And the Crown Property Land Market in South-East Wales in The

Home , East Wales, Hadnock, Monmouth Priory, Mounton, South east Wales

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 dealing 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. It does, however, for themselves and several others. But the give some indication of the stability of the more usual solution was to hand over either estates established or augmented by the the securing of the grant or even the whole Crown's generosity and suggests that the process of suing out and rating particulars Crown's gifts were generally used for estate- to one or more agents. Sales by commission building rather than for profit. Even the also opened a way to investors buying land manor of Llanfair, given to Winifred Has- as a disposable asset to be managed or resold tings by Mary and always forming a remote for profit. There was little enough of this in part of the estates of her husbands, Sir the country as a whole and even less in Thomas Hastings, brother of the Earl of Monmouthshire, but the activities of a few Huntingdon, and Sir Thomas Barrington such 'speculators' did give the local land of Barrington Hall, Essex, was retained by market a little more flexibility by providing her family until 1614 when it was sold a small reservoir of land available for resale by her grandson to Nicholas Kemeys of to those who were not prepared to buy Caldicot. 6 from the Crown even through agents as Some alienation of monastic land had well as to local landowners buying to been envisaged in the two dissolution consolidate an estate. Often these investors statutes and in the act which set up the or speculators were the same men who were Court of Augmentations, but the scale of buying as agents for others, and it can be dispersal changed in I539 with the issue of wellnigh impossible to decide in what the first of a series of commissions for the capacity they were acting in any one sale of land at the full market price, initially transaction. Nor can we assume that any of twenty times the net annual value. The the dealers or agents known to have bought advent of free sales under these commissions Crown property confined themselves to encouraged purchases by local gentry and this limited sector of the market, though lesser landholders who were unwilling or we may suspect that was where they were unable to master the intricacies of a purchase most active because their skills were most needed and that there their greatest profits ~' GwRO 13.435."64. lay. 4 i,J 136 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW These profits, where they can be ascer- activities of these dealers, the land market tained, ranged from modest to astronom- in Monmouthshire was slow at first in its ical, and in some cases at least the implication response to Crown stimulus, and it was is that the valuation the Crown put on not until 1543, four years after the first its property was a gross underestimate. commission, that the Crown sold any land However, the losses which some purchasers in the county for cash. By this time, changes made, and the fact that well-placed men like were being made in the conditions of sale David Lewis, the Admiralty judge, chose of the property, changes which should have to buy from dealers rather than from the facilitated the development of a commercial Crown, argue another side to the picture. market in Crown land. ~ By January 15¢7, The length of time taken to purchase land however, in spite of its apparent determi- from the Crown might equally deter the nation to dispose of its property for cash, provincial landowner and the busy Govern- the Crown had sold land worth only £3 IO a ment official. Even when fees and expenses year net in Monmouthshire, 27 per cent of were separately paid for, the purchaser the total held or acquired during Henry gained in the economies of scale of a single VIII's reign. This is a remarkably low figure: large purchase and in the expertise of the even when all secular property is removed agent. This was particularly important when from the calculation the amount of monastic the rating of properties became negotiable. land alienated is only fractionally over 45 Richard Budd, the most important of the per cent of the total acquired. Moreover agents active in Wales in the late sixteenth £IOI of this had been alienated in fee farm and early seventeenth centuries, was able to and was therefore still producing at least advise on prices, availability and the best some income for the Crown. Outright time to negotiate, check on the existence of alienations of monastic land amounted to reversionary leases on property and look only £2o9 yearly, 30 per cent of the total out for and circumvent other prospective revenue from this source. This is a striking purchasers, as well as knowing who to bribe contrast to figures which have been pro- and how. y Purchase through an agent or duced for the whole nation ranging from speculator might also extend the time 'over half' to as much as seven-eighths '° and available for repayment. When Leonard to the situation in Glamorgan where 'more Meyrick bought the Llandegfedd chantry than half' had been sold by 1547." No lands from Richard Budd he paid in six- figures are available for other Welsh counties monthly instalments over a period of five but the impression gained from reading years, s This advice and financial assistance H A Lloyd and G Dyfnallt Owen': is that was particularly useful tO the smaller pur- sales in West Wales were equally slow. Even chasers; indeed, without it, few of the minor after the massive alienation to the Earl of gentry, yeomen and artisans who bought Pembroke during Edward VI's reign less Crown land in South Wales would have than two-thirds of the available land in been able to tackle the complexities involved Monmouthshire had gone. These figures in dealing with Chancery and the Ex- do not indicate an acute shortage of land in chequer. the county, nor a correspondingly intense desire to acquire what was available: nor do II

In what was to emerge as a characteristic '~ For details of these changes a,ld their effects see, e.g., Joyce pattern, however, and in spite of the Youings, The Dissolution qfthe Monasteries, London, t97t, ch. 5 and references therei,~. Bo ibid, pp I17-18; R B Pugh, The Crown estate: an historical essay, National Library of Wales (hereafter NLW) MSS 9o54E no. 5J8, I96o, p 1o. 9o35E nos. 649, 636, 662. " Glanmor Williams, Welsh Refonnation Essays, Cardiff, 1967, p ioo. s NLW, Llangibby Castle A.941, 24 Oct. 16x I. ': The gentry of south-west Wales, z54o..-164o, Cardiff, x968, pp 3 I-4O. CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES 137 they provide any evidence of the rampant Riding of Yorkshire, who went about his speculation imagined by Tawney. Once the area proclaiming publicly that 'yf any special grants to the Earls of Worcester and woolde bye any lande, the king was disposed Pembroke are removed, we are left with a to sell landes and he [Bellow] woold fairly steady trickle of purchases from 1543, help them to hit'. '.