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rly Drama

RECORDS OF EARLY DRAMA

Records of Early Drama

WALES

EDITED BY DAVID N. KLAUSNER

THE BRITISH LIBRARY

and

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

> University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2005 Toronto Buffalo Printed in Canada

First published in North America in 2005 by University of Toronto Press Incorporated

ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9072-0

ISBN- 10: 0-8020-9072-9

and in the European Union in 2005 by

The British Library

96 Euston Road

London NWl 2DB

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this title is available from The British Library

ISBN 0-7123-4911-1

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wales / edited by David N. Klausner.

(Records of early drama ; 18)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9072-0

ISBN- 10: 0-8020-9072-9

1. Performing arts - Wales - History - Sources. 2. Theater - Wales -

History - Sources. I. Klausner, David N. ii. Series: Records of early English drama ; 18.

PN2607.W34 2006 790.2'09429'0902 C2005-904595-7

The research and typesetting costs of

Records of Early English Drama

have been underwritten by the

National Endowment for the Humanities and the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Vll

TRANSLATIONS 308

INTRODUCTION

Historical Background xi Drama, Music, and Popular Customs The Documents Ixxviii Editorial Procedures cxliii Notes cl

Ixiii

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

MAPS clxx

SYMBOLS clxxvii

THE RECORDS

clxv

ENDNOTiES 397 GLOSSARIES

Irjtroduction 442 Latin Glossary 448 English Glossary 467 Welsh Glossary 473

INDEX 482

APPENDIXES

1 Undated Document 271

2 Ancillary Texts to the Statute of GrufFudd ap Cynan 273

3 Royal Accounts 287

4 Records Relating to Robert ap Huw

5 Forged Records 299

6 Saints' Days and Festivals 306

290

Records of Early English Drama

The aim of Records of Early English Drama (reed) is to find, transcribe, and pubUsh external evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity in Great Britain before 1642. The executive editor would be grateful for comments on and corrections to the present volume and for having any relevant additional material drawn to her attention at reed, 1 50 Charles St West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1K9 or s.maclean@utoronto.ca. Detailed information about the REED series can be found on the internet at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/-reed/reed.html.

ALEXANDRA F. JOHNSTON University of Toronto director

SALLY-BETH MACLEAN University of Toronto assocl\te director /executfve editor

EXECUTIVE BOARD

SENIOR ADVISORS

peter GREENFIELD University of Puget Sound c.E. MCGEE University of St Jeromes College DAVID MILLS University of Liverpool A.H. NELSON University of California, Berkeley DAVID PALLISER University of Leeds BARBARA D. PALMER Mary Washington College J.A.B. SOMERSET University of Western Ontario ROBERT iriTLER Concordia University

EDITORIAL STAFF

JOHN LEHR Bibliographer GORD OXLEY Typesetter ARLEANE RALPH Associatc Editor ABIGAIL ANN YOUNG Associate Editor

J.J. ANDERSON University of Manchester HERBERT BERRY University of Saskatchewan DAVID BEViNGTON University of Chicago PETER CLARK University of Helsinki L.M. CLOPPER Indiana University JOANNA DUTKA University of Toronto MAURICE HOWARD University of Sussex UN LANCASHIRE University of Toronto PETER MEREDITH University of Leeds RICHARD PROUDFOOT King's College,

London JOHN M. WASSON Washington State

University, Pullman

Acknowledgments

The Welsh poets of the sixteenth century often spoke of their profession as based on y tri cof ' — the three things that must be held in memory. These three 'memorials' are the deeds of kings and princes, the Welsh language, and the genealogies of the nobility; much of the poetry of the period had the explicit purpose of keeping y tri cof in mind. I hope that this volume can be seen in a similar light; the history of drama and the performing arts in pre- Restoration Wales is little known, though not entirely lost, and the present research is a contribution toward keeping that history in memory and recovering what details of its practice still survive.

I have had a great deal of help in this project. The production of a reed volume is always a collaboration and it is a happy duty to thank the many people who have assisted me over the past thirteen years. A reed editor's first debt is to the superb team in the project's office at the University of Toronto under the firm but gentle guidance of Sandy Johnston (Director) and Sally-Beth MacLean (Associate Director and Executive Editor), who provided expert advice and encouragement at every stage of this project. Working with their staff has been a constant pleasure: Abigail Ann Young (palaeographer and Latinist extraordinaire, who even learned some Welsh), John Lehr (bibliographer and searcher-out of facts), Carolyn Black (kindest and gentlest of copy-editors), Arleane Ralph (who knows more about indices than anyone else), and Gord Oxley (whose fine typesetting you now hold in your hand). Bill Cooke prepared the English Glossary, Patrick Gregory checked the Latin Glossary and Translations, and Subhash Shanbhag produced the maps. John Geek prepared relevant data on patrons and performance events for the reed Patrons and Performances Web Site.

I have been fortunate to have a fine group of research assistants who have checked refer- ences, searched documents, and assisted with collation and translation. They are, in Toronto, Katherine Anderson, Brent Miles, and Stuart Rutten; in England, Jessica Freeman, Tanya Hagen, and Kirstie Jackson; and in Wales, Luned Davies, Rachel Davies, Alison Hincks, and Marcus and Fiona Wells.

The Welsh scholarly community has been unfailingly generous with the widest possible range of advice and assistance, answering my endless questions without complaint, as well as checking references, transcriptions, and translations. I owe a debt beyond repayment to Gerald R. Morgan, not only for checking innumerable documents when I was unable to get to the National Library, but also for his unflagging kindness, generosity, and hospitality. I have

VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

also benefited from the advice and assistance of Dafydd Bowen, Mark Paul Bryant-Quinn, Antony and Glenda Carr, Janet Davies, Sally Harper, Andrew Hawke, Daniel Huws, Nerys Ann Jones, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Bethan Miles, Morfydd Owen, Trefor Owen, Oliver Padel, Glyn Parry, Tomos Roberts, Richard Suggett, Graham C.G. Thomas, and Dafydd Wyn Wiliam. Gerald Morgan and Robert Tittler read the introduction as historians and saved me from a number of errors. Alan Fletcher kindly checked documents in Dublin and David Mills searched documents in Cheshire repositories. In Toronto Frank Collins and Bill Edwards assisted with the French and Anglo-Norman records.

Most of a REED editor s time is spent in libraries and archives, and I have been fortunate to be able to work with the wonderful staff in a large number of collections, without whose help and advice this project would have been impossible. My first and largest debt is to the fine staff of the Manuscript Room of the National Library of Wales, who seemed truly happy to see me each year as I returned to complicate their lives. Many of the staff at individual record offices have provided assistance well beyond the call of duty: Rhian Davies at the National Library of Wales; Lynn C. Roberts at the Gwynedd Archives Service; Charlotte Hodgson at the Glamorgan Record Office; Nikki Bosworth at the Pembrokeshire Record Office; Andrew Dulley at the West Glamorgan Archive Service; the staffs of the record offices of Anglesey, Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan (Cardiff), Gwent, and Merioneth; Katrina Coopey at the Cardiff Libraries and Information Service; Muriel Tonkin at the Herefordshire Record Office; the staff of the Shropshire Record Office; Gill Cannell at the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Michael Heaney at the Bodleian Library; Muriel McCarthy at Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin; Mary Robertson at the Huntington Library; and the staff of the Institut de recherche d'histoire des textes, Paris.

In addition to my thanks to their staff I also thank the following repositories for permis- sion to publish documents in their care: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/The National Library of Wales; the Public Record Office of The National Archives; the British Library; the library and archives of the University of Wales, Bangor; the Denbighshire Record Office (Ruthin); the Flintshire Record Office (Hawarden); the Cardiff Libraries and Information Service; the Gwynedd Archives Service (Caernarfon); the Pembrokeshire Record Office (Haverfordwest); the West Glamorgan Archive Service (Swansea); the Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies; the Herefordshire Record Office; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; the Cambridge University Library; the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the Dean and Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford; the Huntington Library; the Biblioth^ue nationale; and the municipal libraries of Angers, Avranches, and Rouen. I am grateful to Mr and Mrs Murray McLaggan and to the duke of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle, for access to their private collections, and to the bishop of Hereford for permission to publish materials from the Diocesan Archives at the Herefordshire Record Office.

My home libraries could not have been more helpful and I thank the staff of the John R Robarts Research Library, the library of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, the E.J. Pratt Library of Victoria College, the John M. Kelly Library of St Michael's College, and the library of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, all at the University of Toronto, as well as the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library. I am also grateful to

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX

the Widener Library, Harvard University, and the Hugh Owen Library of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, for allowing me access to their collections. My two academic homes, the Department of English and the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto, have provided research support in innumerable ways, including two sabbatical leaves. Special thanks are due to St David's University College, Lampeter (as it was then), for appointing me to a Research Fellowship in 1991-2, and to an Honorary Research Fellowship from 1992 to 1997. For financial support I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Endowment for the Humanities of the United States, the British Academy, and (last but certainly not least) the Jackman Foundation, through the kind- ness of Father Edward Jackman.

Special thanks are due to Kenn Luby, nd, for his long patience in putting up with the whole thing and, more generally, for putting up with me over the past twenty years. His help and support can be read into every page of this volume. Finally, Wales is dedicated to the memory of Dr Gwenan Jones.

Historical Background

Topography

The principality of Wales forms a rough rectangle to the west of England between the Bristol Channel and the Dee estuary, approximately 140 miles from its north to its south coasts, and between 50 and 100 miles from east to west since the broad curve of Cardigan Bay narrows its centre, leaving the two western peninsulas of Pembrokeshire to the south and Llyn, in Caernarvonshire, to the north. The island of Anglesey lies at the northwest corner, separated by the narrow Menai Strait. Through its earlier history much of Wales was protected by its mountainous terrain; Gerald of Wales noted that it was 'montibus excelsis, vallibus imis, sil- vis immensis, aquis et paludibus, terra munitissima.'' These mountains vary from the rolling and gentle Clwydian range in the northeast to the formidable peaks of Snowdonia in the northwest, though bleak highland moors predominate, especially across the south where the Black Mountains of Monmouthshire, Mynydd Eppynt, the Brecon Beacons, the Glamorgan Uplands, the Black Mountain of Carmarthenshire, and the Pembrokeshire Preseli Mountains form an almost continuous series of mountainous areas broken only by the valley of the River Tywi. The Cambrian range links the northern and southern highlands so that no more than forty per cent of the principality lies below 500 feet above sea level.^

These extensive highlands, affecting every county except Anglesey, are relieved only by the valleys of the major rivers and by the coastal plains, broad on the two peninsulas and along much of the south coast, narrower in the north. On the eastern watershed lie the Dee, the upper reaches of the Severn and the Wye, and the Usk. Westward, framing the Pembrokeshire peninsula, are the Tywi and the Teifi, with the twin estuaries of the Cleddau at the southwestern tip of the county. In the curve of Cardigan Bay are the Dovey and the Mawddach, while in the north the Conwy drains the eastern slopes of Snowdonia and the Clwyd, the Hiraethog and Clwydian hills. Though all these river systems provide some measure of arable land large areas suitable for cultivation have always been scarce in Wales, and as Gerald of Wales pointed out the Welsh have always relied more on pastoral farming than on the cultivation of crops.' These two modes of farming, the growing of crops and the pasturing of animals, were always closely interrelated since cultivation depended upon domestic animals both for ploughing and for fertilization."*

The eastern border of Wales, its only land border, shifted frequently in its history until it

XII HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

was given a statutory definition in 1536. Along much of its length runs the earthwork known as Offa's Dyke (and, from its northern terminus, Wat's Dyke). Built by the Anglo-Saxons, probably in the late eighth and mid-ninth centuries respectively, these hill-and-ditch defences may have been designed to protect settlers to the east from Welsh raiders, perhaps cattle- raiders in particular, but they havt always presented a more potent symbol of the boundary to the Welsh than to the English.' Much of the history of early Wales is the story of its shifting relationship to England, though this may in part be because most of the records that survive are those of the English'Vdministration following the Norman Conquest. Native Wales is less easy to find, living more in its literature than in its historical records.

Moving about the country was never easy. What primary roads there were tended to follow the course of the extensive system of Roman roads, built both to service garrison towns like Caerleon and Caer-went, both in Monmouthshire, and Caersws, in Montgomeryshire, and to provide access to sites of economic importance like the gold mines at Dolau Cothi, Carmarthenshire. Entry from the east was provided by major roads through Chester, Cheshire, in the north, Wroxeter, Shropshire, in the centre, and Gloucester in the south with a ferry crossing of the Severn. In the Middle Ages these became the principal east-west routes. The northern route followed the coastline somewhat inland through Caerwys, Flintshire, crossing the Menai Strait either by ferry or^ if the tide was low enough, across the Lavan Sands and ending at Holyhead, Anglesey, one of the principal points of embarkation for Ireland. The central route continued west from Caersws to Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, while the southern route followed the coastal plain of Glamorgan through Cardiff and Cowbridge to Kenfig, Margam, and Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire, in the Middle Ages continuing on to Haverfordwest and St David's in Pembrokeshire. North-south Roman roads are less clear, though it is likely that roads from Brecon, Brecknockshire, went north to meet the east-west road at Caersws, as well as going west to Llandovery, Carmarthenshire. There was a road up the west coast as well but its course is less clear. '^ Aside from the remains of Roman roads travel was predominately over the extensive system of drovers' tracks by which cattle were taken to market.^

Early Medieval Wales

The small kingdoms that constituted Wales after the departure of the Roman legions in ad 410 resolved themselves over the next 500 years into four recognizable units. Gwynedd in the north was perhaps the most powerful with its defences based on the almost impenetrable region of Snowdonia. In central Wales the large area of Powys had been (like Gwynedd) a political unit from at least the end of the Roman period. The two newer kingdoms, Deheubarth in the southwest and Morgannwg (or Glamorgan) in the southeast, were both formed by accretion as they absorbed their weaker neighbours. The boundaries of all four kingdoms were rarely stable and the pre-Norman period was marked by almost constant dynastic in-fighting; between the middle of the tenth century and the Norman Conquest just over a century later the violent deaths of at least thirty-five Welsh rulers are recorded by Brut y Tyivysogion}

The demarcation of the Welsh boundary to the east became much clearer in the late eighth

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Xlli

century when OfFa of Mercia (or perhaps another Anglo-Saxon chieftain with western interests) constructed the defensive earthwork that still bears his name, but only a very few Welsh rulers were able to bring even a modicum of unity to the area to the west of the dyke. Among these were Hywel Dda of Deheubarth (d. 950), whose name is traditionally associated with the codification of the Welsh legal system, and Gruffudd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd (d. 1066).

Norman influence in Wales did not begin in 1066. William I's creation by 1071 of the three border earldoms of Chester, Hereford, and Shrewsbury was defensive rather than the first step of a planned invasion. William knew well that Gruffudd ap Llywelyn had formed close ties with the Norse community across the Irish Sea at Dublin, and his first incumbents in the border earldoms were colleagues with extensive experience in policing border areas in Normandy. Although William may not have intended invasion the border earls quickly showed their predatory instincts, as the new earl of Hereford, William fitz Osbern, built several castles along his western border, including one in stone at Strigoil (now Chepstow), and Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, built Montgomery Castle at the far western edge of his territory. Norman incursions into Wales began in earnest with Williams death in 1087. Bernard de Neufmarche attacked the small Welsh kingdom of Brycheiniog, long seen as a buffer zone between England and the large Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth. Deheubarth's ruler, the powerful Rhys ap Tewdwr, was killed in the ensuing battle at Brecon. Deheubarth itself fell to a force from Montgomery that pushed west to Cardigan and then south to establish the new town of Pembroke. These sallies, whose sole intention was the acquisition of territory, were the beginning of the formation of the great marcher lordships that were to dominate much of southern and eastern Wales for the next four centuries.'

Though these lordships were usually held by men who owed allegiance to the English king, they were not English territory. In many, perhaps most, cases the administration of each area remained much as it had been under its former Welsh rulers with no effort being made toward uniformity of practice in the March. Two changes distinguished the marcher lordships from the native Welsh kingdoms: the building of a castle, a defensive exercise made very difficult if not impossible in England by the king's firm grip on castle-building as a royal prerogative, and the introduction of many of the lord's Breton, English, and Flemish tenants as settlers. These settlers tended to remain in specific areas and to preserve their own customs and laws as did the native Welsh population. As a result many of the marcher lordships were divided into an 'Englishry' and a 'Welshry,' in which custom and law could be very different. A marcher lord would frequently have two administrative households, one for the English and one for the Welsh. During the two centuries after the Norman Conquest over forty marcher lordships were established, of which the largest were Brecon, Glamorgan, Kidwelly, and Pembroke.

Some of this territory was recovered by native Welsh princes following the death of Henry ii in 1189, and the next two centuries were a period of unprecedented cultural activity in their courts. Court poets produced an extraordinary body of literature during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, developing a system of Welsh metrics that still influences Welsh poetry today. Their position in the court may be in part described by some of the passages in the Welsh Laws that, despite their traditional association with the tenth-century Hywel Dda, were probably collected and codified in the twelfth century, perhaps under the influence of Rhys

XIV HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

ap Gruffudd of Deheubarth (1131 or 1132-97). Often styled 'the Lord Rhys,' Rhys ap Gruflfudd's gathering of poets and bards at Cardigan during the Christmas season of 1176 is commonly seen as the first eisteddfod (see pp 81-3).'°

The End of Independent Wales

By the beginning of the thirteenth century Gwynedd had become the most powerful kingdom in Wales. Welsh tradition favoured partible inheritance in contrast to the English tradition of primogeniture, and after the deaths of the Lord Rhys in Deheubarth and Madog ap Maredudd in Powys (1160) both kingdoms were divided. Gwynedd, too, had been divided following the death of Owain Gwynedd in 1170 but by 1200 had largely been reunited by his grandson Llywelyn ab lorwerth. Llywelyn shrewdly utilized the weakness of King John, regaining most of the territory in northeast Wales lost during John's brief invasion of 121 1. He clearly had a vision of a united Wales for he made provision for Gwynedd to pass undivided to his younger son, Dafydd. He also attempted to move Henry in toward a treaty recognizing Wales as a political entity, as well as recognizing Llywelyn's own suzerainty Though much of this planning did not come to fruition before his death in 1240, Llywelyn is still known as 'the Great,' an epithet that seems first to have been used by Matthew Paris." Immediately following Llywelyn's death Henry called all the Welsh princes to Gloucester to do homage individually to him, thus effectively upsetting most of Llywelyn's plans for Welsh unification. Dafydd attempted to stall on many of the terms of the Treaty of Gloucester (1240), even calling himself 'prince of Wales,' but Henry held his brother, Gruffudd, as hostage and until Gruffudd was killed in 1244 attempting to escape from the Tower of London Dafydd had little freedom of movement.

Gruffiidd's son Llywelyn began his rule under the worst possible circumstances. The kingdom was divided between him and his brother Owain, 'o gygor gwyrda.''^ In this weakened state the brothers were forced to sign the Treaty of Woodstock (1247), certainly a low point in Welsh fortunes during this chaotic century. By its terms the princes held their lands directly from the Crown through miHtary service, putting them on the same level as the king's English tenants. However, as Henry became further embroiled in the Barons' War, Owain and Llywelyn regained and consolidated their hold on North Wales; in 1255 the division of Gwynedd was resolved when Llywelyn defeated Owain and imprisoned him for the following twenty-two years. By 1258 every Welsh ruler with the exception of Gruffudd ap Gwenwynv^n of Pov^s had done homage to Llywelyn, and from this time he styled himself 'prince of Wales.' By 1263 even Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn had settled his differences with Llywelyn, and the end of civil war in England prompted Henry to seek a new treaty. If the Treaty of Woodstock represented the lowest point of Llywelyn's career, the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 represented its high point. Henry agreed to recognize him and his successors as princes of Wales and overlords of all other Welsh princes, and his hold on territories gained or regained during the previous decade was confirmed. In return Llywelyn agreed to do homage to Henry and to pay the sum of 25,000 marks.

With the accession of Edward i in 1272, Welsh relations with the Crown began to deteriorate rapidly. Edward took exception to Llywelyn's castle-building in the lordship of Cedewain in

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XV

midWales. Llywelyns brother Dafydd plotted his assassination with GruflFudd ap Gwenwynwyn and, when the plot was discovered, Edward granted asylum to both of them. Edward abducted and imprisoned the daughter of Simon de Montfort, who had been betrothed to Llywelyn in 1265. Llywelyn, for his part, stopped making his annual appearance to pay homage in 1273 and reneged on the annual payments due under the Treaty of Montgomery. Finally, in 1276, Edward declared war over these issues of money and homage. Hostilities ended temporarily with the Treaty of Aberconwy of 1277, by the terms of which Llywelyns lands were reduced to those specified by the Treaty of Woodstock, homage would be paid to him only by the five remaining Welsh lords, moneys owing under the Treaty of Montgomery would be paid (though in fact Edward withdrew this claim), and he would retain the title prince of Wales' for his lifetime only. Llywelyn finally did homage to Edward and in October 1278 he was allowed to marry Eleanor de Montfort in Worcester Cathedral. Edward not only gave away the bride but paid for the feast.

The final conflict was precipitated not by Llywelyn but by his brother Dafydd. Dafydd was lord over two of the so-called Four Cantrefs, which lay between the Rivers Conwy and Dee along the northern coast; the other two were in royal hands. Tension was clearly high in this area and on 21 March 1281/2 Dafydd attacked Edward's castle at Hawarden, just west of Chester, and the revolt spread rapidly. Edward acted quickly, marching west along the coast and crushing the rebellion as far as Rhuddlan, now in Flintshire. A minor victory led Llywelyn to move into Powys where he was killed on 11 December 1282, under circumstances that remain unclear. Dafydd was captured the following spring and was executed at Shrewsbury. The brief war, and with it Welsh independence, ended on 9 July 1283 though two rebellions were to follow, the first in 1287 and the second, more serious one, in 1294. Edward crushed both of them though he was forced to spend Christmas of 1294 under siege in Conwy Castle.

The Statute of Wales, promulgated at Rhuddlan on 19 March 1283/4 (commonly known as the Statute of Rhuddlan), created three new English counties out of the principality of Gv^nedd: Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and Merioneth.'^ The county of Flintshire was created as a Welsh extension of the earldom of Chester. The counties of Cardiganshire and Carmarthen- shire were confirmed though they had existed since 1241. Each county was to have a sheriff; the new principalities of North and South Wales would be under the administration of a pair of justiciars, based at Caernarvon and Carmarthen, with two chamberlains controlling financial matters. Edward also aimed to bring Welsh law into closer conformity with the norms of English practice. He did not, however, eliminate Welsh practice entirely. Criminal law was changed considerably; Welsh tradition had made the kindred of the offender responsible for compensating the victim, if alive, or the kindred of the victim according to a highly organ- ized scale of honour prices, as a means of preventing blood-feuds. Under the new statute crimes of this nature were to be dealt with as offences against the king's peace, as in England, and were to be brought before the sheriff and his court. Civil matters, on the other hand, especially those dealing with land tenure, were left much as they had been and, if English custom eventually prevailed, this was a process that took at least two centuries. The statute did not apply to the marcher lordships, many of which had both Englishries and Welshries with differing legal systems.

rvi HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The statute did not make Wales a part of England.'^ Henry iii had recognized the principality by the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, and this recognition remained in force although with Edward himself as ruler. The title of prince was transferred to his son Edward in 1301 and henceforth became the usual title of the (male) heir to the throne. At the same time as the statute was promulgated, though not under it, six new marcher lordships were created, in part to pay some of the debts of the war. These were Bromfield and Yale, Cedewain, Ceri, Chirk, Denbigh, and Ruthin.

