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du^J-    iqo3. 


THE    WELSH     PEOPLE 


THE 

WELSH    PEOPLE 


CHAPTERS   ON   THEIR 

ORIGIN,  HISTORY,  LAWS,  LANGUAGE,  LITERATURE 
AND  CHARACTERISTICS 

{WITH  TWO  MAPS) 

BY 

JOHN     RHYS,     M.A., 

PRINCIPAL  OF  JESUS   COLLEGE,   AND   PROFESSOR  OF  CELTIC   IN    THE 
UNIVERSITY   OF   OXFORD, 

AND 

DAVID    BRYNMOR-JONES,    LL.B., 

BENCHEK    OF    THE    HON.    SOCIETY    OF    THE    MIDDLE    TEMPLE,    KINGS   COUNSEL. 
AND    MEMBER   OF   PARLIAMENT. 


THIRD  AND   REVISED   EDITION 


LONDON  :    T.    FISHER    UNWIN 
PATERNOSTER    SQUARE.     1902 


^wppwwp^^»^^w^^i^»^^  I      tt^w^^^ywrw*"^  f  m  ■«■■     i^wp^^w^i  i  wv  »iuiwi  ■■! 


BRADBURY,    AGNEW,    &   CO.    LD.,    PRINTERS, 
LONDON    AND   TONBRIDGK 


^   2  61  2  S 


(^//  rights  resefz'gd.] 


WE    DEDICATE    THIS    BOOK 

TO 

THE    MEMORY  OF 

THE    LATE 

HENRY  BARON  ABERDARE 

OF   DUFFRYN 

AND       OF      THE      LATE 

THOMAS      EDWARD      ELLIS 

OF   CYNLAS 

IN     RECOGNITION     OF    THE    PUBLIC     SERVICES 

RENDERED    BY    THEM    TO    THEIR 

NATIVE    LAND. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION. 


In  issuing  a  third  edition  of  this  book,  we  desire  to  say 
that  we  have  tried  to  profit  by  the  criticisms  passed  upon 
our  work.  We  have  not,  however,  deemed  it  expedient 
at  present  to  enlarge  its  scope  by  deaHng  with  topics  to 
which  it  has  been  alleged,  rightly  or  wrongly,  we  have  not 
given  sufficient  space  or  attention.  Errors  which  have 
been  pointed  out  by  reviewers  or  which  we  have  ourselves 
discovered  have  been,  we  believe,  duly  corrected.  We  also 
wish  to  express  our  gratitude  for  the  kindness  with  which 
these  chapters  have  been  received  by  all  those  who  are 
interested  in  the  past  and  present  condition  of  the  Welsh 
People. 

JOHN  RHYS, 

D.   BRYNMOR-JONES. 

I'jth  April,  1902. 


PREFACE. 


The  following  chapters  concerning  the  Welsh  people 
consist  partly  of  extracts  from  the  Report  of  the  Royal 
Commission  on  Land  in  Wales  and  Monmouthshire,  and 
partly  of  matter  which  we  have  written  since  that  body 
finished  its  work. 

Chapters  I.,  IV.,  X.,  XL,  XII.,  and  XIII.  are  based  upon 
the  Report,  and  were  all  (except  some  paragraphs  in 
Chapter  XII.,  for  which  the  Commission  was  indebted  to 
Mr.  Lleufer  Thomas,  one  of  the  secretaries)  originally 
drafted  by  us,  and  were  adopted  with  many  changes  by  all 
the  Commissioners.  As  now  published  they  have,  how- 
ever, been  greatly  added  to  and  altered,  and  though,  as  they 
appeared  in  the  Report,  they  were  signed  by  all  our 
colleagues,  we  cannot  hold  them  responsible  for  them  in 
their  present  form. 

Chapters  II.,  III.,  V.,  VI.,  VII.,  and  VIII.  are  new. 

The  greater  part  of  Chapter  IX.  was  written  by  Mr. 
Frederic  Seebohm,  LL.D.,  one  of  the  Commissioners,  the 
well-known  author  of  "The  English  Village  Community" 
and  other  works.  This  part  of  the  Report  appears  to  us  so 
valuable  a  contribution  to  economic  history  that  it  ought  to 
be  made  more  accessible  to  students  than  it  is  at  present. 
We  accordingly  republish  it  here  with  Mr.  Seebohm's 
kind  consent. 

For  permission  to  reprint  such  paragraphs  of  the  Report 


"DA 
7o8> 


viii  PREFACE. 

as  we  might  deem  necessary  for  this  work,  we  are  indebted 
to  the  Lords  Commissioners  of  the  Treasury,  whose  consent 
was  courteously  signified  through  the  Right  Honourable 
R.  W.  Hanbury,  M.P. 

In  the  Introduction  which  follows  we  give  some 
necessary  preliminary  information,  and  explain  briefly  the 
scope  and  character  of  the  work. 

We  have  to  acknowledge  our  obligation  for  help  of 
various  kinds  to  Professor  Morris  Jones,  M.A.  ;  Mr.  Henry 
Owen,  B.C.L. ;  Mr.  Cadwaladr  Davies;  Mr.  Edward  Owen, 
F.S.A. ;  Lieut.-Col.  Morgan,  of  Brynbriaiiu,  Swansea ; 
the  late  Principal  Viriamu  Jones,  F.R.S.  ;  Chancellor 
Trevor  Parkins  ;  Mr.  Lleufer  Thomas,  M.A. ;  Mr.  Cecil 
Owen,  M.A. ;  Mr.  T.  E.  Morris,  LL.M.  ;  and  many  other 
friends. 

JOHN   RHYS, 

D.  BRYNMOR-JOXES. 

St.  David's  Day,  1900. 


NOTE  TO  THE   READER. 


In  this  book  where  we  refer  to  "  the  Commission,"  we 
mean,  unless  the  context  shows  the  contrary,  the  Royal 
Commission  on  Land  in  Wales  and  Monmouthshire, 
appointed  on  March  27,  1893.  The  Commissioners 
were : — Earl  Carrington,  G.C.M.G.  (chairman) ;  Lord 
Kenyon  ;  Sir  John  Talbot  Dillwyn  Llewelyn,  Bart.,  M.P.  ; 
Mr.  Edwin  Grove,  chairman  of  the  Monmouthshire  County 
Council;  Mr.  John  Morgan  Griffiths,  of  Penally;  Mr. 
Richard  Jones,  of  Pertheirin  ;  Mr.  PVederic  Seebohm, 
M.A.,  LL.D.  ;  and  ourselves.  The  secretaries  were  Mr. 
Lleufer  Thomas  and  Mr.  C.  E.  Owen. 

The  Minutes  of  the  evidence  taken  by  the  Commission 
are  contained  in  five  Blue-books,  the  references  to  which 
are  as  follows: — Vol.  I.,  (1894)  C — 7439;  Vol.  II.,  (1894) 
C— 7439;  Vol.  III.,  (1895)  C— 7661;  Vol.  IV,  (1895) 
C — 7757  ;  Vol.  V,  (1896)  C — 8222.  In  these  volumes  the 
questions  put  to  the  witnesses,  with  their  answers,  are 
numbered  consecutively  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 
So  in  referring  to  the  evidence  we  do  so  by  giving  the 
number  of  the  question  and  answer  in  these  Minutes. 

When  we  have  occasion  to  refer  to  the  Report  of  this 
Commission  (which  was  signed  and  delivered  on  August  26, 
1896,  and  is  Parly.  Paper  (1896)  C — 8221),  we  use  the 
word  "  Report "  only ;  and  the  words  "  Appendix  to 
Report"  mean  the  Appendix  to  that  Report  (Pari}'.  Paper 
(1896)  C— 8242). 


X  NOTE    TO    THE   READER. 

It  has  been  found  impossible  to  insure  uniformity  in  the 
spelHng  of  Welsh  names  in  this  Avork,  as  we  have  not 
thought  it  advisable  to  depart  altogether  from  the  spellings 
occurring  in  the  documents  consulted.  This  may  occasion 
some  inconvenience  to  the  reader,  but  if  he  should  happen 
to  be  a  student  of  English  history  he  will  readily  recognise 
in  it  an  inconvenience  with  which  he  has  had  to  strus^frle 
in  his  own  field  of  study.  As  regards,  however,  the  history 
of  Wales  and  the  Welsh,  the  case  is  somewhat  aggravated 
by  the  fact  that  not  only  have  we  to  deal  with  names 
belonging  to  widely  different  centuries,  carrying  with  them 
phonetic  modifications,  but  that  in  not  a  few  instances 
a  name  may  have  besides  several  Welsh  spellings,  several 
English  ones  too.  Take,  for  example,  that  of  Gmffuct  or 
Griiffy'd,  of  which  the  most  usual  English  spelling  is  Griffith : 
the  index  shows  a  still  greater  variety.  It  will  simplify 
matters  for  the  English  reader  if  he  will  bear  in  mind  the 
following  points  of  Welsh  orthograph}'  and  phonolog}' : — 

(i)  C  has  always  the  sound  of  /c,  and  formerly  both 
c  and  /v  were  used,  though  the  present  Welsh  alphabet 
does  not  recognise  /-. 

(2)  G  has  never  the  English  sound  of  7'  or  dj:/i  as  in 
/o/t?i  or  James. 

(3)  F  is  sounded  v,  and  both  letters  were  formerly  used, 
but  V  is  not  included  in  the  modern  alphabet. 

(4)  Dd  (printed  D,  d  in  this  work)  has  the  sound  of 
tJi  in  the  English  words  tJiis  and  iJiat,  while  tJi  is  confined 
to  the  sound  of  the  same  digraph  in  thick  and  thin. 

(5)  LI  (here  printed  L,  it)  represents  the  surd  force  of 
unilateral  /,  and  its  sound  stands  to  that  of  /  as  that 
of  tJi  to  d  or  of///  to  V.  It  is  a  single  and  simple  consonant, 
though  Englishmen  sometimes  seem  to  hear  it  as  ////, 
which  has  now  and  then  been  their  way  of  representing 
it,  as,  for  instance,  in  "  The  Record  of  Carnarvon,"  in 
Thlaiidrcthlon  for  Landritio. 


NOTE    rO  THE   READER.  xi 

(6)  R  is  trilled  as  in  Italian,  and  in  I'k  it  is  a  surd 
strengthened  by  the  aspirate. 

(7)  .S  is  never  sounded  .z. 

(8)  W  may  be  either  a  vowel  or  a  consonant,  that  is 
English  00  (approximately)  and  w  :  a  similar  remark  is 
in  part  applicable  to  the  sound  of  z. 

(9)  U  is  sounded  nearly  like  a  thickish  English  /,  as 
in  the  word  dzt,  and  so  under  certain  circumstances  isj^. 
Thus  Gruffy'd  or  Griifficd  is  sounded  very  nearly  as 
indicated  by  the  English  spelling  Griffith^  provided  the 
final  th  have  its  soft  sound.  The  inconsistency  between 
Gruffyd  and  MarcduTt  was  observed  too  late  to  be  cor- 
rected :  the  preferable  spelling  is  Maredyd  or  Meredyd — 
the  early  forms  were  Gripp-iud  and  Marget-iud. 

(10)  The  syllabic  accent  is  ordinarily  on  the  penultimate, 
except  where  the  two  last  syllables  of  a  word  have  been 
run  into  one  in  the  more  modern  stages  of  the  Welsh 
language  :   then  the  word  is  of  course  a  perispomenon. 

J.K. 
D.  B.-J. 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 

♦ 

PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

NOTE  TO  THE  READER      .         .         .^       .         .         .         .  ix 

TABLE  OF   CONTENTS         .......  xiii 

INTRODUCTION      . xv 


CHAP. 

I.  THE    ETHNOLOGY   OF    ANCIENT    WALES 

II.  THE    PICTISH    QUESTION         ...... 

III.  ROMAN    BRITAIN    ........ 

IV.  EARLY    HISTORY    OF    THE    CYMRY  .  '         . 

V.  HISTORY    OF    WALES    FROM     CADWALADR    TO    THE    NORMAN 

CONQUEST  

VI.  THE    ANCIENT    LAWS    AND    CUSTOMS    OF    WALES   . 

VII.  HISTORY    OF    WALES    FROM    I066    TO    I282    . 

VIII.  LEGAL    AND     CONSTITUTIONAL    HISTORY    OF    WALES    FROM 

1282 

IX.  HISTORY    OF    LAND    TENURE    IN    WALES 

X.  THE    RELIGIOUS    MOVEMENT  ..... 

XI.  THE    EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT    ..... 

XII.  LANGUAGE    AND    LITERATURE    OF    WALES      . 

XIII.  RURAL    WALES    AT    THE    PRESENT    DAY 


I 

75 
117 

123 
176 
261 

346 
395 
453 

478 

501 
551 


xiv  COXTENTS. 

PAGK 

APPENDIX    A. — LIST    OF    CANTREFS    AND    CYMWDS     .  .  .       6ll 

„  B. — PRE-ARYAX    SYNTAX    IN    INSULAR    CELTIC  .       617 

„  C. — LIST    OF    LORDSHIPS     UNITED     TO    FORM    NEW 

COUNTIES  OR  ADDED  TO  EXISTING  COUNTIES 
BY    STAT.    27    HENRY    VII.    C.    26      .  .  .       642 

,,  D. — NOTE    ON    THE    WELSH    LAWS     ....       645 


Index  of  Names  and  other  Words 649 

Index  of  Principal  Topics  and  Terms 671 


MAPS. 

T.  map  of  wales  in  cantrefs  and  CYMWDS  .    To  fcict p.       I 

2.    MAP   OF    ROMAN   BRITAIN ,.         p.       J^ 


TABLES. 


A.  CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE     OF    ENGLISH    AND     WELSH     KINGS 

AND    PRINCES    DOWN    TO    IO66       ....     TofaCCp.    I74 

B.  THE    HOUSE    OF    RHODRl  ..-..,,/>.    I74 


INTRODUCTION, 


The  Dominion  or  Principality  of  Wales  may  be  described 
as  a  broad  indented  peninsula  situated  in  the  south-western 
part  of  Great  Britain.  Its  greatest  length  from  north  to 
south  is  about  135  miles,  and  its  breadth  from  east  to  west 
ranges  from  about  35  to  95  miles.  On  the  north  it  is 
bounded  by  the  Irish  Sea  and  the  estuary  of  the  Dee, 
on  the  west  by  St.  George's  Channel,  on  the  south  by 
the  Bristol  Channel,  and  on  the  east  by  Cheshire,  Shrop- 
shire, Herefordshire,  and  Monmouthshire.  The  eastern 
boundary  was  definitely  fixed  by  the  operation  of  the 
St.  27  Henry  VIII.  c.  26,^  though  some  small  variations 
have  subsequently  taken  place. 

The  Principality  is  divided,  as  is  the  case  with  England, 
into  counties,  which,  including  Monmouthshire,  are  thirteen 
in  number.  The  names  of  these  counties  with  their  Welsh 
equivalents  are  : — 


Anglesey 

Carnarvonshire 

Denbighshire 

Flintshire     . 

Merionethshire 

Montgomeryshire 

Brecknockshire 

Cardiganshire 


Ynys  Mon. 

Sir  Caernarfon. 

Sir  Dinbych. 

.  Sir  Fflint. 

Sir  FeirioTiyd. 

Sir  Drefaldwyn. 

Sir  Fr}xheiniog. 

Sir  Aberteifi. 


^  See  below,  pp.  368-74. 


xvi  IXTRODUCTIOX 


Pembrokeshire 

Radnorshire 

Monmouthshire 


Carmarthenshire      .  .      Sir  Gaerfyrdin. 

Glamorfjanshire 

Sir  Ben  fro. 

Sir  Faesyfed. 

Sir  F}'n\vy. 

The  first  six  form  what  is  q;enerallv  known  as  North 
Wales,  and  the  remainder  South  Wales.  Their  boundaries 
preserve,  to  some  extent,  the  ancient  divisions  of  the 
Principalit}'.  There  are  also  two  large  county  boroughs — 
Cardiff  and  Swansea. 

Monmouthshire  is  technically  an  English  county,  but  it 
is  often  for  administrative  purposes,  and  sometimes  by 
legislation,  treated  as  part  of  Wales,  or  grouped  with  some 
of  the  Welsh  counties.^     This  has  been  due  partly  to  the 

1  Monmouthshire  was  constituted  into  a  county  or  shire  by  27  Henry  VIII. 
c.  26,  out  of  territory  that  was  expressly  stated  to  be  part  of  the  Dominion 
of  Wales,  but  it  was,  however,  by  the  same  statute  made  subject  to  the 
courts  at  Westminster,  while  the  rest  of  Wales  was  granted  separate 
jurisdiction,  which  lasted  until  its  abolition  in  1830.     See  infya,  p.  373. 

The  position  of  the  county  at  present  is  in  many  respects  anomalous.  It 
forms  part  of  the  Oxford  Circuit,  and,  therefore,  is  included  in  England  in 
most  matters  concerned  with  the  administration  of  law,  but  in  the  division 
of  the  country  into  county  court  circuits,  the  whole  of  the  county,  along 
with  Cardiff  and  Crickhowell  (in  Wales)  and  Ross  (in  Herefordshire),  is 
grouped  into  what  may  be  regarded  as  a  Welsh  circuit  (No.  24).  Its  inclu- 
sion in  Wales  for  executive  purposes  has  been  the  general,  though  not 
universal,  rule.  It  is  so  recognised  by  the  Registrar-General  for  statistical 
purposes,  by  the  Local  Government  Board  for  poor-law  purposes,  and  by 
the  Home  Office  for  the  purposes  of  the  Mines  Regulation  Acts,  the  Factory 
and  Workshop  Acts,  and  the  Quarries  Act.  In  all  matters  educational, 
Wales  and  Monmouthshire  have  been  treated  as  a  unit  distinct  from 
England,  e.g.,  by  the  appointment  of  Commissioners  to  inquire  into  the 
state  of  Education  in  Wales  in  1846,  and  of  the  Departmental  Committee  to 
inquire  into  Intermediate  and  Higher  Education  in  Wales  in  1S80-81,  as  well 
as  by  the  Subsequent  passing  of  the  Intermediate  Education  Act  of  1889.  It 
was  similarly  dealt  with  by  the  Schools  Inquiry  Commission  of  1864,  which 
issued  a  separate  report  (vol.  xx.)  on  the  schools  of  "  Monmouthshire  and 
Wales"  ;  by  the  Court  of  Chancery  in  Schemes  for  the  re-organization  of 
Charitable  Trusts;  by  the  Oxford  University  Commissioners  in  Statutes 
made  under  the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Act,  1877;  and  by 
the  Privy  Council  in  the  granting  of  charters  to  the  University  College  of 


INTRODUCTION.  xvii 

similarity  of  its  development  to  that  of  the  adjoining 
county  of  Glamorgan,  and  partly  to  the  fact  that  a  large 
proportion  of  its  inhabitants  are  Welsh  as  to  their  origin, 
language,  and  habits.  In  any  historical  inquiry  as  to  the 
Cymric  people  it  must  be  looked  on  as  Welsh,  and  so  in 
this  work  we  generally  use  the  term  Wales  as  including 
Monmouthshire. 

These  thirteen  counties  are  divided  into  hundreds, 
poor-law  unions,  highway  districts,  sanitary  districts,  and 
parishes  for  the  purposes  of  local  government ;  into  petty 
sessional  divisions,  county  court  districts,  and  circuits  for 
the  administration  of  justice  ;  and  into  borough  and  county 
constituencies  for  the  appointment  of  parliamentary  repre- 
sentatives. There  are  also  ecclesiastical  divisions  similar  to 
those  that  exist  in  England.^  The  most  ancient  political 
division  of  Wales  about  which  we  have  any  sure  knowledge 
is   that    into  cantrefs   and    cymwds.      This    must    not    be 

South  Wales  and  Monmouthshire,  and  to  the  University  of  Wales.  Both 
the  Education  Department  and  the  Charity  Commissioners,  in  their  super- 
intendence and  inspection  of  elementary  and  intermediate  schools  respec- 
tively, also  include  Monmouthshire  in  Wales,  and  reports  specially  dealing 
with  Wales  are  reprinted,  in  separate  book-form,  from  the  annual  general 
reports  made  by  these  two  Departments.  Monmouthshire  was,  however, 
treated  as  a  part  of  England  (and  not  of  Wales)  in  the  Welsh  Sunday 
Closing  Act  of  1881,  as  it  has  also  been  in  nearly  all  matters  agricultural, 
e.g.,  by  the  Royal  Commission  on  Agriculture  (1880) ;  by  the  Royal  Com- 
mission on  Labour  (in  its  inquiry  as  to  the  agricultural  labourer  in  1892-93), 
and  also,  we  believe,  by  the  Royal  Commission  on  Agricultural  Depression 
(1893-6),  but  not  by  the  Commission  on  the  Employment  of  Children, 
Young  Persons,  and  Women  in  Agriculture  (1867).  The  Board  of  Agricul- 
ture also  treats  Monmouthshire  as  a  part  of  England  in  the  preparation 
of  their  agricultural  returns,  as  well  as  in  all  other  matters. 

^  A  list  of  the  hundreds  in  each  county,  with  the  names  of  the  parishes 
in  each  hundred,  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix  to  the  Report,  pp.  361 
et  seq.  The  student  should  compare  this  list  with  that  of  the  Welsh 
parishes,  according  to  cymwds  printed  in  the  "  Myvyrian  Archaiology," 
ii.  613-628.  For  a  list  of  the  poor-law  unions,  see  the  Appendix 
cited  above,  pp.  378-403,  and  of  the  highway  districts,  see  the  same 
Appendix,  pp.  404-408.  Much  information  as  to  Wales  and  its  place 
names  is  given  in  Carlisle's  "  Topography  of  Wales,"  Lond,  1811. 
W.P.  I? 


xviii  IXTRODUCTION, 

confounded  with  the  distribution  of  the  Cymric  land  among 
the  regal  or  princely  families  which  resulted  in  small 
kingdoms  or  principalities.  It  was  regarded  as  old  in  the 
time  of  Howel  £)a  (907-950),  and  the  boundaries  of  the 
cantrefs  and  cymwds  were  then  well  enough  ascertained  for 
practical  purposes.  We  think  it  useful  to  reproduce  the 
map  of  Wales  according  to  cantrefs  and  cymwds  made  by 
William  Owen  (known  later  as  Dr.  Owen  Pughe)  about 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  We  ought  to  say 
that  this  map  cannot  be  taken  as  representing  boundaries 
with  absolute  accurac}',  but  it  may  be  found  of  some  service 
as  showing  the  geographical  relations  of  the  various  areas. 

There  is  yet  another  division  of  Welsh  land  distinct  in 
origin,  and  based  on  different  conceptions  from  that  into 
cantrefs  and  cymwds,  which  must  be  mentioned,  though  it 
has  now  little  or  no  practical  political  significance — that 
into  seigniories,  lordships-marchers,  lordships,  manors,  and 
fees.  These  feudal  divisions  were  the  result  of  the  Norman 
Conquest  of  South  Wales  and  the  Marches,  and  of  the 
final  conquest  of  the  Principality  of  Edward  I.  They  are 
often  conterminous  with  other  areas.  ^ 

We  think  it  well  to  add  a  few  observations  as  to  the 
population  of  Wales  at  different  periods,  for  without 
bearing  in  mind  the  number  of  persons  concerned  it  is 
not  possible  to  appreciate  historical  events  correctly,  or  to 
see  the  past  conditions  of  things  in  true  perspective. 

Beginning  with  the  known  and  proceeding  to  the  con- 
jectural statistics,  we  find  that  according  to  the  census 
returns  of  1891  the  population  of  England  and  Wales  was 
29,002,525,  and  that  of  Wales  (including  Monmouthshire) 
was    1,776,405  ;    so  that  the  population  of  the  latter  area 

*  As  to  the  lordships,  etc.,  see  the  "  Memorandum  on  the  Lordships  and 
Manors  of  Wales  and  Monmouthshire"  in  the  Appendix  to  the  Report, 
pp.  437  et  seq.  In  the  Principality,  in  the  limited  sense — the  land  acquired 
by  Edward  I. — the  cymwds  were  treated  as  in  effect  lordships  that  passed  by 
conquest  into  the  hands  of  the  Crown.   See  below,  p.  281,  n.  i,  305,  256,  403. 


INTROD  UCTION.  xix 

was  about  one-sixteenth  of  that  of  the  former.^  Coming 
to  the  first  complete  and  systematic  enumeration  of 
England  and  Wales — the  census  of  1801 — we  find  that  the 
figures  for  England  and  Wales  are  8,892,536,  and  for 
Wales  and  Monmouthshire  586,634.  From  them  it  appears 
that  the  population  of  Wales  and  Monmouthshire  was  a 
little  over  one-fifteenth  of  that  of  the  whole  of  England 
and  Wales.^ 

Before  1801  no  direct  and  trustworthy  enumeration 
of  the  inhabitants  of  this  country  had  taken  place,  but 
numerous  estimates  had  been  made  from  time  to  time. 
Three  such  estimates  of  the  population  towards  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century  have  been  made  at  different 
times  by  three  statisticians,  acting  without  concert,  and  the 
results  differ  but  slightly.  Perhaps  the  best  known  of 
these  computations  is  that  made  by  Gregory  King.  The 
basis  of  his  calculation  is  the  number  of  houses  returned  in 
1690  by  the  officers  who  made  the  last  collection  of  the 
hearth  money,  and  the  conclusion  at  which  he  arrived  was 
that  the  population  of  England  was  nearly  5,500,000.  We 
find  that  the  number  of  houses  in  Wales  (excluding 
Monmouthshire)  according  to  the  Hearth  Book  of  1690 
was  77,921.  Assuming  that  on  a  general  average  every 
house  so  returned  contained  five  persons,  the  population  of 
Wales  amounted  to  389,605.  If  we  add  this  number  to 
the  population  of  England,  we  get  a  total  of  5,889,605,  or 
nearly  six  millions.  So  the  population  of  Wales  (excluding 
Monmouthshire)  was  then  a  little  more  than  one-fifteenth 
of  that  of  England  and  Wales,  and  if  Monmouthshire  be 
added  on  this  basis  to  Wales,  the  population  of  Wales 
plus  Monmouthshire  would  come  out  at  nearly  one- 
fourteenth  of  that  of  England  and  Wales.  ^ 

^  App.  to  Report,  p.  272.  ^  Ibid. 

3  See  King's  "Natural  and  Political  Observations"  (i6g6).     A  second 
calculation  was  made  on  the  basis  of  returns  made  to  William  III.  as  to  the 


XX  INTRODUCTION. 

For  periods  earlier  than  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  estimates  of  the  population  of  this  country  are 
still  more  speculative.  McCulloch  puts  the  population  of 
England  and  Wales  at  the  time  of  the  Domesday  survey 
at  2,150,000.^  Thorold  Rogers  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  from  the  fourteenth  to  nearly  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  it  could  not  have  exceeded  two  to  two- 
and-a-half  millions.  He  bases  this  opinion  partly  on  the 
postulate  that  the  number  of  persons  in  a  country,  chiefly 
subsisting  on  one  kind  of  grain,  will  be  almost  exactly 
equal  to  the  number  of  quarters  of  wheat  which  is  annually 
produced,  and  on  the  estimate  that  during  that  time  the 
maximum  produce  of  wheat  in  any  one  year  could  not 
have  been  more  than  the  higher  figure  just  given  ;  and 
partly  on  the  direct  evidence  of  taxing  rolls,  and  especially 
records  of  poll  taxes.-  We  have  seen  that  the  ratio  of 
the  population  of  Wales  and  Monmouthshire  to  that  of 
the  whole  of  England  and  Wales,  on  Gregory  King's 
estimate,  was  in  1690,  1:14.  If  we  assume  that  ratio 
to  have  been  constant  (except  for  slight  and  temporar}^ 
variations)  from  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century 
to  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  and  adopt  the  higher  limit  given 


number  of  the  adherents  of  the  different  rehgious  denominations,  and  it  puts 
the  population  of  England  and  Wales  at  5,200,000.  (Macaulay,  "  Hist,  of 
England,"  c.  3.)  The  third  important  estimate  is  that  of  Finlaison,  who, 
after  subjecting  the  ancient  parochial  registers  to  modern  tests,  calculates 
that  towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  number  was  a  little 
under  5,200,000.  (See  Population  Returns,  1831  ;  Macaulay,  ubi  supra; 
Lecky's  "Hist,  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  i.,  p  197; 
Macpherson's  *' Annals  of  Commerce,"  ii.  68,  634,  674,  and  iii.  134). 

'  McCulloch's  "Statistical  Account  of  the  British  Empire"  (1847),  vol.  i. 
p.  396.  Mr.  York  Powell  estimates  the  population  in  the  area  covered  by 
the  survey  at  2,000.000  :  "  Social  England,"  vol.  i.  p.  240.  Mr.  A.  L.  Smith 
puts  it  at  the  same  figure  :  Ibid.,  p.  357. 

-  "  Dictionary  of  EngHsh  History"  (Lond.  1885),  art.  Population.  See 
too,  Rogers'  "  History  of  Agriculture  and  Prices  in  England,"  vol.  i.  pp.  50 
et  seq.;  and  "  England's  Industrial  and  Commercial  Supremacy."  pp.  44-64. 


INT  ROD  UCTIOX.  xxi 

by  Thorold  Rogers — 2,500,000,  the  population  of  Wales 
and  Monmouthshire  could  not  during  that  period  have 
been  greater  than  about  178,000. 

We  are,  however,  not  justified  in  assuming  that  the  ratio 
1:14  truly  represents  the  proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Wales  and  Monmouthshire  to  that  of  England  and  Wales 
at  the  time  of  the  Edwardian  conquest  in  1282,  or  even  in 
the  sixteenth  century.  We  could  do  so  safely  only  if  we 
found  that  the  economic  development  of  the  two  areas  had 
proceeded  at  equal  rates.  The  facts,  however,  indicate 
that  this  was  not  the  case  before  the  end  of  the  great  war. 
For  instance,  the  total  acreage  of  Wales  and  Monmouth- 
shire is  5,121,013;^  in  1795  the  waste  area  was  1,696,827 
acres- — that  is,  more  than  one-third  of  the  whole  was  wild 
and  uninclosed.  The  mountainous  character  and  the 
climatic  conditions  place  the  country  at  a  disadvantage 
in  regard  to  the  production  of  cereals  as  compared  with 
the  greater  part  of  England,  and  the  progress  of  agriculture 
was  very  slow  until  the  beginning  of  this  century.  These 
and  other  considerations^  lead  us  to  believe  that  the 
population  of  Wales  and  Monmouthshire  in  comparison 
with  that  of  England  and  Wales  in  1282  was  proportionally 
smaller  than  it  is  to-day,  and  that  the  rate  of  its  increase 
has  been  slower  than  that  of  England  and  Wales  as  a 
whole.  We  think,  therefore,  that  the  population  of  Wales 
and  Monmouthshire  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century 
was  not  greater  than  1 50,000, "*  and  if  McCulloch's  estimate 
as  to  the  number  at  the  time  of  the  Domesday  survey  is 
fairly  accurate,  it  was  still  less  in  the  eleventh  century. 

1  Report,  p.  672. 

"  App.  to  Report,  p.  214. 

3  E.g.  The  non-existence  of  any  large  towns.  Cardiff  (which  had  in 
1891  a  population  of  128,915)  had  only  1,870  inhabitants  according  to  the 
census  of  1801. 

'*  Thorold  Rogers  places  it  as  low  as  131,040.  "  England's  Ind.  and  Comm 
Supremacy,"  p.  48. 


xxii  INTRODUCTION. 

No  attempt  to  estimate  the  population  of  Wales  or  of 
the  western  part  of  the  island  at  tim^es  earlier  than  the 
Norman  Conquest  can  be  made  with  success,  for  we  have 
no  materials  at  all  on  which  to  base  an}'  exact  calculation. 
Giraldus,  writing  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  says  : — 
"  For  as  the  mountains  of  Eryri  could  supply  pasturage  for 
all  the  herds  of  cattle  in  Wales  if  collected  together,  so 
could  the  Isle  of  Mon  provide  a  requisite  quantity  of  corn 
for  all  the  inhabitants  ;  on  which  account  there  is  an  old 
British  proverb,  '  Mon  mam  Gymru,'  that  is,  '  Mon  the 
mother  of  W'ales.  '  "^  If  the  saying  was  then  really  old  and 
this  explanation  is  correct,  we  may  infer  that  in  the  far  distant 
days  of  Cuneda  and  Cadwaladr  the  population  was  very 
scanty.  In  any  case  the  notion  which  was  formerly  widely 
entertained,  and  still  lingers  in  some  quarters,  that  Wales 
was  in  early  times  very  populous  is  quite  unfounded. 

It  is,  however,  not  only  in  regard  to  their  numbers  in  the 
past  that  the  view  popularly  taken  of  their  own  histor}'  by 
the  Welsh  is  erroneous.  It  is  not  easy  to  state  briefl}',  and 
at  the  same  time  quite  accurately,  the  current  theory  ;  but 
we  think  it  may  be  fairly  expressed  thus  :  That  they  are 
the  descendants  of  a  great  homogeneous  nation  called 
Cymry  or  Britons  (now  referred  to  as  Ancient  Britons); 
that  in  distant  centuries  they  formed  a  mighty  state  or 
empire,  the  dominions  of  which  comprised  not  only  Britain 
but  larger  territories  on  the  Continent  as  well  ;  that  they 
were  ruled  over  by  a  line  of  illustrious  kings  which  stretched 
up  to  Brutus,  son  of  y^ncas,  and  from  him  to  Noah,  who 
ordered  the  world  anew  after  the  Deluge  ;  but  that  they, 
owing  to  unsuccessful  wars,  bad  government,  and  all  sorts 
of  mischances,  lost  not  only  their  continental  possessions, 
but  also  the  Crown  of  Britain  ;  and  at  last  became  confined 
in  what  is  now  Cymru,  and  reduced  into  subjection  through 
the  "  fraud  and  rapacit}^ "  of  the  Saxon. 

'  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  "  Descriptio,"  i.  c.  6. 


INT  ROD  UCTION.  xxiii 

Now  all  this  is  not  mere  nonsense,  and  as  to  ever}- 
proposition  that  goes  to  make  up  this  bundle  of  historical 
ideas  there  is  some  sound  basis  of  fact.  It  is  true  that  the 
determining  element  in  the  composition  of  the  Cymry  of 
what  is  now  Wales  was  Brythonic ;  that  the  Brythons 
belonged  to  a  Celtic  race  which,  before  Caesar's  time,  had 
spread  over  more  than  half  this  island  and  a  considerable 
part  of  the  Continent  ;  that  there  were  many  British  kings 
who  were  very  important  in  their  day,  and  who  had  long 
and  well-known  pedigrees  ;  and  that  a  confederation  of 
Celtic  tribes — Br}'thonic  and  Goidelic — did  most  stubbornly 
resist  the  Teutonic  tribes  which  invaded  the  island  and 
settled  in  it  after  the  departure  of  the  Roman  legions,  and 
that  for  a  long  time  it  maintained  its  domination  in  the 
western  half  of  Britain.  Yet  the  representation  of  the 
early  history  of  the  Welsh  given  by  the  theory  we  have 
summarised  makes  a  picture  in  which  things  and  persons 
are  exaggerated  and  distorted,  and  by  adopting  it  the  chain 
of  events  is  thrown  out  of  gear — that  is,  if  our  conclusions 
are  correct.  For  we  feel  bound  to  repeat,  in  regard  to  the 
Brythons  and  the  Cymry,  what  a  famous  Greek  historian 
said  about  the  Hellenes,  that  judging  from  the  evidence 
which  we  are  able  to  trust,  "  after  most  careful  inquiry," 
we  should  imagine  that  "past  ages  were  not  great  either 
in  wars  or  anything  else." 

So  far  as  we  can  make  out,  the  beginning  of  the  history 
of  the  Cymry,  considered  as  a  separate  and  independent 
nation,  must  be  associated  with  the  migration  into  what  is 
now  North  Wales  of  a  Brythonic  tribe,  whose  chief  was 
Cuneda  Wledig,  and  which  came  from  the  North.  This 
invasion  took  place  not  long  after  the  time  when  the  Roman 
occupation  ceased.  Before  this,  however,  there  were  both 
Goidels  and  Brythons  in  Wales.  A  glance  at  the  map 
of  Roman  Britain  below  will  show  the  relative  positions 
of  these  two   Celtic   races.     The  former  were  settled  over 


xxiv  INT  ROD  UCTION. 

a  part  of  North  Wales  and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  South, 
while  the  latter  had  spread  over  the  central  area  to  the 
coast ;  but  we  must  add  that  there  were  in  the  same  parts 
besides  these  Celts  certain  non-Aryan  elements,  which 
must  be  looked  on  as  aboriginal,  though  more  or  less 
completely  assimilated  by  the  first  Celtic  conquerors. 
This  was  the  position  when  Cuneda,  who  seems  to  have 
assumed  the  authority  of  the  Roman  military  officer 
called  the  Dtix  Britannice,  established  his  rule  over  Wales, 
and  united  the  Celtic  tribes  of  the  west  of  Britain  into 
a  kind  of  confederation  under  his  leadership,  which  was 
soon  forced  to  defend  the  land  against  divers  streams  of 
Teutonic  settlers,  and  which  under  his  successors  for  a 
long  time  struggled  to  retain  its  supremacy. 

It  was  during  this  contest  that  the  term  Cymro  (which 
means     compatriot),   became    a    national    name    covering 
the    members   of  all   the  Celtic  tribes    and  kindreds  who 
acknowledged    the    over-lordship   of  the    line  of    Cuneda. 
Such,  if  the  matter  is  looked  at,  not  through  the  mists  of 
Neo-Druidism   or   the  bright  yet   delusive  atmosphere  of 
mediaeval  romance,  but  in  the  clearer  light  of  the  evidence 
afforded    by   inscriptions,  language,  laws,    and    reasonably 
trustworthy  chroniclers,  seems  to  us    the    true   conclusion 
as  to  the  origin  of  the  Cymry.     If  we  are  right,  the  Welsh 
people  of  to-day  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  they 
are  not  the  decayed  and  disconsolate  remnant  of  a  once 
great  nation,  but  that  in  the  main  they  are  the  descendants 
of  Celtic    races  which   though   absorbed  into    the  English 
polity,  after  a  prolonged  struggle  for  independence,  have 
steadily    progressed    by    the    side    of  their    conquerors    in 
regard  to  all   that  goes   to   make   up   civilisation,  and   by 
combining  an  obstinate  vitality  with  a  certain  happy  power 
of  adapting   themselves    to  new  circumstances,   have  suc- 
ceeded in  retaining  their  language  and   some  of  the  best 
characteristics  of  their  ancestors. 


IXTRODUCTION,  xxv 

VVe  are  well  aware  that  there  are  grave  imperfections 
in  our  treatment  of  many  of  the  problems  we  discuss. 
We  have,  however,  tried  to  give  them  true  solutions,  ever 
keeping  before  our  minds  the  motto  of  the  new-born 
University  of  Wales — Goreu  awen  gwirione'd  {Optima  musa 
Veritas).  That  we  have,  as  to  every  point,  succeeded  we 
do  not  of  course  assert ;  and  indeed  we  advance  our  con- 
clusions on  controverted  questions  in  no  dogmatic  spirit, 
but  in  tentative  fashion,  though  we  cannot  always  be  saying 
so  in  the  text.  Nor  do  we  present  this  collection  of 
chapters  as  a  history  of  the  Welsh  people,  but  rather  as 
a  contribution  to  such  a  work,  which  may  be  useful  to 
students  at  our  national  colleges  and  to  others  who  are 
seriouslv  interested  in  thing's  Welsh.  Yet  there  is  a  con- 
necting  thread  of  purpose  running  through  the  book,  as 
will  be  seen  by  a  brief  description  of  the  subject-matter 
of  each  chapter. 

In  the  first,  second,  and  third  chapters  we  deal  with 
the  ethnology  and  origin  of  the  Cymry,  and  in  order  to 
justify  and  explain  our  views,  discuss  minutely  some  of 
the  questions  connected  with  the  so-called  "  Picts "  and 
the  distribution  of  tribes  in  this  island  during  the  Roman 
occupation.  Having  shown  that  the  Cymry  emerge  as  a 
separate  nation  under  the  rule  of  Cuneda  and  his  descen- 
dants when  that  occupation  ceased,  we  pass  on  to  state 
ver}^  briefly  in  the  fourth  chapter  their  history  down  to  the 
death  of  Cadwaladr,  when  their  kingdom  in  its  more 
extensive  sense  came  to  an  end.  In  the  next  (the  fifth) 
chapter  we  treat  of  the  history  of  Wales  from  that  time 
to  the  Norman  Conquest  of  England.  Then  we  stop  to 
describe  the  legal  organisation  and  social  condition  of  the 
Cymry  in  the  tenth  and  the  immediately  succeeding 
centuries.  In  the  seventh  chapter  we  describe  the  way  in 
which  the  greater  part  of  Wales  was  gradually  conquered 
b\-   the  Normans,  and  sketch   the  history  of  the   last  and 

W.P.  c 


xxvi  INTROD  UCTION. 

greatest  Cymric  principality  to  its  transference  by  conquest 
to  Edward  I.  From  this  event  the  history  of  the  Welsh  in 
regard  to  wars,  foreign  policy,  and  general  affairs  becomes 
so  merged  into  that  of  Great  Britain  that  it  is  hardly 
susceptible  of  separate  treatment  in  a  continuous  narrative 
form.  They  have,  however,  a  particular  history  as  to  many 
of  the  institutions,  conditions,  and  activities,  that  create 
or  maintain  the  life  of  a  nation.  It  is  with  some  of  these 
things  that  our  eighth,  ninth,  tenth,  eleventh,  and  twelfth 
chapters  are  concerned.  There  we  try  to  show  how,  for 
nearly  all  purposes  of  government,  Wales  has  become 
organised  in  the  same  way  as  England  ;  how  the  old 
Cymric  tribal  notions  of  land-holding  and  administration 
(which  became  by  natural  and  eas\'  stages  very  like  to 
those  of  the  feudal  system)  gradual!}'  disappeared  under 
the  influence  of  Norman-English  officials,  and  by  degrees 
developed  into  the  land  tenure  of  to-day  ;  how  a  religious 
movement  commencing  in  the  sixteenth  century  culmi- 
nated in  a  great  revival  in  the  eighteenth,  and  brought 
about  the  predominance  of  Nonconformity  in  the  Welsh 
counties,  the  preservation  and  growth  of  Cymraeg,  and 
an  intellectual  renaissance  ;  and  how  this  movement  in  its 
turn  created  a  demand  for  schools  and  colleges,  which  has 
resulted  in  the  formation  of  a  system  of  Welsh  public 
education  as  perfect  as  any  to  be  found  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  After  that  we  pass  on  to  give  some  information 
as  to  the  language  and  literature  of  the  Welsh  ;  and  finally 
in  the  thirteenth  chapter  we  attempt  to  exhibit  the  charac- 
teristic features  of  the  most  typical  classes  of  the  population 
of  the  Principalit}-  in  our  own  day. 


THE     WELSH     PEOPLE 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    ETHNOLOGY    OF    ANCIENT    WALES. 

In  this  chapter  we  propose  to  state  briefly  what  com- 
parative philology  and  ethnology  have  to  say  as  to  the 
races  of  ancient  Britain,  especially  those  to  be  found  in 
what  is  now  Wales,  and  what  admixture  has  taken  place 
there  in  later  times. 

Archaeologists  who  have  studied  the  contents  of  the 
ancient  barrows  or  burial  mounds  of  this  country  find  that 
the  human  remains  which  they  detect  in  them  belong  to 
more  than  one  race.  The  barrows  of  the  earliest  date  are 
long,  and  yield  long  skulls,  while  the  round  barrows,  which 
are  later,  show  the  remains  of  a  short-skulled  people  ;  but 
the  round  barrows  sometimes  contain  long  skulls  as  well 
as  short  ones,  a  fact  which  suggests  that  the  conquerors 
began  early  to  intermarry  with  the  conquered  population. 
Looking  at  the  same  order  of  questions  from  the  point  of 
view  of  language,  one  may  say,  that  the  first  race  as  to  whose 
presence  in  this  country  in  ancient  times  there  can  be  no 
manner  of  doubt  is  the  Celtic  ;  and  it  is  also  a  matter 
admitting  of  no  philological  doubt,  that  the  Celts  of  the 
British  Isles  were  Aryans,  speaking  related  languages 
which  fall  into  two  groups,  the  Goidelic  and  the  Brythonic. 
The  Goidelic  group  embraces  at  the  present  day  the  Gaelic 

W.P.  B 


2  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

of  Ireland,  of  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  of  Scotland.  The 
Brythonic  group,  on  the  other  hand,  is  now  represented 
by  Welsh,  and  the  Armoric  dialects  of  Brittany  or 
ILydaw.  To  this  group  also  belonged  old  Cornish,  which 
has  been  extinct  as  a  spoken  language  for  somewhat  over 
a  century. 

These  two  groups  of  Goidelic  and  Brythonic  languages 
may  be  regarded  as  variations  of  two  ancient  tongues, 
Goidelic  and  Brythonic  respectively,  which  differed  from 
one  another  somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  Latin  and 
the  Umbro-Samnite  dialects  of  ancient  Italy.  Thus  the 
Goidelic  for  who  is  in  Manx  Gaelic  qiiei,  qiioi,  but  in  Welsh 
pwy :  compare  Latin  qui,  qiiis,  Oscan  pis,  accusative  pirn. 
Similarly  the  Goidelic  for  five  is  in  Manx  qiieig,  but  in 
WoXsh.  picvzp  (and  pimp^)  :  compare  Latin  qiiinque,  whence 
the  derivatives  qtnnttis,  "  fifth,"  Qnintus  (for  quinctus, 
Qiiinctus),  and  Qiiinctms,  Quintius,  which  we  have  as  an 
Oscan  name  in  IIo/xTrTte?,  Latinised  Pomptiiis,  and  Pontius^ 
as  in  the  well-known  name  of  the  Samnite  Poiithis  Pilate. 
This  distinction  of  qii  and  /  is,  it  is  needless  to  say,  only 
one  of  the  differences  which  must  have  existed  between 
early  Goidelic  and  early  Brythonic  ;  but  it  has  the  advan- 
tage of  forming  a  conspicuous  and  decisive  mark  wherever 
it  happens  to  occur.  Nobody,  however,  supposes  that  qii 
and  p  are  equally  original  here  :  qu  is  the  older,  and  where 
its  equivalent  occurs  as/,  this  last  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
simplification  of  the  qu,  but  the  simplification  appears  to 
date  very  early.  Thus  a  Roman  inscription-  at  Hexham 
was  set  up  in  honour  of  a  god  called  therein  Apollini 
Map07io,  where  Mapono  may  be  regarded  as  cognate  with 

1  Pimp,  "five,"  and  piviphet,  "fifth,"  occur  among  the  old  Welsh  glosses 
in  the  Bodleian  manuscript,  Auct.  F.  4 — 32  ("Gram.  Celtica,"  p.  1060,  and 
"Transactions  of  the  Philological  Society,"  i8fo-i,  p.  237),  and  the  regular 
spelling  in  modern  Welsh  would  be  pymp  and  py?ned,  which  represent  the 
actual  pronunciation  in  the  spoken  language  of  most  of  South  Wales. 

-  See  the  Lerlin  "Corpus  Inscriptionum  Latinarum,"  vol.  vii.,  No.  1345. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.  3 

a  Brythonic  or  Gaulish  nominative,  Mapono-s}  a  word 
which  in  old  Welsh  would  have  been  mapon,  now  inabou, 
"  a  boy  or  youth,"  derived  from  the  simple  form  map,  now 
mab,  "a  boy  or  son."  This  is  in  Irish  mace  or  mac,  for  an 
early  Goidelic  magtta-s,  genitive  niaqici,  which  occurs 
frequently  in  the  Ogam  inscriptions  of  Britain  and  Ireland.^ 
All  this,  however,  only  takes  us  back  at  most  to  the  Roman 
occupation,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  have  no  data  from 
a  time  when  Brythons  and  Gauls  had  not  already  made 
qii  into  p  ;  and  the  question  arises  which  of  the  two  groups 

1  In  Gaulish  the  nominatives  corresponding  to  those  in  us  and  U7ii  (like 
dominus,  regnum  in  Latin)  ended  in  os  and  on  respectively,  as  in  Greek,  and 
where  the  declension  is  fairly  certain  we  shall  write  them  so  ;  but  Latin  autho- 
rities using  us  in  two  declensions  leave  us  sometimes  unable  to  decide  between 
the  o  and  u  stems.     In  that  case  we  shall  follow  the  Latin  in  using  us. 

^  Speaking  more  precisely,  Ogam  inscriptions  occur  (i)  in  Wales,  mostly 
South  Wales,  but  North  Wales  has  one,  found  in  the  parish  of  Clocaenog,  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Ruthin  ;  (2)  in  Devon  and  Cornwall,  and  one  remarkable 
instance  occurs  at  Silchester,  in  Hampshire  ;  (3)  in  Ireland,  mostly  in  the  south 
of  that  country  ;  (4)  in  the  Isle  of  Man;  and  (5)  in  Scotland,  including  Orkney 
and  Shetland,  but  these  are  mostly  late  in  comparison  with  the  bulk  of  the 
others.  The  older  Ogam  characters  consist  of  scores  or  notches  on  the 
edge  of  the  stones  used,  and  the  following  is  the  alphabet  of  the  most  ancient 
monuments,  with  the  continuous  line  representing  the  edge  of  the  stone 
inscribed  : — 

I      I   I      I  I  I  ^5    ^,         '^,  s,  n; 


H^    d,         t,  c  qu 

I II  III  III!  Hill 
I II  III  nil  Hill 

M,  g,   ng,    /,         r; 


I    I 


I     I   I     I   I   I     I   I   I 
A,    0,       u,         e. 


The  classification  of  the  vowels  into  broad  and  slender  suggests  that  the 
inventor  was  a  grammarian  ;  and  the  group  which  stands  second  in  the  usual 
arrangement  was  probably  the  first  to  be  fixed,  as  it  is  found  that  h,  d,  t,  c,  qu, 
represent  the  initials  of  the  Goidelic  words  for  i,  2,  3,  4,  5,  in  the  oldest  forms 
which  can  be  inferred  for  them,  thus  :  —a  hbina-,  a  diwu,  a  ttrl-.  a  ccetiior, 
aqqtjieqqne.  See  Rhys's  "  Outlines  of  the  Phonology  of'^Manx  Gaelic  "  (in  vol. 
xxxiii.  of  the  Publications  of  the  Manx  Society),  p.  73,  also  pp.  41,  58,  59,  60, 
88,  102,  178. 

B   2 


'^\d^\ 


'fffjfC; 


4  rH£    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

of  Celts,  Brythons  or  Goidels,  came  here  first,  and  also 
whence  they  came.  The  answer  to  this  latter  question 
must  be,  that  in  all  probability  they  first  came  from  the 
nearest  part  of  the  Continent,  from  the  land  where  the  bulk 
of  the  Celts  dwelt  in  the  time  of  Caesar,  namely,  Gaul, 
comprising  ancient  France,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  and 
North  Italy,  also  parts  of  Spain.  To  the  question  of  the 
order  of  their  coming  the  answer  is  sufficiently  indicated 
by  the  relative  positions  of  the  peoples  speaking  Goidelic 
and  Brythonic  respectively  at  the  present  day.  For  it  may 
be  regarded  as  fairly  certain  that  those  who  are  found 
driven  furthest  to  the  west  were  the  earlier  comers,  namely 
the  Goidels. 

Goidelic  was  a  phase  of  the  language  of  the  Celtae  in 
Caesar's  restricted  use  of  that  word,  and  we  may,  in  this 
context,  call  the  language  Goidelo-Celtic  orCeltican  ;^  but 
we  must  suppose  its  place,  at  any  rate  as  a  dominant 
speech  on  the  Continent,  to  have  been  taken  by  Gaulish 
some  time  -  anterior  to  Caesar's  Gallic  wars.  Gaulish 
belonged  to  the  same  group  as  Brythonic  ;  or,  to  be  more 
exact,  Brythonic  may  be  treated  as  the  Gaulish  spoken  in 
Britain,  as  we  shall  see  presently.  Both  may  be,  however, 
included  under  the  term  Galatic  or  Galato-Celtic. 

The  ancient  distinction  of  speech  between  the  Celts 
implies  a  corresponding  difference  of  race  and  institutions, 
a  difference  existing  indeed  long  before  Celts  of  any 
description  came  to  these  islands.  Perhaps  few  matters 
of  prehistoric  archaeology  have  recently  been  more  dis- 
cussed than  the  distinction  between  Celticans  or  Celts  of 
the  older  stock  and  the  Galatic  warriors  by  whom  they 
were  largely  conquered.  The  two  peoples  are  found  to 
have  differed  in  their  manner  of  disposing  of  their  dead, 
and  each  had  weapons  characteristic  of  its  own  civilisation. 

1  See  the  *•  Transactions  of  the  (London)  Philological  Society  "  for  1891-3, 
pp.  104,  105. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.  5 

The  interments  with  the  most  important  remains  of  the 
older  stock  are  found  mostly  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
Alps,  including  the  upper  portions  of  the  basin  of  the 
Danube  and  the  plains  of  North  Italy.^  This  older  Celtic 
world  began,  about  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  to  be  invaded 
by  the  Galatic  Celts,  whose  home  may  be  inferred  to  have 
consisted  of  Central  and  Northern  Germany  and  of  Belgium; 
and  the  remains  of  these  Galatic  Celts  are  to  be  studied  in 
the  great  burial-places  between  the  Seine,  the  Marne,  and 
the  Rhine — in  the  country,  in  short,  from  which  they 
invaded  Britain.  It  has  been  surmised  that  this  movement 
was  begun  by  the  Brythons  between  the  time  of  Pytheas, 
in  the  fourth  century  B.C.,  and  the  visits  of  Julius  Caesar. 
The  latter  mentions,  ii.  4,  a  certain  Diviciacos,  king  of 
the  Suessiones,  a  Beigic  people  which  has  left  its  name  to 
Soissons,  as  the  most  powerful  prince  in  Gaul  and  as  ruling 
also  over  Britain.  This  was,  moreover,  late  enough  to  be 
within  the  memory  of  men  living  in  Caesar's  time.  We 
have  also  Caesar's  general  statement  as  to  the  settlers  from 
Gaul,  that  they  belonged  to  the  Belgae  or  the  tribes 
inhabiting  Belgium,  by  which  he  meant,  roughly  speaking, 
the  tract  between  the  Seine  and  the  Rhine  and  between 
the  sea  and  the  tributary  waters  of  the  Marne  and  the 
Moselle;  also  that  their  settlements  here  were  known  by  the 
names  which  they  already  had  on  the  Continent.  This  is 
borne  out  by  those  names  themselves  where  they  happen 
to  be  recorded.  Thus  the  Atrebates,  whose  chief  town 
was  Calleva,  supposed  to  be  the  site  of  Silchester,  in  Hamp- 
shire, probably  came  from  the  Atrebates  of  the  Continent, 
where  that  name  of  theirs  has  been  worn  down  to  Arras, 
in  the  Pas  de  Calais.     Then,  as  to  the  tribe  called  Belgae, 

^  For  the  most  recent  and  comprehensive  account  of  this  chapter  in  Celtic 
archaeology,  see  Bertrand  and  Reinach's  volumes  "  Nos  Origines,"  especially 
vol.  ii.,  entitled  "Les  Celtesdans  les  Vallees  duPoetdu  Danube"  (Paris,  1894), 
pp.  ii.,  42,  180,  181.  To  this  work,  with  its  numerous  illustrations,  we  are 
much  indebted. 


6  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,   (chap,  i.) 

who  appear  to  have  once  been  important  enough  to  impose 
their  name  on  a  whole  group  of  peoples  on  the  Continent, 
they  seem  to  have  come  over  here  in  a  body,  leaving  to  the 
Germans  their  old  home  in  a  country  now  indicated  by 
such  a  place-name  as  that  of  Biilig,  in  the  government 
of  Cologne,  and  that  of  Wsisser- Bi//tg,  near  where  the 
Sauer  joins  the  waters  of  the  Moselle,  In  Britain  the 
people  called  Belgae  took  possession  of  a  tract  which 
included  the  sites  of  the  towns  now  called  Winchester  and 
Bath.  Similarly  the  Parisi  of  the  south-east  of  what  is 
now  Yorkshire  occupied  a  country  ;vhich  is  remarkable 
for  its  interments,  containing  as  they  do  remains  of  the 
iron  war-chariots  used  by  the  conquerors.  They  were 
probably  a  division  of  the  Parisii,  who  have  left  their  name 
to  the  city  of  Paris,  on  the  Seine.  The  first  of  the  Belgic 
peoples  to  cross  over  to  this  country  were  probably  those 
who  dwelt  nearest  to  it,  namely,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Straits  of  Dover.  These  appear  to  have  been  called 
Brittani  or  Brittones,  whom  Pliny  ^  seems  to  have  found 
so  called  in  the  valley  of  the  Somme :  the  name  of  a  town 
of  theirs  is  duly  perpetuated  by  that  of  the  village  of 
Bretagne,  near  the  mouth  of  that  river.  In  our  country 
the  history  of  their  name  was  probably  the  following  : 
from  being  exclusively  that  of  the  first  settlers  it  came  to 
be  extended  to  the  successive  hordes,  so  that  at  the  last 
it  actually  denoted  all  the  settlers  here  of  Belgic  descent  ; 
and  we  have  probably  to  look  for  the  Brittani  proper  under 
the  geographical  appellation  of  Cantii,  or  people  of  Cantion 
— "  Kent/'  In  its  form  of  Brittones  it  yields  in  Welsh  the 
name  BrytJion,  "a  Briton  or  Welshman,"  and  in  its  form  of 
Brittajti  it  yields  the  Irish  plural  Bretain  (genitive  Bretan)^ 
"  Brythons  or  Britons,  also  their  country."     The  prevalent 

*  See  Detlefsen's  Pliny,  "Historia  Naturalis,"  iv.  io6 :  A  Scaldi  incolunt 
extera  Textiandti  pluribus  uominibus^  dein  Menapi,  Morini  ora  Marsacis 
juncti pago  qui  Chersiacus  vacatur^  Britannia  Ambiaiii,  Bellovaci.  Bassi. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.  7 

spelling  in  Latin  appears  to  have  been  Britanni ;  but  the 
related  forms,  and  among  them  the  French  Bretagne,  show 
that  it  ought  to  have  been  written  with  tt. 

Without  enumerating  the  Belgic  tribes  which  constituted 
the  Brythonic  group  of  Celts  in  this  country,  suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  whole  of  the  coast  on  the  east  and  south  was 
probably  occupied  by  them  from  the  Isle  of  Wight  to  the 
Firth  of  Forth.  But  how  far  inland  they  had  overrun  the 
country  by  the  time  of  the  Roman  occupation,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  say  with  any  precision.  We  have,  however,  in 
the  Itinerary  of  Antoninus,  evidence  of  their  presence  as 
far  west  as  Staffordshire,  to  wit,  in  the  name  of  the 
station  of  Peitnocrttcion,  which  is  now  represented  letter 
for  letter  by  Penkridge.  The  form  in  the  Itinerary  is  the 
dative-ablative  Pennocnccio,  derived  from  the  stem  penno, 
represented  in  Welsh  hy pen,  "end,  extremity,  head,"  early 
Goidelic  qtienna,  whence  Irish  ceann,  "  end,  head,"  and  crucio, 
Welsh  cr7ig,  "  a  heap  or  tumulus."  So  the  whole  compound, 
had  it  been  Goidelic,  would  have  been  Quennacnicio  in 
the  Itinerary.  But  as  that  is  not  the  case,  we  know  that 
we  have  here  to  do  with  Brythons,  not  with  Goidels.  The 
spot  was  comprised  probably  in  the  territory  of  the  Cornovii, 
who  may  accordingly  be  supposed  to  have  been  Brythons. 
Behind  them  towards  the  west  were  the  Ordovices,  who 
were  also  probably  Brythons,  though  we  have  no  exactly 
similar  evidence  to  prove  it  ;  but  we  can  account  best  for 
the  facts  which  we  have  at  our  disposal,  if  we  suppose 
the  Ordovices  to  have  divided  what  is  now  Wales  into  two 
parts,  as  it  were  with  a  wedge,  and  to  have  reached  the 
shores  of  Cardigan  Bay.  Beyond  the  Ordovices,  towards 
the  south,  the  country  was  occupied  by  the  Silures  and  the 
Demetae,  neither  of  whom  can  be  supposed  to  have  been 
Brythons,  for  their  territory  supplies  inscriptions  in  Goidelic 
dating  some  time  after  the  departure  of  the  Romans. 
Similarly  beyond  the  Ordovices  in  a  northern  and  north- 


8  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

western  direction  in  the  country  called  Venedot,  later 
Gwyned,  there  were  likewise  peoples  who  cannot  have  been 
Brythons,  as  is  proved  more  or  less  explicitly  by  inscriptions 
found  there  showing  traces  of  Goidelic. 

We  have  some  aid  to   the  understanding   of   the  early 
history  of  the  tract  of  country  which  we  may  loosely  call 
Mid-Wales  in  the  dialects  of  Welsh  actually  spoken  there. 
Welsh  dialects  are  commonly  treated  as  three :  ( i)  the  Gwyn- 
dodeg^  or  Venedotian  Welsh  ;  (2)  the  Powyseg,  or  Welsh  of 
Povvys  ;   and  (3)  the  Southwalian,  consisting  of  the  closely 
connected   Gzvenhzvyseg  (Gwentian  or  Silurian  Welsh)  and 
the  Demetian  or  Welsh  of  Dyfed.     But  this  is  of  little  use 
as  regards  Mid- Wales,  for  the  facts  are  briefly  as  follows  : — 
The  Demetian  reaches  northwards  as  far  as  the  stream  of 
the  Wyrai  at  ILanrhystud,  a  little  south  of  Aberystwyth, 
in  Cardiganshire.    North  of  the  Wyrai  and  of  Strata  Florida 
the  dialect  is  very  distinct    from  the  Demetian,  and  still 
more   so   from   the   contiguous   dialect   of  the   counties   of 
Merioneth  and  Montgomery ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,   it 
resembles  that  of  Penftyn  as  represented  by  Bala  and  other 
places  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bala  Lake.     We  may  add 
that  the  same  dialect  embraces,  without  any  sudden  varia- 
tion, the  Welsh  of  the  Dee  valley  and  some  of  the  northern 
portion  of  Montgomeryshire.     The  inference  to  be  drawn 
is  probably  this:  at  one  time  a  uniform  dialect  prevailed 
in  the  region  of  Mid-Wales  comprising  North  Cardigan- 
shire, Radnorshire,  Montgomeryshire,  and  the  south-east  of 
Denbighshire.      Its   northern   boundary  v/as  probably  the 
river  Mawd'ach,  the  northern  watershed  of  the  Dee,  and 
eventually  the  Clwyd  and  the  Dej   Estuary.       The  area 
indicated    may   be   said    to  reprv^sent    the    conquests   and 
settlements  of  the  Ordovices.     Later,  however — not  long 
probably  after  the  departure  oi  the  Romans  from  Britain — 
another  people  came  on  the  scene  and  established  its  own 
dialect  in  a  great  part  of  th3  Ordovic  territory,  but  so  as  to 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.  9 

leave  the  marginal  districts  of  North  Cardiganshire  and 
Penftyn  in  the  continued  use  of  their  old  Ordovic  speech. 
The  intruding  dialect,  which  severed  them,  is  now  no  other 
than  the  Welsh  of  Powys,  which  prevails  in  Montgomery- 
shire and  on  the  coast  of  Merionethshire  from  the  river 
Dovey  to  Dolgettey  and  Harlech.  It  was  introduced 
probably  by  Cuneda  Wledig  and  his  Sons,  that  is  to  say, 
by  the  people  whose  princes  are  collectively  known  to 
Welsh  history  and  hagiology  by  that  designation. 

Now  Cuneda  was  the  ancestor  to  whom  the  kings  of  '<-  «'^^ 
Gwyned  traced  their  origin,  and  most  of  the  best-known 
saints  of  Wales  are  represented  as  his  descendants.  The 
legend  ^  of  Cuneda  represents  him  and  his  sons  coming  to 
Wales  from  the  North,  where  he  appears  to  have  been  at 
the  head  of  a  force  of  cavalry  defending  the  Roman  wall, 
and  to  have  filled  the  post  of  the  military  leader,  who, 
during  the  Roman  occupation,  used  to  be  known  as  the 
DiiJt:  Britanriice  or  Dux  Britanniarum.  The  legend  further 
represents  Cuneda  and  his  Sons  as  engaged  in  Wales  in 
the  expulsion  of  the  Goidels ;  so  we  may  suppose  that  the 
Ordovices  had  been  hard  pressed  by  the  Goidels  on  both 
sides  of  them,  and  that  they  had  appealed  for  aid  to 
Cuneda,  who  accordingly  sent  a  force  under  the  command 
of  his  sons  to  combat  the  Goidels.  However  that  may 
be,  Cuneda's  men  must  have  permanently  settled  in  the 
country,  and  so  did  his  sons,  as  we  are  told,  except  the 
eldest,  who  is  said  to  have  died  some  time  before  in  Manau 
Guotodin,  a  district  near  the  Firth  of  Forth.  The  share  of 
the  eldest  son  was  given  to  his  son  Meirion,  from  whom 
it  was  called  Cantref  Meirion,  "  the  Hundred  of  Meirion," 
which  in  its  turn  has  given  its  name  to  Meirionyd  and  the 
county   of  Merioneth.     This  Hundred  of   Meirion,  as  the 

1  See  San  Marte's  "  Nennius,"§  62,  and  the  Harleian  MS.  3859,  published 
by  Mr.  Egerton  Phillimore  in  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.  182,  also  Rhys's  "  Celtic 
Britain,"  pp.   1 18-21. 


lo  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i,) 

dominion  of  the  eldest  branch  of  the  Cuneda  family,  is 
probably  what  was  sometimes  called  simply  Y  Ca?itref} 
"the  Hundred."  It  was  also  that  which  an  old  tract  on 
boundaries  calls  Cantref  Or^wyf,  which  possibly  meant 
the  Hundred  of  the  Ordovices,  extending  from  the  Dovey 
to  the  Mawdach,  the  southern  boundary  of  Ardudwy,  which 
belonged  to  Gwyned.^  Now  Meirion,  grandson  of  Cuneda, 
as  chief  of  the  family,  assigns  to  his  uncles,  the  sons  of 
Cuneda,  their  respective  territories,  and  the  list  of  them 
purports  to  represent  the  Brythonic  conquests  made  by  the 
family  in  various  directions,  including  the  carving  out  of 
Keredig's  kingdom  of  Keredigion,  which  is,  roughly  speak- 
ing, the  present  county  of  Cardigan.  Other  members  of 
the  family  have  different  parts  of  Gwyned,  including  Mon 
or  Anglesey,  assigned  to  them  in  this  legend.  One  of  the 
branches  of  the  Cuneda  family  established  in  Gwyned 
became  in  the  sixth  century  so  powerful,  to  wit  in  the 
person  of  Maglocunos  or  Maelgwn  Gwyned,  that  not  only 
Wales,  but  also  Cumbria,  was,  to  a  certain  extent,  forced  to 
own  his  sway  ;  and  it  was  perhaps  in  his  time  that  the 
Hundred  of  Meirion  first  became  a  part  of  Gwyned. 

We  have  suggested  that  the  Brythons  came  over  to  Britain 
between  the  time  of  Pytheas  and  that  of  Julius  Caesar. 
Their  invasions  probably  spread  over  a  considerable  period 
of  time,  but  we  should  perhaps  not  be  far  wrong  in  ascribing 
the  mass  of  them  to  the  second  century  before  our  era.^ 
When,  it  may  be  asked,  did  the  other  Celts,  the  Goidels, 

^  See  the  "lolo  MSS."  (Landovery,  1848),  pp.  85,  86,  translated  at 
pp.  475-7,  but  with  serious  errors ;  also  pp.  120,  519;  and  Rhys's  "Celtic 
Britain,"  pp.  302,  303. 

-  See  the  Mabinogi  of  Math,  in  which  Math  has  the  disposal  of  Ardudwy, 
probably  as  kinf^  of  Gwyned,  Oxford  Mabinogion,  p.  73. 

^  See  M.  d'Arbois  de  Jubainville's  "  Premiers  Habitants  de  I'Europe," 
vol.  ii.,  p.  295,  where  he  expresses  himself  to  the  same  effect,  also  in  the 
**  Revue  Celtique,"  vol.  xiii.,  p.  402  ;  see  also  Holder's  "  Alt-Celtischer  Sprach- 
schatz,"  S.V.,  Brittani.  Both,  however,  make  the  Brythons  conquer  this  island 
from  the  Picts,  not  from  Goidels. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.        ii 

whom  they  found  here,  arrive  in  this  country  ?  It  is  impos- 
sible to  give  any  precise  answer  to  such  a  question,  but  it 
may  be  supposed  that  the  Goidels  came  over  not  later  than 
the  great  movements  which  took  place  in  the  Celtic  world 
of  the  Continent  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  before  our 
era.^  We  mean  the  movements  which  resulted  in  the  Celts 
reaching  the  Mediterranean  and  penetrating  into  Spain, 
while  others  of  the  same  family  began  to  press  towards  the 
east  of  Europe,  whence  some  of  them  eventually  crossed  to 
Asia  Minor  and  made  themselves  a  home  in  the  country 
called  after  them  Galatia.  On  the  whole,  we  dare  not 
suppose  the  Goidels  to  have  come  to  Britain  much  later 
than  the  sixth  century  B.C. ;  rather  should  we  say  that  they 
probably  began  to  arrive  in  this  country  earlier.  Before 
the  Brythons  came  the  Goidels  had  presumably  occupied 
most  of  the  island  south  of  the  firths  of  the  Clyde  and 
Forth.  So  when  the  Brythons  arrived  and  began  to  press 
the  Goidels  in  the  west  some  of  the  latter  may  have 
crossed  to  Ireland  :  possibly  they  had  begun  still  earlier 
to  settle  there.  The  portion  of  Ireland  which  they  first 
occupied  was  probably  the  tract  known  as  the  kingdom 
of  Meath,  approximately  represented  now  by  the  diocese 
of  that  name  ;  but  settlements  may  have  also  been  made 
by  them  at  other  points  on  the  coast. 

We  have  next  to  consider  the  question  whether  the  first 
Celtic  comers,  the  Goidels,  were  also  the  first  inhabitants 
of  this  country.  This  may  be  briefly  answered  to  the 
effect  that  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  to  think  so,  or  even 
to  suppose  that  it  may  not  have  been  uninterruptedly 
inhabited  from  a  time  before  it  ceased  to  form  a  continuous 
portion  of  the  continent  of  Europe.  By  what  race  is  a 
much  harder  question.    Indeed,  there  is  a  previous  question 

^  See  the  "  Premiers  Habitants  de  I'Europe,"  vol.  i.,  p.  262,  and  Zimmer's 
"  Mutterrecht  der  Pikten,"  in  the  "  Zeitschrift  fiir  Rechtsgeschichte,"  vol.  xv. 
(Rom.  Abth.),  pp.  233,  234. 


12  THE  WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  i.) 

which  might  reasonably  be  asked,  namely,  Was  it  a  single 
race  or  several  ?  This  cannot  be  answered,  but  it  would 
clearly  be  a  waste  of  conjecture  to  suppose  the  pre-Goidelic 
inhabitants  to  have  belonged  to  more  than  one  race,  until 
at  any  rate  evidence  is  found  to  compel  us  to  that  conclu- 
sion. So  we  rest  satisfied  for  the  present  to  treat  them  as 
if  belonging  to  a  single  race ;  and  we  proceed  to  consider, 
very  briefly,  the  nature  of  the  relation  in  which  that  race  is 
likely  to  have  found  itself  placed  as  regards  the  new-comers. 
It  is  but  natural  to  suppose  that  the  Goidels,  when  they 
arrived,  subjugated  the  natives,  and  made  slaves  of  them 
and  drudges.  From  the  first  the  fusion  of  the  two  races 
may  have  begun  to  take  place,  but  to  what  extent  it  pro- 
ceeded it  would  be  impossible  to  say.  It  is,  however, 
fairly  certain  that  the  process  of  fusion  between  the  Goidelic 
and  native  elements  must  have  been  quickened  by  the 
advent  of  a  third  and  hostile  element,  the  Brythonic.  For 
it  must  have  been  to  the  advantage  of  the  Goidels  to  have 
induced  the  natives  to  make  common  cause  with  them 
against  the  intruders  ;  and  under  the  pressure  exerted  by 
the  Brythons  the  fusion  of  the  two  other  nations  may  have 
been  so  complete  as  to  produce  a  new  people  of  mixed 
Goidelic  and  native  origin.  To  be  more  correct,  perhaps, 
we  ought  to  have  restricted  the  term  Goidelic  to  that  mixed 
nationality,  and  applied  some  other  designation,  such  as 
Celtican,  to  the  early  Celtic  invaders  of  the  island  before 
they  mixed  with  the  Aborigines  of  these  islands.  Then  as 
to  the  Brythons,  coming  last  as  they  did,  they  had  the 
Goidels  between  them  and  the  Aborigines,  and  they  were  not 
likely  to  come  in  contact  on  any  large  scale  with  the  latter 
before  they  had  been  to  a  considerable  extent  Celticised.^ 

^  Except  perhaps  in  the  North,  where,  for  example,  the  Picto-Brythons  of 
Fortrenn,  with  their  headquarters  eventually  at  Forteviot,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Earn,  seem  to  have  spoken  a  kind  of  Brythonic.  But  that  dialect  is  unknown 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  words  like  Peanfahd,  given  by  Bede  ("Hist 
Eccles."  i.  12)  as  the  vernacular  for  the  Anglian  Pejuieliitn. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF   ANCIENT    WALES.        13 

Accordingly,  supposing  the  Aborigines   not  to  have  been,  /  ^ 
Aryans,  one   might   expect  the  language  of  the  resultantl  ,|-^  . 
Goidelic  people  to  show  more  non-Aryan  traits  than  the^     ^ 
language  of  the  Brythons :  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  proves 
to  be  the  case. 

The  Goidels  have  already  been  represented  as  a  mixed 

race,  and  when  later  this  mixed  Goidelic  population  became 

one  people  with  the  Brythons,  the  result  was  still   more 

composite  ;  and  one  may  say  that  the  Welsh  people  of  the 

present  day  is  made  up  of  all  three  elements :  the  Aboriginal, 

the  Goidelic,  and  the  Brythonic.      And  it  would  be  unsafe 

to  assume  that  the  later  elements  predominate ;    for  the 

Celtic    invaders,  both   Goidels    and    Brythons,   may  have 

come  in  comparatively  small  numbers,  not  to  mention  the 

fact  that  the  Aboriginal  race,  having  been  here  possibly 

thousands  of  years  before  the  first  Aryan  arrived,  may  have 

had  such  an  advantage  in  the  matter  of  acclimatisation, 

that  it  alone  survives  in  force.    This  is  now  supposed  to  be 

the  case  with  France,  whose  people,  taken  in  the  bulk,  are 

neither  Prankish  nor  Celtic  so  much  as  the  representatives 

of  the  non- Aryan  populations  which  the  first  Aryans  found 

there.     It  thus  becomes  a  matter  of  interest  for  us  to  know 

all  we  can  about  the  earliest  inhabitants  of  this  country. 

:  Now  the  question  of  the  origin  of  that  race  is,  according  to 

one  view  taken  of  it,  inseparably  connected  with  the  Pictish 

question  ;  and  the  most  tenable  hypothesis  may  be  said  to 

be,  that  the  Picts  were  non- Aryans,  whom  the  first  Celtic 

migrations  found  already  settled  here.      The  Picts  appear 

to  have  retained  their  language  and  institutions  latest  on 

the  east  coast  of  Scotland  in  portions  of  the  region  between 

Clackmannan  and  Banff.      But  Irish  literature  alludes  to 

Picts  here  and  there  in  Ireland,  and  that  in  such  a  way  as 

to  favour  the  belief  that  they  were  survivals  of  a  race  holding 

ipossession  at  one  time  of  the  whole  country.   If  the  Picts  were 

not  Aryans,  we  could  hardly  suppose  them  to  have  been 


14  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

able  to  acquire  possession  of  extensive  tracts  of  these  islands 
after  the  arrival  of  such  a  powerful  and  warlike  race  as  the 
early  Aryans.  The  natural  conclusion  is,  that  the  Picts 
were  here  before  the  Aryans  came,  that  they  were,  in  fact, 
the  Aborigines. 

Now  something  is  known  of  the  manners  and  customs  of 
the  ancient  Picts  ;  for  one  of  them  at  least  was  so  remark- 
able as  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  ancient  authors  who 
mention  the  peoples  of  this  country.  It  was  the  absence 
among  them  of  the  institution  of  marriage  as  known  to 
men  of  Aryan  race.  This  is  illustrated  by  the  history  of 
the  Picts  in  later  times,  especially  in  the  case  of  their  kings, 
for  it  is  well  known  that  a  Pictish  king  could  not  be 
succeeded  by  a  son  of  his  own,  but  usually  by  a  sister's 
son.  The  succession  was  through  the  mother,  and  it  points 
back  to  a  state  of  society  which,  previous  to  the  conver- 
sion of  the  Picts  to  Christianity,  was  probably  based  on 
matriarchy  as  distinguished  from  marriage  and  marital 
authority.  Accordingly  the  Greeks  and  Romans  who  have 
touched  on  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Picts  show 
clearly  that  they  could  not  understand  the  relations  of  the 
sexes  among  peoples  of  that  race,  except  as  mere  licence 
and  wanton  promiscuity.  Among  others  may  be  mentioned 
Dion  Cassius,  who  in  writing  (Ixxvi.  i6)  about  the  wars  of 
the  Emperor  Severus  introduces,  for  the  evident  benefit  of 
Roman  women,  a  Pictish  lady,  who  replies  to  the  strictures 
of  Julia,  the  Emperor's  wife,  on  Pictish  morality,  to  the 
effect  that  she  thought  the  Pictish  custom  the  better,  since, 
as  she  said,  Pictish  ladies  openly  consorted  with  the  best 
warriors  of  the  race,  while  Roman  matrons  privily  com- 
mitted adultery  with  the  vilest  of  men.  Further  the 
Pictish  succession  cannot  have  always  been  confined  to  the 
Pictland  of  the  North, ^  for  the  ancient  literature  of  Ireland 

'  Since  writing  the  above  we  have  come  across  a  passage  showing  that  the 
^ame  kind  of  succession  once  prevailed  at  Tara  :    see  the  Place-name  Story  of 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.        15 

abounds  in  allusions  to  heroes  who  are  usually  described 
with  the  aid  of  the  mother's  name.  Take  the  case  of 
Conchobar  mac  Nessa,  "  Conor  son  of  Nessa  "  (his  mother), 
Diarmait  Ua  Duibne,  ''Dermot  descendant  of  Dubinn  "  (his 
ancestress),  not  to  mention  the  gods  called  TtLatka  De 
Da7iann,  "  the  tribes  of  the  goddess  Danu  or  Donu,"  which 
Dome  appears  also  in  the  old  literature  of  Wales,  to  wit 
as  Don  in  the  names  of  such  personages  as  "  Gwydion 
son  of  Don,"  "  Arianrhod  daughter  of  Don,"  and  others  of 
the  same  family,  all  placed  by  the  Mabinogion  on  the 
northern  coast  of  Gwyned.  This  kind  of  nomenclature 
implies  the  Pictish  succession  as  its  origin,  and  probably 
all  that  such  origin  implied.  If  the  Aryans  ever  had 
this  kind  of  custom,  a  view  which  is  not  universally 
accepted,  it  was  probably  so  very  far  back  that  we 
could  not  with  any  confidence  invoke  it  to  explain 
these  designations  and  others  like  them  ;  so  we  are 
inclined  to  regard  them  as  having  originated  in  non- 
Aryan  surroundings. 

The  same  conclusion  as  to  the  probable  non-Aryan 
origin  of  the  Picts  is  warranted  by  facts  of  another  order, 
namely,  those  of  speech ;  but  the  Pictish  question  is 
rendered  philologically  difficult  by  the  scantiness  of  the 
remains  of  the  Pictish  language.  It  would  seem  to  have 
been  rapidly  becoming  overloaded  with  loan-words  from 
Goidelic  and  Brythonic  when  we  first  hear  anything  about 
it.  So,  failing  to  recognise  this  borrowing  of  words  by 
the  Picts,  some  have  been  led  to  regard  Pictish  as  a  kind  of 

Druim  Criaich,  edited  with  a  translation  by  Stokes  in  the  "Revue  Celtique," 
xvi.  148-50.  The  storyteller  undertakes  to  explain  the  peculiarity  of  the 
succession  :  he  first  relates  how  the  three  sons  of  the  Irish  king,  Eochaid 
Feidlecb,  rebelled  against  their  father,  and  how  they  fell  in  the  conflict.  He 
then  adds  words  to  the  following  effect  : — "Then  before  nightfall  their  three 
heads  came  to  Druim  Criaich,  and  there  Eochaid  uttered  the  word,  that  from 
that  time  forward  no  son  should  ever  take  the  lordship  of  Tara  after  his  father 
unless  some  one  came  between  them." 


i6  THE  WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  i.) 

Gaelic,  and  some  as  a  dialect  akin  to  Welsh.  The  point  to 
have  been  decided,  however,  was  not  whether  Gaelic  or 
Welsh  explains  certain  words  said  to  have  been  in  use 
among  the  Picts,  but  whether  there  does  not  remain  a 
residue  to  which  neither  Gaelic  nor  Welsh,  nor,  indeed, 
any  Aryan  tongue  whatsoever,  can  supply  any  sort  of  key. 
This  has  of  late  begun  to  be  perceived,^  and  all  the  more 
clearly  now  that  the  ancient  inscriptions  found  in  the 
Pictland  of  the  North  have  been  more  carefully  studied.^ 
The  whole  group  of  inscriptions,  however,  is  a  very  small 
one,  and  it  shows  the  manifold  influence  of  Gaelic  and 
Norse,  especially  in  Shetland,  for  Pictish  cannot  have 
become  extinct  for  some  time  after  the  earlier  visits 
of  the  Norsemen  to  our  coasts.  Among  those  inscriptions 
and  fragments  of  inscriptions,  there  are  two  or  three  which 
may  be  said  to  be  fairly  legible  ;  and  one  of  them  is 
punctuated  word  by  word.  Nevertheless  the  adherents 
to  the  view  that  Pictish  is  Celtic  and  Aryan  have  in 
vain  been  challenged  to  produce  a  convincing  translation. 
Neither  Gaelic  nor  Welsh  seems  to  be  of  any  material 
avail  in  the  effort,  and  one  may  confidently  surmise  that 
any  other  Aryan  language  will  be  found  of  still  less  use,  if 
possible.  This  being  so,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the 
theory  of  the  non-Aryan  origin  of  the  Pictish  language 
holds  the  field  at  present. 

Precarious  as  the  Pictish  inscriptions  must  be  admitted 
to  be,  they  have  supplied  the  key  to  the  interpretation  of 
certain  other  inscriptions,  to  wit,  in  Wales,  Cornwall,  and 
Ireland.  Thus  a  short  one  in  minuscules  at  St.  Vigeans, 
near  Arbroath,  reads,  Drosten  ipe  tioret  ett  forcjis,    which 

^  See  the  "Revue  Celtique,"  vi.  398,  399,  and  Zimmer's  article  in  the 
"Zeitschrift  fiir  Rechtsgeschichte,"  p.  217. 

2  Lists  of  them  will  be  found  in  Lord  Southesk'.s  "Ogams  at  Brodie, 
Aquhollie,  Golspie,  and  Newton"  (Edinburgh,  1886),  p.  38,  and  in  the 
"  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Scotland,"  vol.  xxvi., 
pp.   267-304,  to  which  may  now  be  added  vol.  xxxii.,   pp.   324-98. 


ETHNOLOGY  OF  ANCIENT    WALES.         17 

may  be  for  the  present  rendered  "  Drost's  offspring,^  Uoret, 
for  Fergus."  Similarly  a  well  -  known  monument  at 
Newton,  in  Aberdeenshire,  bears  in  Ogam  what  may  be 
provisionally  read  Vorrejin  ipiiai  Osir^  which  may,  in  the 
same  way,  be  interpreted  as  "  Vor's  offspring  Osir,"  that 
is  to  say,  Osir  son  of  Vor  or  Vaur,  for  the  name  is  read 
Vanr  in  the  script  on  the  same  stone.  From  these  one 
learns  how  to  construe  the  following,  found  at  ILanfaglan 
near  Carnarvon  :- — 

FILI   LOVERNII 
ANATEMORI. 

That  meant,  no  doubt,  "  (the  monument)  of  Lovernias's 
son,  Anatemoras,"  that  is,  of  Anatemoras  son  of  Lovernias. 
This  inscription  was  written  in  Latin,  and  Anateinori  was 
the  Celtic  genitive  of  a  proper  name  which  in  Brythonic 
would  have  been  Anatiomaros,  Welsh  eneid-fazvr,  "  great- 
souled,"  fxeyaXdif/vxo's.  From  this  cannot  be  severed  the 
following,  which  is  to  be  seen  at  Helston,  in  Cornwall : 
Cnegtnni  fill  Genaiiis?  Though  meant  to  be  Latin,  it  has 
to  be  construed  according  to  the  grammar  of  a  different 
idiom,  for  fill  is  here  treated  as  the  crude  stem  of  the 
word,  so  that  fiUGenai-tis  is  to  be  regarded  as  doing  duty 
ioY  filiiis  and  Geiiamsm  apposition,  and  with  only  one  case 
termination.  The  whole  means  Genaius  filius  Cnegiuni, 
but  the  syntax  is  not  that  of  an  Aryan  language.  It  is 
familiar,  however,  in  agglutinative  languages  like  Basque, 
and  it  occurs  in  our  inscriptions  too  frequently  to  be 
regarded  as  a  slip.  Thus  we  have  it  both  in  Latin  and  in 
Goidelic  on  a  tombstone  found  at  Clydai,  in  Pembroke- 

^  It  will  be  seen  later  (p.  50)  that  a  more  probable  rendering  than  "off- 
spring" would  be  "kin"  or  "nephew,"  and  so  probably  with  the  vocable 
poi  of  certain  Irish  Ogams. 

-  See  Hiibner's  "  Inscriptiones  Britannia  Christians,"  No.  147. 

3  Hiibner,  No.  5. 
W.P.  C 


iS  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

shire  :    the    Latin    reads    ETTERXI     FILI    VICTOR,^ 

where  Ji/i  Victor  is  treated  as  one  noun  in  the  nominative, 
and  enough  of  the  Ogam  remains  to  show  that  the  con- 
struction in  the  Goidelic  version  was  identical.  The  whole 
meant  "  /Eternus's  son  Victor,"  that  is,  Victor  son  of 
yEternus.  Another  instance  of  the  same  agglutinative 
syntax  occurs  on  a  stone  at  Eglwys  Cymun,  in  the  south- 
west of  Carmarthenshire  :  it  reads  in  Latin,^' 

AVITORIA 
FILIA  CVxNIGNI, 

and  in  Goidelic  hiigena  Qmigni  Avittoriges,  "(the  monu- 
ment) of  Avitoria,  daughter  of  Cunignas."  Here  the 
nouns  in  apposition  are  inigena,  "daughter,"  and  Avit- 
toriga  ;  so  the  genitive  ending  es  is  applied  to  the  latter 
alone,  while  the  genitive  of  the  father's  name  is  inserted 
between  the  two  feminines.  From  Ireland  may  be  men- 
tioned an  inscription  at  Dunloe,  near  Killarney,  which 
runs  thus  :  Maqid  Ttal  inaqid  Vorgos  inaqid  imicoi  Toicac, 
"  (the  monument)  of  MacTail,  son  of  Fergus,  son  "  &c.  In 
correct  Goidelic  this  should  have  been  Maqui  Ttali  viaqui 
Vorgossos'^  viaqiii^  &c.  ;  but  Ttal  and  uiaqni,  Vorgos  and 
inaqiii,  being  respectively  in  apposition,  have  only  one 
mark  of  the  genitive  each.  The  same  construction  is 
shown  in  one  of  the  northern  Ogam  inscriptions  of  Ireland  : 
it  stands  at  a  spot  some  twelve  miles  north-east  of 
Omagh,  in  Tyrone,  and  reads:  Dotoatt  inaqid  Nan  .  .  ."* 
"  (the  monument)  of  Dotoatt,  son  of  Nainnidh."  Here 
Dotoatt-inaqui  must  be  construed  as  an  agglutination  with 

1  Hiibner,  No.  no. 

-  See  the  "  Arclia-ologia  Cambrensis  "  for  1893,  p.  2S5. 

•^  It  is  not  necessarily  Voi'gossos^  as  Vorgos  may  have  represented  a  genitive 
which  in  a  later  form  occurs  as  Forgo  or  Forco. 

■*  See  the  "Journal  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Ireland"  fori895, 
p.  104. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.        19 

only  one  genitive  termination,  to  wit,  the  z  at  the  end  of 
maqiii,  "son's,  filUr 

The  distribution  of  inscriptions  with  this  non-Aryan 
syntax  suggests  that  the  British  Isles  were  once  inhabited 
by  a  people  speaking  a  non-Aryan  language,  and  that, 
while  that  people  learned  the  vocabulary  of  an  Aryan 
language,  it  continued  the  syntax  of  its  previous  speech. 
This  was  so  decidedly  the  case,  that  we  trace  it  not  only 
in  the  Goidelic  which  that  people  definitely  adopted,  but 
also  in  the  Latin  which  its  learned  men  now  and  then 
wrote.  There  is  nothing  incredible  in  this,  as  habits  of 
pronunciation  and  the  syntax  peculiar  to  a  language  are 
most  persistent  and  difficult  to  eradicate,  even  when  careful 
teaching  is  directed  to  that  end,  as  anybody  will  admit 
who  knows  anything  of  the  difficulties  of  teaching  Welsh 
boys  idiomatic  English.  One  sees  accordingly  how  the 
Goidelic  of  the  west  of  Britain  may  have  been  profoundly 
modified  by  the  pronunciation  and  syntax  of  the  non- 
Aryan  language  of  the  Aborigines  ;  but  to  what  extent 
the  Brythonic  conquerors  of  Mid-Wales  may  have  cleared 
the  latter  area  of  its  ancient  inhabitants,  whether  mostly 
Goidelic  or  native,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  Beyond  those 
conquests,  however,  the  old  inhabitants  of  the  Venedotian 
north  on  the  one  hand,  and  those  of  the  Siluro-Demetian 
south  on  the  other,  are  not  likely  to  have  been  displaced 
on  an}'  considerable  scale.  We  are  accordingly  at  libert}' 
to  regard  the  Ordovic  territory  of  Mid-Wales  as  the  most 
thoroughly  Brythonic.  It  might  appear  at  first  sight  a 
remarkable  corroboration  of  this  view,  that  Mid-Wales 
shows  no  inscriptions  in  Ogam  at  all  or  any  inscriptions 
whatsoever  in  which  Goidelic  can  be  traced.  But  as  to 
the  absence  of  Goidelic  traces  in  Mid-Wales,  it  must  be  at 
once  explained,  that  this  region  has  very  few  inscriptions 
at  all  to  show  corresponding  to  the  post-Roman  ones  to  be 
found  more  to  the  north  and  more  to  the  south.     That 

C  2 


20  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

very  fact,  however,  is  not  without  a  significance  of  its  own, 
for  it  seems  to  show  that  the  burial  customs  of  the  ancient 
Brythons  of  Mid-Wales  differed  from  those  of  the  other 
peoples  :  add  to  this  that  Mid  -Wales  has  few  or  no 
cromlechs  to  show.  Possibly  the  inhabitants  buried  their 
dead  in  barrows,  where  there  was  less  inducement  to 
indulge  in  writing  than  in  the  case  of  peoples  who  put 
up  stones  as  memorials  of  their  departed. 

It  may  be  objected  that  these  arguments  as  to  Mid- 
Wales  are  mostly  negative,  but  there  is  at  least  one 
argument  of  a  more  positive  kind — an  argument  based 
on  the  actual  pronunciation  of  Powysian  Welsh.  In  that 
dialect  the  vowel  a,  whether  short  or  long,  has  a  narrow 
pronunciation  resembling  that  of  the  narrow  a  in  the 
standard  English  pronunciation  of  such  words  as  man  and 
bad.  This  vowel  may  be  indicated  as  a,  and  we  have  it  in 
such  words  as  cam,  "crooked,"  main,  "  mother,"  pan,  "when," 
and  car,  "a  cousin."  Further,  cam  and  car  tend  to  become, 
and  have,  in  fact,  extensively  become,  kiqni  and  kiar,  com- 
binations from  which  the  analogy  of  other  languages  would 
lead  us  to  expect  eventually  some  such  forms  as  ts/iain  and 
tshqr,  or  even  sJiam  and  sJiar,  that  is,  provided  this  dialect 
of  W^elsh  continued  long  enough  a  spoken  language  not 
too  much  restrained  by  the  yoke  of  the  standard  spelling. 
The  change  here  indicated  is  just  what  has  happened  in 
P>ance :  the  Gauls  appear  to  have  pronounced  their  a 
narrow,  and  when  they  adopted  Latin  they  could  probably 
not  help  continuing  their  old  pronunciation  with  its  a. 
The  result  has  been  that  French  has  made  Latin  words 
like  nassus,  "nose,"  and  pratum,  ''a  meadow,"  into  no:  and 
pre,  and  caput,  "head,"  into  cJicf,  pronounced  with  tsh  as  in 
its  English  form  of  cJiief,  and  later,  with  ch  —  English  sJc 
as  in  standard  French  at  the  present  day.  The  sam.e  was 
the  case  with  such  a  word  as  Latin  castra,  "  a  camp,"  which 
some  of  the  Gauls  and  the  Brythons  of  this  country  seem 


ETHNOLOGY   OF   ANCIENT    WALES.        21 

to  have  pronounced  kiastra^  which  the  ancestors  of  the 
Enghsh  borrowed  and  made  into  ceaster',  whence  the 
modern  Chester,  pronounced  Tshester,  The  initiative  in  all 
these  changes  is  the  pronunciation  of  a  as  a,  which  is  a 
sound  with  a  tendency  to  become  e ;  and  the  most  natural 
explanation  of  the  fact  that  a  and  iq  occur  in  Mid-Wales 
Welsh  is,  that  some  of  the  Brythons,  like  the  other  Celts  of 
Northern  Gaul,  had  a  as  the  sound  of  a  in  their  language 
when  they  penetrated  to  the  west  of  this  island.  To  the 
extent  here  indicated  by  the  pronunciation,  the  Welsh  of 
Powys  is  more  like  that  of  ancient  Gaulish,  that  is  to  say, 
it  is  more  purely  Brythonic,  than  any  of  the  other  dialects. 
The  reason  for  this  is,  probably,  that  the  language  of  the 
Ordovices  had  been  modified  by  the  gradual  absorption  of 
other  nationalities  into  that  tribe,  as  it  extended  its  con- 
quests towards  the  west,  while  the  Sons  of  Cuneda  came 
from  a  district  called  Manau  in  the  land  of  the  Guotodin, 
Ptolemy's  Otadini,  or  better  Votadini.  It  was  in  or  near 
their  territory  that  the  Roman  wall  reached  the  North  Sea, 
and  to  them  also  belonged  the  coast  northwards  to  the  Forth, 
including  what  is  now  known  as  the  Lothians.  It  is 
possible  that  the  Votadini  were  not  the  first  Brythons  to 
occupy  that  strip  of  country  ;  and  it  is  probable  that  the 
previous  inhabitants  were  driven  inland,  either  by  them  or 
by  previous  invaders  of  kindred  nationality.  In  either  case 
the  Gaulish  of  the  Votadini  may  have  had  the  chance  of 
remaining  less  influenced  by  the  idioms  of  the  country, 
than  can  have  been  the  case  with  tribes  whose  assimilation 
of  the  peoples  conquered  by  them  in  war  proceeded  on  a 
larger  scale  and  for  a  longer  period  of  time. 

South  of  the  domain  of  Powysian  Welsh  we  have  Breck- 
nockshire, giving  a  broad  pronunciation  to  the  vowel  a, 
whether  long  or  short  But  in  the  Welsh  of  Monmouth- 
shire and  Glamorganshire  as  far  as  the  Neath  Valley  and  the 
western  limit,  approximately,  of  the  Custom  of  Glamorgan 


22  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

(p.  30),  the  short  a  alone  is  broad,  long  a  being  uniformly 
made  narrow.  This  seems  to  indicate  that  at  one  time  that 
part  of  the  southern  border  of  the  Principality  came  under 
the  influence  of  some  Brythonic  people  pressing  westwards, 
such,  for  anything  known  to  the  contrary,  as  the  Dobunni 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Severn  may  have  been. 

It  is,  however,  not  to  be  supposed  that  Brythonic  was 
formed  in  Wales  :  we  are  compelled  by  the  close  similarity 
of  Welsh  with  Old  Cornish  and  Breton  to  suppose  that 
the  language  in  all  its  essential  features  was  formed  before 
the  Ordovices  reached  the  shores  of  Cardigan  Bay  ;  and 
we  have  the  means  of  gauging  to  some  extent  how  far  it 
has  deviated  from  Gaulish.  A  certain  number  of  sentences 
are  extant  in  Gaulish,  and  they  invariably  observe  the 
ordinary  usage  of  Aryan  syntax  in  not  placing  the  verb 
before  its  subject :  take  for  example  the  following — 

^eyo/xapos  OvlX\ov€0<;  toovtlov? 
Na/xavcrarts  etcopov  lirj\7](T0.ixL  crociv  vc}xrfov 

That  is,  "  Segomaros  son  of  Villonos,  magistrate  of  Nimes» 
made  for  (the  goddess)  Belesama  this  temple."  Or  this, 
Ratin  brivationi  Frontu  Tarbeisonios  ieuru  ;  that  is,  "  Pro- 
pugnaculum  pontilium  Fronto,  Tarbeisoni  filius,  fecit."  ^  It 
is  unfortunate  that  not  one  of  the  Gaulish  sentences  extant 
happens  to  come  from  the  ancient  Belgium ;  but  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Gaulish  of  Belgic  Gaul 
differed  in  its  syntax  from  the  Gaulish  of  other  parts  of 
the  country.  On  the  other  hand,  the  normal  syntax  of 
the  Neo-celtic  languages  requires  the  verb  to  precede  its 
subject,  and  the  question  arises  how  this  important  dif- 
ference began.  It  might  be  suggested  as  an  explanation, 
that  the  earlier  Celts  mixed  with  a  non-Aryan  race,  whose 
language  had  this  syntactic  peculiarity  of  Neo-celtic  as 
regards  the  position  of  the  verb,  and  that  they  thus  evolved 

^  According  to  Stokes's  "Celtic  Declension  "  (Gottingen,  18S6),  pp.  60,  67. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF   ANCIENT    WALES.        23 

the  Goidelic  language.  The  next  stage  might  similarly  be 
supposed  to  be  a  mixing  of  the  Brythons  with  the  Goidels 
of  the  description  just  suggested,  when  it  became  the 
turn  of  the  latter  to  be  conquered,  the  result  being  that 
Brythonic  emerged,  having  indirectly  acquired  some  of 
the  linguistic  peculiarities  of  the  Aboriginal  inhabitants  of 
Gaul,  of  Britain,  or  of  both.  Whatever  the  real  explana- 
tion may  prove  to  be,  it  will,  in  all  probability,  have  to 
take  for  granted  a  racial  amalgamation  on  a  considerable 
scale.  But  the  linguistic  conditions  seem  to  us,  it  is  need- 
less to  say,  to  postulate  a  pre- Celtic  race  whose  language 
was  characterized  by  the  chief  peculiarities  distinguishing 
Neo-celtic  from  Gaulish.^ 

The  foregoing  remarks  amount  briefly  to  this  :  the 
Goidelic  and  the  Aboriginal  elements  should  be  expected 
in  their  greatest  strength  in  the  south  and  in  the  north  of 
Wales,  while  Mid-Wales  is  marked  out  by  the  Gaulish 
affinities  of  the  Povvys  dialect,  and  by  the  absence  of 
monuments  betraying  any  traces  of  Goidelic  influence,  as 
the  home  of  the  Brythonic  element  in  the  west  of  the 
island.  We  are,  however,  unable  to  detect  in  the  habits 
or  physical  characteristics  of  the  people  at  the  present 
day  any  salient  features  corresponding  to  these  vanishing 
landmarks.  Thus  the  Aboriginal  non-Aryan  ideas  as  to 
marriage  might,  conceivably,  have  survived  long  in  the 
modified  form  of  a  tendency  to  take  somewhat  too  lenient 
a  view  of  immorality,  but  the  statistics  of  illegitimacy  in 
Wales  do  not  represent  its  geographical  distribution  to  be 
such  as  clearly  to  suggest  any  such  permanence  of  influence. 
On  the  other  hand,  men  of  purely  Aryan  descent  are 
supposed  to  have  been,  like  the  ancient  Gauls  and  the 
ancient  Germans,  inclined  to  be  of  a  light  complexion  and 
a  tall  stature,  which  would,  perhaps,  imply  the  requirement 

^  We  are  glad  to  be  able  to  refer  our  readers  to  an  elaborate  treatment  of 
this  question  in  Appendix  B. 


24  THE  WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  i.) 

of  more  food  than  in  the  case  of  men  of  smaller  build.  We 
have,  however,  no  statistics  to  show  whether  the  people  of 
Mid -Wales  are  on  the  whole  taller  or  blonder  than  other 
Welshmen,  but  the  Land  Commission  heard  some  evidence 
to  the  effect  that  the  former  fare  better  in  the  matter  of 
food,  especially  in  the  county  of  ^Montgomery. 

When  and  how  the  comparative  homogeneity  of  the 
Welsh  people  was  produced,  it  is  impossible  to  say  with 
any  approach  to  precision.  First  of  all,  however,  the 
distinctive  customs  of  the  Aborigines  must  have  given 
way  gradually  to  those  of  their  Goidelic  masters,  though 
hardly  without  affecting  the  latter  themselves ;  and  the 
native  language  yielded,  no  doubt,  comparatively  early  to 
Goidelic.  As  to  Goidelic  itself,  its  turn  to  go  came  in  due 
time.  We  have  no  evidence  that  it  was  spoken  in  any 
part  of  Wales  in  the  eighth  or  ninth  century  ;  but  it  was 
probably  not  dead  till  w^ell  into  the  seventh.  Besides 
having  a  language  of  their  own,  however,  the  Goidels  must 
have  had  also  their  own  laws  ;  and  these,  it  would  seem, 
proved  in  some  respects  more  tenacious  than  their  language. 
Welsh  literature  speaks  of  one  great  and  conspicuous  legis- 
lator of  this  island  in  early  times.  He  is  called  Dyfuwal 
Mocl-Mut,  but  the  name  Dyfinval,  answering  as  it  does 
exactly  to  the  Irish  DoniJinall,  Anglicised  Donald,  teaches 
us  nothing  precise  as  to  his  race.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
epithet  Moel-mud,  in  its  oldest  form  Moel  Miit,  cannot  be 
other  than  Goidelic,  and  its  historical  form  in  Irish  is  Mod 
Muaid,  which  wc  have  in  Ua  Maol-imiaidJi,  in  English 
spelling  O' Molloy.  It  should  mean  "  the  tonsured  man  or 
slave  of  Muad,"  in  the  same  way  that  Mael-Patraic  or 
Mulpatric  was  made  into  Calvus  Patricii}     In  the  vocable 

^  See  Rhys's  "Goidelic  Words  in  Brythonic"  in  the  *' Arcbceologia 
Cambrensis  "  for  1895,  pp.  299,  300;  Nigra 's  "  Reliquie  Celtiche ''  (Turin, 
1870),  p.  19;  Stokes's  "Goidelica"  (London,  1872),  pp.  86,  91  ;  and  Rhys's 
"Celtic  Britain,"  pp.  73-5. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF   ANCIENT    WALES,        25 

Muaid,  for  an  earlier  Motiy  we  have  the  genitive  of  the  name, 
possibly  of  some  forgotten  divinity,  and  the  formula  is  not 
Christian,  but  merely  retained  in  use  in  Christian  times. 
This  personage,  whose  full  name  proves  him  to  have  been  no 
thorough  Brython,  is  the  accredited  legislator  of  the  Cymry  ; 
and,  according  to  one  of  the  manuscripts  of  the  Venedotian 
version  of  the  Laws  of  Howel,  the  former's  laws  continued 
in  force  to  the  time  of  Howel.  But  even  Howel,  descended 
as  he  was  from  Cuneda,  and  representing  the  Brythonic 
clement  as  he  did,  thought  it  inexpedient  to  undo  the 
whole  of  the  work  of  the  Goidel.  He  left  undisturbed  his 
reckoning  of  measurement  from  the  barley-corn  up  to  the 
acre  and  the  mile,  as  he  did  also  his  divisions  of  the  country 
into  cantrevs  and  their  subdivisions.  The  words  are  to 
the  following  effect  :  ^  "  And  he  [Dyfnwal]  was  a  man  of 
authority  and  wisdom  ;  and  he  (first)  made  good  laws  in 
this  country,  which  laws  continued  in  force  till  the  time  of 
Howel  the  Good.  Afterwards  Howel  enacted  new  laws 
and  annulled  those  of  Dyfnwal  ;  and  (yet)  Howel  did  not 
disturb  the  measurements  of  lands  in  this  island,  but  [let 
them  continue]  as  Dyfnwal  left  them  ;  for  the  latter  was 
the  best  man  at  measuring."  Without  entering  into  the 
question  how  far  the  laws  of  the  Goidels  differed  from 
those  of  ,the  Brythons,  and  to  what  extent  Howel  really 
modified^  the  laws  obtaining  till  then  in  any  part  of  his 
kingdom,  we  cannot  help  suggesting  that  the  statement  we 
have  quoted  represents  one  of  the  last  stages  in  the  amal- 
gamation of  the  two  Celtic  races  in  the  west  of  the  island. 

^  Compare  Owen's  ''Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  Wales,"  i.  184,  185, 
where  the  different  manuscripts  have  been  diligently  wrought  into  a  patch-work 
most  difficult  to  unravel.  For  this,  however,  the  editor  was  probably  not  so 
much  to  blame  as  the  perverse  policy  obtaining  at  the  Public  Record  Office  in 
his  time. 

-  Possibly  we  have  an  instance  in  point  in  the  law,  said  to  have  once 
obtained  in  Britain,  that  any  animal  transgressing  should  be  forfeited  to  the  ,  "^ 

person  injured.      See  the  artick  "  Mug-Eime  "  in   Cormac's    Irish  Glossary 
(Dublin,  1862,  and  [translated  at]  Calcutta,  1868). 


26  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

Something  may  be  learned  on  the  head  of  race  amal- 
gamation from  the  probable  history  of  the  national  name 
of  the  Welsh,  to  wit,  Cyviro,  "  Welshman,"  plural,  Cymry. 
This  word  Cyinro  stands  for  an  earlier  Qivibrox  or  Coin- 
brox,  parallel  to  the  Gaulish  Allobrox,  plural  Allobroges,  a 
name  applied  by  Gauls  to  certain  Ligurians  whose  countr}- 
they  conquered  ;  and  just  as  Alio- br ox  meant  an  alien  or 
foreigner,  Welsh  atlfro,  ''  foreigner,"  so  Coni-brox  must 
have  meant  *'  one  belonging  to  one's  own  country,  a 
compatriot."  The  choice  of  this  term  as  the  national 
name  suggests  that  it  was  applied  to  men  who  did  not 
all  belong  to  one  and  the  same  race,  or  speak  the  same 
language.  As  the  word  is  to  be  traced  in  Cninbra-land, 
Cuuiber-land,  its  use  must  have  extended  to  the  Brvthons 
of  Strathclyde,  which  renders  it  probable  that  it  had 
acquired  some  popularity  before  the  end  of  the  struggle 
between  the  kings  of  Gwyned  and  the  Anglian  princes  of 
Northumbria  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  seventh  century.  On 
the  other  hand,  as  the  name  seems  to  have  been  unknown 
not  only  in  Brittany  but  also  in  Cornwall,  it  may  be 
conjectured  that  it  cannot  have  acquired  anything  like 
national  significance  for  any  length  of  time  before  the 
battle  of  Deorham  in  the  year  577,  when  the  West  Saxons 
permanently  severed  the  Celts  west  of  the  Severn  from 
their  kinsmen  in  the  country  consisting  now  of  the  counties 
of  Gloucester,  Somerset,  Devon,  and  Cornwall.  Thus  it  is 
probable  that  the  national  significance  of  the  term  Cyinro 
may  date  from  the  sixth  century,  and  that  it  is  to  be 
regarded  as  the  exponent  of  the  amalgamation  of  the 
Goidelic  and  Brythonic  populations  under  the  high 
pressure  of  attacks  from  without  by  the  Saxons  and 
the  Angles. 

Thus  far  of  the  races  which  may  be  said  to  have  consti- 
tuted the  Welsh  people  ;  but  some  mention  may  now  be 
made  of  others  that  have  entered  into  the  composition  later. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES,        27 

Among  the  earliest  may  be  supposed  a  certain  admixture 
introduced  by  the  legions  of  ancient  Rome,  chiefly  at  such 
places  as  IscaSilurum  orCarleon  on  the  Usk,and  Segontium, 
the  remains  of  which  are  partially  visible  at  the  Carnarvon 
of  the  present  day.  After  the  departure  of  the  Romans 
there  was  probably  nothing  of  any  importance  in  the  matter 
of  foreign  blood  introduced  till  the  visits  of  the  Scandinavian 
rovers  from  the  eighth  to  the  twelfth  century.  They  ma)- 
have  left  small  settlements  here  and  there  on  the  coast,  as, 
for  instance,  at  Angle,  in  Pembrokeshire,  and  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Point  of  Ayre  and  other  places  in  Flintshire. 
Their  presence  also  at  Fishguard  and  Solva  (in  Welsh 
SolfacJi)  in  Pembrokeshire,  seems  to  be  proved  by  those 
names,  and  perhaps  the  same  remark  might  be  made  as  to 
Harlech,  in  Merionethshire.  But  the  Scandinavians  must 
have  lost  their  idioms  and  distinctiveness  in  the  language 
and  nationality  of  their  Celtic  neighbours.  The  next  acces- 
sion of  foreign  elements  came  in  the  course  of  the  Norman 
conquests  ;  but  it  is  not  easy  to  say  to  what  extent  the  con- 
querors contributed  in  flesh  and  blood  to  Welsh  nationality, 
or  even  to  ascertain  to  what  extent  they  were  Normans, 
and  not  Bretons  similar  in  race  to  the  Welsh  among  whom 
they  arrived.  But  the  descendants,  whether  of  Normans 
proper  or  of  Bretons,  became  eventually  absorbed  in  the 
body  of  the  Welsh  people  and  adopted  the  Welsh  language, 
even  in  the  Vale  of  Glamorgan,  where  the  conquest  by  the 
Normans  was  probably  the  most  systematic  and  thorough 
in  Wales. 

Not  quite  so,  however,  with  another  race  which  the 
Normans  are  supposed  to  have  established  in  the  west : 
we  allude  to  the  Flemings,  who  deserve  in  this  context  to 
be  mentioned  at  somewhat  greater  length.  Even  before 
the  Norman  conquest  of  England,  Flemings  seem  to  have 
been  brought  to  this  country,  as,  for  instance,  by  Tostig  in 
his  contest  with  his  brother  Harold  for  the  crown.     William 


28  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

the  Conqueror  married  Matilda,  daughter  of  the  Count  of 
Flanders,  and  he  appears  to  have  had  Flemings  in  his 
employ  in  England.  His  son,  William  Rufus,  had  Flemish 
mercenaries  in  his  army  in  Normandy  when  he  attacked 
his  brother,  and  Stephen  employed  them  in  large  numbers 
in  England.  In  fact,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  in  the 
time  of  the  early  Norman  kings  Flemings  settled  in  con- 
siderable numbers  in  this  country.  They  appear  to  have 
been  unpopular  with  both  Normans  and  Saxons,  and  it 
occurred  to  Henry  I.  to  make  use  of  them,  first,  as  a  check 
on  the  Scotch,  and  afterwards  on  the  Welsh.  He  settled 
them  first  in  waste  lands  on  the  Tweed,  but  later  he  is  said 
to  have  transported  them  bag  and  baggage  to  the  Hundred 
of  Roose  in  Pembrokeshire.^  It  is  observed  that  Roose  is 
remarkable  for  its  comparative  absence  of  Welsh  place- 
names,  and  it  may  be  concluded  that  the  Flemings  cleared 
it  of  what  W'elsh  inhabitants  there  may  have  been  there. 
The  settlers  made  themselves  masters  of  the  rest  of  South 
Pembrokeshire,  but  as  more  Welsh  names  survive  there,  it 
is  not  probable  that  the  new-comers  made  a  clean  sweep 
of  the  previous  inhabitants.  The  question  how  far  this 
Flemish  settlement  was  really  Flemish  and  not  English  is 
one  of  considerable  difficulty.  In  case  it  was  purely  or 
mainly  P'lemish,  one  is  tempted  to  ask,  why  the  language 
of  the  district  is  now  a  dialect  of  English  any  more  than 
that  of  Flanders,  where  Flemish  shows  no  innate  tendency 
to  become  English.  To  this  it  has  been  replied,  that  the 
Fleming  of  Pembrokeshire  now  speaks  English  for  the 
same  general  reason  that  the  Dane  of  Lincolnshire  speaks 
English  ;  and  it  may  be  readily  admitted  that  the  influence 


^  The  principal  contemporary  authorities  for  this  are  Florence  of  Worcester, 
Orderic,  Alfred  of  Beverley,  William  of  Malmesbury,  and  Drompton  ;  the  words 
of  those  authors  and  of  others  in  point  will  be  found  brought  together  in  a 
valuable  paper  contributed  by  Dr.  Henry  Owen,  ofWithybusli,  to  the  "  Archaeo- 
logia  Cambrensis  "  for  1895  ;  see,  more  pariicularly,  p[).  98-100. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF  ANCIENT    WALES.        29 

of  the  Church  and  of  the  castles^  in  the  district,  combined 
with -an  inveterate  hatred  of  the  neighbouring  Welsh,  must 
have  amply  made  up  for  the  isolation  from  the  body  of  the 
English  world.  On  the  other  hand,  one-  of  the  greatest 
authorities  on  English  dialects  has  examined  the  linguistic 
evidence  and  declared  that  it  breaks  down.  At  most,  he 
thought,  there  could  only  have  been  a  subordinate  Flemish 
element,  which  soon  lost  all  traces  of  its  original  and  but 
slightly  different  dialect,  while  the  principal  element  must 
have  been  Saxon,  as  in  Govver  and  in  the  Irish  baronies  of 
Bargy  and  Forth,  forming  the  south-east  corner  of  Ireland. 
Settlements  of  a  still  more  obscure  history  were  made 
here  and  there  on  the  rest  of  the  coast  from  St.  Govan's 
Head  to  the  mouth  of  the  Severn,  but  far  the  most  impor- 
tant must  have  been  the  group  which  made  most  of  the 
peninsula  of  Gzvyr  or  Gower  into  a  non-Welsh  district, 
now  known  as  English  Gower,  and  in  W^elsh  as  Broivyr, 
that  is,  Bro-  Wyr  "  the  march  or  country  of  Gower."-'  Gower 
and  South  Pembrokeshire,  which  are  mutually  visible  and 

^  See  Mr.  Ivor  James's  "Welsh  in  the  i6th  and  17th  Centuries"  (Cardiff, 
1887),  p.  31. 

-  We  aUude  to  the  late  Mr.  Alexander  J.  Ellis,  in  a  paper  to  which  we 
shall  have  occasion  to  refer  again.  It  is  "On  the  Delimitation  of  the  English 
and  Welsh  Languages,"  and  published  in  the  "  Cymmrodor"  for  1882,  seep.  178. 
See  also  Mr.  Edward  Laws's  evidence  received  at  Pembroke  by  the  Welsh 
Land  Commission,  Questions  28,994-29,032.  Mr.  Laws  is  practically  of  the 
same  opinion  as  Mr.  Ellis  ;  and  Professor  Rhys  has  recently  submitted  the 
linguistic  evidence  adduced  in  Mr.  Henry  Owen's  paper,  p.  106,  to  the 
greatest  living  authority  on  the  history  of  English  sounds,  namely,  Dr.  Henry 
Sweet,  and  he  finds  no  reason  to  qualify  Mr.  Ellis's  account  of  the  matter. 
On  the  other  hand,  Professor  Joseph  Wright,  in  the  course  of  his  editing 
his  English  Dialect  Dictionary,  considers  that  he  has  come  across  words  which 
unmistakably  point  to  the  Belgic  mother  country  of  the  Flemings  :  he  instances 
the  interjection  ac/ca/i,  and  blease,  "a  blister." 

"^  For  a  summary  of  the  evidence  as  to  the  Flemish  origin,  see  the  Rev. 
J.  D.  Davies's  "West  Gower,"  especially  part  i.,  chapter  iv.,  entitled  "The 
Colonization  by  the  Flemings,"  pp.  95-115.  See  also  an  important  article 
entitled  "  Anglia  Transvvalliana  "  in  the  "Saturday  Review"  for  the  20th  of 
May,  1876  :  it  is,  unless  Ave  are  greatly  mistaken,  from  the  pen  of  the  late 
Mr.  Freeman. 


30  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

enjoy  the  same  dialect  of  English,  may  be  supposed  to 
have  been  at  one  time  in  close  communication  with  one 
another  by  sea.  The  establishment  of  Flemings  and 
Englishmen  in  Gower  and  the  geographical  position  of 
their  country  would  naturally  suggest  a  distinct  lordship, 
which  we  have  as  the  Seigniory  of  Gower  :  it  has  been 
referred  to  more  than  once  in  the  evidence  taken  by  the 
Welsh  Land  Commission  in  Glamorganshire.^  A  great 
part  of  the  south  of  Glamorgan  is  called  in  Welsh  Bro 
Morgannwg,  "the  march,  margin,  or  country  of  Glamorgan," 
a  term  incorrectly  rendered  into  English  as  "  the  Vale  of 
Glamorgan."  Here  the  district  of  Llantwit  Major  has  been 
thought  to  show  traces  of  Flemish  settlements  ;  but  the 
Vale  is  remarkable  chiefly  for  being,  as  already  suggested, 
one  of  the  earliest  Norman  conquests  in  Wales.  This  fact 
is  rendered  conspicuous  at  the  present  day  by  two  very 
different  features  of  the  country,  the  Norman  architecture 
of  its  churches  and  the  possession  by  its  farmers  of  the 
tenant-right  known  as  the  Custom  of  Glamorgan,  which 
excels  any  other  customary  tenure  in  Whales. 

Lastly,  Wales,  situated  as  it  is  between  England  and 
Ireland,  has  always  received  additions  to  its  population 
from  both  countries.  As  to  England,  the  number  of 
Englishmen  settling  in  Wales  has  perhaps  at  no  time  been 
equal  to  the  number  of  Welshmen  migrating  to  the  large 
towns  of  England.  Irishmen  have  probably  at  all  times 
been  coming  over  to  Wales,  especialh'  to  the  nearest 
corner,  namely,  Pembrokeshire.  Thus  the  Irish  story  of 
the  Deisi  tells  us  how  some  of  those  people  left  the  part 
of  Ireland  represented  by  the  Baronies  of  the  Decies  in  the 
county  of  Waterford,  and  gave  to  Dyfed,  a  line  of  kings 
represented  in  the  time  of  Gildas  by  Vortiporius,  from  whom 
Elen,  wife  of  Howel  the  Good  in  the    loth   century,  was 

1  Qu.   5,095,    6,189-6,404,    6,418-6,422,   23,359,  27,975,  27,980,   28,014, 

28,029,  28,037. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF   ANCIENT    WALES.        31 

descended.  To  come  down  to  a  later  time,  we  read  in  the 
history  of  Pembrokeshire  by  George  Owen,  who  Hved  in 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  that  the  Anglo-Flemish  portion  of 
his  native  county  was  so  overrun  by  Irishmen,  that  in 
some  parishes  the  clergyman  was  found  to  be  the  only 
inhabitant  who  was  not  Irish.^  This,  it  is  true,  was  an 
exceptional  time,  as  it  was  at  the  end  of  the  war  known 
as  Tyrone's  Rebellion,  but  many  of  the  exiles  must  have 
settled  in  Pembrokeshire.  In  fact,  Mr.  Henry  Owen,  the 
learned  editor  of  George  Owen's  work,  remarks-  that  the 
descendants  of  those  Irishmen  can  still  be  traced. 

Reverting"  for  a  moment  to  the  chief  races  constituting" 
the  Welsh  people,  the  Celtic  or  Aryan  consisting  of  Goidels 
and  Brythons,  and  the  non-Aryan  consisting  of  the  Abori- 
ginal population,  we  may  say  that  their  relative  proportions 
to  one  another  may  be  treated  as  little  disturbed  by 
immigrants  from  Ireland  or  even  from  England  ;  for  the 
average  Englishman  is  at  most  not  much  more  Aryan  than 
the  average  Welshman.  But  the  Scandinavian  settlements, 
so  far  as  they  went,  must  have  gone  to  strengthen  the  Aryan 
elem-ent,  and  in  a  qualified  sense  the  same  may  be  said  of 
the  Norman  conquests  in  Wales.  Then  as  to  the  Anglo- 
Flemish  districts,  the  settler  cannot  be  regarded  as  having 
to  any  large  extent  helped  to  modify  the  composition  of 
the  Welsh  people,  as  he  has  partly  resisted  the  temptation 
to  merge  his  national  individuality  in  the  amalgam  of  races 
around  him.  As  it  is,  he  is  there  conveniently  situated 
for  the  purposes  of  comparison,  and  in  this  connection  he 
may  be  roughly  described,  at  any  rate  so  far  as  Pembroke- 
shire is  concerned,  as  somewhat  better  fed  than  his  Welsh 
neighbour,  more  plump  and  well-conditioned  in  point  of 
personal  appearance,  more  happy  and  contented  with  his 

'  See  George  Owen's  "  Pembrokeshire,"  p.  40. 

-  In  the  volume,  to  which  reference  has  already  been  made,  of  the 
"  Archceoiogia  Cambrensis,"  p.  103. 


32  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  i.) 

lot  generally,  and  less  troubled  with  social  or  political 
ideas  as  to  the  future. 

Should  it  then  be  asked  what  the  Welsh  of  the  present 
day  are,  Aryan  or  not  Aryan,  the  answer  must  be,  we  think, 
that,  on  the  whole,  they  are  not  Aryan  ;  that,  in  fact,  the 
Aryan  element  forms,  as  it  were,  a  mere  sprinkling  among 
them.  This  is  by  no  means  surprising,  as  will  be  seen  on 
comparing  the  case  of  France,  to  which  we  have  already 
alluded.  For  the  French  of  the  present  day,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Teutonic  element  in  the  north-east  of 
France,  are,  in  the  main,  neither  Gauls  nor  Aryans  of  any 
description  so  much  as  the  lineal  representatives  of  the 
inhabitants  whom  the  Aryans  found  there.  In  fact,  the 
Gauls  were  not  very  numerous,  even  when  they  ruled  the 
whole  country.  It  has  been  estimated,  on  the  basis  of  the 
particulars  given  by  Csesar  as  to  the  numbers  of  the  cavalry 
which  the  different  Gaulish  tribes  were  able  to  place  in  the 
field  to  meet  the  Roman  legions,  that  the  Gaulish  aristo- 
cracy formed  a  surprisingly  small  proportion  of  a  popula- 
tion whose  numbers  ranged  somewhere  between  three  and 
six  millions.^  There  seems  to  be  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
the  dominant  Celts  in  this  country  were  relatively  more 
numerous  than  in  Gaul.  They  formed  a  ruling  class,  and 
led  their  dependents  in  war,  which  was  their  business  above 
all  other  things. 

Coming  down  to  later  times,  we  may  say  that  their 
descendants  retained  the  position  of  privilege  and  leading 
in  the  contests  with  the  Normans,  who   either   measured 


^  See  Roget  de  Relloguet's  "  Ethnogenie  Gauloise,"  ii.  308-314,  and 
Bertrand  and  Reinach's  "  Celtes  dans  les  Vallees  du  P6  et  du  Danube," 
ii.  41.  See  also  M.  d'Arbcis  de  Jubainville's  "  Premiers  Habitants  de 
I'Europe,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  7-9,  where  the  learned  Frenchman  estimated  the 
aggregate  of  Gauls,  inclusi\e  of  women  and  children,  at  60,000,  a  figure 
which  has  always  struck  us  as  somehow  too  low.  It  has  since  been  boldly 
challenged  by  Mr.  W.  II.  (Bullock)  Hall  in  his  "  Romans  on  the  Riviera " 
^, London,  1898),  pp.  3-5. 


ETHNOLOGY   OF   ANCIENT    WALES.        33 

swords  with  them    on  the   field   of  battle,  or  entered   into 
family  alliances  with  them,  as   best  suited   their  purposes 
for   the  time  being.     In    any  case,  the   Normans  do  not 
appear  to  have  thought  it  beneath  them  to  intermarry  with 
the  nobility  of  Wales,  and  that  to  an   extent  not  to  be, 
in  the  case  of  England,  inferred  from  the  history  of  their 
treatment  of  Saxon  or  Anglian  families.     As  late  as  the 
Tudor  period  the  able-bodied  men  of  the  Welsh  families 
took   part  in  raids  on  the  Marches  and  in  the  interminable 
feuds  which   raged  among  them   at  home,  in   the    course 
of  which  they  waylaid  one  another  or  burnt  each  other's 
residences  about  their  owners'  ears.     Witness,  for  instance, 
the  state  of  Eifionyd,  as  represented  by  Sir  John  Wynne, 
in    his   History  of  the    Gwydir  Family.      But  from    the 
moment  that  Wales  was   subjected  to    English  law  they 
began    to    find    their   occupation    gone,   and    probably   to 
dwindle  in  importance  and  power  ;    but   it  remained  for 
the  Civil  War  which  broke  out  under  Charles  I.  to  com- 
plete their  ruin,  since  they  ranged   themselves   nearly  all 
on   the   side  of  the  King.     Neither  folly  nor  misfortune, 
however,  could    loosen    the  attachment  felt  for  them    by 
their   dependents,  an  attachment  which  a  perusal  of  the 
evidence  taken   by  the  Welsh   Land   Commission   would 
show  to  be   still   strong  among  the  tenants  on  the  larger 
estates  in  Wales.     There  remained  a  difference  of  educa- 
tion, a   difference  of  class,  to  mark  off  the  squire  and  his 
family  from  the    people   on    his  land,  but    no    conscious 
distinction  of  race. 

Nevertheless,  if  a  competent  ethnologist  were  to  be  sent 
round  Wales  to  identify  the  individual  men  and  women 
who  seemed  to  him  to  approach  what  he  should  consider 
the  Aryan  type,  his  report  would  probably  go  to  show 
that  he  found  comparatively  few  such  people,  and  that 
those  few  belonged  chiefly  to  the  old  families  of  the  land- 
owning  class  :  the  vast  majority  he  could   only   label  as 

^v  r.  D 


34  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  i.) 

probably  not  Celtic,  not  Aryan.  To  pronounce,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  race  and  history,  on  the  social,  political,  or 
religious  proclivities  of  that  majority  is  rendered  difficult  by 
the  fact  that  it  is  not  easy  to  estimate  correctly  the  influence 
on  Wales  of  movements  originated  or  developed  in  England. 
There  is,  however,  one  instructive  instance  :  the  Welsh 
people  have  largely  deserted  the  Established  Church,  and 
they  have  done  so  in  favour  of  more  democratic  forms  of 
religion,  just  as  their  kinsmen  have  done  in  Cornwall  and 
the  Highlands  of  Scotland.  Herein  the  Welsh  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  been  merely  following  the  example  of 
England,  as  England  cannot  be  considered  to  have  given 
a  decisive  lead  in  the  matter.  Religion,  however,  is  not 
the  only  domain  in  which  the  tendency  of  the  Welsh  is 
democratic  :  it  holds  good  of  their  attitude,  on  the  whole, 
as  regards  social  and  political  questions.  And  this  cannot 
fail  to  be  rendered  more  and  more  conspicuous  by  all 
movements  calculated  to  weaken  the  attachment  of  the 
many  for  the  class  which  supplied  them  with  leaders  in 
the  past. 

It  may  perhaps  be  convenient  if  we  summarise  here 
the  views  set  forth  in  this  chapter,  somewhat  as  follows  : — 

The  study  of  the  skulls  and  other  remains  found  in 
early  interments  in  this  country  proves  that  it  was  inhabited 
by  more  than  one  race  at  the  time  when  the  Romans  came 
here  to  conquer. 

The  study  of  language  and  institutions  suggests  the 
view,  that  the  earliest  inhabitants  were  of  a  non- Aryan  race, 
namely,  that  represented  probably  by  the  Picts  of  history. 

In  the  fifth  or  the  sixth  century  before  our  era,  or 
perhaps  earlier,  the  first  Celtic  settlers  came  and  overran 
most  of  the  southern  half  of  Britain.  They  were  the 
Aryan  ancestors  of  the  Goidels,  whose  language  is  now 
represented  by  the  Gaelic  dialects  of  Ireland,  Man,  and 
Scotland. 


ETHNOLOGY    OF   ANCIENT    WALES.        35 

In  the  second  or  the  third  century  B.C.  there  arrived 
invaders  belonging  to  the  other  branch  of  the  Celtic 
family,  namely,  the  Brythons,  and  they  conquered  from 
the  Goidels  most  of  the  country  which  the  latter  had 
conquered  previously  from  the  Aborigines. 

In  what  is  now  Wales  the  Brythonic  conquests  were 
represented  by  the  territory  of  the  Ordovices,  covering 
the  whole  of  Mid- Wales  as  far  as  Cardigan  Bay. 

The  Goidels  to  the  north  and  south  of  the  Ordovices 
were  never  systematically  displaced,  and  their  Goidelic 
may  have  continued  a  living  tongue  down  into  the  seventh 
century. 

Soon  after  the  Romans  left  Britain  the  Ordovices 
received  an  accession  of  Brythonic  blood  in  the  troops 
led  by  Cuneda  and  his  Sons,  to  whom  may  be  traced  the 
political  framework  of  Wales  under  the  aspect  which  it 
presents  to  the  historian  of  the  Norman  Conquest. 

Conquests  there  must  have  been,  but  the  study  of  the 
languages  in  point  goes  to  prove  more,  namely,  inter- 
mixture :  the  Brythons  mixed  with  the  Goidels,  who  were 
themselves  an  amalgam  of  the  first  Celtic  settlers  with 
the  Aborigines  ;  but  all  conscious  distinction  of  race  had 
probably  been  obliterated  before  the  eleventh  century. 

The  admixture  of  other  blood,  Scandinavian,  Norman, 
Flemish,  and  English,  has  not  greatly  modified  the  race, 
the  predominant  element  in  which  has  probably  always 
been  the  substratum  contributed  by  the  earliest  lords  of 
the  soil  of  these  islands.^ 

^  Since  this  chapter  was  written  we  have  had  occasion  to  read  a  remarkable 
book  by  the  late  Rev.  W.  D.  Babington  on  "  Fallacies  of  Race  Theories  as 
applied  to  National  Characteristics"  (London:  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1895). 
Among  other  things  we  may  say  that  it  confirms  our  view  as  to  the  mixture  of 
races  constituting  each  of  the  nations  in  the  United  Kingdom,  and  it  disposes 
of  the  stock  generalisations  framed  to  flatter  the  German  at  the  exp'inse  of 
the  Celt. 


D    2 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    PICTISH   QUESTION. 

The  foregoing  outlines  will  serve  to  suggest  a  picture  of 
the  ethnology  of  ancient  Wales,  and  we  have  endeavoured 
not  to  crowd  it  with  details.  Some  of  these  we  now  pro- 
ceed to  supply  by  elaborating  a  few  of  the  points  on  which 
we  have  touched  in  passing.  We  begin  by  reverting  to 
the  Pictish  succession  and  metronymic  designations  like 
that  of  Gwydio7i  son  of  Don  ;  and  when  one  comes  to 
consider  what  the  Pictish  succession  must  have  originally 
meant,  one  cannot  overlook  Caesar's  statement,  that  some 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Britain  had  their  wives  in  common. 
Professor  Zimmer,  on  analysing  Caesar's  chapter  in  point, 
comes  to  the  conclusion  that  the  words  were  meant  to 
apply  to  non-Aryan  inhabitants  in  the  interior — those,  in 
fact,  whom  Caesar  represents  as  regarding  themselves 
descended  from  the  Aboriginal  islanders  in  contrast  to  the 
later  comers,  who,  according  to  the  same  authority,  did  not 
materially  differ  in  their  customs  from  the  Gauls.  Caesar's 
words  (v.  14)  are  to  the  following  effect: — Uxorcs  habent 
deni  dnodeniqne  ijtter  se  coinnmnes^  et  viaxhne  fratres  cum 
fratribus  parentesqne  aim  liberis  ;  sed  qni  stint  ex  iis  nati^ 
eoruvi  JiabenUir  liberie  quo  privnim  vi7'go  qticoqiie  dedncta  est. 
The  first  sentence  makes  a  clean  sweep  of  the  institution  of 
marriage,  and  leaves  no  room  for  the  idea  of  incest  ;  ^  but  the 

'  As  to  the  origin  of  that  idea  see  INI.  S.  Reinach's  article  "'La  prohibition 
de  I'inceste  et  ses  origines ""  in  "' E'Anthropolcgie,"  vol.  x.,  pp.  59-70. 


THE   PICTISH    QUESTION.  37 

second  sentence  seems  to  us  to  have  been  dictated  by  the 
Roman's  inability  to  realise  a  state  of  society  exclusively 
based  on  birth.  The  idea  of  assigning  the  children  each  to 
its  own  father,  if  not  entirely  due  to  the  working  of  Caesar's 
own  mind,  reads  in  this  context  like  an  advance  towards 
Aryan  habits.  At  any  rate,  we  shall  as  we  proceed  find 
traces  of  a  stage  of  society  betraying  no  perceptible 
tendency  in  that  direction.^ 

The  kind  of  social  arrangement  here  in  question  suggests 
several  curious  points  for  consideration,  and  foremost  among 
them  this  :  who  would  be  reckoned  a  man's  nearest  of  kin  ? 
Clearly  one's  own  brothers  and  sisters  by  the  same  mother  ; 
and  looking  backwards  one's  nearest  relatives  would  be  his 
mother  and  his  mother's  brothers  and  sisters  similarly,  while 
looking  forwards  it  would  be  one's  sisters'  children.  So  one 
would  naturally  look  for  one's  heir  and  successor  in  one's 
brother,  and  after  him  in  a  son  of  one's  sister.  This  is 
the  key  to  a  good  deal  that  is  otherwise  unintelligible 
in  Celtic  literature  :  let  us  take  for  instance  the  Mabhiogi 
of  Math,  which  has  already  been  mentioned.  There  the 
leading  family  ruling  over  Gwyned  consists  of  the  following 
persons  : — 

Math  the  king,  who  is  called  son  of  Mathonwy,  about 
whom  nothing  is  known. 

Don^  Math's  sister,  about  whom  equally  little  is  known, 
except  that  she  had  the  following  children  : 

GitydioHy  Gofannon^  {Amaethoii),  Gilfaethivy,  and  Efeyd^ 
all  called  sons  of  Don  ;  and  one  daughter  called 

Aranrot,  or  Arianrhod,  daughter  of  Don.    Arianrhod  had 
two  sons,  Dylan  and  Lezv  Lazvgyffcs. 

Next    to    the    king   himself,   Gwydion    plays   the    most 
important  role  in  Math's  realm,  and  the  king  teaches  him  the 

^  Such  a  stage  of  society,  together  with  well-known  stories  about  virgin 
mothers,  points  back  to  a  savage  state  in  which  the  male  element  had  never 
been  supposed  necessary  to  conception. 


38  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

magic  of  which  he  was  master  :  in  fact,  everything  points 
to  Gwydion  as  Math's  successor,  though  that  is  not  stated 
in  the  story.  In  due  time  ILew  ILawgyffes  is  represented 
succeeding  to  the  kingdom  of  Gwyned.  In  other  words. 
Math  is  succeeded  by  his  sister's  son,  Gwydion,  and 
Gwydion  is  succeeded  by  his  sister's  son,  ILew.  It  is 
tacitly  assumed  that  Gwydion  was  the  father  of  ILew  ;  but 
the  relationship  between  Gwydion  and  Arianrhod  is  never 
discussed,  and  the  silence  maintained  on  that  point  only 
becomes  intelligible  in  the  light  of  the  social  arrangement 
here  supposed. 

Similarly  in  the  case  of  the  Mahinogi  of  B^'aniden  :  there 
we  have  Bendigeitvran,  or  Bran  the  Blessed,  as  king  of 
Britain,  and  he  has  a  brother,  Manaw\'dan,  and  a  sister, 
Branwen  :  they  are  called  sons  of  ILyr  and  daughter  of 
ILyr  respectively,  while  their  mother  is  named  Penardim,^ 
daughter  of  Beli,  son  of  Mynogan. 

Now  Branwen  is  given  to  wife  to  Matholwch,  who  reigns 
in  Ireland,  and  there  she  has  a  son  by  him  called  Gwern 
son  of  Matholwch  ;  but  after  some  years  have  passed  Bran 
hears  of  his  sister  being  harshly  treated,  and  he  makes  an 
expedition  to  Ireland.  He  leaves  behind  him  Cradawc, 
or  Caradog,  his  son,  to  take  charge  of  this  country,  the 
kingship  of  which  is,  however,  seized  in  the  meantime  b\- 
Caswaftawn,  or  Caswatton,  son  of  Beli.    For  this  Caswatton. 

1  She  had  two  other  sons,  Nissien  and  Efnissien,  whose  father  is  called 
EuroswytJ  in  the  Mabinogi  :  he  is  said  in  one  of  the  Triads  (i.  50  =  ii.  49) 
to  have,  some  time  or  other,  taken  Lyr  prisoner.  The  form  Fenardivi  in 
the  Mabinogi  was  an  archaism  ;  and  our  narrator,  had  he  understood  it,  would 
have  put  it  into  his  own  spelling  as  Penardu,  which  would  be  in  modem 
Welsh  Pciiarifu  ox />en-ar(tii,  meaning  "  Her  of  the  Black  Head."  Compare  the 
variant  Dyf-lyn  for  Du-lyn  "  Black  pool,"  and  Welsh  u  in  verbal  nouns  like 
credii  "  act  of  believing  "  zx\^gohebu  "  act  of  corresponding,"  as  compared  with 
Old  Irish  oetem  "belief,"  scchem  "act  of  following,"  and  sessom  "standing." 
The  subject  is  too  large  to  dispose  of  here  in  passing,  but  the  reader  should 
consult  the  learned  articles  of  M.  Ernault  on  "  Les  Formes  de  I'lnfinitif 
Breton,"  in  Meyer  and  Stem's  '•  Zeit.  fiir  Celt.  Philologie,"  vol.  ij. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  39 

we  are  told,  donned  a  coat  of  magic  mail  and  slew  Cara- 
dog's  men  without  disclosing  who  it  was  that  did  it ;  but  he 
did  not  slay  Caradog,  as  he  was  his  relative.  He  is  called 
his  nephew,  son  of  his  cousin ;  and  we  learn  from  an 
ancient  triad  cited  in  the  story  that  he  died  of  grief  and 
vexation  at  the  slaughter  of  his  men.  In  Ireland  the 
coming  of  Bran  and  his  host  created  a  great  commotion, 
but,  thanks  to  the  intercession  of  Branwen,  the  two  kings 
Bran  and  Matholwch  came  to  terms,  and  the  concession 
made  by  the  Irish  was  to  give  Matholwch's  kingdom  to 
Branwen's  son  Gwern.  The  concession  consisted  in  the 
fact  implied  that  Gwern  could  not,  according  to  the  usage 
of  Matholwch's  people,  be  Matholwch's  successor,  as  he 
would,  according  to  the  birth  succession,  be  no  recognised 
relation  of  Matholwch's  at  all,  whereas,  according  to  the 
same  rule,  he  would  be  Bran's  nearest  of  kin  and  his  rightful 
successor,  as  son  of  his  sister.  The  editor  or  narrator  of 
the  story  as  we  have  it  does  not  show  that  he  understood 
this,  and  it  is  he  probably  that  is  to  be  held  responsible 
for  an  inconsistency  which  occurs  in  it.  More  than  once 
he  makes  Caswafton  son  of  Eeli  cousin  to  Bran  and 
Manawydan,  though  he  treats  them  at  the  outset  as  sons  of 
Penardim,  and  her  as  daughter  of  Beli.^  It  all  comes  right, 
however,  if  we  treat  Penardim,  not  as  daughter  of  Beli,  but 
as  his  sister  on  the  mother's  side  :  then  Bran's  rieht  to 
succeed  Beli,  who  is  fabled  to  have  been  king  of  Britain, 
becomes  clear — he  is  the  son  of  Beli's  sister.    But  an  editor 

^  We  take  it  that  the  latest  editor  is  responsible  for  this,  but  that  he  found 

CaswaTton  made  son  of  Beli  in  the  version  which  he  was  using  of  the  Mabinogi, 

and  that  he  forgot  or  hesitated  to  alter  the  relationsliip  as  indicated  at  pp.  41 

and  44.     The  passage  where  Penardim  is  made  daughter  of  Eeli  is  the  opening 

of  the  M.nbinogi  of  Branwen  (p.  26),  and  the  second  line  of  it  is  remarkable  for 

the  words  arderchabc  0  goron  Itiiideiii,  which  have  been  translated  from  some 

such   a  phrase   as  \iiisi^niHis  diademate,    common   enough,    for  example,    in 

Geoffrey's  Latinity,  as  in  Lib.  ij.  i,  20,  iv.  11,  vi.  4.      In  fact  Me  suspect  that 

the  Mabinogion  had  not  assumed  the  form  in  which  we  have  them  till  Geoffrey's 
time.    '    v"«^-v-.^w.  «.,i...c*-,.^'.-^ 


40  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

not  familiar  with  this  kind  of  succession  would  naturally 
think  that  he  improved  Bran's  position  by  making  his 
mother  daughter  of  Beli — that  is  to  say,  by  making  Bran 
a  descendant  of  Beli. 

The  story  originally  implied  the  Pictish  succession,  and 
it  is  worthy  of  note  that  of  the  two  men  whom  it  represents 
succeeding  their  respective  fathers  contrary  to  it,  the  one, 
Caradog,  dies  of  vexation,^  while  the  other,  Caswafton,  is 
only  enabled  to  secure  by  violence  and  magic  a  position 
which  the  tenor  of  the  Mabinogi  assumes  to  have  rightfully 
belonged  to  Manawydan  after  the  death  of  his  brother 
^;.  Bran.     In  fact,  the  introduction  of  Caradog  and  Caswafton 

\'-;.  betrays   the   falsifying   hand    of  a  historian,   for  Cradaivc, 

/  as  we  have   assumed,  is   merely  a  form  of  Caradawc,  the 

representative  of  Caratdcos^  in  Latin  Caratacus — sometimes 
distorted  still  into  Caractacus — the  name  of  the  famous 
but  unsuccessful  leader  of  the  Silures  and  Ordovices  against 
the  Romans.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  no  son  of  Bran, 
nor  was  he  of  his  Goidelic  race,  as  he  was  a  Br\^thon.  Yet  this 
fiction  has  been  widely  accepted  in  Modern  Welsh  literature, 
according  to  which  Caradog  and  Bran  his  father,  together 
with  their  families,  were  taken  captives  to  Rome,  where 
Bran  and  others  of  his  family  were  converted  to  Christianity, 
and  on  their  return  brought  the  Gospel  to  Britain.  Then 
as  to  Caswatton,  by  him  we  are   doubtless  to  understand 

1  The  exact  meaning  of  the  word  used  is  merely  inferred,  as  it  occurs  only  in 
this  triad.  The  part  relating  to  Caradog  reads  in  the  Red  Book  (Oxford 
Mabinogion,  p.  41),  A  h6nn6  uu  y  trydyd  dyn  a  torres  y  gallon  0  niuyget, 
where  the  two  last  words  should  probably  be  o  annmyoei.  It  seems  to  mean 
"And  that  was  one  of  the  three  who  broke  their  hearts  of  vexation  or  grief."' 
Another  of  the  three  making  up  the  original  triad  was  Ffaraon,  who  is  thus 
mentioned  in  "Luddand  JLtveXys,"'  ibid.,  p.  98:  Trydyd  crynweissat  lai  hGntiG 
a  torres y  gallon  \o\  anniuiged,  '*  That  was  the  third  chief  guardian  who  broke 
his  heart  of  grief."  It  is  there  said  that  Dinas  Emreis  in  Snowdon  had  been 
previously  known  from  Ffaraon  as  Dinas  Ffaraon  Dande,  and  the  name 
carries  us  back  to  an  old  world  of  legend  now  submerged.  The  third  limb 
of  the  triad,  we  are  soriy  to  say,  has  never  been  discovered. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  41 

Cassivellaunos,  the  leader  of  the  Brythonic  tribes  who  had 
opposed  JuHus  Caesar  in  the  south-east  of  Britain  when  that 
general  paid  his  second  visit  to  our  shores  :  Geoffrey,  at 
the  end  of  his  third  book,  chap,  xx.,  introduces  him  as 
Cassibellaunus,  son  of  Hely  [read  Bely].  The  way  in 
which  Caradog's  history  is  referred  to  an  ancient  triad, 
susfsests  that  we  have  in  the  allusion  to  his  death  a  touch 
of  genuine  tradition,  based  remotely  on  the  real  history 
of  Caratacos,  and  preserved  in  the  west  of  the  island. 

Lastly,  as  to  Beli  son  of  Mynogan,^  his  identity  with 
Bellinus  son  of  Minocannus  in  Nennius's  Historia  Brit- 
tonum,  where  he  is  made  the  native  leader  against  Julius 
Caesar,  has  been  known  for  some  time.  And  Professor 
Zimmer  ^  has  traced  the  Nennian  Bellinus^  filius  Mino- 
canni,  back  through  Orosius's  gibberish  Minocynobel- 
linum  Britannorum  regis  filiufn  to  Suetonius's  Adniinio, 
Cynobellini  Brittannorutn  regis  filio ;  and  from  the  latter 
historian  we  learn  that  Adminios  was  a  fugitive  from  Britain, 
who  gave  himself  up  to  the  mad  emperor  Caligula.  So 
much  for  the  designation  of  Beli,  or  Beli  Mawr,  son  of 
Mynogan ;  but  we  cannot  follow  Professor  Zimmer  in 
thinking  that  his  unravelling  of  this  tangle  of  errors  dis- 
poses of  Beli.  For  we  conjecture  that  the  words  trans- 
lated "  Son  of  Mynogan  "  were  not  to  be  found  in  the 
original  of  the  Mabinogi,  but  that  they  were  introduced 
by  an  editor  who  was  acquainted  with  the  Historia  Brit- 
tonum  of  Nennius.  What  stood  in  the  story  previously 
was  rather  Beli  Maur  map  Aun,  An,  or  Anau,  "Beli 
the  Great,  son  of  A.,"  which  occurs  as  Beli  Ma6r  in.  Anna, 
*'  Beli  the  Great,  son  of  Anna,"  in  one  of  the  pedigrees  in 

^  See  Skene's  "Four  Anc.  Books  of  Wales,"  ii.  204,  420  ;  and  San  Marte's 
*' Nennius  und  Gildas,"  pp.  40,  41,  §  19. 

2  See  Zimraer's  "Nennius  Vindicatus,"  pp.  271-3  :  his  references  are  to 
Suetonius's  Caligula,  cap.  44  et  seq.,  and  Orosius's  "  Histor.  advers.  Paganos," 
vii.  5,  5  ;  see  also  Evans's  "Coins  of  the  Ancient  Britons,"  pp.  208,  284-348  ; 
and  Rhys's  "  Celtic  Britain  "  (2nd  edition),  p.  278. 


42  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

Jesus  College  Manuscript  20,  supposed  to  be  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  Further  one  reads  two  sentences  respecting 
Anna,  as  follows  :  yr  atma  honn  oed  verch  y  ainheraddyr 
rufein.  yr  anna  honno  a  dywedei  wyr  j/r  eifft  y  bot  yn 
gyfynnithder6  y  veir  vordyn}  which  seem  to  represent  two 
glosses  from  two  different  sources,  as  will  be  seen  from  the 
rendering  of  them,  "  This  Anna  was  daughter  to  the 
emperor  of  Rome.  That  Anna  used  to  be  said  by  the  men 
of  Egypt  to  be  cousin  to  the  Virgin  Mary."  The  latter 
statement  is  also  made  in  the  pedigree  of  Owen  son  of 
Howel  the  Good,  who  is  traced  back  to  Aballac  son  of 
AmalecJi  quifuit  Beli  magni  jilius^  et  Anna  mater  ejus,  quavi 
dicunt  esse  eonsobrinam  Marice  Virginis,  Matris  Domini 
nostri  Ihcsu  Chris ti? 

The  treatment  of  the  ILyr  pedigree  in  the  matter  of 
Penardim  prepares  us  to  understand  the  treatment  of  Anna 
in  the  pedigrees  in  question.  The  editor  probably  found 
Anna  represented  as  Beli's  wife  or  as  his  mother,  but  not 
feeling  bound  to  say  anything  about  her,  he  simply  added 
to  the  name  of  Beli  words  meaning  ''Son  of  Mynogan,"  after 
the  example  of  Nennius.  With  regard  to  the  Christian 
Anna,  the  introduction  of  her  name  is  due  probably  to  an 
early  confusion  of  it  with  that  of  A7ia  or  Ann,  genitive 
Anann,  who  figures  in  Irish  mythology  as  mater  deorum 
hiberfiensium^  This  name  would  be  treated  in  Old  Welsh 
as  Ann  or  An  (possibly  Anau),  according  to  the  quantit}- 

'  See  "  Y  Cynimiodor,"  viij.  84;  also  p.  85. 

-  For  the  abbreviations  used  see  Phillimore's  edition  of  MS.  A.  of  the 
"  Annales  Cambriae,"  in  '•  Y  Cynimrodor,' ix.  170:  the  genealogies  seem  to 
have  been  compiled  in  the  tenth  century.  Whether  the  scribe  here  meant  one 
to  regard  Anna  as  the  mother  of  Beli  or  of  Amalech  is  not  clear  ;  but  a  little 
later  (p.  174)  he  undoubtedly  takes  the  latter  view — the  wrong  view,  in  fact  ; 
for  he  there  has  "Amalech  son  oi  Be.i  et  Anvay 

^  See  Stokes's  edition  of  O'Doncvan's  translation  of  "Corninc's  Glossary " 
(Calcutta,  1868),  s.v.  Atta,  p.  4;  also  p.  17,  where  an  article  is  devoted  to 
another  female  figure,  Buaitann,  mother  of  Irish  heroes,  just  as  Ana  was 
mother  of  Irish  god>. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  43 

of  the  initial  vowel  in  the  Goidelic  Ana  or  Anu,  which  is 
not  certain. 

To  return  to  Beli,  we  read  in  the  Red  Book  story  called 
Maxen's  Dream/  that  he  was  in  possession  of  Britain  until 
Maxen  and  his  legions  came  and  drove  him  and  his  sons 
on  sea  ;  and  so  closely  does  Beli  appear  associated  with  the 
sea  that  an  ancient  verse  calls  the  brine  of  the  ocean  Beli's 
liquor.-     This  we  cannot  help  regarding  as  a  popular  touch 
not  to  be  explained  by  any  amount  of  learned  bungling  on 
the   part  of  Orosius  or  Nennius.     We  are  led  back  to  a 
legend  in  the  west  of  Britain,  which  represented  it  enjoying 
a  sort  of  a  golden  age  which  was  only  brought  to  an  end  by 
the  advent  of  the  Romans.     We  learn  that  the  king's  name 
was  Beli,  and  we  infer  that  he  was  a  Goidel,  who  had  ships 
on  the  Irish  Sea.     We  know  from  the  Chronicles  that  the 
name  which  was  Beli  in  Welsh  (borne  by  one  of  the  kings 
of  Gwyned  and  by  others  in  historical  times)  was  in  Irish 
Bile ;    further,  there  was  an  ancient  Bile   with  whom   we 
should    identify    our    Beli    the    Great,    and    Irish    legend 
represents  him  as  the  father  of  Mil,  the  leader  of  the  last 
legendary  conquest  of  Ireland  and  ancestor  of  all  those  of 
the  Irish  who  called  themselves  Milesians  after  his  name. 
The  story  as  we  have  it  makes  Bile  king  of  Spain,  and  by 
giving  his  son  the  name  of  J///,  genitive  Mzled,  it  brings  us 
to  the  Latin  miles,  genitive  militis,  "  a  soldier  " :  this  seems 
to  have  been  a  synonym  or  translation  of  another  name, 
Galam  or  Golain,  by  which  Mil  was  known  and  described  in 
Irish  as  a  man  of  bravery  and  valour.     The  identity  of  the 
names   Bile  and  Beli   is,  however,  not  all :  the  parallel  is 
closer  than  it  looks  at  first  sight.    Mil,  son  and  successor  of 
Bile,  conquers  Ireland,  which  is  divided  between  his  two 

1  See  the  Oxford  Mab.,  p.  88. 

2  See  the  Book  of  Taliessin  in  Skene's  "  Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales," 
ii.  150,  where  one  reads  Giiadt  rdyf yn  hdi  Beliwiradt,  "Familiar  is  the  sight  of 
oars  in  the  brine  of  Bell's  liquor."    For  a  mistranslation  of  it  see  i.  300. 


44  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

sons  Eber  and  Airem,  while  the  Mabinogi  makes  Beli's 
heir  and  successor,  Bran,  obtain  the  practical  disposal  of 
Ireland.  The  narratives  otherwise  differ,  owing  chiefly  to 
the  Welsh  one  having  gone  off  into  a  stor\'  which  may  be 
regarded  as  forming  a  counterpart  of  that  of  the  Nibelungen 
Slaughter  in  the  literature  of  Teutonic  lands. 

The  tradition  about  Beli  must  be  regarded  as  belonging 
to  the  Goidels  of  Britain,  and  it  was  onh'  by  a  totcr  de  force 
that  Caswatton,  the  leader  of  Brythons — that  is  to  say,  of 
the  hereditary  foes  of  the  Goidel — could  be  made  son  of 
Beli  ;  but  it  was  natural  enough  that  an  editor  of  the 
Mabinogion  should  wish  to  graft  the  later  history  of  his 
country  on  the  legendary  glories  of  the  past,  and  it 
was  a  step  in  that  direction  to  place  Caswatton  among 
the  sons  of  Beli.  Whether  he  set  himself  to  do  this,  or 
merely  followed  the  example  set  by  a  previous  writer,^ 
his  readers,  accepting  the  words  which  he  has  used, 
could  not  help  saying  in  effect :  Yes,  it  was  by  craft  and 
violence  that  Caswatton  secured  supreme  power  ;  but  he 
was  after  all  son  of  the  rightful  king  of  Britain  in  her 
golden  age — that  is,  of  Beli  the  Great.  The  same  editor  is 
possibly  also  to  be  held  responsible  for  the  order  of  the 
events,  which  is  probably  unhistorical,  as  we  should  rather 
regard  the  aggressiveness  of  Caswatton's  race  as  one  at  least 
of  the  reasons  for  Bran's  going  to  Ireland.  But  the  dating 
of  Caswaiton's  conquests  in  W^ales  after  Bran's  departure 
for  Ireland  is  to  be  explained  by  the  confounding  of  the 
naming  of  Cadwaiion  Lawhir  with  Caswallon's  ;  for  Welsh 
tradition  insists  on  that  Cadwaiion,  who  was  grandson  of 
Cuneda  and  father  of  Maelgwn,  as  the  final  vanquisher  of  the 

'  Such  as  Geoffrey  or  the  writer  of  the  pedigree  already  mentioned  (p.  42), 
in  which  we  have  the  descent  of  Owen  son  of  Howel  traced  back  not  only  to 
Maelgwn  and  Cuneda,  but  to  Eeli.  The  former  portion  seems  to  reach  back 
to  Tacit  only  :  then  comes  a  very  Pictish  looking  portion  beginning  with  Cein, 
son  of  Guorcein,  son  of  Doli,  son  of  Giiordoli,  and  terminating  with  Beli  and 
Anna.     See  also  the  ''Proceedings  of  the  Antiq.  of  Scotland,"  xxxij.  342. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  45 

Goidels  in  North  Wales.^  We  may  therefore  still  suppose 
that  the  Brythonic  tribe  of  the  Ordovices  pushing  on  to 
the  shores  of  Cardigan  Bay  may  have  been  the  cause  of 
an  emigration  of  Goidels  to  the  nearest  coast  of  Ireland. 
In  fact,  we  have  possibly  a  trace  of  this  in  the  name 
Eblanii,  which  Ptolemy  gives  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
coast  north  and  south  of  the  mouth  of  the  Liffey,  as 
we  seem  to  have  closely  related  names  in  that  of  the 
river  Elan  (a  tributary  of  the  W\'e),  and  that  of  the 
mountain  region  of  Elenid,  in  which  Giraldus^  places 
the  sources  of  the  Severn  and  the  Wye,  of  the  Towy,  the 
Teifi,  and  the  Ystwyth.  On  the  Irish  side  it  is  significant 
that  the  story  of  Mil's  two  sons  gives  to  Eber,  the  elder 
brother  and  eponymous  hero  of  the  Iverni,  the  southern  half 
of  Ireland,  and  to  the  younger  brother,  Airem  (genitive 
Aireman  or  Eremon),  the  northern  half;  and  that  it  further 
represents  Airem  slaying  Eber  and  taking  the  whole  of 
Ireland  to  himself  The  name  Airem  means  plougJunan^ 
and  possibly  conveys  a  reference  to  the  triumphs  of  the 
Aryan  farmer  over  the  ruder  native.  But  even  disregard- 
ing  all  such  connotation  of  the  name,  we  still  have  the  fact 
that  it  has  gathered  round  it  legends  reminding  one  of  the 
story  of  Arthur;  and  that  the  name  Airem  was  borne  by  one 
of  the  early  kings  of  Tara,  in  Meath  and  the  land  of  the 
ancient  Eblanii,  the  centre  of  Milesian  rule  over  Ireland. 
Let  us  now  see  in  what  way  the  custom  of  reckoning 

*  See  Triad  i.  49  =  ii.  40  =  iii.  27  and  the  "lolo  MSS.,"  pp.  78,  468. 
Compare  Nennius,  §  62,  and  note  the  confusion  of  names  in  the  "  lolo  MSS.'*^ 
See  also  the  Oxford  Bruts,  where  Kat6atia6n  ILa6ir  at  p.  200,  stands  possibly 
for  the  same  man  as  Kas6alla6n  at  p.  232  :  in  Geoffrey's  Latin  they  are 
respectively  Caduallo  ix.  12,  and  Cassibellanus  xi.  2. 

-  See  his  "  Descriptio  Kambrije"  (Rolls  Office  edition),  pp.  119,  138, 
170-3,  175,  where  the  spelling  is  EleiDiyth  and  Elennit/i  ;  also  the  Oxford 
Mabinogion,  p.  62,  where  it  is  written  Elenit :  Lewis  Glyn  Cothi  wrote 
Elenidy  IIL  iv.  43,  4  (p.  184).  As  to  the  phonology  of  the  equation  suggested 
in  the  text,  we  have  the  similar  reduction  of  ebl  into  el  in  the  Welsh  adverb 
^/?;// (this  year)  from  some  form  of  the  Welsh  word  blyned,  "year." 


46  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

descent  by  birth  alone  has  left  its  impress  on  the  language 
and  monuments  of  those  among  whom  it  prevailed.  Our 
attention  is  challenged  in  the  first  instance  by  inscriptions 
which  suggest  no  father's  name  ;  and  the  earliest  of  that 
class  is  probably  the  bronze  tablet  found  not  very  long  ago 
at  Colchester  and  read  as  follows  :^ — 

DEO  .  MARTI  .  MEDOCIO  .  CAMP 
ES[tr]IVM  .  ET  VICTORIE  ALEXAN 
DRI  .  PII  FELICIS  AVGVSTI  .  XOS[tr]I 
DOXVM  .  LOSSIO  .  VEDA  .  DE  .  SVO 
POSVIT  .  XEPOS  .  VEPOGEXI  .  CALEDO. 

""  To  the  god  ]\Iars  Medocms  of  the  Caj}ipes\ti'\es  and  to 
the  victory  of  our  Alexander  Pius  Felix  Augustus  (this)  gift 
has  been  dedicated  at  his  own  expense  by  Lossio  Veda, 
Vepogenos's  nephew,  a  Caledonian." 

The  god  Medocius  who  is  here  equated  with  the 
Roman  Mars  is  otherwise  unknown,  as  is  also  the  pre- 
cise meaning  in  this  instance  of  the  Latin  Campestres, 
which  usually  has  reference  to  the  open  field,  and  in 
particular  to  the  Campus  Martins  in  Rome :  this  has  called 
forth  the  suggestion  that  perhaps  Lossio  Veda  was  a 
gladiator.  However  that  may  be,  he  has  taken  care  to 
tell  us  that  he  was  a  Caledonian,  which  is  for  our  purpose 
much  the  same  as  if  he  had  called  himself  a  Pict.  We  have 
indirect  evidence  to  the  same  effect  in  the  vocables  Veda 
and  Vepogeni,  for  both  may  be  said  to  occur  in  the  list  of 
the  Pictish  kings.  The  former  has  there  been  read  Uecla, 
a  spelling  due  doubtless  to  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing 

'  See  the  "  Proceedings  '*  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  2nd  S.  xiv.  io8,  183  ; 
also  **  The  ArchDeologia, "  liv.  37.  By  reading  Cafnpesium  one  seemed  to  arrive 
at  a  native  name  Campeses,  recalling  Campsie  in  Stirlin<;shire,  and  the  Linn  of 
Campsie  on  the  Tay.  As  we  have,  however,  to  treat  NOSI  as  7tostn\  we  seem 
to  be  bound  to  insert  tr  in  CAMPESIVM  likewise.  For  some  further  account 
of  the  bronze,  together  with  a  photograph  of  it,  see  the  "  Pro.  of  the  Antiq.  of 
Scotland,"  xxxij.  325-30. 


THE    PICTISH   QUESTION.  47 

in  some  kinds  of  handwriting  between  d  and  ^/;  and  the 
latter   has   in   the   same   document  yielded   a  nominative 
Vipoig,     The  two  entries  occur  also  significantly  near  one 
another,  as  follows:^  — 

Vipoig  namet  xxx.  aim.  regnatiit. 
Camitulachama  iiii.  ann.  regnauit. 
Wradech  uecla  ii.  ann.  regitauit. 

Lossio  Veda,  though  showing  no  inclination  to  be  over  brief 
in  describing  himself,  suggests  no  father's  name  ;  and  this  is 
the  case  with  certain  other  inscriptions,  such  as  the  one 
found  on  Winsford  Hill,  in  Somerset,  which  reads^  merely — 

CARATACI 
NEPVS. 

But  what  did  nepos  (or  nepiis)  mean  ?     For  the  Romans  the 

word   is  known  to  have  meant  a  grandson,  a  descendant, 

also  a  nephew,  whether  son  of  one's  brother  or  of  one's 

sister  ;  but  in  a  society  with  birth  alone  considered,  only 

one  of  those  meanings  is  admissible — namely,  a  sister's  son. 

Thus  Carataci Nepus \vou\d  mean  "Nephew  (  =  sister's  son) 

of  Caratacas."     Where  the  language  used  is  Goidelic,  the 

place  of  7iepos  is  supplied  by  avias,  genitive  avi^  reduced  in  Vf ,  ^  ^  ^'^ 

Modern  Irish  to  ua  or  J,  genitive  ui,  as  for  instance  in  the 

follov/ing   inscription   from   the  Barony  of  Bere,  co.  Cork  : 

Maqiii  Decceddas  avi  Toranias  "  (The  Stone)  of  Mac-Dechet 

6  Torna."     Or  take  the  following,   found  at    Dunbell,  co. 

Kilkenny:  Navvallo avvi  Genittac\ci\f  " (The  Stone)  oi Nilall 

^  See  Skene's  "Chronicles  of  the  Picts  and  Scots,"  p.  6  ;  also  the  fac-simile  of 
the  MS.     Skene's  account  of  the  manuscript  will  be  found  in  his  preface, 
pp.  xviii. — xxiii.,  according  to  which  it  is  a  copy  made  in  the  foui'teenth  century 
from  one  or  more  manuscripts  of  the  tenth. 

-  See  the  "  Archseologia  Cambrensis  "  for  1891,  p.  30  ;  also  the  "  Academy  " 
for  Feb.  14,  1891,  p.  168. 

*  ''Journal    of  the    Royal    Society   of   Antiquaries  of   Ireland"  for    1896, 
P-  134- 


48  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

o  Gentichr  In  one  remarkable  instance  the  word  used  is 
the  etymological  counterpart  of  the  Latin  nepos,  genitive 
nepotis,  in  Irish  Ogam  niotta\s\  later  iiioth,  7tiatJi  with  a 
nominative  nie  or  7iia^  Welsh  nei,  now  nai,  "a  nephew."^ 
The  stone  was  found  near  Gortatlea,  between  Killarney 
and  Tralee,  and  it  reads  thus,  in  two  lines  :  ~ — 

Dumeli  maqui  Glasiconas 
Niotta  Cobrano7\i\ 

"  (The  Stone)  of  Dumel,  son  of  Glasiuc,  nephew  of  (the) 
Distributor."  We  take  Cobraiior...  to  stand  for  com-raniioriy 
genitive  of  coin7'a7mo7'ias,  and  to  mean  one  who  shares  or 
divides,  probably  in  the  sense  of  carving  and  dividing  meat 
at  feasts  and  banquets.  Among  the  Irish  this  was  a  position 
of  distinction,  claimed  by  the  warrior  who  had  performed 
most  feats  of  valour.  There  is  a  well-known  Irish  tale 
entitled  the  Story  of  Mac  Datho's  Pig,  which  turns  on  a 
contest  for  the  carving  of  that  portentous  beast  by  the 
braves  of  Ulster  and  Connaught.  Mac  Datho  was  king  of 
the  Leinstermen,  but  afraid  of  both  Ulster  and  Connaught, 
on  account  of  a  remarkable  hound  of  his  which  they  coveted. 
Fearing  trouble,  he  took  his  wife's  advice  and  cunningh- 
invited  both  the  men  of  Connaught  and  the  men  of 
Ulster  for  the  same  day  :  then  the}'  would,  he  said,  get 
the  hound. 

^  The  p  which  appears  in  the  Latin  nepos  disappears,  according  to  imle,  in  the 
Celtic  equivalent  ;  hence  Irish  iije,  genitive  7noth.  The  Welsh  setting  out 
from  ne(p)ot-s  made  it  into  i2e-o  or  7ie-io,  whence  net  and  Jiai :  compare  Heidr 
''  thief."  from  latrjo,  for  the  Latin  latro.  Other  instances  will  be  found  in  the 
'■  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Scotland,"  xxvi.,  309.  Breton 
has  ni  and  iiiz  "nephew,"'  and  iiizez  "  niece,"  where  the  2  of  niz  probably 
stands  for  the  earlier  s  =  ts  of  the  nominative  ne{p)ot-s.  Compare  Breton 
noz  —  Welsh  nos  "night,"  from  not-s  =  noct-s,  reduced  in  Latin  to  nox. 

2  See  the  "Journal  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Ireland  "  for  1895, 
pp.  1-4  ;  but  our  reading  is  checked  by  a  loibbing  and  a  sketch  kindly 
supplied  by  the  Rev.  P.  Sweeny,  A.M.,  Ballinacourty  Rectory,  Annascaul, 
and  by  a  recent  examination  of  the  stone  by  Professor  Rhys. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION,  49 

They  came,  and  were  filled  with  surprise  at  meeting  one 
another  so  unexpectedly.  Presently  they  prepared  to  sit 
down  to  feast  on  the  host's  great  swine,  and  then  arose  the 
question  who  was  to  carve  :  it  was  agreed  to  give  it  to  the 
bravest.  So  each  warrior  who  had  confidence  in  his  record 
declared  what  that  was,  whereupon  rose  another  and  put 
him  down  by  enumerating  greater  feats  of  his  own.  This 
went  on  for  some  time,  when  at  lenc^th  it  looked  as  thou2[;h 
the  honour  of  carving  would  fall  for  certain  to  Get  mac 
Matach,  a  Connaught  hero,  and  he  had  taken  up  the  knife 
to  begin  the  carving  when  a  belated  Ultonian,  Conall 
Cernach,  hurries  into  the  room  and  asks.  Cm  i-annas  dinb  ? 
"  Who  is  carving  for  you  .'' "  It  was  replied  that  Get 
was  going  to  do  it,  and  a  contest  of  words  takes  place 
between  Get  and  Gonall,  with  the  result  that  Get  reluc- 
tantly yields,  with  the  remark  that  Gonall  would  not 
carve  had  Get's  brother  Anluan  been  present.  "  But  he 
is  present,"  said  Gonall,  who,  after  feeling  in  his  girdle, 
brought  forth  the  bleeding  head  of  Anluan  and  hurled 
it  in  his  brother's  face.  Such  was  Gonall's  excuse  for 
arriving  late,  and  the  passage  is  one  of  the  most  graphic 
and  savage  in  the  whole  range  of  old  Irish  literature. 

We  have  taken  Niotta  Cobranari  to  mean  Nepotis 
PartistcB,  as  describing  either  Dicmeli  or  Glasiconas,  but  it 
is  possible  that  it  should  rather  be  taken  as  an  independent 
proper  name :  at  any  rate,  such  names  occur.  Take,  for 
example,  such  a  later  instance  as  Nioth-Fruich}Niath-Fi'oich, 
Nat\]i\-Fraich,  or  Nad-Frdich,  in  which  the  first  element 
owing  to  its  proclitic  position  has  suffered  curtailment.  It  is 
to  be  noticed  that  Fraech^  genitive  Fraich^  was  a  separate 
personal  name  of  unknown  signification,  and  that  Niath- 
Fraich  must  have  meant  "  Nephew  of  Fraech,"  or,  more 
precisely  speaking,  "  Son  of  Fraech's  Sister."  And  this  is 
not  mere  inference,  for  we  have  the  positive  statement  of 

^  See  Stokes's  "Patrick,"  p.  331  ;  also  pp.  76,  194,  196,  214,  250,  468. 
W.P.  E 


50  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

Cormac's  Glossary  that  the  meaning  of  the  word  nie, 
genitive  niath,  was  viae  setJiar,  ''  sister's  son,"^  and,  as  far 
as  we  know,  that  was  its  only  meaning.  In  harmony  with 
the  foregoing  interpretations,  the  St.  Vigeans  Stone  (p.  17, 
above)  should  be  rendered  "  Drost's  nephew  Voret  for 
Fergus,"  rather  than  "  Drost's  kin  Voret  and  Fergus."  Simi- 
larly in  the  case  of  the  corresponding  vocable-  on  the 
Newton  Stone  (p.  [7,  above),  and  of  the  poi  of  certain 
Ogam  inscriptions  in  the  south  of  Ireland. 

The  earliest  existing  manuscript  of  Adamnan's  Life  of 
St.  Columba  dates  from  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century, 
and  it  is  found  that  he  distinguishes  as  a  rule  between  two 
kinds  of  clan  designations,  (i)  He  mostly  uses  ;^^^j"  where 
the  native  usage  of  later  times  recognises  ua  or  J,  with  the 
plural  nepotes  rendered  by  ui  or  Jiiii  (Anglicised  hy  and  d\ 
as  for  instance  in  Nepos  Lethani,  called  in  Irish  UaLiathain, 
Anglicised  Olethan.  So  with  the  plural,  as  in  Nepotes 
Nellis=  Ua  Xeiil,  "  the  Hy-Xeill  or  O'Neills";   but  some  of 


^  See  Stokes's  edition  of  O'Donovan's  "  Translation  of  Corniac's  Glossary," 
p.  121  ;  also  Stokes's  paper  on  the  "  Bodleian  Fragment  of  Cormac's  Glossary  " 
(read  before  the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  November  30th,  1871),  p.  8. 

-  Our  last  reading  of  it  is  ipiiai,  but  we  should  treat  ipe  as  a  spelling  of  ipai, 
and  equate  it  with  ipuai ;  that  is,  unless  it  should  prove  more  correct  to  regard 
ipuai  as  a  spelling  of  ipue.  In  either  case  we  should  treat  both  as  accented  on 
the  final  syllable  (like  rnucSi),  and  equate  them  with  poi  as  a  foreshortening  of 
some  such  a  vocable  as  ipoi  or  apoi.  In  all  instances  poi  appears  affixed 
'contrary  to  the  Celtic  habit  oi prefixing)  to  the  genitive  of  a  personal  name,  as 
in  Broinieiiaspoi  [Poi  of  Broiniu),  Corbipoi  {Poi  of  Corb),  and  lacmipoi  {Poi  of 
lacin).  These  come  respectively  from  the  counties  of  Cork,  Kilkenny,  and 
Wicklow  ;  but  the  same  formula  must  have  been  in  use  in  the  south-west  of 
Britain.  At  any  rate,  it  is  thence  we  have  to  suppose  it  transported  to 
Brittany,  where  we  have  it  in  the  well-known  name  of  the  king  Erispoe  in  the 
ninth  century.  It  is  made  up  of /<?z*  affixed  to  the  genitive  of  a  man's  name 
which  occurs  now  and  then  in  the  pedigrees  in  the  Book  of  Leinster  as  Aij-es, 
genitive  Airiss  as  on  fol.  326d,  353d,  356a,  363c.  See  vol.  xxxij.  of  the 
•'  Proceedings  of  the  Antiq.  of  Scotland"  for  1897-8,  where,  in  a  paper  entitled  a 
"  Revised  Account  of  the  Inscriptions  of  the  Northern  Picts/'  Professor  Rhys 
has  dealt  with  several  of  the  questions  touched  upon  in  this  chapter  :  for  this 
rendering  see  more  particularly  j-ip.  347,  370. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION,  51 

the  race  are  found  styled  Nieth-Neill}  where  nietJi  is  the 
etymological  counterpart  of  nepotes.  So  we  learn  not  only 
the  equivalence  of  meaning  of  nietJi  and  nepotes^  but  of  both 
practically  with  ///,  treated  in  Modern  Irish  as  meaning  grand- 
children or  descendants.  (2)  Adamnan  leaves  untranslated 
and  undeclined  in  his  Latin  a  certain  word  moat,  as  in 
Mocu-Sogin,  Mocu-Dalon,  and  Mocu-Alti.  In  Irish  Ogam 
inscriptions  this  is  a  very  important  word,  and  its  most 
usual  forms  in  them  are  moco^  genitive  imicoi ;  but  in  Irish 
literature  it  appears  as  inaccu^  genitive  uiaccui,  which  began 
comparatively  early  to  be  regarded  as  made  up  oiinacc-iii  and 
meaning  y?//V^j  iiepotis.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  it  is 
nothing  of  the  kind,  but  a  distinct  word  meaning  race  or 
kin  in  the  concrete.  Thus  a  family  or  tribe  called  Mocii 
Riintir  by  Adamnan  is  called  Dal  Rtcntir  in  the  Tripartite 
Life  of  Patrick,-  and  members  of  it  are  said  in  the  Book  of 
Armagh  to  be  de  genere  Runtir.  As  to  this  last,  it  is  to  be 
noticed  that  the  little  word  de,  though  necessary  in  the 
Latin,  is  not  in  the  original  Moat  Runtir,  which  literally 
rendered  would  be  genus  Runtir,  as  if  each  individual  of  the 
group  personified  the  whole.  The  real  explanation  is  that 
the  Picts  had  not  learnt  to  speak  of  any  race  apart  from 
some  individual  member  of  it :  to  them  "  the  kin  of  A.  B." 
was  "  kin  A.  B."  Mocu  here  followed  by  a  genitive  is 
Goidelic,  while  the  Pictish  inscription  at  Aboyne  on  the 
Deeside  has  the  words  in  apposition.'^ 

In  order  to  get  over  the  difficulty  Adamnan  sometimes 
interposes  the  word  gente,  as  in  the  instance  Trenanum, 
gente  Mociiruntir,  "  Trenan,  Mocu- Runtir  b}'  race  or 
family."  At  other  times  he  lets  mocu  do  duty  alone,  as 
in    his    mention   de   Erco  fure  Mocudruidi  qui  in    Coloso 

^  See  Skene  in  his  "Chronicles  of  the  Picts  and  Scots,"  p.  352,  where  he 
copies  the  Annals  of  Ulster  for  a.d.  692. 

'  See  Stokes's  edition,  p.  226  ;  and  as  to  the  meaning  of  mocit,  see  Rhys's 
"  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology,"  pp.  408,  409. 

^  See  the  "Proceedings  of  the  Antiquaries  of  Scotland  "  1898-9,  pp.  351-3, 

E   2 


52  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

insula  coinmanebat.  The  island  was  one  of  those  now 
called  Colonsay,  and  the  clan  to  which  Ere  belonged  took 
its  name  from  a  driiid,  somewhat  like  the  Mactaggarts 
and  MacPhersons  of  later  times,  so  named  after  ancestors 
in  holy  orders.  When  the  great  person  in  the  past  oi  a 
family  was  a  man  and  not  a  woman,  the  word  offspring  is 
inadmissible  in  the  rendering,  and  the  nearest  approach  to 
the  original  may  be  made  perhaps  by  using  "  kin  " :  thus 
Miliuc  mocu  Buain,  the  name  of  the  king  of  Daln-Araide 
(between  Loch  Neagh  and  Belfast  Loch)  who  bought 
Patrick  as  a  slave,  might  be  rendered  "  Miliuc  kin  of  Buan"; 
and  so  with  the  following  inscriptions  from  the  county  of 
Waterford,  Catabor^  inoco  Viricorb\i\  "  Cathbar  kin  of  Fer- 
Corb,"  and  Gosoctas  inucoi  Macorbi,  "  the  Monument  of 
Guasacht  kin  of  Macorb."  A  wider  choice  of  words  is 
permissible  in  a  case  like  ad  liisolas  MacciicJioi"  in  the 
Book  of  Armagh,  as  we  might  render  it  "  to  the  Islands 
of  the  family  or  tribe  of  Cor " — they  are  the  isles  at  the 
Skerries,  off  the  north-west  corner  of  Antrim  ;  and  when  a 
woman  is  the  chief  ancestral  figure  we  are  at  liberty  to  use 
a  word  meaning  progeny  and  lineal  descendants.  But  what 
is  one  to  make  of  the  double  genitive  niaqiii  inucoi,  which 
frequently  occurs  in  ancient  Ogam  inscriptions,  and  must 
Wi^2A\filii  generis  or  filii  gentis  ?  Take,  for  example,  the 
following  from  Corkaguiny  in  Kerry :  Maqqui  Erceias 
maqqui  niucoi  D ovinias,^  that  is  to  say  "  (The  Monument)  of 
Mac  Erce  son  of  the  kin  of  Dubinn,"  where  the  ancestress 
Dubinn  (genitive  Duib7ie)\\3.s  given  her  name  to  Cofro  Duibne, 

^  We  are  not  certain  whether  we  should  read  Catahor  or  Catabar ;  but  com- 
pare Ptolemy's  name — Vcllabo7-i — of  a  tribe  in  the  south-west  of  Ireland, 
Velvor  filia  Bro/io  of  a  somewhat  late  Cardiganshire  inscription,  and  Falbhar, 
a  champion's  name  mentioned  in  O'Curry's  "Manners  and  Customs  of  the 
Ancient  Irish,"  iii.  158. 

-  From  a  rubbing  supplied  by  the  Rev,  Edmond  Barry,  and  recently  verified 
by  Professor  Rhys.  The  stone  is  at  Lord  Ventry's  residence  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Dino;le. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  53 

Anglicised  Corkaguiny,  now  the  name  of  a  barony  in  the 
west  of  Kerry.  Or  to  come  back  to  Wales,  take  the  following 
Ogam  at  Bridelt  in  the  north  of  Pembrokeshire  :  Nettasagru 
rnaqiii  vmcoi  Breci^  which  may  be  rendered  i^Momivientuni) 
N ettasagr us  filii generis  Bisect.  These  and  the  like  inscrip- 
tions take  us  back  without  doubt  to  the  words  of  Caesar 
already  cited  :  in  fact  they  lead  us  back  a  little  further,  to 
wit,  to  a  stage  antecedent  to  the  consideration  of  the  paternity 
suggested  by  him.  In  Irish  literature  this  state  of  society 
is  found  surviving  in  a  form  which  looks  like  polyandr}-,  as 
in  the  case  of  a  king  of  Tara,  supposed  to  have  reigned 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  He  was  known 
as  Lugaid  of  the  Red  Stripes,  and  said  to  be  the  son  of 
three  brothers,  the  sons  of  Eochaid  Feidlech.^  Or  take  the 
Mac  Lir  family  of  Irish  legend  :  one  of  its  leading  figures 
was  the  famous  Manannan  Mac  Lir,  and  this  is  how  he  is 
introduced  in  the  opening  verses  of  a  poem  in  the  well- 
known  story  of  Bricriu's  Feast,  in  the  Book  of  the  Dun 
Cow,  fo.  50a : 

Fegaid  mac  htcJiraidi  Lir^ 
do  viaigib  Eogain  Inbir  ! 

Behold  the  son  of  the  heroes  of  Ler, 
From  the  plains  of  Eogan  of  Inver  ! 

It  is,  perhaps,  relevant  also  to  mention  here  that  a  state 
of  things  in  which  the  children  were  the  children  of  the 
family,  so  to  say,  and  owned  no  fathers  in  particular, 
rendered  necessary  some  arrangement  of  the  nature  of 
fosterage,  an  institution  known  to  have  been  of  vast  import- 
ance among  the  ancient  Goidels,  including  among  them 
the  family  of  Pwytt,  king  of  Dyfed,  as  mentioned  in  the 
Mabinogi  already  cited. 

A  man   who   styles  himself  Nepos   Vepogeni,  or  Son  of 
Vepogen's  Sister,  without  naming  her,  leaves  us  no  evidence 

^  See  the  "  Book  of  Leinster,"  fol.  124b,  151a  ;  the  '*  Revue  Celtique,"  xvi. 
148-50 ;  O'AIahony's  Keating,  pp.  287-8,  and  the  footnote  on  page  37  above. 


54  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

that  the  community  to  which  he  belonged  made  much  of 
its  women.  That  community  appears  to  have  recognised  no 
paternity,  but  to  have  reckoned  descent  by  birth  alone  ;  it 
is  possible,  however,  that  at  a  previous  stage  in  its  history 
the  family  was  constituted  on  strictly  matriarchal  lines. 
At  all  events  other  cases  occur,  which  seem  favourable  to  the 
belief  in  the  former  existence  of  matriarchy.  Certain  Ogam 
inscriptions,  for  instance,  have  been  found  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Dingle,  in  Kerry,  ending  with  the  ancestress's 
name,  nominative  Dovz7ii[s],  genitive  Dozn?2ia[s],  reduced  in 
Mediaeval  Irish  to  DiLbinn  or  D7(bind,gQmt\\Q  Z^///<^;/^, respec- 
tively, as  already  mentioned.  In  the  next  place,  certain  well- 
known  characters  in  Irish  literature  are  distinguished  by 
the  mother's  name,  such  as  ConcJiobar  son  of  Nessa,  and 
Fergus  son  of  Roig,  with  which  should  be  compared  the 
Welsh  Gofannon  son  of  Don.  Lastly,  the  legends  of  heroic 
Erin  picture  the  ladies  sitting  with  their  husbands  at  their 
banquets,  and  treated  by  them  as  their  equals  ;  and  some- 
times courtship  is  represented  in  Irish  story  as  initiated  by 
the  woman,  not  to  mention  the  doings  of  such  personages 
as  Queen  Macha  or  Queen  Maive.  Supposing  that  proof 
were  to  be  found  that  Irish  society  began  with  matriarch}-, 
several  things  in  Irish  literature  could  be  pointed  out  as 
admitting  of  easy  explanation  as  survivals ;  but  we  dare 
not  reverse  the  argument  and  sa}'  that  they  admit  of  no 
other  explanation,  and  that  we  must  therefore  postulate 
matriarchy. 