~ James Gunter dealt peaking in 1546 and again in I553 but at no extensively on his own behalf and that of point becoming a flood. others, including some of the leading local There were no outright sales of Crown gentry, but his own financial position was land in 1547, and response to the commission at times precarious. He could ill afford to for sales of chantry land in April I548 was allow his clients time to repay the money as usual slow. It was not until July that he had spent on their behalf, and the high James Gunter, acting for the rector of prices he charged in most of his resales put Llanwenarth, sued out particulars for £1 6s his services beyond the reach of the minor 8d worth of chantry land in Llandeilo and landowner. It was not until the end of the Llanwenarth.'3 Chantry land was generally century, when the benefits of the economic slow to sell in Monmouthshire, in sharp revival in Wales had become fully apparent, contrast to the unrestrained competition for that men like Richard Budd were prepared such property in London and the south- to encourage small purchasers by offering east.'4 Of a total of about £70 net acquired them facilities for payment by instalments from this source £40 IS worth had been sold and to buy small parcels of land on their by 1553, but £34 2s 6d of this was comprised own account for sale to such purchasers. in one grant to William Herbert and had By I565 most ofthelarge and consolidated already been returned to the Crown by properties had been sold. The existing 1553. Several reasons have been suggested gentry families were presumably satisfied for this. Chantry property consisting of and the available capital and initiative small tenements and fragments of land may for the establishment of new estates had have been overpriced. It is difficult to see a apparently been mopped up. Further grants pattern in the few available particulars but and sales consisted mainly of smaller mon- rates varied from 24 years' purchase in 1548 astic properties and fragments of chantry to 20 in I549 and 155o and 23 in 1553, with land. The initial recipients of these grants William Herbert of course securing the were in most cases courtiers and their lowest rating on his grant in 1551. As the nominees or agents and dealers. Some chantries had been valued more recently smaller properties went to round off and than the monastic estates and values should consolidate existing large estates but an not therefore have been seriously affected increasing number were eventually resold by inflation, these rates were possibly rather to the minor gentry (who in South Wales high. Furthermore at this date it is probable were very minor; some may have been that the likely purchasers of small chantry buying their first property in fee) and even tenements, the minor gentry and yeomanry to yeomen. Such purchasers could be found and the townspeople, had neither the in the I54OS and I55OS but now for the first resources nor the initiative to seek out land time they became numerous, thanks partly for investment. Monmouthshire had no to their increased wealth and partly to the land agents as enterprising as John Bellow, enabling activities of agents and dealers. It the Augmentations surveyor for the East was during this period also that individual urban tenements became popular, although u 'Agrarian conditions and changes in West Wales in the sixteenth century with special reference to monastic and d~antry lands', Wales Phl) thesis, 1935, pp 366-88. ,s CJ Kitching, 'The disposal of monastic and chantry lands' in Heal ,4 E/318/1461: grant to Thos. Butcher and Henry Tanner, 9 Sept., and O'Day, eds, Churdl and society in England, Henry VIII tojames C/66/811 mm 53-55. I', 1977, pp 119-36 (p t33). I38 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW many were not sold until the early seven- resold soon after. Property worth £12 lOS teenth century. Most of those whose descent was sold at least twice, three properties can be traced passed through the hands worth a total of £14 ''~ were resold three of agents and dealers to the burgesses, times and a few smaller properties worth £5 tradesmen and minor town gentry, men 3s were resold four times. No property can like Richard Clayton of Chepstow and be shown to have changed hands by sale Maurice Nicholas of Newport. the latter more than four times between its alienation being already tenant of much of the property by the Crown and I6O3. When the activities which he bought in 16o4. ,6 of agents and middlemen are disregarded a The activities of agents and dealers may staggering 87 per cent of property sold by well give a false impression of an active the Crown during this period is known to land market, especially when land passed have remained with the descendants of its through the hands of several dealers or original purchaser until 16o3.:° partnerships before finding a permanent It is particularly difficult to ascertain owner. 17 As far as local society is concerned, whether there was any difference in dispersal however, it is more important to discover patterns between larger and smaller proper- how much land was bought and sold after ties. Larger properties -- secular and mon- having reached a buyer (probably, though astic manors, substantial demesnes and not necessarily, a local man) who regarded granges -- were more often given or sold it as a long-term investment. There were of directly to the intending purchaser, and course many instances of property remain- were granted subject to tenure in chief. ing with the Crown's grantee; indeed, They will therefore appear in lice,aces to because those who received most, the peers alienate and inquisitions post mortern and and the more enterprising gentry, were also their ownership through the century can those best able to negotiate their own grants, be checked. Smaller properties give the these instances dominate in terms of the impression of being more mobile as they value of the land acquired though not of the may have passed through the hands of number of grants. Of a total of 85 grants several agents or speculators before reaching worth £951 8s, 27 included at least some a permanent owner. As they were com- property retained by the original grantee monly sold under socage tenure after 1544 and at least some of the property in 58 is their subsequent ownership can be virtually known or believed to have been sold, but impossible to trace. Subject to these restric- the property known to have been retained tions, however, and to several exceptions, by the grantee or his direct descendants until the general impression from those smaller r6o3 amounted to £724 I4S or 76 per cent properties which were alienated early and of the total. '~ A further £149 I4S worth is therefore held by tenure in chief, or whose only known to have been resold once and history has been preserved by the fortuitous over £IOO of this is known to have remained survival of their deeds, is that the market with the descendants of its last identified for smaller properties was freer than that purchaser until 16o3, though some was for the more important manors, granges and rectories. The latter, if they changed '~' CJ Kitching, 'Studiesin theredistributio,1 ofcollegiateand chantry property in the diocese and county of York at the Dissolution', hands at all, were more likely to do so by Durham PhD thesis, 197o, p 114. the demographic processes of the failure of J7 C/66/H81 mm 1-13; C/5411713, t77o; NLW TP/9x/92. ~8 The manor of Courtfield in Welsh Bicknor, at that time a detached portion of Monmouthshire, was sold by the Crown to two London '~ These figures exclude assignments between parties, redeemed gentlemen, Thomas Reve and George Cotton, on 14 March 1553, mortgages and settlements: they have bce,~ corrected to the uearest sold by them to John Pollard of Nuneham Courtenay in shilling. Oxfordshire and Thomas Mynde on 30 March and by Pollard and '° Including the rectory of Monmouth, which was twice shared Mynde to Edward Campion of Welsh Bicknor in, 555:C/66/857 between partners but with only three complete changes of mm x7-2x, C/54/492 no 40, NLW Courtfield 239. ownership. CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES I39 male heirs and the marriage of heiresses, further assignments rented at a total of£2r which is arguably only a change of name I8s and not mentioned in the subsequent and not of ownership. We cannot therefore grants may suggest a more active market assume that the lack of movement in the than that indicated by the Crown's records. market for Crown land reflects a similar Even the lower figures, if representative, sluggishness in the rest of the land market, show that the market for leases was appreci- in which small properties were more likely ably greater than that for land held in fee. to predominate.