The governing structure of late medieval Wales was especially complex, divided as it was between the principality itself and the lordships of the March. The principality was further divided into North Wales, which included the counties of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and Merioneth, and South Wales, which included the counties of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. Each of these was governed by a justice and a chamberlain under the direct authority of the Crown. Although many of the marcher lordships had by the early sixteenth century reverted to the Crown, their holdings remained relatively unchanged until the Acts of Union.

Wales in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

The Statute of Rhuddlan defined the constitutional relationship between Wales and England for the succeeding two centuries and more, although through the early fourteenth century it was the marcher lords who typified the relationship in practical terms. They were especially prominent in the baronial opposition to Edward ii, whose favourite, Hugh Despenser the younger, had been given the rich marcher lordship of Glamorgan and whose wife, Isabella, took the marcher lord Roger Mortimer of Wigmore as her lover. After the accession of Edward ill in 1327 the Welsh economic situation deteriorated, for Edward saw the principality primarily as a source of money and men for his French wars. Seven thousand Welshmen were sent to Cr^cy in 1346.'* Nonetheless it was possible for a man to assemble a considerable holding in land, and the decades after the Edwardian conquest saw the rise of a new class of wealthy landowners, the 'uchelwyr.' These men also filled the void left by the demise of the princes by patronizing poets and bards, though it may in part have been their relative lack of interest in the highly formal panegyric of the previous two centuries that led to the adoption in the fourteenth century of freer and less elaborate metrical forms, less complex diction, and a wider range of subject matter. Their patronage supported the new generation of Welsh poets.

Although the economy of medieval Wales was almost entirely agricultural, the poor soil of much of the principality meant that the raising of livestock outweighed the growing of crops in importance although there was a substantial amount of mixed farming. Sheep and cattle farming were the mainstays. The method of raising sheep in Wales had been significantly improved by the Cistercian monasteries in the twelfth century, and by the fourteenth century many landowners had moved into large-scale sheep farming as well. Many of the cattle raised in Wales were driven to England to market, and the rough drovers* roads remained the principal routes of land transport until the middle of the nineteenth century. Through the fourteenth century the export of raw wool decreased in favour of the production of native cloth, and many of the boroughs of early Wales record the existence of occupations associated with the

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Xvii

production of cloth - dyers, fullers, and weavers. Coal was mined in South Wales from at least the middle of the thirteenth century, and other minerals (especially lead and copper) were mined in North Wales. An extensive foreign trade developed between such ports as Carmarthen, Chepstow, Haverfordwest, Milford, and Tenby, which sent hides, slate, timber, and wool to continental Europe and imported a variety of goods, especially wine.'^

The population of Wales, particularly North Wales, was very seriously reduced by the Black Death of 1348-9. The effects it had on Welsh society mirrored those in the rest of Europe: a major reduction in the workforce, a breakdown of the family-based system of land tenure, a re- duction of income to the landholders, and extensive migration of population. Many of the ten- sions that produced the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 were felt in Wales as well, along with such specific- ally Welsh problems as the threatened invasion from France in 1372 by Owain ap Thomas ap Rhodri (Owen of Wales), great-nephew of Llywelyn ap Gruffiidd.'^ In the context of this atmo- sphere of social and political unrest the revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr comes as no great surprise.

Owain was the obvious candidate to lead a revolt. Descended on both sides from the royal dynasties of thirteenth-century Wales, Powys on his father's side and Deheubarth on his mother's, he was the only member of the native Welsh aristocracy to retain a substantial fortune.'* The immediate cause of his revolt is not clear. It is traditionally given as a boundary dispute with Reynold Grey, lord of Dyffryn Clwyd, but the early stages of the revolt were sufficiently well organized that much of it must have been planned in advance. At Glyndyfrdwy, Merioneth, Owain was proclaimed prince of Wales on 16 September 1400 and the ensuing hostilities lasted a full ten years. An early defeat for the rebels in 1401 hinted that the fighting might be over; many of the participants were pardoned and parliament enacted a series of statutory punishments. Hostilities resumed in the following year, and a series of abortive attacks by the English in which bad luck and bad weather played no small role led many to believe that Owain was a magician. This was part of his attraction since Owain drew heavily on the prophetic tradition of Welsh poetry and was thought by many Welshmen to be the mab darogan,' the 'son of prophecy,' who would lead them out of English bondage. Owain continued his raids on the border counties and on the more English of the Welsh boroughs, especially through 1404 and 1405. They did not end completely until 1410 when three of his principal followers were defeated and executed. Owain himself disappeared and though he may have lived a fiirther five years nothing more is heard of him. Owain Glyn Dwr's revolt was a failure though it certainly had major consequences for Wales." Many of his attacks on Welsh boroughs were devastating, leaving damage that was often not repaired until well into the sixteenth century. John Leland regularly made note of the remains of Owain's destructive path; thus he wrote of the abbey of Cwm-hir, Radnorshire, 'Al the howse was spoilid and defacid be Owen Glindour.'^"

Another effect of the rebellion was a serious decline in public order and respect for the law. The weak government of Henry vi added to the problems by appointing absentee justiciars, leaving extraordinary power in the hands of local landowners. An egregious example is Gruffiidd ap Nicolas of Dinefwr, Carmarthenshire, who was appointed deputy justiciar in 1437 and over the course of the next decade turned the office into what A.D. Carr calls 'his own private lordship.'^' By the middle of the century most marcher lords were also non-resident, leaving

XVlll HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

effective power in the hands of their deputies. The March also became increasingly important to the Crown as marcher lords succeeded to the throne, bringing their Welsh lands under the Crowns direct control. Kidwelly, in Carmarthenshire, and Monmouth came to the Crown with the duchy of Lancaster estates on the accession of Henry iv in 1399, while the extensive Mortimer holdings devolved to Richard, duke of York, in 1425. When Richards son Edward ascended the throne in 1461 as Edward iv, Wales became a vital playing card in the Wars of the Roses. Henry Tudor, son of Edmund Tudor, Henry vi s half-brother, landed at Milford Haven in August of 1485, and his Welsh blood was sufficient for him to be hailed as another mab darogan.' Although the Welsh gentry did not rush to join him important local figures such as Rhys ap Thomas, Gruffudd ap Nicolas' grandson, quiedy pledged their support (see pp 256-67).

Tudor and Stuart Wales

Although Henry viii did not take much interest in Wales until the mid- 1530s, at that point he and his ministers acted quickly and decisively to erase the administrative differences between England and the principality, which he saw as causing Wales' continued lawlessness and disorder. Henry's principal instruments for bringing Wales fully into the English fold were the two Acts of Union. The first act (27 Hen viii, chapter 26) was passed by the Reformation parlia- ment meeting between 4 February 1535/6 and 14 April 1536. In its preamble the act noted that the king intended, out of the 'singuler zele love and favour that he beareth' the Welsh people, that Wales should be 'for ev^r fromehensforthe incorporated united and annexed' to England. Although at the time Welsh subjects were subject to 'dyvers rightes usagw lawes and customes . . . farre discrepant frome the Lawes and Customes of this Realme,' in future they were to enjoy the same rights and freedoms as those of England and be subject to the same laws." The marcher lordships were abolished and the powers of the lords reduced to the holding of minor courts. Out of the lordships five new shires were created - Brecknockshire (Breconshire), Denbighshire, Monmouthshire, Montgomeryshire, and Radnorshire - while other lordships were attached to the existing counties of Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, Flintshire, and Merioneth. The lordships of Glamorgan and Pembroke, which had already gained some elements of county status such as a county court and sheriff, were enlarged with some of the adjacent lordships. Anglesey and Caernarvonshire retained their traditional boundaries. Monmouthshire was placed in an anomalous situation, annexed to England through its placement under the jurisdiction of the courts of Chancery and Exchequer at Westminster, and was therefore permitted two knights of the shire like the other English counties, in contrast to the single knight allowed the Welsh counties."

Since the Welsh *do daily use a speche nothing like ne consonant to the naturall mother tonge used within this Realme,' all judicial and administrative proceedings were to be conducted in English." Henceforth no p^rsonne or p^rsonnes that use the Welsshe speche or langage shall have or enjoy any manw^r office or fees within the Realme of Englond Wales or other the Kinges Dominions, upon Peyn of forfaiting the same offices or fees, onles he or they use and exercise the speche or langage of Englisshe.'" A second and supplementary act was passed by the parliament of 1543 (34-5 Hen viii, chapter 26). Although it contained only two major -

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xix

though lengthy - provisions their effects were sweeping. The act provided for a court of Great Sessions, comparable to the English assizes, to meet twice each year for a week on fifteen days' notice. It further gave a statutory mandate to the Council in the Marches and called for each Welsh county to send its representative to parliament.

It is easy to over-emphasize the importance of this legislation, and the Acts of Union can best be seen as the culmination of a lengthy period of cultural and political integration that began early in the previous century, if not with the events of 1282. From a social point of view the primary effect of the Acts of Union was to provide a wealth of opportunities for the ambitious Welsh gentleman to build a strong local power base.^*^

The new offices of justice of the peace, as well as membership in parliament or the Council in the Marches, could form the basis for local power; the introduction of a consistent English legal system offered vast opportunities for those with legal training, and by the end of the century the Welsh gentry were regularly sending their sons to the Inns of Court.

Religious houses had long been a prominent feature of the medieval Welsh landscape. With the bulk of foundations dating from the twelfth century the monastic orders were a significant part of the life and economy of medieval Wales. Among the orders of medieval Europe it was the Cistercians whose ascetic program appealed most to the Welsh. Although houses of all the major orders were founded in Wales none achieved the success of the white monks. Of about fifteen Benedictine houses founded during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for example, only eight remained at the Dissolution. At that time the two largest of these, Abergavenny and Brecon, housed five and six monks respectively and showed annual incomes on the level of such small English houses as Totnes in Devon and St Bees in Cumberland. Eight Augustinian houses included three relatively large establishments at Carmarthen, Haverfordwest, and Llanthony, of which the most substantial at Carmarthen was about twice the size of Abergavenny or Brecon. Lesser orders were represented by small numbers of houses: the Tironians by three; the Cluniacs, two; and the Premonstratensians, one. Leland's claim of a house of Bonhommes at Ruthin is contradicted by a papal petition of 1479, which indicates that it was Augustinian."

The Cistercians, on the other hand, flourished. Of about eighteen early foundations thirteen were still in existence at the Dissolution, with major establishments in every county except Anglesey, Brecknockshire, and Pembrokeshire. Although this included such major foundations as Conwy in Caernarvonshire, Strata Florida in Cardiganshire, Whidand in Carmarthenshire, Valle Crucis in Denbighshire, Basingwerk in Flintshire, Margam and Neath in Glamorgan, Llantarnam and Tintern in Monmouthshire, Strata Marcella in Montgomeryshire, and Cwm-hir in Radnorshire, few of these houses were large and none was wealthy. The largest, Margam, housed thirty-eight monks and forty lay brothers in 1336; its temporal income in 1291 was £255, falling to £181 at the Dissolution. This latter figure represents an income about half that of an English Cistercian house of similar size, such as Bordesley in Worcestershire.^*

The principal event of Henry's reign, the separation of the English Church from Rome, perhaps affected Wales less than the political, administrative, and judicial changes of the Acts of Union. Contemporary sources leave little doubt that Wales was ready for the Reformation. Many of the Welsh monasteries, never wealthy by English standards, were by the 1530s in a state of

XX HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

serious poverty. John Vaughan, one of the commissioners of visitation, wrote to Cromwell in 1 536 concerning the state of Monmouth Priory: 'I dyd see the sayd howse and ther ys nor pott nor panne nor bed nor bedstyd nor no monke in the sayd howse but one the which dothe goo to borde in the towne.'^' The Welsh seem to have greeted the Reformation with a large measure of indifference, much as they did the Marian reinstatement of the old religion.

The Elizabethan Settlement produced stronger feelings for it affected the people more directly. Elements of the prayer book had been translated into Welsh and published by Sir John Prise in 1546, but it was the translation of the Bible into Welsh, mandated by statute in 1563, which had the most profound effect.'" William Salusbury's translation of the New Testament, published in 1567, Bishop William Morgans superb translation of the Old Testa- ment (as well as his revision of Salusbury's New Testament), and his printing of the whole text of the Scriptures in 1588 became the models for Welsh prose for centuries to come.'' For the most part Wales adopted the new religion with equanimity. This is not to say that recusancy was not a problem; a significant number of important Welsh families retained their Catholic connections and local officials complained regularly to the Council in the Marches about 'problems with recusants, but these problems were smaller than in many areas of England. The figures for prosecutions for recusancy suggest that the small number of Catholics at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign increased considerably by the end of the century, but improved methods of reporting - and increased zeal of those reporting - may have affected these numbers.'^ The figures for 1603 suggest that recusants amounted to little more than about 0.3 per cent of the population."

Sixteenth-century Wales was distinguished by two large-scale changes in society: the rise to power of a new class of gentry and the expansion of urban centres. Local families had been the cornerstone of Welsh society since the earliest records, and pride in family and blood were a key to this importance; Gerald of Wales, writing in the early 1190s, had noted that the Welsh valued gentle birth and the nobility of their families above all other things.''' The Act for the Making of Justices of the Peace in Wales of 1535-6, however, provided the opportunity, in its provisions for local administration through the English system of justices of the peace, for families of local importance to increase gready their wealth and influence.'^ On 12 March 1535/6 the formidable Bishop Rowland Lee, lord president of the Council in the Marches, wrote to Thomas Cromwell objecting to the new plan to place control over law and order in the hands of local justices. Lee pointed out that English jps were required to possess land to a value of £20 per year, but 'there be ffew welshemen in wales above Breknock that maye dispende ten pounds lande/ and to saye truthe their discretion lesse then their landes/.''^ Lee's reservations were, for once, ignored and the problem was resolved by the simple expedient of waiving the property requirement for Wales. By the end of the century George Owen of Henllys was able to note proudly the wealth of the Welsh gentry, 'nowe theare is no sheere in wales butt is able to yealde suffisyent numbre of gentlemen that may dispend 100'» a yeare good land, to be sheriffs and Justices of the peace in the sheere.''^ Owen was speaking in local terms and probably exaggerating; even the most wealthy Welsh families barely approached the holdings of the middle level of English gentry, but they had nonetheless become the most important power in the land. The uchelwyr,* or 'boneddigion,' also replaced the marcher lords, native

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

XXI

princes, and monasteries as patrons of the professional poets - the bards - and a very large proportion of the body of poetry surviving from Tudor Wales consists of poems in their honour. The sponsorship of the gentry v^^as also essential to the tv^o documented eisteddfodau of the sixteenth century, held at Caerwys, Flintshire, in 1523 and 1567 (see pp 159-81). These bardic meetings were held specifically to establish the requirements for bardic training and licensing, as well as to codify the norms of bardic practice. The Mostyn family of Mostyn, Flintshire, was instrumental in organizing these meetings, and Caerwys may have been chosen as their venue because of its proximity to the Mostyn estates.

Although many of the towns of medieval Wales dated from the period of the Norman Conquest, both these and the new towns of the late thirteenth century were seen by the native Welsh population as predominately English.^* This explains why the native population did not flock to the new towns, as well as making clear the animus felt toward the urban centres by Owain Glyn Dwr and his followers. The stagnation of town life in the fifteenth century was in part a product of the extensive damage done by Glyn Dwr's forces, much of which was still noticeable to John Leland over a century later, as well as of the more widespread contraction of urban centres that followed on the plague epidemics of the previous century. The sixteenth century, especially after the Acts of Union, saw the Welsh boroughs rise again in importance as centres of commerce and industry. Between the mid-sixteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries many Welsh boroughs roughly doubled in size, among them Caernarfon, Montgomery, Pembroke, Swansea, and Wrexham.^' So Humphrey Llwyd noted of his fellow Welshmen that 'of late they haue very commendably begun to inhabite Townes, to learne occupations, to exercise merchandise, to till the ground well, and to doo all other kindes of publique, and necessary functions, as wel as Englishmen.''"'

It is possible to estimate the population of Wales in the mid-sixteenth century with the help of two sets of documents. The first of these includes the episcopal returns of 1563, in which the bishops were instructed to record the number of households in each parish of their diocese.

COUNTY	HOUSEHOLDS	POPULATION
Anglesey	1,954	8,800
Brecknockshire	4,238	19,100
Caernarvonshire	2,984	13,400
Cardiganshire	3,464	15,600
Carmarthenshire	6,875	31,000
Denbighshire	4,733	21,300
Flintshire	2,405	10,800
Glamorgan	5,530	24,900
Merioneth	2,104	9,500
Montgomeryshire	3,450	15,500
Pembrokeshire	4,225	19,000
Radnorshire	2,837	12,800
TOTAL	44,799	201,700

Figure 1 Estimated population of Wales in the mid-sixteenth century

XXU HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

These returns (though not complete) survive extensively for the dioceses of Bangor and St David's. They must be supplemented by the (also incomplete) information in the surviving lay subsidy rolls of 1543, which cover many of the areas missing in the bishops' records/'

Monmouthshire was not included in either the subsidy or episcopal returns, but adding an estimated 21,000 for its population would bring the mid-sixteenth-century total to about 222,700. This population was likely as much as ninety per cent rural and the Welsh towns were, for the most part, relatively small. Only four urban centres had a population in the range of 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants: Brecon, Brecknockshire; Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire; Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire; and Wrexham, Denbighshire. The largest of these, Carmarthen, is the only one whose population was without question above 2,000. In addition seven other towns had populations of around 1,000 - Caernarfon, Caernarvonshire; Cardiff, Glamorgan; Denbigh, Denbighshire; Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire; Monmouth, Monmouthshire; Swansea, Glamorgan; and Tenby, Pembrokeshire. The rest of the towns in Wales had populations of no more than a few hundred.^^

Wales in the Seventeenth Century

The accession of James i in 1603 brought few changes to Wales. James was, after all, the great- great-grandson of a Welshman, Henry vii. Perhaps more important the Welsh gentry, especially those of recent establishment, clearly saw the continuation of the Elizabethan order under the new king as the best means to preserve and consolidate their estates. Jacobean Wales saw significant increases in the number of Welshmen involved in both education and the law. The foundation of Jesus College, Oxford, by Hugh Price in 1571 had increased the number of Welsh students at the university and that increase now accelerated. So too did the number of Welsh students at the 'third university,' the Inns of Court. Fewer Welsh students went to Cambridge; those who did tended to go to St John's College. Despite these educational and social advances Welsh gendemen continued to pursue quarrels among themselves, using both direct violence and the law courts to further their ambitions.

The reign of Charles i began calmly enough. Serious problems in Wales only started to arise during the period of Charles' personal reign from 1629 to 1640, with the king's repeated demands for ship-money. Welsh attitudes to this taxation can be seen in the returns. In 1635 only two counties defaulted in their payments; in 1639 all the Welsh counties except two defaulted in some measure. Nonetheless the majority of Welshmen took the royalist side in the ensuing Civil War since the threat to established authority was generally also seen as a threat to the local gentry's power. A number of minor battles in the war were fought on Welsh soil, but even with the sequestrations imposed on royalist sympathizers following the king's defeat, few of the Welsh gentry co-operated actively with Cromwell's government.

One of the earliest statutes passed by the Commonwealth parliament of 1649 was they4r^ for the better Propagation and Preaching of the Gospel in Wales, and redress of some Grievances (London, 1650; Wing: E1099), the intention of which was to complete the Puritan conquest of the Welsh. Although a commission of seventy-one was set up to oversee the terms of the act it was not a great success. Its negative provisions, primarily the ejection of clergymen

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXIU

who did not meet the standards of the act, were very successful but the reverse - their replace- ment by appropriate Puritan preachers or lecturers — foundered on the lack of suitable candid- ates. The act was allowed to lapse in 1653 but did have one potentially important effect, however, in its provision for setting up free schools. Under the act some sixty schools were established, generally in towns and boroughs that were not already served by a grammar school. These schools should have been the most important legacy of the so-called Propaga- tion Act, but in fact they had little lasting success since only one of them survived the Restora- tion, Though it was, on the whole, not a success the act did create a national interest in fundamental issues of religion and thus, along with its system of schools, paved the way for the far more extensive religious changes of the following century. In addition to the terms of the act local Welsh officials were also made responsible for the enforcement of a Protest- ant moral code. Many of its terms were familiar from the Sabbatarian regulations promul- gated by Elizabeth's and James' bishops in their visitation instructions (see pp 37-9). Some were new, however, including prohibitions on revels, bowling, dancing around maypoles, and bearbaiting.''^

The Council in the Marches of Wales

The Council in the Marches was formally established in 1493 or 1494 to act as an advisory body to Arthur, prince of Wales, reviving a similar council that had been set up in 1471 for Edward, the son of Edward iv. After Arthur's death in 1502 the Council continued to meet as a commission of the peace for the Welsh borders, although the real power in the border area was held by the earldom of March (in royal hands since the death of Richard iii in 1485).'*'' The Council rose to importance in 1534 when Rowland Lee, the redoubtable bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, was appointed to its head with a mandate to bring law and order to the Welsh borders. Under Lee's guidance the Council and its head, the lord president, became a power almost equal to the Council in the North, with extensive administrative and judicial powers in the counties on the English side of the border as well as in Wales. The second Act of Union made these powers statutory in 1543- The Council was based at Ludlow, Shropshire, but also met at Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and Bewdley and Worcester, Worcestershire. Its precise powers and procedures remained vague, perhaps intentionally so; the Council held a commission of oyer and terminer and was empowered to hear private suits. It acted as an informal court of appeal for the quarter sessions courts of the Welsh counties and supervised justices of the peace. Under Elizabeth the Council's influence waned, although this change was not steady and the strength of the Council depended largely on the strength of its president.''^

With the death of Henry Herbert, earl of Pembroke, in 1601 the Council lost its last Welsh lord president, and a succession of largely absentee presidents, as well as a related increase in its bureaucracy, led to attacks on the Council's practices and its impartiality (see pp 83-6). Though many of these charges may have been self-serving they marked a change in the Council's reputation, though it continued to deal with an extremely large case-load. The criminal juris- diction of the Council was abolished in 1641.''^

XXIV HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Court of Great Sessions

The court of Great Sessions was formally established by the second Act of Union of 1 543, although some of its provisions had been anticipated following the first act of 1536 and had already been put in place in 1541. Wales was to be divided into four judicial circuits each comprising three counties, one in the northwest (Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and Merioneth), one in the northeast (Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Montgomeryshire), one in the southwest (Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire), and one in the southeast (Brecknock- shire, Glamorgan, and Radnorshire). Anomalous since its creation by the first Act of Union Monmouthshire was not included in the Welsh jurisdiction; the county was to be dealt with through the courts at Westminster and after the Restoration it was attached to the Oxford assize circuit.^^ These regional courts of Great Session were to be unique to Wales and were to have jurisdiction over the range of cases heard by the courts of Kings Bench, Common Pleas, and the assizes in England, establishing the rule of English common law in place of the equity law of the marcher lords, and fiirthering the anglicization of Welsh culture.