To  say  the  least  of  it,  however,  there  is  nothing  to 
suggest  that  individual  women  might  not  enjoy  great 
consideration  among  the  early  Goidels :  there  is  much 
to  the  contrary,  and  in  this  connection  a  question  offers 
itself  as  to  the  nature  of  the  theology  evolved  by  a  people 
of  the  kind.  Clearly,  if  they  reckoned  descent  by  birth 
alone,  and  provided  they  were  given  to  ancestor  worship, 
they  must  have   had   female   divinities.     Unfortunately  it 


THE   PICTISH    QUESTION.  55 

happens  that  the  whole  range  of  Irish  literature  supplies 
extremely  few  references  in  express  terms  to  divinities  of 
any  kind,  and  the  few  to  be  found  are  of  the  most  meagre 
and  precarious  description.     In  other  words,  the  Irish  pan- 
theon forms  but  a  very  dim  background   to  Irish  history  ; 
but  in  that  vanishing  picture  it  is  very  remarkable  that  the 
goddesses  loom  larger  than  the  gods.    Thus  we  have  already 
referred  to  Anu,  said  by  Cormac  to  have  been  considered 
the  mother  of  the  gods,  and  we  pointed  out  traces  of  her 
in  Welsh  pedigrees  derived  probably  from  Goidelic  sources 
in    Britain.      Cormac   mentions    also   an   analogous   figure 
whom  we  may  call  Buanu^  genitive  Buanann  ;^  and  to  this 
latter  he  gives  the  position  of  mother  or  nurse  of  Irish 
heroes,  and  of  teacher  who  taught  them  feats  of  arms.     We 
next  come  to  the  story  of  the  Second  Battle  of  Moytura,^ 
,    which  mentions  a  people  who  invaded  Ireland  at  different 
points,  and  bore  the  name  of  Fir  Doynnann^  or  the  Men  of 
Domnu.     They  came  from  the  west  coast  of  Britain,  where 
we  shall    presently  find   them    to   have   borne   the  name 
Dtunnonii  or  Dumnonians.     But  the  interest  of  their  name 
consists  in  the  fact  that  the  Irish  form.  Fir  Doninann^  is  as 
it  were  Viri  Diimnonis,  taken  from  that  of  a  goddess  Domnu 
(genitive  Domnann).      She  was  presumably  considered  to 

^  The  name  is  given  as  Buanann,  making  probably  a  genitive  Btianainne, 
but  this  is  a  comparatively  late  declension,  superseding  the  older  Buanu, 
genitive  Btianann.  Cormac  also  gives  Anit  a  genitive,  Anainne,  s.v.  ana, 
and  Danatui  is  sometimes  made  into  Danainne,  while  Danann  or  Donann 
occasionally  functions  as  nominative  :  see  the  "  Book  of  Leinster,"  fol.  iia. 

-  The  story,  which  will  be  found  published,  with  a  translation  by  Stokes,  in 
the  "  Revue  Celtique,"xii.  52 — 130,  treats  the  Fir  Domnann  as  belonging  to  the 
Fomori,  a  fabulous  race  of  elves  or  demons  whose  name  has  been  supposed 
by  Stokes  (pp.  128,  130)  to  be  derived  in  part  from  the  same  source  as  the 
latter  syllable  of  the  English  word  nightmare,  to  which  we  may  add  that  in 
Scotch  Gaelic  stories  the  singular  occurs  3.%  fomhair,  meaning  a  giant.  On  the 
other  hand,  popular  etymology  has  associated  the  Fomori  with  the  sea,  vniir, 
as  if  the  meaning  had  been  that  of  a  people  who  werej^  muir,  "  up  and  down 
the  sea,  all  over  the  sea";  hence  the  term  tended  to  mean  invaders  who  came 
over  the  sea,  and  sea  rovers  or  pirates  generally. 


56  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

be  their  ancestress,  and  their  leader  is  styled  Indech  mac 
De  Domnann,  "  Indech  son  of  the  goddess  Domnu,"  where 
mac,  "  son,"  has  probably  to  stand  for  a  distant  descendant. 
At  any  rate,  Domnu  does  not  figure  as  intervening  in  the 
story,  and  we  may  presume  that  many  generations  had 
passed  away  between  her  and  Indech  ;  not  to  mention  that 
Fir  Domnann  is  probabl}^  to  be  equated  with  Dumnonii, 
one  of  the  most  widely-spread  designations  of  the  Goidels 
of  Britain. 

Far  more  common,  but  just  as  little  explicit,  are  the 
references  to  the  goddess  Danu,  after  whom  were  called 
the  Tuatha  or  Tuath  Dc  Dananji^  "the  goddess  Danu's 
Tribes  or  Tribe " ;  also  Fir  Dea,  "  the  Goddess's  Men." 
No  one  of  the  leading  figures  in  the  many  allusions  to  the 
Tuatha  De  Danann  is  styled  Son  or  Daughter  of  Danu, 
and  as  the  people  called  after  her  are  usually  spoken  of  in 
the  plural  as  tuatha^  "  tribes,"  she  was  probably  regarded  as 
belonging  to  a  distant  past.  Here  we  have  the  advantage 
of  a  Welsh  identification  :  Danu  is  the  Don  of  the  Mabinogi 
of  Math  son  of  Mathonwy ;  but  at  the  stage  in  which  Don 
is  there  found  she  is  no  goddess  :  she  is  briefly  referred  to 
as  sister  to  the  king  and  mother  of  his  successor,  Gwydion 
son  of  Don,  and  of  his  brothers  and  sister,  as  already  stated 
(p.  37).  All  this  would  have  to  be  tumbled  upside  down 
by  those  who  seem  to  think  that  the  Mabinogion  have  been 
imported  into  Wales  as  Irish  stories  from  Ireland.^     The 

1  Such  appears  to  be  the  view  taken  by  Professor  Kuno  Meyer  in  an  article  on 
Gael  and  Rrython  in  the  "  Transactions  of  the  Cymmrodorion  Society,"  1895-6. 
especially  where  he  speaks  (pp.  71-3)  to  "the  deposits  of  Irish  legendary  lore*' 
which  he  finds,  for  example,  in  the  Mabinogion.  He  nistances  the  Irish  story 
o(  Jl/esce  Ulad^  in  which  a  party  of  Ultonians  are  induced  to  be  entertained  in 
an  iron  house,  the  iron  of  which  is  concealed  by  the  timber  covering  it  both 
inside  and  out.  When  they  are  found  to  have  drunk  freely,  their  attendants 
leave  them  one  by  one,  and  the  door  is  shut.  Then  fuel  is  piled  up  round  the 
iron  house  and  set  fire  to.  The  story  relates  how  the  inmates  at  length 
realised  their  position,  and  how  some  of  them  forced  their  way  out.  Now  an 
iron  house  story  is  referred  to  in  tlie  Mabinogi  of  Branwen  ;  but,  so  far  as  the 


THE   PICTISH    QUESTION.  57 

view  which  recommends  itself  to  us  is  that  they  are  stories 
which  were  current  among  the  Goidels  of  old  in  Britain, 
and,  in  such  instances  as  that  here  indicated,  they  represent 
a  far  earlier  state  of  things  than  can  be  said  of  any  Irish 
story  extant  about  the  Tuatha  De  Danann. 

In  one  case  we  see,  perhaps,  a  little  more  closely  the  deifi- 
cation in  process  :  this  takes  us  back  for  a  moment  to  the 
barony  of  Corkaguiny  and  the  name  of  the  ancestress 
Dubinn.  A  story,^  which,  as  we  have  it,  was  committed  to 
writing  in  surroundings  where  Aryan  ideas  had  begun  to 
prevail,  makes  Dubinn  sister  to  Cairbre  Muse,  who  appears 
to  have  been  king  in  the  west  of  Munster  in  the  third  century. 
They  had  a  son  called  Core  Duibne,  and  the  story  relates 
how  Cairbre's  realm  was  visited  with  bad  seasons  in  conse- 
quence of  the  incest,  and  how  Core  Duibne  had  to  be  taken 
outside  his  father's  realm  by  the  Druid  who  undertook  the 
boy's  education.  Now  several  of  the  Ogam  inscriptions  of 
Corkaguiny,  which  may  be  said  to  belong  to  the  fifth  or 
the  sixth  century,  end  with  the  name  of  the  ancestress.  Thus 
one  at  Ballintaggart,  near  Dingle,  reads  :  Maqqui  laripi 
inaqqui  Mucoi  Dovvinias^  "(The  Stone)  of,  larip  son  of  the'?,-,  a*^* 
Kin  of  Dubinn."  Another,  preserved  at  Burnham  House, 
Lord  Ventry's  residence  in  the  same  neighbourhood,  has 
been  read  thus  (p.  52)  :  Maqqui  Erccias  maqqui  Mucoi 
Dovinias,  "(The  Stone)  of  Mac  Erce,  son  of  the  Kin  of 
Dubinn."  But  the  most  remarkable  one  stands  on  a  head- 
land beyond  Dunmore  Head  and  looks  out  on  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  as  if  prophetically  appealing  to  the  Gaels  beyond  : 

brevity  of  the  Welsh  allows  us  to  judge,  it  cannot  have  been  the  Mesce  Ulad 
which  the  narrator  had  his  story  from  :  most  likely  the  iron  house  had  figured 
in  more  than  one  tale.  Further,  as  the  iron  house  incident  is  there  avowedly 
Irish,  one  can  hardly  regard  it  as  a  very  instmctive  sample  of  "the  deposits 
of  Irish  legendary  lore"  in  the  Mabinogion:  it  is  desirable  to  have  more 
instances,  and  of  a  less  self-confessed  description. 

^  See  the  Book  of  the  Dan  Cow,  fol.  54a  ;  and  Rhys's  "  Celtic  Heathendom," 
pp.  308,  9. 


58  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

it  may  have  been  the  monument  of  a  son  of  the  chief  com- 
memorated on  the  last-mentioned  stone,  as  it  reads  on  the 
one  edge,  Ere  iiiaqqiti  Maqqui  Ercias^  "  The  Stone  of  Ere, 
son  of  Mac  Erce,"  and  on  the  other,  Mu  Dovi7iia,  "of  M}- 
Dubinn."  Here  one  would  have  expected  a  longer  legend 
making  "  Ere  son  of  Mac  Erce,  son  of  the  Kin  of  M}- 
Dubinn,"  as  that  is  probably  how  we  are  to  construe.  But 
what  is  most  remarkable,  if  our  reading  should  prove  correct/ 
is  the  use  of  the  prefix  viu  or  mo,  which  is  familiar  to 
every  student  of  Irish  hagiology  as  a  mark  of  respect  and 
affection  prefixed  to  the  names  of  certain  saints.  Thus  in 
Corkaguiny  we  have  first  simply  Dovinias,  "  Dubinn's" ;  then 
Mu  Dovinia\s\  "  My  Dubinn's,"  with  the  reverential  prefix  ; 
and  had  not  the  deification  been  arrested  by  the  advance 
of  Christian  ideas  we  should  have  probabl}-  had  the  name 
in  a  third  stage  :  that  is,  Dubinn's  son  would  have  been 
known  in  Irish  literature  not  as  Core  Duihic,  but  as  Core 
Dc  Diiibiie,  or  the  progeny-  of  the  goddess  Dubinn. 

The  folklore  of  Ireland  from  Meath  to  Beare  Haven  and 
Corkaguiny  abounds  with  allusions  to  an  old  woman  of 
fabulous  age  called  Bera,  Beara,  or  Beirre,  and  she  is  pro- 
bably to  be  identified  with  the  Beara  whom  certain  stories 
make  the  daughter  of  a  king  of  Spain,  and  wife  of  Eogan 
Mor  or  Mog  Nuadat,  who,  with  Conn  the  Hundred-fighter, 
is  fabled  to  have  divided  Erin  into  a  northern  and  a 
southern  half  between  them  in  the  second  century.  But 
in  those  stories  Bera's  name  is  mostly  given  with  the  prefix 

^  It  is  only  right  to  warn  the  reader  that  the  reading  of  the  Ogams  on  the 
same  edge  as  Doviiiia  is  contested  by  the  Rev.  Edmond  Barry  and  by 
Mr.  Macalister.  Professor  Rhys,  having  become  aware  that  the  former  read 
it  differently,  took  an  opportunity  of  re-examining  the  stone  in  1891,  and 
the  result  only  confirmed  him  in  his  former  opinion.  Mr.  Macalister's  remarks 
in  point  will  be  found  in  his  "  Studies  in  Irish  Epigraphy,"  p.  56. 

-  It  is  not  known  precisely  what  the  word  Core  meant ;  nor  is  it  evident  that 
Corco  in  Corco-Duibnc  (wliich  also  occurs  as  Corca  Duilme)  is  the  plural  of 
Core,  as  if  core,  corco,  meant  child,  children,  or  the  like,  respectively.  See 
"  Pro.  Soc.  Antiq.  Scotland,"  xxxij.  355-7. 


THE  PICTISH  QUESTION.  59 

7no  (or  ;;///),  as  in  the  case  of  Mn-Dovinia,  and  then  it  is 
found  written  Moincra.  The  stories^  have  not  been  found 
so  far  as  we  know  in  any  very  ancient  manuscript ;  but 
there  appears  to  be  no  reason  to  suppose  them  to  have  begun 
late.  They  would  seem,  however,  to  have  been  developed 
relatively  so  late  that  Bera  has  only  succeeded  in  attaining 
to  the  status  of  a  witch  or  wise  woman,  of  a  nun  or  hag, 
of  a  revered  person  and  a  giantess,  not  quite  to  that  of  a 
goddess,  unless  it  be  in  Argyll,  where  she  rules  the  storm. 
Here  also  attention  may  be  relevantly  directed  to  the 
great  place  which  women  occupy  in  the  legendary  account 
of  the  early  colonisations  of  Ireland.  Take,  for  example, 
Scota  treated  as  chief  ancestress  of  the  Milesian  Irish,  and 
as  giving  her  name  to  all  the  Scots.  She  is  net,  at  any  rate 
in  this  context,  to  be  disposed  of  as  a  mere  myth ;  for  a 
cognate  eponym  of  the  other  sex  might  have  served  equally 
well  for  mythic  purposes.  The  most  remarkable  instance, 
perhaps,  is  the  case  of  Cessair,  said  to  have  taken  possession 
of  Ireland  before  the  Flood  :  her  wanderings  are  made  to 
begin  with  Noah  refusing  her  and  hers  room  in  the  ark 
which  he  was  building.  She  is  represented  landing  at  Dun 
na  vi-Barc,  "  the  Fortress  of  the  Barks,"  somewhere  between 
Bantry  and  Tralee.  The  Irish  historian  Keating  apologises 
for  mentioning  Cessair,  and  suggests  it  as  his  reason  for 
doing  so,  that  he  found  her  story  in  old  books,  such  probably 
as  the  Book  of  Leinster,  folios  4,  5,  and  those  used  by  Duald 
mac  Firbis,  a  well-known  Irish  antiquary  of  the  earlier  part 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  who  compiled  from  old  manu- 
scripts his  annals  known  as  the  Chroniciini  Scotorum.  His 
first  entry  is  under  Ajino  Miindi  1599,  and  it  runs  thus:  "In 

^  See  O'Curry's  volume  containing  "The  Battle  of  Magh  Leana  "  and 
"The  Courtship  of  Momera,"  pp.  xx.  39,  166,  and  3i«,  and  compare 
O' Flaherty's  "Ogygia,"  p.  274,  where  he  has  Bera  Jilia  Ocha  principis 
Britomim  Mannicz,  whatever  that  may  have  exactly  meant ;  also  Professor 
Kuno  Meyer's  "  Visicn  of  Mac  Conglinne,"  pp.  131-4,  20S-10,  and  Professor 
Rhys's  ''Celtic  Folklore,"  p.  393- 


6o  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

this  year  the  daughter  of  one  of  the  Greeks  came  to 
Hibernia,  whose  name  was  Heriu,  or  Berba,  or  Cesar,  and 
fifty  maidens,  and  three  men  with  her.  Ladhra  was  their 
conductor,  who  was  the  first  that  was  buried  in  Hibernia. 
This  the  antiquaries  of  the  Scots  do  not  relate."^  This  it 
will  be  seen  equates  or  co-ordinates  Cessair  with  Erin, 
the  epon\'m  of  Ariu,  genitive  Erenn,  "  Ireland,"  and  with 
Berba,  which  there  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  altering  into 
the  better- known  name  Banba  of  another  epon}'m  of  the 
island.  Berba  is  elsewhere  only  known  as  the  name  of 
the  river  Barrow,  in  which  we  seem  accordingh'  to  have 
another  ancestral  name.  The  most  reasonable  view  to 
take  of  the  legend  of  Cessair  is,  that  it  was  a  local 
tradition  of  the  Aborigines  of  the  south-west  of  Ireland, 
who  by  making  Cessair  the  first  coloniser  asserted  their 
own  priority  of  possession  to  all  other  peoples  in  the 
country.  The  synchronisers,  not  knowing  what  to  make  of 
this,  accepted  the  alleged  priority,  and  placed  the  whole 
storv^  before  the  Flood.  Thereby^  thev  rid  themselves  of 
difficulties  from  two  possible  sources,  to  wit,  the  context  of 
the  story  with  the  other  events  occupying  their  attention, 
and  the  later  fortunes  of  Cessair's  descendants.  The  legend 
associates  Cessair  and  her  companions  with  various  localities 
in  the  south  and  west  of  Ireland,  together  with  others  lying 
so  far  north  as  Slieve  Beaixh  in  Fermanajrh  ;  not  to  mention 
that  Ireland  is  occasionally  found  designated  Cessair's 
Island.-  We  gather,  therefore,  that  Cessair  may  have  been 
the  eponymous  heroine  of  a  race  occup}-ing  the  whole  of 
the  southern  half  of  Ireland  and  more,  together  very  possibly 
with  the   nearest  portions  of  the   west  and  south-west  of 

^  See  the  opening  of  the  Four  Masters'  Annals  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland, 
and  the  editor  O'Donovan's  notes  on  the  place-names  involved  ;  Joyce's 
edition  of  Keating's  "  History  of  Ireland,"  part  i. ,  pp.  52-5  ;  and  Hennessy's 
(Rolls  edition  of  the)  "  Chronicum  Scotorum,"  pp.  xxv.-xxxij.  2,  3. 

-  See  Toc/uiiarc  Monera  [;riz</ Momcra]  in  O'Curry's  "Battle  of  Magh 
Leana,"  p.  154. 


THE   Fieri SH   QUESTION,  6i 

Britain  as  its  earlier  home.^  However  that  may  be,  it 
proves  to  our  satisfaction  that  to  show  a  predilection  for 
ancestresses  over  ancestors  was  Ivernian  :  that  it  was  also 
Aryan  we  are  inclined  to  doubt,  but  that,  where  it  has  been 
found  among  the  peoples  of  these  islands,  it  is  to  be  traced 
rather  to  the  Aboriginal  element  in  a  mixed  population 
promiscuously  termed  Celtic. 

The  influence  of  Christianity  must  have  by  degrees  put 
an  end  to  the  social  system  to  which  we  have  been  referring, 
and  this  raises  questions  of  great  difficulty  as  to  dates  and 
localities,  on  which  we  cannot  enter.  So  we  return  to  our 
view,  that  if  the  reckoning  of  descent  by  birth  alone  was 
not  Aryan,  it  must  have  been  accepted  by  the  Goidelic 
Celts  from  the  Aborigines,  which  would  go  far  to  prove  the 
numerical  importance  of  the  latter.  It  is  known  to  have 
been  Pictish,  but  was  it  also  Celtic  and  Aryan  ?  We  are  dis- 
posed to  think  that  it  was  not,  though  we  readily  admit  that 
the  negative  cannot  be  proved.  Moreover  it  is  right  to  say 
that  the  following  passage  in  chapter  xxi.  of  the  Germania- 
of  Tacitus  is  redolent  of  the  same  ancient  menage  :  Sororum 
jiliis  idem  apud  avunculum  qui  ad  patreui  Jionor.  Quidam 
sanctiorein  artioremque  Jiunc  nexuni  sanguinis  arbitrantur 
et  in  accipiendis  obsidibus   magis   exigtmt,  tamquani  etia77t 

1  The  name  Cessair,  genitive  Cesra,  admits  of  being  regarded  as  derived 
from  a  stem,  cestari,  and  should  M.  Salomon  Reinach's  conjecture  prove 
correct,  that  the  Cassiterides  originally  meant  the  British  Isles,  and  that 
Kaaairepos,  "tin,"  was,  like  several  other  Greek  names  of  metnls,  called  simply 
after  the  country  or  the  people  of  the  country  in  which  it  was  found,  our 
Cessair  would  be  found  to  supply  a  necessary  link  in  the  reasoning.  For 
M,  Reinach's  view  see  "  L' Anthropologic  "  for  1892,  pp.  275-81  ;  also  Rhys's 
letter  on  Cassitej'idcs  m  the  "  Academy,"  October  5,  1895,  PP*  272-3,  and  see 
further  pp.  298,  342,  366,  390,  414,  438,  524,  547. 

-  Compare  chapter  viii.,  which  treats  female  hostages  as  more  efficacious  in 
the  case  of  the  Germans — adeo  tit  efficaciiis  obligentzir  aninii  civitatum,  quibus 
inter  obsides  piielhc  qiioque  nobilcs  impa-aniur  ;  and  also  a  passage  in  Suetonius's 
Augustus,  21,  to  the  following  effect  :  A  quUnisda}n  vero  [the  last  people 
mentioned  seem  to  have  been  Germans]  novmn  genus  obsidum,  feniinaSy 
exigere  tentaverit,  qtiod  negligerc  inarium  pignora  sentiebat. 


62  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

animi^n  finnius  et  doinum  latius  teiieant.  "  There  is  the 
same  regard  shown  for  the  sons  of  the  sisters  by  the  uncle 
as  by  their  father.  Some  think  this  tie  of  blood  more 
binding  and  closer,  and  insist  on  it  more  when  they  receive 
hostages,  on  the  theor\'  that  it  restrains  their  impulses  more 
powerfully,  and  has  a  wider  control  over  the  family." 
The  words  are  unfortunately  so  indefinite  that  we  have  no 
jclue  to  the  identity  of  the  tribes  the  historian  had  in  view; 
Iso  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  they  were  likely  to  have 
been  mixed  with  any  Aboriginal  race  practising  the  same 
customs  and  enjoying  the  same  institutions  as  the  Aborigines 
of  the  British  Isles.^ 

We  admit  that  the  foregoing  argument  is  not  quite 
decisive,  and  we  now  turn  to  others  of  a  more  pureh' 
linguistic  nature,  and  leading  to  a  more  decided  conclu- 
sion. So  we  revert  for  a  moment  to  the  dedicator  of  the 
bronze  tablet  found  at  Colchester  :  we  saw  that  he  describes 
himself  as  Lossio  Veda,  Nepos  Vepogeni,  Caledo,  and  that 
Veda  appears  as  part  of  the  name  of  one  of  the  kings  in 

^  Say  somewhere  between  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  and  that  of  the  Elbe, 
where  there  was  an  amber  coast,  and  where  Tacitus  would  seem  to  have  heard 
of  a  people  partly  Celtic  and  partly  Teutonic,  whom  he  has  mixed  up  with  the 
.-Estii  of  the  amber  coast  of  the  Baltic.  Witness  the  following  passage  in  the 
Germania,  45  : — Ei-go  Jam  dextro  Suebici  maris  litore  ^stiorum  gentes 
adliuaitnr,  qtiibus  ritus  habititsqur  Sueborum,  lingua  Britannica  propior. 
matrcm  dtiim  venerantiir.  insigiie  stipfrstitionis  formas  aprorum  gestant :  id 
pro  armis  hominumque  tutela  seciirtim  dea  cultorem  etiam  inter  hostis  prastat : 
varus  jerri^  frequens  fustinvi  us  us.  frumenta  ceterosque  fritdus  patientins  quam 
pro  solita  Gernianorxifn  inertia  laborant.  sed  et  mare  sc>7ctantur,  ac  soli 
omnium  sucinum,  quod  ipsi  glesum  vacant,  inter  vada  atque  in  ipso  litore  legunt. 
How  well  the  allusion  to  the  goddess  would  fit  Goidelic  surroundings  need 
not  be  dwelt  upon  ;  and,  as  to  the  language,  glesum  is  as  easily  explained  by 
means  of  Celtic  as  of  Teutonic.  Witness  the  Irish,  glaitiy  gloin,  "glass  or 
crystal,"  Welsh  gldn,  glain  {gemma,  tessera),  for  an  older  gles-inu-s  ;  while 
a  language  said  to  come  nearer  the  Britannica  would  exactly  describe  the 
position  of  Goidelic  as  compared  with  Brythonic  The  sort  of  people  which 
the  Germania  suggests  might  be  Aborigines  who  had  first  become  Goidels  in 
speech  and  later  Teutons,  while  retaining  habits  and  customs  which  they 
practised  before  they  acquired  any  Aryan  language  at  all. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  63 

the   Pictish  list,   where  also    I'epogeni  is  to  be  found,  cur- 
tailed, it  is  true,  to   Vepog,  and  written    Vipoig.     But  while 
it  is   probable  that   Veda  is  not   Celtic,   it   is  certain  that 
Vepogeni^  is,  and  we  compare  it  with  Gaulish  names  like 
J/epus  and  Vepo-talos,  of  unknown  meaning,  and  MatiL-genos^ 
''  well-born,"  or  Camulo-genos,  "offspring  of  Camulos."    Thus 
we  seem   to  have  in    Vepogeni  an    early   instance    of  the 
Pictish  habit  of  borrowing  names   and   other  words  from 
the  Celts.      The  interest  of  the   present  instance  centres 
in  the  way  in  which  the  name  Vepogenos  was  treated.     This 
would  be  the  Brythonic  and  Gaulish  form,  while  in  Goidelic 
it  would  have  been   approximately  Vequagenas.     Now  the 
study   of  the    laws    of   mutation   of  initial  consonants    in 
the  Neo-celtic  languages  goes  to  show  that  the  ending  of 
the  nominative  must  have  been  dropped  early,  so  that  the 
foregoing  forms  would  be  shortened  to  Vepogen  and  Vequa- 
gen.     Another  process  of  curtailment  would  be  to  drop  the 
thematic  vowel  of  the  first  element  in  the  compound,  bring- 
ing  the    result    approximately  to    Veb-gen    and    FccJi-gen. 
But  the   reduction    of    Vepogen    to     Vepog,  which   is   what 
underlies   Vipoig,  is  impossible  on  Celtic  ground,  whether 
Brythonic  or  Goidelic,  while   Pictish  offers  a  simple  and 
natural  explanation.      In   that  language  it  can   be  shown 
that  emt  or  en  was  a  common  ending  of  the  genitive  case, 
so  that  Vepogen  must  in  the  long  run  have  sounded  to  the 
Picts  as  a  genitive,  whence  was  readily  inferred  a  simpler 
form,   Vepog,  which  we  should  call  nominative  in  the  case 
of  Aryan  speech. 

This  leads  us  to  consider  the  Pictish  genitive  somewhat 
further,  and  to  mention  another  instance  in  Drosten,  which 
may  be  regarded  as  the  genitive  of  the  Pictish  name  Drost 


^  Vepogenos  was,  perhaps,  the  name  represented  by  the  abbreviation  VEP 
on  the  native  coins  of  the  Brythons  north  of  the  Humber,  reading  VEP  COR  F, 
for,  let  us  say,  VEPOGENVS  COROTICI  FILIVS  :  see  Rhys's  "Celtic 
Erilain, "  p.  41  ;  and  p.  xv.,  coi;i  5. 


64  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

on  a  stone  already  mentioned  as  being  at  St.  Vigeans,  near 
Arbroath.  Take  also  the  well-known  Newton  Stone  in  Aber- 
deenshire, whichhas  in  Ogam  the  genitive,  Vorrenn}  ofaname 
which  occurs  as  Vaur  in  the  other  lettering  on  the  same  stone. 
This  genitive  occasionally  appears  in  old  Irish  inscriptions, 
such  as  one  on  the  island  of  Valencia  which  reads,  LogirP 
maqui  Erpenn,  "  The  Monument  of  Lugar  son  of  Erp." 
Had  Erpcrm  been  Goidelic,  it  should,  in  order  to  be  on 
a  level  with  Logiri  and  maqui^  have  been  Erpennas^  or  at 
least  Erpenna  ;  but  the  presence  of  the  consonant  /  is  very 
fair  evidence  that  the  name  is  other  than  Goidelic.  The 
Picts  appear  to  have  had  genitives  also  in  an7t^  on\n\  and 
m\ii\.  Instances  of  the  first-mentioned  occur  in  the  mixed 
inscriptions  found  in  the  Shetlands,  such  as  Meqqddi'roann. 
which  might  be  rendered  probably  Filii  Druidis;  and 
dattrraiin  on  the  same  stone  seems  to  be  the  Pictish 
genitive  of  the  Norse  word  for  daughter?'  As  to  onn^  the 
Book  of  Deer  mentions  a  grant  of  land  to  the  Church  of 
Aberdour,  in  which  among  other  names  of  men  occur  a 
nominative  Culii,  and  a  genitive  Ctdeon  :  they  are  probabl}- 
cases  of  one  and  the  same  name.*     We  have  it  now  and 

^  See  the  "  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Scotland,"  vol.  xxxij. 
pp.  360-4. 

2  This  is  a  reading  recently  made  out  by  Professor  Rhys  ;  but  it  is  not  quite 
certain  whether  Logiri  is  to  be  equated  with  the  Lugir  oi  Alaccu  Lugir,  or  with 
Loegairi,  the  genitive  of  Loegaire  mac  Neill,  the  name  of  the  king  of  Ireland 
in  whose  time  Dubthach  Maccu  Lugir  was  chief  poet  (Stokes's  "Goidelica," 
pp.  86,  126).  Reeves  in  his  Adamnan's  Vita  Cohimbce  (p.  350)  cites  after 
Ussher  a  passage  the  writer  of  which  thought  that  niacti,  mocu^  or  mucoi  had 
something  to  do  with  vitic,  "a  swine,"  so  that  in  his  hands  the  chief  poet, 
D.  Maccu  Lugir,  becomes  sulnilcus  regis  Loigeri  filii  Nil ;  but  compare 
Stokes's  "Patrick,"  pp.  122,  324. 

^  "  Pro.  Soc.  Antiq.  Scotlnnd,"  xxvi.  297-300,  where  the  dd  of  Meqq- 
ddrroaiui  should  probably  be  pronounced  d,  and  NahhtvvddaQQs  taken  to  mean 
Nahhtz'ultdaQQs.  as  a  more  likely  antecedent  of  the  curtailed  form  Natdads  or 
Nd/dod's,  which  became  historical  as  the  name  of  the  man  who  discovered 
Iceland. 

^  From  the  same  MS.  one  might  quote  Abber-deon  (Aberdeen)  but  for  the 
uncertainty  that  the  Dee  is  the  river  implied  and  not  the  Don.     The  entries 


THE  PICTISH  QUESTION,  65 

then  in  the  old  inscriptions  of  Ireland,  as,  for  instance,  in  an 
Ogam  in  the  Kilkenny  Museum,  reading,  in  two  lines  : — 

Mucoi  Atr.  .  .  r  (The  Monument)  of  the  kin  of  A., 
Bivadon,  \       namely,  Bivad. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  order  intended  was  the  reverse, 
"  The  Monument  of  Bivad,  kin  of  A."  Lastly,  a  remark- 
able instance  of  the  genitive  in  znn  occurs  in  the  name 
of  the  district  called  the  Mearns,  approximately  the 
county  of  Kincardine.  Mearns  is  derived  from  a  native 
name,  Mag  Gerginn^  or  Gergind^^  which  is  also  found  as 
Mag  Cirgin^  the  Plain  of  Gerg,  Greg,  Giric  or  Ciric  ;  for  the 
name  appears  to  have  had  several  forms,  between  which  it 
is  not  easy  to  decide,  not  to  mention  that  it  has  been  con- 
founded with  that  of  St.  Ciricus.  We  have  an  unexpected 
instance  of  this  genitive  in  an  Ogam  inscription  from  the 
townland  of  Ballinvoher  in  Corkaguiny,  county  Kerry.  It 
reads,  Coimagni  inaqui  Vitalin,  "  The  monument  of  Coeman 

in  Gaelic,  including  the  names  here  in  question,  will  be  found  printed  and 
translated  in  Stokes's  "Goidelica,"  pp.  106-111  ;  and  a pjopos  of  Vepooen^ 
and  ahher  may  be  mentioned  the  old  Welsh  Morgant  (mod.  Welsh  Morgan)^ 
which  appears  borrowed  as  Alorctint,  Morcunn,  Alorgainn  :  all  three  occur 
in  the  genitive,  and  Morgiinn  in  the  nominative.  Query,  whether  such  Pictish 
names  as  T'alargan,  Talorcen,  Tahrc,  and  kindred  forms  are  not  all  adaptations  I 
of  a  Brythonic  Talargent  or  lalargajit,   "  Silver-forehead"?  [ 

1  "  Book  of  Leinster,"  fol.  319c;    Skene's   "Chronicles   of  the  Picts  and 
Scots,"  p.  319  ;  also  Skene's  "Celtic  Scotland,"  i.  295,  where  he  purports  to 
give  Terra  Circin  from  the  Irish  annalist  Tigernach.     For  Gog  see  O'Curry, 
i.   ccclxxv.  ;  III.   168,   307.     The  name  Gerg  occurs  frequently  in  the  traoic 
story  of   the  courtship  of   Gerg's   daughter  Ferb  in  the  Book    of   Leinster 
fol.  253a — 259b,  where  it  is  mostly  nominative  Gerg.  geaitive  6'^/ro-(also  Gerg), 
His  house  was  in  Glen-Gerg  in  Ulster,  but  there  was  another  Glenn-Gero-  in 
Carlow  :  see  the  "  Four  Masters,"  A.  D.  1015.   We  have  the  genitive  also  possibly 
in  the  patronymic  of  Munremur  mac  Gerrcind,  an  Ulster  champion  introduced 
to  checkmate  the  Connaught  mng'cian  Curoi  mac  Dairi,  in  the  Tdhi  Bo  Ciialnge, 
in   the    "Book   of   the    Dun  Cow,"  fol.   71b.     Various  forms  of   this  name 
occurred   in  Scotland,    as  will  be  seen  under    Grig  in   the  index  to  Skene's 
Chronicles  of  the  Picts  and  Scots  ;  and  some  of  them  were  stereotyped  in  the  ^ 
name  of  the  Mearns  church,  Eccles-greig  ox  Eglis-giro\  now  called  St.  Cyrus,  " 
dedicated  to  St  Ciricus  :  see  Skene's  "Celtic  Scotland,"  i.  333,  4. 
W.P.  F 


'^^^M^ 


66  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  ii.) 

son  of  Fidlin,"  where  correct  Goidelic  would  seem  to  require 
Coimagni  viaqui  Vitalmi.  The  scores  are  all  certain,  and 
the  third  genitive  never  had  a  final  i  on  the  stone.^ 

All  this  has  to  do  chiefly  with  the  inflection  of  the  names 
to  which  we  have  referred ;  and  though  it  supplies  convincing 
evidence  to  the  presence  of  some  element  other  than  Celtic, 
whether  Goidelic  or  Brythonic,  Irish  nomenclature  provides 
us  with  a  still  more  sweeping  argument  to  the  same  effect. 
We  allude  to  an  important  group  of  Irish  names  formed 
much  in  the  same  way  as  Hebrew^  names  are  represented 
chosen  in  the  Old  Testament.  We  begin  wath  an  instance 
from  a  comparatively  late  manuscript,  nameh',  that  which 
contains  the  storv  of  the  Battle  of  Macrh  Leamhna  : — A 
certain  Munster  prince  called  Mogh  Neid,  "  Slave  of  Ned," 
had  a  son  called  Eoghan  Mor,  or  "  Big  Eoghan,"  who  was 
fostered  b}^  one  of  his  nobles  called  Nuadha.  One  day 
when  Eoghan,  in  the  company  of  the  Druid,  whose  name 
was  Deargdamhsa,  were  watching  the  building  of  a  rdtJi 
for  Mogh  Xeid,  the  workmen  came  upon  a  stone  which  they 
were  unable  to  lift  to  its  place,  but  the  boy  Eoghan  Mor 
went  and  lifted  it  at  once,  to  everybody's  astonishment; 
whereupon  the  workmen  exclaimed,  "  This  is  a  noble  slave 
that  Nuadha  has."  The  Druid  then  said,  "  That  name  shall 
be  upon  him  for  ever,"  that  is,  Mogh  Nuadhad,  "  the  Slave 
of  Nuadha."-  It  is  right  to  say  that  Ned  and  Nuadha  were 
names  of  gods,  the  former  a  god  of  war  of  the  ancient 
Goidels,  and  the  latter  a  god  the  remains  of  one  of  whose 
temples   have    been   found    at   Lydney,  near   the  Severn, 

^  The  stone  is  in  the  Irish  National  Museum  in  Dublin,  where  it  has  been 
'  xamined  repeatedly  by  Prof.  Rhys.  A  paper  on  it  by  the  Lord  Bishop  of 
Limerick  will  be  found  in  the  third  series  of  tlie  "Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy,"  1893,  pp.  374-9,  where  he  would  identify  Fidlin  and  Webh 
Gwythelin  with  Viialin. 

2  See  Curry\s  "  Battle  of  Magh  Leana  "  (Dublin,  1855),  pp.  I-3  :  we  have 
given  the  names  in  the  late  spelling  in  which  Curry  left  them  ;  the  older  forms 
would  be  Must  Net  or  Neit  and  Must  Ntiadat. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  67 

together  with  a  representation  of  his  person  careering  in  a 
chariot  over  the  waves  of  the  sea ;  and  from  inscriptions  in 
honour  of  him  we  know  that  his  name  had  in  Roman  times 
the  form  Nodens  or  Nudens,  genitive  Nodentis,  Nudentis, 
or  Nodontis,  the  termination  of  which  is  doubtless  Latin  :^ 
in  Welsh  the  name  has  become  Nilzf  and  also  liiicf.  It  is 
needless  to  point  out  how  such  names  as  Mogh  Neid  and 
Mogh  Nuadhad  resemble  such  instances  as  Abdiel,  "  Ser- 
vant of  El,"  AbdastartiLS,  "  Servant  of  Astarte,"  and  others 
from  Semitic  lands. 

To  go  back  to  an  older  manuscript,  namely,  the  "  Book  of 
the  Dun  Cow,"  which  was  written  as  w^e  ha\e  it  before  the 
end  of  the  year  1 1 06,  we  have  there  one  of  the  oldest  and 
most  weird  of  fairy  tales,  which  relates  how  a  fairy  damsel 
came  to  entice  Condla  the  Red,  one  of  the  two  sons  of 
Conn  the  Hundred- fighter,  to  go  away  \\'ith  her  to  the 
Land  of  the  Living,  and  how  Conn  sent  for  Coran,  his 
Druid,  to  counteract  her  wiles.  Coran  tried  to  do  so,  and 
failed  ;  the  youthful  Condla  leaps  into  the  fairy's  glass  boat 
and  away  they  sail  till  they  are  lost  to  the  sight  of  Conn 
and  his  astonished  friends.  Before  Conn  had  stirred  from 
the  spot  his  other  son,  called  Art,  came  to  them,  when  his 
father  exclaimed,  "  Art  is  now  solitary  {penfer^  oenur),  for 
he  has  no  brother."  "  That  is  the  word,"  said  the  Druid  ; 
"that  will  be  his  name  for  ever, ^r/  Oenferr^^  Here  again 
the  Druid  does  his  part,  though  in  this  instance  he  seems 
only  to  add  an  epithet,  but  Art,  though  common  enough 
as  an  Irish  name,   probably  meant  as  an  appellative  "  a 

^  See  tlie  Berlin  Corpus,  vol.  vii.  Nos.  1 37-141  ;  also  the  numerous 
plates  with  vrhich  are  illustrated  a  posthumous  work  on  the  "  Roman  Antiquities 
at  Lydney  Park,"  by  W.  H.  Bathurst,  edited  by  C.  W.  King  (London,  1879) ; 
and  a  paper  by  Htibner  on  the  Sanctuary  of  Nodens  in  the  "Jahrbticher  des 
Vereins  von  Alterthumsfreunden  im  Rheinlande,"  vol.  Ixvii.  pp.  29-46. 

2  See  the  "Book  of  the  Dun  Cow,"  fol.  120  :  the  story  will  also  be  founr' 
printed  in  Windisch's  ' '  Kurzgefasste  irische  Grammatik  mit  Lesestucken " 
((Leipsic,  1879),  pp.  1 18-120. 

F    2 


68  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ii.) 

bear,"  in  Welsh  art/i ;  and  its  original  use  in  this  story  may 
have  been  that  of  a  nickname  which  was  allowed  to  stand 
as  part  of  the  new  name. 

The  next  two  instances  come  also  from  the  "  Book  of  the 
Dun  Cow, "  but  they  belong  to  the  Ultonian  cycle  of  stories. 
The  first  to  be  mentioned  relates  to  Derdriu,  the  heroine  of 
the  story  of  the  Exile  of  the  Sons  of  Usnech.  Even  before 
she  was  born  there  were  forebodings  of  the  troubles  before 
her,  and  before  her  country  on  her  account.  For  while 
yet  unborn  she  screamed  in  a  way  that  alarmed  King 
Conchobar  mac  Nessa  and  his  nobles  as  they  sat  ban- 
queting in  the  house  of  her  father  and  mother ;  and 
Conchobar's  Druid,  whose  name  was  Cathbad,  exclaimed  on 
hearing  the  scream  which  the  child  had  given  {devdrestar) 
and  said,  "  Verih'  it  is  a  girl,  and  let  Derdriic  be  her  name." 
Here  again  it  is  the  Druid  of  the  part}'  that  fixes  the  name 
of  the  child,  and  the  relation  between  the  deponent  verb 
derdrestar^'' ^Qx^dSiXQ^l'  and  Derdriii,  purports  to  explain  how 
he  came  to  call  her  Derdriu.  The  rest  of  the  story  need  not 
be  reproduced  here.^  The  other  story  is  one  related  of 
Cuchulainn's  infanc}-.--  Conchobar  and  his  nobles  were 
gone  one  evening  to  feast  at  the  house  of  Culann  the  Smith, 
who  ^^•as  a  great  man  among  them.  Culann,  when  they 
were  all  supposed  to  have  arrived,  had  his  gates  closed,  and 
a  famous  watch-dog  of  his  was  let  loose,  as  was  his  wont,  to 
guard  his  possessions.  The  boy  Cuchulainn,  however,  had 
been  forgotten,  and  when  he  arrived  he  was  attacked  by 
Culann's  watch-hound  ;  but,  to  everybody's  astonishment, 
the  boy  killed  the  formidable  beast.  Culann  afterwards 
complained  loudly  of  his  loss,  whereupon  Cuchulainn  said 
that  until  the  smith  had  another  hound  of  the  same  breed 
reared  to  guard  his  possessions  he  would  guard  them:  he 
would  be  himself  Culann's  watch-dog.     Thereupon  Cathbad 

1  For  tlie  text  see  Windisch's  "  Irische  Texte  '"'  (Leijisic,  1880),  pp.  67-69. 
-  See  the  "  Book  of  the  Dun  Cow,"  fol.  6oa-6ia. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  69 

the  Druid  said,  "  Let  Cu-Chulainn  (Culann's  Hound)  be  thy 
name  "  ;  for  till  then  he  had  been  known  as  Setanta  Bee, 
or  the  Little  Setantian,  in  reference  probably  to  his  race  ; 
for   we    know   that   he    cannot    have    been    altogether   of 
Ultonian  descent,  as  he  and  his  father  are  represented  as 
never  liable  to  the  cess  7ioinden  or  couvade  sickness^  of  the 
Ultonians,  while  on  the  other  hand  the  opposite  coast  of 
Britain  had,  according  to  Ptolemy,  a  Port  of  the  Setantii 
somewhere  near  the  mouth  of  the  Ribble.     Before  leaving 
the  incident  which  fixed  Cuchulainn's  name,  let  us  observe 
that  the  Druid  Cathbad  who  gave  it  him  was  also  the  school- 
master or  tutor  of  the  young  nobles  of  the  Ultonians  :  he 
had,  we  are  told,^  no  less  than  one  hundred  at  the  same  time 
learning</r2//</^^/// or  magic  from  him,  andCuchulainn  is  found 
after\\arcls  boasting  that,  in  consequence  of  the  teaching  of 
Cathbad,  he  was  an  adept  in  "  the  arts  of  the  god  of  magic," 
or  whatever  the  term  di'indecJit  may  have  precisely  meant. 
We  now  turn  to  the  Mabinogion,  which  represent,  though 
doubtless   not  ver\'  closely,  the   s tories  of  the  Goidels   of 
ancient  Wales  ;   and  there  we  have  at  least  two  instances 
in  point.     One  of  them  relates  how  Lew  Lawgyffes  got 
that  name  given  him   by  Gwydion  from  an  exclamation 
made  b}/  Arianrhod,  his  mother,  when  she  saw  him  making 
a  skilful  hit  at  a  wTen.     Thereby  she  unwittingl}-  undid  a 
destiny  which  she  had  put  on  her  boy,  that  he  should  never 
have  a  name,  whereby  she  had    intended    to    protect  her 
own  reputation  as  a  maiden.    This  is  from  the  Mabinogi  of 
Math,-'  but  the  other  occurs  in  that  of  Pwyit,  Prince  of  Dyfed. 
This  latter  Mabinogi  relates  how  Rhiannon,  his  queen,  had 

^  For  the  Irish  account  of  tliis  cess  or  sufferhig,  see  the  "Berichte  cler  k. 
sachs.  Gesellschaftder  Wissenschaften,  philologisch-historische  Classe,"  for  1884 
(pp.  336-47),  where  Windisch  discusses  the  question  and  gives  some  texts  relating 
to  it. 

-  See  the  "Book  of  the  Dun  Cow,"  fol.  6ia  and  foL  124b  (printed  in 
Windisch's  Irische  Texte,  p.  325). 

'*  See  the  Oxford  Mabinogion,  pp.  69-71  ;  and  Guest's  Mabinogion,  iii.  233-6. 


70  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap.  ii.) 

her  firstborn  kidnapped  b}'  witches  immediately  after  his 
birth,  and  how  the  child,  a  wondrously  fine  bo}',  was  found 
b\'  Teyrnon,  a  chieftain  of  Gwent,  and  brought  up  by  his 
w  ife  as  her  own  child.  When  Te}Tnon,  however,  who  had 
been  one  of  Pwyft's  men,  heard  of  Rhiannon's  trouble,  it 
struck  him  that  the  boy  was  unmistakabh*  like  Pw}'^  ;  so 
he  and  his  wife  resolved  to  restore  the  boy  to  Pwyft  and 
Rhiannon  at  their  court  in  D\'fed.  When  Teyrnon  and 
the  bo}'  were  being  entertained  at  table  b}'  Pwylt  and 
Rhiannon,  with  the  nobles  of  their  court,  Tc}Tnon  related 
the  wonderful  story  of  his  finding  the  bo\',  and  appealed  to 
all  present  to  say  whether  the}^  did  not  agree  with  him  that 
the  boy  was  Pwyit's  son.  They  responded  with  one  accord 
in  the  affirmative,  whereupon  Rhiannon  exclaimed,  "  I  call 
heaven  to  witness  that  this,  if  true,  would  deliver  me  of 
my  anxiet}^  {pryderiy  Pendaran  of  D\'fed  at  once  said, 
"  Well  hast  thou  named  thy  son  Prydcri^  and  the  name 
Pryderi  son  of  Pwytt  Penn  Annwn  befits  him  best."  He 
had  been  called  by  Te}Tnon  and  his  wife  "Gwri  of  the 
Golden  Hair,"  but  Pw\'ti  insisted  on  his  being  now  called 
Pryderi  according  to  his  mother's  word  when  she  got  joyful 
news  of  him,  and  on  his  being  fostered  by  Pendaran  of 
D}'fed.i  Pendaran  is  not  called  a  Druid — nobod}'  is  called 
a  Druid  in  the  Mabinogion — but  both  he  and  Gw\'dion 
remind  one  of  the  Druids  of  Irish  tales  ;  and,  furthermore, 
the  latter  portion  of  the  name  of  Penn-Daran,  "  Chief 
Daran,"  is  probably  to  be  identified  with  that  of  the  Irish 
Druid,  Dalan,  in  the  story  called  the  "  Wooing  of  Ktain,*' 
v/here  also  the  name  Etain  of  the  heroine  happens  to  equate 
letter  for  letter  with  the  latter  part  of  the  name  Rhiainwji, 
on  the  hypothesis  of  this  last  representing  an  earlier 
Rig-Antoii{-  meaning  "  King's  Anton  "  or"  Royal  Anton." 

'  See  the  Oxford  Mabinogion,  pp.    iS-24;    and  Guest's  Mabinogion,  iii. 
60-70.  ^ 

-  The  text  of  the    "Wooing  of  Etain"'  has  been  published  in  Windisch's 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  yi 

These  stones  transport  us  into  an  atmosphere  more  Hkc 
Semitic  than  Aryan,  and  we  notice — (i)  first,  that  the  per- 
manent name  is  drawn  from  some  incident  in  one's  history, 
and  that  as  a  rule  it  supersedes  any  name  or  nickname  of 
one's  infancy  ;  (2)  secondly,  that  the  name  is  fixed  by  the 
Druid  or  by  the  foster-father  and  tutor  ;  (3)  lastly,  that  in 
the  Mabinogion  the  part  played  by  the  mother  is  regarded  as 
essential  ;  and  it  suggests  that  the  giving  of  the  name  was 
originally  her  exclusive  right,  while  the  man  who  took  it  up 
only  gave  the  transaction  a  certain  stamp  of  ceremony  and 
publicit}'.  Now  this  plan  of  naming  men  and  women  could 
not  help  resulting  in  names  differing  widely  from  those 
given  under  the  Aryan  system  of  nomenclature  ;  but  before 
proceeding  to  consider  the  latter,  let  us  for  a  moment  take 
stock  of  the  names  we  have  been  discussing.  Their  pre- 
vailing nature  may  be  gathered  from  the  following  enumera- 
tion of  the  most  common  of  them  : — (i)  First  may  be 
mentioned  those  formed  with  ;;///^  or  iiiogJi,  "  slave,"  such  as 
Mogh  Nuadhad,  "  the  Slave  of  Nuadha."  (2)  Those  formed 
with  indil,  "  cropped,  tonsured,"  are  analogous,  such  as  Mdil- 
Patraic,  "  the  tonsured  man  (the  slave)  of  Patrick,"  called 
in  Latin  Calviis  Patricii.  Names  of  this  kind  had  a 
great  vogue  among  Irish  Christians,  but  the  formula  was 
doubtless  pagan,  and  some  of  the  names  recorded  appear  to 
be  so,  such  as  Mail-genn,  the  name  of  the  third  century 
Druid  who  is  related  to  have  caused  demons  to  kill  king 
Cormac  mac  Airt,  because  he  had  become  a  Christian.^ 
(3)  The  same  view  may  be  taken  of  names  with  gille,  such 
as  Gilla-Miiire,  "  the  gillie  or  servant  of  (the  Virgin)  Mary," 
Ano"licised  Gilnwre.  Names  of  this  class  also  became  verv 
common  among  Goidelic  Christians,  but  we  appear  to  have 
a  pagan  instance  in  Gilvaethzvy  son  of  Don,  in  the  Mabinogi 

"Irische  Texte,"  pp.   117-130,  and  a  letter  by  Prof.   Rhys  on  the  equations 
here  suggested  will  be  found  in  the  '' Academy  "  for  August  15th,  1896,  p.  115. 
^  See  the  Four  Masters,  a.d.  266. 


■iH^*>aB«i 


^2  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  ii.) 

of  Math.  (4)  Another  vocable  used  for  names  of  this  kind 
was  nia,  genitive  ninth,  "  a  champion,"  as  in  Nza  Segainain^ 
which  appears  in  the  genitive  in  Ogams  as  Neta  Segaino7ias} 
"the  Champion  of  Sego?no"  Segomo  being  in  GauHsh 
theology  a  divinity  equated  with  the  Latin  Mars.  (5)  So 
with  fcr,  "  a  man,  t7>,"  as  in  Fe7'  Tlachtga^"  "  the  Man  of 
Tlachtga."  (6)  The  same  idea  approximately  was  doubtless 
expressed  by  cu,  "hound,"  the  meaning  intended  being  that 
of  a  watch-hound,  champion,  and  protector,  as  in  Cu-c/iu/ain?i, 
"Culann's  Hound,"  Ciii-C/wrd/'  Corh's  Hound,"  Cu-CJioci'iche, 
"  the  Hound  of  the  Frontier,  the  Watch-dog  of  the  Boun- 
dary." (7)  Mac,  "  boy,"  was  used  in  much  the  same  way, 
as  for  instance  in  Mac  Naue,  "  Boy  of  the  Boat  or  Ship," 
rendered  by  Adamnan  Filius  Navisf  and  Mac  Tdil,^  sup- 
posed to  mean  "  Boy  of  the  Hatchet"  or  "Son  of  the  Adze." 
(8)  Feminine  names  with  der  are  analogous,  such  as  Der- 
LugdacJi  and  Der-Fraich,  meaning  probably  the  maid  or 
woman  of  Lugaid  and  Fraech  respectively.  (9)  Names  with 
niott,  such  as  Niott-  Vrecc,  and  Nioth-Fruich  or  Nad-Fraichy 
have  already  been  sufficienth'  discussed. 

The  foregoing  will  suffice  to  show  how  this  kind  of 
personal  name  forms  a  very  striking  feature  of  Goidelic 
nomenclature,  although  the  majority  of  Goidelic  names  are 
of  another  description,  remaining,  as  they  do,  true  to  the 
Aryan  system.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed 
that  the  above  syntactic  names  are  in  any  way  the  outcome 
of  a  disintegration  of  Aryan  names,  or  that  as  a  group  the}' 
date  later  here  than  the  Ar}'an  ones.     The  reverse  would  be 

'  See  Rhys's  "Celtic  Heathendom,"  p.  33 ;  and  Stokes's  "Celtic  Declension," 
p.  87.  It  is  to  be  noticed,  that,  though  the  later  forms  of  the  word  for 
'*  champion,"  nia,  ni'ath,  become  confused  with  the  words  for  "nephew,"  nia, 
nioth  (p.  48  above),  the  Ogmic  spellings  were  respectively  netta  or  iicta,  and 
niotta. 

2  See  the  "  Book  of  Leinster,"  fol.  526^'. 

3  Reeves's  Adamnan's  "Life  of  St.  Columba,"  preface,  p.  9. 

^  Stokes's  "  Martyrology  of  Gorman,"  June  nth  and  October  9th. 


THE   PICTISH   QUESTION.  7^ 

nearer  the  truth.  Take,  for  instance,  those  names  which 
consist  of  a  noun  followed  by  a  genitive,  such  as  Mug  Neit 
or  Muer  Nuadat.  How  little  we  know  about  TW'/  or  Nitada 
it  is  needless  to  suggest;  and  as  for  Tlachtga  in  Per  TlacJitga 
we  know  nothing,  except  that  Irish  story  makes  Tlachtga 
the  daughter  of  a  famous  Druid  called  Mog  Ruith,  whom  it 
brings  in  contact  with  the  Simon  Magus  of  Christian  legend  ; 
and  that  it  associates  Tlachtga's  name  with  an  ancient  rdtJi 
on  the  Hill  of  Ward  (in  Meath),  where  a  fire  used  to  be 
kindled  at  Allhallows,  and  distributed  to  the  country  round 
about.^  Then  who  knows  anything  about  Corb  ?  And  still 
we  have  not  only  Cil  CJiorb^  "Corb's  Hound,"  and  Fe?'  Corb, 
"  Corb's  Man,"  but  also  Nia  Corb,  "  Corb's  Champion,"  Mac 
Corb,  "  Corb's  Boy  or  Son,"  Mug  Corb,  "  Corb's  Slave,"  Ai't 
Corb,  "  Corb's  Bear."  So  we  should  probably  not  be  far 
wrong  in  supposing  that  Corb  was  a  divinity,  fetish,  totem, 
or  ancestor  of  the  Aborigines.  In  any  case  Corb  must  be 
regarded  as  antecedent  to  such  personal  names  as  Cu  Choj'b, 
Fer  Corb,  and  the  like.  In  other  terms,  these  names  are 
conglomerates  involving  elements  derived  from  an  ancient 
system,  and  the  obscurity  that  surrounds  them  precludes, 
in  most  cases,  one's  regarding  the  class  of  personal  names 
in  which  they  are  present  as  late. 

The  Aryan  system  of  personal  names  differed  from 
the  foregoing  very  strikingly.  They  may  be  classed  under 
two  heads  :  first  come  the  full  names,  consisting  not  of 
words  in  syntactic  relation  to  one  another,  but  of  two 
elements  forming  real  compounds,  such  as,  Sanskrit  Candra- 
rdja,  from  Candida,  "  shining,  moon,"  and  rctja,  ''  king,"  Greek 
AtoyeV-j^?,  "  descendant  of  Zeus,"  Gaulish  Tlf.vvo-oviv'^0%,  meaning 
"  white-headed,"  from  penno-s,  "  head,"  and  vindos,  "  white," 
in  Welsh  Pen-wyn,  and  in  Irish  Cenn-fhinn,  of  the  same 
meaning.  The  number  of  words  employed  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  composition  does  not  appear  to  have  been  at 

^  For  references  see  Rhys's  "Celtic  Heathendom,"  p.  515,  note  2. 


74  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap.  il) 

any  time  very  great,  but  the  best  use  was  made  of  them 
when  the  Greeks  formed  not  only  "iTTTra/a^os  but  also''Ap;(t7r7ros ; 
and  similarly  in  Old  High  German,  Haribej^ht  (English 
Herbert)  and  Bej'hthaii,  Servian  Milodrag2^\^D7'agomil^2.Vi.^ 
so  in  some  of  our  inscriptions,  such  as  the  one  at  Laugh- 
arne  in  Carmarthenshire  reading  BARRIVENDI  FILIVS 
VENDVBARI.^  The  two  names  occur  in  later  Irish  as 
Barrfhhm  and  Finnbharr  respectively,  in  Welsh  Berwyn 
and  Gwynfar :  both  seem  to  have  meant  white-topped 
or  white-headed.  These  are  instances  of  the  Aryan  full 
or  compound  name,  but  there  was  another  class  consisting 
of  the  full  name  reduced  to  one  of  the  elements  in  the 
compound  and  supplied  sometimes  with  hypocoristic  or 
endearing  terminations.  Thus  in  Greek,-  for  instance,  we 
find  besides  the  compounds  NiK6/xaxo9,  NtKoVrparo?,  and  the 
like,  shorter  forms  such  as  NtKca?,  NikSs,  Nikcov,  Nikcvs,  Nt^us, 
NtKvAXes,  and  a  good  many  more.  Similarly,  besides  such 
names  as  CadivUaon,  Cadfael  and  Cadfan  in  Welsh,  we  have 
the  shorter  ones  suggested  by  them,  Cadog  and  Catwg. 
Many  more  might  be  added  from  all  the  Celtic  languages, 
but  the  foregoing  will  serve  to  show  what  the  Ar^^an  system 
of  names  was,  and  how  it  would  have  taxed  the  ingenuity 
of  the  cleverest  Druid  to  select  many  incident  names  which 
at  the  same  time  should  sound  Aryan  of  the  approved 
type.  Not  only  were  the  two  systems  different,  they  must 
have  been  incompatible,  mutually  destructive;  and  it  is 
needless  to  say  that  the  habit  of  giving  children  incident 
names  cannot  have  been  developed  in  Aryan  surroundings. 
It  is  the  less  artificial  of  the  two,  and  belongs  to  a  ruder 
race  ;  and  no  evidence  could  well  be  more  conclusive  as  to 
the  former  presence  in  these  Islands  of  a  population  of 
natives  of  non-Aryan  origin. 

See  Rhys's  *'  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology,"  pp.  279,  388. 
-  For  a  discussion  of  the  whole  subject  of  Greek  proper  names,  see  Fick's 
'  Griechische  Personennamen  "  (Gottingen,  1874). 


-v^ 


THE     BRITISH     ISLES 

IN  THE  FIRST  CENTURY  A  D 

Ensl.sk  Milti 
9  .  50 ijo (§o 


N  O 


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BRISTOL   CH.\N,\i  ) 

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^ 


H    A 


N    N    K     L 


by  Ihe  aborigines  are  l«ft  I 


CHAPTER  III. 


ROMAN    BRITAIN. 


The  following  chapter  is  intended  mainly  to  do  two 
things  :  to  elucidate  the  map  of  Britain  in  the  first  century 
of  our  era  which  faces  this  page,  and  to  lead  up  to  the 
history  of  Wales  proper.  The  facts,  where  they  are  not 
new  or  submitted  to  a  fresh  examination,  are  taken  from 
Rhys's  "  Celtic  Britain," ^  checked  by  Mr.  F.  Haverfield's 
map  of  Roman  Britain,^  and  the  succinct  account  of  the 
Province  with  which  his  map  is  accompanied. 

From  what  has  already  been  said  it  will  be  seen  that 
Pytheas,  when  he  visited  this  country  in  the  4th  century 
before  our  era,  is  not  likely  to  have  found  any  Brythons 
here:  the  inhabitants  of  the  south  of  the  Island  consisted 
then  of  the  Aborigines,  with  Goidels  as  the  race  ruling 
over  some  or  all  of  them.  It  is  unfortunate  that  Pytheas's 
account  of  his  visit  is  not  extant ;  abstracts,  however,  from 
his  diary  have  come  down  through  such  channels  as  the 
works  of  Diodorus,  Strabo,  and  Pliny.  But  the  evidence 
which  principally  concerns  us  is  concentrated  in  a  few 
proper  names,  such  as  Albion^  Belermm,  Britannia  Cantium, 
Ictis,  Moriniarnsam,  and  Prctanic  Islands.  Of  these 
Caiitiuju    and   Prctanic    must    be    regarded  as   Brythonic, 

^  Published  by  the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge,  2nd  ed. , 
London,  1S84. 

~  See  Mr.  Poole's  *' Historical  Atlas  of  Modern  Europe  from  the  Decline 
of  the  Roman  Empire"  (Oxford,  Clarendon  Press,  1896),  Plate  XV. 


76  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

Belgic,  or  Gaulish,  and  not  Goidelic.  The  earliest  existing 
work  which  alludes  to  the  south-eastern  portion  of  Britain 
as  Cantium  is  Caesar's  account  of  the  Gallic  War,  and  then 
follows  Diodorus  with  his  ^avnov}  The  name  has  the 
same  form  in  the  pages  of  Strabo,  who  uses  it  in  passages 
devoted  to  a  criticism  of  the  statements  of  Pytheas  in  such  a 
way  that  it  has  been  supposed  that  Pytheas  had  used  it  him- 
self On  this,  however,  one  can  only  surmise  that  P}'theas 
either  employed  a  slightly  different  form  of  the  word  or 
else  that  it  reached  him  from  a  Brythonic  or  Belgic  source 
on  the  Continent.  The  same  kind  of  remark  would  apply 
to  Prctanic,  if  it  could  be  shown  that  an}^  such  a  term  was 
known  to  Pytheas,  for  the  Celtican  or  Goidelic  form  must 
be  supposed  to  have  been  Qiirtaiiic.  The  form,  for  example, 
in  which  it  occurs  in  Ptolemy's  Geography  is  IIperai'tK?;  Xr]croq 
or  npcTai/t/cat  N-^o-at,  "  Pretanic  Island  or  Islands,"  the  latter 
of  which  meant  the  British  Isles  generally,  the  largest  of 
them  being  called  Albion,  "Albion,  Britain,"  and  the  next 
in  size  and  importance  'lovcpvia,  or  Ivernia,  "  Ireland."  The 
collective  name  has  its  living  cognates  in  the  old  Goidelic 
CruitJmi,  "Picts,"  Criiithnech,''Y\Q,\:\^\il'  in  Old  Welsh  Priten, 
later  Pryden,  Piydyn  and  Prydein,  now  Prydain^-  "  Scotland, 
Alba,  or  the  Pictland  of  the  North,"  and  Ynys  Prydain, 
"  Great  Britain,"  literally  "  Prydain's  or  Picts'  Island."  Thus 
the  name  of  the  Aborigines  implied  by  these  vocables  would 
have  been  in  Greek  orthography  Ilperavot',  with  which 
eventually  another  and  an  unconnected  name  was  con- 
founded, namely  that  of  the  Brittani,  and  the  confusion  is 
to  be  detected  in  the  tt  of  Xlp^rraviKr],  IIpcTTari/cat,  and  in  the 
c  of  Bpcrravoi'.  The  name  of  the  Brittani  was,  as  already 
suo-gested,  more  usually  and  less  correctly  made  in  Latin 

1  See  Ccesar's  Gallic  War,  v.  13,  14,  22 ;  Diodorus,  v.  21,  3  ;  and 
Meineke's  Strabo,  i.  4,  3  (C  63),  iv.  3,  3  (C.  193). 

-  Yox  Priten  see  "Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.  179:  the  other  forms  occur  in  the 
plural,  meaning  Picts,  in  the  Books  of  Aneuriti  and  Taliessin:  see  Skene,  ii. 
92,  209. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN,  77 

orthography  into  Britanni,  until  at  last  it  was  ousted  by 
the  name  as  pronounced  by  those  people  themselves, 
namely,  Brittones.  This  last  has  regularly  yielded  the 
Welsh  Brython  and  French  Bretons,  while  French  Bretagne 
similarly  represents  Brittania^  not  Britania  or  Britannia  ; 
and  it  cannot  he  regarded  as  an  accident  that  the  Latin 
Brittani  corresponds  exactly  to  the  Mediccval  Irish  plural 
Bretain,  genitive  Bretan.  In  other  words  the  form  Brittani 
must  have  reached  the  Romans  from  the  non-Brythonic 
Celts  of  these  Islands  or  of  the  Continent. 

Let  us  now  take  the  other  names,  (i)  beginning  with 
Pliny's  Albio7t,  which  is  treated  in  Greek  as  "A\/3lov, 
'AXjSiOiv  or  'AAovtW,  genitive  'AA^tWo?  or  'AAoutwvos.^  This 
name  is  unknown  to  the  Brythonic  dialects,  except  that 
Modern  Welsh  literature  sometimes  borrows  Alban  for  Scot- 
land ;  but  it  survives  in  the  Goidelic  dialects,  namely,  as  Alba, 
"Alpa,  and  Elpa,  genitive  Albaji  (also  Alba^).  Traces  of  its 
application  to  the  whole  of  Great  Britain^  before  it  came 
to  be  confined  to  the  northern  portion  of  it  occur  in  Irish 
literature;  and  the  fact  of  the  Island  being  called  Insula 
Albiomim  in  the  Ora  Maritima  of  Avienus'^"  makes  it  pro- 
bable that  the  name  is  very  ancient.  Albion  is  supposed, 
and  probably  rightly,  to  mean  the  White  Country,  in  reference 
to  the  appearance  of  the  cliffs  of  the  southern  coast,  and  at 
first  it  was  applied  presumably  only  to  the  south.  There  is 
no  evidence  that  the  Brythons  or  Belgic  Gauls  used  the  word, 
but  rather  that  they  translated  it  into  their  own  tongue  as 
Cantion ;    for   some  believe  that  also  to   have  meant  the 


^  Pliny's  "  Historia  Naturalis,"  iv.  30,  i. 

-  Rhys's  "Manx  Phonology,"  p.  85. 

^  See  "  Cormac's  Glossary,"  J. z/.  "Mug-eime,"  and  the  instance  in  the  Duan 
Albanach,  quoted  at  the  close  of  this  chapter,  p.  115  ;  see  also  Stokes's  "  Urkel- 
tischer  Sprachschatz,"  p.  21,  where  he  explains  the  name  to  mean  White 
Land. 

•*  See  the  lines  in  question  quoted  and  explained  in  MUllenhoffs  "Deutsche 
Altertumskunde,"  i.  91. 


78  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

White  Country.^  Unlike  the  other  name,  however,  Caution 
remained  confined  to  the  south-east  of  the  Island,  so  that  it 
has  yielded  the  Welsh  Caint  and  the  English  Kent. 

(2)  Beleriuin  is  given  twice  by  Diodorus  as  BeXepiov, 
which  Ptolem}''s  manuscripts  give  as  BoXeptor,  and  it  is 
supposed  to  have  meant  some  portion  of  the  south-western 
peninsula,  including  probably  the  Land's  End.  In  Old 
Irish  we  have  a  word  which  comes  ver\'  near  it,  nameh' 
the  neuter  noun  bclre^  (Modern  Irish  bcnrla)^  which  meant 
a  language,  and  unqualified,  perhaps,  an  alien  or  foreign 
tongue.  This  would  explain  how  in  Modern  Irish  it  means 
''English";  and  the  inference  suggested  by  the  occurrence 
of  the  name  Belerion  is,  that  it  became  current  among  the 
Goidels  at  a  time  when  the  language  of  the  Aborigines  was 
still  dominant  over  a  certain  area  of  the  south-west  of  the 
Island.  Perhaps,  however,  it  was  merely  meant  to  describe 
the  extreme  south-west  as  a  tongue  of  land. 

(3)  Ictis  is  the  name  recorded  by  Diodorus  as  given  to 
one  of  the  islands  at  high  tide  to  which  the  inhabitants  of 
the  south-western  peninsula  of  Britain  brought  their  tin  for 
sale  to  the  merchants  who  traded  with  them.  The  same 
name  was  known  to  Plin)',  for  his  Insnlmn  Mictini  is 
doubtless  to  be  corrected  into  Insnlani  letini.  But  his 
account  of  Ictis  differs  from  that  of  Diodorus,  although 
both  are  supposed  to  have  drawn  their  information  from 
Timaeus,  a  historian  who  was  contemporary  with  P}'theas. 
There  seems  to  be  no  sufficient  reason  for  identih'incf  Ictis 
with  Vectis,  ''  the  Isle  of  Wight,"  or  to  sever  it  from  the 
Irish  name  of  the  English  Channel,  namel}',  Miiir  n-IcJit^- 

^  See  Stokes's  "  Urk.  Sprachschatz,"  p.  90,  and  Holder's  "  .Vlt-celt.  Sprach- 
schatz,"  s.v.  Caution,  canto  :  compare  the  Welsh  word  can,  ''  white."  A  certain 
school  of  Eni^lish  historians  pretend  that  Cantiuiu  is  in  Welsh j'  Caint,  "the 
Kent,"  and  that  it  meant  "the  open  country."  This  interpretation  comes 
Irom  Dr.  W.  Owen  Pughe,  but  where  the  definite  article  has  been  found 
prefixed  to  this  proper  name  we  have  not  yet  discovered.  Both  **///f  Caint" 
and  "  the  Gwent "  figure  among  the  curiosities  of  Guest's  "  Origines  Celticae." 

-  "Cormac's  Glossary,"  J. z'.  Mug-cime. 


ROMAN    BRITAIN.  79 

"  the  Sea  of  Icht,  or  Ictian  Sea."  /cU's  and  /c/it  represent 
possibly  a  Celtic  pronunciation  of  the  same  Aboriginal 
word  which  the  Romans  made  into  Pictus}  plural  Picti ; 
for  if  the  Celts  learned  the  word  sufficiently  early  they  would 
naturally  treat  it  like  any  other  word  with  the  consonant/, 
that  is  to  say,  they  would  get  rid  of  that  consonant  as  in 
their  own  words.  It  is  probably  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
in  this  name  we  have  the  Latin /^V/^j",  "painted,"  any  more 
than  in  the  name  of  the  Pictones  in  Gaul.  Had  it  been 
Latin  it  could  hardly  have  been  regarded  as  other  than  a 
kind  of  nickname,  and  no  one  would  have  expected  the 
Aborigines  of  Caithness  and  Sutherland  to  give  the  Norse- 
men who  first  reached  their  shores  a  Latin  nickname  as 
their  national  designation.  Rather  must  we  suppose  it  an 
early  name,  which  the  Aborigines  adopted,  while  the  Celts 
sooner  or  later  applied  another  name,  Qurtani,  Pretani^ 
Cruithni  and  Piydyn^  to  them  in  Goidelic  and  Brythonic 
respectively.  =^ 

•  This  may,  perhaps,  be  regarded  as  confirmed  by  Ictium,  given  by  Holder 
as  an  old  name  of  a  place  now  called  L'Isle-Jourdain  in  the  Dep.  of  the  Vienne, 
covered  by  the  eastern  portion  of  the  old  province  of  Poitou.  For  Poitoii 
represents  an  older  Pictavi.  another  form  of  the  name  of  the  Pictones.  and  both 
claim  close  kinship  with  that  of  the  ricts  of  this  country.  For  the  latter  were 
not  only  called  Picti,  but  also  Pictones  (see  Stokes's  "Annals  of  Tigernach  " 
in  the  "Revue  Celtique,"  xvii.  251,  253) ;  and  probably  Piciores,  which,  under 
the  influence  of  the  genitive  plural  Pictomm,  is  not  uncommon,  is  everywhere 
to  be  corrected  into  Pictones.  The  Paris  document,  published  by  Skene  at  the 
head  of  his  collection  of  the  Chronicles  of  the  Picts  and  of  the  Scots,  has,  in 
that  compilation,  Pictavia  and  Plctaviani  seven  times.  Skene's  v  is  meant  to 
represent  the  ti  of  the  manuscript ;  but  on  scrutinising  the  original  (Latin,  4126) 
in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale,  we  find  only  <>ne  instance  which  looks  like 
Pictauia.  The  others  we  should  read  Pictania,  Pictaniam.  with  ni  formed 
like  tn.  The  MS.  appears  to  be  a  fourteenth  century  copy  of  an  original  of  the 
tenth.  Add  to  this  that  the  Life  of  St.  Cadroe  calls  the  Aborigines  of  Ireland 
gentem  Pictaueorum  :  see  Skene's  "  Picts  and  Scots,"  p.  loS  ;  also  p.  137,  where 
the  unusual  form  Pictinia  is  given. 

-  The  words  Cruithni  and  Prydyn  have  been  regarded  as  derived,  though 
the  nasal  has  not  been  exactly  accounted  for,  from  the  Irish  and  Welsh  words  for 
"  form  or  shape,"  namely  c7-uth  and  pryd  respectively,  and  a  reference  in  them 
has  been  assumed  to  the  forms  or  outlines  of  the  beasts  which  the  Picts  are 


8o  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

(4)  Morimariisain  is  said  b}^  Pliny,  after  Philemon,  to  have 
been  the  name  of  the  northern  ocean  from  the  Cimbri's 
country  to  a  certain  Cape  Rubeas,  and  to  have  meant  Dead 
Sea.  The  passage,  somewhat  carelessly  given  by  Pliny, 
is  repeated  in  a  less  ambiguous  form  b}'  the  later  author 
Solinus,  xix.  2  : — Philemon  a  Ciinbris  ad  proinuntiiriuni 
Riibeas  Moriinarusain  dicit  vocari^  hoc  est  Mortuuui  Mare : 
ultra  Rubeas  quicquid  est  Croniuvi  nominat}  Scholars  are 
not  inclined  to  regard  Moriniarusam  as  a  specimen  of  the 
language  of  the  Cimbri,  whom  they  regard  as  a  Teutonic 
people,  while  on  the  other  hand  it  admits  of  being  explained 
exactly  as  Celtic,  Mori  Marusani^  which  would  make  in 
Modern  Irish  Muir  Marbh,  Welsh  Mar  Marii\  "Dead 
Sea."  In  the  Latin  of  both  Pliny  and  Solinus  it  looks  like 
an  accusative  feminine,  but  as  the  word  uiori,  Irish  uiuir, 
was  neuter  like  the  Latin  inare^  it  is  probabl}'  to  be  treated 
as  accusative  neuter  ;  and  the  fact  of  Marusani  ending 
in  am  shows  that  we  have  here  to  do  with  Goidelic,  as 
Brythonic  and  Gaulish  would  have  had  on  or  o?n^^  and 
the  Latin  would  have  been  criven  accordin^lv  as  Mori- 
Marusum.     Pliny's  authority  was  a  certain   Philemon  who 


believed  to  have  had  tattooed  on  their  persons.  Should  this  prove  tenable, 
one  could  scarcely  avoid  treating  Cridthni  and  Frydyn  as  translations  into 
Goidelic  and  Brythonic  of  the  word  Pici  regarded  as  the  Latin//r/«j-,  ' '  painted.'' 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  would  not  help  us  to  the  meaning  of  Pict  as  a 
word  of  the  Pictish  language  to  which  it  possibly  belonged  ;  but  the  supposi- 
tion here  suggested  as  to  Fretanic  being  merely  a  sort  of  translation  of  the 
Latin  pichis,  would  compel  us  to  regard  the  first  use  of  Pretanic  as  dating  no 
earlier  than  Ccesar's  time  and  the  spread  of  Latin  in  Northern  Gaul.  This 
would  simplify  the  question  if  the  chronology  should  make  it  possible,  which 
looks  hardly  probable. 

^  Pliny's  version  runs  thus,  iv.  95  :  Moriniarusavi  {eum)  a  Cinibris  vocari^ 
hoc  est,  Mortman  J\Ia  >'e,  inde  usque  ad  p7'Oimc7ituri7ii)i  Riibeas,  idlra  delude 
Cronnmi.  This  we  copy  from  Mullenhoff's  "Deutsche  Altertumskunde," 
i.  413,  where  the  passage  is  discussed. 

2  The  predilection  of  Goidelic  for  a  instead  of  0  as  the  thematic  vowel  is 
borne  out  by  the  most  ancient  Ogams  of  Britain  and  Ireland  :  thus  the 
genitive  ending  corresponding  to  Greek  os  (Latin  is)  is  always  as  or  a. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  8i 

appears  to  have  lived  in  the  last  century  before  our  Era 
and  Philemon  is  supposed  to  have  been  using  information 
obtained  by  Pytheas  when  he  visited  Britain. 

With  regard  to  these  names  Albion,  Beleriiun,  Ictis^  and 
Mori-Marusam,  it  is  probable  that  they  were  learnt  in  this 
country  by  Pytheas  or  some  of  the  travellers  who  came  here 
after  his  time.  In  other  words,  we  may  treat  them  for  what 
they  are  worth  as  evidence  of  the  occupation  of  the  southern 
portions  of  Britain  by  a  Celtican  or  Goidelic  people  at  a 
time  before  the  Brythons  had  obtained  a  footing  on  its 
shores.  We  have  dwelt  on  these  names  at  this  point  as 
another  view  is  sometimes  put  forward,  that  everything 
Goidelic  in  Britain  is  to  be  traced  to  invasions  from  Ireland, 
and  to  a  time  subsequent  to  the  second  century  of  our  era, 
especially  the  later  years  of  the  Roman  occupation  and 
those  following  the  withdrawal  of  the  Roman  legions  from 
the  Island.^  That  men  from  Ireland  invaded  Britain  at 
various  points  and  at  various  times,  and,  further,  that  some 
of  them  settled  here,  is  not  to  be  disputed.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  case  of  the  Dalriad  Scots,  who  crossed  from 
Ireland  to  Argyle  in  the  fifth  century,  or  that  of  the  Deisi 
in  the  south-west  of  Wales  at  a  still  earlier  date.  This, 
however,  proves  in  no  wise  that  there  was  not  previously 
a  Goidelic  population  in  the  west  of  the  Island  ;  it  rather 
favours  the  contrary  supposition,  for  a  native  Goidelic 
population  might  well  be  credited  with  having  appealed 
to  men  of  their  own  race  and  language  in  Ireland  for  aid 
in  their  struggles  with  Brythonic  tribes,  and  the  response 
to  such  an  appeal  may  have  served  as  the  beginning  of  a 
series  of  descents  on  the  coasts  of  Wales  and  of  the  south 
of  England.     To  such  invasions  we  may  possibly  have  to 

^  This  view  has  been  recently  advocated  by  Professor  Meyer  in  the  *'  Trans- 
actions of  the  Hon.  Society  of  Cymmrodorion  "  (64  Chancery  Lane,  London, 
1897),  1895-6,  pp.  55-86,  where  a  number  of  facts  illustrating  the  early 
intercourse  between  Wales  and  Ireland  have  been  brought  together  in  a  very 
interesting  fashion. 

W.P.  G 


82  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

ascribe  the  destruction  of  such  towns  as  Isca  Silurum  or 
Caerleon  and  Venta  Silurum  or  Caer  Went  in  Monmouth- 
shire, and  perhaps  of  Calleva  or  Silchester  in  Hampshire, 
where  an  Ogam  inscription^  testifying  to  the  presence  of  a 
Goidel  was  discovered  a  short  time  ago.  Nay,  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  Vortigern,  whose  name  outside  the  Hengist 
story  is  found  to  have  been  more  at  home  in  Ireland  and 
Brittany  than  in  Wales,  represented  such  an  invasion,  with 
its  influence  reaching  as  far  as  Kent. 

The  advocates  of  the  view  to  which  we  ha\e  referred 
appear  to  be  at  one  with  us  as  to  the  existence  of  a  con- 
siderable Goidelic  population  in  the  west  of  Britain  from 
the  second  century  onwards,  and  also  as  to  the  influence  of 
that  Goidelic  element  on  the  subsequent  history  of  this 
Island,  especially  that  portion  of  it  which  constitutes  the 
Principality  of  Wales.  The  difference  of  view  attaches  to 
the  previous  question,  whence  came  the  Goidelic  element 
admitted  to  have  been  present  here?  Our  hypothesis  regards 
it  as  for  the  most  part  resident  and  as  partly  drawn  from 
Ireland,  while  the  other  derives  it  wholly  from  Ireland. 
The  difficulty  which  we  feel  in  estimating  the  respective 
merits  of  these  hypotheses  is  enhanced  by  our  lack  of  data 
to  enable  us  to  judge  of  the  attitude  of  the  advocates  of 
the  hypothesis  of  the  exclusive  Irish  origin  with  regard  to 
the  question  of  the  Aboriginal  population.  Xor  can  we 
hope  to  understand  their  position  till  they  indicate  how 
they  suppose  the  Goidel s  of  Ireland  to  have  reached  that 
country,  also  where  and  when  they  approximatel)^  think 
Goidelic  nationalit)-  and  Goidelic  speech  to  have  assumed 
their  individuality.  For  our  own  part,  we  have  alread}- 
sufficiently  sketched  our  conjectures  as  to  the  Aboriginal 
population  ;  and  we  have  also  indicated  our  conviction  that 

1  See  in  the  AicliKologia,  vol.  liv.,  a  paper  by  Mr.  G.  E.  Fox  and  Mr.W.  H. 
St.  John  Hope,  entitled  "  Excavations  on  the  Site  of  the  Roman  Cit}'  at 
Silchester,  Hants,"  in  1893,  PP-  35-9- 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  83 

Goidels  and  Brythons  differed  in  speech  before  the}'  left  the 
Continent.  We  might  probably  add  religion:  for  we  under- 
stand Caesar  (vi.  13)  to  represent  Druidism  as  being  on  the 
wane  in  Gaul,  and  as  having  originated  in  Britain,  whither 
those  who  wished  to  study  it  thoroughly  had  to  resort.  But 
as  there  is  no  convincing  evidence  to  identify  it  with  any 
Brythonic  tribe  in  this  country,  while  there  is  evidence  of 
its  prevalence  among  the  Goidels  of  Mon  in  the  time  of 
Agricola,  and  of  its  surviving  in  Ireland  in  that  of  Patrick, 
and  in  the  Pictland  of  the  north  in  that  of  Columba,  we 
infer  that  it  was  a  system  evolved  by  the  Continental 
Goidels,  or  rather  accepted  by  them  from  the  Aborigines. 
When,  however,  the  Goidels  of  Gaul  were  conquered  by  the 
Galatic  Celts,  including  the  Belgic  peoples,  Druidism  may 
well  have  found  it  impossible  to  hold  its  own  for  any  great 
length  of  time,  though  it  may  have  continued  to  flourish  in 
remote  corners  of  Britain,  which  we  take  to  be  the  real 
meaning  of  the  supposition  that  Britain  was  its  native 
'Country.^ 

We  now  come  to  the  question  how  the  Goidels  reached 
Ireland — that  is  to  say,  was  it  direct  from  the  Continent  or 
across  Britain  ?  In  answer  to  this,  we  should  say  that  the 
first  Celts  to  land  in  Ireland  embarked  probably  on  the 
western  shores  of  Britain  ;  in  other  words,  they  belonged  to 
a  race  which  had  conquered  southern  Britain  from  sea  to 
sea.  In  early  ages  the  voyage  from  the  nearest  ports  of 
the  Continent  to  Ireland  must  have  been  a  formidable 
undertaking  ;  but  by  the  time,  let  us  say,  of  Csesar,  it  was 
probably  well  within  the  capacity  of  the  mariners  of  the 
Veneti  and  of  the  other  tribes  belonging  to  the  Armoric 
League.     That  in  one  instance  at  least  this  did  take  place 

^  Since  this  was  written  a  most  suggestive  volume  of  "''  Nos  Origines"  has 
iDcen  published  :  it  is  the  work  of  the  veteran  archaeologist,  M.  Bertrand,  and 
■bears  the  title  of  "La  Religion  des  Gaulois,  les  Druides  et  le  Druidisme  "  (Paris, 
ieroux,  1897),  pp.  ix.  436,  and  numerous  illustrations. 

G   2 


84  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

the  following  neglected  indication  is  worth}-  of  note  :  in 
the  extreme  north-west  of  Gaul — that  is  to  say,  on  the 
westernmost  peninsula  of  Brittany — there  was  in  Pytheas's 
time  a  people  called  by  him  'no-Tiatot,  "  Ostitti."  Another 
early  form  of  their  name  appears  to  have  been  'flo-rtWcs  ; 
but  later  they  were  best  known  as  'Oo-to-^tot,  the  Osismi 
whom  Caesar  mentions  among  the  allies  of  the  Veneti. 
Now  a  name  which  has  all  the  appearance  of  being  closely 
connected  with  that  of  the  Ostiaei  or  Ostiones  is  given 
by  Ptolemy  to  a  people  in  the  south  of  Ireland — namely,  the 
OwSittc,^  "  Usdiae,"  whose  name  in  its  turn  is  probably  to 
be  identified  with  that  of  Ossory.  In  Irish  this  latter  is 
written  OsraigJie,  and,  roughly  speaking,  it  means  the  count}' 
of  Kilkenn}'  ;  but  the  Ossorians  formerly  claimed  against 
Munster  the  whole  of  the  country  from  the  Suir  to  the 
Barrow,  and  from  the  mountains  called  Slieve  Bloom  in 
Queen's  County  to  the  Meeting  of  the  Three  Waters  near 
Waterford.-  Moreover,  as  Ptolemy  represents  the  Usdiae  as 
reaching  the  coast,  we  should  probably  add  to  their  territor}^ 
the  greater  part  of  the  County  Waterford,  on  which  the 
Deisi  seized  in  the  third  century,  together  with  the  western 
portion  of  the  Ossorians'  countr}',  north  of  the  Suir,  of 
which  they  got  possession  later."^  The  similarit}-  of  the 
names  Usdiae  and  Ostiaei  natural!}'  leads  one  to  suppose 
that  some  of  the  Ostiaei  or  Osismi  sailed  from  Brittany 
past  the  Land's  End  to  the  coast  between  Youghai  and 
Waterford  Harbour,  and    then    gradually    pushed    inland^ 

^  OvirS/at  is  considered  the  best  reading,  and  it  lias  been  adopted  in  the  text 
of  Ptolemy,  by  C.  Midler,  in  the  Firmin  Didot  edition  of  1883  ;  and  as  to  the 
name  ^(TTiaioi  see  MUllenhoft's  "  Deutsche  Altertumskunde,"  i.  y]'y-S-  ^^  the 
view  suggested  above  should  prove  correct,  one  may  propose  that  instead  _of 
correcting  the  ovs  ti/jlIovs  of  the  MSS.  of  Sti-abo  into  ovs  'Ciarifxiovs,  as  Miillen- 
hoff  does,  it  should  rather  be  into  ovs  Ova-n/xiovs. 

2  See  O'Donovan's  "Book  of  Rights,'"  pp.  17,  18. 

'"'  //>id.  pp.  49,  50 ;  but  for  the  w  hole  story  of  the  Deisi  see  the  ''  Book  of 
the  Dun  Cow,"  fo.  53,  54,  and  O'Curry's  "Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient 
Iri^h,"  ii.  205-8. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  85 

taking  possession  of  some  of  the  best  land  in  Ireland. 
Possibly  this  took  place  as  late  as  Caesar's  Gallic  War,  and 
one's  thoughts  are  naturally  directed  to  the  time  when  the 
Osismi  found  their  powerful  allies,  the  Veneti,  being 
crushed  by  him  on  land  and  sea.  The  archaeological  dis- 
coveries of  the  future  may  perhaps  supply  evidence  where 
we  have  at  present  only  conjecture.  ' 

The  south-east  of  Ireland  seems  also  to  have  been  occu- 
pied, at  least  in  part,  by  settlers  coming  direct  from  the 
Continent.  For  next  to  the  Usdioe  come,  according  to 
Ptolemy,  a  certain  tribe  of  Brigantes,  occupying  the  coast  as 
far  as  Carnsore  Point,  and  above  them  he  places  a  people 
whom  he  calls  the  Coriondi  or  Coriondae,  who  probably 
occupied  a  district  to  which  the  waters  of  Wexford  Har- 
bour and  the  River  Slaney  gave  ready  access.  Then  come 
the  Manapii,  with  their  town  called  Manapia,  and  situated 
somewhere  near  the  mouth  of  a  river  called  Modonnus,  which 
may  probably  have  been  the  Avon  more,  at  whose  mouth 
stands  the  town  of  Arklow,  called  in  Med.  Irish  Inber 
Mor,  "the  great  River-mouth."  Beyond  the  Manapii  come 
the  Cauci,  occupying  probably  the  north  of  the  present 
County  Wicklow,  and  extending,  perhaps,  towards  the 
mouth  of  the  Liffey.  Of  these  four  tribes,  the  Manapii 
point  to  the  Menapii  on  the  Lower  Rhine  as  their  mother 
state,  and  as  to  the  Cauci  their  name  reminds  one  of  that  of 
the  Teutonic  people  of  the  Chauchi,  Chauci,  or  Cauchi,  but 
our  Cauci  are  more  likely  to  have  been  Celts — possibly  Celts 
who  had  been  under  the  Teutonic  rule  of  the  Chauci.^    The 


'  Tn  this  connection  it  is  worth  while  mentioning  that  there  seems  to  have  been 
a*very  ancient  trade  in  amber  between  Britain  and  the  coast,  with  its  islands, 
between  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  and  that  of  the  Elbe.  Some  of  the  amber 
found  in  the  ancient  burials  south  of  the  Thames  seems  to  have  been  of  that 
origin  ;  so  one  infers  that  there  was  active  navigation  between  the  country  of 
the  Chauci  and  the  British  Isles.  On  this  amber  question  see  Elton's  "  Origins 
of  English  History,"  pp.  65-6.  Holder  cites  Kiepert  as  believing  the  Cauci 
connected  with  the  Lower  Rhine. 


86  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

Brigantes  of  Ireland  were  very  probably  of  the  same  origin 
as  the  Brigantes  of  Britain  ;  but  we  have  no  evidence  to 
help  us  to  fix  on  their  home  on  the  Continent.  We  should, 
perhaps,  not  be  greatly  mistaken  in  looking  for  it  not  far 
from  the  territory  of  the  Menapii ;  for  instance,  in  the  country 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  known  as  Insula  Batavoru7n. 
The  Batavi  and  Caninefates  whom  we  find  in  possession  of 
it  in  the  first  century  are  believed  to  have  been  Teutonic 
peoples  ;  but  that  the  country  had  been  formerly  inhabited 
by  Celts  is  proved  by  Lugtidunum  {Batavorum),  now  Leyden^ 
which  is  as  Celtic  a  name  as  that  of  the  other  Lugudunums^ 
in  different  parts  of  Gaul.  Another  Batavian  town  was 
known  as  Batavoduruin^  which,  in  point  of  name,  was  at 
least  in  part  Celtic,  and  situated  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Nymeguen,  whilst  a  little  higher  up  the  Rhine  seems  to 
have  been  a  place  called  Burginatiinn,  which  looks  like  a 
sort  of  Teutonic  translation  of  some  such  a  Celtic  name 
as  Brigantio,  borne  by  a  place  once  perhaps  inhabited  by 
the  Brigantes  of  whom  we  are  in  quest. 

Now  some,  possibly,  of  the  four  tribes  of  this  group 
were  Brythonic  or  Belgic  rather  than  Goidelic  ;  but  we  have 
no  means  of  tracing  the  influence  of  their  language  on  the 
Goidelic  which  became  the  language  of  Ireland.  They  are 
also  remarkable  for  the  small  scale  of  their  territory  :  it 
cannot  have  extended  much  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
present  counties  of  Wexford  and  Wicklow,  and  its  area  was 
probably  far  from  covering  them,  as  it  presumably  con- 
sisted of  settlements  surrounded  by  the  Aboriginal  popu- 
lation— that  is,  in  case  that  part  of  the  country  had  not 
already  been  Goidelicised.  In  any  case  the  territory  of 
these  Leinster  tribes  and  that  of  the  Usdiae  had  been  carved 
probably  in  the  first  instance  out  of  that  of  the  Iverni, 
who    may    accordingly    be    represented    as    an  Aboriginal 

^  For  a  list  of  these  see  Holder's  "  Alt-celtischer  Sprachschatz,"  s,v.  ;  see  also 
his  Batavodiiron  and  Bu7'^inatio. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN,  87 

population  previously  extending  from  the  south-west  of 
the  Island  to  the  mouth  of  the  Liffey  or  the  Boyne.  This 
would  help  to  explain  why  Munster  used  formerly  to  claim 
Ossory,  which  we  have  supposed  to  represent  the  Usdiae, 
and  why  the  Iverni  gave  their  name  to  the  whole  Island — 
that  is  to  say,  Ivernia,  Latinised  Hibernia  ;  and  similarly 
in  the  case  of  the  'louepvtKos  '0/<eavo9,  which  still  retains  its 
name  of  the  "  Irish  Sea."  When  these  names  came  into 
vogue  the  Iverni  must  have  been  predominant  in  Ireland. 
It  is  probably  from  the  northern  half  of  the  Island  that 
we  have  the  name  Scotti,  under  which  the  first  western 
invaders  appear  in  the  history  of  Roman  Britain  in  the 
fourth  century.  Before  leaving  Ireland  we  wish  to  men- 
tion two  or  three ^  of  the  names  identified  in  Ptolemy's 
Geography.  Foremost  comes  that  of  the  people  whom  he 
calls  Oh<j\ovvTioi  or  OvoKovvtioi^  for  the  manuscripts  differ. 
His  figures  admit  of  our  locating  them  around  Armagh, 
near  which  is  the  remarkable  pre-historic  fortress  of  Emain 
Macha,  now  known  as  the  Navan  Fort,  and  we  detect  their 
name  in  the  Irish  Ulaid^  Ultu'^  "the  Ultonians,  Ulster,"  which 

1  We  take  them  from  an  excellent  paper  on  Ptolemy's  Map  of  Ireland, 
by  Mr.  G.  H.  Orpen,  in  the  "  Journal  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Antiquaries  of 
Ireland,"  1894,  pp.  1 15-128,  with  map. 

-  The  editor  of  the  Firniin  Didot  edition  gives  the  preference  to  this  reading, 
for  the  incredible  reason,  that  the  so-called  Richard  of  Cirencester  has  Vohintii 
or  Volant ii  in  Britain.  To  make  OvoKovvnoi  fit  as  well  as  OhcrKovvrioi  we 
should  have  perhaps  to  spell  it  Ov\6vtiol  ;  but  OvaKovvTioi  and  the  variant 
Ov(T\6vTioi,  which  also  occurs,  would  do  ;  however,  the  declension  of  the  word 
in  Irish  suggests  -roi  rather  than  -noi. 

2  This  was  the  accusative  plural,  and  the  dative  was  Ultaib,  contracted,  no 
doubt,  from  Ula'u  and  Ulataib  respectively — no  singular  occurs  :  so  the 
genitive  should  have  been  Ulat  and  the  nominative  Ulait,  but  from  Ultii  and 
Ultaib  were,  by  false  analogy  probably,  inferred  Ulad  and  Ulaid.  Compare 
such  words  as  iuguath  or  ingnad,  *' wonderful,  a  wnnder,"  pi,  inganta,  chad, 
"a  suffering  or  passion,"  ac.  plural  cestit,  and  violad,  "praise,"  pi.  moita  and 
moltha.  The  Irisli  Ulaid  occurs  in  Welsh  as  Wleth  :  see  the  Book  of  Taliessin, 
poem  xiv.  (Skene,  i.  276,  ii.  154),  where  Penren  Wleth  seems  to  mean  some 
headland  called  after  the  Ultonians  or  their  country.  The  reduction  of  «/, 
7ic  to  //  {t),  cc  {c)  is  universal  in  Goidelic,  and  no  c:riain  instance  from  a 
previous  strge  has  yjt  b.en  discovered.    Brigantes,  for  example,  was  brythonic, 


88  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

fits  so  well  that  there  can  be  no  serious  doubt  as  to  their 
identity.  The  name  of  Ptolemy's  'EpStrot  survives  in  that 
of  Lough  Erne  and  of  the  ancient  tribe  of  the  E^'nai 
associated  bv  Irish  lec^end  with  that  water.  His  Bot'oviV8a 
was  undoubtedly  the  Boyne,  and  his  Bipyo?  the  Barrow,  not 
to  mention  his  Aa/3poVa,  which  is  probably  to  be  corrected 
into  SaySpcom,  and  to  be  identified  with  Sabrami}  an  old  name 
of  the  river  Lee,  on  the  banks  of  which,  somewhere  about 
the  position  of  Cork,  stood  Ivernis,  which  ma\'  be  supposed 
to  have  been  the  capital  of  the  Iverni  in  Ptolemy's  time. 

We  now  at  length  come  back  to  Britain  and  the  disposi- 
tion of  its  populations  under  the  Romans.  Here  we  have 
to  deal  first  with  the  question,  whom  the  Romans  had  to 
contend  with  ^^■hen  they  invaded  the  island.  Caesar's 
passage  alread\'  mentioned  (p.  5)  as  to  the  powerful  Gaul 
Diviciacos  who  ruled  over  Britain  supplies  a  clue  to  the 
answer.  The  statement  of  the  Remi  to  Caesar  referred  to 
a  time  which  men  then  still  alive  remembered,  and,  since 
no  hint  as  to  a  revolution  is  vouched,  the  probabilit}'  is 
that   the   empire  of   Di\iciacos   in   this   countr\'   subsisted 

and  Uoliintli  comes  from  a  Pictish  origin  doubtless  rather  than  a  Celtic  one. 
Compare  Pictish  Uoret,  -iiorrami  and  -norm  (Pro.  of  Antiq.  Scot,  xxxij.  347, 
349,  372).  On  the  other  hand,  not  only  Prythonic  but  also  Pictish  shows  no 
aversion  to  nt :  take,  for  instance,  the  names  of  the  thirty  Pictish  kings 
mentioned  in  the  Pictish  Chronicle  as  ruling  over  Erin  and  Britain 
(Skene's  "  Picts  and  Scots,"  pp.  5-8);  the  list  opens  with  Brute  Pant, 
followed  by  Brute  Urpaut,  and  contains  others  called  Brude  Gani  and  Brude 
Urgatit,  Brude  Cint  and  Brude  Urcint,  also  such  later  names  as  EntifidicJi 
and  Custantin  {  =  Constantiinis).  Similarly  Ptolemy  places  a  tribe  called 
DecantiC  in  the  northern  reach  of  the  Pictish  countr)-,  while  we  have  the 
Decanti  of  the  Arx  Decantorum  of  the  Annales  Cambria,  later  Deganhwy  or 
Deganiuy,  near  Llandudno,  in  North  Wales  :  the  Goidelic  equivalent  is  found 
in  the  personal  name  which  occurs  in  the  genitive  variously  as  DECCETJ, 
DECHETl,  and  in  Ogam  Dccceddas,  Deceddo,  «S:c. 

^  This  name  is  probably  non-Celtic,  and  evidently  identical  with  that  of  the 
Severn,  in  Welsh  Hafreti,  from  an  earlier  Sahrina,  which  our  classical  scholars, 
so  particular  as  to  vowel  quantity,  are  pleased  to  make  into  Sabrlna.  Compare 
Irish  salami,  Welsh  halen,  "salt,"  and  Irish  cranii,  Welsh //v;/,  "a  tree, 
timber." 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  89 

under  his  successors  In  Cresar's  time.  But  DIviciacos's 
people  were  the  Suesslones  and  the  Rem  I ;  so  we  should 
expect  to  find  both  of  them  represented  In  Britain,  though 
their  names  have  not  been  detected.  Now  we  know  from 
a  couple  of  ancient  inscriptions^  that  a  favourite  god  of  the 
RemI  was  Camulos,  whose  name  is  the  etymological  equiva- 
lent of  the  German  word  /iim7ue/,  "  heaven,"  and  may  be 
regarded  as  a  synonym  or  translation  doubtless  of  the 
god's  common  Aryan  name,  which  is  represented  by  Zeus 
in  Greek,  Jovis  in  Latin,  and  Dyaus  In  Sanskrit.  This  was 
the  supreme  god  of  the  ancient  Aryans,  and  the  Celts 
made  him  their  god  of  war ;  so  some  of  them  when  they 
settled  in  Britain  called  one  of  their  fortresses  Canmlodunon^ 
"  the  town  of  Camulos."  This  was  near  Colchester,  in  the 
country  of  the  Trinovantes,  in  whom  w^e  are  accordingly 
prepared  to  find  the  Remi  we  are  seeking.  The  next 
neighbours  of  the  Trinovantes  were  the  Catuvellauni,  in 
whom  w^e  probably  have  our  insular  Suesslones.  At  any 
rate,  the  name  of  the  Catuvellauni  was  also  that  which, 
shortened  into  Catelauni  or  Catalauni,  eventually  became 
Chaaloiis  and  Chalons^  the  name  of  a  well-known  town 
on  the  Marne,  in  a  district  usually  assigned  to  the  Remi. 
But  the  fact  is  that  the  Remi  and  Suesslones  formed  a  sort 
of  twin  state,  the  boundary  between  whose  lands  we  have 
no  data  to  enable  us  to  draw.  According  to  Caesar's 
information,  the  Remi  and  the  Suesslones  regarded  one 
another  as  kinsmen :  they  lived  under  the  same  laws  and 
obeyed  the  same  magistrates.  But  the  Remi  cultivated 
the  friendship  of  Ca:sar,  while  the  Suesslones  took  part  in 
various  efforts  made  by  the  Gauls  to  throw  off  the  Roman 
yoke  ;  and  when  those  efforts  failed,  the  Remi  came  forward 
to  intercede  for  the  Suesslones  and  save  them  from  ruin." 

^  See  the  Berlin  "  Corpus  Inscrip.  Latinorum,"  vi.  No.  46,  and  Hiibner's 
•'•  Exempla.  Script.  Epigraphicae,  No.  198." 
-  Ca;sar,  ii.  3,  12. 


go  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

A  somewhat  similarly  close  relationship  appears  to  have 
existed  between  their  representatives  in  Britain — that  is,  if 
we  are  right  in  supposing  these  to  have  been  the  Trino- 
vantes  and  the  Catuvellauni  respectively.  Thus  the 
Catuvellauni,  under  the  lead  of  their  chief  Cassivellaunos, 
strenuously  opposed  Caesar's  second  invasion,  while  the 
Trinovantes  hastened  to'  seek  his  protection,  complaining 
that  Cassivellaunos  had  slain  their  king,  whose  son  fled  to 
Caesar  on  the  Continent.  The  feud  between  these  kindred 
peoples  is  perhaps  to  be  detected  also  in  the  case  of  a 
certain  prince  named  Dubnovellaunos,  who  in  vain  sought 
the  aid  of  Augustus  :  at  an\'  rate,  some  of  his  coins  seem 
to  identif}'  him  with  the  country  of  the  Trinovantes.^ 

In  an\'  case  the  Catuvellauni  and  the  Trinovantes 
between  them  may  be  regarded  as  the  upholders  of  the 
empire  of  Diviciacos,  and  for  aught  we  know  Cassivellaunos 
may  have  been  lineally  descended  from  Diviciacos.  The 
power  and  influence  of  the  Catuvellauni  is  sufficiently 
proved  by  the  fact  of  their  chief  Cassivellaunos  being 
entrusted  with  the  conduct  of  the  war  against  Caesar;  and 
Dion  Cassius, speaking  of  the  campaign  of  Aulus  Plautius  in 
43,  represents  the  Catuvellauni  as  ruling  over  a  part  or  the 
whole  of  the  people  of  the  Dobunni  on  the  Severn  in 
Gloucestershire.  On  the  other  hand,  the  coins  of  Cuno- 
belinos  their  king,  who  died  before  that  )'ear,  show  him 
occupying  Camulodunon  as  his  headquarters  in  the  lifetime 
of  his  father  Tasciovant,-  who   resided  at  Verlamion,  now 

^  See  Rhys's  ••  Celtic  Britain,"  pp.  27,  294. 

-  This  name  has  a  variety  of  forms  on  the  coins  :  the  nominative  occurs  as 
Tasciovamis,  Tasciovaniiis,  and  Tasciovans,  and  the  genitive  as  Tasciovani^ 
Tasciioz'anii,  Tasciovantis,  besides  such  abbreviations  as  Tasciov,  Tasciav, 
Tascio,  Tascia,  Taxcta,  and  Taxci;  but  there  must  have  also  been  some  such  a 
form  as  Tacsivant-,  for  we  find  it  represented  in  Welsh  pedigrees  by  a  form  whicli 
must  have  been  Techuant,  written  TV/zz-fl;;//,  which  is  the  explanation  of  the  form 
Teuhant  in  the  Nennian  genealogies:  see  '"Y  Cymmrodor,"'  i.x.  174,  176, 
also  Tccf/iant  for  Techmant,  with  ;;/  for  z^  (p.  174):  it  is  written  Tixn'ciiit  in 
Jesus  College  MS.   20,  Il>id.  viij.  84,   and  it  is   from   Tchvant^  by  the  easy 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  gi 

Old  Verulam,  near  St.  Albans.  Thus  at  the  time  when  the 
Claudian  invasion  took  place  the  people  of  the  Catuvellauni 
held  sway  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  mouth  of  the  Severn. 
But  to  return  to  Tasciovant,  the  number  of  his  coins  seems 
to  indicate  that  he  had  a  long  reign,  terminating  only  in 
the  earlier  years  of  the  Christian  Era.  Some  of  his  coins 
suggest  that  his  rule  extended  to  Calleva  of  the  Atrebates — 
that  is  to  say,  Silchester,  in  the  north  of  Hampshire.  He 
had  two  sons  also  whose  coins  are  extant,  namely,  Cunobe- 
linos  already  mentioned,  and  Epaticcos,  whose  coins  induce 
one  to  believe  that  he  held  sway  south  of  the  Thames,  in 
what  is  now  Surrey.^  But  the  tribes  south  of  the  Thames 
appear  to  have  for  some  time  retained  a  certain  independ- 
ence under  three  princes  named  Tincommios,  Epillos,  and 
Verica,  each  of  whom  styles  himself  on  his  coins  "  Son 
of  Commios."  Their  father  may  have  been  Commios  the 
Atrebat,  who  attempted  to  act  as  Caesar's  emissary  in 
Britain,  and  who  afterwards  played  the  part  of  mediator 
when  Cassivellaunos  sued  for  peace.  The  subsequent  career 
of  this  Commios  in  Gaul  was  a  very  chequered  one.  He 
joined  with  his  countrymen  in  various  attempts  to  free 
themselves  from  the  yoke  of"  Rome,  and  after  narrowly 
escaping  Roman  treachery  he  withdrew  to  Britain.  But 
whether  Tincommios  and  his  brothers  were  the  sons  of  this 
Commios  or  not,  there  is  evidence  that  Tincommios,  who 
possibly  ruled  over  the  Regni,  pursued  a  Romanising  policy  ; 

misreading  of  h  into  ir,  that  Geoffrey's  Temtaniius  (iii.  20)  arose.  It  is 
remarkable  that  we  have  in  the  pedigree  of  Rhun,  son  of  Nwython  (Cym- 
mrodor,  ix.  176)  the  correct  succession  map.  Caratatic.  map.  Cinhelin. 
map.  Tetihant,  for  JUii  Carataci  Jilii  Cunobelini  filii  Taxivanti ;  but  this 
information  wlrich  one  obtains  partly  from  the  coins,  above  all  the  name  of 
Tasciovant,  is  not  to  be  got  from  any  known  author,  whether  Roman  or 
Greek.  So  we  have  here  probably  traces  of  a  Welsh  pedigree  representing  a 
genuine  tradition  reaching  back  beyond  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 

^  A  coin  with  the  letters  CAR  A  or  CARAT  is  probably  to  be  referred  to 
Caratacos,  the  more  famous  brother  :  see  Evans's  "Coins  of  the  Ancient  Britons,'" 
Supplement  (London,  1890),  p.  .553,  and  Plate  XX.  8. 


92  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

for  Augustus  having  become  emperor  and  styled  him- 
self on  a  coin  Augustus  Divi  Films,  it  was  not  long 
before  Tincommios  had  coins  of  his  own  inscribed  in 
Augustus's  Latin  formula :  Tindionnnius^  Coin\i]ii\  F\iliiis\ 
A  passage  in  Tacitus's  Agricola,  c.  14,  is  here  in  point. 
He  says  that  certain  cities  were  given  to  a  certain  king 
Cogidumnos,  according  to  the  received  polic}'  of  Rome 
when  she  wanted  tools  for  the  enslaving  of  other  nations, 
and  he  adds  that  Cogidumnos  continued  faithful  to  the 
Romans  even  within  the  historian's  own  time.  An  inscrip- 
tion, dating  from  the  time  of  Claudius  or  Vespasian  and 
found  at  Chichester,  helps  to  localise  Cogidumnos  there.^ 
Thus  we  seem  to  have  glimpses  of  a  Romanising  polic\* 
pursued  among  the  kings  of  the  Regni  from  the  time  of 
Tincommios  to  that  of  Tacitus.  It  originated  probabl}- 
in  fear  and  jealousy  of  the  power  of  the  Catuvellauni,  and 
in  any  case  that  is  the  key  to  the  history  of  the  Roman 
conquest  in  43,  for  the  legions  seem  to  have  met  with  no 
serious  resistance  till  they  neared  the  Thames.  The  resist- 
ance then  offered  was  organised  b}'  the  Catuvellauni,  while 
the  Eceni  in  their  rear,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  district  between 
the  Trinovantes  and  the  Wash,  do  not  seem  to  have  fought 
at  all,  for  Tacitus'-  represents  them  as  having  entered  into 
alliance  with  Rome  of  their  own  free  will.  This  makes  it 
appear  all  the  more  probable  that  we  have  the  Eceni  in 
the  Cenimagni  of  a  previous  age,  who  head  Citsar's  short 
list  of  tribes  suing  for  peace.  The  names  of  the  others 
were  Segontiaci,  Ancalites,  Bibroci  and  Cassi,  who  were  all 
probabl}'  inhabitants  of  the  southern  side  of  the  Thames, 
and  may  have  been  forced  or  frightened  into  submission ;  but 
it  is  hard  to  believe  this  of  a  warlike  people  like  the  Eceni, 
located   as   they  were    beyond    the   Trinovantes    and    the 

^  See   the    Berlin  "  Corpus    Iiiscr.   Lat.  "'  vii.    No.   11  ;    also   Holder,  s.v. 
*' Cogidubnus." 
-  See  the  Annals,  xiv.  31. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  93 

Catuvellauni.  One  is  left  to  conclude  that  they,  in  case 
we  are  to  identify  them  with  the  Cenimagni,  only  followed 
the  example  of  the  Trinovantes  out  of  fear  or  jealousy  of 
the  aggressive  policy  of  the  Catuvellauni.  How  far  north- 
wards the  power  of  the  Catuvellauni  extended  it  is 
impossible  to  say,  but  it  may  have  reached  Uriconion,  or 
Wroxeter,  on  the  Severn,  near  Shrewsbury,  and  probabl}' 
it  took  in  the  Coritavi  or  Coritani,  whose  country  la\' 
between  the  Trent  and  the  North  Sea,  and  contained  the 
towns  of  Lindon,  now  Lincoln,  and  RatcB,  now  Leicester. 
It  is  significant  as  to  the  power  of  the  Catuvellauni  that 
Suetonius  (Caligula,  44)  calls  their  king  Cunobelinos,  who 
died  before  the  Claudian  conquest,  Britannorum  Rex\ 
"  King  of  the  Brythons." 

Some  further  light  is  to  be  obtained  on  the  disposition 
of  these  and  neighbouring  tribes  from  the  history  of  the 
conquest  of  the  south  of  Britain.  According  to  Dion  Cassius 
a  prince  named  Bericos,  having  been  driven  into  exile  by 
troubles  at  home,  sought  for  help  from  the  Emperor 
Claudius,  who  then  made  up  his  mind  to  conquer  Britain. 
Aulus  Plautius  was  appointed  leader  of  the  expedition,  and 
the  war  was  prosecuted  with  vigour  for  the  first  ten  years  ; 
and  Dion  Cassius  tells  us  that  Aulus  Plautius  conquered  two 
of  Cunobelinos's  sons,  first  Caratacos,  and  then  his  brother 
Togodumnos,  who  had  probably  succeeded  his  father  as 
king.  In  the  course  of  the  war  the  Roman  general's 
lieutenant,  Vespasian,  afterwards  emperor,  appears  to  have 
greatly  distinguished  himself,  having,  as  it  is  said  by 
Suetonius  (Vespasian,  4),  reduced  two  of  the  most  powerful 
tribes  in  the  island,  together  with  more  than  twenty  towns  and 
the  Isle  of  Wight.  We  can  only  surmise  that  his  operations 
were  conducted  chiefly  against  the  Belga;  and  Dumnonii, 
the  latter  of  whom  were  probably  Goidels.  The  Romans, 
at  any  rate,  appear  to  have  lost  little  time  in  making  their 
way   to    the    Mendip    Hills,    where    they   had  lead   mines 


94  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

worked.  In  the  }'ear  50  the  commatid  was  taken  b\- 
Ostorius  Scapula,  and  he  proceeded  to  deal  with  the  natives 
with  a  strong  hand.  He  took  measures  to  hold  in  check  all 
the  tribes  living  on  his  side  of  the  Severn  and  the  Trent  ;^ 
and  possibly  it  was  then  the  Roman  town  of  Uriconium  came 
into  existence,  marking  the  limit  reached  by  the  province 
as  well,  perhaps,  as  that  of  the  influence  of  the  Catuvellauni. 
But  the  determined  attitude  of  Ostorius  would  seem  to 
have  moved  various  widely  severed  tribes  to  take  a  sort  of 
concerted  action  against  him.  The  first  to  rebel  were 
the  Eceni ;  and  after  humbling  the  Eceni  he  marched  to 
the  coast  of  the  other  sea,  namely,  to  the  c6untr}^  of  the 
Deceangli,  whose  name  survives  in  that  of  the  deanery  ol 
Tegeingl,  in  Flintshire.  The  attraction  of  that  district  was 
its  mineral  wealth,  and  it  is  the  inscription  on  some  pigs  of 
lead  from  there,  now  in  the  Grosvenor  Museum  at  Chester, 
that  enables  us  approximately  to  fix  the  localit}'.-  From  the 
Deceangli,  the  general  turned  back  to  quell  troubles  caused 
b}'  the  Brigantes,  who  formed  the  dominant  people  in  what 
is  now  the  North  of  England.  We  next  read  of  him 
•establishing  a  strong  colony  of  veterans  at  Camulodunon 
and  undertaking  to  subdue  the  Silures,  who  occupied  the 
•eastern  half  of  the  region  between  Cardigan  Ba}'  and  the 
Severn.  The  Silures  were  a  warlike  race,  and  the\'  uere  at 
this  time  led  by  Caratacos,  one  of  the  sons  of  Cunobelinos. 
Caratacos  had  resisted  the  Romans  from  the  beginning, 
which  meant  some  nine  \'ears  of  experience  in  war  against 
them.  When  his  own  people,  the  Catuvellauni,  succumbed, 
he  appears  to  have  sought   refuge  among  the  Silures,  to 

^  See  Tacitus's  Annals,  xii.  31,  where  the  passage  in  point  has  been 
emendated  as  follows  by  Mr.  Henry  Bradley  :  Ciinctosqtie  cis  Trisantonam  et 
Sabrinam  jiiivios  co/iibere  parat.  See  the  "•Academy,"  April  28,  1883,  p.  296. 
Trisaniofia,  which  was  probably  the  early  form  of  the  name  of  the  Trent, 
analyses  itself  into  Tris-antona^  and  recalls  Rhi-annon  (for  Rig-anton-)^  on 
Av?iich  see  the  '•  Academy,"  Aug.  15,  1896,  p.  115. 

2  See  the  "  Academy,"  Oct.  31,  1891,  p.  390  :  see  also  pp.  412,  437. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN.  95 

whom  he  must  have  been  well  known  for  his  opposition  to 
the  Romans,  not  to  mention  that  the  portion  of  his  father's 
dominion  entrusted  to  him  may  have  been  the  western  one 
bordering  on  the  country  of  the  Silures.  However,  he 
shifted  the  war  into  the  country  of  the  Ordovices,  who  were 
probably  of  the  same  Brythonic  race  as  his  own  people, 
while  the  Silures  are  more  likely  to  have  been  Goidels. 
The  final  battle  was  fought,  as  we  gather,  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  Brei^in^  Hills,  between  Welshpool  and  the 
English  border.  The  legions  prevailed,  and  Caratacos  fled 
to  the  Brigantes,  whose  Queen  Cartismandua  gave  him  up 
to  the  Romans  to  adorn  a  triumph  in  the  streets  of  Rome  ; 
but  the  Silures  continued  unsubdued. 

In  the  year  58,  Nero  sent  here  Suetonius  Paulinus,  who 
led  his  troops  in  62  to  Anglesey,  and  Tacitus's  account  of 
the  battle  which  they  fought  there  is  remarkable  for  the 
Druids  that  figure  in  it.  While  Suetonius  was  reducing  Mona 
and  cutting  down  her  sacred  groves,  Boudicca,  queen  of  the 
Eceni,  widow  of  the  king  whose  name  is  given  as  Prasutagus, 
headed  a  determined  revolt,  which  resulted  in  a  terrible 
slaughter  of  the  Roman  colony  at  Camulodunon.  In  time, 
Suetonius  supervened,  and  was  able  to  avenge  the  Roman 
losses  by  inflicting  others  on  a  still  larger  scale.  Nothing 
worthy  of  note  seems  to  have  occurred  till  Vespasian 
became  emperor  in  69  ;  one  of  his  generals  effected  the 
reduction  of  the  Brigantes  in  the  years  69  and  70.  The 
Silures  were  also  at  last  conquered,  and  Julius  Agricola, 
who  was  sent  here  in  yS,  quickly  crushed  the  Ordovices 
and  led  his  troops  as  far  as  Anglesey.  His  subsequent 
achievements  in  war  took  place  mostly  in  the  north  of 
the   island,  where  he  is  supposed   to  have  drawn  a  line 

^  This  word  put  back  into  its  early  form  would  probably  make  Bragidunon  or 
Bragodtmon,  meaning  possibly  the  "  Hill-fort."  Dygen  Freidin  was  the  name 
of  a  stream  in  the  same  neighbourhood  :  see  Skene's  "  Four  Ancient  Books  of 
Wales,"  ii.  277,  and  the  "  Myvyrian  Arch,,"  i.  193. 


96  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

of  fortifications  from  the  Clyde  to  the  Forth,  One 
of  his  great  victories  was  won  at  a  place  called  Mons 
Granpius  or  Graupius,  over  tribes  who  fought  from  war 
chariots  ;  and  on  his  way  back  he  took  hostages  from  a 
people  called  by  the  otherwise  unknown  name  of  Boresti, 
located  somewhere  between  the  Ta}'  and  the  Forth.  The 
fleet  also  co-operated  with  the  land  forces,  and  after  passing 
a  winter  at  a  certain  Portus  Trucciilensis  or  Trutulensis,  it 
performed  the  circumnavigation  of  Britain.  Agricola  was 
recalled  in  85  or  86,  but  had  he  been  allowed  to  go  on  he 
would  probably  have  conquered  Ireland  :  he  had  calculated 
the  cost,  and  he  had  an  exiled  chief  read}-  to  lead  the 
way.  He  was  not  only  a  great  general,  but  also  an  astute 
statesman,  who  conciliated  the  conquered  and  encouraged 
them  to  adopt  Roman  institutions  and  acquire  the  Latin 
language. 

The  Emperor  Hadrian,  who  came  here  in  120,  appears 
to  have  put  do\\'n  an  insurrection,  and  he  is  represented 
building  a  wall  from  the  Solwa}'  to  the  Tyne.  In  139,  his 
successor,  Antoninus  Pius,  sent  his  general  Lollius  Urbicus 
here,  and  he  reduced  the  Brigantes  dwelling  beyond 
Hadrian's  Wall,  and  constructed  in  143  a  turf  wall  across 
the  country  from  the  Clvde  to  the  Forth.  The  reason  s^iven 
for  the  war  on  the  Brigantes  was,  that  the  latter  had  begun 
to  invade  the  territory  of  certain  Roman  subjects  described 
by  Pausanias,  the  onl\'  writer  who  alludes  to  them,  as 
y]  Yevovvia  Motpa,  "  the  Division  or  Cohort  called  Genunia," 
a  thoroughly  non-Brythonic  designation,  which  recalls 
Adamnan's  Geona  Cohors,'d.\\<\'s,WQ\\  tribal  names  diS Ddl-Riada 
and  Ddl-Cais,  the  division  of  Riada  and  Cas  respectively.^ 
The  Genunians  probably  occupied  some  part  of  Gallowa}-, 

^  See  Reeves's  Adamnan's  "Life  of  St.  Columba,"  i.  11  (p.  62),  p.  92,  note. 
One  is  strongly  tempted  to  identify  the  terms  Fevovula  Mo7pa  and  Gcona  Cohors : 
all  that  is  necessary  is  to  suppose  the  latter  written  GeomT,  that  is  Genotia: 
instead  of  GeojKC.  But  what  would  such  an  identification  mean  geographically 
and  historically  ? 


ROMAN   BRITAIN,  97 

possibly  that  assigned  by  Ptolemy  to  a  people  whom  he 
called  Selgovae,  a  name  which  meant  hunters  :  they  were 
probably  a  tribe  of  the  Aboriginal  Picts,  more  or  less 
Goidelicised,  and  depending  on  the  Romans  for  protection 
against  the  aggressiveness  of  the  Brigantic  Brythons.  In 
162  there  were  troubles  again  in  the  north,  and  under 
Commodus  they  became  still  more  serious.  The  fortresses 
beyond  Hadrian's  Wall,  and  that  Wall  itself,  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  northern  enemy,  who  spread  devastation  in 
the  province  ;  it  was  repelled  in  182.  In  the  struggle  for 
the  purple  of  empire,  following  the  death  of  Commodus, 
Albinus,  who  was  in  command  of  the  forces  in  Britain, 
crossed  to  the  Continent,  where  he  met  with  his  death.  He 
had,  in  197,  succeeded  in  making  terms  with  the  tribes 
beyond  Hadrian's  Wall  ;  but  his  successor  found  himself 
unable  to  keep  them  quiet,  so  he  purchased  peace  from 
them  at  a  great  price. 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before  they  attacked  the 
province  with  such  determination,  that  the  Emperor  Severus 
resolved  to  make  a  great  expedition  in  the  north  in 
208.  Severus  penetrated,  it  has  been  supposed,  as  far  as 
the  Moray  Firth,  and  he  is  credited  with  having  built 
or  rebuilt  a  wall  from  the  Clyde  to  the  Forth  ;  in  any 
case,  as  Britain  figures  little  in  history  from  the  time  of 
Severus's  death  in  211  to  the  reign  of  Carausius,  his  expedi- 
tion must  be  pronounced  very  effective.  It  is  to  be  noticed 
that  in  the  time  of  Severus  one  finds  the  populations  of  the 
north  grouped  under  the  two  names  of  Caledonii  and 
Maeata^.  By  the  former,  we  are  to  understand  the  Cale- 
donians, or  native  Picts  of  the  Highlands,  while  the  latter 
name  appears  to  have  comprised  a  mixed  people  of  Picts 
and  Celts  occupying  approximately  the  country  assigned 
by  Ptolemy  to  the  northern  portion  of  the  Dumnonii, 
together  with  the  tribes  of  the  Lowlands  nearest  to  them. 
Dion  Cassius  (Ixxvi.  12)  locates  the  Maiarat  close  to  the  Wall 

W.P.  H 


98  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

which  divided  the  island  in  two.  If,  as  might  be  expected 
in  his  time,  he  meant  Hadrian's  Wall,  the  Maeatae  must  be 
supposed  to  have  included  the  Brigantes  dwelling  beyond 
that  Wall  and  the  tribes  overshadowed  by  them,  such  as 
were  probably  the  Votadini,^  who  occupied  the  coast  from 
the  southern  Wall  to  the  Firth  of  Forth.  But  we  find  it 
hard  to  accept  this,  and  would  prefer  supposing  that  Dion 
was  loosely  following  some  previous  author  who  meant  the 
northern  Wall.  Otherwise  one  gets  into  difficulties  as 
regards  the  subsequent  history  of  the  tribes  involved,  and 
runs  counter  to  the  later  traces  of  the  home  of  the  Maeatae; 
for  their  name  is  found  to  survive  beyond  the  more 
northern  Wall,  to  wit,  in  Dun-Myat,  "  the  fortress  of  the 
Mceatce  or  Miatil'  as  the  name  is  once  given  by  Adamnan.^ 
Dunmyat  is  now  the  name  of  one  of  the  westernmost  points 
of  the  Ochil  Hills,  over  against  Stirling,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Forth.  Other  fixed  points  of  the  same  kind  are  May 
Water,  near  Forteviot,  and  Maya  Insula,  well  known  as  the 
Isle  of  May,  off  the  north-east  coast  of  Fife.  So  it  may  be 
supposed  that  the  country  of  the  Maeatae  comprised  at 
least  most  of  the  tract  covered  by  Stirlingshire  and  the 
whole  of  the  Lowlands  as  far  as  the  Tey,  whatever  may  be 
said  as  to  the  region  beyond  that  river.^ 

^  The  name  of  these  people  is  given  in  most  of  the  manuscripts  of  Ptolemy 
as  'nraSrjj/o^  or  'HraSii/ot,  but  the  Welsh  form,  according  to  Nennius,  was 
Guotoitin^  which  should  now  be  Gododin  ;  and  it  follows  that  the  ancient  form 
should  have  been  more  nearly  OuotoStjvoi  or  OvoraZivoi,  perhaps  better  still 
OvoToSivoi.  Their  country  embraced  the  district  around  North  Berwick,  and 
the  headland  over  against  Fife  is  alluded  to  in  Irish  literature  (Skene's  "  Picts  and 
Scots,"  p.  57)  as  the  promontory  of  Fothudan,  which  agrees,  except  in  its 
termination,  with  the  Gtiotodin  of  Nennius.  We  have  a  simpler  form  of  the 
same  origin  in  the  Irish  personal  name  Foihad,  and  in  the  leading  element 
of  the  genitive  VotepoHgis,  Votecorigas,  on  the  bilingual  stone  of  Castett  Dwyran. 
Carmarthenshire.  See  the  "Arch.  Cambrensis,"  1895,  pp.  303-13;  1896, 
pp.    107-10,  138. 

-  See  Reeves's  Adamnan,  i.  9  (p.  36)  ;  also  i.  8  (p.  33),  where  the  spelling 
is  Miathi. 

3  See  Skene's  "'  Picts  and  Scots,"'  pp.  clxi.  423-4. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  99 

Carausius  seized  the  reins  of  government  in  Britain  in 
287,  and  he  is  described  as  of  the  most  plebeian  descent, 
as  a  Menapian  citizen,  and  as  an  alumnus  of  Batavia. 
His  history  was  that  of  a  man  who  had  once  worked  for 
wages  as  a  mariner,  and  by  degrees  made  his  way  up  to 
the  very  responsible  position  of  commanding  the  Roman 
fleet  charged  to  keep  the  sea  opposite  the  Belgic  and 
Armoric  coasts  clear  of  the  Saxons  and  Franks  who 
infested  it  ;  among  other  distinctions  he  had  earned 
a  great  reputation  in  the  war  against  the  Bagaudse  in 
Gaul.  The  headquarters  of  his  fleet  were  at  Bononia  or 
Boulogne,  and  he  did  his  work  with  great  success,  but 
at  length  he  fell  under  the  suspicion  of  conniving  at  the 
doings  of  the  pirates  and  of  receiving  a  share  of  the 
plunder.  This  resulted  at  last  in  an  order  that  he 
should  be  put  to  death,  whereupon  Carausius  declared 
himself  Caesar,  and  made  Britain  for  a  time  independent 
of  Rome,  and  not  a  little  prosperous.  He  died  in  294, 
assassinated  by  a  certain  Allectus,  who  is  represented 
as  one  of  his  associates,  and  Allectus  enjoyed  power  till 
he  was  slain  in  a  battle  fought  in  296  with  the  army 
of  Constantius  Chlorus,  who  then  re-united  Britain  to  the 
Roman  Empire.^ 

It  will  help  one  to  understand  the  career  of  Carausius, 
if  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  being  a  citizen  of  Menapia 
does  not  necessarily  mean  that  he  was  a  native  of  the 
Continental  Menapia  :  he  may  have  been  born  in  the 
Manapian  town  which  Ptolemy  places  somewhere 
between  Wexford  Haven  and  Avonmore,  on  the  east  coast 
of  Ireland  ;  and  when  one  comes  to  look  into  the  name 
Carausius,  this  becomes  probable.  For  it  can  hardly  be  an 
accident  that  Carausius  admits  of  being  equated  with  the 

^  For  the  history  of  Carausius  see  Aurelius  Victor's  Caesars  (edited  by 
Pichlmayer)  xxxix.  20,  39,  Eutropius,  ix.  21,  and  other  authors  cited  by  Holder, 
s.v.  Carausius. 

H    2 


100         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

Irish  name  Cu-rSi}  which,  according  to  the  analogy  already 
discussed  (pp.  6^,  yi),  seems  to  have  meant  the  Hound  of 
the  Plain  or  of  the  Field,  probabh*  of  the  Battlefield  ;  and  it 
was  borne  by  a  personage  well  known  in  Irish  literature. 
Cii-roi  is  represented  in  Irish  literature  as  a  consummate 
magician  and  a  great  warrior  usually  engaged  in  expeditions 
to  Scythia  and  other  distant  lands ;  but  he  has  unfortunately 
been  inextricablx*  confused  with  a  great  ancestral  figure  in 
the  West  of  Ireland,  whose  name  was  Cii-ri,  and  his  fortress 
has  accordingh'  been  identified  with  Cathmr  Con-ri^ 
"Caher  Conree,  or  the  City  of  Cii-ri,''  in  Kerry.  The  true 
position,  however,  of  Cii-roi's  stronghold  is  more  correctly 
indicated  by  the  circumstantial  evidence  of  the  locality  of 
certain  foes  who  made  attacks  on  it  at  night :  some  come 
from  Breg,  the  eastern  portion  of  Meath,  roughly  speaking, 
and  some  from  Sescenn  Uairbeoil,  *'  Marsh  of  Uarb^l,"  some- 
where on  the  east  coast  of  Lcinster.  On  the  Welsh  side, 
poem  xlii.  in  the  Book  of  Taliessin  purports  to  be  the  elegy 
of  Cii-roi.  calls  him  Corroi,  represents  him  holding  a  helm  on 
the  Sea  of  the  South,  and  connects  him  seemingly  with  Dover.- 
If  this  view  should  prove  correct,  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand that,  belonging  to  a  colony  which  probabl}-  traded  with 

'  The  first  part  of  Cu-roi  consists  of  fw',  '*  hound,"  the  vowel  of  which  is  long; 
but  in  a  compound  like  Cu-rSi  the  stress  accent  being  on  the  second  element 
?w,  the  «  of  cit  would  lose  a  part  of  its  length,  yielding  practically  Cii-roi  or 
a^-rlii.  Then  as  to  the  spelling  of  Ca-rausius  with  a,  compare  Kantnio  on  a 
Roman  milestone  (now  in  the  British  Museum)  for  Concvio,  now  Comty, 
.Anglicised  CV/n^vy,  in  North  Wales.  As  to  the  other  part  of  the  name  Ca- 
rausius.  the  intervocalic  s,  according  to  rule,  disappears,  \-iel(iing  ;w,  concerning 
which  see  Stokes's  "  Urk.  Sprachschatz,"  p.  235,  where  he  traces  r^^e,  roi^ 
"  ebcncs  Feld,"  to  the  same  origin  as  the  Latin  r«,f.  genitive  ruris,  Ccrroi  in 
the  Taliessin  [>oem  is  derived  from  the  Irish  genitive  Con-rSi. 

2  See  the  stor\-  called  Fled  Bricrenn  in  Windisch's  "  Irische  Texte,*' 
pp.  294-3(X).  As  to  Scs^enn  Uairhe/yil,  this  has  l>een  recently  identified 
with  the  Esgeir  Oervel  of  the  Twrch  Trwyth  story  (Oxford  Mabinogion. 
pp.  135-6)  by  Prof.  Meyer,  in  the  "Transactions  of  the  Cymmrodorion  Society," 
1S95-6,  p.  73.  CiJrM  seems  to  mean  the  "Cold-mouth,'  referring  to  some 
gap  or  gully  where  .1  cold  wind  usually  blows  :  compare  The  Sloe,  in  the  Isle 
of  Man   known  in  Manx  as  the  Great  Mouth  of  the  Wind. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN,  loi 

Britain  and  with  the  Belgic  coast,  including  the  Menapian 
mother-state,  Carausius  was  used  from  his  boyhood  to  the 
sea.  If,  moreover,  the  colony  was,  as  we  have  supposed, 
Belgic  or  Brythonic,  he  could  presumably  pass  as  a  Brython, 
but  the  fact  of  his  name  being  Goidelic  argues  his  being 
partly  of  Goidelic  descent :  in  other  words,  he  would  seem 
to  have  been  favourably  situated  to  become  popular  with 
both  Brythons  and  Goidels,  and  to  make  them  consider 
him  one  of  themselves,  whether  in  Britain  or  on  the  Con- 
tinent. During  his  time,  at  all  events,  we  read  of  no  diffi- 
culties with  the  tribes  beyond  the  Roman  Wall.  The  same 
remark  applies  to  the  three  years  of  Allectus's  rule  ;  but 
his  name  ^  points  to  the  North  of  Britain,  whence  also  his 
troops  may  have  been  largely  drawn.  No  sooner,  however, 
had  Rome  resumed  possession  of  the  province  than  the 
northern  tribes  began  to  be  troublesome  once  more,  and 
they  are  now,  for  the  first  time,  spoken  of  as  Caledones 
and  "other  Picts,"^  against  whom  Constantius  Chlorus 
undertook,  in  296,  an  expedition  beyond  the  Wall.  The 
effect  of  the  chastisement  which  he  then  inflicted  on  them 
appears  to  have  lasted  some  time. 

The  next  serious  attack  on  the  province  took  place  in 
360,  when  the  Picts  from  the  north  were  joined  b}'  a  people 
from  Ireland,  figuring  for  the  first  time  in  history  under 
the  name  of  Scotti.  They  were  probably  mixed  bands  of 
Goidels,  Criiithni  or  Picts  of  Ireland,  and  Fir  Ulaid  or  True 
Ultonians.  These  last  had  been  crowded  into  the  north- 
east corner  of  that  island  in  consequence  of  the  conquest 
of  Oriel  or  southern  Ulster  some  years  previously  by  Celts 

^  We  have  it  in  the  name  of  the  Perthshire  town  of  Alyth,  in  an  older  form 
Aleeckt,  and  probably  also  in  the  Welsh  name  Elaeth,  borne,  according  to 
Williams's  "Eminent  Welshmen,"  by  a  sixth  century  saint  and  poet,  who  had, 
before  he  took  to  a  saintly  life,  been  a  king  in  a  district  in  the  north  of  England. 
See  also  Skene's  "Four  Ancient  Books,"  ii.  344. 

-  See  Eumenius's  "  Panegyricus  Constantino,"  c.  7  :  Noti  dico  Caledonum 
alioTumque  Pictorum  silvas  etpahtdes. 


102  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

from  the  direction  of  Meath.  The  Scotti  presumably 
crossed  at  first  into  Galloway,  where  we  have  surmised 
the  Genunians  to  have  dwelt ;  and  on  this  occasion  the 
people  of  Galloway,  the  descendants  of  the  Genunians  of 
a  former  age,  take  part  themselves  in  the  attack  on  the 
province;  these  were  probably  the  Atecotti  represented 
as  located  between  the  southern  and  the  northern  Walls, 
and  their  name  would  seem  to  have  meant  the  Old  or  Ancient 
Race.  The  Picts  from  the  north  are  this  time  described  as 
consisting  of  Dicaledonae  and  Verturiones,  in  whom  we 
seem  for  certain  to  have  the  Caledonii  and  Maeatae  of  Dion 
Cassius  respectively ;  for  the  term  Dicaledonae  used  by 
Ammianus  Marcellinus  (xxvii.  8)  seems  to  have  meant  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Highlands  conceived  of  as  forming  two 
Caledonias,  severed  by  the  waters  of  Loch  Linnhe,  Loch 
Lochy,  Loch  Ness  and  Inverness  Firth,  or  else  as  consisting 
of  a  Lowland  and  a  Highland  region.  As  to  Verturiones, 
that  is  a  name  which  gave  rise  ultimately  to  the  designa- 
tion Fir  Fortrenn}  as  it  were  Viri  Verturio7iis^  "  the 
Men  of  Fortrennl'  a  district  in  which  the  Picto-Brythonic 
people  of  the  Lowlands  had  their  headquarters  at  Forteviot 
till  the  centre  of  gravity  was  shifted  to  the  banks  of  the 
Tay  by  Kenneth  mac  Alpin  and  his  dynasty.  Thus  the 
Verturiones  seem  to  have  been  the  Boresti  of  Tacitus  and 
the  Maeats  of  Dion.  Whilst  these  tribes  were  attacking 
the  province  on  one  side,  the  Saxons  were  plundering  it  on 
another,  especially  the  south-eastern  coast.  In  369  Theo- 
dosius  arrived  and  put  a  stop  to  the  devastation,  which  had 
•extended  to  the  heart  of  the  province,  and  he  renewed 
the  stations  on  the  Wall.     Add  to  this  that  the  Atecotti 

^  It  is  possible  that  we  have  a  survival  of  the  nominative  in  Fothrev-e  or 
Fothrif,  the  name  of  a  district  embracing  Kinross  and  a  part  of  Fife  :  see 
Skene's  "Picts  and  Scots,"  pp.  Ixxxiv.,  Ixxxv.,  136.  This  would  imply  that 
Fothi-if  stands  for  an  earlier  Foj-t/niu,  and  that  the  old  Brythonic  forms 
were  approximately  Vorthrio,  genitive  Vorthrionos.  See  "  Pro.  Soc.  Antiq- 
Scotland,"  xxxii.  396. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  103 

were  subdued  and  their  able-bodied  men  drafted  into  the 
Roman  army  in  Gaul,  where  St.  Jerome  reports^  having 
seen  some  of  that  race,  which  was  in  his  time  believed  to 
be  cannibals.  The  province  continued  to  be  attacked  from 
without  by  land  and  sea,  and  to  be  cleared  from  time  to 
time  of  the  spoilers  by  the  Roman  soldiers,  until  at  last  the 
exigencies  of  the  empire  compelled  Rome  to  withdraw  her 
troops  from  the  island  altogether  early  in  the  fifth  century. 

A  word  now  as  to  the  administration.  At  the  date  to 
which  the  Notitia  Dignitatum  or  the  Table  of  Dignities 
belongs,  the  military  command  of  Roman  Britain  was  dis- 
tributed as  follows  : — ( I )  There  was  the  Count  of  Britain, 
Conies  rei  iiiilitaris  Britanniarinn^  Comes  Britanniaruin  or 
Comes  BritannicB^  who  with  his  troops  was  not  fixed  in  any 
particular  locality  ;  (2)  the  General  or  Duke  of  Britain, 
Dux  Britanniarum  or  Dux  Britannice,  who  had  command 
of  the  troops  on  the  Wall  and  in  the  country  south  of  it 
to  the  Humber ;  and  (3)  the  Count  of  the  Saxon  Shore, 
Comes  litoris  Saxonici  per  Britannias^  who  had  charge 
of  the  south-east  of  the  island,  where  there  were,  from  the 
fourth  century,  military  posts  placed  at  intervals  from  the 
Wash  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  as  a  defence  against  invasions 
by  the  Saxons  and  other  Teutonic  tribes.  Comparatively 
little  is  known  concerning  the  civil  administration  of  Britain 
under  the  Romans,  but  the  organisation  of  it,  at  the  head 
of  which  stood  the  Vicar  of  the  Britannias,  Vicariiis  Britan- 
niarum, was  practically  subordinated  to  the  military  system, 
owing  doubtless  in  a  great  measure  to  the  continuous  attacks 
to  be  expected  from  without.  Roman  Britain  was  treated 
as  a  single  province  till  the  year  210,  when  Severus  divided 
it  into  two,  called  Lower  and  Upper  Britain,  Britannia 
hiferior  and  Britannia  Superior ;  but  we  have  no  indica- 
tion as  to  their  respective  positions  beyond  the  fact  that 
Eburacum,  "  York,"  was   in    Lower  Britain  ;    while  Deva, 

^  See  "  Hieronymus  adversus  lovinianum,"  ii.  7  (p.  50). 


104  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    ichap.  hi.) 

'*  Chester,"  and  Isca  Siluruin,  "  Caerleon,"  on  the  Usk,  were 
in  Upper  Britain.  This  naturally  suggests  that  Lower 
Britain  was  the  area  drained  by  rivers  flowing  to  the  North 
Sea  and  the  English  Channel,  and  that  Upper  Britain  was 
so  situated  as  to  be  reached  b\'  travelling  up  the  valle\'s  of 
the  rivers  of  Lower  Britain,  in  other  words  the  region  beyond 
the  watershed  and  draining  into  the  various  parts  of  the 
Irish  Sea.  But  Mr.  Haverfield  is  of  opinion  that  Upper 
Britain  was  the  first  portion  of  the  island  reached  by  the 
Romans,  that  it  comprised  the  whole  of  the  south  as  far  as 
a  line  drawn  from  the  Mersey  to  the  H  umber,  and  that 
Lower  Britain  lay  north  of  that  line  :  such  a  division  would 
seem  to  have  the  advantage  of  fitting  in  better  with  the 
military  arrangements  already  suggested.  Possibly  the 
explanation  is,  that  Severus  found  the  terms  Lower  and 
Upper  Britain  already  in  use  in  his  time  in  the  sense  which 
we  have  suggested,  and  that  he  altered  their  application  so 
far  as  to  make  Lower  Britain  comprehend  all  south  of  the 
Mersey  and  the  H umber,  and  Upper  Britain  all  the  Roman 
territory  beyond  those  waters  ;  for  we  are  not  convinced 
that  the  relative  position  of  Lower  and  Upper  Britain  was 
the  reverse. 

In  297  Diocletian  divided  Roman  Britain  into  four 
provinces  called  Prima,  Secunda,  Flavia  Ca^sariensis,  and 
Maxima  C^esariensis  ;  but  all  that  has  been  made  out 
as  to  their  positions  is  that  Cirencester  was  in  Britannia 
Prima.  In  369  a  fifth  province  was  made,  called  Valentia, 
after  the  Emperor  Valens,  but  the  position  of  this  also  is 
uncertain  ;  it  has  been  supposed  to  have  been  the  district 
between  the  two  Walls.  In  the  second  and  third  century 
the  forces  here  consisted  of  three  legions,  one  stationed  at 
York,  one  at  Chester,  and  a  third  at  Caerleon.  Besides 
these  there  were  auxiliary  cohorts,  with  their  cavalry,  mostly 
recruited  in  Germany,  stationed  on  the  Wall  and  at  various 
points  in  the  district  between  the  Tyne  and  the  H umber, 


ROMAN  BRITAIN.  105 

which  was  largely  given  up  to  those  troops.  The  Brigantes 
were  not  reduced  to  quietness  till  the  end  of  the  second 
century,  and  for  another  century  native  troops  were  seldom 
employed  in  garrisons  in  the  island  :  they  were  drafted  away 
to  Germany. 

When  the  Roman  legions  finally  departed  the  provincials 
appear  to  have  been  on  the  whole  equal  to  the  task  of 
repelling  attacks  from  the  north ;  at  any  rate,  there  is  no 
•evidence  that  any  Caledonians  or  other  Picts  were  able  to 
effect  a  single  settlement  south  of  the  Clyde  or  the  Forth. 
The  question  of  invasions  from  Ireland  is  a  more  difficult 
one,  as  it  cannot  be  severed  from  the  other  question,  already 
touched  upon  :  What  Goidelic  populations  had  their  home 
in  this  country  before  the  coming  of  the  Romans,  and 
remained  here  till  after  the  departure  of  the  legionaries  ? 
But  in  spite  of  the  threnody  of  Gildas  over  the  ravages 
committed  by  Picts  and  Scots,  the  principal  misfortunes 
of  the  Brythons  came  from  a  different  quarter,  namely, 
from  the  Continent ;  we  mean  the  permanent  conquests 
effected  here  by  the  Teutonic  peoples  of  the  Saxons,  the 
Angles,  and  the  Jutes.  In  the  continued  effort  to  hold 
their  own  the  Brythons  may  naturally  be  expected  to  have 
at  first  endeavoured  to  maintain  the  offices  to  which  Roman 
administration  had  accustomed  them.  Thus  they  would 
probably  have  somebody  filling  the  office  of  Count  of 
Britain,  or,  perhaps  more  likely,  of  that  and  the  office  of 
Emperor  all  in  one,  now  that  the  Emperor  of  Rome  con- 
cerned himself  no  more  with  the  affairs  of  the  island. 
Welsh  literature  does  not  fail  to  supply  us  with  a  personage 
fitted  for  such  a  position,  and  that  is  Arthur,  at  any  rate 
in  so  far  as  Arthur  can  be  treated  as  a  historical  man  and 
not  a  myth.  He  exerted  himself,  according  to  Nennius,  as 
the  Dux  Bellorum  of  the  kings  of  the  Brittones,  and  his 
activity  manifested  itself  in  all  parts  of  the  country,  In 
Welsh  story  he  is  called  Amherawdyr,  which  is  the  Latin 


io6         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

word  IniperatorhoYYowQd,  and  also  Penteyrjied'yr  Y?iys  honn^ 
"Chief  of  the  Rulers  of  this  Island," ^  but  not  king  till  late. 
With  more  confidence,  however,  one  detects  a  post- 
Roman  officer  filling  the  position  of  the  Dux  BritannicBy 
in  command  of  the  forces  on  the  Wall  and  in  the  adjacent 
district,  namely,  in  Cuneda  the  Gwledig  or  Ruler,  to  whom 
reference  has  already  been  made  (p.  9).  His  pedigree 
represents  him  as  son  of  ^tern  {/Eternus),  son  of  Patern 
Pesriit  {Paternus  of  the  Red  tunic,  in  reference  probably  to 
the  purple  of  office),  son  of  Tacit  {Tacitus)  \  while  one  of 
his  own  sons  was  called  Dunawd  {Donatus),  and  one  of  his 
grandsons  was  Meriaun  {Marianus),  after  whom  is  called 
Meirionyd  or  Merioneth?  So  the  family  of  Cuneda 
must  have  been  Christian,  and  perhaps  partly  of  Roman 
descent.  The  most  powerful  branch  of  it  supplied  Venedos 
or  Gwyned  with  kings,  and  the  most  powerful  of  them 
appears  to  have  been  Maglocunos  or  Maelgwn,  who  was 
contemporary  with  Gildas,  by  whom  he  is  called  Insularis 
Draco^  meaning  probably  thereby  the  Dragon  or  Leader 
of  the  Island  of  Britain.  The  explanation  of  the  term  is 
presumably  that  the  general  or  leader  had  as  his  ensign  a 
dragon,  which  had  descended  to  him  from  the  Dux  Britannice 
in  Roman  times.  In  the  seventh  century  this  dragon 
figures,  as  heraldry  teaches,  as  the  Red  Dragon  of  King 
Cadwaladr,  who  was  the  last  of  the  line  of  Cuneda  and 
Maelgwn  to  try  to  wield  the  power  which  Maelgwn  enjoyed. 
What  that  power  precisely  was,  is  only  a  matter  of  inference. 
Maelgwn  was  King  of  Gwyned,  but  he  seems  also  to  have 
exercised  sway  over  the  whole  of  the  country  from  the 
Severn  Sea  to  the  Firth  of  Forth.  How  he  obtained  this 
wider  power  becomes  intelligible  on  the  supposition  that 
the    office    of  Dux  Britannice   had    been    continued   from 

^  See  the  Story  of  Kulhwch  and  Olwen,  in  the  Oxford  Mab.,  p.  105. 
2  See  "Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.  170,  178,  182,  and  see  the  pedigree  in  the  rote 
on  p.  120  below. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  107 

Roman  times,  and  that  the  Gwyned  branch  of  the  Cuneda 
family  had  been  able  to  keep  it  in  their  own  hands.  Thus 
however  widely  the  east  and  south  of  the  island  had  been 
wrested  from  the  Brythons  by  Teutonic  tribes,  there  still 
was  what  might  be  called  Roman  Britain,  though  it  no 
longer  owed  allegiance  to  Rome,  and  its  head  would 
naturally  be  hailed  by  Gildas  as  the  Dragon  of  the  Island. 
It  was  more  congenial  to  his  style  to  describe  him  in  that 
way  than  to  call  him  simply  Dux  BritannicB.  Though 
Gildas  had  grave  faults  to  find  with  Maelgwn,  the  latter  was 
of  his  own  race,  and  that  must  have  counted  for  a  great 
deal  with  one  who  hated  Picts  and  Scots  and  Saxons  with 
the  bitter  hatred  of  an  irritable  saint. 

Maelgwn's  son  and  successor,  Rhun,  appears  to  have  been 
less  able  than  his  father,  but  we  read  of  him  making  war  as 
far  north  as  the  river  Forth,^  probably  in  order  to  retain  his 
father's  power  ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  successfully  so 
retained,  to  be  lost  only  to  the  Angles  after  a  prolonged 
struggle.  This  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with  the  winning 
of  the  battle  of  Chester  by  vEthelfrith  of  Deira  in  the  year 
616,  and  to  have  been  continued  later  in  a  war  between  Cad- 
watton,  king  of  Gwyned,  and  Eadwine  or  Edwin,  king  of 
the  Angles  of  Bernicia.  Bede,  in  speaking  of  Cadwatton, 
calls  him  oftenest  Rex  Brettonmn, "  King  of  the  Brythons," 
but  he  is  also  found  once  using  the  term  Brettonum  DuXy 
"  general  or  leader  of  the  Brythons."  Edwin  triumphed  for 
a  time  over  Cadwatton,  and  it  appears  from  what  Bede  says 
that  Edwin  was  the  first  of  the  kings  of  the  English  to  have 
a  banner  carried  before  him  when  he  rode  forth  and  a  tuft 
of  feathers  when  he  went  on  foot.  This  Roman  fashion 
was  probably  also  that  of  the  Dux  Britannice  down  to  Cad- 
watton, from  whom  Edwin  would  seem  to  have  adopted 
it  as  a  visible  indication  that  he  had  taken  the  position  of 
Cadwatton.      It  was  then  also    presumably  that  was  first 

^  See  Aneurin  Owen's  *'  Laws  and  Institutes  of  Wales,'*  i.  104,  5. 


loS  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  iii.^ 

heard  the  title  of  Bretwalda}  Ruler  of  "  Britons,"  other- 
wise Bryten-walda  or  Bryten-wealda,  Breten-anivealda,  and 
Bryten-weald,  "  Ruler  of  Britain ; "  for  all  these  forms 
of  it  are  given  in  the  manuscripts  of  the  Saxon  Chronicle, 
when,  in  speaking  of  Ecgbryht,  it  enumerates  those  of  his 
predecessors  supposed  to  have  wielded  more  power  than 
the  others.  The  diversity  of  form  which  the  title  shows  in 
English  documents  argues  a  certain  amount  of  hesitation 
between  Dux  Brittonuvi^  which  would  in  Welsh  be  Gwledig 
Brython,  and  Dux  Britannice,  which  Welsh  poetry  renders 
Prydein  Wledic?  Nay,  one  would  not  err  perhaps  in  sup- 
posing that  the  term  gwledig  (earlier  {^gYcvledic,  wletic)  had 
something  to  do  with  the  choice  in  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  word 
walda  or  an-wealda,  "  a  ruler  or  sovereign,"  to  translate  the 
title  into  that  language.  As  it  happens,  the  words  are  also 
cognate,  for  gwlad,  [g'\ivlat,  meant  the  government  or 
power  of  the  state,  while  Anglo-Saxon  wealdan  was  "to  rule, 
or  wield  power." 

The  battle  of  Chester  made  no  difference  in  the  claims  of 
the  kings  of  Gwyned  to  be  gwledigs  or  overlords  ;  and  this 
is  the  light  in  which  should  be  read  the  epitaph  of  King 
Cadfan,  put  up  by  his  son  Cadwaiton  or  by  his  grandson 
Cadwaladr  :  Cataina7ius  rex  sapie7itisim7is  opinatisiimis 
omnium  regum'^  "  King  Cadfan  the  wisest,  the  most 
renowned  of  all  kings."  It  was  inspired  not  so  much  by  a 
spirit  of  random  flattery,  perhaps,  as  by  the  ancient  pre- 
tensions of  the  family.  The  final  history  of  the  struggle 
between  the  kings  of  Gwyned  and  the  princes  of  the  Angles 
was  this  :  Cadwatton  returned  from  exile  in  Ireland  and 
was  for  a  time  triumphant  in  the  assertion  of  his  ancient 

^  See  the  Oxford  New  English  Dictionary,  s.v.  Bretwalda^  where  the 
untenable  nature  of  Kemble's  interpretation  of  "wide  ruler"  is  exposed,  and 
the  equivalence  of  /Ethelstan's  Bryteinvalda  ealles  ityses  iglands  with  rector 
totiiis  huius  Britannia  insula:  is  advanced. 

-  See  Skene's  "Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales,"  ii.  138. 

^  Rhys's  "Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology,"  p.  364. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  log 

right  to  the  office  of  gwledig  or  overlord,  Edwin  having 
been  slain  by  him  in  a  great  battle  fought  in  633  at^Heth- 
field,  somewhere  near  Doncaster.  The  Angles  continued 
the  struggle  under  ^thelfrith's  son  Oswald,  and  Cadwatton 
fell  in  a  battle  fought  with  him  in  635  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Hexham.  Cadwatton's  son  Cadwaladr  tried  for  some  time 
to  recover  the  position  of  his  ancestors,  but  his  efforts  failed 
and  his  personality  passed  into  legend  as  that  of  Cadwaladr 
the  Blessed.  For  some  time  afterwards  the  bards  of  the 
Brythons  sang  of  the  expected  return  of  Cadwaladr  to  lead 
his  people  to  victory,  and  to  assert  the  ancient  rights  of 
his  family,  described  in  this  context  as  Kessarogyon  or 
CiJesarians.^ 

The  Dux  Brittonum  had  long  been  also  rex  and  king, 
to  wit,  king  of  Gwyned,  so  the  title  of  Dux  Brittonum  very 
naturally  passed  into  that  of  Rex  Brittonum ;  in  the  pages 
of  Bede  one  finds  this  latter  all  but  uniformly  preferred. 
Henceforth  also  the  domain  of  the  Rex  Brittonum,  what 
was  left  of  Roman  Britain,  dw^indled  down  to  the  dimensions 
of  Wales.  There,  however,  the  title  continued  in  vogue  : 
witness  the  oldest  version  of  the  Annates  Cambrics^  com- 
piled about  the  middle  of  the  tenth  century,  which  under 
the  year  754  record  the  death  of  Rotri  rex  Brittonum,  and  in 
950  that  of  Higuel  rex  Brittonum?  The  Bruts  continued  for 
some  time  to  use  the  same  phraseology;^'  thus  under  1056 
is  mentioned  Grufud  vrenhin  y  brytanyeit,  "  Griffith,  king 
of  the  Britons."  In  1091,  with  the  death  of  Rhys,  son  of 
Tewdwr,  the  kingdom  of  the  Britons  {teyrnas  y  brytanyeit) 
is  said  to  have  fallen.  Under  the  year  11 13  allusion  is 
made  to  the  wish  of  certain  Welshmen  to  renew  the  kinsfdom 

1  See  Skene's  "Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales,"  i.  444-46,  487-90;  ii. 
25-8,  2 1 1-3. 

-   "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.  161,  169. 

•^  See  Rhys  and  Evans's  "Bruts"  (Oxford,  1890),  pp.  267,  270,  296,  309, 
341,  355'  361,  365,  368,  369^  375>  379;  '-ind  "  Brut  y  Tywysogion  "  (Rolls,. 
i860),  pp.  44,  54.  124,  158,  252,  288,  306,  316,  326,  356. 


no         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  in.) 

of  the  Britons  {brytana6l  teyrnas).  Under  1135  two  of 
the  sons  of  Gruffud  ab  Kynan  are  represented  as  jointly 
holding  together  the  whole  kingdom  of  the  Britons 
{hoU  deyrnas  y  brytanyeii).  In  the  subsequent  entries  the 
phraseology  changes,  Kymry,  "  Wales,  Welshmen,"  being 
introduced.  In  1198  Gwenwynwyn,  prince  of  Powys, 
purposed  an  attempt  to  secure  for  the  Kymry  their  ancient 
rank,  their  ancient  rights  and  boundaries.  In  1 2 16  ILywelyn, 
son  of  lorwerth,  summoned  to  him,  at  Aberdovey,  all  the 
princes  of  Wales  {Jtott  tyivyssogyon  kymry)  to  partition  the 
land  of  Wales  ;  and  in  1220  he  summoned  most  of  the  Welsh 
princes  to  him  in  order  to  join  in  an  attack  on  the  Anglo- 
Flemings  of  Roose  and  Pembroke.  In  1228  the  English 
king,  after  making  an  expedition  into  Wales,  makes  peace 
-with  ILywelyn  ab  lorwerth,  and  during  the  latter's  lifetime 
all  the  princes  of  Wales  swore  allegiance  to  his  son  David 
in  1238,  at  Strata  Florida;  lastly,  when  ILywelyn  died  in 
1240,  he  is  called  prince  of  Wales  {tyivyssadc  kymry).  In 
1258  we  read  of  an  assembly  of  the  princes  of  the  country 
swearing  allegiance  to  ILywelyn,  son  of  Gruffud,  and  in  1267 
we  find  the  English  king,  Henry  III.,  formally  and  solemnly 
acknowledging  the  right  of  the  prince  of  Wales  to  the 
homage  of  the  barons  who  held  land  in  Wales.  This 
ILywelyn  ab  Gruffud  proved  to  be  the  last  of  the  line  of 
'Cuneda  and  Maelgwn  to  occupy  the  position  of  prince  of 
Wales,  for  as  is  well  known  the  military  successes  and 
shrewd  policy  of  Edward  I.  achieved  the  substitution  of 
the  heir  to  the  English  crown  for  a  native  prince  of  the 
race  of  Maelgwn  and  Cuneda.  Even  thus  the  Prince  of 
Wales  of  the  present  day  is  historically  the  actual  repre- 
sentative of  the  Dux  BritannicB  of  Roman  Britain ;  but  his 
Roman  Britain  is  Wales,  and  it  differs  in  one  important 
particular  from  the  Gaulish  portions  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
namely,  in  that  it  has  not,  like  them,  adopted  the  Latin 
language.      The  number  of  Latin  words,  however,  in  the 


ROMAN   BRITAIN.  in 

vocabulary  of  the  Celtic  language  of  Wales  shows  that  the 
latter  began  to  give  way  to  Latin  ;  and  this  would  have 
continued  to  go  on  had  not  the  Latin  firmly  rooted  in  the 
east  and  south  of  Britain  been  submerged.  Strange  as  it 
may  appear,  had  it  not  been  for  the  English  language,  by 
which  the  existence  of  Welsh  is  now  threatened,  the  Welsh 
language  would  have  long  ago  given  way  to  a  Latin  idiom 
resembling  French. 

Lastly,  another  glance  at  the  map  of  southern  Britain 
and  the  position  on  it  of  some  of  the  Brythonic  tribes  will 
enable  us  to  infer  the  relative  dates  of  their  advent.  Thus 
the  Britanni  from  the  opposite  coast  of  the  Straits  of  Dover 
probably  took  possession  first  of  Cantion  or  Kent.  Passing 
by  the  Regni  of  obscure  origin  and  overshadowed  by  the 
woods  of  Anderida,  we  find  next  in  order  the  Belgae,  who 
may  have  been  preceded  by  the  Dobunni ;  but  these  last 
may  have  made  their  way  round  Cornwall  and  sailed  up  the 
estuary  of  the  Severn,  or  they  may  have  drifted  westwards 
from  the  Midlands.  A  similar  uncertainty  attaches  to  the 
Atrebates  ;  they  may  have  come  up  the  Thames,  but  it  is 
perhaps  more  likely  that  they  came  about  the  same  time 
with  the  Belgae  and  pushed  inland  from  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  We  now  come  to  a  second  group, 
some  members  of  which  must  have  made  for  the  mouth 
of  the  Thames.  The  first  of  these  were  probably  the 
Trinovantes,  who  posted  themselves  on  the  coast  of  Essex 
and  the  banks  of  the  Thames  as  far,  at  any  rate,  as  the  site 
of  London,  which  the  fashionable  Romans  of  a  later  day 
thought  they  had  re-named  Augusta  for  all  time.^     The 

1  See  Tacitus,  Ann.  xiv.  33,  and  Ammianus,  xxvii.  8  ;  xxviii.  3.  Luckily 
for  the  historian  the  ease  with  which  a  superior  race  thinks  it  consigns  to 
oblivion  a  place-name  current  among  its  subjects  often  proves  delusive,  as  in 
this  instance  of  London  ;  but  it  is  a  matter  of  regret  that  no  Roman  inscrip- 
tion discovered  in  London  or  elsewhere  gives  the  full  name  oi  Londinium^ 
or  whatever  the  Latin  spelling  may  have  been  :  we  have  nothing  more  than 
the  abbreviation  LON. 


112  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

Catuvellauni,  comingr  about  the  same  time,  had  to  proceed 
higher  up  the  river  before  landing  to  conquer  the  Midlands. 
After  the  Trinovantes  came  also  the  Eceni,  who  landed 
on  the  coast  between  the  Trinovantes  and  the  Wash ;  we 
offer  no  guess  as  to  their  home  on  the  Continent.  The 
same  remark  applies  to  the  Brythons  beyond  the  Wash, 
namely  the  Coritavi,  who  arrived,  presumably,  by  the  way 
of  the  Humber,  as  did  also,  perhaps  about  the  same  time, 
the  Parisi,  the  remains  of  whose  iron  chariots  impart  a 
special  interest  to  the  archreology  of  the  opposite  district 
between  the  Derwent  and  the  North  Sea. 

If  we  look  westwards,  our  attention  is  challeng;ed  b\'  the 
Ordovices  and  the  Cornavii,  both  of  obscure  origin.  The 
form^er  possibly  acquired  their  individuality  in  the  Midlands, 
and  thence  gradually  pushed  their  way  westwards  to  the 
sea,  leaving  in  the  possession  of  unnamed  Goidels  what  is 
now  the  north-west  corner  of  Wales,  including  Mona,  or 
Anglesey,  where  Agricola  found  Druids.  The  latter,  nameh- 
the  Cornavii,  seem,  to  bear  a  geographical  name  describing 
them  as  the  inhabitants  of  the  ho?'Tt  or  peninsula,  as  though 
they  had  landed  between  the  estuaries  of  the  Dee  and  the 
Mersey  and  thence  penetrated  inland.  The  same  interpreta- 
tion fits  the  Celtic  corn  (Latin  cornu,  English  Jioiii)  in  the 
name  of  Cornwall  and  in  that  of  the  Cor7iavii^  in  the  extreme 
north.  It  need  not  be  supposed  to  imply  identity  of  race  : 
thus  the  Cornavii  on  the  Dee  were  Brythons,  while  the 
northern  Cornavii  were  as  probably  a  tribe  of  the  Aborigines. 
The  last  groups  of  Brythons  consisted  of  the  Brigantes  and 
the  Votadini,  that  is  unless  we  should  include  with  them 
the  Parisi  from  the  banks  of  the  Seine.  This  could  hardl}' 
be  correct  if  our  conjecture  (p.  86)  fixing  the  Jiome  of  the 
Brigantes  in  the  countr}^  at  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  should 
prove  tenable.  The  position  of  the  Brigantes  in  this  countr\' 
would  seem  to  sho\\',  that  they  arrived  comparatively  late 
and  landed  probably  from  the  Humber  or  the  Tees,  or  from 


ROMAN  BRITAIN.  113 

both.  Last  of  all  came  the  Votadini,  who  took  up  their 
abode  on  the  coast  from  the  Tyne  to  the  Firth  of  Forth, 
together  with  the  adjacent  country  as  far,  perhaps,  as 
Bannockburn. 

This,  however,  does  not  cover  the  whole  Brythonic 
area  towards  the  west  and  the  north,  since  Brythonic 
speech  is  found  to  have  acquired,  previous  to  Kenneth 
mac  Alpin's  reign,  a  footing  among  the  Picts  of  Forteviot, 
to  which  must  be  added  the  fact  that  Goidelic  also 
appears,  in  later  times,  in  the  valley  of  the  Tay  pos- 
sessed of  such  a  hold  there  as  to  be  difficult  to  account 
for.  So  we  are  forced  to  suppose  that  a  considerable 
mixture  of  Pictish,  Goidelic  and  Brythonic  must  have 
existed  in  the  country  extending  from  the  Firth  of  Clyde 
to  the  banks  of  the  Tay  ;  in  other  words,  the  Picts  beyond 
the  Forth  were  fairly  well  protected  by  the  deep  mud  of  the 
Forth  ^  on  one  side  and  by  the  Ochil  range  on  another,  while 
their  Celtic  aggressors  took  one  and  the  same  path  towards 
the  Tay, namely,  that  passing  between  Stirling  and  Dunmyat, 
and  now  sufficiently  indicated  by  the  line  of  railway  from 
Stirling  to  Perth :  it  became  also  the  route  of  the  Roman 
legions,  as  indicated  by  the  camp  at  Ardoch. 

But  roughly  speaking,  the  inland  region  from  the  Firth 
of  Clyde  to  the  basin  of  the  Tay  is  that  assigned  by 
Ptolemy  to  the  Dumnonii,  and  there  were  Dumnonii 
also   in  the  south-west  of  the  island  :^   neither  appear  to 

^  It  is  probably  the  muddiest  river  in  the  kingdom,  and  its  name  Forth 
may  be  supposed  to  refer  to  this  peculiarity  of  its  waters,  if  we  may  take  the 
word  to  be  Celtic  and  the  etymological  equivalent  of  its  Welsh  name  Gzveryd, 
which  would  seem  to  be  the  same  word  as  Welsh  giveryd^  "  soil,  mould,  or 
earth."  Similarly,  its  ancient  name  o^  Bodotria  seems  to  have  its  explanation 
in  the  Welsh  Inidr^  "dirty  "  :  Ptolemy  calls  it  BoSepta,  which  does  not  harmonise 
with  budr  with  its  ti  for  an  older  u  or  o.  Skene's  "  Picts  and  Scots  "  gives  Fo7-th  a 
dative  Forciu  (to  be  read  probably  Forthiu)  and  a  genitive  Forthin,  pp.  lo,  43. 

-  Holder,  s,v.  Dumnonii,  mixes  the  two  peoples  up,  and  declares  them  to 
have  been  Brythons ;  but  it  is  right  to  say  that  the  article  seems  to  have 
accidentally  escaped  revision. 

W.P.  I 


114  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

have  been  Brythonic.  In  fact,  the  position  of  the  two 
peoples  so  designated  suggests  the  hypothesis  that  their 
countries  are  to  be  regarded  as  extreme  portions  of  the 
GoideHc  area  which  had  escaped  conquest  by  the  Brythons, 
and  that  the  word  Dinnnonii  was  a  collective  name  of 
the  Goidels  of  Britain  when  the  Brythons  arrived.  The 
adjective  discloses  the  stem  Duvinon,  which,  treated  in  a 
way  not  unusual  with  Irish  names,  would  yield  a  nominative 
Doinnu^  genitive  Domnanit ;  and  we  are  thus  led  back  by 
easy  steps  to  the  Fir  Domnann,  that  is,  Viri  Diuiinonis^  or 
Domnu's  Men,  already  mentioned.  We  infer  that  one 
of  the  Fir  Domnann's  landing  places  in  Ireland  was  the 
river-mouth  known  as  Malahide  River,  between  Howth  and 
Balbriggan,  in  County  Dublin  ;  for  in  Med.  Irish  it  is  called 
Inter  Doinnann,  or  the  Domnu  river-mouth,  and  from  that 
point  the  Dronga  Domnand}  or  the  Multitudes  of  Domnu, 
proceeded  to  the  conquest  of  the  fertile  soil  of  Meath  and 
adjacent  districts.  This  we  should  have  to  regard  as  an 
attack  on  Ireland  in  front,  but  we  are  reminded  that  she 
was  also  assailed  from  behind,  so  to  say :  witness  such  a 
place-name  as  Irrus  Domnann,  "the  lorrus  of  Domnu,"  now 
the  barony  of  Erris  in  the  north-west  of  the  county  of  Mayo, 
and  witness  also  the  Irish  stories  of  early  invasions  of  the 
north  of  Connaught  from  the  sea.  The  explanation  is 
probably  that  some  of  the  Dumnonii,  from  their  home  near 
the  Firth  of  Clyde,  sailed  round  the  north  of  Ireland,  and 
landed  in  the  nearest  part  of  Connaught :  hence  the  Fir 
Domnann  of  some  of  the  Irish  legends.  Nor  is  this  all,  for 
they  may  have  coasted  further  southwards  ;  and  this  may 
possibly  be  the  key  to  the  legend  which  represents  Scota,  the 
eponym  of  the  Irish  Scots  of  the  Milesian  group,  as  buried  in 
Kerry,  where  her  grave  and  that  of  one  of  her  companions  are 
pointed  out  in  the  barony  of  Troughanacmy,  in  that  county.^ 

^  See  O'Curry's  MS,  Materials,  p.  485,  and  Stokes's  '"Patrick,"  p.  34. 
-  See  O' Donovan's  notes  to  the  Four  Masters  under  the  year  a.m.  3500. 


ROMAN   BRITAIN,  115 

However  that  may  be,  the  Fir  Domnann  on  this  side  cf 
the  Irish  Sea  have  left  the  name  of  the  goddess  Domnu^ 
to  the  county  of  Devon  ;  and  in  the  North,  Hkewise  as 
Devon,  it  has  become  the  name  of  a  river  rising  within  their 
natural  boundary  in  the  Ochil  Hills.  Even  should  these 
conjectures  prove  tenable,  the  tribes  in  the  west  of  Roman 
Britain  must  be  pronounced  hard  to  classify,  while  on  the 
eastern  side,  in  spite  of  the  usual  scantiness  of  the  data, 
there  is  little  room  for  error  in  this  respect.  There  the 
Brythonic  settlements  were  continuous  from  Dover  to  the 
Forth,  as  it  has  been  comprehensively  put  in  the  Duan 
Albanach,  a  historic  poem  concerning  Alba,  or  Scotland, 
which  is  surmised  to  have  been  written  in  Ireland  in  the 
eleventh  century  and  to  represent  the  ideas  of  a  still  earlier 
time.  The  Duan  begins  with  the  Trojan  story,  and  repre- 
sents Albanus  and  Brutus,  treated  as  eponymi  of  Alba 
and  the  territory  of  the  Brittones  respectively,  taking 
possession  of  Britain.     The  third  stanza  runs  thus^  : — 

Ko  ioiinarb  a  hrdthair  bras  To  exile  Bnitus  drove  his  big  brother 
Briotus  taj'  iiniir  n-Ioth  n-amnas  Over  the  stormy  sea  of  loth  : 

Rogab  Briotus  Albain  din  To  himself  Brutus  noble  Britain  took 
Go  rinn  fiadnach  Fothudain.  As  far  as  Fothudan's  .   .   .   foreland. 

This  last  doubtless  meant,  as  already  suggested,  a 
promontory  in  the  country  of  the  Guotodin,  somewhere 

'  In  the  transition  from  Doffimi  or  Domnami  to  Devon  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  Welsh  has  made  mn  into  vn  and  Irish  into  wn.  In  the 
Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle  (with  f  —  v)  Devonshire  is  sometimes  written 
Def\e\}iascire  and  sometimes  Def[e\nanscire.  See  Thorpe's  Rolls  ed. ,  i., 
120,  121,  146,  147,  166,  167,  246,  247. 

-  For  the  text  see  the  Irish  Nennius,  pp.  272-3  ;  and  Skene's  •'  Picts  and 
Scots,"  p.  57— the  original  MS.  appears  to  have  been  lost  [Ibid.,  pp.  xxxvi-iii). 
We  have  substituted  loth  for  Ickt,  which  makes  no  sense  here,  as  Mtcir  n-Icht 
would  be  the  English  Channel.  As  to  loth  and  lodeo,  see  Rhys's  Rhind  Lectures 
in  the  "  Scottish  Review  "  for  1891,  p.  loi,  where  perhaps  it  might  be  more  cor- 
rect to  say  that  7nerin  was  obtained  by  analysing  into  tra  merin  the  Latin 
transinarinus  ;  as,  for  instance,  in  Gildas's  duabus  pri/mtm  gentibus  trans- 
marinis  veheinenter  scevis^  Scotorum  a  circione  Pictorzim  ab  aquiione 
(Hist.  §  14). 

I    2 


ii6  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  hi.) 

near  North  Berwick ;  and  the  whole  of  the  island  up  to  that 
point  means  all  the  country  from  the  Straits  of  Dover  to 
the  Firth  of  Forth,  which  is  here  termed  Muir  n-Ioth,  or  Sea 
of  loth.  This  is  undoubtedly  to  be  identified  with  the  water 
called  Merin  lodeo  in  the  Book  of  Aneurin,  and  lodeo 
further  equates  letter  for  letter  with  Nennius's  name  of  a 
town  of  Itideu,  which  Bede  calls  Urbs  Giudi}  In  Scotch 
history  the  Firth  was  well  known  as  Scottewatre  and  Scottis 
See.  Lastly,  as  will  have  been  gathered  from  our  previous 
remarks,  the  fact  of  giving  the  name  Alba  to  Britain, 
when  referring  expressly  to  the  southern  half  of  the  Island, 
from  the  English  Channel  to  the  Firth  of  Forth,  argues  a 
very  respectable  antiquity  for  the  tradition  set  forth  in  the 
poem. 

1  As  references  here  may  be  further  mentioned — for  Merin  lodeo,  Skene's 
'"Four  Ancient  Books,"  ii.  103  ;  Thomas  Stephens's  "Gododin"  (London,  1888), 
pp.  348-9.  For  Itideti,  see  San-Marte"s  "  Nennius  und  Gildas,'  §65  (p.  74); 
and  for  Bede's  Giudi  or  ludi,  see  Plummer's  Bedes  "Hist.  Eccles." 
i.  12  (vol.  i..  p.  25).  Here  should  be  added  Muir  11-Giudan,  quoted  (from 
the  Book  of  Lecan)  in  Reeves's  Culdees,  p.  124,  and  to  be  explained 
probably  as  having  Jij  modified  into  ngi  (rather  than  influenced  by  Bede's 
Giudi).  This  sort  of  change  is  common  enough,  for  example,  in  Manx  Gaelic  : 
see  Rhys's  "Manx  Phonology."  pp.  135-6.  But  more  interesting  philo- 
logically  is  the  identity  of  the  termination  of  lodeo  and  Iiideu  Avith  the  cttj  of 
such  names  as  Frobbaccennew  in  the  Aboyne  Ogam :  see  the  "  Proceedings  of 
the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Scotland,"  xxxii.  396;  also  the  suggestion  in  the 
note,  at  p.  102  above,  as  to  the  name  Fothrif. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

EARLY   HISTORY   OF   THE   CYMRY. 

In  this  and  the  following  four  chapters  we  propose  to  deal 
briefly  with  the  history  of  the  Cymric  nation,^  to  give 
some  account  of  the  laws  and  customs  of  the  people  during 
the  time  of  their  independence,  and  to  trace  the  steps  by 
which  Wales  became  politically  assimilated  to  England. 
We  do  not  affect  to  write  a  history  of  Wales  and  the 
Marches,  for  that  is  in  our  opinion  a  task  that  cannot  be 
successfully  performed  with  the  aid  only  of  the  materials 
at  present  at  our  command. 

Many  of  the  sources  of  information  as  to  the  middle  and 
later  periods  of  the  Welsh  story  which  have  survived  to  our 
day  are  to  be  found  at  the  Record  Office  and  elsewhere, 
but  have  not  been  published  or  even  properly  examined  ; 
and  even  the  well-known  authorities  have  for  the  most 
part  been  only  very  indifferently  edited  and  printed.^ 
Under  these  circumstances  any  work  dealing  with  the 
history  of  Wales  must  be  looked  on  as  merely  tentative, 

^  It  may  be  well  to  state  here  that  Cymric  means  the  land  of  the  Cymry,  i.e., 
Wales  ;  and  that  Cymry  means  the  Welsh  people.  Originally,  of  course,  the 
latter  term  only  included  the  men  of  the  dominant  tribes  or  clans,  and  not 
classes  or  persons  subject  to  them.  For  the  meaning  and  origin  of  the  term 
see  p.  26  abos^e. 

-  Progress  is  being  made.  See  the  "  Public  Records  relating  to  Wales,"  by 
R.  Arthur  Roberts,  Barrister-at-Law,  in  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"x.,  p.  157  ;  and  the 
**  Ruthin  Court  Rolls"  (intheCymmrodorion  Record  Series),  edited,  with  trans- 
lation, notes,  etc.,  by  the  same  author  (Chas.  J.  Clark,  Lond.,  1893),  affords 
a  good  model  for  the  treatment  of  the  legal  materials  at  the  Record  Office. 


ii8  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,   (chap,  iv.) 

and  we  only  present  what  follows  as  matter  likeh'  to  be 
useful  and  suggestive  to  the  student  of  things  Welsh. 

Most  people  have  either  forgotten  or  never  observed  that 
it  was  only  in  the  century  now  ending  that  Wales  was 
completely  assimilated  to  England.  Before  the  Norman 
Conquest  we  may  truthfully  say  that  Wales,  though  its 
rulers  were  in  some  sort  of  subjection  to  the  kings 
of  England,  formed  no  part  of  the  English  realm,  and 
it  is  only  by  gradual  steps  that  it  has  been  absorbed 
into  the  English  body  politic.  Our  principal  aim  is 
to  point  out  the  chief  stages  in  the  process  by  which 
the  present  constitutional  position  has  been  brought 
about. 

The  history  of  Wales,  as  distinct  from  other  portions  of 
the  Island,  commences  after  the  departure  of  the  Romans. 
The  scanty  and  obscure  character  of  the  evidence  relating 
to  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  does  not  enable  us  to  speak 
with  any  confidence  as  to  the  commencement  of  the 
national  life  of  the  Cymry.  What  is  now  Wales  appears 
to  have  been  during  the  time  of  the  Roman  occupation 
part  of  the  territory  extending,  roughly  speaking,  from  the 
Bristol  Channel  to  the  Clyde  and  the  Forth,  under  the 
charge  of  the  military  official  called  Dux  Britanniaruni 
The  word  Cymro  means,  according  to  the  best  philological 
authorities,  "  compatriot,"  ^  as  we  have  seen,  and  it  was  in 
the  contests  of  Celtic  tribes  with  Teutonic  immigrants  that 
it  became  a  national  name.  It  seems  perfectly  clear  that 
for  something  over  200  years  after  the  Roman  occupation 
had  ceased  the  western  part  of  the  Island,  from  the  Bristol 
Channel  to  the  Solway  Firth  and  the  Clyde,  as  well  as  the 
south-western  peninsula,  were  in  the  possession  of  tribes 
who  may,  subject  to  what  has  been  said  above,"  be 
described   as  "  Celtic,"  and  who  succeeded  in  maintaining 

^  Supra,  p.  26. 
«  Supnx,  pp.  34-5- 


EARLY  HISTORY  OF   THE    CYMRY,       119 

their  predominance  in  that  part  of  the  Island  till  a  few  years 
after  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century.  The  evidence  of 
the  Welsh  laws  referred  to  below  tends  to  show  that  the 
tribal  system  therein  disclosed  was  similar  in  its  main  and 
fundamental  particulars  to  a  stage  of  society  through  which 
other  Indo-European  races  have  passed.  It  seems  clear, 
too,  that  these  tribes  were  bound  together  in  some  loose 
form  of  confederation,  and  that  from  the  time  they  recog- 
nised the  term  Cymry  they  looked  upon  themselves  collec- 
tively as  one  nation.  They  appear  to  have  acknowledged 
the  over-lordship  or  leadership  of  a  king  or  ruler,  who  was 
called  the  "gwledig,"  and  whose  office  or  dignity  was 
sooner  or  later  known  as  the  "  Crown  of  Britain."  The 
authority  of  the  gwledig  appears  to  have  been  partly  based 
on  his  claim  to  be  the  successor  of  the  Roman  officer  called 
the  Dux  Briianniaruin,  and  partly  on  earlier  tribal  notions 
of  political  and  military  organisation.^ 

In  time  the  territory  over  which  the  confederation  spread 
came  to  be  called  Cymru,  and  the  predominant  language 
Cymraeg.  The  earliest  ruler  of  the  Cymry  and  of  Cymru 
of  whom  there  is  distinct  evidence  is  Cuneda,  whose  name 
often  occurs  in  Welsh  literature.  In  an  elegy  in  the  "Book 
of  Taliesin"  he  is  said  to  be  a  man  from  Coelin,  by  which 
was  apparently  meant  the  district  since  called  Kyle  in 
Ayrshire.  In  Nennius'  "  Historia  Britonum"  there  occurs 
the  following  passage  : — "  The  great  King  Mailcun  reigned 
among  the  Britons  in  the  district  of  Guenedota  because  his 
great-great-grandfather  Cuneda  with  his  twelve  sons  had 
come  before  from  the  left-hand  (or  northern)  part,  i.e.^  from 
the  country  which  is  called  Manau  Guotodin,  146  years 
before  Mailcun  reigned,  and  expelled  the  Scots  with  much 
slaughter    from   those   countries,    and    they   never    again 

1  One  of  the  ancestors  of  Cuneda  is  called  Padam  Pesnict  (literally, 
Paternus  of  the  red  tunic).  See  Rhys's  "Celtic  Britain,"  2nd  ed.,  p.  ii8. 
See  the  pedigree  printed  in  note  2  on  p.  138  below. 


120  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  iv.) 

returned."^  Guenedota  here  is  obviously  Gwyned"  (speak- 
ing broadly,  North  Wales) ;  Manau  Guotodin  is  evidently 
the  Man  aw  of  the  Gododin  of  Welsh  poems,  and  appears 
to  have  been  a  district  in  Scotland  situate  somewhere  south 
of  the  Forth,  but  we  have  no  means  of  determining  its 
boundaries.-  If  the  conjecture  is  true,  Manaw  was  south  of 
the  northern  Roman  Wall,  in  the  province  of  Valentia.  The 
entry  in  Nennius  is  confirmed  by  Welsh  tradition  and 
by  many  items  of  archaeological,  philological,  and  literary 
evidence  So  that  we  may  take  it  that  the  Cymric  king- 
dom was  founded  upon  conquest,  and  that  the  aspect  which 
society  in  what  is  now  Wales  presented  in  the  centuries 
to  which  we  are-  referring  was  that  of  an  aggregate  of 
Brythonic  clans  forming  a  tribal  aristocracy  superimposed 
upon  Goidelic  tribes,  partly  Celtic  and  Aryan  in  origin 
and  partly  Aboriginal,  who  had  before  occupied  the  land. 
The  conclusion  thus  arrived  at  as  to  the  early  structure  of 
Welsh  society  is  borne  out  by  the  Welsh  laws  and  customs 
of  a  later  time. 

It    is    unnecessary  to    trace    in     detail,    even    were    it 
possible  for  us  to  do  so  with  accuracy,  the  steps  by  which 

^  The  date  of  Cunetta's  occupation  o'"  X.>rth  Wales  cannot  be  exactly 
determinecl ;  but  it  probably  took  place  early  in  the  fifth  century,  and  very 
near  to  the  departure  of  the  Romans.  The  passage  citeJ  does  not  give  the 
date  of  Maelgwn's  reigning.  The  "•  Annales  Cambrice"  record  his  death  as 
taking  place  in  547.  He  was  a  contemporarj'  of  Gildas'  (see  "  Gild.  Epist."' 
s.  33).  The  most  probable  dates  for  the  birth  and  death  of  the  latter  are 
516  and  570  respectively  (Smith's  "Diet.  Christ.  Biog. ,"-<■.;/.  Gildas).  The 
••  An'i.  Cana.''  assign  his  birth  to  516  and  the  "  Annales  Tigernachi "'  his  death 
to  570. 

2  In  the  genealogies  annexed  to  the  "Annales  Cambriae''  (as  to  v%diich  see 
below,  p.  132),  the  number  of  Cuneda's  sons  is  put  at  nine.  The  entry  (which 
deserves  the  notice  of  the  student)  is  as  follows  :  "  [H]ec  sunt  nomina  filiorum 
Cuneda  quorum  numeras  erat.  ix.  Typipaun  primogenitus  qui  mortuus  in 
regione  que  vocatur  manau  guodotin.  et  non  uenit  hue  cum  fratribus  suis.  pre 
[dictis]  meriaun.  filius  ejus,  divisit  possessiones  inter  fratres.  suos.  ii.  Osmail 
iii.  rumaun.  iiii.  dunaut.  v.  Ceretic.  vi.  abloyc.  vii.  enniaun.  girt.  viii.  docmail. 
ix.  etern."      See  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.,  p.  182,  and  below,  p.  138. 