-" Only a detailed study of This accords with the suggestion that the all land transactions in the county could stability of the land market was largely due prove or disprove this assumption, and such to a prejudice against selling land. The a study is very likely impossible because of average size of leases renewed to the lessee the paucity of surviving original deeds. and his heirs is almost exactly twice that of leases granted or renewed to others, III providing some possible evidence for the Deeds and enrolments are even more scarce greater stability of larger estates in this area, for assignments of leases, and in their whatever the picture may be for the whole absence it is difficult to reach any conclusions country. H A Lloyd suggests -'3 that the at all about the extent or significance of gentry of south-west Wales preferred to dealing in leases. Agents are known to have deal in leases because they lacked the capital been active in this area of the property to invest in purchasing land, but the only market but their methods can only be consideration which has survived for the illustrated by examples from other coun- assignment of a Crown lease, £2o0 paid by ties.:-" As for private dealing in leases, all Edward Kemeys of Cefnmabli to William that can be said is that of identifiable James of Llanddewi Rhydderch for the properties leased more than once (a fraction residue of his term of 2I years in the rectory of the total) and excluding leases to agents, of Caldicot at £I6 yearly, '4 indicates that leases in reversion and head-leases of whole buying leases on the private market may estates including property already held by have been considerably more expensive than lease, ~6 leases rented at £296 2s (53 per cent buying them from the Crown. of the total) were renewed to the lessees or The small percentage of Crown property their heirs; I4, rented at £126 2s (23 per cent which changed hands after reaching a of the total) were renewed to the assignees genuine purchaser is further reduced by the of the first lessee; and 14 leases, rented at activities of men like Gunter who bought £I34 2s (24 per cent of the total), were made apparently for themselves but were prepared to persons having no known connection to sell at a profit. Apart from these with the first lessee. Mesne assignments are transactions, a mere handful of properties seldom recited in Crown leases and the was resold in the course of the century. survival of leases and assignments from this Some of these sales may be explained by period is even more fortuitous than that of financial difficulties. Howell Thomas Lewis conveyances, but the existence of three had thrice mortgaged his farm at Gregoes in Llantrisaint before mortgaging and :' According to Kcw, art. tit. and thesis pp 1o7-t2, the land market in l)cvon was becoming more active in the t 53os before the impact eventually releasing it to the Earl of Pem- ofex-monastic land, and the private land market consisted mainly of smaller properties. broke. -'s Robert Brayne's lands in Hadnock :" E G Jones, ed, Exdlequer proceedings (Equity) concerning Wales, and a fishery in the Wye were taken over Henry Vlll-Elizabeth, Cardiff, 1939, p 12o, T IJeffrcysJones, ed, Exchequer proceedings concerning Wah's in tempore james 1, Cardiff, by his brothers-in-law after his death to x955, pp 233,238 for Richard Budd's securing of leases for clients in Carmarthenshire and Mcrionethshirc; Gwynedd P,O, E.R.D.9 :~ The gentr), q/'south-west Wales... pp D"4o. for a lease apparently taken by him on his own account and :4 LP, I/233 f"2. reassigned six months later. :s C/66/1335 m 25, C/54/638 no 9 I, 765 no 49, C/66/Io64 ,n 44. 140 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW reimburse themselves for their payment of ing Divine approval for the beneficiaries of his debts. -'6 The strange circumstances of the Dissolution. Obviously, the longer Andrew Powell's bargain and sale of the the perspective one takes, the greater the tithes of Monkswood and Stavarney to the number of families selling up or dying out, Earl of Worcester for £40 in return for a but the fact of sacrilege according to lease to Powell and Andrew Jones for their Spelman does not seem to have had any lives may also indicate necessity rather than appreciable effect on Monmouthshire by profit. -'7 Gregory Price may have been I6o3. It would certainly be rash to assume forced to sell his property in Llangatwg that these statistics would be reflected in the feibion afel, Rockfield and Llanfihangel private land market. Kew found that in ystum llewern (formerly of Monmouth Devon more land was transferred by female priory) at a loss in I564, :~ but he is not inheritance and marriage than by sale before known to have been in difficulties at that 1536 and that the figures were roughly equal time and he may have been getting rid of from I536 to :t558, but in both cases his an unsuccessful investment in order to buy figures are appreciably higher than those for property nearer the centre of his estates in Monmouthshire.:9 Hereford and Brecon. The circumstances of A longer perspective would also make the other sales are not known. In all, Crown more clear the process by which much of property worth a total of £32 5s (3.4 per this land was absorbed into a few major cent of the total sold) at 1536 prices is known estates, a process which did not reach its to have changed hands by sale after reaching culmination until the eighteel~th century. 3° its first genuine purchaser. As some proper- Its small beginnings can be seen in the ties changed hands more than once the total acquisition of the advowson of Llangybi by value of these transactions is in fact £38 8s. the lord of the manor, Roger Williams, and This compares with £64 I SS worth which by a few transactions of the Somerset family. changed hands as a result of demographic The site and lands of St Kynemark's Priory processes, the failure of male heirs to the in the Earl of Worcester's lordship of Gwilym of Whitfield and Welsh Bicknor; Chepstow were sold by John Farnham to a Brayne; Herbert of St Julians; and Herbert younger son of the second earl, Thomas of Wonastow and Grace Dieu estates and Somerset, on whose death without issue in their transfer to the husbands of the heiresses; I586 they appear to have passed to the third the remarriage of Winifred Hastings; and earl.-" In I596 the fourth earl acquired the the deaths without heirs of cadet members tithes of Stavarney and Monkswood, the of the Somerset family. The low proportion area covered by Tintern's Pelleni grange of resales testifies both to the reluctance of which he already held. In I588 another local landowners to sell land except as a last brother of the third earl purchased from resort and to the remarkable stability and Walter Spicer and his assignees three- endurance of estates established out of quarters of the rectory of Monmouth, which Crown property. It is more difficult to he devised to his nephew the fourth earl.-': explain the low rate of change of ownership The remaining quarter was bought by the as a result of failure of heirs without fourth earl's younger son, Sir Charles comparable figures for other estates not including Crown lands and without invok- "~ ,11"1. cir. •~" Peter Roberts, 'The decline of the Welsh squires in tile eighteenth century', National Librar), of Wah,sJournal xiii, 1963-64, 157-69; "¢' C/66//IO81 mm 34-35, 1113 ran1 15-16, 1432 m 6, 1436 m 17; H J Habakkuk, 'English landownership, 168o-174o', Ec0n Hist C/66/Io9z mm 7-8, C/54/795, C/66/1411 m 4, 148o mm 37-38; Rev x, 194o, 2-17; F M L Thompson, 'The sueial distribution of Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeolok,ical Society, vii, property in England since the sixteenth century', Econ Hist Rev, 1882-83 , 237-44. 2nd ser, xix, 1966, 5o5-17. :7 NLW Badminton II, 998o, a May 1596. ~t NLW Badn'finton 52, LR6/141/9. :s C/54/681 no 51. J" NLW Badminton 814t, C/142/266/12. CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES 141 Somerset of Troy, in 1610, and also appears the land differed little from that on the to have passed into the Raglan estate. 33 The private market but it was more readily process continued in the early seventeenth available. Even in the intervals between century with the fourth earl's acquisition of commissions there was the possibility of the rectories of Cilgoegan and Newchurch arranging a purchase through a grantee in and the tithes of Raglan. 