The Great Sessions courts quickly became an important part of Welsh life and remained so until their suppression in 1830. Perhaps most important the courts brought a measure of uniformity to the administration of justice in Wales, where there had previously been the widest possible deviation under the various authorities of the Crown and the marcher lords. Courts were to be held twice annually for six days, with at least fifteen days' notice being given of a session. The courts were relatively efficient and, unlike the courts of the marcher lords, could not be bought off, and they thus became very popular. Elizabeth was successfully petitioned in 1576 for the doubling of the number of justices. The courts were required to be held in English but their success implies that the problems of language and interpreters were overcome.'** George Owen had a particularly rosy (and likely unjustified) view of the courts and their justices; a character in one of his dialogues describes having seen 'the Judges deale w/th such care of Justice ioyned w/th mercye as J wowld wish to see in all places; Theare sawe J the guiltye condemned w/th pittye, and the Jnnocent delyuered by Justice, rich and poore, the like care and paynes was vsed for both '*'

The Welsh Dioceses

The ecclesiastical administration of Wales was based on four dioceses. The largest of these was governed from the isolated cathedral of St David s at the far western tip of Pembrokeshire, at least until the bishop's palace was relocated to Carmarthen in 1550. The diocese of St David's comprised the whole of Brecknockshire, Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, and Radnorshire and included the cantref of Cower in Glamorgan, as well as the commotes of Ceri in Montgomeryshire and Ewias in Monmouthshire. There was considerable dispute over these boundaries, with the adjoining cantrefs of Kidwelly, Cower, and Cantref Bychan, as well as the Brecon commotes of Ystrad Yw and Crucywel, contested by the diocese of Llandaff.^

Llandaff, in the southeast with its seat just north of Cardiff, Glamorgan, consisted of the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire with the exceptions noted above. In the northwest

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXV

of Wales the diocese of Bangor encompassed the counties of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and the western portion of Merioneth, with outliers in the southern part of the Clwyd valley in Denbighshire and the commote of Arwystli in the southern part of Montgomeryshire. The diocese of St Asaph in the northeast took in the counties of Denbighshire (minus the deanery of Dyffryn Clwyd), eastern Merioneth, the rest of Montgomeryshire, and all of Flintshire with the exception of the peculiar of Hawarden. The eastern boundary of the Welsh dioceses did not correspond exactly to the political boundary of the principality and thus several Radnorshire parishes lay in the diocese of Hereford, while a few Flintshire parishes and one Denbighshire parish lay in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield (after 1541, the diocese of Chester). A small number of Shropshire parishes around Oswestry were included in the diocese of St Asaph.

A tendency in the fourteenth century to exclude Welshmen from the Welsh sees expanded to become normal practice in the fifteenth and thus no Welsh bishops served the diocese of St Davids between 1389 and 1496, Llandaff between 1323 and 1566, Bangor between 1408 and 1500, and St Asaph between 1376 and 1500 (with the exception of Reginald Pecock, St Asaph, 1444-9). Not surprisingly very few of the foreign bishops were resident.

Recusancy returns from the four dioceses show a strong differentiation between them with significantly higher numbers in the border areas. Of the 808 recusants reported in Wales in 1603 forty-seven per cent were from the diocese of Llandaff, thirty-one per cent from St Asaph, eighteen per cent from St Davids, and a mere four per cent from Bangor.^'

A number of Welsh border parishes lay in the diocese of Hereford, and records from these parishes are therefore included in the consistory court records of the diocese. Eight Welsh parishes were in the Hereford Archdeaconry: two in the Archenfield Deanery (Dixton Newton and Monmouth, both in Monmouthshire), five in the Leominster Deanery (Disgoed, Norton, New Radnor, Old Radnor, and Presteigne, all in Radnorshire), and one in the Weobley Deanery (Michaelchurch-on-Arrow, Radnorshire). Knighton, Radnorshire, lay in the Ludlow Arch- deaconry, Clun Deanery, and six Welsh parishes were in the Pontesbury Deanery (Buttington, Churchstoke, Forden, Hyssington, Montgomery, and Snead, all in Montgomeryshire).

Anglesey/Mon

The island of Anglesey, separated from the mainland of Caernarvonshire by the Menai Strait, contains the most low-lying land in Wales, rising nowhere more than 720 feet above sea level. At least some of the island's acreage is arable and the marshland areas that are unsuitable for cultivation are acceptable for grazing. In the seventeenth century the county's agricultural reputation was high; Speed noted that

[t]he commodities that commend, (or rather beautifie) this Country, are in Corne and Cattle, wherewith it not onely enricheth it selfe exceedingly, but sendeth out great prouision thereof to others to supply their defects, and although the ground may seeme drie and stony, or vnpleasant and nothing sightly, wherein for the outward quality, it resembleth some other parts of Wales, that are not so fruitftill, yet for the inward bounties of nature, it is farre vnlike."

XXVI HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

There is a measure of hyperbole here; today eleven per cent of the county's land is classed as marginal while for the principality as a whole the figure is thirty-one per cent."

In the earlier Middle Ages Aberffraw in the southwest was an important site, serving as principal court for the rulers of Gwynedd. The island was of considerable strategic importance, not least as the principal route to Ireland, and was given county status through the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284. The creation through the statute of three new counties out of the kingdom of Gwynedd brought a measure of English administration to these areas, especially through the introduction of the new office of sheriff. The changing attitude of royal administration to the Welsh counties over the next two centuries can be seen in the persons who held this office. Through the fourteenth century Anglesey's sheriffs were Welsh approximately thirty per cent of the time, though the Welsh sheriffs were concentrated in the first half of the century. In the fifteenth century the count fell to zero. The immediate cause was Henry iv's punitive anti- Welsh laws of 1402 but the trend had clearly been developing through the previous century. Simultaneously with Owain Glyn Dwr's rebellion a revolt arose in Anglesey led by Gwilym and Rhys ap Tudur. This was quickly crushed by Henry vi who ravaged the eastern side of the island, killing the remaining friars at Llan-faes and burning the friary.

In addition to its livestock and grain crops Anglesey also had from the late fifteenth century some limited mining of coal in the commote of Menai. The county was also known for the high quality of its millstones, which were exported from the eastern tip of the island throughout England and Ireland.^'' None of these industries was sufficient to keep Anglesey's population much above the poverty level and the island was served by only two major markets at the island's two boroughs, Beaumaris and Newborough.

Beaumaris attained some prosperity as a fishing port; the cattle market at Newborough was never really successful at bringing the borough similar status. In 1507 Newborough was made county town for a time but the honour reverted to Beaumaris again in 1549." In addition to these major markets small fairs were also held at Aberffraw and Llannerch-y-medd, though it is likely that these were no longer held by the sixteenth century.'^ All four of these locations supported annual fairs: Beaumaris on Ascension Day (forty days after Easter) and 8 September; Newborough on 29 June and 1 1 November." Anglesey's roads were poorly kept and access from the mainland was by ferry. A single bridge connected the island to its harbour at Holyhead and in many ways its connections by ship to Ireland, Lancashire, and Pembrokeshire were more important than its connections to the mainland.

Although agriculture remained the basis of the island's economy weaving had become common by the mid-fourteenth century. Anglesey also had a thriving fishing industry, and its several ports conducted trade with other Welsh and English ports from the fourteenth century on. Wine was a principal commodity, with wine-bearing ships coming from Bristol, Plymouth, and St Ives. Foreign trade was limited to Beaumaris with the majority of ships arriving from home ports in Brittany, including Le Conquet, Le Croisic, Paimpol, St Malo, and St Pol de Leon, as well as from Honfleur and Lisbon." The port books of the sixteenth century show a far wider range of home ports, including Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and a variety of English ports.*' Although Anglesey's economy remained predominately based on agriculture and sea trade Mynydd Parys, just south of Amlwch, had been a source of copper

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xxvii

since Roman times, and this was expanded in 1579 into a minor industry, which lasted until the early nineteenth century.^

BEAUMARIS

Situated at the northern entrance to the strategically vital Menai Strait, Beaumaris first attained importance as the site of Edward I's last castle in Wales. It seems likely that Edward did not initially intend to fortify this side of the Strait, well protected as it was by castles at both Caernarfon and Conwy in Caernarvonshire, but in 1294 Madog, son of Llywelyn ap Maredudd, lord of Meirionydd, attracted a host of disaffected Welshmen and proclaimed himself prince of Wales. He continued to harass Edward throughout the winter of 1294/5 until March, when he was drawn into Powys and defeated. The experience seems to have convinced Edward of the wisdom of further fortification of the northwest. In order to deal with economic competi- tion from the nearby Welsh town of Llan-faes, which the survey of 1294 had described as a thriving centre of commerce, Edward simply had the inhabitants moved to a new site at Rhosyr, twelve miles to the west, where it was renamed Newborough and in 1303 given its own charter. Only the friary was left behind.*^'

Though Beaumaris Castle was never finished its presence and its garrison formed the basis for a thriving community. The boroughs first charter was granted in 1296 with provision for annual fairs at Llan-faes on Ascension Day (forty days after Easter) and the Nativity of St Mary (8 September) .^^ Throughout the fourteenth century Beaumaris was one of the primary trading centres of North Wales, although its burgesses regularly complained that other ports and markets were being used to the town's detriment. After 1379 the evidence of vacant burgages and, in 1389, a release for a year from the payment of burgage rents suggest that the town was in economic decline. During the Glyn Dwr rebellion the castle may have fallen into rebel hands in 1404—5 but the evidence is unclear." The town was not originally walled but work began on walls in 1414, perhaps in response to Glyn Dwrs occupation. This work continued through the fif- teenth and early sixteenth centuries with a number of burgages destroyed to make space for them. The walls were never needed for defensive purposes and the burgages lost to them were replaced by substantial extramural development. The Free School of Beaumaris was founded in 1603 by David Hughes (see pp 43-5)." Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Beaumaris remained a quietly prosperous market town; even its capture by parliamentary forces in 1646 did not lead to the destruction usually visited upon royalist sites.

Not all the population of Anglesey was happy with Beaumaris' pre-eminent position on the island; in 1657 a petition was sent to the lord protector signed by forty-two residents of the county and endorsed by a further fifty-two, requesting that because of the awkward position of Beaumaris' market 'scituate vpon the most remote confines of the same,' a further market be allowed at the more central town of Llannerch-y-medd.^*

HOUSEHOLDS

Originally from Cheadle, Cheshire, by the early seventeenth century the Bulkeleys of Beaumaris

XXVlll HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

and Baron Hill had become the most important family in Anglesey and the name appears with great jfrequency in the records of the period. The senior branch of the family settled in Anglesey before 1450 and the family's fortunes grew rapidly through the purchase of lands in both Anglesey and Caernarvonshire. 'Richard' was a traditional family name and in virtually every generation was given to the eldest son. Richard Bulkeley i was born c 1507 and died in 1547. He served as chamberlain of North Wales, as high sheriff of Caernarvonshire from 22 November 1542 to 22 November 1543, and of Anglesey from 23 November 1546 to 15 November 1547; he was knighted around 1534. The second Sir Richard Bulkeley (d. 1572) served as member of parliament for Anglesey in 1547, 1554, and 1571, as well as sheriff for the county in 1547, 1552, 1561, and 1570 and for Caernarvonshire in 1550 and 1558. His influence was important in obtaining a charter of incorporation for Beaumaris in 1562. According to his son Richard he was poisoned by his second wife, Agnes, who had committed adultery with William Kenericke. Although poison was found in her room she was acquitted. The family appears to have had strong Catholic connections.^

The family's influence peaked with the third Sir Richard Bulkeley (1533-1621), whose friendship with Queen Elizabeth involved him in bitter opposition to the earl of Leicester's schemes in Wales, by which as chief ranger of Snowdon he tried to bring freehold lands in the counties of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and Merioneth into his sphere of control. "^^ In revenge Leicester attempted to link Bulkeley to the Babington Plot of 1585 but the queen refused to believe the charge. In 1561 he was appointed constable of Beaumaris Castle and he served as member of parliament for the county in 1563 (through his father's influence), 1604, and 1614. Sir Richard Bulkeley iii built the Baron Hill estate just north- west of Beaumaris in 1618. The tenure in the estate of his son Sir Richard Bulkeley iv represented a substantial decrease in the family's influence. After his death in 1630 his wife and Thomas Cheadle were tried twice on the charge of poisoning him, the second trial justified by a charge that unfair influence had been used to sway the outcome of the first. In the second trial they were again acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence; she later married Cheadle. The estate passed to Bulkeley 's son, Richard Bulkeley v, who died on 15 March 1639/40, at which time the estate passed to his uncle Thomas Bulkeley, who was created Lord Viscount Bulkeley on 6 January 1643/4 and died in 1659. His son. Colonel Richard Bulkeley, born in 1626, was killed in a duel with Richard Cheadle, Thomas' son, on Lavan Sands near Beaumaris on 19 February 1649/50. Cheadle was executed at Conwy for Bulkeley 's murder.

The gentleman farmer who kept a journal for a good part of the 1630s did not identify himself specifically as a member of the Bulkeley family but there is little doubt of his identity.*^ In late 1621 or early 1622 Robert Bulkeley, a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, returned to his family home, Dronwy, in the parish of Llanfachreth near the west coast of the island not far from Holyhead." His father had died some time earlier and his mother, as far as we can tell, called him home to run the estate. Bulkeley appears to have remained in Anglesey for the rest of his life. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Rhys ap Huw of Tan-yr-allt, Llanfachreth, whom he refers to often in the journal as 'Besse,' and they had at least seven children.^" Bulkeley served as justice of the peace and the journal notes his attendance at petty sessions in Bodedern

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXIX

and at quarter sessions, as well as at the assizes at Beaumaris. It also records his payments to be relieved of jury and inquest duties.

The Lewis family of Prysaeddfed in the parish of Bodedern was prominent in the affairs of the county during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. William Lewis {c 1526-1601 or later) served as sheriff of the county on three occasions, in 1549, 1558, and 1572, and as member of two parliaments, in 1553 and 1555.^' His parliamentary career began with dif- ficulties. In 1 548 he had brought a suit in Star Chamber against Thomas and Robert Bulkeley, involving also the second Sir Richard Bulkeley {c 1524-72), one of the most powerfiil men in the county, who challenged Lewis' election to Mary's first parliament in 1553 on the grounds that Lewis' return by the sheriff was corrupt and that he, Bulkeley, had in fact received the larger number of votes. The case dragged on until the session was virtually over but the ill feeling it generated was so widespread that in 1560 the poet Sion Brwynog wrote that it had poisoned' the atmosphere of the county (A wna'n ynys yn wenwyn).''^ In 1573 Lewis was ap- pointed high collector for the subsidy but he seems to have retired from public life afi:er that.

Brecknockshire/Sir Frycheiniog

The county of Brecknockshire or Breconshire was created by Henry viii's first Act of Union in 1536, amalgamating the ancient kingdom of Brycheiniog and the cantref of Buellt to the north. The county is divided quite spectacularly between its mountains and valleys. 'This County is fiill of hils and vneuen for trauel,' wrote Speed. The Brecon Beacons in the south form the highest land mass outside of Snowdonia, rising to above 3,000 feet. To the east the Black Mountains form a natural border with Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, while the north is dominated by the barren dome of Mynydd Eppynt. Among which,' continued Speed, ariseth and runneth so many fruitfijU springs, that their vallies are thereby made most fertile, yeelding in plenty both corne and grasse.'^^ Principal among these valleys is that of the River Usk, running west to east across the centre of the county, while the north is drained by several tributaries of the Wye, which forms the county's northern border with Radnorshire.

Most of the area was in Norman hands by 1092, the large lordship of Brecknock held by Bernard de Neufmarch^ and the smaller cantref of Buellt by William de Briouze. Afiier Bernard's death c 1125 the whole county came into the hands of the Briouze family where it remained until 1241, when it passed to the Bohuns, with part of the eastern cantref of Talgarth split off into the separate lordship of Blaenllyfni. At the end of the fourteenth century the Bohun lands passed by marriage to Henry Bolingbroke and, with the coup d'etat that established him on the throne as Henry iv, the lands came under direct royal control. The lordship was granted to the Stafford dukes of Buckingham but reverted to the Crown following the execution of Henry Stafford in 1483. It was restored to his son Edward in 1485 where it remained until his execution in 1521.

The county had four market towns, Brecon, Builth Wells, Crickhowell, and Hay.^^ Of these Brecon was by far the most prosperous; the others in contrast remained small market towns. All were severely damaged during the Glyn Dwr rebellion but Brecon was the only one with a sufficiently prosperous economy to rebuild quickly.

XXX HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Through the sixteenth century the county remained agricultural; the severest problem it faced, along with Merioneth, Montgomeryshire, and Radnorshire, was the encroachment and enclosure of common pasturage, a process that dealt a severe blow to the ancient system of transhumance grazing, in which sheep and cattle were pastured during the winter season in the valleys and lowlands, near to the principal farmhouse ('hendre'), and moved to uplands pasturage during the summer near a less permanent dwelling for the herders ('hafod'). This mode of agriculture predominated in hilly areas and enclosure in lowland areas proceeded with relatively little disruption. Acting on a petition from the freeholders of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire the Council in the Marches recommended in 1573 that measures be taken against encroachment in Brecknockshire and Merioneth as well." Brecknockshire's total reliance upon agriculture was briefly set aside in the early seventeenth century when the Hanbury family extended their iron-smelting into the county, but mining and smelting never became a major part of the county's economy ^^

The county remained a quiet place through the seventeenth century, its calm broken only by the antics of a few men like John Games of Aberbran, who travelled around the county's markets and fairs with a gang of toughs extorting money (see pp 55-7).^^ Even during the Civil War the county remained relatively quiet; no battles were fought on its soil and no castles or buildings were destroyed.^*

BRECON/ABERHONDDU

The borough of Brecon, at the confluence of the Rivers Honddu and Usk, grew up around the Norman castle built at the end of the eleventh century by Bernard de Neufmarch^, following his victory in 1093 over Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth. Through the Middle Ages, indeed until 1521, Brecon remained a seigneurial borough under the direct control of the marcher lords of Brecon. Although the borough clearly existed by 1106 and had a charter of rights and liberties from 1270 (expanded before 1282), the power of the lord was of paramount importance, and several times during the borough's history its charter was abrogated and the town was placed under the direct control of the lord.^' First, from 1340 to 1365 Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, took direct control apparently for financial reasons, since his annual income from the borough quickly increased by about forty per cent. Bohun granted the town a generous charter in 1365, including the right to sixteen fair days a year, thus making it one of the most important market towns in Wales. Second, Henry iv took control of the town during the Glyn Eh^r rebellion, this time for reasons of security, and finally Anne, dowager countess of Stafford, revoked the charter in 1429 on the grounds that the burgesses had abused their privil- eges. The charter was restored after her death by her son Humphrey, duke of Buckingham.*"

Throughout the Middle Ages Brecon remained a town of considerable commercial import- ance, its charter providing for two weekly markets, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and for three (originally two) annual fairs of eight days at the feasts of the Nativity of John the Baptist (24 June), the Beheading of John die Baptist (29 August), and St Leonard (6 November)." The Cough map of c 1360 makes it clear that Brecon also lay on the major east- west road leading from Hereford along the valleys to Carmarthen and St David's." The relative wealth of the

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXXI

borough can be seen in the substantial loan of £53 6s 8d made toward Henry v's French wars in 1417 by two of its burgesses, Walter Bace and Thomas ap David."

Brecon was also a religious centre of some note. Its Benedictine priory had been founded by Bernard de Neufmarch^ in the early days of the borough and became relatively wealthy, with the second-largest endowment of any house in Wales. It remained small, however, housing fewer than six monks for most of its history. Outside the town walls on the west side of the River Usk stood the largest Dominican friary in Wales, founded in the late thirteenth century. Several local shrines, including the rood of Brecon and the shrine of St Elined, brought pilgrims to the town (see pp 53—4).

R.R. Davies has shown that the story of Brecon in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflects a slow but consistent increase in prosperity, although the Glyn Dwr rebellion took a particularly hard toll on the town. By the end of the century Davies estimates that Brecon had a population of about 800.*'' With the creation of the county of Brecknockshire in 1536 the borough became the county town. In 1556 a new charter gave the town its seal and specified the duties of its civic officers and common council. Even the dissolution of its priory and friary cannot be said to have been a complete loss, since the friary was converted into Christ's College under a royal charter from Henry viii. The chancel of the friary's church survives as the school's chapel. A considerable portion of the priory church also survives, though much restored, as the cathedral of the modern (1923) diocese of Swansea and Brecon. Despite the borough's relative prosperity the Pembrokeshire writer and antiquary George Owen claimed in 1602 that it was 'evill for intertaywmente.'*'

Caernarvonshire/Sir Caernarfon

The county of Caernarvonshire came into being through the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, forming along with Anglesey and Merioneth the principality of North Wales. The county is divided topographically into two very different halves. To the west the Llyn peninsula offers a limited amount of arable land with good grazing. To the east the mountains of Snowdonia provide only the most basic grazing, though they long proved a haven for the Welsh in their battles with Edward i. Speed understood the two halves' strategic importance: 'but for the hart of this Shire, it is altogether mountainous, as if Nature had a purpose heere, by rearing vp these craggy hils so thicke together, strongly to compact the ioynts of this our Hand, and to frame the Inland part thereof for a fit place of refuge to the Britaines, against those times of aduersitie which afterward did fall vpon them.'*^ Leland described the county's agriculture: 'Cairarvonshire aboute the shore hath reasonable good corne, as abouth a myle upland from the shore onto Cairarvon. Then more upwarde be Eryri Hilles, and in them ys very litle corne, except otes in sum places, and a litle barle, but scantly rye. If ther were the deere wold destroye it. But in Lleene and Hiuionith*^ is good corne, both by shore and almost thorough upland.'** Over the course of the later Middle Ages landholding in the county tended to change from a large number of widely dispersed small farms to a smaller number of large estates, mainly through enclosure and consolidation by purchase and marriage.*'

The county was dominated by its four major castles: Cricieth at the base of the Llyn

XXxii HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

peninsula, one of Llywelyn ab lorwerth's castles refurbished by Edward after the conquest; the two castles built by Edward for his new towns at Caernarfon and Conwy, the former the most splendid of his new buildings; and the old mountain fortress of Dolbadarn on the slopes of Snowdon.'" With its limited agricultural resources Caernarvonshire's people depended largely on weaving for their livelihood. Relatively little of the county's livestock was kept for wool, which was imported from other parts of Wales.