EARLY  HISTORY   OF   THE   CYMRY.       121 

invading  Teutonic  tribes  advanced  upon  the  western  half 
of  the  Island,  and  by  slow  steps  broke  up  the  Cymric 
federation.  Two  well-ascertained  events  mark  the  process. 
By  the  loss  of  the  battle  of  Deorham  in  577,  the  Cymr)' 
of  what  is  now  Wales  were  severed  from  the  Celtic  tribes 
of  the  south-western  peninsula,  and  afterwards,  as  a  result 
of  the  battle  of  Chester  in  616,^  the  Cymry  of  Wales  were 
also  cut  off  from  their  northern  allies.  The  Cymry  were 
thus  enclosed  by  Teutonic  kingdoms  within  that  part  of  the 
west  of  the  island  which  subsequently  was  called  Cymru  by 
the  inhabitants  themselves  and  Wales  by  the  conquering 
Saxon. 

Notwithstanding  these  disastrous  battles,  the  Cymry 
proper  maintained  a  vigorous  struggle  with  very  varying 
fortunes  against  the  Saxon  or  English  kingdoms.  But  the 
result  of  continuous  warfare,  though  it  did  not  bring  about 
incorporation  with  the  English  kingdom  till  long  after,  was 
to  create  a  state  of  complete  disorganisation,  from  a  military 
and  a  political  point  of  view ;  and  by  the  defeat  of 
Cadwaladr,  shortly  after  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century, 
the  Cymric  kingdom  in  the  older  sense  came  to  a  melan- 
choly end.  This  Cadwaladr  is  deemed  by  Welsh  tradition 
to  be  the  last  king  of  the  Cymry  who  wore  the  "  Crown 
of  Britain";  and  that  the  result  of  the  conflict  of  centuries 
was  adverse  to  the  Cymric  nation  is  admitted  by  the  brief 
but  graphic  entry  in  "Brut  y  Tywysogion,"  which  sa}'s  : 
*'  Cadwaladr  died  at  Rome  as  Merdyn  had  previoush- 
prophesied  to  Vortigern  of  repulsive  lips,  and  thenceforth 
the  Britons  lost  the  crown  of  the  kingdom  and  the  Saxons 
gained  it."~ 

^  The  date  is  imcertain.  The  Annals  of  Tighernach  (see  O'Connor's 
*'  Scriptores  rerum  hibernicarum  "  and  "Ann.  Cam. ")  put  the  battle  under  613. 
But  the  true  date  seems  616.  See  Plummer's  "  Basdae  Opera  Historica,"  ii., 
pp.  76,  77.  Tighernach  antedates  the  battle  of  Dsegsastan  by  three  years, 
and  probably  does  the  same  in  regard  to  the  battle  of  Chester. 

-  See  Murray,  "  Eng.  Diet.,"  i-.t'.  "Bretwalda." 


122  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  iv.) 

With  this  completion  of  a  series  of  events  the  history  of 
Wales  in  its  limited  and  modern  sense  commences. 

The  subsequent  history  of  Wales  may  be  divided  into 
the  following  periods  : — 

First. — From  the  death  of  Cadwaladr  to  the  Norman 
Conquest  of  England. 

Second. — From  that  Norman  Conquest  to  the  conquest 
and  settlement  of  North  Wales  by  Edward  I. 

Third. — From  the  settlement  of  Wales  by  Edward  down 
to  the  incorporation  of  Wales  into  the  English  organi- 
sation, in  the  reign  of  Henr)^  VIII. 

Fourth. — From  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.  onward. 


CHAPTER    V. 

HISTORY  OF   WALKS  FROM  CADWALADR  TO  THE  NORMAN 

CONQUEST. 

(A.D.  664— A. D.    1066.) 

Little  is  known  of  the  history  of  Wales  from  the  death 
of  Cadwaladr  to  the  death  of  Gruffyd  ab  ILewelyn. 
Literary  tradition  has  preserved  the  names  and  a  bald 
account  of  the  deeds  (chiefly  inconsiderable  battles)  of  a 
line  of  kings  or  princes,  some  of  whom  are  represented 
as  kings  of  all  Cymru  or  all  the  Britons  ;  but  the  persons 
it  hands  down  to  us  are  for  the  most  part  as  shadowy  as 
the  ghosts  of  Banquo's  issue.  The  account  is  colourless, 
and  the  men  it  brings  to  our  notice  in  this  period  have 
hardly  more  living  interest  than  the  names  in  a  genealogical 
tree.  No  relation  of  the  events  that  happened  in  Wales 
during  this  time  can  be  lively  or  dramatic  unless  one  bases 
it  more  on  plausible  efforts  of  imagination  than  on  credible 
evidence.^  But  though  this  is  the  case,  in  order  to  under- 
stand the  subsequent  history,  it  is  necessary  to  see  what 
trustworthy  authority  has  to  say  about  this  period,  and 
especially  to  discover  as  well  as  we  can  what  were  the 
chief  political  divisions  of  Cymric  territory,  or,  to  put  the 
matter  perhaps  more  accurately,  how  Cymric  land  was 
apportioned  among  the  leading  royal  or  princely  families. 

'  We  have  no  assistance  from  bardic  or  poetic  literature  for  the  period  from 
the  sixthcentury  down  to  about  loSo,  when  Meilir  lamented  Trahaearn  (defeated 
and  slain  by  Gruffyd  ab  Kynan).  Stephens's  "Literature  of  the  Kymry'' 
(2nd  ed.),  pp.  10,  II. 


124  ^^^    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

There  is  a  considerable  number  of  works  dealiner  with 
the  history  of  Wales,  or  with  the  history  of  Britain  from  a 
specially  Welsh  point  of  view.  Passing  over  Geoffrey  of 
Monmouth's^  work,  which  cannot  be  treated  as  serious 
history,  and  for  the  moment  Caradog  of  ILancarvan's 
"  Historie  of  Cambria,"  we  may  refer  to  the  ambitious 
"  Cambria  Triumphans "  of  Enderbie  as  the  principal 
example  of  an  older  type.^  This  writer  carries  back  the 
Cymric  story  to  Troy,  and  thence  to  the  Tower  of  Babel. 
His  fundamental  conception  is  that  all  history  may  be 
reduced  to  a  system  of  events  radiating  from  Troy  as  a 
centre.  For  the  early  period  dealing  with  this  island 
he  relies  on  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  and  for  the  events  of 
the  later  period  on  Caradog  of  ILancarvan.  It  is  only  in 
regard  to  the  "modern  estate"  that  the  book  is  of  any  value 
to  the  student  of  history. 

But  besides  works  of  this  class  there  are  other  histories 
which  discard  older  theories,  though  they  are  not  adequately 
critical,  of  which  Warrington's  and  Jane  Williams'-^  are  the 
best.  Both  are  in  the  main  founded  on  a  sixteenth  century 
compilation — "  The  Historie  of  Cambria,  a  part  of  the  most 
famous  ylande  of  Britaine,  written  in  the  British  language 

^  For  a  recent  account  of  Geoffrey  and  the  character  and  v^akie  of  his  work, 
see  Morley's  "English  Writers,"  vol.  iii.,  pp.  44-57.  See  also  Professor  \V. 
Lewis  Jones'  paper  on  Geoffrey  in  "  The  Transactions  of  the  Hon.  Soc.  of 
Cymmrodor  on,"  session  1898-9,  p.  52. 

-  "  Caml)ria  Triumphans,  or  Britain  in  its  perfect  lustre,  showing  the  origin 
and  antiquity  of  the  illustrious  nation,  the  succession  of  their  kings  and  princes, 
the  description  of  the  countrey,  the  history  of  the  modern  estate,  etc.,  etc.," 
by  P.  Enderbie;  folio  (Lond.,  1661)  ;  reprinted  1810,  See  also  Lewis' 
"History  of  Great  Britain,  etc.,  to  wliich  is  added  the  Breviary  of  Britayne 
l)y  Plumfrey  Lwyd,  and  lately  Englished  by  Thomas  T\\  ine,"'  folio  (Lond. ,  1729*. 

•*  "  History  of  Wales  in  nine  books,  with  an  Appendix,"  by  the  Rev.  William 
Warrington  ;  410  (Lond.,  1783).  '"  History  of  Wale-,"  l)y  Jane  Williams, 
8vo  (Lond,,  1869).  Reference  should  also  be  made  to  the  "  History  of  Wales," 
by  John  Jones  (barrister-at-law),  Lond.,  1824;  and  to  "  Hanes  Cymru,"by  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Price,  commonly  called  by  his  bardic  name,  Carn/!7U7//a7cc {1S42). 
See  also  his  "  Literary  Remains  "(Landovery,  1854-5).  See  also  O.  ^L  Edwards' 
••Hanes  Cyniru."  part  i.  (1895),  an  excellent  te>ct-book  for  Welsh  students. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     125 

about  two  hundred  years  past :  translated  into  English  by 
H.  Lloyd/  gentleman,  corrected,  augmented,  and  continued 
out  of  records  and  best  approved  authors,  by  David  Powel 
Doctor  in  Divinity."  ^     Caradog  of  ILancarvan,'^  the  friend 
and  contemporary  of  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  was  one  of 
the  band  of  men  of  letters  who  gathered  around  Robert, 
Earl  of  Gloucester,  the  illegitimate  son  of  Henry  I.    The  date 
of  his  birth  is  unknown,  but  it  is  supposed  he  died  in  1 147. 
It  was  to  him  that  Geoffrey  left  the  history  of  the  kings 
who  succeeded  the  Ivor  and  Ini,  who  had  "  fiercely  attacked 
the  nation  of  the  Angles  "  but  to  little  purpose,  just  as  he 
committed  the  kings  of  the  Saxons  to  William  of  Malmes- 
bury  and   Henry  of  Huntingdon.^     That  Caradog  wrote  a 
chronicle  is  clearly  proved,  but  in  its  original  form  it  is  not 
extant.     Professor  Tout  thinks  (with  the  probability  of  the 
case  on  his  side)  that  it  was  written  in  Latin. ^     According 
to  the  address  to  the  reader  given  by  Powel,  Caradog  col- 
lected the  successions  and  acts  of  the  British  princes  after 
Cadwaladr  to   1156  ;  several  copies  of  the  collection  were 
kept  in  the  abbeys  of  Conway  and  Strata  Plorida,  which 
were   "yearly    augmented    as   things    fell    out,"    the    two 
abbeys  comparing    the    entries    every   third    year.     Powel 
says  that  the  entries  were  continued  to  the  year  1270,  and 

^  Humfrey  ILwyd  (physician  and  antiquary)  was  born  in  1527,  and  died  in 
1568.  The  MS.  of  his  translation  of  Caradog's  translation  is  preserved  in  the 
British  Museum  (Cotton  MS.  "Caligula,"  A.  vi.),V.  "Diet.  Nat.Biog.,"  j,  7iom. 

•  Small  quarto,  London,  1584;  2nd  ed.  (Lond.,  1811).  See  also  Wynne's 
"  improved  edition"  (Lond.,  1697);  2nd  ed.  (Lond.,  1774);  3rd  ed.  (Merthyr, 
1812) ;  4th  ed.  (Shrewsbury,  1832).  The  edition  of  1811  is  the  only  exact 
reproduction  of  Powel's  work.  David  Powel  was  born  in  1552  (?),  and  died 
in  1598.  He  was  vicar  of  Ruabon  and  rector  of  Lanfyiiin.  The  living 
of  the  latter  parish  he  exchanged  afterwards  for  Meifod  {vu/e  Diet.  Nat. 
Biog.,  Slid  nom.).  He  is  honourably  mentioned  in  "Strype's  Annals," ii.  472-3 
(ed.  1824). 

3  See  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  sub.  nom.;  also  Morley's  "  English  Writers,"  vol.  iii., 
pp.  95.  96,  97. 

"*  See  Geofirey's  "  British  History,"  book  xii.,  ch.  19  and  ch.  20, 

'  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  s!/b  7 wm.  "Caradog." 


126  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

that  transcripts  of  the  work  were  made  b\'  divers,  and  that 
over  a  hundred  copies  were  extant  in  Humfre\'  Lwyd's 
time.  Lwyd  translated  the  work  into  EngHsh,  and  a  copy 
of  the  translation  was  bought  by  Sir  Henry  Sidne}',  Presi- 
dent of  the  Court  of  the  Marches,  and  he,  desiring  its 
publication,  entrusted  the  work  to  Dr.  Powel.  The  editor 
collated  the  copy  with  three  versions  of  the  Welsh  work  ;  he 
added  matter  from  other  chronicles  showing  the  additions 
by  a  change  of  type,  prefixed  a  description  of  Wales  by 
Sir  John  Prise,  and  added  brief  accounts  of  the  Princes 
of  Wales  after  the  Edwardian  Conquest.  In  this  form  the 
work  was  published  in  1584,  under  the  title  set  forth  above. 

In  our  judgment  the  statements  made  in  a  work  thus 
compiled,  and  published  so  late  as  1584,  cannot  be  relied 
on  unless  confirmed  by  the  Welsh  chronicles,  to  which  we 
refer  below,  or  by  the  authorities  accepted  by  competent 
students  of  English  history  as  trustworthy — at  any  rate,  so 
far  as  the  pre-Xorman  period  is  concerned.  At  the  same 
time  we  cannot  deny  to  the  work  considerable  value,  and 
assuming  that  the  main  text  is  down  to  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth  century  the  work  of  Caradog,  we  ma\'  look  upon 
that  part  of  the  history  as  representing  the  Welsh  tradi- 
tional view  of  the  general  course  of  Welsh  affairs  at  a 
time  when  the  memory  of  many  of  the  events  was  com- 
paratively recent. 

But  really  for  the  period  we  are  now  dealing  with,  the 
principal  Welsh  authorities  which  are  entitled  to  credence 
are  ''Brut  y  Tyw}'sogion"  and   the    "Annales   Cambriae."^ 

^  "Brut  y  Tywysogion"  (i.e..  history  of  the  princes)  and  "  Annales  Cambriae" 
are  the  names  given  to  two  sets  of  chronicles  which  specially  record  aftairs 
concerning  Wales,  and  which  in  MS.  seem  to  have  been  produced  as  a 
whole  within  the  Cymric  limits,  though  some  of  the  entries  in  the  "Annales 
Cambriae"  appear  to  have  been  written  in  Ireland,  or  at  any  rate  to  have  been 
■of  Irish  origin.  'Ihe  former  set  of  MSS.  is  in  Welsh,  and  the  latter  in  Latin. 
The  best  critical  account  of  the  origin,  the  date,  and  the  value  of  the  MSS.  is 
to  be  found  in  Mr.  Egerton  Phillimore's  able  paper  entitled  "The  Publicaiion 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST,     127 

From  these  sources,  supplemented  by  the  authorities  relied 
on  for  the  early  history  of  the  island  by  competent  English 
writers,  the  story  of  these  pre-Norman  Welsh  kings  and 
princes  must  (if  it  be  possible  to  do  so  at  all)  be  con- 
structed. 

It  is  clear  from  the  entry  in  the  Brut  that  we  have 
quoted  above  and  from  other  sources  that  the  death  of 
Cadwaladr  was  regarded  by  the  Cymry  as  an  event  of 
great  importance,  but  as  to  its  exact  date  we  have  no 
certain  evidence.  The  Brut  puts  it  as  taking  place  in  681, 
but  the  writer  uses  language  which  shows  that  for  some 
reason  he  confounded  Cadwaladr  with  Ceadwalla,  king  of 
Wessex,  who  did  die  in  that  year.  If  from  the  few  data 
we  have  to  rely  on  the  matter  is  traced  out  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  year  681    is  too  late,  and  that  in  all 

<»f  Welsh  Historical  Records  "  in  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  vol.  xi.,  p.  133  (1892).  The 
earliest  known  version  of  the  "Annales  Cambriae  "  is  printed  in  "  Y  Cymm- 
rodor," vol.  ix.,  pp.  152 — 169,  under  Mr.  E.  Phillimore's  editorship.  The 
portion  of  the  "Annales  "  dealing  with  the  events  up  to  the  Norman  Conquest  is 
also  printed  in  "  Monumenta  Historica  Britannica,"  vol.  i.  (1848),  under  the 
editorship  of  Petrie  (really  under  that  of  Aneurin  Owen,  the  editor  of  "The 
Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  Wales").  The  "Annales  Cambriae  "  were 
also  published  in  the  Rolls  series  in  i860  (edited  by  Ab  Ithel).  The  "  Brut 
y  Tywysogion  "  up  to  1066  is  also  printed  in  "  Monumenta  Historica  Britan- 
nica," and  the  whole  of  it  was  published  (ed.  Ab  Ithel)  in  the  Rolls  series  in 
i860.  The  versions  of  the  "Annales"  and  the  "Brut"  in  the  Rolls  series 
are  subjected  to  severe  but  just  criticism  by  Mr.  Phillimore.  In  1890,  hew- 
ever,  the  text  of  the  "Brut,"  as  transcribed  in  the  "Red  Book  of  Hergebt,"" 
was  published  in  the  series  of  Welsh  texts  produced  at  Oxford  under  the 
editorship  of  Professor  J.  Rhys  and  Mr.  Gwenogvryn  Evans  (Clarendon  Press). 
For  further  information  as  to  the  MSS.  see  Mr.  Evans'  preface  to  the  "Red 
Book  of  Hergest,"  vol.  ii.,  and  Aneurin  Owen's  posthumously  printed  intro- 
duction to  the  "Gvventian  Chronicle"  in  "Arch.  Cambr.  "  (1864).  The 
so-called  "Gvventian"  or  "  Aberpergwm  Brut"  is  printed  in  "  Myv.  Arch." 
(vol.  ii.,  pp.  468 — 582),  and  a  copy  made  by  Aneurin  Owen  from  the  "  Myv. 
Arch."  is  printed  in  "Arch.  Camb  "  for  1864.  The  date  of  its  compilation 
was  not  earlier  than  1550,  and  it  has  not  the  authority  of  the  genuine  and 
older  "  Brut  "  (see  Egerton  Phillimore's  paper  cited  above,  "  Y  Cymmrodor," 
xi.  163-168).  As  to  the  genealogies  appended  to  "Annales  Cambriae  "  in 
Harl.  MS.  3,859,  and  printed  in  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  xi.,  p.  169  e^  seq.^  see 
pp.  132,  138,  below. 


128  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

probability  it  was  in  or  very  near  to  664  that  Cadwaladr 
died. 

If  we  assume  that  this  date  is  correct,  the  period  now 
under  consideration  comprises  402  years,  and  the  scantiness 
of  the  direct  evidence  as  to  what  took  place  may  be 
estimated  from  the  fact  that  there  are  in  the  Brut  only 
about  200  entries  up  to  the  Xorman  Conquest,  and  only 
43^  for  the  180  years  that  elapsed  from  the  time  the 
Britons  lost  the  crown  of  Britain  to  the  accession  of  Rhodrl 
]\lawr  in  844,  and  that  these  entries  are  always  brief  and 
often  obscure.  We  have,  however,  some  incidental  help 
for  the  construction  of  this  direct  evidence  from  other 
sources,  amongst  which  the  Laws  of  Howel  Da  and  other 
legal  treatises  must  be  given  the  first  place,^  for  from  them 
we  can  discover  with  reasonable  certaint}^  the  structure  of 
Welsh  society  in  these  times  from  a  legal  and  economic 
point  of  view  ;  and  the  "  Liber  Landavensis  "  •"  properly  and 

^  Forty-one  in  "  Annales  Cambrige  "  (Phillimore,  tibi  supra). 

-  For  an  account  of  the  legal  treatises  see  below,  p.  176  et  sdj. 

^  ''Liber  Landavensis  "  is  the  name  given  to  a  work  supposed  to  have  been 
compiled  by  Galfrid  (Jeffrey  or  Geoffrey),  the  brother  of  Urban,  the  last 
Bishop  of  Llandaff  mentioned  in  it.  This  Galfrid  is  identified  by  Mr. 
Gwenogviyn  Evans  with  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  (see  preface  to  the  Oxford 
text  mentioned  below).  It  is  a  chartulary  or  collection  of  documents  con- 
cerning the  Bishops  of  Llandaff,  the  endowments  of  the  Church,  and  events 
connected  with  the  history  of  the  diocese.  There  are  several  MSS.  of  the 
work.  The  oldest  and,  as  it  seems,  the  original  one  is  the  Gwysaney  MS. 
(belonging  to  Mr.  P.  B.  Davies-Cooke,  of  Gwysaney,  Flintshire,  and  Owston, 
Yorkshire).  For  information  as  to  the  MSS.  see  the  prefaces  to  the  printed  texts 
by  W.  J.  Rees  and  Mr.  Gwenogvryn  Evans.  The  book  was  first  printed  in 
1840,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Welsh  MSS.  Society.  The  Gwysaney  text  has 
been  recently  published  in  the  Oxford  series.  See  "  The  Liber  Landavensis 
Lyfr  Teilo,  or  the  Ancient  Register  of  the  Cathedral  Church  of  Llandaff,  from 
MSS.  in  the  Libraries  of  Hengwrt  and  of  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  with  an 
English  translation  and  explanatory  notes  by  the  Rev.  W.  J.  Rees,  M.A., 
F.S.A.,  cK:c.  "  (Lundovery,  1840).  This  has  been,  however,  superseded  by 
the  Oxford  work,  in  which  the  Gwysaney  text  is  diplomatically  reproduced 
under  the  editorship  of  Mr.  Gwenogvryn  Evans,  "  The  Text  of  the  Book  of 
Llan  Dav,  reproduced  from  the  Gwysaney  Manuscript  by  John  Gwenogvryn 
Evans,    Hon.    M.A.    Oxon.,    with    the   co-operation   of  John   Rhys,    ^LA., 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     129 

critically  used  is  not  to  be  ignored.  From  Welsh  literature 
(other  than  the  Brut  and  the  Laws)  no  help  is  to  be 
obtained  for  this  period. 

The  task  of  the  historian  of  Wales  has,  however,  been 
lightened  by  the  excellent  work  of  those  who  during  this 
century  have  devoted  themselves  to  clearing  up  the  early 
history  of  England,  and  it  is  only  by  labouring  in  the  light 
of  what  they  have  made  known,  and  according  to  the 
methods  they  have  adopted,  that  he  can  succeed  in  getting 
at  the  truth  about  the  story  of  the  Cymry. 

As  pointed  out  above,  the  break-up  of  the  older  Cymric 
kingdom  left  Wales  in  a  state  of  complete  political  dis- 
organisation. Memories  of  the  old  kingship  and  of  the 
old  bonds  undoubtedly  survived  in  theory  and  sometimes 
reappeared  in  fact ;  but,  speaking  broadly,  the  aspect  that 
Wales  presents  during  the  succeeding  centuries  is  that  of 
a  disunited,  or  very  loosely  connected,  aggregate  of  clans, 
or  petty  kingdoms,  or  lordships  engaged  in  perpetual  war- 
fare both  among  themselves  and  with  English  kingdoms 
and  English  rulers.  It  would  be  untrue  to  state  that  there 
was  absolutely  no  conception  of  a  collective  nation  or  of  a 
united  kingdom,  but,  so  far  as  we  can  ascertain,  on  no 
occasion  was  the  whole  country  effectively  under  the  rule 
of  one  sovereign.  The  material  is  so  scanty  that  it  would 
be  dangerous  to  make  any  general  assertion  in  other  than 
a  tentative  fashion. 

In  an  endeavour  to  clear  up  the  history  of  a  country  thus 
disorganised  one  of  the  first  questions  that  must  occur  to 

Professor  of  Celtic  in  the  University  of  Oxford  "  (Oxford,  1893).  The  "  Liber 
Landavensis  "  is  also  called  '*  Lyfr  Teilo  "  (the  Book  of  Teilo).  Teilo  is  one  of 
the  principal  traditional  saints  of  Wales.  He  is  represented  as  a  cousin  of  St. 
David's  andasBishopof  Llandaff,  buthe  seems  to  have  advanced  archiepiscopal 
claims.  For  an  account  of  him  see  Smith's  "  Dicty.  Christ.  Biog.,"  sud 
nom.  The  chief  authority  for  his  life  is  a  portion  of  the  twelfth  centuiy 
MS.  with  which  this  note  deals.  See  *'  Lib.  Land."  (Oxf.  ed.),  pp.  97  et  seq. 
There  is  no  life  of,  but  there  are  several  references  to,  Teilo  in  Rees'  "Lives 
of  the  Cambro-British  Saints"  (Landovery,  1853). 

W.P.  K 


130  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

one's  mind  is,  what  were  its  divisions  for  the  purposes  of 
such  government  as  existed,  especially  when  as  in  the 
case  of  Cymru  one  finds  the  names  attached  to  various 
areas  ancient  We  have  in  the  introduction  pointed  out 
that  Wales  was  in  the  times  of  its  practical  independence 
of  the  English  monarchy  undoubtedly  divided  into  can- 
trefs  and  cymwds.  In  the  laws  of  Howel  Da,  which 
are  legal  treatises  once  in  practical  use,  the  land  divisions 
and  measurements  are  ascribed  to  Dyfnwal  Moelmud,  who 
was  king  "  before  the  crown  of  London  and  the  supremacy 
of  this  island  were  seized  by  the  Saxons,  and  who  first 
established  good  laws  in  this  island  .  .  .  and  after  that 
Howel  enacted  new  laws,  and  abrogated  those  of  Dyfnwal ; 
yet  Howel  did  not,  however,  alter  the  measurement  of  the 
lands  in  this  island,  but  continued  them  as  they  were  left 
by  Dyfnwal ;  because  he  was  the  best  measurer."^  Now 
"the  cause  of  his  measuring  of  the  island  was  that  he  might 
know  the  tribute  of  this  island,  the  number  of  the  miles, 
and  its  journeys  in  days."^  What  is  expressly  ascribed 
in  the  laws  to  Dyfnwal  is  the  determination  of  the  units 
of  measurement  and  the  division  of  the  area  called  the 
cymwd  into  smaller  parts,  having  some,  though  to  us  not 
quite  clear,  significance  in  a  tribal  system.  It  is  not 
said  that  Dyfnwal  marked  out  the  Cymric  land  into  can- 
trefs  and  cymwds,  but  as  the  cymwd  is  represented  as  an 
agereeate  of  smaller  divisions,  themselves  having  reference 
to  the  prescribed  units  of  measurement,  it  seems  to  be 
implied  that  he  did  in  fact  constitute  the  division  into 
those  larger  areas. 

The  matter  is  not,  however,  free  from  difficulty,  for 
if  we  are  to  read  the  text  literally  as  a  division  of 
the  whole  of  Cymru,  the  area  of  each  cymwd  ought  to 
have    been    of    equal    superficial    extent.       In    fact,    the 

>  **  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  Wales, "vol.  i.,  i  p.  182-185  (1841,  Rolls 
series,  ed.  A.  Owen). 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     131 

cantrefs  and  cymwds  varied  very  greatly  in  size.  We 
cannot  profess  that  we  have  discovered  any  final  solution 
of  the  difficulty  thus  created.  It  would  seem  that  the 
primary  purpose  of  the  division  was  to  facilitate  the  equit- 
able assessment  of  the  food-rents  due  to  the  chieftains 
as  well  as  in  the  first  instance  to  secure  a  fair  apportion- 
ment of  a  conquered  territory  among  the  new  settlers.  It 
may  be  that  in  the  time  of  Dyfnwal  the  different  families 
of  Cymric  origin  took  possession  by  arrangement  among 
themselves ;  that  they,  as  was  natural,  made  their  first 
establishments  on  the  more  developed  and  fertile  areas ; 
that  each  cenedl  on  whom  the  liability  for  customary 
dues  fell  became  associated  with  a  particular  area  ;  that  in 
some  cases  the  area  came  to  be  called  by  the  name  of  the 
head  of  the  cenedl  at  the  time  of  its  settlement,^  and  in 
others  that  the  name  of  some  pre-existing  division  survived  ; 
and  that  what  Dyfnwal  the  legislator  really  did  was  to 
create  a  system  of  measurement  and  division  applicable 
roughly  to  an  established  order  of  possession  with  a  view 
to  making  the  incidence  and  rendering  of  the  customary 
food-rents  fair  and  easy.  However  this  may  be,  it  is 
certain,  that  in  the  tenth  century  Cymru  was  divided 
into  cantrefs  and  cymwds,  with  boundaries  ascertained 
well  enough  for  practical  purposes,  and  that  the  division 
was  then  deemed  to  be  ancient. 

Dyfnwal  Moelmud  is  generally  supposed  to  have  reigned 
about  400  years  before  Christ.  This  seems  due  to  the  place 
given  to  him  by  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  in  his  line  of 
British  kings.  According  to  Geoffrey  he  gained  the  sceptre 
of  Britain  after  a  civil  war  that  followed  the  slaying  of 
Porrex,  and  on  his  death  his  sons  Belinus  and  Brennius 
became  kings  of  Britain.^  If  we  were  to  assume  this  to 
be  true,  the  date  of  Dyfnwal's  flourishing  and  legislation 

^  £.^..  Meirioiiyd.     Meirion  was  a  son  of  Cuneda. 
2  "  British  History,"  book  ii.,  cc.  i6  and  17  ;  book  iii.,  c.  i. 

K    2 


132  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

might  be  about  B.C.  400.^  But  there  is  nothing  to  support 
Geoffrey's  narrative,  while  there  is  credible  evidence  that 
about  the  time  of  Cuneda  (who,  as  leader  of  the  Cymry, 
conquered  Wales)  there  was  a  Dyfnwal  Moelmud  who, 
whether  or  not  he  was  ever  head-king  of  the  Cymry,  or 
simply  a  member  of  a  ruling  family,  was  so  closely  con- 
nected with  the  line  of  Cuneda,  that  his  name  may  have  well 
become  associated  with  legislation  over  Cymric  territory. 
It  fortunately  happens  that  there  are  several  pedigrees 
appended  to  the  earliest  MS.  of  the  "  Annales  Cambriae,"  and 
as  they  are  undoubtedly  old,  and  came  into  being  at  a  time 
when  every  one's  genealogy  was  most  religiously  preserved 
and  remembered  as  a  kind  of  title-deed  to  his  status  in  the 
then  existing  legal  and  social  system,  we  may  with  a  high 
degree  of  confidence  look  upon  them  as  in  substance 
accurate.^  The  name  of  Dyfnwal  Moelmud  occurs  in 
Pedigree  X.  He  was  son  of  Garbaniaun,  and  grandson  of 
Coel  Hen,  whose  daughter  was  Cuneda's  wife,  and  his 
pedigree  was  traced  "to  Beli  et  Anna."^  He  may  therefore 
have  been  a  contemporary  of  Cuneda's,  and  may  have 
survived  during  the  lives  of  one  or  two  generations  of  his 
descendants.  Save  so  far  as  we  may  infer  it  from  the 
statement  in  the  Welsh  laws,  that  he  was  king  before  the 
loss  of  the  crown  of  Britain,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that 
he  was  king  of  all  the  Cymry  ;  and  in  fact  the  text  does  not 

*  Geoffrey's  Brennius  took  the  city  of  Rome,  and  seems  to  be  meant  for 
Brennus,  who,  according  to  current  computation,  in  B.C.  390,  did  capture  the 
city  and  besiege  the  citadel.  Mommsen,  "History  of  Rome,"  1.,  p.  366 
(English  translation). 

2  "  The  annales  and  genealogies  in  their  present  form  show  marks  of  having 
been  composed  in  the  last  half  of  the  tenth  century "  (E.  Phillimore,  **  Y 
Cymmrodor,"  xi.,  p.  144).  "  But  the  date  of  the  MS.  is  upwards  of  a  century 
later  than  that  of  the  composition  of  the  Annales  and  Welsh  Genealogies " 
{ibid.,  p.  145).  See  also  "The  Welsh  Pedigrees,"  a  paper  by  Henry  F.  J. 
Vaughan,  B.A.,  S.C.L.,  printed  in  '*  Y  Cymmrodor,"  x.  72  (1890). 

•'  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  ^i^  p.  174.  As  the  pedigree  is  not  very  accessible  to 
the  student  we  reproduce  it : — 


CADWALADR   TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     133 


necessarily  give  him  the  position  of  a  head-king  or  gwledig  ; 
and  there  is  nothing  inconsistent  between  what  is  stated  in 
the  laws,  and  the  inference  that  he  was  a  king  of  some 
territory  subject  to  Cuneda,  and  that  he  was  authorised 
by  the  gwledig,  upon  the  conquest  of  Wales,  to  settle  the 
affairs  of  the  newly-won  lands.  This  conjecture  accords 
well  with  the  ascertained  facts.  There  were  in  all  proba- 
bility earlier  divisions  of  Wales,  and  we  need  not  assume 
that  they  were  entirely  superseded  by  Dyfnwal's  work. 
His  main  object  was  evidently,  as  we  have  said,  to  make  an 
arrangement  for  the  fair  imposition  of  the  food-rents  of  the 
occupiers  of  Cymric  land.  Under  his  system,  confirmed 
by  Howel,  the  families  in  each  cymwd  were  liable  for  the 
same  food-rent,  that  is,  the  same  amount  was  levied  on  each 
cymwd,  irrespectively  of  the  number  of  the  families  or  its 
size ;  and  as  the  occupied  land  varied  very  greatly  in 
fertility   and    productiveness,    the    operation    of   practical 

[X] 


[M]orcant. 

map. 

Vrb. 

map. 

Coledauc. 

an. 

map. 

Morcaiit. 
bulc. 

map. 
map. 

Grat. 
lume- 

map. 

Cincar. 
braut. 

map. 

tel. 
Riti- 

map. 

Branhen. 

girn. 

map. 

DvLmngual. 
moilmut. 

map. 

Oude- 
cant. 

map. 

Garbani 
aiin. 

map. 

Ou- 

tigir. 

map. 

Coyl  hen. 

map. 

Ebiud. 

map. 

Guotepauc. 

map. 

Eudof. 

map. 

Tec  ma- 
.   nt. 

map. 
map. 

Eudelen. 
Aballac. 

map. 

Teu- 
hant. 

map. 

Beli  ^/  anna. 

map. 

Telpu- 

The  map  before  Guotepauc 

should, 

says 

Mr.    Phillimore,    be  cancelled. 

Guotepauc     (now  Godebog)  was  Coyl': 

5  epithet, 

.     The 

;  pedigree  is  Northern. 

The  patronymic  of  Dumngual  Moilmut : 

seems 

Goidelic 

;  see  above,  p.  24. 

134  ^HE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

causes  may  well  have  led  to  great  difference  in  the  relative 
extents  of  the  rent-paying  units. 

In  the  "Chronicles"  and  the  "Liber  Landavensis"  we  find 
individuals  represented  as  kings  or  princes  of  areas  larger 
than  cantrefs,  to  which  names  other  than  those  of  the 
cantrefs  are  given.  These  may  have  been,  probably  were, 
aggregates  of  the  smaller  divisions.  They  represented 
lands  over  the  inhabitants  of  which  certain  regal  or  princely 
families  descended  from,  or  assumed  to  be  descended  from, 
Cuneda,  or  it  may  be  the  descendants  of  other  founders 
of  ancient  and  pure-blooded  tribes  of  the  Cymric  race 
exercised  a  tribal  sway,  and  possessed  customary  privileges. 
In  the  "  Brut"  we  find  mention  of  the  following  areas  for  the 
most  part  in  terms  implying  that  they  were  kingdoms : — 
Gwyned",  Powys,  Ceredigion,  Dyfed,  Morgannwg,  Gwent, 
Brecheiniog,  Buatlt,  Ystrad  Towi,^  Rhuvoniog,  Cidweli, 
Gwyr,  Mon. 

We  need  not  assume  the  list  to  be  exhaustive.  There 
were  very  likely  other  kingdoms  or  principalities  which  do 
not  happen  to  be  mentioned.  The  names  of  other  districts 
are  certainly  to  be  found  (e.g.^  Gwenitwg,  ILeyn,  Meironyd), 
but  not  in  terms  necessarily  suggesting  they  were  under 
separate  sovereign  families. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  before  Rhodri's  time  there 
is  no  mention  of  a  king  of  Deheubarth  (ordinarily  used  as 
equivalent  to  South  Wales),  though  the  word  Deheubarth wyr 
(men  of  Deheubarth)  occurs  once. 

To  the  rulers  of  these  larger  areas  the  names  "  brenin  " 
(king)  and  "  tywysog"-  (prince)  are  applied.  In  the  earlier 
times  the  former  title  is  liberally  accorded.  The  king  is 
usually   described    as   king    of  a   particular   district,    e.g.^ 

^  Ab  Ithel  in  the  Rolls  edition  of  the  "Brut"  translates  this  as  the  "  Vale  of 
Towi,"  but  it  practically  means  district  of  the  Towi.  Ystrad  literally  means 
strand,  "strath." 

"  See  s.a.  856  :   '*  Y  bu  uar6  lonathal  t)rwyssawc  Abergeleu." 


CADWALADR    TO  NORMAN   CONQUEST.     135 

Gvvgaun,  son  of  Meurug,  king  of  Keredigion  ;  ^  but  some  of 
the  chieftains  are  described  as  "  king  of  the  Britons."^  Now 
later  writers  proceed  on  the  theory  that  Cymru  was  divided 
into  three  principal  parts,  Gwyned,  Deheubarth,  and 
Powys,  with  three  royal  residences — Aberffraw  in  the  first 
Dinefwr  in  the  second,  and  Mathrafal  in  the  third,  and  an 
over-lordship  is  ascribed  to  the  king  of  Gwyned.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  "  Chronicles  "  absolutely  inconsistent  with 
this,  but  on  the  other  hand  there  is  nothing  directly  to 
support  it ;  but  some  of  the  later  legal  treatises  accord  a 
pre-eminence  to  the  king  of  Gwyned,  and  many  isolated 
facts  tend  to  support  this  view,  so  far  as  the  kingdoms  of 
Deheubarth  and  Powys  are  concerned  f  but  there  seems  no 
evidence  proving  with  certainty  that  the  regal  families  of 
South-eastern  Wales,  which  was  divided  into  the  kingdoms 
of  Morgannwg,  Gwent,  Brecheiniog,  and  Buatlt,  generally 
acknowledged  the  over-lordship  of  Gwyned.  There  is, 
however,  no  improbability  in  the  view  that  the  chieftains 
of  Cymru  at  one  time  regarded  themselves  as  forming  a 
kind  of  hierarchy  of  kings  ;*  and  certainly  the  organisation 
of  each  kingdom,  as  described  in  the  codes,  seems  to  involve 
a  gradation  of  lordships  very  nearly  resembling  a  feudal 
system.  But  though  the  supremacy  of  Gwyned  and  the 
subordination  of  one  ruler  to  another,  in  some  settled  manner 
grouping  all  Wales  into  a  collective  nation,  may  have  been 
a  legal  first  principle,  the  actual  facts,  as  gathered  or  inferred 
from  the  "Chronicles,"  hardly  seem  to  square  with  the  theory, 

1  "Brut,"j.«.  871.     "Ann.  Cam.,"  j.tz.  871. 

-  £.£.,  "Brut,"  s.a.  998  :  "Maredud,  son  of  Owain,  the  most  celebrated 
King  of  the  Britons." 

^  Mr.  Seebohm  adopts  the  theory.     "Tribal  System  in  Wales,"  pp.   134 — 

139- 

"*  Cf.  the  case  of  Ireland,  where  there  seem  to  have  been  recognised  an 
Ard-ri  Erend  and  three  classes  of  subordinate  kings.  O'Sullivan's  Introduction 
to  O'Curry's  "  Lectures  on  the  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient  Irish," 
pp.  ccxxix-xxxi.  See  also  Ginnell's  "The  Brehon  Laws"  (London,  1894), 
pp.  63  ef  scfj. 


136  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

and  what  we  do  find  is  an  aggregate  of  small  states  under 
separate  kings  or  ruling  families  continually  quarrelling 
among  themselves. 

The  period  now  under  consideration — that  from  the 
death  of  Cadwaladr,  in  664,  to  the  Norman  Conquest — 
may  itself  be  conveniently  divided  at  the  accession  of 
Rhodri  Mawr.  For  the  one  hundred  and  eighty  years  that 
elapsed  from  the  loss  of  the  crown  of  Britain  to  844,  when 
Rhodri  became  chief  king  of  the  Britons,  we  know  little  of 
what  took  place  in  Wales,  and  all  we  can  gather  from 
trustworthy  sources  is  the  names  of  certain  kings  and 
battles,  and  the  general  conclusion  that  the  limits  of  the 
Welsh  area  were  further  contracted. 

According  to  Caradog  of  ILancarvan,  Ivor,  son  of  Alan, 
king  of  Armorica  (who  becomes  strangely  confounded 
with  Ine,  king  of  Wessex),  succeeded  Cadwaladr  on  his 
death  in  681,  and  reigned  till  720.  Then  Rhodri  Molwynog, 
son  of  Edwal  Ywrch,  became  "King  of  the  Brytains,"  and 
survived  till  750,  and  was  followed  by  his  son,  Conan 
Tindaethwy,  who  continued  chief  king  till  817,  when  he 
died  (after  chasing  his  brother  Howel  out  of  Mon  in  that 
year),  leaving  a  daughter,  Esyllht,  married  to  Merfyn  Fr}'ch 
ab  G\\Tiad.  Merfyn  and  his  wife  took  possession  of  the 
kingship,  and  Merfyn  reigned  till  841.  In  that  year  ("as 
some  do  write  ")  he  was  killed  in  a  battle  at  Cettett  between 
the  Welsh  and  the  Mercians  under  Burchred,  and  then  his 
son  Rhodri  succeeded.  This  account  is  usually  followed 
by  Welsh  historians,  but  it  is  barely  credible.  For  a  period 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty- three  years  (i.e.,  664  to  817),  only 
four  chief  kings  (one  following  the  other  immediately)  are 
assigned,  and  Conan  is  made  to  reign  nearly  seventy  years. 

Caradog  appears  to  have  been  trying,  very  likely  honestly 
enough,  to  represent  a  continuity  in  the  devolution  of  the 
Cymric  over-lordship  that  had  had  no  existence  except  in 
the  imagination  of  later  rulers  and  those  who  were  connected 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     137 

with  them  as  bards  and  genealogists.    The  "Brut,"  while  not 
absolutely  inconsistent  with  the  view  of  Caradog,  can  hardly 
be  described  as  entirely  supporting  it.     It  says  that  after 
Cadwaladr,  Ivor,  son  of  Alan,  king  of  ILydaw,  which  is  called 
little  Britain,  reigned  not  as  king,  but  as  a  chief  or  prince,^  and 
after  him  Rhodri  Molwynog  reigned.     The  entries  down  to 
844,  when  it  records  the  death  of  Merfyn  Frych,  are  very 
brief    Rhodri  Molwynog  died  in  754.    The  earliest  reference 
to  a  Kynan  is  in  812,  when  it  is  recorded  that  a  battle  took 
place  between  Howel  and  Kynan,  and  that  the  latter  was 
beaten,  and  three  years  later  (815)  Howel  expelled  Kynan 
from  M6n.^     Then,  in   817,   Howel  was  "a  second  time" 
driven  from  Mon,  and  Cynon  (who,  we  may  fairly  assume, 
was  identical  with  Kynan)  died,  and  the  Saxons  ravaged 
the  mountains  of  Eryri,  and  took  the  kingdom  of  Rhuvoniog.'^ 
No    mention    is    made   of  Esyllht,    but    it  is    stated    that 
Merfyn  Frych  died  in  844.     We  may  therefore  look  upon 
the  existence  of  Ivor,  Rhodri  Molwynog,  Kynan,  and  Merfyn 
Frych  as  proved,  and  we  may  believe  that  they  were  very 
important  chieftains  of  the   Cymry  in  the  time  after  the 
death  of  Cadwaladr  and  before  Rhodri  Mawr's  accession. 
But  there  are   other  kings    mentioned,  such  as    Caradog, 
king   of  Gwyned,    Maredud  and    Rein,    kings   of   Dyfed, 
Arthen,  king  of  Keredigion,  and  CadeH,  king  of  Powys.^ 
To    Rhodri    Molwynog,   indeed,    the    title   of    "  brenin   y 
Brytanyeit"    is    accorded,  but  the   deaths    of   Conan  and 
Merfyn  are  mentioned   as    if   they  were  simply  kings  of 
districts ;  and  we  cannot   avoid  noticing   that  if  Gwyned 

1  The  words  in  the  text  of  the  "Brut"  (Oxford  edition,  p.  257)  are  **ac  nyt 
megys  brenhin  namyn  megys  pennaeth  neu  tywyssauc."  They  are  important 
as  showing  clear  recognition  of  the  change  in  the  position  of  the  Cymry  in  the 
island,  which  had  been  brought  about  by  the  events  that  led  up  to  the  death  of 
Cadwaladr  and  the  loss  of  "the  crown  of  Britain." 

-   "Brut,"  J.a.  815. 

3   "  Brut,"  s.a.  817. 

^  See  under  the  years  798,  796,  807,  and  808,  "Ann.  Cam.,"  798,  807,  808. 


138  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

had  at  that  time  a  practical  pre-eminence,  it  is  strange  that 
Caradog  (a  king  of  that  part  of  Wales)  should  find  no 
place  in  the  succession  of  kings  of  all  Wales  as  traced 
by  Caradog  of  ILancarvan. 

The  sources  of  information  by  means  of  which  we  may 
check  or  correct  the  traditional  or  usually  adopted  account 
of  this  period  are  not  limited,  however  to  the  Chronicles. 
The  first  of  the  pedigrees  appended  to  the  MS.  of  the 
"  Annales  Cambriae,"  edited  by  Mr.  E.  Phillimore,  is  that  of 
Owain,  the  son  of  Howel  Da,  and  great-grandson  of 
Rhodri  Mawr,  and  it  carries  back  his  genealogy  a  very  long 
way.  It  is  a  genuinely  old  compilation,  and  however  much 
we  may  doubt,  or  rather  be  in  a  state  of  indifference  as  to 
the  more  remote  stages,  yet  if  we  bear  in  mind  the  legal 
structure  and  general  complexion  of  the  community  in 
which  it  was  produced,  it  would  be  an  excessive  display  of 
the  sceptical  spirit  to  deny  its  accuracy  for  many  genera- 
tions, especially  as  there  is  evidence  from  many  sources 
that  most  of  the  nearer  ancestors  of  Owain  whom  it 
discloses  really  lived  and  played  their  parts  among  the 
Cymry  in  a  sequence  of  events  that  is  not  inconsistent  with 
the  order  of  the  names  in  the  pedigree  in  question.^ 

According  to  this  pedigree,  the  names  of  the  successors 
of  Cadwaladr  were  : — lutgual,  Rotri,  Cinnan,  Etthil,  Mer- 
min,  Rotri  (Mawr).-  lutgual  is  probably  the  Idwal  Ywrch 
of  Caradog  ;  the  first  Rotri  is  evidently  Rhodri  Molwynog, 
king  of  the  Britons,  who,  according  to  the  "  Brut,"  died  in 
754  ;  Cinnan  seems  to  be  the  Kynan  or  Cynon  of  the  "Brut," 
who  fought  with  Howel  in  812  and  815,  and  died  in  817, 
and    Caradog's    Conan    Tindaethwy ;    Etthil,    daughter   of 

^  In  Mr.  Phillimore's  opinion,  "up  to  the  date  when  all  Welsh  records 
necessarily  became  more  or  less  fabulous,  these  genealogies  have  every  claim 
to  rank  beside  the  *  Annales '  and  the  '  Saxon  Genealogies  '  as  a  valuable 
historical  authority."     "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.,  p.  149  (1888). 

-  This  important  pedigree  desen'es  the  most  careful  study.  It  is  printed  in 
ihe  preface  to  Aneurin  Owen's  "Welsh  Laws,"  etc.  (vol.  i.,  Preface,  p.  xiv.. 


CADWALADR   TO   NORMAN  CONQUEST,     139 

Cinnan,  is  the  Esyllht  who,  in  his  account,  was  married 
to  Merfyn  Frych ;  Mermin,  son  of  Etthil,  is  probably 
identical  with  the  Merfyn  Frych  whose  death  is  assigned 
by  the  Brut  to  the  year  844,  and  the  Mermin  whose  death 
is  mentioned  in  the  Annales  as  taking  place  in  the  same 
year.     The  second  Rotri  is  Rhodri  Mawr. 

We  may,  then,  take  it  that  the  existence  of  Idwal  Ywrch, 
Rhodri  Molwynog,  Conan  Tindaethwy,  Etthil,  Merfyn 
or  Mermin  Frych  is  confirmed  by  the  pedigree,  and  that 
they  were  descendants  of  Cadwaladr ;  but  the  interval 
between  754,  when  Rhodri  Molwynog  died,  and  817  or 
816,  when  Conan  died,  is  very  long.  A  Caradog,  king  of 
Gwyned,  is  stated  to  have  been  killed  by  the  Saxons  in  798.^ 
He  may  have  been  a  son  of  Rhodri  Molwynog,  and  have 

note).  We  reproduce  it  as  edited  by  Mr.  E.  Phillimore  in  **  Y  Cymmrodor" 
(vol.  ix.,  pp.  169,  170). 

[0]we«  map.  iguel.  map.  Cein. 

map.  catell.  map.  Guorcein. 

map.  Rotri.  map.  doli. 

map.  mermin.  map.  Guordoli. 

map.  etthil  merch.  map.  Dumn. 

cinnan.  map.  Gurduw;?. 

map.  rotri.  map.  Amguoloyt. 

map.  lutgual.  map.  Awguerit. 

map.  Catgualart.  map.  Oumun. 

map.  Catgollau;;,  map.  Dubun. 

map.  Cat  man.  map.  Brithguein. 

map.  Jacob.  map.  Eugein. 

map.  Beli.  map.  Aballac. 

map.  Run.  map.  Amalech  qui  fuit. 
map.  Mailcun.  beli  magni  filius. 

map.  Catgolau;?.  e^  anna  mater  ejus. 

lauhir.  quaw  dicz^^zt  esse 

map.  Eniau;z  girt,  [cowso. 

map.  Cuneda.  brina  MARINE, 

map.  iEtern.  uirginis  niatm. 

map.  Pat<fm  pefrut.  d'ni  n'ri  ih'u  xp'i. 

map.  Tacit. 
^  "Brut,"  s.a.   798.      "Caratauc  rex  guenedote  apud  Saxones  iugulatur," 
*' Ann.,"  s.a.  798. 


140  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

been  omitted  by  the  compiler  of  the  genealogy,  but  there 
can  be  no  certainty  about  the  question.  Nor  can  we  speak 
positively  as  to  the  district  over  which  this  line  held  sway, 
though  the  mention  in  the  Brut  and  Annales  of  kings 
of  various  districts/  who  do  not  appear  to  have  been  descen- 
dants of  Cadwaladr,  leads  us  to  the  opinion  that  lutgual 
and  his  immediate  successors  were  rulers  of  Gwyned. 

In  addition  to  the  scanty  information  we  have  as  to  the 
names  of  these  kings,  we  know,  from  the  Welsh  and  other 
sources,  that  there  was  almost. continual  warfare  between  the 
Cymry  and  their  English  neighbours,  and  very  frequently 
among  themselves,  and  that,  as  a  result,  the  Cymric  area 
was  again  diminished. 

It  is  with  the  name  of  Offa  of  Mercia  that  the  further 
and  definite  lessening  of  the  Cymric  land  is  chiefly 
associated.  He  began  his  reign  in  75/.^  Of  his  deeds 
during  its  earlier  years  little  is  recorded,  but  later  on  he 
engaged  in  seemingly  fierce  contests  with  the  Welsh.  In 
jyG  the  destruction  of  the  South  Wales  men  took  place,^ 
and  some  years  after  he  pushed  over  the  Severn,  "  and 
spoiled  the  Britons  in  summer  time."*  The  king  of  Powys 
was  driven  from  Pengwern  (Shrewsbury),  till  then  the 
capital  of  his  realm,  and  the  boundaries  of  Mercia  were 
practically  carried  to  the  Wye.  It  was  probably  about 
this  time  that  the  Mercian  king  caused  the  earthwork 
known  as  Clawd"  OfTa,  or  Offa's  dyke,  to  be  constructed. 
Speaking  roughly,  this  work  extended  from  the  estuar}' 
of  the  Dee  to  the  mouth  of  the  Wye.  Whether  it  was 
intended  for  military  purposes  or  simply  as  a  visible  mere 

^  E.g.,   "Arthgen  rex   cereticiaun,"     "Regin   rex    demetorum ;    at  catel, 
pouis  moriuntur,"  '*  Ann.,"  s.a.  807,  808. 

2  *'  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,"  sub  notn.  Offa. 

3  "Brut,"  s.a.  776.    *' Vastatio  Brittonum  dexteralium  apudOffa,"  "Ann.,'' 
s.a.  778. 

•*  "Brut,"  s.a.  Tjg.    QC"Vastatio  Brittonum  cum  Offa  in  estate,"  "Ann.," 
s.a.  784. 


CADWALADR   TO  NORMAN   CONQUEST,     141 

between  England  and  Wales,  it  became  recognised  as  the 
boundary  line  of  Cymru.  The  dyke  is  not  mentioned  in 
the  Oxford  text  of  the  "Brut,"  though  in  one  of  the  MSS. 
on  which  the  Rolls  edition  is  based,  it  is  stated  that  Offa 
caused  the  dyke  to  be  made  to  enable  him  more  easily  to 
withstand  the  attacks  of  his  enemies.  Probably  this  is  a 
late  addition  to  the  Brut,  but  the  making  of  the  dyke  is 
mentioned  by  Asser,^  and  its  existence  is  an  indisputable 
fact.  Portions  of  it  were  a  few  years  ago  noticeable.  In 
Radnorshire  at  the  beginning  of  this  century  its  remains 
were  "  almost  as  fresh  as  if  cut  yesterday,  excepting  the 
edges,  which  are  clothed  with  a  fine  verdure."^ 

The  consolidation  of  the  Teutonic  kingdoms  in  England 
under  Ecgbryht  (the  first  Saxon  king  who  called  himself 
Rex  Anglorum)  in  the  early  years  of  the  ninth  century  had 
an  immediate  effect  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  remnant 
of  the  Britons.  In  his  reign  the  Cornish  people  were 
subdued,  and  henceforth,  though  they  maintained  some 
kind  of  separate  organisation,  they  never  successfully  threw 
off  the  yoke  of  Wessex.  After  the  reduction  of  Mercia 
and  Northumbria,  it  seems  clear  that  he  extorted  the 
submission  of  the  Cymric  princes^ — the  English  certainly 
made  temporarily  successful  invasions  into  the  heart  of 
the  Cymric  land.* 

^  Asser,  M.  H.  B.  471. 

2  W^illiams's  "  History  of  Radnorshire,"  58.  See  also  Pryse's  '*  Descriptio  '* 
prefixed  to  "Caradocof  ]Lancarvan,"ed.  1584;  also  Guest's  "OriginesCelticse," 
vol.  ii.,  p.  273  ;  and  Longueville  Jones's  article  in  Arch.  Cambr.  (3rd  series, 
vol.  ii.,  pp.  1-3,  and  pp.  151-4) ;  also  Earle's  paper,  Arch.  Cambr. ^  3rd 
series,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  196-209.  Most  of  what  is  known  about  the  dyke  is  well 
stated  by  Mr.  A.  N.  Palmer  in  his  paper,  *'  Offa's  and  Wat's  Dykes,"  in 
"Y  Cymmrodor,"  vol.  xii.,  p.  65(1897).  '  Freeman,  N.  C.  i.,  p.  42, 

"*  In  817,  "The  Saxons  ravaged  the  mountains  of  Eryri  and  took  the  kingdom 
of  Rhuvoniog,"  "Brut,"  s.a. 

In  818,  "  A  fight  took  place  in  Mona,  called  the  action  of  Llanvaes." 

In  819,  "  Kenulf  ravaged  the  kingdoms  of  Dyfed." 

in  623,  "  the  Castle  of  Deganwy  was  destroyed  by  the  Saxons,  and  then  the 
Saxons  took  the  kingdom  of  Powysinto  their  possession."    *'  Brut,"  J.  a.  S23. 


142  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

The  reign  of  Ecgbryht  marks  a  distinctstep  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  EngHsh  monarchy  ;  but  just  as  the  EngHsh 
state  was  attaining  to  considerable  power,  its  own  existence, 
as  well  as  that  of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  island,  was 
threatened  by  the  formidable  invasions  of  the  Northmen 
or  Danes,  who  were  still  outside  the  pale  of  Christianity. 
Sporadic  incursions  had  taken  place  before  the  accession 
of  Ecgbryht.  The  Welsh  Chronicle  says  that  790  was  the 
year  of  Christ  when  the  Pagans  first  came  to  Ireland.^  At 
the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century  their  raids  became 
more  frequent  and  more  effective  ;  but  shortly  before  his 
death  Ecgbryht  defeated  the  invaders  and  the  Cornish  Britons 
(who  had  joined  them)  in  a  great  battle  at  Hengestendun 
in  Cornwall- 
Freeman  makes  the  Danish  invasions  of  England  to  fall 
into  three  periods — one  of  mere  plunder,  one  of  settlement, 
and  one  of  political  conquest.  The  first  extended  from  the 
first  appearance  of  the  Scandinavians  in  the  later  years  of 
the  eighth  century  to  855  ;  the  second,  from  that  year  to 
897  ;  and  the  third  from  980  to  10 16,  when  Cnut  com- 
menced to  reign  as  king  of  the  English.^  In  the  first 
period  the  Welsh  seem  to  have  suffered  much  as  the 
English  did,  though  to  a  less  extent.  As  to  the  second 
period,  there  was  no  large  settlement  of  Northmen  in 
Cymru.*  As  to  the  third,  the  Danish  Conquest  did  not 
materially  alter  the  relations  of  the  Welsh  princes  to  the 
government  of  England.  However  much  the  people  settled 
on  the  coast  of  Wales  may  have  suffered  from  the  Danish 
raids,  it  seems  clear  enough  that  for  the  Cymry,  as  a  whole, 
the  arrest  of  the  growth  of  the  English  monarchy  and 
the  incoming    of   fresh   settlers  was  an    advantage.     The 

1   Cf.  "  Ann.,"  J.t7.  796. 

-  In  2>2,6,  Freeman,  "  Norman  Conquest,"'  i.  43, 

^  Freeman,  ubi  stcp-a. 

■^  See  above,  pp.  27,  35. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     143 

incursions  of  the  Northmen  assisted  the  preservation  of  prac- 
tical independence  by  the  Welsh  nation  for  a  long  time,  and 
by  distracting  the  English  gave  an  opportunity  for  the  opera- 
tion of  forces  which  were  slowly  tending  to  the  consolidation 
of  the  little  British  kingdoms  beyond  the  dyke.  Probably 
it  was  due  to  the  absorption  of  the  English  in  the  conflicts 
of  the  ninth  century  that  Rhodri  Mawr  found  it  possible  to 
extend  his  dominion  over  a  very  large  part  of  Wales,  and 
make  his  house  the  really  predominant  power  there. 

While  Merfyn  Frych  was  still  reigning,  some  cessation 
of  Danish  attack  enabled  Burchred,  king  of  Mercia,  to  turn 
his  attention  to  the  Welsh.  In  844  he  engaged  and  defeated 
them  at  a  place  called  Cetytt  in  the  Brut ;  Merfyn  was 
slain,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Rhodri,  who  came  to 
be  known  as  "  the  Great  "  (Mawr).  With  his  accession  we 
reach  ground  somewhat  surer. 

By  the  death  of  Merfyn  he  had  become  head  of  the 
line  of  Gwyned.  Afterwards,  by  his  marriage  with  a 
daughter  of  Meurig  ab  Dyfnwafton,  he  became  lord  of 
Ceredigion  and  Ystrad  Towi  on  the  death  of  her  brother 
Gwgan ;  ^  and  he  is  said  to  have  become  possessed  of  Powys 
through  his  grandmother,  Nest,  sister  and  heiress  of  Congen 
ab  Cadeii,  king  of  Powys.^  Whether  Rhodri  ever  directly 
ruled  over  Powys  is  not  clear,^  but  it  is  certain  that  his 
dominions  included  the  rest  of  Wales  except  Dyfed, 
Morgannwg,  Gwent,  and  the  principalities  roughly  corre- 
sponding to  the  modern  Brecknockshire  and  Radnor.  It 
is,  of  course,  possible  that  he  may  have  exercised  some  kind 
of  over-lordship  even  over  these  territories.  We  know  so 
little  of  Rhodri  that  it  is  not  very  plain  why  he  came  to  be 

1  See  Jesus  Coll.  MS.   20:   "Cymmrodor,"  viii.  87;  Harleian  MS.  3859; 
*'  Cymmrodor,"  ix.,  p.  180  :  Pedigree  xxvi. 

2  The  death  of  a  Cadeli,  king  of  Powys,  is  recorded  in  the  "Brut,"  s.a. 
808.     See  Pedigree  xxvii.  in  **  Y  Cymmrodor,"  ix.,  p.  181. 

^  In  823  the  Saxons  took  possession  of  Powys.    **  Brut,"  s.a.     The  "  Brut  ' 
is  silent  as  to  Powys  from  this  time  to  the  Noiman  Conquest. 


144  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

called  the  Great,^  unless  it  be  from  the  fact  that  he  ruled 
over  an  area  much  larger  than  any  then  recent  predecessor, 
and  that  this,  coupled  with  military  successes  of  which  we 
have  no  sure  evidence,  made  him  an  exceptionally  powerful 
king  among  his  contemporaries.  He  had  continual  con- 
flicts with  the  Mercians  and  the  Danes.  According  to  Irish 
authorities,  he  slew  a  Danish  chief  called  Horm  in  855. 
The  end  of  his  reign  was  clouded  in  misfortune ;  for  in  SyS 
he  sustained  a  great  defeat  at  the  hands  of  the  English,  and 
was  obliged  to  flee  to  Ireland.  Returning  in  the  following 
year,  he  and  his  brother  Gwriad  were  slain  by  the  Saxons.^ 

Great  importance  is  attached  by  the  later  writers  on 
Welsh  history  to  Rhodri's  reign,  for  with  it,  or  its  con- 
clusion, is  associated  the  division  of  Wales  into  the  three 
kingdoms  we  have  mentioned  —  Gwyned,  Powys,  and 
Deheubarth.  Some  say  that  Rhodri  made  the  division 
during  his  lifetime,  but  the  earlier  authorities  attribute  the 
division  to  his  sons  after  his  death.  The  text  of  Caradog 
of  ILancarvan  says  that  Rhodri  had  divers  sons,  as  Anarawd, 
to  whom  he  gave  Aberffraw  with  North  Wales  ;  Cadett,  the 
second  son,  to  whom  he  gave  Dinevwr  with  South  Wales,  also 
took  Powys  land  by  force  from  his  brethren  after  the  death  of 
Merfyn,  the  third  son,  to  whom  his  father  had  given  the  same. 

Powel,  in  his  note,  amplifies  this  statement  in  substance 
thus :  ^  Rhodri  was  the  undoubted  owner  and  possessor  of 
all  Wales  ;  *  Gwyned  he  had  through  Esyttt,-^  his  mother ; 

*  This  is  a  convenient  place  for  our  calling  attention  to  the  excellent 
biographies  of  Welsh  princes  in  the  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography.'' 
They  deserve  the  attention  of  all  students  of  Welsh  history.  Most  of  them 
are  written  by  Professor  Tout,  Professor  J.  E.  Lloyd,  or  Mr.  Lleufer 
Thomas. 

2  "Brut,"  s.a.  877.  "Ann.  Camb."  877.  According  to  the  latter,  Gwriad 
was  Rhodri's  son. 

3  "Car.  of  Lan.,"  p.  35. 

*  This  is  certainly  not  true  if  the  term  Wales  is  used  to  cover  the  present 
thirteen  counties. 

°  Seemingly  the  Etthil  of  the  pedigree  cited  above  is  meant. 


CADWALADR    TO  NORMAN   CONQUEST,     145 

Demetia,  or  South  Wales,  came  to  him  by  his  wife, 
daughter  of  Meurig  ab  Dyfnwal,  king  of  Ceredigion  ;  Powys 
he  had  by  Nest,  his  grandmother.  These  three  dominions 
he  appointed  under  their  meares  and  bounds,  with 
a  princeHe  house  in  every  of  them,  which  he  named 
"y  tair  talaeth,"  and  left  the  same  unto  three  of  his 
sons,  Anarawd,  Cadett,  and  Merfyn,  which  were  called 
"  y  tri  thywysog  taleithiog  "  (the  three  diademed  princes).^ 
The  historians  of  Wales  generally  accept  this  account,  often 
speak  as  if  the  division  amounted  to  a  splitting  up  of  all, 
Cymru,  and  deplore  it  as  an  impolitic  act. 

There  is,  however,  something  wrong  in  the  aspect  it  gives 
to  the  division  of  Rhodri's  dominions,  whether  it  took  place 
during  his  life  or  after  his  death.  Gwyned"  and  Powys  (as 
we  have  seen)  were  separate  kingdoms  before  Rhodri's  time. 
So  also  were  Dyfed  and  Ceredigion,  as  we  know  from  the 
Welsh  chronicles,  which  are,  however,  silent  as  to  any  divi- 
sion by  Rhodri.^  The  principalities  or  kingdoms  of  the  south- 
eastern part  of  Wales — Morgannwg,  Gwent,  Brecheiniog, 
Buattt,  and  smaller  areas — clearly  preserved  separate  orga- 
nisations. The  evidence  of  Asser  confirms  this.^  In  the  "  Life 
of  Alfred"  he  says  that  King  Hemeid,with  all  the  inhabitants 
of  Demetia,  compelled  by  the  violence  of  Rhodri's  six  sons,^ 
submitted  to  Alfred.     Howel  also,  son   of  Rhys  king  of 

^  Giraldus,  writing  more  than  300  years  after  Rhodri's  death,  gives  the 
tripartite  division  as  ancient,  and  says  that  Rhodri  was  the  cause  of  the 
division.     "  Descriptio,"  i.  c.  2. 

-  S.a.  796,  we  hearof  Maredud",  king  of  Dyfed;  s.a.  798,  of  Caradog,  king  of 
Gwyned  ;  s.a.  808,  of  Rein,  king  of  Dyfed,  and  Cadert,  king  of  Powys ;  s.a. 
819,  of  kingdoms  of  Dyfed  ;  s.a.  817,  of  the  kingdom  of  Rhuvoniog  ;  s.a.  823, 
of  the  kingdom  of  Powys  ;  s.a.  848,  of  Ithel,  king  of  Gwent ;  s.a.  856,  of 
lonathal,  prince  of  Abergeleu  ;  s.a.  871,  of  Gwgawn  ab  Meurug,  king  of  Cere- 
digion and  the  Vale  of  Towi. 

'  "We  are  aware  that  the  worth  and  genuineness  of  Asser's  "  Life"  have  been 
seriously  attacked,  and  give  the  extract  with  this  caution. 

*  We  can  only  find  four  mentioned  in  the  "  Brut."  See  the  genealogical 
t'able  at  the  end  of  this  chapter. 

W.P.  L 


146  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

Gleguising,  and  Brocmail  and  Fernmail,  sons  of  Meurig, 
kings  of  Gwent,  compelled  by  the  violence  and  tyranny  of 
Earl  Ethered  of  the  Mercians,  sought  his  protection  ;  while 
Elised,  son  of  Teudyr,  king  of  Brecknock,  compelled  by  the 
force  of  the  same  sons  of  Rhodri,  sought  the  government  of 
^Elfred.  Now,  of  course,  it  is  quite  possible  that  Rhodri, 
after  adding  Keredigion  and  Ystrad  Towi  to  the  parcels  of 
his  immediate  dominions,  had  obtained  some  kind  of  sub- 
mission from  the  kings  or  princes  of  the  smaller  areas  here 
mentioned,  and  that  he  was  recognised  as  king  of  all  the 
Britons  or  all  Cymru.  But  it  is  certain  that  he  was  not 
possessed  of  all  the  Cymric  land.  He  was  king  of  Gwyned, 
with  seemingly  Aberffraw  as  his  home  demesne,  and  of 
Deheubarth,  with  Dinevwr  as  its  chief  seat ;  but  for  the 
notion  that  Deheubarth  was  equivalent  to  what  we  now  call 
South  Wales  there  is  no  warrant  at  all,  and  no  kingdom  of 
Deheubarth  is  referred  to  in  the  chronicles,  though  the  word 
Deheubarthwyr  is  used.  Dinevwr  seems  to  have  been  the 
palace  of  the  king  of  Ceredigion  and  Ystrad  Towi,  which 
roughly  corresponded  to  the  present  Cardiganshire  and 
the  greater  part  of  the  modern  Carmarthenshire.  Neither 
Cidweli  nor  Gwyr  (answering  to  Gower  in  Glamorganshire) 
which  are  both  mentioned  in  the  Brut,  are  shown  with  any 
certainty  to  have  been  part  of  Rhodri's  dominions  as  matter 
of  right ;  while  we  find  that  Dyfed,  Morgannwg,  Gwent,  and 
Brecheiniog,  and  probably  other  smaller  areas,  were  under 
other  rulers.  Some  time  afterwards  the  line  of  Dyfed 
qame  to  an  end,  and  the  district  was  incorporated  in 
some  fashion,  at  any  rate  temporarih',  into  the  kingdom  of 
Dinevwr  or  Deheubarth  ;  but  its  subsequent  history — its 
rapid  development  into  a  county  palatine,  without  any 
apparent  violent  breach  of  the  continuity  of  its  story — 
seems  to  show  the  survival  of  a  separate  organisation. 
Morganwg,  Brecheiniog,  and  Gwent  remained  as  "separate 
entities,"  if  we  may  use  a  modern  phrase,  and  by  a  gradual 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     147 

process  became   counties   under   the   English   or    Norman 
system. 

Though  there  is  no  early  authority  on  the  question,  and 
though  the  complexion  given  to  the  transaction  by  Caradog 
is  probably  wrong,  yet  there  is  ground  for  thinking  that 
something  unusual  did  take  place  in  regard  to  the  devolution 
of  the  regal  rights  upon  the  death  of  Rhodri.  The  Cymric 
kingship  was  originally,  and  probably  down  to  a  late  time, 
not  a  personal  monarchy,  but  a  tribal  or  family  chieftaincy^ 
The  so-called  king  was  the  chief  of  the  royal  family 
^penkenedl)  in  whom  the  tribal  sovereignty  was  vested. 
If  we  may  assume  that  the  laws  of  Howel  Da  apply  to 
earlier  times,  then  we  should  expect  that  on  Rhodri's  death 
Anarawd,  the  eldest  son,  would  become  chief  (if  he  had  the 
necessary  legal  qualifications  of  a  penkenedl)  without  any 
division  of  the  family  dominions  of  a  permanent  character, 
though  Cadett  (^-^O  might  be  made  arglwyd  (lord)  of  a 
particular  district  of  the  family  lands  for  reasons  of  con- 
venience. Then  on  the  death  of  Anarawd  one  would 
expect  his  eldest  son  or  some  other  member  of  the 
cenedl  (kindred)  to  become  chief  and  rule  over  the  whole 
dominion.  In  fact,  however,  the  devolution  of  Rhodri's 
possessions  was  different.  Anarawd  became  king  of 
Gwyned,  and  handed  it  on  to  his  son  Idwal  ;  and  Cadelt 
became  king  of  Deheubarth,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
son  Howel.  Merfyn  does  not  seem  to  have  transmitted 
any  claims  to  Powys.  The  two  former  undoubtedly  founded 
the  princely  lines  of  Gwyned  and  Deheubarth.  The  facts, 
therefore,  seem  to  show  that  the  succession  to  Rhodri's 
dominions  did  not  proceed  in  the  ordinary  wa}' ;  and, 
perhaps,  what  took  place  may  have  marked  a  stage  in  the 
change  from  a  tribal  chieftaincy  to  a  territorial  sovereignty. 

Upon  the  death  of  Rhodri  his  eldest  son  Anarawd,  as  we 
have  said,  succeeded  to  Gwyned  ;    Cadett  to  Deheubarth, 

^  See  below,  pp.  202-3. 

L    2 


148  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

and  perhaps  oVIerfyn  to  Powys.  Of  the  south-eastern 
principalities  we  learn  practically  nothing  on  trustworthy 
authority.  No  grave  internal  troubles  seem  to  have  occurred 
during  Anarawd's  long  reign  of  thirty-eight  years.  In 
880,  three  years  after  his  accession,  there  was  an  English 
invasion,  and  Anarawd  defeated  the  Saxon  enemy  "for 
God  to  avenge  Rhodri."  ^  The  battle  was  fought  near 
Conway,  and  came  to  be  referred  to  as  "  Dial  Rhodri " 
(Rhodri's  revenge). 

During  the  later  years  of  the  ninth  century  the  house 
of  Rhodri  was  undoubtedly  the  predominant  power 
in  Wales.  We  have  seen  how  the  kings  outside  the  pale 
of  Rhodri's  possessions  were  compelled  by  the  oppression 
of  his  "  six  sons "  to  seek  the  protection  of  Alfred  the 
Great ;  but  now  Anarawd  himself,  with  a  brother  (seemingly 
Cadelt  of  Deheubarth),  abandoned  close  relations  with 
the  Northumbrians  and  came  into  the  great  king's  pre- 
sence and  sought  his  friendship.  He  was  received  by  the 
king  with  honour  as  his  son  by  the  Bishop's  confirmation, 
and  was  presented  with  many  gifts.-  Probably  Anarawd 
at  first  pursued  a  policy  of  friendship  and  alliance  with 
the  people  of  Northern  Britain  as  against  the  Mercians 
and  West-Saxons,  as  he  did  with  the  Danes  for  a  time. 
His  submission  to  Alfred,  and  that  of  his  brother,  no 
doubt  paved  the  way  to  that  usually  friendly  relation 
which  existed  between  the  chief  rulers  of  Wales  and 
the  kings  of  the  house  of  yElfred  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  tenth  century.  We  know  not  when  Anarawd 
and  yElfred  met ;  not  even  whether  it  was  before  or  after 
a  temporary  quarrel  with  Cadett  which  led,  in  893,  to  an 
inroad  into  Ceredigion  and  the  Vale  of  Towi  by  the  North- 
Welsh  prince.     Probably,  however,  the  meeting  took  place 


1   "Brut,"  s.a.  877  ;   "Ann.  Cam.,"  877. 
3  Asser,  M.  H.  B.,  p.  488. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     149 

after  the  defeat  of  the  Danes  under  Hasting  by  /Elfred 
in  897.^ 
~  The  remaining  years  of  Anarawd's  reign  were  quite 
barren  of  any  events  of  importance.  He  died  in  915,  and 
was  succeeded  by  his  son  Idwal  Voel.  Cadett  had  pre- 
deceased his  brother,  and  Howel  afterwards  called  f)a 
(the  good)  became  king  of  Deheubarth,  and  later  on  of 
Gwyned"  as  well.  Under  the  rule  of  Idwal  and  Howel  the 
Cymry  enjoyed  unwonted  peace."  The\'  were  contem- 
poraries of  Eadward  the  Elder  and  yEthelstan,  and  thus 
lived  when  the  power  of  the  house  of  Alfred  was  at  its 
greatest  height.  Howel  throughout  his  whole  career 
remained  ^  on  peaceful  terms  with  the  English  court,  and 
so  far  as  we  know  (except  in  regard  to  a  dispute  with 
Morgan  Hen  of  Morgannwg)  with  the  other  Welsh  princes. 
Both  Idwal  and  Howel  did  homage  to  the  English  kings, 
and  seem  to  have  behaved  as  faithful  vassals. 

To  appreciate  the  significance  of  the  isolated  facts  which 
we  can  gather  concerning  Idwal  and  Howel  it  is  necessary 
to  bear  in  mind  the  change  that  had  been  wrought  in 
England  by  the  settlement  of  the  Danes.  By  the  peace  of 
Wedmore  England  north  of  the  Thames  had  been  divided 
by  a  line  roughly  drawn  from  north  to  south  from  the 
Ribble  to  the  upper  valley  of  the  Thames.  This  involved 
the  division  of  the  ancient  and  important  kingdom  of 
Mercia  into  an  English  and  Danish  Mercia.     The  former 

^  Green,  "  Conquest  of  England, "  pp.  172-3,  183  ;  "  Eng.  Chvon.,''  s.a.  897, 
The  fact,  however,  that  Gwyned  and  Deheubarth  escaped  the  ravages  of  the 
Northmen  in  894  suggests  that  the  house  of  Rhodri  was  then  in  alliance  with 
them. 

"  In  the  "  Brut  "  only  four  battles  are  mentioned  between  914  and  948  : — 
914.  The  people  of  Dublin  (i.e.,  Norsemen)  made  a  descent  on  Mon. 
919.  A  battle  took  place  at  Dinas  Newyd.     (Ann.  Cam.,  921.) 
935.   The  battle  of  Brun  took  place.      (Ann.  Cam.,  938.) 
944.  Ystrat  Clut  (Strath  Clyde)  was  devastated  by  the  Saxons.     (Ann. 
Cam.,  946.) 
^  At  any  rate,  after  the  first  five  years  of  his  reign. 


150  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

was  a  stretch  of  country  from  the  Ribble  to  the  Thames 
and  the  Avon,  and  it  seems  clear  that  it  was  one  ot 
^^Ifred's  objects  to  separate  the  Danes  from  the  Welsh 
by  this  English  Mercia.  At  the  beginning  of  the  tenth 
century  this  remnant  of  the  older  Mercia  was  ruled  by  the 
Ealdorman  ^thelred  and  his  wife  yEthelflaed,  and  after 
the  death  of  the  former,  by  the  latter,  the  celebrated  "  Lady 
of  Mercia." 

No  marked  change  took  place  in  regard  to  the  Welsh 
principalities  during  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  or  earlier 
part  of  the  tenth  century.  There  is  nothing  to  show 
that  either  Idwal  Voel  or  Howel  extended  his  dominions 
over  Morgannwg,  Brecheiniog,  Buattt,  or  Gwent.  Of  Powys 
we  hear  nothing,  but  it  may  be  presumed  with  probability 
that  the  lordships  into  which,  as  we  gather  from  later 
sources,  it  was  divided  were  in  some  sort  of  subjection  to 
Mercia.  As  to  Deheubarth,  it  is  likely  that  Howel  became 
possessed  of  Dyfed,  for  he  married  Elen,  daughter  of 
Loumarc  ab  Hymeid,  king  of  Dyfed.  This  Hymeid  was 
seemingly  the  king  of  D}'fed  who  sought  the  protection 
of  yElfred.^  We  hear  no  more  of  kings  of  Dyfed,  though 
it  seems  to  have  kept  a  separate  character.  On  the  east 
Howel  extended  his  rule  peaceably  over  Kidweli  and  Gwyr, 
and  thus  became  the  immediate  neighbour  of  Morgan 
Hen  (king  of  Morgannwg),  for  we  find  that  the  undoubted 
possessions  of  Maredud  ab  Owain — the  grandson  of  Howel 
Da — included  those  two  districts  in  addition  to  Ceredigion 
and  Ystrad  Towi.^  Gwyned  certainly  included  Mon,  the 
present  shire  of  Carnarvon,  and  part  of  Merionethshire,  and 

^  See  above,  p.  145.  In  pedigree  ii.  appended  to  the  "  Ann."  ("V  Cymm- 
lodor,"  ix.  p.  171),  Elen  is  daughter  of  loumarc  (a  mistake  for  Loumarc), 
son  of  Himeyt.     Loumarc  is  the  Welsh  lywarch. 

-  The  '*Brut,"  s.a.  991,  with  a  videlicet,  describes  the  kingdoms  of 
Maredud  as — Dyfed  and  Keredigion,  and  Gower  and  Kydweli.  Ystrad 
Towi  is  not  specifically  mentioned,  but  probably  it  was  covered  by  the  term 
"  kingdom  of  Keredigion." 


CADVVALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     151 

probably  North  Wales  up  to  the  Dee,  but  at  this  time  it 
did  not  comprise  Chester.^ 

Pursuing  the  policy  adopted  by  yElfred,  of  completely 
interposing  an  English  kingdom  between  the  Welsh 
and  the  Danes,  the  rulers  of  Mercia  early  in  the  tenth 
century  proceeded  to  re-fortify  that  city.  Since  its  sur- 
render to  ^thelfrith  in  616  the  city  had  lain  waste  and 
desolate.  Situate  on  the  Dee,  being  the  point  of  junction 
of  ancient  ways,  and  commanding  the  old  coast  route 
from  England  to  Anglesey,  it  was  a  place  of  military 
importance,  and  its  effectual  occupation  cut  off  the  shortest 
communication  between  the  Welsh  of  Gwyned  and  the 
Danish  Mercians.  Its  Roman  walls  still  existed  in  a 
damaged  condition,  and  little  exertion  must  have  been 
necessary  to  make  it  a  comparatively  strongly-defended 
centre  of  operations.  In  907  the  Ealdorman  of  Mercia 
"  renewed  "  Chester,  though  we  are  not  informed  as  to  the 
extent  of  the  new  fortifications  he  erected.  A  small 
settlement  was  made,  and  a  secular  house  of  St.  Werburgh 
was  founded  in  the  city.  The  event  was  of  consequence 
in  W^elsh  history,  and  henceforth  Chester  played  a  con- 
siderable part  in  the  military  and  the  economic  fortunes  of 
the  men  of  Gwyned  and  Powys. 

Bearing  these  general  considerations  in  mind,  we  now 
return  to  the  personal  history  of  Idwal  and  Howel. 

Few  facts  are  known  concerning  Idwal's  reign  over 
Gwyned.  In  922,  when  Eadward  the  Elder  had  subdued 
all  Mercia  (Danish  as  well  as  English),  Idwal,  together  with 
Howel  Da  and  a  Welsh  king  called  Clydawc,-  received  him  as 
their  lord,-^  and  the  two  former  did  homage  to  ^thelstan 
in  926^  at  Hereford  and,  it  is  said,  rendered  tribute  to  him. 

^  We  can  find  no  evidence  of  a  re-peopling  of  Chester  by  the  Welsh. 
-  We  know  not  where  he  reigned.     The  death  of  a  Clydog  is  recorded  in  the 
"Brut,"  s.a.  917,  and  in  "Ann.  Cam.,"  s.a.  919. 
^  "  Eng.  Chron.,"  s.a.  922. 
■*  "Eng.  Chron,,"  s.a.  926. 


152  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

A  word  or  two  ouo;ht  here  to  be  said  as  to  the  submission 
of  the  Welsh  kings  to  these  kings  of  the  EngHsh.  There  can 
be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  entries  in  the  English 
chronicles,  confirmed  as  they  are  by  authentic  charters 
and  by  the  documents  relating  to  the  litigation  between 
Howel  Da  and  Morgan  Hen  referred  to  below,  recount  real 
historical  events.  But  there  is  danger  of  misunderstanding 
what  took  place.  The  kings  of  the  English  did  not  by 
reason  of  the  commendation  of  the  Welsh  kings  obtain  the 
right  of  directly  interfering  in  the  affairs  of  the  Welsh 
kingdoms.  Though  Idwal  and  Howel  became  his  men,  their 
subjects — under-kings  or  lords  or  uchelw\T — stood  in  no 
legal  relation  to  the  English  king.  The  effect  of  the  com- 
mendation was  that  the  over-lord  took  upon  himself  the 
duty  of  protecting  his  vassals  from  their  enemies,  while  on 
their  side  they  incurred  the  obligation  of  fighting  against 
their  lord's  enemies.  The  tie  was  necessarily,  in  those  times, 
a  loose  one,  and  was  often  broken.^  The  reality  of  the 
relationship  in  the  first  half  of  the  tenth  century  is  shown 
by  the  attendance  of  the  Welsh  princes  at  the  meetings  of 
the  Witenagemot.  If  we  can  trust  a  charter  (which  is,  how- 
ever, of  doubtful  authenticity),  Idwal  was  taking  part  in  the 
proceedings  of  the  English  assembly  at  Exeter  in  928.- 
That  Howel  Da  attended  these  meetings  on  several 
occasions  is  certain.  The  silence  of  the  Brut  about  Idwal 
till  943  affords  some  indication  that  nothing  of  any  import- 
ance took  place  in  Gwyned"  between  926  and  that  time  ; 
but  as  in  that  year  Idwal  and  his  brother  Elised  were  killed 
by  the  English,'^  we  may  presume  that  Idwal  had  revolted, 
or  perhaps  had  refused  to  pay  tribute,  but  there  is  no 
certainty  about  the  matter. 

We  have  somewhat  fuller  information  about   Howel  Da, 

^  See  as  to  the  effect  of  "commendation  "  Freeman,  N.  C.  i.,  pp.  131-2. 

*  See  cliarter,  "Cod.  Dipl.,"  iioi. 

3  "Brut,"  s.a.  941  ;  "Ann.  Cam.,"j.a.  943. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     153 

though  of  the  earlier  years — that  is,  the  years  before  the 
submission  to  Eadward  the  Elder — we  know  nothing. 
Whether  or  not  he  took  part  in  the  actions  of  Dinas  Newyd 
or  of  Brun  we  cannot  determine.  After  doing  homage 
to  ^thelstan  he  is  said  to  have  made  a  pilgrimage  to 
Rome.^ 

There  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  this,  but  if  he  did  so  we 
may  infer  that  there  was  an  unusually  stable  position  of  things 
in  Wales,  and  no  internal  events  seem  to  have  made  such 
a  journey  necessary.  Upon  his  return  he  resumed  peace- 
able exercise  of  his  regal  rights.  From  that  time  to  the  year 
before  his  death  he  was  a  frequent  attendant  at  the  meetings 
of  the  Witenagemot  of  his  English  over-lords.  We  know 
from  his  subscription  of  charters  that  he  did  so  in  931, 
932,  933,  934,  937,  946,  and  949.^  In  the  earlier  charters 
he  attests  as  "  sub-regulus  "  ;  in  the  later  ones  he  subscribes 
as  "  regulus  "  and  "  rex."  Perhaps  the  difference  is  due  to 
his  having  on  Idwal's  death  succeeded  to  Gwyned  and 
becoming  recognised  as  king  of  the  Britons  or  of  the 
Cymry. 

The  nature  of  Howel's  relations  with  the  English  kings 
is  made  clearer  by  the  account,  preserved  in  the  Book  of 
Llandaff,  of  a  dispute    between    him    and    Morgan    Hen, 

^  "Brut,"  s.a.  926;    "Ann.  Cam.,"  s.a.  928.     The  date  is  uncertain;  see 
below,  p.  182-3. 

-  The  following  are  the  dates  of  the  charters,  and  the  references  to  them  in 
Kemble's  "Cod.^Diplom."  :— 

21  July,  931  ("Cod.  Dipl."  v.  199). 
12  Nov.,  931  (/<^.,  ii.  173). 
30  Aug.,  932  {id.,  V.  208). 

15  Dec,  933  {id.,  ii.  194). 
28  May,   934  {id.,  ii.  196). 

16  Dec,    934  {id.,  V.  217). 

937  {id.,  ii.  203). 

946  and  949  {id.,  ii.  269,  292,  296). 
There  are  also  subscriptions  of  Howel's  to  doubtful  charters  of  the  17th  June, 
930,  and  the  ist  Jan.  and  21st  Dec,  935  ("Cod.  Dipl."  ii.   170;   v.  222; 
ii.  203). 


154  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

king  of  Morgannwg.  The  entry  in  the  Book  is  not,  however, 
free  from  ambiguity.  It  says  Eadgar  and  Howel  Da  and 
Morgan  Hen  were  kings  of  all  Britain,  and  those  two  were 
subject  to  King  Eadgar,  and  Morgan  enjoyed  the  whole  of 
Glamorgan  in  peace  and  quietness,  but  Howel  would  take 
from  him  Ystradyew  and  Ewyas  if  he  could.  Then  Eadgar 
summoned  his  under-kings  and  Morgan's  son,  Owain,  before 
him,  and  having  examined  the  matter  in  dispute,  gave 
judgment  in  favour  of  Morgan,  and  with  the  common  assent 
atid  testimony  of  all  the  archbishops,  bishops,  abbots,  earls^ 
and  barons  of  all  England  and  Wales  granted  to  Owain,  the 
son  of  Morgan  Hen,  "  the  said  two  districts  of  Ystradyew 
and  Ewyas,  declared  by  name  to  be  in  the  diocese  of  Llan- 
daff,  as  his  own  proper  inheritance."  ^  There  are  several 
points  of  difficulty  connected  with  this  document — points 
which  we  do  not  affect  to  solve.  Eadgar,  though  he  had 
ruled  in  Mercia  before,  was  not  king  of  England  till  958, 
some  eight  years  after  Howel's  death.  Morgan  Hen  survived 
Howel,  for  he  was  a  witness  to  a  charter  of  Eadwig's  in  956, 
together  with  Eadgar,  sub-regulus  of  Mercia.  There  is  a 
Welsh  version  of  the  same  Latin  document  to  be  found  in 
the  Myvyrian  Archaiology,  among  the  collection  called 
"  Y  cwta  cyfarwyd  o  Forganwg."  It  is  clearly  impossible 
that  Howel  could  have  appeared  before  Eadgar,  king  of 
England.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  the  dispute  may 
have  arisen  during  the  time  of  Howel,  and,  lingering  on  for 
years,  may  have  been  decided  by  Eadgar.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  dispute  ma)'  have 
been  decided,  not  by  Eadgar,  but  by  Eadward  the  Elder, 
and  that  the  mistake  may  have  occurred  in  the  transcription 
of  the  account  of  the  dispute  and  of  the  grant,  especially  as 
we  find  it  expressly  stated  that  it  was  inserted  in  the  Book 

1  "Book  of  Llan  Dav  "  (Oxford.  1893),  p.  248;  "Liber  Landavensis  " 
(Llandovery,  1870),  p.  237;  Palgrave,  "English  Commonwealth,"  v.  2, 
p.  ccxliv. 


CADWALADR  TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     155 

of  l.andaff  because  the  paper  on  which  it  had  been  written  ' 
had  nearly  perished  from  its  great  age.^ 

It  is,  however,  on  his  legislation  that  the  fame  of  Howel 
©a  chiefly  depends,  for  to  him  is  attributed  the  setting 
down  in  writing  of  the  laws  and  customs  of  the  Cymry. 
The  preamble  prefixed  to  each  of  the  codes  that  have 
been  handed  down  to  us  in  substance  (though  in  varying 
language)  records  that  Howel  summoned  four  men  from 
each  cantref  in  his  dominions  to  the  Ty  Gwyn,  which  is 
identified  by  far-reaching  tradition  with  Whitland  in  Car- 
marthenshire. We  deal  with  these  laws  in  the  following 
chapter.  Though  there  is  no  mention  in  the  Brut  of  the 
summoning  of  this  meeting  at  Ty  Gwyn,  there  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  that  the  preambles  of  the  Code  preserve  a 
historical  transaction.-  It  is  probable  that  the  compilation 
of  the  work  took  place  after  Howel  had  becomiC  king  of 
Gwyned  upon  Idwal's  death,  and  therefore  some  time 
between  943  and  950.  These  facts  are  all  that  we  can 
glean  upon  trustworthy  evidence  concerning  a  king  who 
was,  to  use  the  words  of  a  later  writer,  "  for  his  godlie 
behaviour,  discreet  and  just  rule,  beloved  of  men."  The}^ 
are  too  few  to  enable  us  to  draw  a  vivid  picture  of  his 
character  or  personality,  but  they  corroborate  the  view  of 
him  popularly  entertained  among  the  Welsh  people,  and 
justify  us  in  inferring  that  he  was  an  able  and  politic  prince, 
under  whom  Wales  enjoyed  a  period  of  unusual  repose  and 
prosperity. 

The  peace  that  Howel  had  kept  disappeared  at  his  death. 
There  was  war  at  once  between  his  sons  (Owain,  Dyfnwal, 
Rhodri,  and  Edwyn)  and  the  sons  of  Idwal  Voel  (leuaf 
and   I  ago),  and  the  eighty-nine  years  that  elapsed  from  the 

^  Palgrave,  //^/  supra,  says  that  according  to  usual  custom  the  Welsh  scrilie 
omitted  the  final  d  and  substituted  a  g  for  a  w,  relying,  he  observes,  on  the 
authority  of  a  genealogical  MS.  ("  Bibl.  Harl.,"  4181). 

-  See  the  next  chapter. 


156  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

commencement  of  this  conflict  to  the  accession  of  Gruffyd 
ab  ILewelyn  in  1039  form  a  time  of  almost  inextricable 
confusion.  In  a  battle  fought  at  Carno  in  the  very  year 
that  Howel  died  his  sons  sustained  a  defeat  at  the  hands 
of  leuaf  and  lago,  who,  setting  aside  their  elder  brother, 
obtained  joint  possession  of  Gwyned.^  In  952  they 
ravaged  Dyfed  twice,  and  slew  Dyfnwatlon,  who  was 
probably  the  prince  of  that  region.^  The  sons  of  Howel 
in  954  invaded  North  Wales,  but  were  again  apparently 
unsuccessful,  being  beaten  in  an  engagement  at  [Lanrwst,-^ 
by  the  sons  of  Idwal,  who  thereupon  devastated  Ceredigion — 
whence,  however,  it  is  said  they  were  driven  back  with 
great  slaughter.*  After  this  there  was  an  interval  of  peace 
between  Gwyned  and  Deheubarth,  but  raids  of  the  Danes 
gave  some  trouble. 

There  was  a  quarrel  with  the  English  in  965,  and  Alvryd 
invaded  and  ravaged  Gwyned" ;  while  in  970  Godfrey  son 
of  Harold  subdued  and  for  a  time  held  Mon.'  Before 
this  latter  event,  however,  the  brothers  of  Gwyned"  had 
quarrelled.  lago  seized  leuaf  and  caused  him  to  be  blinded 
and  then  hanged.  The  relations  between  the  Welsh 
princes  and  Eadgar  (958 — 975)  were  fairly  peaceable, 
though  there  seems  to  have  been  an  invasion  of  Gwyned 
in  968,^  but  the  English  hold  on  Wales  was  gradually 
relaxing.  No  fewer  than  four  Welsh  princes  attended  a 
W^itenagemot  held  by  Eadred.  During  Eadgar's  time, 
so  far  as  we  can  tell,  the  Welsh  no  longer  attended  the 
English  Court,  and  their  dependence  on  the  English  Crown, 

1   "Brut,"  s.a.  948,  950,  951,  952. 

-  He  may  Iiave  been  Dyfnwal  ab  Howel  Da;  but  the  ••Brut"  places  the 
death  of  this  Dyfnwal  in  the  following  year. 

3  "  Brut,"  s.a.  952. 

■*  Gwentian  "  Brut  "  (Myv.  Arch.  ii..  468  et  seq.). 

'"  "Brut,"  s.a.  965  and  s.a.  970. 

^  "Ann.  Cam.,"  s.a.  968.  It  is  possil)le  this  is  the  same  invasion  as  that 
by  Alvryd  noted  in  the  "  Brut,"  s.a.  965. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     157 

which  had  been  real  enough,  as  we  have  seen,  earlier  in  the 
century,  was  now  becoming  nominal  as  the  power  of  the 
house  of  Alfred  was  waning.^ 

In  later  chronicles  it  is  said  that  Eadgar  went  to  Chester 
and  summoned  eight  under-kings — including  five  Welsh 
princes — to  his  presence,  that  they  did  homage  and  swore 
fealty,  and  that  as  a  mark  of  their  subordination  he  caused 
his  vassals  to  row  him  in  his  barge  on  the  Dee  from  the 
palace  to  the  monastery  of  John  the  Baptist,  and  after 
divine  service  there  back  to  the  palace.-  Possibly  the 
invasion  of  Gwyned  mentioned  above  may  have  led  to 
a  renewal  of  oaths  of  fealty  and  payment  of  tribute ;  but 
this  twelfth-century  story  cannot  be  accepted  as  certain 
history,  and  a  similar  observation  must  be  made  as  to  the 
imposition  by  Eadgar  of  a  tribute  of  three  hundred  wolves.^ 

Returning  to  the  affairs  of  Gwyned,  the  murdered 
leuaf  had  left  a  son  called  Howel,  who  was  not  long  in 
avenging  his  father's  death,  for  in  972  he  succeeded  in 
expelling  lago  and  taking  possession  of  Gwyned  in  his 
stead.  lago  was  captured  by  Danes  in  978,  and  we  hear 
of  him  no  more.^ 

Howel's  rule  was  soon  challenged,  for  the  cause  of  the 
defeated  chieftain  was  espoused  by  his  son  Kystenin,  and 
in  the  year  after  the  capture  of  his  father  he,  with  the  help- 
of  Godfrey  son  of  Harold  (of  whom  we  have  alread)' 
heard),    made    a    raid    on    ILeyn    (in    the    modern    South 

^  Green,  "  Conqu.  of  Eng.,"  p.  323.  There  is  one  charter  to  which  lago's 
name  (as  lacob)  appears  dated  at  Bath,  Whitsuntide,  966,  but  the  document 
is  suspect.     Kemble,  **Cod    Dipl.,"  519. 

2  "Will.  Malm.  Gest.  Reg."  (Hardy)  i.,  p.  251  ;  "Flor.  Wore."  (Thorpe) 
i.  142. 

^  "Will.  Malm.  Gest.  Reg."  (Hardy)  i.  251.  Palgrave  prints  a  charter  (the 
date  of  which  must  have  been  before  971,  since  one  of  the  subscribers,  Oscytel, 
died  in  that  year)  which  lukill  and  lacobus  attest.  "Eng.  Com."  ii., 
p.  ccliii.  They  may  have  been  leuaf  and  lago  ;  but  lukill  does  not  look  like- 
leuaf  at  all. 

^  The  dates  are  quite  uncertain.     See  "  Brut,"  s.a.  972  and  978. 


158  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

Carnarv'onshire)  and  Alon,  but  he  was  met  b}'  Howel  ab 
leuaf  at  Hirbarth,  and  fell  in  the  battle.^  Howel,  who 
acquired  (in  curious  antithesis  to  the  case  of  Howel  €)a) 
the  epithet  of  Drwg,  or  the  Bad,  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  attacked  by  other  Welsh  claimants  to  Gwyned ;  but 
the  Godfrey  son  of  Harold  (who  had  taken  the  side  of 
Cystenin,  as  we  have  seen)  still  vexed  the  Welsh  kingdom. 
In  981  he  ravaged  Dyfed,  and  in  the  next  year  Brecheiniog, 
and  the  territories  of  Einion  ab  Owain  ab  Howel  Da  were 
overrun  by  the  Saxons  under  Alvryd.  In  984  Howel  was 
killed  by  the  "  Saxons  through  treachery."  ~  He  left  two  sons 
— at  least — Maig,  who  was  killed  in  the  following  year,  and 
Cadwatton,  who  took  possession  of  Gwyned",  but  who  was 
almost  immediately  defeated  and  slain  ^  by  Maredud  ab 
Owain,  king  of  Deheubarth  (a  grandson  of  Howel  Da), 
who  played  a  considerable  part  for  the  next  few  years. 

We  must  now  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  affairs  of  Deheu- 
barth. Upon  Howel  Da's  death  Owain  and  his  three 
brothers  succeeded  to  that  kingdom,  but  failed  to  make 
good  whatever  claim  they  may  have  had  to  Gwyned"  as 
against  the  sons  of  Idwal.  Dyfnwal,  Rhodri,  and  Edwyn 
died  very  soon,*  and  Owain  reigned  alone  till  he  died  in 
987  or  989,-^  and  was  succeeded  by  the  Maredud  just 
mentioned. 

From  an  incidental  statement  in  the  Brut^  we  know  that 
Maredud's  possessions  included  Dyfed,  Ceredigion,  Gwyr, 
and  Kydweli,  and  no  doubt  Ystrad  Towi,  which  had  long 

'  •'  Brut,"  s.a.  979. 

-  "Brut,"  s.a.  984.      Probably,  however,  a  year  or  two  later. 

^  "Brut,"  s.a.  984. 

^  In  951  and  9^2,  according  to  llie  "  Brut.''     Probably  in  either  case  later. 

'"  "  Brut,"  s.a.  987.  In  "  Ann.  Cam.  "  O wain's  death  is  placed  in  the  next 
entry  after  987. 

^  "Brut,"  s.a.  991.  It  is  curious  that  this  is  pretty  nearly  the  kingdom  of 
Pr)-deri  ab  Pwytt,  as  described  at  the  end  of  the  story  of  Pwylt,  prince  of  Dyfed, 
in  the  '*  Mabinoi^ion."     See  Oxford  edition  of  the  Red  Book.  i.  25. 


CADWALADR    TO  NORMAN   CONQUEST.     159 

been  connected  with  Ceredigion.  Gwyr  may  have  passed 
from  Howel's  sons  on  his  death,  for  we  have  it  recorded 
that  Einion  ab  Owain,  his  grandson,  devastated  that  district 
twice — the  first  time,  according  to  the  Brut,  in  968,  and  the 
second  time  in  976.  Probably  Einion  was  extending  the 
family  territory  to  the  east,  and  under  his  father  Owain  was 
able  to  annex  some  of  the  smaller  lordships  or  areas  to 
Deheubarth.  We  hear  that  Brecheiniog  and  all  the  territory 
of  Einion  were  devastated  by  the  Saxons  in  982^ — an  entry 
which  seems  to  show  that  Einion's  territory  extended  to 
south-eastern  Wales.  The  year  after  this  raid  Einion  was 
l<illed  through  "the  treachery  of  the  nobles  of  Gwent."- 

Apart  from  such  exploits  as  may  have  been  performed  by 
Einion  and  Maredud,  the  only  events  of  Owain's  long  reign 
were  the  usual  raids  of  Danish  leaders,  and  some  conflicts 
with  the  English.  Of  his  relation  to  Powys  we  know 
nothing  certain.  We  may  conjecture  with  some  probability 
that  he  shared  some  of  the  qualities  of  his  father,  for  upon 
his  death  he  handed  on  to  Maredud  the  kingdom  of 
Deheubarth  with  its  area  undiminished,  and  before  that 
event,  as  we  have  recounted,  his  son  Maredud,  taking- 
advantage  of  the  fall  of  Howel  t)rwg,  had  founded  a  claim 
to  Gwyned  by  attacking  and  killing  that  king's  brother, 
Cadwatton  ab  leuaf 

Maredud  does  not  seem  to  have  been  able  to  obtain 
real  possession  of  Gwyned,  though  Caradog  places  him 
in  the  line  of   kings   or  princes   of  all  Wales.^     He   was 

1  **Brut,"  s.a.  982.      C/.  Ann.  Cam.  (Rolls  Series),  p.  20. 

"  '*  Brut,"  s.a.  983.  Gwent  was  still  farther  to  the  east,  and  l^eyond 
Morgannwg, 

3  We  may  conjecture,  too,  that  the  real  effect  of  Mareduct's  victory  over 
Cadwatton  ab  leuaf  was  to  create  a  kind  of  interregnum  in  Gwyned.  The 
student  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  fact  that  there  was  no  king  of  Gwyned  at 
any  particular  moment  did  not  disorganise  the  life  of  the  territory  as  the  want 
of  a  head  in  the  highly-centralised  systems  of  to-day  generally  does  now. 
Except  in  time  of  attack  from  without,  there  was  some  advantage  to  the  ordinary 
head  of  a  family,  for  the  king's  progresses,  etc.,  were  for  the  time  discontinued. 


i6o  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

chiefly  occupied  ''in  repelling  the  Danes  (to  whom  he  paid 
tribute  on  at  least  one  occasion),^  and  in  attacks  upon 
Gwyned  and  Morgannwg.-  It  is  said  he  ruled  Powys  in 
right  of  his  mother,  but  there  is  no  sufficient  authority  for 
this.^  However  this  may  be,  he  fairly  maintained  the 
prestige  of  the  house  of  Howel  Da  in  a  very  disturbed 
period,  and  died  a  natural  death  in  998  or  999,*  leaving 
only  one  child — a  daughter,  married  to  ILewelyn  ab  Seisyttt, 
who,  apparently  in  right  of  his  wife,  assumed  the  government 
of  Deheubarth. 

Ever  since  the  retreat  of  Maredud  from  Gwyned,  after 
his  victory  over  Cadwatton,  that  kingdom  had  been  in  a 
condition  of  extreme  confusion  ;  and  there  was  probably 
from  the  death  of  Cadwatton  ab  leuaf  to  lago  ab  Idwal's^ 
accession  a  kind  of  interregnum.^  Meurig  ab  Idwal  Voel 
(apparently  he  who  was  ousted  by  his  brothers  leuaf  and 
lago)  "fell  sick"  and  died,^  but  he  left  issue.  Among  his 
sons  was  an  Idwal,  who  fled  to  ILancarvan  in  Morganwg, 
in  the  lifetime  of  Maredud,  who  made  an  attempt  to  seize 
him.  Idwal's  claims  on  Gwyned  seem  to  have  been  just, 
according  to  the  legal  rules  of  succession,  and  Maredud's 
attempt  on  his  person  having  failed,  he  secured  some 
adherents,  and  in  992  returned  to  Gwyned.*^  In  the 
following  year,  993,  a  battle  took  place  between  him  and 

1  "Bnit,"  j.a.  988. 

"  In  990  he  devastated  also  Maes  Hyfeid  (roughly  equivalent  to  the  present 
Radnorshire).     See  "Brut,"  j.a.  990. 

3  Warrington,  p.  20,  cites  "Brit.  Antiq.  Revived,"  by  G.  Vaughan  of 
Hengwrt,  pp.  5,  14. 

^  "Brut,"  j.fl.  99S. 

•'  I.e.,  984  to  102 1. 

^  Caradog,  however,  fills  the  time  up  vnth  Idwal  ab  Meurig,  Conan  ab  Howel, 
and  Aedan  ab  Blegored. 

''   '*  Brut,"  s.a.  972 ;  but  cf.  "Ann.  Cam.,"  "  Meuric  filius  Idwal  caecatusest  " 

(974)- 

^''  "Brut,"    s.a.    992:     "the    sons    of    Meurig     made     an     inroad     into 

Gwyned." 


CADWALADR    TO  NORMAN   CONQUEST,     i6i 

his  brothers^  and  the  sons  of  Maredud,  in  which  the  former 
triumphed,  with  the  result  that  Idwal  ab  Meurig  became 
king  of  Gwyned;^  but  he  did  not  enjoy  his  success  long, 
for  two  years  after  he  was  killed,  probably  by  the  Danes.^ 

He  left  a  son  of  tender  years,  lago,  who,  though  passed 
over  for  the  moment,  many  years  after  obtained  Gwyned. 
Upon  Idwal's  death  Cynan  ab  Howel,  Aedan  ab  Blegored, 
and  others,  with  little  or  no  show  of  right,  "  did  aspire  to 
the  government,"  and  sought  the  rule  of  the  land.^  There 
was  again  a  contested  succession,  but  Kynan  was  killed 
(presumably  in  a  battle  with  Aedan)  in  1003,^  and  Aedan 
seems  to  have  usurped  the  throne.  We  know  nothing  more 
of  him  except  that  he  and  his  four  sons  were  killed  in  1016 
in  a  fight  with  ILewelyn  ab  Seisyttt,  who  once  more  joined 
Gwyned  to  Deheubarth.^  The  troubles  of  England  under 
/Ethelred  the  Unready,  culminating  in  the  fall  of  the  house 
of  Alfred  and  the  accession  of  Cnut,  seem  to  have  afforded 
some  relief  to  Wales  from  attacks  from  the  English  border 
as  well  as  by  Danish  forces,  and  with  the  reign  of  ILewelyn 
begins  a  fresh  growth  of  Cymric  power  that  attained  its 
greatest  development  in  the  reign  of  his  son,  Grufifyd  ab 
ILewelyn.  It  is  assumed  that  ILewelyn  ruled  over  Powys,^ 
but  for  this  there  is  no  certain  warrant.  Though  Deheu- 
barth  seems  to  have  been  fairly  quiet  under  his  rule,  he 
had  one  rising  at  least  to  contend  with.  The  uchelwyr 
of  South  Wales  "loved  not  ILewelyn,"^  and,  led  by  one 

^  In  the  **Brut"  Idwal's  party  is  described  as  the  sons  of  Meurig,  The 
only  one  of  the  sons  of  Meurig  besides  Idwal  whose  name  we  know  seems  to 
be  the  Jonaval  who  was  killed  by  Cadwatton  ab  leuaf  in  984.  "  Brut,"  s.a. 
984.      Cf.  "Ann.  Cam.,"  p.  24. 

2  "Brut,"  J. a.  993. 

3  "  Brut,"  s.a.  995.     Three  years  after,  according  to  "Ann.  Cam.,"  p.  21. 
■*  Caradog,  p.  74. 

5  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1003. 

^  "Brut,"  s.a.  1016. 

'  Warrington,  p.  205. 

'  Caradog,  p.  85. 

W.P.  M 


i62  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

Meurig  ab  Arthvael,  revolted  in   1019,  but  they  were  at 
once  subdued.^ 

In  the  following  year  there  was  a  more  formidable  rebel- 
lion, when  a  pretender  called  Rein  Yscot,  affecting  to  be  a  son 
of  Maredud  ab  Owain,  got  together  the  strength  of  Deheu- 
barth  at  Abergwili,  and  waited  the  coming  of  the  king. 
ILewelyn,  "  daring  and  fearless,"  with  the  host  of  Gwyned 
engaged  in  battle  and  conquered  Rein,  who,  though  brave 
and  confident  in  assault,  "  retreated  shamefully  in  a  fox-like 
manner,  and  never  thenceforward  made  his  appearance."- 
The  men  of  Gwyned  wrathfully  pursued  the  enemy,  and 
devastated  the  country  to  the  Mercian  border.  In  1023 
ILewelyn  at  the  height  of  his  power  died.^  It  is  said  by 
Caradog  he  was  slain  by  two  descendants  of  Howel  Da,  but 
the  "  Brut "  simply  records  that  he  died.  His  son  Gruffyd, 
who  was  destined  to  play  a  great  part  in  the  years  just 
before  the  Norman  Conquest,  must  have  been  at  this 
time  very  young,  and  did  not  succeed  to  either  king- 
dom. Gwyned  fell  to  lago,  the  son  of  that  Idwal  who 
had  possessed  it  in  defiance  of  Maredud  ab  Owain  ;  but 
possibly  he  did  not  make  good  his  claims  till  some  time 
after  ILewelyn's  death."*  But  it  was  only  to  Gwyned  that 
he  succeeded,  for  Deheubarth  was  seized  by  Rhyderch 
ab  lestyn.''  Though  possessing  neither  of  the  two  principal 
divisions  of  his  dominions  by  a  legal  title,  ILewelyn's  rule 
left  a  marked  impression  upon  the  Welsh  people.  Accord- 
ing to  the  "  Brut,"  "  In  his  time  it  was  usual  for  the  elders  of 
his  kingdom  to  say  that  his  dominion  was  from  one  sea  to 
the  other  complete  in  abundance  of  wealth  and  inhabitants ; 


^  Meurig  was  killed.    **  Brut,"  .r.a.  1019.   "Book  of  Lan  Dav"(  Oxf.).  p.  200. 
2  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1020. 

^  *' Brut,"  j.rt'.  1021.     "Ann.  Cam.,"  j.a.  1023.     Caradog,  p.  S6. 
■*  **  Brut,"  s.a.  1031,  says  :  **  And  then  lago  ab  Idwal  held  the  government 
of  Gwyned  after  Lewelyn." 

^  We  infer  this  from  later  events  recorded  in  the  "  Brut." 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     163 

so  that  it  was  supposed  there  was  neither  poor  nor  destitute 
in  all  his  territories  ;  nor  empty  trev  nor  any  deficiency."^ 

Though  we  cannot  fix  the  exact  year  in  which  lago  ab 
Idwal  obtained  a  real  possession  of  Gwyned,  it  seems 
clear  that  his  reign  was  uneventful.  Nor  did  anything  of 
special  consequence  happen  in  the  south.  Great  events, 
however,  had  been  taking  place  in  England,  for  the  Danish 
king  Cnut  had  become  in  1016  ruler  of  all  England,^  which 
he  divided  into  the  great  ealdormanries  of  Wessex,  Mercia, 
East  Anglia,  and  Northumbria.  Cnut's  accession  brought 
peace  to  the  whole  country.  The  Danish  pirate  fleets 
(speaking  broadly)  ceased  to  ravage  the  coast  of  the  island, 
while  indirectly  the  vigorous  government  of  Cnut  benefited 
Wales  as  well  as  the  territories  under  his  more  direct  rule. 
English  manufactures  and  trade  began  to  make  some 
progress.  Worcester  was  growing  to  be  a  place  of  import- 
ance, and  Gloucester  was  rapidly  rising  to  a  position  which 
enabled  it  in  the  years  after  the  Norman  Conquest  to 
exercise  a  marked  influence  on  the  development  of 
South  Wales.  In  the  north,  Chester,  restored  as  we  have 
seen  some  one  hundred  years  before  by  yEthelflaeda, 
was  now  a  centre  of  commerce  and  the  common  meeting 
ground  of  Irish,  Welsh,  Cumbrians,  English,  and  Danes. 
The  quiet  of  lago's  reign  is  probably  largely  explained  b}' 
these  and  other  more  general  circumstances.  Deheubarth 
and  the  small  principalities  to  the  south-east  enjoyed  an 
unwonted  immunity  from  external  attack,  but  there  was 
as  usual  internal  trouble.  Rhyderch  of  Deheubarth  was 
slain,  it  is  said  by  Irish-Scots,  in  103 1  or  1033.^  Howel 
and  Maredud,  sons  of  Edwin,*  took  his  place,  but  a  year 


*  S.a.  1020. 

-  Green,  "  Conqu.  of  Eng.,"  pp.  411  ef  sec^. 
3  "Brut,"  J.a.  1031.     "Ann.  Cam.,"  s.a.  1033. 

■*  Apparently  this  Edwin  was  son  of  Einion,  one  of  the  gi-andsons  of  Howel 
t).i  :  see  the  genealogical  table  at  end  of  this  chapter. 

M    2 


i64  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

afterwards  the  sons  of  Rhyderch  revolted,  and  a  battle 
was  fought  at  Hiraethwy,  in  which  the  latter  were  probably 
defeated.  Maredud  ab  Edwin  was  soon  after  killed  in  an 
obscure  conflict,^  and  Howel,  his  brother,  was  left  in  sole 
possession  of  Deheubarth,  though  Gruffyd  ab  Rhyderch 
survived  to  create  further  disturbances  in  after  years. 

The  peace  of  Gwyned"  was  some  six  years  after  these 
events  broken  by  the  assertion  of  his  claims  by  Gruffyd 
ab  ILewelyn  ab  Seisyftt,  who  had,  though  still  young,  by 
that  time  reached  manhood.  Of  his  early  years  nothing 
is  known.  The  immediate  occasion  of  his  attack  upon 
Gwyned  appears  to  have  been  that  one  lestyn  ab  Gwrgant, 
having  ravished  Gruffyd's  cousin  Arden,  the  daughter  of 
Robert  ab  Seisyftt,  fled  to  lago,  who  gave  him  his  protec- 
tion. Gruffyd  thereupon  raised  a  force,  engaged  the  army 
of  lago,  slew  the  king,  and  seized  his  kingdom.- 

It  was  during  the  reign  of  Gruffyd  ab  ILewelyn — extend- 
ing from  1039  to  1063 — that  the  Cymry  reached  the  point  of 
greatest  strength  since  the  death  of  Cadwaladr,  and  that  for 
the  first  time  for  many  years  their  leader  was  able  to  exercise 
an  appreciable  influence  on  affairs  beyond  the  border.  In 
1035  Cnut  had  died.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Witan  at 
Oxford  held  after  his  death,  notwithstanding  the  resistance 
of  the  powerful  Godwine,  Earl  of  Wessex,  who  endeavoured 
to  enforce  the  will  of  Cnut  in  favour  of  Harthacnut, 
Harold  Harefoot  was  chosen  king,  with  the  aid  of  Leofric, 
Earl  of  Mercia.  Godwine's  influence  was,  however,  strong 
enough  to  secure  part  of  the  late  king's  dominions  for  the 
younger  son  of  Cnut,  who  was  recognised  as  king  of 
Wessex.  It  was  after  England  had  been  once  more 
divided,  and  the  house  of  Godwine  had  received  a  temporary 
check  in  its  path  of  aggrandisement,  that  Gruffyd'  became 
king  of  Gwyned.     Nearly  ninety  years   had  passed  since 

^  "Brut,"  j.a.  1033.  "Ann.  Cam.,"  j.a.  1035. 
-  "  Brut,"  x.a.  1037.   "Ann.  Cam.,"  j.a.  1039. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     165 

the  death  of  Howel  Da.  They  had  been  for  the  most 
part,  as  the  bald  narrative  we  have  been  able  to  give  shows, 
years  of  almost  continued  internal  confusion,  of  border 
troubles,  and  of  vexatious  invasions  from  be}'ond  the  sea. 
But  the  career  of  Gruffyd  ab  ILewelyn  seems  to  show  that 
the  conflicts  that  had  been  waged  and  the  events  that  had 
taken  place  had  not  sensibly  affected  the  power  of  the 
Cymric  clans  as  a  whole.  It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  infer- 
ence that  the  wars  during  this  disturbed  period,  of  which 
the  recollection  is  preserved  in  the  "  Brut,"  were  on  a  merely 
petty  scale — an  inference  strengthened,  of  course,  by  our 
knowledge  that  the  population  was  very  small.^ 

However  this  may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  under 
the  leadership  of  Grufifyd  the  Cymry  suddenly  developed 
an  amount  of  military  capacity  and  activity  which  had  not 
been  displayed  for  centuries,  and  which  resulted  in  their 
becoming  a  factor  of  some  considerable  importance  in  the 
affairs  of  the  whole  island.  The  divisions  of  race  in  England, 
the  rivalries  of  the  great  Earls,  and  other  circumstances, 
combined  to  assist  Gruffyd  in  uniting  the  forces  of  Wales, 
consolidating  his  own  position,  and  making  himself  not 
only  the  predominant  chieftain  in  Wales,  but  a  dangerous 
and  powerful  foe  to  the  English  king,  or  at  an}'  rate  to  the 
house  of  Godwine.  One  reason  no  doubt  was  that  after 
the  first  year  of  his  reign  his  policy — one  consistently 
pursued — was  to  remain  on  friendly  terms  with  the  Earl 
and  people  of  Mercia,  or  rather  the  English  part  of  the 
t)ld  kingdom  of  Mercia,  then  forming  the  ealdormanry  of 
Leofric.  Of  the  personal  characteristics  of  this  the  greatest 
military  chief  of  the  Cymry  (except,  perhaps,  ILewelyn  ab 
lorwerth,  who  was  to  exhibit  similar  qualities  two  hundred 
years  later),  we  know  nothing  except  what  may  be 
inferred  from  his  deeds.  The  burst  of  literary  activity 
which   commenced    among   the    Cymry  shortly  after   the 

*  See  the  Introduction,  above. 


i66  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

Norman  Conquest  has  preserved  for  us  much  information 
about  later  and  far  less  important  princes  and  warriors  ; 
but  though  Gruffyd,  like  them,  had  bards  in  his  train 
and  at  his  court,  not  even  fragments  of  their  poems  have 
come  down  to  enlighten  us  concerning  the  lord  whom  they 
doubtless  delighted  to  honour.  For  GruffyS's  life,  as  in 
regard  to  those  of  his  predecessors,  we  must  rely  simply  on 
the  short  entries  in  the  chronicles. 

Grufifyd's  character  showed  itself  at  once.  In  the  very 
\'ear  of  his  accession  he  led  a  raid  over  the  border  into 
Mercia,  and  beat  the  English  forces  in  a  battle  at  Rh\'d-y- 
Groes,^  on  the  Severn,  in  which  Eadwine,  brother  of  Earl 
Leofric,  was  slain.  This  event  does  not  seem  to  have 
embroiled  him  with  the  Mercian  Earl,  for  henceforth  we  find 
him  in  alliance  with  the  house  of  Leofric,  and  many  years 
elapsed  before  he  again  invaded  England.  He  immediately 
turned  his  attention  to  Deheubarth.  Howel  ab  Edwin,  who 
was  now  possessed  of  South  Wales  as  a  result  of  the  defeat 
of  the  sons  of  Rhyderch,  was,  without  any  considerable 
pause,  attacked  by  Gruffyd,  and  defeated  in  an  encounter 
at  ILanbadarn.  Howel  was  forced  to  fly  to  the  Irish  Norse- 
men for  assistance.  Two  }'ears  afterwards,  with  their 
support,  he  returned  to  Wales,  and  penetrated  into  Kere- 
digion,  but  was  again  beaten  by  Gruffyd  in  an  engagement 
at  Pencader,  which  was  of  a  decisive  character,  and  in 
which  the  victor  captured  Howei's  wife,  whom  he  took 
as  his  mistress.  Howei's  resources  were  not,  however, 
exhausted,  and,  by  one  of  the  sudden  changes  of  fortune 
characteristic  of  the  period,  in  the  following  year  (1042) 
Gruffyd  was  himself  beaten,  with  the  aid  of  the  "  black 
Pagans,"  and  taken  prisoner,  at  Pwtt  Dyvach.  Somehow — 
probably  by  payment  of  a  ransom — Gruffyd  regained  his 

'  Literally  "the  fold  of  the  Cross."  The  chief  authorities  for  the  life  of 
f  Irufiyd  are  the  *'  Brut."  and  "Ann.  Cam.,"  with  the  English  Chronicle.  See 
his  life  in  "Diet.  Nat.  Biog." 


CADWALADR   TO  NORMAN   CONQUEST.     167 

liberty,  and  returned  to  his  kingdom.  Two  years  after 
Howel,  who  seems  to  have  once  more  gone  to  Ireland,  came 
back  with  a  fleet,  and,  sailing  round  Dyfed,  proceeded  to 
the  Towy,  but  was  defeated  and  lost  his  life  in  a  battle  with 
the  army  of  Gruffyd  at  Abertowy.^ 

This  victory  secured  Deheubarth  for  the  king  of 
Gwyned,  though  his  troubles  in  that  part  of  Cymru 
were  not  over.  Howel,  as  we  have  seen,  had  himself 
violently  usurped  the  crown  of  Deheubarth,  after  expel- 
ling Rhyderch.  Two  sons  of  the  latter,  Gruffyd"  and 
Rhys,  saw  in  Howel's  overthrow  an  opportunity  of 
asserting  the  claims  of  their  house.  How  far  they  were 
able  to  obtain  actual  possession  of  the  whole  or  any  part  of 
South  Wales  is  not  clear;  but  probably  it  was  Gruffyd  ab 
ILewelyn  who  was  the  actual  ruler,  while  the  sons  of  Rhyd- 
erch from  time  to  time  attacked  him  or  his  subordinate 
lords.  About  ten  years,  however,  elapsed  from  the  defeat 
of  Howel  before  Gruffyd  was  able  finally  to  suppress  the 
house  of  Rhyderch.  That  he  was  strengthening  himself 
with  prudence  is  shown  by  his  peaceful  attitude  towards 
Edward  the  Confessor's  government,  and  his  close  relation 
to  the  Mercian  Earl ;  and  when  Swein  son  of  Godwine,  in  or 
about  1045,  was  Earl  of  the  south-western  part  of  the  old 
kingdom  of  Mercia,  he  joined  Gruffyd  ab  ILewelyn  in 
an  expedition  against  the  sons  of  Rhyderch.  His  friend- 
ship with  the  house  of  Mercia  was  cemented  by  his  marriage 
with  Ealdgyth,  daughter  of  ^Ifgar,  the  son  of  Leofric,  who 
afterwards  became  the  wife  of  Harold  H.      Gruffyd  also 

^  This  place  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  Aberteivi  in  Keredigion,  nor  with 
Abertawe.  Abertowy  occurs  in  the  Twrch  Trwyth  hunt.  At  "Aber  Tywi "' 
it  was  that  Twrch  Trwyth  tui'ned  to  bay  and  killed  Kynlas  son  of  Kynan,  and 
Gwilenhin,  king  of  France.  See  Rhys's  paper  in  "Transactions  of  Cymmro- 
dorion  Society,"  1894-5,  P-  ^^-  Abertowy  was  on  the  peninsula  between  the 
Towy  and  the  Gwendraeth.  About  three  years  ago  a  storm,  carrying  away 
parts  of  the  sandbanks  th.^re,  exposed  the  foundations  of  a  row  of  houses. 
(Account  furnished  to  Professor  Rhys  by  Mr.  Drummon'l,  agent  for  Lord 
Cawdor.) 


i68  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

succeeded  in  obtaining  a  grant  from  the  English  king  of 
all  the  lands  west  of  the  Dee  that  had  theretofore  been 
taken  possession  of  by  the  English. 

In  1047  he  had  to  deal  with  a  more  than  usually  serious 
revolt  in  Deheubarth.  The  uchelwyr  of  Ystrad  Towi 
suddenly  rose  and  slew  one  hundred  and  forty  of  his  men. 
Gruffyd  thereupon  laid  waste  that  district,  as  well  as  Dyfed. 
This  rising  had  probably  some  connection  with  the  claims 
of  Gruffyd  ab  Rh\'derch  and  his  brother.  Two  years 
later  there  was  further  trouble  in  the  south.  The  Irish  allies 
of  Gruffyd  ab  Rh}'derch  are  said  to  have  ravaged  Deheu- 
barth. We  hear  nothing  further  of  this  Gruffs-d,  except 
that  he  was  slain  by  Gruffyd  ab  ILewelyn  in  1055,  and 
his  brother  Rhys,  too,  disappears  from  the  stor)\ 

Even  before  the  death  of  Gruffyd  ab  Rhyderch  the 
power  of  the  North-Welsh  king  had  become  very  consider- 
able. He  felt  himself  strong  enough  once  more  to  invade 
England.  Of  the  circumstances  that  led  to  this  course  of 
action  we  have  no  information.  Whatever  the  reason  for 
the  raid,  Gruffyd"  in  1052  penetrated  into  the  land  of 
Hereford,  very  nigh  to  Leominster,  and  fought  the  "  lands- 
men as  well  as  the  Frenchmen  of  the  Castle  "  on  the  same 
day  on  which,  thirteen  years  before,  Eadwine  had  been 
slain.^  yElfgar  was  outlawed  in  1055,  without,  as  the 
English  chronicler  says,  any  guilt.-  He  fled  to  Ireland 
and  collected  a  fleet  of  eighteen  ships,  and  with  that  force 
proceeded  to  Wales  to  Grufr}'d,  who  received  him  into 
his  protection.  Gruffyd  and  his  father-in-law,  having 
gathered  together  a  great  force,  invaded  England,  and 
defeated  the  English  under  Ralph  the  Earl  near  Hereford. 
"  Before  there  was  any  spear  thrown  the  English  people 
fled  because  they  were  on  horses,  and  there  great  slaughter 

*  "Eng.  Chron.,"  s.a.  1052.      "And  there  were  slain  of  the  English  very 
many  good  men,  and  also  of  the  Frenchmen." 
"  "  Eng.  Chron.,"'  s.a.  1055. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     169 

was  made  about  four  hundred  or  five,  and  they  made  none 
on  the  other  side."^  The  Welsh  then  took  Hereford,  burnt 
the  town  and  the  minster  that  the  venerable  Bishop 
yEthelstan  had  built,  and  even  slew  the  priests  that  were 
within  it  and  many  others,  and  retired  carrying  away 
much  booty.- 

The  incapable  Ralph  was  replaced  by  Harold  son  of 
Godwine,  and  the  importance  of  the  Welsh  victory  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  a  great  force  was  gathered  "  from  well 
nigh  all  England."^  The  English  army  met  at  Gloucester, 
and  started  against  the  Welsh.  Gruffyd  appears  to  have 
retreated,  or  at  any  rate  avoided  an  engagement,  and 
Harold  either  did  not  desire  or  was  not  able  to  bring  about 
a  battle.  Some  obscure  negotiations  took  place  between 
/Elfgar  and  Gruffycl  on  the  one  side,  and  Harold  on  the 
other.  The  result  was  that  peace  was  restored  ;  yElfgar 
was  in-lawed,  but  Gruffyd  lost  the  lands  beyond  the  Dee 
that  had  been  granted  to  him  by  the  king.  One  of  the 
copies  of  the  English  Chronicle  says  that  when  the  Welsh 
"  had  done  the  utmost  evil  this  counsel  was  counselled  : 
that  Elgar  (yElfgar)  the  Earl  should  be  in-lawed  and  be 
o^iven  his  earldom  and  all  that  had  been  taken  from  him." 
The  fact  that  peace  in  accordance  with  this  counsel  was 
made  is  the  strongest  evidence  of  the  formidable  influence 
of  the  Welsh  king.  Harold  forthwith  rebuilt  Hereford,  and 
Bishop  ^thelstan  having  died,  he  appointed  Leofgar,  his 
mass-priest,  to  be  Bishop  on  February  7,  1056. 

The  peace  between  Grufifyd  and  Harold  was  not  long 
kept.  In  the  summer  of  1056  Gruffyd  (who  was  probabl}* 
dissatisfied  with  the  arrangements  of  the  year  before)  again 

1  "  Eng.  Chron.,"  s,a,  1055. 

"  "Eng.  Chron.,"  j.a.  1055.  Cf.  "Brut.,"  s.a.  1054.  This  entry  describes 
the  engagement  as  a  "  severely  hard  battle,"  and  says  the  Saxons  took  to  flight 
unable  to  bear  the  assault  of  the  Britons,  and  fell  with  a  very  great  slaughter. 

^  "Eng.  Chron.,"  J, rt;.  1055. 


170  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  v,) 

invaded  south-west  Mercia.  He  was  met  by  the  new 
Bishop — who  had  worn  "  his  knapsack  during  his  priest- 
hood till  he  was  a  bishop,"  and  then  "  forsook  his  chrism 
and  his  rood,  his  ghostly  weapons,  and  took  to  his 
spear  and  sword  after  his  bishophood " — and  /Elfnoth, 
the  Sheriff,  at  the  head  of  the  Mercian  forces,  eight  days 
before  Midsummer.^  Gruff}^d  was  again  victorious  ;  both 
the  Bishop  and  the  Sheriff  were  slain,  and  with  them 
''  many  good  men."  Gruffyd  seems  to  have  followed  up 
his  success,  for  the  English  chronicler  found  it  "  difficult 
to  tell  the  distress,  and  all  the  marching  and  all  the 
camping,  and  the  travail  and  destruction  of  men  and 
also  of  horses  which  all  the  English  army  sustained." 
But  Leofric,  Harold,  and  Bishop  Ealdred  of  Worcester 
came  to  Gruffyd  and  succeeded,  though  we  know  not  on 
what  terms,  in  quieting  him.  A  reconciliation  was  effected, 
and  Gruffyd  swore  oaths  that,  he  would  be  to  King 
Edward  "a  faithful  and  unbetraying  under-king."~ 

Two  years  after  this  event,  however,  it  is  recorded  in  the 
"  Brut  "  that  Magnus,  son  of  Harold,  described  as  "king  of 
Germany,"  came  to  England  and  ravaged  the  dominions  of 
the  Saxons,  and  that  Gruffyd  was  his  "conductor  and 
auxiliary."^  The  English  Chronicle  says  that  a  fleet  came 
from  Norway  in  1058,  but  does  not  connect  this  event  with 
Gruffyd;  but  that  there  were  hostilities  between  him  and 
the  English  in  that  year  is  clear,  for  yElfgar  the  Earl,  who 
succeeded  his  father  on  his  death  in  1057,  ^^'^^  banished,  but 
soon  returned,  with  the  aid  of  his  son-in-law.^  The  Welsh 
king  was  now  at  the  height  of  his  power.  So  long  as  ^Ifgar 
lived, however, he  seems  to  have  kept  the  peace.  Harold  him- 
self had  taken  possession  of  the  earldom  of  the  Magesaetas 

1  "Eng.  Chron.,"  j-.rt.  1056. 

-  "  Eng.  Chron.,"  j.a.  1056. 

3  "Brut,"j.rt.  1056.  In  "  Ann.  Cam.,"  seemingly  1058. 

■*  "  Eng.  Cliron.,'"  ^.a.  1058 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST,     lyi 

and  the  course  of  the  Severn  (i.e.,  south-west  Mercia),  no 
doubt  with  the  intention  of  holding  yElfgar  and  Gruffyd 
in  check.  The  exact  date  of  the  former's  death  is  not 
known,  but  it  is  probable  that  he  died  in  1062.  Very  likeh' 
border  raids  into  England  were  made  by  the  Welsh,  or 
some  other  provocation  was  given  by  Gruffyd,  for  in  1063 
Harold  determined  to  make  a  strong  attempt  to  crush  his 
dangerous  and  now  too  formidable  neighbour.  The  chief 
palace  of  Gruffyd"  was  at  Rhudlan,  which  was  a  site  of 
military  value,  since  it  dominated  the  Vale  of  Clwyd,  and  was 
then  a  seaport.  It  was  against  Rhudlan  that  Harold  directed 
his  first  blow.  With  a  small  band  (probably  his  own  house- 
carls)  he  hastened  there  at  the  end  of  1062,  and  surprised 
Gruffyd,  who,  however,  escaped  by  sea.  Unable  to  follow, 
and  not  strong  enough  to  winter  in  North  Wales,  Harold 
contented  himself  with  burning  the  house  and  the  remaining 
ships,  and  set  out  back  for  Gloucester  on  the  same  day.^ 
It  may  be  conjectured  from  the  subsequent  course  of  affairs 
that  this  event  did  much  to  damage  Gruffyd's  prestige 
among  the  loosely  united  Welsh  clans,  and  especially  among 
the  uchelwyr  of  South  Wales.  Such  a  career  as  his, 
in  the  circumstances  of  his  time,  must  have  created 
jealousies  and  involved  the  enmity  of  many  families  among 
the  Cymry.  Only  six  years  had  elapsed  since  the  final 
overthrow  of  the  house  of  Rhyderch.  Many  men  must 
have  been  waiting  for  the  time  when  a  reverse  gave  a 
favourable  opportunity  for  revolt.^ 

It  was  immediately  after  his  sudden  raid  On  Rhudlan  that 
Harold,  now  the  most  powerful  subject  of  England — indeed, 
its  real  ruler — planned  a  systematic  invasion  of  Wales.  He 
collected  a  fleet  at  Bristol  with  a  view  to  coasting  round  the 
country,  while  he  arranged  that  his  brother  Tostig^  should 

1  Fl.  Wigoni,  1063. 

"  Note  Giraldus'  reference  to  Gruffyd  as  one   "who  by  his  tyranny  for  a 
long  time  had  oppressed  Wales  "  :  "  Itin.  Cam.,"  book  i.,  ch.  2. 
•"*  Tostie:  had  become  Earl  of  Northumbria. 


172  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

cross  the  border  from  Northumbria  with  a  land  force.  At 
Rogation-tide  (in  1063)  Harold  left  Bristol  with  his  fleet  and 
sailed  along  the  coast,  presumably  landing  at  points  where 
damage  could  be  inflicted  on  the  Welsh.^  Tostig,  acting 
in  conjunction  with  his  brother,  crossed  the  border.  For 
several  weeks  the  English  carried  on  a  vigorous  and  far- 
reaching  harrying  of  Grufifyd's  dominions.  There  is  no 
record  of  any  pitched  battles,  and  the  warfare  was  clearly 
of  the  guerilla  kind.  Taught  by  experience,  the  English 
leaders  changed  their  method  of  fighting.  They  made 
their  men  discard  armour  and  give  up  the  close  array.- 
Lightly  armed,  they  fought  on  the  same  terms  as  their 
active  enemies.  The  Cymry  defended  themselves  with 
stubbornness,  but  the  English  won  many  skirmishes  and 
gave  no  quarter.  The  former  suffered  more  severely  than 
at  any  time  since  the  death  of  Cadwaladr."  The  campaign 
seems  to  have  been  carried  on  over  a  large  part  of  Wales. 
The  result  was  that  "  the  people "  (so  says  the  English 
Chronicle)  made  a  truce  with  Harold  and  delivered 
hostages.'^  Of  Gruffyd"  himself  during  these  weeks  in  the 
summer  of  1063  we  hear  nothing.  Later  authority  says 
the  Welsh  sentenced  him  to  deposition.  What  is  certain 
is  that  he  was  slain  in  August  by  Welshmen — slain, 
according  to  the  English  chronicler,  because  "  of  the  war 
he  waged  with  Harold  the  Earl" — slain,  according  to  the 
Brut,  by  the  treachery  of  his  own  men.  "  The  shield  and 
defender  of  the  Britons  .  .  .  the  man  who  had  been  hitherto 
invincible,  was  now  left  in  the  glens  of  desolation,  after 
taking  immense  spoils  and  after  innumerable  victories  and 
countless  treasures  of  gold  and  silver,  and  jewels  and  purple 

1  "Eni:.  Cliron.,"  ^.rt.  1063. 
-  See  Freeman,  '*  N.C,"  ii.  480. 

3  Giraldus  (writing  about  140  years  later)  says  that  Harold  left  scarcely  a 
man  alive  in  Wales. 

*  "Eng.  Cliron.,"  s.a.  1063. 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     173 

vestures."^  The  effects  of  Harold's  merciless  ravaging  were 
long  felt.  His  victory  plunged  Wales  once  more  into 
confusion,  and  no  doubt  contributed  to  the  comparativel}' 
swift  conquest  of  a  great  part  of  the  South  by  the  Normans 
a  few  years  afterwards. 

However  ruthless  Harold  had  shown  himself  in  the 
campaign,  so  soon  as  Gruffyd  had  been  got  rid  of  he 
proceeded  to  arrange  a  new  settlement  of  Welsh  affairs. 
The  kingdom  of  the  dead  chieftain  was  divided  between 
Bledyn  ab  Cynfyn  and  his  brother  Rhiwatton,-  but  further 
considerable  portions  of  Cymric  land  were  added  to  the 
shires  or  earldoms  on  the  border.  The  Vale  of  Clwyd,  or 
the  greater  part  of  it,  was  added  to  the  shire  of  Chester, 
and  seemingly  passed  under  the  rule  of  Eadwine,  son  of 
/Elfgar,  Earl  of  Mercia.  The  whole  or  a  large  part  of  what 
is  now  Radnorshire  became  an  English  possession.  Part 
of  Gwent,  though  we  cannot  define  what  part  (probably  the 
land  between  the  Wye  and  the  Usk),  was  united  to  the 
earldom  of  Harold.^     How  far,  or  in  what  sense,  these  lands 

^  "Brut.,"  s.a.  io6i.     ''Ann.  Cam.,"  s.a.  1063. 

2  The  "Brut  "and  "Ann.  Cam.  "are  silent  as  to  this,  but  the  subsequent  entries 
confirm  the  transaction.  The  "Worcester  Chronicle  "  ( 1063)  records  it — making 
Bledyn  and  Rhiwatton  brothers  of  Gruffyd";  and  in  the  "Brut,"  s.a.  1068, 
they  are  referred  to  as  still  reigning,  and  are  mentioned  as  sons  of  Cynfyn. 
They  were  really  half-brothers  of  Grufifyd.  Their  mother  was  Angharad 
(daughter  of  Maredud),  who  married  Lewelyn  ab  Seisyttt,  and  also  Cynfyn. 
Probably  the  latter  was  her  second  husband.  The  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1112,  explains 
the  relationship.  See  Freeman,  "  Norman  Conquest,"  ii.,p.  483,  n.  i.  In  the 
"Brut,"  j.«.  1073,  Bledyn  ab  Cynfyn  is  referred  to  as  "the  man  who  after 
Gruffyd  his  brother  nobly  supported  the  whole  kingdom  of  the  Britons." 
The  Gruftyd  referred  to  is  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn. 

^  See  Freeman,  "  N.  C,"  v.  ii.,  p.  483-6  ;  and  note  {mi)  in  App.,  p.  707 
(third  edition,  London,  1877).  Harold,  it  seems,  began  to  build  a  hunting 
seat  at  Forth  Iscoed.  Caradog,  son  of  that  Gruffyd:  who  claimed  Deheubarth 
and  who  was  slain  by  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn,  made  a  raid  upon  the  workmen 
engaged  in  the  building,  slew  nearly  all  of  them,  and  carried  away  the 
provisions  and  other  things  that  Harold  had  collected.  "  Chronn.  Ab.  et 
Wig.,"  1065;  "Domesday,"  162:  "Sub  iisdem  prgepositis  sunt  iiii.  villse 
wastatas  per  regem  Caradnech." 


174  '^^^    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  v.) 

(except  the  Vale  of  Clwyd)  had  been  part  of  Gruffyd's 
possessions  we  have  no  means  of  determining  ;  but  it  is 
clear  that  one  of  the  results  of  the  Earl's  successful  war  was 
that  the  English  made  a  further  advance  on  Welsh  territory. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  comparatively 
great  Welsh  campaign  largely  increased  the  prestige  of 
Harold  and  his  house,  and  was  one  of  the  circumstances 
which  led  to  his  being  elected  king  on  the  death  of 
Eadward  the  Confessor  early  in  1066.  He  did  not  enjoy 
his  high  office  long,  for  on  the  14th  of  October  in  the 
same  year  he  fell  in  the  battle  of  Hastings  or  Senlac, 
resisting  the  Norman  invasion,  and  shortl}'  afterwards 
William,  Duke  of  Normandy,  became  king  of  England. 
We  need  say  nothing  for  our  purpose  as  to  the  general 
circumstances  and  effect  of  this  Norman  conquest,  but  he 
who  looks  at  it  from  a  Cymric  standpoint  will  note  with 
curious  interest  the  satisfaction  of  the  Welsh  chronicler  who 
records  that  Harold,  who  had  been  previously  "vauntingly 
victorious,"  was  despoiled  of  his  life  and  kingdom  by 
William  the  Bastard  "  Tywysog  "  of  Normandy,  and  that 
*'  that  William  "  defended  the  kingdom  of  ILoegr  in  a  great 
battle  "with  an  invincible  hand  and  his  most  noble  army."^ 

As  appendices  to  this  chapter  we  insert  in  face  of  this 
page  :— 
(A)  A  Chronological  Table  of  the  Kings  of  England  and 

the    Kings   or    Princes   of  Gwyned  and    Deheubarth. 

The  dates  of  the  accession  of  the    latter   are   taken 

^  "  Brut,"' j-.a.  1066.  The  last  sentence  is,  '*  Ar  G6iliin  h6nn6  dr6y  dirua6r 
ur6ydyr  a  ymdiffynna6d  teyrnas  Loegr  o  an  orchyfegedic  la6  a  uonhedickaf  lu  " 
(see  "  Red  Book  of  Heigest,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  268  :  Oxford  edition).  Thovigh  at 
the  time  Loegr  denoted  much  the  same  area  of  the  island  as  England  at  present, 
yet  it  did  not  connote,  when  the  chronicler  wrote,  all  that  the  word  England  does 
now  to  us.  The  notion  that  William  was  defending  Loegr  should  be  observed. 
The  student  should  also  notice  that  the  application  of  the  term  tyiuysog  to 
William  in  regard  to  Normandy  shows  it  was  then  used  in  a  very  general 
-sense. 


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TABLE    B. 

THE    HOUSE    OF    RHODRI. 

Rhodri  Mawr 
{d.  877) 


An  a  raw  d 

W-  913) 


Idwal  Voel 
('A  940 


Meurig 
{d.  992) 


Cadeli 
{d.  907) 


1  Towel  Da        Clydog 
(r/.  950)  {d.  917) 


Merfyn 

1 
Hayard'ur 

(«'.  953) 


Gwriad 
(955) 


Hirmawr  Anaravvd   Gwgawn 
{d.  952)      {d.  952)      {d.  955) 


Owain 
{d.  987) 


Dyfnwal 

K950 

I    . 
Owain 
(d.  989) 


Rhodri       Edwin 
{d.  951)     {d.  952) 

I 
Idwal 
{d.  960) 


Eineon 
{d.  968) 


]\raredua  Gruffyd 

{d-  998)  (?) 

I 
A  daughter  =  Lewelyn  ab  Seisyttt 
I  [d.  1021) 


CadwaHon 
(^/.  964) 


Grufifyd 
{d.  1063) 


Owain  Maredud  Ithel 

(d.  1057)       {d.  1068)       {d.  1068) 


Edwin 
(^.  991) 


Tewdwr 
(^-  993) 


IdwaHon 
{d.  974) 


Howel 
(./.  1042  (?)) 


Maredud 
id-  1033) 


Owain 
{d.  1068) 


leuaf 
(./.  967) 


lago 
(978) 

I 
Cystenin 
{d.  979) 


Rhodri 
{d.  966) 


Maredud 
(d.  1070) 


Rhys 
(^/.  1076) 


Howel 

{d.  1076) 


CadwaHon 
(^''.  985) 


Howel  Drwg 
(^.  984) 


Maig 
{d.  985) 


Idwal 

(^-  995) 

I 

lago 

{d.  1039) 


lonaval 
{d.  984) 


CADWALADR    TO   NORMAN   CONQUEST.     175 

mainly  from  the  "  Brut  y  Tywysogion,"  but  in  some 
instances  from  the  dates  placed  in  brackets  in  Mr.  E. 
Phillimore's  edition  of  the  "Annales  Cambriae." 
B)  A  Genealogical  Table  of  the  House  of  Rhodri  Mawr. 
This  is  compiled  from  the  "Brut"  and  the  "Annales,"and 
is,  in  regard  to  some  of  the  persons,  conjectural,  owing 
to  the  paucity  of  the  names  in  use  among  the  Cymry. 
Where  the  letter  "  d."  is  prefixed  in  this  table  to  a  date 
it  signifies  "  died."  Where  a  date  alone  is  given  it 
refers  to  the  year  of  entry  in  the  "  Brut." 


CHAPTER     VI. 

THE    ANCIENT    LAWS    AND    CUSTOMS    OF    WALES. 

We  have  in  the  preceding  chapters  set  down  the  scant}' 
facts  concerning  the  history  of  the  Welsh  princes  before 
the  Norman  Conquest  that  can  be  gleaned  from  the 
authorities  to  which  credit  may  be  reasonably  given. 
Standing  alone  these  facts  tell  us  little ;  they  form  only 
a  barren  record  of  men  who  played  their  parts  in  a  remote 
district  of  Western  Europe.  Even  if  we  knew  them  far 
better,  their  real  interest  would  lie  in  the  circumstance  that 
they  were  the  chieftains  of  clans  and  families  which  had 
survived  from  a  distant  past,  and  had  established  them- 
selves in  Wales  before  the  English  nation  was  formed  ;  and 
to  a  greater  extent  still  in  the  further  circumstance  that, 
though  their  descendants  have  become  an  integral  part  of 
the  United  Kingdom,  they  have  not  lost  their  national 
characteristics  or  the  consciousness  of  their  national  in- 
dividuality. Fortunately,  manuscripts  containing  the  laws 
of  the  people  living  in  some  of  the  small  Welsh  kingdoms 
have  been  handed  down  to  us,  and  from  them  we  can 
obtain  a  fairly  clear  picture  of  society  in  Wales  before  the 
conquest  of  Gwyned  by  Edward  I. ;  and,  besides  what  we 
can  gather  from  their  formal  documents,  we  have  in  the 
works  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis  much  information  as  to  the 
habits  and  character  of  the  Cymry  in  the  twelfth  century. 

Caradog   of   ILancarvan    states  that    "  Howel    Da   con- 
stituted and  gave  lawes  to  be  kept  through  his  dominions 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND   CUSTOMS.         177 

which  were  used  in  Wales  till  such  time  as  the  inhabitants 
received  the  lawes  of  England  in  the  time  of  Edward  the 
first,  and  in  some  places  long  after.  These  lawes  are  to  be 
seen  at  this  daie  both  in  Latine  and  in  Welsh."  To  this 
Powel,  the  editor,  adds  a  statement  of  the  circumstances 
attending  Howel's  legislation.^ 

Though  there  is  not  a  word  of  all  this  in  the  Brut  or 
Annales,  there  seems  no  doubt  that  the  tradition  handed 
down  by  Caradog  of  ILancarvan  records  a  real  historical 
transaction.  The  supersession  of  Celtic  by  Latin  Chris- 
tianity led  to  the  spread  of  the  Roman  organisation  into 
Wales,  and  to  the  more  extensive  knowledge  and  use  of 
collections  of  canons  and  penitential  books  among  the 
Cymry.^  It  must  thus  have  had  the  effect  of  familiarising 
the  minds  of  tribal  rulers  with  the  advantage  of  having 
a  written  law.  Furthermore,  some  conflict  between  the 
Roman  code  of  morals  and  the  tribal  or  customary 
system  naturally  arose,  and  the  clergy  found  the  reduction 

^  This  seems  taken  from  the  preface  to  one  of  the  codes, 

2  It  should  be  observed,  too,  that  there  were  canons  and  penitentials  of 
Welsh  or  British  origin  earlier  than  the  submission  of  the  Welsh  clergy  to 
Rome.  The  Prcfatio  Gildae  de  penitentia  is  a  fragment  that  is  assigned 
to  a  date  before  570  (Haddan  and  Stubbs's  "Councils,  &c."  i.,  p.  113). 
Excerpta  quaedam  de  libro  Davidis  consists  of  sixteen  canons  supposed  to  be 
extracted  from  the  Liber  of  St.  David,  and  to  be  of  a  date  between  550  and  600 
{ibid.,  i.,  p.  118).  Sinodus  Aquilonis  Britannice  and  Altera  sitiodtis  luci 
Victoria  contain  canons  apparently  affecting  to  have  been  adopted  at  two 
synods  held  in  569,  during  the  lifetime  of  St.  David,  at  Handewi  Erefi, 
in  Cardiganshire,  and  not  far  from  the  Roman  station  called  Loventium 
in  the  Itineraries  {ibid.,  i-  p-  n?;  Lewis's  Topographical  Diet,  of  Wales). 
The  date  569  comes  from  the  "Ann.  Cambr.,"  as  printed  in  r^Ion.  Hist.  Krit., 
but  in  the  MS.  of  the  same  chronicle,  edited  and  published  in  ''  Y  Cymmrodor,"' 
V.  ix.,  by  Mr.  E.  Phillimore,  there  is  no  entry  as  to  these  synods.  Carwncs 
Wallici  form  a  collection  of  laws  of  a  civil  rather  than  ecclesiastical  character. 
They  probably  belong  to  the  first  half  of  the  seventh  century,  and  in  Haddan 
and  Stubbs's  opinion  are  of  Welsh  origin  ("  Councils,  &c.,"i.,  p.  127).  Several 
of  these  canons  are  identical,  or  nearly  identical,  with  texts  to  be  found  in  one 
of  the  Latin  MSS.  of  the  Welsh  Laws,  printed  in  A.  Owen's  edition  of  the 
**  Ancient  Laws,  &c.,  of  Wales."  See  "  Anc.  Laws,"ii.,  pp.  875-6;  and 
cf.  "  Councils,  &c. ,"  i.,  pp.  127  et  seq. 

W.F.  N 


178  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

of  traditional  rules  to  writing  one  means  of  increasing 
their  power.  Even  if  a  powerful  and  progressive  chieftain 
had  no  example  to  follow,  one  would  not  be  surprised 
to  find  that  under  the  circumstances  in  which  Howel  was 
placed,  the  idea  should  occur  that  it  would  be  expedient 
to  set  down  the  principal  rules  governing  his  own  house- 
hold, and  regulating  the  concerns  of  the  district  over 
which  he  exercised  tribal  rights.  In  fact,  however,  any 
chieftain  who  had  the  opportunity  of  coming  in  contact 
with  kings  and  lords  of  countries  or  districts  in  which 
the  laws  had  been,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  written 
down,  and  had  obtained  the  sanction  which  in  those  days 
was  attached  to  manuscripts,  might  naturally  feel  a  desire 
to  act  upon  the  precedents  set  by  those  neighbours  for 
whom  he  had  either  admiration  or  respect  Howel  had,  as 
we  have  seen,  opportunities  of  meeting  the  English  kings, 
and  perhaps  he  had  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Rome. 

We  find,  too,  that  there  was  throughout  the  whole  of 
Western  Europe  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  a  strong 
tendency  to  the  making  of  so-called  codes.  Probably  this 
tendency  had  its  immediate  origin  in  the  foundation  of 
the  Karlovingian  Empire,  in  the  legislation  of  Karl  the 
Great,  and  in  the  notion  that  smaller  rulers  and  chieftains 
could  not  do  better  than  imitate  one  whose  deeds  afld 
fame  were  so  great,  and  whose  prowess  and  wisdom  were 
fast  becoming  legendary  and  heroic.  Certainly  we  find 
in  the  most  unexpected  places  in  the  two  centuries  that 
follow  the  coronation  of  Karl  the  Great,  attempts  to  reduce 
customary  law  to  written  law.  There  is,  therefore,  a  fair 
probability  in  favour  of  the  genuineness  of  the  tradition 
that  couples  the  name  of  Howel  Da  with  the  reduction 
of  Welsh  tribal  customs  into  a  rigid  and  formal  written 
system. 

The  preamble  prefixed  to  each  of  the  codes  that  has 
been  handed  down  to  us  in  substance  (though  in  varying 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         179 

language)  records  that  Howel  summoned  four  men  from 
each  cantref  in  his  dominions  to  the  Ty  Gvvyn,  which  is 
identified  by  modern  antiquaries  and  far-reaching  tradition 
with  Wliitland  in  Carmarthenshire.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
inquire  whether  the  details  given  in  the  different  recen- 
sions of  the  code  are  absolutely  accurate.  The  notion  that 
there  is  any  similarity  between  such  a  gathering  and  later 
mediaeval  Parliaments  is  obviously  unfounded.  Not  only 
does  our  general  knowledge  prohibit  the  placing  of  any 
such  interpretation  upon  the  transaction,  but  the  specific 
information  afforded  to  us  from  later  sources  that  the 
making  of  laws  was  a  prerogative  of  the  princes  clearly 
shows  it  to  be  untenable.  Moreover,  the  similarity  of  these 
preambles  with  those  prefixed  to  other  compilations, 
collectively  called,  in  opposition  to  the  civil  and  canon 
law,  le^es  barbarormn^  is  inconsistent  with  this  idea,  and 
leads  to  the  inference  that  some  churchman,  probably  the 
Blegywryd  (archdeacon  of  Llandaff),  mentioned  in  the 
manuscripts  of  some  of  the  codes,  acquainted  with  similar 
books,  had  a  large  share  in  the  actual  transcription  of  that 
compilation  which  by  the  Welsh  is  called  "  hen  lyfr  y 
Tygwyn."  This  ancient  manuscript  has  not  come  down 
to  us,  and  what  we  have  is  a  number  of  manuscripts  of 
considerably  later  dates,  presenting  a  general  similarity 
in  substance  combined  with  considerable  differences  in 
detail. 

These  manuscripts  appear  to  be  transcripts  of  older 
books,  which  had  probably  received  additions  from  time 
to  time  either  authoritative,  as  coming  from  a  ruler,  or  as 
being  the  notes  of  judges  or  lawyers  who  had  become  the 
possessors  of  documents  which  were  naturally,  from  the 
difficulty  of  reproduction  and  the  paucity  of  their  number, 
extremely  valuable. 

The  earliest  edition  in  print  of  these  laws  is  the  work 
published  in  1730  by  Wotton  with  the  assistance  of  Moses 

N    2 


i8o  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  vi.) 

Williams  and  Clarke.^  In  this  volume  no  attempt  is  made 
to  separate  or  classify  those  manuscripts  which  apply  to 
different  parts  of  the  Principality.  It  was  reserved  for 
Aneurin  Owen,  who  was  commissioned  to  edit  and  publish 
the  Welsh  laws  for  the  Record  Commissioners,  to  make 
the  discovery  that  in  fact  the  MSS.  fell  into  three  classes 
— namely,  those  embodying  the  customs  of  Gwyned,  of 
Demetia,  and  of  Gwent  respectively.- 

The  work  of  Aneurin  Owen,  entitled  "  The  Ancient  Laws 
and  Institutes  of  Wales,"  was  published  in  1841,  and  is  at 
present  the  best  and  authoritative  edition  of  these  laws.^ 

We  cannot  describe  at  any  length  the  contents  of  these 
volumes.  The  first  contains  {a)  the  Venedotian  Code  ;  {b)  the 

1  Wotton  (William),  D.D.  "  Cyfieilhyeu  Hywel  Dda  ac  eraill  seu  leges 
Wallicae  Ecclesiasticas  et  Civiles  Hoeli  Boni  et  Aliorum  Walliae  Principum 
quas  ex  variis  Codicibus  Manuscriptis  erint,  Interpretatione  Latina,  Notis  et 
Glossario  illustravit  Gulielmus  Wottonus,  S.T.P.,  adjuvante  Mose  Gulielmo, 
A.M.,  K.S.  Soc.  Qui  et  Appendicem  adjecit."  Londini  :  Typis  Gulielmi 
Bowen,  mdccxxx.  fo. 

2  See  as  to  this  point  App.  D. 

^  Owen  (Aneurin):  "Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  Wales;  comprising 
Laws  supposed  to  be  enacted  by  Howel  the  Good,  modified  by  subsequent 
regulations  under  the  native  Princes  prior  to  the  conquest  by  Edward  the  First ; 
and  anomalous  laws  consisting  principally  of  Institutions  which  by  the  Statute  of 
Ruddlan  were  admitted  to  continue  in  force:  with  an  English  translation  of  the 
Welsh  Text.  ^  To  which  are  added  a  few  Latin  transcripts  containing  Digests  of 
the  Welsh  Laws,  principally  of  the  Demetian  Code.  With  indexes  and  glossary." 
Lond.  :  Record  Commissioners,  1841,  fo.  Another  edition,  2  vols.,  8vo, 
1841.  Something  had  been  done  towards  making  these  laws  known  between 
the  publication  of  Wottons  and  Owen's  work.  A  portion  of  the  laws  was 
published  in  the  "Cambrian  Register,"  vols.  i.  and  ii.  (Lond.,  1795  and 
1796),  and  in  the  3rd  vol,  of  the  "  Myvyrian  Archaiology  "  (Lond.  1S07),  a 
MS.  of  the  Laws,  which  is  termed  E  in  Owen's  Preface,  was  printed,  and  also 
certain  pieces  headed  "Trioedd  Cyfraith"  and  "  Trioedd  Dyfnwal  Moelmud." 
See  also  2nd  ed.  of  "  Myv.  Arch."  (Denbigh,  1870);  also  Probert  (William), 
"Ancient  Laws  of  Cambria,"  &c.  (Lond.  1823,  Svo),  and  Hoiiard,  "  Traites 
sur  les  coutumes  Anglo-Normandes  publics  en  Angleterre  depuis  le  onzieme 
jusqu'au  quatorzieme  siecle. "  and  "  Tableau  de  nioeurs  au  dixieme  siecle,  ou  la 
Cour  et  des  lois  de  Hoel  le  Bon,  Roi  d'Aberfraw  de  907-948,"  &c.,  by 
E.  G.  Peignot  (Paris,  1832).  See  note  above,  p.  25,  n.  i,  as  to  Owen's 
unsatisfactory  method  of  dealing  with  the  MSS. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS,         i8i 

Demetian  Code,  and  (c)  the  Gwentian  Code.  The  first  is 
given  in  the  main  according  to  a  version  in  the  Black 
Book  of  Chirk,  a  MS.  now  in  the  Peniarth  collection,  which 
appears  to  belong  to  the  later  part  of  the  twelfth  century.^ 
The  other  MSS.  of  the  Venedotian  Code  belong  to  the  two 
succeeding  centuries.  The  Demetian  Code  is  printed  from 
a  MS.  of  about  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  now  in 
the  British  Museum.  The  Gwentian  Code  comes  chiefly 
from  a  MS.  of  the  fourteenth  century.  In  his  second 
volume,  Owen  prints  two  fairly  full  versions  and  one 
incomplete  version  of  these  laws  from  Latin  MSS.  These 
Latin  texts  are  of  exceptional  importance,  because  the 
technical  terms,  which  are  rendered  into  Latin,  connect 
the  Cymric  system  in  an  intelligible  way  with  the  systems 
of  other  parts  of  Western  Europe.  They  indeed  suggest 
the  question  whether,  as  a  result  of  the  celebrated  conven- 
tion of  Howel  Da,  the  laws  were  not  first  of  all  set  down 
in  Latin.  Blegywryd,  archdeacon  of  Llandaff,  mentioned 
above,  was  the  scribe  selected  to  write  the  law,  as  being  the 
most  learned  in  all  Cymru  {yr ysgolheic  huotlaf  o  Gymry  oU), 
after  twelve  of  the  wisest  of  the  Assembly  had  been  set 
apart  to  make  the  law  (y  deudec  doythaf  o  hyny  arneiUtit  y 
6neutJiyr  y  gyfreitJi ) . 

Assuming,  as  we  must,  that  Blegywryd  was  conversant 
with  the  Welsh  language,  it  may  be  that  he  recorded  the 
result  of  the  formation  of  the  law  by  these  twelve  wise 
men  in  Latin,  and  that  the  laws  so  settled  were  afterwards 
translated  into  Welsh.  If  it  be  true,  as  stated  in  the 
Preface  to  the  Demetian  Code,  that  Howel  and  others  went 
to  Rome  to  read  the  law  before  the  Pope  that  he  might 
see  if  there  was  anything  contrary  to  the  law  of  God  in  it,^ 

^  So  says  A.  Owea,  but  we  understand  that  Mr.  Gwenogvryn  Evans  thinks 
it  is  later.    See.  however,  App.  D.  below. 

2  See  Owen,  i.,  p.  343.  Cf.  in  the  Ven.  Code  the  Preface  to  Book  iii., 
Owen,  i.,  p.  217.  The  Venedotian  Code  (Book  ii.,  c.  xvi.  2)  says,  "The 
ecclesiastical  law  says  again  that  no  son  is  to  have  the  patrimony  but  the  eldest 


±82  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

and  obtained  the  Pope's  confirmation,  there  must  have  been 
a  Latin  version  in  existence  at  that  time.  But  according 
to  the  Demetian  Preface,  the  king  ordered  three  law-books 
to  be  prepared  ;  one  for  the  use  of  the  daily  Court,  to 
remain  continually  with  himself ;  another  for  the  Court 
of  Dinevwr ;  the  third  for  the  Court  of  Aberffraw,^  and  in 
one  of  the  MSS.  of  the  Demetian  Code,  towards  the  end  of 
the  Preface,  the  names  of  the  twelve  laymen  who  were  set 
apart  to  make  the  law — a  kind  of  committee — are  given.^ 
The  statements  of  this  Preface  (seemingly  compiled  at 
different  times,  and  not  affecting  to  be  the  Preface  of  the 
original  book)  are  to  some  extent  confirmed  by  the  Preface 
to  the  third  book  of  the  Venedotian  Code.^ 

There  lorwerth  ab  Madog  is  represented  as  having 
collected  the  Book  {i.e.,  the  third  or  Proof  Book)  from 
the  Book  of  Cyvnerth  ab  Morgeneu,  and  from  the  Book  of 
Gwair  ab  Rhuvon,  and  from  the  Book  of  Goronwy  ab 
Moreidig,"^  and  the  old  Book  of  the  White  House  ("  a 
hen  lyfr  y  Ty  Gwyn  ")  ;  and,  in  addition  to  those,  from  the 
best  books  he  found  likewise  in  Gwyned,  Powys,  and 
Deheubarth.  There  is  no  improbability  in  all  this  ;  for  the 
books  of  the  lay  Welsh  judges  or   lawyers-  cannot   have 

born  to  the  father  by  the  married  wife  ;  the  law  of  Howel,  however,  adjudges 
it  to  the  youngest  son  as  well  as  the  eldest,  and  decides  that  sin  of  the  father 
or  his  illegal  act  is  not  to  be  brought  against  the  son  as  to  his  patrimony." 
This  important  difference  between  the  law  of  the  Church  and  the  law  of 
Howel,  of  course,  is  evidence  against  the  story  that  the  latter  had  received 
Papal  confirmation. 

1  Owen,  i.,  p.  340. 

2  It  may  be  worth  while  to  note  them  : — "  Morgeneu,  the  judge  ;  Cyvnerth 
his  son  ;  Gwair,  son  of  Rhuvon  ;  Goronwy,  son  of  Moreidig ;  Cewyf!,  the 
judge  ;  Idig,  the  judge  ;  Gwiberi  the  aged ;  Gwrnerth  the  grey,  his  son  ; 
Medwon,  son  of  Cerise ;  Gwgon  of  Dyfed ;  Bledrws,  son  of  BleicJyd  ; 
Gwyn,  the  maer,  the  man  who  was  the  owner  of  Glantavwyn.  to  whom 
the  house  belonged  in  which  the  law  was  made." 

3  Owen,  i.,  pp.  216 — 218. 

^  It  will  be  noticed  that  Cyvnerth,  Gwair,  and  Goronwy  are  three  of  the 
twelve  laymen  referred  to  in  the  Demetian  Preface.     See  note  2  above. 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND   CUSTOMS.         183 

been  in  Latin,  and  so  we  may  take  it  that  men  who  had 
actually  taken  part  in  the  convention  at  the  White  House 
had  in  their  possession  MSS.  of  the  law  in  the  Welsh 
language.  This  is  not,  of  course,  inconsistent  with  there 
having  been  a  contemporary  Latin  version.^ 

There  is,  however,  great  reason  for  doubting  whether 
Howel's  visit  to  Rome  had  any  connection  with  his 
legislation.  The  story  as  given  in  the  Preface  to  the 
Demetian  Code  is  as  follows: — "After  the  law  had  been 
made  and  written,  Howel,  accompanied  by  princes  of 
Cymru,  and  Lambert  bishop  of  Menevia,  and  Mordav 
bishop  of  Bangor,  and  Cebur  bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  and 
Blegywryd  archdeacon  of  Llandaff,  went  to  Rome  to  Pope 
Anastatius  to  read  the  law  and  to  see  if  there  were 
anything  contrary  to  the  law  of  God  in  it ;  and  as  there  was 
nothing  militating  against  it,^  it  was  confirmed,  and  was 
called  the  law  of  Howel  Da  from  that  time  forward." 
The  only  Anastatius  who  was  Pope  during  Howel's  time 
was  Anastatius  HI.,  who  held  the  Papacy  from  909  to  911. 
Both  the  Brut  and  Annales  record  that  Howel  went  to 
Rome ;  the  former  puts  the  date  as  926  and  the  latter  two 
years  later.  The  Venedotian  and  Demetian  Prefaces  describe 
Howel  as  king  of  all  Cymru,^  but  it  seems  clear  he  was  not 
in  possession  of  Gwyned  till  Idwal  died  in  941.*      Even, 

'  For  some  further  observations  on  the  question  whether  the  laws  were 
first  written  down  in  Latin,  see  App.  D. 

-  This  was  not,  however,  the  case.     See  below,  p.  210. 
^  The  Gwentian  Preface  simply  calls  him  king  of  Cymru. 
•*  The  Demetian  Preface  adds  to  the  account  of  the  journey  to  Rome  :  "  The 
year  of  the  Lord  Jesus   Christ  at   that  time  914.     And  here  are  the  verses 
composed  by  Blegywryd  thereupon  in  testimony  of  that  event : — 
Explicit  editus  legibus  liber  bene  finitus 
Quem  regi  scripcit  Blangoridus  et  quoque  fuit 
Hweli  turbe  doctor  tunc  legis  in  urbe 
Cornando  cano  tunc  judice  cotidiano 
Rex  dabit  ad  partem  dexteram  nam  sumerat  artem." 
These  verses,  in  a  very  slightly  different  form,  are  to  be  found  in  a  Latin  MS. 
in  the  Bodleian  (A.  Owen's  Preface,  p.  xxxiii.).     The  text  adds  '*  Gornerth 


i84  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

therefore,  if  the  story  of  the  visit  to  Rome  to  get  the  Pope's 
confirmation  be  true,  we  cannot  accept  the  date  assigned  or 
the  name  of  the  Pope  as  accurate.  We  see  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  Howel  paid  a  visit  to  Rome,  as  mentioned  in  the 
Chronicles  ;  but,  seeing  that  Idwal  was  then  reigning  in 
Gwyned,  we  think  it  unHkely  that  the  Ty  Gwyn  conven- 
tion could  have  been  held  before  that  event,  for  men  from 
the  cymwds  of  the  North  were  summoned  by  Howel  to 
attend  it — a  course  which  could  hardh^  have  been  taken  by 
the  South  Welsh  prince  without  difficulties  with  his  North 
Welsh  cousin  had  the  latter  been  then  alive.  The  most 
probable  date  of  the  transaction  we  are  considering  is  there- 
fore 942  or  943,  and  the  notion  that  Howel's  visit  to  Rome 
had  anything  to  do  with  his  law-making  looks  like  a  later 
invention.^ 

The  contents  of  Owen's  second  volume  (apart  from  the 
Latin  versions  of  the  laws  of  Howel  f)a  and  the  statute  of 
Rhudlan)  are  not  of  the  same  interest  or  importance  as  the 
codes.  They  consist  of  comparatively  late  legal  maxims, 
commentaries,  and  illustrations,  which  supplement  and 
explain,  without  essentially  modifying,  the  codes.  He  also 
prints  specimens  of  pleadings  and  other  matter  of  interest. 
From  a  literary  point  of  view  Book  xiii.,  entitled  "  Trioec! 
Dyvnwal  Moelmud  a  elwir  Trioed  y  cludau  a  Thrioed  \' 
cargludau"  {i.e.^  "the  triads  of  Dyfnwal  Moelmud,  which 
are  called  the  triads  of  motes  and  triads  of  car-motes"),- 

tt6yd  mab  G6yberi  bach  (cornandus  canus  filius  gwiberi  parvi)  erat  judex  curi^ 
de  Dinevwr  in  tempore  Hywali  Da."  As  to  the  status  of  the  Judge  of  the 
Court,  see  below,  p.  198. 

1  It  should  be  noticed  that  in  the  Venedotian  Preface  there  is  not  a  word  said 
about  the  visit  to  Rome  or  the  Papal  confirmation. 

2  See  Owen,  vol.  ii.,  p.  474.  For  further  remarks  on  these  triads  and 
Owen's  translation  of  the  title,  see  Appendix  D,  below,  p.  648.  On  p.  4S2  the 
second  set  of  triads  are  called  *'  the  triads  of  the  social  and  federate  state  ;  and 
which  are  the  ancient  triads  of  the  privileges  and  customs  of  the  Cymry  before 
they  lost  their  privilege  and  their  crown,  through  the  rapacity,  fraud,  and 
treacherv  of  the  Saxons." 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         185 

naturally  attracts  attention.  The  tract  is  printed  from  a 
MS.  which  concludes  thus:  "And  I,  Evan  son  of  Evan  of 
Trev  Bryn  in  Morganwg,  transcribed  this  from  the  old 
books  of  Sir  Edward  Mansell  of  Margam,  when  the  year  of 
Christ  our  Lord  was  1685."  We  may  believe  that  Evan  ab 
Evan  was  not  the  author;  but  the  style  and  the  internal 
evidence  show  that  the  work  is  not  one  to  which  any  great 
age  can  be  ascribed.  The  whole  production  is  unlike  in  style 
to  the  genuine  law-books  that  have  survived,  and  seems  more 
a  literary  exercise  than  a  practical  treatise.  The  author^ 
however,  was  acquainted  with  the  old  Welsh  legal  system 
and  its  technical  terms,  and  many  of  the  triadic  texts  embody 
really  ancient  maxims.  No  great  weight  can,  however,  be 
attached  to  the  treatise.  So  far  as  it  agrees  with  the  codes 
it  has  no  special  value;  when  its  texts  differ  from  the  codes, 
or  extend  the  doctrines  they  state  expressly  or  impliedly, 
they  cannot  be  deemed  to  have  any  more  authority  than 
may  be  given  to  a  late  commentary  not  prepared  for 
practical  use ;  especially  as  there  is  a  good  deal  that 
suggests  that  the  real  object  of  the  writer  was  to  magnify  the 
importance  and  status  of  the  bards  in  the  old  Welsh  polity. 

To  sum  up,  we  may  say : — 

The  oldest  MS.  of  the  laws  of  Howel  being  of  the 
twelfth  century,  we  may  be  sure  that  we  have  no  authentic 
copy  of  the  old  Book  of  the  White  House.  The  earliest 
MSS.  bear  marks  of  having  had  themselves  a  history. 
The  Black  Book  of  Chirk  refers  to  amendments  made  by 
Bledyn  ab  Cynfyn,  who  reigned  from  1063  to  1073,  and 
the  thirteenth  century  MS.  of  the  Demetian  Code  makes 
mention  of  alterations  and  additions  by  Lord  Rhys  ab 
Gruffyd",  who  flourished  from  1137  to  1 197.  But  there  is 
no  reason  for  not  carrying  back  the  first  setting  down  in 
writing  of  the  Welsh  customs  to  the  time  of  Howel  Da. 

Nor  is  there  any  real  doubt  that  these  bodies  of  law 
consist  of  custumals  which  were  once  in  actual  operation. 


i86  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,   (chap,  vi.) 

In  support  of  this  the  high  authority  of  Sir  Henry  ]\Iaine* 
may  be  cited,  and  apart  from  authority  the  fact  that  the 
documents  disclose  a  fairly  complete  system  of  legal 
terminology  in  the  Cymric  language,  while  the  general 
contents  describe  a  tribal  system  such  as  what  is  known 
of  other  races  leads  us  to  think  may  have  been  in  force 
among  the  Cymric  people,  is  practical!}'  conclusive  of  the 
genuineness  of  these  laws.- 

Much  controversy  has  arisen  upon  the  question  whether 
the  English  law  is,  as  a  whole,  derived  from  Welsh 
law,  or  whether  these  Welsh  laws  are  simply  conscious 
imitations  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  laws.  We  do  not  affect  to 
enter  upon  this  question,  but  we  may  observe  that  we  think 
it  extremely  likely  that  there  were  survivals  of  British 
customs  among  the  people  who  afterwards  became  con- 
solidated into  the  English-Norman  kingdom.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  think  it  quite  probable,  and  in  some  instances 
certain,  that  Howel  or  those  who  assisted  him  intentionally 
adopted  some  rules  or  descriptions  either  from  English 
or  foreign  bodies  of  written  law.  It  cannot  escape  notice 
that  in  precisely  that  part  of  the  codes  where  we  might 
expect  imitation  and  legislation  in  the  modern  sense  of 
the  term,  that  is,  the    making   of  new  rules  for  changed 

^   "  Early  History  of  Institutions,"  pp.  5,  6. 

2  As  to  the  interpretation  of  these  Welsh  Laws  the  following  works  should 
be  consulted: — Seebohm's  "Tribal  System  in  Wales,"  and  "The  English 
Village  Community  "  ;  Palmer's  "  History  of  Ancient  Tenures  in  the  Marches 
of  North  Wales";  Hubert  Lewis's  "Ancient  Laws  of  Wales,"  edited  by 
Professor  Lloyd,  M.A.  ;  Ashton's  "  Hywel  Da  a'i  Gyfreithiau "' ;  Walter's 
"  Das  Alte  Wales";  De  Valroger's  "  Les  Celtes  :  La  Gaule  Celtique  "' ; 
Skene's  "Celtic  Scotland"  ;  Fowler's  "Some  Account  of  the  Ancient  Laws 
and  Institutes  of  Wales  "  ;  Brymmor-Jones's  "The  Study  of  the  Welsh  Laws'* 
(articles  in  Cymru  Fyd,  1889),  and  "The  Criminal  Law  of  Mediaeval  Wales" 
(South  Wales  University  College  Magazine,  1S90).  See  also  Classen's 
"Histoire  du  Droit  et  des  Institutions  de  I'Angleterre,*'  iii.,  pp.  609  et  scq.; 
Warrington's  "  Histor)-  of  Wales,"  pp.  164-190  ;  and  Meyrick's  "History 
of  Cardiganshire,"  Int.,  pp.  Ixvii.-lxxi.  For  particulars  of  some  of  these 
works  see  Appendix  to  Report,  pp.  81-2. 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND   CUSTOMS.         187 

circumstances,  there  is  a  remarkable  similarity  with  the 
corresponding  part  of  the  Karlovingian  system.  If  it 
be  true,  as  indicated  above,  that  Howel  had  obtained 
the  rule,  or  rather  over-lordship  of  the  whole  of  Wales, 
we  might  easily  understand  that  one  of  the  first  things 
which  would  occupy  his  attention  would  be  the  organisa- 
tion of  his  own  Court  or  household  ;  and  it  is,  in  at  least 
one  of  the  codes,  the  completeness  with  which  the  rights 
and  duties  of  the  king  himself,  of  members  of  his  family, 
of  his  servants  and  attendants,  are  set  forth  that  first 
strikes  the  reader.  Now,  here  in  this  organisation  we 
find  a  noticeable  resemblance  to  the  organisation  created 
by  Karl  the  Great.  Probably  this  emperor  and  his  advisers 
had  themselves  before  their  eyes  the  model  of  the  Byzantine 
Court,  but,  however  this  may  be,  one  cannot  help  coming 
to  the  conclusion  that,  directly  or  indirectly,  the  Welsh 
organisation  was  very  largely  influenced  by  intentional 
imitation  of  the  Karlovingian  precedent.  We  have  no 
means,  of  course,  of  determining  whether  the  model  which 
Howel  and  his  assistants  set  before  them  was  the  Prankish 
system  or  the  Court  of  ^thelstan,  but  we  are  inclined  to 
think  that  what  is  found  in  these  Welsh  books  is  not  wholly 
derived  from  observation  of  the  latter. 

But  in  regard  to  other  portions  of  the  customary  system 
disclosed  in  what  we  may,  without  inaccuracy,  call  Howel's 
legislation,  the  traces  of  conscious  imitation  from  other 
sources  are  few,  if  any.  One  is  rather  struck,  when  com- 
paring them  with  the  so-called  Anglo-Saxon  laws,  say  the 
laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  with  dissimilarities  rather 
than  with  similarities.  No  doubt  many  notions  and  con- 
ceptions are  very  like  in  or  common  to  both  sets  of  laws, 
but  the  same  is  true  as  between  the  W^elsh  laws  and  the 
Irish  laws.  It  would  be  in  our  judgment  entirely  wrong  to 
infer  an  English  derivation  from  mere  identity  or  similarity 
of  usage  and  idea.      The  truth    seems    rather   to  be  that 


i88  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

all  the  races  forming  part  of  the  Indo-European  group 
started  with  common  ideas  of  duty  and  of  tribal  organisation 
In  some  cases  the  process  of  disintegration  of  the  tribal 
system  proceeded  more  rapidly  than  in  others  ;  in  one 
case  the  line  of  development  went  in  one,  and  in  another 
in  another  direction.  Or,  possibly,  while  the  process  of 
evolution  was  the  same  in  every  case,  while  every  race  went 
through  the  same  typical  changes  or  stages  of  growth,  cir- 
cumstances interfered  to  alter  the  rate  of  the  process. 
Howsoever  this  may  be,  forming  the  best  judgment  we 
can,  we  think  that  these  ancient  Welsh  laws  are  truthful 
evidence  of  the  condition  of  society  during  the  centuries 
in  which  they  were  in  operation  in  Wales  and  Monmouth- 
shire, and  that,  apart  from  the  organisation  of  the  Court, 
they  represent  a  natural  and  spontaneous  growth  of 
civilisation  among  the  Cymric  tribes. 

Treating,  then,  these  compilations  as  authentic  evidence 
of  the  condition  of  the  Cymry  in  the  tenth  century,  we  are 
enabled  to  draw  a  picture  of  society  in  its  broad  outlines  in 
the  days  of  Welsh  independence.  Looking  at  the  system 
as  a  whole  it  must  be  described  as  still  tribal.  Political 
and  property  rights,  as  well  as  the  status  of  individuals, 
depended  upon  a  theory  of  blood  relationship.  The  whole 
community  is  looked  upon  as  an  aggregate  of  tribes  or 
clans  and  families,  forming  a  ruling  aristocracy,  under  whom 
other  classes  of  lower  status  are  grouped.  The  form  of 
government,  so  far  as  the  term  "government"  can  be  used 
at  all,  was  monarchical.  In  theory  the  king  of  Gwyned  or 
Aberffraw   was    head    of  the    organisation.^       He    himself 

'  This  seems  to  have  been  a  principle  of  the  Welsh  law.  It  is  Mr.  Seebohm's 
view  ("  Tribal  System  in  Wales,"  pp.  135 — 6) ;.  but  the  codes  give  no  certain 
evidence  on  the  point.  The  most  explicit  text  seems  that  in  Book  x.  of  the 
"Anomalous  Laws"  (Owen,  vol,  ii.,  p.  585).  There  Aberffraw  is  said  to  receive 
Mcchdcyi-n  dues  from  Dinevwr  (South  Wales)  and  from  Gwynva  (Powys),  and 
the  king  of  Loegr  is  to  receive  three-score  and  three  pounds  from  the  king  of 
Aberffraw. 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND   CUSTOMS.         189 

recognised  the  over-lordship  of  the  king  of  England. 
Regularly,  all  other  chieftains,  princes,  or  kings  in  Cymru 
were  subject  to  the  lord  of  Aberffraw.  The  result  is  that 
there  was  a  more  or  less  well-understood  hierarchy  of  kings 
or  princes,  which  presents  remarkable  analogies  to  a  feudal 
kingdom.  In  the  chronicles  sometimes  one  individual  is 
represented  as  king  over  the  whole  of  Wales.  We  have 
seen  that  Howel  -Da  is  an  instance  in  point,  but  there 
were  always  other  kings  or  princes  who  are  represented  as 
exercising  power  in  different  districts  of  the  territory,  and 
enjoying  various  regal  privileges  and  prerogatives.  There 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  any  alteration  in  theory 
caused  by  the  division  and  re-division  of  the  existing  Cymric 
districts  among  the  kingly  families.  What  is  really  meant 
by  saying  that  Howel  ©a  was  lord  of  all  Wales  is  that 
certain  districts  usually  held  by  kings  or  princes  of  other 
royal  or  princely  kinsmen  were  possessed  directly  by 
Howel,  who  received  the  dues  and  enjoyed  the  privileges 
ordinarily  received  and  enjoyed  by  the  latter.  That  is,  it 
really  amounted  to  Howel's  taking  possession  of  all  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  the  king  of  Powys  and  the  king  of 
Gwyned  as  well  as  those  of  the  king  of  South  Wales. 
The  kingship  of  Powys  and  the  kingship  of  Gwyned  were 
assumed  to  continue  to  exist,  though  the  kingship  was  in 
the  hands  of  one  man.  Similar  later  instances  of  an 
analogous  kind  readily  present  them.selves,  e.£:,  after  the 
conquest  of  Wales  the  mere  attainder  of  a  lord  of  Glamorgan, 
and  the  consequent  forfeiture  of  his  possessions  to  the  Crown, 
followed  by  the  king's  taking  possession,  did  not  amount 
to  an  extinction  of  the  lordship  ;  it  simply  came  to  the 
king's  administering  Glamorgan  until  he  re-granted  it  to 
one  of  his  subjects.  Whatever  the  theory,  the  state  of 
Cymru  was  as  a  rule  very  unsettled  and  sometimes 
anarchical.  The  position  and  rights  of  its  kings  and 
its   political    organisation,    cannot   be   understood   without 


igo  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

reference  to  the  territorial  divisions  of  and  the  different 
classes  of  persons  in  the  country. 

Cymru  was  divided  into  the  districts  called  cantrefs  and 
cymzuds,  the  origin  and  character  of  which  we  have  dis- 
cussed above.  The  exact  significance  of  the  cantref  it  is 
very  difficult  to  determine,  for  in  the  laws  we  are  dealing 
with  it  is  the  cymwd  which  is  the  unit  of  organisation.  In 
the  time  of  Howel  the  boundaries  of  the  cantrefs  and 
cymwds  were  evidently  known  and  settled  for  practical 
purposes.  To  understand  the  method  of  government  from 
day  to  day  the  cymwd  is  the  area  on  which  one  must  fix  one's 
eye.  The  cantref,  as  it  then  existed,  was  in  all  probability 
a  district  over  which  a  lord  {arglwy^,  appointed  b\-  the 
king  of  the  country  {gwlad)  of  which  it  formed  part,  ruled 
with  a  set  of  officers  whose  rights  and  duties  corresponded 
with  those  of  the  king's  household.  The  lord  of  a  cantref  or 
cymwd  must  not  be  confounded  with  another  kind  of  chief- 
tain, the  head  of  a  kindred  (cenedl)  with  whom  the  laws  make 
us  acquainted.  The  lord  might,  of  course,  be  a  penkenedl 
in  reference  to  his  own  kindred,  but  his  position  as  arglwyd 
was  due,  as  it  would  seem,  to  his  appointment  by  the  king 
of,  or  the  royal  kindred  ruling  over,  the  country  in  which 
the  cantref  or  cymwd  was  situate.  Sometimes  several 
cantrefs  were  combined  under  one  lord  who  called  himself 
tywysog  (prince)  or  brenin  (king),  but  in  an}*  case,  if  wc 
may  judge  from  the  laws,  each  cymwd  and  cantref  main- 
tained its  separate  organisation.  The  lord  delegated  to 
certain  officers  the  discharge  of  some  of  his  functions.  In 
every  cymwd  there  was  a  luaer  (in  the  Latin  text,  prcu- 
positus)  and  a  canghdior  (in  the  Latin  text,  cancellanits], 
discharging  prescribed  governmental  duties,  and  in  each 
cymwd  a  court  was  held  by  them  with  the  aid  of  other  officers. 