34 fee farm or by exchange or from the stock Of more significance in the sixteenth of land held by a dealer. The purchaser still century, however, was the way in which had a reasonable choice of land from these smaller estates could be built up or aug- sources. Even when land was sold many mented by second-hand purchases of Crown years after its initial grant and by someone property. David Lewis was already a Master who had originally bought with the inten- in Chancery and Member of Parliament for tion of retaining his purchase, it is quite the county in 1554 when he made his likely that a vendor could more easily be first purchase of former Crown land in persuaded to sell land he had bought than Abergavenny but he always dealt at second land part of his patrimony. The inquisitions hand or through agents. At his death in post mortem for the county contain 1584 he left a respectable estate including examples of similar estates built up piece- the manor of Llwyn-ddu (bought from meal from private land 37 but this was James Gunter's son in 1564) and some land inevitably a longer and more painstaking in Abergavenny formerly of the priory, as process and likely to result in a more well as the manor ofLlanddewi Rhydderch fragmented estate. The market in private and other property in Abergavenny, property does appear to have expanded by Llanwenarth and Llandeilo Bertholau the end of the sixteenth century. This may acquired from other sources." Later in the have been influenced by the market in century the Aldey family of Hardwick, who Crown property, either through the activi- had already leased property in Hardwick ties of landowners selling other estates in from the Crown and had accumulated a order to buy from the Crown or from the number of conventual leases, substantially general example of a market in one sort of augmented their estate by a series of land encouraging the buying and selling of purchases of Crown land in Hardwick, land in general. However, the nature and Chepstow and Mounton from Richard extent of these influences could only be Budd.3 c' established by a full study of the local land By this time no great distinction was market and, as explained above, this would being made between Crown and other land; be difficult if not impossible. the purchaser looked for land which suited his purposes and bought what was available IV from any source. However, Crown land Lack of information also makes it difficult still offered advantages to the aspiring estate- to establish the extent to which purchasers builder. By the end of the sixteenth century of Crown land were also involved in the market for other property: indeed, one of " N LW Badminton 8142; (]'J A 13radncy,A History o.]'Monnlouthshire, the continuing justifications for studies of t9o4-33, vol. i p I 1 Ja NLW Badminton 11 1145 I, ] OCt 1603, 9526, 26 Mar. 16o6, to735, the market in Crown property is that, in 1 Sept. ~612. South Wales at least, other property is so 35 C/66/m28 mm 33-34; Bradncy, op. cit.vol, i p. 283; C/54/1187; C/142/244/95; for his dealings in other lands sc':, e.g., C.54/857, poorly documented. It seems that, as far 913, 9i7, 957 (no into nos); for a recent biography see S T Bindoft; as Monmouthshire was concerned, the cd, The History of Parliatnent: The House qf ColllmOns, 15o9-1558, 1982, vol. II pp 524-25 London-based agents confined themselves '~¢' E/3o9/17 Eliz./12 no. 28; LP,2/237 ff 31-42; C/54/1468, t7to, 1772, 2163 nos. 6, 7, 8, 9; see Bradncy, op. tit, vol 1V pp 20-21 for their other estates in Hardwick. J7 E.g. C1142/249/58. 493/to 3.

,! ~42 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW to dealing in Crown land, though some are the Friary, Newport, established himself by known to have bought other land elsewhere, his first purchase from the Crown but possibly for retention by themselves. 3s As subsequently bought land worth far more one would expect, most of the major from others. 4: Some purchasers seem delib- purchasers of Crown land in Monmouth- erately to have sought out former Crown shire also bought private land, though their properties in preference to private land, other purchases may well have been dwarfed even when its advantages for building by the size of the estates they bought from up and consolidating an estate were not the Crown. The Earl of Pembroke dealt on immediately apparent. Over a period often a large scale in both Crown and private years, William Morgan bought at first and land, but his estate was inevitably dominated second hand most of the property formerly by the gifts he received during Edward VI's of Llantarnam Abbey, including the remote reign. Roger Williams and his descendants grange of Penrhys in the Rhondda Valley. bought extensively in Llangybi and else- He considered buying Llystalybont Grange, where in the Usk valley, and seem to have near Cardiff, but eventually declined, poss- paid more to private vendors than they did ibly because of shortage of capital. He also to the Crown, but their efforts were largely failed to persuade the Earl of Pembroke to de;coted to the consolidation of their existing sell him Mynyddislwyn Grange, though estates in the area and in particular to buying the Earl was willing to part with Wentsland out some of the numerous freehold tenants and Bryngwyn, a divided manor which was on their manor of Tregrug. .''2 William not so convenient for the rest of his estate. 43 Morgan's early investments were all in For many purchasers, however, the land Crown land, but when he bought the which the Crown offered for sale was only manors of Porton and Whitston in 1572 he one part of a range of available optim3s. Dr increased his estates by about a third, David Lewis ofAbergavenny 44 and Richard and some at least of the other property Seyborne of Sutton St Nicholas, Hereford- mentioned in his inquisition post mortem shire, who had bought the manor of was bought rather than inherited. 4° Caldicot Priors in I557, 4s both invested in These, the principal grantees of Crown Crown and private land at the same time land in the county, all began the process of and without apparent discrimination. James estate-building with gifts or purchases from Morgan, the lawyer who bought chantry the Crown, and former Crown land land in Caerleon from William Morgan of remained the most important part of their Llantarnam for £4o in I565, subsequently holdings. For others, Crown land was paid £5oo to Thomas Parry of Wellford in significant but not dominant: Sir Thomas Berkshire for the manor of Brym and Herbert of Wonastow inherited some land land in Undy and 'Llanvyhangell nether from his father and made his first purchase Gwentsland' (Llanfihangel Roggiett). 46 from the Crown but the largest single Walter Aldey bought several parcels of land property in his estate was the manor of in Hardwick and Chepstow from and Wonastow, bought from his brother's heirs through Richard Budd but bought his in 1558, and he made several other purchases mansion and main estate in Hardwick of land in and near Monmouth from private privately. landowners. 4~ Similarly, Giles Morgan of J~ E.g. Richard Budd's purchases in Oxfordshire and Hampshire 4: NLW, TP/46, 7/1, C. 142/I55/169. (CI54/I823 and I991); see also C/54/451 nos. 23 and 37 for James 4~ E/318/2445; C/66/993 ram. 28-31 (Pcnrhys); LR2/84 f. 78 Gunter's purchases in Abergavenny, Llangatwg Dyffryn Wysg (Llystalybont); C/66/957 mm 4-6, 967 m 32 (Mynyddislwyn, and Llanddewi Rhydderdl in 1547. Wentsland and Bryngwyn). a~ NLW Llangibby Castle passhn. 44 NLW, Milborne 3o8; C/54/857, 9H, 957,. 1187 0571-84). 4o C/54/887; C, 142/,96/I6; Gw.R.O.D.43.55oL 612z. 45 C/142/773/201; Bindoff, Commons 15o9-1558, Ill, 285-86. 4, NLW, Milborne 24, 888, 316. 4~, C/54/684 no 52, 8o8 m 7. /

CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES r43 As far as the motivation of the individual Mansel, who was himselfone of the greatest purchaser is concerned, the acquisition of purchasers of Crown land in Glamorgan; former Crown land by private conveyance William Morgan's marriage settlement from its previous owner some years after specified that the dowry was to be invested the original grant should probably be in land. He may also have been able to considered as a purchase on the private borrow money from his father-in-law to market, but the fact remains that the fund further purchases, and he built his dispersal of Crown property increased the estate up slowly so that income from earlier amount of land on the market as well as acquisitions may have provided the capital providing types of property (tithes, large for later investments. marcher manors) which would not other- Roger Williams, another minor land- wise have been available. As for those who owner who invested heavily in Crown land, bought directly from the Crown or through appears to have had some legal experience agents or dealers, the young man with an and held office with the Earl of Pembroke inheritance or marriage portion to spend or and the Court of Augmentations. 48 His early the retiring merchant or lawyer wishing to grants included extensive purchases on establish his family as landed gentry could behalfof others and the property he intended invest in large properties and integrated to keep could have been paid for largely out estates and avoid the tedious process of of his profits on the other transactions. 4'~ He building up a holding from scattered local alienated his patrimony of Biddhey, in sales; for the smaller purchaser, more Llangwm, and some of his earlier purchases, suitable land might well appear on the in a complicated exchange with the Earl of private market, but the Crown had a wide Pembroke which secured him Usk Priory's range of properties always available for scattered 'manor' of Usk and other property those who knew whom to contact. It would in the Usk valley, but his family remained not, therefore, be surprising if estate- as tenants of Biddhey and his descendants builders tended to look first to the Crown eventually repurchased it. James Gunter, as when buying property. the younger son of a family of minor local It is equally difficult to assess the extent gentry, had even less chance of raising to which purchasers of Crown or other land money from his inheritance. Although he had sold property they already owned in was a lawyer and a moderately eminent order to raise capital for further investments. monastic and Crown official, and although Since so many were younger sons or from his wife's family were apparently fairly cadet branches of landed families, they had wealthy, s° he seems to have needed to deal in any case little that they could sell. in land to raise capital to invest for himself. According to his marriage settlement, the His career also illustrates the limitations of wealthiest of the major purchasers, William the property market as a means of making Morgan of Llantarnam, inherited freehold money: in spite of his extensive and lucrative and leasehold property worth about £53 6s dealings, the mortgages to which he was 8d a year including his mother's jointure. 47 forced to resort suggest that he had difficulty Property corresponding to this valuation in making enough to retain the land which can be found in his inquisition post mortem and we have no record of substantial sales by him. The money for his initial investment 4~ 13radney, op. tit, vo1111, pp 97-IO3. almost certainly came from the dowry of •~'J E/318/1225; C/66/760 r2ml. 37-38,764 m 19, 759 m 5; E/318/1769; C/66/82o nlnl 7-I 1. his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Rice ~" For his career scc Bindofl'; op. tit, I1, .2"67-68; for the will of his mother-in-law Elizabeth Wcscott see Ida l)arlington, cd., Lomhm 47 GTClark, CartaeetaliamunimentaquaeaddominilondeGlamo~ta,cia Cotlsistory Court wills, t492-t547, London P,ccord Society, 1967, pertinem, Cardiff, 191o, V, 1987-9o. pp 139-4o.

! I44 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW he had bought for himself and raise enough from the Crown was George Herbert of capital for future transactions. Wonastow, and even he was at the time of his first and largest investment a younger V brother with no certainty of inheriting the Historians of Wales have tended to assume family estate. The other major purchasers that the county of Monmouthshire was were all lesser gentry, younger sons or from its creation one of the most developed members of cadet branches of the greater as well as the most anglicized areas of the families. It was impossible to be a gentleman country. If the velocity of the land market in Wales at that time and not to claim is any indicator of economic development descent from a handful of royal houses and this judgement may well need revision. kinship with the leaders of local society, but

Studies of other counties in South Wales in terms of land owned and offices held the i indicate that Monmouthshire was less men who profited from the dispersal of advanced than Glamorgan, where the power Crown property in Monmouthshire were of the great lordship of Glamorgan and the of surprisingly low status. Even the Earl of ii rich agricultural lands of the Vale had Pembroke was the younger son of a fostered the development of a gentry 61ite gentleman from the Welsh district of Here- capable of grasping the advantages offered fordshire and received much of his Mon- by economic revival, the Acts of Union and mouthshire land while he was still Sir the financial problems of the Crown. -~' William Herbert and a courtier.S3 Monmouthshire was more like the counties The reasons for this are difficult to of south-west Wales, less wealthy and establish. Explanations of individual cases apparently less ready to adopt new ways of are possible, but do not account for the seeking wealth, s: It may be, however, that general pattern and may not be entirely it was Glamorgan which was the anomaly valid in themselves. Sir Charles Herbert of and that Monmouthshire was more typical Troy was in severe financial difficulties by both of Wales and of the north and west of I552, but in the early I54os his extensive England, areas which have been neglected estates and his offices in the Duchy of in studies of this kind because of the Lancaster should have put him in a good sparseness and difficulty of the evidence. position to buy. s4 Sir Thomas Morgan of Judged against other areas in which the Pencoed and his son Sir William seem to market in Crown land has been studied in have preferred fighting to estate manage- detail, Momnouthshire was perhaps even ment, but this need not have prevented more atypical in the comparatively low them from investing in property; Nicholas social class of the eventual purchasers of that Arnold served with Sir Thomas lVlorgan as property. True, two of the county's peers, a gentleman pensioner and was allowed to the Earls of Worcester and Pembroke, got take part of his grant of Llanthony in fee the lion's share; but the senior representa- farm presumably as a reward for services; tives of the county's leading families -- the while Sir Rice Mansel of Penrice and Herberts of Troy, the Morgans of Machen, Margam is perhaps the classic example of a Tredegar and Pencoed -- bought little and soldier who raised his family to a position late, and almost invariably at second and of local pre-eminence by the purchase of third hand. The only member of the county estates from the Crown. Military service 4lite to make extensive purchases direct " For details ol d~e purchasers of Crown land in Monmouthshire s, Glanmor Williams, 'The dissolution of the monasteries in see ch. 4 of the present writer's thesis, and her chapter 'Change Glamorgan' in Welsh R~fi, rmation Essays, Cardiff; 1967, 91-110; and continuity: the gentry and Church property in south-east idem, Glamoty.an Conm), Histor), pol. ie: Early mode,', glama~:k,,m, Wales in the sixteenth century' inJ Gwynfor Jones's forthcoming Cardiff, ~974. book on Society in Tudor H,'ales. s: H A Lloyd, G l)yfi~alk Owen, op. ¢i¢. s4 Bindoff, Commons 1509-1558, 11,336--37. CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES 145 could be expensive, as the Morgans of county, tended to be younger sons or to Pencoed found, but it could also be exploited come from cadet branches. It is almost as to provide great gains.SS Henry Lewis of St though there was an agreement on the Pierre had increased his estate by a more proper size for a gentleman's estate, to which traditional method when he married further additions would be superfluous. In Bridget, daughter of Thomas Kemeys of a more practical sense, families who felt Caldicot. 