Transportation would have been particularly difficult in the mountainous areas of the county, for its roads were especially bad, even by Welsh standards, and were often made impassable by snow. The lower-lying areas of the Llyn peninsula were only approachable from the east by the north coast road through Conwy and along the Menai Strait, by the road across the Traeth Mawr from Harlech, Merioneth, or (the most sensible route) by boat. In addition to Edward's new towns several other sites had markets, generally of modest proportions, including Bangor, the seat of one of Wales' four bishoprics, the old town of Degannwy, and Nefyn on the north coast of the Llyn peninsula. By 1303 Edward had given charters to seven new royal boroughs in the county, all modelled on Hereford's charter.^' The charters generally provided for civic government by a mayor and burgesses, except in the cases of incastellated towns where the castellan was to be mayor by patent.

CONWY

After his victory over Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Edward i chose to fortify the entrance to north- west Wales not at the ancient site of Degannwy, on the west side of the Conwy estuary, but at a new site on the west bank, giving the new borough its charter in 1284 and building one of his most severely impressive castles to guard the approach both by land and by sea." The site had originally been occupied by the Cistercian abbey of Aberconwy, which Edward moved up the valley to Maenan, leaving the old abbey church to become the parish church of the new town. The charter allowed for annual fairs on St Bartholemew's Day (24 August) and the feast of St Simon and St Jude (28 October), as well as a weekly Friday market, whose fees would pay for the upkeep of the town walls with their twenty-one half-round towers." Although during the early fourteenth century the borough was populous (about twice the size of Caernarfon in 1312), it never became an important port and in the late sixteenth century Camden took note that it was not replenished with inhabitants.''' There is some evidence that a serious depletion of Conwy's population occurred in the 1607 plague." It is unlikely that the grammar school provided for in Robert Wynn's will was ever built; it was not known to L. Stanley Knight in his survey of Welsh schools and no references to it survive in municipal documents.'^

DEGANNWY

Described by Speed as *an ancient City . . . which many yeeres agoe was consumed by lightning, & so made vtterly desolate,' Degannwy was in the earlier Middle Ages a major site controlling the north coast road.'^ It may have been the seat of power of the early princes of North Wales, for as Leland noted, '...a mile up ynto the land appere greate ruines of Hegannoye Castel

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXXlll

stondding on an hille, wher, as sum say, Mailgo Guined dwellid and Lleulen Prince of North Wales.''* A castle had been built on the site at least by 1210 by the earls of Chester, enlarged and garrisoned by Henry iii in 1245. When Degannwy fell securely into royal hands with the Treaty of Woodstock in 1247, Henry proceeded with the construction of a substantial stone castle costing over £10,000 and created the town a free borough, clearly intending it to be a permanent settlement. Its economy was largely dependent upon its castle and declined rapidly when the castle was abandoned by Edward i in \T71P

HOUSEHOLDS

Although the Griffith family had been associated with the area at the tip of the Llyn peninsula since the early fourteenth century, its first clear connection with the estate of Cefnamwlch dates from 1481. For our purposes the principal member of the family was John Griffith the younger, who provided the major challenge to Sir John Wynn of Gv^dir as head of the most influential Caernarvonshire family. His father, John Griffith the elder, served as MP for the county from 1604 until his death in 1609. John the younger graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1609 and studied for a legal career at Lincoln's Inn. Through his wife, Margaret Trevor, he had close connections with the lord president of the Council in the Marches, the earl of Northampton, who furthered his career significantly. His long-standing feud with the Wynn family came to a head in 1620 when he defeated Sir John's son Richard in the county election. In 1622 he received his patent as constable of Caernarfon Castle, prompting a concerted attempt on the part of the Wynns, with the assistance of the keeper of the records, to prove his ineligibility. Sir John, who called Griffith a prying, industrious, and malicious fellow, suggested at the time that it might be necessary to request a new charter in order to keep him from the position of mayor. '°°

The large estate of Clenennau (also on the Llyn peninsula) came into the hands of Sir William Maurice (1542-1622) in 1575 on the death of his father, Moris ab Elise. The estate, with its large manor house built about 1550, made him along with Sir John Wynn of Gwydir one of the principal landowners of the county."" Maurice, the first of his family to adopt the English spelling of his name, served as MP for Caernarvonshire in 1593 and 1604, and for Beaumaris, Anglesey, in 1601, as well as deputy lieutenant for Caernarvonshire. Maurice was well known for his substantial patronage of poets writing in the bardic tradition.'"^

The Wynn family estate at Gwydir on the Caernarvonshire-Denbighshire border was purchased by Maredudd ab leuan about 1500. His son John Wyn ap Maredudd rebuilt the house in 1555 and served both as MP and high sheriff for Caernarvonshire. His son Morris, the first to use the epithet Wynn as a surname, served in the same offices. It is Morris' son Sir John Wynn, born in 1553, who is of particular interest. Two major sources survive for the history of the family: Sir John's own account of his ancestors. The History of the Givydir Family written in the 1580s and intended to establish the antiquity of the family, and a large collection (2,891 items) of private papers, largely letters, covering most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.'"^

Sir John matriculated at All Souls, Oxford, in 1570 and continued his legal training in London at Furnival's Inn in 1572 and the Inner Temple in 1576. Upon his father's death in

xxxiv HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

1580 he returned to Wales where he entered with gusto into the complex political life of North Wales. He repeated the offices of his father and grandfather, serving also as a member of the Council in the Marches from about 1603, and in 1611 he became a baronet. Sir John was a colourful figure whom Glyn Roberts has described as unscrupulous, acquisitive, litigious, and hot-tempered. Although his primary income was from the rental of his extensive landholdings, Sir John was very interested in the expansion of industry in North Wales, mining lead in the vicinity of the Gwydir estate and discussing with Sir Thomas Myddelton the possibility of mining copperas and alum as well.""* Much of Sir Johns energy was expended in a series of political battles with the family of Griffith of Cefnamwlch.

Sir John was a signatory to the petition to hold an eisteddfod in 1594 (see pp 31-3). Although this petition was not successful a further competition and grading of poets may have taken place at Gwydir on 2 August 1596 at the wedding of his eldest daughter, Mary, to Sir Roger Mostyn. Nine poets were invited to the feast; one of them, Owain Gwynedd, suggested - though not clearly - that such a grading may have taken place.'"'

Cardiganshire/Sir Ceredigion

The county of Cardiganshire existed by 1240, consisting of the area immediately north of Cardigan. Under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 the county was confirmed and extended to the south, forming with Carmarthenshire the principality of South Wales. Much of the county is hilly, with the Cambrian Mountains forming part of its eastern border with Brecknockshire and Radnorshire, and the massif of Plynlimon marking its northeastern extent. On Plynlimon's boggy slopes both the Severn and the Wye flow, as well as the Rheidol whose estuary provides Aberystwyth with its harbour. The northern boundary is partly the Dovey estuary and partly the hills that look toward Cadair Idris. Most of the county is more suitable for grazing than for cultivation though some crops were grown on the margins of the uplands.''^ Both the county's thin population and its relative poverty are reflected in the plainness of its surviving churches. About the county's commerce Speed wrote, 'The commodities of this Shire chiefly consist in cattle, sea-fowle, and fish; corne sufficient, but of woods some scarcitie: and at the head of Istwydh are certaine veines of lead, a merchandize of no meane regard or wealth.''"^

Through the sixteenth century the county was dominated by its largest landowner, the Devereux family. In 1526 Walter Devereux (r 1489-1558) became chamberlain for South Wales and the counties of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire; he had already been made justiciar of South Wales in 1525 and steward and receiver of Builth Wells for life, making him one of the wealthiest landowners in west Wales, a position consolidated by his son Richard (d. 1548) who also acquired the episcopal manor of Lamphey, Pembrokeshire, which became the family's principal seat. The family also acquired virtually all the holdings of the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. Richard's son Walter (1539-76) acquired further monastic lands and in 1559 succeeded his grandfather as Viscount Hereford. In 1572 he was made earl of Essex. He served as steward of the court of Great Sessions in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire and, from about 1594, on the Council in the Marches. His son Robert (1567-1601), favourite of Queen Elizabeth, spent much of his early childhood at Lamphey but left for Cambridge at

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

the age of twelve and from the age of twenty resided at court. The family's influence in the county remained strong even after Robert's rebellion and execution in 1601.

Though the county was largely agricultural mining also played an important part in its economy. From at least the early fourteenth century lead was mined near Llanbadarn though the industry declined at the end of the following century. In the later part of the sixteenth century the county's mines again became active; most of the 800 tons of silver sent to the mint in 1590 came from Cardiganshire, and by 1592 over thirty per cent of the lead exports from Britain came from Wales. '°^ Leland had noted that there was a greate mine digging for leade in Comeustwith,' and the discovery that there was a significant quantity of silver in the lead veins prompted speculators to bring in German miners to reopen the mines. Disputes over ownership and jurisdiction led to Elizabeth's formation of the Society for the Mines Royal, which leased the mines while keeping them under royal control. The mine mentioned by Leland, at Cwmystwyth about fifteen miles inland from Aberystwyth, was leased by Sir Hugh Myddelton for £400 a year. By the early 1620s he was turning an annual profit of £24,000.'°' Litde of this money of course went into the hands of the Cardiganshire population and George Owen noted in 1602 that all townes in the Shire Are ruynous, poore & decayed.'""

As was frequently the case in Wales the family most prominent in the patronage of Welsh poetry and music, the Pryse family of Gogerddan in the north of the county, left no records of patronage beyond the poetry that they commissioned from Huw Arwystli, Lewis Trefnant, Lewys Mon, and Sion Ceri.

CARDIGAN/ABERTEIFI

Cardigan was from its earliest history a Norman town. The first castle construction at the estuary of the Teifi was a motte built by Roger de Montgomery in 1093. This site was abandoned in the twelft:h century and a castle built about a mile upstream at the present site of the town by Gilbert de Clare, who likely also built the church of St Mary and founded the Benedictine priory. In 1165 the castle fell to Rhys ap GrufRidd and the English and Anglo-Norman monks were driven from the priory; English townspeople may have suffered a similar fate. Recognizing its strategic importance at the mouth of the River Teifi and on the main coast road, Rhys promptly fortified the site, rebuilding the castle in stone. The town changed hands frequently until the middle of the thirteenth century from which time it remained in English hands. In the same period the town walls were constructed along with further improvements to the casde.

Although the town had been given the privilege of a guild merchant in 1249, it was granted its first charter in 1284, modelled on that of Carmarthen. It is likely that this charter was a recognition of existing privileges since Cardigan was already by this time a major urban centre and had had a weekly market for well over a century.'" But like many Welsh towns a high level of growth in the period after the conquest was followed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by a slow decline. By the late 1530s Leland noted that Cardigan's market was inferior to that of Aberystwyth. The bishop's returns of 1563 list a total of fifty-two house- holds in the town for a total population of perhaps 225, and by 1566 the report to the queen on havens and creeks took occasion to comment on the dilapidation of the borough.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

'the towne beinge enhabited (..) the number of fyfti & five houshold^^ and as many & more (..) decaye '"^

Carmarthenshire/Sir Gaerfyrddin

Carmarthenshire is the largest county in Wales, comprising approximately 920 square miles. Its northern boundary with Cardiganshire is the River Teifi while its topography is largely defined by the central valley of the Tywi, which flows south to Carmarthen Bay. The northern part of the county is mountainous with part of the Preseli Mountains to the west and the Brecon Beacons to the east. Speed wrote approvingly, 'This Shire is not altogether so pestred with hilles as her bordering neighbours are: and those that she hath, neither so high nor so thicke, and therefore is better for Corne and Pasturage, yea and in Woods also, so that for victuals this Country is very well stored, which the stomacke doth as well disgest, the aire being wholesome, temperate, and pleasing.'"^ From at least the eighth century the areas of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire formed the kingdom of Seisyllwg, which by the tenth century had become amalgamated with the kingdoms of Dyfed (now Pembrokeshire) and Brycheiniog (Brecon) to form the principal South Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth, with its royal seat at Dinefwr in the Tywi valley roughly midway between Carmarthen and Llandovery.

Between 910 and 950 Deheubarth was ruled by Hywel Dda ('the Good'). Hywel is tradition- ally held responsible for the codification of native tribal laws that still bear his name, although the earliest surviving texts of the laws, in both Latin and Welsh, date from the middle of the thirteenth century (see pp 4-7, 11-28). As R.R. Davies points out it is unlikely that the association is historical; more likely the surviving legal texts 'are to be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to manufacture an ideology of national unity.'"''

Deheubarth remained in Welsh hands briefly following the Norman Conquest when in 1081 Rhys ap Tewdwr was allowed to retain control of the kingdom for an annual tribute of £40. At Rhys' death in 1093 the power vacuum was filled by both Welsh and Norman claimants. By the accession of Henry i in 1100 Carmarthen itself had become a royal lordship and had begun its 250-year career as the administrative centre of Norman Wales. The reasons for Carmarthen's selection had largely to do with transportation; it was at the major cross-roads of trade into both west and southwest Wales and it was the furthest inland point to which the Tywi was navigable from the Bristol Channel, The southern part of the Tywi estuary was protected by the lordship of Kidwelly on its eastern bank. From 1155 until his death in 1 197 Deheubarth was ruled by the charismatic Rhys ap GrufiFudd, whom Henry ii recognized in 1171 as ruler of the native Welsh kingdom, then consisting of Cantref Mawr, the whole of Ceredigion and Cantref Bychan, both of which Rhys had recovered from Norman hands, and two small commotes west of Carmarthen itself In 1 172 he was appointed royal justiciar for South Wales and from this time he was known as 'yr Arglwydd Rhys,' the Lord Rhys. In 1188 he entertained Archbishop Baldwin and Gerald of Wales on their preaching tour. His last years, from 1 194 until his death in 1 197, were marked by disputes with (and between) his sons, which were only settled after his death by Llywelyn ab lorwerth in 1216. At the Treaty of Woodstock in 1247 the commotes of Elfed and Gwidigada around Carmarthen borough

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXXVll

were regained by the Crown, leaving the northern half of the county in Welsh hands while the southern half remained as a series of marcher lordships.

Reconstituted and enlarged under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, the county of Carmar- thenshire formed along with Cardiganshire the principality of South Wales, with its administrative seat remaining at Carmarthen. The county itself consisted of the northern part of its present area (primarily Cantref Mawr), with Cantref Bychan added in 1287 with the dispossession of Rhys ap Maredudd after his abortive revolt. The coastal lordships of Kidwelly, Laugharne, and St Clears remained in marcher hands but were administratively subject to Carmarthen.

The principal boroughs of the county, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, and Laugharne, all lie along the Tywi and reflect its importance as a trade route. Extensive sea trade with both Ireland and the continent added to the flourishing agriculture of medieval Carmarthenshire, where the quality of the land encouraged the cultivation of crops as well as the raising of sheep. The importance of sea trade can be seen in the decline of Kidwelly in the fifteenth century after its harbour in the estuary of the Gwendraeth silted up.

Fifteenth-century Carmarthenshire was strongly Lancastrian, perhaps influenced by Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke and uncle to the future Henry vii. He was also lord of Llanstephan and his castle there controlled the entrance to the Tywi estuary from Carmarthen Bay. The county's most important figure was Sir Rhys ap Thomas {c 1449-1525), lord of Dinefwr and Carew. Knighted in 1485 Rhys became chief justice for South Wales in 1495 and a Garter Knight and member of the privy council in 1505, largely for services rendered in the capture of the imposter Perkin Warbeck. A seventeenth-century life of Rhys describes in detail the celebrations staged around his elevation to the Garter (see pp 256-67)."^ Although his lordship established a long period of peace in the county Rhys' death in 1525 brought this to an end and a riot in Carmarthen in 1529 was one of the events that made clear to Henry viii that more judicial control of Wales was necessary, a recognition that led ultimately to the Acts of Union and the establishment of the court of Great Sessions.

CARMARTHEN/CAERFYRDDIN

Carmarthen had long been an important site for the ford it provided over the Tywi. At least four Roman roads had converged at the town and its importance had increased by 1220 with the building of a bridge. A licence for the building of city walls was issued in 1233. The medieval town lay on or near the site of the important Roman garrison of Moridunum and thus, when the borough received its first charter from Edward, son of Henry iii, in about 1256 or 1257, the site overlooking the River Tywi had been inhabited for well over a millennium. The Norman castle, built downstream of the Roman town, was of timber and was burnt by the Welsh at least eight times in its first century, before a stone structure was erected, likely in the second quarter of the thirteenth century."^ Initially, the new town that grew up around the castle had a separate existence from the old town on the site of the Roman settlement, the former holding its charter of 1256-7 from Edward i, while the latter had been granted to the Augustinian (originally Benedictine) priory just northeast of the Roman site by Henry ii. Like many Welsh civic charters of the thirteenth century Carmarthen's was based on that of

XXXVlll HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Hereford; according to an undated reference in Hereford's Great Black Book a delegation of burgesses from Carmarthen visited Hereford to obtain a copy of its customary."^ By 1284 a Franciscan friary had been established to the west of the new town as far as possible from the priory. For the rest of the thirteenth century Carmarthen remained a seigneurial borough under the lordship of the king; after the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 it also became the adminis- trative centre of the new principality of South Wales. The new town's charter allowed it a reeve though he was primarily the agent of the king, nominated from among the burgesses by the constable of the castle. A further charter of July 1386 granted the town its own government by mayor, bailiffs, and coroner. The separation of the two towns, 'old' and new' Carmarthen, created almost continual political friction and the two were finally joined constitutionally by a charter of incorporation in 1546, which was expanded in 1604."*

The borough was also the principal market for much of southwest Wales. Its charter initially provided for a weekly market on Saturday and a fair at the feast of St Peter (1 August), and by 1299 a second fair had been acquired at the feast of St George (23 April). By the end of the fourteenth century the town had acquired another fair on the Beheading of John the Baptist (29 August).'" Carmarthen also had great strategic importance as a port. Ships came up the Tywi estuary from Bristol, Gloucestershire, and Bridgwater and Dunster, Somerset, carrying men and military supplies initially. After 1282 this traffic became commercial, especially in the exporting of wool and animal hides and the importing of goods of all kinds. As a Norman stronghold and the centre of English government in South Wales it is hardly surprising that until the latter part of the fourteenth century the burgesses of Carmarthen were predominately English. However, over the next century and a half the admission of burgesses with Welsh names increased markedly and by the 1540s, as R.A. Griffiths notes, 'the borough appear [ed] decidedly Welsh in character.''^"

Though the town was successfully stormed twice during the Glyn Dwr rebellion, in 1403 and 1405, its history through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflects a gradual increase in prosperity. The silting-up of the Tywi required a new anchorage to be provided downstream by the 1430s; as Speed noted, '...before times was a conuenient Hauen for Ships arriuage, but now is sore pestred with Sands and Shelfs: notwithstanding some small Vessels ascend vp the Riuer, euen vnto the Bridge of this Towne.''^'

The episcopal census of 1563 indicates that Carmarthen was the largest town in Wales, with 430 households, for a total population of around 1,950 persons. By the end of the sixteenth century the town had eight guilds: Cordwainers, Glovers, Saddlers, Tailors, Tanners, Tuckers, Weavers, and a guild of Hammermen that included cutlers, goldsmiths, ironsmiths, metallars, pewterers, plumbers, and tinkers.'"

LLANELLI

Llanelli was an Anglo-Norman settlement, its small castle acting as administrative centre of the lordship of Carnwyllion, which in the later Middle Ages became a part of the vast Welsh holdings of the duchy of Lancaster. The castle was certainly in existence by 1 190 when it was ruined, but little documentary evidence survives of early Llanelli. No borough charter has

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND XXXIX

come down to us and it is very possible that none was ever granted, Llanelli having borough status 'by prescription only.''"

Leland described Llanelli as a 'village,' and its small size is corroborated by the duchy of Lancaster's survey of 1609-13, which identified only fifty-nine freeholders.'^'* The church of St Elli antedates the Norman settlement for there is a reference to it in the Book of Llandaff dating from the mid-twelfth century, almost certainly indicating an earlier settlement. '^^ The church has been much rebuilt since the seventeenth century, the latest extensive work having been completed in 1907. Although little information remains about the original thirteenth- century structure the rebuilding was done on the old foundations, so at least the approximate dimensions of the medieval church are traceable, showing a cruciform building of modest size, built around a square central tower whose interior measurements were 26.5 feet on each side.

Denbighshire/Sir Ddinbych

Denbighshire, especially the Vale of Clwyd, contains some of the most fertile land in Wales, though the upland cantrefs of Rhos and Rhufoniog in the west were suitable only for grazing, as the Domesday surveyors noted: 'Omwis alia t^rra. tst in Siluis & moris. nee potest atari.' '^* Speed's comments covered the whole of the county: 'The soile is but barren towards the West part: yet the middle, where it lieth flat in a valley, is most fertile.''"

The Statute of Rhuddlan created four lordships out of the ancient western cantrefs of Rhos and Rhufoniog. The lordship of Denbigh, consisting of the western half of the county, went to Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln; the lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd to Reynold Grey; Bromfield and Yale (the commote of Maelor Gymraeg) to John de Warenne, earl of Surrey; and Chirkland to Roger Mortimer of Chirk. Denbigh became closely involved with the fortunes of Edward ii after the death of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln and lord of Denbigh, in 131 1, as it passed to Thomas of Lancaster (executed 1322), Hugh Despenser (executed 1326), and Roger Mortimer (executed 1330). In 1330/1 the lordship was granted to William Montagu but by the end of the century it was back in Mortimer hands. '^^

Edward I's policy of establishing English settlements in conquered areas of Wales was more successful in Denbighshire than in most other areas. The survey of Denbigh undertaken in 1334 clearly shows the influx of a large number of English settlers, coming both from the border counties and from the English lands of the new marcher lords. '^' Denbighshire's economy was based principally on the wool trade and the county boasted the largest number of fulling- mills in North Wales. '^° Some coal was also mined in the county though less extensively than in Flintshire or Glamorgan.

The county's most prominent family were the Salusburys of Lleweni. Although as a family the Salusburys were orthodox Protestant, Thomas, the younger son of John Salusbury (d. 1566) and grandson of Sir John Salusbury (d. 1578), was executed for his participation in the Babington Plot in 1586. Thomas' involvement with the Catholic conspiracy weakened the family's influence for the next decade, until his brother John's appointment as squire of the body to Queen Elizabeth in 1595. Denbighshire, along with Flintshire, formed a strongly Catholic area and levels of recusancy were higher there than in any other part of Wales except Monmouthshire. ''"

xl HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Through much of the sixteenth century an uneasy balance of power was maintained between the western part of the county, which was dominated by a small number of powerful families who had held their estates since the late thirteenth century (including the Salusburys), and a larger number of Welsh families in the east. The situation came to a head in 1588 with the county's first contested parliamentary election, in which the upstart John Edwards of Chirkland on the Shropshire border successfully challenged Lleweni's dominance. The election led to an elaborate Star Chamber case in which much emphasis was placed on Edwards' use of the recusant vote.'^^

DENBIGH

The township and surrounding area of Denbigh had become a site of some importance during the thirteenth century. Strategically placed on a hill the area was ceded to the Crown by the Treaty of Woodstock in 1247, reconquered by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1256, and given by Edward to Llywelyn's brother Dafydd in 1277. Dafydd's use of the township as the staging post for his raids on lands under royal control may have influenced its choice as the administrative site of the lordship of Denbigh, created aft:er Llywelyn's defeat in 1282. The first lord, Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, quickly set about building a casde and town walls, which were likely finished by his death in 1311 though the building program was stalled by the uprising of 1294. Lacy established Denbigh as a borough, granting it two charters, one on 1 October 1285 and one undated but somewhat later. '^^ A royal charter of 1290 granted further privileges to the new borough and these were confirmed in 1379 when a guild merchant was also established.