We  cannot  here  attempt  to  give  a  complete  analysis  or 
full  exposition  of  the  legal  system  developed  in  these 
treatises  ;    nor  do  we  think  it  necessary,  until   they  have 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         191 

been  further  examined  and  studied,  to  suggest  the  points 
of  comparison  between  them  and  the  Irish  and  early 
.  EngHsh  laws.  We  do  not  in  the  least  wish  to  disparage 
the  value  of  "the  comparative  method"  in  its  application 
to  the  history  of  institutions  ;  but  before  we  can  compare 
systems  with  a  view  to  generalisation  we  ought  to  know  a 
good  deal  about  the  systems  themselves — a  thing  surely 
obvious  enough  but  often  forgotten.  So  what  we  wish  to 
do  now  is  to  show  the  leading  features  of  the  Cymric  law 
as  we  find  them  in  these  old  books. 

As  might  have  been  expected,  the  codes  disclose  com- 
munities containing  different  classes  of  persons,  or  perhaps 
we  ought  to  say,  different  castes.  Speaking  broadly, 
braint  (status)  depended  on  birth.  The  primary  distinc- 
tion is  between  tribesmen  and  non-tribesmen,  between  men 
of  Cymric  and  those  of  non-Cymric  blood.  The  Cymry 
themselves  were  divided  into:  (i)  a  royal  class  consisting 
of  men  belonging  to  families  or  kindreds  (cenedloe^)  of 
kingly  or  princely  braint  (status)  who  had  over  divers  areas 
of  Cymru  special  rights ;  (2)  a  noble  class  called  in  the 
codes  sometimes  uchelwyr  (literally,  "high-men"),  sometimes 
breyriaid,  sometimes  gwyrda,  and  in  the  Latin  versions 
nobiliores  and  optimates ;  and  (3)  innate  tribesmen  styled 
bonedigion  (gentlemen). 

Below  the  tribesmen  in  the  scale  were  unfree  persons 
denominated  taeogion  or  eiittion  (in  Latin,  nativi  or  villani), 
corresponding  roughly  to  the  villeins  of  English  law. 
Lowest  of  all  was  a  class  of  menial  or  domestic  slaves 
{caetJiion)} 

^  Taeog  is  of  the  same  origin  as  ty  (house),  and  was  probably  suggested  by 
villanus.  Atttud  means  one  of  another  people  or  country — a  foreigner,  and  is 
equivalent  to  Anglo-Saxon  el-theod.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  aitit,  which  in 
the  early  laws  is  usually  viab  eyiit  [eigffd],  or  jnab  ei-H  or  mab  eifti  =  a.  shaven 
fellow — i.e.,  a  slave,  plural  nieybyon  eiHion.  The  later  spellings  7?iab  aitit 
and  aittt  without  the  mab,  plural  eiition,  make  their  appearance  in  the  Triads. 
The  word  has  its  congeners  in  eiHio  (the  act  of  shaving),  and  eH-yn  (a  razor), 
Irish  altan. 


192  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,   (chap,  vi.) 

But  quite  apart  from  these — the  primary  classes  con- 
templated— forming  the  legal  organisation,  the  laws  deal 
with  strangers  residing  temporarily  in  or  settling  within 
the  limits  of  a  Cymric  area.  Such  strangers  were  called 
aUtudion^  and  though  there  was  some  similarity  in  the 
position  of  the  two  classes,  they  must  not  be  confounded 
with  the  eiiition. 

The  degree  of  the  afttud  in  his  own  country  made  no 
necessary  difference  to  his  position  in  the  Cymric  system. 
If  a  Mercian,  whether  noble  or  non-noble,  settled  in 
Gwyned,  he  was  in  either  case  an  aittiid.  For  the  in- 
dividual the  line  that  separated  him  and  the  Cymro  could 
not  originally  be  passed.^  But  there  is  evidence  to  show 
that,  in  regard  to  South  Wales,  the  residence  in  C\'mru  of 
an  atttud  and  his  descendants  continued  till  the  ninth 
generation  conferred  Cymric  status  upon  the  family ;  and 
also  that  intermarriage  with  innate  Cymraeses  generation 
after  generation  made  the  descendants  of  an  atttud  innate 
Cymry  in  the  fourth  generation.  Late  texts  give  also 
examples  of  artificial  methods  of  securing  Cymric  kinship, 
e.g.,  by  joining  a  kindred  in  the  work  of  avenging  the 
death  of  a  kinsman. 

The  Cymry  of  full  blood  deemed  themselves  descended 
from  a  common  ancestor ;  but  they  were  divided  into 
numerous  kindreds,  each  of  which  formed  a  kind  of  privileged 
oligarchy,  but  subordinate  to  the  kindreds  of  royal  status. 

The  kindred  {cenedl)  was  an  organised  and  self-govern- 
ing unit,  having  at  its  head  a  penkenedl  (chief  of  the 
kindred).  The  Welsh  cenedl  comprised  the  descendants 
of  a  common  ancestor  to  the  ninth  degree  of  descent.  The 
penkenedl,  say  the  Laws,  must  not  be  either  a  maer  or 
cangheHor  of  the  king,  but  an  uchelwr  of  the  country ;  and  his 
status  must  not  be  acquired  by  maternity.     He  has  to  pay  a 

'  It  would  seem,  however,  that  ifjthe  king  conferred  office  on  him,  he 
assumed  the  braint  (status,  privilege)  attaching  to  it. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS,         193 

tribute  yearly  to  the  arglwyd  or  higher  chieftain.  He  must 
be  an  efificient  man,  being  the  eldest  of  the  efficient  men  of 
the  kindred,  and  being  the  chief  of  a  household  {penteulu), 
or  a  man  with  a  wife  and  children  by  legitimate  marriage. 
He  was  assisted  by  three  other  officers,  the  representative 
{teisbanteulu)  whose  duty  was  to  mediate  in  Court  and 
assembly,  and  in  combat  within  the  tribe,  and  to  act  for 
the  kindred  in  every  foreign  affair  ;  the  avenger  {dialwr)  who 
led  the  kindred  to  battle,  and  pursued  evil-doers,  brought 
them  before  the  Court,  and  punished  them  according  to  its 
sentence  ;  the  avoucher  {ar'delwr)^  who  seemingly  entered 
into  bonds  and  made  warranty  on  behalf  of  the  kindred. 

Under  the  penkenedl  were  grouped  the  chiefs  of  house- 
hold belonging  to  the  kindred,  and  every  one  of  the  kindred 
was  a  man  and  a  kin  to  him  {yn  wr  ac yn  gar  ido). 

We  are  now,  in  the  light  of  these  legal  rules,  able  to  form 
a  fairly  clear  notion  of  the  original  Cymric  cenedl.  Con- 
sidered at  any  one  moment  in  the  abstract,  it  consisted  of 
a  group  of  blood  relations  descended  from  a  common 
ancestor.  Observed  in  more  concrete  fashion,  it  was  an 
aggregate  of  families  residing  in  separate  homesteads,  at 
the  head  of  each  of  which  was  a  penteiUtt  (chief  of  the 
household).  It  was  a  self-governing  unit  under  the  chief- 
tainship of  the  penkenedl,  assisted  by  the  officers  and  for 
some  purposes  by  a  council  of  elders. 

There  seems  to  have  been  some  kind  of  court  for 
redressing  wrongs  done  by  members  of  one  household  to 
members  of  another  household  within  the  cenedl ;  but  the 
discipline  of  each  household  was  maintained  by  its  penteulu 
(chief  of  the  household).  The  household  in  its  structure 
resembled  the  "  patriarchal  family  "  under  a  patria  potestas 
more  nearly  than  the  "joint  family"  of  some  systems,  with 
its  joint  ownership  under  a  chief  who  is  only  primus  mter 
pares}     The    sanctity  of  each   hearth  was  respected,  and 

^  Seebohm,  "Tribal  System,"  p.  95. 
W.P.  O 


194  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

each  penteulu  had  a  right  of  nawd  (protection)  within 
defined  limits,  which  varied  according  to  his  status. 

It  should  be  noticed  that  according  to  the  fundamental 
ideas  of  this  system  the  cenedl  was  not  a  rigid  or  final 
corporation  or  entity  formed  once  for  all  ;  it  was  an 
ever-changing  organism  ;  every  penteulu  was  a  possible 
founder  of  a  complete  cenedl.  As  Mr.  Seebohm  says,  the 
tribal  system  was  "  always  forging  new  links  in  an  endless 
chain,  and  the  links  of  kindred  always  overlapped  one 
another."^  Furthermore,  it  should  be  remarked  that  the 
kindreds,  the  chiefs  of  which  were  uchelwyr,  were  subordi- 
nate in  the  complete  structure  of  Cymric  society  to  kindreds 
built  up  in  analogous  fashion  of  the  privileged  or  royal 
status,  the  members  of  which  in  theory  could  trace  their 
descent  from  Cuneda  the  gwledig. 

Such  being,  so  far  as  we  may  infer  it  with  some  con- 
fidence from  these  laws,  the  original  structure  of  the  Cymric 
cenedl,  we  observe  that  the  system  (except,  perhaps,  so  far 
as  the  theory  of  tir  gwelyaivg-  is  an  essential  part  of  it)  has 
no  necessary  connection  with  any  particular  area.  It  seems 
indeed  as  well  adapted  for  a  nomadic  as  fryr  a  settled  race, 
and  is  a  personal  rather  than  a  territorial  organisation.  But 
it  is  evident  the  final  settlement  of  the  kindreds  in  a  given 
territory,  even  if  that  territory  were  previously  unoccupied, 
would  lead  to  gradual  modifications  of  custom,  and  the  altera- 
tions would  come  more  speedily  when  the  tribe  or  tribes  to 
which  the  kindreds  belonged  conquered  and  settled  upon 
land  already  in  the  possession  of  men  of  other  races  who 
were  not  extirpated,  but  placed  in  an  inferior  position  by  the 
victorious  immigrants.  This  probability  is  confirmed  by  the 
laws  of  Howel.  As  we  have  seen,  when  the  laws  were  set 
down  in  writing,  the  Cymry  had  been  settled  in  Wales  for 
several  centuries,  and  the  codes  show  that  great  changes 

1   "Tribal  System,"  p.  85. 

"  I.e.,  family-land.      See  below,  p.  220. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         195 

must  have  taken  place  in  the  legal  system.  Many  of 
the  privileges  and  functions  formerly  appertaining  to  the 
penkenedl  had  come  to  belong  to  the  arglwyd  (lord)  of 
the  cymwd.  There  had  arisen  a  court  of  the  cymwd 
regulated  by  a  7naer  and  caiigheiior  (officers  appointed 
by  an  arglwyTt  or  the  king  or  prince  above  him) ;  the 
canghettor  had  the  right  to  appoint  a  rhingyU  (the  sum- 
moner  of  the  court — seemingly  a  registrar  or  clerk).  The 
two  chief  officers  superintended  the  eitttion  or  taeogion,  and 
they  had  to  see  that  the  king's  rights  in  his  waste  land 
in  the  cymwd  were  respected.  The  son  of  an  uchelwr^ 
or  innate  bonedig  at  fourteen  became  the  man  of  the 
arglwy'd  of  the  cymwd,  and  at  twenty-one  received 
land  from  him  in  consideration  of  military  service.-  In 
South  Wales  the  uchelwyr  of  the  cymwd  were  judges  in 
its  court.^  The  chiefs  of  household  had  become  practically 
landowners  as  against  all  the  world,  except  members  of 
the  household.  The  rights  of  the  chief  of  household  to 
his  ty'dyn,  and  the  lands  in  the  occupation  of  himself  and 
other  members  of  his  household  were  termed  his  gwely 
(literally,  "bed  or  couch"),  and  on  his  death  the  family 
land  was  divided  between  his  descendants  in  the  manner 
described  below.*    So  that  it  seems  safe  to  5^.7  that  the 

^  See  the  chapter  on  the  Duties  of  the  Maers  and  Canghetlors,  "  Anc.  Laws," 
i.    p.  188. 

'^  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  90;  ii.,  p.  211, 

'  "Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  567.  In  Gwyned  and  Powys,  it  is  said,  in  the 
Demetian  Code,  the  king  placed  five  officers  in  each  court — a  niaer,  cangheUor, 
rhhigydi:  (summoner),  a  priest  to  write  pleadings,  and  one  judge  by  virtue  of 
office  ;  and  four  like  the  preceding  in  each  court  in  South  Wales,  and  many 
judges,  that  is,  every  owner  of  land,  as  they  were  before  the  time  of  Howel  the 
Good,  by  privilege  of  land  without  office.      "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  405. 

■*  There  might  be  several  ty'dynau  (homesteads)  on  the  land  occupied  by  a 
penteulu  and  his  family.  They  seem  to  have  had  grazing  rights  over  sometimes 
several  and  distant  districts.  The  descendants  of  the  penteulu  were,  during  his 
life,  in  a  subordinate  position  as  to  land.  They  had  rights  of  maintenance,  and 
were  capable  of  owning  da  (cattle  or  movable  property),  and  they  had  rights 
of  grazing  cattle  in  the  common  herd  and  of  co-aration  with  the  other  members 

O    2 


196  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

cymwd  approximated  to  the  manor  or  lordship  of  English 
law,  though  its  structure  in  the  tenth  century  appears  to 
have  been  a  natural  development,  and  not  an  imitation  of 
other  systems  ;  and  that  the  relations  of  the  king,  to  the 
arglwy'di,  and  of  the  latter  to  the  men  of  the  cymwd,  were 
tending  to  become  of  a  feudal  character. 

But  though  the  cenedl  was  by  the  time  of  Howel  to 
some  extent  disintegrated,  and  the  general  organisation  of 
Cymric  society  had  assumed  a  territorial  aspect,  it  still 
played  an  important  part  in  the  legal  s}'stem  and  was 
recognised  for  certain  purposes.  Now  we  may  here 
mention  that  within  the  cenedl  {i.e.,  kindred  to  the  ninth 
degree  from  the  common  ancestor),  smaller  groups  of 
kinsmen  were  looked  upon  as  what  we  may  call,  for  want 
of  a  better  term,  legal  entities.  These  were  groups  of  the 
kindred  to  the  fourth  and  the  seventh  degrees  of  descent 
from  a  common  ancestor.  The  first  group  included  a  given 
person,  his  sons,  his  grandsons,  and  his  great-grandchildren. 
This  group  formed  the  unit  within  which  succession  to  land 
of  the  gwely  of  the  given  person  could  take  place  according 
to  certain  rules.  It  was  also  the  group  of  kinsmen  upon 
which  joint  responsibility  for  personal  injuries  short  of 
homicide  rested  ;  or  in  other  words  if  a  man  did  a  wrong 

of  the  gwely  (Seebohm,  "Tribal  System,"  p.  91).  Ty'dyn  seems  to  mean  a 
*'  house-hill,"  i.e.,  a  place  suited  for  a  house.  Ty  (a  house),  in  Old  Welsh, 
tig,  is  for  tegios,  corresponding  to  the  Greek,  riyos  (a  house).  From  the  word 
tig  is  partly  derived  the  word  ty'dyn,  pi.  ty^ynau.  Tyctyn  occurs  in  the  Laws 
(ii.  780)  as  tygdyii,  and  its  dyn  is  perhaps  the  Welsh  equivalent  of  the  Irish 
dinn  (a  place,  i.e.,  cdijicia  pati'is  sui).  The  Gwentian  version  has  eissyityn 
(Laws,  i.  750,  760)  :  see  also  Laws,  ii.  686,  688,  where  we  have  essydyn,  which 
is  in  the  present  day  reduced  to  sydyji.  This  involves  an  s  form  corresponding 
to  Greek  areyos  as  contrasted  with  t€7os  with,  perhaps,  a  prefix  ad  or  ecs  ;  but 
eissyiiyn,  sydyn  seems  to  have  the  same  meaning  as  tyttyii,  the  difierence  being 
one  of  dialect.  In  modern  Welsh  place-names  tydyii  is  reduced  to  tyn,  as  in 
Tyii  yy  Ofiuen  for  Tyltyn  yr  Oni/c?!,  and  Tyji  Siarlas  for  Tydyu  Siarlas 
(Charles'  tenement).  See  as  to  the  meaning  and  use  oi  din.  Professor  Lloyd's 
paper  on  '*  Welsh  Place-names  "  in  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  xi.  22  ;  and  Mr.  E. 
Phiilimore's  note,  ibid.,  p.  60. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         197 

to  another  which  came  within  the  definition  of  saraad 
(literally,  "insult"),  his  kinsmen,  as  far  as  second  cousins, 
were  jointly  liable  with  him  for  the  payment  of  the  pre- 
scribed compensation  in  cattle  or  money.^  It  also  seems  that 
this  group  was  responsible  for  the  marriage  of  daughters.- 
Lastly,  as  will  be  made  clear  below,  there  was  no  re-division 
of  the  ancestor's  gwely  after  the  second  cousins  had  divided 
it,  but  the  members  of  the  group  were  still  liable  to  jointly 
warrant  their  common  title  to  their  respective  shares."^ 

The  functions  of  the  group  of  kindred  extending  to  the 
seventh  degree  of  descent  can  only  be  properly  understood 
after  the  law  relating  to  homicide  between  kindreds  has 
been  explained. 

Bearing  these  general  principles  in  mind,  let  us  see  what 
these  laws  have  to  say  about  the  royal  or  princely  kindreds. 
Each  of  the  codes  deals  first  of  all  with  the  Cyvreithiau  y 
Lys  (Laws  of  the  Court),  that  is,  with  the  organisation  of 
the  household  of  the  king,  but  it  is  in  the  Venedotian 
Code  that  the  matter  is  best  and  most  fully  dealt  with. 
According  to  that  treatise  Howel  appointed  twenty-four 
servants  of  the  Court,  of  which  the  following  is  a  list : — 

(i)  Vk^T¥.\31A]  {Chief  of  the  Household). 
(ii)  Effeiryat  teulu  {Priest  of  the  Household). 
(iii)  Dysteyn  {Steward). 
(iv)  Penhebogyt  {Chief  Falconer). 

(v)  Brahudur  Lys  {fudge  of  the  Court). 
(vi)  Penguastrahut  {Chief  Gr 00771). 
(vii)  Guastavel  {Page  of  the  Cha77ibei-). 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  231  and  703. 

2  It  seems  to  have  formed  for  this  purpose  a  kind  of  family  council.  If  they 
gave  a  daughter  of  one  within  the  circle  to  an  atttud,  and  her  sons  committed  a 
wrong  for  which  sa7'aad  v^2&  payable,  the  group  became  liable  ("  Anc.  Laws," 
i.,  pp.  208 — 212).  Mr.  Seebohm  aptly  refers  to  the  tale  of  "  Kulhwch  and 
Olvven"  in  the  "  Mabinogion."  When  Yspactaden  Penkawr  is  asked  to  give 
his  daughter  in  marriage,  he  answered,  "  Her  four  great-grandmothers  and 
her  four  great-grandfathers  are  yet  alive  ;  it  is  needful  that  I  take  counsel  of 
them." 

-^  "  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.  657  ;  and  see  i.,  pp.  208-10. 


igS  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

(viii)  Bart  teulu  {Bard  of  the  Household). 

(ix)  GoSTECHUR  {Silejitiary). 

(x)  Penkynyt  {Chief  Huntsman). 

(xi)  Medyt  {Mead  Brewer). 

(xii)  Medyc  {Mediciner). 

(xiii)  Trulyat  {Butler). 

(xiv)  Drysaur  {Doo7-ward). 

(xv)  Coc  {Cook). 

(xvi)  Kanuylyt  {Candle-bearer). 

And  eight  officers  of  the  queen  : — - 

(i)  Dysteyn  {Stewa^-d). 
(ii)  Effeiryat  {Priest). 
(iii)  Penguastrahut  {Chief  Groopi). 
(iv)  Guastavel  {Page  of  the  Chamber). 
(v)  Lavoruyn  {Handmaid). 
(vi)  Drysaur  {Doorward). 
(vii)  Coc  (C^^/^). 
(viii)  KanuylyT  {Candle-bearer).^ 

The  rights,  privileges,  and  duty  of  each  of  these  officers  are 
gone  into  with  great  detail.  The  names  of  the  offices  give 
sufficient  indication  of  the  sphere  of  work  assigned  to  their 
holders,  except  in  the  case  of  the  chief  of  the  household. 
The  penteulu  was  required  to  be  of  the  blood  royal,  and 
appears  to  have  had,  subject  to  the  king,  and  especially  in 
the  king's  absence,  the  superintendence  of  the  Court.  The 
judge  of  the  Court  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  judges 
of  cymwds  or  cantrefs.  He  was  judge  of  the  king's  Court ; 
"  he  is  to  administer  justice  to  the  Court,  the  household,  and 
to  whoever  pertains  to  them  without  fee,"  but  he  also  on 
occasion  examined  other  judges,  and  heard  appeals  from 
them,  or  dispensed  justice  in  conjunction  with  them.^ 

Besides    the   twenty-four    officers  we   have  enumerated 

1  We  have  given  the  translation  of  the  Welsh  names,  following  A.  Owen. 
But,  of  course,  the  nature  of  the  chief  offices  becomes  more  intelligible  when 
we  use  more  courtly  terms.  Thus,  the  Penteulu  is  the  "Mayor  of  the  Palace," 
the  Brahudur  Lys  "the  Chief  Justice"  or"  Justiciary,"  and  the  Penguastrahut 
the  "  Master  of  the  Horse,"  of  corresponding  Western  European  Courts. 
Dysteyn^  in  Mod.  Welsh  distain,  is  the  Anglo-Saxon  disc-thegn  or  disc-then^ 
literally  dish-servant,  but  meaning  at  Court  "seneschal." 

-  Ven.  Code,  i.,  c.  xi.  ;  "  Ancient  Laws,"  i.,  p.  29. 


ANCIENT   LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.  199 

there  were  eleven  servants  who  are  described  as  officers 
in  the  Court  by  custom  and  usage :  (i.)  groom  of  the 
rein  ;  (ii.)  foot-holder ;  (iii.)  land  maer ;  (iv.)  apparitor ; 
(v.)  porter ;  (vi.)  watchman  ;  (vii.)  woodman  ;  (viii.)  baking- 
woman  ;  (ix.)  smith  of  the  Court ;  (x.)  chief  of  song ; 
(xi.)  laundress.  The  distinction  drawn  between  the  first 
set  of  officers — those  "  appointed "  by  Howel,  and  the 
latter  class,  the  customary  officers — and  the  descriptions  of 
the  two  sets  of  ministers,  indicate  that  Howel's  innovations 
were  intended  to  increase  the  pomp  of  the  Court,  and  also 
that  the  authority  of  the  kingly  office  was  being  enlarged. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  texts  of  this  Book  of  the 
Law  is  that  on  Priodolion  Z^d?^^  (appropriate  places).  It  is 
what  in  modern  times  we  should  call  a  "  table  of  pre- 
cedence," and  though  nominally  it  only  applies  to  the 
arrangement  of  the  household  at  the  meals  in  the  king's 
hall,  it  really  determined  and  indicated  the  order  of  the 
different  officers.  The  arrangement  cannot  be  understood 
without  stating  the  character  of  the  house  of  a  Welsh 
chieftain.  Fortunately  Giraldus  Cambrensis  has  given  us 
a  fairly  minute  description  of  the  typical  Welsh  house 
of  his  time,  and  further  material  for  its  reconstruction  is 
also  furnished  by  the  laws  we  are  considering,  so  that 
we  can  ascertain  what  it  was  like  in  the  later  period  of 
the  tribal  system. 

The  evidence  of  these  two  authorities  has  been  sum- 
marised by  Mr.  Seebohm,  and  we  cannot  do  better 
than  quote  his  description  :  ^  "  The  tribal  house  was  built 
of  trees  newly  cut  from  the  forest.  A  long  straight  pole 
is  selected  for  the  roof-tree.  Six  well-grown  trees  with 
suitable  branches,  apparently  reaching  over  to  meet  one 
another,  and  of  about  the  same  size  as  the  roof-tree,  are 
stuck  upright  in  the  ground  at  even  distances  in  two 
parallel  rows,  three  in  each  row.     Their  extremities  bending 

^  See  "  English  Village  Community,"  pp.  239-40  ;  "  Report,"  p.  691. 


■  «1..-J ,^J..«.->T- 


t 


200  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

over  make  a  Gothic  arch,  and  crossing  one  another  at  the 
top  each  pair  makes  a  fork,  upon  which  the  roof-tree  is 
fixed.  These  trees  supporting  the  roof-tree  are  called 
gavaels,  forks,  or  columns,  and  they  form  the  nave  of  the 
tribal  house.  Then,  at  some  distance  back  from  these  rows 
of  columns  or  forks,  low  walls  of  stakes  and  wattle  shut  in 
the  aisles  of  the  house,  and  over  all  is  the  roof  of  branches 
and  rough  thatch,  while  at  the  aisles  behind  the  pillars  are 
placed  beds  of  rushes,  called  gwelyaii  {lecti),  on  which  the 
inmates  sleep.  The  footboards  of  the  beds  between  the 
columns  form  their  seats  in  the  daytime.  The  fire  is  lighted 
on  an  open  hearth  in  the  centre  of  the  nave  between  the 
two  middle  columns."  ^  This  tribal  house  was  the  living 
and  the  sleeping  place  of  the  household.  The  kitchen  and 
buildings  for  cattle  and  horses  were  separate  and  detached, 
and  it  seems  that,  if  not  the  whole  set  of  buildings,  yet  the 
set  of  buildings  with  more  or  less  completeness  was  dupli- 
cated for  summer  purposes  on  the  higher  grazing  grounds. 
The  house  of  persons  of  smaller  importance  was  not,  of 
course,  so  extensive.  Giraldus  describes  the  ordinary  house 
as  circular,  with  the  fireplace  in  the  centre  and  beds  of 
rushes  all  round  it,  on  which  the  inmates  slept  with  their 
feet  towards  the  fire.^ 

In  the  king's  house  screens  extending  from  each  middle 
pillar  to  the  side  walls  divided  the  hall  into  an  upper  and  a 
lower  part ;  the  former  part  appears  to  have  been  raised  so 
as  to  form  a  dais,  upon  which  the  king  and  nine  of  his 
officers  were  seated,  while  in  the  other  part  four  officers  and 
the  rest  of  the  household  were  placed."  The  text  is  curious 
and  deserves  attention  : — 

1  See  also  "Arch.  Cambr."  3rd  ser.,  vol.  iv.  (1858),  p.  195  ;  and  4th  ser., 
vol.  X.  (1893),  P-  ^72-  There  is  some  confusion  in  the  words  ''\oavaels,  forks, 
or  columns"  in  this  passage.  Gavael  means  a  grasp  or  hold  ;  the  Welsh  for 
fork  is  gavl. 

-  "  Report,"  p.  692  ;   "  Gir.  Desc.  Camb.,"  i.,  c.  10  and  c.  17. 

^  See  "Ancient  Laws,"  vol.  i.,  p.  ii,  note. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         201 

"  There  are  fourteen  persons  who  sit  on  chairs  in  the 
palace  ;  four  of  them  in  the  lower  portion  and  ten  in  the 
upper  portion.  The  first  is  the  king ;  he  is  to  sit  next  the 
screen  ;  next  to  him  the  canghellor  ;  then  the  osb  ;  then 
the  edlincf ;  then  the  chief  falconer  ;  the  foot-holder  on  the 
side  opposite  the  king's  dish  ;  and  the  mediciner  at  the  base 
of  the  pillar  opposite  to  him  on  the  other  side  of  the  fire. 
Next  to  the  other  screen,  the  priest  of  the  household,  to 
bless  the  food  and  chaunt  the  Pater;  the  silentiary  is  to 
strike  the  pillar  above  his  head  ;  next  to  him  the  judge  of 
the  Court ;  next  to  him  the  chaired  bard  ;  the  smith  of  the 
Court  on  the  end  of  the  bench  below  the  priest.  The  chief 
of  the  household  is  to  sit  at  the  lower  end  of  the  hall  with 
his  left  hand  to  the  front  door,  and  those  he  may  choose 
of  the  household  with  him  ;  and  the  rest  on  the  other  side 
of  the  door.  The  bard  of  the  household  is  to  sit  on  one 
hand  of  the  chief  of  the  household  ;  the  chief  groom  next 
to  the  king,  separated  by  the  screen  ;  and  the  chief  hunts- 
man next  to  the  priest  of  the  household,  separated  by 
the  screen."  ^ 

These  were  the  rules  for  Gwyned  ;  in  the  Demetian 
Code,  as  we  have  it,  there  is  no  such  elaborate  statement, 
though  there  is  a  chapter  on  appropriate  places  applying 
to  the  ceremony  at  the  three  principal  festivals,  Christmas, 
Easter,  and  Whitsuntide.^ 

In  regard  to  this  order  of  precedence  we  notice  first  of 
all  the  absence  of  all  reference  to  the  queen  or  other  ladies, 
and  we  feel  inclined  to  infer  from  this  fact  that  it  has 
reference,  not  to  the  ordinary  life  of  the  chieftain  and 
his  establishment,  but  to  the  formal  occasion  of  some 
ceremonial  Court,  probably  the  solemn  meetings  of  the 
household  on  the  three  principal  festivals,  of  which 
we   have   mention,    or    other    similar   assemblies.     It   will 

^  Veil.  Code,  i.,  c.  6  ;  ''Ancient  Laws,"  i.,  p.  ii. 
"  Dem.  Code,  i.,  c.  6  ;   "  Ancient  Laws,"  i.,  p.  35 1. 


202  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

in  the  second  place  not  escape  observation  that,  besides 
the  officers  named  in  the  Hst  we  have  given  above, 
there  are  places  assigned  to  the  "  canghettor,"  the  "  osb," 
and  the  "edling."  The  canghettor  was  not  a  minister 
of  the  Court  (in  the  sense  of  the  household),  but  a 
territorial  officer  of  the  cymwd,  though  we  may  assume 
that  he  attended  the  king's  Court  when  in  the  due  course 
of  the  royal  progress  it  was  held  in  his  particular  district. 
The  word  "  osb  "  or  "  hosb  "  is  derived  from  the  Latin  hospes, 
guest,  and  though  used  in  the  singular  is  to  be  looked  on 
as  a  generic  word  to  cover  all  guests  of  high  degree  present 
on  any  formal  occasion  on  which  the  full  ceremonial  was 
observed.  The  "edling,"  to  use  the  word  employed  in 
Aneurin  Owen's  translation,  is  in  the  Welsh  text,  "  Gwrth- 
drych''  (the  words  '' id  est  edligg''  are  added),  and  signifies 
the  heir-apparent — "  he  who  is  to  reign  after  the  king,"  and 
who  "  ought  to  be  son  or  nephew  to  the  king." 

In  the  status  of  the  edling,  as  described  in  the  Venedotian 
Code,  we  seem  to  perceive  a  new  order  of  ideas.  Originally 
the  kingship  or  chieftainship  appears  to  have  been  the 
"prerogative  of  a  family  rather  than  of  a  person,  and  the  tie 
of  blood  relationship  bound  together  the  head  chieftains 
and  the  sub-chieftains  and  the  chiefs  of  kindred  and  heads 
of  households,  and  whilst  the  continuity  of  kindred  so 
secured  throughout  the  whole  hierarchy  of  chieftains  bound 
the  whole  body  of  tribesmen  together  by  the  tie  of  blood, 
the  gulf  remained  as  great  as  ever  between  the  tribesmen 
and  the  strangers  in  blood."  ^  The  regal  rights  were  vested 
in  a  ccncdl  (kindred)  of  royal  privilege.-  This  family,  as 
exhibited  in  the  Codes,  consists  of  the  king  and  his  near 
relations,  and  the  near  relations  are  defined  as  his  sons, 
nephews,  and  first  cousins.     The  Code  says  : — 

»  Seebohm,  "  Tribal  System,"  p.  148. 

-  The  Welsh  word  is  braint.     Perhaps  status  is  the  most  correct  juridical 
tsrm  to  express  what  is  meant. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         203 

"  When  the  edling  dies  he  is  to  leave  his  horses  and  his 
dogs  to  the  king,  for  that  is  the  only  ebediw^  he  is  to 
render ;  and  the  reason  why  he  ought  to  render  no  other 
is  because  he  is  a  near  relation  of  the  king.  The  king's 
near  relations  are  his  sons,  his  nephews,  and  his  first 
cousins.  Some  say  that  every  one  of  these  is  an  edling ; 
others  say  that  no  one  is  an  edling  except  that  person  to 
whom  the  king  shall  give  hope  of  succession  and  desig- 
nation. .  .  .  The  edling  and  those  whom  we  have  above 
mentioned  shall  possess  that  privilege  until  they  obtain 
land  ;  after  that  their  privilege  shall  be  identified  with  the 
privilege  of  the  land  they  obtain,  except  they  obtain  land 
in  villeinage ;  in  that  case  the  privilege  of  the  land  shall 
augment  until  it  become  free."  ^ 

The  near  relations  of  the  king  thus  formed  an  exclusive 
royal  class,  and  on  the  death  of  a  king  it  was  from  this 
class  that  the  new  king  legally  came.  Seemingly,  the  king 
had  the  right  to  nominate  his  successor.  The  similarity  of 
the  position  of  the  Welsh  "  Gwrthdrych  "  with  that  of  the 
Irish  "  Tanaiste''^  should  not  escape  attention. 

^  A  render  in  the  nature  of  a  heriot  or  relief. 

2  "Ancient  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  9,  ii. 

3  With  the  Cymric  family  of  royal  privilege,  compare  the  rig  doinna  {i.e.y 
"the  makings"  or  "materials  of  a  king")  or  royal  class  among  the  Irish. 
See  O'SuUivan's  Introduction  to  "  O'Curry's  Lectures,"  pp.  ccxxx — ccxxxi. 
Our  information  as  to  the  proper  devolution  of  the  kingship  or  chieftaincy  is 
scanty.  It  seems,  however,  clear  that  the  royal  privileges  did  not  descend 
according  to  the  rule  of  primogeniture,  and  that  the  lands  appurtenant  to  the 
kingship  were  not  divided  on  death  like  tir  gwelyawg.  The  new  chieftain  was 
either  the  gwrthdrych  nominated  by  the  deceased  king  from  among  his 
"  near  relations,"  or  else  was  elected  by  the  members  of  the  royal  cenedl. 
Theoretically,  the  bundle  of  rights  forming  the  kingship  belonged  to  the 
cenedl  collectively.  The  members  of  the  cenedl  were  entitled  to  maintenance 
at  court ;  but  the  king  could  grant  to  any  of  them  the  rule  over  one  or  more 
cymwds,  or  settle  them  on  tir  gwelyaw",  to  the  possession  of  which  he  might  be 
entitled.  Such  were  the  rules  as  we  infer  them  from  the  Codes,  and  from 
what  we  know  as  to  the  actual  course  of  succession  in  the  more  peaceable 
times ;  but  we  cannot  advance  these  propositions  with  certainty.  Some 
light  is  perhaps  thrown  on  the  matter  by  the  Irish  system  as  described  in 
"Le  cas  de  gavelkind,"  where  it  is  said  : — "  Before  the  establishment  of  the 


204  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    ichap.  vi.) 

Any  one  of  the  "  near  relations,"  until  he  settled  upon  land 
in  some  cymwd,  was  maintained  at  Court.  When  he  settled 
on  land  from  which  a  free  tribesman's  dues  issued,  he  lost 
his  royal  status  and  became  a  breyr  or  uchelwr.  But 
there  are  indications  in  the  law^s  that  he  might  be  placed 
at  the  head  of  a  court  iUys)  of  a  cantref  or  cymwd,  and 
exercise  (subject  to  the  king)  regal  rights.^  If,  instead  of 
settling  on  that  kind  of  land  which  was  called  tir  gwelyawg 
{i.e.,  family  land),  he  was  established  on  bond  land,  he  lost 
his  status,  but  in  that  case  his  land  became  free,  and  he 
was  only  liable  to  pay  the  gwestva  and  other  dues  of  an 
uchelwr. 

The  Cymric  king,  like  other  monarchs  of  mediccval  times, 
made  progresses  through  his  dominions,  which  imposed 
obligations  on  his  subjects.  There  seems  to  have  been  a 
distinction  between  the  progress  for  hunting  or  hawking, 
or  military  purposes  and  the  great  progress  of  the  house- 
hold after  Christmas.  The  king's  gosgor'd  (retinue)  con- 
sisted of  thirty-six  horsemen — the  twenty-four  chief  officers 
and  twelve  guestey  {i.e.,  probably  the  persons  who  brought 
the  entertainment  dues,  gwestva,  from  each  {x^^maenol  in 
the  cymwd) — together  w^th  the  rest  of  the  household,  the 
king's  givyrda  (literally,  "  good  men  "),  his  inferior  serv^ants, 
his  ministers,  and  his  almsmen.^ 

Passing  on  from  the  men  of  royal  or  princely  degree  we 
come  to  the  rest  of  the  Cymry  proper,  the  uchelwyr  and 
boncdigion.  They,  of  course,  formed  the  majority  of  the 
race.  Their  status  cannot  be  fully  understood  till  the  rules 
relating  to  the  possession  of  land  and  the  way  in  which  it 

(English)  common  law  all  the  possessions  within  the  Irish  territories  ran  either 
in  course  of  Tanistry  or  in  course  of  gavelkind.  Every  Signory  or  Chiefry, 
with  the  portion  of  land  which  passed  with  it,  went  without  partition  to  the 
Tanist,  who  always  came  in  by  election  or  with  the  strong  hand,  and  not  by 
descent  ;  but  all  inferior  tenanties  were  partible  between  males  in  gavelkind" 
("Davis's  Reports,"  Ilil.  3  J.ic.  i). 

^  See  Seebohm,  "Tril)al  System,"  p.  147. 

-  "Ancient  Laws,"'  i.,  p.  9. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         205 

was  distributed  in  each  cymwd  have  been  explained.  The 
uchelwyr  and  bone'digion  were  all  free  tribesmen  ;  the)" 
were  true  Cymry  ;  they  were,  like  their  royal  superiors,, 
grouped  into  cenedloe^.  They  occupied  tydynau  (home- 
steads) on  the  tir  givelyawg  (free  or  family  land)  of  the 
cymwd ;  and  by  the  time  of  Howel  Da  some  of  the 
uchehvyr  had  on  their  land  eitition  or  taeogion  cultivating  the 
soil  on  terms  analogous  to  those  on  which  the  bond  tenants 
of  the  bond  or  register  land  of  the  cymwd  stood  towards 
the  arghvyd.  They  were  liable  to  military  service  for  six 
weeks  in  the  year  outside  the  country,  and  at  any  time 
within  it.  They  were  competent  to  take  an  oath  for  legal 
purposes  and  to  be  members  of  the  rhaith  gwlad  (yiX.QXdWy ,. 
'*  right  of  the  country  "),^  which  meant  that  they  were  full)- 
entitled  to  the  privileges  of  the  common  law  of  the  Cymr}'. 
In  dealing  with  the  law  of  property  (if  we  may  use  the 
term),  we  shall  make  the  position  of  the  free  tribesman 
more  clear. 

The  acquisition  by  the  son  of  a  Cymro  of  full  privileges 
in  the  cenedl  was  marked  by  two  stages.  First,  the  infant 
son  was  solemnly  received  into  the  kindred  by  his  father, 
or  if  the  father  was  not  alive  by  the  penkenedl  with  six 
kinsmen,  or  if  there  were  no  penkenedl,  by  twenty-one  of 
the  best  men  of  the  cenedl.^  From  the  time  of  his  reception 
into  the  kindred  the  son  was  maintained  by  his  father,  who 
was  "  responsible  for  him  in  everything,"  until  the  'child 
attained  the  age  of  fourteen  years.  Then  his  father  took 
him  originally  (as  it  seems)  to  the  penkenedl,  but  in  the 
Codes,  as  we  have  them,  to  the  arglwyd,  and  commended 

^  Rhaith  is  a  term  that  is  used  in  more  than  one  sense.  Originally  it  seems 
to  have  been  used  to  signify  the  notion  conveyed  by  the  juridical  terms,  j^is^ 
droit ^  recht.  It  is  cognate  with  German  recht  and  P^nglish  right,  and  is  repre- 
sented in  Irish  by  the  neuter  recht^  which  is  as  if  we  had  in  Latin,  besides 
rectus, -a,-iim,  a  neuter  rectu,  genitive  rectils. 

2  The  ceremony  is  described  in  the  Venedotian  Code,  "  Ancient  Laws," 
i.,  p.  207. 


2o6  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

the  youth  to  him,  and  the  youth  became  the  man  of,  and 
Svas  placed  on  the  privilege"  of  the  penkenedl  or  arglwyd"; 
and  thenceforth  the  young  Cymro  was  to  be  supported  by 
the  chief  or  lord,  and  became  himself  liable  to  answer  claims 
made  upon  him,  and  capable  of  possessing  da  (cattle  and 
movable  property).  The  status  so  acquired  was  that  of  an 
innate  bonedig  ;  and  even  if  his  father  was  an  uchelwr  he 
did  not  obtain  that  degree  till  the  father  died.^  The  right 
of  maintenance  by  the  chief  or  lord  to  whom  the  young 
Cymro  was  commended  seems  to  have  involved  the  giving 
of  cattle  to  the  latter,  and  a  share  of  the  free  land  of  the 
kindred  ;^  but  on  the  other  hand  he  became  liable  to 
military  service.^ 

The  transfer  of  the  son  to  the  care  of  the  lord  of  the 
cymwd  did  not,  however,  confer  on  the  former  the  right  to 
receive  his  cyvarwys  at  once,  but  the  lord  undertook  the 
obligation  of  providing  for  him  till  his  settlement  and  of 
doing  what  we  should  now  call  completing  his  education. 
This  he  performed  by  quartering  the  lad  on  one  of  his 
eifition. 

The  gweision  bycJiain  (little  youths)  or  gwestio7i  bycJiain 
(little  guests),  as  they  were  called,  were  no  doubt  trouble- 
some visitors  in  a  farmer's  house,  and  as  they  approached 

^  See  Ven.  Code,  "Ancient  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  203-5;  ^'^o  ibid.,  i.,  p.  91. 
The  text  adds  "and  no  one  is  a  ^war^//^^-- (horseman  or  kniglit)  till  he  shall 
ascend,"  i.e.,  to  the  status  of  his  father. 

2  The  rights  of  the  kinsman  against  the  chief,  as  representing  the  kindred, 
were  collectively  called  cyva)-%uys.  A  late  triad  says,  "Three  cyvai-^tvysau  of  an 
innate  Cymro  ;  five  free  erws  ;  co-tillage  of  the  waste  ;  and  hunting."  See 
"  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p  516.  Cyfarwys  or  cyfarws  is  used  in  the  Mabinogion 
to  signify  aboon  or  the  right  to  ask  for  a  gift  of  one's  own  choice.  Whether 
that  is  the  original  meaning  may  be  doubted.  Its  employment  in  the  laws 
suggests  that  its  primary  signification  was  a  right  to  quarters  or  lodging.  If 
that  is  so  it  may  be  analysed  into  cyf-ar-wys,  from  the  root  ues  ("to  abide," 
also  "to  be,"  in  Eng.  was,  7i'ere),  from  which  we  have  ar-os  (to  "remain"  or 
"wait").  From  it,  too,  corner  g7uas  ("a  residence")  in  Welsh  mediaeval 
poetry. 

•'  And,  of  course,  entitled  to  bear  arms. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         207 

manhood  formed  those  companies  of  youths  whom  Giraldus 
mentions  as  moving  about  the  country.  According  to  the 
same  author,  the  princes  entrusted  the  education  of  their 
children  to  the  care  of  the  principal  men  of  their  country, 
each  of  whom,  after  the  death  of  the  father,  endeavoured  by 
every  possible  means  to  exalt  his  own  charge  above  his 
neighbours,  and  he  points  out  that  on  that  account  friend- 
ships were  found  to  be  more  sincere  between  foster-brothers 
than  between  those  who  were  connected  by  the  natural  ties 
of  brotherhood.^  It  looks  as  if  the  rules  as  to  youths  and 
the  usages  we  have  referred  to  had  some  connection  with 
the  widely-diffused  custom  of  fosterage,^  of  the  existence  of 
which  in  Wales  definite  proofs  are  to  be  found  in  the 
Welsh  laws.  In  the  Venedotian  Code  it  is  laid  down  that  if 
an  uchelwr  place  his  son  to  be  reared  with  an  aiUt  of  a  lord 
by  the  permission  or  sufferance  of  the  lord  for  a  year  and 
a  day,  that  son  is  to  receive  a  son's  share  of  the  aiUfs  land, 
and  ultimately  of  his  property.^ 

Here  we  must  notice  that,  besides  the  rights  possessed  by 
the  innate  bone'dig  to  his  cyvarwys  (rights  acquired  by  him 
as  one  of  the  kin,  and  claimed  by  kin  and  descent),  he  had  a 
right  of  succession  to  a  share  oi  Xki^tir  gwelyawg  (idsviAy  land) 
possessed  by  his  father,  grandfather,  or  great-grandfather, 
and  the  possibility  of  attaining  a  position  of  privilege  as  a 
landed   person  and  chief  of  his  family  within  the  ceitedl 

1  "  Desc.  Cambr."  ii.,  cc.  4,  9. 

"  See  Maine,  "  Early  History  of  Institutions,"  p.  241  ;  and  the  tract  on  the 
Law  of  Fosterage  in  the  "  Senchus  Mor." 

3  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  195.  Cf.  Dem.  and  Gwent.  Codes,  pp.  543  and  767. 
In  this  connection,  see  the  text  as  to  the  rearing  of  a  boneUig  when  he  was 
nursed  by  his  mother  and  brought  up  at  home  (*' Anc.  Laws,"  i.  519).  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  character  of  the  marriage  contract  and  the  division 
of  the  children  on  separation  of  husband  and  wife  afford  some  explanation  of 
the  custom  of  fosterage.  But,  as  Mr.  Seebohm  points  out,  it  was  "  one  of  the 
several  means  used  under  the  tribal  system  for  the  purpose  of  tying  strangers 
as  closely  as  possible  to  the  tribe,  quite  consistently  with  the  tribal  policy  of 
keeping  the  class  of  strangers  in  blood  as  loosely  organised  as  possible  inter se.'" 
*' Tribal  System,"  p.  128. 


2o6  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

{i.e.^  becoming  an  uchelwr  or  breyr).     His  possible  accession 
to   that   position    depended    on    the    rules    relating   to  tir 
gwelyawg,  with    which  we  deal  below,  and  his   right  was 
AjyAo"^^^*^^    claimed  by  a  process  called  dadeti/uict  {i.e.,  the  uncovering 
^a'^^    (j       of  the   family   hearth).^     The   hearth  was  the    symbol   of 
^   ^  family  ownership,  and  "  the  covering  and  uncovering  of  the 

fire  had  a  picturesque  significance.  Whether  the  fire  were 
of  wood  or  turf,  the  hearth  was  swept  out  every  night.  The 
next  thing  was  to  single  out  one  particular  glowing  emblem 
— tJie  seed  of  fire — which  was  carefull)'  restored  to  the 
hearth  and  covered  up  with  the  remaining  ashes  for  the 
night.  This  was  the  nightly  covering  of  the  fire.  The 
morning  process  was  to  uncover  the  seed  of  fire,  to  sweep 
out  the  ashes  under  which  it  was  hid,  and  then  deftly  to 
place  back  the  live  ember  on  the  hearth,  piling  over  it 
the  fuel  for  the  new  day's  fire.  This  was  the  uncovering  of 
the  fire,  which  thus,  from  year  end  to  year  end,  might  never 
go  out."  ~ 

So  much  as  to  the  sons  of  the  free  tribesmen.  In  regard 
to  a  daughter,  the  law  was  that  she  was  to  be  maintained 
by  her  father  till  she  attained  twelve  years  of  age,  and 
thenceforward  she  was  not  to  remain  "  at  her  father's 
platter  "  unless  he  should  will  it.  There  is  some  ambiguity 
as  to  her  position  if  her  father  refused  to  maintain  her  ;  but 
the  text  says  that  from  her  twelfth  year  she  is  to  possess 
her  own  da  (chattels,  movable  property),  which  may  simply 
mean  that  she  is  capable  of  owning  movable  property,  or 
fas  is  more  probable)  implies  that  she  had  a  right  to  a  share 
in  the  da  of  the  household  or  of  the  larger  group  of  kindred, 
to  the  fourth  degree,  of  which  she  was  a  member."' 

It  is  said  that  a  daughter  is  to  have  of  her  father's  da 

•  A  man  could  not  claim  by  dad^hiicf  exce[)t  by  the  hearth  he  himself,  or 
his  father  before  him,  uncovers.    "  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  141. 

-  Seebohm,  "Tribal  System,"  p.  82. 

•^  Seethe  Ven.  Code,  book  ii.,  c.  30,  on  the  "  Law  of  a  daughter  and  her 
rights."     "Anc.  Laws,  '  i.,  p.  205. 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND   CUSTOMS.         209 

only  half  the  share  her  brother  is  to  have.^  Whether  this 
was  on  the  father's  death  or  on  attaining  the  age  of  twelve 
years  is  not  clear.  One  of  the  noticeable  things  about  the 
status  of  woman  in  these  laws  is  the  freedom  accorded  to  her 
both  before  and  after  marriage.  "  Every  woman  is  to  go  the 
way  she  willeth  freely,  for  she  is  not  to  be  home-returning."- 
Upon  the  marriage  of  a  Cymraes,  or  upon  her  having 
connection  with  a  man,  a  fine,  called  aniobr,  was  payable  to 
the  lord  of  the  cymwd.^  The  amount  of  the  fine  varied 
according  to  the  status  of  her  father.  If  her  father  or  other 
relative  gave  her  away  in  marriage,  he  was  liable  to  pay 
the  amobr  ;  if  the  woman  disposed  of  herself,  she  was  bound 
to  pay  the  fine.^  The  head  of  the  household  in  which  a 
woman  slept  was  also  liable  to  the  lord,  presumably  in  case 
of  default  on  the  part  of  the  person  primarily  responsible.^ 

The  young  daughter,  in  the  first  instance,  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  entirely  at  the  disposal  of  her  father,  nor  to 
have  been,  in  theory,  entirely  free.  The  laws  refer  to  the 
giving  of  a  daughter  in  marriage  by  her  kindred  as  well  as 
by  her  father.^  She  seems  also  to  have  been  entitled  to  a 
marriage  portion  or  settlement  {gwaltol)  from  her  father 
or  kindred,  which  consisted,  perhaps,  of  the  half  of  a 
brother's  share  of  da,  or,  perhaps,  of  chattels  agreed  between 
her  father  or  kindred  and  the  bridegroom. 

The  gwadol  usually  included  not  only  things  of  utility 
for  a  new  household,  but  also  argyvreu  (special  ornaments, 
paraphernalia).  It  is  not  perfectly  clear  whether  a  sister's 
share  of  da  was  necessarily  handed  over  on  marriage,  or 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  99. 

2  *«Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  97. 

^  Aviohr  became  due  in  three  modes  :  one,  by  gift  and  deliveiy  before  the 
woman  be  slept  with;  secondly,  by  openly  cohabitating,  though  there  might  be 
no  gift  or  delivery;  thirdly,  by  her  pregnancy.  Ven.  Code,  ii.,  c.  i.,  "  Anc. 
Laws,''  p.  95. 

^  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  88. 
^  "Anc.  Laws,"  ibid. 
See  above,  as  to  tlie  functions  of  the  group  of  kindred  to  the  fourth  degree 
W.P  F 


210  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

receivable  on  the  death  of  the  father,  but  on  the  whole  the 
texts  seem  to  indicate  that  it  was  usual  for  the  family  of  the 
bride  to  give  some  kind  of  portion. 

Daughters  did  not  take  any  share  in  the  land  of  the 
gwely.  But  if  a  woman  were  given  in  marriage  to  an 
atttud,  her  sons  could  claim  in  due  course  to  share  by 
privilege  of  maternity.^ 

The  position  of  women  in  the  system  can,  however,  only 
be  made  intelligible  by  reference  to  the  law  as  to  the 
marriage  contract  and  its  consequences,  which  shows  a 
serious  conflict  between  the  law  of  the  Church  and  the  law 
of  Howel. 

Thus  we  read  in  the  Venedotian  code  that :  "  The 
ecclesiastical  law  says  again  that  no  son  is  to  have  the 
patrimony  but  the  eldest  born  to  the  father  by  the  married 
wife ;  the  law  of  Howel,  however,  adjudges  it  to  the 
youngest  son  as  well  as  the  eldest  ;  and  decides  that  sin  of 
the  father  or  his  illegal  act  is  not  to  be  brought  against 
the  son  as  to  his  patrimony."  ^  By  the  "  married  wife  "  in 
this  passage  we  are  probably  to  understand  a  woman 
married  according  to  the  rites  of  the  Church,  and  therefore 
not  within  the  prohibited  degrees  of  consanguinity;  and  by 
the  "  illegal  act "  is  meant  a  marriage  invalid  according  to 
the  doctrines  of  the  Church.  The  general  tenure  of  the 
Welsh  laws  and  the  provisions  of  the  Statute  of  Rhudlan^^ '^^^•^^' 
show  that  to  a  late  period  the  old  Cymric  customs  pre- 
vailed. The  laws  did  not  permit  polygamy  ;  a  man  at 
one  time  could  have  only  one  "  espoused  "  wife."^  But  the 
contract  was  not  necessarily  of  life-long  duration,  and  each 
party  had  a  right  of  repudiation  or  separation  exercisable 
without  an\'  liability,  except  a  loss  of  da  (goods  and  chattels), 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  97  and  175. 

-  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  179. 

3  See  below,  p.  353. 

*   "No  man  is  to  have  two  wives"  ("Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  97). 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND    CUSTOMS.         211 

varying  with  the  time  and  circumstances  of  the  parting. 
The  marriage  ceremony  is  not  expressly  described,  but,  as 
we  infer  it  from  texts  scattered  throughout  the  codes,  it 
was  a  verbal  contract  between  the  kindred  or  father  of  the 
bride  and  the  bride  herself  of  the  one  part,  and  the  bride- 
groom of  the  other,  entered  into  in  the  presence  of  witnesses.^ 
We  are  not  told  whether  it  took  place  in  the  house  of  the 
bridegroom's  or  that  of  the  bride's  kindred,  but  in  its 
essence  it  was  a  formal  delivery  of  the  woman,  together 
with  her  gwadol  and  agwe'di,  by  her  kindred  or  father  to 
the  bridegroom.  At  the  time  of  the  delivery  mutual 
warranties  or  suretyships  were  exchanged.  On  behalf  of 
the  bride  her  kindred  or  parent  gave  sureties  that  she  would 
do  nothing  culpable  against  her  wedded  husband,  and  the 
bridegroom  gave  sureties  for  his  wife's  gwadol  and  agweltiP- 
There  is  some  obscurity  as  to  the  term  "  agweUir  Aneurin 
Owen  translates  it  "  dower,"  but  it  is  clear  that  the  Welsh 
wife  was  not  entitled  to  dower  in  the  English  sense  till  the 
Statutes  of  Rhudlan  came  into  force  ;  and  agwe'di,  strictly, '^"'^.^^^ 
was  a  payment  made  by  the  kindred  or  parent  of  the  bride 
to  the  bridegroom,^  but  the  word  sometimes  seems  to  be 
used  to  include  the  marriage  portion  of  the  bride  as  well. 
One  other  incident  of  the  marriage  must  be  mentioned, 

^  See  an  incidental  reference  to  the  contract,  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  519. 

-  **Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  529.  The  Ven.  code  gives  a  chapter  to  suretyship 
{mechmaeih),  but  it  is  very  obscure.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  contract  entered 
into  verbally,  in  formal  terms,  before  witnesses  or  arbitrators  {anwiodwyr),  whom 
the  parties  empowered  to  enforce  the  contract  in  the  form  they  had  agreed. 
Ven.  Code,  book  ii.,  cc.  6,  7;  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  112. 

3  "There  are  three  legal  agwedi :  the  agiuedl  of  a  King's  daughter, 
24  pounds  ;  .  .  .  the  agwedi  of  a  gwrda's  daughter,  3  pounds  ;  .  .  •  the 
agivedi  of  an  aiiit's  daughter,  i  pound"  (Ven.  Code,  ii. ,  c.  i.  32;  "Anc. 
Laws,"  i.  91).  In  modern  dictionaries  both  gwadol  and  agzveTti  Kxe.  translated 
Into  "dower.''  Gwadol  =  gwo-dawl  {Irish  /o-dai I ;  Latin  divisio)  is  a  portion 
or  dowry  as  a  division  of  something.  Agwedi  seems  to  mean  all  that  the 
dy-wedi  (the  beti-othed  woman)  brings  with  her  to  the  husband  ;  but  iu  the 
laws  it  is  limited,  as  in  the  text  just  quoted,  to  a  pecuniary  sum  given  to  the 
bridegroom  by  the  bride's  parent  or  kindred. 

P    2 


212  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

the  cowyti  of  the  bride  ;  this  was  a  gift  payable  the  morning 
after  the  consummation  of  the  marriage  by  the  husband 
to  the  wife,  the  amount  of  which  depended  on  the  status 
of  the  wife's  father.^ 

Each  of  the  three  codes  contains  a  chapter  dealing  with 
the  law  relating  to  women.  They  are  very  similar  in 
substance,  though  they  vary  in  detail.  That  in  the 
Venedotian  code  is  the  fullest  and,  on  the  whole,  the  more 
archaic.  It  describes  some  usages  of  a  barbaric  character 
which  one  is  somewhat  surprised  to  find  surviving  to  so 
late  a  period  in  a  country  in  which  the  Church  had  been 
established  for  many  centuries  and  was  a  powerful  force. 
The  laws  deal  very  minutely  with  the  relations  of  husband 
and  wife  ijiter  se,  and  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  follow  them 
into  particulars. 

We  can  only  attempt  to  seize  the  salient  points,  but 
we  are  by  no  means  sure  that  we  have  construed  the 
texts  aright.  It  is  however  clear  that  the  marriage  tie 
was  loose,  and  that  the  wife  had  far  greater  freedom  than 
was  afforded  to  her  by  the  law  of  the  Church  or  the  English 
common  law.  Practically  either  husband  or  wife  might 
separate  whenever  one  or  both  chose.  There  seems  to  have 
been  no  legal  method  of  bringing  the  parties  again  together; 
but  the  time  and  circumstances  of  the  separation  entailed 

'  The  cowyii  of  a  king's  daughter  was  8  pounds  ;  of  a  gwrda's  daughter 
I  pounl  ;  and  of  an  aittt's  daughten six-score  pence  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  91). 
Probably  at  an  early  period  the  cowyii  was  not  thus  accurately  measured,  for 
one  of  the  texts  says,  *'  If  a  maid  be  given  in  marriage  to  a  man  and  her  cowyii 
be  not  specified  before  she  rise  from  her  bed  in  the  morning,  he  is  not  answer- 
able to  her  for  it  thenceforward.  If  a  maid  declare  not  her  cowyii  before  she 
rise  from  her  bed  in  the  morning,  the  cowyii  \%  to  be  thenceforward  in  common 
between  them"  ("Ane.  Laws,"  i.  91).  There  seems  some  inconsistency 
between  these  two  sentences,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  what  they  mean  if  the 
co-wyii  was  already  fixed  by  law.  Cowyii  is  probably  of  the  same  origm  as  the 
Welsh  word  caweif,  "a  basket  or  creel,'"  and  to  be  compared  with  the  French 
term,  corheille  de  mariage,  which  Littre  explains  as  meaning  "parure  et  bijoux 
que  le  futur  envoie  a  sa  fiancee  dans  une  corbeille  d'ornement." — Littre,  Diet., 
s.v.  corbeille. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         213 

different  consequences  in  regard  to  the  division  of  the 
household  goods.  Separation  of  husband  and  wife  might 
take  place  by  agreement  or  by  the  act  of  one  party  without 
lawful  cause.  In  regard  to  separation  by  agreement,  the 
period  of  seven  years  less  three  days  was  crucial.  If  the 
separation  was  voluntary  on  both  sides,  and  took  place 
before  the  wife  had  attained  "  three  nights  of  the  seventh 
year,"  the  wife  was  only  entitled  to  take  away  from  the 
house  her  agwe^i  (seemingly  including  her  gwattol,  her 
argyvreu  (paraphernalia),  and  her  cowyii).  If  they  cohabited 
till  after  there  were  three  nights  wanting  of  the  seventh 
current  year,  and  afterwards  separated  by  agreement,^ 
everything  belonging  to  them  was  divided  into  two  portions. 
The  laws  set  out  minutely  the  things  that  were  to  go  to  the 
wife  and  to  the  husband  respectively,  and  as  to  the  things 
which  the  law  did  not  specifically  allot,  the  wife  had  the  right 
to  divide  them,  and  the  husband  chose  which  portion  he 
would  take.^  Of  the  children  two  shares  went  to  the  father 
and  one  to  the  mother — the  eldest  and  the  youngest  to  the 
former,  and  the  middlemost  to  the  mother.  The  debts  were 
payable  in  equal  shares ;  and  the  household  goods  that  were 
to  go  to  the  wife  and  husband  respectively  are  enumerated 
with  particularity.  If  a  wife  left  her  husband  before  the 
seventh  year  without  good  cause,  she  lost  all  her  property 
except  her  cowytt  and  her  right  to  any  fine  due  from  the 
husband  for  having  committed  adultery."^  The  good  causes 
for  which  she  might  repudiate  her  husband  without  any 
loss  of  property  were — his  being  affected  with  leprosy,  his 
having  fetid  breath,  or  his  impotence.* 

1  It  is  not  clear  whether  this  division  was  made  when  the  separation  after 
seven  years  of  cohabitation  took  place  by  the  will  of  one  party  without  mis- 
conduct on  the  part  of  either  the  husband  or  wife.  We  are  inclined  to  think 
not,  yet  the  other  view  is  arguable,  at  least  so  far  as  the  Ven.  code  is  concerned. 

2  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  8i. 

3  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  85. 

"•  Aneurin  Owen's  modesty  induced  him  to  translate  some  of  the  usages 
described  in  the  laws  relating  to  women  into  the  comparative  obscurity  of  the 


214  ^^^    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 


Biiww.Giila.., 


On  the  other  hand,  if  a  wife  were  "  guilty  of  an  odious 
deed  along  with  another  man,  whether  by  kiss,  aut  coitu 
aut  palpandol'  the  husband  could  repudiate  her,  and  she 
forfeited  all  her  property  rights.^  Many  other  rules  as  to 
the  relations  of  the  sexes  are  given  which  we  cannot  stop  to 
explain.  The  separation  of  husband  and  wife  under  these 
rules  does  not  seem  at  once  to  have  operated  as  a  complete 
divorce,  and  it  seems  that  it  was  only  on  the  subsequent 
marriage  to  another  person  of  one  of  the  parties  that  the 
relationship  was  finally  determined.^ 

We  pass  on  now  from  the  rules  as  to  the  status  of  the 
("ymry  proper  to  those  dealing  with  men  of  the  sub- 
ordinate classes  (called  eitttioji,  taeogion,  and  aiitudion),  who 
though  not  endowed  with  tribal  privileges  were  allowed 
certain  rights  and  a  recognised  place  on  Cymric  land. 
They  could  not_£qssess  //;-  gucljuri^'g-  ffamih'  land),  but 
were  settled  (at  least  originally)  only  on  tij-  cyfrif  (register 
land — the  bond  or  servile  maenolyTt oi  the  cymwd),  of  which 
we  say  more  below.  Their  evidence  was  of  no  worth 
against  a  Cymro,'^  and  to  them  were  denied  the  right  to 


bear  arms,  and  the  privileges  of  horsemanship  and  hunting.^ 

An    aitlt   could  not  without  his  lord's  consent  become  a 

clerk,  a  smith,  or  a   bard,  but  if  the   lord  did  not  object 

Latin  tongue.  We  follow  his  example.  The  method  of  deciding  whether  the 
husband  was  or  was  not  impotent  is  thus  given  : — '*  Si  feniina  ob  desideriumse 
sejungendi  diceret  quod  vir  non  potest  copulare,  lex  requirit  id  probari  hoc 
modo  :  linteamen  album  recens  lotum  sub  illis  expandi,  et  virum  in  illud  ire 
pro  re  venerea  et  urgente  libidine  earn  super  linteamen  projicere  ;  et  si  fiat  vel 
conspiciatur  in  linteamen  satis  est  ei  et  ilia  postea  non  potest  ob  istam  causam 
se  sejungere  ab  eo  ;  et  si  non  pos.sit  potest  se  sejungere  ab  eo,  et  abire  cum 
omnibus  rebus  suis." 

^  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  527. 

2  So  we  inf;r :  "If  the  husband  take  another  wife  after  he  shall  have  parted 
from  the  first,  the  first  is  free.  If  a  man  part  from  his  wife  and  she  be  minded 
to  take  another  husband,  and  the  first  husband  should  repent  having  parted 
from  his  wife,  and  overtake  her  with  one  foot  in  the  bed  and  the  other  outside 
the  bed,  the  prior  husband  is  to  have  the  woman  "  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  87). 

;«  ♦*  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  pp.  515,  557. 

^  "Anc.  Laws,"  ii.  515. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS,         215 

before  he  was  tonsured  as  a  clergyman,  or  set  up  a  smithy 
of  his  own,  or  graduated  in  song  as  a  bard,  the  lord  could 
not  enslave  him  again. ^ 

There  is  in  the  laws  (though  the  rules  we  have  just  set 
forth  apply  to  both  classes)  some  confusion  between  the 
eilttion  or  taeogion  on  the  one  and  the  atttudion  on  the 
other  hand.  The  explanation  of  the  difficulties  caused  by 
the  indiscriminate  use  of  the  words  "aittt"  and  "  atltud  "  in 
the  manuscripts  that  have  come  down  to  us  is  easy  if  the 
views  as  to  conquest  of  Wales  by  Cuneda  and  his  Sons, 
and  its  settlement  or  division  by  Dyfnwal  Moelmud,  stated 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  are  accepted.  If  that  account  be 
true  in  substance  (as  we  think),  the  conquerors  made 
arrangements  that  continued  to  exist  for  centuries ;  and 
the  laws  we  are  considering  seem  to  prove  that  they  had 
forcibly  grouped  the  vanquished  peoples  of  the  land  in  the 
areas  that  became  the  bond-maenols  of  the  cymwds  as 
marked  out  by  Dyfnwal,  and  put  them  into  the  category 
of  the  eitttion  or  taeogion.  But  so  soon  as  the  Cymry 
had  established  themselves,  their  rulers  and  the  officers 
of  the  cymwds  must  have  had  to  consider  the  legal  posi- 
tion of  strangers  coming  to  reside  on  the  then  sparsely 
populated  Cymric  territory  from  England  or  Ireland,  or  of 
men  of  different  grades,  for  one  reason  or  another,  leaving 
districts  in  which  they  were  born  and  seeking  a  new  place 
of  settlement— especially  those  of  Cymric  blood  who, 
because  of  their  misdeeds,  had  become  the  "  kin-wrecked  " 
men  with  whom  the  Welsh  texts  make  us  acquainted.  No 
atltud  came  within  the  purview  of  Cymric  law  till  he  placed 
himself  in  some  way  under  the  protection  of  a  Cymro  ; 
before  he  had  any  rights  recognised  by  that  law  he  must 
have  entered  into  relationship  with  a  man  of  Cymric  blood. 
The  tie  did  not  necessarily  imply  serfdom.  An  English- 
man might  commend  himself  to  a  Welsh  king  and  become 

^  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  436. 


2i6  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

his  man  ;  the  matter  might  go  no  further ;  he  simply 
entered  into  the  king's  naw'd  (peace  or  protection).  But  if 
such  an  atltud  desired  to  settle  permanently  in  Cymru,  he 
could  not  obtain  tir  gwelyawg ;  he  could  only  be  allowed 
to  occupy  land  in  the  niaer-dref  o{  the  king's  demesne  or  be 
placed  in  a  taeog-tref,  in  some  cymwd  belonging  to  his 
protector. 

If  he  did  so  and  lived  on  his  land  he  did  not  lose 
his  freedom  to  go  away  when  he  might  will,  but  if  his 
descendants  remained  there  till  the  fourth  generation,  then 
those  of  that  generation  became  eitttion  and  adscripti 
glebce.  Till  the  fourth  generation  his  descendants  might 
leave  their  land  and  its  lord  on  penalty  of  forfeiting  half 
their  personal  property  {da)}  But  in  some  cases,  at  any 
rate,  or  in  some  parts  of  Wales,  this  settlement  was  not 
without  compensation,  for  the  recognition  of  kindredship 
then  began,  though  it  was  not  till  the  ninth  generation 
that  an  aittt  genedl  was  legally  formed.  The  effect  of 
this  was  not  (except  perhaps  in  South  Wales)  to  make  the 
members  of  such  a  kindred  Cymry,  but  it  altered  their 
status  and  enabled  them  to  claim  galanas  for  the  slaying 
of  a  kinsman.- 

Another  general  distinction  between  the  status  of 
individuals  was  founded  upon  religious  profession.  The 
community  was  divided  by  these  laws  into  lay  and  spiritual 
or  ecclesiastical  persons.  The  clergy  formed  a  kind  of 
separate  estate.  It  is  clear  that  in  Howel's  time  the  Church 
possessed  a  large  amount  of  landed  property  with  various 
immunities,  which  seem  to  have  depended  principally  on 
the  terms  of  the  original  donation.  All  possessors  of 
Church  land  were  to  come  to  every  new  king  who  succeeded, 

1  **  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  183. 

^  As  to  the  position  of  strangers  in  the  system — a  very  obscure  and  doubtful 
topic — see  Seebolim's  "Tribal  System,"  pp.  115 — 126.  Till  the  period  at 
which  aittt  kindredship  was  allowed,  the  worth  of  a  slain  man  of  the  family 
went  to  the  lord,  as  in  the  case  of  an  hereditary  taeog  ("Anc.  Laws,"  ii.  403). 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         217 

to  declare  to  him  their  privilege  and  their  obligation ;  and 
after  they  had  declared  to  him  their  privilege,  if  the  king 
saw  their  privilege  to  be  right,  he  allowed  them  to  continue 
their  nawd  (right  of  sanctuary  or  protection)  and  their 
privileges  or  immunities.^  The  land  of  the  Church  seems 
to  have  been  divided  into  abbey  land,  bishop  land,  hospital 
land,  and  land  of  a  church. 

As  a  general  rule  the  king  seems  to  have  had  jurisdiction 
in  regard  to  some  offences  committed  by  and  the  right  to 
certain  dues  and  services  from  laymen  settled  on  such  land.- 
It  is  said,  however,  that  Howel  permitted  every  ecclesiastical 
lord,  such  as  the  archbishop  of  Menevia  (St.  David's),  or  other 
bishops  or  abbots,  royal  privilege  for  holding  pleas  among 
their  laics  according  to  the  common  law  {cyfraith  gyffredin) 
of  Cymru.'^  The  clergy  were,  it  appears,  exempt  from  the 
jurisdiction  of  civil  courts,  though  they  might  sue  laymen 
in  them.  On  the  other  hand,  in  general,  the  spiritual  court 
could  not  deal  with  suits  against  laymen  ;  but  in  regard  to 
tithe,  daered  (income  or  fees),  etc.,  and  to  saraad  {injuria) 
and  open  violence  done  to  a  clerk,  the  Church  had  juris- 
diction over  laymen.^  There  was  no  worth  established  by 
Howel  for  the  limb  or  the  blood  or  the  saraad  of  a  clerk, 
and  every  "unworthy"  injury  done  to  the  clergy  was  to  be 
repaired  to  them  in  the  synod  according  to  ecclesiastical 
law.^  Abbots,  bishops,  and  masters  of  hospitals  were  per- 
mitted to  make  capitular  regulations  according  to  their  own 
law  for  their  establishments,  provided  the  rules  did  not 
contravene  the  law  of  the  king.^ 

Other   distinctions   between    persons   were  based    upon 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  139. 

?  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  171. 

2  "Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  365.    But  this  seems  a  late  theory  ;  see  below,  p.  240. 
■*  So  we  interpret  the  texts  in  a  chapter  entitled  "  Suits  of  Court  and  Church  " 

("Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  367),  but  the  MS.  is  somewhat  late. 
^  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.  477. 
•^  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.  171. 


2i8  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

official  position  or  the  status  {braint)  of  office.  The  rights 
and  duties  of  the  ministers  of  the  king's  and  queen's 
estabhshments,  to  whom  we  have  referred  above,  and  of  the 
maer  and  cangheifor  of  the  cymwd,  are  set  forth  with  great 
minuteness. 

We  now  turn  to  consider  briefly  the  law  relating  to 
property  in  or  possession  of  land.  Here  again  in  the 
codes  we  find  the  cymwd  treated  as  a  legal  unit^  and 
its  divisions  give  us  a  key  to  the  explanation  of  the 
system.  The  divisions  are  ascribed  to  the  laws  of  Dyfnwal 
Moelmud ;  and  though  at  first  sight  they  look,  as  explained 
in  the  codes,  to  be  rigid  territorial  areas,  yet  on  further 
consideration  it  seems  they  were  created  in  order  to  adjust 
the  rights  of  the  king  or  chieftain,  the  uchelwyr,  the  tribes- 
men,  and  the  eitltion,  of  separating  the  inferior  classes  from 
the  Cymric  tribesmen,  and  especially  for  the  purpose  of 
aggregating  the  homesteads  of  the  free  Cymric  tribesmen 
into  groups  for  the  a^essment  of  the  ^zc/^i"^z^<2  (food-rent)  due 
to  the  chieftain.  There  was  some  difference  in  the  arran^je- 
ments  in  Gwyned  and  Deheubarth.  According  to  the 
Venedotian  code  the  cymwd  was  thus  divided : — Four 
erivmc^  in  every  tyUyn  (homestead),  four  tyctynazc  in  every 
rJiandir  (shareland),  four  7'Jiaiidiroe^  in  every  gafael  (hold- 
ing), four  gafaelio7i  in  every  tref  (vill  or  township),  four 
trefyTt  in    every  inaeiiol^   and    twelve    inaenolyTt  and    two 

^  j^'/Tc  (literally,  "what  has  been  tilled")  was  a  measurement  applicable 
to  arable  land.     It  contained  about  4,320  yards.     A.  Owen's  *'  Glossary."  Oje  J^^^\i<Ji'^C 

-  Sometimes  spelt  maenor.  Maenol,  according  to  Dr.  Pughe's  guess,  a 
"dale"  or  "manor,"  is  best  explained  as  "  heredium "  or  "praedium." 
Macnol (adj. )  means  "stony. "  Alaoiawr  (for  that  is  the  old  spelling)  becomes 
maenol  in  Gwyned  and  mac  nor  in  Powys  and  South  Wales,  and  being 
feminine  it  becomes  with  the  article  y  Facuol  and  y  Faeiio7\  "the  maenawr"  ; 
whence  in  place-names  it  is  written  Vaeuol  or  Vaynol  in  the  North,  and 
Vaeiior  or  Vaynor  elsewhere.  Without  the  article  it  is  written  Manor, 
as  in  Manordeifi  {  =  AIae>ior  Deiji\  and  Manorbeer  {  =  Maenor  Byr) — both 
in  Pembrokeshire.  The  latter  was  so  called  after  a  certain  Porius  or  Pyr 
after  whom  Caldey  was  named  Vnys  Byr  (^I'yr's  island).  The  word  viacnauir 
has  nothing  to  do   with  English  ?iianor,  to  which  it  is  often  assimilated,  but 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS,         219 

trefyd  in  every  cymwd.  So,  there  being  fifty  trefyd  in  each 
cymwd,  and  two  cymwds  being  normally  equal  to  a  cantref, 
there  were  one  hundred  trefyd  in  the  cantref ;  and  there 
were  twelve  maenolyd  and  two  trefyd"  in  a  cymwd,  which 
were  thus  apportioned: — the  two  "supernumerary"  trefyd 
were  possessed  by  the  king — one  as  inaer  -  dref  land 
{i.e.,  demesne  land),  and  the  other  as  his  waste  and 
summer  pasture  ;  four  of  the  maenolyd  were  assigned 
to  eitttion  to  support  dogs  and  horses  and  for  progress 
and  dovraeth  (quarters)  ;  of  the  remaining  eight  maenolyd, 
two  were  assigned  to  the  canghettorship  and  maership 
of  the  cymwd,  and  the  rest  to  the  free  uchelwyr.  Such 
is  the  arrangement  ascribed  by  the  code  of  Gwyned  to 
Dyfnwal,  and  though  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
it  represents  a  system  that  once  had  real  significance,  there 
are  some  obvious  difficulties  arising  from  the  language  of 
the  code.  The  erw  is  defined  as  a  definite  and  constant 
area,  and  if  the  text  is  to  be  taken  literally,  all  the  cymwds 
would  be  of  equal  size,  but  this  was  certainly  not  the  case  ; 
and  so,  whatever  may  have  been  the  intention  of  the  ancient 
legislators,  we  must  look  on  the  larger  areas  mentioned  as 
not  being  uniform  in  size,  but  as  representing  groups  of 
households  connected  together  for  the  purpose  of  adjusting 
the  rights  of  the  king  as  against  the  men  of  different  classes 
residing  in  the  cymwd.  Whatever  the  original  object  of 
these  divisions,  the  aspect  presented  by  the  cymwd  in 
Howel's  time,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  codes,  was  this — it 
was  divided  into  recognised  maenolyd ;  a  portion  of  the 
cymwd  was  possessed  by  the  king,  or  an  arglwyd  appointed 
by  him,  as  demesne  land,  and  another  part  was  recognised 
as  the  king's  waste  ;  the  maer  and  the  canghettor  occupied 

appears  to  come  from  inaen  (a  stone).  Originally  it  probably  meant  a  par- 
ticular spot  in  its  district,  which  was  distinguished  by  stone  buildings  or  some 
sort  of  stone  walls  ;  this  seems  to  us  more  likely  than  the  conjecture  of  A.  Owen 
that  it  meant  a  district  bounded  by  stone  land-marks.  See  Professor  Lloyd's 
remarks  in  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  xi.,  32-3,  and  Mr.  E.  Phillimore's  note  x.,  p.  57. 


220 


THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 


Ouoir«aiJn-j . 


other  areas  within  it ;  the  residue  of  the  land  was  div^ided 
into  tir  o:welyawo[  (^occupied  b\'  uchehvyr  and  bonedigion) 
and  tir  r;^;'?]/^ (occupied  by  eitttion)  ;  and  an  acute  distinction 
is  drawn  between  the  free  land  of  the  true  Cymry  and  the 
bond  land  of  the  unfree  persons,  and  it  should  be  noticed 
that  the  legal  attributes  free  and  bond  are  given  not  only 
to  persons,  but  also  to  specific  areas  of  land. 

The  king's  demesne  {inaer-di'ef)  was  cultivated  by  his 
eitttion  under  the  superintendence  of  his  land-maer,  but  it 
also  seems  that  parts  of  it  w^ere  occupied  by  subordinate 
officers  of  the  court  holding  their  land  free  by  privilege  of 
office  in  return  for  their  services.^ 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  advert  to  the  relation 
of  the  gwely  to  the  cenedl  in  dealing  with  the  constitution 
of  the  latter  as  it  existed  in  Howel's  days  ;  we  have  now  to 
consider  its  relation  to  the  king  as  lord  of  the  cymwd. 

So  far  as  we  have  observed,  the  codes  nowhere  speak  of  the 
uchehvyr  as  holding  their  land  of  the  king,  but  their  position 
was  in  Howel's  time,  or  when  the  codes  were  in  operation, 
hardly  distinguishable  from  that  of  tenants.  The  first 
obligation  of  the  possessors  of  tir  gwely  aw g  was  to  pay  a 
i^westva  (food-rent)  to  the  king.  Originally  this  was  paid 
in  kind  for  the  entertainment  of  the  king  and  his  court  on 
his  progress.-  He  did  not  quarter  himself  on  the  Cymric 
tribesmen,  but,  as  we  shall  see,  the  eitttion  had  to  provide 
him  with  certain  necessary  buildings,  while  the  former  had 
to  furnish  the  food  and  drink.     According  to  the  codes, 

*  See  a  survival  of  this  in  the  case  of  the  manor  of  Aberffraw.  Seebohm's 
"Tribal  System,"  p.  12. 

-  From  the  phrase  *'na\v  nos  gwesty  "  (i.e.,  nine  nights  of  the  guest-house) 
it  would  appear  that  the  original  obligation  of  the  cymwd  was  to  entertain  its 
chieftain  for  nine  nights.  Naw-Jios  means  eight  days  bounded  by  nine  nights, 
just  as  ivytJuios  (eight  nights  =  a  week)  is  our  ordinary  Jewish  week  of 
seven  days.  Cf.  /uiitahie,  and  pyihriinios  (fortnight,  qtttjtzaine).  Naio-nos  is 
the  old  Celtic  nine-night  week  of  eight  days.  See  Rhys'  "CeUic  Heathendom," 
pp.  360,  365.  See  "Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  345;  and  Seebohm's  ''Tribal 
System,"  p.  158. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         221 

this  service  was  no  longer  rendered  in  kind,  but  had  been 
commuted  into  a  money  payment — the  tunc  pound.  The 
Venedotian  code  says  :  "  And  from  eight  (i.e.,  the  two 
maenolyd  of  the  maer  and  canghellor  and  the  six  of  the 
Cymric  tribesmen)  the  king  is  to  have  a  gwestva  every 
year ;  that  is,  a  pound  yearly  from  each  of  them  :  three- 
score pence  are  charged  on  each  trev  of  the  four  that  are  in 
a  maenol,  and  so  subdivided  into  quarters  in  succession, 
until  each  erw  of  the  tydyn  be  assessed  :  and  that  is  called 
the  tunc  pound ;  and  the  silentiary  is  to  collect  it  '',«\e^" 
annually."  ^  The  maenol  therefore  appears  as  the  tune- 
paying  unit,  and  the  gwestva  or  tunc  pound  was  a  rent 
issuing  from  the  whole  tir  gwelyawg  of  the  cymwd,  and  not 
a  personal  due  from  the  uchelwyr  or  heads  of  households  ; 
and  the  required  amount  was  assessed  among  the  uchelwyr 
and  heads  of  household  according  to  the  number  of  the 
subdivisions  of  the  maenol  in  their  possession. 

The  uchelwyr  and  other  Cymric  tribesmen  were  also, 
as  we  have  said,  liable  to  military  service.  "^  Though  they 
were  not  subject  (except  so  far  as  the  tunc  pound  in  lieu 
of  the  gwestva  was  concerned)  to  liability  in  regard  to  the 
king's  progresses,  they  had  also  to  submit  to  the  great 
progress  of  the  household  once  a  year."  Lastly,  the  free 
tribesmen,  like  other  classes  in  the  community,  were  obliged 
to  pay  on  death  an  ebediw  (a  relief)  to  the  king  or  lord.  ^"-^•-^^-'^ 

The  mode  of  succession  on  the  death  of  an  uchelwr  or 
chief  of  a  household  was  as  follows : — The  land  of  the 
deceased  was  first  of  all  divided  between  all  his  sons.  If 
there  were  no  buildings  on  the  land,  the  youngest  son  was 
to  divide  all  the  patrimony,  and  the  eldest  was  to  choose 
which  portion  he  would  take,  and  each  in  seniority  chose 
unto  the  youngest.    If  there  were  buildings  on  the  land,  the 

*  '*Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  189. 

^  *' Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  79.     See  above,  p.  205. 

^  See  above,  p,  20;. 


222  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

youngest  brother  but  one  was  to  divide  the  tyddynau 
(homesteads),  and  the  }^oungest  was  to  have  his  choice 
among  them  ;  and  after  that  he  was  to  divide  all  the 
patrimony,  and  by  seniority  they  were  to  choose  unto  the 
youngest.  That  division  was  not  final,  but  only  continued 
during  the  lives  of  the  brothers.  After  the  brothers  were 
dead  their  sons  (first  cousins)  divided  the  patrimony  again 
per  capita,  and  not  per  stirpes ;  the  heir  (etife^)  of  the 
youngest  brother  divided,  and  the  heir  of  the  eldest  brother 
chose,  and  so  by  seniority  unto  the  youngest.  This 
division  again  was  not  final,  but  only  continued  till  all  the 
first  cousins  were  dead  ;  when  that  time  arrived  there  was 
a  final  division  per  capita  among  the  second  cousins — i.e., 
the  great-grandchildren  of  the  original  head  of  the  gwely} 

Thus  every  one  of  the  male  descendants  to  the  fourth 
degree  of  a  possessor  of  tir  gwelyawg  had  an  interest  in 
the  family  land,  which  became  an  interest  in  possession  to 
a  share  in  his  father's  land  when  his  father  died,  and  which 
was  liable  to  be  enlarged  or  lessened  when  the  next  division 
of  the  whole  land  of  the  gively  took  place. 

It  was  a  logical  result  of  this  position  of  things  that 
a  chief  of  a  household  could  not  alienate  or  dispose  of  any 
part  of  his  tir  gwelyawg  except  for  his  own  life  ;  if  he  did 
so,  it  was  recoverable  by  his  sons.  Where,  however,  there 
was  an  agreement  between  father,  brothers,  cousins,  and 
second  cousins  (seemingly  the  whole  zwely)  and  the  lord 
to  yield  land  as  bloodland  {i.e.,  in  lieu  of  the  composition 
for  homicide),  the  head  of  the  household  might  assign  his 
land  or  part  of  it,  and  his  son  could  not  recover,  and  the 
reason  given  is  that  peace  was  bought  for  the  son  as  well 
as  for  the  father — i.e.,  there  was  valuable  consideration  to 
the  son.-     This  case  is  mentioned  as  the  only  one  in  which 

'  **  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  i68.     This  is  from  tlie  Ven.  code,  but  the  Demetian 
code  is  in  practical  agreement. 
-  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  177. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         223 

a  father  could  defeat  his  sons'  rights.  It  seems,  ho\\'ever, 
that  a  man  who  had  no  sons  could,  with  the  consent  of  his 
brothers,  first  cousins,  second  cousins,  and  the  lord  of  the 
cymwd,  alienate  his  land.^ 

We  have  now  explained  the  principal  rules  relating  to  tzr 
gwelyawg  as  they  appear  in  the  codes.  They  seem  to  us, 
in  the  form  there  presented,  to  indicate  that  the  tir  gwely- 
awg in  each  cymwd  consisted  of  definite  geographical 
parcels,  though  the  uchelwyr  and  bonedigion  occup\'ing 
them  had  rights  over  waste  and  woodland,  and  our  opinion 
is  confirmed  by  the  existence  of  rules  concerning  boundary 
disputes.^ 

We  now  pass  on  to  consider  the  law  as  to  the  servile  or 
villein  maenolyd".  According  to  the  original  scheme,  four 
maenolydwere  set  aside  for  occupation  byeiihion  or  taeogion. 
As  a  result  of  the  application  of  the  old  regulations,  we  find 
that  in  Howel's  time  certain  parts  of  each  cymwd  were  in 
the  possession  of  occupiers  or  tenants  not  looked  upon  as 
Cymric  tribesmen,  but  as  unfree  persons  {adscripti  glebcB), 
whose  services  to  the  king  or  lord  and  whose  rights 
were  different  from  those  of  the  owners  or  holders  of  tir 
gwelyazvg. 

1  This  is  an  inference.  The  Ven.  code  speaks  of  the  grades  just  mentioned 
as  the  "persons  without  whose  consent  land  cannot  be  assigned"  ("Anc. 
Laws,"  i.,  p.  177),  and  another  text  says  that  "  no  man  can  sell  land  or  engage 
it  without  the  permission  of  the  lord"  (i,,  p.  i8i).  He  might  let  it  annually 
without  such  permission. 

2  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  537  :  "  If  a  dispute  as  to  boundaries  be  commenced 
between  the  land  of  co-inheritors,  privilege  is  to  meer  ;  if  between  occupied 
land  and  a  waste,  pre-occupation  (cyiiwarckad)  is  to  meer."  The  text  goes  on 
to  say  that  "building  and  tillage  denote  occupation."  The  meaning  is  obscure  ; 
but  it  seems  to  amount  to  this — that  in  the  first  case  that  one  of  the  contendino- 
parties  whose  hraint  (status  or  privilege)  was  higher  had  the  right  to  define  the 
boundary  ;  that  in  the  second  case  the  prior  occupant  had  that  right.  Another 
text  says  :  "If  there  be  contention  between  two  persons  of  equal  braint  as  to 
meers.  and  the  truth  between  them  be  not  known,  let  each  swear  to  his  meer. 
and  afterwards  the  debateable  land  is  to  be  divided  between  them"  ("Anc. 
Laws,"  i.  537). 


224  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

The  bond  maenolyd  (the  parcels  of  land  to  which  a  non- 
tribal  character  was  given)  were  liable  to  furnish  a  dawn- 
bwyd  (food-gift)  twice  a  year  to  the  king — one  in  the  winter 
and  one  in  the  summer.^  Apart  from  the  food-gifts,  the 
eiittion  were  not  bound  to  support  the  king  or  his  household  ; 
but  they  had  to  submit  to  the  progresses  of  the  maer  and 
canghettor.  These,  with  their  servants,  were  to  make  two 
progresses  a  year,  in  parties  of  four.  The  villeins  were  also 
obliged  to  erect  the  hall  and  eight  subsidiary  buildings  for 
the  king  on  his  progresses,  though  whether  this  was  done 
afresh  every  year,  or  when  built  only  repaired  from  time  to 
time,  is  not  clear.^  The  king  was  also  entitled  to  have  for 
his  military  expeditions  from  every  villein-tref  a  man,  a 
horse,  and  an  axe,  to  form  encampments  at  his  own  cost."' 
They  had  also  to  furnish  pack-horses  for  the  king  for 
such  expeditions.'*  Once  a  year  they  were  to  present  the 
queen  with  meat  and  drink ;  and  upon  them  fell  the 
duty  of  supporting  the  dogs,  the  huntsmen,  the  falconers, 
and  the  youths,  all  of  them  once  a  year.  The  king  might 
also  quarter  strangers  on  his  eiittion  according  to  their 
abilities.^ 

The  regulation  of  matters  in  the  bond  maenolyd  or  as  to 
tir  cyfrif  was  entrusted  to  the  maer  and  canghettor  of  the 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  199.  According  to  the  Venedotian  code  they  were 
the  following  : — 

(i)  In  the  winter — a  three-year-old  swine  ;  a  vessel  of  butter  3  handbreadths 
in  depth  and  3  in  breadth  ;  a  vat  full  of  bragot  9  handbreadths  in  depth 
diagonally  ;  a  thrave  of  oats  of  one  band  for  provender  ;  26  loaves  of  the  best 
l)read  grown  on  the  land  ;  a  man  to  kindle  the  fire  in  the  hall  that  night  or 
one  penny. 

(ii)  In  summer — a  three-year-old  wether  ;  a  dish  of  butter ;  26  loaves  ;  a 
cheese  of  one  milking  of  all  the  cows  in  the  tref. 

The  gifts  in  the  other  cases  are  similar  in  general  character,  though  not 
identical. 

2  "  Anc.  Laws,*'  i.  79,  487. 

3  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  79. 

4  "Anc.  Laws,"   .  193. 

5  Ibid. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         225 

cymwd.^  Upon  the  death  of  an  ailk  possessing  a  ty^fn 
the  land  which  had  been  in  his  occupation  was  not  divided 
between  his  sons  as  in  the  case  of  lir  gwelyawg ;  but  the 
tref  in  which  the  tycfyn  of  the  deceased  was  situate  was 
re-divided  between  all  the  eitttion  settled  in  the  tref!^  The 
land-maer  of  the  king's  maer-dref  is  directed  to  proceed  in 
the  same  way  as  to  the  king's  eitttion  settled  thereon.  The 
incident  of  ebediw  (relief)  applied  to  the  eitltion  as  to  the 
C\'mric  tribesmen,  but  the  amount  was  less."' 

We  can  only  give  very  brief  attention  to  the  law  of 
contracts.  The  laws  recognise  the  sale,  loan,  deposit,  and 
pledging  of  da  (movable  property).  But  besides  obliga- 
tions resulting  from  such  transactions  as  these,  duties  might 
be  created  by  entering  into  a  suretyship  {inechn'iaeth)^  a 
briduw,  and  a  legal  contract  {avtinod  dedfol).  Suretyships 
and  legal  contracts  were  verbal  agreements  entered  into 
in  solemn  form  before  witnesses  or  contract-men  {aiiimod- 
zuyr).  The  mutual  undertakings  were  spoken  by  the  con- 
tracting parties,  and  in  sign  of  the  conclusion  of  the  contract 
there  was  "  a  mutual  pledging  of  hands,"  which  we  gather 
was  a  joining  of  hands.*  A  promise  given  without  witnesses 
present  was  of  no  avail  if  denied  on  oath  by  the  alleged 
contractor.^      The   briduw  seems  to  have  been  a  contract 

^  The  general  name  of  the  hand  on  which  taeogion  or  eilition  were  settled,  is 
in  the  codes  tir  rj^;'//"(reckon-land,  i.e.,  land  accounted  for).  The  taeog-tref  ox 
maer-dref  of  the  codes  is  equivalent  to  the  tref)ie2iery  (subdivided  tref)  of  the 
Record  of  Carnarvon.  H.  Lewis's  "Ancient  Laws,"  p.  41;  Seebohm's 
"Tribal  System,"  p.  1 1 6. 

-  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  169.  Seemingly  for  reasons  of  convenience  no  one  was 
to  remove  from  his  legal  ty'^yn  if  an  equivalent  could  be  obtained  for  it  of 
other  land. 

'^  It  was  for  a  king's  aitlt  6  score  pence  ;  for  an  uchelwr's  aitlt  4  score  and 
10  pence  ("Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  493).  That  of  a  breyr  (=  uchelvvr)  was 
6  score  pence. 

^  See  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  137-8:  also  the  chapter  on  Suretyship,  ibid., 
p.  113.  "There  is  no  surety  nor  gorvodawg  unless  the  three  hands  meet," 
ibid,,  p.  135  ;  and  also  p.  133.     See  the  texts  as  to  "delusive  suretyships." 

^  Ibid. 

W.P.  Q 


226  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

entered  into  with  the  sanction  of  the  Church,  a  promise  on 
oath  taking  God  to  witness  that  a  man  would  do  or  abstain 
from  doing  some  act.  It  could  only  be  entered  into  by 
baptised  persons.^ 

The  same  fundamental  notions  as  to  the  punishment  of 
wrongs  that  prevailed  among  the  Irish  and  Saxon  nations 
in  early  times  are  disclosed  in  the  Welsh  laws.  The 
rules  as  to  offences  of  different  kinds  are  most  completely 
developed  in  the  third  book  of  the  Venedotian  Code,  which 
is  called  the  Proof  book  {Lyfr  prawf).  The  preamble 
shows  that  it  was  compiled  after  Howel's  time  ;  ~  and  as 
the  text  refers  to  alterations  made  by  Bleynd"  ab  Cynfyn, 
it  must  have  been  originally  written  not  earlier  than  the 
middle  of  the  eleventh  century,  and  in  fact  probably  a  good 
deal  later.  It  treats  of  the  "three  columns  of  law"  {teyr 
kolovyn  kyvi^eyth) — the  law  of  murder  or  homicide  {galanas), 
of  theft  (Jtadrad),  and  of  fire  (tan)  ;  and  then  with  very  great 
minuteness  goes  on  to  settle  the  worth  of  wild  and  tame 
animals,  of  the  different  limbs  and  members  of  the  human 
body,  of  domestic  utensils,  agricultural  implements,  and 
many  articles  coming  under  the  head  of  movable  property. 

The  treatise  shows  clearly  that  as  in  regard  to  property 
arrangements,  so  also  in  regard  to  wrongs,  the  effect  of 
settlement  in  a  particular  district  for  centuries  had  been  to 
alter  very  materially  the  older  tribal  system,  and  to  vest 
in  the  lord  and  court  of  the  cymwd  a  territorial  jurisdiction 
in  regard  to  what  we  should  call  crimes.  The  distinction 
between  civil  injuries  (offences  against  an  individual  or 
individuals)  and  crimes  (offences  against  the  state  or  com- 
munity at  large)  is  not  developed,  though  for  many  wrongful 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  133-5.  It  was  probably  entered  into  in  church  or 
in  the  presence  of  a  priest. 

^  **  And  this  book  lorwerth  son  of  Madog  collected  from  the  book  of 
Cyfnerth  son  of  Morgeneu,  and  from  the  book  of  Gwair  so.i  of  Ruvon,  and 
from  the  book  of  Goronwy  son  of  Moreidig,  and  the  old  book  of  the  White 
House,  &-C."  ("  Anc.  Laws,"i.,  p.  219). 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         227 

acts  the  lord  has  the  right  to  exact  fines  called  dirwy  and 
camlwrw,  and  for  some  the  wrong-doer  might  be  sold,  or 
exiled,  or  put  to  death.  Apart  from  homicide,  what  we  find  is 
an  elaborate  system  whereby  the  injured  person  might  sue  for 
money  compensation  fixed  by  law  beforehand  in  respect 
of  each  kind  of  offence,  though  in  some  cases  the  offender 
was  also  directly  punished.  The  texts  of  the  codes  are  very 
obscure,  and  we  do  not  affect  to  be  able  to  interpret  them 
with  certainty  or  summarise  them  with  absolute  correctness. 
The  rules  relating  to  galanas  (homicide)  are  set  forth 
with  tolerable  clearness,  and  are  of  great  importance  to 
students  of  the  history  of  legal  institutions,  for  they  are 
evidently  derived  from  notions  common  to  all  or  nearly  all 
races  at  certain  stages  of  their  'development,  and  the  working 
of  the  system  is  explained  at  unusual  length.  In  very 
early  communities  the  moral  ideas  of  their  members  were 
limited  to  men  of  their  own  tribe  or  clan  or  family.  The 
words  stranger  and  enemy  were  practically  synonymous. 
The  slaying  of  a  man  outside  one's  community  might  or 
might  not  be  counted  for  righteousness,  but  it  was  not 
thought  of  as  wrong.  But  the  killing  of  a  man  within  the 
pale — belonging  to  one's  own  tribe — was  quite  another 
thing,  and  the  nearer  relations  of  the  murdered  man  were 
prompted  to  vengeance,  not  only  by  natural  emotions  of 
anger  and  pride,  but  by  powerful  impulses  connected  with 
primitive  religion.  It  was  the  right  and  duty  of  the 
kindred  of  the  murdered  man  to  prosecute  a  blood-feud 
against  the  murderer  and  his  kindred.  At  some  time 
amongst  progressive  races,  to  put  a  stop  to  strife  within 
the  tribe,  a  system  of  ending  the  feud  between  kindreds 
or  families  within  the  larger  aggregate  of  kinsmen  was 
devised.  In  all  probability  expediency  suggested  the  settle- 
ment of  the  quarrel  without  further  bloodshed  between 
the  kindreds  by  a  payment  of  cattle.  The  termination  of 
the  vendetta  was  very  likely  originally  brought  about  by  a 

Q  2 


228  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

voluntary  treaty  between  the  kindreds  at  feud  ;  but  in  the 
codes  we  find  a  rigid  system,  carried  out  according  to  a 
settled  procedure,  under  which  one  group  of  kinsmen  made 
to  another  group  of  kinsmen  a  payment  in  cattle  or  money, 
which  varied  with  the  status  of  the  murdered  man,  and 
which  was  carried  out  under  the  auspices  of  the  lord  of 
the  cymwd.  "  There  was  thus,  so  to  speak,  a  kind  of 
international  law  and  authority  superseding  the  lynch- 
law^  or  blood-feud  between  the  kindreds."  ^  The  Irish 
laws  describe  an  analogous  system  as  "  a  middle  course 
between  forgiveness  and  retaliation,"  and  the  essential 
character  of  the  whole  proceeding  is  emphasised  by  the 
text  of  the  Venedotian  Code,  which  says  that  "  on  that  day** 
— the  day  on  which  the  worth  of  the  murdered  man  is 
completely  paid — "  everlasting  concord  is  to  be  established 
and  perpetual  amnesty  between  them  (i>.,  the  kindreds 
at  feud)."  2 

Let  us  now  try  as  briefly  as  possible  to  explain  the 
system  as  it  appears  in  the  Venedotian  Code.  To  do  so 
we  must  first  of  all  define  two  technical  terms,  galanas  and 
saraad.  The  former  word  is  now  used  for  homicide  or 
murder  ;  in  the  codes  it  is  employed  not  only  in  that  sense, 
but  also  for  the  worth  measured  in  cattle  or  money  of  the 
murdered  man.  Saraad  (literally  "disgrace")  was  in  like 
manner  a  term  used  to  signify  a  wrongful  act  involving 
insult  to  the  person  whose  right  was  infringed,  as  well  as 
the  compensation  payable  for  the  wrong.  It  was  a  ver}^ 
general  term,  and  included  both  direct  trespasses  to  the 
person  and  indirect  attacks  upon  a  man's  honour,  privi- 
leges, or  rights."'  Saraad^  therefore,  was  much  broader  than 
galanas,  and  no  one  could  commit  galaitas  without  doing 

1  Seebohm,  "Tribal  System,"  p.  105. 

2  **  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  229. 

'  E.g.,  saraad  was  done  to  a  queen  by  snatching  anything  out  of  her  hand, 
or  violating  her  protection  or  peace  {imxod).  So  saraad  was  done  to  a  king 
by  seducing  his  wife  or  violating  his  protection  (*'  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  7). 


ANCIENT   LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         229 

saraad  to  the  deceased.^  Accordingly  the  law  quite 
logically  imposed  on  the  murderer  and  his  kinsmen  com- 
pensation for  saraad  as  well  as  galanas. 

The  amount  of  the  galanas  was  generally  thrice  that  of 
the  saraad  of  the  deceased,-  and  the  amount  was  fixed  by 
law  for  each  kind  of  man,  so  that  we  have  incidentally 
valuable  information  as  to  the  grades  of  aristocracy  and 
status. 

The  galanas  of  the  king  of  Aberffraw  was  his  saraad 
threefold.  His  saraad  was — "  a  hundred  cows  from  each 
cantref  -in  his  dominion,  and  a  white  bull  with  red  ears  to 
each  hundred  cows,  and  a  rod  of  gold  equal  in  length  to 
himself  and  as  thick  as  his  little  finger,  and  a  plate  of  gold 
as  broad  as  his  face  and  as  thick  as  the  nail  of  a  ploughman 
who  has  been  a  ploughman  for  seven  years."  ^  Gold  was 
only  paid  to  the  king  of  Aberffraw.  As  to  other  men  the 
following  were  the  amounts  oi galanas : — 

The  penkenedl .         .         .         .         .         .         .189  cows. 

An  uchelwr  ........     126     ,, 

Man  with  a  family  without  office  (penteulu)         .       84     ,, 

Innate  bonedig      .  .  .  ,          .  .     .       63     ,, 

Atttud  of  a  brenin  .         .          .         ,  .       63     ,, 

Aiitud  of  an  uchelwr      .  .          .  .  ..31^,, 

Caeth  "  slave  "  of  the  island  :   i  lb.  of  silver        .        4     ,, 

Caeth  from  beyond  the  sea  :  i^  lb.  .  .     .        6     ,, 

The  galanas  of  a  woman  was  half  that  of  a  man.* 
The  murderer  or  wrong-doer  was  not  alone  liable  for  the 
payment  of  galanas  and  saraad,  but  jointly  w  ith  him  a 
group  of  his  kinsmen.  The  group  liable  for  saraad  was 
limited  to  the  fourth  degree  from  the  common  ancestor — 
i,e.,  the  group  of  descendants  among  which  tir  gwelyawg 


1  "  No  one  is  killed  without  being  first  subjected  to  saraad''''  ('•  Anc.  Laws," 
i.  231). 

2  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  223. 

3  "Anc.  Laws,"  i,,  p.  7.     But  as  to  the  latter  statement,  see  the  Demetian 
Code  ("Anc.  Laws,"i.  347). 

-»  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  85. 


c> 


230  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

was  divisible  and  re-divisible.  The  responsibility  for 
^alanas  lay  upon  a  much  larger  group  :  the  kinsmen  to 
the  seventh  degree  of  descent  from  the  common  ancestor 
— i.e.,  all  the  kinsmen  of  the  murderer  to  that  degree  of 
relationship  which,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  we  must  call 
sixth  cousinship.^ 

The  galanas  was  assessed  on  such  kinsmen  not  only 
on  his  father's  side,  but  also  on  his  mother's  side.  The 
mode  of  assessment  was  as  follows  : — One-third  of  the 
whole  amount  fell  upon  the  murderer  and  his  father  and 
mother,  if  living,  in  the  proportion  of  two  parts  on  himself 
and  one  part  on  his  father  and  mother.  If  he  had  children, 
and  they  were  of  age  liable  to  pay,  the  murderer  himself 
paid  two-thirds  of  his  own  share,  and  the  children  the 
remaining  third  of  that  share.  The  residue  (two-thirds)  of 
the  whole  galanas  fell  upon  the  groups  of  kinsmen  on  the 
father  and  mother's  side  just  described  in  the  proportion 
of  two-thirds  for  the  father's  kin  and  one-third  for  the 
mother's  kin. 

But  the  liability  of  his  kin  was  not  wholly  exhausted 
within  this  grade,  for  if  by  assessment  in  the  manner 
described  the  full  galanas  was  not  collected,  the  murderer 
could  call  upon  the  remaining  men  of  his  kindred  {cenedl) — 
i.e.,  his  kinsmen  to  the  ninth  degree — to  assist  him  by  a 
payment  called  the  spear-penny  {ceiniog  baladyr).  Beyond 
the  ninth  degree  liability  ceased,  and  the  Welsh  lawyer 
asks,  "  Is  there  a  single  penny  for  which  a  person's  life  is 

>  The  following  was  the  group  thus  formed  :— 

1.  Brothers braut 

2.  First  cousins  .         .         .         .         .     .     keuendeni 

3.  Second  cousins keuerderu 

4.  Third  cousins         ......     keyuyti 

5.  Fourth  cousins gorcheyuen 

6.  Fifth  cousins gorchau 

7.  Sons  of  a  fifth  cousin  ....     mab  gorckau 
There  is,  however,  some  obscurity,  if  not  confusion,  in  the  mode  of  counting- 
degrees  of  relationship  in  the  codes.      See  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  225. 


ANCIENT   LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.  231 

forfeited  ?  "  and  sternly  answers,  "  There  is  ;  a  penny  wanting 
{ox  galanas''^  Neither  women  nor  clerks  were  liable  for 
the  spear-penny,  for  "they  were  not  avengers."^ 

The  manner  in  which  the  spear-penny  was  collected  is 
curious.  The  murderer,  accompanied  by  a  servant  of  the 
arglvvyd  of  the  cymwd,  carrying  with  him  a  relic,  went 
forth,  and  wherever  he  met  a  man  not  known  to  be  related 
to  him  within  the  seventh  degree,  was  entitled  to  require 
such  person  to  take  an  oath  on  the  relic  that  he  was  not 
descended  from  any  of  the  four  kindreds  from  which 
the  murderer  was  descended.  If  he  took  the  oath,  he  was 
exempt  ;    if  he  did  not,  he  was  assessed.^ 

Turning  now  from  the  consideration  of  the  individuals 
or  groups  liable  to  pay  saraad  and  galanas,  we  find  that  the 
iCalanas  obtained  from  the  murderer  and  his  kin  was  thus 
divided  :  the  first  third  was  taken  by  the  lord  for  exacting 
it ;  the  second  third  was  distributed  between  the  father 
and  mother  of  the  murdered  man,  their  children,  and  his 
children,  if  any  ;  "*  the  third  went  to  the  groups  of  kins- 
men of  the  murdered  man  on  the  father's  and  mother's 
side  who  would,  in  case  he  had  been  the  murderer,  have 
been  liable  to  pay  the  corresponding  shares  o{ galanas — the 
third  being  divided  between  these  groups  in  the  proportion 

^  '*  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  600.  The  method  of  communicating  the  law  by 
question  and  answer  is  not  infrequent  in  these  Welsh  treatises.  It  is  interesting 
to  notice  that  the  ninth  degree  is  still  looked  on  as  a  limit  among  the  Welsh. 
If  a  witness  in  Court  is  asked  {e.g.),  "  Are  you  a  relative  of  the  defendant's  ?  " 
it  is  not  unusual  for  him  to  leply,  '■^  Dim  perthynas  0  fewn  y  nawfed  achT 
which  means  "  not  related  within  the  ninth  degree."  Mr.  S.  T.  Evans,  M.P., 
heard  the  phrase  quite  recently  in  Carmarthenshire.  Another  phrase  in  use 
is,  "  I  am  not  related  '  hyd y  imwfed ach^'  "  i.e.,  as  far  as  the  ninth  degree. 

"  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  227. 

3  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  225. 

"*  The  division  of  the  second  third  within  this  group  took  place  thus  :  "  two 
shares  to  the  father  and  one  to  the  mother  .  .  .  and  of  what  remains  for  the 
children,  if  there  be  children  of  the  murdered  man,  two  shares  to  them."  Two 
versions  of  the  division  oi galanas  are  given  in  MSS.  of  the  Ven.  Code.  We 
follow  the  older  M.S.,  which  was  taken  by  A.  Owen  as  the  principal  text. 


232  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap.  \'i.) 

of  two  parts  for  the  father's  kin  and  one  for  the  mother's 
kin.^  As  to  the  division  of  the  saraad  of  a  murdered  man 
there  is  some  conflict  of  authority,  but  the  u=;ual  \va\' seems 
to  have  been  to  give  one-third  to  his  widow  if  he  was 
married,  and  to  divide  the  remainder  among  the  group  of 
kinsmen  liable  in  the  converse  case  to  pa}'  saraad ;''~  but  if 
his  father  were  alive  the  father  received  in  the  distribution 
a  share  equal  to  twice  that  of  a  brother  ;  and  similarly  if  the 
mother  were  alive  she  received  a  share  equal  to  twice  that 
of  a  sister.-^  If  the  galanas  was  not  duh*  paid,  the  injured 
kindred  were  at  liberty  to  exercise  the  right  of  vengeance 
seemingly  without  becoming  in  turn  liable  {ox  galanas.^ 

It  is  evident  that  these  arrangements  applied  to  the  case 
of  the  murderer  and  his  victim  being  members  of  different 
kindreds.  If  a  man  murdered  his  near  kinsman — a  man 
of  the  same  cenedl — no  galanas  was  due,  but  the  murderer 
appears  to  have  forfeited  his  rights  as  a  member  of  it  ;  he 
became  a  kin-wrecked  {carttawedrog)  man,  and  though  not 
put  to  death,  he  was  an  object  of  hatred,'  and  obliged  to 
riee  and  find  shelter  and  protection  among  strangers. 

It  should  be  noticed  that  there  is  in  the  codes  no  defini- 
tion of  murder  {galanas).  It  seems  that  the  term  was  not 
imited  to  cases  of  intentional  homicide.  The  gist  of  the 
wrong  seems  to  have  been  the  causing  the  death  of  a  man, 
but  the  matter  is  not  clear.  One  text  says  that  there  was 
no  liability  if  the  alleged  murderer  could  prove  that  he 
acted  in  self-defence. 

The   procedure   for   determining    liabilit}'    is    not    fully 

1  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  227. 

-  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  231. 

'■'  Ibid. 

"*  But  in  the  time  when  the  codes  as  we  have  them  were  in  operation  it 
seems  that  the  right  of  revenge  was  limited  to  the  slaying  of  the  murderer. 
'•  No  one,"  says  one  version  of  the  Ven.  Code,  "  is  to  be  killed  on  account  of 
another  but  the  murderer"  ("Anc.  Laws,"i.,  p.  229). 

^  "  Since  the  living  kin  is  not  killed  for  the  sake  of  the  dead  kin,  everybody 
will  hate  to  see  him  "  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  791). 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         23-^ 

explained,  and  raises  questions  of  a  character  too  detailed 
for  us  to  enter  upon  here.  It  was  evidently,  however,  a 
trial  by  compurgation.  The  oaths  of  three  hundred  men  of 
a  kindred  were  required  to  deny  "  murder,  blood,  and  wound, 
and  the  killing  of  a  person."  ^  When  the  liability  {or galanas 
was  admitted,  or  the  kindred  charged  failed  to  absolve 
themselves,  the  amount  was  collected  by  the  lord  thus  : — 
"  The  period  for  galanas  is  a  fortnight  after  being  sum- 
moned for  each  lordship  in  which  they  {i.e.^  the  kinsmen 
liable)  live  to  apportion  the  payment,  and  twice  that  time 
for  exacting  the  payment  and  assembling  them  to  pay  it. 
At  three  periods  and  in  three  thirds  the  galanas  is  to  be 
paid  :  two  periods  for  the  kindred  of  the  father,  and  one 
period  for  the  kindred  of  the  mother  ;  ...  at  the  first 
period  for  the  kindred  of  the  father  to  pay  one  of  their 
thirds,  they  are  to  have  the  oaths  of  one  hundred  of  the 
best  men  of  the  other  kindred  that  their  relation  is  forgiven  ; 
and  at  the  second  period,  on  their  paying  their  second 
third,  they  are  to  have  the  oaths  of  another  hundred  men 
of  the  other  kindred  that  their  relation  is  forgiven,  and 
those  of  the  best  men  of  the  tribe  ;  and  at  the  third  period 
the  kindred  of  the  mother  are  to  pay  their  third  ;  and  then 
they  are  to  have  the  oaths  of  a  hundred  men  of  the  other 
kindred  that  their  relation  is  forgiven  ;  and  everlasting 
concord  is  to  be  established  on  that  day  and  perpetual 
amnesty  between  them."  ^ 

The  codes  do  not  make  the  rules  relating  to  trespass  to 
the  person  not  causing  death,  but  dismemberment  or  other 
bodily  injury,  a  "  column  of  law  "  ;  but  assaults  and  batteries 
came  under  the  head  saraad ;  and  the  offender  and  his 
kindred  of  the  circumscribed  degree  had  not  only,  when 

^  A  distinction  was  drawn  between  an  ordinary  murder  and  a  murder  "with 
savage  violence."  No  explanation  is  given  of  the  latter  term,  but  to  deny  the 
charge  the  oaths  of  six  hundred  men  of  the  kindred  were  necessary  ("Anc. 
Laws,"  i.,  p.  231). 

2   "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  229. 


234  ^HE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

the  wrong  was  admitted  or  proved,  to  pay  the  amount 
prescribed  as  the  saraad  of  the  complainant,  but  also  in 
case  of  maiming  or  definite  injury  to  a  part  of  the  body 
the  worth  as  fixed  by  law  of  the  limb  or  part  destroyed 
or  affected. 

The  second  "  column  of  law "  {liadrad,  literally  theft)  is 
treated  of  in  a  chapter  in  the  Venedotian  Code.  Its  con- 
tents are  not  simply  rules  for  the  punishment  of  theft  in 
our  sense,  but  rather  a  collection  of  rules  relating  to 
property  in  movable  things  and  interference  with  a  man's 
right  of  possession.  The  texts  indicate  difference  of  opinion 
on  some  points,  and  give  an  account  of  the  law  not  easily 
intelligible.  Da  (chattels)  were  divided  into  things  animate 
and  inanimate.  The  claim  or  title  iardelw)  to  an  animal 
was  of  three  kinds — birth  and  rearing,  possession  before 
loss,  and  the  warranty  {arwaesav)  of  another  person  ;  to 
inanimate  things,  of  two  kinds — possession  before  loss,  and 
warranty.  Several  kinds  of  wrongful  taking  of  another 
man's  da  are  given.  The  consequences  of  taking  a  thing 
in  a  man's  presence  were  different  from  a  taking  in  his 
absence — i.e.^  secretly  or  without  his  knowledge. 

Theft  iUadrad)  is  defined  as  the  taking  of  a  thing  in  the 
owner's  absence,  coupled  with  denial  of  the  act.  Surreption 
{angJiyfarcJi)  was  the  taking  of  the  thing  secretly,  but  with- 
out any  subsequent  denial  of  the  act.  Violence  (Jrais)  was 
the  taking  of  a  thing  in  a  man's  presence  and  against  his 
will.  Savage  violence  {fyimygruyd  dywuynaii)  was  com- 
mitted when  a  man  rendered  useless  the  property  of  another. 
Mistake  or  inadvertence  {anitodej-i)  was  the  taking  of  "  one 
thing  for  another  " — that  is,  the  taking  of  a  thing  that  one 
had  no  right  to  possess  under  the  belief  that  one  was  acting 
legally.  These  distinctions  were  apparently  of  importance 
in  regard  to  the  procedure  for  recovering  da  which  one  man 
claimed  from  another. 

If  a   man   was    in    possession  of  property  and  another 


ANCIENT   LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.  235 

claimed  it,  the  procedure  before  the  court  was  this: — The 
possessor  asked,  "Who  owns  this?"  then  the  claimant  said 
he  did,  and  that  "It  is  wrong  for  thee  to  own  what  is 
mine";  then  the  defendant  said,  "It  is  altogether  denied; 
for  nothing  of  thine  have  I  :  and  since  I  have  not,  by  what 
means  did  thy  loss  happen,  and  at  what  time  didst  thou 
lose  it?"  Then  if  the  claimant  alleged  a  loss  by  theft,  by 
negligence,  or  by  surreption,^  he  was  entitled  to  swear  to 
the  thing  being  his  property  in  the  prescribed  manner — 
which  varied  according  as  the  chattel  was  animate  or 
inanimate — and  was  obliged  to  state  with  particularity  the 
time  of  its  loss.  Upon  his  taking  the  proper  oath  on  the 
relic,  what  we  should  call  the  burden  of  proof  was  shifted  to 
the  then  possessor,  who  was  not,  however,  put  to  a  rhaith 
(compurgation)  in  this  proceeding,^  but  only  on  proof  in 
a  prescribed  form  of  his  title  {arMw).  The  title  or  claim 
he  might  take  his  stand  on  was  either  warranty  {arwaesav)  ^ 
or  possession  before  the  time  sworn  to  by  the  claimant  as 
the  time  of  loss,  and  also,  in  the  case  of  animals,  birth  and 
rearing.  In  case  the  defendant  relied  on  a  warranty  he 
had  to  call  for  a  warrantor,  and  if  no  one  was  produced  he 
lost  his  cause  ;  if  the  warrantor  came  forward  the  claimant 

^  There  were  six  ways  in  which  a  man  might  lose  his  possession  :  theft, 
surreption,  or  negligence,  deposit  and  loan,  hire,  or  by  favour  (=  gift).  In  the 
three  former  cases  he  could  swear  in  legal  form  to  the  property  ;  in  the  latter 
he  could  not,  and  seemingly  his  suit  failed.  The  reason  given  is  that  in  the 
three  latter  cases  he  had  voluntarily  given  up  the  thing,  and,  as  we  understand 
the  law,  it  was  for  the  bailee  to  sue,  not  the  original  possessor  or  owner. 
Sed  qu.  ?  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  249.)  As  we  understand  the  matter,  the  action 
dealt  with  under  the  second  column  of  law  was  one  against  a  defendant  alleged 
to  be  illegally  possessing  the  plaintiff's  da.  It  was  not  founded  on  contract, 
but  on  a  wrong.  An  action  as  between  a  bailor  and  bailee  was  regarded 
as  based  on  the  real  contract. 

2  "It  is  not  right  that  there  should  be  a  rhaith  after  detention  and  swearing 
only,  arwaesav,  or  custody  before  loss,  or  birth  and  reai-ing  "  ("  Anc.  Laws,'' 
i.,  p.  249). 

^  In  this  connection  it  ought  to  be  observed  that  there  was  a  special  kind 
of  warranty,  which  might  be  given  on  sale,  called  dilysrwyd  (literally, 
affirmation),  and  which  was  a  warranty  of  title. 


236  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

recommenced  the  proceedings.  If  the  defendant  relied  on 
prior  possession  he  took  an  oath,  in  the  \va}'  the  claimant 
had  done,  that  the  thing  was  his,  and  then  having  said  that 
the  thing  had  been  in  his  possession  "  either  a  week  or  a 
month  or  two  or  a  season  "  before  the  time  of  loss  deposed 
to  by  the  claimant,  he  produced  "guardians"  {geitweyt^ 
— seemingly  witnesses)  to  lawfully  prove  his  possession  as 
alleged,  and  on  doing  so  obtained  judgment.  If  he  alleged 
that  he  had  bred  and  reared  the  animal  in  dispute  he  was 
to  produce  "  guardians "  who  would  depose  to  the  mother 
of  the  animal  having  been  his  property,  and  that  the  latter 
was  born  in  his  possession  and  had  not  been  parted  with 
till  that  da\'.  The  production  of  two  "  guardians  "  sufficed 
if  one  was  of  status  higher,  and  one  of  status  lower,  than 
that  of  the  defendant.^ 

This  proceeding  for  recovering  possession  is  not  to  be 
confounded  with  what  is  described  as  a  legal  prosecution 
[gyrr  kyueytJijfaul)  for  theft ;  the  claimant  in  the  former  action, 
though  he  might  allege  he  had  a  right  to  take  the  oath  and 
put  the  defendant  to  his  arztelw,  did  not  swear  the  latter 
was  a  thief  A  legal  prosecution  for  theft  could  only  be 
commenced  by  the  claimant's  taking  an  oath  that  a  person 
accused  by  him  had  "  really  stolen  the  goods."  ^  Upon  this 
the  accused  was  put  to  his  rhaith  (compurgation).  At  the 
time  when  the  Venedotian  Code  as  we  ha\e  it  was  in 
operation  it  was  customary  to  require  for  theft  the  oaths  of 
twelve  men,  and  "  the  half  of  them  nodmen  {^gwyr  nod)!'  * 
If  the  accused  failed  to  secure  the  required  rhaith  he  was 
convicted. 

^  The  word  is  not  now  used.  It  is  translated  "guardians"  by  A.  Owen 
("  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  251). 

-  "  One  above  his  hand  and  another  below  his  hand  "  ("  Anc.   Laws,"  i., 

P-  251). 

•'  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.  243. 

"*  •'  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  243.  The  term  g7i<y  nod  (literally,  man  of  mark)  is  very 
ambiguous.     Sometimes  it  looks  as  if  it    meant  a  taeo^  or  aiUt.     But  here 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         237 

There  was  a  distinction  drawn  between  theft  of  a  thing; 
worth  fourpence  or  less,  and  a  thing  worth  more  than  that 
amount  In  the  former  case  the  convicted  thief  became 
a  "saleable  thief"  ifteidi^  gwertJi)  \  in  the  latter  the  thief 
forfeited  his  life,  but  not  his  property.^  The  worth  of  a 
saleable  thief  was  fixed  at  seven  pounds,  and  it  would  seem 
that  if  the  seven  pounds  were  paid  by  the  thief  or  on  his 
behalf  he  was  let  off.  If  he  or  his  friends  did  not  redeem 
him  he  was  exiled,  and  if  he  remained  in  the  country 
beyond  the  time  assigned  (a  day  being  allowed  for  him  for 
passing  through  every  cantref  in  the  lord's  dominions)  was 
liable  to  lose  his  life  unless  some  one  bought  him — that 
is,  he  became  an  outlaw."- 

The  third  column  of  law  was  tan  (fire),  and  the  rules 
concerning  it  are  curious.  We  can  only  glance  at  them. 
The  important  position  given  to  this  topic  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  houses  were  timber-built,  and  probably  also  to 
the  difficulty  of  kindling  fire.  Tan  is  dealt  with  as  if  it  were 
an  object  of  property  rights.  If  a  man  gave  fire  to  another 
to  burn  therewith,  and  he  admitted  the  gift,  the  donor  was 
to  pay  one  third  of  any  damage  caused  by  its  user.^  To 
take  fire  from  a  house  without  leave  was  an  offence  against 
the  owner  for  which  payment  was  to  be  made  to  him,  and 

gwyrnod  would  seem  rather  to  mean  men  of  distinction,  of  higher  status.  Cf. 
"Nody  genedl"  (—  mark  of  the  kindred),  used  for  a  sign  on  a  boundary 
stone,  and  ^z'-w^^  (obscure),  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  242.  See  A.  Owen's  glossary 
("  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  1118). 

'  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  253.  The  property  stolen  was,  however,  restored  to  the 
owner.     There  is  some  diversity  of  view  as  to  these  rules. 

"  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  245.  It  is  said  that  a  bondman  {taeog)  is  not  to  be 
put  to  death  if  his  lord  will  redeem  him  {jlnd.,  1.  255).  We  ought  to  say  that  the 
codes  show  considerable  difference  of  practice  as  to  the  law  of  theft.  The 
Church  in  some  cases  seems  to  have  claimed  to  play  a  part ;  see  Dern.  Code, 
"Anc.  Laws,"  i.  419.  In  trying  to  get  at  the  first  principles  we  have  mainly 
followed  the  Ven.  Code. 

3  "Anc.  Laws,"  i. ,  p.  259.  But  another  text  says,  "  Whoever  shall  ask  to 
borrow  fire:  let  it  come  to  him  without  claim  against  the  lender."  The 
distinction  seems  fine. 


238  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

was  also  punishable  by  a  fine  {camlwrw)  to  the  lord.  If  a 
man  set  fire  to  a  house  he  was  liable  to  pay  its  worth,  and 
that  of  any  other  houses  burnt  in  consequence.^  If  in  con- 
sequence of  the  carelessness  of  the  owner  of  a  house  in 
a  tref  it  caught  fire,  he  was  liable  at  any  rate  for  damage 
done  to  the  two  nearest  houses,  but  if  the  fire  spread  further 
it  was  deemed  an  uncontrollable  fire  for  which  no  one  had 
redress.^  There  were  three  fires  for  which  no  indemnity 
could  be  claimed,  even  if  they  did  harm  :  burning  the  heath 
in  March  ;  the  fire  of  a  smithy  in  a  hamlet  which  was  seven 
fathoms  from  the  nearest  houses,  and  which  was  covered 
with  shingles  or  tiles  or  sods  ;  and  the  fire  of  a  bath  in  a 
hamlet  seven  fathoms  from  the  other  houses. 

The  elaborate  distinctions  made  among  those  who  were 
accessory  to  the  offences  dealt  with  in  the  three  columns 
of  the  law  deserve  the  attention  of  the  student  of  legal 
history,  but  we  cannot  do  more  than  call  attention  to  them. 

There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  essential  principles 
of  the  criminal  system  of  which  we  have  been  treating  had 
their  origin  in  a  state  of  society  much  earlier  than  that  of 
the  Cymry  in  the  time  of  Howel  ;  but  as  the  whole  law  is 
presented  to  us,  it  is  clear  that  long  strides  had  been  made 
towards  the  development  of  a  true  criminal  law,  and  the 
recognition  of  a  distinction  between  injuries  to  individuals, 
and  grave  offences  against  the  community  or  the  king  or 
lord  as  its  visible  representative.  This  is  most  clearly  shown 
by  the  liability  to  pay  for  various  offences  fines  (called 
dirwy  and  camlwrw)  directly  to  the  lord  of  the  cymwd,  by 
the  distinction  between  offences  which  amounted  to  a  breach 
of  the  king's  naw'd  (protection  or  peace)  and  that  of  other 
men,  and  to  some  extent  by  the  punishment    of  treason 

^  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  259.  This  explains  the  nece^sity  for  the  rules  as  to  the 
worth  of  buildings  and  their  different  parts.  See  i /in/.,  p.  293.  Different  values 
are  set  on  the  houses  of  a  king,  of  an  uchelwr,  and  of  an  aittt. 

-  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  259. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         239 

{brad)  to  a  king  (not  merely  as  a  wrong  against  a  pen- 
kenedl),  and  the  forfeiture  by  a  traitor  of  patrimonial 
rights,  which  was  roughly  equivalent  to  the  attainder  of 
English  law.^ 

We  do  not  propose  to  deal  at  length  with  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  among  the  Welsh  under  these  laws. 
The  usual  distinction  between  lay  and  spiritual  courts  is 
certainly  to  be  found,  but  if  we  may  safely  judge  from  the 
codes  we  should  say  that  the  jurisdiction  of  ecclesiastical 
courts  was  not  developed  to  so  great  an  extent  as  in 
England  at  the  same  time.  The  highest  lay  court  was 
the  court  of  the  king  or  prince.  The  king  or  the  judge  of 
the  court  {ynad  ttys)  presided,  but  there  were  apparently 
other  assistant  judges.  This  court  decided  all  disputes 
between  officers  of  the  household.^  Certain  other  matters 
were  reserved  to  it ;  for  instance,  if  an  ecclesiastic  held 
land  by  title  under  service  to  be  performed  to  the  king,  he 
was  to  appear  in  case  of  dispute  in  this  high  court.  The 
same  tribunal  had  a  kind  of  appellate  jurisdiction.  If  a 
suitor  who  had  lost  a  cause  in  a  court  of  local  jurisdiction 
complained  that  the  judgment  was  wrong,  he  entered  into 
a  **  mutual  pledge "  with  the  judge  against  the  decision. 
If  he  wished  to  appeal,  he  was  obliged  to  demand  the 
pledge  before  the  judge  left  his  seat  or  passed  on  to  the 
next  cause.  The  appeal  came  on  in  due  course  in  the 
king's  court.  It  seems  the  judgment  could  only  be 
questioned  on  the  ground  that  the  judge  had  applied  a 
wrong  law,  that  the  proceedings  had  not  been  conducted 
with  the  right  formalities,  that  the  judge  was  partial  or 
interested    in   the  result,    or    that   he    had    exacted    fees 

1  It  should,  however,  be  mentioned  that  though  the  fines  {dirivy  and 
camlwrut)  were  inflicted  in  Gwyned",  the  evidence  as  to  treason  comes  from  the 
Dem.  Code.  But  dirwy  for  offences  committed  within  the  king's  palace  was 
doubled  even  according  to  the  Ven.  Code  ("Anc.  Laws,"  i.  13.  See  also 
ibid.  436,  550). 

-  See  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  pp.  27-28,  pp.  369-371,  p.  469. 


240  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

illegally.^  If  the  decision  went  against  the  judge,  he  lost 
his  office,  his  status  as  one  of  the  order  of  judges,  and  his 
tongue  or  its  worth  as  settled  by  law.^  If  the  appellant 
failed,  he  had  to  pay  the  judge's  saraady  and  to  redeem  his 
tongue  by  paying  its  value. 

Besides  the  king's  court  (which  moved  about  with  the  house- 
hold) there  were  local  courts — those  of  the  cantref  and  those 
of  the  cymwd.  The  distinction  between  the  two  sets  of  fixed 
territorial  courts  is  quite  obscure.  Perhaps  the  cantref  court 
adjudicated  in  cases  where  the  disputants  resided  in  different 
cymwds.  The  officers  of  the  court  of  a  cymwd  were  the 
canghettor,  the  maer,  a  judge  or  judges,  a  priest  who  acted  as 
registrar,  a  clerk,  and  a  bailiff  or  usher.  The  composition 
of  the  court,  so  far  as  the  judges  were  concerned,  varied  in 
different  parts  of  the  country.  In  Gwyned  and  Powys,  it 
is  said,  there  was  one  judge  appointed  for  each  court  of  a 
cymwd  or  cantref;  but  in  the  south  every  landed  person 
(owner  of  tir  gwelyawg)  was  a  judge,  and  the  right  or  duty 
of  sitting  in  the  court  was  an  incident  attached  to  the  land.'^ 

In  a  treatise  entitled  "additional  law"  of  a  date  subse- 
quent to  the  subjugation  of  the  principality  by  Edward  I., 
it  is  said  that  Howel  "  permitted  every  ecclesiastical  lord 
such  as  the  archbishop  of  Menevia  or  other  bishops  and 
abbots,  royal  privileges  for  holding  pleas  among  the  laics 
by  the  common  law  of  Cymru.  And  likewise,  he  permitted 
every  chief  {peruiaetJi),^  to  whom  there  might  belong  a 
cymwd  or  cantref  or  more,  to  hold  a  daily  court  of  privileged 
officers,  in  number  as  he  should  think  proper,  in  a  similar 

1   "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.  pp.  475,  479. 

-  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.  116.  The  tongue's  worth  was  that  of  all  the  other 
members  of  the  human  body.  It  was  assessed  at  four  score  and  eij;ht  pounds 
{ibid.,  pp.  311,  505,  699).  Lawyers  and  judges  seem  to  have  had  some 
kind  of  organisation,  and  to  have  formed,  like  the  bards,  an  order  with  various 
privileges. 

^  '•  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  469. 

"•  Seemingly  the  arghiyTt  oi  whom  we  hear  in  other  contexts. 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND   CUSTOMS,         241 

manner  to  himself;  and  privilege  to  hold  a  royal  court  of 
pleas  {dadleuoed  breninawl)  in  his  country  among  his 
uchelwyr."^  Jurisdiction  conferred  by  the  king  in  this  way 
finds  no  countenance  in  the  codes.  The  courts  of  the 
cymwd  appear  in  them  as  part  of  a  regular  system  of  no 
recent  origin  ;  but  as  the  authority  of  the  court  of  the 
cymwd  covered  in  practice  all  the  ordinary  suits  in  its  area, 
as  by  legal  theory  every  cymwd  had  over  it  some  brenin, 
tywysog,  or  arglwyd",  and  as  the  process  was  to  a  late  period 
oral,  it  can  have  mattered  little  whether  the  presiding 
officer  affected  to  proceed  in  the  name  and  by  the  privilege 
of  the  king  himself  or  of  some  lord  appointed  by  him. 

Though  the  granting  of  practically  complete  immunity 
to  the  Church  from  the  authority  of  lay  chieftains  was  very 
likely  common  enough  in  the  earlier  years  of  Cymric 
history,^  the  conferring  on  laymen  of  privileges  analogous 
to  those  of  the  lords-marchers  of  a  later  time  is  not 
probable,  and  is  inconsistent  with  some  of  the  regulations 
in  the  codes  ;  so  we  think  that  the  statement  which  we 
have  just  quoted  is  simply  a  reproduction  of  a  theory  later 
than  the  time  of  Howel  (perhaps  of  the  fourteenth  century), 
which  attempted  to  account  for  a  state  of  things  then 
existing  by  referring  it  to  the  positive  enactment  of 
Howel. 

On  the  subject  of  judicial  procedure  we  must  content 
ourselves  with  mentioning  just  a  few  salient  points.  As 
might  be  expected,  the  codes  are  very  full  of  the  subject,'"^ 

^  This  is  in  c.  13  of  book  x.  of  the  "Anomalous  Laws,"  entitled,  the 
"  Charter  of  Howel  Da."  The  chief  text  is  printed  from  the  MS.  which  is 
denominated  Q  by  A.  Owen  (Preface,  *'Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  30),  and  in  his 
opinion  was  written  about  1401. 

2  See  Seebohm's  "Tribal  System,"  c.  8;  and  "Book  of  Llan  Dav " 
(Oxf.  ed.),  pp.  118  ei  scq.^  364-5. 

•'  See,  e.g. ,  the  lengthy  chapter  on  the  laws  concerning  landed  property  and 
how  one  pleads  {datleivyr)  in  respect  thereto,  in  the  Ven.  Code,  "Anc.  Laws," 
i.  141  et  seq.  We  take  datlewyr  from  the  Code.  It  should  be  spelt  dadleiiir 
in  Mod.  Welsh. 

W.P.  R 


242  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

and  any  attempt  to  briefly  summarise  difficult  and  con- 
fusing texts  would  lead  to  error.  Notwithstanding  some 
striking  analogies  with  the  early  judicial  procedure  of  the 
English,  we  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  in  the  main  the 
rules  disclosed  in  these  codes  were  not  imitations,  but 
were  naturally  developed  among  the  Cymry  themselves. 
The  court  sat  in  the  open  air^  the  pleadings  were  oral 
(though  there  are  references  to  a  record — cofUys),  and  the 
progress  of  civil  actions  (at  any  rate)  w^as  evidently  slow 
and  tedious.  The  year  was  divided  for  legal  purposes, 
so  far  as  actions  about  land  were  concerned,  into  four 
periods  ;  in  two  the  law  was  "  open  for  landed  property," 
and  in  two  it  was  "  closed."  This  resulted  in  there  being 
two  terms  in  which  claims  to  land  might  be  made,  prose- 
cuted, and  tried.  The  first  was  from  the  ninth  of  the 
calends  of  winter  to  the  ninth  of  February  ;  the  second 
was  from  the  ninth  of  May  to  the  ninth  of  August.^ 
There  was  a  class  of  professional  lawyers.  The  parties 
had  the  assistance  of  a  cynghaws  (literally,  "  pleader ") 
and  a  canitaw  (a  "guider,"  literally,  a  "hand-rail").- 

It  is  in  regard  to  real  actions  and  to  suits  for  galaitas 
that  we  have  the  most  detailed  information,  though 
even  in  regard  to  them  it  is  hardly  possible  to  give  a  clear 
and  sure  account  of  the  whole  procedure,  and  we  cannot 
here  attempt  to  do  so.  But  the  particulars  the  laws 
give  as  to  the  arrangement  of  the  court  for  the  decision 
of  a  claim  to  land  on  the  day  of  trial  are  interesting.  At 
the  time  appointed  all  concerned  came  "  upon  the  land  " 

^  *'  The  reason  why  the  law  shall  be  closed  in  autumn  and  spring  is  because 
the  land  is  cultivated  during  those  two  periods  ;  lest  ploughing  in  the  spring 
and  reaping  in  the  autumn  be  impeded"  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  143). 

-  The  distinction  was  analogous  to  that  between  barristers  and  attorneys  in 
the  English  courts.  There  is  no  reason  for  thinking  it  was  taken  front  English 
practice,  for  it  is  found  in  the  Irish  laws.  The  cyjighaius  was  there  called 
"  aighne^^  (arguer),  and  the  canitaw  appears  as  "/'"r  ^<^^."  See  O'Sullivan's 
Introduction  to  "  O'Curry's  Lectures,"  p.  cclxxiii. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         243 

(ie.y  the  land  in  dispute),  and  then  proceeded  to  "  sit 
legally."  The  litigants  and  their  assistants,  with  their 
witnesses,  compurgators,  and  sureties,  divided  themselves 
into  two  parties,  and  stillness  being  proclaimed  on  the  field, 
the  members  and  officers  of  the  court  arranged  themselves 
and  the  parties  in  the  manner  represented  in  the  following 
table  1  :— 

Gurda — Gurda — Heniuid — BRENIN — Heniuid — Gurda — Gurda. 
Effeyrat — Egnat  Kymwd.  Egnat  Lys — Effiriatt. 

Kanitau — Amdiffenur — Keghaus.  Keghaus — Haulur — Kanitau. 

Rigytl:.  Righiit. 

After  the  court  was  thus  constituted  very  formal  oral 
pleadings  took  place,  and  the  judges  (who  seem  to  have 
been  the  spokesmen  and  controllers  of  the  court,  even  if  the 
king  were  present),  after  giving  the  parties  an  opportunity 
of  amending  their  pleadings,  re-stated  the  contentions,  and 
then  retired  to  deliberate  with  a  priest  or  priests  and  an 
usher.  When  they  had  taken  their  seats  "in  a  judgment 
place  "  a  priest  prayed,  and  the  judges  chanted  their  Pater ; 
they  then  recited  the  pleadings  a  second  time,  and  having 
done  so,  decided  whether  by  law  there  was  any  necessity 
for  the  giving  of  evidence  ;  if  they  decided  not,  judgment 
was  given  simply  on  the  pleadings,  i.e.^  to  the  effect  that 

^  We  print  the  table  as  it  appears  in  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  p.  146.  We  must,  how- 
ever, translate  the  Welsh  terms  :  Breiiin  =  king ;  henuiid  {hynefy)  —  elder ; 
gurda  {gTi'fda)  =  good-man,  uchelwr,  breyr  ;  effeyrat  and  effiriatt  —  priest  ; 
egiiat  kymwd  —  judge  of  the  cymwd  ;  egnat  fiys  =  judge  of  the  king's  court, 
the  chief  justice  ;  kardiaii  {canH-aw),  literally,  hand-rail  =  guider  ;  keghaus 
{cynghaws)  —  pleader  ;  amdjffenur  {aindiffynnzvr)  —  defendant ;  rigift  (rhingyrff) 
=  bailiff,  apparitor,  usher.  It  is  clear  this  table  is  only  a  skeleton  form.  There 
might,  for  instance,  be  more  than  two  gwyrda  on  each  side.  So,  also,  more 
than  two  elders.  The  gwyrda  were  the  uchelwyr  of  the  cymwd  who  had  to 
attend  the  king  on  his  progress  through  their  district.  Probably  the  elders  were 
men  of  the  king's  cenedl,  his  near  relations,  accompanying  him  in  his  progress. 
The  table  represents  the  arrangement  of  the  king's  court  ;  but,  no  doubt,  when 
an  arglwy  presided  it  afforded  a  precedent ;  and,  perhaps,  also  one  for  the 
ordinary  court  of  the  cymwd.  The  king  sat  with  his  back  to  the  sun  or  the 
weather,  lest  the  weather  should  incommode  his  face. 

R    2 


244  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

one  or  the  other  contention  as  set  forth  was  correct  in  law, 
and  that  there  was  no  need  to  interrogate,  i.e.,  to  call 
witnesses.  If,  however,  they  held  they  could  not  decide 
simply  on  the  pleadings  they  returned  to  the  field  and 
announced  the  fact,  seemingly  saying  on  whom  lay  the 
burden  of  proof,  and  two  judges  were  appointed  to 
question  the  parties  and  demand  the  production  of  their 
witnesses  respectively.  At  this  stage  there  might  or  might 
not  be  an  adjournment,  but  ultimately  the  whole  matter 
was  decided  by  a  trial  by  witnesses  sworn  on  relics.^ 

We  may  here  remark  that  there  were  three  actions  in 
regard  to  land  :  (i.)  a  suit  to  recover  possession  of  land  from 
which  the  plaintiff  himself  had  been  ousted  ;  (ii.)  the  suit 
P.  ^0  called  dadiHhud,hy  which,  the  plaintiff  sought  to  recover 

a  share  o1  tir gwelyawg  belonging  to  him  in  right  of  his 
father  or  ancestors  within  the  smaller  group  we  have 
described  above  j'-^  and(iii.)  the  plaint  by  kin  and  reckoning 
{p  ach  ac  edryu^),  by  which  one  sought  to  establish  his  right 
to  such  land  as  he  might  be  entitled  to  as  a  member  of  a 
cenedl  (in  the  large  sense  as  a  group  of  descendants  to  the 
ninth  degree  from  a  common  ancestor)."^ 

The  rules  we  have  been  considering  were  those  applying 
to  disputes  about  land,  but  it  would  seem  that  methods 
fundamentally  similar  were  applied  to  other  controversies. 
There  were  actions  for  the  recovery  of  movable  property 
or  its  value  (to  which  we  have  adverted  above),  for  enforcing 
suretyships,  pledges,  and  obligations  incurred  by  contract, 
as  well  as  the  more  serious  processes  in  regard  to  galanas, 
saraad,  personal  injuries,  theft,  and  damage  by  fire.  In 
recrard  to  all  these  the  normal  mode  of  settlement  was  a 

o 

Mt  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  it  was  not  everyone  who  could  be  a 
witness  in  regnrd  to  a  suit  concerning  Cymric  land,  e.g.y  an  atttud  could  not  \ 
nor  a  woman  as  against  a  man,  etc.      (*'  Anc.  Laws,"  i. ,  p.  153.) 

'  See  specially  "Anc.  Laws,"  i.  171-2  ;  and  above,  p.  196. 

'  This  would  be  "  ach  ac  edrif"  in  modem  Welsh. 

4  See  "  Anc.  Laws,"  i.,  pp. '73-5  ;  P-  467- 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         245 

trial  by  witnesses  or  by  rhaith  (compurgation).  The  rules 
as  to  the  number  and  value  of  the  members  of  the  rhaith 
are  complicated  and  obscure.  The  oath  entered  very 
largely  into  the  administration  of  justice.  It  was  taken 
in  divers  ways,  sometimes  on  the  gospels,  sometimes  on 
relics.  The  place  of  swearing  varied  ;  it  might  be  in  a 
church  or  before  the  court.  Trial  by  combat  or  other 
ordeal  is  not  mentioned  in  the  codes,  but  in  a  late  treatise 
it  is  said  Dyfnwal  Moelmud  established  for  cases  of  theft, 
galanas,  or  treason,  three  ordeals,  those  of  boiling  water, 
hot  iron,  and  combat,  and  that  Howel  did  not  deem  them 
just  and  substituted  for  them  proof  by  men  and  rhaith;  ^ 
but  all  this  is  doubtful,  though  one  may  believe  that  trial 
by  ordeal  {i.e.,  an  appeal  to  a  divine  authority)  sometime 
existed  among  the  Cymry,  since  it  was  a  very  ancient  and 
widespread  way  of  settling  disputes. 

We  have  now  given  an  outline  of  the  legal  organisation 
of  the  Cymry  in  the  days  of  their  independence  as  it  may 
be  gathered  from  their  law-books,  and  to  some  extent  we 
can  fill  it  in  by  means  of  the  information  handed  down  to 
us  in  the  works  of  a  celebrated  Welshman  of  the  twelfth 
century.  Gerald  de  Barri  (usually  called  Giraldus  Cam- 
brensis)  was  born  in  1147  in  the  castle  of  Manorbeer,  the 
ruins  of  which  still  stand  on  the  rocks  of  the  South 
Pembrokeshire  coast.  He  came  of  a  Welsh  family  which 
had  a  Norman  strain,  and  his  grandmother  was  the  Nest — 
the  "  Helen  of  Wales " — who  had  been  the  mistress  of 
Henry  I.,  and  afterwards  wife  of  Gerald  de  Windsor,  lord  of 
Pembroke.  His  father,  William  de  Barri,  and  other  members 
of  his  family  had  joined  in  warfare  in  Ireland.  We  must 
not  linger  over  the  details  of  his  life  or  of  his  persistent 
struggle  to  secure  archiepiscopal  status  for  St.  David's,  or  in 
other  words  the  independence  of  the  Welsh  Church.  In  that 
effort  he  failed,  but  he  has  left  for  us  valuable  books,  of 

^  **  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  623. 


246  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

which  the  most  relevant  for  our  present  purpose  are  the 
"Itinerarium  Cambriae"  and  the  "Descriptio  Cambria^."^ 

In  1 188  Baldwin,  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  journeyed 
through  Wales  to  preach  a  crusade.  He  was  accompanied  by 
Giraldus,  who  recorded  their  experiences  in  the  Itinerary. 
The  second  work  is,  as  its  name  applies,  a  description  of  the 
country  and  the  people.  Notwithstanding  some  attempt 
at  fine  writing  which  may  have  led  to  undue  emphasis  on 
particular  points,  we  have,  no  doubt,  in  these  books  a  true 
record  of  the  characteristics  of  the  mediaeval  Cymry  from 
the  pen  of  an  able  and  honest  observer. 

These  and  the  laws  being  our  principal  authorities,  we  find 
that  the  condition  of  society  in  Wales  was  removed  by  very 
many  degrees  from  a  barbaric  or  nomadic  stage,  but  it  was 
backward  as  compared  with  the  south-eastern  Britain  of 
that  time.  It  may  be  that  the  economic  progress  of  the 
scanty  population  of  Wales  had  been  checked  by  the  war 
with  Harold,  the  collapse  of  Gruffs'd  ab  ILewelyn's 
power,  and  the  subsequent  course  of  events.  Gerald  deals 
with  a  people  who  had  sustained  many  reverses,  and  who 
had  been  driven  from  the  most  fertile  portions  of  their 
country  by  bands  of  Norman  adventurers  ;  and  it  is 
obviously  likely  that  these  things  told  for  a  time  against 
any  great  social  advance,  though  it  may  be  noted  as  a 
curious  fact  that  it  was  in  the  eleventh  century  that  modern 
Welsh  poetry  has  its  beginning,  and  that  in  that  region 
of  culture  contact,  whether  friendly  or  inimical,  with  the 
Norman  lords  had   a  stimulating   effect.     Neither   Howel 

^  The  works  of  Giraldus  are  to  be  found  in  the  Rolls  series,  vols.  i. ,  ii.,  iii., 
iv.  (ed.  by  Professor  Brewer),  vols,  v.,  vi.,  vii.  (ed.  by  the  Rev.  J.  F.  Dymock). 
••  The  Topography  and  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Ireland  "  (translated  by 
Thomas  Forester),  and  the  "  Itinerary  through  Wales,"  and  the  "  Description 
of  Wales"  (translated  by  Sir  R.  Colt  Hoare,  Bart.)  are  published  in  vol.  vii. 
Bohn's  Antiquarian  Library  (ed.  by  Thomas  Wright,  F.S.A.).  For  his  life, 
see  "Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,"  sub  nom.  ;  the  introduction  to  vol.  i.  in  the  Rolls 
series  ;  and  "Gerald  the  Welshman,'"  by  TTeniy  Owen.  B.C. L.,  F.S.A. 
(Lond.,  1889). 


ANCIENT   LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         247 

Da  nor  Gruffyd  ab  ILewelyn,  the  only  two  chieftains  of  the 
Cymry  who,  after  Rhodri  Mawr,  had  played  any  really 
considerable  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  island,  were  celebrated 
by  contemporary  bards  whose  works  have  come  down  to 
our  time  ;  but  from  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  we 
find  many  poems  devoted  to  the  praise  (often  in  extrava- 
gant language)  of  princes  some  of  whom  were  hardly  of 
a  position  higher  than  that  of  a  petty  lord-marcher. 

In  the  centuries  with  which  we  are  dealinc:  Wales 
presented  a  physical  aspect  very  different  from  that  which 
it  does  to-day.  The  greater  part  was  waste  land  on  which 
the  foot  of  man  rarely  trod,  mere  boulder-strewn  moorland,  or 
boggy  tract ;  and  large  portions  of  the  estates  now  divided 
into  farm  holdings  and  highly  cultivated  were  covered  with 
trees  that  have  disappeared.  The  roads  (if  we  exclude  the 
few  which  seem  to  derive  their  origin  from  the  time  of 
Roman  occupation)  were  mere  mountain  tracks.  There 
were  practically  no  enclosures  apart  from  the  mounds  or 
wooden  fences  which  were  made  around  the  houses  of  the 
more  important  families.^ 

When  Giraldus  wrote,  towns  were  beginning  to  arise 
under  the  shelter  of  some  of  the  Norman  castles,  but  there 
were  no  truly  Cymric  towns.  Caerleon  on  Usk  was  in 
ruins,  and  Chester  was  in  Norman  hands. ^     The  social  and 

^  Rice  Merrick,  in  his  "  Booke  of  Glamorganshire  Antiquities"  (1578), 
(new  ed.  by  James  Andrew  Corbett,  fol.,  Lond.,  1887),  referring  to  the  Vale 
of  Glamorgan,  sa}'s  it  was  ' '  a  champyon  and  open  country  without  great  store 
of  inclosures,"  and  that  the  old  men  reported  that  "  their  fifore-fathers  told 
them  that  great  part  of  th'  enclosures  was  made  in  their  daies"  ("  Cambrian 
Register"  (1796),  pp.  96-8  ;   "  Report,"  p.  663). 

-  Giraldus  says,  "  This  city  (Caerleon)  was  of  undoubted  antiquity  and 
handsomely  built  of  masonry,  with  courses  of  bricks,  by  the  Romans.  Many 
vestiges  of  its  former  splendour  may  still  be  seen  ;  immense  palaces  formerly 
ornamented  with  gilded  roofs  in  imitation  of  Roman  magnificence,  inasmuch 
as  they  were  first  raised  by  Roman  princes,  and  embellished  with  splendid 
buildings  ;  a  tower  of  prodigious  size,  remarkable  hot  baths,  relics  of  temples, 
and  theatres  all  inclosed  within  fine  walls,  part  of  which  remain  standing,  etc." 
("Desc,"  i.,  c.  5.)     The  castle  of  Cardiff  was  surrounded  by  high  walls,  and 


248  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

domestic  life  of  the  Welsh  centred  round  the  timber-built 
houses  of  the  kings,  princes,  lords  or  uchehvyr  which  were 
scattered  in  the  valleys  and  on  the  lower  slopes  of  the  hills. 
Except,  perhaps,  in  some  of  the  villein-trefs,  there  were  no 
villages  or  clusters  of  dwelling-houses  close  adjoining  one 
another,  though  the  principal  hall  of  men  of  higher  position 
had  the  usual  out-buildings.  The  dwellings  of  some  families 
were  duplicated  ;  in  the  summer  they  lived  in  a  house  on 
the  higher  part  of  their  property  called  the  liavod-dy 
(literally,  "  summer-house  "),  and  in  winter  returned  to  the 
principal  residence  {hen-dref,  literally,  the  "  old-stead  ")  set 
up  in  a  more  sheltered  place  below. 

The  broad  conclusion  we  draw  from  the  sources  we  have 
mentioned  is  that  in  the  twelfth  century  the  Cymry  were  a 

Giraldus  refers  to  the  city  7x.%  containing  many  soldiers.  The  "Brut,"  in  one 
of  its  versions,  says,  under  the  year  1080,  "the  building  of  Cardiff  began." 
This  is  not  in  the  "  Brut"  reproduced  in  the  Oxford  series.  It  occurs  in  the 
MS.  called  D,  by  Ab  Ithel  (see  preface  to  Rolls  ed.,  p.  xlvi).  The  MS.  is  in 
the  B.  M.  Cottonian  collection,  marked  "Cleopatra,  B.  v.,"  and  is  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  Whether  this  entry  means  that  the  building  of  Cardiff  castle, 
or  that  of  the  town,  began,  the  date  seems  too  early  (see  below,  as  to  the 
conquest  of  Glamorgan).  The  date  of  the  foundation  of  Swansea  castle  is 
uncertain,  but  it  was  later  than  that  of  Cardiff.  Colonel  Morgan,  of  Brynialiu, 
has  been  good  enough  to  send  us  an  interesting  communication  as  to  Swansea 
(in  Welsh  Abertawe),  which  is,  however,  too  long  to  reproduce  here.  He 
argues  that  (i)  Swansea,  Sweyneshe,  Sweineshe  (the  two  latter  are  the  earliest 
forms)  is  to  be  identified  with  the  Sein  Henyd  of  the  "Brut"  {^s.aa.  1215, 
1 221)  ;  and  (ii)  that  the  name  Sweyneshe,  etc.,  is  derived  from  Sein  Henyd. 
We  are  of  opinion  that  the  first  of  these  propositions  is  true,  but  we  do  not 
think  that  the  place-name  Sweyneshe,  etc.,  and  Sein  Henyd  have  anything 
to  do  with  one  another.  The  "  w"  in  the  accepted  English  name  is  one  of 
the  most  considerable  difficulties  in  the  way  of  adopting  Colonel  Morgan's 
second  suggestion.  There  are  place-names  of  Danish  or  Scandinavian,  or  at 
any  rate  non-Welsh,  origin  to  be  found  on  or  near  the  sea-coast  of  South 
Wales.  Consider  Sully,  Haverford,  Stackpole,  Hulberston,  Angle,  Herbrand- 
ston,  Gateholm,  Stockholm,  Skimer,  Musselwick,  Haroldston,  Ramsey,  and 
Strumble.  See  Clark's '"  Mediaeval  Military  Architecture  in  England,"  p.  15 
(Lond.,  1884).  Giraldus  calls  Carmarthen  an  "ancient  city,"  and  notices 
that  it  was  strongly  enclosed  with  walls  of  bricks,  part  of  which  were  still 
standing  ("  Desc,"  i. ,  c.  10).  Dinevwr,  higher  up  the  Towy,  was  the  seat  of 
the  South  Welsh  princes. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND  CUSTOMS.         249 

warlike  pastoral  people,  who  had  been  settled  on  their  lands 
for  centuries,  but  who  had  made  only  slight  progress  in 
agriculture  and  the  other  practical  arts,  and  who  had 
advanced  more  quickly  in  regard  to  intellectual  exercises, 
poetry,  and  music  than  in  regard  to  material  prosperity 
and  higher  morality. 

We  have  only  space  to  mention  a  few  details  concerning 
them  from  which  we  think  this  generalisation  will  appear 
to  be  true.  The  principal  crops  referred  to  in  the  laws 
and  Giraldus's  works  are  wheat,  barley,  and  oats.  The 
plough,  the  scythe,  and  other  farming  implements  (which 
were,  however,  of  primitive  construction)  are  mentioned. 
The  ridges  were  generally  ploughed  straight  upward,  and 
the  Commissioners  found  their  form  still  visible  in  some 
places.^  They  also  saw  indications  that  slopes  and  even 
summits  of  hills,  which  are  not  now  and  have  not  been  for 
a  very  long  period  arable  land,  had  at  some  former  time 
been  ploughed. 

In  the  laws  yokes  of  four  different  lengths  are  men- 
tioned : — The  ber-iau,  or  short  yoke  of  three  feet,  for  two 
oxen  ;  the  mei-iau^  or  field  yoke  of  six  feet,  for  four  oxen  ; 
the  ceseil-iau^  or  auxiliary  yoke  of  nine  feet,  for  six  oxen  ; 
and  the  hir-iau^  or  long  yoke  of  twelve  feet,  for  eight  oxen.^ 
The  Welsh  farmer  seldom,  however,  yoked  less  than  four 
oxen  to  the  plough.  The  driver  walked  backward,  and 
instead  of  a  small  sickle  in  mowing  he  made  use  of  a 
moderate-sized  piece  of  iron  formed  like  a  knife  with  two 
pieces  of  wood  fixed  loosely  and  flexibly  to  the  head.^  In 
the  month  of  March  only  the  soil  was  once  ploughed  for 
oats,  and  again  in  the  summer  a  third  time,  and  in  the 
winter  for  wheat. 

1  "Report,  p.  657. 

■^  See  '"Report,"  p.  657  :  The  measurements  are  in  the  English  standard. 
Pughe,  in  his  "Welsh  Dictionaxy,"  says  the  Welsh  used  four  soi"ts  of  yoke  until 
about  1600. 

^  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  "  Desc.  Camb.,"  book  i.,  c.  17. 


250  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

Giraldus's  remarks  seem,  for  the  most  part,  to  apply  to 
the  Cymry  proper,  though  there  is  a  good  deal  to  show 
that  by  his  time  there  was  considerable  admixture  of  classes 
or  races. 

Hospitality  and  liberality  were  among  the  first  of  their 
virtues.  The  house  of  the  Cymro  was  common  to  all. 
The  traveller  was  not  offered,  nor  did  he  beg  entertainment. 
He  simply  delivered  up  his  arms  :  he  was  then  under  the 
nawd  (peace)  of  the  penieulu  (head  of  the  household). 
Water  was  brought  to  him,  and  if  he  suffered  his  feet  to  be 
washed,  he  became  a  guest  of  the  house  ;  if  he  refused 
water,  he  was  understood  to  be  simply  asking  for  morning 
refreshment  and  not  lodging  for  the  night.  Strangers 
arriving  early  were  entertained  by  the  conversation  of  the 
young  women  of  the  household  and  the  music  of  harps. 
The  principal  meal  was  served  in  the  evening.  It  varied 
according  to  the  number  and  dignity  of  the  persons 
assembled  and  the  degrees  of  the  wealth  of  different  house- 
holds. In  any  case  it  was  a  simple  repast  ;  there  were  no 
tables,  no  cloths,  no  napkins  ;  the  guests  were  seated  in 
messes  of  three  ;  all  the  dishes  were  at  once  set  before 
them  in  large  platters  on  rushes  or  grass  spread  on  the 
floor.  The  food  consisted  of  milk,  cheese,  butter,  meat 
plainly  cooked.  "  The  kitchen  did  not  supply  many  dishes 
nor  high-seasoned  incitements  to  eating."  The  bread  was 
served  as  a  thin  and  broad  cake,  fresh  baked  every  day,^ 
and  broth  with  chopped-up  meat  in  it  was  sometimes 
added.  The  family  waited  on  the  guests,  and  the  host 
and  hostess  stood  up  until  their  needs  were  satisfied.  The 
evening  was  enlivened  by  songs  and  recitations  by  the  bard 
of  the  household  or  by  minstrels  who  in  their  wandering 
had  joined  the  company,  and  seemingly  also  by  choral 
singing. 

^  Giraldus  says  it  was  "lagana"  in  the  old  writings.      It  was  evidently  like 
the  ''bake-stone  "  bread — bara  plane  or  bara  itech — of  modern  days. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         251 

A  bed  made  of  rushes  and  covered  with  a  coarse  kind 
of  cloth  made  in  the  country  called  brychan^  was  then 
placed  along  the  side  of  the  hall,  and  the  family  and  guests 
lay  down  to  sleep  in  common.^  The  fire  on  the  hearth  in 
the  centre  continued  to  burn  all  night. 

From  Giraldus  we  get  little  information  as  to  the  clothes 
of  the  Welsh  ;  he  says  that  at  all  seasons  they  defended 
themselves  from  the  cold  only  by  a  thin  cloak  and  tunic  ; 
but  the  laws  give  the  worth  of  other  articles  of  wearing 
apparel,  e.g.,  a  mantle  of  rich  dark  colour ;  a  town-made 
mantle  ;  a  town- made  cap  ;  a  town-made  coat  (pais);  a 
home-made  covering  ;  shirt  and  trousers  ;  a  head-cloth  ;^ 
robes  of  the  king  and  queen,  and  of  an  uchelwr  and  his 
wife,  etc.^ 

As  to  their  personal  habits  the  Cymry  seem  to  have  been 
cleanly.^  In  the  laws  we  have  allusions  to  the  bath  ;  the 
custom  of  offering  water  to  guests  has  just  been  referred 
to.  Both  sexes  cut  their  hair  short — close  round  to  their 
ears  and  eyes.  The  men  shaved  all  their  beard  except  the 
moustache.     All  paid  great  attention  to  their  teeth,  which 

1  Giraldus  does  not  mention  pillows,  but  in  the  Ven.  Code,  iii.,  c.  22,  a  legal 
price  {gwertk)  is  placed  on  the  pillow  [gobennyd)  of  the  king  and  on  that  of  an 
uchelwr,  thus  showing  they  were  in  use.  A  price  is  also  put  on  a  sheet  {Hen, 
or  in  the  laws  itenftyeyn).  As  late  as  the  fifteenth  century  the  English 
"gentry,  who  slept  on  down  beds,  or  beds  stuffed  with  rabbits'  fur  and  other 
materials  which  passed  for  down,  still  went  naked  to  their  slumbers  ;  the  poor, 
who  slept  on  bimdles  of  fern  or  on  trusses  of  straw  spread  on  the  ground,  slept 
in  the  dress  they  had  worn  during  the  day,  and  the  cloak  or  cassock  of  the 
ploughman  was  his  only  counterpane"  (Denton,  "  England  in  the  Fifteenth 
Century,"  p.  206).  Down  to  the  early  years  of  this  century  it  was  not  unusual 
in  Wales  for  people  to  go  to  bed  naked. 

2  Giraldus  says  the  women  covered  their  heads  with  a  large  white  veil  folded 
together  in  the  form  of  a  crown. 

^  See  Ven.  Code,  iii.,  c.  22  ;  but  book  iii.  was  collected  from  books  later 
than  Howel's  time  as  well  as  from  the  old  book  of  the  "White  House."  See 
the  prefaces  to  it. 

■*  The  account  given  by  Giraldus  of  the  Cymry  in  this  regard  is  very  favour- 
able as  compared  Vvith  his  remarks  on  the  barbarism  of  the  Irish  ("Top. 
Irel.,"  iii.,  c.  10). 


252  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

they  rendered  like  ivory  by  constantly  rubbing  them  with 
green  hazel  and  wiping  them  with  a  woollen  cloth. 

For  the  Cymry  proper — the  leading  families — the  chief 
business  of  life  was  warfare.  "  They  were  entirely  bred  up 
to  the  use  of  arms ;"  but  the  language  of  Giraldus  is  general, 
and  according  to  him  "  all  the  people  are  trained  to  war." 
When  "  the  trumpet  sounds  the  alarm,  the  husbandman 
rushes  as  eagerly  from  his  plough  as  the  courtier  from  his 
Court."  We  have  seen  that  in  the  laws  of  Howel  it  was 
only  the  tribesmen  who  formed  the  host ;  to  the  eiiition 
only  the  subordinate  duties  of  a  campaign  were  entrusted  ; 
but  the  words  we  have  quoted  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
settlement  of  the  Normans  in  the  land  had  brought  about 
a  change  in  the  military  arrangements,  and  this  is  confirmed 
by  indications  from  other  sources. 

The  higher  classes  {nobiliores^  i.e.,  uchelwyr)  went  forth 
to  battle  on  horseback,  though  they  did  not  hesitate  to 
dismount  if  necessary,  either  for  marching  or  combat.  The 
great  majority  of  the  men  of  the  host  fought  on  foot.  The 
armour  of  all  was  so  light  as  not  to  impede  the  quick  move- 
ments on  which  they  depended  for  success.  The  uchelwyr, 
and  seemingly  most  of  the  foot  soldiers  (of  tribal  privilege) 
as  well,  wore  small  coats  of  mail,  helmets,  and  sometimes 
greaves  plated  with  iron.  In  marching  they  often  walked 
barefoot,  but  in  battle  array  they  appear  ordinarily  to  have 
worn  high  shoes    roughly  made  with    untanned    leather.^ 

^  It  is  clear  that  even  men  of  the  upper  class  did  not  wear  boots  on  many 
occasions,  even  of  some  importance.  On  the  morning  after  leaving  the  house  of 
Strata  Florida,  the  archbishop  and  Giraldus  met  one  Cyneuric  ab  Rhys  (evidently 
of  noble  descent),  accompanied  by  a  body  of  light-armed  youths.  Giraldus 
describes  him  thus  :  "This  young  man  was  of  a  fair  complexion,  with  curled 
hair,  tall  and  handsome,  clothed  only  according  to  the  custom  of  his  country, 
with  a  thin  cloak  and  inner  garment,  his  legs  and  feet,  regardless  of  thorns  and 
thistles,  were  left  bare  ;  a  man  not  adonied  by  art  but  by  nature ;  bearing  in  his 
presence  an  innate,  not  an  acquired,  dignity  of  manners"  ("Itin.,"  book  ii., 
c.  4).  In  the  laws  a  price  is  set  on  wadded  boots  {botessau  kenhailauc),  shoes 
with  thongs  (eskydyeii  careyaiic),  and  on  buskins  {j^uy/itcsseit). 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND    CUSTOMS.         253 

Their  chief  weapons  were  the  sword,  the  lance  or  spear, 
the  battle-axe,  and  the  bow  and  arrow ;  and  in  the  time  of 
Giraldus  the  men  of  Gwent  were  deemed  more  expert  in 
archery  than  those  of  the  other  parts  of  Cymru.^ 

The  fighting  in  which  the  Cymry  excelled  was  of  the 
guerilla  kind.  They  did  not  shine  much  in  open  engage- 
ments or  regular  conflicts,  but  were  skilful  in  harassing  the 
enemy  by  ambuscades  and  nightly  sallies.  As  a  rule  they 
made  no  determined  struggle  for  the  field  of  battle.^  In 
their  onset  they  were  bold  and  rapid  ;  they  filled  the  air 
with  horrid  shouts^  and  the  deep-toned  clangour  of  very 
long  trumpets ;  if  repulsed,  they  were  easily  thrown  into 
confusion,  and  trusted  to  flight  for  safety.  But  though 
defeated  one  day  they  were  ever  ready  to  resume  the 
combat  on  the  next ;  they  were  active  and  hardy ;  able 
to  sustain  hunger  and  cold  ;  not  easily  fatigued  by  war- 
like exercise,  and  above  all  not  despondent  in  adversity. 
Giraldus  sums  up  the  matter  by  saying  that  they  were  "  as 
easy  to  overcome  in  a  single  battle  as  difficult  to  subdue  in 
a  protracted  war."*     We  ought  to  add  that  it  is  probable 

^  The  Ven.  Code  sets  a  price  on  **a  bow  and  twelve  arrows  "  {h/a  a  detidec 
saet),  a  spear  {gnaeti),  a  battle-axe  {are/  btcyaii),  and  on  a  sword  {ciedyf)  rough- 
ground,  a  sword  dark-bladed,  and  a  sword  white-bladed  (*'Anc.  Laws,"  i., 
p.  305).  In  one  passage  Gh^aldus  refers  to  the  lances  as  long  ("  Desc.,"i.,  c.  8); 
in  another  he  mentions  frequent  throwing  of  darts  ("Desc,"  ii.,  c.  3).  The 
Welsh,  therefore,  probably  had  two  kinds  of  spear.  "A  sword,  and  spear, 
and  bow  with  twelve  arrows  in  the  quiver,"  was  the  traditional  equipment  of 
the  head  of  a  Cymric  household  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  557). 

-  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn  in  his  Hereford  campaigns  against  Ralph  acted 
exceptionally.  But  notice  how  he  avoided  a  pitched  battle  with  Harold  when 
the  latter  changed  the  conditions  by  lightly  equipping  his  men.       See  above, 

p.  172. 

^  So  says  Giraldus  ("  Desc,"  ii.,  c.  3).  Cf.  the  poem  in  praise  of  Lewelyn  ab 
Madoc,  ascribed  to  one  Lywarch  Lew  Cad.  The  bard  calls  Lewelyn  *'  com- 
mander of  the  men  of  terrible  shout  "  {^Lawr  gawr  goruchel y  wir).  Stephens's 
"  Lit.  of  the  Kymry  "  (2nd  ed. ),  p.  53. 

■*  See  "  Desc,"  book  ii.,  c.  3.  It  should  be  noticed,  further,  as  an  illustration 
of  the  character  of  the  warfare,  that  the  Cymry  gave  no  quarter  ("Desc,'' 
book  ii.,  c.  8). 


254  T^E    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

that  during  the  period  of  about  one  hundred  and  forty  years 
that  elapsed  between  the  death  of  Gruffyd  ab  Lewei}'n  and 
the  time  at  which  Giraldus  wrote,  intercourse  and  fighting 
with  the  Normans  had  done  much  to  improve  the  equip- 
ment and  mihtary  methods  of  the  Cymry.^ 

Giraldus  bears  warm  testimony  to  the  proficiency  of  the 
Cymry  in  the  art  of  music.  They  used  three  instruments 
-r-the  harp,  the  pipes,  and  the  crwth.^  In  their  concerts 
they  did  not  sing  in  unison,  but  in  different  parts.  He 
remarks  that  the  people  in  the  northern  district  of  Britain 
beyond  the  Humber  and  on  the  borders  of  Yorkshire  made 
use  of  the  same  kind  of  "symphonious  harmony,"  but  with 
less  variety,  singing  o\\\y  in  two  parts,  one  murmuring 
in  the  bass,  the  other  warbling  in  the  acute  or  treble. 

Much  attention  was  paid  by  them  to  poetry.  Bards  were 
important  members  of  the  community,  as  we  know  also 
from  the  laws.  They  were  organised  in  some  fashion  into 
a  kind  of  separate  order,  though  we  have  no  certain  evidence 
as  to  the  rules  of  their  craft  or  guild  in  those  early  days.-^ 
Every  considerable  household  had  its  domestic  bard  {bavd 
teulii).  Besides  the  duty  of  entertaining  by  song  he  had 
care  of  any  documents  that  concerned  the  family  of  his 
patron  ;  he  was  the  preserver  of  the  genealogy  of  the 
kindred  ;  and  often  the  teacher  and  companion  of  his 
chieftain's  children.  Whether  by  positive  enactment  or  by 
usage,  the  practice  of  making  tours  of  the  country  arose. 

^  See  "Desc,"  book  ii.,  c.  7. 

-  Gir.  "Top.  Ireland"  Dist.,  iii.,  c.  11  ;  "Desc.  Camb.,"  L,  c.  12.  The 
crvvth  or  crowd  was  a  kind  of  early  violin.  The  pipes  seem  to  have  been  bag- 
pipes, and  were  objects  of  ridicule  to  the  bards.  For  a  summary  of  what  is 
known  as  to  early  Welsh  music,  see  Stephens'  "Literature  of  the  Kymry" 
(2nd  ed.),  pp.  55-69. 

■*  It  is  traditionally  believed  Gmffyct  ab  Kynan,  king  of  Gwyned,  made 
rules  for  the  government  of  the  bardic  order,  but  the  proof  is  not  satisfactory. 
See  as  to  the  Eistedfod,  p.  516,  below.  The  Brut  {s.a.  1176)  records  that 
Lord  Rhys  held  a  grand  festival,  at  which  there  were  musical  competitions,  in 
the  castle  of  Aberteivi. 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS,         255 

The  bards  went  from  house  to  house,  quartering  themselves 
on  the  households  :  the  higher  grade  of  bards  only  went  to 
the  palaces  of  princes  and  the  greater  nobles  ;  the  lower 
grades  had  the  range  of  the  establishments  of  meaner  men. 
Extravagant  pretensions  as  to  the  antiquity  of  this  Cymric 
bardic  order  have  been  advanced  ;  it  has  been  claimed  for 
the  bards  of  the  twelfth  century  that  their  organisation  was 
a  direct  survival  of  that  of  the  Druidic  hierarchy  ;  and  that 
they  were  the  depositories  of  a  mysterious  system  of  religion 
and  philosophy  orally  handed  down  to  them  from  the 
priests  of  the  oak,  and  thence  transmitted  without  break 
to  our  own  day.  There  is,  however,  no  proof  of  any  formal 
connection  between  the  Druidic  priesthood  and  the  bardic 
system  as  it  appears  in  Wales  in  the  twelfth  century. 
There  is  no  certain  evidence  that  Druidism  had  spread  to 
that  part  of  the  island  whence  Cuneda  and  the  ancestors 
of  the  Cymry  came.  Centuries  before  their  settlement 
in  Wales  Druidism  had  been  suppressed  by  the  Roman 
government,  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  the  sacer- 
dotal class,  practically  destroyed  by  Paulinus,  ever  regained 
its  authority  or  maintained  its  organisation.^ 

From  the  Roman  conquest  of  Mon  to  the  time  of 
Gruffyd  ab  Kynan  over  one  thousand  years  had  elapsed. 
Christianity  had  for  a  long  period  been  the  only  legally 
recognised  religion,  and  was  probably  professed  by 
Cuneda  and  his  followers.  It  had,  first  in  its  Celtic, 
and  afterwards  in  its  Roman  form,  obtained  a  secure  and 
undisputed  position  in  the  land.  If  to  these  considerations 
we  add  the  facts  that  none  of  the  bardic  MSS.  are  older 
than  the  twelfth  century,  and  that  competent  criticism  of 
the  bardic  remains  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  this  so-called 

^  Mon,  "  the  last  asylum  of  the  Celtic  priesthood,"  was  conquered  by 
G.  Seutonius  Paulinus  in  a.d.  6i,  and  finally  subdued  by  Julius  Agricola  in 
A.D.  78.  Mommsen's  "  Provinces  of  the  Roman  Empire "  (Eng.  Tr.), 
V.  I,  pp.  179,  T82. 


256  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

Druidism  was  confined  to  the  bards  themselves,  and  that 
as  an  institution  it  was  then  of  recent  origin,^  we  must 
dismiss  the  claims  we  have  been  discussing  as  mere  inven- 
tions or  efforts  of  the  imagination  which  have  been  ignorantly 
and  uncritically  adopted  and  developed  in  after  times.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  office  of  domestic 
bard  is  one  which  is  found  in  the  earliest  historic  times 
among  Indo-European  nations  ;  that  there  are  many  items 
of  evidence  which  show  an  intimate  connection  between 
singers,  story-tellers,  and  the  like,  and  the  priesthoods  of 
early  forms  of  religion  ;  and  that  the  memory  may  be  so 
cultivated  that  rites,  formulae,  poems,  and  tales  may  be 
orally  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation  for  an 
indefinite  time.  It  must  also  be  admitted  that  many  pagan 
notions  and  customs  survived  among  the  people  long  after 
Christianity  had  obtained  its  formal  hold  on  the  community. 
The  bardic  poems  of  later  date  may  be  the  genuine  echoes 
of  the  conceptions  of  the  religion  of  a  distant  past,  and 
contain  the  dim  recollections  of  true  historical  events;^  but 
there  is  nothing  in  all  this  that  need  alter  the  opinion  we 
have  expressed,  that  there  is  no  proof  of  any  direct  con- 
nection between  the  bardic  order  in  mediaeval  Wales  and 
the  Druidic  system  described  by  Cassar.  However  this 
may  be,  the  genuine  laws  and  the  words  of  Giraldus  give 
to  the  bards  of  Wales  a  very  respectable  position  in  the 
society  of  the  time,  and  accord  their  profession  a  reasonable 
and  satisfactory  antiquity. 

Among  the  characteristics  of  the  Welsh,  Giraldus  notices 
their  wit  and  pleasantry.  They  were  fluent  and  bold  in 
conversation  ;  in  their  rhymed  songs  and  set  speeches 
they  were    so   subtle   and    ingenious   that   they  produced 

1  See  the  chapter  on  •' Bards  and  Bardism,"  in  Stephens's  *'Lit.  of  the 
Kymry,"  p.  84. 

-  See  Matthew  Arnold's  *'  Essay  on  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literatuie"  (Lend., 
1867)  ;  Skene's  "  Four  Ancient  Looks  of  Wales"  (Edin.,  1868,  2  vols.). 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         257 

"  ornaments  of  wonderful    and   exquisite  invention,    both 
in  the  words  and  sentences." 

They  greatly  esteemed  noble  birth  and  generous  descent. 
All  retained  their  genealogy  and  could  readily  repeat  the 
names  of  their  ancestors  to  the  sixth  or  seventh  generation 
or  beyond,  and  when  we  think  of  the  laws  we  can  readily 
understand  this  to  have  been  the  case.^    They  were,  at  any 

^  As  late  as  the  time  of  Norden's  survey  of  Abenbury,  a  township  adjoining 
Wrexham   (1620),   a  gentleman  of   estate  gave  his  name    as  Humfridus    ap 
Robert  ap  Will'm  ap    Rob't  ap    David  ap   Griffith  ap   Robert.     (Seebohm, 
"  Tribal  System,"  p.  85,  note.)     This  is  stated  on  the  authority  of  Mr.  A.  N, 
Palmer.     Though  it  was  not  every  one  who  could  give  his  style  with  this  fulness, 
the  method  of  identifying  a  person  by  coupling  his  christian  name  with  those  of 
his  immediate  ancestors  lingered  long  in  Wales.    It  is  not  easy  to  fix  the  time  when 
the  use  of  surnames  became  general  among  all  classes.    The  noticeable  thing  now 
is  the  paucity  of  surnames  in  this  populous  area.     Those  that  usually  occur  are 
mostly  baptismal  names  taken  from  the  Bible  spelt  in  divers  ways.   This  is 
especially  so  in  the  Welsh-speaking  districts.     The  number  of  Joneses,  Davieses, 
Williamses,  Thomases,  etc.,  on  public  bodies  and  juries  is  often  the  subject  of  jest, 
and  sometimes  the  cause  of  inconvenience.     The  usual  explanation  of  the  few- 
ness of  surnames  in  the  Welsh  area  is  that  the  officials  of  the  Welsh  courts,  the 
coroners,  and  lawyers  found  the  Welsh  custom  of  stringing  together  a  series  of 
baptismal  names  troublesome,  and  that  in  the  jury  process,  etc.,  they  abridged 
the  style  of  the  person  with  whom  they  were  dealing.     Thus  they  summoned 
a  juror,  not  by  the  style  he  would  have  given  himself,  but  as,  ^.^.,  William  ap 
John,  or  Gulielmus  ap  Johannes,  which  often  repeated  became  William  Jones, 
and  was  acquiesced  in  by  a  too  patient  people.     In  rural  districts,  to  avoid 
ambiguity,  farmers  often  referred  to  one  another  by  the  names  of  their  holdings 
{e.g.,  John  Maeseglwys,  where  the  latter  word  is  the  name  of  John's  holding), 
and  we  have  known  this  recently  done  by  witnesses  in  the  courts.     In  later 
times  the  inconvenience  has  been  to  some  extent  met  among  the  professional 
and  middle  classes  by  the  conferring  of  a  second  and  distinctive  christian  name 
{e.g.,  W.  Tztdor  Howell,  T.  Eynon  Davies,  John  Morlais  Jones — where  the 
intermediate  names  are  the  only  distinguishing  marks).   The  use  of  bardic  names 
is  not  uncommon.     Thus,   the  late  Dr.  William  Rees,  of  Chester,   is  always 
spoken  of  as   "  Hiraethog,"  and  Mr.  William  Abraham,   M.P.,  is  called  by 
most   Welshmen  "Mabon,"  in  public  and  private.     People  are  reluctant  to 
change  their  surnames,  because  they  do  not  wash  to  lose  touch  with  their 
relations,  and  fear  that  in  property  matters  there  may  be  difficulty  later  on 
in  proof  of  identity,  birth,    etc.     It   would   be   a   great   advantage   if  some 
method   of  formal  registration  of  change  of  name   could   be  established   in 
each  county.     For  information  as  to  Welsh  surnames  see  a  series  of  papers  by 
Mr.  T.  E.  ISIorris,  LL.M.,  B.A.,  in  "  Byegones  "  for  Oct.,  1893,  Feb.,  1894 
April,  1897,  and  Jan.  and  Feb.,  1900. 

W.P.  '  S 


258  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

rate  outwardly,  very  religious  ;  when  one  of  them  met  a 
priest  or  monk  he  asked  his  blessing  "  with  extended  arms 
and  bowing  head";  they  showed  greater  respect  than  other 
nations  to  churches  and  the  clergy,  to  relics,  bells,  holy 
books,  and  the  cross. 

So  far  our  account  gives  a  pleasant  view  of  the  Welsh 
people  in  these  mediaeval  times,  but  there  is  a  darker  side 
to  Giraldus's  picture.  In  language  which  recalls  in  some 
degree  the  rhetoric  of  Gildas,  he  points  out  very  grave 
blemishes  in  the  character  and  mode  of  life  of  the  Cymry. 
He  describes  them  as  wanting  in  respect  to  oaths,  faith 
and  truth  ;  as  so  indifferent  to  the  covenant  of  faith  that 
they  went  through  the  ceremony  of  holding  forth  the  right 
hand  on  trifling  occasions  and  to  emphasise  mere  ordinary 
assertions  ;  and  worse  still  as  not  scrupling  to  take  false 
oaths  in  legal  causes.  He  says  they  habitually  committed 
acts  of  plunder,  theft  and  robbery,  not  only  against 
foreigners  but  against  their  own  countrymen.  They  were 
addicted  to  trespassing  and  the  removal  of  landmarks,  and 
there  were  continual  disputes  between  brothers.  They  were 
immoderate  in  their  love  of  food  and  intoxicating  drinks. 

Though  the  language  of  Giraldus  is  strong,  and  his 
strictures  are  severe,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  is 
substantial  truth  in  what  he  says,  but  by  way  q^  qualifi- 
cation it  must  be  pointed  out  that  he  was  a  stern  and 
imperious  ecclesiastic,  that  he  was  looking  at  the  condition 
of  things  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Norman-English 
government,  so  far  as  civil  matters  were  concerned,  and 
that  he  completely  ignores  the  injustice  that  had  been  done 
by  the  conquest  of  the  greater  part  of  the  south  by  Norman 
adventurers.  What  he  meant  by  false  swearing  was  almost 
a  necessary  result  of  a  legal  system,  which  made  an  oath  an 
incident  of  ordinary  transactions,  and  which  in  judicial 
proceedings  multiplied  the  number  of  compurgators  to  an 
unusual    degree.       Especial  allowance  must  be  made  for 


ANCIENT  LAWS   AND   CUSTOMS.         259 

this  kind  of  perjury  in  the  case  of  men  who  regarded  the 
tie  of  blood  as  the  strongest  social  bond,  and  in  a  time 
when  a  trial  was  not  an  inquiry  into  issues  of  fact  to  be 
decided  by  witnesses  in  our  modern  sense,  but  one  depend- 
ing on  a  complicated   method  of  swearing  and   counter- 
swearing  by  rheithwyr,  who  came  to  regard  themselves  not 
as  being  charged  with  the  duty  of  saying  what  they  had 
actually  seen  or  heard,  but  of  standing  by  a  kinsman   in 
trouble.     So  too   much  may  be  urged  in   extenuation  of 
their  trespassing  and  plundering.     For  in  the  early  years 
of  the  conquest,  at  any  rate,  the  men  of  the  Norman  lord 
were  quite  as  ready  to   seize  any  cattle  they  could   lay 
hands  on  as  any   Cymric  youths,  and  many  violent  acts 
of  the  Welsherie  were  justifiable,  because  the  cattle  they 
carried  off  in  their  raids  were  looked  on  as  being  taken  in 
lieu  of  those  of  which  they  had  been  despoiled.      Their 
trespasses  on   and  "  ambitious  seizures "  of  land    in    the 
occupation  of  invaders  need  from  an  impartial  standpoint 
no  justification  ;  but  the  continued  litigation  about  land 
among  themselves  and  the  habits  of  forcible  entry  (as  we 
should  say)    by  one  relative  as   against  another,  though 
easily  to  be  explained  as  the  consequence  of  the  rules  con- 
cerning succession  to  tir gwelyawg^  must  be  condemned  as 
a   proof  of  those   serious  defects  in  the   typical   Cymric 
character,  of  which  such  striking  illustration  is  afforded  by 
the  failure  of  the  nation  to  effect  any  stable  and  lasting 
political  combination. 