56 In many cases, though, we they had an adequate income from existing simply do not know enough about the estates would have less incentive to invest circumstances of local families to explain in further purchases capitalwhich could have their inaction. been spent on such forms of conspicuous In the same way, we can suggest super- consumption as a new or enlarged house. ficial explanations for those who bought. Nor, it seems, did they have any desire to Nicholas Arnold's family had been involved modify the location or structure of their in the administration of Llanthony-juxta- estates by selling land on the private market Gloucester during its last years and in its in order to buy Crown land. dissolution; he, his father-in-law and his This may in itself have contributed to the brother-in-law, Arthur Porter, all invested sluggishness of the market for Crown in former property of that house. William property. If the wealthiest men in the county Morgan may have been inspired by the were reluctant to buy, the field was left example of his father-in-law, Sir Rice open for the minor gentry and lesser Mansel. Legal training or a period of landholders; but these were obliged by the residence in London may have widened slenderness of their resources to build up some men's horizons: Nicholas Arnold had their estates slowly, acquiring a manor at a been educated at Lincolns Inn -w and Walter time instead of buying up whole monastic Aldey at the Middle Temple. -~s According estates. Nor was the diversion of this capital to Bradney, Roger Williams's father may into land entirely beneficial to the local have been a lawyer, and Roger himselfspent community. The redistribution and disper- some time in London as servant of the Earl sal of former ecclesiastical and Marcher of Pembroke.-~') Giles Morgan, the purchaser property brought new families into the of Newport friary, was one of Thomas county hierarchy and widened the basis of Cromwell's lesser servants in the late property-owning, but money tied up in ~53os, 6° and Nicholas Arnold also served land was necessarily withdrawn from local Cromwell for a time. 6' The purchasers of circulation. We can probably ignore the Crown property in Monmouthshire were argument that the sale of Crown lands most of them comparatively young men damaged the local economy simply by but during the period (roughly from 154o diverting money to the government: if the to 156o) when the largest properties in the Crown had been unable to raise money by county were being sold, most families had selling land it would have been obliged to at some time a young representative. The do so by raising taxes or managing its own main purchasers, however, if they were estates more ruthlessly, both of which connected with the leading families of the expedients would have had a similar effect on the local community. Even the gifts of ~ Bradncy IV, 2t3-215; Bindoff, Commons t5o9--1558, II, 630. land to absentees like the Earl of Pembroke ~*' Bradney IV, 78. 57 Bindoff, Commons t5o9-1558, I, 33o-3 i. and the dioceses of Bristol and Gloucester 5~ H A C Sturgess, Register of admissions to the Honourable Society q]" did no more than perpetuate an existing the Mi&lle Temple .... 1949, p 55. ~'J 111, 97. tradition of outside ownership of these ~o Commons tsog-t558, II, 6,, 7. properties. More damaging in its long-term ¢" Letters and palters, fore(e.n attd domestic, of the reiy.n ql'Henry VIII... xiii OiL pp I184, I2"3, effects was the way in which the land market I46 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW absorbed the money and energies of the absentee landlords were religious corpor- county's more enterprising landowners, ations, and their endowments merely con- leaving little to spare for industrial develop- tinued the ownership of a few properties by ment. The chronic problem of the Welsh religious houses outside the county. economy has always been the extent to There was thus lao appreciable rise or which it is controlled from outside. This is decline in absentee landowning as a result at least partly due to the agricultural poverty of the seizure and sub sequent sale of property of the country, resulting in a failure to by the Crown. The estates of March and accumulate enough capital for expansion. Buckingham passed largely to another In consequence, Welsh industries have England-based family, the Earls of Pem- tended to be geared to the needs of outside broke; the holdings of monasteries outside investment, producing basic materials at the county endowed new and old bishoprics low cost which will be refined and processed and the property of the county's own elsewhere. It was therefore particularly religious houses went mainly to the local unfortunate that, at a time when local gentry and the one resident peer. O1a the landowners did have the capacity to invest, one hand, the lordships of Edlogan and their capital should have been channelled Tregrug, the marcher manors of Llangwm, into land, leaving the development of Llyswyri and Llebenydd, Keysham's manor industry to outsiders. ~-" of Wentloog and some of the property of The property market and the dispersal of Llanthony-juxta-Gloucester were returned Crown land thus produced several new to local families; oll the other hand, the families to take their place in the county estates of Llanthony Prima passed for a time hierarchy, but almost all of them had their to an absentee landlord, though they were roots in local society. Even the Earl of returned to local ownership at the coming- Pembroke, who was to become the county's of-age of John Arnold. Among the lesser greatest absentee landlord, belonged to one purchasers, Sir Richard Morgan of Black- of the many illegitimate branches of the brook and David Lewis of Abergavenny powerful Herbert clan. Local men bought spent most of their lives outside the county more than half of what remained after the but their heirs were more local in their Earl's massive grants, and 42 per cent of interests. There was thus in the long term a former Crown land in the county was still modest but perceptible transfer of land to in the hands of their descendants in I6o3. owners living in the county, though again The outsiders involved might be numerous it is difficult to say what effect such residence • but they bought almost entirely as agents had on the actual administration of the or dealers and in most cases their purchases property. were small. Apart from the Earl of Pem- As far as lesser landholders were con- broke the only individual outsiders to cerned, there appears to have been a receive large grants were Nicholas Arnold, widening of the basis of property-ownership whose family came from nearby Brecon- as tenant farmers took advantage of the shire and had a long-standing connection opportunity to buy either their own ten- with Monmouthshire, and Winifred Has- ements or nearby properties. This was tings, who was given her grandmother's facilitated by the development of a group manor of Llanfair and Llangyfiw as part of of estate agents who could manage the a grant in restoration. The other major complex processes of buying property from the Crown and assist their clients with loans ¢': 1 reached dais conclusion independently, but my thoughts on its or schemes for deferred payment. Without implications benefited from discussions at a day-school organizcd a comprehensive study of the land market by the Modern Wales l~,esearch Unit at" Dyffryn House in May 1983. in the county, however, we cannot say how CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES I47 far this extension of land ownership was so uneven. The" only estates documented typical, how many new small estates had fully enough to make any useful analysis of their origin, nucleus or main strength in estate administration possible are those of