The early charters did not make provisions for the borough's self-administration, since the burgages were held in fee-farm from the lord of Denbigh. By 1334, however, the burgesses were choosing a bailiff from among their number and at some time before 1461 they were electing aldermen.'^'' The town expanded rapidly outside the walls, which had made defensive but not commercial sense; by 1305 the duchy of Lancaster survey counted 183 burgages outside the walled precinct and fifty- two burgages within.'^'

Denbigh quickly developed into a prosperous trading centre populated almost entirely by English settlers. By 1311 an annual fair was being held, later expanded to twice a year on the feasts of Crouchmas (14 September) and St Alexander (3 May). Tax returns show that by the later fourteenth century the lordship of Denbigh had become one of the most prosperous areas of Wales. '^^ A weekly market was held on Wednesday. By the sixteenth century there were individual guilds for Cordwainers, Glovers (for which trade the borough was especially known), Mercers, and Weavers.

The town suffered considerable damage during the Wars of the Roses. The lordship of Denbigh had been granted to Roger Mortimer in 1327 and was closely associated with the family after that, becoming one of the principal strongholds of Yorkist activity in Wales. Seventy years later John Leland could still see the signs: 'The new toune of Denbigh was clere defacid with fier by hostilite, ao.D.l468. Sum say that this was doone by the Erie of Penbroke [Jasper Tudor] .'"^^ The 1563 episcopal survey gives the number of households as 189, for a total population of around 800. A number of early surveys of Denbigh survive and, as D.H. Owen

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xli

has shown, the names of burgesses recorded in them make it clear that even during the reign of Henry viii it was rare for a native Welshman to hold a burgage in Denbigh. That change would come slowly over the following century.'^*

RUTHIN

Just as Denbigh was the administrative centre of the lordship of Denbigh, Ruthin served as the centre of the lordship of Ruthin consisting of a large part of the fertile Vale of Clwyd. The new lordship was granted in 1282 to Reynold Grey, lord of Wilton and justice of Chester. It remained in the Grey family until the estate of the spendthrift Richard Grey, earl of Kent, reverted to the Crown in 1507. In 1281 Reynold Grey may have issued a charter to the burgesses of Ruthin (without doubt confirmed in 1295), which included provisions for a weekly Monday market and three annual fairs at Pentecost, 20 September, and 31 October.'^' Henry vii granted the borough a new charter in 1508 (confirmed by James i) after the lordship had reverted to the Crown. The new charter provided for a civic government of two aldermen and sixteen councilmen under the authority of the lord, whose steward was empowered to set elections and summon the court.

The most notable difference between the boroughs of Denbigh and Ruthin was that while Denbigh remained until well into the sixteenth century a settlers' town, with very little native Welsh participation in its affairs and administration, in Ruthin Welsh burgesses lived and worked side by side with the new English population. In the first surviving Ruthin survey of 1324 forty of the seventy burgesses listed were Welsh; in 1496 this figure rose to sixty out of ninety."*"

Situated on the River Clwyd Ruthin's principal monument was its castle of the local red sandstone. The structure had been begun by Edward i but was abandoned in 1277 when the terms of the Treaty of Aberconwy returned the Vale of Clwyd to Dafydd, brother of Llywelyn ap Gruflfudd. The castle was completed after Llywelyn and Dafydd's defeat in 1283. To the north of the castle at the top of the hill leading up from the river lay the market square and the churcdi of St Peter. In 1310 John Grey endowed the church, converting it into a collegiate institution, and it remained much in this form until its dissolution. The town does not appear to have been walled.

Besides the local agriculture centred around the borough's market and fairs, Ruthin's economy was especially driven by the production of shoes and cloth. As the county's major centre for the distribution of wool cloth Ruthin's wool craft guilds were particularly successftil in integrating their work with the town's regular fairs. The Walkers and Weavers entered their guild ordinances on the borough court rolls in 1447 and a Cordwainers' guild was in existence by 1496.''"

WREXHAM

The marcher lordship of Maelor (later Bromfield and Yale), in which Wrexham was situated, lay along the Welsh-English border and the shifting status of the border in the early Middle Ages put Wrexham under English control for significant periods of time. In 1282 as part of

xlii HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

the lordship of Bromfield and Yale Wrexham was granted to John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, and remained under English lordship from that time on.

The town does not appear to have been a strategic site since it was centred around the large church of St Giles rather than around a castle or earthwork. Wrexham enjoyed some borough- like privileges from at least the early fourteenth century although it did not achieve borough status until the mid-nineteenth century. A Sunday market was held from before 1331, for in that year the Bruty Tymysogion notes that the day was changed to Thursday.'''^ These privileges were consolidated in a grant from Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel and lord of Bromfield and Yale, in 1380."*^ The 1620 survey indicates market days on Monday and Thursday as well as three annual fairs on 12 March, 5 June, and 8 September.

The Bromfield and Yale survey of 1315 showed a population of forty householders, only eight of whom were English. The 1563 episcopal survey lists 319 householders in the town, for a population of perhaps 1,450. Local industry included brewers, bucklers (relying, no doubt, on the local small deposits of iron), button and comb makers, curriers, dyers, fullers, glovers, parchment makers, skinners, tanners, and weavers. Wrexham remained an important trading centre throughout the period, its flourishing commerce and large 'beast market' creating such a sufficiently wealthy citizenry that a group of players from the town could appear in Shrewsbury in 1540-1. The circumstances under which the payment 'in Regardo q«ibusdam int^rlusorib«^ de wrexam ludentib«j- coraw Ball/wis' ('as a reward to some interluders of Wrexham while playing before the bailiffs') was made are not clear, but it seems quite likely that they would have been parish players.''''' Wrexham's superb parish church of St Giles is ample evidence of the town's wealth. It was largely built between 1463 and 1472 after its predecessor was destroyed by fire. The magnificent tower was added in the early sixteenth century.

HOUSEHOLDS

The Brereton family of Borras Hall, a branch of the important Brereton family of Brereton, Cheshire, furnished several prominent members of Denbighshire society in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Owen Brereton (d. c 1595) was county sheriff in 1581 and 1588, after a career in the household of Sir Francis Knollys, knight of the shire for Oxfordshire, during which he served as mp for Banbury in 1563. His son Edward Brereton filled the office of sheriff in 1598.''" Edward and his son Owen appear prominently in the Great Sessions case for Llwyn-on, Denbighshire, in 1597 (see pp 121-6).

The estate of Kinmel Park was a part of the honour of Denbigh and was included in the survey made in 1334. By the end of the fifteenth century it was in the hands of a branch of the extensive Holland family, whose principal base was at Berw, Anglesey, through the marriage of Pyrs Holland (d. 1552), son of John Holland of Faerdref, Denbighshire, to the heiress of the Kinmel estate. The large adjacent manor of Dinorben Fawr was leased from the Crown in 1534/5 and then sold to David Holland in I6l4 for £512 13s 4d. David Holland (the fourth of that name) had served as high sheriff^ for the county in 1596 and died in 1616.""^

The Myddeltons of Chirk were a Welsh family who adopted an English surname following the marriage of Rhirid ap David to the daughter of Sir Alexander Myddelton of Middelton,

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xliii

Shropshire, in about 1393-4. The first Sir Thomas Myddelton (b between 1549 and 1556-1631) spent much of his career in London as an entrepreneur, holding shares in the East India Company and the Virginia Company. In 1603 he became an alderman of the city, then sheriff; he was knighted in the same year. In 1613 he became lord mayor. He left his Welsh estates including his principal Welsh residence. Chirk Castle along the Shropshire border, to his son Thomas (1586-1666/7), who had been educated at Queens College, Oxford, and Grays Inn. The account book kept at the time of his marriage in 1612 survives among the Chirk Castle documents in the National Library of Wales.

Thomas the younger's interests remained primarily in Wales; in 1632 he bought Ruthin Castle and shortly after became steward of the lordship of Ruthin. First elected to parliament in 1624 he was a moderate Puritan, taking charge in 1643 (and again in 1648) of the defence of North Wales. He spoke against the trial of Charles i and was expelled from parliament, retiring to Chirk Castle. His loyalty to the Commonwealth was held in question and the castle was garrisoned until Myddelton presented sureties in 1656. He joined in proclaiming Charles ii in 1659/60, was declared a traitor, and his lands were sequestered, but before the orders were fully carried out he was recalled to parliament along with other expelled members in February of 1659/60 and the sequestration was lifted. Enough of the orders for dismantling Chirk had already been carried out to make it uninhabitable until restorations in 1672.

Though their origin is obscure the Salusburys were unlikely to have been a family of Welsh origin, coming perhaps from Herefordshire. They had however acquired the estate of Lleweni in the Vale of Clwyd by 1334. By the end of the fifteenth century the family had become thoroughly Welsh and Lleweni had grown to be one of the most extensive estates in Denbigh- shire. The first of the family to gain strong royal support was Sir Thomas Salusbury (d. 1505), who was knighted following the Battle of Blackheath in 1497. His fourth son, John, served in Henry viii's household and was steward of the lordship of Denbigh, constable of Denbigh Castle, and the first chamberlain of the county. The first John Salusbury to be knighted (d. 1578) was the son of Sir Thomas' heir. Sir Roger Salusbury (d. 1530); Sir John achieved considerable standing at court early in his life, serving as well in a variety of offices, including county sheriff in 1542 and 1575, MP on several occasions, and chamberlain of North Wales. He was made a Knight of the Carpet at Edward vi s coronation.

His son John was the first husband of Katheryn of Berain but died before his father in 1566. His son John Salusbury, the second to be knighted, was born shortly after the death of his father in 1566 or 1566/7. He entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1581 at the early age of fourteen and became heir to Lleweni on the execution of his elder brother, Thomas, for his part in the Babington Plot in 1586. Though Thomas maintained his Catholic beliefs on the scaffold there is no evidence that John held them as well. John was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1594 and in the following year was appointed one of the queens Esquires of the Body. By about 1602 he had been appointed deputy lieutenant for Denbighshire. He stood for parliament in 1601 but opposition from local enemies created a riot at the election in Wrexham. He left London for Lleweni and never returned. Many of the Welsh poets of the period wrote poems in his honour and Sir John wrote poetry himself'''^ Ironically, however, Sir John's poetry was in English not Welsh. This is unlikely to derive from the language provisions of the Acts of

xliv HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Union but from the social and political realities of closer ties to England, especially to London. Sir John's wife was Ursula Stanley, illegitimate daughter of Henry Stanley, thirteenth earl of Derby, and through the Stanley family Salusbury would have had close connections with the theatrical world. Both Stanley and his son Ferdinando (Lord Strange, Ursula's half-brother) had their own theatrical companies and Salusbury was likely acquainted with Ben Jonson and perhaps Shakespeare as well.'"** Sir John died in 1612.

In that same year Sir John's grandson, Thomas Salusbury, was born. He attended both Jesus College and the Inner Temple but completed neither course of study, returning to Lleweni on his father Henry's death in 1632. He was involved in local politics in Denbigh borough through the 1630s and was MP for the county for the short parliament of 1640. He achieved some renown as a poet publishing his History ofloseph: a poem in 1636 {stc. 21620). He also wrote several plays that survive in nlw: nlw ms 5390D but there is no evidence that they were ever performed. Several occasional masques in the same volume, however, have a clear performance history, including one for a Chirk Castle wedding on 30 December 1641 (see pp 146-50).''*'

The Lleweni mansion, of which only a small section of wall survives today, lay on the London-Holyhead road and appears on the maps of both Christopher Saxton (1577) and John Speed (1611). A water-colour painting of the great hall existed early in the last century and, although it has not survived, a photograph does. This is reproduced as Figure 3, p Ixxiv; the dimensions of the hall were given as 40' x 28' in a brief description by Samuel Johnson who toured the estate with Mrs Thrale in July of 1774.'^°

A branch of the Salusbury family was established at Bachymbyd, between Denbigh and Ruthin, in the late fifteenth century by John Salusbury, son of Thomas Salusbury of Lleweni. Thomas is reputed to have been killed at the Battle of Barnet (1471) but evidence in poetry of the period suggests that he may have lived until 1490. From the early sixteenth century the Bachymbyd branch consistently adopted the 'Salesbury' variant spelling of their name. William Salesbury was the younger brother of Sir Robert Salesbury (d. 1599), succeeding to the estate on the death of their brother. Captain John, in 1611. William served as MP for Merioneth between 1620 and 1622. He was a firm royalist and defended Denbigh Castle during a six month siege in 1646. Captain John Salesbury was involved in the Wrexham election riot of 1601 in the opposition to Sir John Salusbury of Lleweni. The Rug (Merioneth) estate, the larger part of the family's lands, became part of the estate on the marriage of Piers, the eldest son of John Salusbury (son of Thomas Salusbury of Lleweni).

Flintshire/Sir Fflint

The county of Flintshire lies principally between the estuaries of the Clwyd and the Dee, most of it low-lying land except for the Clwydian Mountains in the southwest along the Clwyd valley. Speed approved of both the county's topography and its climate: 'This Country is nothing mountainous, as other parts of Wales are, but rising gently all along the Riuer of Dee,

makes a faire shew and prospect of her selfe to euery eie that beholds her The Aire is

healthful and temperate, without any foggie clouds or fenny vapors ''*' The eastern border

of the county follows the original bed of the Dee although the canalization of the river in the

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xlv

eighteenth century has altered its course. The bulk of the county is the ancient cantref of Tegeingl (Englefield), with a large outlier, Maelor Saesneg, along the Shropshire border and a small one between Gresford and Rossett, Denbighshire, in the Dee valley. The importance of these two outliers is their fertility since they include some of the best arable land in Wales, and during the sixteenth century the county also became known for the high quality of its livestock.'"

The broad coastal plain that forms the county's northern border has from at least Roman times been one of the principal access routes to North Wales, though extensive marshes around both estuaries have made fording places of particular strategic importance. The major fording place along this route was Rhuddlan, at the mouth of the Clwyd, site of one of the royal palaces of North Wales. When Hugh d'Avranches, earl of Chester and nephew of William i, sent his cousin Robert de Tilleul (or Robert of Rhuddlan, as he came to be known) to subdue the lordships of North Wales, one of Robert's first acts, c 1073, was to build a castle to defend the Rhuddlan crossing.'" The region changed hands with some frequency. Gruffudd ap Cynan (1054 or 1055-1137), an exiled member of the royal house of Gwynedd born in Ireland to a Welsh father and an Irish mother, joined forces with Robert to take control of Gv^nedd, bringing a Viking force from Dublin with him. This was hardly an alliance; no sooner had he secured his position in Gwynedd but he laid siege to Rhuddlan. His exciting career is the subject of a near-contemporary Welsh-language life (translated from a Latin original that has recently been rediscovered in the National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 434E).'^'' Captured by the Normans after killing his Gwynedd rival he spent several years in the Chester prison before being rescued dramatically. In 1099 he captured Rhuddlan and from 1101 to 1 1 14 he ruled all of the Flintshire area. He gave up Tegeingl to Henry i in 1114 in return for a peaceful reign in Gwynedd from the Clwyd estuary to Anglesey. He died in 1137 but the struggle to wrest Tegeingl again from Norman hands returned under his son Owain.

The Statute of Rhuddlan established the new county of Flintshire but it was rather a balkan affair composed of the three ancient cantrefs of Tegeingl, Hope, and Maelor Saesneg. The first two were separated by the marcher lordship of Mold, already in the hands of the Montalt family, while the second and third were separated by the lordship of Bromfield and Yale. Edward's conquest was further confirmed by the establishment of a series of boroughs with royal charters: Rhuddlan (1278, expanded in 1284), Flint (1284), Caerwys (1290), Overton (1292), and Hope (1351).'" Of these all but Caerwys were exclusively English with prohibitions against Welsh burgesses. The county's boundaries were not settled until Henry viii's Acts of Union and remained anomalous until the twentieth century.

During the early fourteenth century the county flourished. While remaining, like all of Wales, predominately agricultural an active mining industry emerged as well. Lead was the major product and the burgesses of Flint were given exclusive rights to its smelting. As with all industry the Black Death almost succeeded in stopping it at mid-century, at which time the total miners' payments in Tegeingl to the earl of Chester fell from an annual 100s to 4s.''^

The most popular pilgrimage site in Wales was also located in Flintshire. St Winefride's well at Holywell on the Dee estuary attracted large numbers of pilgrims. Its fame is suggested by its appearance in the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as the point at which Gawain crosses the Dee into the forest of Wirral (11.700-1). The site remained popular even after

xlvi HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

the Reformation; orders for its destruction were issued on 17 April 1637 but were not car- ried out.'"

Two groups dominated the county during the Wars of the Roses. The Lancashire-based Stanleys, lords of Hawarden and Mold, performed for over forty years one of the most spectacu- lar balancing acts of British history. From Thomas Stanley, justice of Chester, who failed to bring his 2,000 troops into the Battle of Bloreheath in 1459, to the better-known William Stanley who at the last minute entered into the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 on the side of Henry Tudor, the family succeeded not only in siding with the victors but in keeping peace with both Yorkist and Lancastrian factions (though these machinations did not prevent Williams execution for treason in 1495).'^* In contrast the Hanmer and Puleston families of Maelor Saesneg and leuan Fychan of Mostyn, the ancestor of the prominent Mostyn family, and his son Hywel were staunch Lancastrians. Mostyn Hall became one of the hiding places of Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, during his forays out of exile in France.'"

The historical county of Flintshire was a creation of Henry viii's Acts of Union but the arrangements proved more complex than with most Welsh counties. With the first act in 1536 the lordship of Hawarden and Mold, which had separated the Flintshire cantrefs of Tegeingl and Hope, as well as part of Hope itself, were made a part of Denbighshire, as were the lands around St Asaph controlled by the bishop of St Asaph. This arrangement, a con- tinuation of the medieval division of Flintshire into three separated areas, was soon found to be administratively unworkable and in 1541 these areas were made a part of Flintshire. The commote of Maelor Saesneg remained separated since the intervening lordship of Bromfield and Yale (the old commote of Maelor Gymraeg) was made a part of Denbighshire."^"

As in Denbighshire the sixteenth century saw principally the consolidation of power in the hands of a small number of county families, the Mostyns in the north and west, and the Hanmers, Pulestons, and Trevors in the eastern part of the county. Through the century parliamentary representation was regularly dominated by these families and serious political challenge to their power did not arise until well into James' reign, when the relatively new Salusburys of Bach-y-graig (a cadet branch of the Lleweni family) were successful over the Hanmers in a parliamentary election.'^'

CAERWYS

Although references to Caerwys as an inhabited place antedate the conquest of 1282, the borough was established at that time as one of the settlements intended by Edward i to form a ring around the territories of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. The new borough received its charter in 1290 (but with no provision for a mayor or the election of officials) though it remained a predominately Welsh town. There is no evidence of either a castle or town walls and it is likely that Caerwys was throughout the period primarily a trading centre. For the next century it remained a prosperous commercial town with a weekly market (the only one in Flintshire) and annual fair, as well as providing an occasional venue for the Rhuddlan hundred court.'" Through the fifteenth century its importance gradually declined in favour of Rhuddlan, twenty-three miles to the northwest, and through the sixteenth century it remained a quiet

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xlvii

market town. The reasons that Caerwys was adopted as the site of the two sixteenth-century eisteddfodau are not clear, though it may simply be that Caerwys was one of the few boroughs that did not come heavily under the influence of one of the major North Wales families and was thus an acceptable compromise for all parties. Conversely, the site may have been chosen because of its proximity to Mostyn Hall, the seat of the Mostyn family.

OVERTON

The manor of Overton, close to the English border in Maelor Saesneg, had existed since the Norman Conquest, for it appears in the Cheshire section of the Domesday Book. There is no evidence of a castle and the borough of Overton was probably one of Edward is English plantations. A market was established in 1279 and along with the rest of Maelor Saesneg the manor was granted to Queen Eleanor in 1286, where she had already endowed a chapel. A royal charter was issued in 1292 though the new borough was badly damaged in Madog ap Llywelyn's revolt of 1294. The town was again burnt by Owain Glyn Dwr in 1403 and remained very small. When Leland saw it in 1539 he commented that 'the toune of Oureton hath had burgesses, but now there is not 20. houses.''^^

RHUDDLAN

The site of Rhuddlan, at a strategic ford over the River Clwyd, was inhabited from before the Roman occupation. From 796 it was in English hands for about a century as part of the lordship of Tegeingl under the control of the Mercian dynasty. Remains of defensive building survive from the Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Norman, and Edwardian periods, attesting to the site's importance.

During the eleventh century Rhuddlan became the seat of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and it was sacked by Harold ii in 1063. The Norman castle was built c 1073 under the direction of Robert of Rhuddlan. The small borough he included in his plans for the site appears in the Domesda)vurvey. Edward i intended to make Rhuddlan the principal town of North Wales and began construction of its elaborate castle and borough in 1277, giving the borough a charter in 1278 based on that of Hereford. Construction of the borough was completed by 1280. The castle and defences, however, were never entirely finished since Llywelyn's defeat in 1282 reduced their level of urgency. Both Edward and his queen took an interest in the borough; in 1278 the king gave financial support toward the construction of muni- cipal alms-houses and in 1284 Eleanor contributed toward the building of a church dedic- ated to St John."^'' The site's strategic importance was of course the reason for this interest and Rhuddlan became the first of Edward's great defensive castles, as well as his head- quarters in Wales. He spent most of 1282-4 there, joined by Queen Eleanor, calling parlia- ment to meet (probably in his new castle) in 1284 for the promulgation of the Statute of Rhuddlan.

After the conquest, however, the site's strategic importance declined rapidly. Rhuddlan remained a small borough with some importance as a port. The town was heavily damaged

xlviii HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

in 1400 by Owain Glyn Dwrs forces. It regained some of its importance briefly in the six- teenth century as a lead mining centre.