But  when  every  allowance  is  made,  the  Cymry  proper, 
whom  Giraldus  describes,  were  a  wild  and  turbulent  race, 
dangerous  neighbours,  and  impatient  of  settled  control 
from  any  quarter,^  a  set  of  men  very  unlike  the  singularly 

^  Read  the  adventures  of  Owain  ab  Cadwgan,  in  the  "  Brut,"  j.a.  iio6, 
and  in  following  entries  and  pp.  293  et  seq.  below.  See  also  Wynne's 
"History  of  the  Gwydyr  Family,"  which  sliows  how  disorderly  were  the 
habits  of  a  later  day. 

S    2 


26o  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vi.) 

law-abiding  Welsh  people  of  to-day.^  They  were  a  quick, 
impulsive  race,  wanting  in  moderation,  indulging  in 
extremes  of  conduct,  and  we  readily  follow  Giraldus  when 
in  ending  his  first  book  he  says  that  "  this  nation  is  earnest 
in  all  its  pursuits,  and  neither  worse  men  than  the  bad 
nor  better  than  the  good  can  be  met  with." 

^  The  comparative  absence  of  crime  in  the  distinctively  W  elsh  counties  has 
been  noticeable  for  many  years,  and  is  often  a.  topic  of  comment  by  judges  of 
assize  and  cliairmen  of  quarter  sessions. 


I 

4 


CHAPTER    VII. 

HISTORY   OF   WALES   FROM    IO66   TO    1 282. 

It  was  the  Norman  conquest  of  England  that  led  to  the 
absorption  first  of  large  areas,  and  later  on  of  the  whole,  of 
Wales  into  the  English  system.  This  absorption  did  not 
fully  take  place  for  about  500  years  ;  and  some  220  years 
elapsed  before  the  whole  of  the  country  was  placed  in 
a  position  of  actual  and  practical  dependence  on  the 
English  Government.  It  is  a  circumstance  worth  noting 
that  while  the  English  counties  were  conquered  by  the 
Normans  in  a  comparatively  few  years,  and  almost  by 
a  single  stroke,  the  Norman-English  kings  and  their 
followers  were  only  able  to  effect  the  subjugation  of 
Cymru  in  a  very  gradual  and  tedious  manner. 

An  eminent  historian  says  in  reference  to  the  commence- 
ment of  the  Norman  invasion  of  Cymru,  "  The  conquest 
which  now  began,  that  which  we  may  call  either  the 
English  or  the  Norman  conquest  of  Wales,  differed  widely 
both  from  the  English  conquest  of  Britain  and  from  the 
Norman  conquest  of  England.  It  wrought  far  less  change 
than  the  landing  at  Ebbsfleet  ;  it  wrought  far  more  change 
than  the  landing  at  Pevensey.  The  Briton  of  those  lands, 
which  in  the  Red  King's  day  were  still  British,  was 
gradually  conquered  ;  he  was  gradually  brought  under 
English  rule  and  English  law,  but  he  was  neither  exter- 
minated, nor  enslaved,  nor  wholly  assimilated.  He  still 
abides  in  his  ancient  land,  still  speaking  his  ancient  tongue. 


262  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.i 

The  English  or  Norman  conquest  of  Wales  was  not  a 
national  migration,  like  the  English  conquest  of  Britain,  nor 
was  it  a  conquest  wrought  under  the  guise  of  an  elaborate 
legal  fiction,  like  the  Norman  conquest  of  England."  ^ 

The  process  by  which  the  conquest  of  Wales  was 
effected  is  one  that  cannot  be  described  as  simply 
military,  but  rather  as  being  both  military  and  economic. 
If  we  may  judge  from  the  records  of  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries,  the  Welsh  chieftains  were  in  the 
battles  fought  from  time  to  time  nearly  as  successful, 
and  often  more  so,  than  the  Norman  invaders  ;  but 
the  greater  resources  and  wealth  of  the  latter  gradually 
led  to  their  military  predominance,  while  such  evidence 
as  we  possess  in  the  work  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis  leads 
to  the  conclusion  that  when  he  wrote  not  only  a  relative, 
but  an  absolute,  diminution  of  the  Cymric  or  W^elsh- 
speaking  population  had  taken  place.  However  this 
may  be,  it  was  by  the  building  of  castles  on  the  Norman 
plan  and  by  actual  settlement  that  the  process  became 
successful.  W^hat  appears  to  have  been  done  was  this  :  ^ 
at  points  conveniently  situated  near  the  more  fertile  lands, 
and  most  suitable  for  military  defence  or  operations,  a 
castle  was  built  and  garrisoned.  Gradually  the  Cymry 
were  ousted  from  the  cultivated  area,  or  else  became,  on 
some  terms  or  other,  the  tenants  of  the  Norman  lord. 
From  the  coign  of  vantage  afforded  by  the  castle,  the 
Norman  lord  waged  continual  warfare  against  the 
natives,  and  as  he  gradually  forced  them  further  and 
further  into    the    less  desirable  areas    of  the  country  he 

^  Freeman,  "William  Rufus,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  72.  Though  the  generalisations 
in  this  paragraph  are  (we  agree)  substantially  true,  we  cannot  help  pointing 
out  that  the  phrase  "  English  conquest  of  Britain  "  is  not  strictly  accurate. 
Unless  a  very  unreasonable  extension  is  given  to  the  terms  "English"  and 
"conquest,"  the  English  had  conquered  only  a  part  of  Britain  before  1066. 

2  See  the  account  of  the  Lords  Marchers  in  CHve's  "Ludlow"  (London,  1841) 
from  a  manuscript  in  the  Lansdowne  collection  (now  in  British  Museum),  p.  loi. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,  1066— 1282.  263 

extended  his  power,  seizing  cymwd  after  cymwd  and 
cantref  after  cantref.  In  time  towns  began  to  spring 
up  under  the  shelter  of  the  castle  walls,  settlement  from 
England  was  encouraged,  charters  conferring  municipal 
privileges  were  from  time  to  time  conferred  upon  the 
settlers,  and  most  of  the  early  charters  of  the  Welsh 
boroughs,  drawing,  as  they  do,  an  acute  distinction  between 
Englishmen  and  Welshmen,  mark  the  nature  of  the  struggle 
which  went  on  during  these  years.^ 

The  ultimate  outcome  of  the  process  was  that  by  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  nearly  the  whole  of  what 
is  now  Wales,  except  the  counties  of  Anglesey,  Carnarvon, 
part  of  Denbighshire,  and  Merionethshire,  the  area  roughly 
corresponding  to  the  ancient  kingdom  of  Gvvyned,  had 
passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Norman-English  king  or 
Norman  lords,  who  came  to  be  described  by  lawyers  as 
"  lords  marchers,"  who  were  feudal  vassals  of  the  king 
of  England,  though  they  exercised  in  their  respective  lord- 
ships practically  supreme  power.  As  Freeman  observes, 
"  Wales  is,  as  every  one  knows,  pre-eminently  the  land 
of  castles.  Through  those  districts  with  which  we  are 
specially  concerned,  castles  great  or  small,  or  the  ruins  or 
traces  of  such  castles,  meet  us  at  every  step.  .  .  .  The 
castles  are  in  truth  the  leading  architectural  features  of 
the  country.  The  churches,  mostly  small  and  plain,  might, 
themselves,  with  their  fortified  towers,  almost  count  as 
castles.      The  towns,  almost  all  of  English  foundations, 

^  Before  the  Norman  Conquest,  the  Cyniry  did  not  for  their  defence  build 
stone  castles  or  fortresses.  Their  defensive  works  consisted  "of  a  mound 
with  a  moat,  and  a  timber  building  protected  by  palisades  on  the  mound." 
(See  Clark's  *'  Mediaeval  Military  Architecture  in  England,"  Lond.  1884, 
pp.  23,  24.)  Clark  says  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  evidence  that  they  (the 
Welsh)  constructed  any  new  defensive  works  in  masonry  upon  the  Roman 
models,  or  even  repaired  those  that  were  left  to  them  in  the  same  material. 
{/did  p.  12.)  See,  however,  the  Rev.  S.  Baring-Gould's  paper  on  "Early 
Fortifications  in  Wales"  in  "Trans,  of  the  Hon.  Soc.  of  Cymmrodorion," 
Sess.  1898-99,  p.  I. 


264  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

were  mostly  small  ;  they  were  military  colonies  rather  than 
seats  of  commerce.  As  Wales  had  no  immemorial  cities,  like 
Exeter  and  Lincoln,  so  she  had  no  towns  which  sprang  up  into 
greatness  in  later  times,  like  Bristol,  Norwich,  and  Coventry. 
Every  memorial  of  former  days  which  we  see  in  the  British 
land  reminds  us  how  long  warfare  remained  the  daily 
business  alike  of  the  men  in  that  land  and  of  the  strangers 
who  had  made  their  way  into  it  at  the  sword's  point."  ^ 

The  significance  of  the  castle  is  that  it  is  the  mark  of  a 
lordship  which  formerly  existed,  and  which  may  even  at 
the  present  day  remain  for  legal  purposes,  as  forming 
the  root  of  title  to  the  possession  of  land  or  the  exercise 
of  some  seigniorial  right. 

The  detailed  history  of  this  gradual  conquest  has  never 
been  written  with  an  adequate  comprehension  of  the  facts 
as  a  whole,  though  the  county  histories  and  many  books 
written  concerning  Welsh  families  or  particular  lordships 
preserve  the  story  with  substantial  accuracy.  One  general 
comment  we  have  to  make  :  that  we  are  immensely  struck 
with  the  continuity  of  the  whole  history.  The  evidence 
that  the  Commission  obtained  with  regard  to  different 
estates  and  much  of  the  information  that  they  collected 
indicate  that  the  settlement  of  the  Norman  in  a  particular 
cantref  did  not  operate  so  as  to  cause  an  absolute  break  in 
local  organisation  and  local  life.  The  lordship  or  the  sub- 
lordship  oftentimes  appears  to  have  become  coterminous 
with  a  cantref  or  a  cymwd,  and  probably  in  its  actual 
visible  working  the  individual  conquest  from  a  legal  point 
of  view  only  led  to  the  Norman  conqueror's  exercising  a 
right  and  jurisdiction  very  analogous  to  that  of  the  Welsh 
arglwyd  in  lieu  of  the  dispossessed  Cymro,  and  the  holding 
of  the  court  in  the  new  castle  instead  of  the  older  timber- 
built  house  of  the  Welsh  chieftain,  under  the  officers  of  the 
former  instead  of  those  of  the  latter. 

^  Freeman,  "William  Rufus,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  777. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  265 

Another  general  observation  which  our  experience 
enables  us  to  make  is  that  Wales  as  a  whole  for  a  long 
time  presented  a  striking  want  of  constitutional  uniformity, 
and  the  traces  of  that  condition  of  things  still  remain. 
The  historian  whom  we  have  more  than  once  quoted  says  : 
— "  Wales  for  a  long  time  after  the  time  with  which  we 
are  now  dealing  was  as  far  from  uniformity  as  any  land 
east  of  the  Adriatic.  Here  was  the  castle  of  the  Norman 
lord,  with  his  following,  Norman,  English,  Flemish,  any- 
thing but  British.  Here  was  the  newly  founded  town,  with 
its  free  burghers,  again  Norman,  English,  Flemish,  anything 
but  British.  Here  again  was  a  whole  district  from  which 
the  British  Briton  had  passed  away  as  thoroughly  as  he  had 
passed  away  from  Kent  or  Norfolk,  but  which  the  Norman 
had  not  taken  into  his  own  hands.  He  had  found  that  it 
suited  his  purpose  to  leave  it  in  the  hands  of  the  hardy  and 
industrious  Fleming,  the  last  wave  of  Low  Dutch  occupa- 
tion in  the  isle  of  Britain.  And  alongside  of  all  there  was 
the  still  independent  Briton,  still  keeping  his  moors  and 
mountains,  still  ready  to  pour  down  from  them  upon  the 
richer  lands  which  had  been  his  father's,  but  which  had 
passed  into  the  stranger's  grasp.  Those  days  have  long 
passed  away ;  for  three  centuries  and  more  Briton  and 
Englishman  have  been  willing  members  of  a  common  state, 
willing  subjects  of  a  common  sovereign.  But  the  memory 
of  those  days  has  not  passed  away  ;  it  abides  in  the  most 
living  of  all  witnesses.  England  has  for  ages  spoken  a 
single  tongue,  her  own  ancient  speech,  modified  by  the 
coming  of  the  conquerors  of  800  years  ago  ;  but  in  Wales 
the  speech  of  her  conquerors,  the  speech  of  England,  is 
still  only  making  its  way  slowly  and  fitfully  against  the 
abiding  resistance  of  that  stubborn  British  tongue  which 
has  survived  three  conquests."^ 

^  Freeman,    "William  Rufus,"  vol.   ii.,    p.    74.      As  to  the  settlement   of 
Flemings  in  Wales,  see  above,  pp.  27-9. 


266  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

The  next  remark  that  we  have  to  make  is  that  if 
we  want  to  form  a  true  picture  of  the  actual  facts 
taking  place  from  year  to  year  during  the  times  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  we  must  notice  the  different  inter- 
pretations placed  upon  events  by  those  who  approached 
their  consideration  from  the  Norman  or  English  and 
from  the  Welsh  point  of  view.  We  have  seen  above 
that  before  the  Norman  had  placed  his  foot  as  conqueror 
upon  English  soil  Wales,  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  the 
cantrefs  and  cymwds,  the  areas  and  the  names  of  which 
had  been  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation,  was 
parcelled  out  among  lords,  princes,  or  kings,  exercising 
customary  rights  over  their  own  portions.  \Nq  have  seen 
that  the  whole  of  this  region  was  governed  or  regulated 
by  a  tribal  system  as  strong  as  any  statutory  laws.  The 
mere  fact  of  a  particular  cymwd  or  cantref  being  violently 
taken  possession  of  by  a  Norman  or  English  stranger  in 
no  way,  from  the  Welsh  point  of  view,  affected  status  and 
rights.  The  pretensions  of  the  heads  of  the  W^elsh  families 
remained  precisely  the  same  and  were  recognised  to  the 
same  extent  by  their  relations  and  dependants  after  the 
building  of  a  new  castle  by  an  intruder  or  the  loss  of  a 
series  of  battles,  as  before.  The  Welsh  arglwy^  retreated 
to  the  higher  ground,  fortified  as  well  as  he  could  his 
house,  and  sometimes  imitated  with  skill  the  fortress  of 
the  stranger.  The  contest,  when  once  the  castle  was 
built  and  adequately  garrisoned,  was  however  a  hopeless 
one  for  the  Welshman.  The  point  to  be  noticed  is  that, 
though  practically  defeated  and  ousted  from  his  cymwd, 
his  cantref,  or  his  gwlad,  the  Welshman  still  maintained 
his  legal  theory,  and  did  not  recognise  the  stranger's 
rights.  In  fact  superseded,  the  Welshman  at  first  still 
called  himself  and  deemed  himself  justly  the  lord  of  the 
conquered  territory,  and  to  such  an  extent  as  the  occupiers 
of  the  soil,  whether  free  tribesmen  or  taeogion,  recognised 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  267 

him,  he  was  so  in  fact.  Probably,  however,  the  actual 
cultivators  within  the  area  of  the  castle's  power  were  evicted 
one  after  another  if  they  did  not  become  the  tenants  of 
the  Norman  lord  or  were  not  slain  in  the  ceaseless  petty 
warfare  that  resulted  from  the  efforts  of  the  Norman  lord 
to  feed  his  garrison.  It  is  not  difficult,  therefore,  to  under- 
stand the  position  of  the  Welsh  chieftain.  Sometimes  he 
retook  the  castle  and  the  adjacent  lands,  and  for  a  brief 
period  again  enjoyed  his  accustomed  rights.  But  whatever 
were  the  vicissitudes  of  the  particular  case,  the  Welsh 
chieftains  long  maintained  their  old  tribal  and  customary 
rights,  and  did  not,  except  as  the  result  of  generations  of 
conflict,  in  the  course  of  which  many  of  them  forfeited  their 
lives,  acquiesce  in  the  counter-theory  of  the  Norman  lords. 
Turning  now  to  the  side  of  the  invader,  we  find  a  distinct 
order  of  ideas.  We  need  not  stop  to  inquire  whether  the 
theory  Avhich  is  a  first  principle  of  English  land  tenure  is 
founded  upon  a  solid  fact  when  it  is  represented  as  springing 
from  the  recognition  of  the  right  of  William  the  Conqueror 
to  be  the  paramount  lord  of  all  land  in  the  island  at  the 
assembly  in  which  the  chief  English  vassals  and  tenants 
swore  fealty  to  the  new  monarch.  Tradition  hands  down 
the  story  that  after  the  great  survey  had  been  made  the 
Conqueror  summoned  all  the  witan  and  landowners  of 
England  to  meet  him  at  Salisbury,  and  that  the  men 
assembled  at  this  great  meeting  numbered  60,000,  and 
that  they  one  and  all,  "whose  men  soever  they  were,  all 
bowed  down  to  him  and  were  his  men,  and  swore  to  him 
faithful  oaths  that  they  would  be  faithful  to  him  against  all 
other  men."  ^  Whether  this  is  true  or  not,  it  has  been  the 
undoubted  principle  of  English  law  ever  since,  that  all 
land  is  held  either  of  the  king  or  of  some  one  who  holds 
land  immediately  or  mediately  from  the  sovereign.^ 

^  Freeman,  *'  Norman  Conquest,"  vol.  iv. ,  p.  693. 

2  *'  Every  acre  of  English  soil  and  every  property  right  therein  have  been 


268  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Now  when  the  Norman  adventurer,  acting  with  more 
or  less  cognisance  on  the  part  of  his  Norman  sovereign^ 
endeavoured  to  carry  the  conquest  beyond  the  bounds  of 
the  EngHsh  kingdom,  he  did  so  actuated  very  largely  with 
the  object  of  personal  gain,  but  he  did  so  under  the  influence 
of  ideas  which  found  a  practical  expression  in  the  celebrated 
meeting  at  Salisbury.  It  is  commonly  assumed  that  in 
times  in  which  human  life  was  little  regarded,  and  which 
appear  to  be  times  of  mere  violence,  m.en  knew  no  law 
except  the  law  of  the  strongest.  No  greater  blunder  can 
be  made  than  that  which  is  involved  in  such  an  assump- 
tion. One  of  the  remarkable  things  about  the  history  of 
Europe  at  the  close  of  the  Dark  Ages,  and  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  mediaeval  period,  is  the  immense  influence  of 
law  and  custom,  and  the  most  rapacious  Norman  adven- 
turer, whatever  his  private  vices  and  the  turbulence  of  his 
disposition,  never  seems  to  have  acted  without  endeavouring 
at  least  to  do  so  under  the  colour  of  a  legal  right  and 
a  legal  title.  The  theory  which  the  conquerors  of  Wales 
adopted,  the  theory  according  to  which  the  man  who, 
following  the  Welsh  view,  was  an  atitud  acted  was  this — that 
he  was  carrying  out  the  commands  of  his  sovereign,  and 
that  his  title  to  any  land  that  he  won  with  his  sword  was 
his  either  by  the  express  or  the  implied  grant  of  the  Norman 
king  of  England. 

One  other  observation  before  leaving  this  part  of  the 
subject  ought  to  be  made.  As  the  settlement  of  the  Norman 
lords  gradually  became  more  fixed  and  permanent,  the 
hostility  between  them  and  such  of  the  Welsh  princes  or 
lords  as  retained  any  cantrefs  or  cymwds  became  modified 
in  a  sensible  and  continually  increasing  degree  ;  and  it  was 
not  unusual  to  find  Norman  lord  and  Welsh  lord  combining 

brought  within  the  compass  of  a  single  formula  which  maybe  expressed  thus  :  — 
Z  tenet  terram  illatn  de  .  .  .  dommo  I'ege.^''  Pollock  and  Maitland,  "Hist, 
of  English  Law,''  i.  210. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,  1066— 1282.  269 

for  military  purposes  against  some  other  chieftain  of  either 
race,  while  intermarriage  between  members  of  the  Norman 
families  and  those  of  the  more  important  and  powerful 
Welsh  cenedloed  became,  in  the  course  of  time,  not  infre- 
quent. Probably,  though  this  approximation  between 
the  rulers  of  the  country  became  very  marked  by  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  it  must  not  be  assumed 
that,  speaking  broadly,  there  was  any  such  rapprocheme^it 
among  the  lower  orders.  The  small  Welsh  tenants,  the 
servile  occupiers  of  the  land,  the  Welsh  bards,  and  the 
Welsh-speaking  clergy,  continued  to  entertain  racial  preju- 
dices and  to  advance  national  claims  quite  regardless  of  the 
interests  and  intrigues  of  the  princely  families. 

Such  appears  to  us  to  have  been  the  general  course  of 
events  that  led  to  the  final  subjugation  of  Wales  by  Edward 
the  First.  The  Welsh  naturally  regarded  the  overthrow 
of  their  enemy  Harold  as  a  matter  of  congratulation  ;  but 
they  soon  found  that  their  position  was  not  improved  by 
the  Norman  Conquest.  Bledyn  and  Rhiwatton,  who  had 
received  the  possessions  of  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn,  combined 
with  Eadric  the  Wild,  who  was  in  possession  of  lands  in 
Herefordshire  and  Shropshire,  and  had  refused  to  submit 
to  the  new  king.  The  allies  laid  waste  the  former  county, 
though  they  did  not  take  the  town  and  fortress  of  Hereford, 
which  were  in  Norman  hands.^  Almost  immediately, 
however,  there  was  internal  war  in  Wales.  Maredud  and 
Ithel  (or  Idwal),  sons  of  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn,  assailed  the 
chieftains  whom  Harold  had  invested.  The  forces  of  the 
rival  families  met  at  Mechain.  Ithel  was  killed  in  the 
battle  ;  Maredud  fled  and  died  of  cold  ;  Rhiwatlon,  too, 
fell.  Bledyn  held  his  own,  and  reigned  alone  over  Powys, 
and  probably  over  the  greater  part  of  Gwyned ;  but  we 
find  that  one  Maredud  ab  Owain  ab  Edwyn  now  held 
Deheubarth — a  fact  which  indicates  that   there  had   been 

1  Freeman,  N.  C,  iv.  no,  in.      "  Flor.  Wig. '^  and  "  Chron.  Wig."  1067. 


270  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

some  partition  of  the  great  possessions  of  Gruffyd"  ab 
Lewelyn.^  It  is  clear  that  the  friendly  feelings  between 
the  Welsh  and  the  Mercians  shown  by  the  durable  alliance 
between  them  in  the  great  days  of  Gruffyd"  still  existed, 
and  Bledyn  joined  in  the  abortive  revolt  of  Eadwyne  and 
Morkere.2 

After  the  submission  of  these  earls  to  William  we  hear 
of  no  further  efforts  of  Bledyn  against  the  king,  but 
during  the  next  few  years  Normans,  on  one  pretext  or 
another,  are  found  raiding  in  the  south.  In  1070  the 
Maredud  ab  Owain  who  had  assumed,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  chieftaincy  of  Deheubarth,  was  attacked  by  Caradog 
ab  Gruffyd  ab  Rhyderch.^  The  latter,  with  the  aid  of  the 
French  (so  the  Normans  are  called  in  the  "  Brut  "),  defeated 
and  slew  the  former  in  a  fight  on  the  banks  of  the  Rymney, 
and  probably  obtained  a  hold  on  some  part  of  the  south- 
eastern district.  In  the  next  year  we  find  the  Normans 
ravaging  Dyfed  and  Keredigion,  and  in  1072  they  devastated 
the  latter  principality  a  second  time.  Probably  these  raids 
were  made  in  conjunction  with  the  Caradog  ab  Owain  who 
had  claims  to  Deheubarth,  and  who  fought  a  battle  in  1073 
with  Rhys  ab  Owain,  who,  as  we  gather,  was  his  brother. 
The  state  of  things  in  that  kingdom  (if  we  may  still  use 
the  word),  as  well  as  in  Dyfed  and  Morganwg,  is  very 
obscure,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  continual 
feuds  in  which  the  princely  families  of  the  south  con- 
tinued to  indulge  were  among  the  main  causes  of  the 
rapid  conquest  of  that  part  of  Cymru  a  few  years  later. 
In  the  significant  fact  that  this  Caradog  ab  Owain  (following 
a  generally  fatal  precedent)  sought  the  help  of  strangers — 

1  "Brut,"  j.a.  1068.      "Ann.  Camb."  1068. 

-  Old.  Vit.  51  IB. 

•'  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1070.  This  Caradog  was  apparently  the  son  of  the  Gruffyd 
al)  Rhyderch  slain  by  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn  (above,  p.  168).  If  so,  he  was 
ihe  man  who  destroyed  Harold's  hunting-seat  at  Forth  Iscoed  (Yscewin, 
Tortskewet). 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  271 

"  Freinc,"  in  the  "  Brut " — in  an  internal  dispute,^  we  may 
see  a  further  explanation  of  the  ease  with  which  the  new- 
comers established  themselves  at  many  important  points 
in  South  Wales  before  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century. 

Rhys  ab  Owain,  with  one  Rhyderch  ab  Caradog,  not- 
withstanding the  efforts  of  Caradog  ab  Owain,  maintained 
themselves  in  Deheubarth.  From  the  time  of  the  sub- 
mission of  Eadwyn  and  Morkere,  Bledyn  had  remained  in 
effective  possession  of  Powys,  and  probably  of  a  considerable 
part  of  Gwyned,  and  he  is  regarded  by  the  chronicler  as 
the  man  who  after  Gruffyd  his  brother  "  nobly  supported 
the  whole  kingdom  of  the  Britons,"  "  the  gentlest  and 
most  merciful  of  kings,"  "  a  defence  to  every  one."  -  But 
his  reign  was  not  long,  for  in  1073  he  was  killed,  under 
circumstances  of  which  no  information  is  given  in  detail, 
by  Rhys  ab  Owain,  "  through  the  deceit  of  evil-minded 
chieftains  and  of  the  noblemen  of  Ystrad  Tywi."  ^  He 
was  succeeded  in  Gwyned  by  a  cousin,  Trahaiarn  ab 
Caradog."*  We  may  presume,  from  what  we  know  of  the 
subsequent  history  of  Powys,  that  the  cenedl  of  Bledyn 
remained  in  possession  there. 

The  death  of  Bledyn  strengthened  the  position  of 
Rhys  ab  Owain  in  Deheubarth.  Acting  jointly  with 
Rhyderch  ab  Caradog,  he  put  down  in  the  same  year 
a  rising  led  by  Goronwy  and  Lewelyn  ab  Cadwgan,^  and 
was  able,  after  the  murder  of  Rhyderch  in  1074,  to  defeat 
them  again    in    1075.     But   in    the   next   year   Trahaiarn 

1  "Brut,"  J. a.  1070. 

2  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1073  and  1076. 

^  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1076.  We  have  heard  of  similar  conduct  on  the  part  of  the 
"  uchelwyr  of  Ystrad  Tywi  "  before  (above,  pp.  161,  168). 

■*  Bledyn  left  sons,  among  whom  Cadwgan,  lorwerth,  and  Maredud  came  to 
the  front.  There  is  no  explanation  of  the  succession  of  Trahaiarn,  except  that 
he  was  chosen  from  among  "near  relations,"  unless  it  was  simply  a  case  of 
coming  in  "by  the  strong  hand  "  ;  see  p.  203,  n,  3,  above.  Nothing  is  said  in  the 
"Brut  "  as  to  Trahaiarn's  relation  to  Powys. 

'"  The  battle  took  place  at  "  Kamdwr."       "  Brut,"  s.a.  1073. 


272  THE  WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

(who  was  then  for  the  moment  firmly  in  possession  of  the 
north)  attacked  Rhys  ab  Owain,  and  by  decisively  defeat- 
ing him  at  the  battle  of  Pwft  Gwdyc  avenged  the  blood 
of  Bledyn.  There  all  the  family  of  Rhys  fell ;  he  himself 
fled  "  like  a  timid  stag  before  the  hounds  through  the 
thickets  and  rocks,"  only,  however,  to  die  before  the  end  of 
the  year  by  the  hand  of  Gruffyct  ab  Caradog,  Upon  the 
overthrow  of  this  Rhys,  his  kinsman  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr,  a 
lineal  descendant  of  Rhodri  Mawr,  succeeded  to  Deheubarth 
without  any  opposition  of  which  evidence  is  handed  down, 
and  for  about  fourteen  years  was  the  leading  chieftain  in 
the  south,  though  as  events  turned  out  he  was  the  last  man 
who  can  really  be  regarded  as  king  or  prince  of  the  ancient 
kingdom  of  Deheubarth. 

Gwyned,  though  Trahaiarn's  sway  was  at  this  time  seem- 
ingly acquiesced  in,  had  not  been  wholly  free  from  internal 
trouble.  Cynan,  the  son  of  lago  and  grandson  of  Idwal, 
who  came  of  the  direct  line  of  Rhodri,  years  before  had 
taken  refuge  in  Ireland.  He  married  Raguell  (daughter  of 
Auleod,  an  Irish  king),  who  became  the  mother  of  Gruffyd, 
born  about  1055.  On  the  death  of  Bledyn,  with  the  aid 
of  his  Irish  kinsmen,  Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  made  a  descent 
on  Mon,  and  effected  some  kind  of  settlement  in  the 
island.  This,  according  to  the  "  Brut,"  was  in  the  year 
1073,  and  he  immediately  crossed  over  to  the  mainland, 
attacking  Trahaiarn  at  Bron  yr  Erw,  in  the  cantref  of 
Dunodig.  Gruffyd  retreated  to  Mon,  where  he  and  his 
followers  for  a  time  remained.  At  this  time,  as  we 
have  seen,  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  was  ruling  in  Deheubarth. 
He  allied  himself  to  the  cause  of  Gruffyd  (who  had  in 
the  meantime  received  reinforcements  from  Ireland)  ;  the 
allies  attacked  Trahaiarn,  and  ultimately  a  battle  was 
fought  at  Mynyd"  Carn  between  the  two  princes  and  the 
king  of  Gwyned,  in  which  the  latter  was  defeated  and  slain/ 

1  "Brut,"j.a.    1079.     For  the  life  of  Gruffyti"  ab  Cynan   see  "  Diet.  Nat. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066—1282.  273 

Thus  once  more  we  find  two  princes  lineally  descended 
from  Rhodri  Mawr  ruling  respectively  over  Gwyned  and 
Deheubarth.  Gruffyd  was  more  fortunate  than  Rhys,  and 
though  the  earlier  years  of  his  reign  were  far  from  being 
prosperous,  by  prudent  conduct  he  succeeded  in  maintain- 
ing his  rule  and  died  peacefully,  as  we  shall  see,  in  what 
was  for  those  troublous  times  extreme  old  age. 

William  the  Conqueror  in  1080  or  108 1  made  an  expedi- 
tion into  Wales,  by  which,  according  to  some,  he  subdued 
the  country.^  He  and  his  army  penetrated  as  far  as  Saint 
Davids,  but  since  we  find  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  still  reigning 
afterwards,  the  campaign  can  have  had  no  great  practical 
result,  though  it  marks  a  stage  in  the  conquest  of  South 
Wales,  especially  as  with  it  seems  to  have  been  closely 
associated  the  foundation  of  a  castle  at  Cardiff.^  The 
Welsh  chronicles  represent  that  William,  king  of  the  French, 
Saxons,  and  Britons,  came  for  prayer  on  a  pilgrimage  to 
Menevia  ;  but  it  is  clear  from  other  sources  and  from  subse- 
quent events  that  his  journey  through  the  south  was  made 
with  political  intent  and  had  political  consequences.^ 

During  the  next  few  years  no  events  of  importance 
happened  in  Wales  itself,  but  in  1087  William  the 
Conqueror  died,  and  we  may  stop  for  a  moment  to  see 
how  far  his  rule  of  twenty-one  years  had  in  fact  altered 
the  relations  of  England  and  Cymru.  We  will  state  what 
we  can  gather  from  trustworthy  sources  quite  simply. 
William    founded    two    palatine    earldoms    that    directly 

Biog."  s.n.  As  to  the  situation  of  Mynytl  Carn,  see  "Y  Cymmrodor,"  xi., 
p.  167.  It  must  not  be  confounded  with  Camo  in  Montgomeryshire  or  the 
Carno  near  Crickhowell.     The  best  opinion  locates  it  in  South  Cardiganshire. 

^  Chron.  Petr.,  io8i.  R.  Wendover,  ii.  20.  Freeman,  N.  C.,iv.  675-7, 
and  his  valuable  notes. 

2  «'  Brut,"  s.a.  1080. 

'  "Brut,"i'.«.  1079  (this  date  is  wrong)  says  :  "Ydeuth  Gwilim  vastard 
vrenhin  y  Saeson  ar  Freinc  ar  Brytanyeit  wrth  wediaw  drwy  berenindawt  y 
Vynyw."  "  Ann.  Camb."  (1079)  simply  record  :  "  William  Rex  Anglice  causa 
orationis  Sanctum  David  adiit." 

W.P.  T 


274  T^HE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

concerned  Wales — those  of  Chester  and  Shrewsbury  ^ — and 
quickly  made  Worcester,  Hereford,  and  Gloucester  impor- 
tant military  stations  for  operations  in  the  west.  William 
entered  Chester  (restored  as  we  have  seen  by  Saxon 
rulers)  in  1070,  and  founded  a  new  castle,  the  custody  of 
which  he  entrusted  to  his  stepson  Gerbod.- 

Shrewsbury  (the  Welsh  Amwythig)  had  long  been  in 
English  possession,  but  we  do  not  know  when  first  it  was 
seized  by  the  Normans.  It  must,  however  have  been  in 
their  power  before  1069,  for  in  that  year  it  was  besieged 
and  burnt  by  Eadric  with  the  assistance  of  men  from  many 
quarters,  noticeably  from  the  regions  of  Chester,  Gwyned, 
and  Powys.^ 

The  date  of  the  conquest  of  Worcester  is  not  known,  but 
Urse  of  Abetot  held  the  city  and  shire  for  the  king  as 
early  as  1068  or  1069.* 

A  Norman  colony  had  been  planted  in  the  region  of 
Hereford  in  the  time  of  Eadward  the  Confessor.  It  is  not 
clear  when  the  castle  was  built,  but  Osbern  the  sheriff 
defended  the  city  and  the  adjoining  lands  against  the 
attacks  of  Eadric  the  Wild  immediately  after  the  Conquest, 
and  in  1070  William  Fitz-Osbern  was  appointed  Earl  of 
Herefordshire.^ 

The  year  of  the  conquest  of  Gloucestershire  is  uncertain, 
but  it  was  probably  occupied  by  the  Normans  and  the 
building  of  a  castle  commenced  in  1068  or  the  following 
year.  It  did  not  become  an  earldom  at  once,  but  later  on 
Henry  I.  conferred  the  county  on  his  son  Robert.^ 

At  the  time  then  of  William's  death   the  Welsh   were 

^  Counties  palatine   differed  from  other  counties  in  that   the   earls  thereof 
had  certain  royal  privileges  and  prerogatives. 

-  Freeman,  N.  C,  iv.  309-316. 

^  Ibid.  iv.  272-278. 

■*  IbiJ.  iv.  173-4. 

•''  Ibid.  iv.  64. 

'^  Ibid.  iv.  173.      Wm.  R.,  ii.  p.  89. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  275 

hemmed  in  and  checked  by  the  forces  of  the  counties 
palatine  of  Chester  and  Shrewsbury,  by  the  Earls  of 
Worcester  and  Hereford,  and  by  the  Normans  forming  the 
garrison  of  Gloucester.  The  English  frontier  had,  before 
the  Conquest,  been  considerably  advanced.  At  Rhudlan, 
which,  it  will  be  recollected,  had  been  one  of  the  seats  of 
Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn  and  burnt  by  Harold,  a  castle  had 
been  built  from  which  Robert  of  Rhudlan  (under  the  Earl 
of  Chester)  waged  continuous  warfare  with  the  Welsh.^ 
Similarly  a  fortress  had  been  erected  on  a  height  which 
came  to  be  called  Montgomery  among  the  English,  after 
the  name  of  Earl  Roger  of  that  place,  and  Tre  Faldwin 
among  the  Welsh.-  Some  part  of  what  is  now  Radnor- 
shire had  passed  into  Harold's  possession,  and  was  still 
English  or  Norman  land.  The  king  held  the  castle  of 
Monmouth.  Cardiff  Castle  was  either  completed  or  in 
course  of  erection,  and  the  better  opinion  is  that  the  lands 
between  the  Wye  and  the  Usk  had  for  some  time  been  in 
English  hands.^ 

It  is  evident  that  during  the  greater  part  of  William's 
reign  Wales  was  in  a  state  of  extreme  disorder.  There 
was  continual  internal  and  border  warfare.  The  fights 
(they  can  hardly  be  called  wars)  between  the  princely 
kindreds  were  incessant,  and  were  repeated  on  a  still 
•smaller  scale  between  the  uchelwyr  occupying  adjacent 
lands.  Quarrels  were  continually  taking  place  on  the 
border  between  the  Welsh  and  the  Norman  earls,  and  the 
latter  were  of  course  quite  ready  to  make  temporary 
alliances  with  those  of  the  Cymric  chieftains  who  sought 
their  assistance. 

1  Freeman,  N.  C,  iv,  489-90.      "Ord.  Vit.,"  670.      "Domesday,"  269. 

-  /did.  iv.  501.  "Ann.  Camb."  1072:  "  De  Muntgumeri  Hugo  vastavit 
Keredigium. "  The  land  around  the  site  of  the  castle  seems  to  have  been 
held  by  Englishmen  as  a  hunting-ground  in  Eadward  the  Confessors  time. 
■*'  Domesday,"  254. 

^  Freeman,  N.  C,  ii.  708,  et  seq. 

T    2 


276  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Such  was  the  position  of  things  when  William  Rufus 
succeeded  his  father.  The  following  year  (1088)  was 
marked  by  a  rebellion  in  which  the  Norman  conquerors 
took  different  sides,  and  the  Cymric  chieftains  to  some 
extent  profited  by  the  opportunity  thus  afforded.^  Earl 
Hugh  of  Chester  and  Robert  of  Rhudlan  were  in  opposite 
camps,  and  while  Robert  was  assisting  at  the  siege  of 
Rochester,  Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  seized  the  occasion  to  invade 
his  territory.  The  Welsh  king,  with  Irish  allies,  advanced 
as  far  as  Rhudlan  itself,  and  slew  many  men  and  carried 
off  many  captives.  Robert  soon  returned,  however,  and 
we  hear  of  his  being  at  Deganwy,  an  old  British  strong- 
hold at  the  mouth  of  the  river  Conway,  traditionally 
supposed  to  have  been  the  seat  of  Maelgwn.  It  now  seems 
to  have  been  an  advance  post  of  the  Earl  of  Chester,  and 
a  castle  of  some  kind  had  been  already  erected  by  Robert 
While  the  Norman  chief  was  at  this  fortress  Gruffyd  with 
three  ships  entered  the  Conway,  and,  daring  even  in  the 
very  presence  of  Robert  to  raid  the  adjacent  territory,, 
carried  off  prisoners  and  cattle  to  his  vessels.  Robert  in 
anger,  and  taken  by  surprise,  bade  his  men,  who  were 
evidently  few  in  number,  to  follow  him ;  he  himself, 
attended  by  only  one  knight,  rushed  to  the  shore  of  the 
river.  He  was  immediately  surrounded  by  the  enemy  and 
borne  down  by  darts  and  arrows.  His  head  was  smitten 
off  and  placed  as  a  trophy  on  the  mast  of  one  of  the  ships ; 
but  Gruffyd  ordered  it  to  be  taken  down  and  thrown  into 
the  sea,  and  then  escaped  with  his  booty.- 

About  the  time  when  this  considerable  success  was 
being  obtained  by  Gruffyd  trouble  was  taking  place  in  the 
south.  Three  sons  of  Bledyn  (Madog,  Cadwgan,  and 
Rhirid),  who,  as  we  gather,  were  among  the  joint  rulers  of 

^  For  an  account  of  this  rebellion  see  Freeman,  Wm.  K.,  i.  22,  et  seq. 
'  The  story  comes  from  "  Ord.  Vit.,"  and  is  fully  told  by  P'reeman.      See 
Wm.  R.,  i.  124-7. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  277 

Powys,  expelled  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  from  Deheubarth.  Rhys 
-escaped  to  Ireland,  and  immediately  collecting  "  a  fleet  of 
the  Gvvydyl,"  returned  and  landed.  He  gave  battle  to  the 
sons  of  Bledyn  at  a  place  called  Lych  Crei.  Madog  and 
Rhirid  were  killed,  but  Cadwgan  survived  to  take  an 
important  part  in  Welsh  affairs  for  many  years.  Rhys 
was  evidently  a  wealthy  chieftain,  for  the  gifts  he  gave  to 
his  Irish  mercenaries  were  so  large  as  to  attract  special 
attention.  His  victory,  as  far  as  the  cenedl  of  Bledyn  was 
concerned,  was  decisive,  but  he  was  assailed  by  others,  and 
his  failure  to  keep  peace  in  the  south,  though  he  main- 
tained a  predominant  position  for  some  time,  was  one  of 
the  causes  which  made  the  conquest  of  South  Wales  easy 
and  rapid.^ 

Soon  after  the  overthow  of  the  sons  of  Bledyn  a  forward 
movement  on  a  large  scale  was  made  by  the  Normans  in 
central  and  south  Wales  which  speedily  resulted  in  the 
occupation  of  very  large  areas  by  Norman  adventurers,  and 
in  the  disappearance  as  real  entities  of  Deheubarth  and  the 
kingdoms  or  principalities  of  south-eastern  Whales.  For 
the  sake  of  clearness  we  must  separate  the  conquests  of 
Morgannwg,  Brecheiniog,  and  Dyfed,  though  they  seem  to 
have  been  very  nearly  simultaneous,  and  it  is  likely  that  the 
movements  which  resulted  in  these  events  were  more  or 
less  concerted.  Whether  this  is  so  or  not,  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr 
was  killed  by  the  Normans  in  1093  in  an  engagement  at  a 
place  not  particularly  stated  in  the  Chronicles  somewhere 
near  the  borders  of  the  present  Brecknockshire.- 

^  For  these  events,  see  "Brut,"  s.a.  1087  (really  1088).  As  to  Rhys'  gifts 
the  entry  is  :  ''Ac  y  rodes  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  diruawr  swttt  yr  riygheswyr 
yscotteit  ar  GwyJjyl  a  deuthant  yn  berth  idaw."  According  to  the  "Brut" 
{s.a.  1089),  I^ewelyn  ab  Cedivor,  who,  as  we  think,  was  of  the  line  of  Dyfed, 
■with  the  Gruffyct  ab  MareduTt  of  whom  we  have  already  heard,  fought  with 
Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  near  Landydoch.  Lewelyn  was  slain  ;  "Brut,"5.a.  1089. 
The  true  date  of  Rhys'  victory  is  probably  109 1.  Freeman  suggests  that 
Cedivor  was  a  vassal  prince  of  Dyfed  under  Rhys.     Wm.  R.,  ii.  78. 

-  "  Brut,"  j.a.  1091,  "Ann.  Cam."  1093. 


278  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Morgannwg  in  earlier  times  seems  to  have  been  the  name 
of  a  very  large  district,  but  the  Morgannwg  of  the  tenth  and 
eleventh  centuries  was  much  smaller.  It  roughly  corre- 
sponded to  the  present  county  without  Gower  on  the  west, 
but  with  the  present  shire  of  Monmouth  up  to  the  Usk 
included.  The  northern  boundary  cannot  be  determined. 
We  have  seen  that  a  king  called  Morgan  Hen  had  ruled  in 
this  part  of  the  country  in  the  tenth  century,  and  had  had 
a  dispute  with  Howel  Da  which  was  decided  by  an  English 
king  in  favour  of  the  former.  Perhaps  it  was  from  his 
time  that  the  place  -  name  Gwlad  Morgan  (land  of 
Morgan),  which  survives  in  Glamorgan,  came  into  vogue. 
There  was,  however,  a  clear  distinction  between  Morgannwg 
and  Glamorgan,  and  long  after  it  was  reflected  in  the  style 
assumed  by  the  chief  lords  of  the  south-east  of  Wales — of 
lords  of  "  Morgania  et  Glamorgania."  No  authentic  record 
preserves  for  us  the  line  of  Morgan  Hen,  but  at  the  time  at 
which  we  have  now  arrived  one  lestyn  ab  Gwrgan  emerges 
as  a  ruler  of  Morgannwg,  and  perhaps  of  Gwent — no  doubt 
the  smaller  Morgannwg  and  a  sadly-curtailed  Gwent.  It  was 
while  he  was  reigning,  if  we  may  use  the  term,  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  tract  of  territory  between  the  Usk  and 
the  Neath  passed  into  Norman  hands.  As  to  the  way  in 
which  this  came  about  we  have  no  information  from  really 
trustworthy  sources  ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  by  the  end 
of  1093  it  had  happened,  and  that  Robert  Fitz-Hamon, 
a  trusted  companion  of  the  Conqueror,  was  the  man  who 
brought  it  about.  Neither  in  the  "  Brut "  nor  in  the 
"  Annales  Cambriae  "  is  there  any  reference  to  the  conquest 
of  Glamorgan  ;  but  in  the  so-called  Gwentian  "  Brut "  and 
in  Caradog's  History  the  story  of  the  conquest  is  given 
with  some  pomp  and  circumstance. 

We  must  tell  Caradog's  story  in  an  abridged  form. 
According  to  him,  Lewelyn  and  Eineon,  sons  of  Cedivor 
of  Dyfed,  were  defeated  by  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  at  Landy- 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  279 

doch.  Eineon  fled  to  lestyn,  lord  of  Morgannwg,  who 
also  was  at  feud  with  Rhys.  lestyn  promised  his  daughter 
in  marriage  to  Eineon,  who  had  served  in  England 
before,  and  undertook  to  bring  an  army  of  Normans 
to  assist  lestyn  in  his  quarrel  with  Rhys.  Eineon 
thereupon  prevailed  upon  Robert  Fitz-Hamon  and  twelve 
knights  to  come  into  Morgannwg.  A  great  army  of 
Normans  was  gathered  together,  and  shortly  afterwards 
landed  in  Glamorgan.  Joining  forces  with  lestyn,  Robert 
burnt  and  spoilt  the  land  of  Rhys  and  his  people.  Rhys 
gathered  his  power  and  met  the  allies  not  far  from  Brecon. 
There  was  a  terrible  battle  ;  Rhys  was  slain,  and  with  him 
"decaied  the  kingdom  of  South  Wales."  The  Normans, 
after  receiving  "  their  promised  salarie  and  great  rewards  " 
from  lestyn,  returned  to  their  ships.  Eineon  then  demanded 
lestyn's  daughter,  but  was  "laughed  to  scorne,"  and  told 
that  the  daughter  would  be  bestowed  otherwise.  Full  of 
anger,  Eineon  followed  the  Normans  and  found  them  all* 
a-shipboard.  Going  to  the  chiefest  of  them,  he  showed  his 
grievance,  and  how  easy  it  would  be  for  them  to  conquer 
the  land.  Easily  persuaded,  they  returned,  despoiled 
lestyn  of  his  country,  took  "  the  fertile  and  valley  "  land  to 
themselves,  and  awarded  to  Eineon  the  "  barren  and  rough 
mountain."  The  knights  that  accompanied  Robert  were  : 
■Londres  or  London  ("  as  the  Brytish  booke  nameth  him  "), 
Stradlyng,  St.  John,  Turberville,  Grenuile,  Humffreuile, 
S.  Quintine,  Soore,  Sully,  Berkeroll,  Syward,  and  Fleming. 
Caradog  adds  "  that  these  men  and  their  heires  have 
enjoyed  that  countrie  to  this  daie,  who  were  the  first 
strangers  that  ever  inhabited  Wales  since  the  time  of 
Camber."! 

Another  version  of  the  story  is  interpolated  by  Dr.  Powel 
in  the  1584  edition  of  Caradog's  History.  It  is  headed 
"  Of  the    winning    of    the    Lordship    of    Glamorgan    or 

'   "Caradog"  (1584  ed.),  1 19-122. 


28o  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Morgannwc."  Powell  gives  the  tract  from  a  manuscript 
delivered  to  him  by  Mistress  Blanch  Parry  ("  one  of  the 
gentlewomen  of  the  Quaenes  Majesties  Privie  Chamber,  a 
singular  well-wisher  and  furtherer  of  the  weale  public  of 
that  countrie"),  and  which  had  been  "set  in  writing  by 
some  skilful  and  studious  gentleman  of  that  countrie."  ^ 
The  account  in  this  tract  does  not  materially  differ  from 
that  in  the  main  text,  though  a  more  definitely  chivalrous 
complexion  is  given  to  the  transaction. 

It  is  evident  that  this  story  cannot  be  accepted  with  all 
its  detail,  but  there  is  no  reason  for  rejecting  it  altogether.^ 
Robert  Fitz-Hamon  undoubtedly  conquered  Glamorgan.'* 
lestyn  ab  Gwrgan  was  lord  of  the  whole  or  part  of 
Morgannwg.^  Some  of  the  knights  mentioned  did  settle  in 
the  county.  We  may  take  it  as  certain  that  Morgannwg 
was  occupied  about  1091  to  1093,  though  the  exact  date  (no 
chronicle  gives  us  information  on  the  point)  cannot  be 
fixed.  It  is  likely  enough  that  the  event  was  connected 
with  the  overthrow  of  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  in  1093,  but  the 
"  Brut "  ascribes  his  death  to  the  "  French  who  inhabited 
Brecheiniog."  **  This  looks  as  if  when  Rhys'  last  battle  was 
fought  the  conquest  of  Brecheiniog  had  taken  place  or  was 
proceeding,  and  as  if  he  were  trying  to  oust  the  Normans, 
and  not  engaging  in  civil  war  with  lestyn,  but  there  can  be 
no  certainty   on  the  matter.     It  is  not,  however,  probable 

>  "Caradog,"  124,  el  seq. 

-  This  is  Freeman's  view,     \Vm.  R.,  ii,  81. 

"*  He  was  on  the  side  of  William  Rufus  in  the  rebellion.  He  had  great 
possessions  in  Gloucestershire  and  Somersetshire.  His  daughter  Mabel 
became  wife  of  Robert,  Earl  of  Gloucester,  son  of  Henry  I.  "  Diet.  Nat. 
Biog.,"  S7tl>  tio7H.,  and  Freeman,  Wm.  R.,  ii.,  83. 

"*  See  Giraldus,  *'  Itin.  Camb.,"  i.  7  :  "  Quatuor  Caradoci  filii  lestini  tilius,  et 
Resi  principis  ex  sorore  nepotibus,  his  in  finibus  herili  portione,  sicut  Gualen- 
sibus  mos  est,  pro  patre  dominantibus,  Morgano  videlicet,  et  Mereducio, 
Oeneo,  Cadwallano."  The  children  of  lestyn  held  Aberafan  (Aberavon)  after 
the  Conquest.      Freeman,  Wm.  R.,  ii.  87. 

'"  "Brut,"  .r.a.  1091,  probably  in  truth  1093. 


HISTORY   OF   WALES,    1066— 1282.  281 

that  the  conquest  of  Morgannwg  was  so  sudden  an  affair  as 
the  story  represents.  The  building  of  Cardiff  Castle,  if  we 
may  trust  the  "  Brut,"  had  begun  some  ten  years  before, 
and  the  conquest  by  the  Normans  was  gradual,  though  no 
doubt  in  the  Vale  their  settlement  went  on  rapidly.  It  is 
to  be  noticed  that  the  number  of  castles,  and  therefore  of 
lordships,  manors,  or  sub-manors,  in  Glamorganshire  is 
proportionally  very  large,  and  as  the  evidence  the  Land 
Commission  received  shows  the  district  was  strictly 
organised  on  feudal  principles,  and  suggests  some  former 
intentional  and  definite  apportionment,  it  indirectly  tends 
to  support  the  substantial  accuracy  of  the  story  of  the 
conquest  of  Glamorgan.^ 

Brecheiniog  also  speedily  passed  into  Norman  hands.  It 
was  probably  in  the  early  years  of  Rufus'  reign  that  Bernard 
de  Neufmarche  or  Newmarch  seized  a  central  position  in 
that  region  and  built  a  castle  at  Aberhondu.  He  married 
(we  know  not  the  date)  Nest,  who  was  the  daughter  of 
Gruffyd"  ab  Lewelyn  by  Ealdgyth,  and  therefore  the  step- 
daughter of  King  Harold.  It  was  probably  in  fighting 
against  him  that  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr  was  slain.-  The  defeat 
of  the  Welsh  king  took  place  early  in  the  year.  Cadwgan 
ab  Bledyn,  the  same  who  had  survived  the  defeat  at  Lych 

^  £-S-i  the  Duke  of  Beaufort  is  lord  of  the  seigniory  of  Gower.  In  this 
area  (182  square  miles)  there  are  a  number  of  mesne  manors,  and  besides  these 
fees  or  sub-manors,  the  lords  of  which  hold  of  the  lords  of  the  mesne  manors. 
The  Duke  holds  of  himself,  as  lord  of  Gower,  the  mesne  manors  of  Swansea, 
Oystermouth,  Loughor,  Kilvey,  Gower  Wallicana,  Gower  Anglicana  ;  while 
he  holds  the  fee  of  Trewyftfa  of  the  lord  of  the  mesne  manor  of  Pennard  held 
of  the  Duke  himself.  See  Mr.  Glynn  Price's  evidence,  qq.  6425,  e^  seq.  ; 
6626 — 6630.  The  contrast  between  this  state  of  things  and  that  which  exists 
in  Gwyned",  where  there  are  comparatively  few  manors  (except,  of  course,  the 
Crown  lordships  formed  by  treating  the  cymwds  on  the  conquest  as  equivalent 
to  lordships),  is  very  marked. 

-  Bernard  first  married  a  daughter  of  Osbem  of  Hereford,  settled  there,  and 
established  a  stronghold  at  Aberhond:u  (Brecon).  The  dates  of  his  birth 
and  death  are  not  known.  **  Diet.  Nat.  Biog,,"  j-z/Z*  noin.-,  and  Giraldus, 
**Itin.  Camb."  i.  2. 


282  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Crei,  and  who  now  begins  to  play  a  considerable  part  in  the 
afifairs  of  Wales,  immediately  despoiled  Dyfed,  and  two 
months  afterwards  we  find  the  Normans  invaded  both  Dyfed 
and  Keredigion,  which,  says  the  chronicler,  "they  have  still 
retained."  ^  They  fortified  the  castles,  and  seized  "  all  the 
lands  of  the  Britons."  This  conquest  was  effected  by  Arnulf 
of  Montgomery,  and  he  immediately  caused  some  kind  of 
castle  to  be  erected  at  Pembro  (later  Pembroke),  and 
confided  the  defence  of  it  to  Gerald  of  Windsor.  ^  It  is 
to  be  noted,  however,  that  at  this  time  (1093-4)  Gower, 
Kidweli,  and  most  of  the  territory  between  the  Neath  and 
the  Towi  had  not  yet  been  occupied  by  the  invaders. 

The  events  in  the  north  during  the  time  the  conquests 
we  have  described  were  taking  place  cannot  be  surely  or 
clearly  stated.  The  death  of  Robert  of  Rhudlan  had  only 
a  momentary  effect,  and  Rhudlan  and  Deganwy  continued 
to  be  firmly  held  by  Hugh  of  Chester  or  his  subordinate 
officers,  and  he  probably  controlled  the  whole  of  the  coast- 
line to  the  Menai  Straits.  Earl  Roger  of  Shrewsbury  had 
not  been  idle,  and  was  strengthening  his  hold  on  Powys, 
and  by  the  king's  command  a  castle  had  been  raised  at 
Rhyd  y  Gors.^ 

^  Ehys'  son  Gmffyd  possessed  only  '*one  cymwd,  namely,  the  fourth  part  of 
the  cantref  of  Caeoc,  in  the  cantref  Mawr,  which  in  title  and  dignity  was 
esteemed  by  the  Welsh  equal  to  the  southern  part  of  Wales  called  Deheubarth, 
that  is,  the  right-hand  side  of  Wales."  Giraldus,  **Itin.  Camb."  i.  2.  Caeoc  is 
a  mistake  for  Caeo,  which  was  a  cymwd  in  cantref  Bychan,  not  cantref  Mawr. 
Giraldus  remarks  that  though  Gruffyd's  "inheritance  was  diminished,  his 
ambition  and  dignity  remained."  It  is  in  this  connection  he  tells  the 
well-known  story  of  the  Welsh  prince's  proclamation  by  the  birds  of  the  lake 
of  Brecheiniog. 

2  The  words  of  the  "Brut"  seem  to  indicate  that  some  castles  already 
existed — they  are  :  "Ac  y  gadarnhayssant  y  kestyH"."  In  modern  Welsh 
cadharnhau  means  "to  strengthen,"  and  casteii  is  used  as  equivalent  to  '  *  castle. "' 
"  Ann.  Camb."  say  "  circiter  kalendas  Julii  Franci  primitus  Demetiam  et  Kere- 
digion tenuerunt,  et  abinde  totam  terram  Britonum  occupaverunt."  Pembroke 
is  mentioned  in  the  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1092,  as  holding  out  against  Cadwgan  ab 
Bledyn. 

^  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1092  (probably  in  truth  later). 


HISTORY  OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  283 

In  Gwyned  we  may  presume  that  Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  was 
still  the  recognised  ruler,  but  we  have  no  mention  of  him  in 
the  "  Brut "  after  1073  till  the  year  1096,  and  in  the  stirring 
events  of  the  next  two  years  it  is  Cadwgan  ab  Bledyn 
who  comes  to  the  front  as  the  chief  leader  of  the  Cymric 
nation.^ 

The  year  1094  is  celebrated  in  Welsh  annals  for  a  general 
attempt  to  shake  off  the  Norman  yoke.  Cadwgan,  it  may 
be  fairly  conjectured,  effected  some  temporary  combination 
among  the  Welsh  chieftains.-  There  certainly  was  a 
widespread  rising.  The  Welsh,  unable  to  bear  the  cruelty 
of  the  Normans,  began  the  movement  under  the  leadership 
of  Cadw^gan  by  an  attack  on  the  newly-made  castles  in 
Gwyned  and  M6n,  which  resulted  in  their  destruction  or 
capture.^  The  "  French "  made  a  fresh  expedition  into 
Gwyned,  but  were  defeated,  according  to  the  "  Brut,"  in  the 
wood  of  Yspwys.  Cadwgan  and  his  allies,  taking  the 
offensive,  ravaged  Chester,  Shropshire,  and  even  Hereford- 
shire ;  they  burnt  towns,  slew  many  men,  and  carried  off 
much  booty.*  Having  as  they  deemed  freed  Gwyned, 
the  Welsh  chieftains  marched  south  into  Keredigion  and 
Dyfed.  They  demolished  all  the  fortresses  except  two. 
Pembroke  held  out  under  Gerald  of  Windsor,  and  William 
son  of  Baldwin  succeeded  in  retaining  Rhyd  y  Gors.^ 
Cadwgan,  it  is  said  in  the  "  Brut,"  "  the  people  and  all  the 

*  He  is  mentioned  in  the  epitaph  of  Robert  of  RhuS'lan  that  is  given  in 
"  Ord.  Vit.  Hist.  Eccles.  "  :  *' cepit  Grithfridum  regem."  Gruffyd  was  at 
large  in  1087,  for  he  led  in  that  year  a  raid  against  Robert  (see  above,  p.  276), 
in  which  the  latter  was  killed.  Gruffyd's  captivity  must  therefore  have  ended 
before  that  event. 

-  See  "  Eng.  Chron.,"  s.a.  1097  :  "They  (the  Welsh)  chose  them  many 
elders  of  themselves  ;  one  was  Cadwgan  hight  that  of  them  worthiest  was  : 
he  was  brother's  son  of  Grufyd"  the  king."     ('*  Chron.  Petrib.") 

2  "Brut,"j'.a.  IC92.  See  "  Flor,  Wig.,"  1094:  "  fregerunt  et  castellum 
in  Meoania  insula." 

4  «'Flor.  Wig.,"  1094. 

*  "Brut,"  s.a.  1092. 


284  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

cattle  of  Dyfed  brought  away,  leaving  Dyfed  and  Keredigion 
a  desert."^  This  statement  must  be  taken  with  some 
qualification,  but  we  may  believe  that  there  was  a  consider- 
able migration  of  the  scanty  population  of  those  districts  to 
the  safer  and  more  mountainous  regions  of  the  northern 
and  central  parts  of  the  country ;  but  in  after  times  North 
Pembrokeshire  and  Cardiganshire  are  found  to  be,  and  still 
remain,  Welsh-speaking  areas.  For  the  moment  the  work 
of  the  Norman  adventurers  seemed  to  be  undone  ;  but  in 
the  very  next  year  (1095),  while  the  Cymry  of  the  north 
were  still  in  possession  of  the  lands  they  had  reconquered, 
the  Normans  of  Morgannwg  made  a  fresh  advance  to  the  west 
and  overran  Gower,  Kidweli,  and  Ystrad  Towi,  into  which 
they  had  not,  except  perhaps  sporadically,  up  to  that  time 
penetrated.  William  of  London  settled  at  Kidweli,  and 
commenced  building  a  strong  castle.^  Within  the  next 
few  years  castles  also  arose  at  Abertawe  (Swansea), 
Aberttwchwr  (Loughor),  Oystermouth,  Penrice,  and  Lan- 
rhidian  in  Gower. 

In  the  same  year  (1095)  the  Cymry  of  Powys,  with 
probably  the  men  of  Gwyned",  were  fighting  in  the  valley  of 
the  Severn,  and  suddenly  achieved  a  success  which,  however, 
led  to  their  undoing.  They  took  the  important  castle  of  Tre 
Faldwin,  and  killed  its  garrison.^  Matters  now  became 
sufficiently  serious  to  demand  the  personal  attention  of 
William  Rufus  himself.  Much  disturbed,  he  called  out  the 
fyrd  of  his  English  kingdom,  and  made  an  expedition  into 
Wales.*  Crossing  the  border  soon  after  Michaelmas,  and 
dividing  his  force  into  parties,  he  is  said  to  have  marched 
through  Wales.     The  Cymry,  following  their  usual  tactics, 

^  "  Brut,"  ^.rt-,  1092;  "Ann.  Cambr.,"  s.a.  1095:  "  Demetia  et  Caretica 
et  Stratewi  deserta  manent. " 

-  So  says  the  Gwentian  "  Brut,"  ^.(7.  1094. 

^  By  this  time  Hugh  son  of  Roger  had  succeeded  his  father  in  the  earldom 
of  Shrewsbury. 

*  "Chron.  Petrib.,"  1095. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  285 

avoided  a  pitched  battle  ;  they  took  to  the  "  moors  and  dales  " 
and  "  the  fastnesses  in  the  woods  and  glens."  ^  Ultimately 
the  Norman  parties  reunited  somewhere  near  Snowdon, 
and,  finding  winter  approaching,  William  ordered  a  retreat, 
and  he  and  his  army  returned  home  "  empty  without  having 
gained  anything."-  In  the  next  year,  1096,  probably 
encouraged  by  the  ill-success  of  William's  expedition,  the 
Cymry  of  Brecheiniog,  Gwent,  and  Gwenttwg  "  resisted  the 
domination "  and  "  threw  off  the  yoke  of  the  French."  '^ 
The  tide  of  Welsh  success  rose  yet  higher.  Some  time  in  the 
same  year  William  son  of  Baldwin,  the  founder  of  the  castle 
of  Rhyd  y  Gors,  died.  Till  now,  under  his  personal  direction 
or  that  of  his  officers,  this  castle  had  held  out  against  all  the 
efforts  of  the  Welsh ;  but  no  sooner  had  he  died  than  its 
garrison  deserted,  leaving  the  fortress  empty  and  open  to 
the  enemy.  Following  up  this  fresh  success,  Uchtrud  ab 
Edwin  and  Howel  ab  Goronwy,  with  many  chieftains  of  the 
cenedl  of  Cadwgan,  marched  again  against  Pembroke. 
They  failed  to  take  the  castle,  but  they  despoiled  its  territorj^ 
of  its  cattle,  ravaged  the  whole  country,  and  with  immense 
booty  returned  home.* 

At  the  same  time  there  was  fighting  in  the  lands  between 
the  Usk  and  the  Wye,  and  between  the  Usk  and  the 
Rymney,  though  how  far  there  was  any  concert  between 
the  chieftains  of  the  south-east  and  of  the  north  we  cannot 
say.  The  result  was  evidently  for  the  moment  favourable 
to  the  Welsh,  and  made  the  positions  of  the  Normans  in 
those  parts '  dangerous.  For  we  read  that  the  French 
(operating  we  know  not  from  where)  sent  an  army  into 
Gwent,  but,  like  the  forces  of  William,  empty  and  without 


1  "  Brut,"  j.a.  1093.      "Ann.  Catnbr.,"  1095. 

■-  "Brut,"^,«.  1093.      "Ann.  Camb.,"  j.a.  1095:     "vacuus  ad  sua  rediit." 
3  "  Brut,"  J-.<2.  1094.      "Ann.  Camb.,"  j.a.  1096. 

•*  Ibid.      Giraldus  ("Itin.  Cambr.,"i.  12)  gives  some  stories  about  this  siege. 
His  dates  are  wrong.    See  Freeman,  Wm.  R.,  ii.  109,  note. 


286  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

having  gained  anything  they  were  obliged  to  retreat.  Less 
fortunate  than  the  forces  of  the  king,  on  the  return  march 
they  were  cut  off  and  defeated  at  Ketti  Carnant.  Soon 
after  a  larger  force,  raised  with  a  view  of  crushing  the  whole 
of  the  country,  sustained  a  like  fate,  being  defeated  at 
Aberttech  by  the  sons  of  Idnerth  ab  Cadwgan.^  So  far 
the  success  of  the  Cymry  in  the  rebellion  had  been 
singularly  great;  but  early  in  1097  Gerald  of  Windsor 
took  the  offensive,  and  ravaged  the  land  of  D}'fed  up  to 
the  boundaries  of  the  church  of  St.  David.  Once  more 
William  Rufus  determined  to  go  to  the  aid  of  his  vassals 
in  the  west.  Gathering  an  army,  soon  after  Easter  he 
entered  Wales  ;  led  by  native  guides,  he  penetrated  far  into 
the  country^  but  with  no  practical  result,  though  some  of  the 
Cymric  lords  made  formal  submission.  He  returned  to 
England  for  the  Whitsuntide  festival,  but  before  Midsummer 
he  again  set  forth  with  an  army  of  cavalry  and  foot  soldiers, 
and  for  the  third  time  entered  and  proceeded  far  into 
Wales.  He  remained  there  for  several  weeks.  To  the 
Welsh  chiefs  this  new  host  seemed  invincible  ;  following 
their  usual  practice,  they  avoided  any  engagement.  Great 
though  was  the  number  of  the  Norman  host,  they  were  not 
able,  or  else  did  not  dare,  to  seek  out  their  enemies  in  the 
mountains  and  forests  to  which  they  prudently  retreated, 
and,  to  use  the  words  of  the  Welsh  chronicler,  they  only 
"skulked  about  the  level  plains."  According  to  the  "Brut," 
the  Welshmen,  evidently  conscious  of  their  weakness  in 
numbers,  not  confiding  in  themselves,  "  placed  their  hope  in 
God,  the  Creator  of  all  things,  by  fasting  and  praying  and 
giving  alms  and  undergoing  severe  bodily  penance."  Though 
we  know  that  the  Cymry  were  religious  enough  upon  occasion 
yet,  reading  between  the  lines  of  the  English  and  Welsh 
sources  of  information,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  infer  from 
all  this  that  the  clergy  were  in  league  with  Cadwgan  and 

1   "  Brut,'"  j-.iz.  1094,      "Ann.  Camb.,"  j-.*/.   1096. 


HISTORY   OF   WALES,    1066— 1282.  287 

were  properly  rewarded,  and  probably  also  that  the  "native 
guides"  led  the  invincible  host  along  the  ways  which  the 
Cymric  leaders  desired  them  to  go.  Anyhow,  William's 
third  campaign  ended  like  the  others  :  he  lost  much  in 
men  and  horses,  and  "eke  in  other  things,"  and  returned  some 
time  in  August.  William's  three  campaigns  were  failures ; 
he  and  his  commanders  had  not  learned  what  experience 
had  taught  Harold.^  Cavalry — especially  knights  in  armour 
— could  do  nothing  against  lightly-armed  and  agile  infantry 
led  by  men  who  knew  every  inch  of  the  land  they  were 
defending.  But  now  the  Norman  warriors  gradually  took 
to  heart  the  lessons  of  recent  campaigns,  and  saw  that  it 
was  in  castle-building  on  every  coign  of  vantage  that  this 
Welsh  land  was  to  be  really  subdued.  They  persevered, 
and  in  the  long  run  attained  their  object. 

Up  to  this  time  the  revolt  of  the  Cymry  against  the  rule 
of  the  invaders  had  been  attended  with  unexpectedly  great 
success.  They  had  recovered  for  the  moment  the  control 
of  the  greater  part  of  the  land  that  had  been  Cymru  before 
the  conquest  of  England.  But  in  1098  the  whole  scene 
changes.  Till  then  Cadwgan  seems  to  have  been  able  to 
keep  the  Cymric  chieftains  in  active  alliance  for  a  longer 
period  than  usual,  but  suddenly  he  (the "Brut"  joins  Gruffyd 
ab  Cynan  with  him)  appears  to  have  been  obliged  to  take 
a  defensive  attitude.  The  great  border  earls,  Hugh  the 
Fat  of  Chester  and  Hugh  the  Proud  of  Shrewsbury,  of 
whom  we  have  heard  nothing  for  some  time,  determined  to 
make  an  expedition  to  Mon.  Cadwgan  and  his  allies 
according  to  the  "Brut"  retreated  to  the  strongest  places, 
but  according  to  the  "  Annales"  to  the  island  itself  They 
enlisted  into  their  service  a  fleet  of  pirates  or  vikings 
(gentiles  de  Ybernia).  Whether  this  was  before  or  after  this 
new  Norman  expedition  had  reached  M6n  is  not  clear,  but 

^  "Brut,"  s.a.  1095.  "Ann.  Camb.,"  s.a.  1097.  "  Eng.  Chion.,"  s.a. 
1097. 


288  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (ckap.  vii.) 

it  is  said  that  the  Cymric  leaders  agreed  in  council  to  save 
the  island.  The  two  earls  reached  Abertteiniog,  and  en- 
trenching themselves  began  the  rebuilding  or  repair  of  the 
castle.  Whatever  were  the  efforts  made  by  the  Welsh 
leaders,  they  were  made  in  vain.  There  were  influences 
of  the  usual  character  at  work  undermining  the  power  ot 
the  military  leaders  of  the  Cymry,  and,  "for  fear  of  the 
treachery  of  their  own  men,"  Cadwgan  and  Gruffyd  fled  to 
Ireland.^  Mon  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  earls.  They  and 
their  followers  behaved  with  a  cruelty  excessive  even  in 
this  period  ;  they  did  not  simply  slay,  but  blinded  and 
ferociously  mutilated  those  of  the  native  enemy  on  whom 
they  could  lay  their  hands. 

The  sequence  of  events  in  this  year  is  quite  obscure, 
but  the  result  is  plain  enough.  The  combination  which 
the  authority  and  ability  of  Cadwgan  had  brought  about 
fell  to  pieces  (perhaps  only  from  the  inconstancy  of  the 
people,  but  perhaps  also  from  reverses  of  which  we  are 
not  informed),  and  the  work  of  the  last  four  years  was 
quickly  undone.  The  Cymry,  however,  had  some  revenge, 
for  the  Norman  earls,  while  mercilessly  punishing  the 
natives  of  Mon,  were  called  upon  to  reckon  with  Magnus 
son  of  Olaf  of  Norway,  who  was  roving  about  the  west 
coast  of  Britain.^  He  one  day  appeared  off  Abertteiniog 
with  some  of  his  ships,  and  an  engagement  was  brought 
on  between  the  Normans  and  the  crews  of  his  vessels. 
Magnus  by  an  arrow  sped  from  his  own  bow  killed  Hugh 
of  Shrewsbury,  who  w^as  leading  his  men  on  the  sea-shore. 
The  viking,  however,  did  not  stay  to  succour  the  Welsh, 
but  sailed  off,  and  so,  according  to  the  words  of  the  Brut, 
"  the  French  reduced  all,  as  well  great  as  small,  to  the  level 


1  '-Brut,"  s.a.   1096.       "Ann.   Camb.,"  s.a.   1098.       *' Flor.  Wig.,"  s.a. 
1098. 
-  As  to  the  expedition  of  Magnus,  see  Freeman,  Wm.  R.  ii. ,  126. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  289 

of  Saxons."^  Of  what  went  on  in  the  south  we  know 
little,  though  the  later  events  show  that  the  Norman  lords 
recovered  and  strengthened  the  position  they  had  already 
occupied,  and  continued  to  extend  their  dominions.  The 
slaying  of  Lewelyn,  one  of  the  sons  of  Cadwgan,  in  the 
next  year  (1099),  i^  ^  conflict  with  the  men  of  Brecheiniog 
(probably  the  men  of  Bernard  of  Newmarch),  seems  to 
mark  the  end  of  the  revolt  in  south-east  VVales.^ 

Some  time  in  the  course  of  1099  Cadwgan  and  Gruffyd 
returned  from  Ireland.  The  former  made  peace  with  the 
Normans,  and  received  Keredigion  and  part  of  Powys.^ 
Gruffyd  obtained  possession  of  Mon,  whether  by  force  or 
not  is  uncertain,  but  it  seems  clear  that  he  did  not  obtain 
a  grant  from  the  king,  at  any  rate  at  this  time.  Matters 
remained  in  this  position  in  Wales  during  iioo — the  year 
in  which  William  Rufus  was  killed  and  Henry  I.  became 
king.  In  iioi,  however,  the  revolt  of  Robert  de  Belleme 
had  important  effects  on  the  affairs  of  the  west.  Robert 
and  Arnulf  his  brother,  on  breaking  with  the  king,  asked 
for  the  assistance  of  Cadwgan  and  his  brothers  lorwerth 
and  Maredud,  whom  they  regarded,  and  seemingly  legally, 
as  their  vassals.  The  Welsh  princes  complied  with  the 
request  or  command  of  the  rebel  earls,  and  repaired  to  them 
at  Shrewsbury,  where  they  were  received   "  magnificently 

^  Freeman  thought  these  words  had  a  strange  sound.  So  they  have,  if  the 
Rolls  translation  is  taken  literally.  There  Ab  Ithel  translates  the  Welsh  text 
thus:  "  The  French  reduced  all  .  .  .  /^ /^^  Saxons."  But  the  Welsh  words 
are  :  "A  dcyn  aoruc  y  Freinc  oil  a  maor  a  bychan  hyt  ar  y  Saeson."  What 
the  Welsh  writer  meant  was  that  the  Normans  reduced  the  Cymry  to  the 
level  of  the  conquered  Saxons.  '*  Hyt  ar  y  Saeson  "  is  equivalent  to  "usque 
ad  Saxones."  The  word  "  Saeson"  was  long  a  term  of  contempt  among  the 
Cymry. 

■^  "Brut,"j.«.  1097.      "Ann.  Camb.,"  j-.a.  1099. 

3  "Brut,"5.a.  1097  (really  1099).  "Ann.  Camb.,"  j.a.  1099.  Cadwgan 
seems  to  have  received  the  lands  as  feudal  tenant  from  Robert  de  Belleme,  who 
was  now  Earl  of  Shrewsbury.  See  "Brut,"  s.a.  iioo  :  "Robert  and  Amulf 
invited  the  Britons  who  were  subject  to  them  in  respect  of  their  possessions  and 
titles,  etc." 

W.P.  U 


290  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

and  honourably."  The  earls  made  great  promises,  and 
"gladdened  the  country  with  liberty."  Cadwgan  called 
together  the  host  of  the  territories  of  the  house  of  Bled}'n, 
and  together  with  the  earls  obtained  temporary  successes. 
Henry,  however,  speedily  laid  siege  to  Bridgenorth,  the 
principal  castle  of  Robert,  and  at  the  same  time  astutely 
resorted  to  arts  of  diplomacy.  William  Pantulf  was  on  the 
side  of  the  king,  and  opened  negotiations  with  lorwerth 
with  a  view  to  detaching  the  Welsh  from  the  Norman  rebels. 
The  result  of  the  dealings  between  William  and  lorwerth 
was  that  Henry  promised  lorwerth,  if  he  would  come 
over  to  his  side,  with  the  Welsh  forces,  that  he  would  grant 
him  for  his  own  (Henry's)  life  Powys,  Ceredigion,  half  of 
Dyfed,^  Ystrad  Towi,  Cidweli,  and  Gower,  without  homage 
and  without  tribute.  lorwerth  was  taken  in,  and,  without 
informing  his  brothers,  accepted  the  king's  terms.  lorwerth 
went  to  the  castle  of  the  king,  and  sent  orders  to  the  Welsh 
forces  to  turn  against  Robert.  They  obeyed,  and  thoroughly 
despoiled  the  territory  of  the  earls,  collecting  immense 
booty.  Their  work  was  probably  made  easier  by  the  fact 
that  Robert  was  taken  by  surprise,  and  the  spoil  was 
greater  because  the  earl  had  placed  such  confidence  in  his 
Welsh  allies  that  he  had  sent  his  "dairies,  cattle,  and 
riches  "  amongst  them  for  safety. 

Before  the  end  of  the  year  Robert  submitted,  and  was 
allowed  to  cross  over  to  Normandy.  We  have  no  ex- 
planation of  the  way  in  which  lorwerth  induced  the  W^elsh 
to  follow  him  without  any  apparent  sanction  on  the  part 
of  Cadwgan  or  Maredud,  but  there  was  an  immediate 
quarrel  among  the  brothers.  lorwerth  seized  Maredud 
and  caused  him  to  be  confined  in  one  of  the  king's 
prisons,  but  conferred  on  Cadwgan  a  portion  of  that  great 
area  which  he  assumed  the  king  would  grant  him.     Henry, 

^  •'  As  the  other  half  bad  been  given  to  the  son  of  Baldwin."     "  Brut,"  s.a. 

I  100. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  291 

however,  had  been  simply  using  lorwerth  as  a  tool,  and 
refused  to  perform  his  bargain.  Pembroke  was  given  to 
one  Saer,  from  whom  it  passed  in  1 104  to  Gerald  of 
Windsor,  who  had  been  for  some  years  holding  it  as 
steward.  Ystrad  Towi,  Cidweli,  and  Gower  were  granted 
to  Howel  ab  Goronwy.  Unless  there  is  some  explana- 
tion, Henry  was  guilty  not  only  of  a  mean  duplicity, 
but  of  brutal  cruelty  as  well.  He  caused  lorwerth,  now 
apparently  no  longer  in  command  of  any  force,  to  be 
brought  before  the  Council  at  Shrewsbury  on  a  charge 
of  treason.  The  Welsh  prince  was  convicted,  fined,  and 
cast  into  prison,  not  as  the  Welsh  chronicler  justly  says, 
according  to  right,  but  according  to  might.  He  was  kept 
in  confinement  till  1109,  when  the  king  "remembered 
the  imprisonment  of  lorwerth,"  and  released  him  on  hard 
conditions.^ 

The  settlement  of  Welsh  affairs  made  by  Henry  in  1 102 
was  then  this  : — The  Norman  lords  retook  or  retained  the 
fortresses  that  they  had  built ;  the  land  of  Deheubarth  and 
Powys  not  actually  in  Norman  hands  was  divided  between 
Howel  ab  Goronwy  and  the  descendants  of  Bledyn.  The 
former  received  Ystrad  Towi,  Cidweli,  and  Gower  as  fiefs 
from  the  king,  and  Cadwgan  and  other  former  members 
of  the  cenedl  of  Bledyn  were  expressly  or  tacitly  con- 
firmed in  the  possession  of  Ceredigion  and  parts  of  Powys 
on  terms  of  vassalage.  In  the  north  Gruffyd  still  held 
Mon,  and  probably  some  parts  of  Gwyned  on  the  main- 
land. Except  the  North  Welsh  prince,  the  members  of  the 
Welsh  princely  families  were  now  practically  in  the  position 
of  tenants  in  capita  of  Henry.  Cadwgan's  temporarily 
successful  attempt  to  shake  off  the  Norman  yoke  had  failed, 
and  the  new  settlers  had  a  .still  firmer  grip  on  Welsh 
territory. 

^  The  main  authorities  for  these  events,  so  far  as  the  Welsh  were  concerned 
in  them,  are  the  "  Brut,"  and  "Ann.  Camb." 

U    2 


292  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Howel  ab  Goronwy  did  not  long  enjoy  the  possessions  he 
had  received  from  the  king.  He  was  a  grandson  of  Rhys 
ab  Tewdwr,  but  had  been  false  to  the  cause  of  Cymric 
independence.  He  was  at  feud  with  the  house  of  Bledyn, 
and  was  soon  in  trouble  with  Richard  son  of  Baldwin  as  to 
Rhyd  y  Gors  Castle.  As  we  gather,  Howel  claimed  it  as 
part  of  his  dominion,  but  it  is  not  likely  that  this  claim  was 
acquiesced  in,  though  when  we  last  heard  of  it  it  had  been 
deserted  by  its  Norman  garrison.  It  was  now,  however, 
again  in  "  French  "  hands.  Through  this  quarrel  Howel  was 
expelled  from  his  dominions,  but  he  quickly  retaliated, 
raided  the  Norman  territory  and  killed  many  of  the 
"  French  who  were  returning  home,"  and  regained  posses- 
sion of  his  land.  But  in  the  following  year  (1105)  he  fell  a 
victim  to  a  conspiracy  formed  among  his  own  surroundings, 
which,  without  an  undue  stretch  of  imagination,  we  may 
believe  to  have  been  instigated  by  Cadwgan  or  some  of  his 
kinsmen.  Howel,  following  the  custom  of  the  times,  had 
given  one  of  his  sons  in  fosterage  to  Gwgawn,  "  whom  of  all 
men  he  most  trusted."  From  some  motive  (but  as  if  to  give 
point  to  the  observations  of  Giraldus  as  to  foster-fathers) 
Gwgawn  either  began  or  joined  in  a  plot  against  Howel. 
According  to  the  story  handed  down  to  us,  he  invited 
Howel  to  his  house,  having  in  the  meantime  arranged  with 
the  "  French "  that  a  band  should  be  in  a  place  near  the 
house,  where  they  were  to  wait  till  the  appointed  time. 
They  agreed  ;  Howel,  without  suspicion,  accepted  the 
invitation  and  went  to  Gwgawn's  residence.  The  "  French,'* 
as  arranged,  about  daybreak  surrounded  the  house  where 
the  prince  was  sleeping  ;  at  the  given  signal  they  gave  a  loud 
shout  ;  Howel  awaking  sought  for  his  sword  and  spear,  but 
found  they  had  been  taken  away ;  he  called  for  his  men-at- 
arms,  but  they  had  deserted.  He  escaped  from  the  house, 
but  was  pursued  and  captured  by  Gwgawn  and  his  men. 
They  brought   him,  already  nearly  dead  from  strangling, 


; 


HISTORY   OF   WALES,    1066— 1282.  293 

to  the  Norman  band,  by  whom  he  was  unmerciful!}' 
beheaded.^ 

The  considerable  area  given  by  Henry  to  this  Howel  was 
not,  it  would  seem,  again  granted  to  one  man,  but  we  sub- 
sequently find  diverse  portions  of  it  in  the  possession  of 
Welshmen.  They  indulged,  as  usual,  in  raiding  adjoining 
territories  and  in  killing  and  sometimes  mutilating  one 
another.  But  now  the  process  of  fusion  between  them  and 
the  Norman  lords  was  going  on,  and  the  whole  of  the  south 
was  rapidly  assuming  a  frankly  feudal  aspect.  While  the 
princes  and  the  more  important  uchelwyr  were  ruining  them- 
selves by  their  incessant  quarrels,  the  men  of  smaller  posses- 
sions or  pretensions  and  the  inferior  orders  over  a  good  deal 
of  the  country  generally  stuck  to  their  lands,  notwithstanding 
the  changes  among  their  overlords.  When  the  lord  over 
them  was  a  Cymro,  the  Welsh  customs  continued  in  force ; 
when  he  was  Norman,  the  Norman-English  laws  prevailed 
as  a  rule,  though  in  some  instances  Welsh  law,  more  or  less 
modified,  was  recognised  over  the  whole  or  part  of  the 
lordship. 

In  1 108  Cadwgan  was  still  in  undisturbed  possession  of 
Ceredigion  and  the  parts  of  Powys  which  he  had  received 
from  Henry.  He  had  in  his  earlier  years  displayed 
capacity  above  the  average,  but  from  causes  which  can 
only  be  conjectured  he  had  now  become  a  somewhat  weak 
and  incompetent  ruler.  His  few  remaining  years  were 
clouded  in  misfortune,  and  especially  disturbed  by  the 
turbulent  conduct  of  his  son  Owain.  This  man  (whose 
career  is  fully  enough  told  in  the  Chronicles,  and  is  the  most 
romantic  handed  down  to  us)  was  typical  of  the  race  from 
which  he  sprang.  He  possessed  the  best  and  the  worst 
characteristics  of  the  Cymric  princely  families.  His  first 
recorded  feat  is  the  slaying  of  the  sons  of  Trahaiarn  ab 
Caradog.     His  next  adventure  was  an  attack  on  Pembroke 

*  **Brut,"  s.a.  1103  (really  1105). 


294  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Castle  and  the  abduction  of  Nest/  then  the  wife  of  Gerald 
of  Windsor — one  that  influenced  the  whole  of  his  after 
life.  The  story  goes  that  in  1107  Gerald  of  Windsor  was 
still  holding  Pembroke.  He  had  deposited  there  "  all  his 
riches,  with  his  wife,  his  heirs  and  all  dear  to  him,  and  he 
fortified  it  with  a  ditch  and  a  wall  and  a  gateway  with  a 
lock  to  it."  The  next  year  at  Christmastime  Cadwgan 
made  a  feast  in  honour  of  God,  at  which  Owain  was  present. 
The  conversation  turned  upon  the  charms  of  Nest.  Owain, 
fired  by  the  accounts  of  her  beauty,  paid  a  visit  to  Pem- 
broke, and  being  received  as  her  kinsman  (as  in  fact  he 
was)  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  lady.  Soon  afterwards 
with  a  small  band  he  made  a  raid  at  night  on  the  castle, 
set  fire  to  the  houses  near  it,  and  perhaps  to  the  fortress, 
itself  Forcing  an  entrance,  though  Gerald  escaped  by  the 
connivance  of  his  wife,  Owain  carried  away  Nest  as  well 
as  the  children,  and  returned  with  them  and  the  more  usual 
booty  to  his  own  land. 

Cadwgan  was  greatly  disturbed  at  such  an  outrage 
against  a  man  high  in  the  king's  favour.  He  tried  to 
induce  his  son  to  return  to  the  great  steward,  his  wife  and 
the  spoils,  but  in  vain.  The  children  were,  however,  sent 
back,  but  Nest  herself  was  for  the  time  retained. 

Richard,  steward  for  the  king  at  Shrewsbury,  hearing  of 
this  misdeed,  sent  for  Ithel  and  Madog,  sons  of  Rhirid  ab 
Bledyn,  and  persuaded  them  by  large  promises  to  try  to 
seize  Owain,  or,  if  not,  to  expel  both  him  and  Cadwgan 
from  their  country.  Richard  promised  to  procure  for  them 
the  assistance  of  Lywarch  ab  Trahaiarn  (who  was  at  feud 
with  Owain  by  reason  of  the  slaying  of  his  brothers),  and 
also  that  of  Uchtryd  ab  Edwin.  Ithel  and  Madog  collected 
their  men  and  entered  Cadwgan's  country.  Uchtryd  met 
them,  but   seems   to    have  played    a   double    part.      The 

^  Nest  had  been  a  mistress  of  Henry  I.     She  has  been  called  the  "Helen 
of  Wales." 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  295 

inhabitants  fled  in  various  directions.  Cadwgan  and  Owain 
took  refuge  in  a  ship  at  Aberdovey.  The  expedition  did 
not  achieve  much  beyond  creating  the  usual  confusion,  and 
nothing  except  a  few  murders,  the  burning  of  houses,  and 
the  desecration  of  the  church  at  Landewy  Brefi  was 
accomplished.  Owain  with  some  companions  thought  it 
prudent  to  retire  to  Ireland,  while  Ithel  and  Madog  seized 
the  part  of  Powys  that  the  king  had  granted  to  Cadwgan. 
The  latter  secretly  went  to  some  lands  in  Powys  which  he 
possessed  in  right  of  his  wife.  He  soon,  however,  made 
peace  with  the  king,  and  on  the  payment  of  one  hundred 
pounds  was  allowed  to  return  to  Ceredigion  on  condition 
that  there  should  be  neither  communication  nor  friendship 
between  him  and  his  son. 

Owain  thereupon  returned  from  Ireland  and  hied  him  to 
Powys.  He  attempted  to  send  a  message  to  the  king,  but 
no  man  was  bold  enough  to  carry  it.  In  the  meantime 
Madog  ab  Rhirid  had  quarrelled  with  the  Normans  on 
account,  as  he  alleged,  of  robberies  committed  by  the 
Saxons,  and  refused  any  further  to  obey  the  commands  of 
the  steward  of  Shrewsbury.  In  these  circumstances  he 
sought  the  friendship  of  his  former  enemy  Owain,  who, 
nothing  loth,  came  to  an  understanding  with  him.  They 
mutually  vowed  upon  sacred  relics  that  neither  would 
be  reconciled  to  the  king  without  the  other,  and  that  neither 
would  betray  the  other.  They  then  cast  aside  all  pretence 
of  ruling  by  any  law  or  obeying  any  lord  ;  with  armed 
forces  they  wandered  about  the  country  wherever  their 
destiny  might  lead  them.  Making  their  headquarters 
among  the  mountains  and  forests  of  Powys,  they  set  their 
hands  against  every  man.  They  burned  the  hamlets  of 
the  gwyrda  around,  stole  horses  and  cattle,  and  did  not 
disdain  to  carry  off  clothes  or  whatever  they  could  find. 

This  line  of  conduct  was  continued  into  the  following  year 
(i  1 09).     They  were  in  the  habit  of  carrying  off  their  booty 


296  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

into  the  lands  which  had  formerly  been  the  share  of  the 
then  captive  lorwerth.  In  that  year,  however,  the  king,  as 
we  have  mentioned,  released  lorwerth  upon  his  making 
promises  the  performance  of  which  he  was  not  wholly  able 
to  compass,  but  he,  however,  was  allowed  to  return  to  his 
lands.  He  made  kindly  representations  to  the  two  lawless 
chieftains,  pointing  out  the  danger  in  which  Cadwgan  and 
he  himself  were  placed  by  their  wild  lives  ;  he  asked  them 
as  a  relative  and  commanded  them  as  their  lord  not  to 
enter  his  or  his  brother's  territories.  But  Owain  and  Madog 
were  now  desperate  men ;  they  treated  lorwerth's  messages 
with  scorn,  and  frequented  the  forbidden  lands  all  the  more, 
lorwerth,  sincerely  anxious  to  carry  out  the  king's  wishes 
and  restore  some  degree  of  order,  took  stronger  measures 
and  attempted  to  capture  them. 

Hunted  from  place  to  place,  they,  with  their  followers, 
went  over  the  border  of  Meirionyd",  then  possessed  by 
Uchtryd.  Before  they  had  left  Cyfeiliog  they  were  met 
by  the  sons  of  that  chieftain,  who  were,  however,  not  strong 
enough  to  repel  them.  Uchtryd  found  it  necessary  to 
assemble  the  host  of  Meirionyd",  and  came  forward  to 
defend  his  territory  in  well-ordered  array.  Some  part 
of  the  forces  of  the  invaders  seem  to  have  fled — probably 
the  men  of  Madog  ;  but  Owain  advanced  bravely,  and 
the  men  of  Meirionyd,  apparently  awed  either  by  the 
number  of  his  followers  or  his  fame  as  a  warrior,  suddenly 
took  to  flight. 

Owain  and  Madog  then  ravaged  as  usual,  burning 
houses,  but  this  time  killing  the  cattle  because  they  had 
no  place  to  which  to  take  them.  They  however  now 
separated  ;  the  latter  went  into  Powys  and  the  former 
into  Ceredigion.  There  Owain  with  his  band  remained, 
"  dwelling  where  he  thought  proper,"  in  defiance  of 
Cadwgan's  orders.  He  made  a  raid  into  Dyfed,  and 
terrorised     the     whole    country.       Finally,    his    misdeeds 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  297 

culminated  in  the  murder  of  a  Fleming,  one  William  of 
Brabant,  on  the  highroad.  Cadwgan  and  lorwerth,  seriously 
alarmed,  and  unable  to  curb  Owain's  lawlessness,  repaired 
to  the  king  and  obtained  an  interview.  Even  while  they 
were  conversing  news  of  the  murder  of  William  of  Brabant 
was  brought  by  his  brother  to  the  king.  Henry  sternly 
questioned  Cadwgan,  and,  though  satisfied  that  he  was  not 
aiding  Owain,  deprived  him  of  his  lands,  and,  on  condition 
that  he  should  not  set  his  foot  on  his  native  soil,  pensioned 
him.  The  king  bestowed  Ceredigion  on  Gilbert  son  of 
Richard,  the  founder  of  the  house  of  Clare,  who,  having 
collected  a  force,  took  possession  of  that  region,  and  for  a 
time  strengthened  the  Norman  hold  by  building  two  castles  : 
one  at  Lanbadarn,  and  another  near  Aberteivi  at  a  place 
called  Dingeraint. 

When  Owain  heard  that  his  father  was  dispossessed  he 
once  more  retreated  to  Ireland.  His  associate  Madog  had 
gone  there  before  him,  and  it  is  not  without  a  smile  that 
we  can  read  in  the  Chronicle  "  that  not  being  able  to  endure 
the  savage  manners  of  the  Gwydyl"  he  soon  returned, 
leaving  Owain  to  bear  the  ills  of  life  in  Ireland  as  he  might, 
lorwerth  had  not,  like  Cadwgan,  been  detained  by  the  king, 
and  when  Madog  returned  was  occupying  his  land  in  Powys. 
Madog  sought  there  an  abiding-place,  but  he  was  not 
welcomed  by  lorwerth,  and  not  daring  to  seek  his  presence 
he  "  skulked  here  and  there."  lorwerth's  anger  was  such 
that  he  ordered  that  no  man  should  even  venture  to  mention 
the  name  of  Madog. 

Underlying  these  events  we  can  see  two  currents  of 
opinion  among  the  Cymric  chieftains.  The  older  men, 
like  Cadwgan  and  lorwerth,  saw  that  their  only  course  was 
to  retain  possession  of  as  much  of  the  Cymric  land  as 
possible  as  vassals  of  Henry.  The  younger  men  were 
imbued  with  notions  of  an  impossible  independence.  The 
deeds    of    Owain    and    Madog    could    hardly   have    been 


298  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

performed  if  there  had  not  been  a  latent  and  perhaps,  on 
occasion,  overt  sympathy  with  them  on  the  part  of  a  section 
of  the  Cymric  inhabitants.  We  are  now  coming  to  the 
close  of  the  story.  Madog,  smarting  under  his  ill  reception 
by  his  uncle  lorwerth,  planned  a  terrible  revenge.  He  had 
maintained  friendship  with  Lewelyn  ab  Trahaiarn,  of  whom 
we  have  already  heard.  They  jointly  determined  to  kill 
lorwerth,  and,  finding  at  last  a  favourable  time,  Madog, 
with  the  assistance  of  Lewelyn's  men,  attacked  him  at 
Caereinion,  where  he  was  staying  for  the  night.  lorwerth 
bravely  defended  himself,  but  the  timber  building  in  which 
he  was  reposing  was  fired  by  Madog.  lorvverth's  attendants 
fied,  and  seeing  the  house  falling  in  he,  already  sorely 
burnt,  tried  to  escape,  but  rushing  out  of  the  house  he  was 
slain  by  the  spears  of  his  enemies.  Madog  retreated  into 
the  mountain  lands  and  lurked  in  woods  and  recesses,  for 
he  had  yet  another  uncle  to  kill. 

When  tidings  of  the  murder  of  lorwerth  were  brought 
to  Henry  he  released  Cadwgan  and  granted  Powys  to 
him,  at  the  same  time  requesting  him  to  send  messages 
of  forgiveness  to  Owain,  who  was  still  a  fugitive  in  Ireland. 
The  messages  arrived  too  late  to  save  his  father  from 
the  wrath  of  Madog.  Cadwgan  proceeded  to  Powys  and 
stayed  at  Tratlwng  Lewelyn,  "  never  supposing  that  any 
man  could  intend  him  mischief."  Madog  had,  however, 
determined  that  he  should  die,  and  one  day  he  and  his 
band  set  upon  Cadwgan.  The  aged  prince's  men  deserted 
or  were  overcome,  and  Cadwgan,  who  conducted  him.self 
"  weakly,"  was  put  to  death.  Madog  now  boldly  demanded 
from  Richard  of  Shrewsbury  a  grant  of  Cadwgan's  land, 
for  which,  so  the  Chronicle  says,  the  crimes  had  been  com- 
mitted. Richard  temporised,  but  ultimately  gave  him  the 
share  of  the  countr\'  which  he  and  his  brother  Ithel  had 
formerly  possessed.  The  fact  is  that  neither  Henry  nor 
his  officers  on  the  borders  took  much  interest  in  the  feuds 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  299 

between  the  Welsh  princes,  and  were  evidently  quite 
ready  to  condone  the  destruction  of  such  inconstant 
vassals. 

The  remaining  son  of  Bledyn,  Maredud,  on  hearing 
of  the  death  of  Cadwgan,  obtained  from  Henry  the  custody 
of  lorwerth's  lands  till  Owain  should  return  from  Ireland. 
These  events  had  taken  place  in  mo,  and  later  on  in 
the  same  year  Owain  returned  from  Ireland.  Both  he 
and  Madog  had  interviews  with  Henry,  and  were  invested 
with  lands  on  giving  pledges  and  promising  "  much 
money."  ^  But  their  friendship  had  now  ceased,  owing 
to  the  murder  of  Cadwgan,  and  "  each  of  them  avoided 
the  other "  for  a  time.  Peace  was  maintained  in  Powys 
during  nil,  but  in  the  year  after  we  find  Maredud 
making  an  incursion  into  the  lordship  of  Lywarch  ab 
Trahaiarn.  The  expedition  passed  through  Madog's  terri- 
tory. Maredud's  men  by  torturing  a  man  of  the  country 
discovered  the  whereabouts  of  Madog  ;  they  decided  to 
attack  him,  and  by  a  sudden  effort  made  him  a  prisoner, 
slaying  many  of  his  companions.  He  was  brought  to  his 
uncle  Maredud.  Owain,  hearing  of  the  affair,  came  in 
haste  to  the  prince,  who  delivered  Madog  into  his  hands. 
Owain  spared  his  prisoner's  life,  but  ruthlessly  caused  him 
to  be  blinded,  thereby  destroying  his  capacity  for  further 
mischief  We  hear  nothing  more  of  him,  and  Maredud 
and  Owain  divided  between  them  his  share  of  Powys.^ 

During  these  events  Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  was  ruling  in 
Gwyned,  and  consolidating  the  power  of  his  family.  In 
1 1 14,  however,   Hugh,  Earl    of   Chester,    accused    him    of 

1  Madog's  portion  was  Caereinion,  and  a  third  of  Deudwr  and  Aberrhiw. 
Caereinion  and  Deudvvr  were  cymwds  in  Powys.  Y  Rhiw  was  a  cantref  in 
that  ancient  kingdom,  but  does  not  seem  to  have  been  identical  with 
Aberrhiw. 

-  The  '"Brut"  and  "Ann.  Camb."  are  the  authorities  for  the  events  we 
have  been  narrating.  See  the  excellent  lives  of  Cadwgan,  lorwerth,  and 
Owain  in  "Diet.  Nat.  Biog." 


300  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

various  misdeeds,  and  about  the  same  time  Gilbert  Fitz- 
Richard  (who,  as  we  have  seen,  had  become  lord  of 
Keredigion)  complained  of  robberies  made  by  Owain  ab 
Cadvvgan.^  The  king,  believing  the  charges  against 
Owain  at  any  rate  to  be  true,  miade  an  expedition  into 
Wales.  Owain  took  refuge  in  the  mountains  of  Snow- 
don  region ;  Maredud  submitted  at  once.  There  is  no 
record  of  any  fighting,  and  Owain  not  only  made  terms 
with  the  king,  but  was  received  into  favour  and  accom- 
panied him  in  an  honourable  capacity  to  Normandy. 
Gruffyd  made  peace  on  payment  of  a  large  tribute.  The 
kingdom  or  principality  of  Powys  was  now  practically  at  an 
end,  and  the  surviving  members  of  the  Welsh  princely 
cenedloed  of  that  region  had  become  vassals  of  the  king. 
The  whole  of  Cymru  except  Gwyned  was  divided  between 
Norman  and  Welsh  lords,  who  came  to  be  called  Lords- 
Marchers.  The  subsequent  history  of  the  south  and  central 
Wales  resolves  itself  into  the  records  of  quarrels  between 
these  lords  and  the  rise  and  fall  of  baronial  families. 

The  end  of  Owain  ab  Cadwgan's  stormy  career  may  be 
told  in  a  few  words.  Gruffyd,  a  son  of  that  Rhys  ab 
Tewdwr  who  had  fallen  in  1093,  had  been  taken  for  safety 
with  some  of  his  kin  to  Ireland.  About  11 12  he  returned 
to  what  the  ''  Brut "  calls  his  patrimony,  but  for  two  years 
he  led  a  somewhat  wandering  life.  The  spirit  of  inde- 
pendence was  not  yet  wholly  quelled  in  the  south,  and  the 
hopes  of  the  Cymry  were  now  set  upon  this  young  prince. 
How  far  Gruffyd  actually  encouraged  these  aspirations  at 
this  time  we  do  not  know,  but  the  fact  that  he  was  or 
might  be  dangerous  to  the  Norman  interests  was  brought 
to  the  notice  of  Henry.  Hearing  of  this  circumstance,  he 
took  refuge  with  his  namesake  in  the  north,  who  received 
him    with    favour.       Henry   now   summoned    Gruff}'d   ab 

^  The  "Brut  "places  this  in  nil,  but  the  "  Eng.  Chron."  in  iii4("Chron. 
Tetrib."  s.a.)y  which  is  the  right  date. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  301 

Cynan  to  his  presence.  With  his  usual  prudence  he  obeyed 
the  call,  met  the  king,  and  at  his  instance  promised  to 
secure  Gruffyd  ab  Rhys  and  send  him  a  prisoner  to 
England,  or  else  to  compass  his  death.  The  young  Gruffyd, 
however,  had  received  tidings  of  this  treachery,  and  he 
escaped,  first  to  the  church  of  Aberdaron,  and  thence  to 
Ystrad  Towi,  where  he  collected  a  force.  In  11 16  he  was 
raiding  in  various  directions  in  South  Wales.  Owain  ab 
Cadwgan  was  still  with  Henry,  who  commissioned  him  and 
Lywarch  ab  Trahaiarn  to  expel  "  that  thief"  Gruffyd  ab 
Rhys.  They  promptly  collected  an  army  and  proceeded  to 
Ystrad  Towi.  Owain  harried  the  country,  and  some  of 
the  people  fled  to  Carmarthen.  At  this  time  a  force  of 
Flemings  led  by  Gerald  of  Windsor,  apparently  acting 
independently  of  Owain  and  Lywarch,  was  marching  from 
Rhos  in  Dyfed  towards  Carmarthen,  as  we  understand 
with  the  intention  of  putting  down  Gruffyd  ab  Rhys. 
The  inhabitants,  who  had  fled  at  the  approach  of  Owain, 
complained  to  Gerald  of  their  having  been  attacked  and 
robbed.  The  story  reads  as  if  the  fugitives  did  not  under- 
stand that  it  was  not  Owain  the  bandit,  but  Owain  in  a 
new  character,  who  was  coming  into  the  country,  nor  is  it 
clear  whether  Gerald  knew  of  the  king's  commission,  but 
it  may  be  that  there  was  treachery  on  his  part  or  perhaps 
that  the  king  had  led  Owain  into  a  trap.  However  this 
may  be,  Gerald,  who  had  of  course  never  forgotten  the 
insult  that  in  earlier  days  had  been  put  upon  him,  incited 
his  Flemings  against  Owain.  The  forces  met.  The 
Flemings  were  the  attacking  party  ;  Owain  bore  the  assault 
bravely,  but  in  the  first  discharge  of  arrows  he  himself  fell 
wounded  ;  dismayed  by  the  fall  of  their  leader,  his  men 
fled,  and  he  was  promptly  despatched. 

"  Thus,"  says  Warrington,  "  died  this  bold  and  profligate 
chieftain  agreeably  to  the  tenour  of  his  life."  We  cannot 
deny  the  boldness  and  the  profligacy ;  but  perhaps  a  broad 


302  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

consideration  of  the  circumstances  under  which  he  ran  his 
short  and  violent  course  may  lead  to  a  lenient  judgment 
on  the  character  and  conduct  of  a  man  of  great  energy  and 
bravery.  For  the  Norman  conquest  of  England  there  was 
some  show  of  justification.  The  claims  of  Harold  to  the 
crown  were  not  legally  stronger  than  those  of  the  Conqueror. 
But  for  the  overrunning  of  Cymru  by  the  more  needy 
or  ambitious  of  the  followers  of  William  and  his  successors 
there  was  no  moral  justification.  The  Cymric  leaders 
had  welcomed  the  overthrow  of  Harold,  and  neither  mere 
border  foray  nor  intestine  quarrel  could  excuse  the  whole- 
sale seizure  of  the  lands  of  the  Welsh  princely  and  noble 
families  which  had  been  in  the  possession  of  their  cenedloed 
for  centuries,  or  justify  the  breaking-up  of  a  social  and 
legal  organisation  which  contained  in  itself  the  elements 
of  national  progress,  and  which  would  in  all  probabilit)' 
have  resulted  in  a  stable  polit}^,  had  it  been  allowed  to 
develop  without  interference,  under  men  like  Gruffyd  ab 
Lewelyn,  Bledyn,  and  Cadwgan.  Owain  and  Madog  were 
men  who  were  suffering  under  the  sense  of  grievous  wrong, 
and  though  we,  writing  calmly,  may  condemn  them  as 
impolitic  and  imprudent,  or,  judging  by  modern  standards, 
censure  many  of  their  acts  as  criminal,  a  truer  criticism  will 
accord  some  tribute  of  admiration  to  their  intrepidity  in 
fighting  fearful  odds — odds  against  them  at  home  and  odds 
against  them  beyond  the  borders  of  their  native  land. 

For  some  years  longer  Maredud  ab  Bled^yn  and  the 
remaining  sons  of  Cadwgan  upheld  the  claims  of  their 
cenedl  t)  the  sovereignty  of  so  much  of  Powys  as  was 
not  in  the  hands  of  Norman-English  lords.  Encouraged, 
perhaps,  by  the  drowning  of  Richard,  Earl  of  Chester,  in 
the  White  Ship,  they,  in  the  course  of  1121,  rose  and  gave 
cause  of  offence.  Henry,  deeming  the  matter  serious  enough 
to  make  another  expedition  necessary,  entered  Wales  with 
an  "  immense  and  cruel  army."     Maredud  and  his  friends 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  303 

appealed  to  Gruffyd:  ab  Cynan  for  help,  but  he,  with  a 
prudence  unusual  among  the  Welsh  chieftains,  refused  to 
join  them,  and  even  threatened  active  opposition  if  they 
came  over  the  border  of  his  dominion.^  The  lords  of  Powys 
took  counsel  together,  and  decided  to  adopt  the  defensive 
attitude.  The  king  marched  into  Powys,  and  there  was  at 
any  rate  one  engagement,  during  which  an  arrow  struck 
the  king,  but,  owing  to  the  strength  of  his  breast-plate, 
glanced  off.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  arrow  was  sped  by 
a  Welsh  archer  or  by  one  of  Henry's  force,  though  the 
"  Brut "  is  probably  right  when  it  claims  that  it  was  directed 
by  one  of  "  the  young  men  "  sent  forward  by  Maredud  to 
harass  the  enemy  in  their  advance.  Henry  behaved  with 
cowardice,  and,  greatly  disconcerted,  entered  into  negotia- 
tions, which  led  to  the  renewed  submission  of  the  Welsh 
leaders.  Maredud  and  his  allies  ''came  under  the  king's 
peace."^  He  did  not  again  imbroil  himself  with  the  king, 
but  he  was  involved  in  many  domestic  quarrels,  and 
behaved  with  great  cruelty  to  his  relatives.  He  died  in 
1 1 29  or  1 1 30  in  the  odour  of  sanctity.  The  "  Brut "  describes 
him,  with  more  generosity  than  justice,  as  the  "ornament, 
and  safety,  and  defence  of  all  Powys."  ^ 

The  ruin  of  the  house  of  Bledyn,  so  far  as  any  claim  to 
sovereignty  was  concerned,  was  now  complete.  The  king- 
doms of  Deheubarth  and  Powys,  like  the  smaller  regions  of 
Dyfed,  Morganwg,  Gwent,  Brecheiniog,  and  the  rest,  were 
destroyed  as  existing  entities,  save  so  far  as  occasional 
pretensions,  the  imagination  of  bards,  or  the  friendly  flattery 
of  the  adherents  of  the  Cymric  lords  can  be  said  to  have 
kept  them  alive.  In  the  south  and  in  Powys  the  posses- 
sion of  the  descendants  of  the  princely  houses  dwindled 
down  to  cymwds  or  cantrefs,   largely   those  of  the  more 

1  "Brut,"j.a.  118. 

2  //?i(/.  "Ann.  Camb.,"  s.a.  1120,     Freeman,  "  Norm.  Conq.,"  v.  212. 

3  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1 129. 


304  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

mountainous  parts  of  the  country,  held  more  or  less  volun- 
tarily as  vassals  of  the  Norman  king  ;  but  in  these  sadly- 
diminished  areas  the  cyfraith  gyffredin  (common  law)  of 
Cymru  was  still  the  rule  of  right.  The  chieftains,  though 
reduced  in  power,  kept  up  according  to  their  means  the 
household  state  found  in  Howel's  laws,  haughtily  cherished 
the  memories  of  a  departed  greatness,  and  alternately 
sullenly  acquiesced  in  the  new  state  of  things  and  eagerly 
seized  an  opportunity  for  revenge  against  Norman,  Saxon, 
and  Cymric  neighbour  alike.  Notwithstanding  that  during 
the  twelfth  century  the  line  of  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr,  in  the 
persons  of  the  two  of  its  members  who  most  clearly  emerge 
to  our  view — Gruffyd"  ab  Rhys  and  Rhys  ab  Gruffyd — 
carried  on,  with  occasional  very  considerable  successes, 
warfare  with  the  intruding  Norman  lords,  and  even  the 
king  of  England,  the  hold  of  the  central  government  was 
never  permanently  relaxed,  except  during  the  seventeen 
years  of  Stephen's  unhappy  reign,  and  the  policy  of  conquest 
by  settlement  went  on  relentlessly. 

We  must  here  pause  for  a  moment  to  make  a  few 
observations  on  the  legal  aspect  of  the  events  that  we  have 
been  narrating.  As  will  be  seen  b\'-and-by,  the  whole  of 
the  Cymric  lands,  except  that  portion  of  the  north  which 
remained  in  the  possession  of  Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  and  his 
descendants,  became  known  as  the  Marches  of  Wales.  By 
the  time  that  we  have  reached  it  seems  to  us  that  the  whole 
of  the  country  except  Gwyned  had,  as  we  have  said,  now 
been  feudalised,  for  there  is  a  great  deal  of  evidence  that 
the  Welsh  chieftains  in  the  territories  which  became  the 
Marches  had  familiarised  themselves  with  the  notion  that 
they  held  their  lands  of  the  king  of  England  on  terms 
analogous  to  those  of  the  Lords-Marchers.  Certainly  this 
was  the  case  over  the  greater  part  of  Powys.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  by  Welsh  law  the  uchelwyr  and  free 
tribesmen  did  not,  according  to  theory,  hold  their  land  of 


HISTORY    OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  305 

any  king  or  prince,  though  the  system  was  approximating 
to  the  Norman-EngHsh  notions  of  tenure.  The  introduction 
of  the  first  principle  of  feudal  law  was  encouraged  and 
made  easy  by  the  organisation  of  the  cymwd  as  it  had 
developed  from  the  time  of  the  Cymric  settlement  many 
centuries  before.^ 

The  transition  from  the  ideas  of  land  ownership  found  in 
the  Welsh  codes  to  the  Norman-English  system  was  not 
difficult.  The  kingship, as  we  have  pointed  out,  under  Cymric 
law  was  originally  vested  in  a  family  ;  it  was  not  an  office 
handed  down  from  person  to  person  in  a  defined  order. 
Primogeniture  was  not  a  recognised  principle.  The  chief- 
taincy of  the  kingly  families  was  in  early  times  probably 
transmitted  according  to  the  rules  which  governed  the 
election  to  the  headship  of  any  cenedl ;  but  in  the  Venedo- 
tian  Code  the  heir  was  to  be  sought  in  the  last  king's  near 
relations,  and  was  to  be  one  marked  out  by  him.  Each 
gwlad  was  composed  of  an  aggregate  of  cantrefs  or  cymwds. 
As  the  territorial  idea  became  stronger  and  stronger,  the 
chieftain  of  the  ruling  family  of  the  gwlad  found  it  expe- 
dient for  the  administration  of  his  territory  to  place  his  sons 
or  other  kinsmen  over  this  or  that  cantref  or  cymwd. 
Gradually  these  lords  and  their  descendants  so  planted  about 
the  country  got  to  look  upon  themselves  as  permanently 

^  Mr.  A.  N.  Palmer  says:  "The  cymwd  or  commote  became  almost 
invariably  the  civic  hundred,  and  it  often  became  the  feudal  lordship.  Very 
often,  however,  the  feudal  lordship  was  formed  by  a  group  of  commotes,  each 
of  which  long  retained  a  separate  organisation  and  many  old  Welsh  forms  of 
procedure,  but  was  gradually  assimilated  to  the  English  minor.  It  was  quite 
unusual  for  the  bounds  of  the  commote  to  be  changed."  He  gives  as  examples 
of  lordships  formed  by  grouping  cymwds  those  of  Chirk,  Denbigh,  and 
Dufifryn  Clwyd.  See  his  learned  note  in  App.  to  Report,  447.  See  also 
the  "Memorandum  on  Lordships  and  Manors,"  compiled  by  Mr.  Lenfar 
Thomas  (App.  to  Report,  437) ;  and  especially  notes  contributed  by 
Mr.  Cobb,  F.S.A.  (438),  Mr.  Trevor  P  rk  ns  (449),  Mr.  Williams  (451)', 
Mr.  John  Lloyd  (452),  Mr.  J.  Hobson  Matthews  (459),  and  the  late 
Mr,  J.  Stuart  Corbet  (465). 

W.P.  X 


3o6  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

settled  in  the  cantref  or  cymwd  assigned  to  them,  though 
recognising  their  allegiance  to  the  head  of  their  princely 
cenedl.  The  grants  made  from  time  to  time  to  the 
Church,  with  the  immunities  of  which  w^e  have  spoken 
above,  were  also  factors  in  familiarising  the  minds  of  men 
with  defined  territorial  government.  When  the  Cymric 
families  came  into  contact  with  the  Normans,  with  their 
fully-developed  ideas  of  tenure,  the  transition  from  the  old 
Cymric  tribal  idea  of  the  right  to  possession  of  land  to  that 
of  the  invaders  was  very  rapid,  and  not  long  after  the 
beginning  of  the  twelfth  century  there  is  ample  evidence  of 
the  recognition  by  the  Welsh  princes  over  the  greater  part 
of  Wales  of  this  great  change. 

In  Gwyned  the  position  was,  and  remained  for  a  long 
time,  somewhat  different,  though  it  is  not  very  easy  to 
state  precisely  the  legal  relation  of  its  prince  to  the 
Norman  king.  As  far  back  as  the  time  of  Alfred, 
Welsh  princes  had  commended  themselves  and  after- 
wards repeatedly  did  homage  to  English  kings ;  but  this 
commendation  in  the  eighth,  ninth,  or  tenth  centuries 
was  a  very  different  thing  from  the  receiving  of  a 
definite  area  of  land  from  a  Norman-English  king  in  the 
twelfth  century,  as  for  instance  did  Cadwgan  and  his 
brothers,  Bledyn  and  Rhiwatton  had  undoubtedly  been 
invested  by  Harold,  and  so  far  as  central  and  south  Wales 
were  concerned  this  fact  was  never  lost  sight  of  by  the 
rulers  of  England.  But  Grufifyd"  ab  Cynan  was  not  of  the 
house  of  Cynfyn,  but  a  lineal  descendant  of  Rhodri  Mawr. 
He  conquered  M6n,  and  seems  gradually  to  have  obtained 
possession  of  various  parts  of  the  old  kingdom  of  Gwyned" 
on  the  mainland,  and  we  can  find  no  evidence  that  he  ever 
received  his  possessions  by  any  grant  from  a  Norman  king, 
though  he  did  homage  to  Henry  I.  His  position,  therefore, 
was  different  from  that  of  the  lords  of  the  south.  This 
view    is    confirmed    by   subsequent    events,   and    by    the 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  307 

preamble  of  the  Statute  of  Rhudlan.  The  prince  of  Gwyned 
continued  to  regard  himself  as  a  sovereign  owing  allegiance 
to  the  king  of  England  in  a  personal  capacity,  but  not 
admitting  any  jurisdiction  of  the  royal  court.  As  the  power 
of  the  house  of  North  Wales  increased,  some  of  the  Welsh 
lords  in  areas  outside  Gwyned  acknowledged  its  prince 
as- their  immediate  lord,  and  even  after  the  final  conquest 
by  Edward  L,  and  as  late  as  1354,  an  Act  of  Parliament 
was  deemed  necessary  to  declare  that  all  Lordships- 
Marchers  were  held  of  the  king  and  not  of  the  Prince 
of  Wales.  Whether  these  observations  are  well-founded  or 
not,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Gwyned  did  occupy  a  special 
position,  and  that  it  was  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  after 
the  downfall  of  the  house  of  Bledyn  practically  inde- 
pendent. Henceforth  the  interest  of  Cymric  affairs,  not- 
withstanding the  fitful  struggles  of  the  descendants  of  Rhys 
ab  Tewdwr  in  the  south,  centres  round  the  line  of  Gwyned. 
Gruffyd  ab  Cy nan's  long  reign  came  to  an  end  in  1137,^ 
when  he  died  (having  survived  Henry  I.  by  two  years)  at 
the  age  of  eighty-two,  after  assuming  the  monastic  habit. 
Though  his  attitude  of  isolation,  his  conduct  in  not  joining 
the  lords  of  the  ccntr^  and  the  south  in  resisting  the 
Norman  invasion,  and  his  open  desertion  of  the  cause  of 
Gruffyd  ab  Rhys  have  been  censured,  yet  subsequent 
events  justify  his  prudent  policy,  and  prove  him  to  have 
been  a  wise  and  competent  ruler  in  a  very  difficult  time. 
But  for  his  steady  resolve  to  avoid  wasting  the  strength  of 
Gwyned  in  a  fruitless  attempt  to  hold  all  the  Cymric  land 
and  to  concentrate  all  the  energies  of  the  people  on 
preserving  the  independence  of  the  north-western  districts, 
it  is  probable  that  Gwyned  might  even  thus  early  have 
sustained  the  fate  of  Deheubarth  and  of  Powys.  Gruffyd 
made  Gwyned  for  the  time  the  centre  of  national  life,  and 
the  eagerly-sought  refuge  of  Welshmen  dispossessed  by 

i  "Brut,"j.d'.  1136.      "Ann.  Cambr."  1137.     The  latter  is  the  true  date. 

X    2 


3o8  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Norman  intruders.  The  result  of  his  policy  was  a  great 
revival  of  Cymric  power  under  a  line  of  princes  whose 
capacity  gives  interest,  and  even  lustre,  to  the  annals  of 
Wales  from  this  time  to  the  final  conquest  of  the  princi- 
pality by  Edward  I.  The  space  at  our  command  does  not 
enable  us  to  deal  at  length  with  the  fortunes  of  the  house  of 
Gwyned  during  this  period,  and  we  must  content  ourselves 
with  a  mere  outline  of  the  course  of  events.^ 

Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  left  several  sons.  Owain  (usually 
called  Owain  Gwyned)  succeeded  to  the  principality,  and 
his  brothers  (we  may  assume)  received  shares  of  their 
father's  provisions  in  the  customary  manner.  He  and 
Cadwaladr  had,  before  the  aged  prince's  death,  distin- 
guished themselves  by  raiding  in  the  territories  of  the  lords- 
marchers,  and  had  even  retained,  for  the  time,  some  of  the 
fortresses  which  had  been  built  by  the  invaders.  In  the 
very  year  of  his  accession  Owain  and  his  brother  Cadwaladr 
again  marched  to  the  south,  and  destroyed  several  castles.- 
During  the  seventeen  years  of  Stephen's  troubled  reign  the 
Welsh  were  left  much  to  themselves,  and  the  Norman  lords 
who  had  settled  in  Wales  had  generally  to  depend  on  their 
own  resources.  Owain  was  later  on  troubled  by  a  dispute 
with  Cadwaladr,  who  was  forced  to  flee  into  England,  and 
there  were,  of  course,  constant  feuds  between  the  Welsh 
lords.  It  would  be  tedious  to  recount  the  vicissitudes  of 
petty  local  quarrels  which  had  no  important  consequences, 

^  For  an  excellent  account  of  Gruffyd  see  *'  Diet.  Nat.  Biog."  Consult  (in 
adoption  to  the  usual  sources)  *'  Historia  hen  Gruffud  vab  Kenan  vab  Yago, 
Myv.  Arch,  ii.,  583-605  ;  Arch.  Cambr.,  3rd  series,  1866.  A  Latin  transla- 
tion of  this  life  of  Gruffyd  by  Robinson,  Bishop  of  Bangor  (1566-85),  is  pre- 
served in  the  library  at  Peniarth,  and  is  printed  in  "  Arch.  Cambr.,"  iihi  supra. 
To  Gruffytt  is  popularly  ascribed  the  making  of  regulations  regarding  minstrelsy 
and  minstrels.  See  the '*  Historia  hen  ";  J.  D.  Rhys'  '*  Cambio-Brytannica; 
CymrOiCaeve  Linguae  Institutiones"  (1592^,  translated  in  "Y  Cymmrodor," 
i.  283-293  ;  Stephens'  "  Lie.  of  the  Kymry,"  2nd  edition,  p.  56.  The  bard 
Meilir  composed  an  elegy  on  GrufiVd.     (Stephens,  nbi  supra,  p.  12.) 

-  "Brut,"j.a.  1136 — really  1137. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  309 

and  we  will  content  ourselves  with  stating  that  when,  after 
the  peace  of  Wallingford  and  the  death  of  Stephen, 
Henry  11.  became  king  the  prince  of  Gwyned  had  maten* 
ally  added  to  the  resources  of  his  country  and  re-occupied 
several  places  or  districts  from  which  the  Welsh  had  been 
expelled  earlier  in  the  century;  while  in  the  south  Rhys  ab 
Gruffyd,  who  came  of  the  princely  line  of  Deheubarth,  had 
obtained  several  comparatively  important  successes.^ 

Some  three  years  elapsed  before  hostilities  broke  out 
between  the  new  king  and  Owain,  but  in  1157  Henry 
invaded  North  Wales.  It  is  not  clear  what  provocation 
had  been  given  by  the  Welsh,  but  it  is  probable  the  king  was 
induced  to  take  this  step  at  the  instigation  of  Cadwaladr 
and  of  Madog  ab  Maredud  (one  of  the  lords  of  Powys), 
who  had  both  quarrelled  with  the  prince  of  Gwyned.- 
Henry  advanced  through  "  the  champaign  land  of  Chester." 
Owain,  entrenching  himself  at  Basingwerk,  awaited  him. 
The  king  divided  his  forces  ;  the  main  body  was  directed 
to  proceed  along  the  coast  and  attack  the  Welsh  in  front, 
while  the  king  himself,  intending  to  take  the  enemy  in  flank 
and  to  cut  off  his  retreat  to  the  mountains,  turning  to  his 
own  left,  went  into  the  forest  of  Kennadlawg;  but  his  tactics 
were  anticipated.  He  was  surprised  in  "  the  trackless  wood  " 
by  Davyd  and  Cynan,  two  of  Owain's  sons,  and  defeated. 
It  was  only  with  difficulty  and  loss  that  he  escaped  into 
the  open  country.^  Owain  did  not,  however,  risk  a  pitched 
battle,  but  retreated  to  Kil  Owain,  near  St.  Asaph.  The 
king  gathered  his  army  together  and  proceeded  to  Rhud'lan. 
Owain  then  moved  to  Lwyn  Pina,  and  from  there,  with  the 
help  of  Madog  ab   Maredud  (one  of  the  chief  barons  of 

^  His  father,  Gruffyd  (who  is  described  by  the  "  Brut  "  as  "  the  light  and 
strength  and  gentleness  of  the  men  of  South  Wales  "),  died  in  1137. 

"  The  formal  pretext  for  the  invasion  was  very  likely  that  Owain  had  not 
done  homage. 

^  It  was  probably  in  this  engagement  that  the  Earl  of  Essex,  overcome  by 
terror,  abandoned  the  royal  standard. 


310  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Powys),  harassed  the  king  by  day  and  night.  Henry's 
army  was  supported  by  a  fleet  which  sailed  along  the 
coast ;  a  force  of  seamen  and  "  youths  fit  for  battle  "  effected 
a  landing  in  Mon,  but,  after  some  pillaging  of  churches, 
was  defeated  with  heavy  slaughter  by  the  men  of 
the  island. 

Henry's  attempt  was  a  failure,  but  still  was  not  without 
effect.  Peace  was  quickly  made  on  the  terms  of  Owain's 
doing  homage  and  restoring  Cadwaladr  to  his  share  of  the 
possessions  of  the  late  prince.  In  the  same  or  the  following 
year  all  the  Welsh  princes  or  barons  except  Rhys  ab 
Gruffyd  submitted  to  the  king. 

Rhys  had  been  waging  a  sporadic  warfare  against  the 
neighbouring  lords-marchers  from  the  recesses  of  Ystrad 
Towi.  Henry  sent  him  a  message  ordering  his  attendance 
at  Court  to  do  homage.  Rhys,  acting  on  the  advice  of  his 
uchelwyr,  went  to  the  king,  and  made  his  peace  on  condi- 
tion of  receiving  Cantref  Mawr,  and  such  other  cantref 
as  the  king  should  be  pleased  to  give  him,  "  whole  and  not 
scattered."  Henry  agreed,  but  did  not  literally  perform 
the  condition.  For  some  years  there  was  comparative 
quiet  in  Wales,  and  in  1 164  both  Owain  and  Rhys  appeared 
at  the  council  at  Woodstock  and  renewed  their  homage. 

Rhys,  however,  soon  began  to  raid  the  lands  of  the 
Norman  lords,  because,  as  the  "  Brut "  says,  the  king  did  not 
fulfil  his  promises.  Having  regard  to  the  general  character 
of  the  Norman-English  kings,  we  see  no  reason  to  doubt 
this  view,  or  to  believe  that  Rhys,  who,  on  the  whole,  was 
one  of  the  best  of  the  later  South  Welsh  princes,  and 
afterwards  became  Justiciar  of  South  Wales  under  Henry, 
was  in  the  wrong  in  this  quarrel.  Rh}'s  took,  dismantled, 
and  burnt  the  castle  at  Aber  Rheidol,  and  overran 
Keredigion  a  second  time. 

Probably  encouraged  by  this  success,  and  influenced  by 
circumstances  of  which  we  have  no  knowledge,  the  Welsh 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  311 

barons,  with  Ovvain  at  their  head,  combined  and  joined  in 
the  revolt  begun  by  Rhys.  Davyd  ab  Owain  ravaged 
Tegeingl,  and  Henry,  apprehending  a  further  attack  in 
force  on  the  castles  of  that  cantref,  hastened  to  Rhudlan, 
but,  finding  matters  more  serious  than  he  expected,  after 
staying  there  only  three  nights,  returned  to  England. 
Having  collected  a  mixed  but  large  force,  he  marched  to 
Oswestry.  The  combined  Welsh  hosts  (under  Owain  and 
Cadwaladr,  as  well  as  Owain  Cyfeiliog  and  other  lords  of 
Powys)  encamped  at  Corwen.  There  was,  however,  no 
considerable  engagement.  The  Welsh  adopted  a  defensive 
attitude ;  the  king  hesitated  to  attack.  He  ultimately 
moved  into  the  wood  of  Ceiriog,  causing  ways  to  be  cut  in 
advance  through  the  forest,  and  penetrated  to  the  country 
near  the  Berwyn  range  ;  but  the  weather  having  become 
tempestuous  and  his  supplies  having  failed,  he  was  com- 
pelled to  lead  his  men  to  *'  the  open  plains  of  England," 
and  thence  to  Chester.  Angry  and  disappointed,  he 
cruelly  blinded  some  of  the  Welsh  hostages  who  were  in 
his  custody,  and  abandoned  for  the  time  being  further 
attempts  to  crush  the  Welsh. 

Later  in  the  year  Henry  left  England,  and  was  absent 
for  about  six  years,  during  which,  though  there  were  the 
usual  disputes  and  occasional  raidings  among  the  Welsh 
lords,  there  was  no  warfare  of  consequence.  The  most 
serious  quarrel  was  one  in  1167  between  Owain  and  Rhys 
on  the  one  side,  and  Owain  Cyfeiliog  on  the  other,  in  which, 
after  some  fighting,  the  latter,  with  Norman  aid,  came  off 
the  better  ;  but  in  the  course  of  the  year  Owain  and  Rhys 
took  and  destroyed  the  castles  at  Rhud'lan  and  Prestatyn. 
Nothing  which  tended  to  retard  the  growing  power  of 
Gwyned  occurred  until  the  death  of  Owain  in  11 69  led 
to  a  contest  between  his  sons.  His  later  years  had  been 
clouded  by  a  quarrel  with  the  Church,  caused  partly  by  a 
disputed  election  to  the  see  of  Bangor  and  partly  by  his 


312  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

marriage  with  Crisiant,  his  cousin,  who  was  within  the 
prohibited  degrees  of  consanguinity.  In  the  end  he  was 
excommunicated  by  Archbishop  Thomas  a  Becket,  but, 
notwithstanding  this,  he  received  the  last  sacraments  and 
Christian  burial.  The  Welsh  chronicler  praises  him  as  a 
man  of  "  the  most  extraordinary  sagacity,  nobleness, 
fortitude,  and  bravery."^ 

Upon  Owain's  death  the  succession  to  the  principalit}' 
was  disputed  among  his  sons.  Cadwaladr  did  not  advance 
any  claims,  though  he  survived  his  brother  for  three  or  four 
years.2  Howel  ab  Owain,  the  late  prince's  eldest  son,  and 
Davyd",  his  son  by  Crisiant,  were  both  deemed  illegitimate 
by  the  clergy.  lorvverth,  the  eldest  legitimate  son,  was  for 
some  reason  passed  over  altogether,  though,  as  we  shall  see, 
his  son  Lewelyn  later  on  obtained  Gwyned",  and  raised  the 
principality  to  its  highest  point  of  power  and  renown, 
Howel  had,  as  early  as  1 144,  taken  part  in  military  affairs, 
but  he  is  better  known  as  the  author  of  some  graceful 
poems  than  as  a  warrior.  Immediately  after  Owain's  death 
he  seized  or  was  elected  to  the  inheritance.  But  his  hold 
on  the  country  was  very  slight  (perhaps  on  account  of  the 
Irish  origin  of  Pyvog,  his  mother),  and  Davyd,  who  claimed 
the  throne,  overcame  and  slew  him  in  1170.^  The  victor, 
however,  only  made  good  his  claim  to  part  of  the  territories 
of  Owain.  His  brother  Maelgwn  seized  M6n,  and  other 
members  of  the  family  refused  to  submit.  In  1173  Davyd 
expelled    Maelgwn    from    that    island,    and    by    11 74   had 


^  The  poet  Gwalchmai  celebrates  his  prowess  in  an  ode  upon  which  Gray 
founded  his  fragment  "The  Triumph  of  Owen."  Stephens'  "Lit.  of  the 
Kymry,"  2nd  edition,  p.  i8. 

"  According  to  the  *'  Brut  "  he  died  in  1172. 

^  Howel  ab  Owain  is  celebrated  among  the  bards  of  the  twelfth  century. 
Stephens  says  he  is  "the  most  sprightly  and  charming  poet"  he  has  to 
mention.  (Stephens,  ziln  siipra^  p.  41.)  An  ode  to  him  ])y  Kynctelw,  and  a 
lament  on  his  death  by  Periv  ab  Kedivor,  are  extant.  Kedivor  was  Howel's 
foster-father. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  313 

captured    or   driven    into   exile   all    his    brothers    or   near 
relations  who  refused  to  recognise  his  paramount  position. 

When  the  barons  revolted  against  Henry  II.,  Davyd, 
instead  of  pursuing  the  usual  policy  of  the  Welsh  and 
siding  with  the  rebellious  and  discontented  men  of  the 
realm,  remained  faithful  to  the  king ;  and  it  was  due  to 
this  fact  that  he  was  permitted  to  marry,  in  1 175,  the  king's 
bastard  sister  Emma,  the  daughter  of  Geoffrey  Plantagenet 
by  a  lady  of  Maine.  He  thought,  no  doubt,  that  this 
alliance  would  not  only  make  his  position  in  Gwyned  more 
secure,  but  that  it  would  in  other  ways  be  of  advantage. 
But  while  such  a  connection  did  enhance  the  position  of 
his  family  among  the  great  houses  of  the  whole  country  it 
did  him  no  good  at  home,  and  almost  immediately  there 
were  signs  of  coldness  and  disaffection  towards  him  on  the 
part  of  the  barons  of  North  Wales.  Before  the  end  of  the 
year  his  brother  Rhodri(whom  he  had  treated  badly)  escaped, 
and,  finding  followers,  possessed  himself  of  M6n  and  part 
of  the  mainland,  while  his  nephews,  the  sons  of  Cynan  ab 
Owain,  occupied  Meirionyd.  Davyd  was  unable  to  protect 
himself,  and  was  driven  over  the  Conway.  He  then  turned 
for  assistance  to  the  English  Court,  and  attended  the 
Council  at  Oxford  in  11 77  with  some  of  the  Welsh  barons 
who  were  still  well  affected  to  him,  where  they  swore  fealty 
to  Henry.  Apparently  by  way  of  compensation  for  the 
losses  he  had  sustained,  he  received  a  grant  of  Ellesmere. 
But  his  power  over  Gwyned  now  became  nominal  .;  the 
leaders  of  the  Welsh  were  completely  alienated,  and  his  real 
sway  was  limited  to  Rhudlan  and  the  Vale  of  Clvvyd  with 
his  newly-acquired  estate.  Nothing  is  known  about  him 
for  some  years,  but  we  find  that  in  11 88  he  entertained 
Archbishop  Baldwin  and  Giraldus  Cambrensis  very  hand- 
somely  at    Rhudlan,    on    their    journey   through  Wales.^ 

^  Giraldus  describes  Rhudlan  as  a  very  noble  castle.  "  Itin.  Cambr. ," 
ii.  c.  10. 


314  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Giraldus  notes,  however,  that  even  then  Davyd"  was 
beginning  to  be  harassed  by  Lewelyn  ab  lorwerth  or  his 
adherents.  Henry  11.  died  in  1189,  and  was  succeeded  by 
Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  whose  prolonged  absence  for  man}' 
years  prevented  much  interference  with  Welsh  affairs. 
Lewelyn's  friends  became  more  and  more  numerous  ;  he 
alHed  himself  with  Rhodri,  his  uncle,  and  expelled  Davycl 
even  from  the  Vale  of  Chvyd.  Taking  refuge  in  England 
(probably  residing  in  Ellesmere),  Davyd  lived  on  in 
obscurity,  and  died  unnoticed  in  1203.^ 

During  the  years  after  the  death  of  Owain  Gwyned,  in 
which  Davyd  attempted  and  failed  to  secure  the  actual  rule 
of  the  principality,  Rhys  ab  Gruffyd  (the  representative  of 
the  old  princely  line  of  Deheubarth),  to  whom  we  have  had 
occasion  to  refer  more  than  once  as  the  alty  of  Owain, 
pursued  a  more  successful  career  in  the  south,  though  the 
success  was  purchased  by  a  complete  submission  to  the 
English  crown.  After  reluctantly  doing  homage  to  Henry, 
as  we  have  stated  above,  Rhys,  finding  the  king's  promises 
not  to  be  trusted,  and  that "  he  could  not  preserve  anything 
of  what  the  king  had  given  him  except  by  force  of  arms,"^ 
made  his  headquarters  in  Cantref  Mawr,  and  for  many  years 
engaged  in  almost  continual  warfare  with  the  lords-marchers 
within  his  reach,  and  sometimes  with  his  Welsh  neighbours. 
In  1 171,  after  a  campaign  against  Owain  Cyfeiliog,  at  the 
end  of  which  the  latter  submitted,  there  occurred  a  sudden 
change  in  the  policy  of  Rhys.  Henry,  returning  after  a 
prolonged  absence  to  England,  forthwith  planned  and 
proceeded  to  carry  out  an  invasion  of  Ireland.  Rhys, 
apparently  on  his  own  initiative,  sought  the  friendship  of 
the    king,  and   made  offers  of  assistance.      His  overtures 

^  In  1200  John  undertook  to  protect  the  lands  of  Ellesmere  and  Hales, 
which  belonged  to  Davyd"  or  his  wife  (Rotuli  Chart.  44  a),  lie  left  a  son, 
Owain,  who  exchanged  Ellesmere  for  lands  in  Lincolnshire. 

2  *'Brut,"  j.a.  1 157. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  315 

were  accepted,  and  on  his  appearing  before  the  king  at 
Pembroke,  where  the  English  forces  were  awaiting  a  favour- 
able opportunity  of  crossing  the  channel,  he  "obtained 
grace,"  and  was  received  into  high  favour.  Henry  granted 
to  him  Keredigion  and  other  lands,  and  handed  back  his 
son  Howel,  who  had  been  given  as  hostage  some  time 
before.  Though  the  Irish  expedition  was  a  failure,  Rhys 
remained  then  and  thenceforward  true  to  his  allegiance, 
and  the  king  on  his  return  made  him  Justiciar  of  South 
Wales.  The  holding  of  this  office,  far  from  alienating  the 
Welsh,  added  to  his  authority  ;  he  was  called  em.phatically 
"  the  lord "  Rhys,  the  style  by  which  he  is  still  known 
among  the  Welsh-speaking  people.  He  rebuilt  the  castle 
of  Aberteifi  (Cardigan)  "with  stone  and  mortar,"  whence 
for  many  years  he  ruled  over  a  large  part  of  South  Wales 
in  comparative  peace,  and  died  at  an  advanced  age  in  1 197.^ 
For  some  years  before  the  death  of  Davyd,  his  nephew 
Lewelyn  had  obtained  possession  of  the  greater  part  of 
Gwyned".  The  son  of  that  lorwerth  ab  Owain  who  had 
been  ousted  by  his  brother  Howel  in  1 169,  Lewelyn,  who  was 
born  about  11 76,  commenced  his  military  career  at  an  early 
age,^  and  soon  secured  the  devoted  support  of  the  W^elsh, 
who  viewed  with  dislike  and  suspicion  the  close  relations 
of  Davyd  with  the  English  court.-^  He  does  not  appear  to 
have  come  in  contact  with  Richard  I.,  but  when  John  came 
to  the  throne  Lewelyn  quickly  made  peace  with  the  new 
king  on  terms  that  gave  him  a  good  title,  according  to 
Norman-English  law,  to  the  principality,  but  which  made 
him  a  feudal  vassal.    This  submission  was  an  act  of  policy  on 

1  See  for  further  details  his  life  in  the  "  Diet.  Nat.  Biog." 

"  Giraldus  says  that  Lewelyn  was  at  the  time  of  his  journey  twelve  years 

old.     "  Itin.  Cambr. ,"  ii.  8.    His  partisans  were  even  then  asserting  his  rights. 
^  The  chief   authorities   for   Lewelyn's   life   are    of    course   the    "  Brut " 

and    "Ann,    Cambr.,"  but  English  sources  give   us  many   additional  facts. 

Lewelyn's  life  is  dealt  with  exhaustively  by  Professor  Tout  in  "  Diet.  Nat. 

Biog." 


3i6  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

his  part.     His  relations  with  the  king  continued  friendly  for 
several  years,  and  in   1206  he  married  Joan  (the  daughter 
of  John),   who    received    as   her    marriage   portion    EUes- 
mere,  which  Ovvain  ab  Davyd"  had  exchanged  for  lands 
elsewhere.     Soon  after  (1207),  John  and  Lewelyn  fought 
against  Gwenwynwyn  (one  of  the  sons  of  Owain  Cyfeiliog), 
a  considerable  lord  in  Powys.    Lewelyn  seized  the  lands  of 
Gwenwynwyn,  who  was  captured  by  the  king,  and  in  the 
same  campaign    conquered   all    Keredigion    north    of  the 
Aeron,  which  was  then  in  the  possession   of  Maelgwn  ab 
Rhys.       Most   of  the   Welsh    barons    now    acknowledged 
Lewelyn  as  their  immediate  superior.      The  old  theory  of 
the  supremacy  of  Gwyned  was  of  material  help  to  him  in 
his  claim  to  the  homage  of  the  Welsh  ;  but  his  growing 
power  soon  excited  the  jealousy  of  the  most  powerful  of 
the  descendants   of  the   other  princely  families,   and  the 
attack  on  Gwenwynwyn  and  Maelgwn  was  probably  caused 
by  their  hostile  attitude  towards  the  claims  of  the  prince 
of  Gwyned.     In  the  next  year  there  was  a  quarrel  between 
John  and  Lewelyn.     The  immediate  cause  was  probably 
the   release  by  the  former  of  Gwenwynwyn,  who   in   1209 
recovered  his  lands  with  the  aid  of  the  king.     John  and  his 
son-in-law  were   never  again   really   friendly.     The    latter 
appears  to   have  been  well-informed  as    to   the  course  of 
events  in   England,  and   to   have  begun  to  form  relations 
with  the  barons,  whose  discontent  with  the  government  was 
day  by  day  increasing.     But  his  position   was  for  a  time 
full  of  difficulty,  and  even  critical.     He  ravaged  the  land  of 
Chester  in   1 209,  and  made  very  successful  attacks  on  the 
English    within    his    reach.       Ranulph,    Earl    of  Chester, 
retaliated,  and  John  himself,  with  the  intention  of  deposing 
the  prince,  took  the  field  in   12 10,  with  a  large  army.     He 
was  joined  by   Gwenwynwyn,   Maelgwn,  Rhys  Grug,   and 
other  Welsh  lords.     After  some  delay,  owing  seemingly  to 
imperfect  preparations,  John  marched  right  into  Gwyned. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  317 

The  combination  was  too  much  for  ILewelyn.  He  retreated 
into  the  mountains,  and  was  obliged  to  allow  John  to 
capture  Bangor,  and  to  build  or  restore  many  castles. 
Ultimately  he  sued  for  peace,  which,  owing  to  Joan's  inter- 
cession, was  granted  on  not  unreasonable  terms.  ILewelyn 
retained  the  greater  portion  of  Gwyned,  but  ceded 
Perfedwlad,  made  large  gifts  of  cattle,  and  delivered 
hostages. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  by  allying  himself  for 
some  years  with  John,  and  by  his  marriage,  he  had  seemed 
to  be  following  the  same  course  as  Davyd  I.,  the  majority 
of  the  Welsh  barons  did  not  lose  confidence  in  him,  and 
even  the  terms  on  which  peace  was  concluded  did  not 
alienate  his  supporters. 

The  position  of  John  himself  was  now  fast  becoming 
desperate,  and  the  discontent  of  the  English  barons  was 
soon  to  become  expressed  in  open  rebellion.  Lewelyn, 
with  true  insight,  took  the  popular  side,  formed  friendly 
relations  with  the  disaffected  magnates  of  the  English 
realm,  and,  dropping  former  feuds,  induced  Gwen- 
wynwyn,  Maelgwn,  and  others  to  join  forces  with  him. 
Then,  not  being  able  "  to  brook  the  many  insults  done 
to  him  by  the  men  of  the  king  who  had  been  left  in  the 
new  castle  at  Aberconway,"  he  renewed  the  war,  and  with 
his  allies  took,  in  121 1,  all  the  castles  the  king  had  made 
in  Gwyned,  and  also  achieved  some  successes  in  Powys. 

Hostilities  of  the  same  sort  being  continued  in  12 12, 
John  became  so  irritated  that  he  caused  twenty-eight 
of  the  Welsh  hostages  to  be  hanged  at  Nottingham,  and 
made  hasty  preparations  for  another  expedition  into  Wales. 
Before,  however,  he  could  carry  out  his  plans  of  conquest 
in  the  west,  he  discovered  the  existence  of  the  wide-spread 
conspiracy  against  him,  and  was  forced  to  give  up  the 
design  of  another  Welsh  invasion.  Owain  ab  Davyd,  how- 
ever, tried  to  obtain    possession  of  the  ceded   district  of 


3i8  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Perfedvvlad  (which  the  king  had  granted  him),  but 
ignominiously  failed,  and  the  four  cantrefs  were  soon 
regained  by  Lewelyn. 

John's  affairs  went  from  bad  to  worse,  and  he  was 
reduced  to  asking  the  aid  of  his  son-in-law,  but  Lewelyn 
was  too  astute  to  desert  the  winning  side.  By  steadily 
acting  with  the  barons  he  increased  his  power,  and,  on 
the  triumph  of  their  party,  he  was  able  to  secure  the 
insertion  of  clauses  in  the  great  charter  intended  to  remedy 
the  grievances  of  the  Welsh. 

The  death  of  John,  the  war  with  Louis,  and  the  general 
confusion  in  England  gave  the  Welsh  prince  opportunity 
of  pursuing  his  successes.  The  Welsh  lords  of  the  south 
revolted  ;  Lewelyn  came  to  their  aid,  and  in  121 5  took 
Carmarthen,  demolished  the  castle  of  Lanstephan,  and 
many  others  ;  marched  through  Keredigion  and  obtained 
possession  of  the  castles  of  Aberystwyth  and  Cilgerran. 
He  was  equally  successful  in  the  two  next  years,  and 
as  a  result  of  his  operations  became  the  recognised  feudal 
chief  of  all  Wales  not  in  the  actual  occupation  of  the  lords- 
marchers.  Gwenwynwyn  alone  questioned  his  position, 
but  the  prince  swiftly  expelled  him  from  Powys,  and 
though  he  escaped,  he  never  himself  obtained  his  lands 
again. 

John  died  in  October,  12 16,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
infant  son,  Henry  HI.  William  Marshal,  Earl  of  Pem- 
broke, was  made  "  governor  of  king  and  kingdom,"  and 
after  the  expulsion  of  Lewis,  ELewelyn  pursuing  his  usual 
policy  did  homage  to  the  boy-king  at  Winchester  in  12 18. 
William  Marshal  died,  however,  in  12 19,  and  his  great 
possessions  descended  to  his  son  William,  the  second  Earl 
of  Pembroke,  while  the  management  of  English  affairs 
passed  into  the  hands  of  Pandulf,  the  papal  legate,  Stephen 
Langton,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  Hubert  de 
Burgh. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  319 

For  reasons  that  do  not  clearly  appear,  a  quarrel  took 
place  between  the  new  earl  and  Lewelyn  which  resulted 
in  a  private  war  of  some  six  years'  duration.  In  the  earlier 
campaigns  the  latter  was  very  successful  in  attacks  on 
Dyfed.  In  1221,  Rhys  Gryg,  who  had  submitted  to 
Lewelyn,  rose  and  joined  the  earl,  but  was  defeated  by 
the  prince,  who  confiscated  his  lands  and  compelled  him 
again  to  do  homage.  Henry  III.  made  in  the  same  year 
an  expedition  in  the  interest  of  the  earl,  but  with  little 
result.  William  Marshal  himself,  however,  in  an  encounter 
with  the  Welsh  defeated  them  with  great  slaughter.  The 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  excommunicated  Lewelyn,  and 
placed  his  lands  under  an  interdict,  but  his  power  remained 
unshaken.  The  king  led  another  army  into  Wales,  but 
without  the  happening  of  any  decisive  operations  peace 
was  made.  In  1223,  Lewelyn  and  the  earl  attended  the 
Council  at  Ludlow,  but  their  feud  was  not  composed, 
and  it  was  only  in  1226,  after  the  prince  had  met  the  king 
at  Shrewsbury,  that  some  kind  of  reconciliation  was  effected 
between  them. 

For  some  years  there  was  peace,  but  in  1228,  for  reasons 
which  are  not  clear,  war  between  the  prince  and  the 
English  again  broke  out.  Lewelyn  kept  up  his  connection 
with  many  of  the  disaffected  barons  of  England,  and 
probably  much  of  his  conduct  may  be  explained  by  their 
secretly  inciting  him  to  embarrass  the  king  and  his 
government.  Henry  III.  and  the  Justiciar  marched  to 
Montgomery,  which  the  Welsh  were  attacking.  There  was 
at  least  one  engagement,  but  the  campaign  was  not  fruitful 
of  any  important  result.  The  prince  quickly  made  terms. 
He  agreed  to  pay  3,000  marks  as  compensation,  and,  with 
other  Welsh  lords,  renewed  his  homage. 

William  de  Braose  (the  heir  to  the  estates  of  the 
powerful  marcher  house  of  de  Braose)  was,  however, 
captured  by  the  Welsh.      The   prisoner  was  released    in 


320  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

1229  on  his  paying  3,000  marks,  giving  his  consent  to 
the  marriage  of  his  daughter  Isabella  to  Davyd",  Lewelyn's 
son  by  Joan,  and  undertaking  not  to  fight  against  the 
prince  again.  It  so  happened  that  while  in  captivity  he 
had  an  intrigue  with  Joan,  which  seems  to  have  been 
carried  on  after  he  obtained  his  freedom,  and  which  was 
discovered  by  the  prince.  Lewelyn  seized  William  (catch- 
ing him,  it  is  said,  in  his  own  chamber),  and  caused  him 
to  be  publicly  hanged.^  It  is  strange  to  find  that  this 
affair  did  not  prevent  Davyd's  marriage  to  Isabella,  which 
was  soon  afterwards  celebrated.  The  prince's  eldest  son, 
Gruffyd,  had  already  shown  considerable  military  capacity, 
but  his  unruly  conduct  not  only  cost  him  the  loss  of  his 
father's  affection,  but  led  to  his  disgrace  and  imprisonment 
in  1228,  and  it  was  made  plain  to  all  that  Davyd  was  the 
son  whom  Lewelyn  proposed  to  designate  as  his  heir. 

In  1 23 1  Lewelyn  again  invaded  the  marches,  burnt  the 
castle  of  Montgomery,  marched  to  Brecon  and  Gwent, 
destroying  castles  and  cruelly  devastating  the  districts. 
Avoiding  Morganwg,  he  advanced  to  Neath  and  Kidweli, 
and  then  with  the  help  of  some  south  Welsh  lords  took 
Cardigan.  This  brilliant  campaign  alarmed  the  English 
government.  The  spiritual  weapons  of  excommunication 
and  interdict  were  again  employed  against  the  prince,  and 
Henry  once  more  marched  into  central  Wales,  but  effected 
nothing  decisive.  A  truce  for  three  years  was  soon  arranged 
on  the  terms  of  the  suspension  of  the  excommunication  and 
interdict.  Before,  however,  the  three  years  had  elapsed 
Richard  Marshal  (who  had  succeeded  William,  the  prince's 
former  enemy,  in  the  Earldom  of  Pembroke)  revolted 
against  Henry.  Lewelyn  did  not  scruple  to  join  him,  and 
after  raiding  in  Gwent  and  Morganwg  besieged  Carmarthen, 

^  The  "Brut,"  s.a.  1230,  says  that  "William  Brewys  was  hanged  by 
Llewelyn  ab  lorwerth,  having  been  caught  in  the  chamber  of  the  prince  with 
the  Princess  Jannett." 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  321 

but  after  a  prolonged  attempt  to  reduce  the  castle  this 
time  failed.  In  the  next  year  the  truce  was  renewed  on 
terms  favourable  to  the  Welsh.  The  prince's  active  career 
now  virtually  ended,  for  though  he  was  not  old  his  health 
was  bad,  and  the  direction  of  affairs  soon  passed  to  Davyd. 
Lewelyn  was  henceforth  chiefly  concerned  with  securing 
the  succession  to  his  principality  for  Davyd.  He  liberated 
Grufifyd  from  prison  after  six  years'  confinement,  and  again 
acknowledged  the  king  as  his  feudal  over-lord.  In  1238 
he  convened  his  Welsh  vassals  to  a  meeting  at  Strata 
Florida,  at  Avhich  they  swore  fealty  to  Davyd.  Grufifyd 
received  lands  in  Leyn.  The  prince,  having  arranged 
his  affairs,  soon  afterwards  assumed  the  monastic  habit  and 
retired  from  the  world.  He  died  on  April  nth,  1240,  in 
the  Cistercian  monastery  at  Aberconway. 

The  Welsh  accorded  to  Lewelyn  with  justice  the  title 
of  Mawr  (the  Great),  and  the  epithet  was  recognised  as 
appropriate  among  his  Norman-English  contemporaries. 
The  melancholy  fate  of  his  grandson — another  Lewelyn 
— has  attracted  to  the  personality  of  the  last  Cymric  prince 
of  Wales  popular  interest  and  sentiment  to  a  degree  that 
has  been  somewhat  detrimental  to  the  fame  of  the  grand- 
father. There  can,  however,  be  no  doubt  that  the  latter 
was  the  most  brilliant  and  capable  ruler  the  Cymry  pro- 
duced after  the  time  of  Gruffyd  ab  Lewelyn  or  Howel  Da — 
perhaps,  indeed,  the  ablest  of  all  the  line  of  Cuneda.  He 
saw  that  the  true  policy  for  a  Welsh  prince  of  his  period 
was  to  frankly  admit  the  suzerainty  of  the  English  king  ; 
to  devote  his  energies,  not  to  regaining  a  shadowy  crown 
of  Britain,  but  to  protecting  the  remaining  Cymric  land 
from  encroachment,  and  preserving  the  independence  of 
his  people  in  internal  matters.  From  the  time  when  he 
obtained  a  firm  hold  on  Gwyned  he  steadily  pursued  this 
course  of  action,  and  took  his  place  among  the  great  vassals 
of  the  realm.     While  it  may  have   cost  him  something  to 

W.P.  Y 


322  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

assume  openly  a  position  of  formal  dependence,  he  was 
more  than  repaid  by  the  increase  of  his  real  power.  Unfor- 
tunately for  the  Welsh,  his  successors  followed  him  with 
steps  unequal,  and  the  principality  which  he  consolidated 
and  handed  on  to  his  son  Davyd  was  destined  not  long 
afterwards  to  pass  from  the  line  of  Cadwaladr  to  the 
greatest  of  the  Plantagenet  kings. 

For  some  time  before  the  death  of  his  father,  Davvd  II. 
had  been  the  real  ruler  of  the  principality.     The  homage 
of  the  Welsh  barons  already  done  in  1238  went  a  long  way 
to  ensuring  his  succession  ;  but  he  had  taken  "  time  by  the 
forelock"  in    another  way,  for   in   the  course  of   1239  he 
had  treacherously  seized  and  imprisoned  his  half-brother 
Gruffyd"  with  whom  he  had   been  long    at    feud.      Imme- 
diately after  Lewelyn's  death  he  was  recognised  as  prince, 
again  received  the  submission  of  the  Welsh  vassal  lords, 
and  himself  attended  at  Gloucester,  where  he  did  homage 
to  Henry,  and  was  knighted.     Lewelyn's    territories  were 
granted  to  him,  and  it  was  agreed  between  the  king  and 
him  that  any  matters  in  dispute  should  be  referred  to  the 
arbitration  of  the  Papal  legate.  Otto,  who  however  shortly 
afterwards  left  the  kingdom.    The  imprisoned  Gruffyd"  had, 
however,  some  partisans  in   Gwyned.      Foremost    among 
them  was  Richard,  Bishop  of  Bangor,  who  excommunicated 
Davyd",  and  then,  either  from  fear  for  himself  or  zeal   for 
GruffyCi,  hurried  to  the  king,  and  induced  him  to  take  an 
interest  in  Gruffyd's  grievances.     In  pursuance  of  the  agree- 
ment come  to  at  Gloucester,    Davyd   was    summoned    to 
Worcester   to   arrange    for  the  appointment  of  arbitrators 
in  place  of  Otto.      He  took  no  notice  of  the  summons, 
but  fresh  arbitrators  were  chosen,  or  rather  appointed  (for 
it  does  not  appear  that  the  prince  ever  consented  to  the 
new  names),  and  being  summoned  to  Shrewsbury  for  the 
decision  of  the  question  between  him  and  his  brother,  he 
again  neglected  the  call.     Senena,  the  wife  of  Gruff}-d,  was, 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  323 

however,  at  Shrewsbury  pressing  her  husband's  claims,  and 
made  an  arrangement  with  the  king.  Quite  apart,  however, 
from  his  conduct  towards  Gruffyd,  Davyd,  not  content 
with  strengthening  his  hold  over  the  lands  granted  to  him, 
had  been  imprudent  enough  to  receive  the  homage  of 
rebellious  royal  tenants  and  to  give  aid  to  the  enemies 
of  Roger  Mortimer.  Under  these  circumstances  Henry 
decided  to  make  a  punitive  expedition.  "  Having  assembled 
an  army,"  he  advanced  towards  Gwyned  as  far  as  Diserth 
Castle  in  the  Vale  of  Clwyd.  Davyd  was  either  taken 
unprepared  or  did  not  think  it  prudent  to  engage  in  war 
and  submitted  without  striking  a  blow  on  August  29th,  1 241, 
at  Alnet,  near  St.  Asaph,  and  came  at  once  to  terms  with  his 
over-lord.  Under  the  arrangement  made,  the  unfortunate 
Gruffyd  was  transferred  to  the  king  ;  the  Welsh  prince 
agreed  to  submit  the  quarrel  between  him  and  his  brother 
to  the  king's  court,  to  give  up  Mold  to  the  seneschal  of 
Chester,  to  yield  up  to  Gruffyd  ab  Gwenwynwyn  his  lands 
in  Powys,  and  to  concede  to  other  Welsh  lords  their  claims 
to  parts  of  Meirionyd.  He  was  ordered  to  attend  the  court 
in  London,  and  went  there  in  October.  During  his  visit  a 
further  agreement  was  forced  on  him  by  the  king's  govern- 
ment by  which  it  was  stipulated  that  the  principality  should 
be  surrendered  to  the  English  crown  if  he  died  without  heirs 
of  his  body. 

Davyd  returned  to  North  Wales,  and  the  next  two 
years  were  years  of  peace.  Gruffyd  was  kept  a  prisoner 
in  London.  The  English  court  had  readily  enough  used 
his  claims  and  grievances  as  weapons  to  justify  inter- 
ference with  Davyd ;  but  when  they  had  attained  their 
object  it  was  seen  that  his  release  would  only  mean  more 
trouble  in  the  west.  He  was  therefore  detained,  and  no 
steps  were  taken  to  bring  on  his  cause  before  the  king's 
court.  He  had  been  taken  to  London  and  confined  in  the 
Tower,   where  he  was  well  treated.     In  1244,  having  no 

Y  2 


324  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

doubt  come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  could  not  count  on 
redress  from  the  king,  he  tried  to  escape  by  means  of  a  rope, 
but  fell  in  the  attempt  and  broke  his  neck.  Probably 
relieved  by  his  brother's  death  from  fear  of  internal  dis- 
affection, and  influenced  by  the  desire  to  repair  a  repu- 
tation damaged  among  subjects  ever  eager  for  war  by  his 
hasty  conclusion  of  peace  with  the  king,  Davyd",  instead  of 
waiting  till  the  discontent  of  England  with  the  despotic  but 
weak  personal  government  of  Henry  had  burst  into  flame, 
took  overt  steps  which  showed  that  he  did  not  intend  to 
regard  the  obligations  into  which  he  had  entered.^  He 
summoned  in  1244  all  the  Welsh  lords  to  join  him — appa- 
rently to  do  homage  with  a  view  to  a  general  rising.  All 
obeyed  except  three,  who  were  promptly  assailed  and  com- 
pelled to  submit.  Davyd  not  being  able  to  secure  allies 
among  the  English,  and  conscious  of  his  inability  single- 
handed  to  shake  off  the  control  of  the  English  government, 
intrigued  with  the  Papal  court,  and  appears  to  have  offered 
to  submit  the  questions  between  him  and  the  king  to  the 
judgment  of  commissioners  appointed  by  the  then  Pope. 
But  though  the  Pope  did  nominate  two  abbots  as  arbitrators 
Henry  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  them  ;  and  Innocent 
IV.  on  further  representations  cancelled  the  commission. 

Border  warfare  continued  into  1245.  The  Welsh  sus- 
tained a  considerable  defeat  at  Montgomery,  but  Davyd 
retook  Mold. 

Henry  then  made  preparations  for  another  invasion  of 
Wales.  With  a  sufficient  army  he  advanced  to  Deganwy, 
while  M6n  was  ravaged  by  a  force  from  Ireland.  The 
Welsh  prince  avoided  a  decisive  engagement,  and  was  com- 
pelled to  retire  in  the  usual  way  to  the  mountains  of 
Snowdon.     There  he  awaited  the  development  of  events. 

^  "  Brut,"  s.a.  1244,  after  recounting  Gruffyd's  death,  abruptly  says  Davy^ 
''became  enraged  and  summoned,  &c.,"  but  his  anger  was  surely  not  caused 
by  the  removal  of  one  who  was  at  once  an  enemy  and  a  rival. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  325 

Henry  was  not  able  to  follow  the  enemy  into  the  moun- 
tains. When  winter  came  his  army  fell  short  of  supplies, 
and  he  had  to  retire  without  having  obtained  the  submis- 
sion of  Davyd ;  but  he  strengthened  Deganwy,  and  in  the 
campaign  inflicted  much  loss  on  the  Welsh.  The  prince's 
plans  were  cut  short  by  his  death  in  March,  1246. 

Davyd  II.  died  without  issue  ;  but  Gruffyd  had  left  three 
sons,  Owain  Goch  (who  had  shared  his  captivit)'  for  a  time, 
but  had  been  released  and  received  into  favour  by  the 
king),  Lewel}^!  (who  it  is  said  had  already  been  occupying 
parts  of  Perfedwlad  in  defiance  alike  of  his  uncle  Davyd 
and  the  English  authorities),^  and  Davyd  (destined  to  be 
the  last  reigning  prince  of  his  line).  Ignoring  the  agree- 
ment of  1 24 1,  by  which  the  principality  was  to  pass  to  the 
English  crown  in  case  Dav}"d  II.  should  die  without  issue, 
Owain  and  Lewelyn,  with  the  consent  of  the  Welsh 
barons,  assumed  the  sovereignty,  and  divided  the  posses- 
sions of  their  house  (making  provision  for  their  younger 
brother  Davyd).  They  were  at  once  treated  as  rebels. 
Nicholas  de  Myles,  seneschal  of  Carmarthen,  seized  the 
lordships  in  the  south  that  were  appurtenant  to  Gwyned, 
and  promptly  marched  to  the  north  as  far  as  Deganwy. 
Owain  and  Lewelyn  retreated  to  the  mountains.  The 
king,  not  wishing  at  the  moment  to  push  things  to  extre- 
mities, did  not  insist  on  the  exact  terms  of  the  bargfain 
with  the  late  prince.  An  understanding  was  arrived  at 
between  him  and  the  princes,  in  pursuance  of  which  they 
did  homage  to  him  at  Woodstock  in  1247.  A  treaty  was 
thereupon  signed  by  which  Henry  pardoned  their  rebellion, 
retained  all  Welsh  land  east  of  the  Conwa}^,  as  well  as  the 
southern  districts  which  had  been  occupied  by  De  Myles 
(except  a  part  allotted  to  Maelgwn  Vychan),  but  conferred 
on  them  the  residue  of  the  principality. 

^  Warrington's  "  History,"  p.  428,  citing  Wynne's  "History  of  the  Gwydir 
Family,"  p.  28. 


326  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

For  several  years  the  settlement  of  1247  was  loyally 
adhered  to,  and  there  was  a  period  of  unwonted  peace, 
during  which  Lewelyn  steadily  increased  his  influence,  and 
attracted  to  himself  the  devoted  attachment  and  the  still 
retained  hopes  of  the  Welsh.  It  was  probably  owing  to 
the  jealousy  roused  by  his  growing  popularity  that  in  1254 
his  brothers  Owain  and  Davyd  quarrelled  with  and  took 
up  arms  against  him.  Lewelyn  and  his  men  confidently 
awaited  the  "  cruel  coming"^  of  the  rebels  at  Bryn  Derwin, 
where  after  a  brief  engagement  the  latter  were  decisively 
beaten.  Owain  was  captured,  thrown  into  prison,  and  kept 
in  confinement  for  many  years,  but  Davyd  escaped  to 
England  to  work  much  mischief  against  his  brother  and 
the  cause  of  the  Welsh.  Lewelyn  took  possession  of  their 
lands,  and  on  the  death  of  Maredud  ab  Lewelyn,  one  of 
his  vassal  barons,  seized  oMeirionyd.  This  last  act  estranged 
Gruffyd  ab  Gwenwynwyn,  lord  of  the  neighbouring  c}'mwd 
of  Cyfeiliog,  and  induced  him  to  ally  himself  to  the 
English. 

While  matters  were  in  this  position  in  Wales  an  event 
which  had  a  direct  effect  on  the  fortunes  of  Gwyned  took 
place.  Edward,  the  eldest  son  of  Henry  III.,  was  married 
to  Eleanor,  daughter  of  Ferdinand  the  Saint,  in  October, 
1254,  and  the  king,  as  part  of  the  provision  made  for  his 
son,  conferred  on  him  the  earldom  of  Chester  and  all  his 
lands  in  Wales. 

We  have  pointed  out  above  the  exceptional  position  of 
the  county  of  Chester.  From  the  time  of  William  I.  it  had 
been  a  practically  independent  state.  It  was  now  the 
strongest  and  most  valuable  of  all  the  lordships  in  the 
marches  of  Wales.  By  becoming  Earl  of  Chester  the  heir 
to  the  English  crown  came  directly  into  contact  with 
Welsh  affairs.  The  vague  grant  of  the  king's  lands  in 
Wales    included    the    four    cantrefs    of    Perfedwlad,    and 

1  "Brut,"  .-.a.  1254. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  327 

three  lordships  in  the  south  that,  though  not  without 
intermission,  had  been  in  the  possession  of  the  EngHsh 
cro\Mi  for  many  years.^  Edward  and  his  wife  came 
to  England  in  1255.  Boy  though  he  was — being  only 
sixteen — Edward  took  some  part  in  the  administration 
of  his  possessions  in  the  west,  though  the  real  government 
was  no  doubt  left  to  ministers,  who  were  arbitrary  and 
often  unjust  in  their  treatment  of  the  Welsh  tenants  in  the 
earl's  lands.  Their  conduct  after  Edward's  assumption  of 
his  earldom  gave  rise  to  great  irritation  in  the  four  cantrefs 
and  the  other  parts  of  Wales  in  his  jurisdiction.  In  the 
course  of  1255  a  survey  was  made  by  his  officers  or  those  of 
the  king  on  his  behalf,  of  his  castles  and  lands  in  Gwyned" ; 
steps  were  taken  to  annex  the  four  cantrefs  to  the  county  of 
Chester  ;  while  the  earl's  deputy,  Geoffrey  Langton,  consti- 
tuted three  parts  of  Keredigion  and  the  lands  attached  to 
or  held  with  the  castle  of  Carmarthen  into  shire-ground, 
with  an  organisation  similar  to  that  of  the  English  shires. 
The  Welsh  tenants,  seeing  clearly  enough  that  the  effect 
of  these  measures  would  be  the  introduction  of  Norman- 
English  law  and  the  suppression  of  customs  to  which 
they  were  attached,  not  only  because  of  their  substantial 
consonance  with  their  ideas  of  justice,  but  also  because 
their  use  was  a  symbol  of  practical  independence.  The 
smaller  Welsh  barons,  as  well  as  their  tenants,  looked  on 
the  action  of  Edward's  officers  in  a  very  different  way  from 
that  in  which  they  regarded  a  change  of  prince  or  lord.  It 
mattered  little  to  them  whether  their  superior  lord  or  prince 
did  homage  to  the  king  of  England  or  any  one  else,  so  long  as 
the  incidents  of  tenure  remained  the  same.    The  chancres  now 

o 

made,  as  they  instantly  saw,  might,  and  probably  would,  be 
detrimental  to  them  from  a  pecuniary  point  of  view,  and 

^  Thus  practically  all  the  areas  that  are  now  Flintshire  and  Denbighshire, 
and  large  parts  of  the  present  Carmarthenshire  and  Cardiganshire  passed  to 
Edward. 


328  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

tend  to  their  having  to  endure  new  burdens.  But  apart 
from  mere  fears  of  the  consequences  of  the  changes 
attempted,  the  Welsh  of  the  districts  in  question  had  also 
reason  to  complain  of  much  actual  injustice  to  individuals, 
of  illegal  imprisonment,  violent  evictions,  and  oppression  in 
every  possible  form  at  the  hands  of  the  English  local 
authorities. 

In  their  distress,  the  Welsh  now  turned  to  Lewelyn,  and 
besought  him  to  come  to  their  assistance.  Moved,  it  is 
said,  by  their  tears,^  he  determined  to  make  an  effort  to 
regain  the  territories  he  had  lost  in  consequence  of  his 
former  rebellion.  He  took  the  field  in  1256,  and  for  about 
eleven  years  there  was  almost  continuous  warfare  between 
him  and  the  English — warfare  that  was  ended  by  the  peace 
of  1267. 

Once  determined  on  a  fresh  war,  Lewelyn  acted  with 
vigour  and  promptitude.  In  the  autumn  of  1256  he 
suddenly  invaded  Perfedwlad.  His  forces,  no  doubt 
received  with  gladness  by  the  inhabitants,  subdued  it 
within  a  week  ;  but  the  castles  of  Diserth  and  Deganwy 
remained  in  the  hands  of  Edward's  officers.  Lewelyn 
then  turned  south,  overran  the  parts  of  Keredigion  that 
had  been  lately  made  shire-ground,  and  also  took  the  can- 
tref  of  Buattt  in  Powys,  which  belonged  to  the  Mortimers. 
He  did  not,  however,  keep  these  conquests  in  his  own 
possession  ;  but,  desirous  of  attaching  the  Cymric  lords  of 
the  south,  and  through  them  the  Welsh-speaking  tenants 
of  the  Norman-English  lords-marchers  to  himself,  granted 
them  to  Maredud  ab  Owain,  who  was  a  descendant  of 
Rhys  ab  Teudwr,  and  therefore  represented  the  ancient 
princely  line  of  Deheubarth,  and  restored  to  Maredud"  ab 
Rhys  Gryg  lands  from  which  the  latter  had  been  ousted  b}' 
his  nephew,  Rhys  Vychan  ab  Rhys  MechyH:.  The  new  Earl 
of  Chester  had  no  force  at  his  disposal  adequate  for  an  attack 

1  "Brut,"'  s.a.  1255. 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  329 

upon  the  victorious  Lewelyn.  He  appealed  to  his  father, 
but,  for  the  moment,  in  vain,  and  the  Welsh  prince,  in  his  next 
campaign  (1257),  expelled  Roger  Mortimer  from  the  cymwd 
of  Gwrthryn  in  Powys,  and  Gruffyd  ab  Gwenwynwyn 
(who  still  remained  aloof  from  the  Welsh  cause)  from 
Cyfeiliog.  Lewelyn,  actively  helped  by  his  allies,  ravaged 
a  large  part  of  South  Wales,  taking  and  burning  many 
castles  that  were  in  English  hands.  Henry,  in  the  summer 
of  the  same  year,  came  to  his  son's  assistance,  and,  with  a 
considerable  force,  reached  Deganwy,  but  did  not  cross  the 
Conway.  The  king  remained  there  for  several  weeks,  but 
no  engagement  of  importance  took  place,  and  the  English 
army  retired,  after  having  effected  nothing  that  altered  the 
situation  in  a  material  degree  in  favour  of  Edward  ;  and  in 
1258  a  truce  for  a  year  was  concluded  between  Lewelyn 
and  Henry  on  the  terms  that  the  latter  should  have  free 
communication  with  Deganwy,  and  the  former  remain  in 
possession  of  the  four  cantrefs.  The  fame  of  Lewelyn  was 
now  spreading  far,  for  he  was  able  to  effect  an  alliance  with 
the  Scotch  nobles  against  the  king,  and  to  enter  into  friendly 
relations  with  the  English  barons,  whose  discontent  with 
the  tyrannical  and  yet  weak  government  of  Henry  was  now 
coming  to  a  head. 

Lewelyn's  military  career  and  domestic  rule  had  been  so 
successful  that  now  nearly  all  the  Welsh  barons  openly 
took  their  stand  on  his  side,,  and  at  a  formal  assembly  a 
large  number  of  the  nobles  of  Wales  took  oaths  of  fealty 
to  him.^ 

It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance  for  Lewelyn  that 
the  long-smouldering  resentment  of  the  English  people 
against   Henry  and   his   practically  foreign  ministry  burst 

1  MaredueJ  ab  Rhys,  though  he  was  indebted  to  Lewelyn  for  his  restoration 
to  his  estates,  and  though  he  had  taken  the  oath,  intrigued  with  the  Seneschal 
of  Carmarthen — De  Sayes  ;  but  he  was  quickly  attacked  and  captured,  and  his 
castle  of  Dinevwr  seized. 


330  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

into  open  revolt,  and  resulted  in  the  Provisions  of  Oxford, 
the  rule  of  Simon  de  Montfort,  and  civil  war.  In  the 
troubled  condition  of  things  in  England  the  war  against 
Wales  was  not  prosecuted  with  any  vigour.  Notwith- 
standing the  truce,  Lewelyn,  in  1259  and  1260,  made 
some  border  raids,  justifying  himself  on  the  ground  that  its 
conditions  were  not  observed  by  the  English  ;  but  peace  was 
substantially  preserved  till  1262,  when  he  took  the  offensive 
in  earnest.  This  time  he  began  by  attacking  Roger  Morti- 
mer, one  of  the  principal  lords-marchers  in  the  cantref  of 
Maelienyd,  and  then  seized  several  castles  in  that  region.  The 
Welsh  inhabitants  of  the  cantref  did  homage  to  him,  and  he 
pressed  on  to  Brecheiniog,  and,  having  received  the  submis- 
sion of  the  people  there,  returned  to  Gwyned.  This  bold 
incursion,  which  was  probably  made  m  concert  with  the 
disaffected  English  barons,  caused  general  alarm  in  the 
west  and  a  speedy  renewal  of  operations  in  the  marches 
Edward,  with  such  a  force  as  he  could  command,  early  m 
1 263  advanced  into  Wales,  but  his  campaign  was  fruitless  ; 
and  the  breaking  out  of  actual  civil  war  between  the  barons, 
headed  by  Simon  de  Montfort,  and  the  king,  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  give  attention  to  Welsh  affairs. 
Lewelyn,  just  as  his  grandfather  had  done  many  years 
before,  threw  himself  on  the  side  of  the  barons,  and  formed 
a  close  alliance  with  Simon  de  Montfort,  who  promised  him 
his  daughter  Eleanor  in  marriage. 

The  disputes  between  the  king  and  the  barons  were 
referred  for  settlement  to  St.  Louis,  king  of  France,  who 
decided  in  favour  of  Henry  IIL,  and  annulled  the 
Provisions  of  Oxford.  The  Earl  of  Leicester  repudiated 
the  award  of  the  French  king,  and  took  up  arms  again. 
The  events  of  1264  and  1265  are  too  well  known  to  need 
retelling  here.  The  battle  and  Mise  of  Lewes  made 
Simon  de  Montfort  the  real  ruler  of  the  realm  for  the 
time.     Edward   was   taken  prisoner.     A   new  constitution 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  331 

was  drawn  up.  The  celebrated  Parliament  of  1265  was 
convened  and  met.  The  earldom  of  Chester  was  assigned 
to  Simon,  who  early  in  the  year  1265  proceeded  to  the 
marches,  which  were  now  well  under  the  control  of 
Lewelyn  and  his  allies.  In  1263,  seizing  the  occasion 
afforded  by  the  commencement  of  the  barons'  wars  in 
England,  Lewelyn  had  again  overrun  Perfedwlad,  and 
this  time  had  succeeded  in  taking  the  castles  of  Diserth 
and  Deganwy,  which  had  so  long  resisted  his  attempts. 
His  position  was  now  very  strong  in  Wales,  and  even  his 
former  enemy,  Gruffyd  ab  Gwenwynwyn,  came  over  to  his 
side  and  did  homage  ;  but  just  as  the  principal  Welsh  lord 
in  Powys  submitted,  Lewelyn  had  to  deal  with  a  fresh 
revolt  by  his  brother  Davyd.  The  rebellion  was  at  once 
suppressed,  and  Davyd  himself  was  forced  to  take  refuge 
again  in  England.  The  incident  in  no  way  weakened 
the  prince,  who  continued  to  act  with,  and  give  powerful 
support  to,  the  Earl  of  Leicester  and  his  party.  Simon 
rew^arded  Lewelyn  for  his  services  by  forcing  the  king  to 
sign  a  convention,  which  conferred  on  the  Welsh  prince 
large  territories  (including  even  Maud's  Castle,  Hawarden, 
Ellesmere,  and  Montgomery),  and  formally  granted  him 
the  principality  with  the  right  of  receiving  the  homage  of 
Uie  Welsh  barons.^ 

Fortune,  however,  soon  deserted  the  great  earl.  On 
x\ugust  4th,  1265,  he  was  defeated  and  slain  by  Edw^ard 
at  the  battle  of  Evesham.  The  loss  was  very  great  to 
Lewelyn,  but  he  continued  the  war,  and  in  September 
made  an  inroad  into  Chester,  which  had  been  restored 
to  Edw^ard  ;  but,  notwithstanding  the  Welsh  efforts 
and  the  prolonged  resistance  of  the  remainder  of  the 
baronial  party  in  England,  its  cause  was  now  lost,  and 
shortly  after  the  surrender  of  Kenilworth  there  was  a 
general  submission  by  the  barons  to  the  king  and  Edward. 

^  Rymer's  "Foedera, "  i.  457. 


332  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

Leweiyn  had  formed  an  alliance  with  Gilbert  de  Clare, 
Earl  of  Gloucester,  but  the  latter  made  peace  with  the 
king,  and  by  the  intervention  of  the  papal  legate,  Ottobon, 
terms  were  also  arranged  between  Leweiyn  and  Edward, 
which  were  so  favourable  to  the  former  as  to  amount  to  a 
real  triumph  for  the  Welsh  nation.  By  a  treaty  concluded 
at  Montgomery,  the  king  granted  the  principality  to 
Leweiyn  and  his  heirs,  to  be  held  on  the  terms  of  doing 
homage  ;  Leweiyn  was  authorised  to  receive  the  homage 
of  all  the  Welsh  barons  (except  that  of  Maredud  ab  Rh\'s, 
the  representative  of  the  old  line  of  South  Welsh  princes, 
which  the  king  reserved  to  himself  and  his  heirs)  ;  the 
limits  of  the  principality  were  defined  in  a  wa\'  liberal 
towards  the  Welsh  prince  ;  the  four  cantrefs  of  Perfedwlad 
were  granted  to  him  ;  and  Davyd  was  restored  to  the 
lands  he  had  possessed,  but  Leweiyn  was  to  pay  24,000 
marks  by  way  of  indemnity.  The  treaty  was  ratified  by 
papal  authority.  Practically  it  left  to  Edward  no  part  of 
his  Welsh  estates  except  Carmarthen  and  its  appurtenant 
lands. 

It  is  useless  to  speculate  on  what  might  have  happened  if 
Leweiyn  had  thenceforth  adhered  faithfully  to  the  terms  of 
this  treaty,  and  reinstated  the  far-seeing  yet  practical  polic}- 
of  his  grandfather,  which  was  concentrated  on  the  mainten- 
ance of  Gwyned  as  a  separate  entity  among  the  great  lord- 
ships or  feudal  states  of  the  realm,  and  frankl}-  based  a 
position  of  vassalage  under  the  English  crown  ;  but  one  can 
hardly  help  thin  king,  when  one  looks  back  on  the  uncertain  and 
devious  devolution  of  the  English  kingship,  that  if  Leweiyn 
ab  Gruffyd  had  abided  by  the  terms  of  the  treat)',  thrown 
over  the  De  Montforts  and  their  friends,  and  steadily  allied 
himself  to  Edward,  the  crown  of  Britain  might  have  been 
regained  by  a  descendant  of  his  house  before  the  time  at 
which  a  Welsh  prince,  in  the  person  of  Henr\'  VI L,  became 
king    of   England.       Things,    however,    turned    out   quite 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  333 

otherwise.  Lewelyn  not  only  continued  on  friendly 
relations  with  the  sons  of  Simon,  but  intrigued  with  them 
against  Henry.  He  did  not  understand  the  trend  of  events 
in  England,  and  seems  to  have  looked  upon  the  treaty  of 
Montgomery,  not  as  marking  the  limit  for  a  time  of  a 
prudent  ambition,  but  as  the  immediate  stepping-stone 
to  the  realisation  of  dreams  of  conquest,  which  were 
encouraged  by  the  recollection  of  prophecies  supposed  to 
be  ancient  and  continually  fostered  by  the  flattery  of  those 
around  him,  especially  of  the  bards,  to  whom  the  somewhat 
backward  conditions  of  life  in  North  Wales  still  allowed 
an  influence  which  was  highly  pernicious  in  practical 
concerns. 

Till  the  death  of  Henry  HI.  in  1272,  Lewelyn  did 
nothing  overt  to  give  offence.  Peace  was  fairly  well  kept 
on  the  borders,  there  was  internal  repose,  and  no  dispute 
with  the  English  central  authority.  Edward  (who  had 
taken  the  cross  in  1268,  and  had  gone  to  the  East  to  join 
in  a  crusade)  was,  when  his  father  died  in  1272,  still  abroad, 
but  he  was  proclaimed  king  at  Westminster  without  oppo- 
sition, and  the  government  carried  on  by  the  Archbishop 
of  York,  Edmund  of  Cornwall,  and  others,  on  his  behalf 
Lewelyn  did  not  attend  the  assembly  of  the  magnates  of 
the  kingdom  at  Westminster,  and  the  regents  having 
appointed  a  commission  to  receive  his  homage,  sum- 
moned him  on  the  29th  November,  1272,  to  render  his 
service  ;  but  the  Welsh  prince  took  no  notice  of  the 
message. 

It  is  clear  he  was  continuing  negotiations  with  the  sons 
of  Simon  de  Montfort,  and  he  was  probably  encouraged  by 
some  of  the  English  barons  to  resist  Edward.  In  1273  he 
was  betrothed  to  Eleanor  de  Montfort,  the  late  earl's  only 
daughter,  in  accordance  with  the  promise  made  some  years 
before.  He  also  entered  into  communication  with  the 
Roman  court,    and    obtained    from    Gregory  X.  a   decree 


334         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

absolving   him    from    obedience    to    citations    to    places 
outside  Wales. 