former Crown land and how many minor the two peers, the Earls of Pembroke and landowners were either acquiring or losing Worcester, who cannot be regarded as land on the private property market. While typical of the county's landowners. Nor the rise of gentry estates in England is does the surviving evidence fall into any generally accepted as being the counterpart obvious pattern. Indeed, the administration if not the consequence of the breakdown of of the Worcester and Pembroke estates was larger estates, in Wales it has its origin in radically different, as might be expected the amalgamation of many small estates, in when one was managed for most of the the creation of a group ofsupergentry (who sixteenth century by a resident owner and were the equivalents in status and wealth of the other was administered for a complete the English gentry) out of the large class of absentee the focus of whose interests was in petty landholders whose claim to gentility his Wiltshire estates. The Earls of Pembroke was based o11 pedigree rather than on regarded their Welsh lordships as a power- income. If, therefore, the dispersal of Crown base and a fund to draw on as much as a property in the sixteenth century did result source of regular income. In I592 a scheme in the creation of new small estates, this was was suggested for the consideration of the not (as in England) part of a continuous second earl to raise money for investment development but a diversion in the process in land nearer Wilton by selling Welsh by which smaller holdings were amalga- tenements in fee farm for substantial con- mated to create the great landed estates of siderations and virtually nominal rents. 63 the eighteenth century. In general, however, This was never implemented, but much apart from the huge estate given to the Earl capital was subsequently raised by the of Pembroke, the estates carved out of charging of heavy fines for renewal on the Crown land in Monmouthshire were com- surrender of leases for lives. ~4 The second parable in size with others which had been earl's estate management, though efficient, inherited or built up by more traditional exhibited the conservatism of the typical means. Since few of the buyers were absentee. Rents were generally steady in already major landowners, no massive spite of inflation, fines were high, and accumulations of inherited and purchased the practice of retaining a lord's council land were formed; during most of the continued when it had long gone out of sixteenth century the largest estates in the fashion elsewhere. The nature of the power- county were those of the Morgans of base changed, however, during the sixteenth Pencoed and Tredegar Park who at that century: while William Herbert, the first time owned no former Crown land at all. earl, had boasted of his ability to put men in the field in defence of the Crown, his son VI and grandson placed a greater emphasis on Since the changes in landownership in the political support and their relations with the sixteenth century did not dramatically affect upper gentry. By contrast, the third Earl of the size of estates, the social class of Worcester in particular administered his landowners or the amount of land in the estates more like a traditional member of hands of outsiders, their impact on the local the gentry, receiving money from bailiffs economy might be expected to have been and collectors in person and inspecting and limited. It is unfortunate that the survival signing account rolls. of evidence relating to estates including or ~ NLW, Bute box 93/x63. consisting mainly of former Crown land is ~'4 E.g. NLW, Bute 4, 5, 27. 148 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW The lack of evidence also makes it difficult William Morgan had initiated the change. 66 for us to see how (if at all) the administration That the new practice was recorded is itself of former Crown property differed from connected with the fact that the manor had that of other estates, whether inherited or passed through the Crown's hands, since privately purchased. The records of the this was probably the reason why an early Worcester estate indicate that no such seventeenth-century dispute over tenants' difference existed, but information from rights found itself before the court of the one atypical estate is not conclusive. In fact, Exchequer. the available evidence does not provide Nor did the successors to the marcher us with any recognizable pattern at all. lords ascribe much importance to the Examples can be found of most of the mineral resources which were to be the traditional methods of estate administration most valuable attribute of their lordships in and improvement: the negotiation of shorter the nineteenth century. In I6~.5 the Earl of terms and increased rents on leases; the Pembroke leased land in Machen and conversion of copyhold tenures into lease- Basaleg for rents including sea coal and holds; the enclosure of large and small stone coal (to be delivered to Cardiff Castle), parcels out of the extensive upland wastes; but no mention was made in the leases of forest management for profit; and the attack mines on the property, while the lease of a on customary tenants' rights. There is little tenament at Blaendare in Panteg with liberty evidence of a return to demesne farming, to dig for coal was subject to a manorial though the accounts of both the Pembroke type of rent of£I3 6s 8d and two fat capons and Worcester estates do suggest a deliberate yearly and a heriot of the best beast. 6v policy of converting cash rents into rents in The tenants of Wentsland and Bryngwyn kind. 65 The absence of demesne farming claimed in I615 the right to dig coals makes it difficult to assess the extent on their copyhold tenements, and quoted to which agricultural improvements were examples of coalmining by customary ten- related to changes in the land market. The ants on new holdings and on the wastes; the first recorded use of lime to sweeten the lord's interest was limited to attempts to acid soils of the county's upland zone was extract fines for their encroachments and in the r56os on the former monastic manor spoil heaps. 6~ Coal was apparently still of Wentsland and Bryngwyn, then recently regarded as a useful adjunct to a farm rather bought by WiUiam Morgan of Llantarnam than as a commercial proposition in its own from the Earl of Pembroke, but there is no right and it was probably mined by the reason to suppose that either the Earl or farmer himself as a supplementary source of income. There is of course no reason why the Such rents on the Pembroke estate were normally paid in cattle or buyers of land and their descendants should sheep of a specified quality which could be driven to the earl's principal household at Wilton, though rents of oxen and butter as have been innovative in any aspect of their well as animals taken as heriots were also delivered to ihe lord's estate management. Investing in land is household in CardiffCastle. The transporting of rents on the hoof was not an unusual practice. Eton College received part of their estate improvement at its most conservative, rent for the manor of Goldcliff in oxen, and complained about and the income from new land could cushion their quality. In 1575 part of the rent of the Earl of Pembroke's estate was used to buy oxen to be driven to Wilton but this a landowner from the effects of the declining interesting practice was not apparently continued. On the value of money, thus making it less necess- Worcester estates, by contrast, rents in butter, fruit, cider and perry as well as grain and all sorts ofauimals, were delivered to ary for him to undertake other less congenial Raglan Castle for the use of the earl and his household there. improvements. NLW, Bute l, 9255, 9363, 9664, for the Pembroke estate; Cardiff Central Library, MS 4.474 PP 13-68, transcripts by John Hobson Matthews, for Eton College; NLW, Badminton Manorial 1512- ~ E/Ila/to7/7o/12Jac. I. 1538 for the Worcester estate; the references to cattle droviug are a7 NLW, Bute 126/9363 nos 54, 55, 65, 29. in NLW, Bute 1. 6M E/l12/lo7/70/12, jac. I.