HOUSEHOLDS

The Mostyn family was Welsh to its core, deriving neither from Norman stock nor from English settlers; following Welsh tradition the surname does not appear consistently until well into the sixteenth century. The first Thomas Mostyn (d. 1558) extended his patronage to at least seven Welsh poets. His son William (1521-76) continued his interest in strict-metre poetry as one of the commissioners for the 1567 Caerwys eisteddfod. William served as MP for Flintshire in 1554 and 1572, three times as sheriff of FHntshire (1561, 1566, and 1571), and once as sheriff of Caernarvonshire (1568).'^' Although no poetry survives addressed to William Mostyn during his lifetime, six elegies were written at his death. When over Easter 1599 his son Thomas {c 1542-1618) entertained the earl of Essex, forced by wind and fog to delay his journey to take up his new position of lord lieutenant of Ireland, five poets celebrated the splendour of the occasion and Mostyn was knighted on the spot.'^'^

Sir Thomas Mostyn served as sheriff of Anglesey (1575, 1588), Caernarvonshire (1584), and Flintshire (1578, 1587) and was a member of the Council in the Marches from 1602 until his death. '^^ His second son, Roger (1567 or 1568-1642), was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn. He served in similar offices to his father, as sheriff of Anglesey and Flintshire, and also as MP for Flintshire. He was knighted in 1606. He became heir to the Mostyn estate on the death of his father in 1618, his elder brother, William, having predeceased their father around 1586."^*

Glamorgan/Sir Forgannwg

The ancient Welsh kingdom of Morgannwg was one of the first areas to be taken under Norman control, becoming the lordship of Glamorgan by about 1090. The western part of the county, the cantref of Cower (Gwyr), also came under Norman control early in the twelfth century though much of it was briefly taken back into Welsh hands under the Lord Rhys in the second half of the century. The county is clearly divided in its topography into the upland plateau creased by deep valleys and the lowland Vale of Glamorgan (Bro Morgannwg) along the coast. A hilly transitional area divides the two. The Glamorgan uplands are suitable only for the raising of cattle and sheep but the coastal plain and the Cower peninsula contain some of Wales' most fertile land. All early commentaries on the county recognize the distinction; Speed, for example, wrote, 'towards the Sea-coasts, the Country becommeth somewhat plaine, which part is the best both for plenty of Graine, and populous Inhabitants. The rest all Mountaine, is replenished with Cattell, which is the best meanes vnto wealth that this Shire doth afford; vpon whose Hils you may behold whole Heards of them feeding....''^'

From the early twelfth century the lordship of Glamorgan had acquired some of the trappings of county status, such as a county court and a sheriff, and thus at this early period 'a portion of the medieval lordship of Glamorgan was already organized as a county.''^" Through most

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND xlix

of the thirteenth century the central lordship was in the hands of the Clare family; from 1317 until its dissolution it was held by the Despensers.

Speed noted the large population of the Glamorgan coastal plain, marked by a large number of boroughs from Caerphilly, Cardiff, Cowbridge, and Llantrisant in the east, through Aberafan, Kenfig, and Neath toward the centre of the county, to the large borough of Swansea in the west. The prosperous boroughs of Glamorgan became a major focus of Owain Glyn Dwr's attacks in the early years of the fifteenth century, and what economic evidence survives shows that for most places it took more than thirty years to recover from the depredations. The 1428 rental of the lordship of Ogmore, for example, shows that more than half the messuages, cottages, and acreage of the lordship remained untenanted and rents had fallen since 1395 by a similar amount.'^'

A considerable range of industry had grown in medieval Glamorgan and most aspects of it persisted and grew through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, giving the county the most diverse economy of any in the principality. Some of these industries, like the weaving of woollen cloth and the tanning and working of leather, were adjuncts to the raising of sheep and cattle but mining was also exploited on a substantial scale. Although the massive coal deposits of the county had been known from Roman times the industry really only began to operate on a sufficient scale for export from the middle of the sixteenth century. Given the difficulties of overland transport the export of coal was entirely dependent upon the existence of deposits near or at the surface in regions close to the sea - a situation that existed nowhere but in Glamorgan, especially in the western parts of the county around Neath and Swansea. Iron and copper were also mined, the latter after 1568 under the auspices of the Mines Royal company, though never on a large scale. '^^ Most of Glamorgan's trade was carried by sea, the terrible state of its roads mitigated by its excellent harbours. Trade with England (via Bristol) and France (via Brittany) was extensive with exports primarily of foodstuffs, particularly butter, grain, and meat, as well as cloth, coal, and leather. Imports included salt and wine from France and a wide range of foodstuffs, goods, and luxury items from England, Holland, Ireland, Portugal, and the New World. The first recorded cargo of tobacco to the British Isles — a substantial 1,000 pounds - landed at Swansea in March 1603 and the small port of Aberthaw became famous for its direct importation of tobacco from St Kitts.'^^

CARDIFF/CAERDYDD

The borough of Cardiff occupies the site of a Roman fort established by the end of the first century ad. Soon after the Norman Conquest the area of southern Glamorgan came under the control of Robert fitz Haimon; the borough received its first charter from his grandson William, earl of Gloucester, during the second half of the twelfth century. By the end of the thirteenth century Cardiff was the largest town in Wales, with approximately 400 burgesses. Town walls were built before 1315.

The borough was laid out along a broad High Street parallel to the River Taff, with the castle at the north end and St Mary's Church at the south end. St John's Church lay in the centre of the borough, to the east of the High Street. After the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the population of the borough declined though it is not entirely clear how much

1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

of this decline can be attributed to the plague of 1348-9 and how much to the devastation caused by Owain Glyn Dwr's forces, who burned most of the town.

Cardiff never really recovered until the industrial revolution and many of the reports of the court of Augmentations in the sixteenth century speak of decayed buildings.'^'' At the end of the century Cardiff's population was little over 1,000; by the beginning of the nineteenth century it had still not reached 2,000.'"

SWANSEA/ABERTAWE

The derivation of 'Swansea' from the Old Norse name 'Sveinn' suggests strongly that the site was inhabited long before the Normans established it as the administrative centre of the lordship of Cower. '^^ Certainly Swansea's position on the estuary of the River Tawe and its natural harbour made it a site of considerable strategic importance. Bruty Tytvysogion noted that the Norman castle of Swansea was attacked in 1116 by the forces of Gruffudd ap Rhys, son of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the last king of Deheubarth.'^^ The garrison under the lord of Cower, Henry de Beaumont, earl of Warwick, repelled the attack and only the outer walls of the castle were burnt.

The borough's first charter was granted by Henry's grandson William de Beaumont at some point between 1153 and 1184 (the period of William's tenure as lord of Cower). This seigneurial charter laid the basis for Swansea's economy for well over a century and provided for a hundred court presided over by the lord or his deputy. A new charter was granted in 1306 by William de Briouze but many of its provisions seem to have been concessions on Briouze's part, likely through royal intervention, limiting the taxation the lord of Cower could impose and providing a system for complaints against the lord's officers through the hundred court. The charter goes so far as to specify a fine of 500 marks each to the king and the men of Cower to be paid by the lord and his heirs for offences against its terms. Briouze's charter provided for three fairs to be held on the feasts of the Translation of St Thomas the Martyr (7 July), the Assumption of the Virgin (15 August), and St Martin (1 1 November).'^* Separate sessions of the hundred court for the English and Welsh communities, as well as the provision that no one of the borough should be indicted by a Welshman (or by a member of the lord's household), suggest that the integration of the Welshry and Englishry found in some Welsh boroughs was not the case in Swansea. The principal officials of borough government were the portreeve and the aldermen. The portreeve was chosen from two candidates by the steward of the lord, the earl of Worcester; the twelve aldermen were elected for life by the burgesses. The borough's financial affairs were overseen by two appointed officials, the common attorneys.

Though little of medieval Swansea remains except the ruins of the castle provisions for the payment of murage in the 1306 charter imply that it was walled and recent research has located part of the course of these defences.'^' Much of Swansea's economy was likely based on sea trade though the evidence is unclear. A toll-collector is mentioned as early as the twelfth-century charter and may have been the predecessor of the portreeve. The exportation of wool certainly provided a major part of the borough's income though regulations for tanning imply that trades associated with leatherwork were also important. The borough's documents show no

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND li

reference to a guild merchant before Cromwell's charter of 1650 though the burgesses may have had similar privileges without the existence of a formal guild system. '*"

The Welsh population of Swansea, judging from the names recorded in the extent survey of 1400, was relatively small and increased gradually to about fifty per cent by the time of the 1543 subsidy assessment.'^' Two sets of ordinances survive from the sixteenth century: the first set from 1548 was made with the consent of the lord's steward, the second set from 1569 makes no mention of such permission. The borough's population at this time was likely somewhat less than 1,000 people, rising to about 1,400 by 1631.'"

HOUSEHOLDS

Although the Stradlings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries claimed descent from the earliest Normans in South Wales, the family in fact derives from one John de Estratlinges, a soldier from Strattligen, Switzerland, in the retinue of Otto de Grandson, whose son Peter married the heiress to the St Donat's estate toward the end of the thirteenth century. The members of the family of most relevance here are Sir Edward Stradling (r 1529-1609) and his heir, Sir John (1563-1637). Educated at Oxford Edward spent several years on the continent, including two years in Rome as companion to Sir Thomas Hoby. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1552. His father, Thomas, was a staunch Catholic; during Mary's reign he served in a variety of administrative and political offices and as member of parliament for East Grinstead, Sussex, in 1553 and for Arundel, Sussex, in 1554. Edward's sympathies lay with the Protestants but his family background counted against him and his name appeared in Elizabeth's pardon roll for 1559. Only after his father's death in 1571 was he fully in favour. Knighted in 1573 he served three terms as sheriff of Glamorgan (1574, 1583, and 1596) and from 1595 was deputy lieutenant for both Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire. He was member of parliament for Steyning, Sussex, in 1554 and for Arundel, Sussex, in 1558, both through the influence of Henry Fitzalan, earl of Arundel.'*^

Edward Stradling was a highly cultured man, underwriting the cost of publication in 1592 of Sion Dafydd Rhys' Welsh grammar, Cambrobrytannica Cymraecave Lingua Institvtiones et Rudimenta (London, 1592; stc: 20966). He was a notable book collector; his library at St Donat's was likely the most extensive in Wales. The collection was broken up and sold in the eighteenth century. A collection of 267 letters to and from Stradling was published in 1 840. At that time they were in the hands of Charles G. Young, York herald, but their present whereabouts are unknown.'*''

Sir Edward and his wife were childless so he chose as his heir John Stradling, grandson of the younger son of Edward's great-grandfather Thomas Stradling, who died in 1480. John was born in 1563, entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1580, and graduated from Magdalen Hall in 1584. He was a fellow of All Soul's College and attended the Inns of Court, most probably the Middle Temple. After Sir Edward's death in 1609 Sir John (who had been knighted the previous year) continued his predecessor's plans to build a grammar school in Cowbridge, where the first master was his relative Walter Stradling.

Sir John continued the tradition of public service. He was justice of the peace from 1607

lii HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

and served as sheriff in 1607, 1609, and 1620. One of the first baronets created by James i in 1611 he became knight of the shire in 1625 and served as mp for Glamorgan in 1625-6. After 1626 Stradhng increasingly withdrew from public Hfe in favour of scholarship. He had already published two translations of Lipsius in the 1590s and on 6 April 1598 he wrote a brief oudine of the dispute between Sir Edward and his neighbour Griffith Williams concerning the ownership of the marshy shore, or lower burrows, at Merthyr Mawr, near St Donat's.'*^ John dedicated the work to Edward, both for his delight and as a memorial for posterity and signed it 'from my studie in your casde at St Donats.' At the time of his withdrawal from public life Sir John was turning increasingly to the writing of English verse. He had previously published his Beati Pacifici a Diuine Poem. Written to the Kings most excellent Maiestie (London, 1623; STC: 23352). This was followed with his large-scaled Diuine Poemes In Seuen Seuerall Classes. Written to his most excellent Maiestie Charles (London, 1625; stc. 23353). He died at the age of seventy-four in 1637.'*^

Merioneth/Sir Feirionnydd

Poor soil and rocky terrain made Merioneth the poorest and least productive county in Wales, 'the roughest and most vnpleasant to see to ... in all Wales,' as Speed put it. Small amounts of arable land in the valleys did little to alleviate the general poverty and the economy depended upon the sheep that grazed the county's uplands, 'wherein the onely riches of this Shire doth consist.''*^ Fishing, both fresh and saltwater, was an important part of the population's subsist- ence despite the lack of good harbours for sea-fishing.

The territory of Merioneth had never been in Norman hands because of its great difficulty of approach. Guarded by mountains the county could only be reached by two routes: the first a long coastal trek from Rhuddlan through Caernarvonshire across the base of the Llyn peninsula and the Traeth Mawr estuary, well protected by the imposing dome of Harlech, the county's only urban centre; the second direcdy from the east through the Bala cleft. Invasion via this latter route had been attempted in 1096 with singular lack of success. Most of the county remained a part of the native kingdom of Gwynedd until 1282, though the eastern cantref of Penllyn had long been a part of Powys Wenwynwyn and was thus for much of the thirteenth century strongly Norman in its outlook. Merioneth became a county through the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284.

A surviving lay subsidy roll for the county dating from 1292-3 gives a good picture of the local economy aside from its agriculture. The principal occupations were blacksmith, carpenter, and weaver, with the carpenters assessed at the highest rate. The single goldsmith and painter who appear would suggest that, as Sir Glanmor Williams proposes, they were 'exotic figures.''** As in Caernarvonshire landholding through the mid-fifteenth century was dominated by the system of 'gafael,' through which scattered holdings throughout a township were held as a unit, intermingled with the holdings of others. From the mid-fifteenth century on, however, these dis- persed holdings tended to be consolidated into large estates, often under absentee landlords.'*'

Though the county's urban life was minimal the area was severely damaged by the Glyn D^r rebellion in another way. Much of the agriculture of the county was in the hands of

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Uu

bonded tenants, many of whom fled their homes in the face of the rebeUion. Descendants of bondsmen who had left at the beginning of the century were still being sought during the reign of Henry vii.

Through the later part of the period the most prominent family in the county was the Nannau family of Nannau in the parish of Llanfachreth. Although the early history of the family is obscure and they have left relatively few records they were patrons of several important poets, including Gruffiidd Llwyd ap Dafydd ab Einion Lygliw around 1400, Guto'r Glyn in the later fifteenth century, and Wiliam Llyn in the following century. Before the Nannau family rose to power the counry^ was dominated by the Prices of Rhiwlas and the Owens of Peniarth, both of whom ftirnished the county with several sheriffs and MPs. By the end of the sixteenth century these families and several others became so involved in competition for social dominance that the county's public life was seriously undermined.""

HOUSEHOLDS

The Lloyds of Rhiwedog in the parish of Llanfor, just southeast of Bala, were among the most notable patrons of Welsh poets in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Virtually all the major poets of the period from about 1550 to 1625 visited Rhiwedog and wrote poetry to the family, a tradition that continued, if weakly, almost to the end of the eighteenth century. The poets Richard Cynwal and Rhisiart Phylip even held a formal bardic contest for the position of Rhiwedog household bard.'" Elisau ap Wiliam Lloyd, whose son's wedding was commemorated in a poetic 'roast' of the bard Gruffudd Hiraethog, served as sheriff of the county in 1565 (see pp 210-14).

Monmouthshire/Sir Fynwy

Monmouthshire, the most easterly of the Welsh counties, was derived from the native Welsh kingdom of Gwent, which consisted of the cantrefs of Gwent Is Coed, Gwent Uwch Coed, and Gwynllwg. Because of its proximity to the powerful earldom of Hereford, as well as the high quality of the land between the Usk and the Wye valleys, by 1086 close to half the kingdom was in Norman hands. By the end of the twelfth century only the most westerly cantref of Gwynllwg and the two adjoining commotes of Edeligion and Llebenydd remained under Welsh control. Norman rule in Monmouthshire was based in particular on a series of border castle defences, including the lordship of Three Castles (Grosmont, Skenfrith, and Whitecastle), and the lordship of Strigoil (renamed Chepstow after the thirteenth century). These lands remained in marcher hands until the sixteenth century and thus Monmouthshire was much less affected by the Edwardian conquest than other areas of Wales.

However, the strongly English character of many of the county's boroughs (Abergavenny, Caerleon, Newport, and Usk) meant that they were an early target of Owain Glyn Dwr's rebellion in August 1402. Although much of Monmouthshire remained agricultural throughout the period Chepstow in particular became a major centre of foreign trade. Since it was outside the full jurisdiction of the Crown until the abolition of its lordship, the borough was not

liv HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

subject to Exchequer duties on foreign imports and a large trade built up at the Wye estuary, with extensive importation of salt and wine and exportation of grain and timber."^ The county's agriculture was of recognized quality. Speed was particularly lavish in his praise: 'The aire is temperate, healthfull and cleare, the soile is hilly, wooddy, and rich, all places fruitfull, but no place barren. The hilles are grased vpon by Cattle and sheepe, the vallies are laden with corne & grasse, neuer vngratefuU of the Husbandmans pains, nor makes frustrate his hope of expected increase; whose springs abundantly rising in this County with many streames, doe fatten the soile euen from side to side.''"

Monmouthshire became a new county with Henry viii's Acts of Union though it did not retain all the territory of the previous marcher lordships. The eastern part of the lordship of Chepstow, between Chepstow bridge and Gloucestershire, became part of that county. Further differences created for the county a somewhat anomalous position. Monmouthshire was not given a place within the organization of the Welsh court of Great Sessions created by the second Act of Union; its judicial affairs were to be handled from Westminster, and at the Restoration were added to the existing Oxford assize circuit. The county was also granted two parliamentary representatives, in line with the English counties and in contrast to the 'Welsh' counties whose representation was restricted to a single knight of the shire. Monmouthshire's position between England and Wales was long recognized in a legal sense in that legislation refer- ring to the principality was since the sixteenth century directed to 'Wales and Monmouthshire,' a situation only corrected by Harold Wilson's second Labour government in the late 1960s. So Francis Tate, a judge on the South Wales circuit of Great Sessions in the early seventeenth century and one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries, wrote in his notebook that 'Monmouthshire is none of the twelve shires of Wales and yet it is p^rte of the principalitie of Wales.''^ Similarly the Elizabethan register of the Council in the Marches (Bodl.: MS. Bodl. 904, covering the years 1569-91) regularly refers to 'the 12 shires of Wales,' citing Monmouthshire along with the English border counties.'^' Its position in Wales is, however, clear in other ways. The county lay largely within the diocese of Llandaff although a few parishes on its eastern border were in the diocese of Hereford and a few to the north were part of the large diocese of St David's. In spite of the early Norman influence Monmouthshire had throughout the period a predominately Welsh-speaking population outside the English boroughs. The county has always been popularly understood to be part of Wales; Camden, for example, is just one of the many early topographical writers who refer to 'the thirteen counties of Wales.' '^^

Like Glamorgan to the west Monmouthshire enjoyed extensive sea-borne trade through its primary port of Newport, which also served as one of the principal routes from Bristol to the west. A second route from Bristol took the traveller north via ferry to Chepstow, then by road to Monmouth. Ogilby was unimpressed by the quality of the county's roads, finding them '[a]ffording no pleasant way to Monmouth nor indeed throughout, being generally rough hard and uneasie even to the very end '"^

Monmouthshire had probably the strongest recusant tradition in Wales, led in particular by William Somerset, earl of Worcester, and his family at Raglan, and the Morgan family at Llantarnam, a branch of the Morgans of Pen-coed. In 1609 Lord Eure, president of the Council in the Marches, described the county as 'wholy devided almost into factions, by

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Iv

reason the number of those who being addicted, and misled with Poperie, are so powerflill, and they so daring to professe, and show themselves as that few causes arise in the Shire which is not made a Question betwixt the Protestant, and the Recusant. '"''

ABERGAVENNY/Y FENNI

Abergavenny occupies an important position at the confluence of the Rivers Gafenni and Usk and was the site of the Roman fort of Gobannium. Under the Normans it remained a town of military importance and also became the administrative centre of the Vale of Gwent. The earliest castle was built in the late eleventh century by Hamelin de Ballon, who also established the important Benedictine priory to the east of the town. As a centre of Norman administration Abergavenny was the object of regular attacks by the Welsh and was certainly walled by the middle of the thirteenth century if not earlier.

The borough was very heavily damaged by Owain Glyn Dwr's siege of 1404 and seems to have remained in this state for the next century, for Henry viii demanded in 1544 that the bailiffs repair the fabric of the town.''' Although much of the stone for this rebuilding came from the walls enough was left for Leland to note that 'Abergeveney yt self is a faire waulled town, meately welle inhabited '^°° During the sixteenth century it again became an import- ant commercial site, known especially for its boots and for the manufacture of flannel of high quality.^"'

The priory was founded in the late eleventh century as a cell of St Vincent s, Le Mans, and was refounded as an independent house in 1415- Some parts of the monastic buildings, including the tithe barn, survive, and the priory church (rebuilt in the fourteenth century) also served as the parish church and stands today. ^°^

HOUSEHOLDS

The Morgans of Pen-coed were a branch of the larger Morgan family of Tredegar. Sir William Morgan the elder (d. 1542) served as Princess Marys vice-chamberlain in Ludlow, while his son Sir Thomas Morgan (c 1509-65) served as MP in the first parliament to include members from the newly created shires in 1547.^"^ His son Sir William Morgan the younger (1541—83) spent most of his life after 1569 as a soldier in France, Ireland, and the Netherlands. He distinguished himself in the earl of Essex's Irish service and was knighted in 1574, probably at Essex's request, and was elected MP that year for Monmouth borough in a by-election. His Welsh lands seem to have come to him highly encumbered and in 1577 he was forced to sell part of them. He spent most of the rest of his life in Ireland though he petitioned several times for recall on the basis of ill-health in 1580-1. He was at length recalled in 1582 and died shortly after his return on 9 October 1583. The Pen-coed estate was seized by the Exchequer to pay his debt of 2,000 marks.^""

The Powell family of Llan-pill in the parish of Llan-soe was closely connected with the Morgans. On 20 June 1576 William Powell married Florence Morgan, Sir William Morgan's sister. ^°^ Powell was one of four children of Dafydd ap Philip, for whom Dafydd Benwyn wrote

Ivi HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

a marwnad' or elegy, as well as a praise poem to William Powell, ^""^ Powell was knighted on 7 January 1607/8 and died in 1611.^°^

Montgomeryshire/Sir Drefaldywyn

The county of Montgomeryshire was created by the Act of Union in 1536 out of the marcher lordship of Montgomery, which as a part of the duchy of York was in royal hands. The county lies on a westward extension of the Shropshire plain up the Severn valley and is thus far more fertile than Radnorshire to the south. As Speed noted, 'This Riuer maketh the East part of this shire for fruitfiilnes to be compared with most of the Land, and to exceed any other Shire in Wales.... '^°»

The present county is roughly equivalent to the kingdom of Powys Wenwynwyn, with the addition of the commote of Ceri in the southeast. Under Gwenwynwyn of Powys and his son Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn the area had a long history of collaboration with the Normans and was in almost constant feud with the kingdom of Gwynedd to the northwest. However, their English leanings meant that Gruffudd was allowed to keep his lands as a marcher lord after 1282. His grand-daughter married into the Charlton family, who remained lords of Powys until the death of Edward Charlton in 1421.

Montgomeryshire had long been a major centre of wool production, aided by the proximity of the borough of Montgomery to the border, though its towns were severely damaged in the Glyn Dwr rebellion.

HOUSEHOLDS

From the sixteenth century on the most important family in the county were the Herberts, who were granted Montgomery Castle in 1520. After the Reformation a second branch of the family at Powys Castle remained staunchly Catholic while the Montgomery/Chirbury branch became just as devoutly Anglican.