Lewelyn  was  now  called  upon  to  meet  an  internal 
revolt.  Davyd  entered  into  a  conspiracy  with  Grufifyd 
ab  Gwenwynwyn  and  others  against  his  brother.  The 
prince,  however,  was  able  at  once  to  seize  the  lands  of  the 
rebels.  Davyd  and  Gruffyd  fled  to  England,  but  Owain 
was  captured.  The  fugitives  seem  to  have  been  well 
received  by  the  king,  and  Lewelyn  found  in  that  circum- 
stance another  reason  for  neglecting  to  perform  his  duty 
as  vassal,  ignored  all  messages,  and  finally  openly  defied 
his  over-lord.  Edward  I.  was  crowned  on  August  the  i8th, 
1274,  but  though  Alexander  III.  of  Scotland  attended  the 
ceremony  and  did  homage,  Lewelyn  was  conspicuous  by 
his  absence,  and  still  delayed  to  make  his  submission. 
Edward  determined  to  compel  him  to  submit,  and  pro- 
ceeding to  Chester,  summoned  his  recalcitrant  vassal  to 
come  to  him  there.  Lewelyn  convened  his  own  vassals, 
and  took  counsel  with  them.  In  accordance  with  the 
general  assent  of  the  Welsh  barons,  he  refused  to  comply 
with  Edward's  command  on  the  ground  that  the  latter  had 
committed  a  breach  of  the  mutual  feudal  obligations  by 
harbouring  his  enemies,  Davyd"  ab  Gruffyd  and  Gruffyd  ab 
Gwenwynwyn.  Edw^ard  returned  to  England  in  anger. 
The  De  Montforts  still  kept  up  a  connection  with  some 
of  the  English  barons  as  well  as  w^th  the  prince,  and  it 
looks  as  if  the  action  of  the  latter  was  taken  in  contem- 
plation of  some  combined  action.  Edward,  however, 
checked  any  movement  in  England  by  proclaiming  a  full 
oardon  to  the  survivors  of  the  barons  who  had  sided  with 
Simon  in  the  recent  war.  It  was  about  this  time  that 
Eleanor  de  Montfort,  under  the  escort  of  her  brother 
Amaury,  sailed  for  Gwyned  to  marry  Lewelyn  ;  but  the 
vessels  of  her  party  were  captured  by  some  Bristol  sailors. 
Amaury  was  thrown  into  prison,  and  Edw'ard,  meanly  and 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  335 

unchivalrously,  caused  Eleanor  to  be  detained  in  captivity 
as  one  of  the  queen's  household.  Lewelyn  sent  many 
messages  to  the  king  with  the  view  of  obtaining  the  release 
of  his  bride  and  forming  a  durable  peace ;  but  they  were 
fruitless,  for  Edward  was  greatly  incensed  at  what  he 
deemed  the  prince's  faithless  and  shifty  conduct.  The 
latter  found  the  only  terms  on  which  Edward  would  set 
Eleanor  at  liberty  too  hard  to  be  entertained.  Border 
hostilities  took  place  in  1276,  and  in  November  of  that 
year  Edward  formally  declared  war  against  Lewel}'n,  and 
summoned  his  army  to  Worcester.  He  divided  his  whole 
forces  into  three  armies.  The  first,  led  by  himself  (with 
whom  served  Davyd),  entered  Wales  from  Chester,  while 
the  fleet  co-operated  by  sailing  along  the  coast  with  the 
ultimate  object  of  cutting  off  supplies  for  the  Welsh  from 
Mon.  The  second,  under  the  command  of  Hugh  de  Lacy 
and  Roger  Mortimer,  advanced  from  Shrewsbury  to  Mont- 
gomery, while  the  Earl  of  Hereford  retook  possession  of 
Brecheiniog.  The  third,  under  Edmund  of  Lancaster, 
invaded  the  district  of  the  south  occupied  by  the  vassals 
or  allies  of  Lewelyn.  Most  of  the  South- Welsh  barons 
speedily  deserted  and  made  submission  to  the  king. 

Lewelyn  was  obliged  to  abandon  the  south  and  confine 
his  efforts  to  the  defence  of  Gwyned  by  the  usual  tactics. 
But  Edward  had  made  his  plans  carefully ;  he  advanced 
cautiously,  causing  ways  to  be  cut  through  the  forests,  and 
gradually  forced  Lewelyn,  who  did  not  venture  on  a 
pitched  battle,  to  the  mountainous  districts  of  Snowdon. 
Blockaded  there,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the  enemy, 
deprived  of  provisions  from  Mon,  Lewelyn,  though  he 
struggled  long,  was,  when  winter  came,  starved  into  sub- 
mission and  compelled  to  make  peace  on  terms  which  were 
dictated  by  Edward,  and  embodied  in  the  Treaty  of  Conway- 

This  treaty,  in  effect,  completely  undid  the  work  of  1267, 
and  reduced  Lewelyn  to  the  position  of  a  petty  baron.     He 


336  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

agreed  to  pay  50,000  marks  as  a  fine  or  indemnity,  and  to 
surrender  all  prisoners  ;  the  four  cantrefs  and  his  former 
South-Welsh  estates  were  to  go  to  the  king  ;  Mon,  of  which 
Edward  was  in  possession,  was  granted  to  him  at  a  yearly 
rent  of  1,000  marks,  but  was  to  revert  to  the  Crown  on  his 
death  without  heirs ;  the  homage  of  the  Welsh  barons 
(except  the  five  barons  of  Snowdon)  was  transferred  from 
him  to  the  king.  Provision  was  made  for  Davyd  by  a 
grant  of  land  in  Perfedwlad.  Owain  Goch,  who  had  so  far 
as  we  can  find  been  in  captivity  since  1256,  was  released  and 
given  territory  in  Leyn.  The  adherents  of  the  king  in 
Wales  were  restored  to  the  lands  they  had  possessed  before 
the  war.  Lewelyn  was  to  come  to  London  on  a  day  to  be 
appointed  to  do  homage,  and  to  attend  in  England  every 
Christmas  to  renew  that  act  of  submission.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  was  stipulated  that  outside  the  four  cantrefs  justice 
should  be  administered  according  to  the  laws  and  customs 
of  the  districts  in  which  the  lands  might  lie  ;  that  all 
tenants  holding  lands  in  the  four  cantrefs  and  other  Welsh 
places  in  the  king's  possession  should  possess  them  as  freely 
and  enjoy  the  same  customs  and  liberties  as  they  did  before 
the  wars  ;  and  that  disputes  between  the  prince  himself  and 
other  persons  were  to  be  decided  according  to  the  law  of 
the  marches.  The  complete  failure  of  the  war  and  the  con- 
clusion of  peace  on  these  terms  amounted  to  the  ruin  of  the 
house  of  Gwyned,  though  an  attempt,  and  as  it  proved  a 
last  attempt,  was  made  by  Lewelyn  to  recover  the  ground 
he  had  lost. 

Edward,  having  shown  his  power,  did  not  exact  full 
performance  of  the  treaty.  He  remitted  the  fine,  and 
returned  the  hostages  delivered  by  the  prince.  Lewelyn  did 
homage  at  Rhudlan,  and  went  to  London  at  Christmas 
when  the  ceremony  was  repeated.  His  promised  wife  was 
still  at  court,  and  his  conduct  at  this  time  was,  no  doubt, 
very   largely  determined   by   the  natural    desire    that    her 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  337 

marriage  to  him  should  take  place,  and  by  the  belief  that 
close  connection  with  the  family  of  the  great  earl  would 
strengthen  him  in  an  effort  to  recover  the  authority  and 
territories  he  had  lost  Whatever  his  motives,  he  behaved 
with  such  conciliatory  prudence  that  in  1278,  on  the 
occasion  of  his  going  to  Worcester  to  renew  his  submission, 
the  king  allowed  the  wedding  to  take  place.  Lewelyn  and 
Eleanor  were  married  "  at  the  door  of  the  great  church " 
there  in  the  presence  of  Edward  and  his  court,  and  next 
day  "joyfully  returned"^  to  Wales.  The  union  thus  formed 
did  not,  however,  last  long.  Eleanor  died  in  childbirth  in 
1280,  leaving  a  daughter,  Gwenrlian,  surviving.  The  loss  of 
his  wife  tended  to  estrange  Lewelyn  from  the  English 
court,  and  made  him  more  ready  to  listen  to  the  complaints 
of  the  Welsh  against  the  tyranny  of  the  king's  officers,  but 
it  was  not  until  the  spring  of  1282  that  there  was  again  a 
formal  rupture  of  the  peace. 

After  taking  possession  of  the  districts  ceded  by  the 
treaty  of  1277,  Edward  vigorously  proceeded  with  the  con- 
version of  Perfedwlad  into  shire-ground,  and  renewed  the 
county  organisations  of  Cardigan  and  Carmarthen,  which 
had  been  first  created  many  years  before.  Many  of  the 
castles  which  had  been  built  in  the  early  days  of  the 
Norman  invasion  were  strengthened  or  erected  anew  on  a 
larger  and  more  formidable  scale.  These  proceedings 
caused  general  alarm  and  indignation  among  the  Welsh  of 
the  four  cantrefs  and  the  southern  counties.  They  soon 
saw  that  the  new  system  in  effect  involved  the  substitution 
of  Norm  an- English  laws  for  the  Welsh  customs,  which  by 
the  treaty  were  to  be  retained  in  regard  to  the  lands  of 
the  Welsh  inhabitants.  In  any  case  the  immediate  change 
from  one  system  to  another,  however  gently  brought  about, 
would  have  caused  some  loss  or  injury  to  individuals  ;  but 
the    conduct   of  the   king's    subordinates  was    such   as   to 

=  "Brut,".r.a.  1278. 
W.P.  Z 


338         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

aggravate  very  greatly  the  ills  sustained  b\'  the  Welsh. 
The  ro}'al  officers  were  not  onh'  violent  and  arbitrary  in 
their  dealings  with  Welsh  holders  of  land,  but  also  grossly 
extortionate  and  corrupt,  while  the  provisions  inserted  in 
the  treaty  for  the  protection  of  the  latter  were  ignored. 
Whatever  allowance  may  be  made  for  Edward  on  the  score 
of  his  being  badly  served,  or  of  the  acts  of  his  officers  being 
unauthorised,  he  was  guilty  of  bad  faith,  for  when  com- 
plaints were  made  to  him,  he  declared  that  he  would  main- 
tain the  Welsh  laws  only  so  far  as  they  were  good.  In 
fact,  he  had  determined  to  impose  English  laws  in  the 
ceded  lands  without  regard  to  the  treaty.  Lewelyn,  too, 
had  grievances  of  his  own.  Thus  he  laid  claim  to  some 
land  in  Arwystli,  and  brought  the  case  before  the  king's 
court  at  Rhudlan.  According  to  the  treaty  (so  the  prince 
contended)  the  matter  should  have  been  tried  and  decided 
according  to  the  Welsh  law,  but  it  was,  in  fact,  dealt  with 
according  to  the  Norman-English  procedure.  Davyd  also 
had  complaints  to  make  against  the  authorities  in 
Perfedwlad.  The  anger  and  resentment  kindled  first 
among  the  Welsh  outside  the  remnant  of  the  principality 
left  in  the  possession  of  Lewelyn  quickly  spread  among  his 
own  subjects  and  the  whole  Welsh-speaking  people.  It 
was  felt  by  all  that  another  effort  to  secure  independence 
ought  to  be  made  ;  but  the  independence  now  sought  for 
was  not  the  severing  of  all  ties  with  the  English  king,  but 
freedom  to  carry  on  their  affairs  in  accordance  with  their 
own  conceptions  of  right.  Just  as  the  English  clamoured 
for  the  laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  the  Welsh  national 
demands  focussed  themselves  into  a  claim  that  the  laws  of 
Howel  Da  should  be  maintained,  and  into  resistance  to  the 
innovations  of  the  English  government.  The  movement  in 
favour  of  revolt  rapidly  spread  in  1281.  A  reconciliation 
was  effected  between  Lewelyn  and  his  brother  Dav}'u,  and 
the  latter  agreed  with  him  never  again  to  serve  under  the 


HISTORY   OF   WALES,    1066— 1282.  339 

English  king.  An  understanding  was  also  arrived  at  between 
the  prince  and  the  aggrieved  barons  of  the  south,  and  from 
what  subsequently  took  place  we  may  infer  that  a  general 
insurrection  was  planned. 

The  rising  was  commenced  by  Davyd",  who,  on  the  eve 
of  Palm  Sunday,  1282,  suddenly  attacked  and  took 
Hawarden  Castle  and  captured  Roger  Clifford  the  Justiciar. 
Lewelyn  at  once  crossed  the  Conway,  ravaged  the  country 
up  to  Chester  itself,  and  besieged  Rhudlan  and  Flint. 
Almost  simultaneously,  the  chiefs  among  the  southern 
barons,  Gruffyd"  ab  Maredud  and  Rhys  ab  Maelgwn,  rose 
and  took  Aberystwyth,  burnt  the  castle,  and  destroyed 
the  rampart  that  had  been  made  round  the  town.  Edward, 
profoundly  angered  by  the  news  from  Wales,  made  very 
extensive  preparations  for  the  final  subjugation  of  the 
principality.  The  events  that  had  just  happened  left 
Edward  no  option  but  to  invade  it  again,  and  we  cannot 
blame  him  for  taking  that  course.  Yet  the  outbreak  of 
a  fresh  rebellion  at  a  time  and  under  circumstances  which 
(as  the  better  informed  of  the  Welsh  leaders  must  have 
known)  made  its  success  impossible  shows  not  only  that 
the  Welsh  grievances  were  real  and  hard  to  be  borne, 
but  that  Edward  had  neglected  to  make  adequate  inquiry 
about  them,  and  to  exercise  efficient  control  over  his  local 
ministers.  He  made  no  attempt  to  negotiate,  unless  indeed 
it  was  by  his  desire  that  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
(Peckham)  tried  to  effect  a  peaceful  settlement.  Either 
acting  under  the  direction  of  the  king  or  simply  in  his 
own  episcopal  capacity  he  visited  North  Wales,  and 
having  addressed  a  letter  to  the  prince,  met  and  con- 
ferred with  him  and  his  council.  Lewelyn  laid  before 
him  a  written  answer  to  his  letter  on  behalf  of  himself 
and  his  people,  adding  particulars  of  "  the  greefes "  of 
Davyd  and  other  barons,  and  of  the  men  of  Rhos  and 
other  districts.     The  written  complaints  of  the  Welsh  were 

Z  2 


340         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

taken  b}*  Peckham  to  the  king,  who,  though  he  did  not 
categorical!}'  refuse  to  hear  the  Welsh  complainants,  made 
unconditional  submission  a  preliminary  step  to  investigating 
the  matters  in  dispute,  for  he  would  promise  to  those  who 
might  come  to  him  liberty  to  return  to  Wales  only  if  "  by 
justice  they  deserved  to  depart."  The  archbishop  again 
went  to  Whales  and  saw  Lewelyn,  who  resolutely  refused 
to  place  himself  at  the  king's  mercy.  Returning  to  Eng- 
land he  reported  what  had  taken  place,  and  Edward  sternly 
said  he  wanted  no  other  treaty  of  peace  than  that  the 
prince  and  his  people  should  simply  submit  themselves. 
Such  a  submission  was  demanded  in  a  message  to  Lewelyn 
and  his  council,  which  was,  however,  accompanied  by  secret 
offers  to  the  prince  of  an  estate  worth  ;^i,ooo  a  year  in 
England,  and  to  Davyd"  of  adequate  provision  according 
to  his  degree.  The  Welsh  princes  declined  both  the  open 
and  the  private  terms  of  accommodation  suggested  to  them, 
and  in  a  dignified  and  touching  epistle  to  the  archbishop 
explained  that  they  dare  not  trust  to  the  king,  as  he  had 
kept  "  neither  oath  nor  covenant  nor  grant  by  charter," 
and  in  effect  expressed  their  determination  to  defend  their 
rights  at  all  hazards. 

Finding  that  his  friendly  negotiations  had  failed,  the 
archbishop  excommunicated  Lewelyn.  Edward,  fully 
prepared,  marched  into  Gwyned",  repeated  the  tactics  of 
1277  with  a  similar  result,  and  having  occupied  Mon,  com- 
pelled the  Welsh  to  retreat  into  the  mountainous  district 
of  Snowdon,  though  not  without  sustaining  considerable 
losses.  In  the  south,  the  Earl  of  Gloucester  and  Sir 
Edmund  Mortimer  advanced  against  the  Welsh  force, 
under  the  command  of  Gruffyd  ab  Maredud  and  his  friends, 
and  met  and  defeated  it  at  Landeilo  Fawr.  Lewelyn, 
remembering  his  fate  in  the  last  war,  left  Davyd  to  defend 
himself  in  the  north,  and  himself,  with  a  small  body  of 
men,    escaped,   in   the    hope  of  securing  fresh   adherents, 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  341 

encouraging  the  Welsh  in  the  marches,  and  of  effecting 
some  kind  of  diversion.  He  passed  through  and  ravaged 
Cardigan  and  the  estate  of  Rhys  ab  Maredud,  who  was 
serving  with  the  king.  He  then  proceeded  into  the  valley 
of  the  Wye,  apparently  w^ith  the  intention  of  inducing 
the  Welsh  of  southern  Powys  to  join  him  when  the  winter 
was  further  advanced  in  an  attempt  to  cut  off  Edward's 
communications  with  Chester  ;  but  he  w^as  met  not  far  from 
Buattt  Castle  by  Mortimer,  who  was  lord  of  the  cantref, 
and  an  engagement  took  place  on  December  loth,  in  which 
the  small  Welsh  force  was  beaten.  Lewelyn  was  killed  by 
Adam  de  Francton  on  the  same  day,  but  whether  in  the 
actual  battle  or  while  waiting  unattended  for  the  coming 
of  some  of  the  Welsh  barons  of  the  country  with  Avhom  he 
had  made  a  secret  appointment  is  not  certain.  His  head 
was  sent  to  Edward,  and  was  afterwards  exhibited  in 
London,  encircled  with  a  crown  of  ivy  in  mocking  allusion 
to  a  prophecy  current  among  the  Welsh  that  he  should 
be  crowned  there.  He  is  usually  regarded  as  the  last 
Cymric  Prince  of  Wales,  and  this  popular  view  is  sub- 
stantially true,  for  he  was  the  last  lineal  descendant  of 
Rhodri  MawT,  who  ruled  over  the  whole,  or  nearly  the 
whole,  of  the  ancient  kingdom  of  Gwyned ;  but  technically 
Davyd  HI.  must  be  accorded  the  melancholy  honour. 
Left,  as  we  have  seen,  in  command  in  Snowdon  on  his 
brother's  death,  he  was  acknowledged  by  the  Vv^elsh  barons 
as  their  prince.  For  a  time  he  held  out,  but  he  was  soon 
obliged  to  conceal  himself  in  the  recesses  of  the  mountains, 
and  after  some  months  was  betrayed  into  the  king's  hands. 
He  was  imprisoned  at  Rhudlan  Castle ;  the  other  Welsh 
barons  surrendered,  and  the  whole  of  Wales  and  the  marches 
was  soon  reduced  to  subjection.  The  king  determined  to 
make  an  example  of  Davyd,  who  was  tried  as  a  baron 
of  Englatid  by  a  Parliament  held  at  Shrewsbury,  and, 
having  been  convicted,  was,  on  October  3rd,  1283,  hanged. 


342         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

drawn,  and  quartered.^  Edward's  brutal  treatment  of  the 
remains  of  Lewelyn  (who,  though  a  rebel  according  to  the 
law  of  the  king's  realm,  was  slain  in  honourable  war),  and 
his  utter  want  of  magnanimity  in  dealing  with  Davyd, 
were  long  remembered  among  the  Cymry,  and  helped 
to  keep  alive  the  hatred  with  which  the  Welsh-speaking 
people  for  several  centuries  more  regarded  the  English. 

We  deal  in  the  next  chapter  with  Edward's  settlement 
of  Welsh  affairs  and  his  organisation  of  the  principality. 
The  possessions  of  the  Cymric  house  of  Gwyned  were  not 
simply  added  to  England.  The  principality  was  still 
maintained,  but  annexed  to  the  English  Crown.  During 
the  time  Edward  resided  in  Wales  two  sons  were  born 
unto  him.  The  younger  one,  Edward  of  Carnarvon  (who 
became  his  successor  as  Edward  II.),  was  in  1301  created 
Prince  of  Wales,  and  it  became  the  custom  for  the  king 
of  England  to  grant  the  principality  to  the  heir  to  the 
Crown  with  a  special  limitation  which  made  it  appurtenant 
to  the  rightful  succession  to  the  throne. 

But  though  the  principality  survived  in  a  new  form,  and 
under  new  rules,  all  was  now  over  with  the  last  of  the 
princely  Cymric  lines.  Lewelyn  and  his  brothers  were 
the  representatives  of  one  of  the  very  oldest  reigning 
families  of  western  Europe — one  that  could  trace  its  origin 
to  the  time  when  Britain  still  formed  part  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  and  which  had  with  some  brief  intervals  ruled 
in  Gwyned  for  nearly  nine  hundred  years.  Lewelyn's 
daughter,  Gwenliian,  lived  on,  was  brought  up  in  a  convent, 
and  ultimately  took  the  veil,  it  is  said,  against  her  will. 
She  was  his  only  child  legitimate  according  to  English  law, 

1  For  full  details  as  to  their  careers  see  the  excellent  lives  of  Lewelyn  and 
Davyd  in  "  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,"  by  Professor  Tout.  ILygad  Gwr  wrote  a  long 
o;le  to  ILewelyn  not  long  after  th-i  prince's  success  of  1267  (Stephens'  "  Lit.  of 
the  Kymry,"  2n  1  e.iition,  p.  346)  ;  and  Blc.^yn  Vard"  and  Gruflyd  ab  yr  Ynad 
C'och  wrote  elegies  upon  h  m.  {Ibid.,  pp.  365,  368.)  Consult  too  "The 
Welsh  Wars  of  Edward  I.,"  by  J.  E.  Morris  (Clar.  Press,  1901). 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  343 

but  there  is  little  doubt  the  Madog  who  led  a  vigorous 
insurrection  in  1294,  which  was  put  down  in  the  following 
year,  was  his  son.^  Davyd  left  sons  surviving  him,  and  Owain 
Goch  perhaps  did  so,  but  so  far  as  we  know  none  of  the 
descendants  of  the  three  brothers,  except  Madog,  played  a 
noticeable  part  in  political  or  military  affairs,  unless  a  dis- 
tinguished soldier  called  Owain  Lawgoch,  with  whom  Welsh 
literature  and  the  pages  of  Froissart  make  us  acquainted, 
may  be  counted,  as  seems  to  us  not  unlikely,  among  them  ;  - 
for  neither  Owain  Glyndwr  nor  Henry  VI I.  could  substan- 
tiate a  claim  to  anything  more  than  a  remote  and  indirect 
connection  with  the  cenedl  of  Lewelyn  ab  lorwerth.  In  the 
Record  of  Carnarvon  we  find  that,  at  a  court  held  at 
Conway  in  the  44th  year  of  Edward  III.,  a  certain  Griffid 
Says  was  adjudged  to  forfeit  all  his  lands  which  he  held  in 
Anglesey  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  (that  is,  Edward  the  Black 
Prince)  for  the  reason  that  he  had  been  an  adherent  of 
Owain  Lawgoch.^  This  shows  that  Owain  Lawgoch  was 
a  real  man,  and  it  so  happens  that  one  Yewaines,  levains 
or  Yvain  de  Galles  {i.e.,  Owain  of  Wales)  was  fighting  on 
the  French  side  against  the  English  in  Edward's  con- 
tinental wars.  Froissart  has  a  good  deal  to  say  about  him, 
for  he  distinguished  himself  very  greatly  on  several  critical 
occasions.  From  the  French  chronicler's  account  *  we  learn 
that  the  king  of  England  (Edward  III.)  had  slain  Owain's 
father,  and  given  his  lordship  and  principality  to  his  own 
son,  the  Prince  of  Wales.  The  name  of  the  father  is  given 
as  Aymon,  which  is  regarded  as  equivalent  to  Edmond,  but 
may  be  Einion.  Owain  escaped  to  the  court  of  Philip  VI., 
who  received  him  with  favour,  and  had  him  educated  with 
his  own  nephews.     He  was  engaged  at  Poictiers  in  1356, 

J  See  under  "Madog,"  Diet.  Nat.  Biog, 

-  See  below,  p.  593.     Owain  Lawgoch  means  Owain  '*  of  the  red  hand." 
^  The  words  are  :  — "  Adherens  fuisset  Owino  Lawgoch  inimico  et  proditor 
praedicti  Domini  Principis  et  de  consilio."     Record  of  Carnarvon,  p.  133. 
■*  See  "  Chroniques  de  J.  Froissart,"  i,,  cc,  306-7,  311 ;  ii.,  cc.  6,  17. 


344  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  vii.) 

and  when  peace  was  nriade  he  went  to  serve  in  Lombard}*, 
but  returned  on  the  breaking  out  of  war  again  between 
France  and  England.  He  sometimes  fought  on  sea  and 
sometimes  on  land,  but  he  was  always  entrusted  by  the 
French  king  (by  this  time  Charles  V.)  with  important 
commands.  Thus,  in  1372,  be  was  placed  at  the  head 
of  a  flotilla,  with  3,000  men  under  him,  and  ordered  to 
operate  by  sea  against  the  English  ;  he  made  a  descent  on 
Guernsey,  and  while  besieging  the  castle  of  Cornet  there  he 
was  charged  by  the  king  to  go  to  Spain  to  invite  the  king 
of  Castile  again  to  send  his  fleet  to  help  in  the  attack  on 
La  Rochelle.  Whilst  staying  at  Santander,  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke  was  brought  thither  to  him,  having  been  taken 
prisoner  in  the  course  of  the  destruction  of  the  English 
fleet  in  1272.  Owain,  seeing  the  earl,  asked  him  if  he  had 
come  to  do  him  homage  for  his  land  which  he  had  taken 
possession  of  in  Wales,  and  threatened  to  avenge  himself 
on  him  as  soon  as  he  could,  and  also  on  the  Earl  of 
Hereford  and  Edward  Spenser,  for  it  was  by  the  fathers 
of  these  three  men  that,  as  he  said,  his  own  father  had 
been  betrayed  to  death.  Owain  survived  the  Black  Prince 
and  Edward  HI.,  and  was  actively  engaged  in  besieging 
Mortagne-sur-]\Ier,  in  Poitou,  when  he  was  assassinated 
by  one  Lamb,  who  had  insinuated  himself  into  his  service 
and  confidence  by  pretending  to  bring  news  from  his  native 
land,  and  telling  him  that  all  Wales  was  longing  to  have 
him  back  to  be  lord  of  the  country  ("  et  lui  fist  a  croire 
que  toute  la  terre  de  Gales  le  desiroient  mout  a  ravoir  a 
seigneur").  So  Owain  fell  in  1378,  and  was  buried  in  the 
church  at  St.  Leger,  and  Lamb  returned  to  the  English 
to  recei\'e  his  reward. 

With  the  conquest  of  the  principality  by  Edward  L  it 
ceased  to  exist  as  an  independent  or  semi-independent 
state,  though  its  political  institutions  were  not  made  the 
same    as    those    of  England    in    all    respects    until     1830, 


HISTORY   OF    WALES,    1066— 1282.  345 

Henceforth  the  history  of  Wales  is  merged  in  that  of  Great 
Britain,  and  save  for  the  brief  period  during  which  Ovvain 
Glyndwr  over  a  hundred  years  later  revived  the  claims 
of  the  old  princes  of  the  country,  and  defied  the  authority 
of  Henry  IV.,  cannot  with  any  advantage  be  treated  in 
general  as  distinct  from  that  of  the  whole  island.  But  yet 
the  Welsh-speaking  people  have  a  particular  history  of  their 
own.  Edward,  by  the  building  of  great  castles,  of  which 
that  of  Carnarvon  is  the  best  known  example,  and  by  the 
foundation  of  towns  in  which  English  traders  and  artisans 
were  encouraged  to  settle,  not  only  made  the  hold  of  the 
central  government  too  strong  to  be  relaxed  for  any  length 
of  time,  but  made  the  centres  of  the  more  progressive 
industrial  and  social  life  hostile  to  all  things  Cymric.  The 
conquest  and  the  consequential  changes  did  not,  however, 
oust  the  Welsh  cultivators  of  the  soil ;  but  the  loss 
of  their  independence,  the  change  from  the  rule  of  native 
princes  to  that  of  unsympathetic  foreigners,  and  their  isola- 
tion in  a  mountainous  part  of  the  island,  remote  from  the 
centre  of  affairs,  retarded  for  a  time  their  intellectual  develop- 
ment. Notwithstanding  this,  and  the  lapse  of  more  than  six 
centuries,  Cymraeg  is  spoken  habitually  by  nearly  a  million 
of  persons  in  the  thirteen  counties,  and  is  thus  the  only  one 
of  the  ancient  tongues  of  the  island  that  has  survived  as  a 
living  language  by  the  side  of  English  among  any  con- 
siderable number  of  our  fellow-subjects  in  the  United 
Kingdom  ;  while  the  descendants  of  the  Cymry  still  retain 
many  of  their  national  characteristics,  and  preserve  the 
consciousness  of  their  national  identity.  To  explain,  so  far 
as  we  can,  how  this  has  come  about,  and  to  describe  briefly 
the  condition  and  habits  of  the  Welsh  of  to-day,  are  the 
principal  aims  of  the  remaining  chapters  of  this  work. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LEGAL   AND   CONSTITUTIONAL   HISTORY    OF   WALES. 

Having  traced  the  process  and  briefly  narrated  the  events 
by  which  the  Cymric  princes  lost  all  political  power  and 
Cymru  its  practical  independence,  we  next  propose  to  give 
an  outline  of  the  subsequent  legal  and  constitutional  history 
of  Wales. 

We  may  here  describe  shortly  its  legal  position  about 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  area  that  was 
called  Wales — i.e.,  which  formed  part  of  no  English  shire — 
had  not  been  very  largely  curtailed  since  the  time  of  William 
the  Conqueror.  The  western  limits  of  Gloucestershire, 
Herefordshire,  and  Shropshire,  the  three  adjacent  shires, 
were  in  the  time  of  Henry  I.  only  very  vaguely  defined.  The 
result  of  the  gradual  formation  of  the  lordships-marchers 
was,  of  course,  to  make  the  boundary  line  more  and  more 
precise,  since  their  lords  took  care  that  the  authorities  of 
the  shires  should  not  trespass  on  the  lands  they  had  won 
by  the  sword.  That  line  was  not  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury the  same  as  the  present  one,  which  dates  only 
from  the  time  of  Henry  VHI.  The  former  line  included 
considerable  portions  of  land  that  are  now  English,  while 
the  county  palatine  of  Chester  included  the  modern 
Elintshire     and    a    great    part    of    Denbighshire.^      The 

1  We  ought  to  point  out  that  the  district  called  Perfedwlad  (the  middle  countiy), 
and  sometimes  the  "four  cantrefs,"  included  the  greater  part  of  the  modeiu 
Flintshire  and  Denbighshire,  and  frequently  changed  hands. 


LEGAL  AND   CONSTITUTIONAL    HISTORY.  347 

boundary  did  not  then,  any  more  than  in  the  earher  days 
of  the  Norman  conquest,  correspond  with  the  territorial 
distribution  of  the  two  languages  or  races.^ 

From  the  point  of  view  of  legal  organisation  the  Welsh 
territory  was  at  that  time  divided  into  : — 

(i.)  The  Principality,  roughly  corresponding  to  the  modern 
counties  of  Anglesey,  Carnarvon,  and  Merioneth,  in  the 
possession  of  the  house  of  Gwyned. 

(ii.)  Portions  of  land  in  the  king's  hands  (which  passed 
to  Edward  I.  under  the  grants  made  to  him  by  his  father)^ 
of  which  the  chief  were  the  towns  and  castles  of  Carmarthen 
and  Cardigan,  with  the  lands  usually  held  with  them.  In 
these  places  Edward  in  1256  tried  to  establish  an  organisa- 
tion similar  to  that  of  the  English  shires  ;  but  they  hardly 
became  effective  till  the  Statute  of  Rhudlan  came  into  force, 
though  we  may  assume  he  created  a  county  court  and 
appointed  the  usual  officers." 

(iii.)  The  county  palatine  of  Pembroke  and  the  lordship 
of  Glamorgan.  Pembroke  had  been  a  county  palatine 
since  the  grant  to  Gilbert  de  Clare  in  1138,  and  is  thus 
the  oldest  Welsh  county.^     The  county  palatine  was  not, 

1  See  Professor  Tout's  paper  on  *'  The  Welsh  Shires  :  A  Study  in  Constitu- 
tional History,"  "Y  Cymmrodor,"  vol.  ix. ,  p.  201;  and  the  same  author's 
"Edward  the  First"  (Lond.  1893),  p.  16.  Enderbie,  writing  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  says  : — "Welsh  is  commonly  used  and  spoken  English- 
ward  beyond  these  old  meares  a  great  way,  as  in  Herefordshire,  Gloucester- 
shire, and  a  great  part  of  Shropshire"  ("Cambria  Triumphans,"  ed,  1661, 
p.  209). 

-  See  Tout's  paper  (cited  above),  p.  21 1.  Professor  Tout  has  several  bits  of 
evidence  in  support  of  this  statement :  e.g.,  in  1270  Pain  de  Chaworth  was 
ordered  to  do  homage  to  Edward's  brother  "  for  the  lands  which  he  holds  of 
the  castles  and  counties  of  Cardigan  and  Carmarthen"  (35th  Rep.  of  the  Deputy, 
Keeper  of  Public  Records,  p.  ii).  In  1280  the  "counties"  of  Carmarthen 
and  Cardigan  were  granted  to  a  certain  Bogo  of  Knovill,  the  King's  Justice  of 
West  Wales  (Carmarthen  Charters,  collected  by  Daniel  Tyssen  and  Alcwyn 
Evans,  published  by  Spurrell,  Carmarthen,  1878). 

3  See  c.  24  of  Owen's  "Description  of  Pembrokeshire,"  headed  "That 
Pembrokeshire  was  in  ancient  tyme  a  Countye  Palatyne,  and  noe  part  of  the 
Principalitie    of  Wales,  &c.,"    in    "Owen's    Pembrokeshire"    (edited    with 


348         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

however,  so  extensive  as  the  county  as  delimited  by  the  Tudor 
legislation.  Haverfordwest,  Walwyn's  Castle,  Slebech,  and 
Narberth  were  not  within  its  area,  nor  were  Lamphe\-, 
Kemmes,  or  Dewisland  at  this  time  among  its  parcels.^ 

The  lordship  of  Glamorgan,  though  not  strictly  a  county 
palatine,  was  one  in  substance.  An  organisation  similar 
to  that  of  Pembroke  or  Chester  was  created  perhaps  b}' 
Robert  Fitzhamon,  but  certainly  not  long  after  his  time. 
As  Professor  Tout  suggests,  the  fact  that  it  did  not  become 
an  earldom  is  very  likely  due  to  its  close  connection  with 
the  earldom  of  Gloucester,  with  which  it  was  usually  held. 
The  Glamorgan  of  the  thirteenth  century  was  not  so  large 
as  the  present  county.  Gower  was  outside  its  western 
limits,  and  some  districts  in  the  Vale  were  excepted  from 
its  jurisdiction,  while  the  uplands  were  for  the  most  part  in 
the  hands  of  Welsh  chieftains.- 

(iv.)  The  rest  of  Wales  was  divided  into  lordships- 
marchers  held  of  the  king  by  Norman  lords  or  W^elsh 
chieftains,  who  held  their  lands  on  terms  of  vassalage. 
These  lordships,  with  the  characteristics  of  which  we  deal 
below,  ultimately  numbered  about  140.^ 

notes  by  Henry  Owen,  B.C.L.),  part  i.  (Lond.  1892),  pp.  190  et  seq. 
The  "Description"  is  also  printed  in  the  Cambrian  Register,  vol.  iii.  (Lond. 
1799)5  PP-  53~23i.     See  also  Tout'.s  paper,  p.  206. 

1  Tout's  paper  cited  above,  and  Owen's  "Description."  Before  the  Act  of 
Henry  VIH.,  however,  the  limits  of  the  county  had  seeminfjly  been  extended. 
See  the  table  made  by  Geo.  Owen,  printed  m  "Owen's  Pembrokeshire," 
part  ii.  (Lond.  1897),  p.  374,  headed  "How  the  Counties  of  Pembroke  and 
Carmarthen  were  made  up."  There  "Narberth  Baronia,"  "  Haverfordwe<;t 
Baronia,"  "  Walwinscastle  Baronia,"  "  Kemes  Baronia,"  are  placed  in  "  Guide 
Pembrokeshire";  but  "Dewisland"  and  "Slebech"  are  described  as  added 
by  the  statute. 

-See  Tout's  paper  cited  above,  and  G.  T.  Clark's  "The  Land  of  Morgan" 
(reprinted  from  the  "  Archaeological  Journal"),  Lond.  1888. 

3  The  principal  sources  of  information  already  published  as  to  the  courts, 
legal  procedure  and  practice,  and  the  government  of  Wales  and  the  Marches 
from  the  Edwardian  Conquest  to  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  centuiy,  are 
the  chapter  on  "The  Government  of  Wales"  in  dive's  "Ludlow"  (Lond. 
1841);   an  essay  printed  in  Hargraves'   "Law  Tracts"  (Lond.    1787),  from 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  349 

Bearing-  these  things  in  mind  let  us  now  see  how  Edward 
proceeded  to  organise  his  newly  won  lands.  Even  before 
he  had  finally  subdued  Lewelyn  he  had  taken  some  pre- 
liminary measures  for  the  settlement  of  Welsh  affairs.  In 
1280  he  had  issued  a  commission^  to  Thomas,  Bishop  of 
St.    David's,  Reginald  de    Grey,  and  Walter  de  Hopton, 

an  anonymous  MS.  entitled,  "A  Discourse  against  the  Jurisdiction  of  the 
King's  Bench  in  Wales  by  Process  of  Latitat  "  ;  "  An  Historical  Account  of  the 
Ancient  and  Modern  State  of  the  Principality  of  Wales,  Duchy  of  Cornwall, 
and  Earldom  of  Cornwall,  &c.,"  by  Sir  John  Dodridge,  Knight  (2nd  ed., 
Lond.  1714;  1st  ed.,  Lond.  1630);  Owen's  **  Pembrokeshire,"  cited  above; 
G.  T.  Clark's  ' '  Cartae  et  alia  Munimenta  quae  ad  Dominium  de  Glamorgan 
pertinent,"  4  vols.,  vol.  i.  (1885),  1102-1135;  vol.  ii.  (1890),  1348-1730; 
vol.  iii.  (1891),  441-13CO;  vol.  iv.  (1892),  1215-1689  ;  G.  G.  Francis's  "Charters 
granted  to  Swansea,  the  Chief  Town  in  the  Seigniory  of  Gower  "  (privately 
printed,  1867),  and  other  collections  of  borough  charters,  such  as  the  "Car- 
marthen Charters"  already  cited;  Rice  Merrick's  "A  Booke  of  Glamorgan- 
shire Antiquities"  (ist  ed.  1578;  new  ed.  by  James  Stuart  Corbet,  Lond. 
1867);  "The  Ruthin  Court  Rolls,"  cited  above,  p.  117;  "A  Descriptive 
Catalogue  of  the  Penrice  and  Margam  Manuscripts  in  the  Possession  of 
Miss  Talbot  of  Margam,"  with  an  introduction  and  notes  by  Walter  de  Gray 
Birch  (ist  series,  Lond.  1893;  2nd  series,  1894,  and  3rd  series,  1895,  all 
three  privately  printed),  for  the  loan  of  which  we  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Charles 
Cheston,  of  Wyndham  Place;  Coke's  "Fourth  Institute,"  and  other  legal 
treatises.  See  also  "The  Record  of  Carnarvon"  (Record  Commissioners, 
1838),  and  the  extents  appended  to  Seebohm's  "Tribal  System."  The  county 
histories  also  contain  useful  information,  notably  Theophilus  Jones's  "History 
of  the  County  of  Brecknock"  (Brecknock,  vol.  i.  1805;  vol.  ii.  1809).  But 
the  fullest  description  of  the  political  and  legal  institutions  of  Wales  (in  the 
broad  sense)  in  Tudor  times,  and  of  their  history,  is  to  be  found  in  a  work 
printed  but  not  yet  published — "The  Dialogue  of  the  Government  of  Wales  " 
(written  about  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  by  George  Owen,  the  author 
of  the  "Description"),  edited  by  Henry  Owen,  B.C.L.,  who  has  kindly  lent 
us  the  proof-sheets.  It  is  a  dialogue  between  Barthol,  a  doctor  of  the  Civil 
Law,  and  Demetus,  a  Pembrokeshire  man,  in  the  course  of  which  the  Doctor 
interrogates  the  country  gentleman  as  to  the  state  and  history  of  his  country, 
and  is  courteously  and  fully  answered  by  the  latter. 

1  The  commission  is  dated  at  Westm.,  9  Edw.  I.,  4th  Dec.  For  a  fuller 
account  of  the  commission  and  its  proceedings  see  Lewis's  paper  on  "The 
Court  of  the  Council  of  Wales  and  the  Marches"  (cited  above),  pp.  4,  5, 
and  Mr.  E.  Phillimore's  note  on  p.  5.  See  also  the  "Historical  Account  of 
the  Statute  of  Rhudlan"  in  the '"  Literary  Remains  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Price  " 
{^Cartthuanawc),  i.  352-371,  for  a  translation  of  part  of  the  document.  The 
evidence  is  printed  in  the  Appendix  to  Wotton's  "  Leges  Wallicae." 


350         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

directing  them  to  examine  upon  oath  persons  Welsh  ana 
English  in  order  to  obtain  information  respecting  the  laws 
and  usages  by  which  the  kings,  his  predecessors,  had  been 
accustomed  to  govern  and  orc'er  the  Prince  of  Wales  and 
the  Welsh  barons  of  Wales  and  their  peers  and  others  their 
inferiors,  and  all  particulars  connected  with  such  laws  and 
usages.  The  heads  of  inquiry  comprised  fourteen  inter- 
rogatories to  be  put  to  each  witness.  The  commissioners 
sat  and  examined  witnesses  at  Chester,  Rhudlan,  the  White 
Monastery  (probably  Oswestry),^  Montgomery,  and  Lan- 
badarn  Fawr,  and  in  due  course  reported  the  answers.  If 
the  evidence  is  true,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  the  area 
of  inquiry  Norman-English  procedure  and  law  had  alread}' 
almost  entirely  ousted  the  Welsh  customs  ;  but  there  is 
reasonable  ground  for  suspecting  it.  The  frequent  profes- 
sion of  absolute  ignorance  and  some  rather  evasive  replies 
suggest  that  the  witnesses  were  either  carefully  selected,  or 
else  under  the  influence  of  fear  or  motives  of  self-interest 
gave  replies  which  they  thought  would  be  satisfactory  to 
the  English  authorities.  The  survival  of  Welsh  customs,  as 
to  which  there  is  ample  testimony  even  as  late  as  Tudor 
times,  tends  to  confirm  one's  suspicions,  but  on  the  other 
hand  the  commission's  questions  dealt  chiefly  with  procedure 
and  the  rights  of  barons  and  landed  proprietors  ;  and  it 
may  be  urged  that  the  supersession  of  Welsh  law  in  regard 
to  that  part  of  the  corpus  Juris  was  not  inconsistent  with 
the  retention  of  Welsh  usages  in  regard  to  other  parts,  or  as 
to  holdings  of  land  by  inferior  tenants  in  particular  lordships. 
Edward  remained  in  Wales  for  about  two  \-ears  after  the 
downfall  of  ILewelyn,  reducing  the  Principality  to  order, 
and  ultimately,  partly  as  a  result  of  the  commission,  pro- 
mulgated in  1284  the  Ordinance  of  Rhudlan,  consisting  of  a 
scries  of  regulations  which  a  recent  writer  has  felicitoush* 
compared  to  the  laws  made  by  the  British  Government  for 

^  See  Mr.  E.  Phillimore's  note  (b)  at  the  end  of  Lewis's  paper,  ///'/  supra. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   351 

the  settlement  of  the  affairs  of  the  North-West  Provinces 
of  India.  It  is  not  strictly  speaking-  a  statute,  but  it  is 
always  treated  as  one,  and  is  included  in  the  Statutes  of  the 
Realm.^ 

It  recites  that  :^ — 

"  Edward  by  the  grace  of  God,  King  of  England,  Lord 
of  Ireland,  and  Duke  of  Aquitaine,  to  all  his  subjects  of  his 
land  of  Snowdon  and  of  other  his  lands  in  Wales,  greeting 
in  the  Lord.  The  Divine  Providence,  which  is  unerring  in 
its  own  government,  among  other  gifts  of  its  dispensation 
wherewith  it  hath  vouchsafed  to  distinguish  us  and  our 
realm  of  England,  hath  now  of  its  favour  wholly  and  entirely 
transferred  under  our  proper  dominion  the  land  of  Wales, 
with  its  inhabitants  heretofore  subject  unto  us  in  feudal 
right,  all  obstacles  whatsoever  ceasing,  and  hath  annexed 
and  united  the  same  unto  the  Crown  of  the  aforesaid  realm 
as  a  member  of  the  same  body.  We  therefore,  under  the 
Divine  will,  being  desirous  that  our  aforesaid  land  of 
Snowdon  and  our  other  lands  in  those  parts  like  as  all 
those  which  are  subject  unto  our  power,  should  be  governed 
with  due  order  to  the  honour  and  praise  of  God  and  of 
Holy  Church  and  the  advancement  of  justice,  and  that  the 

^  It  is  in  Latin,  and  has  been  printed  several  times  in  collections  of  the 
statutes.  The  authoritative  version  is  that  in  the  Statutes  of  the  Realm 
(published  by  the  Record  Commissioners,  1810,  vol.  i.,  p.  55),  with  a  transla- 
tion. In  this  version  the  abbreviations  of  the  MSS.  are  not  expanded.  In 
Pickering's  Collection  of  the  Statutes  the  Latin  text  is  printed  in  expanded 
form.  The  text  of  the  18 10  version  is  from  a  roll,  then  in  the  Tower  of 
London,  now  at  the  Record  Office,  and  the  various  readings  are  from  two 
rolls,  writte»i  in  the  time  of  Edw.  L,  preserved  among  the  Records  in  the 
Treasury  of  the  Court  of  the  Receipt  of  Exchequer  in  the  Chapter  House  at 
Westminster  (which  also  are  now  at  the  Record  Office).  The  statute  is  also 
printed  in  A.  Owen's  "Ancient  Laws,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  908. 

"  We  feel  it  incumbent  on  us  to  explain  that  we  make  several  lengthy 
citations  from  statutes  and  other  authorities  in  this  chapter  because  we  hope 
that  this  work  may  be  found  useful  to  students  in  Wales,  and  we  know  that 
even  at  the  National  Colleges  the  statutes  and  some  of  the  other  books  cited 
are  either  not  at  all  or  not  easily  accessible. 


352         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

people  or  inhabitants  of  those  lands  who  have  submitted 
themselves  wholly  unto  our  will,  and  whom  we  have  there- 
unto so  accepted,  should  be  protected  in  security  within 
our  peace  under  fixed  laws  and  customs,  have  caused  to  be 
rehearsed  before  us  and  the  nobles  of  our  realm  the  laws 
and  customs  of  those  parts  hitherto  in  use,  which,  being 
diligently  heard  and  fully  understood,  we  have,  by  the 
advice  of  the  aforesaid  nobles,  abolished  certain  of  them  ; 
some  thereof  we  have  allowed  and  some  we  have  corrected, 
and  we  have  likewise  commanded  certain  others  to  be 
ordained  and  added  thereto,  and  these  we  will  shall  be 
from  henceforth  steadfastly  kept  and  observed  in  our  lands 
in  those  parts  according  to  the  form  underwritten." 

After  generally  providing  that  the  justice  of  Snowdon 
is  to  have  the  custody  and  government  of  the  king's  peace 
in  Snowdon  and  the  lands  of  Wales  adjoining,  and  that 
he  is  to  administer  justice  according  to  original  writs  of 
the  king  and  the  laws  and  custom  underwritten,  the 
statute  constitutes  the  counties  of  Anglesea,  Carnarvon, 
Merioneth,  Flint,  Carmarthen,  and  Cardigan.  It  ordains 
for  each  county  a  sheriff  as  well  as  coroners,  and  also 
bailiffs  for  each  commote.^  It  then  describes  the 
duties  of  the  office  of  sheriff  and  the  manner  of  holding 
courts  (both  the  county  court  and  the  sheriffs  tourn  in 
each  commote),  and  goes  on  to  deal  with  the  mode  of 
electing  the  coroner  for  each  commote,  his  duties,  and  the 
way  in  which  he  is  to  discharge  them.  It  then  sets  forth 
the  form  of  some  of  the  principal  writs  :  novel  disseisin  for 
a  freehold  and  also  for  a  common  of  pasture  ;  for  nuisance  ; 
writ  of  mortdancestor  ;  writ  of  general  disseisin  ;  wTit  of 
dower  ;  writ  of  debt ;  covenant.  Rules  for  the  trials  of 
pleas  or  causes  are  then  given  ;  some  are  to  be  determined 
by  the  assize  and  some  by  inquest  or  jury.  Pleas  of  lands 
in  those  parts,  it  is  said,  are  not  to  be  determined  by  battle 

•   Sir.      *'  Commote  ''  is  generally  used  for  cyynwd  in  English  books. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   353 

nor  by  the  grand  assize.  The  county  court  is  given  juris- 
diction in  all  trespasses  wherein  the  damages  do  not 
exceed  forty  shillings :  other  trespasses  before  the  justice 
of  Wales. 

The  statute  also  provides  that — 

"  Whereas  heretofore  women  have  not  been  endowed  in 
Wales,  the  king  granteth  that  they  shall  be  endowed.  The 
dower  of  a  woman  is  two  fold,  one  is  an  assignment  of  the 
third  part  of  the  whole  land  that  belonged  to  her  husband 
which  were  his  during  coverture,  whereof  there  lieth  the 
writ  of  reasonable  dower,  elsewhere  described  in  its  place 
with  the  other  writs  for  Wales.  .  .  .  The  other  dower  is 
when  a  son  endoweth  his  wife  by  the  assent  of  his  father." 

As  to  succession  the  statute  proceeds  thus  : — 

"  Whereas  the  custom  is  otherwise  in  Wales  than  in 
England  concerning  succession  to  an  inheritance  inasmuch 
as  the  inheritance  is  partible  among  the  heirs  male,  and 
from  time  whereof  the  memory  of  man  is  not  to  the 
contrary,  hath  been  partible.  Our  lord  the  king  will  not 
have  that  custom  abrogated,  but  willeth  that  inheritance 
shall  remain  partible  among  like  heirs  as  it  was  wont  to 
be,  and  partition  of  the  same  inheritance  shall  be  made 
as  it  was  wont  to  be  made,  with  this  exception,  that 
bastards  from  henceforth  shall  not  inherit,  and  also  shall 
not  have  portions  with  the  lawful  heirs  nor  without  the 
lawful  heirs.  And  if  it  happen  that  any  inheritance  should 
hereafter,  upon  the  failure  of  heir  male  descend  unto 
females  the  lawful  heirs  of  their  ancestor  last  seised 
thereof,  we  will  of  our  special  grace  that  the  same  women 
shall  have  their  portions  thereof  to  be  assigned  them  in 
our  court,  although  this  be  contrary  to  the  custom  of 
Wales." 

The  statute  concludes  thus  : — 

"And  whereas  the  people  of  Wales  have  besought  us 
that  we  would    grant    unto    them,  that    concerning    their 

W.P.  A  A 


354        THE   WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  viii.) 

possessions  immovable,  as  lands  and  tenements,  the  truth 
may  be  tried  by  good  and  lawful  men  of  the  neighbour- 
hood chosen  by  consent  of  the  parties ;  and  concerning 
things  movable  as  of  contracts,  debts,  sureties,  covenants, 
trespasses,  chattels,  and  all  other  movables  of  the  same 
sorts,  they  may  use  the  Welsh  law  whereto  they  have 
been  accustomed  which  was  this,  that  if  a  man  complains 
of  another  upon  contracts  or  things  done  in  such  a  place 
that  the  plaintiff's  case  may  be  proved  by  those  who  saw 
and  heard  it,  when  the  plaintiff  shall  establish  his  case  by 
those  witnesses  whose  testimony  cannot  be  disproved, 
then  he  ought  to  recover  the  thing  in  demand,  and  the 
adverse  party  be  condemned,  and  in  other  cases  which 
cannot  be  proved  by  persons  who  saw  and  heard,  the 
defendant  should  be  put  to  his  compurgation  sometimes 
with  a  greater  number,  sometimes  with  less,  according  to 
the  quality  and  quantity  of  the  matter  in  deed.  And  that 
in  theft  if  one  be  taken  with  the  mainours  he  shall  not  be 
permitted  to  pay  it  in  but  be  holden  for  convict.  We,  for 
the  common  peace  and  quiet  of  our  aforesaid  people  of  our 
land  of  Wales,  do  grant  the  premises  unto  them.  Yet  so  that 
it  hold  not  place  in  thefts,  larcenies,  burnings,  they  murders, 
manslaughters,  and  manifest  and  notorious  robberies,  nor 
do  by  any  means  extend  unto  these  ;  wherein  we  will  they 
shall  use  the  laws  of  England  as  is  before  decreed. 

"  And  therefore,  we  command  you  that  from  henceforth 
you  do  steadfastly  observe  the  premises  in  all  things.  So 
notwithstanding  that  whensoever  and  wheresoever,  and  as 
often  as  it  shall  be  our  pleasure,  we  may  declare,  interpret, 
enlarge,  or  diminish  the  aforesaid  statutes  and  the  several 
parts  of  them  according  to  our  mere  will  and  as  to  us  shall 
seem  expedient  for  the  security  of  us  and  our  land  aforesaid. 

"  In  witness  whereof  our  seal  hath  been  affixed  to  these 
presents.  Given  at  Rothelan  on  Sunday  in  Mid-lent  in 
the  twelfth  year  of  our  reign." 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   355 

In  regard  to  this  statute  it  is  to  be  noticed — 

That  it  applied  only  to  the  area  of  the  Principality 
enjoyed  by  the  last  Lewelyn,  prince  of  Wales  ;  it  did  not 
extend  to  the  marches,  i.e.,  the  districts  in  the  possession 
of  lords  marchers.  The  term  *'  marches  "  subsequently  in 
common  parlance  was  limited  to  the  districts  or  counties 
on  the  borders  of  Wales  in  the  large  sense,  but  strictly, 
and  for  legal  purposes,  it  included  all  the  lordships  marchers, 
even  those  in  the  very  heart  of  what  is  now  Wales,  or 
situate  in  the  most  remote  counties,  e.£:,  the  lordship  of 
Kemes  in  Pembrokeshire  was  a  lordship  marcher.^ 

The  Principality  extended  only  to  those  cymwds  or 
lordships  of  which  Prince  Lewelyn  was  seised.  His  pos- 
sessions, or  to  use  the  legal  term  parcella  principalitatis 
Walliae  were  the  cymwds  grouped  by  the  statute  into  the 
counties  of  Anglesea,  Carnarvon,  Merioneth,  Cardigan,  with 
part  of  Flintshire,  and  part  of  Carmarthenshire  (West  Towy).* 

The  effect  of  the  statute  was  to  create  formally  an 
important  distinction  between  the  Principality  land  and 
the  marchers.  In  the  former,  save  so  far  as  the  statute 
makes  express  exceptions,  English  law  was  introduced ; 
in  the  latter  no  express  enactment  made  English  law  the 
rule  to  be  applied  by  the  courts.  In  the  Principality 
justice  was  administered  by  the  justices  appointed  under 
the  statute  ;  in  the  marches  it  was  dispensed  in  each  lord- 
ship by  officers  appointed  by  the  lord  according  to  the 
law  of  the  lordship.^ 

In  regard  to  the  tenure  of,  and  succession  to  land,  Welsh 
customs  were  preserved.  Upon  death  land  was  allowed 
to  continue  partible  according  to  the  Welsh  custom  which 
was  called  by  the  Norman-English  "gavelkind."     We  deal 

1  See  Clive's  "Ludlow"  (cited  jw/ra),  p.  135,  and  Owen's  **  Pembrokeshire," 
pt.  ii. ,  pp.  425  et  seq. 

^  See  Clive's  "Ludlow"  (cited  supra),  p.  117,  and  Dodridge's  "Principality 
of  Wales,"  p.  6. 

^  See  Clive's  "Ludlow"  (cited  supra),  p.  103. 

A  A  2 


356         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

in  the  next  chapter  with  the  difficulty  which  the  lawyers 
had  in  applying  English  law  modified  by  this  custom  to 
property  in  land  in  the  Principality. 

The  Act  only  became  fully  and  really  operative  very 
gradually,  and  even  in  the  time  of  the  Tudors  (as  appears 
from  the  Acts  of  Parliament  referred  to  below)  many 
notions  and  practices  found  in  the  Welsh  laws  survived. 
In  regard  to  the  formal  political  organisation,  it  appears 
to  have  been  put  in  force  at  once.  It  is  clear  from  the 
statute  that  the  organisation  of  the  cymwd  had  survived, 
and  probable  that  it  had  become  almost  indistinguishable 
from  that  of  an  English  manor.  The  Norman-English 
lawyers  seem  to  have  treated  the  cymwd  as  a  seigniory, 
and  applied  the  English  rules  in  its  administration ;  and 
the  definition  of  a  cymwd  to  be  found  in  the  books  is  that 
it  is  "  a  great  seigniory."  ^ 

The  general  constitutional  effect  was  that  the  Princi- 
pality was  considered  a  distinct  parcel  of  the  kingdom  of 
England,  ruled  however  by  English  laws  save  so  far  as 
these  were  not  modified  by  the  provisions  of  the  statute. 
The  courts  at  Westminster  did  not  affect  to  exercise  any 
jurisdiction  over  it  ;  breve  regis  non  currit  in  Walliam. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  marches  which  were  left 
untouched  by  Edward's  legislation.  From  the  time  of  the 
conquest  a  lordship-marcher  was  recognised  by  the  king's 
courts  and  the  English  lawyers  as  a  special  kind  of 
seigniory  or  honour.  The  distinctive  marks  of  a  lordship- 
marcher,  as  compared  with  the  ordinary  manor,  were 
these  : — 

First,  the  lord-marcher  hadywr*^  regalia  or  royal  rights,  his 
own  chancery  and  his  own  courts,  and  appropriate  officers. 

See  the  case  of  The  Queen  v.  Reveiey  and  others,  in  which  the  right 
cf  the  Crown  to  treat  Pentlyn  as  a  lordship  was  in  dispute  and  was  affirmed. 
Report,  p.  1 80.  The  case  was  privately  reported  and  published  for  the 
Commissioners  of  Woods  and  Forests,  Lond.  1870. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   357 

Secondly,  all  writs  within  the  seigniory  ran  in  the  name 
of  the  lord  and  were  confra  pacem  of  the  lord  and  not  of 
the  king  of  England. 

Thirdly,  the  lord-marcher  had  judgment  of  life  and 
limb  in  all  kinds  of  criminal  cases,  and  also  the  power  of 
pardoning  all  offences. 

Fourthly,  he  had  a  right  to  hold  plea  of  all  actions,  real, 
personal,  and  mixed  within  his  seigniory. 

Fifthly,  the  king's  writ  did  not  run  into  the  marches,  for 
they  were  not  parcel  of  the  realm  of  England,  nor  could 
the  king  intromit  into  any  of  the  lordships  for  the 
execution  of  justice.  The  only  sorts  of  causes  in  which 
the  king's  court  could  hold  plea,  though  the  cause  of  action 
arose  within  the  marches  were  : — 

(a)  Those  to  which  the  lord-marcher  was  a  party,  either 
in  respect  of  the  title  to  the  lordship  itself  or  its 
boundaries. 

(d)  Those  causes  in  which  it  was  necessary  to  write  to 
the  bishop,  e.g'.,  quare  impedit  and  issues  of  marriage 
and  bastardy.  In  these  cases  an  appeal  was  open 
to  the  king  and  his  privy  council. 

Sixthly,  the  lord-marcher  had  the  power  of  constituting 
boroughs. 

Seventhly,  for  the  purpose  of  exercising  his  powers  the 
lord-marcher  had  the  power  of  appointing  officers,  usually 
the  following  :  Justiciary,  chancellor,  seneschal,  mareschal, 
chamberlain,  and  constable,  all  of  whom  usually  held  their 
office  durante  bene placito.  The  courts  were  generally  held 
at  the  castle  and  the  possession  of  a  castle  was  deemed  to 
be  necessary  to  a  lordship-marcher,  whence  the  maxim 
"  No  lordship-marcher  without  a  castle,"  and  it  was  a 
condition  of  his  tenure  that  a  lord-marcher  should  supply 
his  castle  with  sufficient  men  and  munition  for  the  keeping 
of  the  king's  enemies  in  subjection. 

The  picture,  therefore,  that  Wales  presented  in  the  time 


358         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

of  Edward  I.  was  very  similar  to  that  which  one  gathers  to 
have  been  the  condition  of  the  larger  part  of  France  and 
Germany  at  the  same  time.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  the 
evils  naturally  incident  to  the  conflicting  rights  of  so  many 
petty  sovereigns,  and  in  fact  their  castles  became  the 
homes  of  disaffected  and  factious  subjects  of  English  kings 
and  Welsh  princes,  as  well  as  of  mercenary  adventurers. 

With  regard  to  the  law  administered  in  the  courts  of 
the  lordships,  there  appears  to  have  been  considerable 
diversity  of  practice,  but  in  the  main  the  best  authorities 
lead  to  the  conclusion  that  for  the  most  part  it  was  the 
Norman-English  law  that  was  adopted,  though  many 
particular  customs,  especially  in  regard  to  the  tenure  ot 
land,  were  recognised  by  the  local  courts.^ 

Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  in  his  history  of  Henry  VIII. 
gives  the  following  account  of  the  lordships  marchers  : — 
"  As  the  kings  of  England  heretofore  had  many  times 
brought  armies  to  conquer  that  country  (Wales),  defended 
both  by  mountains  and  stout  people,  without  yet  reducing 
them  to  a  final  and  entire  obedience,  so  they  resolved  at 
last  to  give  all  that  could  be  gained  there  to  those  who 
would  attempt  it,  whereupon  many  valiant  and  able  noble- 
men and  gentlemen  won  much  land  from  the  Welsh,  which 
as  gotten  by  force  was  by  permission  of  the  kings  then 
reigning  held  for  divers  ages  in  that  absolute  manner  as 
jura  regalia  were  exercised  in  them  by  the  conquerors. 
Yet  in  those  parts  which  were  gotten  at  the  king's  only 
charge  (being  not  a  few)  a  more  regular  law  was  observed. 
Howsoever,  the  general  government  was  not  only  severe, 
but  various  in  many  parts  ;  insomuch,  that  in  about  some 
141  lordships  marchers,  which  were  now  gotten,  many 
strange  and   discrepant  customs  were  practised."^      Lord 

1  See  Clark's  "  Cartae  et  alia  Munimenta,"  tassim.  Consult  also  Owen's 
"  Description." 

2  "History  of  Henry  VIH.,"  printed  in  Kennel's  "Complete  History,' 
Lond.  1 7 19.  ( 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   359 

Herbert's  statement  is  no  doubt  true  as  to  parts  of  South 
Wales,  especially  the  counties  of  Pembroke  and  Glamorgan, 
but  considerable  parts  of  the  marches  must  have  been 
in  the  hands  of  Welshmen  who  had  never  been  finally 
conquered  at  all  by  the  invader,  but  had  submitted  to 
hold  of  the  king  or  of  a  lord  marcher.  Lord  Herbert's 
account  agrees  with  that  given  in  the  MS.  printed  in  Clive's 
"  Ludlow  "  :— 

"  The  said  lord  marchers  being  English  lords,  executed 
the  English  lawes  for  the  most  parte  within  their  lordships, 
and  brought  the  most  parte  of  the  landes  of  the  said  lord- 
ships to  be  English  tenure,  and  passed  the  same  according 
to  the  lawes  of  England,  viz.,  by  fine,  recovery  feoffment 
and  seisin  as  in  England,  and  such  part  as  they  left  to  the 
auntient  inhabitants  of  the  country  to  possesse,  being  for 
the  most  part  the  barrenest  soiles  was  permitted  by  some 
lordes  to  be  holden  by  the  old  Welsh  custome,  as  to  passe 
the  same  by  surrender  in  court."^ 

In  Jones's  History  of  Breconshire  substantially  the  same 
view  is  presented.     He  says  : — 

"  In  some  lordships  there  were  two  courts,  one  for  the 
English  inhabitants  called  Englishcheria,  or  the  rights  of  an 
Englishman,  and  Wellescheria,  or  the  rights  of  a  Welshman. 
The  former  was  abolished  in  the  14th  of  Edward  III." 

"  There  were  also  in  some  lordships  a  mixture  or  jumble 
of  the  laws  of  both  countries ;  thus  Leland  tells  us  that  : 
'  Blain  Levein  (Blaenllyfni  in  Welscherie)  though  it  be  in 
Welsh  Talgarth  yet  keep  the  Englishe  tenure.'  So  also  in 
Welsh  and  English  Penkelley,  English  and  Welsh  Hay 
and  many  others,  lands  are  frequently  said  to  be  holden  of 
English  tenure  and  Welsh  Dole  ;  Cyfraith  saesneg  a  rhan 
Cymraeg ;  and  here  the  lord  had  the  wardship  of  all  the 
children  both  sons  and  daughters ;  in  many  of  the  lord- 
ships  none  of  the  Welsh  customs  were  permitted  to  be 

^  Clive's  "  Ludlow,"  p.  103. 


36o         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    ^chap.  viiij 

retained,  and  the  English  laws  entirely  prevailed  ;  the 
whole  jurisprudence  in  fact  depended  on  the  will  of  the 
first  conquerors."  ^ 

Some  account  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  lords  marchers 
is  to  be  found  under  Quo  warranto  in  Coke's  entries 
(549-55 ^  -^^-  9  Q^^^  warranto).  He  there  gives  the 
pleadings  in  a  proceeding  on  a  Quo  warranto  in  42 
Elizabeth  (1600)  against  Thomas  Cornewall  of  Burford  in 
Shropshire.  The  information  alleges  that  Burford  w^ithout 
warrant  uses  in  the  manor  of  Stapleton  and  Lugharneys  in 
the  county  of  Hereford,  the  franchise  of  taking  the  goods 
and  chattels  of  felons.  To  this  the  defendant  pleaded  that 
before  and  up  to  the  statute  of  27  Henry  VHI.,  and  from 
the  time  of  legal  memory,  Wales  was  governed  by  Welsh 
laws  and  Welsh  officers  in  all  matters,  whether  relating  to 
lands  and  tenements,  or  to  life  and  limb,  and  all  matters 
and  things  whatever.  Also  at  the  passing  of  the  statute 
of  27  Henry  VHI.,  divers  persons  were  seised  of  divers 
"  several  lordships,"  called  in  "  English  lordships  marchers 
in  Wales,  and  held  in  them  royal  laws  and  jurisdiction  as 
well  of  life  and  limb  as  of  lands  and  tenements  and  all 
other  things,  and  they  could  pardon  and  had  full  and  free 
power  ...  of  pardoning  all  treasons,  felonies,  and  other 
offences  whatever,  and  also  to  do  and  execute  all  things 
whatever  within  their  separate  lordships  aforesaid,  as  freely 
and  in  as  ample  a  manner  and  form  as  the  king  may  in  his 
aforesaid  dominions  ;  and  that  moreover  the  king  ought 
not  and  could  not  interfere  in  any  of  the  said  lordships 
belonging  to  any  other  person  for  the  execution  of  justice." 
The  plea  further  states  that  the  lords  marchers  were 
entitled  to  all  forfeitures,  goods  of  felons,  deodands,  etc., 
according  to  the  laws  and  customs  of  Wales  without  any 
grant.     It  was  further  pleaded  up  to  the  date  of  the  statute 

*  Jones,  vol.  i.,  p.  247,  citing  Camden,  vol.  ii.,  p.  401  ;  and  see  vol.  i.,  p.  246, 
for  convevances,  etc. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.    361 

the  king's  writ  did  not  run  in  the  lordships  marchers.  The 
plea  then  goes  on  to  aver  that  the  manors  in  question  were 
lordships  marchers,  to  which  Cornewall  and  his  ancestors 
had  been  entitled  at  the  passing  of  the  statute  of  27 
Henry  VIII.  c.  26,  and  that  neither  that  statute,  nor  the 
statute  of  Philip  and  Mary,  c.  15,  deprived  him  of  the 
particular  franchise  in  question,  but  confirmed  it  to  him. 
To  this  plea  the  attorney-general  demurred,  thereby 
admitting  the  truth  of  its  averments.  "  Shortly,  the 
pleadings  come  to  this,  that  so  much  of  Wales  as  had  not 
been  brought  under  the  Statutum  Walliae  by  Edward  I. 
continued  till  the  27  Henry  VIII.  (1535)  to  be  governed 
by  a  number  of  petty  chiefs  called  lords  marchers — chiefs 
who  might  be  compared  to  the  small  rajahs  to  whom  much 
of  the  territory  of  the  Punjab  and  the  North-West  Provinces 
still  belong."  ^ 

To  conciliate  the  Welsh,  Edward  L,  as  we  have  seen, 
conferred  the  Principality  upon  his  son  Edward,  who 
was  born  in  Carnarvon  Castle,  and  it  became  usual 
to  confer  this  dignity  upon  the  heir  to  the  Crown. 
It  has  been  sometimes  imagined  that  the  revenues 
of  the  Principality  necessarily  belonged  to  the  Prince 
of  Wales,  but  this  view  is  erroneous.  The  revenues 
of  Wales  form  part  of  the  hereditary  revenue  of  the 
Crown  and  whenever  a  Prince  of  Wales  has  enjoyed 
them  it  has  been  by  virtue  of  a  special  charter  or  grant. 
The  earliest  grant  given  by  Dodridge  in  his  account  of  the 
Principality  is  that  by  which  the  Crown  lands  and  lordships 
in  Wales  were  conferred  by  Edward  III.  on  the  Black 
Prince.  The  last  grant  of  that  nature  was  made  in  the 
-first  of  George  I.  to  George  (afterwards  George  II.)  by 
virtue  of  a  special  Act  of  Parliament.^ 

1  Stephen,  "  History  of  the  Criminal  Law,"  vol.  i.,  p.  142.     There  is  a  tract 
entitled  '•  Cornwall's  Case"  in  the  Harleian  MS.,  141,  in  Brit.  Mus. 

"  See  the  1 2th  Report  ofthe  Commissioners  appointed  under  26  George  III.  c.27. 


362         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

It  was  probably  during  the  period  from  the  Edwardian 
Conquest  to  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.  that  the  condition 
of  the  Welsh  people  as  a  whole  was  most  unhappy,  at 
any  rate  since  the  troubled  period  that  followed  the  reign 
of  Howel  Da.  It  was  marked  by  several  abortive  insur- 
rections, and  by  the  temporarily  successful  revolution,  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century,  of  Owen  Glyndwr. 
The  black  death  appears  to  have  ravaged  the  marches  and 
the  Welsh  counties  with  much  the  same  severity  as  England. 

Neither  life  nor  property  was  safe  in  the  marches. 
Probably  the  condition  of  things  in  the  Principality  was 
slightly  better  than  in  the  greater  part  of  the  marcher  land. 
Private  wars  between  the  lords  marchers  continued  to 
be  very  frequent.  Their  castles  had  become  the  haunts 
of  men  of  disreputable  character,  ready  to  place  their 
swords  at  the  disposal  of  any  one  willing  to  employ  them. 
They  sometimes  conspired  together  to  despoil  the  Welsh, 
sometimes  they  quarrelled  among  themselves,  involving 
in  the  dispute  their  tenants  and  their  vassals,  and  some- 
times they  rebelled  against  the  king  of  England ;  and 
while  in  the  course  of  the  two  centuries  which  succeeded 
the  conquest  of  Wales,  their  power  and  influence  from 
various  causes  gradually  declined,  their  administration  of 
justice  became  a  mere  mockery,  and  the  number  of  the 
courts  and  the  clashing  of  jurisdiction  involved  the 
holders  of  land  in  vexatious  litigation  as  expensive  as 
it  was  corrupt.^ 

The  venality  and  rapacity  of  the  courts  of  the  lordships 
marchers,  the  general  disorder  that  prevailed,  and  the 
difBculty  of  punishing  crime  in  consequence  of  the  conflicts 
of  jurisdiction  and  the  flight  of  accused  persons  from  one 
lordship  to  another,  led  to  the  establishment  of  a  new  court, 
that   of  "  The  President  and  Council  of  Wales   and    the 

^  See  Wynne's  "History  of  the  Gwydir  Family"  (ist  ed.  1770;  2nd  ed. 
1780;  3rd  ed.  1827  ;  4th  ed.  1878). 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  363 

Marches."  Its  origin  is  not  quite  clear,  but  it  seems  to 
have  been  created  in  Edward  IV.'s  time — in  1478,  and 
was  probably  intended  to  be  of  a  merely  temporary 
character ;  but  Henry  VII.  made  it  permanent,  and 
extended  its  jurisdiction  over  the  counties  of  Chester, 
Salop,  Worcester,  Hereford,  Gloucester,  and  the  city  of 
Bristol,  while  its  seat  was  fixed  at  Ludlow.^  This  was 
done,  not  by  statute,  but  by  an  exercise  of  the  royal  prero- 
gative which  gave  rise  to  question  in  later  years.  Of  the 
composition  of  the  court  in  the  time  of  Edward  IV.,  we 
only  know  that  it  consisted  of  John,  Bishop  of  Worcester, 
and  Anthony,  Earl  Rivers,  the  uncle  and  governor  of  the 
young  Prince  of  Wales,  Edward  of  Westminster,  and  others 
of  his  council,-  who  are  said  to  have  sat  at  the  "  town  hall  of 
Salop,"  and  to  have  made  certain  ordinances.  This  language 
suggests  that  the  new  court  really  grew  out  of  the  council 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales — a  body  the  ordinary  authority  of 
which  could  of  course  only  extend  to  the  Principality. 
Whatever  its  earlier  composition,  when  it  became  a  fixed 
institution,  or  at  any  rate  after  Henry  VIII.'s  legislation^ 
its  members  were  the  Lord  President  (who  was  "the 
chiefe  and  supreme  governor  of  all  the  Principalitie  and 
Marches  of  Wales "  ^),  the  Chief  Justice  of  Chester,  three 

^  For  much  information  concerning  the  earlier  history  ot  this  court  see  a 
paper  by  the  late  Judge  David  Lewis  (edited  and  annotated  by  Mr.  Egerton 
PhiUimore),  entitled,  "  The  Court  of  the  President  and  Council  of  Wales  and 
the  Marches"  ("Y  Cymmrodor,"  xii,,  p.  i),  and  ''Further  Notes  on  the 
Court  of  the  Marches,"  by  Mr.  Lleufer  Thomas  in  *'  Y  Cymmrodor,"  vol.  xiii., 
p.  97.  See  also  Powel's  "  Historic"  (ed.  1584),  pp.  389  and  391-2  ;  the 
Preface  to  Bacon's  "  The  Argument  on  the  Jurisdiction  of  the  Council  of  the 
Marches  "  in  Spedding,  Ellis  and  Heath's  edition  of  Bacon's  Works,  vol.  vii. 
(1859),  p.  569;  and  Wright's  "History  of  Ludlow  and  its  Neighbourhood" 
(Ludlow,  1852),  pp.  378  et  seq.  ;  Clive's  "Ludlow"  and  Owen's  *'  Dialogue," 
cited  above ;  also  Coke's  "  Fourth  Institute,"  c.  48. 

-  Powel's  Hist.,  ed.  1584,  p.  389,  and  Lewis's  paper,  p.  22,  ubi  supra,  citing 
a  MS.  copy  of  the  original  Shrewsbury  record  referred  to  by  Powel — Vitellius, 
c.  i.,  fo.  2. 

*  The  words  are  George  Owen's  :    "Dialogue,"  p.  21. 


364         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  vni.) 

others  of  the  justices  of  Wales  ;  together  with  such  extra- 
ordinary members  "  both  lords  and  knights  and  such  others 
as  were  learned  in  the  lawes,  and  were  called  to  councell 
when  the  Lord  President  should  think  requisite."^  The 
powers  and  methods  of  procedure  of  the  court  were  defined 
in  Instructions  which  were  renewed  and  amended  from  time 
to  time.  Briefly  put,  it  had  a  criminal  jurisdiction  much 
like  that  of  the  Star  Chamber,  but  more  extensive  than 
that  court  originally  possessed  ;  an  equitable  jurisdiction  to 
mitigate  the  rigours  of  the  law,  especially  for  the  benefit  of 
poor  suitors  ;  and  a  common  law  jurisdiction  both  as  to  real 
and  personal  actions.-  Its  procedure  was  analogous  to  that 
of  the  Star  Chamber  and  the  Court  of  Chancery.  In  regard 
to  crimes  its  methods  were  inquisitorial,  and  it  had  power 
to  subject  persons  suspected  of  felony  on  proper  grounds 
to  torture.^ 

Whatever  doubts  may  have  existed  as  to  the  legality  of 
this  court  were  set  at  rest,  so  far  as  Wales  and  the  marches 
•\\ere  concerned,  by  the  stat.  34  &  35  Henry  VIII.  c.  26, 
s.  4,  which  enacted  that  there  should  be  and  remain  a 
president  and  council  in  the  dominion  and  principality 
of  Wales  and  the  marches  thereof,  in  manner  and  form  as 
hath  been  heretofore  used  and  accustomed,  which  president 
and  council  should  have  power  and  authority  to  determine 
by  their  wisdoms  and  discretions  such  causes  and  matters 
as  were  or  should  be  assigned  to  them  by  the  king  as 
theretofore  had  been  accustomed  and  used.  There  is  no 
reference  here,  it  will  be  noticed,   to  the    English    shires 

^  Dodridge  {ubi  snpra),  p.  54.      Cf.  Owen's  "  Dialogue,"  p.  21. 

-  See  Owen's  "  Dialogue,"  pp.  21-23;  Lewis's  paper  (iibi  supra),  p.  18, 
citing  Gerard's  Discourse  to  Walsingham. 

^  See  the  Instructions  of  1574  cited  by  Wright  {ubi  supra),  p.  376.  So  late 
as  James  I.'s  time  this  power  was  retained  in  two  sets  of  instructions 
revised  by  Coke.  The  Instructions  of  1607  and  161 7  contain  no  express 
power  to  torture,  but  there  are  general  words  which  are  capable  of  being 
construed  to  cover  the  practice.  See  Preface  to  Bacon's  "Argument'  {ubi 
supra),  p.  569. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   365 

included  by  Henry  VII.  in  the  area  of  the  council's 
authority — a  very  material  point  in  the  controversy  which 
took  place  in  the  reign  of  James  I. 

Except  as  altered  by  the  formation  of  this  new  court 
the  organisation  of  Wales  and  the  marches  remained  much 
in  the  same  condition  down  to  the  time  of  Henry  VIII. 
As  a  consequence  of  the  insurrection  of  Owen  Glyndwr, 
a  very  oppressive  series  of  statutes,  upon  which  we  need 
not  dwell,  was  passed  in  the  reigns  of  the  Lancastrian 
princes  ;  but  as  bearing  upon  the  history  of  tenure,  we 
may  mention  that  by  the  28  Edward  III.  c.  2,  lords  of  the 
marches  of  Wales  were  made  attendant  to  the  crown  of 
England  and  not  to  the  principality  of  Wales. 

The  accession  of  Henry  VII.  was  the  commencement  of 
a  brighter  epoch  for  Whales  and  the  marches.  The  power 
of  the  lords  marchers  had  greatly  declined  ;  in  consequence 
of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  many  of  the  lordships  were  in 
the  king's  hands,  but  it  was  not  till  the  latter  part  of 
Henry  VIII.'s  reign  that  legislative  steps  were  taken  to 
improve  the  political  and  judicial  organisation  of  that  part 
of  the  country.  The  performances  of  Henry  VII.  did  not 
by  any  means  fulfil  the  expectations  which  the  Welsh 
people  formed  from  the  accession  to  the  throne  of  a  prince 
of  Cymric  descent.  Though  some  relief  was  given  to  the 
tenants  in  parts  of  the  country,  no  determined  effort  was 
made  to  remedy  the  grievances  the  people  suffered  at  the 
hands  of  the  surviving  lords  marchers,  or  to  reduce  the 
country  into  a  more  settled  condition.  No  doubt  Henry 
intended  the  continuance  or  renewed  establishment  of  the 
Council  of  Wales  and  the  Marches  to  be  a  step  in  that 
direction,  but  under  William,  Bishop  of  Lincoln  (the  first 
president  mentioned  in  the  records  of  the  court),  and 
Geoffrey  Blyth,  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry,  and 
John  Voysey,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  who  succeeded  him,  the 
court  seems  to  have  been  by  no  means  efificient  in  putting 


366         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

down  the  abuses  of  the  lord-marcher  system,  or  able  to 
make  punishment  swift  and  certain.^  For  instance, 
Rowland  Lee,  who  followed  Voysey  in  the  presidency 
in  1535,  writing^  to  Cromwell  about  the  condition  of  the 
lordship  of  Magor  in  1534-5,  says  he  found  that  there 
were  living  unpunished,  under  the  protection  of  Sir  Walter 
Herbert,  five  men  who  had  committed  wilful  murder, 
eighteen  who  had  committed  murder,  and  twenty  thieves 
and  outlaws  who  had  committed  every  variety  of  crime 
from  the  robbing  of  a  man  and  his  mother  and  putting 
them  "on  a  hotte  trevet^  for  to  make  them  schow," 
to  a  robbery  of  the  cathedral  of  ILandaff,  perpetrated  by 
Myles  Mathew  (a  friend  of  Sir  Walter's),  and  other  persons 
unknown. 

It  was  under  Rowland  Lee  that  the  court  became 
a  terror  to  the  evil-doers  in  the  marches  and  a  powerful 
weapon  for  keeping  the  peace  and  dispensing  justice 
throughout  the  West.  Lee  was  a  very  severe,  even  a 
cruel  judge,  but  he  was  wise  in  counsel  and  active  in  the 
discharge  of  his  duties.^  His  tenure  of  office  (which  lasted 
until  1 543)  prepared  the  way  for  the  practical  application 
of  the  great  statutes  by  which  Henry  VHL  united  Wales 
and  the  marches  to  England.^ 

1  See  Lewis's  paper,  ubi  supra,  pp.  21-24  J  P-  28. 

2  See  Wright's  ''Ludlow,"  p.  383. 

3  This  is  obviously  for  "trivet."  Mr.  Phillimore  suggests  it  is  equivalent 
to  the  Welsh  trybed^z.  support  ;  a  three-legged  utensil  put  over  an  open  fire). 
Lewis,  ubi  supra,  p.  33. 

^  lie  did  not  content  himself  with  sitting  at  Ludlow  for  the  hearing  of 
causes,  etc.  ;  but  made  circuits  in,  or  rather  visited,  such  districts  and  places 
within  his  jurisdiction  as  specially  required  attention.  See  Lewis's  paper,  ubi 
supra. 

5  It  is  said  by  Ellis  Griffith  ("a  soldier  of  Calais" — so  he  describes 
himself)  in  his  **  History  of  England  and  Wales  from  William  the  Conqueror 
to  the  Reign  of  Edward  VI.,"  preserved  in  MS.  in  the  Mostyn  Collection 
(see  Gwenogvryn  Evan's  "  Report  on  MSS.  in  the  Welsh  Language,"  vol.  i. 
(1898),  pp.  X.  and  214,  Parly.  Paper,  1898,  C. — 8,829),  that  Lee  caused 
over  5,000  men  to  be  hanged  during  six  years.     We  cannot  accept  so  high 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.    367 

In  the  year  of  Lee's  appointment  no  fewer  than  five  Acts 
relating  to  Wales  were  passed.  The  first  was  one  for  the 
punishment  of  jurors  in  the  lordships  marchers,  obviously 
designed  to  check  the  giving  of  verdicts  friendly  to  the 
accused  flagrantly  against  the  evidence.  There  is  reason 
to  believe  that  the  practice  of  bribing  or  otherwise  corrupt- 
ing juries  in  the  lord-marcher  courts  prevailed  very  largely. 
The  second  was  an  Act  prohibiting  the  ferrying  of  persons 
and  goods  over  the  Severn  at  night.  This,  of  course,  was 
designed  to  put  a  stop  to  the  flight  of  criminals  accused  or 
convicted  from  the  area  of  jurisdiction  in  which  the  crime 
was  triable  or  punishable  to  another  in  which  it  was  not, 
and  also,  of  course,  to  prevent  the  carriage  and  disposal  of 
stolen  goods.  The  third  was  an  Act  for  the  amendment  of 
the  administration  of  justice,  the  details  ot  which  we  cannot 
stop  to  give.  One  of  its  most  important  provisions,  how- 
ever, was  the  allowance  of  appeals  from  the  courts  of  the 
lords  marchers  to  the  king's  commissioners  or  the  President 
and  Council  of  the  Marches.  Certain  old  Welsh  customs 
were  abolished,  ^.^.,  Comniorthas,  or  collections.  It  also 
prohibited  "  congregations  "  by  Welshmen  in  any  place  in 
Wales,  unless  for  evident  and  necessary  cause,  and  by  the 
licence  of  the  chief  of^cers  and  ministers  of  the  seigniory, 
and  in  their  presence — a  provision  remarkably  like  recent 

a  figure  as  accurate  ;  it  is  evidently  simply  a  reflex  of  popular  belief  some 
years  afterwards.  But  even  if  we  assume  the  true  figure  to  be  only  one-fifth 
(ijCXX)),  that  would  be,  having  regard  to  the  paucity  of  population  and  the 
comparative  smallness  of  the  area  concerned,  a  terrible  record,  and  must  have 
involved  gi-eat  injustice.  We  must  remember  that  no  jury  intervened,  that 
perhaps  torture  was  resorted  to,  and  that  Lee  held  office  during  what  Green 
calls  "the  English  Terror"  under  Thomas  Cromwell.  Notice,  too,  "the 
apparent  relish  "  (the  words  are  Lewis's)  with  which  Lee  and  his  brother 
judge  write  to  Cromwell  as  to  certain  batches  of  convicts.  We  think  Judge 
Lewis's  view  of  Lee  too  favourable.  His  cruel  and  arbitrary  administra- 
tion may  perhaps  be  justified  by  political  considerations  ;  but  neither  its 
necessity  nor  its  success  prove  him  to  have  been  a  good  or  upright  judge. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  reduction  of  the  marches  to  order  and  the 
suppression  of  the  power  of  the  lords  marchers  was  part  of  Cromwell's  policy. 


368         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

legislation  concerning  public  meetings  in  Ireland.  The 
fourth  was  an  Act  for  punishing  Welshmen  for  making 
assaults  or  affrays  on  the  inhabitants  of  Shropshire,  Here- 
fordshire, and  Gloucestershire  ;  and  the  fifth  one  entitled 
"  An  Act  for  the  Purgation  of  Convicts  in  Wales,"  which  dealt 
chiefly  with  the  plea  of  benefit  of  clergy.^  In  the  following 
year  an  Act  was  passed  instituting  the  office  of  justice  of 
the  peace  and  providing  for  the  appointment  of  justices  in 
Chester  and  the  eight  then  existing  Welsh  counties.- 

The  legislation  of  1 5  34  shows  that  the  affairs  of  Wales 
were  occupying  much  of  the  time  of  the  central  government ; 
but  its  energy  was  not  exhausted,  and  the  Acts  of  that  year 
were  only  first  steps  towards  the  suppression  of  the  political 
and  judicial  authority  of  the  lords  marchers,  and  the  com- 
plete merging  of  Whales  and  the  marches  into  the  English 
polity.'^ 

Under  the  rule  of  Thomas  Cromwell,  by  the  27 
Henry  VIII.  c.  26  and  the  34  &  35  Henry  VIII.  c.  26, 
the  arrangements  for  the  legislative  and  executive  govern- 
ment of  Wales  were  practically  assimilated  to  those  of 
the  English  counties,  and  an  improved  judicial  system 
introduced. 

The  first  Act  was  one  entitled  "  An  Act  for  Laws  and 
Justice  to  be  ministered  in  Wales  in  like  form  as  it  is  in 
this  Realm."     The  preamble  recites  : — 

"  Albeit  the  dominion,  principality,  and  country  of  Wales 
justly  and  righteously  is,  and  ever  hath  been  incorporated, 
annexed,  united,  and  subject  to  and  under  the  Imperial 
Crown  of  this  realm,  as  a  very  member  and  joint  of  the 

1  These  Acts  are  the  stais.  26  Henry  VIII.  c.  4,  c.  5,  c.  6,  c.  11,  and  c.  12. 

2  Stat.  27  Henry  VIII.  c.  5.  But  as  to  Welsh  justices,  consult  the  later 
Act,  34  &  35  Henry  VIII.  c.  26.     See  p.  377  below. 

2  How  far  these  measures  were  desired  by  the  body  of  Welsh-speaking 
people  we  cannot  tell.  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  inserts  in  his  "History  of 
Heniy  VIII."  a  speech  by  a  Welsh  gentleman  advocating  the  union  ('*  History," 
tilu'  supj-a,  p.  171). 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   369 

same,  whereof  the  King's  most  Royal  Majesty  of  meer 
droit,  and  very  right,  is  very  head,  king,  lord,  and  ruler ; 
yet  notwithstanding,  because  in  the  same  country,  princi- 
pality, and  dominion  divers  rights,  usages,  laws,  and 
customs  be  far  discrepant  from  the  laws  and  customs  of  this 
realm,  and  also  because  that  the  people  of  the  same  domi- 
nion have  and  do  daily  use  a  speech  nothing  like  ne 
consonant  to  the  natural  mother  tongue  used  within  this 
realm,  some  rude  and  ignorant  people  have  made  distinc- 
tion and  diversity  between  the  king's  subjects  of  this  realm 
and  his  subjects  of  the  said  dominion  and  principality  of 
Wales,  whereby  great  discord,  variance,  debate,  division, 
murmur,  and  sedition  hath  grown  between  his  said  sub- 
jects ;  his  highness  therefore,  of  a  singular  zeal,  love,  and 
favour,  that  he  beareth  towards  his  subjects  of  his  said 
dominion  of  Wales,  minding  and  intending  to  reduce  them 
to  the  perfect  order,  notice,  and  knowledge  of  his  laws,  of 
this  his  realm,  and  utterly  to  extirp  all  and  singular  the 
sinister  usages  and  customs  differing  from  the  same,  and  to 
bring  the  said  subjects  of  this  his  realm,  and  of  his  said 
dominion  of  Wales,  to  an  amicable  concord  and  unity, 
hath  by  the  deliberate  advice,  consent,  and  agreement  of 
the  Lords  Spiritual  and  Temporal,  and  the  Commons  in 
this  present  Parliament  assembled,  and  by  the  authority  of 
the  same,  ordained,  enacted,  and  established,  that  this  said 
country  or  dominion  of  Wales  shall  be,  stand,  and  con- 
tinue for  ever  from  henceforth  incorporated,  united,  and 
annexed  to  and  with  this  his  realm  of  England  ;  and  that 
all  and  singular  person  and  persons  born,  and  to  be  born 
in  the  said  principality,  country,  or  dominion  of  Wales, 
shall  have,  enjoy,  and  inherit  all  and  singular  freedoms, 
liberties,  rights,  privileges,  and  laws  within  this  his  realm 
and  other  the  King's  dominions,  as  other  the  King's 
subjects  naturally  born  within  the  same  have,  enjoy,  and 
inherit." 

w  ?.  BE 


370         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

The  statute  then  enacts  inter-  alia  : — 

"  And  that  all  and  singular  person  and  persons  inherit- 
able to  any  manors,  lands,  tenements,  rents,  reversions, 
services,  or  other  hereditaments,  which  shall  descend  after 
the  feast  of  All  Saints  next  coming,  within  the  said 
principality,  country,  or  dominion  of  Wales,  or  within  any 
particular  lordship,  part,  or  parcel  of  the  said  country  or 
dominion  of  Wales,  shall  for  ever,  from  and  after  the  said 
feast  of  All  Saints,  inherit  and  be  inheritable  to  the  same 
manors,  lands,  rents,  tenements,  reversions,  and  heredita- 
ments, after  the  English  tenure,  without  division  or  parti- 
tion, and  after  the  form  of  the  laws  of  this  realm  of 
England,  and  not  after  any  Welsh  tenure,  ne  after  the 
form  of  any  Welsh  laws  or  customs ;  and  that  the  laws, 
ordinances,  and  statutes  of  this  realm  of  England,  for  ever, 
and  none  other  laws,  ordinances,  or  statutes,  from  and 
after  the  Feast  of  All  Saints  next  coming,  shall  be  used, 
practised,  and  executed  in  the  said  country  or  dominion  of 
Wales,  and  every  part  thereof,  in  like  manner,  form,  and 
order,  as  they  be  and  shall  be  had,  used,  practised,  and 
executed  in  this  realm,  and  in  such  like  manner  and  form 
as  hereafter  by  this  Act  shall  be  further  established  and 
ordained ;  any  Act,  statute,  usage,  custom,  precedent, 
liberty,  privilege,  or  other  thing  had,  made,  used,  granted, 
or  suffered  to  the  contrary  in  anywise  notwithstanding. 

*'III.  And  forasmuch  as  there  be  many  and  divers 
lordships  marchers  within  the  said  country  or  dominion 
of  Wales,  lying  between  the  shires  of  England  and  the 
shires  of  the  said  country  or  dominion  of  Wales,  and  being 
no  parcel  of  any  other  shires  where  the  laws  and  due 
correction  is  used  and  had,  and  by  reason  whereof  hath 
ensued,  and  hath  been  practised,  perpetrated,  committed, 
and  done,  within  and  among  the  said  lordships  and 
countries  to  them  adjoining,  manifold  and  divers  detest- 
able   murthers,    brenning     of    houses,    robberies,    thefts. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.    371 

trespasses,  routs,  riots,  unlawful  assemblies,  embraceries, 
maintenances,  receiving-  of  felons,  oppressions,  ruptures  of 
the  peace,  and  manifold  other  malefacts,  contrary  to  all 
laws  and  justice  ;  and  the  said  offenders  thereupon  making 
their  refuge  from  lordship  to  lordship,  were  and  continued 
without  punishment  or  correction  ;  for  due  reformation 
whereof,  and  forasmuch  as  divers  and  many  of  the  said 
lordships  marchers  be  now  in  the  hands  and  possession  of 
our  sovereign  lord  the  king,  and  the  smallest  number  of 
them  in  the  possession  of  other  lords.  It  is  therefore 
enacted  by  the  authority  aforesaid,  that  divers  of  the  said 
lordships  marchers  shall  be  united,  annexed,  and  joined  to 
divers  of  the  shires  of  England,  and  divers  of  the  said 
lordships  marchers  shall  be  united,  annexed,  and  joined  to 
divers  of  the  shires  of  the  said  country  or  dominion  of 
Wales,  in  manner  and  form  hereafter  following.  .  .  ." 

''  XX.  Also  be  it  enacted  by  the  authority  aforesaid,  that 
all  justices,  commissioners,  sheriffs,  coroners,  escheators, 
stewards  and  their  lieutenants,  and  all  other  officers  and 
ministers  of  the  law  shall  proclaim  and  keep  the  sessions, 
courts,  hundreds,  leets,  sheriff's  courts,  and  all  other  courts 
in  the  English  tongue ;  and  all  oaths  of  officers,  juries,  and 
inquests,  and  all  other  affidavits,  verdicts,  and  wagers  of 
law,  to  be  given  and  done  in  the  English  tongue  ;  and  also 
that  from  henceforth  no  person  or  persons  that  use  the 
Welsh  speech  or  language  shall  have  or  enjoy  any  manner, 
office,  or  fees  within  this  realm  of  England,  Wales,  or  other 
the  King's  dominion,  upon  pain  of  forfeiting  the  same 
offices  or  fees,  unless  he  or  they  use  and  exercise  the 
English  speech  or  language." 

"  XXXI.  Provided  always,  that  this  present  Act  nor  any- 
thing therein  contained  shall  not  take  away  or  derogate 
from  any  laws,  usages,  or  laudable  customs  now  used 
within  the  three  shires  of  North  Wales,  nor  shall  not 
deprive  nor  take  away  the  whole  liberties  of  the  Duchy  of 

B  B  2 


372         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

Lancaster,  but  the  said  liberties  shall  continue  and  be  used 
in  every  lordship,  parcel  of  the  said  duchy,  within  the 
dominion  and  country  of  Wales  as  the  liberties  of  the  said 
duchy  be  used  in  shire-ground,  and  not  county  palatine, 
within  this  realm  of  England." 

**  XXXV.  Provided  always,  that  lands,  tenements,  and 
hereditaments  lying  in  the  said  country  and  dominion  of 
Wales,  which  liave  been  used  time  out  of  mind  by  the 
laudable  customs  of  the  said  country,  to  be  departed  and 
departible  among  issues  and  heirs  males,  shall  still  so 
continue  and  be  used  in  like  form,  fashion,  and  condition 
as  if  this  Act  had  never  been  had  nor  made,  anything 
in  this  Act  to  the  contrary  thereof  notwithstanding." 

By  section  36  the  king  was  empowered  to  suspend  or 
revoke  any  part  of  this  statute  ''at  any  time  within  three 
years  after  the  end  of  the  Parliament,  so  as  such  suspen- 
sion, &c.,  be  made  in  writing  under  the  Great  Seal,  and  be 
annexed  to  the  Parliament  roll  of  this  statute,  and  pro- 
claimed in  every  shire  in  Wales  ; "  and  by  section  37  it  was 
enacted  that  "  for  five  years  the  king  may  erect  in  Whales 
so  many  courts  and  justices,  &c.,  as  he  will." 

The  effect  of  this  statute  was  to  convert  the  whole  of  the 
marches  into  shire-ground,  and  to  introduce  into  all  the 
parts  of  the  "  dominion  and  principalit}- "  of  Whales  that 
were  outside  the  limits  of  the  old  eight  counties  the  county 
organisation  of  England.  It  struck  a  fatal  blow  at  the 
power  of  the  lords  marchers  ;  though  then  it  did  not 
expressly  abolish  all  their  peculiar  powers,  yet  the  result 
of  the  whole  Act  seems  to  amount  to  a  supersession 
by  the  ordinary  courts  of  the  distinctive  courts  of  these 
lordships,  and  the  withdrawal  of  most  of  tho.  Jura  regatta. 
The  thirteenth  section,  indeed,  preserved  certain  liberties  to 
the  temporal  lords  marchers,  namely  : — (i.)  the  accustomed 
mises  and  profits  at  the  first  entry  into  their  lands  ;  (ii.)  the 
right   to  hold  courts  baron,  courts  leet,  and    law-days  in 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY,   ^y^ 

their  lordships  ;  and  (iii.)  certain  ancient  privileges,  such 
as  "waife,  straife,  infanthef,  outfanthef,  treasure  trove 
deodands,  goods  and  chattels  of  felons,"  &c.  Such  lords 
marchers  were  also  by  section  25  allowed  half  the  forfeitures 
of  their  tenants.^ 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  third  section,  which  is  printed 
above,  that  by  its  operation  five  new  counties  are  created — 
Monmouth,  Brecon,  Radnor,  Montgomery,  and  Denbigh — 
by  grouping  together  divers  lordships  marchers.  The  lord- 
ships marchers  not  included  in  these  new  units  were  added 
to  existing  English  and  Welsh  shires.  Sections  3  to  19 
inclusive  deal  with  the  details  of  the  operation,  which  may 
be  summarised  in  a  table  thus  : — 


No.  of  lordships  marchers  dealt  with 
in  regard  to  each  county. 

24    • 
16 
16 
II 
9 
7 
10 
3,    and    all    honours,    &c. ,   lying 
between   Chepstow  Bridge  and 
Gloucestershire 
17 


13 
I 
I 


How  dealt  with. 

United  to  form  Monmouthshire. 
United  to  form  Brecknockshire. 
United  to  form  Radnorshire. 
United  to  form  Montgomeryshire. 
United  to  form  Denbighshire, 
Added  to  Shropshire. 
Added  to  Herefordshire. 


Added  to  Gloucestershire. 
Added  to  Glamorganshire. 
Added  to  Carmarthenshire. 
Added  to  Pembrokeshire. 
Added  to  Cardiganshire. 
Added  to  Merionethshire.* 


Monmouthshire  was  placed  in  a  category  apart,  and 
annexed  to  England  ;  while  for  the  easier  administration 
of  justice,  having  regard  to  the  distance  of  the  Welsh 
counties  from  London,  by  section  9  Chancery  and  Exchequer 
offices  were   established    at  Brecknock   and    at    Denbieh  • 

^  These  provisions  (ss.  25,  30)  were  confiri'aed  and    extended  to  spiritual 
lords  marchers  by  i  &  2  Ph.  &  Mary,  c.  15. 

-  For  a  list  of  the  lordships  marchers  thus  dealt  with,  see  Appendix  C. 


374         ^^^    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  viii.) 

and  by  section  lO  it  was  provided  that  justice  should  be 
nriinistered  and  exercised  in  the  new  counties,  by  judges  to 
be  appointed  by  the  king,  according  to  the  law  of  England 
and  such  Welsh  customs  as  might  be  allowed  by  the  king 
and  his  council. 

The  manner  of  descent  of  manors,  lands,  and  other  here- 
ditaments is  described  in  section  2,  and  the  Welsh  method  of 
partition  is  done  away  with  in  the  broadest  way ;  but  it  should 
be  noticed  that  section  35  provides  expressly  that  "lands, 
tenements,  and  hereditaments  "  in  Wales,  "  which  have  been 
used  time  out  of  mind  by  the  laudable  customs  of  the  said 
country  to  be  departed  and  departible  among  issues  and 
heirs  male,"  shall  still  be  so  used.  There  seems  at  first  sight 
a  discrepancy  here  ;  but  the  intention  seems  to  have  been 
to  make  the  English  rules  apply  in  general,  and  to  throw 
on  any  one  relying  on  the  Welsh  custom  the  burden  of 
proving  its  existence  in  regard  to  the  land  in  question 
before  the  time  of  legal  memory.  But  all  doubt  as  to  the 
construction  of  these  sections  was  finally  set  at  rest  by  the 
abolition,  by  the  34  &  35  Henry  VIII.  c.  26,  of  the  Welsh 
rules  of  descent. 

The  statute  27  Henry  VIII.  c.  26,  also  conferred  Parlia- 
mentary representation  on  the  Welsh  counties  and  boroughs. 
So  far  back  as  the  reign  of  Edward  II.  members  had  been 
returned  for  the  counties  of  Anglesey,  Carnarvon,  and 
Merioneth,  and  the  boroughs  of  Beaumaris,  Carnarv^on,  and 
Conway,  to  the  Parliament  summoned  to  meet  at  West- 
minster on  the  14th  December,  1326,  and  by  prorogation 
on  the  7th  January,  1327.^     No  members  were  afterwards 

^  See  Introduction  to  W.  R.  Williams's  "  Parliamentary  History  of  Wales" 
(Brecknock,  1895).  Hughes's  "  Parliamentary  Rep.  of  Cardiganshire  "  (1849) 
contains  a  writ,  dated  i8th  April,  15  Edw.  II.,  to  Edmund,  Earl  of  Arundel, 
Justiciar  of  Wales,  directing  him  to  choose  twenty-four  persons  from  South 
and  a  like  number  from  North  Wales  to  attend  the  Parliament  summoned  to 
York  for  May  2,  1322.  The  writ  summoning  members  for  the  Parliament  of 
1326  is  dated  at  Kenilworth,  the  8th  Januar}',  1326-7  (Williams,  ubi  supra.) 


LEGAL   AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.     375 

summoned  until  the  passing  of  the  Act  of  1535,  by  the 
29th  section  of  which  it  was  enacted  that  one  knight  should 
be  elected  for  each  of  the  twelve  Welsh  counties  created 
or  newly  delimited  by  it,  and  one  burgess  from  every 
borough  therein  being  a  shire-town  (except  the  shire-town  of 
Merioneth)  ;  while  to  the  county  of  Monmouth  two  knights 
were  allotted,  and  one  burgess  to  the  borough  of  Monmouth 
(section  26).  Whether  Welsh  members  attended  the  Parlia- 
ments of  1536  and  1539  is  doubtful,  as  the  returns  have 
been  lost,  but  members  were  certainly  returned  from  Wales 
and  served  in  the  Parliament  of  1541. 

Important  as  this  Act  was,  it  did  not  complete  the 
new  organisation  of  Wales,  and  further  legislation  was 
contemplated.  By  section  26  it  was  enacted  that  a 
commission  under  the  Great  Seal  should  be  appointed 
to  inquire  and  view  all  the  shires  except  the  three 
North  Welsh  ones  created  by  the  Statute  of  Rhudlan, 
and  upon  such  view  to  divide  the  former  into  hundreds, 
and  certify  with  the  commission  such  hundreds  into  the 
Court  of  Chancery  ;  and  by  section  27  it  was  directed  that 
a  like  commission  should  be  appointed  to  inquire  into  and 
report  upon  the  Welsh  laws  and  customs,  that  the  report 
should  be  certified  to  the  king  and  his  council,  and  that  the 
king  and  council,  upon  deliberate  advice,  might  allow  such 
laws,  usages,  and  customs  as  they  might  deem  expedient, 
requisite,  and  necessary  to  remain  in  full  strength  and 
vigour.  These  commissions  and  their  reports  are  lost.^ 
It  is  certain  that  the  first  was  appointed  and  reported,  for 
section  3  of  the  34  &  35  Henry  VIII.  confirms  the  limita- 
tions   into   hundreds   made   by    it  for   each    of   the    nine 

See  also  Stubbs's  "Constitutional  History,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  382,  392.  Dr.  Stubbs 
evidently  assumes  the  summonses  for  the  1322  Parliament  were  complied  with. 
^  See  Oldnall's  "Practice  of  the  Great  Sessions  on  the  Carmarthen 
Circuit"  (Lond.  1814),  Introduction,  p.  xxvi.  He  is  mistaken  in  thinking 
that  Rowlands  in  his  Mona  Antiqtta  (p.  114)  is  referring  to  these  commissions; 
it  is  to  certain  extents  that  Rowlands  refers. 


376         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

counties  to  which  its  power  extended.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  the  provision  of  section  27  was  put  into  force. 

After  a  pause  of  some  years  another  Act,  which 
reorganised  the  Welsh  judicial  system,  made  important 
provisions  that  were  rendered  necessary  by  the  new  arrange- 
ments of  the  statute  of  1535,  and  enacted  supplemental 
sections  as  to  the  law  of  property,  was  passed  in  the  34th 
and  35th  years  of  Henry  VIII. 

It  is  entitled  "An  Act  for  certain  ordinances  in  the 
King's  Majesty's  Dominion  and  Principality  of  Wales." 
We  extract  the  more  relevant  parts. 

It  recites  that — 

"  Our  Sovereign  Lord  the  King's  Majesty,  of  his  tender 
zeal  and  affection  that  he  beareth  towards  his  loving 
and  obedient  subjects  of  his  dominion,  principality,  and 
country  of  Wales,  for  good  rule  and  order  to  be  from 
henceforth  kept  and  maintained  within  the  same,  whereby 
his  said  subjects  may  grow  and  arise  to  more  wealth  and 
prosperity,  had  devised  and  made  divers  sundry  good  and 
necessary  ordinances,  which  his  Majesty  oi  his  most 
abundant  goodness,  at  the  humble  suit  and  petition  of  his 
said  subjects  of  Wales,  is  pleased  and  contented  to  be 
enacted  by  the  assent  of  the  Lords  Spiritual  and  Temporal 
and  the  Commons  in  this  present  Parliament  assembled, 
and  by  the  authority  of  the  same,  in  manner  and  form  as 
hereafter  ensueth  "  ;  and  enacts — 

"II.  First,  that  his  Grace's  said  dominion,  principality, 
and  country  of  Wales  be  from  henceforth  divided  into 
twelve  shires  ;  of  the  which  eight  have  been  shires  of  long 
and  ancient  time,  that  is  to  say,  the  shires  of  Glamorgan, 
Caermarthen,  Pembroke,  Cardigan,  Flint,  Caernarvon, 
Anglesea,  and  Merioneth ;  and  four  of  the  said  twelve 
shires  be  newly  made  and  ordained  to  be  shires  by  an  Act 
made  at  the  Parliament  holden  at  Westminster  in  the 
twenty-seventh  year  of  our  said  sovereign  lord's  most  noble 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.    377 

reign,  that  is  to  say,  the  shires  of  Radnor,  Brecknock, 
Montgomery,  and  Denbigh,  over  and  beside  the  shire  of 
Monmouth  and  divers  other  dominion,  lordships,  and 
manors  in  the  marches  of  Wales,  united  and  annexed  to 
the  shires  of  Salop,  Hereford,  and  Gloucester  as  by  the 
said  late  Act  more  plainly  appeareth. 

*'III.  Ilem,  That  the  limitations  of  the  hundreds,  of 
late  made  within  the  said  shires  by  virtue  of  his  Grace's 
commissions  directed  out  of  his  Highness's  Court  of 
Chancery,  and  again  returned  into  the  same,  shall  stand  in 
full  strength,  force,  and  effect,  according  to  the  said  limita- 
tion ;  except  such  of  the  same  as  sith  that  time  hath 
been  altered  or  changed  by  virtue  of  any  Act  or  Acts 
of  Parliament  already  made,  or  that  shall  be  altered  or 
changed  by  any  Act  or  Acts  in  this  present  session  to 
be  made." 

After  thus  confirming  the  formation  of  the  shires,  and 
adopting  the  divisions  of  the  shires  into  hundreds  as 
certified  by  the  commissioners,  the  Act  by  section  4  placed 
the  Court  of  the  President  and  Council  of  Wales  and  the 
Marches  on  a  sure  and  legal  foundation.  The  statute  then 
•constitutes  courts,  to  be  called  the  "  King's  Great  Sessions 
in  Wales,"  which  were  to  sit  twice  a  year  in  every  one  of 
the  twelve  counties,  and  for  this  purpose  were  grouped  into 
four  circuits.  The  Justice  of  Chester  was  to  keep  the 
sessions  of  Denbigh,  Flint,  and  Montgomery ;  the  Justice 
of  North  Wales  those  of  Carnarvon,  Merioneth,  and 
Anglesey ;  one  person  learned  in  the  laws  (to  be  appointed 
by  the  king)  those  of  Radnor,  Brecknock,  and  Glamorgan  ; 
and  one  person  learned  in  the  laws  (to  be  similarly 
appointed)  those  of  Carmarthen,  Pembroke,  and  Cardigan.^ 
Within  the  local  limits  of  their  several  commissions,  the 
jurisdiction  of  these  Justices  was  made  as  "large  and 
ample  "  as  that  of  the  Courts  of  King's  Bench  and  Common 

^  34  &  35  Henry  VIII.  ss.  5  to  ii. 


378         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

Pleas  in  England.^  Provision  was  made  for  the  devising 
and  custody  of  an  original  seal  for  each  circuit.  The  seals 
of  the  three  shires  of  North  Wales  and  of  Carmarthen,  Pem- 
broke, and  Cardigan  were  to  be  kept  by  the  chamberlains  of 
North  and  South  Wales  respectively  ;  those  of  Brecknock,. 
Radnor,  and  Glamorgan,  and  of  Denbigh  and  Montgomery, 
by  the  stewards  and  chamberlains  of  Brecknock  and 
Denbigh  respectively  ;  and  the  seal  of  Chester  was  to  be 
and  stand  for  the  seal  of  Flint  and  to  be  kept  by  the 
chamberlain.^  These  directions  practically  fixed  the  prin- 
cipal offices  of  the  courts  at  the  offices  of  the  chamber- 
lains. Besides  these  seals,  there  were  to  be  four  judicial 
seals  devised  by  the  king,  one  for  each  circuit,  to  be  kept 
by  each  Justice  for  the  sealing  of  judicial  process.^ 

For  the  discharge  of  the  official  business  it  was  enacted 
that  there  were  to  be  four  prenotaries,  one  for  each  circuit, 
to  be  appointed  by  the  king  by  letters  patent,  whose  duty 
it  should  be  to  make  out  all  judicial  process,  to  enter  all 
pleas  and  matters  of  record,  and  to  attend  upon  the  Justices 
on  circuit.'*  There  were  also  to  be  marshals  and  criers  for 
each  circuit,  who  were  to  be  appointed  by  the  Justices.^ 
These  are  the  chief  sections  regulating  the  Great  Sessions, 
but  there  are  of  course  many  others  of  a  consequential 
character,  dealing  with  fees  and  other  matters  necessarily 
requiring  attention  in  creating  new  or  reforming  old  courts. 
Besides  the  President  and  Council,  and  the  Justices  of  the 

'  Ibia.,  ss.  12,  13.  These  sections  made  the  Great  Sessions  "  Superior 
Courts."  Local  equity  jurisdiction  had  long  existed  in  the  old  three  North 
Welsh  counties  and  the  three  south-western  shires ;  while  section  9  of  the 
27  Henry  VIII.  c,  26,  provided  for  the  creation  of  a  Chancery  and  Exchequer 
at  Brecknock  for  the  three  south-eastern  counties,  and  at  Denbigh  for  Denbigh- 
shire and  Montgomeryshire.  Flintshire  was  subject  to  Chester  in  regard  to 
Chancery  matters. 

2  J  bid.,  ss.  16-20. 

3  Ibid.,  ss.  29-31. 
^  Ibid.,  s.  44. 

'  Ibid.,  s.  45. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY,    ^yg, 

Great  Sessions,  there  were  to  be  justices  of  the  peace 
and  quorum,  as  well  as  one  custos  rotulorum  for  each 
shire.  These  officers  were  to  be  appointed  by  the  Lord 
Chancellor  of  England  by  commission  under  the  Great  Seal^ 
by  the  advice  of  the  President,  Council,  and  Justices,  or 
three  of  them  (the  President  being  one) ;  but  the  number  of 
justices  of  the  peace  was  not  to  exceed  eight  (excluding  the 
President,  the  Council,  the  Justices,  and  the  King's  Attorney 
and  Solicitor-General  of  each  circuit,  who  were  to  be  ex 
officio  on  the  commission).^ 

These  justices  of  the  peace,  or  any  two  of  them  (one  of 
whom  was  to  be  of  the  quorum),  were  directed  to  keep  and 
hold  their  sessions  four  times  a  year  {i.e.,  Quarter  Sessions), 
and  at  other  times  for  urgent  causes,  as  was  done  in 
England;  and  like  "power  and  authority  in  all  things" 
as  was  possessed  by  English  justices  of  the  peace  was 
conferred  upon  them.^ 

The  Act  also  dealt  with  the  offices  of  sheriff  and  coroner 
of  the  county,  and  constable  of  the  hundred.  In  regard  to 
the  office  of  sheriff,  it  enacted  that  it  should  be  only  tenable 
for  one  year  ;  that  the  President,  Council,  and  Justices  of 
Wales,  or  three  of  them  (whereof  the  President  was  to  be 
one),  should  yearly  nominate  three  substantial  persons  in 
each  county  for  the  office,  and  certify  their  names  to  the 
King's  Council,  so  that  the  king  may  appoint  one  of  the 
three  so  nominated  ;  and  that  the  sheriff  so  appointed  shall 
have  the  like  patents  and  commissions  as  the  sheriffs  of 
English  shires,  but  shall  take  the  oaths  and  knowledges  of 
recognizances  before  the  President  and  Justices,  or  one  of 
them.  The  authorities  and  duties  of  the  Welsh  sheriffs 
were  made  similar  to  those  of  their  English  colleagues. 
They  were  to  keep  their  county  courts  monthly,  and  their 
hundred    courts   for  pleas    under   forty   shillings,    and   to 

1  Ibid.,  ss.  53-55. 
'  Ibid.,  ss.  53-59. 


38o         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

hold  their  tourn  twice  a  year  (after  Easter  and  Michael- 
mas),   as    in    England.       It    is    also    provided    too,    that 
in  the  county  and  hundred  courts,  as  well  as  in  courts  baron, 
the  trial  of  issues  should  be  by  wager  of  law  or  verdict  of 
six  men  at  the  pleasure  of  the  party  pleading  the  plea.^ 

Further,  there  were  to  be  two  coroners  in  every  count}-, 
appointed  as  in  England  by  writ  de  coronatore  eligendo^ 
issuable,  however,  in  the  case  of  Welsh  counties  out  of  the 
Exchequer  at  Chester ;  and  two  constables  specially  charged 
with  the  maintenance  of  the  king's  peace  were  to  be 
appointed  for  each  hundred  by  the  justices  of  the  peace,  or 
two  of  them  (one  of  whom  was  to  be  of  the  quorum)^  of 
each  county.^ 

To  complete  this  brief  account  of  the  new  or  modified 
arrangements  for  the  government  of  Wales,  we  ought  to  add 
that  stewards  of  any  lordships  or  manors  were  empowered 
to  continue  to  hold  the  accustomed  courts — leets,  law- 
days,  or  courts  baron — and  to  hold  pleas  by  plaint  up  to 
forty  shillings  in  every  court  baron,  and  exercise  the  same 
authority  as  the  like  stewards  in  England,  and  also  that 
the  mayors,  bailiffs,  and  officers  of  corporations  in  Wales 
might  hold  courts  according  to  their  lawful  grants  or  the 
custom  of  the  towns,  so  long  as  they  followed  the  law  of 
England  and  not  Welsh  customs,  and  that  issues  joined  in 
personal  actions  might  be  tried  in  such  towns  by  a  jury  of 
six  men.'" 

Besides  these  matters  of  form^al  organisation,  this  Act 
declared  or  altered  certain  rules  of  law.  The  sections 
relating  to  the  real  property  are  worthy  of  attention.  They 
made  the  laws  of  descent  the  same  as  that  of  England,  and 

'  Ibid.y  ss.  61-64;  ss.  73-75. 

-  Ibid.,  ss.  68-70. 

^  Ibid.,  ss.  23  and  26.  The  manorial  courts  were  not  to  try  felonies 
(section  24).  The  king,  by  section  27,  took  power  to  dissolve  boroughs  and 
create  others. 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.    381 

finally  abolished  the  Welsh  system  of  partition.     They  are 
as  follows  : — 

'*  XXV.  And  that  from  henceforth  no  leet  nor  law-day 
be  kept  by  the  steward  or  other  officer  of  any  lordship  or 
manor  in  the  said  dominion  of  Wales,  but  in  such  lord- 
ships and  places  where  it  was  accustomed  to  be  kept  before 
the  making  of  the  Act  of  Parliament  concerning  Wales, 
made  in  the  twenty-sixth  year  of  our  said  Sovereign 
Lord's  reign  ;  so  always  the  place  where  such  court  shall 
be  kept,  be  meet  and  convenient  for  that  purpose." 

"  XCI.  IU7;iy  That  all  manors,  lands,  tenements,  mes- 
suages and  other  hereditaments,  and  all  rights  and  titles  to 
the  same,  in  any  of  the  said  shires  of  Wales,  descended 
to  any  manner,  person,  or  persons  sith  the  feast  of  the 
Nativity  of  St.  John  Baptist  in  the  thirty-third  year  of 
our  said  Sovereign  Lord's  reign,  or  that  hereafter  shall 
descend,  be  taken,  enjoyed,  used,  and  holden  as  English 
tenure,  to  all  intents  according  to  the  common  laws  of  this 
realm  of  England,  and  not  to  be  partable  among  heirs 
males  after  the  custom  of  gavelkind,  as  heretofore  in 
divers  parts  of  Wales  hath  been  used  and  accustomed. 
And  that  the  same  law,  from  and  after  the  said  feast  of 
St.  John  Baptist,  in  the  said  thirty-third  year,  be  used, 
taken  and  exercised  in  the  said  county  of  Monmouth,  and 
in  all  such  lordships  and  other  places,  as  by  virtue  of  the 
said  Act  made  in  the  twenty-seventh  year,  or  by  any  other 
Act  or  Acts  made  or  to  be  made,  were  and  shall  be 
annexed,  united,  or  knit  to  any  of  the  shires  of  Salop, 
Hereford,  Gloucester,  or  other  shire  ;  any  laws,  usages,  or 
customs  heretofore  had  or  used  to  the  contrary  thereof 
notwithstanding. 

"XCII.  IU7n,  That  no  mortgages  of  lands,  tenements, 
or  hereditaments  made  or  had  after  the  said  feast  of 
St.  John  Baptist,  which  was  in  the  said  thirty-third  year  of 
the  reign   of  our  said  Sovereign   Lord,  or  that  hereafter 


382         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

shall  be  had  or  made  within  any  of  the  said  shires  or 
places,  shall  be  hereafter  allowed  or  admitted,  otherwise 
than  after  the  course  of  the  common  laws  or  statutes  of 
the  realm  of  England  ;  any  usage  or  custom  heretofore 
had  to  the  contrary  thereof  notwithstanding. 

"XCIII.  Item,  It  shall  be  lawful  to  all  persons  to  aliene, 
sell,  or  otherwise  put  away  their  lands,  tenements,  and 
hereditaments  within  the  said  country  or  dominion  of 
Wales,  the  county  of  Monmouth,  and  other  places  annexed 
to  any  of  the  shires  of  England,  from  them  and  their  heirs, 
to  any  person  or  persons  in  fee-simple  of  fee-tail,  for  term 
of  life,  or  for  term  of  years,  after  the  manner  and  according 
as  is  used  by  the  laws  of  the  realm  of  England  ;  any 
Welsh  law  or  custom  heretofore  used  in  the  said  country 
or  dominion  of  Wales  to  the  contrary  thereof  notwith- 
standing. This  article  to  take  effect  from  and  after  the 
said  feast  of  the  Nativity  of  St.  John  Baptist,  which  was  in 
the  said  thirty-third  year  of  our  said  Sovereign  Lord's  reign." 

"  CI.  Ite7n,  where  divers  lordships  marchers,  *  as  well  in 
Wales,  as  in  the  borders  of  the  same,  now  being  by  Act  of 
Parliament  annexed  to  divers  shires  of  England,  be  lately 
come  to  the  king's  hands  by  suppression  of  houses,  by 
purchase  or  attainders,  and  now  be  under  the  survey  of  the 
court  of  augmentations,  or  of  the  king's  general  surveyors, 
the  liberties,  franchises,  and  customs  of  all  which  lordships 
be  lately  revived  by  Act  of  Parliament,  made  in  the  thirty- 
second  year  of  his  most  gracious  reign  ;  '  nevertheless  his 
Majesty  willeth  and  commandeth,  that  no  other  liberties, 
franchises,  or  customs  shall  from  henceforth  be  used, 
claimed,  or  exercised  within  the  said  lordships,  nor  any 
other  lordships  within  Wales,  or  the  county  of  Monmouth, 
whosoever  be  lord  or  owner  of  the  same,  but  only  such 
liberties,  franchises,  and  customs  as  be  given  and  com- 
manded to  the  lords  of  the  same  lordships,  by  force  and 
virtue  of  the  said  Act  of  Parliament  made  for  Wales  in  the 


LEGAL  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.   383 

said  twenty-seventh  year  of  his  Grace's  reign,  and  not 
altered  nor  taken  away  by  this  ordinance ;  the  said  Act 
made  in  the  said  thirty-second  year,  or  any  other  Act,  grant, 
law,  or  custom  to  the  contrary  thereof  notwithstanding." 

"CXXVII.  Provided  always,  that  all  lands,  tenements, 
and  hereditaments,  within  the  said  dominion  of  Wales, 
shall  descend  to  the  heirs,  according  to  the  course  of  the 
common  laws  of  England  of  the  realm  of  England, 
according  to  the  tenor  and  effect  of  this  Act,  and  not  to  be 
used  as  gavelkind  ;  anything  contained  in  these  provisions 
or  any  of  them  to  the  contrary  thereof  notwithstanding." 

This  measure  (the  clear  drafting  of  which  has  won  the  com- 
mendation of  eminent  lawyers)  completed  the  incorpora- 
tion of  Wales  and  the  marches  into  the  realm  of  England. 
It  assimilated  the  Welsh  to  the  English  counties  for  political 
and  executive  purposes,  but  left  the  former  with  a  separate 
judicature.  The  new  judicial  system  seems  to  have  begun 
its  work  very  quickly,  and  after  a  few  years'  trial,  owing  to 
the  amount  of  the  work  and  the  difficulty  of  the  questions 
that  arose,  it  was  found  expedient  to  appoint  an  addi- 
tional judge  on  each  circuit.  Power  to  do  so  (which  was 
duly  acted  on)  was  given  to  the  Crown  by  the  stat.  18  Eliz. 
c.  5  (1576),  and  the  number  of  the  judges  was  thus  raised  to 
eight.  The  Great  Sessions  absorbed  the  bulk  of  the  more 
considerable  business  done  in  the  old  marcher  courts,  and 
no  doubt  also  many  matters  that  would  have  gone  to  the 
Court  of  the  President  and  Council.  They  continued  in 
active  operation  until  1830,  and  developed  a  special  practice 
of  their  own,  which  varied  but  little  on  the  different  circuits, 
and  which  was  based  on  the  same  fundamental  principles 
as  that  of  the  English  Superior  Courts.^ 

^  The  earliest  printed  book  on  the  practice  of  the  Great  Sessions  is  R.  Rice 
Vaughan's  "  Practica  Wallise "  (Lond.  1672).  See  also  Foley's  "  Practice 
of  the  Courts  of  Great  Sessions  for  the  several  counties  of  Carmarthen, 
Pembroke,  and  Cardigan"  (Lond.  1792);  Abbot's  "Jurisdiction  and  Practice 
of  the  Court  of  Great  Sessions  of  Wales  upon   the  Chester  Circuit"    (Lond 


384         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

It  is  clear,  notwithstanding  the  creation  of  the  Great 
Sessions,  that  the  Court  of  the  President  and  Council,  though 
not  nearly  so  active  as  in  the  days  of  Lee,  continued  during 
the  closing  years  of  the  sixteenth  and  the  earlier  part  of  the 
seventeenth  century  to  deal  with  a  great  many  causes  ;  but 
it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  causes  came  not  only 
from  Wales,  but  also  from  the  four  English  counties  over 
which  its  jurisdiction  had  been  extended  since  the  time  of 
Henry  VII. ^  These  four  shires  and  Bristol  were  not  men- 
tioned in  the  fourth  section  of  the  34  &  35  Henry 
VIII.  c.  26.  The  jurisdiction  of  the  Court  over  the 
English  counties  therefore  rested  on  an  act  of  the  pre- 
rogative, unless  those  counties  were  included  within  the 
term  "  marches  "  in  that  section.  An  agitation  against  the 
Court,  so  far  as  it  exercised  authority  over  any  part  of 
England,  of  which  the  principal  leader  was  Sir  Herbert 
Croft,  a  Herefordshire  landowner  and  justice,  arose  in  the 
early  years  of  James  I.'s  reign.  In  1605-6  a  Bill  to  exempt 
the  four  counties  passed  through  the  House  of  Commons, 
but  was  dropped  in  deference  to  a  conciliatory  speech  from 
the  king.  A  like  fate  aw^aited  a  similar  Bill  in  the  next 
session. 

In  1607  Lord  Eure  was  appointed  Lord  President,^ 
and  fresh  instructions  were  issued.  These  to  some  extent 
met  the  alleged  grievances  of  the  opponents  of  the  English 
jurisdiction  of  the  Court.  The  extraordinary  powers  of  the 
President  and  Council  were  confined  to  Wales,  but  a  civil 

1795),  and  Oldnall's  "The  Practice  of  the  Court  of  Great  Sessions  on  the 
Carmarthen  Circuit"  (Lend.  1814).  The  last  book  is  the  most  valuable. 
Oldnall,  afterwards  Sir  W.  Oldnall  Russell,  became  Chief  Justice  of  Bengal. 
Much  information  as  to  the  history  and  the  methods  of  these  courts  will  be 
found  in  the  Reports  and  Minutes  of  Evidence  of  the  Select  Committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons  appointed  in  1817,  1820,  and  1821  ;  and  in  the  first 
Report  of  the  Common  Law  Commissioners,  issued  in   1829. 

^  See  the  remarks  of  Demetus  hereon  in  Owen's  "Dialogue";  and  the 
extracts  from  Gerard's  Discourses  to  Walsingham,  printed  in  Lewis's  paper, 
til'i  supra. 


LEGAL   AND   CONSTITUTIONAL   HISTORY,   385 

jurisdiction  in  cases  of  debt  and  trespass  where  the  damages 
were  laid  under  10/.  was  retained  in  the  four  shires. 
Croft  and  his  friends  were  not,  however,  satisfied,  and 
ultimately  the  validity  of  the  English  jurisdiction  was 
submitted  to  the  Privy  Council,  and  by  them  referred  to 
the  judges.  The  king  propounded  the  question  "whether 
the  article  of  the  instructions  touching  hearing  causes 
within  the  four  shires  under  10/.  be  agreeable  to  the  law?" 
The  case  was  argued  in  1608  for  six  days.  The  opinion  of 
the  judges  was  given  in  writing  on  February  3rd,  1609,  but 
was  never  published,  and  was  therefore  probably  adverse  to 
the  Crown.^ 

The  instructions  were  not,  however,  withdrawn,  and  the 
agitation  was  continued.  A  fresh  attempt  at  legisla- 
tion proved  abortive ;  but  the  movement  was  carried 
on  in  the  country.  The  process  of  the  Court  was  set  at 
nought ;  a  petition  signed  by  five  thousand  persons  alleged 
it  to  be  a  nuisance  ;  it  was  presented  as  such  by  a 
grand  jury  ;  numerous  actions  were  threatened,  and  some 
brought,  against  its  officers.  But  the  king  was  firm 
in  resisting  what  he  looked  at  as  an  attack  on  his  preroga- 
tive, and  the  resistance  gradually  died  away,  notwithstanding 
some  revival  of  the  agitation  in  16 14.  In  161 7  Lord 
Compton  succeeded  Lord  Eure  as  President  of  the  Court, 
and  fresh  instructions  were  issued.  By  these  new  articles 
the  concessions  made  in  1607  were  withdrawn  ;  no  distinc- 
tion was  made  between  Wales  and  the  four  shires ;  in  both 
areas  civil  jurisdiction  (limited  to  50/.  in  personal  actions) 
concurrent  with  that  of  the  Superior  Courts  at  Westminster 
was  granted,  and  an  unlimited  jurisdiction  where  the  plain- 
tiff's poverty  was  duly  certified  ;  a  full  equitable  and  Star 
Chamber  jurisdiction  was  also  conferred,  with  the  saving 
that    no    injunction    was    to    be    issued    to    the    Superior 

'  Coke  led  for  those  who  attacked  the  legality  of  the  jurisdiction,  while 
Bacon  did  so  for  the  President  and  Council. 

W.P  c  c 


386         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

Courts.^  It  has  been  said  on  good  authority  that  the  aboHtion 
of  the  Court  of  Star  Chambers  by  stat.  17  Charles  I.  c.  10,  in 
effect  took  away  those  powers  of  the  President  and  Council 
which  were  analogous  to  those  exercised  by  the  former 
court,  and  that  it  thenceforth  only  determined  civil  causes.- 

Whether  this  view  is  right  or  not,  the  Court  during  the 
Commonwealth  and  the  two  succeeding  reigns  declined  in 
importance,  and  immediately  after  the  Revolution  of  1688 
was  abolished  by  the  stat.  i  William  &  Mary,  sess.  i.  c.  2, 
which  recited  that  '*  the  powers  of  the  Lord  President  had 
been  much  abused,  and  that  the  institution  had  become  a 
great  grievance  to  the  subject." 

Between  1688  and  1830  a  considerable  number  of  statutes 
affecting  the  Welsh  courts  were  passed,  but  as  they  dealt 
chiefly  with  procedure  and  have  now  no  importance  it  is 
unnecessary  for  us  to  mention  them  specifically.^  No 
change  of  any  moment  was  made  by  these  Acts  as  to 
the  constitution  and  jurisdiction  of  the  Great  Sessions."^ 
Though  the  Welsh  courts  were  Superior  Courts,  the  King's 
Bench  had  long  affected  to  exercise  a  power  of  regula- 
tion and  review  over  them,  and  by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  by  a  series  of  judicial  decisions,  it  had  become 
settled  law  that  plaintiffs  might  bring  in  the  courts  at 
Westminster  actions  concerning  lands  in  Wales,  and  also 
personal  actions  (which  might  have  been  commenced  in  the 
Welsh  courts)  where  the  damages  claimed  exceeded  50/.^ 
Notwithstanding,  however,  the  encroachments  on  their  area 
of  authority,  the  Welsh  courts  continued  to  do  an  increasing 


^  See  Heath's  preface  to  Bacon's  "Argument,"  ubi  supra,  for  all  these  facts. 

2  So  says  Heath,  Jiln  supra,  sed  queer e? 

^  See  Oldnall's  "  Practice,"  tihi  supra ^  Introduction. 

*  One  of  the  Acts,  however,  it  may  be  well  to  mention — that  of  20  Geo.  II. 
c.  42,  which  enacted  that  in  all  Acts  of  Parliament  in  which  "  in  England  "  is 
mentioned,  Wales  shall  be  deemed  to  be  included. 

'"  See  the  argument  referred  to  above  in  Hargi-ave's  "  Law  Tracts,"  as  to  the 
encroachments  of  the  King's  Bench,  &c. 


LEGAL   AND   CONSTITUTIONAL   HISTORY.    387 

amount  of  business,  seemingly  without  any  greater  com- 
plaints against  their  procedure  than  was  indulged  in  against 
that  of  the  courts  at  Westminster,  It  is  not  clear  when  the 
movement  for  the  abolition  of  the  Welsh  courts  began,  but  it 
probably  first  arose  (except  merely  by  way  of  suggestion) 
as  part  of  the  larger  agitation  for  reforms  in  all  branches  of 
the  law,  and  in  the  procedure  of  all  the  courts,  which  dis- 
tinguished the  first  quarter  of  this  century.  It  is,  however, 
interesting  to  note  that  Burke,  speaking  in  the  House  of 
Commons  on  the  i8th  December,  1780,  and  referring  to  the 
Welsh  judicial  system,  said  it  had  been  proposed  to  add  a 
judge  to  each  of  the  courts  at  Westminster,  and  thought 
that  arrangement  would  be  sufficient  for  Wales ;  but  that 
his  original  thought  was  to  suppress  five  out  of  the  eight 
Welsh  justices,  and  to  throw  the  counties  into  districts.^ 
Burke  was,  however,  not  attacking  the  Welsh  courts  on 
general  grounds,  but  on  account  of  their  alleged  unnecessary 
expense  to  the  Crown. 

It  was  not  till  1817  that  some  definite  step  was  taken 
in  regard  to  the  matter.  In  that  year  a  select  committee 
was  appointed  by  the  House  of  Commons  to  inquire 
into  the  condition  of  the  judicial  system  of  Wales  and 
Chester,  and  in  1820  and  1821  like  committees  sat.  The 
evidence  taken  by  and  the  reports  of  these  bodies  contain 
full  information  about  the  Welsh  courts,  their  merits  and 
their  defects.  Nothing  was  done,  however,  until  after  the 
first  report  of  the  Common  Law  Commissioners,  who 
were  appointed  in  consequence  of  the  attack  led  by 
Brougham  on  the  abuses  and  defects  of  the  courts  and 
the  whole  judicial  system  in  his  celebrated  speech  of 
February,  1828.  The  first  report  of  the  Commissioners 
dealt  chiefly  with  the  Welsh  judicature.       It  recommended 

^  Speech  of  Edmund  Burke  on  a  "  Plan  for  the  better  security  of  the 
independence  of  Parliament,  and  the  economical  reformation  of  the  civil  and 
other  establishments." 

C  C  2 


388         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

the  extension  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Superior  Courts 
of  England  to  Chester  and  Wales,  the  appointment  of 
three  additional  judges  (one  to  each  of  the  common  law 
courts),  the  abolition  of  the  Courts  of  Great  Sessions,  as 
well  as  certain  subsidiary  steps. 

The  Government  adopted  the  principal  recommendations 
of  the  Commissioners  ;  and  on  the  9th  March  the  Attorney- 
General  (Sir  J.  Scarlett),  after  a  somewhat  perfunctory 
speech  that  showed  little  grasp  of  the  real  issues,  moved 
for  leave  to  bring  in  "a  Bill  for  the  more  effectual  Ad- 
ministration of  Justice  in  England  and  Wales,"  embodying 
in  substance  the  plan  of  the  Commissioners.  O'Connell 
opposed  the  Bill  as  useless  to  the  public.  Sir  J.  Owen^ 
protested  against  it  ;  but  C.  W.  W^ynn-on  the  other  hand 
supported  the  Government.  The  best  speech  was  made  by 
John  Jones,^  who  pertinaciously  opposed  the  Bill,  on  the 
main  ground  that  while  the  need  for  a  reform  of  the  W^elsh 
system  was  admitted,  that  did  not  involve  the  need  for 
its  abolition  ;  he  defended  the  Welsh  judges ;  he  objected 
to  the  interests  of  Wales  being  made  the  ladder  by  which 
ambitious  barristers  might  climb  to  such  preferment  as 
three  additional  judgeships  necessarily  included  ;  the  Welsh 
people,  he  said,  were  attached  to  their  institutions,  and 
did  not  desire  the  abolition  of  these  courts ;  the  Bill 
was  being-  forced  uoon  them.  After  a  brief  debate  the 
motion  was  agreed  to  without  a  division,  and  the  Bill  read 
a  first  time.* 


^  Then  M.P.  for  Pembrokeshire  (bom  1776  ;  died  1861,  having  sat  fifty-one 
years  in  the  House).     Williams'  "Pari.  Hist.,"  p.  159. 

-M.P.  for  Montgomery  (Privy  Councillor  1822;  member  of  Lord 
Liverpool's  Administration;  Secretary  at  War  and  in  Cabinet  1S30-I  ;  died 
1850).     Williams'  "Pari.  Hist.,"  p.  145. 

*^]SLP.  for  Carmarthen  (b.  1792;  d.  1857;  barrister-at-law,  and  Chairman 
of  Quarter  Sessions  for  Cardigan  ;  afterwards  member  for  Carmarthenshire). 
Williams'  "Pari.  Hist.,"  pp.  49,  55. 

*  Hansard  (2nd  series),  vol.  23,  col.  54. 


LEGAL   AND   CONSTITUTIONAL   HISTORY.    389 

The  second  reading  was  taken  on  April  27th. 
Frankland  Lewis ^  and  Colonel  Wood^  made  criticisms 
on  the  Bill.  The  latter,  while  not  denying  that  the  time 
had  come  for  the  assimilation  of  the  Welsh  to  the 
English  system,  pointed  out  the  characteristic  of  the  Welsh 
people,  and  how  largely  the  Welsh  language  was  used  by 
the  lower  classes;  he  thought  the  juries  ought  to  be  Welsh, 
and  asked  how  many  gentlemen  in  the  House  would  like 
to  give  evidence  in  French  in  a  case  in  which  the  life  of  a 
fellow-countryman  was  at  stake  ?  John  Jones  subsequently 
spoke,  attacking  the  Commissioners,  with  very  considerable 
reason  on  his  side,  as  being  completely  ignorant  of  Wales 
and  its  inhabitants,  and  complained  of  their  unfair  treatment 
of  him  and  other  Welshmen  who  had  assisted  them,  and  again 
insisted  that  there  was  no  demand  for  the  Bill  in  Wales. 
C.  W.  Wynn  argued  in  its  favour.  Rice  Trevor^  urged 
that  the  Bill  would  entail  great  additional  expense  on 
Welsh  suitors.  The  Attorney-General  briefly  replied,  and 
the  Bill  was  read  a  second  time  without  a  division, 
passed  through  Committee,  but  was  re-committed  on  June 
i8th,  and  read  a  third  time  on  July  17th;*  and  subse- 
quently passed  through  the  Lords  without  difficulty — 
notwithstanding  the  adverse  opinion  of  Lord  Eldon,  then 
no  longer  the  autocrat  of  that  House — and  duly  became 
law. 

By  this  Act  (the  1 1  George  IV.  and  i  William  IV.  c.  70) 
an  additional  judge  v/as   appointed  to  each  of  the  three 


-M.P.  for  Radnorshire  (b.  17S0  ;  d.  1855;  Privy  Councillor  1828;  held 
various  offices,  and  was  Chairman  of  the  Poor  Law  Commission,  1834-9  ;  a 
member  of  the  Commission  of  Inquiry  into  the  Rebecca  Riots,  1843  5  created  a 
baronet  1846).     Williams'  "Pari.  Hist.,"  p.  176. 

2  M.P.  for  Breconshire  (b.  1778  ;  d.  i860).     Williams'  "  Pari.  Hist.,"  p.  20. 

'M.P.  for  Carmarthenshire  (b.  1795;  d.  1869;  only  son  of  George  Lord 
Dynevor,  and  succeeded  his  father  as  second  Lord  Dynevor  in  1852), 
Williams'  "Pari.  Hist.,"  p.  49. 

•*  Hansard  (2nd  series),  vol.  24,  col.  104. 


390         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

Superior  Courts — the  King's  Bench,  the  Common  Pleas,  and 
the  Exchequer  of  Pleas.  The  jurisdiction  of  these  and 
other  English  Superior  Courts  was  extended  over  Chester 
and  Wales,  while  that  of  the  Great  Sessions  was  to  cease 
from  the  commencement  of  the  Act.  It  was  enacted  that 
assizes  should  thenceforth  be  held  by  the  judges  of  the 
superior  Courts,  as  in  England.  It  was  arranged  that 
there  should  be  two  circuits — a  North  Wales  and  Chester, 
and  a  South  Wales  and  Chester  circuit.  A  single  judge 
was  to  do  the  work  in  the  six  counties  of  North  Wales,  and 
another  to  go  alone  through  the  counties  of  South  Wales 
(except  Glamorganshire),  and  that  both  judges  should  unite 
for  the  assizes  of  Cheshire  and  Glamorganshire.  Proper 
provisions  were  inserted  for  the  pensioning  of  the  officials 
of  the  Welsh  courts  and  effecting  the  change  without  delay 
or  inconvenience,  and  certain  useful  amendments  in  regard 
to  the  procedure  of  the  common  law  courts  were  also  made. 
It  can  hardly  be  said  that  the  Welsh  members  made  the 
most  of  their  case.  The  majority  sat  on  the  Government 
side,  and  most  of  them  were  country  gentlemen  who  rarely 
took  part  in  debate  ;  but  a  meed  of  praise  is  due  to  the 
stand  made  by  John  Jones  of  Carmarthen  against  the  Bill 
at  a  time  when  the  very  courts  which  the  Government 
proposed  to  substitute  for  the  Welsh  ones  were  themselves 
unreformed  and  carried  on  their  work  under  a  system  of 
practice  universally  condemned.  The  broad  questions, 
whether  it  is  or  is  not  expedient  to  centralise  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  (in  regard  to  all  except  the  more  trivial 
disputes)  so  completely  as  was,  and  in  a  less  degree  still  is, 
the  case  in  this  country  ;  whether  the  English  circuit  system 
is  better  than  a  system  of  provincial  courts  of  first  instance 
controlled  by  a  Court  of  Appeal  ;  whether  it  was  fair  to 
deprive  of  its  separate  judicial  organisation,  a  part  of  the 
country  where  a  different  language  was,  in  most  of  the 
counties,   habitually  spoken  by  the  large   majority  of  the 


LEGAL    AND    CONSTITUTIONAL    HISTORY,   391 

inhabitants,  and  to  allow  Scotland,  where  English  was 
even  then  almost  exclusively  spoken,  to  retain  its  own 
courts,  were  not  raised  with  any  clearness.  No  doubt 
there  were  many  abuses,  grievances,  and  defects  connected 
with  the  Welsh  system.  The  judges  were  permitted  to 
sit  in  Parliament,  and  to  practise  at  the  Bar  off  their  own 
circuits ;  the  appointments  to  the  Bench  were  often  made 
for  political  reasons  ;  no  pensions  being  attached  to  their 
office,  the  judges  often  clung  to  their  posts  when  they 
were  really  too  infirm  to  do  their  duties  properly  ;  they 
did  not  change  their  circuits,  and  some  became  too  familiar 
with  the  barristers  who  came  before  them,  and  the  country 
gentlemen  in  the  neighbourhood,  thus  giving  rise  on  occasion 
to  grave  suspicion  of  partiality  ;  the  term  of  the  sessions 
(six  days)  was  often  not  long  enough  for  the  cautious  and 
patient  trial  of  the  causes  ;  the  procedure  was  antiquated 
and  complicated  ;  the  territorial  limits  of  jurisdiction  gave 
rise  to  difficulties.  All  those  things  are  true,  and  show 
that  a  reform  of  the  system  was  quite  necessary  ;  but  every 
one  of  those  ills  could  have  been  removed  by  legislation, 
and  not  one  of  them  (except  perhaps  the  possibility  of  too 
great  familiarity  with  a  particular  neighbourhood)  affords 
an  argument  against  a  properly-constituted  system  ot 
provincial  courts. 

For  some  years  the  Act  inflicted  considerable  hardship 
on  Welsh  suitors.  There  being  no  county  courts  on  the 
modern  basis  till  the  Act  of  1846  had  passed,  and  the  local 
courts  having  only  jurisdiction  up  to  forty  shillings,  it  was 
necessary  to  bring  an  action  in  London  even  to  recover 
trivial  debts,  and  as  the  local  equitable  jurisdiction  had 
been  determined,  the  administration  of  the  smallest  estate 
had  to  be  effected  through  the  medium  of  the  Court  of 
Chancery.  The  proceedings,  too,  in  an  action  commenced 
in  a  Superior  Court  and  tried  at  a  Welsh  assize,  were  much 
more  dilatory  and  expensive  than  those  in  a  suit  of  the 


392         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

same  kind  in  the  Great  Sessions.  Again,  though  the 
Welsh  judges  were  not  the  equals  of  the  English  judges 
in  status  at  the  Bar,  or,  as  a  rule,  in  legal  attainments, 
they  came  in  a  very  little  time  after  their  appointments 
into  close  touch  with  the  people  and  generally  secured 
their  confidence.  For  many  years  the  want  of  sympathy 
of  the  English  judges  going  the  Welsh  circuits,  their 
ill-concealed  assumption  that  Welshmen  were  beings 
inferior  to  Englishmen,  their  apparent  total  inability  to 
understand  that  a  man  who  could  speak  a  few  words  of 
a  foreign  language  in  the  market-place  or  society  might 
decline  to  give  evidence  in  it  in  a  court  of  justice  and 
yet  be  an  honest  man,  produced  very  often  great  popular 
(though  in  those  days  not  overt)  indignation,  and  some- 
times grave  miscarriage  of  justice.  The  establishment 
of  the  modern  county  courts,  and  the  gentler  and  more 
tactful  treatment  of  Welsh  witnesses  by  the  judges  of  the 
High  Court  during  recent  years,  have  done  much  to  remove 
any  grievances  special  to  the  people  of  Wales  in  regard  to 
the  administration  of  justice.^ 

We  have  now  only  to  add  a  few  words  about  the  legal 
profession  in  Wales  as  affected  by  the  Act  of  1830.  The 
statute  enabled  the  attorneys  and  solicitors  of  the  Welsh 
courts  to  obtain  like  positions  in  the  common  law  courts  at 
Westminster  and  in  the  Court  of  Chancery.  A  consider- 
able but  not  numerous  Bar  had  been  in  the  habit  of  attend- 
ing the  four  old  circuits.-     What  took  place  on  the  coming 

^  The  more  vigilant  action  of  the  Welsh  members  in  the  House  of  Commons 
since  1868  has  no  doubt  contributed  to  this  more  satisfactory  state  of  things. 

2  We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  W.  Trevor  Parkins,  of  the  North  Wales  Circuit, 
Chancellor  of  the  diocese  of  St.  Asaph,  for  he  following  information.  Before 
1830  there  was  a  Ear  mess  for  each  Welsh  Circuit.  A  book  in  MS.  containing 
the  "  Records"  of  the  Chester  Circuit  from  1788  to  1830  (now  in  the  possession 
of  Sir  Horatio  Lloyd)  seems  to  be  the  only  minute-book  of  the  old  circuit 
messes  extant.  P'rom  1790  the  minutes  of  the  Chester  Circuit  were  regularly 
kept.  The  Attorney-Ceneral  of  the  Circuit,  or  in  his  absence  his  deputy, 
presided   at  the   High  Court.     The    "Records"  contain  the   names   of  the 


LEGAL   AND    CONSTITUTIONAL    HISTORY.    393 

into  operation  of  the  new  Act  is  not  quite  clear ;  ^  but  it 
seems  that  two  Bar  messes  ^  were  formed,  on  much  the  same 
plan  as,  and  with  rules  very  similar  to,  those  of  the 
English  circuits  ^ — one  for  the  North  Wales  and  the  other  for 
the  South  Wales  Circuit,  which  united  to  form  one  mess  at 
Chester  and  in  Glamorganshire  respectively.  The  number 
of  barristers  practising  on  the  Welsh  circuits  was  at  first 
and  for  many  years  very  small;  ^  but  of  late  years,  principally 

members  present  at  each  High  Court,  an  account  of  the  expenses  of  the  wine, 
of  the  fines  imposed,  and  of  the  jokes  that  were  made  and  deemed  worth 
setting  down.  Among  the  more  eminent  members  whose  names  occur  are  : — 
Richard  Richards,  afterwards  Lord  Chief  Baron  of  the  Exchequer  ;  Charles 
Abbot,  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  ;  Charles  Wetherell,  who  became 
Attorney-General  of  England  ;  C.  W.  Williams  Wynn  (see  note  2,  p.  388, 
above) ;  John  Jervis,  afterwards  Chief  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas.  The 
members  of  the  mess  frequently  held  mess  dinners  in  London.  The  la'^t  of 
such  meetings  took  place  at  the  Thatched  House  Tavern,  on  May  19th,  i>^^o. 
The  Bar  of  the  Chester  Circuit  was  composed  of  men  who  belonged  to  othei 
Circuits  (usually  the  Northern  or  Oxford),  and  a  few  equity  barristers.  Many  of 
them  did  not  follow  the  Circuit  into  Wales.  In  addition  to  the  judges  mentioned 
above,  Mr.  Justice  John  Williams,  Mr.  Justice  Littledale,  Baron  Parke  ( Lord 
Wensleydale),  Mr.  Justice  Wiglitman,  and  Mr.  Justice  Crompton  practised 
at  Chester  Great  Sessions.  After  1830  Chester  became  the  common  ground 
for  all  the  members  of  the  old  Welsh  Circuits.  Thus  Vaughan  Williams 
(afterwards  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas),  who  belonged  to  the  Carmarthen 
Circuit,  exercised  his  right  to  come  to  Chester. 

^  When  I  became  junior  of  the  South  Wales  Circuit  in  1877  the  books  of  the 
mess  handed  to  me  only  contained  the  minutes  of  business  from  about  the 
middle  of  the  fifties. — D.  B.  J.  Mr.  Trevor  Parkins  informs  us  that  the 
existing  minute-book  of  the  North  Wales  Circuit  (in  the  narrower  sense)  only 
goes  back  to  1872,  anl  that  of  the  Chester  mess  only  to  18S0.  There  are  no 
records  of  either  mess  for  the  period  from  1830  to  1872. 

2  This  is  substantially  true,  but  we  are  informed  that  technically  the  members 
of  the  North  Wales  Division  regard  the  Bar  mess  in  the  Welsh  counties  as  a 
distinct  mess  from  that  of  Chester. 

•'  E.£: ,  members  of  the  mess  were  not  allowed  to  travel  on  circuit  in  any 
public  conveyance  ;  nor  to  reside  during  the  Assizes  at  any  hotel  or  inn,  but 
had  to  take  private  lodgings ;  members  were  not  permitted  to  dine  with 
solicitors  during  the  Assizes,  &c.  The  two  former  rules  were  modified  before 
1877.  Members  were  then  allowed  to  go  to  hotels,  provided  they  engaged 
private  sitting-rooms,  and  to  travel  by  rail,  but  only  in  a  first-class  carriage 
after  joining  circuit. 

"*  They  can,  however,  boast  of  three  members  who  joined  after  1830  and  have 


394         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  viii.) 

owing  to  the  gieat  increase  of  the  work  in  Glamorganshire, 
has  been  greatly  augmented.^  The  business  in  the  otlier 
counties  since  the  large  extension  of  the  county  court 
jurisdiction  has  very  greatly  diminished,  and  there  is  a 
tendency  to  putting  down  the  more  substantial  cases  for 
trial  at  Swansea  or  Cardiff;  and  the  great  amount  of  work 
done  in  the  industrial  and  commercial  centres  of  South 
Wales  has  led  to  the  "localising"  of  several  members  of 
the  Bar.2 

Having  touched  upon  the  principal  points  in  the  con- 
stitutional and  legal  development  of  the  Welsh  counties 
from  the  time  of  Edward  I.,  we  must  now  turn  to  the 
history  of  land  tenure  in  Wales,  looked  at  from  an  economic 
rather  than  from  a  legal  standpoint. 

reached  high  judicial  office — Lord  Halsbury,  the  present  Lord  Chancellor ; 
the  late  Sir  William  Milbourne  James,  Lord  Justice  of  Appeal;  and  the 
late  Sir  William  Grove,  Judge  of  the  High  Court  of  Justice. 

1  In  1843  W6  fi^^  from  a  letter  of  Carlyle's  (Froude's  "Life  of  Thomas 
Carlyle  in  London,"  vol.  i.,  p.  312)  that  about  twenty  barristers  were  attend- 
ing the  summer  Assizes  at  Carmarthen.  Carlyle  was  staying  at  Abergwili 
with  the  Bishop,  and,  the  Assizes  being  on,  the  Bishop,  following  a  not  unusual 
custom,  had  invited  the  Judge  and  Bar  to  dinner.  C.  calls  the  entertainment 
"an  explosion  of  dulness,  champagne,  and  ennui,''^  and  makes  the  ill-natured 
and  conceited  remark  that  "the  advocates  generally  filled  me  with  a  kind  of 
shudder  !     To  think  that  had  I  once  had  200/.  I  should  have  been  that  ! " 

2  The  technical  name  of  the  former  North  and  South  Wales  Circuits  is  now 
"The  Welsh  Circuit,"  but  the  North  Wales  and  South  Wales  "Divisions'* 
are  recognised. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

HISTORY   OF   LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES. 
§    I. —  The   Welsh  Tribal  System. 

It  is  not  proposed  to  enter  at  great  length  upon  the  history 
of  ancient  land  tenures  in  Wales.  But  it  seems  a  necessary 
part  of  our  duty  to  offer  the  best  explanation  we  are  able  of 
the  main  facts  in  Welsh  economic  history  which,  commencing 
with  the  general  prevalence  throughout  the  greater  part  of 
Wales  of  the  tribal  system  above  described,  have  resulted  in 
the  present  conditions  of  ownership  and  tenure. 

It  may  be  well  to  mention  at  the  outset  that  the  evidence 
of  the  main  facts  of  the  Welsh  tribal  system  prevalent 
under  the  chieftains  or  princes  before  the  conquest  is  not 
by  any  means  confined  to  vague  tradition,  or  even  to  the 
codes  and  treatises  of  various  authority  in  which  from  the 
time  of  Howel  the  Good  the  customs  and  customary  law 
prevalent  in  different  districts  of  Wales  were  from  time  to 
time  collected.  The  evidence  for  the  main  facts  relevant 
to  the  object  of  this  inquiry  rests  upon  the  solid  ground  of 
the  actual  surveys  or  extents  made  by  Norman  surveyors 
in  great  detail  and  with  the  especial  object  of  recording 
the  condition  of  things  as  to  tenure  which  was  found  to 
exist  in  North  Wales  after  the  conquest  by  Edward  I.  and 
which  was  the  result  of  the  customary  tribal  law  prevalent 
before  the  conquest. 

The  extent  of  greatest  value  and  detail  is  that  of  the 


396  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

Lordship  of  Denbigh  made  in  8  Edward  III.,  but  other 
extents  embrace  Anglesey,  Carnarvonshire,  and  Merioneth- 
shire and  the  scattered  possessions  of  the  see  of  St.  Davids 
in  four  counties  of  South  Wales. 

The  main  facts  relevant  to  this  inquiry  are  those  which 
relate  to  the  customary  law  as  to  land  under  the  tribal 
system  itself,  and  the  results  it  left  behind  it  as  regards 
land  tenure  in  Wales  after  the  English  conquest 

So  far  as  the  part  of  Wales  conquered  by  Cuneda  and 
his  sons  is  concerned,  the  Cymry  appear  not  to  have  been 
the  original  inhabitants,  but  a  conquering  tribe  ;  and  it 
appears  most  probable  that  their  coming  into  Wales  in  the 
fifth  and  sixth  centuries  partook  of  the  nature  of  a  tribal 
migration  from  Cumbria.^ 

The  result  naturally  followed  that  a  permanent  division 
of  classes  was  established  according  to  tribal  custom, 
between  the  conquering  tribesmen  and  the  conquered 
people,  so  that  the  inhabitants  of  Wales  from  that  time 
onward  were  divided  into  two  classes — the  free  tribesmen 
and  the  non-tribesmen,  or  strangers  in  blood. 

First,  as  to  the  free  tribesmen.  They  were  bound 
together  from  the  chieftain  down  to  the  humblest  tribes- 
man by  the  tie  of  blood  relationship.  They  carefully 
guarded  their  pedigree  and  purity  of  blood,  and  the  several 
kindreds  or  groups  of  kinsmen  within  certain  degrees  of 
relationship  were  mutually  liable  to  one  another  for  injuries 
and  crimes. 

It  is  not  needful  to  enter  into  details  as  to  the  structure 
of  tribal  society,  except  so  far  as  to  explain  the  result  of 
the  tribal  organisation  upon  the  occupation  of  land  ;  and 
the  main  point  about  this  is  the  fact  that  the  tribal  unit  of 
occupation  of  land  was  the  kindred  or  family  group  and  not 
the  individual.     The  rights,  moreover,  of  the  family  group 

^  See  above,  pp.118 — 120,  as  to  the  conciuest  of  Gwyned  by  Cuneda  and  his 
sons. 


HISTORY   OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    397 

were  vested  in  its  patriarchal  head,  and  during  the  lifetime 
of  this  head  of  the  group  all  the  surbordinate  members  of 
it,  down  to  great-grandchildren  or  second  cousins,  instead 
of  being  joint  tenants  of  the  family  rights  as  regards  land 
had  apparently  only  tribal  rights  of  maintenance.  They 
were  regarded  not  as,  in  the  modern  sense,  joint  owners 
with  equal  shares  in  the  land,  but  rather  as  the  sons  and 
grandsons  of  a  patriarchal  family  under  the  patriarchal 
rule  of  its  head. 

Thus  tribal  society  was  in  no  true  sense  a  republic  or 
democracy  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term,  but  rather  an 
aristocratic  group  of  families  organised  on  a  patriarchal 
basis. 

When  the  English  surveyors,  therefore,  in  the  fourteenth 
century  made  their  extents  after  the  conquest,  they  found 
and  described  this  or  that  district  as  occupied,  not  by 
individuals,  but  by  this  or  that  family  group,  or,  using  the 
Welsh  term,  this  or  that  zve/e  or  gwely  {i.e.,  bed  or  family 
stock),  consisting  of  the  progenies  or  descendants  down  to 
great-grandchildren  of  the  original  head  of  the  family 
group.  Each  of  these  family  groups  held  together  till  a 
final  division  took  place  amongst  the  great-grandchildren 
of  its  original  head,  and  it  was  called  by  the  surveyors  the 
"  wele  of  so-and-so,"  although  he  and  his  sons  may  have 
been  long  dead.  And  the  reason  why  the  **  wele  "  of  the 
original  head  of  the  family  thus  held  together  long  after 
his  death  and  the  death  of  his  sons  is  given  in  the  codes. 
It  was  the  tribal  rule  that  on  the  death  of  the  original  head 
the  original  wele  was  divided  into  the  equal  weles  of  his 
sons,  who  were  brothers,  that  after  the  death  of  all  the  sons 
the  tribal  rights  of  the  family  were  subject  to  a  re-division 
among  the  grandsons  or  cousins  per  capita  and  not  per 
stirpes,  and  that,  lastly,  on  the  death  of  all  the  sons  and 
grandsons,  a  final  re-division  could  be  claimed  by  the  great- 
grandsons  or  second  cousins  per  capita  and  \\o\.  per  stirpes. 


398  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

Hence  the  original  wele  of  the  great-grandfather  was 
retained  as  the  unit  of  the  family  rights  until  all  the 
grandsons  were  dead,  on  which  event  the  final  division  of 
family  rights  among  great-grandsons  took  place  and  fresh 
family  groups  were  formed.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  the 
gwely  or  family  so  constituted  under  tribal  custom  con- 
tinued after  the  conquest,  and  was  described  in  the  extents 
by  the  English  surveyors  as  the  ordinary  tribal  unit  of  land 
occupation. 

The  result  was  that  the  surveyors  describe  this  district, 
and  that  as  in  the  occupation,  not  of  individuals,  but  of  the 
wele  or  gwely  of  so-and-so,  or,  as  mostly  happened,  of 
several  such  family  groups,  having  undivided  shares  in  the 
tribal  occupation  of  the  district. 

The  surveys  or  extents  enable  us  further. to  realise  that 
this  occupation  in  most  districts  was  that  of  a  pastoral, 
rather  than  agricultural,  people.  The  tribal  rights  of  land 
occupation  held  by  the  family  groups  were  thus  mainly 
rights  of  grazing  over  considerable  districts  in  common 
with  other  family  groups.  Each  wele  or  family  group,  no 
doubt,  held  in  severalty  its  own  roughly  constructed  home- 
steads or  ty'dynau,  with  cattle-yards  and  crofts  for  winter 
protection  and  feeding,  whilst  the  mass  of  the  land, 
mountain  and  moor  and  waste,  was  held  by  them  in 
common.  And,  further,  these  families  of  tribesmen,  with 
their  cattle,  often  had  both  winter  and  summer  homesteads 
and  grazings,  and  were  easily  shifted  from  one  district  to 
another  when  changes  of  population  or  other  necessities  of 
tribal  life  might  require  it. 

Another  peculiarity  of  this  tribal  system  of  land  occu- 
pation may  be  noticed  as  increasing  the  difficulty  of 
description  by  English  surveyors,  who  approached  it  full 
of  English  and  manorial  notions.  All  the  landed  rights 
of  the  family  group  being  vested  in  its  head,  it  was  difficult 
to  define  the  rights  of  the  ordinary  tribesman. 


HISTORY   OF   LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    399 

When  a  new  tribesman  was  born  into  the  tribe,  both 
parents  being  of  full  tribal  blood,  he  remained,  according 
to  Welsh  custom  or  tradition,  more  or  less  rigidly  adhered 
to,  under  the  paternal  lordship  of  his  father,  and  was  main- 
tained by  his  father  till  he  was  fourteen.  At  fourteen,  he 
claimed  from  the  kindred,  and  not  from  his  father,  his  full 
tribal  rights.  That  is,  he  was  apparently  provided  with 
cattle,  independently  of  his  father,  and  became  liable  to 
answer  for  his  own  misdeeds,  and  his  father  was  no  longer 
obliged  to  maintain  him.  When  he  married,  if  not  before, 
he  was  allowed  to  establish  himself  in  a  separate  home- 
stead or  tyUyn,  and  became,  like  his  fellow-tribesmen,  a 
small  dairy  farmer  on  his  own  account,  putting  his  cattle 
into  the  common  herd  along  with  the  rest.  He  also  had  a 
right  to  join  in  the  common  ploughing  of  portions  of  the 
waste.  This  tribal  provision  for  his  maintenance  he  got 
from  the  kindred  to  which  he  belonged,  and  not  by  inheri- 
tance from  his  father.  But  he  also  had  a  prospective  right 
or  chance  of  one  day,  if  he  lived  long  enough,  becoming 
the  successor  of  his  father's  rights  or  privileges,  and  of 
becoming,  on  the  death  of  his  ancestors,  the  head  of  a 
wele.  The  ordinary  tribesman,  therefore,  was  in  a  double 
position  :  he  was  a  member  of  a  kindred  with  tribal  rights  of 
maintenance,  and  not  a  joint  tenant  of  any  particular  land. 
And  at  the  same  time,  prospectively,  and  by  possibility,  he 
might  succeed  to  the  headship  of  a  wele,  and  so  become 
the  person  in  whom  the  landed  rights  of  a  family  group 
were  vested. 

This,  according  to  traditional  theory,  and  to  some  extent 
in  practice,  was  the  complicated  condition  of  things  in 
North  Wales  at  the  conquest  as  regards  the  free  tribesmen. 
The  English  surveyors  described  it  as  best  they  could,  and 
the  Crown  lawyers  judged  it  right  under  the  terms  arranged 
on  the  conquest  to  let  these  Welsh  family  units  of  land 
occupation  continue  under  Welsh  custom. 


400  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

The  statute  of  Rhudlan  left  them  alone,  to  follow  the 
natural  course  of  disintegration  sure  to  result  from  the 
relaxation  of  customary  ties  and  the  division  and  sub- 
division by  gavelkind  generation  after  generation,  till  the 
statute  of  Henr}^  VIII.,  when  English  law  was  extended  to 
Wales,  and  the  laws  of  primogeniture  and  English  tenure 
were  introduced. 

Then,  at  last,  after  many  generations  of  confusion,  it 
became  necessary  for  the  Crown  lawyers  to  bring  whatever 
remained  of  the  tribal  rights  of  the  descendants  of  the 
free  tribesmen  under  some  category  of  English  law,  and 
so  define  their  rights  for  the  future. 

But  there  is  also  the  case  of  the  non-tribesmen  or 
strangers  in  blood  to  be  considered  before  we  go  further. 

The  distinguishing  mark  of  this  class  was  the  absence 
of  tribal  blood,  and  this,  in  North  Wales,  was  technically 
and  under  tribal  tradition  an  impassable  barrier  between 
the  stranger  and  the  tribesmen  for  ever ;  whilst  in  South 
Wales  it  only  could  be  bridged  by  continued  residence 
under  a  chieftain  for  nine  generations,  or  by  repeated  inter- 
marriage with  tribeswomen  for  four  generations. 

The  typical  tenure  of  these  non-tribesmen — who  were 
settled  upon  the  estates  of  the  chieftain  or  head  tribesmen, 
and  called  taeogs  or  airlts  or  atttuds — was  that  which  in 
the  extents  is  called  by  the  common  name  of  "  trefgevery," 
the  holding  of  tir  cyfiif^  or  '*  register  land,"  as  opposed  to 
the  tribesmen's  holdings  in  gwelys.  Its  peculiarity  was 
that  there  were  no  rights  of  inheritance,  no  family  groups 
with  their  heads,  but  that  in  the  hamlet  or  group  of  these 
non-tribesmen  there  was  absolute  equality  between  all 
males  above  fourteen.  Parents  and  children,  side  by  side, 
all  were  treated  alike,  except  that  the  youngest  son  kept 
house  with  his  father,  and  had  no  separate  recognition. 

This  was  the  normal  tenure  of  non-tribesmen,  but  as 
legards  some  classes  of  strangers,  after  residence  for  four 


HISTORY   OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    401 

generations  in  the  same  place,  kindred  was  recognised  in 
the  non-tribesman's  family,  but  from  that  moment  and  for 
ever  after  its  descendants  became  adscripti glebes. 

Hence  the  surveyors  when  they  came  to  make  the 
extents  found  two  classes  of  non-tribesmen  :  those  living 
in  groups  or  hamlets  with  no  rights  of  inheritance  and  in 
what  was  called  trefgevery,  and  others  occupying  in  families 
or  gwelys,  like  the  free  tribesmen,  though  not  acknowledged 
as  belonging  to  the  tribe.  Both  these  classes  of  non- 
tribesmen  were  permanently  attached  to  the  land  of  the 
chieftain  or  of  some  landed  tribesman,  and  hence,  rightly 
or  wrongly,  were  naturally  classed  by  the  surveyors  as 
nativi  or  bond  tenants,  and  so  regarded  until  Tudor  times. 

Before  tracing  the  after  history  of  the  tribesmen  and 
non-tribesmen,  there  remains  to  be  noticed  the  position  of 
the  chieftain  and  his  family  and  the  territorial  arrangements 
which  were  connected  with  the  chieftainship. 

Now  at  the  time  of  the  extents  and  long  before,  in  the 
time  of  the  Welsh  princes,  the  country  was  divided  into 
cymiads,  two  of  these  generally  making  a  cantref. 

In  each  cymwd  or  sometimes  in  each  cantref  there  was 
a  tract  of  land  set  aside  for  the  chieftain's  residence.  It 
formed  an  estate  which  the  surveyors  very  naturally  called 
a  manor,  and  which  in  many  respects  resembled  a  manor. 
On  this  estate  was  what  may  be  described  as  the  home 
farm  of  the  chieftain,  called  his  inaerdref^  worked  by  groups 
of  non-tribesmen  or  nativi  under  the  management  of  a 
land  maer  and  other  ofiicers.  The  chief  also  had  pasture 
land  allotted  to  him  for  his  cattle,  and  all  this  he  held  in 
severalty. 

There  was  one  prince  of  North  Wales  with  his  chief 
palace  at  Aberffraw  in  Anglesey.  But  the  prince  was  not 
an  isolated  chieftain  chosen  from  the  ranks  of  the  tribes- 
men, but  the  head  of  a  family  of  chieftains,  a  kind  of  royal 
family  with  aristocratic  privilege.     And  though  the  palaces 

W.P.  D  D 


402  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

of  the  other  cymwds  in  his  jurisdiction  nominally  belonged 
to  the  chieftain,  they  appeared  to  have  often  become  the 
residence  of  sub-chieftains,  members  of  his  family,  and  in 
later  times  came  easily  to  be  regarded  as  the  property  of 
the  subordinate  chieftains  under  the  prince. 

Upon  the  home  farm  or  maerdref  were  settled  families 
of  non-tribesmen.  They  were  called  the  men  of  the 
maerdref,  and  by  their  services  the  maerdref  was  cultivated. 
Besides  this,  there  were  at  Abcrffraw  groups  or  hamlets  of 
non-tribesmen  holding  in  trefgevery  and  more  closely 
attached  to  the  chieftain's  estate  than  the  other  similar 
groups  scattered  over  the  cymwds  like  the  gwelys  of  the 
free  tribesmen. 

The  revenue  or  provision  for  the  prince  or  chieftain 
consi.sted  mainly  of — 

(i)  the  produce  of  his  maerdref  or  home  farm  worked 
by  non-tribesmen  ; 

(2)  the  rents  in  kind  and  various  services  due  from  the 
clusters  of  non-tribesmen,  including  his  right  to  quarter 
his  retinue  and  dogs  upon  them  when  on  his  hunting, 
hawking,  or  other  expeditions  ; 

(3)  the  food  rents  of  the  free  tribesmen  which  had  long 
been  commuted  into  money  under  the  name  of  tunc. 

This  brief  statement  of  the  main  features  of  the  tribal 
system  ^  must  be  taken  as  applying  chiefly  to  North  Wales. 
Though  from  the  evidence  of  the  Welsh  codes  the  system 
was  prevalent  at  one  time  in  South  Wales  also,  the  latter 
had  been  subject  to  the  disintegrating  effects  of  Norman 
conquest  centuries  earlier  than  the  final  conquest  of  North 
Wales  by  Edward  I.  And  this  remark  applies  also  to  the 
border  districts  which  had  fallen  under  the  power  of  the 
Lords  Marchers. 

^  For  the  authorities  on  the  main  points  of  the  foregoing  brief  summary, 
see  "The  Tribal  System  in  Wales,"  by  Mr.  F.  Seebolim,  one  of  the  Com- 
missioners, who  lias  for  many  years  made  a  special  study  of  the  subject. 


HISTORY    OF   LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    403 

§   2. — Results  of  the  Conquest  of  North  Wales. 

Such  being  the  positions  of  the  chieftains,  tribesmen,  and 
non-tribesmen  under  the  tribal  system,  the  next  question 
is  how  they  were  severally  treated  at  the  time  of  the 
conquest  of  North  Wales  by  Edward  I. 

First  as  regards  the  chieftains.  All  their  rights  were 
transferred  with  but  little  alteration  to  the  Prince  of  Wales 
or  the  Crown.  The  chieftains'  demesnes  seem  to  have  been 
maintained  in  the  same  position  as  before.  They  were 
naturally  regarded  as  manors  to  which  were  attached  the 
old  chieftains'  rights  within  the  cymwds  of  which  they  were 
the  centres.  Thus  both  tribesmen  and  non-tribesmen — 
now  regarded  as  free  tenants  and  nativi — became  tenants 
of  the  Crown,  with  no  mesne  lord  between  them  and  the 
Crown,  until  from  time  to  time  grants  were  made  of  the 
manors  or  cymwds,  and  the  rights  appendant  thereto,  to 
subjects,  who  thereupon  assumed  the  position  of  lords  of 
manors  or  cymwds  as  the  case  might  be. 

As  regards  the  tenants,  at  the  time  of  the  surveys  made 
after  the  conquest,  the  value  of  the  customary  rents  in 
kind  for  services  both  of  tribesmen  and  non-tribesmen 
were  severally  ascertained  and  recorded,  and  probably 
thenceforth  in  the  case  of  both  tribesmen  and  non- 
tribesmen  money  was  more  often  paid  than  the  actual 
services. 

During  the  period  which  followed  it  turned  out  to  be  a 
great  protection  and  advantage  to  both  classes  of  tenants 
— both  the  tribesmen  and  non-tribesmen — that  their  services 
and  dues  of  all  kinds  had  been  commuted,  for  the  most 
part,  into  fixed  money  payments.  It  not  only  saved  them 
from  any  attempt  to  grind  more  out  of  them,  but  also  closed 
the  door  against  arbitrary  exactions  and  oppressive  use  of 
the  services.  The  extents  made  after  the  conquest  became, 
as  the  Domesday  survey  did  to  the  English  tenant,  the 

D  D  2 


404  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

authority  to  which  both  classes  of  tenants  could  appeal, 
for  it  seems  to  have  been  tacitly  assumed  by  the  English 
surveyors  that  the  money  value  of  the  food  rents  and 
services  recorded  in  the  surveys  was  to  be  religiously 
followed  ever  after  without  alteration. 

In  several  special  cases  examined,  the  amount  of  the 
quitrents  thus  arrived  at  on  the  conquest  of  North  Wales 
remained  substantially  unchanged  through  all  vicissitudes 
(not  excepting  the  Black  Death  and  the  rebellion  of  Owen 
Glyndwr),  notwithstanding  great  reduction  of  population 
and  forfeitures  for  joining  in  rebellion,  and  death  in  the 
wars. 

The  reason  of  this  seems  to  be  that  the  commuted  food 
rents  and  services  were  regarded  as  chargeable  upon  a 
certain  place  or  district  rather  than  upon  the  persons  or 
families  occupying  it. 

Vast  numbers  of  the  ancient  quitrents  remain  payable 
to  the  present  day  to  the  Crown  or  to  grantees  of  the 
Crown.  Others  have  from  time  to  time  been  bought  up 
and  got  rid  of,  and  all  are  very  trivial  in  their  amount, 
very  many  of  them  under  one  shilling. 

No  doubt  in  part  the  extreme  smallness  of  the  quitrents 
is  the  natural  result  of  the  sub-division  of  holdings  among 
heirs  by  gavelkind  between  the  time  of  the  conquest  of 
Edward  I.  and  the  statute  of  Henry  VIII.,  by  which  the 
law  of  primogeniture  was  extended  to  Wales. 

There  was,  however,  another  economic  cause  at  work, 
which  in  Wales,  as  in  England,  silently  acted  in  favour 
of  the  peasantry  whose  services  had  been  commuted  in 
the  fourteenth  century  into  fixed  money  payments. 

Granted  that  the  descendants  of  the  old  tenants  con- 
tinued to  pay  the  same  quitrent  in  shillings  in  1600  as 
their  ancestors  or  predecessors  in  title  did  in  1300,  they 
gained  by  the  fact  that  the  quitrent  of  1600  was  paid  in 
shillings  which  contained  only  93  grains  of  silver,  whilst 


HISTORY   OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    405 

the  shillings  of  1300  contained  266  grains,  i.e.,  nearly  three 
times  as  much.  Nor  was  this  all,  for  in  addition  there  had 
taken  place  during  the  interval,  apart  from  the  depreciated 
weight  of  the  coin,  a  general  rise  in  prices  and  in  the  value 
of  the  land. 

The  Welsh  tenants  were  chiefly  dairy  or  cattle  farmers, 
and  during  the  three  centuries  since  the  conquest  the  price 
of  cattle  had  increased  at  a  much  higher  rate  than  the 
price  of  corn. 

Some  measure  of  the  enormous  amount  of  relief  which 
accrued  to  the  tenants  through  the  change  in  prices  may 
be  arrived  at  by  a  comparison  of  the  burden  of  the  pay- 
ments of  the  tenants  of  the  Prince's  manor  of  Aberffraw 
at  the  time  of  the  conquest  and  in  the  time  of  Queen 
Elizabeth. 

The  dues  and  services  of  the  tenants  of  Aberffraw,  as 
valued  in  the  extent  of  1294,  amounted  to  21/.  is.  yd.  per 
annum. 

A  few  years  after,  in  an  assessment  made  for  a  15th, 
the  cattle  of  the  tenants  (including  oxen,  cows,  bullocks, 
horses,  and  sheep)  were  valued  at  137/.  The  annual  pay- 
ment of  the  tenants  to  the  chieftain  amounted  thus  to 
about  one-sixth  of  the  value  of  their  cattle.^ 

The  descendants  of  these  tenants  in  the  time  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  paying,  as,  in  fact,  they  probably,  roughly 
speaking,  were  doing,  the  same  quitrent   of  21/.    is.  yd.. 


^   A.D.  1300.  A.D.    1600. 

—                £  —                   £ 

34  at  60s.  (Rogers,  Vol.  V.,  382-348)     411 
44 


137  oxen  at  5^. . 

262  cows  at  3^-.  4^/.    . 

38  three  year  olds  at  2s.  6d, 

91  two  year  olds  at  2s. 

71  horses  at  5j-. 

36  mares  at  5^. 

735  sheep  at  6(/. 


/  at  50J 750 

9    at  40^ 182 

18 

9 

18    at  8s.  .        ,        .        .         .     294 


[  at  loos 535 


137  2,172 


4o6  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

would  be  paying  only  about  xoo^h  part  of  the  value  of 
precisely  the  same  head  of  cattle  at  the  increased  prices 
of  the  day. 

Thus  the  burden  of  the  quitrents  in  the  time  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  throughout  Wales  may  be  taken  as  only  a  small 
fraction  of  what  their  payments  had  been  under  the  Prince 
of  Wales  before  the  conquest.  In  other  words,  supposing 
that  there  had  been  no  disturbance  from  pestilence, 
rebellions,  or  wars,  and  that  the  descendants  of  the  old 
tenants  had  remained  in  occupation  of  their  old  holdings 
during  the  three  centuries  following  the  conquest,  they 
would  have  practically  grown,  as  English  copyholders 
generally  did  under  the  same  circumstances,  into  absolute 
owners,  charged  with  a  merely  nominal  and  trivial  quitrent 
of  a  few  pence  at  most  per  acre. 

But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  customary  tribal 
tenures  in  gwelys  or  family  groups  with  ultimate  divisions 
among  great-grandsons  in  gavelkind  had  been  left  to 
follow  its  natural  course  till  the  introduction  of  Encrlish 
law  by  the  statute  of  Henry  VIII.  The  case,  therefore, 
was  not  so  clear  as  the  case  of  English  copyholders  of 
holdings  in  individual  ownership.  How  far  the  old 
tribal  custom  of  vesting  the  landed  interest  of  the  gwelys 
solely  in  the  patriarchal  head  had  survived  or  worn  itself 
out  under  changed  circumstances  may  be  a  matter  of 
doubt,  but  so  far  as  it  may  have  survived  it  might  well 
have  resulted  in  confusion  by  raising  the  obvious  question 
whether  the  head  of  the  gwely  was  not  the  only  person 
to  be  regarded  as  the  tenant,  and  what  were  the  rights, 
in   that  case,  of  his   more  or  less  numerous   descendants. 

The  abolition  of  the  custom  of  gavelkind,  and  substi- 
tution of  the  law  of  primogeniture,  would,  in  such  case, 
ultimately  disinherit  all  but  one  son  of  the  person  regarded 
as  the  tenant,  whether  tribesman  or  non-tribesman. 

Such  a  statute,  however,  was  not  likely  to  take  general 


HISTORY   OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    407 

effect  all  in  a  moment,  and  accordingly  it  fell  upon  the 
Crown  lawyers  of  Queen  Elizabeth  for  the  most  part  to 
disentangle  the  knotty  questions  which,  after  300  years  of 
silent  decay,  the  tribal  system  had  left  behind  it. 

T/ie  Application  of  English  Law  under  Queen  Elizabeth 
in  North  Wales. — This  was  the  condition  of  things  when 
the  Crown  lawyers  of  Queen  Elizabeth  had  to  undertake 
the  task  of  bringing  the  various  classes  of  Welsh  tenants 
within  some  category  of  English  law.  Welsh  tenures  had 
been  abolished,  and  it  had  to  be  settled  what  the  future 
status  of  both  classes  of  Welsh  tenants  was  to  be.  The 
families  of  free  tribesmen  had,  during  the  interval  since 
the  conquest,  been  regarded  in  a  vague  way  as  freeholders 
under  the  lordships  which  had  grown  out  of  the  cymwds. 
And  the  non-tribesmen,  classed  by  the  surveyors  as 
nativi,  naturally  had  been  treated  very  much  as  English 
copyholders  ;  but  the  status  of  both  classes  to  the  eye  of 
the  English  law  courts  was  vague  and  undefined,  and  had 
now  to  be  settled. 

The  evidence  of  the  quitrents  and  their  general  existence 
down  to  the  present  time,  except  when  extinguished  by 
purchase,  may  be  taken  as  presumptive  evidence  that  no 
radical  change  in  the  position  of  the  successors  of  the  free 
tribesmen  was  made  on  the  substitution  of  English  law  for 
the  old  Welsh  customs.  But  we  have  seen  that  even  under 
the  latter  the  free  tribesman  was  not  individually  a  free- 
holder, that,  in  fact,  the  land  ownership  and  the  rights  of 
grazing,  which  formed  so  large  a  part  of  it,  were  vested  in 
the  head  of  the  gwely  or  family.  So  that  even  as  regards 
the  successors  of  the  tribesmen  the  Crown  lawyers  had  no 
easy  task  to  perform. 

But  this  was  not  all.  There  were  other  difficulties  to 
be  dealt  with  besides  the  legal  ones.  The  successors  of 
the  old  free  tribesmen  were  paying,  presumably,  the  same 
quitrents  as  of  old,  and  no  other  services.     They  held  their 


4o8  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

homesteads  or  tydynau  in  severalty.  Some  had  been 
extinguished  by  escheats  and  forfeitures.  But  new  ones 
had  now  and  again  been  made  out  of  the  waste  as  famiHes 
had  increased.  They  had  made  encroachments  and 
extended  their  inclosures  out  of  the  waste,  and  besides  all 
this  their  most  important  right  as  mainly  pasture  or  dairy 
farmers  consisted  in  their  ancient  user  of  their  undivided 
rights  of  pasture  and  co-aration  over  the  districts  in  which 
they  were  located.  Were  they  to  be  reckoned  as  free- 
holders under  English  law,  or  in  what  other  class  were 
they  to  be  placed }  Again,  who  was  to  be  reckoned 
the  owner,  the  head  of  the  family,  or  the  individual  tribes- 
man }  It  would  be  hardly  possible  to  deal  with  each 
tribesman  separately,  as  they  were  not  under  tribal 
custom  joint  tenants,  and  some  of  them  had  only  rights 
of  maintenance. 

Side  by  side  with  these  successors  of  free  tribesmen  were 
the  successors  of  the  non-tribesmen.  They  also  had  grown 
by  long  residence  into  the  possession  of  family  rights.  But 
under  Welsh  custom,  as  understood  by  the  lawyers,  unless 
enfranchised,  they  had  been  for  300  years  considered  as 
nativi^  and  the  land  they  occupied  had  for  so  long  been 
regarded  as  bond  land.  They  were  the  nativi  of  the  old 
chieftains,  and  now  of  the  Crown,  but  the\'  had  been 
adscripti  glcbcc,  and  had  traditions  of  long-continued 
possession.  Whether  distinguished  or  not  from  the  free 
tribesmen,  they  also  had  to  be  brought  under  some 
category  of  English  law  so  that  their  future  rights  might 
be  defined  and  known. 

We  have  taken  some  pains  to  ascertain  by  careful 
examination  of  typical  cases  what  really  did  happen  to  the 
two  classes  of  tenants  ;  and  to  the  material  facts  of  these 
cases  attention  will  now  be  turned. 

One  typical  case  was  brought  under  our  notice  by  the 
agent  of  the  Wynnstay  estate,  and  is  given  in  full  in  the 


HISTORY   OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    409 

evidence.^  It  was  that  of  two  entire  cymvvds  in  Mont- 
gomeryshire (Arwystli  and  Cyfeiliog),  which  for  700  years, 
with  the  exception  of  a  short  interval,  had  descended 
together  in  one  ownership,  finally  becoming  a  part  of  the 
Wynnstay  estate. 

Now  a  cymwd  under  Welsh  rule  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
a  wide  district  embracing  generally  the  chieftain's  palace 
and  maerdref,  now  regarded  as  the  demesne  manor,  and 
the  various  groups  of  families  of  tribesmen  and  non-tribes- 
men scattered  over  it  and  loosely  regarded  as  freeholders 
and  nativi. 

The  two  cymwds  thus  easily  came  to  be  regarded  as  a 
lordship,  or  as  two  distinct  lordships,  of  which  the  Crown 
farmers  or  grantees  for  the  time  being  were  the  lords. 

But  what  became  of  the  two  classes  of  tenants  under  this 
lordship  1 

In  the  year  1574,  when  the  Earl  of  Leicester  was  in 
possession  under  the  Crown,  a  survey  of  the  two  c\'mwds 
was  made.  The  jurors  were  "the  ancient  and  chiefest 
freeholders,"  and  six  of  them  were  chosen,  with  the  consent 
of  the  rest  of  the  said  jurors  and  of  the  freeholders  of  the 
two  cymwds,  to  petition  the  Earl  for  a  composition. 

The  quitrents  at  the  commencement  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
reign  amounted  to  120/.,  but  some  of  them  had  ceased 
through  escheats,  &c. 

