details of the process by which the Crown's estate in the throughout the sixteenth century and ven- county was sold off, see ch. 3 (i) of the same thesis. The old county name of Monmouthshire has been used througho,at, as Gwent, dors after 1574. To confine the study to historically speaking, refers only to part of the modern county of that name, and most sources relate to the old county boundaries. : 'The land market in Devon, I536--t 558', Exeter PhD thesis, 1967; 3 For a more detailed study of these, see the present writer's article I see also idem, 'The disposal of Crown lands and the Devon land 'The Close Rolls as a source for sixteenth-century history', Archives market, 1536-58', Ag Hist Rev 197o, 93-1o5. xvii no. 75, April 1986. iJ I33 i I34 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW individuals who were involved in the market investors in land; a speculative purchase of for Crown land begs important questions land for resale had the incidental advantage about the state of the land market as a that if the property remained unsold it whole, but at present it seems the only would still produce some profit, while a way of tackling the development of land property bought as an investment might ownership, even in a restricted area, over a well be regarded as available for resale at fairly lengthy time span. The alternative the right price. The subsequent history of would be to take a larger geographical area the property and a knowledge of the and a shorter time span and to scan all the purchaser's other activities may throw some Close Rolls for that period, extracting any light on this question of the original grantee's references to the chosen area. It is to be attitude to his purchase. hoped that, when the importance of enrolled There is still debate, however, on how deeds as evidence for changes in the structure much further the dispersal of this property of local society has been understood, local should be traced through the local land record societies may also feel inclined to market. On the one hand, Joyce Youings caleffdar those deeds relating to their own has argued that it may be misleading to take areas to make them available for more too long a view of the history of former detailed study. monastic property, as it was soon asborbed There is also a need for more detailed into the local market and, if subsequently studies of the market in Crown property returned to the Crown, was described in after it left Crown hands in order to official records not as ex-monastic property determine its impact on the local market but as the property of the most recent and the structure of society. Some of the owner. Its resale was thus of no more evidence suggests that landowners were significance than any other private land more willing to resell land which they had transaction. On the other hand, as Joyce bought than inherited land, though this runs Youings herself points out, it is vitally counter to Kew's conclusion that many important to pursue the history of owner- Devonshire families sold their patrimony in ship to discover the genuine purchasers of order to invest in Crown land. In either property 4 and in the case of speculative case, the injection of Crown land must have purchases this may involve looking at had an effect on the local market, leading to transactions some years after the initial at least some increase in trading. grant. -~ It was originally intended to end the Studies of subsequent dealings in Crown present study in r6o3 but several significant land should also enable us to disentangle the trends from Elizabeth's reign were found to genuinely local property market from the have continued at least until the I62os, activities of dealers and speculators. No notably the Crown's gradual abdication of accurate impression can be obtained of the control over the processes of land alienation velocity and significance of the local market and the increasing power and initiative of when the picture is confused by the activities agents and dealers. Unfortunately, lack of of outsiders who traded in land as a time prevented an exhaustive study of the commodity without social significance. relevant sources for this period: they are in This distinction between commercial deal- ing and the local market is both more The Dissolution o/'the Monasteries, London 1971, pp 19, 13o--3; ihid, pp 126-9. important and more difficult to draw when E.g. the property in Mounton granted in fee farm to Ralph Crewc the dealer was also a local landowner acting and Richard Cartwright o11 -'8 Oct 1598, sold by them to Richard Budd Oll 29 Nov and by Budd to l)avid Phillips, apparently a on his own behalf as well as that of friends local man, on z7July 1613: Public Record Office, C/66/1492 mln or neighbours. It is in any case difficult to 14-19, Gwent Record Office (hereafter GwP, O) 11.5Ol.452. References arc to documents in the Public Record Office unless draw a firm line between speculators and othcrwisc stated. J CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES I35 any case less fully listed, and some sources through the Court of Augmentations or to such as particulars for grants and leases, live in London while the lengthy process enrolments and other copies of leases, are was completed. These problems could be scarce after 16o3. It was therefore decided dealt with by purchase through a courtier to confine the study for statistical purposes or official or through or in partnership with to the years 15oo-16o3, while giving con- a more knowledgeable neighbour who was sideration in more general discussions to also buying for himself. Thus Giles Morgan developments in the early seventeenth cen- made his modest purchase of the site tury. and lands of Newport Friary through Sir Edward Came, who was also buying for I himself. Roger Williams bought on behalf There was virtually i:o dealing in former of himself, his brother-in-law and several Crown property in Monmouthshire in the neighbours in 1544 but exchanged land with earlier phases of its dispersal when grants the Crown through the Earl of Pembroke were made, usually on generous terms, in in 1553. William Morgan began by buying response to individual petitions. Gifts and through the Earl of Bedford, rapidly gradu- concessionary grants were obviously less ated to buying in his own name and in :563 likely to be resold, and there was no scope took John Morris, another Monmouthshire for agents or middlemen to become involved gentleman, into partnership for a purchase in these transactions.