Edward Herbert was born in 1582/3 into a family of extraordinary accomplishments. His three brothers included the poet George Herbert and Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels under both Charles i and Charles ii. Edward married early but travelled extensively on the Continent between 1608 and 1617; two years later he was sent to Paris as ambassador to the court of Louis xiii, but a difference of opinion forced his abrupt dismissal in 1624. A series of attempts to obtain favour at court were unsuccessful though he was eventually given a minor position as first Baron Herbert of Chirbury in 1629. During the early 1630s he wrote a biography of Henry viii in the hope of advancement at court but was ignored. In 1642 he retired to Montgomery to write. Montgomery Castle was occupied by parliamentary forces during the Civil War despite Lord Herbert s attempts to remain neutral. Forced out of his home in 1644 he went to London, receiving a grant of £20 a week from parliament, where he remained until his death in 1648.

During his ambassadorship Herbert wrote a philosophical treatise, De veritate, which he published in Paris in 1624. In the last decade of his life he again devoted himself to writing,

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Ivii

producing three treatises on deistic philosophy, De causis errorum (pubHshed in 1645), De religione laid, and De religione gentilium (published posthumously).^'" From about 1643 on he was also engaged in writing the charming autobiography that chronicles his life up to 1624.^'° Lord Herbert had a keen interest in music all his life and nine short instrumental pieces by him survive. Far more important is the large collection of lute music he assembled from about 1600 until the end of his life, now Ms. M. 3. 1956 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge."'

Pembrokeshire/Sir Benfro

Lying at the southwest corner of Wales Pembrokeshire is divided both topographically and culturally. The northern part of the county is dominated by the windswept mass of the Preseli Mountains, whose bleak slopes provided grazing land but little else beyond extensive stone quarries. The southern part, dominated by the estuaries of the two Cleddau rivers, contained excellent pasturage and some good arable land.^'^ Though the county's sea-coast is extensive much of it is made up of rocky cliffs and until more recent times the bulk of the county's sea trade above the local level was pursued out of the Cleddau estuary, through the ports of Pembroke, Milford Haven, and Haverfordwest, which marked the northern navigable point of the river's larger west branch, as well as its first and principal bridge. Speed recognized the importance of shipping to the county, noting that 'the Hauens being so commodious for Ships arriuage: such is that at Tenby, and Milford, an Hauen of such capacitie, that sixteene Creekes, flue Bayes, and thirteene Roades, knowne all by seuerall names, are therein contained.'^''

Pembrokeshire's shipping ties were not only with Bristol but also with Brittany, Ireland, and North Wales. Locally produced wool was sent either to Bristol or to Caernarfon for spinning, though some was retained for local use, producing a rough cloth called 'cotton' or 'frieze.'

Pembrokeshire was divided more clearly than any other Welsh county into linguistic and cultural groups, with its Welshry concentrated in the northern part of the county and its Englishry in the south. The division was so pronounced that the southern part came to be known as 'Little England beyond Wales,' as Camden called it.""* Norman forces had pressed into the county following the death in 1093 of Rhys ap Tewdwr, whose son GrufRidd ap Rhys remained in exile in Ireland until about 1113. Over the next half century major castles were built at Haverfordwest and Pembroke, with a strategic line of smaller defences marking the boundary between what would later become the Englishry to the south and the Welshry to the north. English settlers came largely by sea, as did a number of Flemish setders invited, according to Gerald of Wales, by Henry i.^''

At the furthest point west of the county lies the isolated cathedral of St David's. Speed noted its unpromising site: 'neither clad with Woods, nor garnished with Riuers, nor beautified with Fields, nor adorned with Meadowes, but lieth alwaies open both to winde and stormes. Yet hath it beene a Nurserie to holy men '^'^

For the Englishry Pembroke Castle became the major outpost, giving its name to the county palatinate on its establishment in 1138. Pembroke and its earls were to dominate the county through much of the Middle Ages. At the close of the period it was the birthplace of Henry Tudor in 1456/7. The county also was the site of one of the principal concluding symbolic

Iviii HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

acts of the Middle Ages, the great tournament staged at Carew Castle by Sir Rhys ap Thomas in 1507.

The excellent harbour of the Cleddau estuaries at Milford Haven figures largely in the county's history. It was from Milford that Richard ii embarked for Ireland in 1395 and in August of 1405 it was the site of an abortive French invasion. From the harbour the county had had a thriving sea trade in wool and cloth since the early Middle Ages and after 1543 that trade expanded with the development of coal mining and the export of coal to France and Ireland. Wool remained a major export but cloth production declined seriously through the sixteenth century.

HAVERFORDWEST/HWLFFORDD

Like most towns in South Wales Haverfordwest grew up around its Norman castle. From the late twelfth century it was a seigneurial borough under the lord of Haverfordwest, its population consisting largely of English settlers. For most of the period the lordship was in the hands of the Crown though it was held by the Bohuns and Mortimers between 1245 and 1289, and by the Valences, earls of Pembroke, between 1308 and 1324. In 1479 the borough was granted an extensive charter with its own civic government of mayor, sheriff, two bailiffs, and a common council of twenty-four. This charter was confirmed and extended in 1610. Unusually in Wales the earlier charter conferred county status on the borough and the town became effectively independent of the lord, except that borough officials took their oaths of office before his chancellor. This provision was confirmed in the second Act of Union (1543) and the town retained county status until 1888.^'^ The 1479 charter had provided for a Saturday market and an annual fair on the feast of the Translation of St Thomas (7 July); to these the 1610 charter added a further weekly market on Tuesday and two fairs, one on May Day and one on the feast of St Bartholemew (24 August). ^'^

The western Cleddau was navigable by ships as large as forty tons as far up as Haverfordwest and the town quay was the locus of intensive trading, especially with Bristol but also with Barnstaple, Devon. The town was also relatively well served by road, lying on the principal route between London and St Davids, which passed through Cardiff, Swansea, and Carmarthen.

The making of coarse woollen frieze was one of Haverfordwest's principal industries through the sixteenth century, although a borough ordinance of 1557 makes it clear that the industry was in difficulty as early as mid-century, since 'dyu^-rse of the burgesses and inh^^itant« of the sayd town dothe convey sell and delyu^r wouUe and wouUen yearne owte of this towne to dyu^rs straungers and forren^rs.'^"

The social standing of frieze was not high; responding to his mother's offer to send enough frieze for a jerkin Robert Wynn (then a student at St John's College, Cambridge) of Gwydir, Caernarvonshire, refused, noting that it would be inappropriate for a St John's student to wear it."°

Haverfordwest had a particularly elaborate system of trade guilds; charters for eight of them still survive among the borough records: Blacksmiths, Carpenters, Felt-makers, Glovers, Gunsmiths and Shoemakers, Saddlers, and Tailors."' The town had a weekly market about

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND lix

which George Owen waxed poetical: 'namely for beefFe, mutton, porke, bacon, veale, goose, capon kidd, lambe, Conye, turkye, and all sortes of wild fowie in their season, that it is a marveile to manye, where the victuells, that are there to be scene at noone shold be shifted awaye ere night, and for fishe yt passeth all others in Wales, w/thout anie comparison, both for plentie and varietie.'^" During the late sixteenth century - certainly from 1580 - the town also appears to have supported a company of waits. Tax assessment rolls for 1647 and 1651 show three inhabitants listing their profession as 'musician,' though there is no clear evidence that they were still acting as civic musicians."' Toward the end of the thirteenth century a guildhall was built just to the east of St Mary's parish church; it stood, probably being fre- quently rebuilt, until the mid-nineteenth century. ^^"^ This building would have been a very likely performance venue for the town's waits as well as the focus of civic ceremony.

Haverfordwest was both prosperous and populous with a population around the middle of the sixteenth century of somewhat under 1,500."' The church of St Mary, parish church to two-thirds of the town's inhabitants, also formed its centre. The council chamber was situated over the north porch of the church a short distance from the guildhall. Maintenance of the bridge and the quay was a constant drain on public funds; in 1616 neglect of this maintenance had reduced the quay to such a state that several of the burgesses were presented at the Great Sessions. The quay was rebuilt at a cost of almost £60 and eight years later the debt had not yet been paid off, prompting a reprimand to the mayor from the chief justice of the Great Sessions."*^

HOUSEHOLDS

Rhys ap Thomas was born in 1448 or 1449 and spent part of his early years at the court of Burgundy with his father, returning to Wales about 1467. At his father's death he became lord of Dinefwr, which office his grandfather had leased in 1440 for a period of sixty years. Rhys organized military support in South Wales for Edward iv but after Richard in came to power he contacted Henry Tudor in France and offered his services, becoming the future Henry vii's principal ally in Wales. He was knighted shortly after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Rhys was granted various other offices in South Wales and for his services in the arrests of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck he was made a knight of the Garter in 1507; the Carew Castle tournament of that year was held to celebrate his elevation. His later years were largely spent at Carew Castle, about five miles northeast of Pembroke, though he did participate in Henry viii's invasion of France in 1513. He died in 1525-"^

Contemporary popular tradition, though not based on fact, claimed that Sir John Perrot was the illegitimate son of Henry viii and one of the court ladies-in-waiting, Mary Berkeley, who married Sir Thomas Perrot."* John was born in 1528 and educated at St David's. He joined the household of the marquis of Winchester, gaining great popularity because of his size and physical strength. Preferment came easily; Edward vi made him a knight of the Bath and even Mary seemed to like him in spite of his Protestantism. She could not ignore claims that he was harbouring heretics in his home, however, and after a brief imprisonment in the Fleet, he went to France in the service of the earl of Pembroke.

he HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Under Elizabeth he became a great court favourite and rose to wield considerable power. In 1562 he became vice admiral of the coast in South Wales and he served frequently as member of parliament: in 1547 for Carmarthenshire, in 1553 and 1555 for Sandwich (Cinque Ports, Kent), in 1559 for Wareham, Dorset, in 1563 for Pembrokeshire, and in 1589 for Haverfordwest."' He was mayor of Haverfordwest in 1560, 1570, 1575> and 1576. In 1571 he was first sent to Ireland as president of Munster, returning to Wales in 1573. In 1574 he was made a member of the Council in the Marches. As chief commissioner of a parliamentary committee to suppress acts of piracy Perrot spent much of the 1570s in a complex series of disputes and litigations, many of them dealing with piracy along the Pembrokeshire coast. While on an expedition against Spanish shipping in 1579 Perrot's enemies attempted to discredit him at court but failed. In 1584 Perrot was again sent to Ireland, this time as lord deputy, but his sharp tongue and temper made him many enemies and he returned to England in 1588.

Rumours of a treasonous letter to the king of Spain began to surface soon after his return; the privy council investigated and Perrot was imprisoned in the Tower. He was tried for treason in 1592 and sentenced to death but died in the Tower before the sentence could be carried out. It appears to have been well known at court that the charges against Perrot were false but he had made too many enemies. That the charges were understood to be false may be seen in Elizabeths granting of his estates to his son, Sir Thomas, in spite of his attainder.

Thomas Perrot (1553-94) followed his father to Ireland in the 1579 expedition and was knighted upon arriving at Waterford. His youthful career was eventful; in 1581 he played the part of one of the 'defendants' in a pageant known as the Castle of Beauty that was staged before the queen and the French ambassadors in the Tilt Yard, Whitehall. By this time Perrot had already spent two brief periods in the Fleet prison; the first in order to prevent a duel being fought between him and Sir Walter Ralegh, the second for secretly marrying one of Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting, Dorothy Devereux, the daughter of the earl of Essex. He may have served as member of parliament for Pembrokeshire in 1572 following the death of John Wogan, and was returned for Cardiganshire in 1586 and for Pembrokeshire in 1593.^'° In 1588 he was commissioned, along with George Owen, the Pembrokeshire antiquary, to supervise preparations for defence against the Armada. After his father's death Sir Thomas was restored in part to his estates through the aid of his brother-in-law, the nineteenth earl of Essex. According to Sir Simonds D'Ewes' parliamentary journal the bill for his restoration passed in three days, 26-8 March 1593, but it was a restoration only in blood, not in name, so although he retained the estate of Haroldston, Carew Castle reverted to the Crown."'

Radnorshire/Sir Faesyfed

The county of Radnorshire was created by the 1536 Act of Union out of the marcher lordship of Radnor. Except in the valley of the Wye, which forms its southern border, Radnorshire has little of the rich and fertile land that characterizes so much of the Herefordshire plain to the east; though well watered the land is rocky and unproductive. Speed's assessment was accurate: 'The soile is hungry, though not barren, and that in the East and South the best: the other

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Ixi

parts are rough and churlish, and hardly bettered by painfull labour; so that the riches of the North and West consisteth chiefly in the brood of Cattle.' The uplands Speed found positively frightening, noting, 'the vnaccessible Mountains, wherwith this Shire is so ouer-pressed and burdened, that many times I feared to looke downe from the hanging Rockes where-vnder I passed, into those deepe and darke dales, seeming to mee an entrance into Limbo.'^^^

Radnorshire became one of the first Norman outposts in Wales, carved from the native Welsh kingdom of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, and some eastern areas of the county appear in the Herefordshire section of the Domesday Book."^ Already before the Conquest, Harold - acting as one of Edward the Confessor's lieutenants - had built a castle at New Radnor with the intention of moving north toward Gruffudd ap Llywelyn's stronghold at Rhuddlan. Soon after 1066 the area around Radnor, the commote of Llythyfnwg, became the territory of the powerful Briouze family, who also held the cantref of Buellt in Brecknockshire. By the end of the twelfth century, after the death of the Lord Rhys, the whole county except for the western commote of Deuddwr was in marcher hands, split between the families of Briouze and Mortimer. In 1233 when the Briouze line came to an end the lands of southern Radnor- shire passed to the Mortimer family through Maud, the daughter of William de Briouze who married Roger Mortimer, the first of many to bear the family's traditional name. Except for the lordship of Radnor these lands were returned to the control of Llywelyn ap Grufftidd by the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, returning to marcher hands with his defeat in 1282. Most of the county remained in the Mortimer family until the lordships were abolished with the Act of Union in 1536.

The first significant victory of Owain Glyn Dwr's rebellion was fought just east of Radnor at Pilleth against Edmund Mortimer in June 1402. The English boroughs that had been established in the county were not prosperous however, and did not receive the damage that Glyn Dwr inflicted in other counties. The Mortimer influence meant that most of the county remained staunchly Yorkist through the Wars of the Roses. The relative poverty of its boroughs remained the norm and its indifferent agriculture kept Radnorshire one of Wales' poorest counties. Though many of the drovers' routes to England passed through the county its roads were among the worst. A late eighteenth-century local historian described them as mere gullies worn by torrents.'""*

PRESTEIGNE/LLANANDRAS

Presteigne's site was an ancient crossing place for the River Lugg, which at this point marks the Welsh-English border; there had been an early Anglo-Saxon settlement at the ford. Ogilby's 1675 maps show clearly that Presteigne was the principal gateway to central Wales. The town was the first to be reached past Hereford on the main road from London, which then branched into a central route to Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, via Rhaeadr, and a more southerly route to Carmarthen via Llandovery. It also lay on an important north-south route leading up to Montgomery via Knighton."'

In 1225 the town was granted an annual fair and a Wednesday market, which waS changed later in the century to Saturday."^ Despite these privileges there is no record of a charter and

bdi HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Presteigne appears to have been a borough by prescription only."^ As with so many Welsh towns a period of economic growth in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was matched by a decline in the fifteenth after the Glyn Dwr rebellion. Even Presteigne's weekly market was no longer held, likely because of competition with the nearby markets at Knighton to the north and Kington, Herefordshire, to the south. Toward the end of the century, however, the town found a champion in one of its native sons, Richard Martyn, bishop of St David's, through whose assistance the town's commercial life began to recover and the market to be held again. Camden described the process by which a very little village within the memorie of our grand fathers, is by the means of Richard Martin Bishop of Saint Davids, growne now to be so great a mercate towne and faire withall, that at this day it dammereth and dimmeth the light in some sort of Radnor. '^^^ Speed too made note of these changes, describing Presteigne as a Towne of Commerce, wonderfully frequented, and that very lately.'"'

Drama, Music, and Popular Customs

The culture of medieval and early modern Wales was distinct from that of England in ways that profoundly affect this collection. Despite the language rules introduced with the Acts of Union, which instituted English as the language of the court of Great Sessions and prevented non-English speakers from holding office, most of the principality remained Welsh-speaking throughout the period of these records.' Although it is an oversimplification it is generally true that the Welsh-speaking population remained predominately rural while the towns were more likely to be English-speaking; many towns show clear signs of having been organized around a division between Englishry and Welshry. A corollary to the distinctiveness of Wales is that many of the modes of performance that appeared with great frequency in English towns were rare or unknown in Wales. Few Welsh towns were wealthy enough to mount elaborate civic ceremonies that included paid performers, and there is no evidence that any Welsh town had a tradition of civic biblical drama associated with a religious observance like Corpus Christi or Whitsun.

Royal progresses generally ignored the principality and many of the nobility with estates in Wales were absentee landlords with primary residences in London or elsewhere in England. Robin Hood plays seem to have been unknown in Wales and lords of misrule were extremely rare; Beaumaris, a strongly anglicized borough, was an exception (see p 42, 11.26-7). Though Wales had its own traditions of dancing there is little evidence of morris dancing other than instances of English dancers crossing the border from Herefordshire or Shropshire, such as the group who were involved in an affray in Bwlchycibau, Montgomeryshire, in 1653. For financial or cultural reasons a great many of the institutions under whose auspices mimetic entertainment flourished in England - boroughs, craft guilds, monastic establishments, parishes - did not often support such activities in Wales. The principal exception was the gentry house- hold, especially in the early modern period, where entertainment flourished though records are often scanty.

Having said this, Welsh culture had its own modes of performance and entertainment though they were more often musical and poetic than dramatic. Itinerant musicians were common in the Welsh countryside; they included performers familiar from the English context, such as fiddlers and pipe and tabor players, as well as performers of traditional Welsh instruments, harp and crwth. The large volume of surviving poetry gives ample evidence of the presence of bards, or Welsh-language poets. The importance of the bards in Welsh culture is indicated

Ixiv DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

by frequent references to the 'bardic order,' though its organization was limited in its effective- ness and, at least until the middle of the fifteenth century, was more a notion than a reality.

The level of representation in this collection varies widely. Extensive documentation survives for some counties, for others very little. There is no single reason for this; while it is true that the volume of surviving material does to a certain extent mirror the population of the county, it also depends on the fortuitous survival of municipal and household records or whether any care was taken with the preservation of the records of the court of Great Sessions at its dis- solution in 1830. Very few quarter sessions records survive and virtually no monastic accounts. There are, then, larger gaps in this collection than in those of the English counties due to the distinctive nature of Welsh society.

Other REED collections preserve tantalizing glimpses of cross-border appearances by Welsh entertainers, like the two harpers who played for Elizabeth Berkeley, countess of Warwick, in 1420/1, the cock-fighting collaboration that pitted the 'Cockes of Cheshire and lanckashir against the cock^j of Shropshire and wales' at Shrewsbury in 1598, or the blind Welsh harper who played at New College, Oxford, in 1616.^ Welsh performers also appeared at court, includ- ing the several Welsh minstrels who attended the feast celebrating the knighting of the future Edward ii in 1306, the two Welsh 'histriones' of Henry vii whose payment was recorded in the Shrewsbury bailiffs' accounts in 1502-3, and the Welsh musicians in the employ of James i (see pp 35-6).^

Local Drama

Writing of Montgomery and Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, in 1602, George Owen expressed his feelings about most of the Welsh towns, that they were 'indifferent for intertaignemente.'^ While it is unlikely that Owen meant the word in quite the sense we would understand, his description does seem to fit. Although the lack of extensive civic and parish records precludes certainty there is no evidence that Wales had an extensive tradition of civic or parish drama such as can be seen in some English towns; indeed the only evidence for civic involvement in drama before 1642 is the appearance of players in Swansea, Glamorgan, between 1617-18 and 1633-4, appearances that were only recorded because of the players' apparent propensity for breaking the windows of the town hall.

It has been assumed that traditions of drama in Wales began with the popular interludes ('anterliwtau') of the eighteenth century and a writer from the early twentieth century went so far as to claim that the Welsh had no strong dramatic tradition because they were so inherently dramatic as to make it unnecessary.^ It is important to recognize that the records of play performances that do survive, deriving as they do from both South and North Wales, from both Welsh-speaking and English-speaking areas, and from the late fifteenth to mid-seventeenth century, indicate a tradition of dramatic performance in Welsh and English, both amateur and professional, on a broad social scale. Though likely never as lavish or as widespread as English traditional drama the commonplace that Wales had no drama before the 'anterliwtau' is no longer a tenable position.

Though sparse the present collection of records proves five important points. First, there

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS Ixv

is clear evidence of a dramatic tradition from at least the beginning of the sixteenth century. For the early part of our period the evidence includes the Abergavenny parishioners who paid for their bells 'w/th games and plays' (see pp 218-19) (as well as the existence of two Welsh- language biblical plays for which no documentary evidence survives). For the later part we have a play in the parish church of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, in 1604; the plays that Robert Bulkeley visited in Anglesey in the 1630s; and the Dolbenmaen, Caernarvonshire, interlude of 1654. These were all public forms of drama; in addition there was a thriving tradition of private plays in the households of the gentry, represented by the Salusbury masques at Lleweni (see pp 153, 155-6) and Chirk (see pp 141-50), as well as school plays in towns like Beaumaris (see pp 42-5). Second, although both the household and school plays were clearly in English, most, if not all, of the public drama must have been in Welsh. There is little likelihood that the rural Anglesey plays and the Dolbenmaen interlude would have found local anglophone audiences in predominately Welsh-speaking areas.^ Third, the geographical distribution of these records is not restricted to a single area of the principality' or even to areas of English influence. Fourth, both amateur and professional players are represented. The Abergavenny players were un- doubtedly amateur as were the Llanelli ruffians and (probably) the performers of the biblical plays, in which the individual roles are of great simplicity, with a relatively large number of very short speaking parts. The Dolbenmaen interluders, described in the deposition as two men and a boy, were very likely professional though their status is not made clear in the records. There is insufficient evidence to speculate on the status of the Anglesey players whom Bulkeley watched. Finally, there is little evidence in the documents that any of these dramatic events were con- sidered extraordinary by either the participants or the spectators. In all cases except for Bulkeleys diary the play was incidental to other more pressing concerns - the ownership of Abergavenny's bells or the affray at Dolbenmaen. Only in Dolbenmaen can the play itself be seen as extraordi- nary, for there the depositions give a most unusual glimpse of a naive audience's reaction to the common professional practice of doubling: the witnesses were carefiil to note that the participants changed their clothing during the course of the play, and they expressed their pleasure at having recognized that the same actor returned in a different costume. In contrast to this reaction was an apparently clear understanding of the nature of drama implied in the 1621 Great Sessions case against one Roger Griffes who claimed that the justice, Thomas Inkes, was not fytt to examyw his busines but to Play on a stage.'^

The surviving dramatic texts in Welsh are limited to the two biblical plays, a morality-like play Y Givr Kadam ('The Strong Man'), and a Troilus and Cressida play of the early seventeenth century* The earliest manuscript of the biblical plays dates from about 1552 but it is likely that the plays themselves were written somewhat earlier, perhaps as early as the end of the previous century.^ There is no evidence that these plays had any civic connections; in fact if the colophon to the Passion play is correct in claiming that the play was a translation from the Latin, then a monastic source for the composition of the plays is more likely. Gwenan Jones concluded on the basis of the dialects of the surviving manuscripts that the most likely region of origin for the plays is northeast Wales, though the range of dialects represented (Glamorgan to Denbighshire) is wide enough that the verdict must be 'not proven.''" The two biblical plays bear very little resemblance to the English biblical plays, including - surprisingly — those of

Ixvi DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

nearby Chester. They are each self-contained and continuous, not divided into discrete episodes, and there is no evidence that they w^ere intended for any form of processional staging. In this they are closer to the plays of the Cornish Ordinalia though much shorter and simpler. The inclusion of a messenger who begins each play speaking to the audience makes their status as performance texts clear, but neither one would have involved a lengthy performance: the Passion play runs less than two hours, the Nativity no more than half an hour. Some manner of re-enactment of the crucifixion seems also to have been performed at Abergavenny Priory in the early fourteenth century, since an episcopal investigation revealed that monks were appearing with arms stretched out with rods and tied in the manner of someone crucified, with straw or something else in the manner of a crown put upon their heads' (see Translations, p 378, translated from the Records, p 216). This was far too early to have any direct connection with the surviving Passion play but both might be part of a tradition of staged Easter pageants.