The  composition  agreed  to  seems  to  have  been  (i)  the 
reduction  of  the  total  of  quitrents  to  -f^^  in  respect  of 
these  escheats,  &c.  ;  and  (2)  an  addition  in  respect  of  the 
encroachments  made  on  the  waste.  Thus  the  old  rents 
were  in  principle  left  unaltered,  though  modified  to  meet 
the  changes  that  had  taken  place. 

Next,  effect  was  given  to  the  composition  by  feoffments 

^  Qu.  76,408.  Though  not  within  the  area  to  which  the  Stat,  of  Rhuttlan 
applied,  the  case  of  these  two  cymwds  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  the  appli- 
cation of  English  law  to  a  thoroughly  Welsh  district. 


410  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

by  the  Earl  of  Leicester  under  licence  from  the  Queen, 
dated  1578,  made  to  four  gentlemen,  who  appear  to  have 
acted  as  trustees,  for  the  whole  body  of  tenants,  of  the 
whole  messuages,  lands,  mills,  tenements,  &c.,  now  in  the 
occupation  of  the  freeholders,  reserving  to  the  Earl  a  certain 
forest,  and  also  all  the  waste  and  common  lands  not 
retained  in  severalty,  and  also  reserving  mines,  &c. 

This  assumed  that  the  freehold  of  the  waste,  &c.,  was 
under  English  law  in  the  Earl,  and  put  him  in  the  position 
of  the  English  Lord  of  the  Manor  or  Lordship. 

But  then  after  this  reservation  of  the  freehold  in  the 
waste  he  granted  to  the  four  trustees  *'  common  of  pasture 
in  all  the  mountain  lands,  wastes,  and  in  all  common  places 
in  the  commots  (except  those  in  demesne)  for  their  sheep, 
animals,  cattle,  and  herds  (but  not  for  agistment)  as  aper- 
taining  to  the  aforesaid  messuages,  &c.,  with  right  to  take 
reasonable  estovers,  house  bote,  hay  bote,  plough  bote,  and 
car  bote,  in  the  common  woods,  &c.,  not  then  enclosed  or 
appropriated,  saving  the  Earl's  right  of  having  as  many 
animals,  &c.,  on  the  said  waste,  and  of  enclosing  such  por- 
tion of  the  waste  as  any  previous  lord  might  have  done." 

The  four  trustees  were  to  hold  the  above  in  free  and 
common  socage  as  of  the  Earl's  manor  by  fealty  and  suit 
of  court,  by  the  rents  therein  named  amounting  in  all  ta 
191/.  3^.  I  id.,  and  by  a  relief  after  the  death  of  every  tenant 
in  lieu  of  all  other  service. 

The  four  feoffees  were  not  expressly  called  trustees,  but 
they  became  under  these  feoffments  seised  of  all  the  tene- 
ments and  common  rights  of  all  the  freeholders  to  the 
intent,  in  the  words  of  the  Crown  auditor,  '*  to  establish  the 
same  (freeholders'  estates)  to  such  as  pretend  to  have  them 
according  to  the  composition  made  for  the  renewing  of 
decayed  rents." 

In  other  words,  this  was  the  perhaps  somewhat  clumsy, 
but  effectual,  method   by  which   English  lawyers,   acting 


HISTORY  OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    411 

under  instructions  from  the  Crown,  to  secure  the  descen- 
dants of  the  old  tribesmen  in  their  holdings,  effected 
that  object.  According  to  the  evidence  of  the  present 
agent  of  the  Wynnstay  estate,  it  succeeded  so  far 
that  there  are  still  numerous  survivors  of  these  quasi 
freeholders  paying  the  old  quitrents  as  freeholders  of  the 
manors,  and  regarded  to  all  intents  and  purposes  as  free- 
holders. At  the  same  time,  in  the  natural  course  of 
things,  many  of  the  old  freehold  tenants  have  from  time 
to  time  sold  their  holdings  to  the  lord  of  the  manor 
or  otherwise,  so  that  by  a  gradual  and  natural  process  of 
purchase  the  extent  of  land  in  the  lord's  direct  ownership 
has  from  time  to  time  increased,  and  at  the  same  time 
with  it  the  area  let  to  tenants  from  year  to  year. 

So  much  for  the  descendants  of  the  free  tribesmen. 
Their  rights  were  respected,  and  they  or  their  successors 
in  title  still  remain  freeholders,  paying  the  old  and  now 
trivial  quitrents. 

But  the  question  remains,  what  became  of  the  so-called 
nativi  ? 

The  agent  assured  the  Commission  that  there  was  no 
evidence  or  tradition  on  the  estate,  to  his  knowledge,  of 
the  existence  of  any  class  of  tenants,  copyhold  or  other, 
representing  the  ancient  non-tribesmen  or  nativi}  Whether 
in  the  case  of  these  cymwds  the  class  of  nativi  had  become 
in  the  interval  betw^een  the  conquest  of  this  district  of 
Powys  and  the  statute  of  Henry  VI 1 1.,  by  long  residence 
and  the  acquisition  of  family  rights,  merged  in  the  class 
of  the  somewhat  vaguely  denominated  freeholders,  and  so 
included  in  the  class  whose  "  pretence "  to  have  freehold 
rights  was  admitted,  or  whether,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
have  become  tenants  from  year  to  year  on  what,  under 
English  law,  could  be  regarded  probably  as  the  lord's 
demesne  lands,  does  not  appear  in  this  particular  case. 

^  Qu.  76,471-480. 


412  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

If  this  may  be  taken  as  a  typical  instance  of  the 
manner  in  which  Encrlish  Crown  lawyers  of  Oueen  Eliza- 
beth's  reign  dealt  with  the  descendants  of  the  old  free 
tribesmen,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  their  rights  were 
carefully  considered,  both  as  regards  the  lands  held  by 
them  in  severalty,  and  also  as  regards  their  tribal  rights 
over  the  wastes. 

But  when  it  is  considered  what  the  ultimate  result  of 
such  a  settlement  would  be,  even  in  the  case  of  those 
families  whose  practically  freehold  rights  were  thus  care- 
fully respected,  it  is  obvious  that  the  application  of  the  law 
of  primogeniture  must  have  confined  the  settlement  with 
freehold  rights  on  the  land  at  least  to  the  heads  of  families, 
and  thus  there  would  arise  at  once  the  beginning  of  a  class 
not  sharing  in  the  succession  to  land,  and  therefore  if 
remaining  on  the  land  becoming  hangers-on  to  the  family 
holding  and  desirous  of  becoming  tenants  from  year  to  year 
or  with  leases  on  the  lord's  demesne  land  or  on  the  land  of 
the  larger  freeholders.  This  result  was  obviously  inevitable, 
and  may  have  largely  promoted  the  increased  prevalence 
of  the  normal  English  year  to  year  tenancy,  accompanied, 
as  historically  it  seems  generally  to  have  been,  with  the 
usage  of  succession  from  father  to  son,  generation  after 
generation. 

But  to  pass  on  to  another  typical  instance  with  special 
reference  to  the  treatment  of  the  non-tribesmen  or 
nativi. 

The  result  of  a  special  search  very  abl}'  made  at  the 
request  of  the  Commission  in  the  Public  Record  Office  by 
Mr.  Edward  Owen,  of  the  India  Office,  who  has  given 
much  attention  to  the  subject,  brought  before  us  interesting 
evidence  of  what  happened  to  the  so-called  riativi  or  bond 
tenants  of  the  manor  of  Dohvydelen,  in  the  cymwd  of 
Nant  Conway  and  county  of  Carnarvon.^ 

1  Qu.  76,947,  ciseq- 


HISTORY   OF   LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    415. 

Tlie  rights  of  these  descendants  of  the  old  non-tribesmen 
came  directly  before  the  Court  of  Exchequer  in  1590. 
They  claimed  to  hold  their  land  as  freehold  on  the  ground 
that  their  ancestors  had  been  enfranchised  under  a  charter 
of  Henry  VII.,  along  with  all  other  native  and  bond  tenants 
of  North  Wales. 

This  charter  still  exists  on  the  Patent  Roll  of  22  Henry  VII. 
(part  3,  and  membrane  22),  and  the  following  is  a  translation 
of  the  passage  above  alluded  to  : — 

"  We  have  also  granted  on  behalf  of  ourselves  and  our 
heirs  that  all  our  native  tenants  or  inhabitants  of  our  coun- 
ties aforesaid  (i.e.,  Anglesey,  Carnarvon,  and  Merioneth),. 
their  heirs  and  successors  as  well  as  the  natives  of  the  said 
Bishop  of  Bangor  and  of  any  abbots  whatsoever  (who  are) 
bound  by  some  obligation  of  law  shall  by  the  tenour  of 
these  presents  obtain  a  general  emancipation  and  liberty 
and  henceforth  have  the  full  benefit  and  enjoyment  of  the 
same.  And  that  they  shall  hold  their  lands  in  future  by  a 
free  tenure  paying  annually  both  to  us  and  to  the  fore- 
mentioned  Bishop  of  Bangor  and  the  abbots  the  rents 
which  were  usually  paid  in  former  times,  in  lieu  of  every 
exaction,  service,  and  custom  which  were  previously  due, 
rendered  and  paid,  as  our  free  tenants  who  reside  in  these 
our  counties  aforesaid  do  or  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
doing."  ^ 

It  appears  from  the  proceedings  in  the  Court  of  Exchequer 
that  the  aforesaid  charter  was  not  held  to  be  good  in  law 
"  for  some  imperfections  therein,"  but  nevertheless  the  posi- 
tion of  the  nativi  was  fairly  taken  into  account  by  the 
Court,  and  although  their  claim  to  a  freehold  estate  was 
not  allowed,  their  continued  holding  was  secured  by  the 
grant  of  leases  for  twenty-one  years  and  "  renewal  of  grant 
after  grant." 

1  The  full  text  of  this  document  is  printed  in  Appendix  to  vol.  v.  of  the 
"Minutes  of  Evidence  "  (p.  643,  ct  seq.). 


414  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

The  Court,  by  a  decree  given  in  the  Easter  Term  of  the 
33rd  Eliz.  (1590),  held  that  "the  freehold  and  inheritance" 
of  the  messuages  and  lands  in  question  "  are  in  her 
Majesty."  But  the  decree  goes  on  to  state,  *'yet  neverthe- 
lesse  the  saide  CompP^  and  theire  ancesto'^  and  those  under 
whome  they  do  claime  have  of  longe  tyme  bene  suffered  to 
hold  and  enjoye  the  said  messuage  and  Landes,  w''*'  posses- 
sions by  sufferance  this  Court  doth  not  like  to  be  whollie 
frustrated  for  that  the  Compl'^  and  there  ancesto"^  have  of 
longe  tyme  bene  in  possession  thereof  w^''  possession  this 
Court  doth  thinke  good  to  p'serve,  and  that  the  CompP  an 
other  poore  Tenants  of  the  sayd  Manno""  w^^  have  likewise 
hold  on  there  Lands  by  sufferance  under  the  like  Cullo'  of 
Estate  may  not  be  (by)  harde  dealinge  or  exacc'on  of  her 
Ma'^  ffarmors  of  the  sayd  Manno'  be  put  from  there  sayd 
tenancies  yt  is  therefore  this  day  ordered  by  the  Lord 
Treasurer  and  the  Barrons  of  this  Court  that  the  sayd 
'CompP  and  all  such  tenants  as  clayme  the  said  customarye 
estate  shall  give  over  their  clayme  unto  the  ffreehold  and 
fee  simple  of  the  sayd  p'misses  as  ffreeholder  by  the  Comon 
Lawe,  yet  newthelesse  for  the  p'servacon  of  her  Ma*^  people 
or  tenants  of  the  sayd  Man'^  yt  is  ordered  that  the  syyd 
CompP  and  all  other  her  Ma''  tenants  that  hold  theire 
lands  under  the  p''tence  of  the  sayd  custome  and  there 
children  wyvfes  or  assignes  in  succession  for  ever  shall  and 
may  hereafter  have  the  same  to  them  and  theire  heires  or 
assignes  by  renewinge  of  graunt  after  graunt  to  them  to  be 
made  of  the  sewall  tenants  in  succession.  To  hold  for 
xxj''^  yeres  as  at  will  to  her  Ma*'*  and  to  her  Ma*^  ffarmo" 
of  the  sayd  Manno'  or  Towneshipp  of  Dolewethelane, 
doinge  and  payinge  th  useuall  rents  for  the  same  as  hereto- 
fore hath  bene  usualye  payed  used  and  done  and  for  the 
bett'  assurance  of  the  sayd  Tenants  so  chellengeinge  by 
custom,  to  every  tenante  and  his  heires  or  assignes  succes- 
sively yt  is   ordered    that  at  thend  of  the  sayd  terme  of 


HISTORY    OF  LAND    TENURE   IN    WALES.    415 

xx""  yeres  so  made  to  every  tenante  either  by  the  expirac'on 
of  the  terme  or  by  surrender  theire  shalbe  newe  graunts  in 
succession  made  for  the  Hke  number  of  yeres  to  there  heires 
wivfes  or  assignes  as  at  the  tyme  of  the  new  taking^  shall 
be  founde  tenante  or  as  uppon  the  surrender  thereof  shalbe 
agreed  upon,  to  hold  as  aforsayd,  payinge  such  fynes  for 
the  same  as  shalbe  rated  and  assessed  by  theis  Court  or  by 
any  other  authorised  from  this  Court  for  that  purpose." 
(Exchequer,  Decrees  and  Orders,  33  Eliz.,  series  I,  vol.  xvii., 
fo.  175b)  (76,953)- 

In  order  to  be  informed  what  lands  were  in  question,  a 
Commission  had  previously  been  issued  which  reported 
that  they  had  "  by  the  full  assents  and  consentes  of  both 
the  said  p'ties  ordered  the  matter  in  variaunce  betweene 
them  in  mann'r  and  forme  followinge  viz.  That  the  said 
Natyve  Tennants  shall  accordinge  to  your  honors  said 
Decree  enjoye  their  sew'all  tenements  for  xxitie  yeres 
yelding  and  payinge  therfore  to  her  highnes  said  ffarmors 
foure  yeres  rent  of  the  old  rent  for  a  ffyne,  and  that  terme 
of  yeres  expired  to  doe  the  like  for  the  Residewe  of  yeres 
remayninge  then  unexpired  and  contayned  in  their  leases 
ratably  after  that  sort  as  they  doe  for  the  xxjtie  yeres 
.  .  .  We  have  c'tyfied  herin  the  names  of  the  tennants 
w'th  ther  sew'all  rents  de  antiquo  answered.  (Signed) 
Robert  Wyn  ap  Cadd'r,  Jo.  Heymys  .  .  . 

"M(emoran(d)um)  .  .  .  and  the  foresaid  sew'all  tennants 
auncestors  have  bene  alwayes  reputed  and  taken  as  Natyve 
tennants  or  bondemen  of  the  said  Prince's  in  his  said 
Towneship  of  Dollw'thllan  who  now  disclayme  from  any 
state  of  inheritance  in  their  sew'all  tenures  but  doe  submytt 
and  yeld  up  their  tytles  therin  to  her  Ma'tie."  (Exchequer, 
Special  Commissions  :  Carnarvon,  32  Eliz.,  No.  3383.) 
Thus  the  tenants  expressly  renounced  their  pretensions  to 
the  estates  of  inheritance  which  they  had  originally  set 
forth  as  being  in  all  respects  similar  to  freehold.     A  final 


4i6  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

decree  to  the  intent  already  expressed  was  made  in  the 
Michaelmas  Term,  33  Eliz.,  1590-91,  in  these  words: — 

"  It  is  this  day  ordered  adjudged  and  decreed  by  this 
Court  that  the  sayd  CompP^  and  all  other  her  Ma*^  tenants 
that  hold  there  lands  under  p'tence  of  the  sayd  custom 
and  theire  children  wivfes  or  assignes  in  succession  for  ever 
shall  and  may  from  tyme  to  tyme  and  at  all  tymes  here- 
after have  hold  occupy  and  enjoye  there  sayd  sewall  lands 
and  ten'ts  to  them  and  to  theire  heires  wifes  or  assignes  by 
renewinge  of  graunt  after  graunt  to  them  to  be  made  of 
there  sewall  lands  and  tennts  in  succession  to  holde  for 
xxj^'^  yeres.  As  tenants  to  her  Ma"^  and  to  her  Ma'^ 
fifarmo"  of  the  said  Manno'  or  Towneshipp  of  Dolewethelan, 
according  to  the  first  order  doinge  and  payinge  the  usuall 
rents  for  the  same  as  heretofore  hath  bene  usually  paid  used 
and  done.  And  such  ffynes  as  by  the  sayd  Commission  are 
certified  to  be  agreed  upon,  without  any  other  exaction  of 
ffynes  or  rents  hereafter  to  be  required  by  any  fi"armo'  or 
ffarmo"of  the  said  Manno''or  Towneshipp  or  any  p'te  thereof " 

Mr.  E.  Owen^  also  brought  before  us  the  case  of  the 
so-called  Manor  of  Dinorwick,  which  in  the  Record  of  Car- 
narvon is  described  as  entirely  composed  of  nativi  (p.  21). 

A  suit  in  the  Court  of  Exchequer  (1594)  established  the 
right  of  the  native  tenants  of  this  manor  to  renewable  leases 
for  twenty-one  years  or  for  three  lives,  and  further  set  forth 
that  a  lease  of  any  ancient  lands  could  not  be  granted  to 
a  third  party  so  long  as  the  ancient  tenant  in  possession, 
his  heirs  or  assigns,  desired  to  have  it.  But  a  later  decree 
of  1600  held  that  the  claim  of  the  native  tenants  to  rights 
of  inheritance  or  estates  in  fee  simple  was  invalid,  seeing 
that  the  freehold  was  in  the  Queen,  and  the  complainants 
and  their  ancestors  tenants  at  the  will  of  the  Queen,  a 
decision  perhaps  not  at  variance  with  the  practice  of  giving 
them  leases  before  sanctioned  by  the  court.    They  could  not 

1  Qu.  76,959- 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.    417 

sustain  their  claim  to  the  freehold  and  take  renewable  leases 
at  the  same  time,  and  following  English  precedents,  they 
seem  to  have  been  considered,  like  English  copyholders  in 
some  instances,  as  tenants  at  the  will  of  the  lord,  the  leases 
being  granted  as  a  practical  way  of  giving  them  a  permanent 
tenure  though  at  law  tenants  at  will. 

There  is  another  remarkable  instance  to  hand  which  runs 
nearly  on  all  fours  with  the  above,  and  which  is  given  by 
Mr.  A.  N.  Palmer  in  his  "  History  of  Ancient  Tenures  of 
Land  in  the  Marches  of  North  Wales." -^ 

It  is  the  case  of  Bromfield  and  Yale.  In  this  case  also 
there  was  a  charter  from  Henry  VII.,  granted  in  the 
twentieth  year  of  his  reign  (1505)  just  two  years  earlier 
than  the  one  last  mentioned.  It  practically  repealed  the 
provision  of  the  statute  of  2  Henry  IV.,  which  prohibited 
Welshmen  from  acquiring  lands  in  fee  simple  or  fee  tail, 
and  at  the  same  time  altered  the  tenure  of  tenants  under  the 
King  holding  in  gavelkind  making  the  lands  descendible 
to  the  eldest  son  according  to  English  common  law  and 
freed  from  several  customs  or  services  which  by  their 
names  are  distinctly  to  be  recognised  as  ancient  tribal 
services  mentioned  in  the  early  extents. 

But  it  does  not  appear  that  this  charter  any  more  than 
the  other  charter  of  Henry  VII.  was  held  by  the  courts  as 
having  acknowledged  or  conferred  a  freehold  estate  to 
be  .recognised  under  English  law.  The  decree  makes  no 
mention,  moreover,  of  the  class  of  nativi. 

Thus,  notwithstanding  this  charter,  the  whole  question 
had  to  be  gone  into  afresh  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
and  the  position  of  the  old  tribal  tenants  of  Bromfield  and 
Yale  was  accordingly  examined  de  novo,  the  inquiry  going 
back  to  the  time  of  the  conquest,  as  though  no  point  of  lav/ 
had  arisen  in  the  meantime. 

In  4  Eliz.  it  was  found  that  there  was  a  "  decay  of  the 

^  See  his  Appendix,  pp.  12"]  et  seq. 
W.P.  E  E 


4i8  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

sum  of  105/.  6s.  yearly  rent  which  in  ancient  times  had 
been  answered  for  the  said  lands." 

By  ancient  times  is  evidently  meant  the  time  of  the 
conquest  to  which  throughout  Wales  the  quitrents  went 
back,  for  the  document  proceeds  to  state  the  explanation 
of  the  decay  in  these  words — "which  decay  (as  by  ancient 
lecords  appeareth)  did  grow  by  reason  of  the  great  mor- 
tality and  plagues  which  in  former  times  had  been  in  the 
reign  of  Edward  III.,  and  also  of  the  rebellion  of  Owen 
Glindor  and  troubles  that  thereupon  ensued  ...  by  reason 
of  which  mortality  and  rebellion  the  country  was  wasted,  the 
tenants  and  their  houses  destroyed  in  so  much  that  the  then 
Lords  of  the  soyle  were  constrayned  by  their  stewards  and 
officers  to  graunt  the  said  lands  at  a  lesser  rent  than  formerly 
was  paid  for  the  same  to  such  as  could  be  gotten  to  take  it." 

The  reference  to  the  great  mortality  is  clearly  to  the 
ravages  of  the  Black  Death  in  1349,  of  which  and  the 
many  escheats  caused  by  it,  the  Record  of  Carnarvon 
contains  frequent  mention. 

The  Crown,  as  lord  of  the  manor,  was  not  getting  the 
whole  of  the  rents  mentioned  in  the  extents  made  after 
the  conquest.  And  the  jurors  go  on  to  say  that  in  4  Eliz. 
a  commission  under  the  great  seal  made  a  survey  of  the 
lordships  of  Bromfield  and  Yale  "to  revise  the  said  decayed 
rent,  and  to  compound  and  agree  with  the  tenants  of  the  said 
lordships  for  a  lease  of  forty  years  of  the  lands  in  their  several 
tenures  at  and  under  the  covenants  and  conditions  in  the 
said  Commission  specified."  As  the  result  of  the  compo- 
sition the  tenants  surrendered  their  copies  and  customary 
estates  and  agreed  to  accept  leases  of  forty  years  instead 
of  them.  They  agreed  to  pay  again  the  ancient  rents  of 
their  holdings,  as  well  as  a  fine  of  two  years'  rent  upon  the 
taking  out  of  their  leases.  The  Queen  then  granted  to 
the  said  tenants  "  several  leases  for  the  term  of  forty  years 
of  the  lands  then  in  their  several  tenures." 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.   419 

Then  follow  the  words  upon  which  would  doubtless  be 
determined  the  vital  question,  whether  these  leases  were 
renewable  once  only^  or  for  ever. 

"And  in  every  of  the  said  leases  (the  Queen)  did  cove- 
nant and  grant  for  her  and  her  heirs  and  successors  to  and 
with  the  several  lessees,  their  executors  and  assigns,  that 
upon  the  determination  of  the  said  leases,  or  otherwise 
upon  surrender  of  the  same,  the  said  tenants,  their  execu- 
tors and  assigns,  might,  and  should  have,  another  new 
demise  or  grant  of  the  premises  in  their  several  tenures  for 
the  like  term  and  rent  and  under  the  like  covenants,  as 
by  the  said  first  letters-patent  were  granted,  reserved,  and 
specified,  they,  the  said  lessees,  and  their  executors  and 
assigns,  paying  to  the  said  Queen,  her  heirs  and  successors, 
two  years'  rents  of  the  premises  only,  for  a  fine  of  the  said 
new  devise,  so  to  be  made  over  and  above  the  rent  by  the 
said  new  devise  to  be  reserved." 

The  intention  of  the  Crown  lawyers  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
to  do  substantial  justice  to  these  Welsh  tenants  is  obvious. 

Now  at  least,  after  an  interrupted  tenure  of  200  years 
under  somewhat  vague  and  decaying  Welsh  custom, 
practically  abolished  by  the  statute  of  Henry  VI I L,  the 
tenants  on  these  manors  had  leases  granted  to  them  giving 
them  at  least  an  eighty  years'  uninterrupted  tenure,  and 
very  possibly  in  intention  a  perpetual  right  of  renewal. 
During  those  200  years,  it  would  seem  that  the  descendants 
of  the  old  free  tribesmen  had  retained  their  free  tenure  as 
customary  freeholders,  and  it  would  appear  that  the  nativi 
also  had  become  recognised  as  permanent  tenants  holding 
by  copy  of  court-roll,  and  considered  by  English  lawyers 
as  somewhat  analogous  to  copyholders  or  customary 
tenants  on  English  manors.  This  seems  to  be  implied  in 
their  surrender  of  their  copies  and  customary  estates  before 
the  grant  of  the  leases. 

The   evidence   in   this    case    seems   to   show   that   the 

E  E  2 


420  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

expedient  resorted  to  by  the  lawyers  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
sometimes  in  the  cases  both  of  the  successors  of  the  free 
tribesmen  and  of  the  nativi  was  the  surrender  of  their 
former  estates,  whatever  they  w^ere,  and  the  substitution  of 
leases,  renewable  on  payment  of  a  reasonable  fine,  as  on 
many  English  manors. 

The  Commission  had  before  it,  in  various  parts  of  Wales, 
evidence  of  the  prevalence  of  leases  for  three  lives,  w^hich 
will  be  subsequently  alluded  to,  and  which  very  possibly, 
in  the  absence  of  other  evidence,  may  be  taken  as  survivals 
of  the  same  system  of  granting  renewable  leases  in  lieu 
of  the  doubtful  and  vague  claims  to  rights  of  permanent 
occupation  put  forward  by  the  successors  of  the  ancient 
tenants  both  free  and  nativi.  In  some  cases  the  tw^o  classes 
had  apparently  been  mixed  up  together,  and  the  granting 
of  renewable  leases  appears  to  have  been  the  rough  way 
out  of  the  confusion. 

Had  these  tenants  remained  tenants  of  the  Crown,  they 
would,  no  doubt,  have  fared  better  than  in  some  cases  they 
did.  But  during  the  Tudor  period  another  cause  of  diffi- 
culty complicated  the  problem,  and  requires  some  notice, 
though  applying  only  to  individual  and  exceptional  cases. 

The  result  of  the  general  view  taken  of  the  position  of 
the  Welsh  tenants  under  the  Crown  placed  the  Crown  very 
much  in  the  position  of  a  territorial  lord  with,  no  doubt, 
some  land  in  demesne,  increased  from  time  to  time  by 
escheats,  yet  still  very  limited  in  area,  and  exercising  little 
more  than  a  seignorial  jurisdiction  over  the  greater  part  of 
the  territor}',  consisting  mainly  in  the  right  to  receive  the 
quitrents  from  the  successors  of  the  tribesmen  and  non- 
tribesmen  in  the  ancient  cymwd  or  lordship,  which  quitrents 
seem  to  have  been  continued  unchanged  under  the  system 
of  leases  above  alluded  to. 

The  quitrents,  as  already  mentioned,  had  become  divided 
into  fractions  by  the  prevalence  of  gavelkind,  and  further 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.  421 

by  a  natural  process  great  irregularity  had  arisen  between 
the  various  tenants  from  the  fact  of  one  or  more  of  the  free- 
holders having  steadily  increased  their  holdings  by  buying 
up  the  lands  of  others,  whilst  others  had  succumbed  in  the 
battle  of  life  and  disappeared  altogether. 

At  the  same  time  the  Crown  seems  to  have  commenced, 
in  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.,  the  practice  of  granting  leases 
of  the  manorial  rights  or  lordship  over  portions  of  the 
Crown  possessions  in  Wales,  sometimes  to  one  or  more  of 
the  chief  freeholders,  and  sometimes  to  Court  favourites, 
who  thus  became  farmers  of  the  rights  of  the  Crown,  the 
quitrents  being  reserved  to  the  Crown,  but  the  profits  or 
improved  value  of  the  Crown  demesne  lands  passing  to 
the  lessee. 

There  are  many  such  Crotvn  leases  to  farmers  mentioned 
in  the  calendars  of  State  papers,  some  with  express  mention 
and  some  without  mention  of  bonds  or  covenants  for  the 
protection  of  the  tenants.  Some  of  these  leases  were 
intended  apparently  by  the  Crown  to  be  made  for  the 
benefit  of  the  tenants.^ 

The  case  of  the  royal  manor  of  Aberffraw  ma}^  be  taken 
as  a  typical  instance  of  the  confusion  arising  from  this 
practice,  and  also  of  the  quarrels  of  rival  families  of  free- 
holders competing  with  each  other  for  these  leases  of  the 
lordship  over  their  district.-^ 

This  case  illustrates  the  practice  of  the  Crown  giving  a 
lease  to  a  farmer  of  the  lordship,  he  giving  a  bond  that 
upon  any  controversy  between  him  and  the  tenants  he 
should  abide  by  the  order  of  the  Lord  Treasurer  and 
Chancellor  of  his  Majesty's  Exchequer  for  the  time  being. 

In  one  case  the  lease  was  transferred  to  a  third  party, 
who  tried  to  get  out  of  the  obligation  by  denying  that  he 
had  any  notice  of  the  bond.      Again,  where  a  second  lease 

[  Qu.  76,957. 

"  Ml*.  E.  Owen's  evidence  (76,962). 


422  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

in  reversion  of  the  old  one  had  been  ordered  to  be  made  to 
another  person,  "  to  the  use  of  the  tenants,"  the  lease  itself 
contained  no  mention  of  the  tenants,  and  the  decree  of  the 
court  held  that  this  third  party  had  no  knowledge  that  the 
lease  was  to  be  to  the  use  of  the  tenants.  Hence  arose 
disputes,  confusion,  and  injustice. 

At  Aberffraw  there  were  two  great  parties,  one  following 
one  of  the  larger  freeholders,  and  the  other  party  following 
another,  and  by  the  habitual  use  of  the  ancient  tribal 
practice  of  the  fosterage  of  children  with  tenants  exercised 
on  both  sides,  the  lesser  tenants  had  become  partisans  and 
almost  retainers  and  tenants  of  the  two  rival  freeholders. 
No  doubt  such  a  case  as  this,  and  the  litigation  arising  from 
it,  should  put  us  on  our  guard  against  the  assumption  that 
even  after  the  decree  of  a  Court  of  Exchequer,  everything 
went  on  smoothly.  However  careful  the  courts  might  be 
to  secure  the  ri'ghts  of  the  tenants,  it  was  not  every  injustice 
or  oppression  which  came  into  court,  and  the  case  of 
Aberffraw  shows  that  sometimes  long  periods  elapsed 
before  the  protection  of  the  court  could  be  obtained,  and 
that  sometimes  a  claim  was,  in  the  end,  as  happened  in  the 
case  of  Aberffraw,  abandoned  by  the  tenants  owing  to  the 
cost  of  litigation. 

On  the  whole  the  general  result  of  the  evidence  from 
North  Wales  seems  to  be  that  as  regards  the  successors 
of  the  free  tribesmen  their  rights  were  respected  by  the 
Exchequer  Court  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  their  ancient  quit- 
rents  being  allowed  to  continue  unaltered,  so  that,  speaking 
generally,  their  successors  either  still  remain  freeholders 
paying  the  quitrents,  or  have  sold  their  holdings  with  the 
common  ri^-hts  attached  to  them.  The  tendencv  towards 
large  estates  seems  to  have  extended  to  Wales.  The  often 
repeated  process  of  mortgages  and  subsequent  sales  seems 
to  have  often  ended  as  in  England,  very  generally  in  the 
ultimate  addition  of  holdinq;  after  holdins^  to   the   larger 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.    423 

estates.  The  lord  of  a  manor  or  lordship,  having  acquired 
by  grant  from  the  Crown,  or  having  purchased  an  estate 
honeycombed  by  the  quasi  or  customary  freeholders,  was 
mostly  as  ready  in  Wales  as  in  England  to  buy  up  any 
holding  which  might  come  into  the  market. 

As  regards  the  nativi,  when  not  merged  or  confused  with 
the  free  tenants  and  sharing  their  treatment,  it  would  seem 
from  the  typical  instances  examined,  that  in  most  cases 
they  passed  through  the  stages  of  renewable  leaseholds 
for  lives  or  terms  of  years,  which  may  or  may  not  have 
been  renewed. 

§   3. — Evidence  from  South    Wales. 

The  instances  already  examined  have  been  confined  to 
North  Wales.  As  already  mentioned.  South  Wales  came 
earlier  under  the  influence  of  Norman  law,  and  tiierefore 
passed  through  somewhat  different  experiences  from  those 
already  described  as  regards  the  districts  conquered  by 
Edward  I.,  and  the  adjoining  districts,  once  a  part  of 
Powys. 

In  a  valuable  report,^  supplementary  to  the  evidence 
given  by  Mr.  Edward  Owen,  will  be  found  a  survey  taken 
in  1609  of  the  honour  or  lordship  of  Kydweli  in  Carmar- 
thenshire, at  that  time  one  of  the  possessions  of  the  Duchy 
of  Lancaster.  It  shows  that  in  South  Wales  the  country 
was  divided  into  cymwds,  and  in  many  other  respects 
retained  traces  of  tribal  custom.  But  South  Wales  had  not 
passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Crown  in  the  same  sense  as 
had  those  parts  of  North  Wales  which  were  conquered  by 
Edward  I.  Earlier  conquests  had  long  before  introduced 
and  firmly  established  the  manorial  system  in  South  Wales 
and  thus  the  survey  above-mentioned,  instead  of  disclosing 
a  process  by  which  the  ancient  tenants  were  being  for  the 

^  See  Appendix  to  vol.  v.  of  "  Minutes  of  Evidence, "  pp.  643 — 677. 


424         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

first  time  brought  within  EngHsh  law  by  the  Crown  lawyers 
of  Elizabeth,  describes  them  as  already  ancient  tenants 
on  long  established  manors,  with  ancient  and  recognised 
customs,  representing  a  singular  mixture  of  Welsh  and 
English  traditions.  The  manors  were  sometimes  divided 
into  two  divisions,  in  one  of  which  English  tenants  and 
English  customs  were  said  to  prevail,  whilst  in  the  other 
Welsh  tenants  and  Welsh  customs  were  prevalent.  The 
differences  between  them  were,  however,  very  minute.  For 
instance,  the  English  followed  English  manorial  customs 
and  paid  the  "best  beast"  as  their  heriot,  whilst  the  Welsh 
still  adhered  to  the  Ebediw  of  the  Welsh  Codes  of  los. 
Till  the  statute  of  Henry  VIII.  the  tenants  are  said  to  have 
held  their  lands  in  "  gavelkynd,"  some  being  "  bond  "  and 
some  "  free  men,"  transferring  their  holdings  b}*  the  rod. 
The  survey  goes  on  to  say,  "  They  are  now  for  the  most 
part  freeholders,"  some  few  copyholders  remaining  only  in 
one  manor.  These  copyholders  are  described  as  "  taking 
for  two  lives  only  in  possession  and  no  reversion,"  and  on 
the  death  of  the  second  life  the  copyhold  became  void 
except  that  the  next  heir  might  "have  the  refusal  at  I2d. 
less  than  any  other  will  give."  The  fines  were  "  uncertain, 
such  as  the  tenant  could  agree  or  compound  for  with  the 
lord  or  his  steward."  Hence  we  may  assume  from  this 
survey  that,  broadly  speaking,  a  manorial  system  had  long 
been  established  in  this  part  of  Carmarthenshire  with  its 
customary  freeholders  and  copyholders  and  immemorial 
customs,  resting  some  on  Welsh  and  some  on  English 
traditions,  varied  only  in  Tudor  times  by  the  abolition 
under  Henry  VIII.  of  the  division  among  heirs. 

Further  light  may  be  derived  from  what  took  place  at 
a  similar  period  in  Pembrokeshire. 

It  is  w^ell  known  that  the  boundary  line  between  the 
English  and  Welsh  districts  of  Pembrokeshire  goes  back 
to  a  very  early  date. 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.    425 

George  Owen  (who  lived  1552 — 161 3)  wrote  his  "Descrip- 
tion of  Pembrokeshire  "  in  1603.  His  knowledge  extended, 
therefore,  over  the  critical  period  during  which  the  rights  of 
Welsh  tenants  of  North  Wales  were  considered  by  the  law 
courts  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

He  describes  the  Welsh  peasantry  as  still  clinging  to 
Uieir  old  open  field  system  of  agriculture,  with  its  holdings 
of  scattered  strips,  and  as  still  exercising  the  common  right 
of  pasture  over  them  after  removal  of  the  crops.^ 

Now  we  know  from  the  extent  of  the  estates  of  St. 
David's  made  in  8  Edw.  HI.  that  the  tribal  system  ot 
occupation  in  gwelys  was  prevalent  in  the  Welsh  districts 
of  Pembrokeshire  and  the  estates  of  the  see  in  Cardigan- 
shire, Carmarthenshire,  and  Glamorganshire.  And  from  the 
large  number  of  quitrents  of  *'  customary  freeholders  "  still 
collected  by  the  Ecclesiastical  Commissioners  from  these 
and  other  ecclesiastical  estates,^  it  may  be  judged  that 
in  these  districts,  as  in  North  Wales,  the  free  tribesmen 
had  come  to  be  regarded  by  English  law  as  "  customary 
freeholders." 

As  regards  the  non-tribesmen  or  nativi  it  would  seem 
from  Owen's  description  that  up  to  about  the  year  1500 
they  had  been  regarded  at  law  as  "  tenants  at  will  according 
to  the  custom  of  the  cotiJitry,'  but  that  owing  to  the  absence 
of  any  pressure  of  population  and  the  dearth  of  tenants 
the  tenancy  continued  without  alteration  of  rent  and  with 
only  nominal  fines  for  renewal  as  a  practically  permanent 
tenancy. 

He  says:^  "And  first  I  will  begin  with  the  tenants  of 
the  country  whereof  I  speak  in  general,  including  therein 
the  greatest  number  which  in  times  past  were  tenants 
at  will,  and    few  sought   leases,  for  most   commonly  the 

^  Owen's  "  Pembrokeshire, "  p.  6i. 

2  On.  76,329—76,342. 

^  Owen's  "  Pembrokeshire,"  p.  190. 


426  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

landlord  rather  made  suit  for  a  good  tenant  to  take  his  land 
than  the  tenant  to  the  landlord,  such  was  the  scarcity  of 
good  tenants  in  those  days  there  to  be  found  that  glad  was 
the  lord  to  hit  upon  a  good  thrifty  and  husbandly  tenant." 

He  then  contrasts  this  state  of  things  with  what  had 
happened  in  his  own  time,  during  which  there  had  been 
a  rise  in  prices  and  a  competition  for  farms,  and  during 
which,  in  consequence,  high  fines  had  become  general  for 
renewal  of  leases,  whilst  there  was  no  security  of  tenure 
without  them. 

"As  for  fines  to  be  paid  it  was  not  a  thing  known  among 
them  a  hundred  years  past,  saving  only  an  earnest  penny 
at  the  bargain  making,  which  the  plain  men  called  '  a  gods 
penny,'  and  which  in  these  60  years  the  poor  tenants  were 
wont  to  say  the  paying  of  fines  was  an  ill  custom  raised 
among  them  of  late." 

And  he  gives  an  example  of  how  insignificant  were  the 
fines  and  how  little  they  were  thought  of  in  the  old  days. 

"  The  letting  of  lands  was  of  so  small  commodity  that 
I  know  lands  in  coparceny  between  heirs,  when  the  next 
to  the  land  hath  had  the  setting  and  letting  thereof  these 
60  years  and  more,  the  other  contenting  himself  with  his 
part  of  the  rent  not  esteeming  what  might  be  made  by 
fines  thereof." 

He  continues  to  complain  that  during  the  last  forty 
years,  i.e.,  from  1560 — 1600,  all  this  was  changed. 

"  For  now  the  poor  tenant  that  lived  well  in  that  golden 
world  is  taught  to  sing  unto  his  lord  a  new  song,  and  the 
landlords  have  learnt  the  text  of  the  damned  disciple, 
'  Quid  vultis  inihi  dare.,  et  ego  ilium  vobis  tradaml  and  now 
the  world  is  so  altered  with  the  poor  tenant  that  he  standeth 
so  in  bodily  fear  of  his  greedy  neighbour  that  two  or  three 
years  ere  his  lease  end  he  must  bow  to  his  lord  for  a  new 
lease,  and  must  pinch  it  out  many  years  before  to  heap 
money  together,  so  that  in  this  age  it  is  as  easy  for  a  poor 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.    427 

tenant  to  marry  two  of  his  daughters  to  his   neighbour's 
sons  as  to  match  himself  to  a  good  farm  from  his  landlord/' 

This  is  precisely  the  same  complaint  as  that  made  in 
England  at  the  same  period.  Harrison,  in  his  "  Description 
of  England"  (A.D.  1577),  says  : — 

"  Although  peradventure  four  pounds  of  old  rent  be 
improved  to  forty  or  fifty  pounds,  yet  will  the  farmer  think 
his  gains  very  small  toward  the  middest  of  his  terrn  if  he 
have  not  six  or  seven  years'  rent  lying  by  him  therewith  to 
purchase  a  new  lease  .  .  .  for  what  stock  of  money  soever 
he  gathereth  in  all  his  years  it  is  often  seen  that  the  land- 
lord will  take  such  order  with  him  for  the  same  when  he 
reneWeth  his  lease  (which  is  commonly  eight  or  ten  years 
before  it  be  expired,  sithe  it  is  now  growen  almost  to  a 
custom  that,  if  he  come  not  to  his  lord  so  long  before, 
another  shall  step  in  for  a  reversion  and  so  defeat  him  out- 
right) that  it  shall  never  trouble  him  more  than  the  hair  of 
his  beard  when  the  barber  hath  washed  and  shaven  it  from 
his  chin"  (fol.  85). 

Recurring  to  the  position  of  the  Pembrokeshire  tenants, 
the  successors  of  the  non-tribesmen,  though  in  some  sense 
recognised  as  like  English  copyholders,  were  evidently  not 
protected  by  custom  from  the  payment  of  increasing  fines 
on  renewal,  resulting  from  the  keen  competition  for  farms. 

Their  case  had  been  dealt  with  by  English  lawyers 
centuries  earlier  than  that  of  the  nativi  of  North  Wales. 

They  seem  to  have  been  regarded  from  early  times  as 
only  quasi  copyholders,  as  holding  in  law  only  from  year  to 
year,  and  yet  they  were  subject  to  heriots  at  their  death, 
The  following  passage  is  useful  as  showing  how  a  kind  of 
middle  stage  had  grown  up  in  these  Welsh  manors  of  South 
Wales  between  the  ordinary  customary  tenant  and  the 
tenant  from  year  to  year. 

"  This  use  of  tenants  at  will  was  so  common  that  there 
were  many  other  customs  grounded  upon  the  same,  for  they 


428  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

were  not  tenants  at  will  at  the  common  law  to  be  put  out 
at  the  lord's  will  at  any  time  of  the  year,  but  they  were 
tenants  at  will  according  to  the  custom  of  the  country,  and 
were  not  removable  without  two  lawful  warnings  to  be  given 
at  usual  feasts,  that  is  the  one  on  our  lady's  eve  in  March, 
the  other  at  May  eve,  and  then  was  the  old  tenant  at  Mid- 
summer to  rem.ove  out  of  the  hall  house  and  to  lease  it  to 
the  new  tenant  and  the  pastures  to  be  common  between 
them  till  Michaelmas,  and  then  the  old  tenant  to  depart 
<ff/;;/  paniin  and  to  leave  it  wholly  to  the  new  comer,  divers 
orders  theai  are  duly  observed  as  yet  amongst  tkese  tenants 
which  for  brevity's  sake  I  here  pass  over. 

"  This  kind  of  tenants  by  the  custom  of  the  country  were 
to  pay  heriots  at  their  death,  viz.,  their  best  beast,  and  also 
were  chargeable  to  the  repair  of  their  houses,  hedges,  &c., 
and  therein  is  observed  an  order  worth  the  noting  .  .  . 
viz.,  that  if  the  tenant  suffer  his  houses,  hedges,  or  buildings 
to  grow  ruinous  the  landlord  used  to  swear  a  jury  of  six  of 
his  tenants  of  the  like  tenure  and  custom  (whose  turns  may 
be  next  to  taste  of  the  same  sauce)  to  view  the  decay  who 
must  and  ought  accordingly  upon  their  oaths  present  the 
same  indifferently  between  the  lord  and  his  tenant,  which 
done  the  landlord  by  his  bailiff  or  servant  useth  to  arrest  so 
much  of  the  tenants  goods  upon  the  land  as  is  found  of 
decay  and  .  .  . 

"  This  custom  of  repair  held  only  for  thatched  houses, 
but  for  slate  houses  the  landlords  were  to  repair  them 
except  it  were  by  special  covenant  .  .  ." 

Thus,  so  far  as  it  goes,  the  Pembrokeshire  evidence  so 
far  as  it  can  be  regarded  as  typical  of  the  early  conquered 
districts  of  South  Wales  seems  to  show  that,  whilst  the  free 
tribesmen  became  "  customary  freeholders  "  under  English 
law,  the  non-tribesmen  had  become  regarded  at  law  very 
early  as  "  tenants  at  will  under  the  customs  of  their  respec- 
tive manors  "  like  English  copyholders.     But  at  the  same 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.    429 

time  it  would  seem  that  the  customs  of  the  manors  in  their 
case,  as  in  the  case  of  many  English  manors,  afforded  no 
adequate  protection  as  regards  the  amount  of  the  fines. 
Owing  to  this  lack  of  adequate  custom  controlling  the 
amount  of  fines,  and  to  the  general  rise  in  fines  following 
the  general  rise  in  prices,  they  became  subject  to  the  com- 
petition of  outsiders  on  the  renewal  of  their  tenures,  and 
were  obliged  to  pay  what  they  considered  exorbitant  fines 
to  obtain  renewals.  Thus,  in  their  case,  owing  to  the  at 
one  time  harmless  prevalence  of  the  system  of  fines,  they 
were  prevented  from  reaping  the  advantage  enjoyed  by  the 
customary  freeholders  whose  quitrents  remained  the  same 
through  all  vicissitudes  notwithstanding  the  rise  in  prices. 

§  4. —  T/ie  Gi'OWtJi  of  Tenancy  from    Year  to    Year 
in    Wales  generally. 

Regarding  the  foregoing  evidence  drawn  from  the  typical 
cases  above  mentioned  as  fairly  representing  the  general 
experience  of  Welsh  tenants  under  the  application  to  their 
case  of  English  law,  it  can  hardly  be  represented  as 
involving  intentional  injustice  or  hardship. 

The  compositions  and  settlements  of  the  Crown  lawyers 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  were  apparently  in  intention  at  least,  on 
the  whole,  fair  attempts  to  deal  with  the  difficult  circum- 
stances of  the  ancient  Welsh  tribal  tenures.  The  substi- 
tution of  renewable  leases  for  other  and  vague  tenures  was 
not  confined  to  Wales,  and  the  question  when  and  how  and 
why  they  ceased  to  be  renewed  is  as  much  an  English 
question  as  a  Welsh  one.  Renewable  leases  disappeared 
in  England  as  they  did  in  Wales.  Whether  there  was  some 
legal  flaw  in  the  creation  of  leases  with  perpetual  right  of 
renewal,  or  whether  the  right  of  renewal  once  exercised 
was  held  to  be  exhausted,  or  whether  the  renewals  ceased 
to  be  sought  for  by  the  tenants,  or  how  much  economic 
causes  had  to  do  with  it,  it  is  not  easy  to  ascertain.     To 


430  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

the  more  modern  aspects  of  this  question  we  shall  have  to 
recur  hereafter.  One  thing,  however,  seems  to  be  clear. 
The  fines  on  renewal  in  the  absence  of  express  limit  by 
the  custom  of  the  particular  manor  were  it  would  seem  held 
by  the  courts  to  be  uncertain,  and  owing  to  the  rise  in  prices 
and  in  the  value  of  land  the  uncertainty  might  easily  lead 
to  prohibitive  increase  in  their  amount.  Whatever  hard- 
ship resulted  from  this,  English  and  Welsh  tenants  shared 
it  together. 

John  Norden,  a  land  surveyor,  whose  surveys  of  parts  of 
Wales  show  how  great  was  his  experience  of  Welsh  as  well 
as  English  tenures,  in  his  "  Surveyor's  Dialogue,"  written  in 
1607,  ^hus  described  the  position  of  things  at  that  date  as 
regards  fines  on  renewal  of  copyhold  tenures. 

Farmer :  "  You  have  not  satisfied  me  .  .  .  touching  the 
fines  of  customary  tenants  of  inheritance  .  .  ." 

Surveyor:  ''This  kind  of  tenant  hath  seldom  any  com- 
petitor to  emulate  his  offer,  because  the  tenant  leaveth 
commonly  one  either  in  right  of  inheritance,  or  by  surrender 
to  succeed  him,  and  he  by  custom  of  the  manor  is  to  be 
accepted  tenant  always  piwided  he  must  agree  with  the 
lord,  if  the  custom  of  the  manor  hold  not  the  fine  certain, 
as  in  fe7u  it  doth."  ^ 

If  in  but  few  English  manors  fines  were  fixed  and  made 
certain  by  custom,  it  may  well  be  that  uncertainty  was  the 
rule  at  any  rate  in  the  newly-constituted  manors  of  Wales, 
inasmuch  as  English  law  did  not  admit  of  the  recognition 
of  customs  unless  clearly  going  back  beyond  legal  memory. 
It  was  not  till  after  a  series  of  later  decisions  that  the 
amount  of  a  "  reasonable  fine  "  was  fixed  by  the  courts  to 
be  two  years  improved  value  of  the  holding.- 

Under  the  actual  circumstances  of  the  case,  the  year  to 

^  Ashley's  "Economic  Histon',"i.  297. 

-  See  "  Scrivenon  Copyhold,"  ch.  vii,,  on  "  the  lord's  fine."     And  see  also 
Ashley's  "Economic  History,''  book  ii.,  c.  4. 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.    431 

year  tenancy  may  have  afforded  a  more  comfortable  prospect 
of  permanence  than  the  renewable  lease.  The  year  to  year 
tenancy  at  a  fair  rent  of  the  improved  value  of  the  land 
may  have  afforded  a  better  prospect  to  the  tenant  than  that 
of  a  smaller  rent  with  the  recurring  uncertain  fine.  The 
recurring  period  of  uncertainty  and  disturbance  was  hardly 
likely  to  be  popular  with  tenants  whose  traditions  were  of 
permanent  tenancy.  And  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
both  in  England  and  in  Wales  the  year  to  year  tenancy 
in  most  cases  was  in  practice,  as  well  as  in  intention,  the 
more  permanent  tenure.  At  the  same  time,  to  fresh  tenants 
the  year  to  year  tenancy  would,  for  the  same  reasons,  be 
the  more  popular  one. 

That  the  class  of  fresh  tenants  was  in  Wales  a  large  and 
increasing  one  must  almost  necessarily  have  resulted  from 
the  two  causes  already  mentioned.  First,  the  substitution 
of  primogeniture  for  gavelkind  inheritance,  by  stopping 
division  of  holdings  would  add  to  the  number  of  applicants 
for  new  ones  ;  and  secondly,  the  large  proportion  of  the 
land  not  as  yet  occupied  in  severalty,  but  subject  only 
to  common  rights  of  pasture,  in  most  districts  would 
make  easy  the  creation  of  new  holdings  out  of  the  waste 
by  gradual  increase  of  inclosures,  and  without  special 
legislation. 

The  homesteads  and  inclosures  of  the  original  tribesmen 
and  non-tribesmen  and  their  successors,  originally  occupied 
in  severalty,  as  we  have  seen,  but  a  very  small  part  of  the 
area  of  the  district  over  which  they  had  rights  of  pasture. 
No  doubt  the  multiplication  of  homesteads  during  the 
two  centuries  after  the  conquest,  before  gavelkind  was 
abolished,  had  involved  encroachments  on  the  waste,  and 
set  in  motion  the  general  practice  of  encroachment  and 
inclosure,  legally  or  illegally  accomplished,  which  has  a 
survival  in  the  squatters  of  more  modern  times.  This 
gradual  increase  of  inclosures  in  Wales,  resulting  in  the 


432  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

present  prevalence  of  scattered  farms,  held  in  severalty, 
involved  questions  very  different  from  those  which  the 
common  form  of  the  English  Inclosure  Act  for  an  open 
field  township  was  intended  to  solve. 

The  Welsh  inclosures  were,  probably,  very  gradually  and 
silently  made  as  the  pressure  of  population  required  new 
holdings  to  be  provided  out  of  the  waste,  and  finally,  when 
the  aid  of  Inclosure  Acts  was  sought,  it  would  be  mostly 
to  divide  up  large  tracts  of  mountain  and  other  land  which 
remained  in  common  pasture. 

The  question  of  commons  and  inclosures  is  dealt  with 
separately  in  the  Report,  but  the  mention  of  their  position 
in  the  history  of  Welsh  land  tenure  is  not  irrelevant  in  this 
connection  as  explaining,  to  some  extent,  the  facility  with 
which  the  system  of  separate  farms,  and  year  to  year 
tenancy,  was  extended  without  legislative  action. 

§   5. — Stnnnmry  of  the  Historical  Result. 

To  sum  up  the  historical  result,  it  will  be  seen,  in  con- 
clusion, that  many  causes  have  combined  in  producing  and 
afterwards  perpetuating  what  is  the  marked  and  peculiar 
feature  of  rural  economy  in  Wales,  viz.,  the  prevalence  of 
a  large  number  of  small  separate  farms  of  what  maybe 
described  as  the  peasant  and  family  type.  So  that,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  year  to  year  tenancy  in  Wales  has  not 
become  generally  associated  as  in  England  with  the  system 
of  large  farms  of  the  more  commercial  type,  nor,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  it  been  associated  as  in  Ireland  and  the 
crofter  districts  of  Scotland  with  that  excessive  subdivision 
and  subletting  which  leads  to  the  congestion  of  a  rural 
population  upon  holdings  too  small  to  maintain  the 
occupiers.  Had  the  system  of  renewable  leases  continued, 
it  might  easily  have  led  to  the  Irish  system  of  throwing 
upon  the  tenant  the  obligation  to  make  and  maintain  the 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     433 

buildings,  and  this  in  its  turn  might  have  introduced  into 
Wales  the  complications  of  divided  ownership. 

The  natural  inherited  instinct  to  live  by  the  land,  and 
the  consequent  competition  for  farms  in  Wales  as  in 
Ireland,  furnished  all  the  necessary  factors  for  producing 
these  results.  But  somehow  or  other  the  transition  from 
tribal  to  modern  forms  of  tenure  in  Wales  has  been  accom- 
plished without  them. 

No  doubt  the  mountainous  character  of  the  country,  the 
large  areas  of  land  under  common  grazing,  and  the  pastoral 
character  of  the  farming  have  had  something  to  do  with  it, 
but  much  also  must  be  attributed  to  the  hereditary  instincts 
and  traditions  of  both  landlords  and  tenants,  and  to  the 
customary  relations  which  grew  out  of  them. 

The  relation  of  landlord  and  tenant  in  Wales  gradually 
passing  through  the  stage  of  leases  for  years  or  lives  into  a 
year  to  year  tenancy  has  made  possible  the  continuance  of 
a  useful  control  on  the  part  of  the  landlord  combined  with 
a  large  measure  of  permanence  in  the  tenure  of  the  tenants  ; 
but  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  traditional  element 
has  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  customary  relations 
which  have  existed  for  generations  on  many  estates. 

The  more  modern  aspects  of  some  of  the  questions 
involved  in  the  historical  survey — the  growth  of  large 
estates  and  the  gradual  dying-out  of  the  system  of  renew- 
able leases — receive  more  detailed  attention  in  the  Report 
and  below,  but  it  is  important  before  leaving  this  part  of 
the  subject  that  the  full  extent  of  some  of  the  before- 
mentioned  peculiar  results  of  Welsh  economic  history 
should  be  adequately  realised  as  far  as  possible  in  actual 
figures. 

The  Census  of  1861  enables  us  to  trace  some  of  these 
results  with  remarkable  clearness. 

First,  the  comparative  smallness  of  the  farms  is  shown 
very  clearly  by  the  statement  of  the  number  of  labourers 

W.P.  .F  F 


434  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

employed  upon  them.  The  annexed  map  No.  i  shows  the 
number  of  labourers  to  each  farmer  and  grazier  in  the 
various  counties  of  England  and  Wales.  It  will  be  seen 
that  if  a  line  be  drawn  from  the  Wash  to  the  Axe,  there 
would  be,  roughly,  about  ten  labourers  to  each  farm  in  the 
Eastern  Counties.  If  a  line  were  drawn  from  the  Humber 
to  the  Dee  and  from  thence  to  the  Severn,  the  average  for 
middle  England  would  be  about  five  to  each  farm  ;  whilst 
in  Wales  the  number  would  not  exceed  one  and  a  half  to 
two  labourers  per  farm. 

The  other  counties  of  England  nearly  approaching 
Wales  in  this  respect  are  Cornwall,  Lancashire,  Westmore- 
land, Cumberland,  Durham,  the  West  and  North  Riding 
of  Yorkshire,  and  Derbyshire,  all  of  which  resemble  Wales 
more  or  less  in  being  hilly  and  chiefly  pasture. 

Again,  the  number  of  farmers  and  graziers  according  to 
the  Census  of  1861  was  as  follows  : — 


North  Wales. 

South  Wales. 

England. 

Males     .... 

Females 

14,660 
2,202 

18,102 
4,862 

194,193 
15,714 

Total 

16,862 

22,964 

209,907 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  proportion  of  women  for  the 
time  being  returned  as  occupying  farms  is,  roughly,  as  one 
to  five  in  Wales,  while  it  is  only  as  one  to  twelve  in 
England.  This  is  more  than  a  slight  indication  that  the 
continuance  of  farms  on  the  death  of  the  occupier  as  family 
holdings  was  more  general  in  Wales  than  in  other  parts  ot 
the  kingdom.  But  the  family  or  household  character  of 
the  Welsh  farms  is  still  more  clearly  shown  by  a  com- 
parison which  the  same  census  enables  us  to  make  between 


^     ;  -^      KS-y  >s    J»Q  .>'•■••  V-  7 


C5 


^"^^^ 


;±4 


F  F  2 


436  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

the  indoor  and  outdoor  character  of  the  labour  employed 
upon  them. 

Map  No.  2  g-ives  the  proportion  of  outdoor  labourers 
to  indoor  labourers  according  to  the  same  census.  The 
figures  show  that  whilst  in  England  the  great  mass  of  the 
farm  labourers  are  outdoor  labourers,  it  is  quite  the  reverse 
in  Wales  and  the  analogous  counties  of  Cumberland  and 
Westmoreland.  Whilst  about  one-half  of  the  agricultural 
labourers  in  Wales,  Cumberland,  and  Westmoreland  are 
indoor  labourers,  the  proportion  becomes  less  and  less 
towards  the  east,  till  in  Essex  the  proportion  is  only  one 
to  eighty. 

Adding  the  number  of  indoor  labourers  in  Wales  to  the 
number  of  farmers  and  their  sons,  &c.,  the  total  of  house- 
hold indoor  labour  as  compared  with  the  outdoor  was 
as  follows  :  — 


Wales. 

England. 

Household  and  indoor 

Outdoor 

82,291 

35,775 

428,166 

902,085 

So  that  whilst  in  England  not  quite  one-third  of  the  labour 
was  household  and  indoor  labour,  and  more  than  two- 
thirds  outdoor,  in  Wales  less  than  one-third  was  outdoor, 
and  more  than  two-thirds  household  and  indoor. 

These  figures  from  the  Census  of  1861  supplement  the 
foregoing  survey  of  historical  causes  by  giving  a  practical 
view  of  their  results.  The}-  throw  inferentially  a  strong 
light  upon  the  peculiar  economic  process  by  which  the 
Welsh  peasantry  have  passed  from  the  primitive  patri- 
archal conditions  of  the  tribal  system  into  their  modern 
conditions  under  year  to  year  tenancy. 

In  conclusion,  we  have  not  attempted  to  minimise  the 
extent  to  which  the  still  lingering  instincts  and  traditions 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     437 

of  Welsh  tenants  may  have  their  roots  in  the  past,  and  yet 
be  important  factors  in  modern  economic  problems. 

Their  existence  is  one  of  the  present  facts  which  have  to 
be  acknowledged.  But  beyond  this  we  have  found  no 
reasonable  ground  for  importing  into  modern  economic 
problems  historical  considerations  which,  however  powerful 
at  the  time  when  the  lawyers  of  Queen  Elizabeth  had  to 
attempt  to  bring  Welsh  tribal  custom  within  some  category 
of  English  law,  have  been  long  superseded  or  rendered 
inoperative  by  the  economic  changes  of  the  past  three 
centuries. 

The  present  year  to  year  tenants  of  Wales  cannot  claim 
to  be  the  direct  successors  of  the  ancient  Welsh  free  tribes- 
men. The  successors  in  title  of  these  are  still  paying  their 
ancient  and  now  trifling  quitrents.  That  more  of  them 
have  not  survived  is  owing  to  natural  causes,  and,  perhaps 
more  than  all,  to  their  having  enjoyed  for  centuries,  like 
English  copyholders,  the  right  of  selling  their  holdings  in 
the  open  market.  On  the  other  hand,  if  some  of  the 
present  year  to  year  tenants  are  the  successors  of  the 
ancient  non-tribesmen  or  naUvi,  then  the  most  probable 
general  conclusion  seems  to  be  that  their  ancestors  have 
passed  through  various  vicissitudes,  out  of  which,  through 
stages  of  leases  for  lives  or  years  (which  for  some  reason 
were  not  renewed),  they  have  passed  into  the  position  of 
year  to  vear  tenants.^ 

§  6. — Formation  and  Contimiity  of  Estates. 

It  appears  clearly  enough  from  what  we  have  said  that 
the  bulk  of  Welsh  land  is,  for  agricultural  purposes, 
now  divided  into  areas  possessed  by  estate  owners  and 
cultivated  by  tenants  from  year  to  year,  or  by  lessees  for 
terms  of  years.     From  the  legal  point  of  view  there  is  no 

^  Mr.  Seebohm's  contribution  ends  here  ;  but  as  Commissioner  he  subscribed 
the  remainder  of  the  chapter. 


438  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

difference  between  the  tenant  in  fee  simple  of  loo  acres 
and  the  tenant  in  fee  simple  of  20,000  acres.  But  from  the 
economist's  point  of  view  there  is  an  immense  distinction. 
An  "  estate "  is  an  economic  unit,  an  industrial,  organic 
entity,  having  a  life  of  its  own,  and  influencing  in  many 
ways  the  progress  or  retrogression  of  a  county  or  district. 
The  owners  of  these  estates  collectively  form  an  aristocratic 
class  in  the  community,  exercise  a  general  superintendence 
over  the  management  of  their  estates,  and  depend  upon  the 
rent  and  profits  of  their  land  for  the  maintenance  of  them- 
selves and  their  families.  To  the  actual  cultivators  of  the 
soil,  and,  in  many  respects,  to  the  people  at  large,  they 
stand  in  a  relation  similar  to  that  in  which  the  lords  or 
barons  of  mediaeval  times  stood  to  the  peasants  of 
those  days.  If  "we  go  back  some  six  hundred  years  to 
the  time  before  the  Edwardian  conquest  of  North  Wales, 
we  find  that  the  class  in  the  community  who  occupied  the 
position  most  analogous  to  that  of  the  modern  estate  owner 
was  the  order  formed  by  the  lords  marchers  and  the  Welsh 
princes  and  lords.  We  find  the  land  cultivated  (so  far  as 
it  was  utilised  at  all)  by  the  free  and  servile  tenants  of  these 
lords,  holding  on  customary  terms.  With  the  way  in  which 
these  customary  tenants  have  become  tenants  from  year  to 
year  we  have  just  dealt. 

The  further  question  how  the  feudal  lord  marcher  and 
the  Welsh  arglwyd  have  been  replaced  by  estate  owners 
is  one  which  may  reasonably  be  asked,  but  which  neither 
our  research  nor  the  evidence  enables  us  to  dispose  of  fully 
or  confidently.  The  answer  to  it  depends  upon  historical 
data  which,  though  they  are  even  now  extensive,  are  not 
complete,  and  accordingly  we  cannot  pretend  to  give  a  final 
solution  to  the  problem.  The  question  may  be  expressed 
more  definitely  thus  :  How  have  these  Welsh  estates  been 
formed  t  Some  few  observations  may  be  made  with  con- 
fidence.      First  of  all,  the  process  of  formation  has  been 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     439 

very  gradual,  and  there  has  never  been  any  real  break  in 
its  continuity.  The  points  at  which  the  continuity  of  the 
process  became  most  nearly  broken  are  the  Edwardian 
conquest  itself,  the  accession  of  Henry  Tudor,  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  monasteries,  and  the  civil  wars  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

The  system  of  settlement  and  re-settlement  from  time 
to  time  with  the  view  of  keeping  the  estate  together,  and 
of  vesting  it  continually  in  a  tenant  for  life  in  possession, 
and  tenants  in  tail  in  remainder,  subject  to  charges  in 
favour  of  younger  children,  was  introduced  into  Wales  as  in 
England,  not  of  course  universally,  for  in  most  cases  the 
estates  were  small,  and  in  some  cases  the  entail  having  been 
broken,  no  re-settlement  was  made. 

In  the  next  place,  considerable  distinction  in  the  rate  at 
which  the  change  from  the  old  order  to  the  new  went  on 
must  be  made  between  the  principality  proper  and  the 
marches ;  for  in  the  former  the  custom  of  dividing  an 
inheritance  was  continued  down  to  the  reign  of  Henry  VHL, 
while  the  laws  and  customs  in  vogue  in  the  courts  of  the  lords 
marchers  were  very  rapidly  assimilated  in  essential  points 
to  those  of  the  English  courts,  both  royal  and  manorial. 

In  the  third  place,  the  process  was  not  fundamentally 
dissimilar  from  that  which  went  on  in  the  English  counties  ; 
but  even  if  it  did  not  proceed  (as  is  probably  the  case)  more 
slowly  than  in  those  districts,  yet  it  began  later,  and  the 
modern  type  of  estate,  on  a  considerable  scale,  appears 
later  in  the  Welsh  counties  than  in  most  parts  of  England. 

Now,  in  the  century  after  the  Edwardian  conquest,  the 
actual  state  of  things  in  Wales  and  the  marches  was 
this :  at  the  top  of  the  social  and  economic  structure  there 
were  the  Norman  or  Norman-Welsh  lords  marchers  and  the 
heads  of  the  Welsh  noble  families  {uchelwyr  of  the  royal 
or  princely  caste)  who  had  survived  the  conquest  without 
attainder.     These  by  their  bailiffs  and  officers,  servants  and 


440  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

tenants,  cultivated  their  demesne  lands,  but  the  greater  por- 
tion of  the  then  cultivated  area  was  probabl}^  in  the  actual 
occupation  of  free  tenants  (whether  uchelwyr,  bone'digion^ 
or  atitudion)  and  of  tenants  practically  corresponding  to 
the  villein  class  in  England — bond  or  native  tenants. 

The  total  effect,  from  an  economic  point  of  view,  of  the 
whole  process  we  are  trying  to  describe  may  be  (making- 
due  allowance  for  the  distinction  between  the  principality 
and  the  marches)  stated  to  be  the  survival  of  the  free 
tenant  or  tribesman — the  occupying  uchelwi%  bonedig,  or 
atitud  of  free  or  gentlemanly  degree  (i.e.,  entitled  to  bear 
arms  in  the  host) — and  the  decay  of  the  princely  or  baronial 
class,  as  such,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  servile  or  non- 
tribal  occupier  on  the  other. 


§  7. — Causes  of  the  Change. 

The  leading  causes  or  forces  which  have  produced  this 
great  change,  and  which  have  resulted  in  the  creation  of 
the  modern  estate,  may,  in  more  abstract  terms,  be  thus 
expressed : — 

First,  the  seigniorial  rights,  owing  to  the  change  in  the 
value  of  money,  became  less  and  less  valuable  (measured 
in  current  coin).^ 

Secondly,  the  price  of  land  held  on  the  least  burdensome 
tenure  (i.e.,  freehold  land  held  of  the  Crown  or  a  mesne  lord 
upon  payment  of  chief  or  quit  rents),  and  therefore  most 
disposable  by  sale  or  mortgage,  went  up  continuously  and 
very  greatly.  Before  the  development  of  manufactures 
and  commerce  on  the  modern  system,  land  was  not  simply 
the  most  desirable  and  safe,  but  in  the  remoter  and  less- 
advanced  districts  the  only  readily  available  investment  for 
any  capital  which  a  freeholder  might  possess,  beyond  what 

1  See  the  case  of  Maelor  Saesneg  in  the  Report,  par.  190  ;  and  the  Hon. 
Mrs.  Bulkeley-Owen's  evidence,  Minutes,  iv.  p.  114,  qu.  57,  149,  et seq. 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     441 

could  be  prudently  used  in  actual  farming.  Accordingly, 
the  saving  and  provident  freeholder  employed  such  money 
as  he  had  to  invest  in  the  purchase  of  other  parcels  of  free- 
hold land.  The  mortgage  of  land,  too,  by  the  unsuccessful 
or  improvident  freeholder,  offered  another  mode  of  invest- 
ment, and  in  many  cases  the  transaction  ultimately  led  to 
foreclosure  or  sale,  and  the  consequent  disappearance  of  the 
mortgagor  and  his  family  from  the  list  of  owners.  As  the 
feudal  aristocracy  of  the  marches  decayed,  and  it  became 
possible  to  purchase  seigniorial  rights  and  to  enforce  them 
in  courts  of  law  without  recourse  to  arms,  there  was  clearly 
every  inducement  to  the  freehold  tenant  who  was  accumu- 
lating land  to  acquire  those  rights,  especially  such  as  were 
exerciseable  over  his  own  or  adjoining  land.  The  astute 
and  vigilant  exaction  and  use  of  these  rights  by  such  a 
freeholder,  living  on  his  own  estate,  also  tended  to  produce 
an  enlargement  of  his  property.  So  also  the  obtaining  of 
leases  or  grants  of  Crown  lands  gave  opportunities  of  which 
the  progressing  freeholder  readily  availed  himself. 

Thirdly,  the  Act  of  Union  between  England  and  Wales 
made  the  structure  of  Welsh  society  and  political  organisa- 
tion similar  to  that  of  England,  and  the  calling  of  members 
to  Parliament  from  the  Welsh  counties  and  boroughs 
greatly  added  to  the  power  and  influence  of  the  larger  free- 
holders. Those  freeholders  who  possessed  areas  of  land  so 
large  that  they  had  ceased  to  be  merely  farmers,  but 
subsisted  mainly  on  rents  paid  by  the  actual  cultivators, 
had  by  this  time,  owing  to  the  operation  of  many  causes 
(^.^.,  traditional  sentiment),  come  to  be  a  distinct  class, 
sharing  amongst  themselves  the  Crown  offices  incident  to 
the  management  of  the  principality,  and  the  judicial  and 
other  posts  connected  with  local  government,  and  excluding 
all  others  (outside  the  boroughs,  which  were  small  and 
unimportant  in  Wales)  from  any  share  in  count}'  affairs. 
They    already    formed    a   ^//<7j/-aristocratic    class,    rapidlv 


442  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

taking  the  same  place  in  the  social  and  political  structure 
that  had  been  previously  occupied  by  the  feudal  baronial 
families,  who  had  almost  disappeared,  but  with  whom  this 
new  class  had  many  points  of  connection.  Intermarriages 
among  members  of  this  comparatively  limited  class  and 
succession  by  settlement  and  devise  naturally  became 
potent  factors  in  the  process  of  aggregation. 

Fourthly,  the  assimilation  of  the  Welsh  and  English  law, 
completed  by  the  legislation  of  Henry  VIII.,  powerfully 
tended  to  enlarge  the  consequence  and  power  of  this  class, 
and  to  produce  an  aggregation  of  land  in  a  few  hands. 
This  involved  the  abolition  of  the  Welsh  system  of  dividing 
the  inheritance,  and  the  introduction  of  the  law  of  primo- 
geniture. The  statute  12  Charles  II.  c.  24,  abolished  tenures 
by  knight  service  and  by  socage  in  capite  of  the  king,  and 
converted  all  tenures  into  free  and  common  socage.  This 
Act  in  Wales,  as  in  England,  material!}-  benefited  the  then 
existing  estate  owners,  while  the  introduction  of  the  modern 
method  of  settlement  and  re-settlement  in  tail  into  Wales 
was  an  additional  means  of  preserving  the  estates  intact  in 
the  possession  of  the  same  family. 

§   8. —  The  Effect  of  the  CJiief  HistoHcal  Evefits. 

Such,  stated  in  general  or  abstract  terms,  appear  to  us 
to  be  the  main  causes  of  the  displacement  of  the  feudal 
aristocracy,  the  substitution  of  the  Welsh  country  gentle- 
man or  squire,  and  of  the  rise  of  the  modern  system  of 
estates.  But  a  succession  of  concrete  historical  events, 
which  cannot  be  logically  classified,  facilitated  the  process 
on  most  important  points  in  the  development.  As  we  have 
seen,  the  Norman  of  South  and  Central  Wales  introduced 
into  those  parts  of  the  countr}'  the  Norman-English  theories 
and  systems.  The  Edwardian  conquest  of  North  Wales 
partialh'  did   the   same    for   the   principalit}-  proper.     We 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     443 

have  examined  above  the  method  of  settlement  adopted  by 
Edward  I.  and  his  successors,  and  the  later  management  of 
affairs  by  the  advisers  of  the  Tudor  monarchs.  Generally 
speaking,  we  may  say  the  effect  was  to  dissolve  tribal 
notions  of  real  property  law,  and  to  replace  them  by  the 
more  fully  developed  theories  of  the  English  lawyers. 
That  the  change  involved  (whatever  may  have  been  the 
intentions  of  the  English  Crown)  grave  injustice,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  In  theory  the  rights  of  the  Welsh 
freeholders,  or  free  tribesmen,  were  admitted  and  pre- 
served, but  in  practice  the  officers  of  the  Crown  and 
the  lords  who  surrounded  or  acquired  a  footing  in  the 
principality  were  guilty  of  oppressing  the  Welshmen 
of  every  degree.  Speaking  of  the  pre-Tudor  times, 
Sir  John  Wynne  (a  competent  and  trustworthy  writer) 
sa}^s :  "  The  exactions  were  in  those  dayes  soe  mani- 
fold that  not  onely  the  bondmen  ranne  away  from  the 
king's  land,  but  alsoe  freeholders  from  their  owne  land."^ 
From  what  Sir  John  says,  it  seems  that  the  process  or  writ 
called  cessavit  per  biennium  gave  a  ready  weapon  to  the 
unscrupulous  Crown  official.  This  writ  appears  to  have 
lain  against  a  tenant  in  freehold  under  the  king  or  another 
lord  who  ceased  for  two  years  to  do  his  service.  Among 
instances  of  oppression  that  he  recounts  he  mentions  that 
Henry  Lacy,  Earl  of  Lincoln,  to  whom  the  king  granted 
the  "  Denbigh  land,"  "  minding  to  make  a  princely  seat 
of  the  castle  of  Denbigh,  per  force  compassed  the  children 
of  the  said  David  ap  Grufifith  to  exchange  their  possessions 
about  Denbigh  Castle  (which  were  great)  with  him  for  other 
lands  of  less  value  in  the  said  lordship  in  the  furthest  part 
from  him."^  The  probable  result  of  this  state  of  things 
was  a  diminution  of  the  number  of  the  freehold  tenants 
during   the  time  between   the   Conquest  and  the  time   of 

1  "History  of  the  Gwydir  Family,'*  p,  83  (edition  of  1878). 

2  Ibid.,  p.  25. 


444  ^^^^    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

Elizabeth.  But  while  this  fact  lessened  the  number  of  the 
freeholders,  it  should  be  noticed  it  increased  the  strength 
and  opportunities  of  those  of  the  class  who  were  able  to 
survive. 

Another  event  which  was  of  far-reaching  economic  effect 
in  Wales,  as  in  England,  was  the  Black  Death,  which,  at 
intervals,  desolated  the  kingdom  in  the  fourteenth  century. 
The  Record  of  Carnarvon  and  other  documents  contain 
entries  which  prove  that  this  pestilence  lowered  the  popula- 
tion, including,  of  course,  the  free  as  well  as  bond  or  native 
tenants. 

The  series  of  rebellions  that  took  place  after  the 
Edwardian  settlement  and  also  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  were 
also  historical  events  which  led  to  the  decay  of  the  wealth 
and  power  of,  and  the  disappearance  of,  many  of  the 
individual  families  forming  the  feudal  baronage,  as  well 
as  of  the  survivors  of  the  Welsh  princely  houses.  The 
decline  of  the  one  class  of  proprietors  naturally,  in  the  long 
run,  brought  about  the  rise  of  the  other  class.  It  is  often 
said  that  the  ruin  of  the  early  feudal  aristocracy  was 
brought  about  by  the  conflicts  between  Lancastrians  and 
Yorkists.  This  seems  an  error  ;  the  lessening  of  their 
power  commenced  before,^  at  any  rate  if  one  speaks  of  the 
whole  kingdom  ;  but  everything  points  to  their  retaining 
their  power  and  influence  to  a  later  time  in  Wales  and  the 
marches  than  elsewhere.  For  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  that  passed  after  the  conquest  by  Edward  I.  this 
western  part  of  the  Island  was  in  a  practically  continuous 
state  of  disorder.  The  peace  of  the  king  and  of  his  feudal 
tenants  was  ill  kept.  Life  and  property  were  everywhere 
insecure.  Private  wars  were  constantly  breaking  out  between 
the  lords  marchers  themselves  and  between  the  lords 
marchers  and  the  descendants  or  reputed  descendants  of 
the  Welsh  princely  or  lordly  families.     The  leaders  of  the 

'  Green's  "History  of  the  English  People,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  14. 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     445 

Welsh,  of  course,  too,  quarrelled  among  themselves,  and 
only  occasionally  took  anything  like  real  concerted  action 
against  the  vexatious  and  oppressive  conduct  of  the 
Norman-English  settlers.  The  result  of  a  period  of  con- 
fusion like  this  was  naturally  adverse  to  the  persons  who 
played  the  greatest  part  in  the  affairs  of  their  times.  The 
leaders  habitually  fought  with  their  own  hands,  and  there- 
fore ran  the  risks  of  the  battlefield  in  their  own  persons. 
Defeat  oftentimes  meant  death  or  attainder,  and  sometimes 
both.  All  this  is  true  of  England  as  well,  but  this  state  of 
things  lasted  longer  in  the  principality  and  the  marches. 
It  is  easy,  however,  b}'  wrongl}"  interpreting  the  general 
phrases  of  chroniclers  and  historians,  to  form  an  exaggerated 
picture  of  the  ills  of  this  period.  It  should  be  noted  that 
under  the  Welsh  tribal  system  it  was  only  the  free  tribes- 
man {uchelwr  or  bonedig)  who  formed  part  of  the  host, 
and  the  bond  tenant  was  left  at  home  or  attended  the  army 
in  menial  capacity.  Nor  was  the  matter  for  a  long  time 
very  different  after  the  Conquest.  The  right  to  bear  arms 
belonged  only  to  those  of  gentle  blood  or  to  those  persons 
who  were  received  as  retainers  of  the  lord  marcher  or  Welsh 
prince  or  lord.  A  war  did  not  mean  that  all  the  cultivators 
of  the  soi]  actually  left  it ;  when  any  of  them  did  so  the}^ 
were  away  only  a  short  time.^  The  operation  of  such  agri- 
culture as  existed  went  on  as  usual.  There  was  no  such 
dislocation  of  rural  life  as  miodern  war  brings  about  in 
occupied  districts.  While,  then,  the  consequence  of  the 
condition  of  things  in  Wales  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries  was  disastrous  to  the  aristocratic  families,  it  was 
not  fatal  to  the  progress  and  permanence  of  the  freeholders 
as  a  class,  though  no  doubt  their  growth  in  prosperity  was 
retarded  and  their  comfort  and  happiness  diminished. 
Another  historical  event  which  had  a  marked  influence 

^  This  remark  must  be  qualified  by  stating  that  on  many  occasions  there  was 
recruiting  for  the  king's  armv  in  the  marches  and  in  Wales. 


446  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

in  improving  the  position  of  the  descendants  of  the  Welsh 
freehold  tenants,  who  had  by  this  time  attained  a  consider- 
able position  and  had  acquired  in  many  instances  the 
position  of  the  squire  or  country  gentleman,  was  the  fact 
that  the  Act  of  Union  (besides  its  assimilation  of  the 
private  law  of  Wales  to  that  of  England)  gave  Wales  the 
right  of  representation  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Of 
course  great  lords  or  barons  who  owned  lands  or  lordships 
in  Whales  or  the  marches  had  been  summoned  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  but  one  gentleman  only  of  Welsh  name  and 
descent  had,  before  the  time  of  Henry  VH.,  been  advanced 
to  the  peerage  in  the  modern  sense — Sir  William  ap  Thomas, 
created  Earl  of  Pembroke  by  Edward  IV.,  from  whom  the 
important  family  of  the  Herberts  trace  their  descent,  and 
who  was  in  his  time  the  "only  and  entire  commander  of 
Wales."  ^  No  W^elshman  in  the  true  sense  was  summoned 
by  Henry  VH.,  upon  his  accession,  to  Parliament.  Of  the 
twenty-nine  peers  summoned  by  him  to  his  first  Parliament 
not  a  sino"le  one  was  Welsh  bv  name  and  descent,  or  had 
his  principal  property  and  lordships  in  the  principality  or 
those  parts  of  the  marches  that  ultimately  were  appor- 
tioned to  W^elsh  counties.  No  doubt  some  of  these  twenty- 
nine  peers  had  property  in  the  marches  and  possibly  in 
Wales  proper,  but  not  one  can  be  fairly  described  as  a 
Welshman.  Members  had  been  returned  to  the  House  of 
Commons  at  an  early  date  from  Anglesey,  Merionethshire, 
and  Carnarvonshire,-  but  from  the  time  of  Edward  H.  to 
the  stat.  27  Henry  VHI.  c.  26,  there  was  an  intermission. 
From  the  time  of  Henry  VHI.,-^  however,  Welsh  members 
were  sent  up  to  Westminster  regularly,  and  this  fact  had  a 

^  Owen's  "Pembrokeshire,"  ed.  Henry  Owen,  1892  (Lond.,  8vo,  Cynimo- 
dorion  Record  Series),  p.  28. 

-  Williams's  "Parliamentary  History  of  Wales"  (Lond.,  1895,  4to>  P-  '•  = 
Introduction). 

3  Certainly  from  1 541.  As  to  the  Parliaments  of  1536  and  1539  qit^re. 
See  Williams,  p.  i.  :   Introduction. 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES.     447 

rapid  and  far-reaching  effect  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  Welsh 
gentry.  From  the  condition  of  the  times  and  the  nature  of 
the  franchise  it  was  members  of  land-owning  families  who 
were  elected  for  many  generations.  The  effect  upon  these 
families  of  their  joining  in  the  general  political  life  of  the 
whole  kingdom  was  to  enlarge  their  views,  to  increase  their 
importance,  to  bring  them  into  contact,  on  a  favourable 
basis,  with  the  members  of  their  order  in  the  English 
counties,  to  lead  to  intermarriages  between  Welsh  and 
English  families,  and  to  give,  to  the  able  and  ambitious, 
opportunities  of  worldly  advancement  on  a  considerable 
scale  in  many  directions,  especially  in  civil  affairs,  which 
had  theretofore  been  denied  to  the  Welsh  gentleman.  The 
more  wealthy  and  influential  among  these  men  were  not 
slow  to  perceive  and  to  use  the  advantages  which  this 
contact  with  the  English  Court,  official  life,  and  society 
afforded  them,  and  many  were  able  to  add  to  the  extent 
of  the  family  estate  and  strengthen  or  consolidate  their 
positions. 

The  dissolution  of  the  monasteries,  practically  contem- 
poraneous with  the  summoning  of  Welsh  members  to  the 
House  of  Commons,  had  also  a  marked  effect.  Those 
members  of  the  Norman-English  baronial  and  Welsh 
princely  families  who  still  maintained  a  connection  with 
Wales  and  the  Welsh  marches,  as  well  as  those  freehold 
tenants  who  by  steady  accumulation  had  acquired  a  superior 
status,  found  in  this  event  an  opportunity  for  adding  to  the 
acreage  of  their  estates  or  of  retrieving  the  family  fortunes. 
A  large  area  of  the  most  fertile  and  desirable  parts  of  the 
principality  fell  into  new  hands,  and  this  led  to  the 
enlarging  of  the  estates  and  improving  of  the  position 
of  the  larger  Welsh  freeholders,  and  brought  things  from 
the  estate  owners'  point  of  view  into  a  condition  not  very 
dissimilar  to  that  which  exists  at  the  present  time,  and 
cleared  the  way  for  dealing  with  the  tenants  (the  actual 


448  THE    WELSH    PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

cultivators)  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  in  the  manner  which 
has  been  explained  above. 

The  rebellion  and  civil  wars  of  the  seventeenth  century 
had  a  great  effect  in  regard  to  the  formation  of  new 
estates,  and  the  destruction  or  the  partial  breaking  up 
of  older  ones.  The  Welsh  gentry,  as  a  rule,  were  Ro}'alist 
in  inclination  and  action  ;  though  there  were  no  doubt 
exceptions,  as  well  as  much  uncertainty  and  tergiversation 
on  the  part  of  individuals  and  families.  The  triumph  of 
the  Parliament  and  the  sequestrations  and  fines  during 
the  Commonwealth  (especially  in  South  Wales  during  the 
rule  of  the  Cromwellian  major-generals)  caused  the  ruin  or 
impoverishment  of  several  of  the  leading  Welsh  families, 
brought  land  "  into  the  market,"  and  gave  opportunities  to 
many  of  the  lesser  gentr}',  and  in  some  cases  to  persons  of 
"  mean  extraction."  But  on  the  whole  there  was  no  rush 
of  new-comers  into  Wales  ;  there  was  no  wholesale  destruc- 
tion and  splitting  up  of  estates  ;  no  general  extinction  of 
the  families  of  gentle  blood.  The  Restoration  undid  a 
good  part  of  what  had  taken  place,  and  the  general  effect 
was  that  the  more  prudent,  unenterprising  estate  owner  of 
moderate  opinions,  living  quietly  at  his  own  place,  found 
the  trend  of  events  tell  in  favour  of  his  own  aggrandisement. 

Some  of  the  Welsh  gentry  seemed  to  have  suffered  in 
the  Revolution  of  1688,  but  from  that  time  no  political 
troubles  have  interfered  with  the  operation  of  the  general 
and  economic  causes  which  told  in  favour  of  the  increase 
of  the  wealth  and  power  of  "  the  landed  interest  "  down  to 
the  middle  of  this  century.  The  policy  of  enclosing  land 
added  to  the  acreage  of  many  estates,  while  the  great 
industrial  development  (especially  in  South  Wales  on 
account  of  the  extension  of  coal-mining  operations)  com- 
bined with  a  large  and  stead}'  increase  of  the  population 
of  Wales,  involving  necessarily,  both  in  town  and  country, 
a  greater  demand  for  land  for  all  sorts  of  purposes,  added 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES,     449 

enormously  to  the  capital  value  and  yearly  revenue  of  real 
property. 

The  preceding  considerations  lead  us  to  infer  that  by  the 
time  of  James  L,  Wales,  like  England,  was  divided  into 
estates  not  dissimilar  in  character  to  those  of  our  own  day. 
They  varied  no  doubt  very  greatly  in  size  and  in  yearly 
value.  Many  freehold  owners  had  only  small  parcels  of 
land  which  they  cultivated  themselves.  Others  had  free- 
holds of  great  extent^  The  social  line  of  demarcation 
between  classes  was  drawn  primarily  between  those  owners 
who  lived  by  farming  and  those  who  depended  for  their 
main  income  upon  the  rents  and  profits  of  their  land  ;  but 
the  distinction  was  emphasised  by  the  respective  length 
and  purity  of  the  family  pedigree,  by  connection  with  the 
older  and  then  existing  great  families,  by  serving  in  or 
the  possession  of  offices  (^.^.,  the  Lord-Lieutenancy,  the 
Shrievalty,  Justiceship  of  the  Peace),  and  the  scale  and 
character  of  the  domestic  establishment.  The  gentry  class 
was  already  separated  from  the  yeoman  class,  formed  an 
order  apart,  was  possessed  of  prejudices  and  notions  that 
tended  more  and  more  to  exclusiveness,  and  was  able  to 
assume,  justifiably  enough,  the  social  importance,  as  they 
had  already  obtained  the  political  power  of  the  older 
aristocracy. 

Speaking  broadly,  the  estates  of  the  gentry  in  Wales  in 
the  seventeenth  century  appear  to  have  been  small — 
possibly  many  may  have  been  extensive  in  area,  but  cer- 
tainly from  the  point  of  view  of  annual  value  they  were 
as  a  rule  very  small.  Major- General  Berry,  writing  to 
Cromwell,  says  :  "  You  can  sooner  find  fifty  gentlemen  of 
100/.  a  year  than  five  of  500/.";  and,  going  back  to  Tudor 
times,  the  conclusion  to  be  formed  from  the  observations 
of  at  least  one  contemporary  observer  of  Wales — John 
Leland — is  that  the  Welsh  estates  were  then,  as  a  rule, 

*  See  Report,  par.  i86. 
W.P.  G  G 


450         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

small,  both  in  extent  and  revenue.  Rowlands,  too,  in  his 
"  Llyfrydiaeth  y  Cymry"  (p.  195),  has  preserved  some 
lines,  which  he  describes  as  ancient,  concerning  Radnor- 
shire, which  are  to  the  same  effect : — 

"  Alas  !  alas  !  poor  Radnorshire, 
Never  a  park,  nor  ever  a  deer, 
Nor  ever  a  Squire  of  five  hundred  a  year 
Save  Richard  Fowler  of  Abbey  Cwm-hir."^ 

But  perhaps  the  most  striking  piece  of  evidence  upon  this 
point  is  afforded  by  looking  at  the  list  of  baronetcies  con- 
ferred up  to  1682.  The  order  of  baronet  was  revived  b}- 
James  I.  with  a  view  of  raising  money,  but  it  probabh- 
partly  ow^ed  its  real  origin  to  the  desire  of  the  noble 
families  to  prevent  that  increase  of  their  numbers  which 
was  inevitable  if  something  was  not  done  to  meet  the 
reasonable  demands  of  the  wealthy  English  country  gentle- 
men for  hereditary  titles.  James  offered  the  title  of  baronet 
to  all  persons  of  good  repute,  being  knights  or  esquires 
possessed  of  lands  worth  1,000/.  a  year,  upon  the  terms 
of  their  paying  1,080/.  in  three  annual  instalments.^  More 
than  200  baronets  were  created  during  his  reign,  and  b}' 
1682  there  had  been  2)66  creations.  Only  twelve  out  of 
the  200  were  Welsh  owners,  and  only  thirty-seven  out 
of  the  866.^  No  precise  conclusion  can  be  drawn  from 
this,  but  it  seems  a  fair  and  probable  inference  that  the 
number  of  estate  owners  having  more  than  1,000/  a  year 
from  land  was  proportionately  less  in  Wales  than  in 
England. 

^  Richard  Fowler  was  originally  a  London  merchant,  and  held  Abbey 
Cwm-hir  for  the  king  in  1 644  ;  he  was  afterwards  High  Sheriff  of  Radnorshire 
under  Cromwell  in  1655,  and  was  probably  the  father  of  Catherine  Philips, 
"Orinda." 

2  Gardiner,  "  History  of  England,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  112. 

^  See  the  official  list  of  1682,  published  in  Dugdale's  "Ancient  Usage  in 
bearing  Arms,"  etc.  (Lond.  1682). 


HISTORY  OF  LAND  TENURE  IN  WALES,     451 

It  is,  however,  clear  from  the  list  of  baronets  with  their 
description  that  by  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
some  estates  which  have  mostly  become  enlarged  since 
then  (though  they  may  have  changed  hands),  and  which 
were  even  then  considerable  or  large,  had  been  formed. 
Mr.  Lecky  says  :  "  At  the  beginning  of  the  century  {ie., 
eighteenth  century)  there  still  existed  in  England  numerous 
landowners  with  estates  of  200/.  to  300/.  a  year.  The 
descendants  in  many  cases  of  the  ancient  yeomen,  they 
ranked  socially  with  the  gentry.  .  .  .  From  the  early  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century  this  class  began  to  disappear  and 
by  the  end  of  the  century  it  was  almost  extinct."^  Similar 
remarks  appear  to  be  as  true  in  regard  to  Wales,  but  the 
available  sources  of  information  appear  to  indicate,  first, 
that  the  annual  rental  of  the  corresponding  class  in  Wales 
was  even  less  as  a  rule  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  secondly,  that  the  existence  of  this  smaller 
gentry  as  a  class  was  more  prolonged.  The  same  general 
causes  which,  in  the  period  from  the  Revolution  of  1688, 
and  even  earlier,  operated  in  England  to  extinguish  the 
smaller  gentry  and  the  yeomen,  were  at  work  also  in 
Wales.  As  to  the  inferior  gentry  class  it  is  not  possible 
to  trace  in  detail  their  decline.  Owing  to  various  causes 
some  sank  to  be  mere  ordinary  farmers  ;  others  sold  their 
lands  to  substantial  neighbours,  or,  having  mortgaged  their 
interests,  foreclosure  and  ultimate  sale  took  place.  Many 
a  house  that  was  a  small  mansion-house  and  a  centre  of 
social  life  has  become  now  a  mere  farm-house. 

The  whole  tendency  of  legislation  and  administration,  as 
well  as  of  agricultural  and  even  industrial  progress,  was 
in  favour  of  the  larger  estate  owners.  Accumulation  of 
land  in  the  hands  of  the  fortunate  survivors  of  the  mediaeval 
and  Reformation  troubles  was  facilitated  and  encouraged. 
The  estate  owners  of  Wales  had  their  share  of  the  benefits 

"  History  of  England,"  vol,  i.,  p.  557. 

G  G  2 


452         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  ix.) 

conferred  on  the  landed  interest  by  the  rule  of  the  great 
families  and  the  political  system  it  involved,  and  their 
growing  association  with  the  same  class  in  England  led 
to  their  intermixture  by  marriage  and  the  gradual  assimi- 
lation of  the  former  to  the  latter  in  speech,  tastes,  ideals  of 
domestic  comfort,  and  general  habits. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE   RELIGIOUS    MOVEMENT. 

It  is  impossible  to  understand  the  evidence  which  the 
Commission  received  as  to  the  condition  of  agricultural 
Wales,  without  taking  into  account  the  special  ecclesiastical 
and  religious  circumstances  of  this  part  of  the  country.  We 
desire  in  this  chapter  to  avoid,  so  far  as  we  can,  entering 
upon  the  controversies  which  are  continually  carried  on 
between  the  adherents  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Wales 
and  those  of  the  great  Nonconformist  bodies — controversies 
which  have  been  accentuated  by  the  introduction  in  the 
last  Parliament  of  the  Suspensory  Bill  and  a  bill  for  the 
Disestablishment  and  Disendowment  of  the  Church  in 
Wales.  The  existence  of  grave  differences  of  opinion  in 
reference  to  church  organisation  and  doctrine,  and  the  acute 
social  and  religious  divisions  created  by  the  continual  rivalry 
between  different  branches  of  the  Christian  Church,  were 
forced  upon  the  attention  of  the  Commission  at  almost 
every  sitting.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  rivalry  and 
these  differences,  with  all  the  consequences  that  may  be 
naturally  expected  to  follow,  are  very  important  factors, 
even  at  the  present  time,  in  determining  the  relations  of 
landlord  and  tenant.  It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that 
Nonconformity  (including  in  that  term  all  religious  organi- 
sations other  than  the  Established  Church)  is  the  pre- 
dominating religious  power  in  Wales  in  the  sense  that  a 
large  majority  of  those  who  habitually  attend  places  of 


454  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

worship  as  communicants,  members,  and  hearers,  worship 
in  Nonconformist  chapels. 

Much  controversy  has  arisen  recently  as  to  the  numbers 
of  Nonconformists  and  of  Churchmen.  We  have  no  means 
of  obtaining  exact  statistics  upon  the  subject,  and  none  of 
the  attempts  which  have  been  made  to  supply  correct 
figures  can  be  regarded  as  entirely  satisfactory.  Even 
supposing  that  the  question  of  the  relative  strength  of  Non- 
conformity and  Anglicanism  is  properly  to  be  measured 
by  counting  heads,  we  would  point  out  that  in  the  attempts 
that  are  made  to  ascertain  the  facts  the  opposing  parties 
do  not  seem  to  be  agreed  upon  the  terms  of  the  issue. 
Most  of  the  Church  supporters  appear  to  rely  upon  the 
presumption  that  every  one  who  does  not  habitually  attend 
a  Nonconformist  chapel  is  a  Churchman.  Now,  of  course, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  \Qg3.\  prima  facie  presumption 
is  that  every  man  who  does  not  avail  himself  of  the  rights 
given  by  the  Act  of  Toleration  is  a  member  of  the  Church 
of  England,  but  we  need  hardly  point  out  that  in  measuring 
the  forces  of  religious  organisations  no  such  presumption  can 
in  fact  be  allowed  any  weight.  The  question  is  not  what 
number  of  men  in  Wales  are  de  jicre  members  of  the  Church 
of  England,  but  how  many  men  are  de  facto  conscientious 
believers  in  Church  principles,  communicants  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and  attendants  at  its  services.  In  deter- 
mining to  what  extent  in  the  average  Welsh  parish  the 
inhabitants  are  Nonconformist  or  Church  people,  it  is 
necessary  to  bear  this  point  in  mind.  Our  impression  is 
that,  however  the  question  be  put,  the  majority  of  the 
people  inhabiting  the  area  of  the  inquiry  of  the  Com- 
mission are  Nonconformist  and  not  Anglican  ;  and  if  the 
question  be  more  accurately  put,  i.e.,  if  we  ask  what  propor- 
tion of  those  who  habitually  attend  or  connect  themselves 
with  any  place  of  worship  are  Nonconformist  or  Church 
people,   there    can   be  no   doubt   that   the  former  class    is 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  455 

in  a  very  large  majority,  especially  in  the  agricultural 
districts  in  which  the  use  of  the  Welsh  language  pre- 
dominates.^ 

For  our  purpose  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  go  into  statistical 
details.  The  evidence  which  the  Commission  received 
as  to  the  condition  of  things  upon  most  of  the  estates 
in  Wales  convinced  them  that  the  immense  majority  of 
the  tenant  farmers  in  the  country  districts  of  Wales 
were  Nonconformists,  and  that  a  state  of  things  in  regard 
to  religion  was  disclosed  that  found  no  parallel  in  any 
part  of  England  of  equal  area.  We,  from  our  point  of 
view,  do  not  attach  so  much  importance  to  mere  numbers 
as  to  what  may  be  called  the  organic  structure  of  rural 
society,  or  of  the  ordinary  estate  considered  as  an  economic 
unit.  Looked  at  in  this  way  what  we  find  is  :  That  on  the 
most  typical  estates  in  Wales  the  landlord  and  his  family 
belong  to  the  Established  Church,  while  the  bulk  of  the 
tenants  belong  to  one  or  other  of  the  Nonconformist 
organisations.  We  are  not  aware  that  a  similar  state 
of  things  exists  in  any  English  county,  and  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  this  remarkable  fact  has  had  a  powerful 
influence  in  creating  a  marked  divergence  between  the 
opinions  of  the  landowning  class  and  the  mass  of  the  people, 
and  in  emphasising  the  opposing  interests  of  landlord  and 
tenant.  It  is  not  necessary  to  summarise  the  evidence  received 
upon  this  matter  exhaustively.  A  few  extracts  illustrating 
what  we  have  said  and  confirming  the  impression  which 
even  a  superficial  observation  of  the  Welsh  counties  would 
produce  will  suffice. 

^  On  this  question  of  numbers  see,  among  more  recent  contributions,  "A 
Handbook  on  Welsh  Church  Defence,"  by  Dr.  Edwards,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph 
(Lond.,  3rd  ed.  1895),  "A  History  of  the  Church  in  Wales,"  by  the 
Rev.  H.  W,  Clarke,  B.A.  (Lond.  1896),  "The  Case  for  Disestablishment" 
(Lond.  1894).  See  also  "Wales,"  by  Sir  Thomas  Phillips  (Lond.  1849), 
and  "The  Causes  of  Dissent  in  Wales,"  by  A.  J.  Johnes  (Lond.  1831,  new 
ed.  1870). 


456  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

Speaking  in  reference  to  this  matter,  Mr.  John  Morgan 
Davies,  of  Froodvale,  Carmarthenshire,  an  agent  for  five 
considerable  estates  in  the  counties  of  Carmarthen,  Pem- 
broke, Cardigan,  Glamorgan,  and  Brecon,  stated  that  the 
families  of  the  present  tenants  had  been  in  the  same  places 
for  many  generations,  and  that  they  nearly  all  habitually 
spoke  the  Welsh  language,  and  were  Nonconformists  **  to  a 
man  pretty  nearly."  ^ 

Mr.  Lewis  Bishop,  agent  for  the  Dynevor  estate  in 
Carmarthenshire,  informed  the  Commission  that  the  tenants 
of  Lord  Dynevor  were  all  Welsh-speaking  men,  and  mostly 
Nonconformists.  He  thought  that  there  were  about  half  a 
dozen  Churchmen  or  so,  but  that  there  might  be  more.- 

Mr.  Charles  Bishop,  in  reference  to  nine  parishes  in 
Upper  Carmarthenshire,  said  that  the  Welsh  language  was 
"  their  Bible  and  hearth  language,"  and  that  "  by  far  the 
greater  majority  are  Nonconformists."  ^ 

Mr.  John  Davies,  of  Landwr,  Mydrim,  St.  Clears,  speak- 
ing of  the  parishes  of  Mydrim,  St.  Clears,  ILandowror,  and 
others  immediately  adjoining  St.  Clears,  said  they  were 
Welsh-speaking  parishes,  and  that  for  the  most  part  the 
farmers  and  the  labourers  were  all  Nonconformists,  though 
he  added  there  were  Churchmen  in  Mydrim.* 

Mr.  James  Thomas,  of  Troedyrhiw  ILanfynyd,  church- 
warden of  the  parish,  said  that  nearly  all  the  farmers  in 
his  district  were  Nonconformists,  and  that  the  adherents 
of  the  Church  of  England  were  a  very  small  fraction.^ 

Mr.  John  Emlyn  Jones,  of  Penlan  Uchaf,  honorary  secre- 
tary of  the  Tregaron  Farmers'  Club  and  a  teacher  of  agri- 
culture, said  that  in  the  parish  of  Nantcwniie  "...  there 


*  Qu.  37,524  and  37,621-3. 

2  Qu.  38,370  and  38, 544-6. 

=»  Qu.  39,493.  39,5C'3,  and  39,506. 

4  Qu.  41,943,  41.970,  and  41,972. 

'  Qu.  42,056  and  42,059. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT,  457 

are  84  tenant  farmers  holding  over  4  acres.  .  .  .  Oi 
those  84,  24  are  Churchmen,  making  29  per  cent.,  but 
out  of  46  freehold  occupiers  of  over  4  acres  in  the 
parish  there  is  not  one  Churchman  except  the  vicar. 
There  is  one  man  doubtful,  and  I  count  him  a  Churchman. 
That  gives  them  2  per  cent,  of  the  freehold  occupiers."^ 
The  same  witness  further  stated  that  in  his  parish  7  out  of 
every  10  were  Nonconformists,  and  that,  taking  the  country 
round,  three-fourths  of  the  inhabitants  were  Noncon- 
formists according  to  the  best  estimate  he  could  give 
v/hile  as  to  the  Nonconformists  the  proportion  of  Noncon- 
formists to  Churchmen  was  60  or  70  per  cent.  But  he 
admitted  that  this  was  a  guess  or  estimate  made  from 
observation  of  the  immediate  neighbourhood.^ 

Mr.  Owen  Price,  tenant  farmer  of  Nantyrharn,  in  the 
parish  of  Cray,  Breconshire,  said  that  a  very  large 
majority  of  the  tenants  round  Brecon,  where  the  people 
habitually  speak  the  Welsh  language,  were  Nonconformist, 
though  the  Church  was  pretty  strong  in  that  neighbourhood.^ 

In  the  counties  of  Anglesey,  Carnarvon,  and  Merioneth, 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  both  from  the  evidence  and  from 
our  own  observation,  that  on  nearly  all  the  estates,  if 
not  indeed  on  all,  a  large  majority  of  the  tenant  farmers 
belong  to  Nonconformist  bodies. 

The  Hon.  R.  H.  Eden,  the  agent  for  the  Crogan  estate 
in  Merionethshire,  belonging  to  Lord  Dudley,  said  that 
there  were  very  few  Churchmen  on  the  estate.  He  really 
could  hardly  point  to  more  than  one  or  two,  and  we  have 
every  reason  to  believe  that  this  is  the  case  with  regard  to 
most  of  the  estates  in  those  three  counties.* 

Mr.  Wynne,  of  Peniarth,  said  that  the    majority  of  his 

*  Qu.  46,622  and  46,649. 

2  Qu.  46,752-6  and  46,760. 

3  Qu.  50,505,  50,705,  and  50,706. 

*  Qu.  9,116,  9,123,  9,207,  and  9,208. 


45«  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

tenants  were  Nonconformists,  and  stated  that  of  the 
tenant  farmers  on  his  Merionethshire  estate  about  46  were 
Nonconformists  and  16  Churchmen.^ 

Mr.  W.  Cadwaladr  WiUiams,  junior,  of  Bendy  Manor, 
Festiniog,  told  the  Commission  that  most  of  the  farmers 
spoke  Welsh  almost  exclusively  among  themselves,  and 
that,  with  very  few  exceptions,  they  were  Nonconformists 
in  that  part  of  Merionethshire.^ 

Mr.  Morris  Owen,  tenant  of  Mr.  Wynne,  of  Garthewin, 
said  that  most  of  the  tenant  farmers  on  the  estate  were 
Nonconformists,  and  added  he  did  not  think  his  landlord 
cared  what  they  might  be.-^ 

Turning  now  to  Glamorganshire,  the  Rev.  T.  Howell,  of 
Longland,  Pyle,  in  the  Vale  of  Glamorgan,  said  that  in 
that  district  seven-eighths  of  the  population  were  Noncon- 
formists.* Similar  evidence  and  the  information  which 
reached  the  Commission  from  many  sources  confirm  the 
view  that  of  the  tenant  farmers  and  labourers  in  that 
county  a  very  large  majority  are  Nonconformist. 

No  statistics,  no  dry  statement  of  facts,  can  adequately 
explain  the  hold  which  Nonconformity  has  obtained  on  the 
Welsh  people.  It  would  be  interesting  to  attempt  to  trace 
the  historical  causes  which  have  led  to  the  peculiar  ecclesi- 
astical condition  of  Wales,  but  it  is  quite  beyond  the  scope 
of  this  work  to  try  to  perform  any  such  task.  We  must 
content  ourselves  with  only  a  few  general  observations 
upon  the  matter,  which  tend  to  show  the  special  points  in 
the  religious  development  of  the  Welsh  people. 

The  first  thing  to  notice  is  the  opposition  between 
Celtic  and  Latin  Christianity,  which  was  ended  by  the 
triumph  of  the  Roman  organisation  and  the  subjection  of 

^  Qu.  9,448  and  9,459. 
-  Qu.  10,074  3.nd  10,075. 
3  Qu.  14,419. 
^  Qu.  24,926. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT,  459 

the  Welsh  clergy  to  the  Roman  see,^  and  next  the  conflict 
between  the  Welsh  bishops  and  the  see  of  Canterbury, 
which  resulted  in  the  four  Welsh  dioceses  becoming  part 
of  the  southern  English  province.^  So  far  as  the  materials 
permit  us  to  form  a  judgment  from  the  time  that  Latin 
Christianity  prevailed  over  Celtic  usages,  there  is  little 
to  differentiate  the  history  of  the  Church  in  Wales  from 
the  course  of  development  in  England.  The  parochial 
system  was  gradually  introduced  into  the  Principality  and 
the  marches.  The  clergy  obtained  from  time  to  time  con- 
siderable grants  of  land  from  the  Welsh  princes  and  other 
lords.  Tithe  became,  under  the  same  influences  as  in  Eng- 
land, a  definite  charge  upon  land,  and  the  ecclesiastical  law 
enforced  in  the  spiritual  courts  of  England  was  applied 
in  Wales.  A  considerable  number  of  religious  houses  were 
founded  and  endowed  throughout  the  Welsh  counties. 

To  attempt  to  estimate  the  extent  to  which  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Christian  religion  obtained  a  real  hold  upon 
the  Welsh-speaking    population    before   the    Reformation 

^  The  literature  connected  with  the  early  history  of  the  Church  in  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  is  very  extensive.  The  student  will  find  "Chapters  on 
Early  English  Church  History,"  by  Dr.  Bright  (Oxford,  2nd  edition,  1888), 
most  serviceable  and  trustworthy.  See  also  Green's  "Making  of  England  " 
(Lond.  1882),  pp.  310  et  seq.,  and  "The  Celtic  Church  in  Wales,"  by  J.  W. 
Willis-Bund,  F.S.A.  (Lond.  1897).  As  to  the  Church  in  Wales,  see  the 
follov.'ing  papers  in  "The  Transactions  of  the  Hon.  Society  of  Cymmrodorion  " 
for  1893-4  (Lond.  1895)  : — "The  Ancient  Church  in  Wales,"  by  Lord  Justice 
Vaughan  Williams;  "Welsh  Saints,'  by  J.  W.  Willis-Bund,  F.S.A.  ; 
"  Some  Aspects  of  the  Christian  Church  in  Wales  during  the  Fifth  and  Sixth 
Centuries,"  by  the  Rev,  Professor  Hugh  Williams,  M.A.  See  also,  in  the 
Transactions  of  the  same  Society  for  1897-8  (Lond.  1899),  a  paper  on 
"  The  Character  of  the  Heresy  of  the  Early  British  Church,"  by  F.  C.  Cony- 
beare,  M.A.  Consult,  of  course,  Haddan  and  Stubbs's  "Councils  and 
Ecclesiastical  Documents  relating  to  Great  Britain  and  Ireland'"'  (3  vols., 
Oxford,  1867-73),  and  Pryce's  "Ancient  British  Church." 

2  We  cannot  refer  to  all  the  sources  bearing  on  this  conflict.  The  matter 
is  discussed  in  Clarke's  "History"  cited  above;  see  pp.  34-66.  The 
petition  of  the  Welbh  Princes  to  the  Pope  will  be  found  in  Gir.  Camb.,  Optra, 
vol.  iii.,  p.  244. 


46o  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

raises  a  question  of  grave  difficulty,  for  the  answer 
to  which  the  data  are  few  and  uncertain.  As  late  as 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  perhaps  even 
afterward,  there  is  evidence  of  the  survival  of  pagan 
ceremonies  and  notions.^  Probably  bardic  traditions,  which 
were  maintained  with  considerable  vitality,  contributed  to 
the  continued  existence  of  an  ancient  order  of  ideas, 
while  the  effect  of  the  Norman-English  gradual  conquest 
and  the  loss  of  national  independence  clearly  arrested  the 
progress  of  the  Welsh  people.  It  is  evident  from  the 
account  given  by  Giraldus  Cambrensis  that  even  after  large 
tracts  of  territory  had  been  occupied  by  Norman  invaders 
the  Cymric  people  displayed  powers  intellectual  and  aesthetic 
of  no  mean  order  when  measured  by  the  general  standard 
of  Western  Europe  at  the  same  time.  The  breaking  up  of 
their  older  social  organisation,  the  troublous  and  almost 
continual  warfare  that  took  place  down  to  the  accession  of 
Henry  VII.,  appear  to  have  reduced  the  great  bulk  of  the 
Welsh-speaking  people  to  a  condition  of  intellectual  torpor. 
The  real  Welsh  aristocracy,  who  had  been  the  leaders  of  the 
people  and  the  fosterers  of  their  literary  development, 
gradually  disappeared  or  became  merged  in  the  English 
upper  classes.  When,  at  the  end  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses, 
more  peaceable  times  arrived,  the  condition  of  the  Welsh- 
speaking  people  gradually  improved,  but  it  must  be 
remembered  it  was  chiefly  the  landowning  class,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  actual  cultivators  of  the  soil,  that  reaped 
the  advantage  of  the  comparatively  friendly  attitude  of  the 
Tudor  monarchs  to  the  Principality. 

It    is  a    curious  fact    that,  so    far  as   appears  from  the 
sources  of  information  which  we  are  able  to  command,  the 

^  See  Lecky,  "History  of  England,"  ii, ,  pp.  602-3;  Paxton  Hood, 
*' Christmas  Evans  "  (Lond.  1881),  pp.  26  ei  seq.  ;  Edwin  Sidney  Hartland, 
"The  Legend  of  Ferseus "  (3  vols.,  Lond.  1894-6),  i.  149,  176;  ii.  16;, 
175-7,  197  n.,  202,  229,  230,  290,  292-4,  299  n.,  427. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT,  461 

Reformation  produced,  so  far  as  the  Welsh  people  were 
concerned,  little  or  no  popular  excitement.  The  series  of 
statutes  which,  from  the  lawyer's  point  of  view,  constituted 
the  reformed  Church,  produced  little  movement  of  opinion 
in  the  Principality  among  the  Welsh-speaking  people.  The 
aristocratic  families  for  the  most  part  appear  to  have 
remained  at  heart,  if  not  in  outward  observance.  Catholic  ; 
but  by  the  bulk  of  the  population  it  seems  that  the  events 
of  the  sixteenth  century  were  practically  unnoticed.  There 
was  no  Welsh  Pilgrimage  of  Grace,  nor  did  the  statutes  for 
the  dissolution  of  the  lesser  and  greater  monasteries  and 
religious  houses  create  any  movement  of  an  insurrectionary 
kmd  in  the  counties  with  which  we  are  dealing.  The  pro- 
perty of  these  religious  houses  was  bestowed  upon  laymen, 
many  of  whom  were  the  descendants  of  the  Norman 
invaders,  for  small  sums  of  money  which,  even  at  that 
time,  appear  to  have  been  hardly  the  market  value  of  the 
lands  in  question.  In  all  this,  however,  so  far  as  we  can 
ascertain,  the  Welsh-speaking  people  took  little  interest. 
They  were  plunged  into  a  deep  sleep  from  which  even 
the  civil  wars  and  religious  turmoil  of  the  seventeenth 
century  were  only  able  very  partially  to  arouse  them. 

A  statute  passed  in  the  fifth  year  of  Elizabeth  (1562) 
had  made  provision  for  the  translation  into  Welsh  of  the 
Bible  and  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Twenty-six 
years,  however,  elapsed  before  the  work  of  translation  and 
publication  was  completely  accomplished.  It  was  by  the 
meritorious  labours  of  Dr.  William  Morgan,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  assisted  by  other  clergymen,  that  this 
great  work  vv^as  performed.  The  Church  thus  rendered  an 
inestimable  service  to  the  cause  of  religion  in  Wales,  and 
indirectly,  as  pointed  out  elsewhere,  gave  a  new  life  to  the 
language  and  literature  of  the  country.^ 

^  See  below,  p.  505.  "We  ought  to  add  it  is  Dr.  Richard  Parry's  revised 
edition,  published  in  1620,  that  is  the  standard  version.     In  1546  a  translation 


462  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

The  beginning  of  Nonconformity  in  Wales  is  usually 
associated  with  the  names  of  William  Wroth,  William 
Erbury,  and  Walter  Craddock,  who,  having  been  ejected 
from,  the  Church,  adopted  an  independent  attitude,  and 
became  itinerant  preachers  throughout  the  country.  The 
work  of  these  men  and  others  (such  as  Vavasour  Powell, 
Morgan  ILwyd,  Hugh  Owen,  and  James  Owen)  during  the 
seventeenth  century  seems  to  have  been  very  largely  con- 
fined to  the  English  side  of  Welsh  life,  that  is  to  say,  to 
the  towns  and  more  Anglicised  portions  of  the  Principality. 
We  do  not  mean  to  ignore  the  fact  that  many  of  the  Welsh 
Dissenting  causes  can  trace  their  origin  to  the  work  of  these 
active  and  earnest  preachers,  but  simply  to  emphasise  what 
appears  to  be  the  case,  that  the  bulk  of  the  Welsh-speaking 
population  was  untouched  by  their  ministrations.  So  far 
as  the  outward  legal  organisation  went,  the  position  of  the 
Church  in  its  reformed  condition  was  practically  unaltered 
by  the  existence  of  a  very  considerable  number  of  sporadic 
Nonconformist  organisations,  chiefly  in  South  Wales,  at  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century.^ 

of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  the  Creed,  by  Sir  John 
Price,  LL.D.,  was  published.  WiUiam  Salesbury's  translation  of  the  New 
Testament  appeared  in  1567.  Twenty-one  years  afterwards  (1588)  Morgan's 
translation  of  the  Old  Testament,  with  a  revised  edition  of  Salesbury's  New 
Testament,  was  published.  The  first  edition  of  Parry's  revised  translation  was 
published  in  1620,  for  the  use  of  the  churches,  and  in  1630  a  new  edition, 
more  suitable  or  the  use  of  families,  was  issued.  For  the  lives  of  Price, 
Salesbury,  Morgan,  and  Parry,  see  "Diet.  Nat.  Biog.";  Rees'  "  History  of 
Protestant  Nonconformity  in  Wales"  (Lond.,  2nd  ed.  1883),  pp.  13  et  seq.  ; 
"  Bywyd  ac  Amserau  yr  Esgob  Morgan,"  by  C.  Ashton  (Treherbert,  1891). 

'  For  accounts  of  the  men  here  mentioned  (except  Wroth)  see  "  Diet.  Nat. 
Biog."  and  Rees'  "  History."  As  to  the  Act  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel 
published  in  1 649,  during  the  Commonwealth,  and  the  controversy  provoked  by 
the  proceedings  of  the  Commissioners  appointed  under  it,  see  Rees'  "  History," 
pp.  ']iet  seq.  The  Act  is  printed  in  the  appendix  to  that  work  (p.  51 1). 
At  least  106  ministers  were  ejected  in  Wales  in  consequence  of  the  Act  of 
Uniformity  (1662).  Ibid.,  p.  153.  The  first  oti^anised  Nonconformist 
church  founded  in  Wales  was  the  Independent  cause  at  Lanvaches,  which 
dates  from  1639. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT,  463 

The  fact  appears  to  be  that  as  a  result  of  the  historical 
circumstances  rural  Wales  was  at  the  commencement  of 
the  eighteenth  century  in  a  condition  of  extreme  languor. 
What  spiritual  earnestness  there  was,  apart  from  the 
instances  of  exceptional  parishes  and  exceptional  clergy- 
men of  the  Established  Church,  was  due  to  the  energy  of 
Nonconformist  (chiefly  Baptist  and  Independent)  itinerant 
preachers.  The  majority  of  the  clergy  of  the  Established 
Church  contented  themselves  with  a  perfunctory  dis- 
charge, in  a  somewhat  listless  and  inadequate  manner, 
of  their  spiritual  duty.  The  services  were  held  irregularly, 
preaching  in  Welsh  was  comparatively  rare,  and  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  there  was  a  general  neglect  on 
the  part  of  the  parochial  clergy  to  inculcate  the  truth 
among  their  parishioners  or  to  give  practical  instruction  in 
regard  to  the  conduct  of  life.  The  upper  classes,  speaking 
broadly,  were  virtually  English,  and  in  their  manners 
and  social  habits  reflected  the  prevailing  condition  of  things 
in  England.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  one  of  the 
principal  difficulties  was  that  created  by  the  fact  that  in 
most  of  the  rural  parishes,  except  those  of  the  border 
counties,  the  people  habitually  spoke  the  Welsh  language. 
The  stipends  of  the  parochial  clergy  were  so  inadequate 
that  the  type  of  man  who  took  orders  and  accepted  the 
average  Welsh  living  cannot,  upon  the  most  favourable 
construction,  be  deemed  to  have  been  cultured  or  efhcient. 
We  are  not  without  some  definite  information  as  to  the 
precise  condition  of  things  in  the  seventeenth  century  as  well 
as  in  the  eighteenth,  and  this  information  enables  one  to 
understand  how  it  was  that  earnest  and  able  men,  throwing 
over  the  bonds  of  ecclesiastical  discipline,  were  enabled  to 
obtain  a  hold  upon  the  affections  and  minds  of  their 
countrymen  to  the  detriment  of  the  more  formal  organisa- 
tion of  the  Established  Church. 

We  will  give  two  illustrations.     First  of  all  we  will  take 


464  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

an  extract  from  a  report  of  an  episcopal  visitation  made 
by  Dr.  Lewis  Baily,  Bishop  of  Bangor,  in  1623  : — "  ILan- 
fairpwttgwyngytt  and  ILandyssilio. — There  had  been  only 
two  sermons  in  these  places  for  the  last  twelve  months, 
which  were  delivered  by  the  rector,  Sir  (or  Rev.)  John 
Cadwalader.  Penmon. — No  sermon  preached  there  five 
or  six  years  last  past.  ILancJona. — No  service  here  but 
every  other  Sunday.  ILangwyliog. — No  sermons  at  all. 
ILanddeussant  and  ILanfairynghornwy. — The  curate  here 
is  presented  for  not  reading  service  in  due  time,  for  not 
reading  of  homilies,  and  for  not  registering  christenings, 
weddings,  and  funerals.  They  had  but  three  sermons  since 
last  Whitsuntide  twelvemonth.  He  spent  his  time  in 
taverns,  was  a  public  drunkard  and  brawler,  quarrelling 
with  his  parishioners  and  others.  ILanfwrog  and  ILan- 
faethlu. — But  two  sermons  here  these  last  twelve  months." 
These  remarks  relate  to  parishes  in  Anglesey,  but  there  are 
similar  accounts  in  regard  to  Carnarvonshire,  Merioneth- 
shire, Montgomeryshire.  As  to  several  places  it  is  reported, 
''  No  sermons,"  or  only  two  or  three  in  the  last  twelve 
months.  Of  the  clergyman  at  Aberdaron,  in  Carnarvon- 
shire, it  is  complained  that  he  neglected  to  bury  a  dead 
child,  which  lay  uninterred  from  Saturday  to  Sunday,  and 
that  on  one  occasion  when  he  came  to  the  church  he 
seemed  drunk,  and  went  straight  from  the  service  to  the 
tavern.^ 

The  next  illustration  is  furnished  by  "  A  View  of  the 
State  of  Religion  in  the  Diocese  of  St.  David's,  about  the 
Beginning  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  by  Dr.  Erasmus 
Saunders,  which  was  published  in  172 1,  nearly  a  hundred 
years  after  the  visitation  of  the  diocese  of  Bangor,  from  the 
report  of  which  we  have  quoted,  had  taken  place.  According 
to  the  account  given  by  Dr.  Saunders  it  appears  that  both 

^  Seethe   "  Histoiy  of  Protestant  Nonconformity  in  Wales,"  by  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Rees,  D.D.  (Lond.  ist  edition  1861,  2nd  edition  1883),  p.  8. 


J*. 
THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  465 

the  material  and  the  spiritual  condition  of  the  Church  in 
Wales  was  deplorable.     He  states  that  some  churches  were 
decayed  and    ''  do  only  serve  for  the  solitary  habitations 
of  owls  and   jackdaws  ;  such   are  St.   Daniel's,  Castelhan, 
Kilvawyr, Mountain,  CapelColman,  and  others  in  Pembroke- 
shire ;  Mount   ILechryd,  in  Cardiganshire  ;  Aberttynog,  in 
Breconshire  ;  Nelso,  in  Gower,  Glamorganshire  ;  and  others 
in  Carmarthenshire.     And  it  is  not  to  be  doubted,  but  as 
there  are  districts   of  land,   so   there  were  originally  just 
endowments  of  tithes  that  did  belong  to  all  those  several 
churches  ;  but,  whatever  they  were,  they  are  now  alienated, 
the  churches,  most  of  them,  demolished,  the  use  for  which 
they    were    intended    almost    forgotten,    unless    it   be    at 
ELanybrec,  where,  I  am  told,  the  impropriator  or  his  tenant 
has  let  that  church  unto  the  neighbouring  Dissenters,  who 
are  very  free  to   rent  it  for  the  desirable  opportunity  and 
pleasure  of  turning  a  church  into  a  conventicle.      As  the 
Christian   service  is   thus  totally  disused   in  some  places, 
there  are   other   some  that   may  be   said   to  be  but    half 
served,  there   being   several  churches  where   we   are    but 
rarely,  if  at   all,   to  meet  with    preaching,   catechising,  or 
administering  of  the    Holy  Communion.     In  others,  the 
service  of  the  prayers  is  but  partly  read,  and  that  perhaps 
but  once  a  month,  or  once  in  a  quarter  of  a  year.  .  .  . 
The  stipends  are  so  small  that  a  poor  curate  must  some- 
times submit  to  serve  three  or  four  churches  for  10/.  or  12/. 
a   year.  .  .  .  And    now   what    Christian   knowledge,  what 
sense  of  piety,  what  value  for  religion,  are  we  reasonably  to 
hope  for  in  a  country  thus  abandoned,  and  either  destitute 
of  churches  to  go   to  or  of  ministers  to  supply  them,  or 
both  ?       Or   how   can    it    well    consist    with    equity    and 
conscience  to  complain  of  the  ignorance  and  errors  of  an 
unhappy  people  in  such  circumstances  }     They  are  squeezed 
to  the  utmost   to  pay  their  tithes  and  what  is  called  the 
Church  due  (though,  God  knows,  the  Church  is  to  expect 
'i«.P.  K  H 


466  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

little  from  it),  and  at  the  same  time  most  miserably 
deprived  of  those  benefits  of  religion  which  the  payment 
of  them  was  intended  to  support,  and  delivered  up  to 
ignorance  and  barbarity,  which  must  be  the  certain  conse- 
quence of  driving  away  the  ministers  of  religion,  or  of 
depressing  or  incapacitating  them  from  their  duty."^ 

We  might  easily  multiply  testimony  to  a  similar  effect 
as  to  the  religious  condition  of  the  Principality. 

Summing  up  the  condition  of  things,  we  may  say  that 
there  were  an  indifferent  upper  class,  a  clergy  wretchedly 
paid,  of  low  moral  and  spiritual  type,  and  a  people 
ignorant  to  the  last  degree  cultivating  the  soil,  for  the 
most  part  unable  to  read  and  write,  and  habitually  speaking 
a  language  unknown  to  their  superiors  ;  the  fabric  of  the 
churches  in  a  large  number  of  parishes  had  been  suffered 
to  go  out  of  repair  ;  the  discipline  of  the  clergy  was  very 
lax  ;  the  bishops  were  often  non-resident  pluralists  ;  there 
was  a  general  neglect  of  Church  services  and  administra- 
tions ;  and,  lastly,  there  was  no  zeal  and  enthusiasm  for 
religion  either  among  the  clergy  or  their  flocks.  This 
condition  of  things,  due  to  the  historical  causes  operating 
for  centuries  in  the  Principality,  was  aggravated  by  the 
fact  that  the  population  was  by  race  and  language  distin- 
jjuished  from  those  who  ruled  them,  and  still  more  bv  the 
fact  that  the  bishops  and  other  dignitaries  of  the  Church 
who  formed  the  more  educated  portion  of  the  Welsh 
clergy  exercised  little  control  for  good  in  their  respective 
dioceses  and  spheres  of  influence. 

We  state  these  things  not  with  a  view  to  asserting  that 
they  have  any  necessary  relevance  in  regard  to  modern 
controversy,  but  as  statements  of  fact  connected  with 
the    Church    which  tend  to    explain  the  rise  of  Noncon- 

1  See  Saunders'  "  A  View  of  the  State  of  Relii^ion  in  the  Diocese  of 
St.  David's  "  (1721)  ;  Lecky,  **  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  " 
(Lond,  18S8),  vol.  ii.,  pp.  602-4. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  467 

formity  in  Wales  upon   a  large  and   even  extraordinary 
scale. 

Now,  such  being  the  state  of  things  in  the  Principality 
at  the  commencement  of  the  eighteenth  century,  one 
might  have  expected  that  in  days  of  comparative  enlighten- 
ment the  rulers  of  the  Church  would  have  attempted  to 
cope  with  the  ills  and  grievances  that  existed.  Far  from 
doing  that,  the  policy  of  the  ministers  of  the  early 
Hanoverian  sovereigns — a  policy  apparently  acquiesced  in 
without  remonstrance  in  any  effective  degree  by  English 
archbishops  and  bishops — was  one  that  ignored  the  special 
needs  of  the  Principality,  especially  the  necessity  of  sup- 
plying the  Church  in  Wales  with  a  clergy  able  to  speak 
the  Welsh  language  and  to  satisfy  the  spiritual  requirements 
of  the  people.  One  would  have  thought  that  the  dictates 
of  self-interest,  without  considering  higher  motives,  would 
have  led  the  leaders  of  the  Church  party  in  England  to 
encourage  the  education  of  the  Welsh  clergy,  and  to 
secure  the  appointment  to  office  in  the  Principality  of  men 
who  were  able  to  preach  and  administer  the  sacraments  in 
the  Welsh  language.  It  became,  however,  the  apparently 
determined  course  of  action  of  English  ministers  to  appoint 
to  the  Welsh  bishoprics  and  to  the  most  lucrative  offices 
connected  with  the  Church,  persons  entirely  ignorant  of 
the  Welsh  language.  Whether  this  was  due  to  an  inten- 
tional attempt  to  crush  out  Welsh,  or  whether  it  was  due 
simply  to  ignorance  of  the  condition  of  things  in  the 
Principality,  and  to  a  misunderstanding  of  the  vitality 
of  racial  and  linguistic  conditions  among  a  free  people, 
we  will  not  try  to  decide.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  from  the 
time  of  George  I.  down  to  1870  none  of  the  bishops 
appointed  to  the  four  Welsh  sees  were  able  to  preach 
effectively  in  Welsh,  and,  speaking  broadly,  the  episcopate 
during  that  period  was  English  and  not  Welsh,  judged  by 
whatever   test   one  may  be  pleased   to  adopt.      Most  of 

H  11  2 


468  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

the  persons  who  accepted  the  Welsh  bishoprics  during 
the  years  to  which  we  allude  took  their  appointments 
simply  with  a  view  to  further  preferment.  Of  the  six 
bishops  appointed  by  George  I.  all  were  translated  to 
English  sees.  George  II.  appointed  twenty-one  bishops, 
and  fifteen  were  translated  to  England.  During  the  reign 
of  George  III.  twenty-three  bishops  were  appointed  to 
Welsh  sees,  and  of  these  eleven  were  translated  to 
England. 

Another  evil  was  clerical  absenteeism.  Some  of  the 
parochial  clergy  did  not  reside  in  their  parishes,  but  the 
chief  offenders  were  the  bishops  and  dignitaries.  The 
Bishops  of  ILandaff  were  absentees  from  1706  to  1820,  and 
similar,  but  not  such  gross,  instances  may  be  given  in  the 
case  of  other  prelates. 

But  probably  a  still  greater  abuse  was  the  system  of 
pluralities.  The  most  celebrated  instance  of  the  abuse 
of  episcopal  patronage  in  Wales  is  the  case  of  Bishop 
Luxmoore,  who  was  first  of  all  Bishop  of  Hereford  and 
was  made  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  in  181 5.  He  seems  to 
have  regarded  his  office  as  merely  one  of  profit.  The 
bishop  himself  had  several  clerical  offices,  but  it  was  the 
exercise  of  his  patronage  and  of  his  influence  in  favour 
of  members  of  his  own  family  that  forms  the  principal 
indictment  against  him.  The  Rev.  C.  C.  Luxmoore, 
his  eldest  son,  was  (i)  Dean  of  St.  Asaph  (1,988/.)  ; 
(2)  Chancellor  of  St.  David's  (tithes  ^6^1.  with  400/.  a  year 
from  fees)  ;  (3)  Rector  of  Whitford  (902/.)  and  Darowen 
(155/.)  ;  (4)  in  Hereford,  Rector  of  Cradiey  (1,024/.)  ; 
(5)  Vicar  of  Bromyard  (513/.) ;  (6)  of  portion  of  Bromyard 
(1,400/);  (7)  Prebendary  of  Hereford  (50/.);  (8)  lessee  of 
the  manor  of  Landegle,  belonging  to  the  bishop  and  leased 
to  him  by  his  father ;  (9)  he  had  a  lease  of  the  tithes  of 
Landegle  (117/.)  and  of  Landsa  (651/.)  for  life  from  his 
father  for  100/.  a  year.     His  total  annual  income,  therefore. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  469 

was  7,618/.  commuted  value,  which  was  equal  to  9,522/. 
non-commuted  value  ;  also  450/  from  other  sources,  total 
9,972/,  or,  deducting  the  100/  for  the  lease,  9,872/. 

The  Rev.  J.  H.  M.  Luxmoore,  another  son,  held  (i)  the 
sinecure  rectory  of  Lan-yn-yal  (462/)  ;  (2)  the  rectory  of 
Marchwiail  (636/.) ;  (3)  Morton  Chapel  (600/)  ;  (4)  Preben- 
dary of  Melford  (65/)  ;  (5)  he  had  200/.  a  year  as  joint 
registrar  of  Hereford  Cathedral. 

The  Rev.  C  Luxmoore,  the  bishop's  nephew,  received 
(i)  the  vicarage  of  Berriew  (445/)  ;  (2)  the  rectory  of 
Lanymynech  (385/)  ;  and  one  Coryn  Luxmoore  received 
300/  a  year  from  Guilsfield.  The  total  income  from  Church 
sources  of  the  five  Luxmoores,  therefore,  was  about  25,225/, 
and  in  contrast  with  this  it  may  be  mentioned  that  the 
working  clergy  of  the  diocese  of  St.  Asaph  received  only 
1 8,000/^ 

It  is  unnecessary  to  multiply  instances  of  abuses  in 
connection  with  the  Church  system  of  the  eighteenth 
and  the  earlier  part  of  this  century,  as  it  actually  worked, 
or  to  make  further  comments  upon  the  matter.  We 
have  mentioned  this  case  not  with  any  hostility  to  the 
Church  in  its  present  more  active  condition,  but  in 
order  that  the  causes  which  led  to  the  predominance  of 
Nonconformity  in  Wales  may  be  understood. 

The  religious  aspect  presented  by  Wales  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  eighteenth  century,  so  far,  at  any  rate, 
as  the  rural  districts  where  the  Welsh-speaking  population 
chiefly  resided  were  concerned,  may  be  compared  to  that 
of  the  Irish  Church;  and  the  Church  was  utilised  by  the 

1  For  these  facts  see  Clarke's  "  History,"  cited  above,  p.  142  e^  seq.  Cf. 
Spencer  Walpole's  "  History  of  England,"  vol.  i.,  p.  149.  Luxmoore  was  an 
opponent  of  Roniilly's  attempts  to  amend  the  criminal  law  of  the  time.  He  is 
specially  mentioned  by  S.  Walpole  as  one  of  seven  bishops  "  who  thought 
it  consistent  with  the  principles  of  their  religion  to  hang  a  man  for  shop-lifting." 
See  his  Hist.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  133.  It  is  said  Majendie,  Bishop  of  Bangor,  held 
eleven  parochial  preferments  [ibid.,  vol.  i.,  p.  153). 


470  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

eighteenth  century  gov^ernments  rather  as  a  poHtical 
machine  than  as  a  spiritual  force.  The  inhabitants  of 
the  Welsh  counties  were  divided  into  two  classes  very 
unequal  in  numbers :  a  landowning  class,  aristocratic  in 
type,  speaking  for  the  most  part  the  English  language 
alone,  in  close  touch  with  the  same  class  in  England, 
actuated  by  the  same  motives  and  imbued  with  the  same 
prejudices  ;  and  the  other  class  chiefly  cultivators  of  the 
soil,  habitually  speaking  the  Welsh  language,  retaining 
many  views  of  life,  ideas,  and  traditions  belonging  to  an 
earlier  stage  of  civilisation,  lively  in  character,  imagina- 
tive, quick  in  action,  passionately  devoted  to  music  and 
country  pursuits.  Both  classes  appear  to  have  been  equally 
indifferent  to  religious  duties,  and  unconcerned  with  those 
deeper  problems  of  a  philosophical  and  spiritual  character 
which  have  occupied  so  large  a  part  in  the  intellectual 
life  of  Wales  since  the  revival  to  which  we  must  now 
allude. 

In  1735  there  were  only  eight  Nonconformist  places  of 
worship  in  North  Wales  ;  in.  South  Wales  there  were  very 
numerous  Nonconformist  causes,  some  of  them  strong  and 
flourishing,  and  most  of  them  ser\^ed  by  able  and  worthy 
ministers.  But  the  Nonconformity  characteristic  of  this 
earlier  phase  of  the  movement  was  of  a  type  analogous 
to  that  of  the  Independency  and  Presbyterianism  of  the 
time  of  the  Great  Rebellion.  Speaking  broadly,  it  may  be 
looked  upon  as  the  result  of  the  spread  of  seventeenth 
century  Puritanism  in  the  Welsh  counties,  and,  as  we  have 
stated  above,  it  was  mainly  English  rather  than  Welsh  in 
its  character,  and  affected  rather  the  towns  and  the  more 
English  districts  than  those  parts  of  the  country  which 
were  distinctively  Welsh.  It  is  probable  that  the  Welsh 
farmers  and  their  families  had  hardly  progressed  intel- 
lectually as  a  class  from  the  time  of  the  Conquest.  Every 
indication  that  we  possess  shows  that  hardly  any  one  of 


THE    RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  471 

them  could  read  or  write,  and  it  is  clear  that  the  provision 
for  education  was  of  the  scantiest  possible  description. 
Wesley,  writing  some  years  after  the  description  given  by 
Dr.  Erasmus  Saunders,  to  which  we  have  referred,  says  that 
the  people  were  as  ignorant  as  the  Creek  or  Cherokee 
Indians,  and  allowing  for  rhetorical  exaggeration  and 
applying  it  to  their  culture  rather  than  to  their  acquire- 
ments as  agriculturists,  the  phrase  is  probably  true. 

One  is  tempted  to  say  that  the  intellect  of  the  Cymry, 
which  had  been  active  and  progressive  in  the  days  of  their 
independence,  became  practically  dormant  and  non-pro- 
gressive with  the  loss  of  their  cherished  liberty.  The  effects 
of  the  Conquest  arrested  their  mental  development,  and 
what  progress  there  may  have  been  was  confined  chiefly 
to  members  of  the  landowning  class,  to  whom,  after  the 
accession  of  Henry  VII.,  the  colleges  and  universities  of 
England  were  thrown  open,  and  in  a  less  degree  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  towns,  who  were  enabled  to  take 
advantage  of  the  scant)^  and  inefficient  education  afforded 
by  the  grammar  schools  founded  in  some  of  the  boroughs. 
Of  course  some  fortunate  members  of  the  tenant  farming 
or  very  small  yeoman  class  under  exceptional  circum- 
stances went  to  the  English  universities  and  carved  out  a 
career  for  themselves  in  England.  But  from  the  people 
as  a  whole  hardly  a  voice  comes  during  the  centuries 
from  the  Norman  Conquest  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  They  tilled  their  land,  attended  to  their  flocks 
and  their  herds,  married  and  died  in  complete  obscurity, 
without  being  to  any  great  degree  touched  by  the  intellectual 
movements  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  It 
is  obvious  that  we  have  here  all  the  elements  necessary  for 
a  sudden  intellectual  and  moral  expansion.  The  renaissance 
of  Wales  during  the  eighteenth  century  came,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  in  the  form  of  a  religious  revival  which  in 
its  intensity  and  its  consequences  can  only  be  compared  to 


472  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

the  analogous  movement  in  Bohemia  hundreds  of  years 
before,  and  the  awakening  of  Scotland  in  the  sixteenth 
century. 

In  1730  the  Welsh-speaking  people  were  probably  as 
a  whole  the  least  religious  and  most  intellectually  back- 
ward in  England  and  Wales.  By  1830  they  had  become 
the  most  earnest  and  religious  people  in  the  whole 
kingdom,  and  in  the  course  of  their  development  had 
created  powerful  Nonconformist  bodies  stronger  than 
those  to  be  found  in  any  other  part  of  the  country,  while 
the  adherents  of  the  Church  had  in  the  Welsh  districts 
dwindled  down  to  a  comparatively  small  class.  The 
Methodist  revival  which  produced  this  striking  result, 
and  which  in  many  respects  resembled  that  which  took 
place  under  Whitfield  and  Wesley  in  England,  was 
commenced  within  the  bounds  of  the  Church.  Its  origin 
is  usually  associated  with  the  name  of  Griffith  Jones, 
of  ILand'owror,  but  it  was  Howell  Harris  and  Row- 
lands, of  ILangeitho,  who  carried  the  movement  to  a 
triumphant  success.  In  the  face  of  continual  and  violent 
persecution  these  men  by  their  extraordinary  preaching 
aroused  the  people  from  their  lethargy.  W^e  need  not 
give  details  of  their  methods,  nor  the  steps  by  which  the 
work  >Vas  accomplished,  but  in  order  that  the  conditions 
under  which  it  was  carried  on  may  be  understood,  aTid 
to  illustrate  the  state  of  feeling  at  the  time,  we  extract 
from  an  impartial  and  unimpeachable  source  the  following 
facts  as  to  Harris  : — 

"  He  seems  to  have  given  great  provocation,  and  he 
certainly  met  with  extreme  hostility.  He  made  it  his 
special  mission  to  inveigh  against  public  amusements,  and 
on  one  occasion  during  the  races  at  Monmouth,  when  the 
ladies  and  gentry  of  the  county  were  dining  together  in 
the  Town  Hall,  under  the  presidence  of  a  duke,  H.  Harris 
mounted  a   table  which   was   placed   against   the   window 


THE    RELIGIOUS    MOVEMENT,  473 

of  a  room  where  they  were,  and  poured  forth  a  fierce 
denunciation  of  the  sinfulness  of  his  auditors.  The  people 
and  clergy  were  furious  against  him.  I  have  already 
noticed  how  Seward,  who  was  one  of  his  companions,  was 
killed  by  the  mob.  On  one  occasion  a  pistol  was  fired 
at  H.  Harris  ;  on  another  he  was  beaten  almost  to  death  ; 
again  and  again  he  was  stoned  with  such  fury  that  his 
escape  appeared  almost  miraculous.  He  was  repeatedly 
denounced  from  the  pulpit.  The  clergymen  were  seen  dis- 
tributing intoxicating  liquors  among  the  mob  to  excite 
them.  Another,  who  held  no  less  a  position  than  that 
of  Chancellor  of  the  diocese  of  Bangor,  stirred  up 
whole  districts  against  him.  Women  in  his  congrega- 
tion were  stripped  naked.  Men  were  seized  by  the 
pressgangs,  and  some  of  his  coadjutors  had  to  fly  for 
their  lives." ^ 

The  movement  was  fortunate  in  its  leaders.  A  series  of 
great  preachers  continued  the  work  of  Harris  and  Row- 
lands. The  example  set  by  these  men  infused  new  energy 
into  the  earlier  Nonconformist  bodies,  and  in  connection 
with  them  also  a  number  of  remarkable  preachers,  whose 
eloquence  and  skill  in  pulpit  oratory  have  rarel}^  if  ever, 
been  equalled,  arose  to  carry  on  the  religious  work  of  their 
denominations.^  The  result  was  that  by  the  middle  of  this 
century  a  very  large  number  of  Nonconformist  causes  had 
been  created  in  Wales,  a  powerful  and  efficient  clergy  had 
arisen,  and  the  organisation  of  each  denomination  had  been 
brought  to  a  state  of  great  efficiency.  We  are  not  for  the 
moment  concerned  so  much  with  the  religious  aspect  of 
this  movement  as  with  its  effect  upon  the  character  and 
capacity  of  the  Welsh-speaking  people,  and  its  influence 

^  Lecky,  "  History  of  England,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  604-5. 

2  For  the  lives  of  the  more  important  among  the  long  list  of  \Yelsh 
preachers  see  Rees's  "  History."  A  good  account  of  the  characteristic 
methods  of  Welsh  preaching  will  be  found  in  Paxton  Hood's  "Christmas 
Evans"  (Lond.  1881). 


474  ^HE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

upon  economic  and  social  progress.  By  many  persons 
unacquainted  with  the  facts  the  whole  revival  is  looked 
upon  as  one  of  those  manifestations  of  dissent  which 
have  arisen  from  time  to  time  to  disturb  the  peace  of 
an  organised  Christianity.  It  may  be  looked  at  in  that 
light ;  it  was  no  doubt  a  religious  revival,  but  the 
moment  its  inner  meaning  is  penetrated,  the  circumstances 
of  its  origin  and  its  progress  understood,  it  becomes 
apparent  that  it  was  a  good  deal  more  than  that.  It 
was,  in  fact,  the  new  birth  of  a  people.  It  would  be  going 
too  far  to  say  that  it  created  a  new  national  character — 
that,  of  course,  was  impossible  ;  but  it  profoundly  changed 
and  strengthened  the  mental  and  moral  qualities  of  the 
Welsh-speaking  people.  In  the  highly-strung  and  sensitive 
natures  it  produced  a  saintly  type  equal  to  any  afforded 
by  the  literature  or  tradition  of  the  Church.  Among  the 
people,  who,  as  a  whole,  threw  themselves  into  the  move- 
ment, it  developed  intellectual  powers  which  may  have 
before  existed,  but  which  were  only  imperfectly  utilised. 
It  induced  men  who  had  never  indulged  in  speculation 
to  raise  and  to  discuss  fundamental  religious  and  philo- 
sophic problems,  and  stimulated  to  an  extraordinary  degree 
the  argumentative  and  imaginative  faculties  of  a  naturally 
quick-witted  race.^  It  turned  the  attention  of  men  to 
the   art  of  oratory  and   to   the   capabilities    of   language. 

^  In  support  of  this  statement  one  of  us  can  vouch  for  llie  following  story. 
About  thirty  years  ago  an  English  professor  of  theology  and  a  Welsh  preacher 
were  taking  a  morning  Avalk  in  a  very  Welsh  county,  and  sat  down  to  rest 
awhile  in  a  field.  Near  by  two  farm  labourers,  who  were  finishing  theii' 
nwd-day  meal,  were  talking  in  Welsh.  Their  loud  tones  and  excited  gestures 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  visitors.  Said  the  Professor:  "Are  they 
(luarrelling? "  "Well,"  replied  the  Preacher,  "they  are  not  quarrelling 
more  than  is  usual  in  a  debate  on  a  theological  point.  They  are  discussing 
the  question  whether  Christ  had  two  wills  or  one.  The  Monothelite  contro- 
versy is  revived."  For  the  benefit  of  the  professor  the  preacher  translated 
the  conversation  as  it  proceeded,  and  the  judgment  of  the  former  was  that  the 
arguments  urged  by  each  disputant  were  as  subtle  and  absurd  as  any  of  those 
to  be  found  in  the  old  books. 


THE    RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  475 

Fortunately  the  Welsh  translation  of  the  Bible  currently 
used  is  as  good  a  specimen  of  Welsh  pure  and  undefiled 
as  the  current  English  version  is  of  the  language  of 
England.  Practically  every  Welsh-speaking  person  became 
acquainted  in  a  very  high  degree  of  familiarity  with  the 
text  of  the  Scriptures  ;  and,  lastly,  it  improved  the  general 
moral  tone  of  the  people,  though  perhaps  it  made  them, 
when  its  results  were  quite  fresh,  take  a  somewhat  one- 
sided view  of  life  and  of  culture. 

The  principal  result  of  the  movement  may  be  thus 
summed  up  :  First,  it  was  the  chief  agent  in  the  preser- 
vation of  the  Welsh  language.  It  is  probable  that  but 
for  the  immense  impetus  given  to  the  study  and  use  of 
the  Welsh  language  by  reading  the  Welsh  Bible  and  by 
listening  to  pulpit  oratory  it  would  have  more  and 
more  tended  to  die  out  as  the  habitual  language  of 
the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  whole  of  Wales. 
Secondly,  it  led  to  general  and  greater  literary  activity. 
This  is  shown  by  the  increase,  gradual  but  certain,  of 
the  number  of  books,  in  the  early  days  chiefly  of  a 
religious  character,  published  from  time  to  time,  and  by 
the  rise  of  Welsh  periodical  literature  and  Welsh  journalism. 
Thirdly,  it  stimulated  a  demand  for  education.  The  neces- 
sity of  a  trained  Nonconformist  clergy  became  at  a  very 
early  stage  evident  to  the  leaders  of  the  movement,  and 
theological  seminaries  and  colleges  were  founded.^  And 
this  demand  for  an  educated  ministry  in  its  turn  gave 
rise  to  that  general  and  spontaneous  demand  for  education 
for  all  classes  with  which  we  deal  in  the  next  chapter. 
Fourthly,  in  a  smaller  degree,  but  still  by  no  means  ineffec- 
tively, it  did  what  at  an  earlier  date  the  Church  generally 
had  done  for  England  and  other  parts  of  Western  Europe. 
The  Welsh  Nonconformist  clergy,  placed  under  the  very 
gravest  disadvantages   from  the  absence  of  all  provision 

^  See  as  to  the  Welsh  Theological  Colleges  p.  483.  n.  i. 


476  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  x.) 

for  any  education  in  the  Principality,  and  shut  out  from 
the  English  colleges  and  universities  by  the  tests  there 
imposed,  triumphed  over  obstacles  to  a  much  larger  extent 
than  is  generally  known.  It  is  true  that  even  down  to 
the  early  years  and  middle  of  this  century  many  of  the 
Welsh  Nonconformist  ministers  were  deficient  in  scholastic 
attainments,  and  few,  if  any,  could  be  described  as 
scholars  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term  ;  but  in  their 
own  special  departments — in  theology  and  philosophy, 
and  in  regard  to  Welsh  and  even  English  literature — 
many  of  them  attained  a  high  standard  of  knowledge. 
In  all  cases  their  culture  was  so  much  higher  than  that 
of  the.  average  farmer  and  labourer  that  their  intercourse 
with  the  latter  on  social  occasions,  quite  apart  from  their 
religious  services,  produced  a  most  beneficial  effect  in 
nearly  every  district.  Fifthly,  it  operated  continually  in 
the  direction  of  improved  morality.  It  is  admitted 
that  there  is  no  part  of  the  country  more  law-abiding 
and  possessing  a  higher  degree  of  immunity  from  crime 
than  the  Welsh  agricultural  counties.  This  must  be  very 
largely  attributed  to  the  religious  revival.  Lastly,  it  pro- 
duced a  great  change  in  the  Church  itself.  No  impartial 
observer  can  fail  to  be  struck  with  the  immense  improve- 
ment in  the  character  of  the  clergy  of  the  Established 
Church  in  Wales.  In  place  of  the  negligent  and  generally 
ignorant  and  incompetent  clergy  of  the  early  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century  there  is  to  be  found  in  Wales  as  active 
and  competent  a  body  of  parochial  clergy  as  in  any  equal 
area  in  England.  And  it  is  to  be  observed  that  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  among  them  are  persons  sprung 
from  Nonconformist  families.  We  will  not  discuss  the 
question  whether  the  Church  is  developing  its  power  and 
influence  at  the  expense  of  the  Nonconformist  bodies,  or 
whether  the  latter  are  declining  in  power.  We  will  con- 
tent ourselves  with  saying  that  nothing  we  observe  either 


THE   RELIGIOUS   MOVEMENT.  477 

in  the  evidence  or  from  sources  of  information  opened 
to  us  by  our  journeys  in  the  PrincipaHty  support  any 
such  inference.^ 

*  Since  about  the  middle  of  the  century  Welsh  and  English  Nonconformists 
have  been  brought  into  much  closer  touch.  The  high  level  of  excellence 
attained  by  Welsh  pulpit  orators  has  resulted  in  a  considerable  demand  for  the 
services  of  Welshmen  in  English  churches.  Taking,  for  instance,  the  Inde- 
pendent denomination,  and  confining  ourselves  to  men  who  have  passed  away, 
we  may  mention  the  following  instances  of  ministers  who  began  their  careers 
in  Welsh  churches  and  afterwards  became  pastors  of  English  causes  : — Caleb 
Morris,  J.  R.  Kilsby  Jones,  and  Thomas  Jones  of  Swansea  (see  "Diet.  Nat. 
Biog.").  Six  bi-lingual  preachers  have  been  elected  to  the  Chair  of  the 
Congregational  Union  of  England  and  Wales  : — -David  Thomas,  of  Bristol 
(1865);  Thomas  Jones,  of  Swansea  (1871);  Thomas  Rees  (1885);  John 
Thomas,  of  Liverpool  (1885) ;  Herber  Evans,  of  Carnarvon  (1892) ;  and  John 
Morlais  Jones,  of  Lewisham  {1896). 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE   EDUCATIONAL   MOVEMENT. 

It  would  take  an  undue  portion  of  the  space  at  our 
command  to  attempt  to  trace  fully  the  progress  of  education 
in  the  Principalit}',  and  we  must  content  ourselves  with 
only  the  ver}^  briefest  statement  of  the  way  in  which  the 
present  system  has  been  established.  It  ma}-  be  worth 
mentioning  that  in  the  century  that  elapsed  between  the 
conquest  of  North  Wales  and  the  rebellion  of  Owain 
Glyndwr,  a  considerable  number  of  Welshmen  seem  to 
have  gone  to  Oxford,  but  in  the  disastrous  period  that 
followed  its  suppression  this  influx  seems  practically  to 
have  ceased.  Glyndwr  himself,  as  is  evident  from  a  letter 
of  his  addressed  from  Pennal  to  the  king  of  France  in  1405,^ 
projected  the  establishment  of  two  universities  in  Wales, 
and  Henry  VII.  (according  to  a  Welsh  bard  of  the  period) 
promised  to  establish  a  Welsh  university  in  Neath  Valley ; 
but  though  the  dreams  of  Glyndwr  and  the  promises  of 
Henry  Richmond  remained  unfulfilled,  the  accession  of 
the  latter  marked  the  commencement  of  an  important 
period  in  the  social  and  educational  progress  of  the  Welsh 
people.     The  attitude  of  the  Tudor  monarchs  towards  the 

^  See  Wylie's  "  History  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  IV.,"  v.  ii.,  pp.  313-4,  where 
an  account  of  the  negotiations  between  O.  Glyndwr  and  Charles  VI.  of  France 
is  given.  In  a  letter  dated  March  31st,  1406,  from  Pennal,  Glyndwr  suggested 
that  two  universities  should  be  established,  one  in  North  and  the  other  in  South 
Wales,  the  exact  places  to  be  determined  afterwards. 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT.         479 

Principality  was  distinctly  encouraging  and  friendly,  and 
with  the  advent  of  a  period  of  peace  after  the  battle  of 
Bosworth  Field,  the  Welsh  people  found  themselves  able 
to  take  advantage  with  comparative  ease  of  the  educational 
institutions  of  England.  The  Universities  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  and  the  schools  which  had  been  in  the  Tudor 
or  at  an  earlier  period  established,  were  in  a  large  measure 
thrown  open  to  the  sons  of  the  Welsh  gentry  and,  in  some 
instances,  of  the  actual  cultivators  of  the  soil. 

In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  a  considerable 
number  of  grammar  schools  were  founded  in  the  towns  of 
Wales,  and  gradually  attracted  to  them  a  large  number 
of  distinctly  Welsh  pupils.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  one  of  the  features  of  Welsh  society  from  the  time 
of  Edward  I.,  down  to  the  Reformation,  was  the  marked 
distinction  between  the  people  of  the  towns  and  the 
country  districts.  The  towns  were  for  the  most  part  more 
English  than  Welsh,  while  it  was  in  the  country  districts 
that  the  Welsh-speaking  people  were  numerous.  The 
distinction  between  the  Englisherie  and  the  Welsherie 
found  in  the  borough  charters  and  the  oppressive  legis- 
lation of  the  fifteenth  century  long  continued,  especially 
in  the  marches  bordering  upon  the  English  counties. 
From  the  time  of  the  accession  of  Henry  VII.  it 
gradually  disappeared,  and  towns  which  had  been  practi- 
cally Norman-English  garrisons  slowly  became  markedly 
Welsh  ;  but  for  a  long  time  traces  of  the  older  order 
of  things  remained,  and  it  was  not  difficult,  even  at  the 
commencement  of  the  century,  to  find  a  market  town 
almost  entirely  English,  while  the  surrounding  country 
was  occupied  by  people  who  habitually  spoke  the  Welsh 
language.  The  grammar  schools  established  after  the 
Reformation  in  accordance  with  the  policy  of  the  reformed 
church,  no  doubt,  were  attended  not  only  by  the  sons  of 
the  town  burgesses,  but  also  by  the  sons  of  yeomen  and 


480  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

small  landowners,  though  probably  it  was  only  excep- 
tionally that  the  Welsh-speaking  people  availed  themselves 
of  the  opportunities  thus  afforded.  The  foundation  of 
grammar  schools  was  in  the  main  associated  with  the 
Established  Church,  and  they  were  carried  on  under  its 
auspices.  The  country  districts  were  entirely  neglected, 
and  down  to  the  time  of  the  religious  revival  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  it  is  hardly  too  strong  to  state  that 
no  opportunity  was  afforded  to  the  great  majorit}'  of  the 
Welsh-speaking  people  for  the  education  of  their  children. 
All  accounts  show  that  the  condition  of  the  Welsh  people 
in  regard  to  education  was  most  lamentably  backward 
down  to  comparatively  recent  times,  but  especially  so  until 
the  time  of  the  religious  revival. 

The  foundation  of  a  Welsh  university  was  the  subject  of 
a  correspondence  between  Oliver  Cromwell  and  Richard 
Baxter,^  whilst  a  remarkable  atterhpt  v/as  made  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  to  provide  instruc- 
tion in  Wales  in  the  English  tongue,  and  to  circulate  the 
Bible,  the  Common  Prayer,  and  other  books  in  the  Welsh 
language.  The  Rev.  Thomas  Gouge,  son  of  Dr.  William 
Gouge,  with  the  assistance  of  Dr.  Tillotson  (first  Dean 
and  afterwards  Archbishop  of  Canterbury),  Dr.  Stilling- 
fleet,  and  many  others,  formed  a  voluntary  society  for  this 
purpose,  and  considerable  funds  were  collected  in  pursuance 
of  that  object.  The  society,  with  the  assistance  of  Gouge 
and  of  James  Owen,  who  ultimately  became  a  Noncon- 
formist minister,  did  a  very  large  amount  of  good  educa- 
tional work  in  Wales,  and,  according  to  the  funeral  sermon 
of  Gouge,  preached  by  Dr.  Tillotson,  by  the  exertions  of 
the  society  there  were  every  year  eight  hundred,  sometimes 
a  thousand,  poor  children  educated,  while  a  "  new  and  very 
fair  impression  "  of  the  Scriptures  and  Liturgy  of  the  Church 
of  England  was  distributed.     The  work  of  this  society  was 

^  See  "Wales,"  vol.  iii.,  pp.  121-4  (March,  1S96). 


THE   EDUCATIONAL   MOVEMENT.         481 

to  some  extent  carried  on  in  Wales  by  the  Society  for 
Promoting  Christian  Knowledge.  As  early  as  170 1  the 
attention  of  this  then  new  society  was  directed  to  Wales. 
It  decided  in  1707  to  set  up  lending  libraries  in  the  Prin- 
cipality, and  in  171 1  a  supply  of  books  to  furnish  four 
such  libraries  was  sent  to  Carmarthen,  Cowbridge,  Bangor, 
and  St.  Asaph. 

The  next  considerable  movement  in  this  direction 
took  place  under  the  influence  of  the  Rev.  Griffith  Jones, 
Vicar  of  Landowror,  in  Carmarthenshire,  who  was 
admitted  a  corresponding  member  of  the  society  in  17 13. 
It  was  in  the  year  17 30  that  this  eminent  divine  opened 
at  Landowror  the  first  circulating  school.  By  1738 
thirty-seven  circulating  schools  had  been  established  by 
his  agency  in  South  Wales,  in  which  2,400  persons 
received  instruction,  and  by  1739  the  number  in  North 
and  South  Wales  had  risen  to  seventy-one,  wherein  3,989 
persons  were  taught.  In  1746  the  number  of  the  schools 
of  Griffith  Jones  had  risen  to  116,  and  in  1760  to  215. 
The  system  according  to  which  this  movement  was  carried 
on  was,  as  the  name  "  circulating  school  "  implies,  itinerant ; 
the  schools  were  only  carried  on  for  a  short  time  each  year 
at  one  place,  and  the  manner  of  instruction  was  chiefly 
catechetical.  The  instruction  in  the  schools  was  not  con- 
fined to  children,  and  it  appears  that  in  many  of  them 
quite  two-thirds  of  the  pupils  were  adult  men  and  women, 
and  most  of  the  masters  taught  for  three  or  four  hours 
in  the  evening,  after  school  time,  very  many  who  could 
not  attend  during  the  day.  At  the  time  of  the  death 
of  Griffith  Jones  in  1761  these  schools  appear  to  have 
increased  in  number  to  218,  and  as  many  as  10,000  persons 
are  said  to  have  been  taught  to  read  in  a  single  year.  The 
schools  were  continued  until  1779-80,  when,  owing  to  a 
dispute  respecting  the  funds  which  had  been  bequeathed 
by  Griffith  Jones  for  the  carrying  on  of  the  schools,  and 

W.P.  I  T 


SE 


482  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

consequent  litigation,  they  were  closed  for  many  years. 
The  charity  came  again  into  operation  in  1809,  under  a 
scheme  made  under  the  direction  of  the  Court  of  Chancer}- 
on  the  nth  Juh^  1807.^ 

In  the  meantime,  however,  Sunday  schools,  as  a  means 
not  onl}'  of  religious  instruction,  but  of  elementary  secular 
education,  had  originated  and  spread  to  Wales,  chiefly 
under  the  influence  of  Thomas  Charles  of  Bala.  These 
schools  introduced  into  Wales  by  Charles  quickly  spread 
over  the  whole  Principality,  and  are  now  carried  on  in 
connection  with  the  Established  Church  as  well  as  with 
the  various  Nonconformist  bodies.  It  is  unnecessary  for 
our  purpose  to  detail  the  efforts  of  a  voluntary  kind  made 
by  the  National  Society  and  the  British  Society  for 
elementary  education  in  Wales  during  the  first  half  of  this 
century,  but,  as  the  report  of  the  Commissioners  appointed 
in  1846  clearl}'  shows,  these  efforts,  creditable  though  they 
were,  were  wholly  inadequate  having  regard  to  the  increase 
of  population  and  the  exigencies  of  modern  times.  At  the 
.present  moment  the  public  educational  system  of  Wales 
is  equal  to  that  established  in  any  part  of  the  Empire, 
and  is  the  result  partly  of  a  general  movement  throughout 
the  whole  kingdom,  but  in  a  still  larger  degree  its  complete- 
ness and  success  are  due  to  the  spontaneous  desire  for 
education  among  the  Welsh  people  themselves.  The 
modern  educational  movement  originated  among  the 
Welsh-speaking  people  largely  as  an  indirect  result  of 
the  religious  revival  which  we  have  described  in  outline 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  aided  (as  it  undoubtedly  was)  by 
the  literary  renaissance  of  the  early  part  of  the  century,  and, 
so  far  as  education  other  than  that  of  the  public  elemen- 
tary schools  is  concerned,  has  been  principally  fostered  b}' 

'  For  a  fuller  account  of  the  movements  summarised  in  this  paragraph,  see 
"Wales,'"  by  Sir  Thomas  Phillips  (Lond.,  1849),  ch.  7,  pp.  247-314.  See, 
too,  Lecky,  "Hist,  of  Engl,  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  ii.,  pp.  603-4, 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT.         483 

the  remarkable  sacrifices  made  by  all  classes  of  persons 
in  Wales.  Even  before  1846  the  spread  and  success  of 
Nonconformity  had  resulted  in  the  formation  of  seminaries 
chiefly  designed  for  the  education  of  persons  intending  to 
become  Nonconformist  ministers,  to  whom  the  grammar 
schools  of  Wales  and  the  universities  of  England  were 
closed  by  reason  of  the  imposition  of  religious  tests.^ 

^  For  an  account  of  the  principal  seminaries,  see  Rees's  "  Protestant  Noncon- 
formity in  Wales  "  (Lond.,  2nd  ed.,  1883),  c.  8.  The  earliest  Nonconformist 
Academy  was  that  at  Bryntiwarch,  near  Bridgend,  Glamorganshire,  started  soon 
after  1662.  Its  founder  was  Samuel  Jones,  M.A.,  for  some  time  tutor  at  Jesus 
College,  Oxford  (see  sub  novi.,  "  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.").  It  was  on  his  death  moved 
to  Abergavenny,  but  it  was  afterwards  removed  to  the  neighbourhood  of 
Bridgend,  and  the  Rev.  Rees  Price,  the  father  of  Dr.  Richard  Price,  of  London 
(as  to  whom  see  jr«<5  ;«i/z«. ,  "Diet.  Nat.  Biog."),  for  some  years  presided  over  it. 
After  some  vicissitudes  the  institution  was  transplanted  to  Haverfordwest,  and 
thence  to  Carmarthen.  It  was  not  a  corporate  body,  and  its  constitution  was 
entirely  uncertain.  Such  as  it  was,  it  was  dissolved  in  1794  ;  but  a  voluntary 
theological  school,  which  traces  its  origin  to  the  earlier  academy,  was 
re-established  at  Carmarthen  in  1795,  and  still  exists  as  the  '*  Presbyterian 
College,  Carmarthen."  We  give  these  particulars  because  this  institution  is 
directly  connected  with  the  work  of  Samuel  Jones,  and  is  open  to  all  Protestant 
Nonconformists.  The  Theological  Colleges  recognised  by  the  University  of 
Wales  under  its  statutes  are  :  The  Theological  College,  Bala  ;  the  Baptist' 
College,  Bangor  ;  the  Congregational  College,  Bangor  ;  the  Memorial  College, 
Brecon;  the  Baptist  College,  Cardiff;  the  Presbyterian  College,  Carmarthen; 
the  Baptist  College,  Aberystwyth  ;  St.  David's  College,  Lampeter  ;  the 
Calvinistic  Methodist  College,  Trevecca.  (See  Statute  xx.,  and  Standing 
Order  viii.  ;  Calendar  of  the  University  of  Wales,  1898  (Newport),  p,  47.) 
The  Brecon  Memorial  College  may  justly  claim  to  be  an  offshoot  of  Samuel 
Jones's  Academy.  Its  existence  as  a  separate  institution  dates  from  1755,  when 
It  was  established  at  Abergavenny.  After  several  changes  in  the  locality  of  its 
work,  itsettledat  Brecon  in  1836.  (Rees's  "  History,"  pp.  495,  497  ;  "Album 
Aberhondu,"  edited  by  the  Rev.  T.  Stephens,  B.A.  (Merthyr  Tydfil,  1898).) 
The  Baptist  College,  Cardiff,  was  founded  in  1807  at  Abergavenny,  transferred 
to  Pontypool  in  1836,  and  thence  to  Cardiff  quite  recently.  There  was  an 
earlier  Baptist  seminary  established  at  Trosnant,  near  Pontypool,  about  1732, 
which  carried  on  work  for  many  years.  (Rees's  "  History,"  p.  504;  '*  Hanes 
Athrofeyd  y  Bedydwyr  yn  Sir  Fynwy,"  by  the  Rev.  J.  Rufus  Williams  (Aber- 
dare,  1863).)  The  organised  Calvinistic  Methodist  Colleges  are  of  later  date, 
as  the  denomination  separated  formally  from  the  Church  of  England  only  as 
late  as  181 1.  By  its  charter  the  Welsh  University  has  the  power  of  conferring 
degrees  in  the  faculty  of  Theology  or  Divinity  (Art.  xiv.,  7),  and  has  exercised  it. 
Grave  fears  were  entertained  that  in  the  divided  state  of  public  opinion  on  matters 

112 


484  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

It  is  unnecessary  for  us  to  detail  the  history  of  these 
institutions,  but  we  must  advert  for  a  moment  to  the 
Commission  appointed  on  the  1st  October,  1846,  in 
pursuance  of  proceedings  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
the  motion  of  Mr.  William  Williams  of  the  loth  March 
preceding,  for  an  address  praying  her  Majesty  to  direct 
an  inquiry  to  be  made  into  the  state  of  education  in  the 
Principality  of  Wales,  especially  into  the  means  afforded 
to  the  labouring  classes  of  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  the 
English  language.^  The  Committee  of  Council  on  Educa- 
tion appointed  three  Commissioners  (Mr.,  now  Lord 
Lingen,  Mr.  Henry  Robert  Vaughan  Johnson,  and  the 
late  Mr.  Jelinger  Cookson  Symons).  The  Commissioners 
appointed  as  assistants  a  certain  number  of  gentlemen 
possessing  a  knowledge  of  the  Welsh  language,  and 
conducted  their  inquiry  between  the  middle  of  October, 
1846,  and  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1847,  ^-nd  their  reports 
were  published  separately  before  the  close  of  that  year. 
Incidentally  they  contain  a  considerable  quantity  of  material 
which  illustrates  the  conditions  of  the  agricultural  popula- 
tion at  the  time.  It  does  not  appear  that  the  Com- 
missoners  went  beyond  the  topics  included  within  the 
scope  of  their  inquir\^  by  the  remarks  which  they  thought 

of  religious  profession  serious  difficulty  might  arise  in  this  faculty.  In  fact,  this 
has  not  been  the  case.  The  Court  (the  legislative  and  executive  authority  of 
the  University)  established  the  faculty  of  Divinity  by  Statute  xxiii.,  and  created 
a  Theological  Board  (Statute  xxi.)  on  a  representative  basis.  The  duties  ot 
the  Board  are  to  recommend  to  the  Court  schemes  of  study  in  the  faculty,  the 
names  of  examiners,  and  to  report  on  other  matters.  Such  has  been  the 
admirable  sphit  displayed  by  all  connected  with  the  University  from  the  first 
that  nearly  every  form  of  Christian  belief  has  been  and  is  represented  on 
the  Board.  Under  its  advice  regulations  for  the  B.D.  and  D.D.  degrees  have 
been  made,  upon  wl-.icli  the  only  criticism  has  been  that  the  standard  of 
learning  which  they  postulate  is  high. 

^  The  motion  for  the  inquiry  was  made  in  1846  by  William  Williams 
(b.  1798  :  d.  1865),  who  was  M.P.  for  Coventry,  1835-1847,  and  Lambeth, 
1850-63.  lie  was  a  generous  supporter  of  the  Welsh  educational  movement. 
See  App,  to  Report,  p.  43. 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT,         485 

fit  to  make  upon  the  moral  and  religious  condition  of  the 
people,  but  their  observations  aroused  considerable  contro- 
versy in  Wales,  and  were  widely  challenged  by  representative 
men  of  all  shades  of  opinion.^  It  was,  perhaps,  unfortunate 
that  they  did  not  confine  themselves  more  strictly  to  the 
educational  questions  with  which  they  were  primarily 
directed  to  deal.  The  inquiry  became  known  among 
Welsh  people  as  "  The  Treason  of  the  Blue  Books  "  {Brad 
y  LyfraiL  Gleision).  For  a  time  the  cause  of  Welsh  educa- 
tion may  have  been  prejudiced  by  the  introduction  of 
sectarian  and  social  questions  into  their  reports,  but,  on 
the  whole,  the  very  fact  that  attention  was  drawn  to  the 
state  of  education  in  Wales  in  a  very  forcible  manner  was 
ultimately  productive  of  good.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
say  that  the  chief  event  in  the  special  history  of  Wales 
during  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  the  modern  educational 
movement  which  has  culminated  in  the  system  now  existing, 
and  which  may  be  traced  directly  to  the  agitation  produced 
by  the  observations  of  these  Commissioners. 

We  must  content  ourselves  with  a  very  brief  account 
of  what  has  taken  place.  Dealing  first  with  elementary 
education,  we  may  mention  that  the  report  of  the  Com- 
missioners of  1846  disclosed  the  very  greatest  inadequacy 
in  the  provision  for  elementary  schools.  There  were  a 
certain  number  of  schools  in  receipt  of  a  share  in  the 
education  grant,  but  in  many  parishes  there  was  no  school 
at  all,  except  a  merely  voluntary  school  started  as  a  private 
adventure.  To  some  extent  the  opposition  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Nonconformist  organisations  to  the  receipt  of  money 

^  The  Reports  were  criticised  by  Dr.  Lewis  Edwai-ds  in  Y  Traethodylt 
for  1848  ;  by  the  Rev.  Evan  Jones  (leuan  Gwyned") — some  of  whose  essays 
were  republished  under  the  title  of  "The  Dissent  and  Morality  of  Wales,"  by 
the  Rev.  William  Rees  (Gwilym  Hiraethog)  in  Yr  Ainserau  ;  and  by  Mr. 
Henry  Richard,  afterwards  M.P.  for  Merthyr,  in  a  lecture.  See  Mr.  Lleufer 
Thomas'  notes  and  analysis  of  the  Reports  in  App.  to  the  Report,  pp.  43 
ei  seq. 


ftmm^ 


486  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

from  the  Government  for  educational  purposes  [i.e.,  pur- 
poses looked  on  as  quasi-religious)  retarded  the  spread  of 
"  British  "  schools  and  the  securing  for  Wales  of  the  benefits 
of  the  Government  grant.  There  was  a  gradual  improve- 
ment down  to  1870,  when  the  Education  Act  was  passed. 
In  no  part  of  the  country  has  that  Act  been  productive 
of  more  beneficial  results  than  in  Wales,  and  it  may  be 
observed  that  in  proportion  to  the  population  there  are 
a  greater  number  of  school  boards  than  in  any  other  part 
of  England  and  Whales.  The  system  at  work  is,  so  far  as 
elementary  education  is  concerned,  assimilated  to  that  of 
England  in  nearly  every  respect. 

One  of  the  great  difficulties  of  education  in  Wales  dis- 
covered by  the  educational  reformers  was  the  want  of 
adequately  equipped  teachers  speaking  the  Welsh  language. 
Mr.  Symons  reported  that  "  the  meagre  prospect  of  income 
which  presents  itself  to  a  schoolmaster  in  Wales  deters  all 
but  those  whom  poverty  or  want  of  activity  compel  to  have 
recourse  to  so  unenviable  a  status  for  their  means  of  liveli- 
hood.' At  that  time  (1846)  only  one  normal  school  existed 
in  Wales,  and  that  owed  its  establishment  to  the  efforts  of  the 
Rev.  Henry  Grififiths,  of  Brecknock,  aided  by  a  few  other 
friends  of  education.  This  school  appears  to  have  been 
established  under  the  mastership  of  Evan  Davies,  M.A., 
LL.D.  in  1846,  and  was  afterwards  transferred  to  Swansea, 
where,  however,  it  lost  its  character  as  a  normal  school,  and 
was  continued  for  many  yea*'s  as  a  secondary  school  where 
many  Welshmen  who  have  subsequently  distinguished  them- 
selves received  their  education.  In  1862  there  was  estab- 
lished at  Bangor  a  normal  college  for  the  training  of  male 
teachers  for  elementary  schools  in  Wales,  and  the  last  few 
)^ears  have  witnessed  the  development  of  training  schools 
or  colleges,  both  for  male  and  female  teachers,  which  are 
now  worked  under  the  auspices  of  the  university  colleges 
recently  established.  During  the  same  period  Church  training 


THE   EDUCATIONAL   MOVEMENT.        487 

colleges  for  school  teachers  were  established  at  Carmarthen 
and  Carnarvon,  the  latter  being  subsequently  removed  to 
Bangor.  In  1849  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir)  Hugh  Owen  addressed 
meetings  of  school  teachers  and  educationists  at  Bangor 
on  the  importance  of  establishing  a  connecting  link  between 
the  elementary  schools  and  higher  places  of  education. 
This  led  to  the  formation  of  the  North  Wales  Scholarship 
Association,  which  was  wound  up  on  the  passing  of  the 
Intermediate  Education  Act,  after  awarding  upwards  of 
3,000/.  in  scholarships  on  the  results  of  examinations  at 
different  centres. 

Turning  to  intermediate  education^that  is  to  say,  to  the 
kind  of  education  preliminary  to  higher  or  university  educa- 
tion— there  appears  to  have  been  a  gradual  improvement 
from  the  middle  of  the  century  down  to  the  time  of  the 
passing  of  the  Intermediate  Education  (Wales)  Act,  i88g, 
which  has  since  resulted  in  a  complete  system  of  secondary 
education.  Fresh  energy  was  infused  into  the  grammar 
schools,  their  constitutions  were  in  many  instances  improved, 
and  the  character  of  the  teaching  changed  very  greatly  for 
the  better.  In  the  meantime  the  movement  for  higher  or 
university  education  had  outstripped  that  for  the  improve- 
ment of  intermediate  education,  and  the  establishment  of 
three  university  state-aided  colleges  at  once  disclosed  the 
necessity  for  a  further  improvement  in  the  character  of  the 
education  given  at  the  middle-class  and  grammar  schools. 
For  it  was  found  when  the  colleges  began  their  work  that 
the  pupils  who  came  to  them  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  or 
even  later,  were  in  most  instances  hardly  fit  to  enter 
upon  university  studies.  Attention  being  thus  directed 
in  a  pressing  manner  to  the  defects  of  the  provision  for 
secondary  education,  the  Intermediate  Education  Act  of  1 889 
was  passed.  This  Act  provided  for  the  levying  of  a  \d. 
rate  in  the  Welsh  counties  by  the  then  recently  constituted 
county  councils,  and  for  the  appointment  of  joint  education 


488  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

committees  in  every  county,  who  were  to  be  charged  with 
the  duty  of  preparing  schemes  utiHsing  existing  educational 
endowments  and  buildings,  and,  where  necessary,  supple- 
menting them  by  the  establishment  of  new  schools  of  a 
public  character  to  be  carried  on  under  county  governing 
bodies  constituted  under  each  scheme.  Schemes  under  this 
Act  have  now  been  passed  for  ever}^  county,  or  nearly  every 
county,  in  the  Principality. 

It  was  found  as  the  system  was  being  gradually 
developed  that  for  many  purposes  it  would  be  expedient 
for  the  count}'  governing  bodies  to  combine  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent  for  the  carrying  on  of  their  work,  especially  in 
regard  to  using  any  general  funds  that  might  be  available 
for  scholarships  and  exhibitions,  and  for  the  purpose  of 
inspection  and  examination  of  the  intermediate  schools  ;  and 
accordingh'  it  was  proposed  that  a  Central  Board  for  inter- 
mediate education,  controlling  in  some  degree  the  action 
of  the  different  county  governing  bodies,  should  for  those 
purposes  be  established.  A  contribution  of  500/.  a  year  was 
promised  b}'  the  Treasury.  Ultimately  the  scheme  for 
establishing  a  Central  Board  was  laid  before  Parliament, 
and  was,  in  the  course  of  the  session  of  1 896,  passed.^ 

We  turn  now  to  higher  or  university  education.  At  the 
commencement  of  the  century  there  was  no  college  giving 
real  university  education  in  Wales.  A  certain  number  of 
theological  colleges  or  seminaries  had,  as  we  have  seen, 
been  established  in  connection  with  the  Nonconformist 
bodies,  but  from  want  of  means  and  an  inadequate 
conception  of  education  they  could  hardly  be  considered 
as  institutions  of  university  rank.     The  Established  Church. 

^  The  Central  Board  was  constituted  in  the  course  of  1897.  Mr.  A.  C. 
Humphreys-Ovven  was  elected  chairman;  Principal  Viriamu  Jones,  F.R.S., 
vice-chairman  ;  and  Mr.  Owen  Owen,  M.A.,  chief  inspector.  For  a  fuller 
account  of  the  Welsh  system  of  intermediate  education  and  its  history,  see 
vol.  ii.,  p.  I,  of  ''Special  Reports  on  Educational  Subjects,"  issued  by  the 
Education  Department,  1898  (c.  8943). 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT.         489 

which,  as  we  have  pointed  out  above,  had  sunk  in  the  early 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  a  low  condition  in  point 
of  spiritual  energy  and  practical  power,  had  under  the 
influence  of  the  evangelical  revival  in  Wales  and  Eng- 
land considerably  strengthened  its  position,  largely,  no 
doubt,  stimulated  by  the  formation  of  a  Calvinistic  Metho- 
dist organisation,  and  by  the  immense  increase  of  Noncon- 
formity. One  of  the  principal  needs  of  the  Church  at  that 
time  was  the  securing  of  an  adequate  supply  of  Welsh- 
speaking  clergymen  with  a  proper  range  of  theological 
learning  and  general  culture.  Among  all  classes  of  Welsh- 
men this  need  was  felt,  and,  it  appears,  it  was  in  regard  to 
the  necessity  of  training  young  men  for  the  Christian 
ministry  that  the  idea  of  equipping  the  Principality  with 
institutions  giving  higher  education  originated.  It  was 
under  the  influence  of  this  impulse  that  St.  David's  College, 
Lampeter,  avowedly  intended  to  be  associated  with  the 
national  Church,  was  founded  in  the  year  1827  and  incor- 
porated in  1828.  By  charters  granted  in  1852  and  1865  it 
was  empowered  to  confer  the  degrees  of  B.D.  and  B.A. 
upon  its  students. 

Nothing  further  of  an  important  character  was  done  in 
the  direction  of  higher  education  for  many  years  in  Wales, 
though  the  equipment  of  the  theological  colleges  was 
gradually  improved  ;  but  the  general  controversy  about 
education  led  to  the  suggestion  in  1853  that  a  national 
university,  open  to  all,  without  distinction  of  creed,  should 
be  founded.  Mr.  B.  T.  Williams  (barrister-at-law,  afterwards 
judge  of  county  courts)  wrote  an  essay  in  which  the  claims 
of  Wales  to  a  university  were  ably  set  forth.  In  the  next 
year  a  meeting  of  London  Welshmen,  in  conjunction  with 
representatives  of  different  interests  in  the  Principality,  took 
place  in  London,  and  among  those  who  were  present  at  this 
memorable  gathering  were  Mr.  Hugh  Owen,  the  Rev.  Henry 
Rees,  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir)  George  Osborne  Morgan,  the  Rev. 


490  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

Richard  Humphreys,  Dr.  David  Charles,  Dr.  Lewis  Edwards 
of  Bala,  Mr.  Richard  Davies  (afterwards  Lord-Lieutenant 
of  Anglesey),  and  Mr.  Enoch  Gibbon  Salisbury.  To  the 
interchange  of  opinion  at  this  and  similar  meetings  held 
about  that  time,  and  a  little  later,  may  be  traced  the  origin 
of  most  of  the  modern  developments  of  the  Welsh  educa- 
tional system.  The  idea  of  a  university  did  not  take 
definite  form  till  several  years  had  elapsed,  but  the  move- 
ment initiated  by  these  gentlemen  led,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
the  establishment  of  the  Bangor  Normal  College  in  i862» 
which,  in  its  turn,  led  to  a  further  development. 

Mr.  George  Osborne  Morgan  and  Mr.  Morgan  Lloyd,  in 
1863,  convened  a  conference  upon  the  general  subject  of 
Welsh  education  on  the  ist  December  in  that  year  at  the 
Freemasons'  Tavern,  London.  The  meeting  was  held  under 
the  presidency  of  Mr.  William  Williams,  M.P.  for  Lambeth, 
and  subscriptions  for  considerable  amounts  were  promised 
by  those  interested  in  the  subject.  Resolutions  in  favour 
of  establishing  a  university  were  passed,  and  an  executive 
committee  appointed.  Dr.  Nicholas  (who  had  read  a  paper 
on  the  subject  at  the  Swansea  National  Eistedfod  a  few 
months  previously)  was  made  secretary,  under  the  control 
of  Mr.  Osborne  Morgan  and  Mr.  Hugh  Owen  as  hon.  secre- 
taries. Mr.  Williams,  M.P.,  accepted  the  office  of  treasurer, 
and  Mr.  Morgan  Lloyd  that  of  sub-treasurer.  Dr.  Nicholas 
acted  as  secretary  until  1867,  when  he  was  succeeded  by 
Dr.  Charles,  who  held  the  post  until  187 1. 

Negotiations  then  took  place  with  Dr.  Perowne,  Vice- 
Principal  of  St.  David's  College,  for  the  establishment  of  an 
unsectarian  university  college  in  combination  with  his 
college.  Differences,  however,  as  might  naturally  have  been 
expected,  arose,  and  the  executive  committee  were  obliged 
to  pass  a  resolution  on  June  i6th,  1864,  that  further  con- 
sideration of  that "  which  appears  to  us  an  admirable  arrange- 
ment" .should  be  deferred.     At  the  same  time  the  executive 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT.        491 

committee  prosecuted  with  the  utmost  energy  during  the 
following  year  the  carrying  out  of  the  scheme  for  a  Welsh 
university.  No  opportunity  was  lost  by  these  energetic  and 
patriotic  men  of  enlightening  public  opinion  upon  the  matter 
and  enlisting  every  interest  on  behalf  of  the  proposed  institu- 
tion. The  original  idea  of  the  executive  committee  was 
the  establishment  of  a  degree-giving  university,  but  as  the 
movement  more  and  more  took  practical  shape,  it  was  seen 
that  the  best  way  of  attaining  this  was  in  the  first  instance 
to  secure  the  foundation  of  a  college  giving  university 
education  of  a  high  standard,  whose  students  should  be 
encouraged  to  graduate  at  the  University  of  London. 