i; /; CROWN PROPERTY AND THE LAND MARKET IN SOUTH-EAST WALES 149 VII conveyance by feoffment and livery of The further one pursues the descent of seisin was suited to local transactions if Crown property fi'om owner to owner the embarrassingly public. There is even one less significant its provenance becomes. local example of a prototype lease and What is significant, in Monmouthshire at release in Gregory Price's lease for Iooo least, is the length of time for which the years to Anna Huntley of land in Hadnock market has to be studied in order for this late of Monmouth Priory in her occupation process to become apparent. Estates built on I2 May I573 followed by a quitclaim in up by purchase were at least as stable as perpetuity on I8 May. 73 In the Welsh areas those established by Crown gifts, though of the county there may have been lingering maybe not for the same reasons. It may doubts about the validity of conveyances have been simple inertia which led the under the newly-introduced English land descendants of Winifred Hastings to hold law, but this could surely not have persisted on to her manor of Llanfair and Llangyfiw, until I6O3 and would not in any case have but for the permanence of estates bought affected the English areas of the county under the commisions for sales another where much ex-monastic land was found. explanation must be sought. Most of the As with the other anomalies indicated in major purchasers of land in Monmouthshire this study -- the delayed pattern of sales of came from the county, and all established Crown property and the generally slow at least a secondary residence oia their new land market -- part of the answer is estates. There was little of the investment probably to be found in the remoteness and by outsiders which could have encouraged traditionalism of the county. Economic a commercial market in land. Monmouth- pressures may have driven some landlords shire was a conservative county and one in to sell, but even in the late seventeenth which land ownership was of overmastering and eighteenth centuries the major estates importance; this is reflected in the lack of established by gift or purchase from the investment by local landowners in any Crown in the sixteenth century were more form of trade or industry. This may have likely to change hands by failure of heirs contributed to the survival of a prejudice than by resale, so that several of the leading against selling even recently-acquired land. 69 families of the county claimed their position There were no particular conveyancing by direct descent from Crown grantees. difficulties. Monmouthshire was outside The economic security conferred by the the area controlled by Great Sessions and consolidated estates which the Crown may have been too far from London for offered for sale in the sixteenth century bargains and sales enrolled there to have seems to have made it difficult for them to been convenient, but some deeds are known mismanage their property so far as to lose it to have been enrolled at Quarter Sessions. v° entirely. A surprising number of Monmouthshire This study ends with the death of Eliza- fines were levied at Westminster, v' but fines beth in 16o3, which is perhaps too early for could also be levied and common recoveries a study of long-term trends. Demographic suffered locally, v:' The old method of and economic processes combined to reverse some of the social changes effected by ~"J For examples of this prejudice, particularly when applied to the sixteenth-century land market. The heriditary estates, see Lawrence Stone, The Crisis oflhe Aristocracy, Oxford 1965, pp 163-64. absorption of many fragments of Crown To NLW, TP/56/145; NLW Courtficld 129. property into the major estates continued v, CP23/2: for an unknown reason most Monmouthshire fines are onfitted from the index. through the seventeenth century. 74 The v: NLW, TP/56/146 is a record of a recovery in the court baron of Dyffryn touching property in Basaleg, St Woolos, Marshfield and n NLW, Milborne 13, 9. St Brides in 1581. ~4 E.g. NLW, Llangibby Castle B94~, At273. !ii~!

/ I50 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW estate papers of the Morgans of Tredegar then with some of the Grace Dieu property !, Park contain deeds of several chantry to the Kemeys-Tyntes. 78 The lordships of L properties in Newport: 75 some of these had Usk and Trelech were sold by the heirs of I been bought by Sir Thomas Morgan of the earls of Pembroke in I750 and came to Rhiwperra and passed to the Tredegar Park the dukes of Beaufort in the late eighteenth estate with the manor of Rumney and the century. 7~ By this time, individual parcels lordship of Newport on the death of John of monastic and chantry land had been so Morgan 'the merchant' in 1715. 76 Edward far absorbed into the local land market as to Kemeys of Cefn Mabli bought the manor have lost their significance as former Crown of Caldicot Priors at Michaelmas I6o3 and property. But the survival of whole estates his nephew, Nicholas Kemeys of Llanfair, based on purchases from the Crown and, bought the manor of Llanfair from Winifred in particular, the importance for the major Hastings's descendants in 1614: these estates of the eighteenth and nineteenth became the foundation of the Llanfair estates centuries of the great manors and marcher of the Kemeys-Tyntes ofCefn Mabli. 77 The lordships which had passed through the property of the Gunters of Abergavenny Crown's hands in the sixteenth century, Priory passed by marriage to the Milbornes, indicate the lasting impact on the social heirs of the Herbert estates of Grace Dieu, structure of the county of the dispersal of Crown property there. 7~ E.g. NLW, TP/8o/58, 84. 7e, NLW,~ TP/6"/SX, 124/624; SC61Chas.l/642; Dictionar), of Welsh Biography, I959, pp 636-37. 75 Bradney 1, 39; II. I22-25. 77 GwRO, D.43. 5569, 5624 etseq. 7,~ Bradney II, 32; 111, 9.

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