Y Gwr Kadarn shows some close connections to the English moral interludes, especially in its first part in which the Strong Man, a wealthy gentleman, argues with a Priest over the state of his soul and is slowly transformed from an arrogant bully to a repentant Christian ready for death. The briefer second part, in which his widow is seduced by a young man, Sion the Servant, is less clearly related to the morality tradition. The anonymous Troelus a Chresyd is in many ways the Welsh play closest to the English tradition; derived primarily from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, were it not in Welsh it would have fit quite happily on the London stage of the early seventeenth century.

There is no question that we have lost a significant number of play texts in Welsh. A four- line fragment of the conclusion of an interlude survives in nlw: Peniarth ms 68, p 117, and the latest documents in this volume date from approximately the same time as the earliest example of the 'anterliwt' tradition, a fragmentary play of Argolws and Simoniax in nlw: NLW MS 5269B, ff 531-4v. The Glamorgan poet Lewis Hopkin (1707 or 1708-71) supposedly claimed to have seen, in the possession of his uncle at Llwyniwrch, Glamorgan, a manuscript full of chwareuau Cymreig dan enw Miraglauason' ('Welsh plays called Miracles') that were then 200 or 300 years old. Unfortunately this anecdote only survives in the hand of the notorious lolo Morganwg and is therefore not reliable."

In addition to these Welsh-language plays there is also clear evidence of performing tradi- tions in English. The two plays performed at the Free School of Beaumaris, Anglesey, in the l650s were in English and they represent most of the evidence of school plays in the period, although very few school records survive from the period from anywhere in Wales. The Beaumaris plays were particularly unusual. School drama in England tended to be based on classical models with texts often in Latin; the plays at Beaumaris, with surviving prologues in verse by the schoolmaster, the Rev. William Williams, were both English and contemporary. One was a bloodthirsty political play, The Rebellion of Naples, or The Tragedy of Massenello, dealing with events of 1646 and published in 1649, only three years before its Beaumaris perform- ance. Three years later the school presented a comedy, Thomas Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, licensed in 1630. Though its content is unknown the play at Penley, Flintshire, took place in an area in which English influence was particularly strong and would probably also have been in English. The Penley play may also represent, along with the Abergavenny play(s), an

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS Ixvii

example from Wales of the parish plays that are now seen as one of the dominant forms of entertainment (and fund-raising) in Tudor England.'^

The scantiness of the Welsh records, then, probably masks a tradition of amateur and profes- sional drama in both Welsh and English, ranging across the principality. Though it was likely not as extensive or elaborate a tradition as that east of the border, its existence is clear.

Household Entertainment

Throughout the period of this collection most performances recorded in private households were bardic and musical. A substantial body of poetry was composed for performance in the patrons' households, both large and small, but with few exceptions this poetry cannot be dated precisely and does not refer to specific occasions; it is thus beyond the mandate of the collection. References to musical performances appear occasionally in household accounts and the presence of instruments in household inventories implies their use in a household context. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the composition of occasional masques to celebrate family occasions became popular, especially among the closely interrelated families of Salusbury and Myddelton. The Stanley earls of Derby (based in Lancashire) might also be added to this list; they were related by marriage to the Salusburys and Thomas Salusbury wrote at least one entertainment for performance at the Stanley home at Knowsley.'^ The texts of two masques written for the Myddeltons of Chirk Castle in the 1630s and 1640s survive as do earlier refer- ences to brief masques within the Salusbury family (see pp 153, 155-6). It is quite possible that dramatic entertainments were also common in other households, especially those with close English connections (such as the Devereux family in Cardiganshire and the Herberts in Montgomeryshire), but the very limited survival of household records does not allow specu- lation in this area.

The Salusburys of Lleweni provide a particularly interesting example of a household with a substantial interest in performances of a wide variety. Two members of the Salusbury family were signatories to the abortive 1594 petition for the holding of a further eisteddfod (see pp 31-3). Sir John Salusbury, who succeeded to the estate in 1586, was the subject of poetry by a wide range of bards whom he entertained at Lleweni, much of it preserved in a series of household books (see pp cxiv-cxv). Sir John himself was a poet but unlike the verse written in his praise his poetry was in English. The bicultural interests of the household were evident in music as well. At Christmas in 1595 Lleweni was host to thirteen of Wales' finest poets, harpers, and crwth players; at about the same time someone in the household (likely a Welsh- speaker judging from his spelling) copied into one of the household books a lengthy list of English ballad tunes (see pp 153-5).

Professional Entertainers

A number of persons with substantial estates in Wales acted as patrons to players and musicians. The exiguous nature of Welsh household and municipal accounts, where the hiring of profes- sional entertainers was most likely to be recorded, limits the conclusions that can be drawn

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about their activities. Previous reed research indicates that performers in the employ of the landed gentry in Wales appeared with considerable frequency at border towns like Bewdley, Bristol, Gloucester, Ludlow, and Shrewsbury, but almost no evidence survives for their appear- ance in Wales. Thus the musicians of Edward Charlton, Richard Grey, and John Grey, all of Powys Castle, Montgomeryshire, appeared on several occasions in Shrewsbury during the fifteenth century, as did those of Jasper Tudor, duke of Bedford, and (in the sixteenth century) Edward Somerset, earl of Worcester. Ludlow, seat of the Council in the Marches, was well served by entertainers under Welsh patronage and within the last quarter of the sixteenth century saw the players of Henry Neville, Lord Abergavenny; Robert Devereux, earl of Essex; Edward Somerset, earl of Worcester; and Henry Herbert, earl of Pembroke. Essex's musicians, who played at Haverfordwest in 1596-7, also appeared at Chester and Ludlow. It is, of course, likely that such performers made regular appearances at their patrons' estates but without the household records it is not possible to be certain.'''

On rare occasions when entertainers under noble patronage appeared in Wales it was in towns with close connections with the patron concerned. For example Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, acted in a variety of capacities for Haverfordwest: in 1585 the mayor's accounts recorded a payment of £2 for Essex's diet and in 1596 he acted as intermediary between the burgesses and the Council in the Marches of Wales. '^ The appearance of his musicians in the town in 1596-7 (along with a payment to his secretary) may have been connected to his interven- tion on the town's behalf (see p 251). Robert's uncle, George Devereux, of Lamphey Court, Pembrokeshire, served as MP for the county in 1589 as well as sheriff for Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire, and Carmarthenshire.

Professional players seem to have travelled in Wales rarely. Along with the limited economy, the state of the roads and the difficult terrain may have had a part in this, for the only town showing clear evidence of players' presence is Swansea, Glamorgan, more easily approached by water than by road. (The appearance by the earl of Essex's musicians in Haverfordwest, a town most easily approached from the Bristol Channel, reinforces the water route as a possible mode of travel, likely a significant improvement over the road from Chepstow along the south coast.) Players, very likely professional, appeared at Swansea's town hall regularly between 1617-18 and 1633-4 but evidence from other Welsh boroughs is lacking, perhaps because so few of them preserve municipal records for the period. The two men and a boy who played in a house in Dolbenmaen, Caernarvonshire, in 1654 may provide an example of professional players who performed on a local basis. The bizarre references to the jester ('croesan') in the Welsh Laws indicate that his function was humorous, absurdist, and subversive; the late appearance of Sir John Puckering's jester in Haverfordwest in 1591-2 may imply a similar fiinction. His substantial payment from the city's council indicates that they likely hired him for some civic occasion (see pp 17, 26, and 249).

A wealth of musicians, often without patrons, travelled the Welsh countryside and, although they are mentioned in the poetry of the late Middle Ages, their existence is now primarily seen in two sources. First, names can sometimes be an indication of the presence of musicians, especially when as with 'Crythor' or 'Telynior' (more commonly in their lenited forms, 'Grythor' and 'Delynior') they were likely to indicate a performer. Second, they occasionally appeared in

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS Ixix

legal texts. Henry iv's anti-Welsh laws of 1402 (see p 28) included restrictions on minstrels though the court records that survive show little evidence of their having been enforced. The law was still valid after the introduction of the court of Great Sessions in 1 543 and musicians occasionally appeared in grand jury presentments after that time (see pp 246-7, for instance). Following the promulgation of Elizabeth's Statute on Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars in 1 572, itinerant musicians (especially fiddlers and pipe and tabor players) were often presented to the quarter sessions or Great Sessions as vagabonds or 'masterless men.'"^

Most Welsh boroughs were too poor to keep civic musicians, with two exceptions. Haverford- west's accounts show payments for the city waits between 1580 — 1 and 1596—7, who were provided by the borough with their livery of grey frieze faced with green taffeta, decorated with green mockado and buttons (see pp 248-51). In 1582-3 the company numbered two, both surnamed Whyt. The number of waits appears to have increased by 1589 since the fourteen yards of cloth used for their coats that year would have been sufficient for four coats (as the 1591-2 entries indicate). Another reference in 1591-2 indicates that a total of eight coats were made but it is unlikely that they were all for the waits. The waits of Ruthin, Denbighshire, are seen briefly in a note made by a seventeenth-century assize judge for whom they played (see p 130, 1.24).

Most of the other entertainers who made their way across the English countryside appear not to have travelled to Wales; there is no sign, for example, of the bearwards. The camel whose appearance attracted a crowd in an alehouse in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in December 1598 would have been a travelling curiosity, but there is no direct evidence that it travelled under aristocratic or royal patronage; it seems unlikely, however, that a camel would be found in either England or Wales outside the context of the royal menagerie. The appearance of the king's camel in Plymouth in 1520-1 and 1523-4 indicates that at least one camel did exist in the royal collection (earlier in the century of course) and that it was exhibited in a provincial town.'''

BARDS

There is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence for performances in Wales by bards. The bardic tradition in Wales extends back as far as historical sources exist; indeed professional poets and their performances are known to have been a part of Celtic tradition from the earliest records of continental Celtic civilization in the works of the Greek geographers such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus.'* Records of bardic performance in Wales date from Gildas' condemnation of the highly secular bards of Maelgwn Gwynedd (see p 60) in the mid-sixth century to the eventual decline of the professional bards toward the end of the sixteenth. The bulk of the surviving material describing bardic performance lies in the poetry of the bards themselves and is thus outside the range of this collection. External records are not lacking however. Two bardic performers were included among the household officers of the Welsh royal court, as described in the legal texts associated with the tenth-century king Hywel Dda of Deheubarth, though likely assembled about two hundred years later. The Welsh Laws describe in detail the position in the household of the pencerdd' or chief poet and the 'bardd teulu' or household

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poet, as well as indicating clearly their modes of performance. If these descriptions do not tally precisely with the large body of surviving poetry from the same period by the 'Beirdd y Tywysogion,' the 'Poets of the Princes,' that would suggest that the gap between legal definition and actual practice was no less in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than at any other time.''

The fall of independent Wales in 1282 brought an end to royal patronage and bards were required to seek new livelihoods in the employ of the gentry, though until well into the fifteenth century a moneyed class of gentry with an interest in Welsh poetry was in short supply. The decline both in status and in ability for these poets was slow but by the early sixteenth century it was obvious. One clear indication of the problem was the number of hack poets and lower- class minstrels calling themselves bards who travelled the country looking for charity and whose existence had already been recognized in Henry iv's anti-Welsh statutes of 1402 (see p 28). The bardic meeting or eisteddfod held in Caerwys, Flintshire, in 1523 under the patronage of the Mostyn family seems to have been an attempt to stem the tide of this decline.

The earliest eisteddfod (literally, 'sitting') of which there is historical record using that name was held in Carmarthen in 1451, though the meeting of poets and musicians held in Cardigan in 1176 under the patronage of the Lord Rhys clearly involved many of the competitive aspects of the later meetings (see pp 81-3). An even earlier meeting in 1135 was recorded in the Aberpergwm text of the Brut y Tyivysogion, but that text is a forgery by the eighteenth- century antiquary lolo Morganwg, though it has often been quoted as the earliest evidence of bardic organization (see Appendix 5, pp 300-3). The three historical eisteddfodau of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were all distinguished by their intentions to reform and improve the bardic order.

The principal document that emerged from the 1523 meeting attempted to deal with this situation. Known as the 'Statute of Gruflfudd ap Cynan,' and thus claiming ancient authority by its association with the eleventh/twelfiih-century ruler, it laid down a series of requirements for formal licensing of the bardic 'order.' Defining a series of bardic levels closely akin to the form of apprenticeship familiar from other crafts and trades, the statute outlined clear and specific requirements for each level, as well as presenting a series of regulations governing bardic conduct. The formal poetic requirements were based on the metrics that had been systematized by the poet Dafydd ab Edmwnd in connection with the Carmarthen eisteddfod of 1451, held under the patronage of Grufilidd ap Nicolas of Dinefwr.^° The requirement that each bard carry his own copy of the statute has led to a very large number of surviving texts.^' Since the require- ments of the statute were based upon the organization of Welsh metrics into twenty-four accepted 'measures,' an organization traditionally associated with the less well-documented Carmarthen eisteddfod, many of the manuscripts of the statute also included a list of these. The statute addressed itself to the performances of harp and crwth players as well, and the manuscripts often included lists of traditional metres - 'tunes' may not be the right word - for these instruments. In addition manuscripts occasionally included a list of the graduates of the 1523 eisteddfod. The statute clearly became a cultural icon in sixteenth-century Wales; Dafydd Bowen points out that emphasizing 'the antiquity of the Statute of Gruffudd ap Cynan was close to the hearts of Welsh poets, gentlemen, humanists, and historians of the sixteenth

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS Ixxi

century, although they probably looked no further back than the Caerwys eisteddfod of 1523, let alone to the age of the prince himself"

The statute stated that further eisteddfodau would be held every three years for the purpose of examining and licensing bards, harpers, and crwth players but it is clear this did not happen. A second meeting was held in 1567, proclaimed by Elizabeth i, this time under the patronage of a much wider group of North Welsh gentry and again in Caerwys, likely because of the extensive involvement of the Mostyn family." Approximately fifty-three poets, harpers, and crwth players were awarded degrees according to the regulations of the statute (see pp 176-81), which was reissued with some changes to its requirements. That these meetings were regional rather than principality-wide suggests very strongly that the impetus for them came from the coalition of Flintshire and Denbighshire gentry, all with close ties to each other, who put their names to the surviving documents. A trophy harp of silver was created for the 1523 eisteddfod through the patronage of the Mostyns, which remains today in the possession of the family at Mostyn Hall (see Figure 6). A petition for a further eisteddfod in 1594 (see pp 31-3) seems to have produced no result; there is no surviving documentation beyond the petition itself and no evidence that it reached royal ears.

Although there were occasional references to other eisteddfodau, such as one in 1577 at which Hywel Bangor purportedly sang an englyn (see p 158), most of these are too late to be reliable or they derive from untrustworthy sources like lolo Morgan wg (see Appendix 5). Substantive records, then, survive only for three occasions in 1451, 1523, and 1567, and no reliable documentation exists for further eisteddfodau until the eighteenth century.^"

Though the bardic tradition was in serious difficulty in the late sixteenth century it was not dead, and Rhys Cain, an Oswestry poet, recorded each visit on what was clearly a lengthy travelling circuit of 102 stops, giving a rare detailed account of a bard's personal itinerary for his 'cwrs clera' (see pp 106-10). Although it is not possible to identify all the persons and places visited by Rhys, those that can be localized form a broad circuit through Flintshire, Denbighshire, and Shropshire with occasional forays into Merioneth and Montgomeryshire.

Performance Places

Evidence survives for a wide range of playing places, both outdoor and indoor. Court records contain references to outdoor playing places like the village greens at Penley and Tallarn Green, both about eight miles southeast of Wrexham, Flintshire, and about four miles apart. Of these Penley provides a far clearer record with the explicit statement of a play performance; Tallarn Green is described as a 'play place' (see p 199, 1.35), a phrase capable of a variety of interpreta- tions. In their position close to the English border it is unlikely that either the Penley play or any performance at Tallarn Green would have been in Welsh.

Indoor sites show an even wider range of possibilities. The relatively small private house of Derwyn Fechan (Derwyn Bach) in Dolbenmaen, Caernarvonshire, was the site of a perform- ance in 1654. The sixteenth-century house still stands. Figure 2a shows the house as it was in the early 1950s, and Figure 2b its ground plan. The house has two storeys (with an un- usual spiral staircase built into the fabric); the ground floor consists of two rooms, separated

Ixxii DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

by a modern stone partition, probably on the site of an earlier partition of wood.'^* The larger of these two rooms, roughly 17' x 19', is the space in which the performance must have taken place; the other ground floor room (7' x 19') probably served as the changing space referred to by one of the witnesses (see p 65, 1.28).

Although the records of Anglesey refer to performances in two schools, one the Free School of Beaumaris, the other most likely at Holyhead, they do not provide significant information on these playing spaces. Nothing survives of the Holyhead school, and the one surviving wall of the Free School of Beaumaris is now incorporated into a later building. In 1589 the school- master at Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire, was brought before the Hereford consistory court, charged with presenting 'enterludf-/ on Sunday, but the court record gives no indication of the location of the entertainment.

Some of the most substantial information on playing places derives from the larger private houses. Extensive additions to the seventeenth-century great hall at Chirk where household masques were performed have unfortunately made its original appearance almost unrecover- able; the hall is now the National Trust shop. Extensive rebuilding has changed the space significandy since the wedding masque of 1641 (see pp 146-50) and the original roof line can only be seen from the courtyard. Only a small portion of a brick wall is still standing from the great hall at Lleweni, Denbighshire, where thirteen invited entertainers performed at Christmas 1595 (see p 155). A watercolour of its interior existed in the nineteenth century but has since disappeared.^^ However, a photograph of the painting survives, reproduced here as Figure 3. The rubric to the Toysie' performed at the masque honouring the marriage of John Salusbury of Lleweni to Ursula Stanley in 1586 indicates that the performance took place at Berain, the home of John's mother, Katheryn of Berain (p 153). Part of the Berain house stands today, incorporated into farm buildings just outside Llanefydd, Denbighshire, but it is no longer possible to tell which part of the structure would have been the hall.

Evidence for playing places is less extensive in South Wales although a religious play was performed in 1604 in the parish church of St EUi in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire (Figure 4). The church was extensively renovated in 1907 but all work was done on the medieval foundations, so its present form and dimensions probably mirror those of the earlier church. Swansea's town hall, frequently used as a playing place in the early seventeenth century, was built in 1585 on the northwest side of the casde ruins. The property had earlier been in private hands, owned by Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk, at her death in 1425.^^ The meeting hall in which performances took place was undoubtedly on the upper floor because the ground floor was partitioned into a storage room, a gaol, and a weighing room. The principal part of the upper floor was a meeting hall where the council met, with the grand jury room at the south end. In addition to burgess meetings the hall was also used for borough courts and quarter sessions.^* Payments concerning the players ceased during the Commonwealth, of course, but resumed (again in the town hall) in 1669. Unfortunately the common attorneys who recorded the payments for reglazing the windows broken by the players did not include the dates of their performances, only the year of the payment. Swansea's town hall was torn down in 1856, but an early seven- teenth-century engraving of it was in the collection of W.C. Rogers before it was destroyed in a fire; it is reproduced as Figure 5.

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

Ixxiii

Figure 2a Derwyn Bach in the 1950s, by permission of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales

DERWYN BACH

Figure 2b Derwyn Bach ground plan, by permission of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales

Ixxiv

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

Figure 3 The great hall at Lleweni, by permission of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales

Figure 4 Llanelli and the church of St EUi in 1785, from John Innes, Old Llanelly (Cardiff, 1902), by permission of Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library

DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

Ixxv

Figure 5 Seventeenth-century town hall, Swansea, from W.C. Rogers, A Pictorial History of Swansea (Llandysul, Dyfed, 1981), by permission of Gwasg Gomer

Figure 6 The Mostyn silver harp, photograph from the Museum of Welsh Life, by permission of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales

Ixxvi DRAMA, MUSIC, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS

The guildhall of Haverfordwest, in Pembrokeshire, originally built in the late thirteenth century but frequently rebuilt and renovated, would have been a primary playing place for the town's waits. The guildhall was torn down in the mid-nineteenth century. The extensive collection of musical instruments in the possession of Sir John Perrot at his death in 1592 indicates that Carew Castle, Pembrokeshire, would also have been the site of performances, as it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century during the festivities associated with Sir Rhys ap Thomas' induction as a Knight of the Garter (see pp 255-6, 256-7).

A further hint that plays in Wales may have taken place at sites not entirely unfamiliar from elsewhere in Europe is furnished by the Welsh translation oi Apologia musices tarn vocalis quam instrumentalis et mixtae (Oxford, 1588; STc: 4755), by John Case, the Oxford scholar of Aristotle. The translation, made by John Conway, survives in clis: ms Hafod 24, pp 361-636, a copy made by the antiquarian John Jones of Gellilyfdy, dated 9 August 1609. Conway translates Case's chapter heading 'Contra musicam in theatro' as 'Yn erbyn kerddwrieth yn y chwryddfau ac yn yskyffaldiau' - that is, Against music in alehouses and on scaffolds.'" Although we have little documentary evidence either for tavern performances or plays on scaffolds or booth stages in Wales, Conway's translation, clearly intended for a literate Welsh- speaking (or reading) audience, would make little sense unless such performances were a part of their experience.

Popular Customs

Some Welsh popular customs surface in these records. A maypole set up in Ruthin, Denbigh- shire, in 1641 reached the court of Great Sessions as the site of a murder, while another was erected in the same county at the High Cross in Wrexham in 1597. Gruffudd ab Adda wrote a fine poem lamenting the destruction of a tree to make a maypole in Llanidloes, Montgomery- shire, in the late fourteenth century. A domestic tragedy provides elaborate descriptions of the presentation of a posy by a cross-dressed messenger or 'gwahoddwr' at a 'byddinge spinwinge' in Wrexham in 1639, as well as describing his subsequent dance where he turned 'himselfe about' (see p 137, 1.35 and p 138, 1.20).^° Both the life of St Brioc and Gerald of Wales' description of the celebration of the feast of St Elined provide evidence for dancing