The  efforts  of  the  executive  committee  being  concen- 
trated upon  this  definite  object,  from  1865  to  1872  it 
made  frequent  appeals  to  people  of  all  classes  in  the 
Principality,  or  those  connected  with  Wales,  for  funds. 
From  1 87 1  until  his  death  Sir  Hugh  Owen  acted  as  secre- 
tary and  organiser,  and  gave  up  all  his  time  to  the  work. 
Buildings  at  Aberystwyth  were  secured  for  10,000/.,  and  the 
college  was  opened  under  the  principalship  of  Dr.  Thomas 
Charles  Edwards,  assisted  by  two  professors,  in  the  follow- 
ing year  (1872).  The  balance  of  the  amount  collected  (about 
12,000/.  in  all),  after  payment  of  the  purchase-money,  was 
applied  to  the  completion  of  the  buildings  and  the  main- 
tenance of  the  staff  until  1874,  when  a  new  fund  was 
created  by  congregational  and  house-to-house  collections, 
local  committees  being  organised  for  the  purpose  in  North 
and  South  Wales.  The  middle  and  working  classes,  espe- 
cially the  tenant  farmers,  contributed  most  nobly  in  pro- 
portion to  their  means,  while  generous  contributions  were 
made  in  London.  For  ten  years  the  institution  received  no 
grant  or  aid  from  the  Treasur}\  The  contributions  of  the 
Welsh  people  to  a  college  which  they  learnt  to  look  upon 
as  national  were  cordially  continued,  and  it  is  calculated 
that  in  all  some  60,000/  were  found  by  the  Welsh  people. 


492  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

The  foundation  of  the  college  had  the  result  of  exposing 
the  inadequacy  of  the  provision  for  intermediate  education, 
and  ultimately  the  leaders  of  the  movement  induced  the 
Government  in  1881  to  appoint  a  committee  to  inquire 
into  the  condition  of  intermediate  and  higher  education 
in  Wales.  The  committee  was  presided  over  by  Lord 
Aberdare,  and  with  him  were  associated  Viscount  Emh'n, 
M.P.,  the  Rev.  Prebendary  Robinson,  the  late  Mr.  Henry 
Richard,  M.P.,  Professor  Rhys,  and  Mr.  (now  Sir)  Lewis 
Morris.  After  taking  evidence  very  exhaustivel}^,  the  com- 
mittee reported  on  the  i8th  August,  1881.  In  their  report 
they  explained  the  then  condition  of  intermediate  and 
higher  education  in  Wales,  summarised  the  evidence  as  to 
its  educational  requirements  and  the  suggestions  offered  as 
to  the  way  in  which  they  should  be  met,  recommended 
the  reorganisation  of  the  Welsh  endowed  schools,  and 
the  formation  of  additional  schools.  It  is  unnecessary 
for  us  to  go  into  the  details  of  the  report.  In  regard 
to  higher  education  the  committee  said  :  "  We  have  no 
hesitation  in  avowing  our  conviction  that  colleges  of  this 
kind  (provincial  colleges)  which  have  been  recenth' 
founded  in  many  of  the  larger  towns  of  England,  are 
desirable  in  the  circumstances  of  Wales,  and  would  be 
found  conducive  to  the  advancement  of  higher  education 
in  the  country.  Amongst  a  people  like  the  Welsh,  who, 
though  defective  in  regular  scholastic  training,  have  a 
natural  turn  for  some  forms  of  literary  culture  and  self- 
improvement,  such  institutions  would  tend  to  stimulate  the 
desire  for  more  advanced  education  by  providing  oppor- 
tunities for  obtaining  it  under  the  conditions  most  suited  to 
the  position  and  requirements  of  the  nation.  The  experience 
of  the  Universit}'  College  at  Aberystwyth,  where  various 
adverse  causes  have  operated,  must  not  be  taken  as  con- 
clusive against  the  success  of  such  colleges  in  Wales." 
They  recommended  that  for  the  present  only  one  college 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT.         493 

in  addition  to  that  already  existing  should  be  provided,  the 
establishment  of  that  college  in  Glamorganshire ;  and 
that  either  Aberystwyth  College  should  be  retained,  or 
re-established  in  North  Wales  at  Carnarvon  or  Bangor. 
In  regard  to  the  constitution  of  the  colleges  they  expressed 
the  opinion  that  they  should  be  adapted  to  the  circum- 
stances of  the  country,  that  science  and  modern  languages 
should  occupy  a  prominent  place,  that  they  should  be 
unsectarian,  and  that  their  benefits  should  be  accessible  to 
women.  As  to  the  question  of  a  degree-conferring  univer- 
sity they  reported  that,  notwithstanding  certain  drawbacks 
and  difficulties,  the  existence  of  a  Welsh  university  would 
almost  certainly  exercise  a  beneficial  influence  on  higher 
education  in  Wales,  and  they  suggested  the  extension  of 
the  charters  of  St.  David's  College,  Lampeter,  to  the  other 
colleges. 

The  recommendations  of  this  important  report  have 
been  given  effect  to  in  almost  every  particular.  In  1882 
an  annual  grant  of  4,000/.  was  given  to  Aberystwyth 
College,^  but  difficulties  arose  as  to  the  adoption  by 
North  Wales  of  the  college  at  Aberystwyth  as  the  North 
Welsh  College,  and  ultimately  it  was  decided  to  establish  a 
college  at  Bangor,  in  Carnarvonshire,  while  in  South  Wales 
immediate  steps  were  taken  for  the  foundation  of  the  pro- 
posed college  in  Glamorganshire.  A  grant  of  4,000/.  to 
each  college  was  promised  by  the  Treasury,  and  generous 
contributions  to  both  were  made  by  all  classes  of  the 
community  throughout  the  Principality.  The  site  of  the 
South  Wales  College  was  a  matter  of  dispute  between 
Cardiff  and  Swansea,  and  ultimately  was  fixed  at  Cardiff, 

^  The  relation  of  the  Aberystwyth  College  to  the  Treasury  was  special.  In 
1882  a  grant  of  4,000/.  was  accorded  ;  but  on  the  establishment  of  the  college 
at  Bangor  in  1884,  this  was  transferred  to  that  body,  but  a  separate  grant  of 
2,500/.  was  given  to  Aberystwyth.  In  1885  the  grant  was  raised  to  4,000/. 
("Reports  from  University  Colleges,"  etc.,  Education  Department,  1897, 
c.  8530.) 


494  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

by  the  award  of  Lord  Carlingford,  Lord  Bramwell,  and 
Mr.  Mundella,  to  whom  the  dispute  was  referred.  The 
college  was  started  at  Cardiff  in  the  year  1883,  and  the 
North  Wales  College  (by  the  award  of  the  same  arbitrators 
as  between  thirteen  competing  towns)  at  Bangor  in  1884. 
A  petition  had  been  duly  presented  for  a  charter  for  the 
establishment  of  the  college  at  Cardiff,  and  such  a  charter 
was  granted  by  her  Majesty  on  the  7th  October,  1884. 
Somewhat  similar  charters  were  granted  to  Bangor  College 
on  the  4th  June,  1885,  ^^^  to  Aberystwyth  College  on  the 
lOth  September,  1890. 

The  establishment  of  the  three  colleges  has  been  ampl)- 
justified,  and  the  number  of  students  has  steadily  increased 
at  each  institution.^  It  was,  of  course,  natural  that  when 
the  three  colleges  came  into  working  order  the  demand  for 
a  degree-granting  national  university,  which  had  never  been 
lost  sight  of,  should  be  revived.  It  was  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Cymmrodorion  section  of  the  National  Eistedfod,  which 
met  in  London  in  August,  1887,  that  the  first  definite  step 

^  According  to  ihe  "  Blue  Book  "  of  the  Education  Department,  published 
in  1901,  containing  reports  from  the  University  Colleges  (1901,  cd.  845),  the 
number  of  students  pursuing  regular  courses  of  study  in  the  Welsh  Colleges 
for  the  session  1 899-1 900  was  as  follows  : — 

Aberystwyth      ........     437 

Bangor  .........     305 

Cardiff 568 

In  October,  1901,  the  number  at  Aberystwyth  was  474. 

The  figures  only  deal  with  university  students.  Cardiff"  College,  however, 
works  in  conneciion  with  the  County  Councils  of  Cardiff",  Glamorganshire,  and 
Monmouthshire.  The  number  of  students  in  attendance  at  the  technical 
school  of  the  county  borough  of  Cardiff"  was  2,716  in  1895-6.  According  to 
the  "  Report  of  the  Principal  of  Cardiff  College  for  1897-8,"  the  number  of 
regular  students  had  risen  to  470,  and  we  understand  there  was  an  increase  for 
the  same  session  in  the  other  colleges.  In  addition  to  the  faculties  of  Arts  and 
Science,  Cardiff"  has  established  departments  in  Medicine,  Engineering,  and 
Mining  and  Metallurgy,  while  Bangor  and  Aberystwyth  have  established 
Agricultural  departments.  (See  "  Report,"  pp.  801-810,  and  Principal 
Reichel's  observations  quoted  on  p.  816.)  Day  training  departments  have 
been  founded  at  all  three  colleges. 


THE   EDUCATIONAL   MOVEMENT.         495 

was  taken.  The  late  Principal  Viriamu  Jones,  of  Cardiff, 
opened  a  discussion  on  Welsh  education  with  a  paper  in 
which,  among  other  things,  he  advocated  the  formation  of  a 
degree-granting  university  to  crown  the  "  educational 
edifice."  He  pointed  out  that  without  university  organi- 
sation it  was  impossible  to  have  a  well-arranged  educational 
system,  and  that  the  efficient  development  of  all  grades  of 
education  in  Wales  was  bound  up  with  the  foundation  of  a 
properly  constituted  university,  which,  he  urged,  would  order 
the  scattered  and  disconnected  results  of  previous  action  as 
a  magnet  arranges  the  iron  filings  within  its  field  of  force. 
The  views  advanced  met  with  immediate  acceptance.  The 
Cymmrodorion  section  passed  the  following  resolution, 
which  was  proposed  by  Professor  John  Rhys  and  seconded 
by  Mr.  (now  Sir)  Lewis  Morris  :  "  That  it  is  the  opinion  of 
this  meeting  that  definite  action  should  be  taken  to  impress 
on  her  Majesty's  Government  the  desire  of  the  Welsh 
people  for  the  establishment  of  a  Welsh  university."  And 
it  was  further  resolved,  "  That  in  the  opinion  of  this 
meeting  a  conference  of  the  representatives  of  colleges, 
intermediate  schools,  and  elementary  schools  should  be 
summoned  in  a  convenient  place  in  the  near  future,  and 
that  the  Society  of  Cymmrodorion  be  requested  to  take 
the  initiative  in  convening  it." 

The  conference  was  summoned  by  the  Cymmrodorion 
Society  to  meet  at  Shrewsbury  in  January,  1888,  and  in 
due  course  the  conference  was  held,  under  the  presidency 
of  Professor  Rhys.  It  was  resolved,  "  That  in  the  opinion 
of  this  conference  it  is  expedient  that  the  provision  for 
intermediate  and  collegiate  education  in  Wales  and 
Monmouthshire  should  be  completed  by  a  university 
organisation,  and  that  the  inspection  of  State-aided 
intermediate  schools  should  be  committed  to  the  Welsh 
university,  due  provision  being  made  for  the  representa- 
tion   of    such    schools    on    its    executive    body ;    that    the 


496  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

executive  committee  should  be  requested  to  make  arrange- 
ments to  enable  the  members  of  the  conference  to  meet 
the  Welsh  peers  and  the  members  of  Parliament  for 
Wales  and  Monmouthshire  at  an  early  date."  This 
conference  with  members  of  Parliament  took  place  on 
the  1 6th  March,  1888. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Court  of  Governors  of  the  Bangor 
College  on  the  27th  April,  1888,  the  following  resolution  (the 
late  Earl  of  Powis  being  in  the  chair)  was  passed,  after  much 
discussion,    on   the    motion    of    the    Rev.    Ellis    Edwards, 
seconded    by    Professor    Rhys  :     "  That    the    Courts    of 
Governors  or  the    Councils   of  Aberystwyth    and    Cardiff 
Colleges  be  invited  to  appoint  four  (subsequently  increased 
to  seven)  representatives  each,  to  meet  an  equal  number 
appointed  by  this  court,  to  formulate  a  draft  charter  for  a 
degree-conferring  university."     In  the  early  part  of  July  in 
the  same  year,  a  conference  so  constituted    assem.bled  in 
London  and  passed  the  following  resolutions  :  "  That  this 
meeting,  representing  the  three  Welsh  university  colleges, 
is  of  opinion  that  the  time  has  come  when  these  colleges 
should  conjointly  apply  to  the  Government  for  a  charter 
for  the  establishment  of   the  University  of  Wales  ;  "  and 
"  That  an  application   be  made  to  the  Government  for  a 
charter  to  constitute  a  university  for  Wales  on  the  same 
general  lines  as  the  charter  already  granted  to  the  Victoria 
University,  with  such  modifications  as  may  be  required  by 
the  peculiar  conditions  and  circumstances  of  Wales."      In 
the  course  of  discussion  some  differences  of  opinion  revealed 
themselves,  but  the  above  resolutions  having  been  passed  it 
was  decided  to  present  them  to  the  Lord  President  of  the 
Council,  and  they  were  accordingly  submitted  on  July  15th. 
Nothing  further,  however,  was  done  for  some  time,  chief!}' 
owing    to   the  divergent   ideas  as  to  the  character  of  the 
university,  to  which  allusion  has  been  made,  and  it  was  felt 
by  those  concerned  that  it  was  best  to  allow  opinion  to 


THE   EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT,        497 

form  Itself  by  continual  discussion,  with  a  view,  if  possible, 
of  arriving  at  practical  unanimity.^ 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Court  of  Governors  of  the  Bangor 
College  on  April  ist,  1891  (Mr.  Wm.  Rathbone,  M.P.,in  the 
chair),  the  following  resolution  was  carried,  on  the  motion 
of  the  Rev.  Ellis  Edwards,  seconded  by  the  Lord  Bishop 
of  St.  Asaph : — "  That  a  committee  be  appointed  by  this 
court  to  consider  again  the  means  of  obtaining  a  degree- 
conferring  University  of  Wales  ;  and  to  deliberate  upon  this 
question,  with,  if  possible,  similar  committees  appointed  b}^ 
Aberystwyth  and  Cardiff  Colleges,  and  with  the  joint  educa- 
tion committees  of  North  and  South  Wales ;  and  to  report 
the  result  of  its  deliberations  at  the  next  half-yearly  meeting 
of  the  court."  The  conference  so  constituted  met  on 
November  8th  of  the  same  year  at  Shrewsbury,  and  it  was 
found  that  the  effect  of  deliberation  during  the  preceding 
two  years  and  a  half  had  resulted  in  the  general  conclusion 
that  the  university  ought  to  be  a  teaching  university  in  the 
sense  that  no  candidate  should  be  admitted  to  a  degfree 
unless  he  should  have  pursued  a  course  of  study  at  one  of 
the  colleges  of  the  university,  and  it  was  also  resolved  to 
appoint  a  committee  to  prepare  the  outlines  of  a  draft 
charter.  The  committee  met  many  times  in  the  course  of 
1892,  and  as  a  result  were  able  to  present  in  a  series  of 
clauses  the  substance  of  the  proposed  charter  to  a  con- 
ference which  met  on  January  6th,  1893,  s-^d  after 
full  discussion,  and  with  slight  alteration,  it  was  adopted 
by  that  body.  In  the  framing  of  this,  the  original 
draft,  a  very  large  part  of  the  work  fell  upon  the  three 
principals  of  the  national  colleges,  the  late  Principal  Viriamu 
Jones,  Principal  Reichel  and  Principal  Roberts,  and  Dr- 
Isambard   Owen,    but  they   had    the   benefit   of   efficient 

^  The  chief  difference  of  opinion  was  on  the  question  whether  the  university 
should  be  a  teaching  university  or  an  examining  Board,  constituted  on  the 
lines  of  the  then  University  of  London. 

w.r.  K  K 


498  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xi.) 

assistance  from  many  men  whose  names  we  cannot  here 
record.^ 

In  the  meantime  Mr.  Acland,  Vice-President  of  the  Council 
in  the  Government  newly  formed  in  1 892,  who  had  for  some 
years  specially  associated  himself  with  the  Welsh  educa- 
tional movement,  appointed  Mr.  O.  M.  Edwards,  M.A.,  of 
Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  to  report  on  the  condition  of  the 
colleges  in  relation  to  the  proposition  for  the  creation  of  a 
university.  Mr.  O.  M.  Edwards  duly  made  his  report,  and 
though  it  has  not  been  made  public,  we  may  assume  that 
it  represented  that  the  case  for  a  degree-granting  university 
for  Wales  had  been  made  out,  from  the  fact  that  when  the 
petition  was  presented  by  the  Draft  Charter  Committee  to 
the  Privy  Council,  it  met  with  ready  acquiescence.  The 
instructions  for  the  charter  having  been  approved  of  by  the 
conference  of  January,  1893,  the  preparation  of  the  formal 
document  was  left  to  Dr.  Isambard  Owen  in  conjunction  with 
Mr.  David  Brynmor-Jones,  Q.C.,  M.P.,  and  Mr.  Cadwaladr 
Davies,  while  Mr.  Maynard  Owen  undertook  to  act  as 
honorary  solicitor  to  the  petitioners.  In  February  and 
March,  1893,  the  charter  was  drafted  in  general  accordance 
with  the  instructions  laid  before  counsel.  It  was  then 
submitted  to  a  representative  conference,  held  in  London 
in  the  latter  month,  and  presided  over  by  Lord  Aberdare. 
After  prolonged  discussion  it  was  adopted  with  slight  altera- 
tions. A  petition  for  the  granting  of  a  university  charter 
in  the  terms  of  the  draft  thus  settled  was  presented  in  the 
names  of  the  three  University  Colleges  to  the  Privy  Council ; 
the  prayer  of  the  petitioners,  notwithstanding  an  adverse 
petition  from  St.  David's  College,  was  acceded  to,  and  the 
charter  as  settled,  with  however  an  additional  clause,  was 
laid  in  due  course  on  the  table  of  each  House  of  Parliament. 

It  met  with  opposition   in  both  places.     In  the  Upper 

*  See  note,  p.  500.     For  the  history  of  the  University  see  "  The  University 
of  ^Vales,"  by  the  late  Principal  Viriamu  Jones,  F.R.S.  (Cardiff,  1896). 


THE    EDUCATIONAL    MOVEMENT.         499 

House  the  Bishop  of  Chester  (Dr.  Jayne),  on  the  29th 
August,  1893,  acting  in  the  interests  (as  he  conceived  them) 
of  St.  David's  College,  moved  a  resolution  praying  the 
withholding  of  the  consent  of  the  Crown,  framed  in  terms 
which  showed  an  imperfect  acquaintance  with  the  pro- 
visions of  the  charter.^  After  a  short  debate  the  House, 
against  the  advice  of  Lord  Knutsford,  one  of  the  leaders  of 
the  then  Opposition,  and  of  Lord  Kimberley,  Lord  Aberdare, 
and  Lord  Herschell,  passed  the  motion.  In  the  Commons 
it  was  Mr.  Bryn  Roberts,  one  of  the  Liberal  members  for 
Carnarvonshire,  who  led  the  attack,  by  moving  the  rejec- 
tion of  the  charter  on  the  ground  that  it  only  provided  fof 
the  granting  of  degrees  to  students  of  the  three  University 
Colleges.  In  a  clear  speech  he  explained  that  his  opposi- 
tion was  based  on  the  contentions  that  the  charter  gave 
privileges  to  three  State-aided  colleges  which  might  be  used 
unfairly  as  against  other  Welsh  institutions,  and  that  no 
opportunity  was  afforded  by  the  charter  for  the  obtaining  of 
degrees  by  non-collegiate  students.  He  received  no  sub- 
stantial support,  and  after  a  brief  debate,  during  which  the 
motion  was  opposed  by  Mr.  Brynmor-Jones,  Mr.  S.  T.  Evans, 
Mr.  Kenyon,  and  Mr.  Acland,  it  was  negatived  without  a  divi- 
sion. Under  these  circumstances  the  Government  ignored 
the  ill-grounded  resolution  of  the  Lords,  and  on  the  30th 

^  The  Bishop  of  Chester  asked  the  House  to  express  the  opinion  "  that  the 
assent  of  her  Majesty  be  withheld  from  the  draft  charter  of  the  proposed 
University  of  Wales  until  such  portions  of  the  aforesaid  draft  charter 
shall  have  been  omitted  as  prevent  the  inclusion  of  St.  David's  College, 
Lampeter,  in  the  county  of  Cardigan,  as  a  constituent  college  of  the  aforesaid 
imiversity "  ("Hans.  Pari.  Deb.,"  4th  series,  col.  1321;.  In  fact,  there  is 
nothing  in  the  charter  to  prevent  the  inclusion  of  St.  David's  College,  or  any 
other  Welsh  college,  in  the  university.  The  Crown,  by  the  charter,  expressly 
reserved  to  itself  the  right  to  make  by  supplemental  charter  any  college  in 
Wales  a  constituent  college  (see  Lord  Knutsford's  speech  in  the  debate). 
St.  David's  College  never  asked  to  be  included  as  a  constituent  college,  and 
the  late  Bishop  of  St.  David's  very  candidly  admitted  that  he  had  made  no 
representations  on  the  subject,  though  he  was  "  visitor"  of  the  college.  The 
House  was  a  small  one.  The  numbers  on  the  division  were  forty-one  contents 
and  thirty-two  non-contents. 

K  K  2 


500  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xi.) 

November,  1 893,  the  charter  was  duly  sealed.  The  petitioners 
(still  actively  represented  by  the  committee  whose  labours  had 
procured  the  charter)  now  found  that  there  was  literal  truth 
in  the  saying  that  "  Nothing  succeeds  like  success."  The 
Court  of  the  University  (the  governing  body)  was  easily  con- 
stituted, as  the  greatest  eagerness  to  join  it  was  manifested  by 
members  of  all  classes  in  the  thirteen  counties.  It  met  for 
the  first  time  at  the  Privy  Council  Office  in  London,  on  the 
6th  April,  1 894,  and  the  proceedings  began  with  a  sympathetic 
address  by  the  Lord  President  of  the  Council  (Lord  Rosebery). 
Upon  his  withdrawal  from  the  meeting  Lord  Aberdare  was 
voted  to  the  chair,  and  the  proper  steps  were  taken  for  con- 
verting the  then  real  but  inchoate  University  into  an  active 
working  body.  It  would  lead  us  beyond  the  scope  of  this 
work  to  follow  them  in  detail.  The  late  Lord  Aberdare  was, 
with  the  unanimous  approval  of  the  Welsh  people,  elected 
the  first  Chancellor.  After  his  death  Albert  Edward,  Prince 
of  Wales,  was,  with  remarkable  enthusiasm,  chosen  without 
a  dissentient  voice  for  the  office,  and  he  having  accepted  it, 
was  duly  installed  as  Chancellor  on  the  26th  June,  1896,  at 
a  "  congregation  "  of  the  University  held  at  Aberystwyth.^ 

•  For  the  names  of  the  ofificers  of  and  full  information  as  to  the  University, 
see  the  "  Calendar  of  the  University  of  Wales  "  (Newport,  Mon.),  1898.  The 
first  Calendar  was  published  in  1897.  In  a  short  sketch  of  a  movement  like  the 
one  dealt  with  in  this  chapter,  one  carried  on  for  many  years  and  supported 
from  different  quarters,  we  have  found  it  impossible  to  refer  by  name  to  all  the 
men  who  have  rendered,  assistance.  Among  those  whose  experience  enabled 
them  to  give  valuable  expert  service  at  different  stages,  but  all  of  whom  we 
have  not  had  occasion  to  mention  in  the  text,  are  certainly  the  following  ; — 
The  Rt.  Rev.  John  Owen,  D.D.,  now  Bishop  of  St.  David's;  Mr.  R.  D. 
Roberts,  D.Sc.  ;  Mr.  Marchant  Williams,  J. P.  ;  Mr.  Ivor  James,  now  Registrar 
of  the  University  ;  Mr.  Geo.  T.  Kenyon,  lately  Member  for  Denbigh  Boroughs  ; 
Mr.  Lewis  Williams,  J.  P.,  of  Cardiff";  the  Hon.  W.  N.  Bruce;  Lady  Verney; 
and  Miss  E.  P.  Hughes.  The  strenuous  support  of  the  movement  by  the  late 
Dr.  David  Thomas,  of  Stockwell,  in  the  Press  should  not  be  forgotten. 
(See  his  life  in  "  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.")  The  late  Earl  Powis,  the  late  Marquis  of 
Bute,  Lord  Tredegar,  Lord  Rendel,  Mr.  William  Rathbone,  LL.  D.  (formerly 
M.P.),  the  late  x\lr.  T.  E.  Ellis,  M.P.,  Mr.  Alfred  Thomas,  M.P.,  and 
Mr.  Stephen  Evans,  should  be  remembered  as  having  been  very  helpful  friends 
at  all  times. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE. 

The  position  of  Welsh  among  the  kindred  languages 
has  already  been  sufficiently  indicated  :  genealogically,  so 
to  say,  it  is  on  a  level  with  old  Cornish  and  with  Breton, 
which  was  carried  over  to  Armorica  by  Celts  who  left  this 
country  in  the  fifth  and  the  sixth  centuries  under  the 
pressure  of  West  Saxon  aggression.  In  all  respects  old 
Cornish  was  the  least  important  of  the  three  sisters,  and 
of  the  other  two  Welsh  is  philologically  the  more  im- 
portant, partly  because  of  the  more  conservative  nature 
of  its  vowel  system,  and  partly  because  of  its  more  exten- 
sive and  varied  literature,  some  of  which  exists  in  manu- 
scripts dating  from  the  twelfth  century.  Welsh  is, 
indeed,  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  Brythonic  of  the 
Ordovices  :  it  is  true  that  it  must  have  been  modified  by 
the  later  people,  who  introduced  the  early  form  of  the 
Powys  dialect,  and  also  probably  by  the  Silures  and 
Demetae  of  the  southern  portions  of  Wales,  and  by  the 
Venedotian  tribes  of  northern  Wales,  when  on  both  hands 
they  gave  up  Goidelic  and  adopted  Brythonic  as  their  own 
tongue.  They  must  have  introduced  peculiarities  charac- 
teristic of  their  previous  vernacular — they  could  not  help 
it.  Nevertheless  the  language  must  have  remained,  as 
we  have  suggested  in  the  first  chapter,  the  same  in  most 
essentials  as  it  was  when  first  brought  to  Mid-Wales  by 
the  westward  conquests  of  the  Ordovices.     From  them  it 


502         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

spread  itself  doubtless  towards  the  north  and  towards  the 
south,  though  the  Silures  in  the  south  were  probably  sub- 
jected to  the  influence  of  the  Brythonic  of  the  tribes  also 
to  the  east  of  them. 

This  state  of  things  had  begun  before  the  Roman  occu- 
pation, when  the  question  of  the  linguistic  conditions 
becomes  complicated  by  the  introduction  of  Latin.  But 
however  much  the  language  of  imperial  Rome  may  have 
prevailed  in  the  towns,  and  as  the  official  speech  of  both 
Romans  and  Br}'thons  during  the  period  of  Roman  rule,  it 
is  probable  that  Brythonic  continued  uniformly  dominant 
as  against  Goidelic,  until  the  latter  was  at  length  silenced 
in  southern  Britain  in  the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries. 
In  the  presence  of  the  Latin  of  the  Roman  occupation 
Goidelic  ma}'  have  appeared  on  a  level  with  Brythonic  ; 
nay,  the  invention  of  Ogmic  writing  and  the  existence  of 
Goidelic  inscriptions  in  that  writing  may  perhaps  be  rightly 
interpreted  as  the  fruit  of  a  transitory  effort  to  rehabilitate 
Goidelic  speech  and  to  assert  Goidelic  nationality.  But,  so 
far  from  Latin  and  Goidelic  having  silenced  Brythonic,  the 
latter  may  be  dimly  descried  as  the  dominant  figure  in 
the  backorround  even  of  Goidelic  monuments  themselves. 
The  grammarian  who  invented  the  Ogam  alphabet  lived 
probably  in  South  Wales,  and  he  must  have  been  familiar 
with  Latin  letters  ;  but  that  is  not  all,  for  he,  or  some 
improver  of  his  system  soon  after  him,  had  to  borrow  some 
of  their  orthographic  expedients  from  Brythonic  phonetics 
and  spelling :  we  allude  to  the  use  of  cc  and  //  for  the 
sounds  now  written  in  Welsh  c/i  and  ///^  respectively. 
Further,  when  a  Goidel  in  Wales  indulged  in  a  bilingual 
epitaph  and  used  Latin  and  Goidelic,  the  Latin  forms  of 
the  names  prove,  in  some  instances,  to  be  not  the  Goidelic 
names  Latinised,  but  the  Goidelic  names  transformed  into 
Brythonic,  and  then  equipped  with  the  Latin  terminations 

^  See  Chambers's  Encyclopedia,    s.v.  ''Ogam.'^ 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  503 

required.  Thus  a  bilingual  monument  at  St.  Dogmael's, 
near  Cardigan,  reads  in  Goidelic  written  in  Ogam, 
Sagramni  maqid  Cicitatami,  and  in  Latin,  Sagrani  fili 
CunotaiJii.  Here  the  genitive  CiLuatami  is  translated  into 
the  Brythonic  genitive  Ctmotavii,  and  probably  the  same 
remark  might  be  made  as  to  Sagramni  and  Sagrani, 
A  still  more  remarkable  instance  occurs  on  a  recently 
discovered  stone  at  Lanfaiiteg,  in  Carmarthenshire.  The 
name  involved  is  that  possibly  of  the  king  of  the  Demetae 
who  is  called  (in  the  vocative)  Vortipori^  in  the  Latin  of 
Gildas,  his  contemporary.  This  we  should,  in  that  case, 
have  to  correct  into  Votipori ;  and  the  presence  of  the 
consonant  p  in  the  name  of  a  Goidel,  whose  language  had 
at  one  time  no  use  for  that  consonant,  is  explained  by  the 
fact  that  the  name  in  the  Latin  form  is  a  Brythonic  trans- 
lation of  the  original,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  legends  on 
the  stone  respectively,  in  Latin  : — MEMORIA  VOTEPORIGIS 
PROTICTORIS ;  and  in  Ogam  the  genitive  Votecorigas.  We 
are  not  convinced  that  these  and  similar  upcroppings  of 
Brythonic  on  Goidelic  ground  can  be  explained  on  the 
hypothesis,  sometimes  suggested,  that  Brythonic  became 
extinct  in  Wales  during  the  Roman  occupation,  and 
was  reintroduced  by  the  Sons  of  Cuneda  and  their 
people.  From  before  the  occupation  began  it  must  have 
existed  in  the  country,  and  more  than  that,  it  must  have 
gradually  spread,  since  it  finally  became  for  a  time  the 
only  vernacular  of  the  west  of  the  Island.  That  it  should 
have  done  so  in  Wales  is  no  more  surprising  than  that  it 
did  the  same  in  the  Dumnonian  peninsula,  or  than  the  fact 
that  there  is  an  actual  Breton  language  in  Armorica. 

For  the  earlier  stages  of  Brythonic  we  have  no  literature, 
but  merely  the  proper  names  of  men  and  places  mentioned 

^  The  latter  element  in  this  compound  occurs  as  a  separate  name  Poj-ius,  on 
the  Lech  Idris  stone,  in  Merionethshire  (Hiibner's  Inscr,  Brit.  Christ iancB, 
No.  131)  ;  and  one  finds  it  borne  by  an  essedarius  who  was  probably  a  Gaul  : 
seethe  G?A^;//^  of  Suetonius,  35. 


504         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

in  works  written  in  Latin  or  Greek  from  the  time  of  Pytheas 
down.  The  earliest  Welsh  glosses  do  not  in  all  probability- 
reach  back  to  the  eighth  century,  but  they  fairly  cover  the 
ninth  and  the  tenth.  To  this,  the  Old  Welsh  period,  may 
be  ascribed  several  boundaries  and  other  bits  of  Welsh  in 
the  Book  of  Lan  Dav,  otherwise  called  Liber  Laiidavensis. 
But  no  manuscript  appears  to  be  extant  in  W^elsh  dating 
before  the  Norman  Conquest,  which,  among  its  other  effects 
on  Wales,  brought  about  a  great  change  in  Welsh  hand- 
writing and  spelling.  The  old  orthography  was  discon- 
tinued and  another  introduced  more  in  harmony  with 
English  and  French  ideas  ;  it  had  also  the  advantage  of 
being  more  nearly  phonetic  than  the  old  historical  spelling, 
which  was  displaced  by  it,  and  which  resembled  to  a  great 
extent  the  spelling  usual  in  Irish  down  to  comparatively 
modern  times. 

The  mediaeval  period  of  Welsh  opens  with  two  manu- 
scripts dating  from  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth  century, 
one  of  poetry  known  as  the  Black  Book  of  Carmarthen, 
and  the  other  of  prose,  namely,  the  Venedotian  Version  of 
the  Laws  of  Wales.  To  a  somewhat  later  date  belong  the 
manuscripts  of  the  Book  of  Aneurin  and  the  Book  of 
Taliessin,  as  to  which,  especially  the  former,  it  may  be  said 
that  the  contents  point  to  an  earlier  period  than  that  of  the 
manuscripts  themselves.  The  sam.e  may  also  be  said  of 
portions  of  the  Red  Book  of  Hergest,  one  of  the  treasures 
of  Jesus  College.  The  contents  of  the  Red  Book  are 
various,  consisting  partly  of  poetry  and  partly  of  prose, 
embracing  the  tales  known  as  the  Mabinogion,and  referred 
to  originals  dating  before  the  fourteenth  century,  to  which 
the  manuscript  belongs.  The  same  remark  applies 
to  some  of  the  Arthurian  stories  which  that  collection 
contains.  In  this  period  translations  into  Welsh,  or 
Welsh  adaptations,  were  made  of  such  stories  as  those 
in  vogue   on  the   Continent  about   Charlemagne  and  his 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  505 

companions,  also  of  the  lives  of  famous  saints,  and  of 
treatises  on  Latin  theology,  such  as  that  of  the  Elucidarium, 
put  into  Welsh  by  an  anchorite  of  Landewi  Brefi  in  the  year 
1346.^  The  greatest  poet  of  this  period  was  Dafyd  ab 
Gwilym,  who  ma)'  be  regarded  as  a  Welsh  troubadour, 
whose  lyric  muse  was  devoted  to  singing  what  the  French 
called  the  Amour  Coiirtois.  The  nature  of  that  theme,  and 
possibly  other  reasons  which  are  not  recorded,  made 
Dafyd  and  the  monks  of  his  time  sworn  foes,  a  fact  which 
cannot  be  construed  wholly  to  the  discredit  of  the  monks 
and  the  clergy  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

W^ith  the  Reformation  began  another  period,  characterised 
by  the  publication  in  the  Welsh  language  of  the  Anglican 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  the  New  Testament,  and  then 
the  whole  of  the  Bible.  These  were  followed  by  various 
works,  both  original  and  translated,  on  theological  and 
religious  subjects.  But  the  men  engaged  in  the  translation 
of  Holy  Writ  complained  of  the  low  ebb  at  which  they 
found  their  countrymen's  knowledge  of  their  language  and 
its  literature.  Among  others  may  be  mentioned  Richard 
Davies,  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  who  utters  this  complaint 
repeatedly  in  his  "  Letter  to  the  Cymry,"  prefixed  by  William 
Salesbury,  his  friend  and  collaborator,  to  his  New  Testa- 
ment printed  in  London  in  the  year  1567.  The  publication 
of  the  Scriptures  in  Welsh  made  little  difference  in  this 
respect  until,  at  any  rate,  an  inexpensive  edition  had  been 
a  long  time  in  print,  namely,  the  five-shilling  Bible  issued 
in  1630,  and  recommended  to  the  people  with  all  the 
fervour  of  his  eloquence  by  Vicar  Prichard.  The  Vicar's 
own  version  of  the  teaching  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church 
put  into  easy  verse,  and  entitled  Camvyti  y  Cymry — "  The 
Candle  of  the  Cymry  " — was  not  comipletely  published  till 

1  The  whole  manuscript,  the  property  of  Jesus  College,  has  been  edited  by 
Jones  and  Rhys,  and  published  in  1894  by  the  Clarendon  Press  in  its  quarto 
series  of  "  Anecdota  Oxoniensia." 


5o6  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

1672,  nearly  thirty  years  after  the  author's  death  ;  but  it 
was  destined  to  exercise  great  influence  over  his  country- 
men. Nevertheless  one  finds  the  language  reaching  its 
lowest  depth  of  neglect  towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century.^ 

The  actual  or  current  period  of  Welsh  may  c*f^T>\^eniently 
be  regarded  as  opening  with  the  establishment  of  the 
Sunday  School,  which,  originating  in  England,  is  regarded 
as  introduced  to  Wales  by  the  Rev.  Thomas  Charles,  of 
Bala,  about  the  year  1785.-  Charles  was  educated  at 
Jesus  College,  and  ordained  deacon  in  the  Church  of 
England  in  1778.  His  career  was  somewhat  like  that  of 
Wesley,  and  he  became  practically  one  of  the  principal 
founders  of  one  of  the  most  influential  and  powerful 
religious  bodies  in  the  Principality,  the  Calvinistic  Metho- 
dists or  W^elsh  Presbyterians.  It  was  a  time  of  religious 
revival  in  Wales,  and  the  ground  was  prepared  for 
Charles's  labours  by  the  earnestness  and  eloquence  of  the 
Rev.  Daniel  Rowlands,  of  Langeitho,  and  the  genius- 
of  the  Rev.  William  Williams,  of  Pant  y  Celyn,  the 
chief  of  Welsh  hymnologists  ;  not  to  mention  other  men 

^  For  valuable  information  on  this  and  several  other  questions  touched  upon 
in  this  chapter,  we  gladly  acknowledge  our  indebtedness  to  Mr.  Ivor  James's- 
brochure,  already  mentioned  :  see  more  especially  pp.  5-8,  18,  19,  22,  39. 

-  See  a  monograph  by  the  Rev.  D.  Evans,  M.A.,  of  Barmouth,  on  "  The 
Sunday  Schools  of  Wales"  (London,  1883),  in  which  the  date  of  Charles's 
Schools  is  clearly  established.  Some  writers  have  endeavoured  to  prove  the 
previous  existence  of  Sunday  Schools  in  Wales,  e.g.,  "  Morien  "  in  a  series  of 
articles  published  in  the  Western  Mail  of  June,  iSSo,  and  the  late  Dr.  Rees,  of 
Swansea,  in  his  "  History  of  Protestant  Nonconformity  in  Wales,"  1883,  p,  394. 
The  latter,  however,  admits  that  the  schools  which  he  mentions  "  were  properly 
catechetical  meetings,  such  as  every  nonconforming  church  in  that  age  held 
regularly  every  week," and  not  "  Sunday  Schools  in  the  modern  form."  There 
is,  however,  scarcely  any  doubt  that  an  occasional  Sunday  School  had  been 
established  in  Wales  before  1785,  the  best  authenticated  instance,  perhaps^ 
being  that  conducted  by  Jenkin  Morgan  on  Sunday  evenings  from  1770  onwards 
at  Crawlom,  near  Lanidloes ;  but  to  Charles  belongs  the  honour  of  having, 
begun  the  type  of  schools  which  spread  and  lived  in  Wales. 


LANGUAGE   AND    LITERATURE.  507 

of  lesser  fame,  but  of  hardly  less  influence  over  their 
countrymen  in  a  generation  which  was  passing  away  as 
Charles  was  attaining  to  the  full  enjoyment  of  his 
powers.  As  one  of  the  events  of  his  life  may  be  regarded 
the  publication  of  his  Geiriadur  Ysgrythyrol  or  Scripture 
Dictionary,  in  181 1,  and  his  Sunday  Schools  were  intended 
to  be  devoted  to  the  reading  and  exposition  of  Scripture. 
Charles's  schools  (like  those  of  Griffith  Jones,  of  Lan- 
dowror)  were  in  the  first  instance  day-schools  stationed 
for  fixed  periods  at  various  centres,  and  their  chief  object 
was  to  teach  people  to  read.  These  circulatory  schools 
were  conducted  by  men  who  regarded  it  as  part  of  their 
duties  to  carry  on  evangelistic  work  in  the  districts  where  for 
their  allotted  time  they  remained  as  teachers.  From  their 
point  of  view,  children  and  young  people  were  taught  to  read, 
chiefly,  that  they  might  peruse  the  Scriptures  themselves. 

As  there  were  many  unable  to  read  who  could  not 
attend  school  on  week-days,  these  teachers,  supported 
by  the  influence  of  Thomas  Charles,  took  the  bold 
course  of  combining  their  efforts  on  Sundays,  for  the 
sake  of  such  as  could  not  attend  on  week-days ;  and,  to 
speak  with  more  precision,  this  was  the  real  origin  of  the 
Welsh  Sunday  School  of  Wales.  The  teachers  would  not 
have  worked  in  this  way  without  the  religious  motive 
which  in  their  minds  justified  the  new  departure.  Their 
labours  in  this  new  form  met  with  strong  resistance,  and 
were  extremely  unpopular  with  the  stricter  portion  of  the 
congregations.  But  amid  the  fire  of  opposition  the  Sunday 
toil  took  more  definite  shape  in  the  matter  of  Scripture 
reading  and  catechetical  work,  the  more  elementary  task 
of  teaching  mere  reading  being  confined  to  children.  But 
there  must  have  intervened  a  period  when  these  efforts, 
mainly  on  the  part  of  the  teachers  paid  by  the  funds 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  Charles,  were  sporadic.  This 
was   an   interval  of  four  or  five  years,  between   1785  and 


5o8  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,   xii.; 

1789.  By  the  latter  date  Sunday  Schools  had  become 
common,  conducted  by  teachers  and  superintendents  from 
among  the  people  themselves.  Nevertheless,  owing  to  the 
strong  prejudice  that  had  still  to  be  encountered,  the  full 
tide  of  success  did  not  come  until  about  the  year  1807-8, 
when  Thomas  Charles  started  the  large  gatherings  called 
Cymanfaoe'd  Ysgolioji,  or  School  Associations.  After  this, 
opposition  gradually  died  away  and  the  institution  found, 
on  the  whole,  a  fair  course.  Sunday  Schools  continue  to 
be  conducted  on  the  same  lines  in  Wales,  and  they  retain 
the  peculiarity  that  they  are  attended  by  men  and  women 
of  all  ages.  Moreover,  they  form  an  institution  recognised 
and  encouraged  by  all  Protestant  denominations  alike. 
Their  importance  from  the  point  of  view  of  Welsh  and  its 
literature  consists  in  the  fact  that  the  Welsh  are  taught  in 
these  schools  to  read  in  their  own  tongue.  The  work  done 
in  them,  it  is  true,  extends  further,  namely,  to  the  exposi- 
tion of  the  words  of  Scripture,  the  only  text  read  in  them  ; 
but  it  does  not  come  within  the  scope  of  that  work  to 
do  anything  directly  to  teach  the  people  to  write  their 
language  or  to  compose  in  it.  So  it  happened  that,  before 
the  Elementary  Education  Act  of  1870  had  been  some 
years  in  force,  it  was  a  common  thing  for  numbers  of 
Welsh  people  of  both  sexes  to  be  able  to  read  Welsh  in 
print,  but  not  in  ordinary  handwriting. 

The  work  of  the  Sunday  School  covers  the  whole  extent 
to  which  the  bulk  of  Welsh  people  are  taught  Welsh  at  all 
outside  their  hearths  and  homes  ;  for  the  public  elementary 
schools  have  till  lately  been  almost  wholly  devoted,  so  far 
as  language  is  concerned,  to  the  teaching  of  English,  and 
the  great  majority  of  them  continue  so,  though  the  Code 
now  recognises  Welsh  as  an  optional  and  special  subject. 
Looking  at  the  Sunday-school  teaching  of  Welsh  as  a 
whole,  one  may  say  that  the  edifice  is  in  a  manner  made 
complete    by    the    role   played   by    literary    societies,  and 


LANGUAGE   AND    LITERATURE.  509 

literary  competitions  in  which  prizes  are  given  for 
singing,  for  writing  Welsh,  both  prose  and  verse,  and  for 
translating  from  English  into  Welsh,  and  vzce  versa. 
These  competitions  do  not  occur  more  than  once  a  year 
even  in  the  neighbourhoods  where  they  are  the  rule  ;  and, 
speaking  generally,  they  are  sporadic  and  depend  for  their 
origination  on  individuals  who  feel  interested  in  Welsh 
and  Welsh  music.  They  are  altogether  a  very  indefinite 
quantity,  but  literary  societies  have  been  of  late  becoming 
more  general  and  somewhat  more  permanent.  They  all 
serve,  however,  as  feeders  to  the  Eistedfod,  and  they  have 
in  recent  years  exercised  great  influence  on  the  cultivation 
of  Welsh  and  Welsh  literature.  It  is  needless  to  remark 
that,  so  far  as  regards  Welsh  prose,  the  style  of  the 
authorised  version  of  the  Welsh  Bible  is  the  ideal  of  those 
who  try  to  write  and  speak  good  Welsh.  The  fact  that  the 
Bible  forms  the  earliest  prose  reading  of  the  youth  of  Wales, 
and  that  they  commit  a  great  deal  to  memory  under  the 
direction  of  the  Sunday  School,  makes  that  result  unavoid- 
able ;  and  this  is  not  to  be  deplored,  as  the  style  of  the 
Welsh  Bible  is  on  the  whole  excellent.  But  this  literary 
or  standard  Welsh  is  practically  a  dialect  to  itself,  distinct 
from  the  colloquial  language  consisting  of  the  dialects 
mentioned  in  the  chapter  on  the  ethnology — as  distinct 
as  standard  English  is  from  the  dialects,  let  us  say,  of 
Somerset  or  Lancashire  ;  but  it  is  familiar  to  the  people 
from  reading  their  Bible,  and  from  listening  to  their  best 
public  speakers.  In  fact  they  would  regard  the  colloquial 
placed  in  the  position  of  the  literary  language  as  a  viola- 
tion of  their  sense  of  dignity,  though  they  might  condone 
a  certain  margin  of  deviation  from  the  literary  style  in  the 
direction  of  the  speaker's  own  dialect.  It  is  somewhat  the 
same  as  regards  a  country  gentleman,  let  us  say  a  landed 
proprietor  or  the  squire,  who  learns  Welsh  in  order  to  be 
able  to  converse  with  the  men   in  his  employ.     Thus    if 


510  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

he  addresses  them  in  Hterary  Welsh,  he  commands  their 
respect  without  appearing  too  affable  or  provoking 
familiarity,  but  if  he  learns  his  Welsh  from  a  stable-boy, 
his  style  of  speaking  provokes  derision.  For  the  Welsh 
have  a  keen  sense  of  the  dignity  of  speech,  and  what  would 
strike  them  as  most  congruous  under  the  circumstances 
would  be  a  conversational  style  pitched  perhaps  between 
book  Welsh  and  their  own  domestic  colloquial.  An  educated 
man  talking  the  latter  would  not  be  willingly  listened  to 
unless  he  happened  to  have  a  fascinating  sense  of  humour  : 
his  language  as  such  would  not  command  a  hearing. 

Unfortunately  this  position  of  supremacy  of  literary 
Welsh  is  now  more  and  more  contested  by  the  shoddy 
Welsh  which  prevails  in  many  of  the  newspapers  published 
in  Welsh.  Possibly  the  tendency  of  journalism  generally, 
with  the  hurry  and  scramble  attendant  on  its  periodicity, 
is  in  the  direction  of  inaccuracy  of  language  and  a  loose 
application  of  its  terms.  Perhaps  the  French,  who  take 
much  trouble  thoroughly  to  master  their  own  language, 
are  the  nation  most  successful  in  resisting  the  tendency 
to  this  kind  of  degeneration.  It  exists  undoubtedly  in 
English,  and  it  does  in  Welsh  ;  but  that  is  not  the  whole  ot 
the  evil  in  the  case  of  Welsh,  for  it  is  found  to  be  the 
readiest  way  to  fill  the  blanks  of  a  Welsh  newspaper  to 
translate  from  English  ones.  Now  translation  is  never  satis- 
factory from  the  point  of  view  of  the  language  into  which 
it  is  made,  unless  it  is  by  men  who  are  competent  and 
not  too  hard  pressed  for  time.  Neither  of  these  is  always 
one  of  the  conditions  under  which  English  ideas  appear 
in  Welsh  journals.  Sometimes  the  translator  is  wofuUy 
restricted  in  the  matter  of  vocabulary,  but  his  most  grievous 
sins  are  to  be  found  in  the  foreign  idioms  which  he  intro- 
duces. To  such  a  pitch  is  this  sometimes  carried,  that  to 
be  sure  of  the  meaning  which  he  intends  to  convey  one 
has  to   translate  the  individual  words  back  into  English, 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  511 

whereupon  one  discovers  perchance  the  sense  intended. 
Unfortunately  for  the  unskilled  or  hurried  translator  the 
syntax  of  Welsh  is  very  unlike  that  of  English,  especially 
in  the  matter,  already  mentioned,  of  the  position  of  the 
verb  and  its  nominative,  and  in  that  of  manipulating  the 
verbal  noun.  It  is  to  be  feared  that  crude  and  loose  Welsh 
of  the  kind  here  in  question  may,  by  dint  of  familiarity, 
become  general ;  and  the  style  of  some  of  the  younger 
speakers  on  Welsh  platforms  and  in  Welsh  pulpits  shows 
a  tendency  that  way.  The  task  of  writing  good  and  close 
W^elsh  is,  it  is  true,  of  the  same  nature  as  that  of  writing 
Latin  prose ;  but  short  of  the  elegancies  of  such  an 
exercise  and  the  closeness  of  texture  of  such  a  production, 
it  is  possible  to  write  without  violating  the  elementary 
rules  of  the  syntax.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  perhaps 
inevitable  that,  when  a  language  which  has  been  much 
devoted  to  religion  and  theology,  to  poetry  and  romance, 
becomes  the  vehicle  of  journalistic  tattle,  it  should  put  on 
a  looser  dress,  so  to  say,  and  undergo  divers  changes 
tending  to  make  it  altogether  more  free  and  easy.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  in  the  process  of  adapting  itself  more  and 
more  to  the  purposes  of  journalism,  the  language  will  issue 
from  the  trial  with  its  syntax  essentially  intact.  At  all 
events  the  dialects,  which  are  the  force  behind  literary 
Welsh,  are  up  to  the  present  time  sound  as  a  rule  in  the 
matter  of  idiom,  and  can  be  relied  upon  as  the  spring  of  a 
power  to  check  the  deteriorating  tendencies  of  translation, 
especially  when  the  language  is  handled  by  skilled  teachers, 
such  as  the  professors  of  Welsh  at  the  colleges  of  academic 
standing  in  the  Principality.  But  it  is  impossible  to  conceal 
the  fact  that  good  writers  of  Welsh  are  scarce  at  the  present 
moment,  and  hard  to  find. 

Such  are  the  prospects  of  Welsh  as  they  appear  from 
the  point  of  view  of  language  and  literature,  and  they  are 
not  wholly  reassuring ;  but  a  great  deal  may  be  expected 


512         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

from  the  present  awakening  of  interest  in  all  things  Welsh. 
This  now  demands  a  word  of  notice  before  we  proceed 
further  ;  and  first  of  all  we  may  say  that  it  would  take  up 
too  much  of  our  space  to  inquire  minutely  into  its  origin. 
But  we  may  trace  it  back  to  the  efforts  of  a  few  patriotic 
Welshmen,  with  the  late  Sir  Hugh  Owen  foremost  among 
the  number,  to  establish  a  university  college  in  Wales,  the 
realisation  of  their  more  immediate  object  in  the  college  at 
Aberystwyth,  and  the  publication  in  the  year  i88i  of  the 
report  of  Lord  Aberdare's  Departmental  Committee  on 
the  state  of  Higher  and  Intermediate  Education  in  Wales. 
IMany  other  things  have  contributed  to  this  result,  and  the 
tide  has  been  steadily  flowing.  It  has  assumed  the  form 
of  antagonism  to  the  philistine  wish  to  see  all  parts  of  the 
United  Kingdom  reduced  to  uniformity  worked  out  on 
the  level  of  the  most  characteristically  Saxon  parts  of 
England.  The  more  conservative  idea  has  of  late  been 
gaining  ground,  that  Wales  and  her  people  are  more  likely 
to  contribute  to  the  greatness  of  our  Anglo-Celtic  Empire 
by  developing  themselves  on  their  own  lines,  so  to  say, 
and  in  their  own  way,  rather  than  by  slavishly  aping  the 
south  of  England.  This  view  extends  to  the  W'elsh 
language  and  its  literature  ;  and,  among  other  proofs,  we 
may  mention  that  Welsh  seems  to  be  far  more  read  and 
studied  now  than  perhaps  at  any  time  in  the  past.  But 
nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the  change  which  has 
come  over  the  old  families  of  the  Principality  in  their 
attitude  towards  the  language.  Not  many  years  ago  all 
care  used  to  be  taken  that  the  children  of  the  gentry 
should  not  be  accustomed  to  Welsh,  lest  it  should  spoil 
their  English  accent  for  the  rest  of  their  lives,  whereas  now 
the  fashion  of  having  them  taught  Welsh  is  growing.  This 
change,  so  far  as  it  goes,  makes  for  improved  relations 
between  their  class  and  those  dependent  on  it. 

Taking  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  history  of  Welsh 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  513 

and  its  literature  from  the  close  of  the  eleventh  century 
down,  one  may  say,  perhaps,  that  the  period  when"  it 
flourished  most  vigorously  consisted  of  the  couple  of 
centuries  preceding  the  conquest  by  Edward  I.  Wales 
happened  then  to  produce  a  number  of  very  able  princes, 
under  whose  rule  and  after  whose  example  Welsh  men  of 
letters  showed  great  activity,  and  Welsh  bards  especially 
distinguished  themselves.^  At  a  later  time,  chiefly  under 
the  Tudors,  Welshmen  seemed  to  have  been  looked  at 
with  favour  at  court,  as  one  may  gather  from  Shakespeare's 
plays  and  Ben  Jonson's  masque,  "  The  Honour  of  Wales  ;" 
nor  can  the  Welsh  language  have  been  altogether  despised. 
But  in  time  the  well-known  Act  passed  by  Henry  VIII.  in 
1535,  incorporating  Wales  with  England,  began  to  bear 
fruit  in  a  way  which  threatened  the  W^elsh  language  with 
certain  extinction  ;  for  before  the  close  of  the  sixteenth 
century  we  find  evidence  of  a  desire  on  the  part  of  many 
Welshmen  to  get  rid  of  the  language,  which  they  regarded 
as  a  sign  of  subjection.  This  was  the  attitude,  doubtless, 
of  the  bulk  of  the  educated  and  well-to-do  classes,  and  of 
some  men  who  were  thoughtfully  anxious  for  the  welfare  of 
their  nation.  They  held  it  to  be  the  best  thing  for  the 
Welsh  to  adopt  English,  and  some  of  them  did  their  utmost 
to  help  their  countrymen  in  the  acquisition  of  the  latter 
language.  Among  others  may  be  mentioned  William 
Salesbury,  who  wrote  and  dedicated  to  Henry  VIII.  a 
Welsh  and  EngHsh  dictionary,  which  he  published  with 
that  object  in  view."  By  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  few  educated  Welshmen  could  speak  Welsh  and 
few  monoglot  Welshmen  could  read  it.     The  gentr}^  with 

^  See  Thomas  Stephens's  "Literature  of  the  Kymry  during  the  Twelfth  and 
two  succeeding  Centuries,"  pp.  332 — 342. 

2  This  was  quite  compatible  with  the  zeal  which  impelled  him  afterwards  to 
take  a  laborious  part  in  the  translation  of  the  Scriptures  into  Welsh,  as  that 
might  be  made  the  indirect  means  of  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  English  in  the 
way   suggested  by    the  following   proviso,    annexed    to   the   original  Act  of 

W.P.  L  L 


514         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

few  exceptions  no  longer  maintained  family  bards,^  and 
the  Eistedfod  had  been  almost  forgotten.^ 

Parliament  passed  in  the  fifth  year  of  EHzabeth's  reign,  enjoining  on  the  five 
Welsh  Bishops — the  Bishop  of  Hereford  has  the  first  place  among  them — the 
duty  of  seeing  that  the  Act  was  carried  out  : — 

**  Provided  always  and  bee  yt  enacted  by  thaucthoritee  aforesaid,  That  one 
Booke  conteyning  the  Bible,  and  one  other  Book  of  Comon  Prayer  in 
Thenglishe  Tongue,  shallbee  bought  and  had  in  every  Churche  throughout 
Wales,  in  w^^  the  Bible  and  Book  of  Comon  Prayer  in  Welshe  ys  to  bee  hadd 
by  force  of  this  Acte  (yf  there  bee  none  alreadye)  before  the  first  daye  of 
Marche  w*=^  shallbee  in  the  yere  of  our  Lorde  God  XV  c  Ixvj ;  and  the  same 
Bookes  to  remain  in  suche  convenient  Places  w'^in  the  said  Churches  ;  that 
suche  as  understande  them  may  resorte  at  all  convenient  times  to  reade  and 
puse  the  same,  and  also  such  as  doo  not  understande  the  sayd  Language  maj'e, 
by  conferring  bothe  Tongues  together,  the  sooner  attayne  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
Englyshe  Tongue  ;  Any  thyng  in  this  Acte  to  the  contrarye  notwithestanding." 

See  also  pp.  39  and  47  of  Southall's  "  Wales  and  her  Language,"  a  work 
from  which  we  have  derived  much  useful  information. 

^  Yet  down  to  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  a  knowledge  of  Welsh  was 
in  some  cases  considered  almost  indispensable  for  a  country  gentleman  even 
in  the  border  district  around  Montgomery,  which  is  now  among  the  most 
Anghcised  parts  of  Wales.  The  first  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  (1583 — 1648) 
in  his  "Autobiography"  (ed.  Sidney  L.  Lee,  1886,  pp.  37 — 38)  makes  the 
following  statement  : — "  After  I  had  attained  the  age  of  nine,  during  all  which 
time  I  lived  in  my  said  lady  grandmother's  house  at  Eyton  [Shropshire],  my 
parents  thought  fit  to  send  me  to  some  place  where  I  might  learn  the  Welsh 
tongue,  as  believing  it  necessary  to  enable  me  to  treat  with  those  of  my  friends 
and  tenants  who  understood  no  other  language  ;  whereupon  I  was  recommended 
to  Mr.  Edward  Thelwall,  of  Plas-y-ward  in  Denbighshire.   ..." 

The  practice  of  maintaining  domestic  harpers,  which  was  once  so  prevalent 
among  the  Welsh  gentry,  survived  in  several  instances  till  well  on  in  the 
19th  century,  and  has  in  fact  not  wholly  ceased  even  at  the  present  day, 
domestic  harpers  being  still  kept  by  the  Dowager  Duchess  of  Londonderry  and 
the  Marquis  of  Bute,  while  the  late  Lady  Lanover  (who  died  early  in  1896) 
always  maintained  quite  a  group  of  harpers  in  connection  with  her  house.  In 
the  last  century  the  celebrated  Blind  Parry  was  domestic  harper  to  the  first  and 
second  Baronets  of  Wynnstay,  and  the  post,  subsequently  filled  by  less 
distinguished  harpers,  was  discontinued  only  about  fifty  years  ago.  In  the 
19th  century  Thomas  Blayney  is  mentioned  as  harper  to  the  second  Earl  of 
Powis,  in  "  the  thirties ; "  Wil  Penmorfa  held  a  similar  post  at  Tregib, 
Landeilo,  as  late  as  1823,  if  not  later ;  Thomas  Lewelyn,  of  Aberdare 
(1828  — 1879),  was  harpist  to  the  Aberpergwm  and  Dyffryn  (Lord  Aberdare's) 
families  ;  while  Griffith  Owen,  who  died  only  in  1879,  discharged  for  many 
years  the  double  functions  of  butler  and  domestic  harper  to  the  late  Mr.  Edward 
Corbett,  ofYnysy  Maengwyn,  near  Towyn,  Merioneth. 

-  See  Mr.  Ivor  James's  brochure,  pp.  5 — 8,  18,  19,  39 — 41. 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE,  515 

The  language,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  did  not  die  out, 
but  it  was  left  uncultivated  and  uncared  for,  a  condition  of 
things  which  may  be  accurately  characterised  in  the  words 
of  a  humorous  English  traveller  in  the  year  1682  :  "  Their 
native  gibberish  is  usually  pratled  throughout  the  whole 
Taphydome,  except  in  their  Market-Towns,  whose  inhabi- 
tants being  a  little  rais'd,  and  (as  it  were)  pufft  up  into 
bubbles  above  the  ordinary  scum,  do  begin  to  despise  it. 
Some  of  these  being  elevated  above  the  common  level,  and 
perhaps  refin'd  into  the  quality  of  having  two  suits,  are 
apt  to  fancy  themselves  above  their  Tongue,  and  when  in 
their  f  other  cloaths,  are  quite  asham'd  on't.  'Tis  usually 
cashier'd  out  of  Gentlemen's  Houses,  there  being  scarcely 
to  be  heard  even  one  single  Welch  tone  in  many  families ; 
their  children  are  instructed  in  the  Anglican  Ideom,  and 
their  schools  are  Pcedagogu'd  with  professors  of  the  same ; 
so  that  (if  the  stars  prove  lucky)  there  may  be  some 
glimmering  hopes  that  the  Brittish  lingica  may  be  quite 
extinct,  and  may  be  Englished  out  of  Wales,  as  Lati^i  was 
barbarously  Goth'd  out  of  Italy T^  The  Great  Rebellion 
was  the  turning  point ;  it  left  the  strong  castles  in  ruins, 
and  the  property  of  very  many  of  the  Welsh  gentry  passed 
into  new  hands,  while  others  found  their  estates  crippled  to 
the  last  degree  by  heavy  mortgages.  From  that  crisis 
forth  the  prospects  of  the  Welsh  language  began  to 
improve ;  they  still  continue  to  improve,  and  that,  we  are 
happy  to  say,  without  boding  ill  to  the  landed  gentry  of 

'  See  "  Wallography,"  by  W.  R.,  p.  123.  For  calling  our  attention  to  that 
work  we  were  indebted  to  the  late  Judge  David  Lewis,  who  contributed  an 
interesting  paper  on  "The  Welshmen  of  English  Literature"  to  the  "  Cym- 
mrodor  "  for  the  year  1882  :  see  pp.  238 — 240.  The  title  of  the  book  runs  as 
follows  : — "  Wallography  ;  or  the  Britton  described  :  Being  a  pleasant  relation 
of  a  Journey  into  Wales,  wherein  are  set  down  several  remarkable  Passages  that 
occur'd  in  the  way  1  hither.  And  also  many  choice  Observables,  and  notable 
Commemorations,  concerning  the  State  and  Condition,  the  Nature  and 
Humor,  Actions,  Manners,  Customs,  &c. ,  of  that  Countrey  and  People.  By 
W.  R.,  a  mighty  Lover  of  Welch  Travels." 

L  L  2 


5t6         the    welsh   people,    (chap,  xii.) 

the  Principality  or  even  failing  to  enlist  their  sympathies 
and  good  will.  On  the  one  hand  we  behold  this  going  on 
before  our  eyes,  while  on  the  other  we  see  that  a  day  must 
come  when  English  is  the  universal  speech  of  the  United 
Kingdom  :  we  strike  a  balance  of  our  feelings  and  venture 
to  predict  that  the  future  has  yet  in  store  for  the  Welsh 
language  many  long  years  of  prosperity. 

We  have  alluded  in  passing  to  the  Eistedfod,  and  we 
cannot  close  these  remarks  without  some  further  notice  of 
an  institution  so  characteristic  of  the  Welsh.  It  consists 
now  of  a  meeting  for  competition  in  Welsh  poetry  and 
prose,  and  in  music,  both  vocal  and  instrumental.  One  of 
the  oldest  assemblages  of  the  kind  of  which  we  have  any 
account  is  called  2.  gwled  or  banquet,  given  in  the  year  1 176 
by  Lord  Rhys  at  his  castle  of  Cardigan  :  notices  of  it  a  year 
in  advance  had  been  published,  we  are  told,  not  only  in 
Wales,  but  also  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland.^  We 
observe  a  difference  between  it  and  the  Eistedfod  of  the 
present  day  in  that  not  only  the  best  poet  was  then  awarded 
a  chair,  but  also  the  best  musician,  whereas  now  the  former 
alone  gets  a  chair.  In  other  respects  the  Cardigan  banquet 
was  like  the  modern  Eistedfod,  namely,  in  that  the  men, 
for  example,  of  South  Wales  excelled  in  music,  and  those 
of  Gwyned  in  poetry.  The  Eistedfod,  the  name  of  which 
means  a  sitting  or  session,  appears  to  have  been  a  regularly 
constituted  court,  bearing  all  the  marks  of  antiquity.  Its 
principal  function  was  to  license  or  admit  duly  qualified 
candidates  to  the  position  of  recognised  bards  or  minstrels  ; 
and  the  legal  position  of  the  adjudicating  bards  or  others 
assisting  in  the  decisions  of  the  court  was  that  of  experts  or 
assessors  to  the  sovereign,  prince,  or  chief  under  whose 
authority  the  court  was  held.  The  business  of  the  court 
must  have  been  of  a  serious  nature  in  proportion  to  the 
value  of  the  privileges  which  it  granted,  and  those  privileges 

^  See  Rhys  and  Evans's  "Bruts  from  the  Red  Book  of  Hergest,"  p.  334. 


LANGUAGE   AND    LITERATURE.  517 

included  among  them  the  right  of  the  qualified  professionals 
to  make  the  circuit  of  the  country,  billeting  themselves  on 
the  nobility  and  gentry  in  their  turn.  One  of  the  Eistedfod 
proceedings  which  has  most  attraction  for  those  who  are 
interested  in  ancient  ceremony  is  that  of  chairing  the  bard. 
It  is  referred  to  in  one  version  of  the  Laws  of  Howel  in  the 
following  clause  :  "  From  the  person  who  shall  conquer 
when  there  is  a  contention  for  a  chair,  he  [the  judge  of  the 
court]  is  to  have  a  buglehorn  and  a  gold  ring,  and  the 
pillow  placed  under  him  in  his  chair."  ^  One  of  the  chief 
places  of  meeting  for  Eistedfod  purposes  in  North  Wales 
appears  to  have  been  the  ancient  town  of  Caerwys,  in 
Flintshire  ;  there  Gruffyd  ab  Cynan  has  been  supposed  to 
have  held  a  great  Eistedfod  about  the  year  iioo.  And  in 
Tudor  times  we  read  of  an  Eistedfod  taking  place  there  in 
the  fifteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  at  which 
Richard  ap  Howel  ap  leuan  Vychan,  of  Mostyn,  and 
Sir  William  Gruffyd,  and  Sir  Roger  Salusbury  presided. 
They  were  assisted  by  a  gentleman  of  learning  and  distinc- 
tion as  a  bard,  named  Gruffyd  ap  leuan  ap  Lewelyn 
Vychan,"  and  by  Tudur  Aled,  who  is  well  known  to  have 
been  one  of  the  ablest  bards  of  the  time.  The  position  of 
the  "  expert  men  "  is  still  further  defined  by  the  wording 

^  See  Aneurin  Owen's  edition,  i.  369.  We  abstain  from  saying  anything 
about  the  "  Gorsed,"  as  its  antiquity  is  contested.  See  Oymru  for  1896,  where 
the  reader  will  find  several  articles  on  the  subject  by  Professor  J.  Morris  Jones, 
whom  we  have  to  thank  for  calling  our  attention  to  the  passage  concerning 
the  chair  contest. 

-  We  are  indebted  for  this  information  to  a  note  in  Pennant's  "Tours  in 
W^ales,"  vol.  ii. ,  p.  93,  of  the  edition  of  1810.  In  the  same  volume  also 
(pp.  89 — 93),  is  to  be  found  at  length  Elizabeth's  commission  for  holding  the 
Eisted'fod  of  1568,  which  we  have,  by  the  kind  permission  of  Lord  Mostyn, 
inserted  in  the  text  from  the  original  manuscript  in  his  possession.  As  to  the 
reputation  of  Gruffyd  ap  leuan  ap  Lewelyn  Vychan  see  Salesbury's  marginal 
note  {d.,  t.)  to  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  Letter  to  the  Cymry,  already 
mentioned,  also  Williams's '* Dictionary  of  Eminent  Welshmen,"  p.  185. 
Salesbury  took  Grufifyd  to  have  been  uncle  to  his  friend  the  Bishop,  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  was  mistaken. 


5i8         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

of  Queen  Elizabeth's  commission  for  holding  an  Eistedfod 
at  Caerwys  in  the  year  1568.  We  print  this  important 
document  at  length,  as  it  illustrates  many  other  points  in 
the  history  of  the  Eistedfod,  and  among  them  the  position 
which  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  Gwyned  continued  to 
occupy  with  regard  to  the  language,  literature,  and  music 
of  Wales  in  the  time  of  the  Tudors  : — 

"  ELIZABETH  by  the  grace  of  god  of  England  ffraunce 
and  Ireland  Quene  defendo"  of  the  fayth  &c.  To  our 
trustie  and  right  welbeloued  S'  Richard  Bulkley  knight, 
S'  Rees  Gruffith  knight,  Ellice  Price  esquio',  docto""  in 
Cyvill  Lawe,  and  one  of  our  Counsaill  in  our  marches  of 
Wales  William  Mostyn,  Jeua"  Lloyd  of  Yale,  John  Salusbury 
of  Ruge,  Rees  Thom<2S,  Maurice  Wynne,  Will""  Lewis,  Peres 
Mostyn,  Owen  John  ap  Ho"  Vaughan,  John  Will""  ap  John, 
John  Lewis  Owen,  Moris  Gruffyth,  Symound  Theloall, 
John  Gruffyth,  Ellice  ap  W°  Lloyd,  Rob*  Puleston,  Harry 
aparry,  William  Glynne,  and  Rees  Hughes  esquio^,  and 
to  eu^ry  of  them,  Greating.  Wheras  it  is  come  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  Lorde  President  and  other  o'  said  Cun- 
saill  in  o''  m'ches  of  Wales  that  vagraunt  and  idle  persons, 
naming  theim  self^^  mynstrelkj"  Rithm's,  and  Barthes,  are 
lately  growen  into  such  an  intollerable  multitude  w^'thm  the 
principalitee  of  North  Wales,  that  not  only  gentlemen  and 
other  by  theire  shameles  disorders  are  oftentymes  disquieted 
in  theire  habitac/ons.  But  also  thexpert  mynstrelkj-  and 
musicions  in  tonge  and  Coiiyng  therby  much  discouraged 
to  travail  in  thexercise  and  practize  of  theire  knowledg^j" 
and  also  not  a  litle  hyndred  in  theire  Lyving^^^  and  ^re- 
{trvncjiies.  The  refourmacon  wherof  and  the  putting  of 
those  people  in  ord""  the  said  Lorde  President  and  Counsaill 
have  thought  verey  necessarye  and  knowing  you  to  be 
men  both  of  wysdome  and  vpright  dealing  and  also  of 
Experience  and  good  Knowledg  in  the  scyence,  have 
apounted   and  aucthorized    you    to   be    Commission's    for 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  519 

that  purpose.  And  forasmuch  as  o"  said  Counsaill  of  late 
travayHng  in  some  p^rte  of  the  said  principalite  had 
perfect  vnderstanding  by  credible  report  that  thaccustomed 
place  for  thexecucon  of  the  like  Co;;^missyon,  hath  bene 
heretofore  at  Cayroes  in  our  Countie  of  fflynt,  and  that 
William  Mostyn  esquio'  and  his  auncest^rs  have  had  the 
gyfte  and  bestowing  of  the  sylver  harpe  ^  app^rtayning  to 
the  Cheff  of  that  facultie,  and  that  a  yeares  warning  at  the 
least  hath  bene  acustomed  to  be  geaven  of  thassembly, 
and  execucon  of  the  hke  Commissyon.  Our  said  Counsaill 
have  therfore  apoynted  thexecucon  of  this  Co;//missyon  to 
be  at  the  said  towne  of  Cayroes  the  monday  next  aft^ 
the  feast  of  the  blessed  Trynitee  w*"^  shallbe  in  the  yeare 
of  o'  Lorde  god  1568. 

'*  And  therfore  we  require  and  co;;2mand  you  by  the 
aucthoritee  of  these  p7^esentes  not  only  to  cause  open  pro- 
clamacons  to  be  made  in  ail  ffayo''^,  m'ketts,  Townes,  and 
other  places  of  assembly  w/thm  our  Counties  of  Anglizey, 
Carn'von,  Meryonneth,  Denbigh  and  fflynt,  that  all  and 
eu^ry  person  and  persons  that  entend  to  maynteigne 
theire  lyving^i*  by  name  or  Colo""  of  mynstrelki",  Rithm's, 
or  Barthes,  W2thm  the  Talaith  of  Aberfrowe  comprehending 
the  said  fyve  Shires,  shalbe  and  appeare  before  you  the 
said  daye  and  place  to  shewe  furth  theire  learninge^  accord- 
ingly. But  also  that  you,  xx*''',  xix^",  xviii''",  xvii""",  xvi^", 
xv^",  xiiii^",  xiii*"",  xii^,  xi",  x^",  ix,  viii,  vii  or  vi  of  you^ 
whereof  youe  S'  Richard  Bulkley,  S'  Rees  Gruffith,  EUice 
Price,  and  W""  Mostyn  Esquio'^  or  iii""^  or  ii°  of  you  to  be 
of  the  nombe?^  to  repayre  to  the  said  place  the  daye  afor- 
said.  And  calling  to  you  such  expert  men  in  the  said  facultie 
of  the  VVelshe  musick  as  to  you  shall  be  thought  con- 
venient to  proceade  to  thexecucon  of  the   premisses,  and 

'  This  silver  harp  is  in  the  archives  of  Mostyn  Hall,  and  was  kindly 
exhibited  to  members  of  the  Welsh  Land  Commission  by  Lord  Mostyn  on  the 
occasion  of  their  visit  to  Holywell  and  the  vicinity. 


520         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

to  admytt  such  and  so  many  as  by  your  wisdomes  and 
Knowledges  you  shall  fynde  worthy  into,  and  ynd""  the 
degrees,  heretofore  in  semblable  sort  to  vse  exercise  or 
folowe  the  scyenc^i-  and  facultes  of  theire  pr^fessyons  in  such 
decent  ord'  as  shall  app^/taigne  to  eche  of  theire  degrees, 
and  as  yo'  discrecons  and  wisdomes  shall  prescribe  vnto 
theim  geaving  straight  monycon  and  co7;/maundm^;/t  in  o' 
name,  and  on  o'  behalf  to  the  rest  not  worthy  that  they 
returhe  to  some  honest  Labo""  and  due  Exercise,  such  as  they 
be  most  apte  vnto  for  mayntenaunce  of  their  lyving^'i',  vpon 
paine  to  be  taken  as  sturdy  and  idle  vacaboundes  and  to 
be  vsed  according  to  the  Lawes  and  Statutes  pr^vdded  in 
that  behalf.  Letting  you  wytt  o'  said  Counsaill  looke  for 
advertisem^;2t  by  due  c^7^tificatt  at  your  handes  of  yo'  doing^j- 
in  thexecucon  of  the  said  p7'emisses,  forseeing  in  any  wise 
that  vpon  the  said  assembly  the  peas  and  good  order  be 
observed  and  kept  accordingly  asscertayning  you  that  the 
said  Will'"  Mostyn  hath  premised  to  see  furnyture  and 
thing^^jr  necessary  p7'(?vided  for  that  assembly  at  the  place 
aforsaid.  Yeven  vnder  o'  Signet  at  o'  Citie  of  Chester  the 
xxiii""  of  October  the  nynth  yeare  of  o'  Raigne. 

"  S?^n^d  herhighnes  Counsaill  in  the  m'ches  of  Wales." 

The  state  of  things  complained  of  in  Queen  Elizabeth's 
commission  was  remedied,  no  doubt,  for  a  time  by  the 
Eistedfod  held  at  Caerwys  in  1568  in  obedience  to  it;  but 
the  same  unsatisfactory  condition  of  the  Welsh  professional 
world,  as  far  as  concerned  the  bards  and  musicians,  had 
again  become  prevalent  by  the  year  1594.  At  any  rate 
that  is  what  one  is  led  to  believe  from  perusing  a  petition,^ 

^  This  is  a  document  which  Lord  Mostyn  only  discovered  in  1895,  ^^'^  ^^^ 
Lordship  was  good  enough  to  submit  it  at  once  to  Professor  Rhys,  an  act  of 
courtesy  for  which  we  desire  to  record  our  hearty  thanks.  The  petition  may 
now  be  read  at  length  in  Mr.  J.  Gwenogvryn  Evans's  "Report  [to  the  His- 
torical Manuscripts  Commission]  on  Manuscripts  in  the  Welsh  Language," 
vol.  i.,  pp.  293-5. 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  521 

signed  then  by  a  number  of  the  gentry  of  North  Wales, 
praying  to  have  another  Eistedfod  held.  We  may  mention 
in  passing  that  according  to  this  document  the  recognized 
prizes  were  by  this  time  the  silver  chair  for  poetry,  the 
silver  harp  for  harping,  the  silver  crowd  for  crowthing,  and 
the  silver  tongue  for  singing.  It  does  not  appear  that  the 
petition  was  granted,  and  the  Eistedfod  is  found  to  have 
now  fallen  on  evil  times,  at  any  rate  as  far  as  regards 
North  Wales.  Without  attempting,  however,  to  trace  its 
history  down  to  the  present  day,  suffice  it  to  say  that 
it  had  probably  become  uncertain  and  sporadic  in  its 
occurrence  in  the  different  parts  of  the  Principality  long 
before  the  sovereign,  the  prince,  or  nobleman  under  whose 
auspices  it  was  held,  had  disappeared  from  the  position  of 
central  figure,  and  given  way  to  a  more  democratic  order 
of  things,  with  a  president  appointed  as  a  matter  of  form. 
At  length,  about  the  middle  of  the  present  century,  it 
struck  some  of  the  leading  Welshmen  of  the  time  that  the 
Eistedfod  was  to  a  considerable  extent  a  neglected  force 
which  might  be  utilised  for  the  benefit  of  Whales.  So  Sir 
Hugh  Owen  and  his  friends  undertook  the  attempt  to 
regulate  it  and  to  add  to  its  meetings  opportunities  for 
discussing  social  and  economic  questions  connected  with 
the  future  of  Wales.  Their  reforming  work  has  proved 
lasting,  and  it  is  now  carried  on  by  the  National  Eistedfod 
Association  under  the  auspices  of  the  Honourable  Society 
of  the  Cymmrodorion,  which  has  its  headquarters  in 
London.  One  of  the  results  is,  that  no  more  than  one 
Eistedfod  claiming  to  be  national  is  held  in  each  year,  and 
that  no  year  now  passes  without  one  such  an  Eistedfod 
being  held,  after  an  announcement  a  considerable  time  in 
advance.  Regarding  the  work  of  the  National  Eistedfod 
in  general,  it  may  be  said,  that  it  continues  to  encourage 
Welsh  literature,  prose  and  verse,  but  that  it  has  achieved 
its  most  striking  successes  in  regard  to  music,  while  it  has 


522         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

all  but  failed  in  the  domain  of  art.  Those,  however,  who 
expect  the  Eistedfod  every  now  and  then  to  turn  out  a 
Shakespeare  or  a  Milton  are  wholly  mistaken  as  to  its 
nature.  It  is  not  a  union  of  learned  or  famous  men  like 
the  French  Academy,  or  even  like  the  British  Association, 
but  a  thoroughly  popular  assembly  representing  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  Welsh  people.  Nevertheless  it  has  now  and 
then  helped  to  bring  to  notice  young  men  who  succeeded 
afterwards  in  distinguishing  themselves  in  the  honour 
examinations  of  the  older  universities  and  in  their  subse- 
quent careers.  Besides  the  immediate  w^ork  of  the  National 
Eistedfod,  it  is  valued  as  a  rallying  point  by  Welshmen 
who  live  apart  from  one  another,  whether  in  Wales  or 
other  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom.  During  the  Eistedfod 
week  they  make  or  renew  their  acquaintance  with  one 
another,  and  they  form  a  sort  of  literary  parliament  for 
Wales,  in  which  the  steam  of  spent  discussions  may,  so  to 
say,  be  let  off  or  new  departures  made. 

After  all,  perhaps  the  chief  importance  of  this  the 
National  Eistedfod  attaches  to  it,  not  as  a  structure  com- 
plete in  itself,  but  as  a  part  of  a  larger  and  wider  edifice. 
The  National  Eistedfod  is,  in  a  sense,  the  coping-stone  of 
the  provincial  and  smaller  Eistedfods,  and  each  of  the 
latter  depends  for  its  success  on  how  the  ground  has  been 
previously  worked  by  the  smaller  literary  associations  to 
which  we  have  already  alluded  as  in  a  sense  following  up 
the  teaching  of  Welsh  by  the  Sunday  School.  Considering 
the  absence  of  any  stimulus,  economical  or  political,  and 
the  evident  advantage  of  learning  English,  which  the  Welsh 
do  not  allow  themselves  to  forget,  the  system  we  have 
sketched  does  them  not  a  little  credit.  At  all  events,  in 
the  present  state  of  hopeless  division  as  regards  religious 
views,  it  deserves  to  be  encouraged  by  all  who  care  for  the 
welfare  of  the  people.  The  Eistedfod — and  we  here  mean 
the   Eistedfod  of  all  grades,  from  the  national   institution 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  523 

down  to  the  competitive  meeting  of  a  local  literary  society 
— knows  no  politics  or  religious  distinctions.  Under  the 
auspices  of  the  Eistedfod  men  of  the  most  divergent 
opinions  may  meet  without  fear  of  prejudice  to  the  politics 
or  dogmas  of  any.  Its  platform  is  the  most  neutral  ground 
one  has  in  the  Principality,  and  if  the  landed  proprietors 
had  more  generally  been  accustomed  to  take  advantage, 
especially  of  the  humbler  Eistedfods  and  literary  meetings, 
to  assist  and  encourage  the  people  in  the  development  of 
their  own  ideas  of  culture,  it  would  have  gone  a  long  way 
to  meet  the  complaint  that  they  keep  themselves  aloof  and 
show  little  or  no  interest  in  the  pursuits  and  ambitions  of 
those  around  them.  Economically  speaking,  the  men  of 
whom  their  dependants  complain  most  loudly  on  the  score 
of  their  alleged  aloofness  are  frequently  and  readily 
admitted  to  be  most  generous  as  regards  the  material 
welfare  of  their  people.  They  may  be  ever  ready  to  give 
prizes  for  the  best  ploughing,  and  they  may  spend  lavishly 
on  the  improvement  of  the  breeds  of  horses  or  cattle 
on  their  estates,  all  excellent  objects  so  far  as  they  go. 
The  Welsh  character  has  a  point  of  greater  sensitive- 
ness than  even  the  pocket  ;  but  the  landowner  who 
has  never  taken  part  in  a  small  Eistedfod  or  literary 
meeting  among  his  people  has  in  all  probability  never 
discovered  it. 

These  remarks  do  not  apply,  it  is  needless  to  say,  to  the 
larger  and  more  ambitious  Eistedfods,  to  preside  at  which, 
especially  the  National  Eistedfod,  has  come  to  be  regarded 
an  honour  not  to  be  rashly  rejected.  It  is,  in  fact,  some- 
times whispered,  that  the  position  is  a  matter  of  some  real 
competition  and  rivalry,  though  they  mostly  escape  the 
observation  of  the  public.  Suspicion  of  this  has  given 
currency  to  a  modern  couplet,  which,  while  wafting 
the  echoes  of  an  old  Welsh  hymn,  gives  expression  to 
the    sentiment    that    the    voice    of    an    English-speaking 


524         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

president  at  an  Eistedfod  is  sometimes  regarded  as  the 
bray  of  the  silver  trumpet  : 

Lais  gwr  o  Sais  inewn  ' Stedfod^ 
Lais  udgorii  avian  yw. 

But  when  the  people  of  a  Welsh  countryside  are  making 
an  effort  on  a  smaller  scale  to  develop  their  ideas  of  culture 
in  their  own  Welsh  way,  any  encouragement  they  receive 
is  accepted  with  a  deep  sense  of  gratitude  ;  and  to  see  the 
gentry  among  them  on  such  occasions  brings  home  to  the 
hearts  of  all  a  conviction  that  their  superiors  in  rank  and 
education  are  not  ashamed  of  them  and  their  humble 
aspirations.  The  feelings  of  friendliness  and  attachment 
thus  engendered  could  not  fail  to  tend  in  manifold  ways 
to  smooth  the  dealings  between  the  farmers  and  those 
dependent  on  them  with  the  members  of  the  land-owning 
class. 

Besides  the  Welsh  language,  English  has  long  existed  in 
the  Principality  partly  as  the  official  language  of  people 
who  habitually  talk  Welsh,  and  partly  as  the  only  language 
used  by  certain  of  the  inhabitants.  As  the  official  and 
business  language  English  has  prevailed  to  a  large  extent, 
especially  wherever  any  kind  of  show  had  to  be  made  ;  for 
instance,  when  one  enters  a  country  churchyard  one  notices 
that  epitaphs  in  Welsh  only  began  to  make  their  appearance 
in  comparatively  recent  years.  Indeed,  when  one  considers 
how  ubiquitous,  so  to  say,  English  has  been,  and  continues 
to  be,  in  the  Principality,  it  becomes  a  surprise  that  Welsh 
still  exists,  and  exists  in  such  comparative  purity  and 
vigour.  The  official  language  has  depended  on  the 
intimate  connection  between  England  and  Wales,  but 
English  as  the  vernacular  of  certain  portions  of  the 
Principality  has  had  its  own  history.  Thus  in  the  Anglo- 
Flemish  districts  of  Pembrokeshire  and  Gower  we  have  an 
English    dialect    which    has    been    discussed    in    the    first 


LANGUAGE  AND   LITERATURE.  525 

chapter,  and  we  need  not  notice  it  any  further.  In  the 
Vale  of  Glamorgan  English  and,  to  some  extent,  French 
must  have  been  introduced  over  a  considerable  area,  where 
Welsh  was  afterwards  able  to  become  the  language  of  the 
hearth,  not  even  excepting  Cardiff  and  its  immediate 
vicinity.^  Similarly,  with  regard  to  Tegeingl  or  the  Flint- 
shire coast  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Chester  to  the  river 
Clwyd  at  Rhyl  and  Rhudlan,  such  names  as  Prestatyn, 
Mostyiiy  Acstyn,  Bychtyn,  Brychtyn  (Broughton),  and  the 
Point  of  Ayre,  seem  to  show  that  English  (and  Scandi- 
navian) once  prevailed  there,  where  Welsh  became  again 
dominant. 

The  spread  of  the  language  of  the  peasantry  of  one 
parish  to  those  of  another  is  not  a  change  of  a  nature 
calculated  quickly  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  historian, 
and  the  propagation  of  English  as  the  vernacular  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Marches  of  Wales  is  accordingly  involved 
in  obscurity.  Certain  indications  remain  of  successive 
stages  in  the  westward  advance  of  the  tide  of  English  ; 
thus  in  English  Maelor  or  the  detached  piece  of  Flintshire, 

^  A  recently  discovered  "Directory  and  Guide  to  the  Town  and  Castle  of 
Cardiff,"  published  in  1796,  throws  considerable  light  upon  its  linguistic 
condition  [inter  alia)  2iho\x\  a  hundred  years  ago.  (See  the  Western  Mail  for 
27th  December,  1895.)  ^^  that  time  the  town  was  chiefly  an  agricultural 
centre  for  the  surrounding  district,  and  "great  quantities  of  oats,  barley,  salt 
butter,  and  poultry  of  all  kinds  "  were  sent  from  it  to  Bristol.  In  the  Directory 
Welsh  names  largely  prevail  :  e.g.,  out  of  127  traders  79  had  Welsh  names  ;  in 
the  professions  of  law  and  physic  four  out  of  the  five  names  were  Welsh, 
though  under  gentry  there  were  only  three  Welsh  names  out  of  nine.  Mr.  John 
Ballinger,  who  kindly  made  inquiries  on  behalf  of  the  Welsh  Land  Com- 
mission among  "the  oldest  inhabitants"  of  the  town,  informs  us  that  he 
has  come  to  the  conclusion  "  that  early  in  the  19th  century  Cardiff  was  a 
bilingual  town,  that  English  was  freely  used  and  understood  by  most  of  the 
inhabitants,  but  that  a  large  amount  of  Welsh  was  spoken,  particularly  in  the 
houses,  and  that,  so  far  as  Cardiff  was  a  centre  for  markets  and  fairs,  it  was 
almost  exclusively  a  Welsh  centre."  He  also  adds  that  there  is  an  old  Welsh 
proverb  that  the  best  English  was  spoken  in  Cardiff,  Cowbridge,  and  Car- 
marthen, while  a  variant  of  the  same  saying  substituted  Crickhowell  for 
Cowbridge. 


526         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

most  of  the  field  names  are  still  Welsh,  and  as  to  Mon- 
mouthshire, which  was  treated  as  an  English  county  from 
the  passing  of  the  ''Act  of  Wales"  in  1535,  the  dialect  of 
the  English  portion  is  considered  to  be  a  more  recently 
introduced  language  than  that  of  the  greater  portion  of 
Herefordshire  or  Shropshire  ;  in  fact,  the  English  of  Mon- 
mouthshire has  been  pronounced  ^  to  be  decidedly  Welsh 
in  tone  and  to  some  extent  in  vocabulary  likewise.  Then, 
with  regard  to  Shropshire,  the  vernacular  of  the  corner  of 
that  county  between  Chirk  and  Lanymyneich  has  been 
described  by  the  same  authority  to  be  English  spoken  as 
a  foreign  language ;  and  at  Oswestry,  the  largest  town  in 
the  district,  a  good  deal  of  Welsh  may  still  be  heard. 
More  to  the  south  in  the  same  county  and  nearer  to 
Radnorshire,  we  come,  in  the  parish  of  Clun,  on  a  locality 
where  the  spoken  English  is  said  still  to  contain  some 
Welsh  vocables,  such  as  the  word  for  a  pig,  which  is  there 
called  a  muchyn,  pronounced  with  the  guttural  spirant  as 
in  Welsh. ^  As  for  Herefordshire,  Welsh  appears  not  to  be 
quite  extinct  there  yet,  and  in  the  valley  of  the  Wye  it 
was  spoken  at  Landogo,  close  on  the  border  of  Gloucester- 
shire, as  late  as  the  year  1830.^ 

Within  the  actual  boundaries  of  Wales  this  quiet  and 
unobserved  invasion  of  English  has  covered  most  of 
Radnorshire,  a  portion  of  Brecknockshire,  and  a  consider- 
able part  of  Montgomeryshire.  It  is  the  English  spoken 
by  the  peasantry  of  the  west  of  England  and  as  learnt  by 
the  peasantry  of  the  tract  in  question  of  Mid- Wales.  It 
is  not  a  particularly  intellectual  dialect,  and,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  the  inhabitants  of  Welsh-speaking  Wales  do  not 
regard  the   Welsh   people   who   speak  it  as  being  among 

1  By  Mr.  Alexander  J.  Ellis.    See  the  "Cymmrodor"  for  1882,  pp.  186-8. 

"  See  Miss  Jackson's  "  Shropshire  Word-book  "  (London,  1879). 

^  See  Southall's  "  Wales  and  her  Language,"  especially  the  ninth  chapter 
(PP*  33^~5^)j  where  the  author  mentions  various  recent  traces  of  Welsh  in  the 
Marches. 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  527 

the  most  intellectual  or  the  most  enlightened  of  their 
nationality.  In  fact,  some  of  the  religious  communities  of 
Wales,  such  as  the  Calvinistic  Methodists,  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  sending  missionaries  to  the  districts  (chiefly 
in  Radnorshire)  near  Offa's  Dyke,  or,  as  they  call  them  in 
Welsh,  Gororaii  Claw^Ojfa.  The  probability  is  that  during 
the  transition  from  the  one  language  to  the  other  the 
people  suffered  intellectually  :  they  were  cut  off  from  the 
movements,  religious  and  other,  which  took  place  among 
those  of  their  countrymen  who  continued  to  speak  Welsh, 
at  the  same  time  that  their  change  of  language  failed  to 
bring  them  into  anything  like  the  atmosphere  of  English 
culture.  Here  we  might,  perhaps,  cite  as  relevant  the 
words  of  one  of  the  commissioners  who  reported,  in  1846, 
on  education  in  Wales,  when  he  wrote  (p.  519)  as  follows  : 
— "  As  the  influence  of  the  Welsh  Sunday-school  decreases, 
the  moral  degradation  of  the  inhabitants  is  more  apparent. 
This  is  observable  on  approaching  the  English  border." 
And  it  is  believed  in  Wales  to  be  their  condition  still  to 
some  extent,^  but  how  far  that  may  be  really  the  case  it 
would  be  hard  to  say.  At  all  events,  we  may  mention,  by 
way  of  comparison  with  the  Anglo-Flemish  part  of  Pem- 
brokeshire, that  some  of  the  tenant  farmers  of  this  area  are 
among  the  most  contented  we  have  met  in  the  course  of 
our  inquiry,  especially  those  of  Radnorshire.  In  other 
parts  of  Wales  even  the  tenants  who  think  most  highly  of 
their  landlords  usually  join  in  the  general  chorus  of  their 
class  that  rents  ought  to  be  reduced,  but,  in  one  or  two 
instances  in  Radnorshire,  we  met  with  the  exceptional 
phenomenon  of  farmers  who  denied  on  their  own  behalf 
the  cherishing  of  any  such  a  wish.^ 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  circumstances  under  which 
the  Midland  dialects   of  English   invaded   the  borders   of 

1  See  also  Qu.  54,167-72;  54,187;  54,754-73;  54,929- 

2  Qu.  53,007;  53,986;    54,137-44. 


528         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

Denbighshire  and  Fh'ntshire,  and  the  Southern  dialect  of 
English  spread  into  Mid-Wales,  no  English  dialect  seems 
any   longer  to    possess   the    secret    of   spreading  itself  in 
Wales.     The  linguistic  boundaries  in  Pembrokeshire  and 
Gower  appear  to  have  been  fixed  long  ago,  and  the  same 
remark  applies,  on  the  whole,  to  Mid- Wales.      Welsh  has 
nothing  to  fear,  so  to  say,  at  the  frontier,  but  rather  from 
innumerable  points  within  its  own  boundaries  :  from  the 
towns  as  the  centres  of  commercial  life,  from  her  pleasant 
watering-places  crowded  with  English  visitors,  and  from 
the  public  elementary  schools  in  every  parish  in  the  land. 
In  some  of  the  towns  the  number  of  English  people  who 
have  taken  up  their  permanent  abode  in  them  is  not  incon- 
siderable ;     but,    excepting    the    English-dialect    districts 
already    mentioned,  the    bulk    of  the   English  spoken  in 
Wales   is  book  English  in  various  stages  of  assimilation 
to  English  as  spoken  by  the  middle  classes  in  the  towns 
of  the  west  and  south  of  England.     English  visitors  who 
happen  to  have  no  partiality  for  dialect  often  express  their 
surprise  at  the  purity  of  the  language  as  spoken  in  Wales  ; 
but  that  is  a  subject  of  no  surprise  to  any  one  who  knows 
the    circumstances,    for   it    is   the  language   daily   taught 
at  school. 

Phonologically  speaking,  it  is  characterised  in  some 
parts  of  Wales  by  not  allowing  the  voice  to  fall  at  the  end 
of  a  proposition  in  the  usual  English  way.  With  regard 
to  individual  sounds,  it  has  some  trouble  in  observing  the 
distinction  between  the  vowels  of  words  like  hole  and  hail, 
it  vacillates  between  the  two  sounds  of  s^  and  it  finds  a 
difficulty  with  sk  in  such  words  as  sJiilling  and  fisJi^  which 
may  still  be  heard  pronounced  silling  and  fiss  in  North 
Wales.  Lastly,  it  trills  the  r  in  a  way  foreign  to  standard 
English  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  avoids  the  latest  atrocity 
in  English  pronunciation,  namely,  the  appending  of  r  to 
words  like  idea  and  potato,  and  it   never  transgresses  with 


LANGUAGE    AND   LITERATURE.  529 

regard  to  /i,  except  in  Monmouthshire  and  Glamorgan, 
where  /i  is  uncertain  both  in  Welsh  and  English.  In  the 
case  of  Welshmen  who  have  to  learn  English  as  a  foreign 
tongue,  there  is  a  conscious  effort  to  attain  to  the  standard 
of  English  pronunciation.  In  other  words,  the  Welsh 
accent  is  not  a  fixed  quantity  in  the  pronunciation  of 
English  under  these  conditions  :  it  varies  in  point  of 
intensity  inversely  with  the  length  and  success  of  the 
teaching.  This  applies  especially  to  the  country  districts, 
whereas  in  the  towns  it  tends  to  become  fixed,  the  most 
decided  instances  being  the  largest  towns,  Cardiff,  Swansea, 
and  Newport. 

The  code  regulating  public  elementary  schools  now 
allows  Welsh  to  be  taught  as  a  special  subject,  but  it  is 
still  doubtful  whether  Welsh  will  be  very  generally  taken 
up,  such  is  the  anxiety  of  Welsh  parents  to  have  their 
children  taught  English,  and  such  is  the  reliance  which  they 
place  in  the  Sunday  School  as  the  means  of  teaching  the 
mother  tongue.  As  a  rule,  however,  the  children  in  the 
country  districts  leave  school  before  they  have  so  far 
mastered  English  as  to  be  able  to  make  a  free  and  com- 
fortable use  of  it  in  conversation.  Only  a  very  small 
minority  of  them  become  really  bilingual,  as  proved  by 
their  habitual  use  of  Welsh  for  all  purposes,  domestic, 
social,  and  religious.  At  most  they  retain  perhaps  enough 
of  the  English  learnt  at  school  to  be  able  to  answer  simple 
questions  addressed  to  them  in  very  plain  terms.  That 
they  should  shrink  from  giving  evidence  in  English  in 
courts  of  law  is  perfectly  natural,  as  any  Englishman 
possessed  of  a  moderate  acquaintance  with  French  would 
at  once  comprehend,  if  he  were  called  upon  to  undergo 
a  cross-examination  in  that  language  in  a  court  of  law. 

We  have  hitherto  dealt  with  the  quality,  so  to  speak, 
rather  than  the  quantity  of  Welsh  literature,  but,  before 
we  quit  the  consideration  of  this  subject,  we  may,  perhaps, 

W.P.  M  M 


530         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

attempt  a  brief  statistical  analysis  of  Welsh  bibliography 
during  the  last  four  centuries. 

The  art  of  printing  was  probably  not  introduced  into 
England  before  about  1477,  though  a  few  English  books 
had  been  printed  on  the  Continent  prior  to  that  date.  It 
was  not,  however,  before  1546  that  the  first  book  written 
in  the  Welsh  language  was  printed,  and  it  is  a  significant 
fact  that  this  contained  a  translation  of  certain  portions 
of  the  Bible.  For  the  next  hundred  years  the  number  of 
W^elsh  books  was  comparatively  small.  Thus  the  total 
number  of  books  by  Welshmen,  or  about  Wales,  published 
between  1546  and  1642,  was  269,  of  which  44  were  in 
Latin,  184  in  English,  and  only  41  in  Welsh.  Of  the 
Welsh  books,  four  only  were  of  an  exclusively  literary 
character,  while  the  remaining  37  were  purely  religious, 
including  three  editions  of  the  Bible,  one  of  the  New 
Testament,  two  selections  from  Scriptures,  four  Psalters, 
one  Litany,  five  Liturgies,  one  book  of  Homilies,  together 
with  1 3  religious  works  by  Protestants,  and  five  by  Roman 
Catholics.^ 

In  the  next  period,  that  of  the  Civil  War,  extending 
from  1643  to  1660,  there  is  a  most  marked  difi*erence 
between  the  character  of  the  productions  of  the  Welsh  and 
English  presses  respectively.  Thomasson's  famous  collec- 
tion of  political  tracts,  which  contains  almost  every  knov/n 
specimen  of  the  ephemeral  and  controversial  literature  of 
the  period,  numbers  over  thirty  thousand,  all  in  English, 
but  intended,  however,  for  distribution  in  Wales  as  well  as 
in  England.  As  against  this,  we  do  not  find  that  a  single 
pamphlet  or  other  publication  of  an  exclusively  political 
character  was  issued  in  the  Welsh  language,  those  that 
approach  nearest  to  this  definition  being  two  works,  which 

^  This  estimate  is  taken  from  Mr.  Ivor  James's  brochure  (pp.  20,  21,  39), 
which  has  been  already  repeatedly  mentioned.  The  figures  for  1643-180x3 
are  based  upon  the  entries  in  Rowlands's  "Cambrian  Bibliography,"  edited 
by  the  Rev.  D.  Silvan  Evans  (Llanidloes,  1869). 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  531 

are  "  strange  mixtures  of  politics  and  religious  mysticism," 
written  by  a  North  Wales  Puritan,  Morgan  Lwyd,  of 
Wrexham.  The  total  number  of  books  published  in  the 
Welsh  language  in  this  troublous  period  appear  to  be 
36,  as  compared  with  166  in  English  (mostly  pamphlets, 
however),  and  four  in  Latin.  It  was  after  the  conclusion 
of  the  Civil  War  that  perhaps  the  first  great  opportunity 
of  the  Welsh  language  occurred,  and  we  consequently  find 
that  in  the  next  sixty  years,  from  1660  to  1720,  the  Welsh 
books  numbered  247,  as  compared  with  four  Latin  books 
and  137  English  works  by  Welshmen  or  about  Wales. 

It  was  not  till  the  last  year  of  the  period,  namely,  17 19, 
that  a  book  was  first  printed,  or,  in  other  words,  that  a 
printing-press  was  established,  within  the  limits  of  the 
Principality  itself.  Almost  all  the  earliest  Welsh  books 
had  been  printed  in  London,  excepting  a  small  number 
printed  on  the  Continent,  especially  at  Milan  and  Paris, 
though  other  works  by  Welsh  authors  had  also  been  printed 
at  Cologne,  Amsterdam,  and  Heidelberg. 

After  London  we  find  that  Oxford  and  Shrewsbury,  and 
still  later  Bristol  and  Chester,  came  to  supply  the  Welsh 
book  market  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries.  In  the  days  of  packhorses  Shrewsbury  enjoyed 
a  geographical  position  of  great  advantage  for  all  pur- 
poses of  communication  between  Whales  and  England,  and 
there  is  a  long  roll  of  Shrewsbury  printers  whose  names 
are  most  closely  associated  with  the  Welsh  literature  of 
that  period.  It  is  now  generally  conceded  that  the  first 
Welsh  press  was  set  up  by  one  Isaac  Carter,  in  1719,  at 
Adpar,  a  suburb  of  Newcastle  Emlyn,  on  the  Cardiganshire 
side  of  the  river   Teifi.^        Carter  eventually  removed   to 

^  See  the  Rev.  D.  Silvan  Evans's  statement  in  Rowlands's  "Cambrian 
Bibliography,"  p.  321,  and  two  interesting  articles  (in  Welsh)  on  "Old 
Welsh  Printers"  ("Hen  Argraffwyr  ILyfrau  Cymraeg  ")  by  Charles  Ashton  in 
V  Geninen  for  October,  1 89 1,  and  January,  1892,  where  a  list  is  given  of  all  the 
printers  of  Welsh  books  prior  to  the  present  century,  and  references  are  also 

M  M  2 


532  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

Carmarthen,  which  was  then  the  chief  town  of  South 
Wales,  and  soon  became  the  main  centre  of  the  Welsh 
book  trade,^  at  least  for  South  Wales,  a  position  which 
it  has,  on  the  whole,  held  to  the  present  day. 

During  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century,  the  great 
revival  which  manifested  itself,  not  only  in  the  religious, 
but  also  in  the  literary,  life  of  the  Welsh  people,  resulted  in 
a  considerable  increase  in  the  number  of  W^elsh  books,  an 
increase  which  has  been  steadily  maintained  from  1740 
even  to  the  present  day. 

The  estimated  numbers  of  Welsh  books  issued  v/ithin  each 
period  of  twenty  years  subsequent  to  the  Civil  War  are 
exhibited  in  two  tables,  which  we  here  append.  The  first 
comes  down  to  (and  includes)  the  year  1800,  and  is  based 
on  Rowlands's  "  Bibliography";  for  the  second,  which  covers 
the  period  from  1801  to  1895,  both  inclusive,  we  are  indebted 
to  Mr.  Charles  Ashton,  of  Dinas  Mawdwy,  who  for  the  last 
ten  years  has  been  collecting  materials  for  a  Welsh  biblio- 
graphy of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  who  has  kindly 
favoured  us  with  the  result  of  his  researches  up  to  the 
}'ear  1896.- 

given  to  the  chief  authorities  on  the  subject  of  Welsh  bibliography.  A  brief 
general  summaiy  of  the  question  is  also  given  in  a  paper  by  Mr.  W.  Eilir 
Evans  on  "Welsh  Publishing  and  Bookselling,"  read  before  the  Library 
Association  at  Cardiff  (September,  1895)  and  published  in  the  Library  for 
December,  1895  (^'^i-  39^  et  seq.). 

^  John  Ross  (a  Scotchman),  who,  after  a  London  apprenticeship,  settled  at 
Carmarthen  in  1 743,  and  acquired  a  knowledge  of  the  Welsh  language,  vei-y 
largely  contribuied  to  this  result.  Pie  used  to  describe  himself  as  "the  only 
printer  in  those  parts  brought  up  to  the  trade." 

'  Mr.  Ashton  has  also  sent  us  the  following  explanation  of  his  list  : — 
"Between  Welsh  books,  etc.,  and  those  in  some  way  or  other  relating  to 
Wales,  I  have  already  recorded  a  total  of  11,613.  All  these  are  different 
publications.  Some  of  them  are  very  small  in  size  ;  indeed,  hundreds  of  them 
contain  only  about  four  pages  each.  Many  of  them  are  periodicals,  tracts,  and 
leaflets.  But  a  book  of  any  number  of  volumes,  such  as  '  Y  Gwydoniadur,' 
or  'Welsh  Cyclopaedia,'  or  a  monthly  periodical  (such  as  Yr  Eurgiawn 
IVesleyaiTt,  which  has  had  a  continuous  existence  since  1S09),  is  only  counted 
as  ONE,  and   entered   under  the  year  it   first  appeared,  but  a  second  or  any 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE, 
Welsh  Books,  1546 — 1800. 


533 


1546 

1643 

1661 

1681 

1701 

1721 

1741 

1761 

I78I 

to 

to 

to 

to 

to 

to 

to 

to 

to 

1642. 

1660. 

1680. 
35 

1700. 

1720. 

138 

1740. 

1760. 

1780. 

1800. 

Welsh  . 

41 

36 

74 

115 

177 

423 

440 

English 

184 

166 

48 

35 

54 

55 

80 

91 

155 

Latin     and    other 

languages . 

•    44 
269 

4 

I 
84 

2 

2 

4 

4 



I 

Total       . 

206 

III 

194 

174 

261 

514 

596 

Welsh  Books,  1801 — 95. 


1801  to 
1820. 

■ 
1821  to 

1840. 

1841  to 

i860. 

1861  to         18S1  to 
1880.             1895. 

Total 

1801  to 

1895. 

Welsh 
English,  etc. 

890 
415 

1,670 

500 

2,065 

550 

2,195 

995 

1,605 
728 

8,425 
3,188 

Total     . 

1.305 

2,170 

2,615 

3.190 

2,433 

11,613 

The  earliest  of  the  Welsh  periodicals  made  its  appear- 
ance in  1770,  as  a  fortnightly  publication,  bearing  the  title 
of  Trysorfa  GzvybodaetJi  neic  Eurgrazvn  Cyniraeg.      After 

subsequent  edition  of  the  same  work  is  separately  counted.  The  column 
'English,  etc.,'  includes  a  few  historical  books,  written  in  Latm,  and  a  small 
number  of  French  and  German  books  which  relate  to  Wales,  but  the  total  is 
largely  made  up  of  Acts  of  Parliament  relating  to  enclosures,  canals,  highways, 
railways,  etc.,  in  Wales,  while  there  is  also  a  good  number  of  books  recorded 
which  treat  of  different  districts  in  Wales — topographical  works,  guide-books, 
and  some  historical  books  of  considerable  size  and  much  value.  I  have  every 
reason  to  believe  that  there  are  still  many  books,  in  Welsh  and  relating  to 
Wales,  published  in  this  country  which  I  have  so  far  been  unable  to  record. 
I  know  practically  nothing  of  the  Welsh  literature  published  in  America,  with 
the  exception  of  an  occasional  book  which  has  found  its  way  over  here." 


534  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xii.) 

the  issue  of  fifteen  numbers  it  was  discontinued.  It  was 
succeeded  by  the  Cylchgrawn  Cyniraeg,  a  quarterly,  of 
which  only  five  numbers  appeared,  between  February, 
1793,  and  February,  1794.  Several  other  periodicals  were 
started  and  had  a  short  existence  in  the  early  years  of  the 
19th  century,  but  Yr  Eurgrawn  Wesley ai^^  a  denomi- 
national magazine,  established  in  connection  with  the 
VVesleyan  body  in  1809,  has  continued  to  appear 
uninterruptedly  to  the  present  day. 

In  the  year  1828,  "the  monthly  press  of  Wales  issued 
no  fewer  than  fourteen  hundred  periodicals,  and  what  is  an 
anomaly  in  the  history  of  literature,  to  the  pages  of  these 
the  peasantry  were  almost  the  only  contributors,"^  a  state- 
ment which  is  very  largely  applicable  to  Welsh  periodicals 
even  of  the  present  day. 

Up  to  1850  there  had  been  started  from  time  to  time  as 
many  as — 

{a)  Fifteen    Welsh    quarterlies,    of     which     only    one, 
Y     Traethodyd^,    which    is     an     undenominational 
review,  is  still   in  existence,  being  now  issued  as  a 
bi-monthly. 
(b)  Two  bi-monthlies,  both  of  which  have  died. 
{€)  About  one    hundred    monthly  magazines,  of  which 
ten   are    still  in  existence,  all  of  them  being  pub- 
lished   in    connection    with    the    various    religious 
denominations. 
{d)  Eleven  fortnightly  and  four  weekly  publications,  of 
which  only  one  has  survived,  that  is  Yr  Amserau^ 
started  in    1843,  and    incorporated    in     1859    with 
Bauer  Cymru,   and   now  appearing   under  the  title 
Bauer  ac  A  mseratc  Cyinrii. 
In   the  year   1896   there  were   publishing  in  the   Welsh 
language  two  quarterlies,  two    bi-monthlies,   twenty- eight 

^  Speech  by  the  Rev.  John  Blackwell  at  the  Denbigh  Eistectfod  in  i828. 
(quoted   in    Rowlands's  "  Bibliography,"  p.   8). 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  535 

monthlies,  and  twenty-five  weeklies,  making  a  total  of 
thirty-two  magazines  and  twenty-five  newspapers.  Except- 
ing one  Welsh  newspaper,  published  in  Liverpool,  all  of 
them  were  published  within  the  Principality,  the  chief 
publishing  centres  for  North  Wales  being  in  the  counties 
of  Carnarvon,  Merioneth,  and  Denbigh,  and  for  South  Wales 
in  those  of  Glamorgan  and  Carmarthen.  Of  English  news- 
papers published  in  Wales,  eleven  were  dailies,  which  were 
issued  from  Cardiff,  Swansea,  and  Newport,  and  seventy- 
nine  were  weeklies  (about  one-fourth  of  which  have  a  Welsh 
column  or  tvv'o),  not  to  mention  half  a  dozen  more  that  were 
published  in  the  'border  counties,  and  circulated  largely  in 
Wales.  Besides  these  there  were  at  least  twelve  magazines 
periodically  issued  in  the  service  of  Wales  or  of  Welsh 
literature,  being  for  the  most  part  the  transactions  of  learned 
societies.^ 

W^e  cannot  pass  on  from  this  subject  without  stating 
that  the  Welsh  Land  Commission  experienced  very  great 
difficulty  in  obtaining  definite  information  with  reference 
to  Welsh  publications  generally.  This  was  especially  the 
case  with  their  endeavour  to  have  a  bibliographical  list 
compiled  of  all  books  relating  to  agriculture  or  land 
tenure  in  Whales,  with  the  view  of  illustrating  the  history 
of  the  development  of  those  subjects.  On  this  subject  the 
Commissioners  speak  as  follows  in  their  Report,  p.  92  : — 
"Out  of  a  total  of  over  four  hundred  books  (exclusive  of 
our  supplemental  lists)  which  are  entered  in  our  biblio- 
graphy, not  more  than  about  one  half  of  that  number  are 
to  be  found  in  the  British  Museum.  During  the  course  of 
our  general  inquiry  in  Whales,  we  were  repeatedly  assured 
that  no  translation  into  Welsh  of  the  Agricultural  Holdings 

1  Further  information  as  to  the  history  of  the  periodical  literature  (.f  Wales 
is  printed  in  Appendix  C  to  the  Report  of  the  Welsh  Land  Commission, 
which,  in  addition  to  other  particulars,  contains  a  list  of  all  the  periodicals 
(both  Welsh  and  English)  issued  in  Wales  or  in  connection  therewith  in  the 
year  iB95- 


536         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

Act,  1883,  had  ever  been  published.  We  subsequently 
discovered  an  edition  brought  out  by  a  Welsh  barrister  ; 
but  we  very  much  question  whether  a  copy  of  it  is  to  be 
found  in  any  public  library,  either  in  or  out  of  Wales,  and 
we  fear  that,  owing  to  the  circumstances  which  govern 
Welsh  bookselling,  it  is  unknown  to  the  farming  community 
outside  the  immediate  district  in  which  it  was  published. 
The  explanation  for  all  this  seems  to  be  that  there  is  in 
Wales  no  central  emporium  where  Welsh  publications  can 
be  procured."  According  to  a  recent  critic,^  ''every  Welsh 
publisher  plays  for  his  own  hand,  and  no  more.  No 
general  Welsh  catalogue  is  ever  published,  and  scores, 
nay,  we  could  say  hundreds,  of  Welsh  books  never  find 
their  way  to  the  British  Museum."  Private  enterprise 
and  a  more  enlightened  policy  on  the  part  of  Welsh 
publishers  might  do  much  to  remedy  this  unsatisfactory 
state  of  things,  but  in  the  matter  of  collecting  and  pre- 
serving the  varied  and  numerous  productions  of  the  Welsh 
press  a  national  library  and  museum  in  Wales  might 
effect  what  the  British  Museum  in  London  is  at  present, 
through  no  fault  of  its  own,  wholly  incapable  of  doing.  The 
establishment  of  such  an  institution,  and  its  endowment 
by  the  State,  has  been  recommended  from  time  to  time,- 

^  Mr.  Eilir  Evans,  in  the  article  already  mentioned.  In  the  course  of  the 
discussion  which  followed  the  reading  of  his  paper,  it  was  suggested  that  the 
county  councils  of  Wales  might  register  the  existing  printers  and  obtain 
complete  lists  of  the  works  issued  by  them. 

2  E.g..)  by  Rowlands,  in  the  preface  to  his  "  Cambrian  Bibliography" 
(p.  xxii.)  ;  by  various  speakers  at  the  National  Eistedfod  (Langotten)  of  1858 
(see  Camhj'ian  Journal,  2nd  ser.,  i.,  p.  297)  ;  by  J.  E.  Southall,  in  "Wales 
and  her  Language"  (1892),  pp.  308-9;  by  Mr.  D.  Brynmor-Jones,  in  an 
address  delivered  before  the  Cymmrodorion  section  at  the  National  EistecJfod 
held  at  Pontypridd  in  1893  (see  "  Thirteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  National 
Eistedfod  Association  ") ;  and  by  Mr.  Romilly  Allen,  in  ArchcBologia  Cavibrensis 
for  July,  1896.  Several  societies,  having  their  headquarters  at  Cardiff,  also 
promoted  a  scheme  for  celebrating  Her  Majesty's  Jubilee  in  1887  by 
establishing  in  that  town  a  national  institute  for  Wales,  but  the  project  waj 
not  realised. 


I 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  537 

and  has  recently  been  urged  on  more  than  one  occasion 
in  Parliament.^ 

Their  experience  led  the  Commission  to  the  conclusion 
that  such  an  institution  is  not  only  desirable,  but  most 
essential  for  the  preservation  of  the  scattered  productions 
of  the  unorganised  publishing  trade  of  Wales.  For  the 
historian  no  tract  or  broadsheet,  ballad  or  penny  almanac, 
is  without  its  value.  They  all  contribute  to  make  up  the 
record  of  a  nation's  life,  they  are  all  expressions  of  local 
thought,  and  without  them  the  mosaic  of  a  country's  past 
cannot  be  pieced  together. 

But  there  are  many  objects,  other  than  printed  works, 
that  should  find  a  receptacle  in  such  an  institution  : 
drawings  of  implements  and  articles  illustrating  the 
industries  of  Wales  and  collections  of  the  fauna  and  flora 
of  the  country.  Nothing  could  throw  such  a  light  upon 
the  development  of  agriculture  in  Wales  as  a  series  of 
drawings  illustrative  of  the  implements  in  use  among  Welsh 
farmers  at  the  end  of  the  last  century.  It  is  well-nigh 
impossible  now  to  trace  the  local  varieties  in  the  form  of 
the  rake,  the  shovel,  and  the  sickle,  and  it  is  difficult  to 
ascertain  with  certainty  what  manner  of  implement  the 

^  The  National  Institutions  (Wales)  Bill  (No.  411),  1891,  which  was  backed 
by  Mr.  Alfred  Thomas  and  nine  other  Welsh  members  of  Parliament, 
contained  a  clause  [21(5)]  which  empowered  the  National  Council  "  to 
establish  a  national  museum  for  Wales,  to  apply  for  a  charter  of  incorpora- 
tion of  the  same,  and  to  apply  to  Parliament  for  an  Act  to  enable  the 
trustees  of  the  British  Museum  to  give  to  such  museum,  for  Wales  any  books, 
manuscripts,  works,  objects,  or  specimens  which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  said 
trustees,  especially  concern  Wales  or  the  Cymric  race."  The  Established 
Church  (Wales)  Bill  (No.  144),  1895,  ^^^o  provided  that  the  objects  (specified 
in  the  first  schedule)  to  which  the  residue  of  the  Church  property  were  to  be 
applied  should  include  "technical  and  higher  education,  including  the  establish- 
ment and  maintenance  of  a  library,  museum,  or  academy  of  art  for  Wales." 
The  question  has  also  been  raised  on  other  occasions,  e.g:,  on  20th  August, 
1894  (see  Hansard,  4th  ser.,  vol.  29,  pp.  29  e^  set/.),  on  28th  August,  1895 
(Hansard,  4th  ser.,  vol.  36,  pp.  1044  and  1048),  and  on  2i5t  February  and 
loth  July,  1896. 


538         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  ^chap.  xii.) 

old  Welsh  plough  was,  or  the  fan,  made  of  frame-wood  and 
canvas  and  turned  by  hand,  for  winnowing  purposes.  The 
introduction  of  manufactured  articles,  in  place  of  those 
formerly  produced  by  domestic  industry  in  every  farm- 
house and  cottage  during  the  long  winter  evenings,  will 
soon  drive  out  all  recollection  of  the  Welsh  peasant's  skill 
in  wood  carving  and  other  kindred  handicraft,  both  of 
profit  and  recreation,  while  a  few  spinning  wheels  are 
almost  all  that  survive  to  testify  to  the  industry  of  his  wife 
and  daughters  in  converting  the  fleeces  of  his  flock  into  all 
manner  of  woollen  goods. 

Apart,  however,  from  what  may  be  regarded  as  the  duty 
of  the  State  with  reference  to  the  collection  and  the  pre- 
servation of  such  specimens  and  objects  as  have  been 
indicated,  whether  literary,  artistic,  or  industrial,  the  Com- 
mission was  also  greatly  impressed  with  the  inadequacy  of 
the  present  means  for  bringing  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
Welsh-speaking  rural  population  the  provisions  of  Acts  of 
Parliament  passed  for  their  especial  benefit,  and  the  work 
done  by  the  various  Government  departments  with  the 
direct  object  of  improving  their  condition  or  of  facilitating 
them  in  the  pursuit  of  agriculture.  Owing  to  this  want 
of  adequate  information,  the  result  has  been  that  Welsh 
farmers  have  not  been  able  to  avail  themselves,  to  the 
extent  that  Parliament  has  intended,  of  those  ameliorative 
provisions  which  have  of  recent  years  altered  in  a  consider- 
able degree  the  relationship  of  landlord  and  tenant.  The 
most  prevalent  instance  under  this  head  was  the  ignorance, 
well-nigh  universal  in  some  districts,  as  to  the  provisions  of 
the  Agricultural  Holdings  Act  and  the  Ground  Game  Act. 
Almost  all  the  tenant  farmers  in  the  Welsh-speaking 
districts  believed  that  these  Acts,  especially  the  former, 
could  be  totally  excluded  by  means  of  a  contracting-out 
clause.  Many  appeared  to  be  quite  unaware  that  the  Act 
of   1875  had  been  amended  by  the  subsequent  statute  of 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  539 

1883.  Even  where  there  was  a  knowledge  of  the  existence 
of  the  latter  Act,  its  provisions,  especially  as  to  procedure, 
were  accurately  known  only  to  a  few,  and  consequently 
in  most  districts  the  Act  was  for  all  practical  purposes  a 
dead  letter. 

To  take  another  example,  only  very  few  of  the  witnesses 
examined  by  the  Welsh  Land  Commission  appeared  to 
possess  copies  of  the  **  Official  Analysis  of  Railway 
Rates,"  ^  published  by  the  Board  of  Trade,  though  it  is 
of  great  importance  that  farmers  should  be  able  to  ascer- 
tain the  legal  charges  for  the  conveyance  of  agricultural 
produce,  feeding  stuffs,  artificial  manures,  and  the  like 
commodities. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  was  more  than  once  suggested 
to  the  Commission  that  it  would  be  of  great  advantage  if 
in  rural  districts  the  service  of  the  Post-office  were  utilised 
for  the  sale  and  distribution  of  Acts  of  Parliament  and 
Government  publications.  If,  for  instance,  a  farmer  could 
procure  a  copy,  say,  of  the  Agricultural  Holdings  Act  by 
merely  giving  a  verbal  order  for  it  to  the  local  postmaster 
in  his  own  district,  or  even  to  the  rural  postman,  and 
prepaying  for  it  its  published  price,  with  a  fractional 
charge,  if  necessary,  to  cover  its  transmission,^  we  believe 
that  such  Acts  would  so  penetrate  to  places  which  they 
never  reach  at  present,  and  that  there  would  result  there- 
from a  more  enlightened  understanding  of  the  civic  rights 
and  duties  of  those  concerned  in  the  occupation  and 
cultivation  of  the  soil. 


^  Parliamentary  Paper  C. — 6,832  of  1893,  price  is. 

-  See,  for  example,  Qu.  3142 — 3.  We  understand  that  in  some  foreign 
countries  a  system  of  this  kind  is  in  vogue  for  the  sale  and  distribution  of  news- 
papers. According  to  the  Z'm^j  (5th  December,  1894,  p.  13),  "it  is  possible 
in  Egypt,  for  example,  to  order  at  any  post-office  any  newspaper  from  any 
country  in  the  world.  The  subscription  to  the  newspaper,  plus  a  small 
commission,  is  paid  down  in  the  local  post-office,  and  the  Egyptian  Postmaster- 
General  sees  the  rest  of  the  business  through." 


540  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

Short,  however,  of  establishing  a  system  of  this  kind  in 
connection  with  the  Post-office,  it  would  probably  facili- 
tate, to  some  extent,  the  sale  of  official  publications,  if  a 
special  depot  for  that  purpose  were  established  in  the 
Principality  by  means  of  commissioning  some  Welsh  book- 
seller, or  other  person  able  to  carry  on  correspondence  in 
Welsh,  to  be  the  duly  constituted  representative  of  Her 
Majesty's  Stationery  Office  in  that  respect.  It  may  be 
pointed  out  that  there  are  already  such  accredited  agents 
in  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  for  Scotland,  and  in  Dublin 
for  Ireland,  in  addition  to  Alessrs.  Eyre  &  Spottiswoode 
in  London ;  and  that  the  names  of  these  respective 
firms  are  imprinted  on  every  Parliamentary  paper  issued. 

But  it  is  not  the  mere  system,  or  want  of  system,  in  the 
distribution  of  these  publications  that  is  alone  defective 
at  present ;  the  language  in  which  they  are  couched  is  a 
much  greater  obstacle  to  their  being  read  and  understood 
by  the  Welsh-speaking  population  of  Wales.  The  diffi- 
culty we  refer  to  here  is  that  which  arises  from  the  Welsh 
farmers'  ignorance  of  English,  rather  than  from  the 
technical  phraseology  which,  even  in  England,  frequently 
renders  Acts  of  Parliament  far  from  being  easily  intelligible 
to  the  less  educated  classes.  Technicality  of  language  by 
itself  is,  however,  so  serious  an  obstacle  to  the  general 
understanding  and  interpretation  of  official  documents 
that  it  has  been  deemed  expedient  by  the  State  to  publish 
abstracts  of  such  statutes  as  the  Alines  Regulations  Acts 
and  the  Factory  and  Workshop  Acts,  with  the  view  of 
more  effectively  bringing  home  to  the  persons  carrying  on, 
or  employed  in  those  industries,  the  conditions  and  regu- 
lations imposed  on  them  by  Parliament.  In  the  particular 
instances  mentioned,  Welsh  translations  of  such  abstracts 
have  been  officially  prepared  and  published  by  the  Home 
Office,  for  exhibition  in  the  precincts  of  mines  and  factories. 
The  General    Register   Office,  as  early  as   1S37,  had   two 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  541 

of  its  official  papers  issued  in  Welsh,  and  since  then  a 
vaccination  notice  and  the  form  of  instructions  for  filling 
in  the  census  schedules  have  also  been  translated  by  that 
department.  Several  other  departments  have  also,  from 
time  to  time,  recognised  the  desirability  of  translating  their 
notices,  etc.,  into  Welsh,  notably  the  Local  Government 
Board,  which  has  so  issued  several  Acts  of  Parliament  and 
administrative  orders,  and  these  translations,  now  that 
they  are  becoming  better  known  in  the  Principality,  are, 
it  is  said,  greatly  appreciated  by  the  Welsh-speaking 
population.^ 

Several  witnesses-  suggested  to  the  Commission  that 
Acts  of  Parliament  directly  affecting  the  rural  districts 
should  be  translated  into  Welsh,  while  Sir  Joseph  R. 
Bailey,  in  objecting  to  such  a  course,  recommended  as  an 
alternative  that  "  there  should  be  published  in  Welsh  a 
short  epitome  of  such  parts  of  Acts  of  Parliament  as 
concerned  Welsh  interests,  cutting  out  what  are  called 
words  of  skill,  and  making  the  Acts  of  Parliament  a  resuvie 
so  simple  that  in  fact  persons  not  well  educated  could 
understand  them."^ 

This  was  the  view  also  taken  by  Mr.  W.  O.  Brigstocke, 
formerly  chairman  of  the  Carmarthenshire  County  Council,^ 
who  observed  that  in  the  case  of  the  Irish  Land  Act 
there  are  very  concise  and  plain  summaries  published, 
and  he  thought  that  if  a  summary  were  published  in 
Welsh  it  would  be  better  than  a  complete  translation, 
owing  to  the  difficulty  of  turning  English  legal  phrases  into 
Welsh. 

But  not  one  Act  that  directly  affects  the  agricultural 

^  A  list  of  all  the  Parliamentary  papers  and  State  documents  ttiat  have  thus 
been  officially  translated  into  the  Welsh  language  is  given  in  Appendix  A.  to 
the  Report. 

2  Such  as  Mr.  O.  Slaney  Wynne,  at  Qu.  8,326  ;  compare  also  Qu.  14,561. 
23,224,  48,152. 

3  Qu.  49,786.  4  Qu.  43,432. 


542  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

community  as  such — from  the  Ground  Game  Act  and  the 
Agricultural  Holdings  Acts  to  the  Allotments  Acts  and  the 
Fertilizers  and  Feeding  Stuffs  Act — has  been  officially 
translated  into  Welsh,  either  in  its  entirety  or  in  the  form 
of  a  popular  summary.  Nor  does  it  appear  that  an  official 
translation  has  at  any  time  been  issued  of  a  single  leaflet 
out  of  the  very  considerable  literature  published  by  the 
Board  of  Agriculture  in  the  service  of  the  agricultural 
interests  of  this  country.  The  practical  suggestions,  tne 
timely  advice  or  warning,  and  the  valuable  information 
about  the  agricultural  methods  of  other  countries  which 
are  contained  in  the  publications  of  the  Board,  reach  and 
influence  but  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  Welsh  a^ricul- 
turists,  owing  to  the  fact  that  no  translations  of  these 
leaflets  and  other  publications  are  ever  issued.  The  evil 
is  to  some  extent  aggravated  by  the  further  fact  that  few, 
if  any,  of  the  inspectors  of  the  Board  who  travel  in  Wales 
possess  any  knowledge  of  the  W^elsh  language.^  This  non- 
utilisation  of  Welsh  as  a  medium  for  reaching  the  culti- 
vators of  the  soil  is  all  the  more  regrettable  inasmuch  as 
there  is  no  exclusively  agricultural  newspaper  or  magazine 
issued  in  the  Welsh  language,  and  consequently  the 
ordinary  Welsh  farmer,  whose  reading  is  confined  to  his 
own  language,  is  not  able  to  inform  him.self  as  to  points 
concerning  which  his  English  brother  receives  gratuitous 
advice  from  the  State. 

To  remedy  this  inequality,  and  to  enable  the  farmers  of 
-Wales  to  reap  the  full  benefit  of  the  valuable  literature 
issued  by  the  Board  of  Agriculture,  it  seems  to  us  highly 
desirable  that  in  future  Welsh  translations  should  be  issued 
of  all  the  Board's  leaflets,  except  such  as  contain  matter 
wholly  inapplicable  to  the  conditions  of  agriculture  in 
Wales.     A   paper   dealing   with   hops,   for   example,   need 

^  On  this  point  see  Hansard's  "Parliamentary  Debates,"  4th  ser.,  vol.  36, 
pp.   739-742. 


I 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  543 

not,  perhaps,  be  translated,  as  Wales  is  not  a  hop-growing 
country — unless,  of  course,  it  were  decided  to  suggest  the 
promotion  of  that  industry  in  the  Principality.  In  certain 
circumstances  the  peculiar  conditions  of  Welsh  agriculture 
might  also  render  it  necessary  to  prepare  special  leaflets 
for  distribution  in  Wales  alone,  or  even  in  the  Welsh- 
speaking  districts  only.  A  Welsh  edition  of  the  "  Journal 
of  the  Board  of  Agriculture "  should  also  be  published, 
but  it  would  not,  perhaps,  be  desirable  that  it  should  be 
entirely  a  translation  of  the  English  edition.  Some  of 
the  English  articles  might,  with  advantage,  be  replaced 
by  original  articles  in  Welsh  having  special  application  to 
Welsh  agriculture.  An  example  in  the  nature  of  a  prece- 
dent is  to  be  found  in  Cape  Colony,  where  the  Colonial 
Government  publishes  an  agricultural  journal  in  English 
and  in  Dutch  for  the  use  of  the  respective  races  in 
that  Colony.  Owing  to  the  more  backward  condition  of 
agriculture  in  Wales  as  compared  with  England — taking 
the  country  generally,  and  also  owing  to  the  remoter 
situation  of  the  country  and  the  greater  inaccessibility 
of  portions  of  it,  stronger  efforts  than  are  necessary 
in  England  should  be  made  to  enable  the  Welsh  farmer 
to  become  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  latest  improve- 
ments and  the  most  modern  methods,  unless  his  lot  in 
the  future  is  to  continue,  as  in  the  past,  much  behind  that 
of  the  ordinary  English  farmer. 

The  census  returns  for  1891  furnish  for  the  first  time 
a  record  of  the  number  of  persons  speaking  Welsh  only, 
English  only,  or  both  English  and  Welsh  within  the  con- 
fines of  the  Principality.  The  accuracy  of  these  returns 
has  been  questioned  by  two  different  parties,  one  com- 
plaining that  the  number  returned  as  speaking  Welsh  o/i/f 
is  too  large,  the  other  that  the  number  of  those  stated  as 
speaking  English  o?t/)/  is  too  large.  Thus,  on  the  one 
hand  the  compilers  of  the  census,  in  their  general  report, 


544         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

state  that  abundant  evidence  was  received  showing  that 
the  instructions  appended  to  the  householder's  schedule 
"  was  either  misunderstood  or  set  at  naught  by  a  large 
number  of  those  Welshmen  who  could  speak  both 
languages,  and  that  the  word  '  Welsh '  was  very  often 
returned,  when  the  proper  entry  would  have  been  '  Both ' ; 
on  the  ground,  it  may  be  presumed,  that  Welsh  was  the 
language  spoken  habitually  or  preferentially."  It  appears, 
however,  that  at  the  time  of  the  taking  of  the  census  it 
was  generally  understood  that  no  mere  smattering  of  either 
language  was  to  count,  and  that  consequently  most  people 
assumed  that  the  real  test  as  to  the  column  under  which 
they  should  be  returned  was  whether  they  could  give 
evidence  in  a  court  of  law  in  the  language  specified  at 
the  top  of  that  column.  This,  it  has  been  pointed  out, 
would  cut  both  ways  inasmuch  as  many  who  possessed  only 
a  smattering  of  the  Welsh  language  would  naturally  return 
themselves  as  speaking  English  o?ily,  instead  of  returning 
themselves  in  the  bilingual  column.  The  same  would  also 
be  the  case  with  Welsh  people  possessing  only  a  smattering 
of  English.  There  is  thus  the  possibility  that  not  only  the 
Welsh,  but  also  the  English  column  was,  for  some  districts, 
perhaps,  unduly  large  at  the  expense  of  the  bilingual  one. 
It  was  also  suggested  that  in  many  cases  census  schedules 
without  the  language  column  were  through  some  error  or 
other  not  distributed  in  every  district,^  so  that  the  result 
would  presumably  be  that  those  persons  (whether  Welsh  or 
English  speaking),  who  were  furnished  with  such  schedules, 

^  "From  various  parts  of  the  country  there  were  complaints  that  papers 
were  sent  round  to  householders  which  contained  no  columns  for  entering  the 
language  spoken  ;  the  Registrar- General  does  not  inform  us  as  to  the  way  in 
which  such  papers  were  dealt  with,  whether  they  were  treated  as  English  only, 
or  entered  under  'No  statement'":  see  Southall  on  "The  Welsh  Language 
Census  of  1891,"  p.  7.  See  also  the  report  of  discussions  of  this  question  in  the 
House  of  Commons  (August,  1894),  in  Hansard's  "Parliamentary  Debates," 
4th  ser. ,  vol.  29,  pp.  33  etseq.,  179  and  321  et  seq. 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE.  545 

were  ultimately  entered  as  English  only.  The  opinion 
expressed  by  the  census  authorities  in  their  report,  how- 
ever, is  that  "  the  number  of  monoglot  Welsh  persons  is 
considerably  overstated,  and  the  number  of  persons  who 
can  speak  both  languages  correspondingly  understated." 
Most  of  those  who  have  subsequently  made  a  study  of 
these  returns  seem,  however,  to  favour  the  opinion  that 
the  returns  are  substantially  correct,  and  that  the  doubts 
raised  by  the  Registrar-General  as  to  the  bona  fides  of  some 
of  the  returns  were  capable  of  only  a  very  limited  applica- 
tion. Having  thus  stated  briefly  the  different  views  as  to 
the  accuracy  of  these  returns,  we  have  no  choice  but  to 
deal  with  the  figures  as  they  stand.  It  is  unnecessary  that 
we  should  here  consider  them  in  great  detail.^  Briefly 
summarised,  however,  the  population  of  Wales  and 
Monmouthshire,  in  regard  to  language,  was  composed  as 
follows  : — 

Speaking  only  English  ....  759,416 
Speaking  only  Welsh  ....  508,036 
Speaking  English  and  Welsh  .         .     402,253 

Speaking  foreign  languages    .         .         .  3,076 

No  information  (over  two  years)  .  .  12,833 
Infants  under  two  years  .         .  90,791 


Total 


1,776,405 


It  is  thus  seen  that  those  who  spoke  English  only, 
759,416  in  all,  outnumbered  those  who  spoke  Welsh  only, 
who  amounted  to  508,036  ;  while  402,253  were  returned  as 
bilingual.  Or  the  figures  may  be  put  in  this  other  way  : 
Of  the  total  population  who  spoke  one  or  other  or  both  of 
the  two  languages,  1,161,669  could  speak  English,  while 
910,289  could   speak   Welsh.     The  total  number  of  those 

^  This  is  done  in  the  memorandum  on  the  census  statistics  printed  in  the 
Commissioners'  Appendix,  Tables  27  and  28. 

W.P.  N  N 


546  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

who  could  speak  Welsh,  however,  outnumbered  those  that 
could  not,  for  while  the  latter  numbered  759,416,  the  former 
amounted  to  910,289. 

The  territorial  divisions  for  which  the  returns  as  to 
language  are  given  are  registration  districts  and  registra- 
tion counties.  It  follows  that  the  totals  are,  therefore, 
given  not  for  Wales  proper,  according  to  its  ancient  and 
well-known  boundaries,  but  for  registration  Wales  and 
Monmouthshire,  which,  as  the  Commissioners  show  in 
the  Appendix  to  their  Report,  is  less  by  14,116  acres 
than  Wales  and  Monmouthshire ;  but  the  total  popu- 
lation of  this  registration  area  exceeds  that  of  Wales 
proper  by  nearly  5,000  persons.  The  registration  districts 
are  for  all  practical  purposes  the  poor  law  unions 
of  the  country,  but  their  boundaries  are  not  generally 
known  to  any  great  extent  outside  their  own  limits,  though 
the  name  of  their  chief  or  capital  town  affords  a  general 
indication  of  their  situation,  inasmuch  as  such  a  town  is 
usually  found  to  be  the  natural  centre  of  the  district  which 
has  been  formed  into  the  poor  law  union  as  well  as  the 
registration  district  that  bears  its  name.  The  boundaries 
of  the  registration  counties  differ  in  most  cases  so  very 
widely  from  those  of  the  ancient  and  administrative  counties 
that  it  would  be  entirely  misleading  if  we  were  to  present 
here  the  result  of  the  linguistic  returns  for  such  counties 
only.  By  grouping  together  several  registration  counties 
the  vagaries  of  the  boundaries  of  each  individual  county  are 
pretty  evenly  balanced,  and  there  is,  in  consequence,  less 
difficulty  in  fixing  in  the  mind  the  general  characteristics,  the 
contour,  and  the  boundaries  of  a  large  area  than  of  a  small 
district  with  artificial  or  arbitrary  boundaries  little  known 
except  by  officials  whose  business  it  is  to  be  acquainted 
with  them,  and  for  whose  convenience  they  have  chiefly 
assumed  their  present  form.  We  shall,  therefore,  give  here 
the  ratios  of  the  Welsh  and  English-speaking  population  for 


LANGUAGE   AND   LITERATURE. 


547 


such  large  areas  only  as  can  be  easily  apprehended  or  borne 
in  mind  even  without  the  necessity  of  referring  to  a  map.^ 
We  wish,  however,  to  add  that  in  order  to  render  these 
linguistic  returns  of  real  value,  if  they  are  to  be  continued, 
in  future  censuses,  both  the  civil  parish  and  the  ancient 
county  should  be  adopted  as  additional  units  for  which 
the  numbers  of  those  speaking  Welsh  only,  English 
only,  or  both  languages  should  be  stated  in  the  published 
returns. 

The  following  table  represents  the  result  of  such  a 
grouping  of  registration  counties  as  we  have  just  suggested, 
so  far  as  the  returns  as  to  language  are  concerned  : — 


Ratio  of  Total 

Proportion  per  Gen 

t.  to  Total 

Number  of  Persons 

whose  Spoken  Language  was 

able  to  speak  Welsh 

stated,  of  Persons  speaking. 

to  Total  not  able  to 

speak  Welsh. 

Both 

English 

Welsh 

English 

Welsh. 

Non- 

* 

only. 

only. 

and 

Welsh. 

Welsh. 

Six  Northern  Counties. 

23*6 

49 '5 

269 

76-3 

237 

Five  "Western  Counties  (ex- 

cluding Pembrokeshire)     , 

8-3 

66-8 

24-9 

90-9 

9*03 

Six    Western    Counties    (in- 

cluding Pembrokeshire)     . 

177 

59-1 

23-2 

82-2 

17-8 

Six  Eastern  Counties    . 

49-1 

22-8 

28-0 

507 

49 '2 

Six    Eastern    Counties    and 

Monmouthshire 

56-8 

187 

24-4 

43 'I 

56-9 

Six  Southern  Counties . 

44-8 

29-1 

26-1 

55'i 

44  9 

Six    Southern    Counties   and 

Monmouthshire 

530 

23-9 

23-1 

46-8 

53'i 

Wales           .... 

38-3 

35 '3 

26*4 

61 -5 

38-5 

Wales  and  Monmouthshire  . 

45 '5 

30 '4 

24-1 

54 '4 

45 '6 

The  ultimate  result  of  these  statistics  is,  that  of  the  total 
population  whose  spoken    language  is   recorded,   54*4  per 

^  A   Linguistic  Map  of  Wales,  showing  approximately  the  exterior  limits 
of    native    Welsh    in    1890,    is   published  in    Southall's    "Wales   and    Her 

N  N  2 


548  THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

cent  were  returned  as  able  to  speak  Welsh,  and  45*6  per 
cent,  as  unable  to  do  so. 

Though  there  are  no  definite  statistics  to  show  what 
were  the  respective  numbers  of  the  Welsh  and  English- 
speaking  population  of  Wales  previous  to  1891,  still  various 
estimates  have  been  made  of  their  relative  proportions  at 
different  periods  during  the  present  century. 

Thus  Mr.  Thomas  Darlington,  who  has  given  consider- 
able attention  to  the  subject,^  estimates  that  in  1801  the 
number  of  the  English  monoglot  population  of  Wales  was 
somewhere  between  100,000  and  120,000.  In  other  words, 
out  of  a  total  enumerated  population  of  587,245,  about 
20  per  cent,  were  English-speaking,  the  remaining  80  per 
cent,  being  Welsh-speaking.  Sir  Thomas  PhiUips,  the 
author  of  a  most  valuable  work  on  the  social  condition  of 
the  Principality,"  published  in  1849,  estimated  that  in  1 841 
the  proportion  of  the  W^elsh  to  English-speaking  popula- 
tion was  as  67  to  33.  But  the  population  of  Wales  during 
the  period  that  had  elapsed  since  1801  had  increased  by  more 
than  60  per  cent.,  and  when  it  is  realised  that  this  increase 
included  very  large  numbers  of  immigrants  from  England 
into  industrial  districts  of  the  Principality,  the  Welsh 
language  must  be  said  to  have  held  its  own  ground  with 
remarkable  tenacity.  Thirty  years  later,  after  the  census 
of  1 871,  Mr.  Ravenstein  made  a  careful  and  exhaustiv^e 
inquiry  as  to  the  numbers  of  the  Celtic-speaking  populations 
of  the  United  Kingdom,  and  the  result,  so  far  as  Wales 
was   concerned,   showed    that,    according  to   his   estimate, 

Language  "  (2nd  ed.,  1893).  A  later  map,  based  on  the  census  returns  of 
1 89 1,  and  showing  the  percentage  of  the  Welsh-speaking  population  in  the 
fifty-two  registration  districts  of  Wales,  was  published  by  the  same  author 
in  his  "  Welsh  Language  Census  of  1891  "  (Newport,   1895). 

^  See  "The  English-speaking  Population  of  Wales  "  in  "Wales"  for  May. 
1894,  pp.  ii-i6. 

-  "Wales:  The  Language,  Social  Condition,  Moral  Character,  and 
Religious  Opinions  of  the  People,  considered  in  relation  to  Education,"  p.  7. 


LANGUAGE   AND  LITERATURE. 


549 


the  proportions  of  the  Welsh  and  English  populations 
had  not  greatly  changed  since  1841.  According  to  his 
conclusions  on  the  subject,^  the  Welsh-speakers  of  Wales 
represented  in  1871  66*2  per  cent. 

These  various  estimates  can  perhaps  be  best  understood 
if  cast  in  a  tabular  form,  where  they  can  also  be  placed  in 
juxtaposition  to  the  ascertained   results  of  the  census  of 
1891  :— 


1 801. 

1841, 

1871. 

1891. 

Persons. 

6 
<  be 

cu  c 
o_ 

80 

20 

Persons. 

0 

Persons. 

Oh    C 
0 

66-2 
33-« 

Persons. 

Per- 
centage. 

Welsh     . 
English  (only) 

(About) 

470,000 

100,000  to 

120,000 

700,000 
346,000 

67 

33 

1,006,100 
406,500 

910,289 
759-416 

54'4 
45*6 

Total  enumerated) 
Population.         / 

587,245 

100 

1,046,073 

100 

1,412,583 

100 

1,669,7052 

100 

Assuming  the  first  estimates  to  be  substantially  correct, 
the  result  of  this  table  may  be  stated  thus  : — The  whole 
population  of  Wales  has  trebled  during  the  90  years  from 
1 80 1  to  1891  ;  the  Welsh-speaking  population  has  rather 
more  than  doubled  in  that  time  ;  but  the  purely  English 
population  has  increased  nearly  sevenfold. 

That  the  great  increase  in  the  English  population  of 
Wales  has  to  some  extent  been  brought  about  at  the 
expense  of  the  Welsh-speaking  population  is  a  conclusion 
which  has    already  been    forced   upon    us  when  we  were 

^  Quoted  in  the  "  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Intermediate  Education  in 
Wales,  1881,''  p.  xlvii.  The  results  of  Mr.  Ravenstein's  inquiry  were  stated  in 
a  paper  read  by  him  before  the  Statistical  Society,  of  M'hich  the  portions 
relating  to  Wales  were  reproduced  in  "Bye-Gones  "  for  May  7,  1879. 

-  This  is  the  total  for  registration  Wales  and  Monmouthshire,  omitting 
infants  {a)  under  two  years  of  age,  {d)  adults  who  spoke  neither  Welsh  nor 
English,  and  (c)  those  who  made  no  statement  as  to  their  language. 


550  THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xii.) 

considering  the  encroachment  of  EngHsh  on  the  border  dis- 
tricts of  the  counties  of  Radnor,  Brecon,  and  Montgomery.^ 
But  this  growth  of  the  English-speaking  population  is 
probably  due,  even  in  a  larger  degree,  to  the  immigration 
of  English  people  into  Wales,  concurrently  of  course  with 
the  emigration  of  Welsh-speaking  persons  from  Wales. 

*  See  above,  pp.  526-7. 


I 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

RURAL  WALES   AT   THE   PRESENT   DAY. 

In  estimating  the  moral  and  intellectual  condition  of 
the  Welsh,  it  will  be  convenient  to  discuss  facts  of  two 
distinct  orders  together,  to  wit,  the  natural  disposition  or 
racial  characteristics  of  the  people,  and  the  circumstances 
under  which  they  live.  Under  the  latter  heading  we 
proceed  to  consider  the  questions  of  food  and  clothing, 
of  farmhouses  and  cottages. 

We  begin  with  the  diet  of  the  farmers  and  labourers, 
premising  that  we  have  found  no  reason  to  draw  any 
distinction  in  these  matters  between  tenant  farmers  and 
small  freeholders  ;  and  in  a  general  way  we  may  say,  that 
in  the  matter  of  food  as  in  many  others  the  difference 
between  the  small  farmer's  family  and  that  of  the  labourer 
is  very  trifling.  Nay,  in  some  instances,  the  farmer  in  a 
small  way  lives  quite  as  hard  as  his  labourer,  and  harder 
than  the  artisans  or  miners  of  his  district.  This  har- 
monises with  the  fact  mentioned  more  than  once  in  the 
evidence  collected  by  the  Welsh  Land  Commission,  that 
a  labourer  frequently  expects  to  become  a  farmer  and 
succeeds  in  doing  so,  while,  vice  versa,  the  sons  of  a  small 
farmer  find  it  sometimes  more  advantageous  to  work  as 
labourers  than  to  help  at  home.  This  is  much  the  same 
all  over  the  Principality,  but  when  a  farmer  was  asked 
the  question  as  to  his  meals,  he  was  not  always  willing 
to  answer.     Evidently  a  sort  of  pride  came  into  play  which 


552         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,   (chap,  xiii.) 

made  the  witness  put  on  the  best  appearance  possible 
consistently  with  the  wish  not  to  depart  too  widely  from 
the  truth.  In  other  words,  questions  as  to  diet  were  apt 
to  be  regarded — unnecessarily  we  think — as  inquisitorial ; 
and  sometimes  a  witness  could  only  be  got  to  speak  freely 
on  the  understanding  that  he  was  not  describing  his 
own  household,  but  those  of  his  neighbours  or  the  people 
generally  whose  houses  he  visited  in  his  district.  In  some 
cases  the  witness  seemed  to  be  apprehensive  lest  his  own 
neighbourhood  should  not  appear  to  advantage  as  com- 
pared with  other  parts  of  the  country.  This  is  a  kind 
of  local  pride  which  we  should  be  sorry  to  discourage  ; 
it  is  self-respect  writ  large,  and  it  cannot  but  tend  to 
produce  beneficial  results. 

We  now  proceed  to  cite  some  typical  portions  of  the 
evidence  1  as  to  the  diet  of  the  farmers  of  Wales.  Mr. 
Hugh  Williams  spoke  as  to  Lanfair  Mathafarn  Eithaf, 
and  the  adjoining  parishes  of  the  Anglesey  Union,  to  the 
effect  that  some  of  the  farmers  there  live  "on  bread-and- 
milk "  for  breakfast,  on  "  potatoes  with  butter-milk,  and 
potatoes  with  butter "  for  dinner,  adding  that  some  get 
salt  meat,  but  very  seldom  any  meat  except  salt  meat, 
that  is  to  say,  bacon  and  beef.  He  went  on  to  say  that 
they  have  bread-and-butter  and  tea  in  the  afternoon,  and 
porridge  and  butter-milk  for  supper.  Lastly,  he  said  that 
"  there  are  many  farmers  who  cannot  afford  to  get  a  piece 
of  fresh  meat  once  a  year." 

Mr.  David  Davies,  a  labourer  living  in  the  parish  of 
Langybi,  in  Carnarvonshire,  made  the  following  statement- 
as  to  the  diet  of  the  farmers  in  his  neighbourhood  :  "  The 
farmer's  food  is  not  of  the  best.  It  generally  consists  of 
salted  meat,  which  is  kept  for  a  year  or  so  until  it  is  hard 
and  difficult  to  eat.  It  is  not  often  that  the  farmer's 
family  or  the  servants  get  fresh  meat,  but  when  they  do 
1  Qu.  19,895,  19,932—46.  2  Qu^  ii,;66. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     553 

get  it,  it  is  only  the  head  of  a  cow  or  pig  when  one  is 
killed.  Generally  when  a  cow  is  killed  for  the  farmer's 
use  it  is  one  which  could  not  be  sold  to  a  butcher.  If 
a  cow  is  a  good  one  it  is  always  sold  to  pay  the  rent.  The 
bread  is  better  than  it  used  to  be,  because  they  have  failed 
to  bake  barley  these  last  few  years,  and  the  farmers  arc 
compelled  to  buy  wheaten  bread.  The  butter  is  generally 
fresh  and  good,  but  the  farmers  can  afford  to  give  but 
very  little  to  the  servants,  and  little  even  to  their  own 
children." 

Mr.  Ivan  Thos.  Davies,  giving  evidence  at  Bala,  stated  it 
as  his  opinion  that  the  hill  farmers  have  much  the  same 
fare  now  as  he  had  when  a  boy  on  a  farm,  and  that  fare 
he  described  as  follows  : — "  First  of  all  we  had  in  the 
morning  bruised  oatmeal  cake  and  butter-milk  ;  ^  then  we 
had  some  bread-and-butter  and  tea.  For  dinner  we  had 
bacon  and  potatoes.  For  tea,  at  about  three  or  four 
o'clock,  we  used  to  have  a  lot  of  siicmi,  followed  by  a 
cup  of  tea.  Sucan  is  a  kind  of  thin  flummery,  or  some- 
thing like  that.  Then  we  had  porridge  or  bread-and- 
cheese  and  butter-milk  for  supper."  ^ 

Mr.  Gomer  Roberts,  a  native  of  Merionethshire,  who 
now  farms  in  the  upper  part  of  the  Vale  of  Clwyd,  gave 
us  his  view  to  the  following  effect  :^  Being  asked  as  to  the 
usual  fare  of  a  small  farmer  and  his  family,  he  said  that 
they  had  as  their  breakfast  bread-and-milk  ox potes  (a  kind  of 

^  This  kind  of  food  is  very  common  in  Gwyned",  and  it  goes  by  the  English 
name  of  "shot ";  but  in  Anglesey  and  parts  of  Carnarvonshire  it  is  known 
also  as  picws  tnali.  The  oatmeal  cake  is  brp.ised  quite  small,  and  butter- 
milk is  mixed  with  it.  It  is  then  mostly  eaten  forthwith,  but  we  have 
sometimes  heard  of  its  being  left  standing  to  give  the  bread  time  to  swell. 
Even  without  that  delay,  however,  it  proves  a  very  satisfying  food,  and  the 
farmers  know  from  experience  that  a  servant  who  partakes  of  it  freely  will 
not  require  much  else  to  complete  his  meal;  and,  above  all,  they  regard  it  a? 
conducive  to  economy  in  the  matter  of  butter  and  cheese  and  meat. 

-  Qu.  6,961—4,  6,934. 

3  Qu.  61,156—78,  61,225—9,  62,264—5. 


554         ^^HE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

pottage  or  broth),  and  that  this  was  followed  by  bread-and- 
butter  and  tea.  For  dinner  they  had  "  meat  always,  bacon 
or  mutton  or  beef"  ;  but  he  proceeded  to  explain  that 
"  bacon  is  the  backbone  of  the  meal  "  ;  and  they  had  fresh 
meat  occasionally,  as,  for  instance,  when  a  sheep  was  killed 
or  when,  within  the  last  few  years,  a  farmer  found  butchers* 
meat  pressed  on  him  at  a  very  low  price — a  lower  price,  in 
fact,  than  that  at  which  he  could  cure  his  own  bacon.  In 
the  afternoon  they  would  have  bread-and-butter  and  tea, 
and  for  supper  they  had  bread-and-milk  or  potes,  as  in  the 
morning.  This  witness  stated  that  the  bread  in  his  present 
district  had  for  the  last  few  years  been  all  wheat,  and  by 
way  of  comparison  he  stated  that  more  oatmeal  bread  was 
made  in  Merionethshire,  and  that  a  good  deal  more 
porridge  was  eaten  there.  He  considered  that  the  food 
eaten  in  Merionethshire  was  better  than  the  food  prevalent 
in  the  Vale  of  Clwyd,  and  further  that  the  less  tea  people 
take,  and  the  more  milk  and  meat,  the  better  ;  this  he 
considered  "  the  strongest  food  and  the  best." 

Mr.  David  Rogers,  farming  in  the  parish  of  Forden,  in 
Montgomeryshire,  spoke  to  the  following  effect^  as  to  his 
own  farm  :  They  had  breakfast  at  six  o'clock,  which  in  the 
case  of  the  men  consisted  of  broth  ;  between  nine  and  ten 
they  had  a  meal  which  he  called  a  bait;  then  came  dinner, 
with  mutton  or  beef,  or  whatever  meat  there  might  be  ;  and 
between  four  and  five  in  the  afternoon  came  another  meal, 
involving  cold  meat,  cheese,  and  butter  ;  and,  lastly,  there 
was  supper.  He  remarked  that  in  harvest-time  his  men 
had  meat  at  all  their  meals  except  breakfast,  and  that  the 
meat  was  fresh ;  but  he  was  of  opinion  that  they  had  not 
always  fared  so  well. 

Nevertheless  it  is  a  tradition,  probably  of  long  standing 
in  other  parts  of  Wales,  that  the  farmers  of  Montgomery- 
shire   near    the    English     borders    fared,    comparatively 

'  Qu.  65,797-808. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     555 

speaking,  better  than  those  of  other  parts  of  the  Princi- 
paHty,  say,  for  instance,  Cardiganshire.  In  this  latter 
county  it  used,  in  the  days  before  the  making  of  the 
railway  connecting  Aberystwyth  with  Shrewsbury  and 
Oswestry,  to  be  related  of  them  that  it  was  their  custom 
to  begin  dinner  with  the  pudding  ever  since  one  of  them 
had  chanced  to  die  before  reaching  that  course.  The 
alleged  change  was  supposed  by  a  people  who  rarely 
tasted  pudding  to  embody  the  rule  of  securing  the  best 
thing  first.  As  to  the  five  meals,  however,  they  will  be 
found  referred  to  in  other  parts  of  the  evidence.^ 

In  the  adjoining  county  of  Radnor  the  fare  appears  to 
be  much  the  same  as  in  Forden,  except  that  less  fresh 
meat  is  eaten  there;  and  one  witness,  Mr.  Lewelyn  Pugh, 
from  the  parish  of  St.  Harmon,  an  old  man  of  eighty-four, 
gave  it  as  his  opinion^  that  when  he  was  a  boy  people  did 
not  liv^e  in  his  neighbourhood  "  the  tenth  part  as  well "  as 
they  do  now. 

Mr.  W.  O.  Brigstocke,  speaking  generally  of  the  farmers 
in  the  unions  of  Cardigan  and  Newcastle  Emlyn,  used  the 
following  words :  ^ — "  The  Welsh  tenant  farmer  is  most 
thrifty  and  frugal  ;  and  his  diet,  though  somewhat  rough, 
is  healthy  and  sufficient.  It  consists  of  tea,  bread,  butter, 
cheese,  milk,  bacon,  and  vegetables  ;  fresh  meat  is  rarely 
seen  at  table,  and  the  diet  of  the  ordinary  farmer  differs 
but  little  from  that  of  the  labourer."  But  Mr.  J.  C.  Jones, 
trading  at  Lanarth,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Aberayron, 
Cardiganshire,  spoke  from  a  minute  knowledge  of  a  more 
circumscribed  district,  and  described  the  usual  diet  as 
follows  :'^ — "The  fare  of  the  tenants  as  a  class  is  hard,  and 
I  am  almost  sure  if  I  commenced  describing  the  same  it 
would  carry  on  the  face  of  it  the  air  of  exaggeration.     The 

^  For  instance,  under  Qu,  43,281  and  70,795 — 800. 

2  Qu.  52,996—53,005. 

3  Qu.  43,281.  ''Qu.  48,103. 


556         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

chief  meal  of  the  day  is  cawl  or  broth,  with  bacon  or 
dried  beef  and  potatoes.  Fresh  meat  is  out  of  the 
question." 

Mr.  John  Davies,  a  tenant  farmer  Hving  in  the  parish  of 
Landeusant,  Carmarthenshire,  says^  of  the  food  there,  that 
it,  "  especially  the  bread,  is  better  than  it  used  to  be." 
"  Farmers,"  he  proceeds  to  say,  "  very  seldom  touch 
butchers'  meat,  but  generally  live  on  bread-and-cheese, 
potatoes,  and  some  salted  meat.  They  sell  nearly  all  their 
cattle,  butter,  and  eggs,  and  all  the  best  things  in  order  to 
pay  the  landlord."  In  his  cross-examination  he  gave  the 
details  of  the  usual  meals  in  harmony  with  the  summary 
from  which  we  have  cited  these  words. 

Miss  Kate  Jenkins,  speaking  as  to  the  parish  of  Lan- 
gadock,  said,^  "  The  living  is  exceedingly  frugal  and  scanty, 
even  in  large  farms  ;  fresh  meat  only  on  Sundays,  often 
never  at  all  ;  no  butter  or  meat  for  breakfast.  They  will 
not  eat  butter  if  dozen  tubs  in  dairy ;  it  goes  to  pay  rent. 
Broth  for  dinner  daily,  with  a  little  salt  meat ;  I  have  been 
in  a  farm  where  they  were  only  eating  broth  of  oatmeal 
and  potatoes,  with  no  meat  at  all.  Farmers  will  offer  you 
tea  and  bread-and-butter  for  dinner  as  a  luxury.  Very 
hard-working,  very  little  recreation,  except  to  market. 
No  holidays,  except,  perhaps,  the  sons  go  by  an  excursion 
train  for  two  days,  or  the  daughters  for  a  few  days  to 
the  seaside.  No  reading-rooms  or  entertainments,  or 
where  they  have  been  tried  unsuccessful.  Singing  schools 
and  Eistedfods  almost  the  only  recreations.  A  weekly 
newspaper  looked  upon  as  a  luxury." 

Mr.  J.  A.  Doyle,  of  Pendarren,  near  Crickhowell,  who 
reported  to  the  Royal  Commission  on  Agriculture,  in  i88i, 
on  the  state  of  farming  in  Wales,  gave  evidence  to  the 
Welsh  Land  Commission  as  to  a  district  on  the  borders  of 

^  Q"-  39,554,  39,575—82.  2  Qu.  38,024. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     557 

Brecknockshire  and  Monmouthshire,  saying,^  "I  should  say 
from  observation  of  some  of  the  quite  small  farmers  that  I 
should  think  their  standard  of  comfort  was  hardly,  if  at  all, 
higher  than  that  of  the  labourers.  As  to  a  former  tenant  of 
mine  on  a  small  farm,  which  I  now  occupy  myself,  of  sixty 
acres,  I  do  not  think  his  standard  of  comfort,  so  far  as  I  could 
observe,  was  materially  better  than  that  of  my  labourers." 

Mr.  Lewis  ILewelyn,  a  tenant  farmer  living  in  the  upper 
portion  of  the  Neath  Valley,  gave  the  Commission  the  details 
of  the  farmer's  meals  as  follows  :  ^ — "  The  breakfast  consists 
of  tea,  bread-and-butter  or  cheese,  and,  in  many  places, 
bacon.  At  dinner,  they  have  potatoes  and  meat,  mostly 
bacon,  but  sometimes  butchers'  meat ;  then  comes  in  the 
afternoon  some  tea  and  bread-and-butter.  For  supper  they 
have  milk  or  broth  and  bread-and-cheese,  but  a  cup  of  tea 
for  those  who  are  fond  of  having  it  again."  He  considered 
that  the  bread  was  good,  and  that  they  fared  pretty  well, 
but  he  suggested  that  those  living  higher  among  the  hills 
lived  harder. 

Mr.  James  Jenkins,  a  tenant  farmer  and  member  of  the 
Pembrokeshire  County  Council,  gave  his  evidence^  at 
Letterston,  and  stated  that  they  have  for  breakfast  tea  or 
coffee  and  bread-and-cheese  and  butter,  for  dinner  caiu/, 
a  broth  or  soup  containing  meal  and  meat,  sometimes 
beef  or  mutton,  but  more  usually  bacon  ;  and  it  is  very 
seldom  that  they  have  any  fresh  meat.  Besides  this  the 
dinner  has  the  usual  complement  of  potatoes  and  bread. 
Lastly,  the  supper  is  sometimes  tea  and  sometimes  caw/, 
of  the  nature  already  described.  Mr.  Jenkins  stated  that 
the  smaller  farmers  had  been  living  harder  than  that,  but 
in  the  Anglo-Flemish  part  of  the  county — his  farm  is  near 
the  boundary — people  fare,  according  to  him,  considerably 
better.     Asked  as  to  the  difference  between  the  Welsh  and 

1  Qu.  50,005.  2  Qu.  2,307—20. 

3  Qu.  31,403-30,  28,929—37. 


558         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

the  English  in  the  county,  he  answered,  "  We  are  hardier, 
and  we  Hve  harder."  Q. — "  You  think  you  Hve  harder  ?  " — 
**  Oh,  a  deal  ;  there  is  no  doubt  about  that."  Q. — "  You  live 
harder  in  the  Welsh  part  ?  " — "  Yes  ;  their  landlords — Lord 
Cawdor,  for  instance — he  is  very  glad  to  get  a  Welshman 
down  Castle  Martin  way."  Q. — ''  Do  you  say  they  are 
hardier  or  harder.-^" — '*  Hardier  and  harder,  living  harder — 
we  can  do  with  commoner  things."  It  is  to  be  noticed 
that  this  evidence  appears  to  coincide  with  the  charge  of 
excessive  eating  sometimes  brought  against  the  Anglo- 
Flemish,  as,  for  example,  by  George  Owen.^ 

We  have  dealt  thus  far  with  the  food  of  the  small  farmer 
and  his  household  ;  and  it  has  been  suggested  to  us  more 
than  once,  that  the  food  provided  by  large  farmers  is 
better  ;  but  we  can  draw  no  distinction  of  importance 
between  the  fare  of  the  small  farmer  and  his  labourers  who 
■eat  at  his  table.  Those  who  have  to  find  for  themselves, 
however,  live  probably  harder.  Among  other  things,  they 
get  less  milk,  especially  in  districts  remote  from  towns  ;  it  is 
not  worth  the  farmers'  while  to  sell  milk,  and  though  they 
may  give  the  labourers  milk  when  they  send  to  ask  for 
some,  the  latter  naturally  feel  reluctant  to  trouble  them 
too  often,  and  the  result  is  that  they  and  their  families  fall 
back  on  tea  more  and  more.  The  labourers  probably  fare 
better  in  the  neighbourhood  of  great  centres  of  industries, 
such  as  the  ironworks  of  Glamorganshire  or  the  slate 
quarries    of    North    Wales ;    for    a   hard    fare  would    act 

^  See  his  "  Pembrokeshire,"  p.  43,  wliere  we  read  as  follows  : — "  In  one 
thinge  these  our  Ffleminges  have  altered  their  stomackes  from  the  rest  over  the 
sea,  for  in  that  excesse  with  which  the  Dutchmen  are  taxed  for  drinkinge  are 
these  theire  kinsmen  for  excessive  eatinge,  for  of  custome  at  certeine  seasons 
and  labors  they  will  have  fyve  meales  a  daie,  and  it  you  will  bestowe  the  sixt 
on  them  they  will  accept  of  it  verye  kindly,  and  if  they  be  but  a  litle  intreated, 
they  will  bestowe  laboure  on  the  seaventhe  meal."  To  most  men  who  have 
travelled  in  Belgium  and  noticed  the  ample  meals  habitually  consumed  at  the 
hotels  patronised  by  Flemings,  George  Owen  would  seem  to  have  slightly 
overrated  the  change  in  "stomackes." 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAW     559 

powerfully  to  make  them  leave  the  land  and  seek  other 
employment.^ 

The  Commission  did  not  systematically  take  evidence 
on  the  question  of  drink  ;  but  we  infer,  from  incidental 
remarks  made  by  witnesses,  that  the  small  farmers  seldom 
have  beer  at  home  ;  and  it  is  only  on  some  of  the  larger 
farms  that  beer  is  given  to  the  servants  and  labourers, 
which  happens  mostly  in  harvest-time,  and  on  special 
occasions.  Difficulties  have  arisen  here  and  there  in  con- 
sequence of  beer  being  supplied  to  the  labourers,  and  the 
tendency  is  to  discontinue  the  supply.  In  one  instance 
the  employer.  Sir  Joseph  R.  Bailey,  of  Glan  Usk  Park, 
Crickhowell,  in  speaking  of  the  management  of  his  home- 
farm,  described  the  circumstances  which  led  him  to  put  an 
end  to  the  custom  of  providing  beer  for  his  workmen  in 
harvest-time  ;  but  they  receive  each  extra  pay  in  that 
season  of  the  year,  and  the  rule  appears  to  work  satisfac- 
torily. The  ordinary  drink  of  the  small  farmer  and  those 
dependent  on  him  is  milk,  tea,  or  cold  water  ;  but  in  some 
instances  water  with  a  sprinkling  of  oatmeal  has  been 
tried.  We  have  it  in  evidence  that  this  is  pretty  generally 
enjoyed  in  harvest-time  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bala ; 
and  we  understand  that  the  custom  is  much  the  same  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Lampeter,  Lanybyther,  Landyssul, 
and  the  adjoining  districts  on  both  sides  of  the  Teify, 
together  with  the  whole  of  the  country  between  that  river 
and  the  Towy.^ 

In  looking  over  the  evidence  generally  as  to  the  diet  of 
the  small  farmers  of  Wales  and  their  households,  one  is 
greatly  struck  by  the  remarkable  improvement  which  has 
taken  place  throughout  the  country.  Among  other  things 
may  be  mentioned  the  fact  that  before  the  use  of  foreign 

^  For  the  evidence  for  the  statements  made  in  this  paragraph  see  Qu.  10,774, 
19,946,  24,866,  4,162 — 7,  10,225 — 6,  4,161 — 7. 
2  Qu.  3,727,  5,347-8,  7,304-7,  49,802,  49,841—5,  3,649—51. 


56o         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

flour  became  general  the  small  farmers  tried  to  grow  corn 
for  their  own  bread,  and  that  in  all  the  upland  country 
they  lived  mostly  on  barley  bread.  If  the  harvest  happened 
to  prove  disappointing  or  the  weather  continued  wet,  which 
it  often  did,  they  suffered  in  their  fare  accordingly,  and 
anybody  who  remembers  the  forties  or  the  fifties  will  not 
readily  forget  the  sort  of  bread  on  their  tables,  how  it 
looked  more  like  lead  than  food  for  human  beings.  But 
they  no  longer  rely  on  corn  crops  of  their  own,  and  very 
little  barley  bread  is  now  made.  One  may  say,  that  there 
has  been  an  advance  all  along  the  line.  In  the  course  of 
the  examination  at  Bala  of  Mr.  Thomas  Davies,  a  tenant 
farmer,  who  undertook  to  speak  to  the  general  condition 
of  things  on  the  Rhiwlas  estate  in  the  parishes  of  Lanycil 
and  Lanfor,  the  following  extract  relating  to  the  former 
fare  of  small  farmers  in  Merionethshire  was  read  from  a 
"  Prize  Essay  on  the  Agriculture  of  North  Wales  "  :  ^  "  For 
dinner  you  will  see  a  small  farmer  have  half  a  salt  herring, 
with  potatoes  and  butter-milk  (very  poor  food  for  a  work- 
ing man)  ;  his  wife  and  family  must  content  themselves 
with  butter-milk  and  potatoes,  or^perhaps,  after  the  farmer 
has  finished  his  part  herring  there  will  be  a  scramble 
amongst  the  youngsters  for  the  bones  to  suck  as  a  treat. 
They  sometimes  have  a  little  skim-milk  cheese  with  oaten 
bread,  some,  better  off  than  others,  bacon."  The  witness 
was  then  asked  as  to  that  extract  :  '•  Is  that  a  fair  average 
truthful  picture  of  what  you  remember  in  your  youth  .-^ " 
He  answered, "  Yes,  it  is  certainly  so  ;  I  remember  it  very 
well "  ;  -  and,  in  answer  to  a  further  question,  he  said  as  to  the 

^  Printed  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Agricultural  Society  of  England  for 
1846  (vii.  572).   See  also  Qu.  3,726,  5,346,  8,507—9,  8,072. 

■^  If  we  go  further  back,  to  the  seventeenth  century  for  example,  we  find  the 
extreme  disparity  between  the  food  and  drink  of  the  rich  and  those  of  the  poor 
attracting  the  attention  of  strangers  :  the  reader  may  be  referred  for  an  instance 
to  "  The  Account  of  the  Official  Progress  of  his  Grace  Henry  the  first  Duke 
of  Beaufort  through  Wales  in  1684"  (London,  1888),  p.  249. 


RURAL    WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.      561 

diet  that  "  it  is  very  much  better  now."  This  statement  as 
to  improvement  is  practically  borne  out  by  the  evidence 
of  Mr.  Price,  the  owner  of  the  Rhiwlas  estate,  who  said  in 
his  evidence  :  ^  "  Unmarried  men  prefer  living  in  the  farm- 
houses, because  they  get  food  and  lodging  free  ;  and  the 
master  is  bound  to  see  to  their  comforts,  and  one  of  my 
tenants  told  me  that  they  now  insist  on  meat  and  tarts  and 
pudding  at  dinner." 

It  is  needless  to  produce  more  evidence  on  this  point : 
it  is  so  generally  admitted  that  we  have  as  a  rule  taken  it 
for  granted.  Nevertheless  there  is  no  denying  that  some 
of  the  small  farmers  have  still  a  hard  fare ;  we  need  only 
recall  the  words  of  Mr.  J.  C.  Jones  which  we  have  already 
cited.  But  there  is  also  evidence  in  point  from  Mr.  R. 
Foulkes  Jones,  headmaster  of  the  board  school  at  Lwyn- 
gwiyl,  between  Towyn  and  Barmouth.^  Asked  concerning 
the  food  of  the  children  of  the  farmers  in  his  district,  he 
answered  as  to  those  who  came  from  a  distance  and  ate 
their  midday  food  in  the  schoolroom,  especially  in  winter, 
as  follows :  "  I  have  seen  farmers'  children  in  the  school 
eating  barley  bread  and  a  red  herring  divided  between  two 
or  three  of  them,  and  drinking  butter-milk  with  it."  He 
characterised  them  as  "  very  badly  fed  indeed,"  and  he  did 
not  regard  the  fare  as  adequate  to  keep  the  children  in 
health.  Even  in  the  districts  where  the  fare  is  still  hard, 
we  have  no  doubt  that  it  was  harder  half  a  century  ago, 
not  to  go  back  to  the  hard  times  before  the  repeal  of  the 
Corn  Laws  ;  and  speaking  of  the  country  generally,  the 
advance  in  the  people's  ideas  of  comfort  cannot  readily 
be  exaggerated. 

There  remain,  however,  a  few  remarks  which  we  wish 
to  make  with  respect  to  that  progress  itself  in  so  far  as 
regards  food.  We  would  refer  again  to  the  little  import- 
ance attached  to  milk  as  part  of  the  food  of  the  labourers' 
'  Qu.  16,318.  _  -  Qu.  16,035-8. 

w.  P.  '  00 


562         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

families,  since  we  do  not  think  it  altogether  satisfactory 
that  tea  should  take  its  place.  We  have  it  in  the  evi- 
dence ^  given  to  the  Commission  at  Bridgend,  in  Glamorgan  ■ 
shire,  by  Dr.  Wyndham  Randall,  medical  officer  of  health 
in  the  district,  that  the  diet  of  the  outdoor  labourer  and 
his  family  "  might  be  improved  if  more  milk  were  made 
use  of,  particularly  by  the  children."  Similarly,  the  Rev. 
R.  W.  Griffith,  whose  ministry  was  carried  on  among  the 
people  of  the  parish  of  Landeiniolen,  in  Carnarvonshire, 
stated  ^  that  the  workmen  in  the  quarries  "  live  to  a  great 
extent  on  tea,"  while  the  agricultural  labourers  "  get  a 
good  deal  of  milk  food."  Asked  to  compare  the  results 
so  far  as  his  observations  went,  he  said,  "  Those  who  take 
milk  food  as  a  rule  are  broader  men  and  stronger  men." 

We  cannot  help  deprecating  the  increasing  consumption 
of  tea,  and  the  change  to  the  modern  diet  has  not  been, 
perhaps,  in  other  respects  wholly  beneficial.  The  old 
regime  is  exemplihed  in  Welsh  parlance  as  represented  by 
the  triad  F'ewyrtJi  a  viodryb  ac  uzud,  "  Uncle  and  Aunt 
and  stirabout,"  as  contrasted  with  the  newer  regime,  with 
its  Mistres  a  inistyr  a  the,  "  Mistress  and  Master  and  tea." 
Porridge  or  stirabout,  called  in  Welsh  uivd,  has  probably, 
in  some  form  or  other,  been  an  important  part  of  the  daily 
fare  of  the  Welsh  peasantry  from  time  immemorial.  For 
we  are  carried  back  far  into  the  past  by  the  suggestive 
fact  that  the  Welsh  word  has  its  exact  equivalent  in  the 
old  Cornish  iot  and  in  the  Breton  iod  for  a  dish  cooked  in 
a  somewhat  similar  fashion,  from  which  the  sturdy  peasants 
of  Brittany  are  sometimes  called  paotred-iod,  or  "  porridge- 
boys."  In  Wales  mud  is  altogether  made  either  of  oatmeal 
or  of  groats,  and  it  is  mostly  taken  with  milk.  But  it  is 
not  the  only  food  of  the  sort  made  from  oatmeal,  for 
flummery,  called  in  Welsh  ffymry^  is  also  made  of  oatmeal, 

1  Qu.  16,035— S.  -  Qu.  12,256—9. 

•*  Flummery  is  made  by  placing  oatmeal  to  soak  in  water  until  it  has  become 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     563 

and  is  eaten  a  good  deal  in  parts  of  Wales  instead  of  ircud, 
as  it  is  also  in  Brittany,  for  instance,  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Lanion,  in  the  Cotes  du  Nord.  But  flummery  is  not 
such  good  food  for  a  man  who  works,  as  porridge  ;  and 
the  latter  continues,  on  the  whole,  to  be  preferred  in  most 
parts  of  the  Principality,  as  it  does  in  Scotland. 

At  one  time  oatmeal  cake  used  to  be  more  commonly 
eaten  in  Wales  than  it  is  now  ;  but  in  such  matters  the 
Principality  comes  readily  under  English  influence,  and  had 
England  been  so  well  known  for  its  bannocks  as  Scotland 
they  would  have  continued  more  in  favour  in  Wales 
probably  than  they  are.  In  the  case  of  porridge  the  fact 
of  its  appearing  on  the  breakfast- table  of  well-to-do  English 
people  will  prevent  the  tendency  to  drop  it.  The  fashion 
in  such  matters  spreads  from  the  houses  of  the  rich  in 
England  to  those  of  the  bourgeoisie,  and  from  these  it 
reaches  in  many  ways  the  houses  of  the  small  shopkeepers 
in  the  towns  and  watering-places  of  Wales.  Thence  it 
propagates  itself  in  the  farmhouses,  and  it  may  do  good 
or  the  reverse,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  change.  In 
the   matter   of    porridge    its    influence   would    be   on    the 

sour,  when  the  soHd  stuff,  or  bran,  is  squeezed  out  of  it,  and  the  rest  passed 
through  a  strainer  or  sieve.  It  is  then  boiled  to  the  consistency  of- a  blanc-mange 
and  taken  with  milk  :  with  sweet  milk  it  makes  very  palatable  food.  A  thinner 
or  fluid  kind  of  flummery  is  made  in  Wales,  chiefly  for  supper,  and  is  called 
sucan  in  North  Wales,  and  bwdran  in  South  Wales ;  with  the  latter  vocable 
compare  its  mediaeval  Irish  name  buaidren.  The  names  vary  :  thus  sucan  is 
pronounced  sican  in  North  Wales,  and  sycan  in  parts  of  South  Wales,  where 
it  is  partly  used  instead  of  the  word  ttym)-}'^  while  in  South  Cardiganshire  the 
longer  term  uwd  S7ican  is  heard  for  Hymry.  In  Brittany  the  flummery  is,  we 
suspect,  partly  made  of  wheat  flour,  as  is  the  case  still  more  with  the  idd ; 
and  in  1888,  whilst  on  a  visit  at  M.  Renan's  house  at  Ros  map  Ammon,  near 
Perros  Guirec,  Professor  Rhys  had  an  opportunity  of  making  a  comparison. 
Mme.  Kenan  took  Mrs.  Rhys  one  day  to  visit  some  farms  in  the  neighbourhood, 
and  came  across  a  family  partaking  of  a  dish  of  the  flummery  kind.  This  led 
her  to  mention  how  fond  her  husband  was  of  it,  whereupon  the  farmer's  wife 
insisted  on  sending  some  at  once  to  Ros  map  Ammon,  M.  Renan  relished  it 
tlioroughly,  but  the  Welshman,  though  fond  of  Hymiy,  could  not  make  much 
way  with  the  Armoric  variant. 

0  0  2 


564         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xin.) 

right  side  ;  but  in  the  matter,  for  instance,  of  broth  or 
soup,  the  influence  of  the  fashion  is  the  reverse.  For  the 
making  of  a  cheap  and  nutritious  soup  is  a  problem  which 
it  is  not  given  the  national  genius  of  England  to  solve,  and 
when  the  Welsh  farmer  visits  a  shopkeeper  or  tradesman 
in  the  town  where  he  does  his  marketing,  he  finds  no  kind 
of  soup  on  the  table.  So  he  goes  home  convinced  that 
such  a  dish  is  not  fashionable,  and  though  some  kind  of 
soup  should  continue  to  be  made  in  his  own  house,  he 
would  not  consider  it  the  right  thing  to  place  any  of  it 
before  a  stranger  who  happens  to  be  his  guest.  We  men- 
tion this,  as  the  art  of  making  an  excellent  soup  is  not  yet 
extinct  in  certain  parts  of  the  Principality,  such  as  Cardi- 
ganshire :  it  is  made  by  boiling  meat  in  water  in  which  are 
put  a  little  oatmeal  and  a  certain  quantity  of  vegetables, 
such  as  leeks,  cabbages,  turnips,  or  carrots.  This  and  other 
cheap  dishes,  in  the  making  of  which  Welsh  women  have 
some  experience,  should  serve  as  the  starting-point  in  the 
cookery  schools  to  be  established  in  the  Principality,  at 
any  rate  if  they  are  to  produce  beneficial  results  in  the 
near  future. 

This  leads  us  to  touch  on  the  question  of  cookery  among 
the  farmers.  The  wife  of  a  small  farmer  usually  takes 
part  in  the  cooking,  or  at  any  rate  tries  to  superintend  it, 
and  a  good  deal  beyond  the  immediate  comfort  of  the 
family  depends  on  her  skill  and  on  that  of  the  maid  who 
does  the  cooking.  For  at  hiring  time  the  state  of  the  kitchen 
at  each  farm  is  pretty  well  known  in  the  neighbourhood, 
and  the  quaHfications  of  the  maid  who  has  charge  of  it 
are  freely  canvassed.  In  case  she  has  a  bad  name,  as 
unsuccessful  in  baking,  for  instance,  or  in  boiling  potatoes, 
the  farmer  who  engages  her  cannot  readily  get  the  best 
servant-men  to  enter  his  service.  Further,  the  depression  in 
agriculture  tends  to  the  same  result,  namely,  by  compelling 
the  farmers    to    engage  young    and  incompetent  servant- 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY,     565 

maids,  who  lack  the  teaching  and  experience  necessary  to 
make  them  fit  for  their  work  in  the  kitchen.  The  Com- 
mission made  no  systematic  inquiry  into  this  matter,  but  it 
was  occasionally  brought  under  its  notice,  as,  for  instance, 
by  Mr.  Richard  Rowlands,  a  farm  labourer  from  Gwalchmai, 
in  Anglesey.  While  admitting  that  there  had  been  improve- 
ment in  the  food-stuffs  which  the  farmers  procured  for  their 
households,  he  found  fault  with  the  cooking,  and  said  :  ^ 
"  The  servant-girls,  as  a  rule,  are  very  young  ;  they  are  too 
young  to  know.  They  have  no  experience  in  cooking,  and, 
of  course,  farmers  employ  them  because  they  get  them 
for  little  wages."  He  admitted  that  the  farmers'  wives 
understood  cooking,  but  he  characterised  it  as  ''  cooking 
for  themselves,"  not  for  the  servants  or  labourers.  Evi- 
dence to  somewhat  the  same  effect  was  given  us  by  a  man 
of  a  different  standing,  namely,  Dr.  Rowlands,  physician 
and  surgeon,  practising  at  Lanaelhaiarn,  in  Carnarvon- 
shire. Asked  as  to  the  diet  of  the  labourers  and  peasantry 
on  whom  he  attends,  whether  he  thought  it  satisfactory  for 
men  engaged  in  manual  labour,  he  answered,^  "  No,  it  is 
not.  Their  food  is  almost  in  a  raw  state.  That  is  a 
reason  why  I  should  suggest  a  school  of  cookery  for  the 
farm  servants  to  learn  cookery,  and  to  manage  the  house 
when  they  get  married."  We  think  that  this  witness  looked 
for  the  remedy  in  the  right  direction,  namely,  that  of 
improved  education  and  better  training,  which  the  other 
witness  did  not  regard  as  having  yet  reached  the  Isle  of 
Anglesey. 

On  the  question  of  clothing  the  Commission  seldom  held 
it  necessary  to  ask  for  evidence.  There  is  very  little 
difference  in  this  matter  between  Wales  and  England,  and 
hardly  any  between  the  Welsh  farmer  and  his  labourer. 
In  the  case  of  farmers'  children  who  work  on  their  fathers' 
farms  this  last  point  is  well  illustrated  by  the  correspondence 
1  Qu.  22,545—55,  22,588—95.  -  Qu.  11,722 


566         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,   (chap,  xiii.) 

which  Mr.  Gee  had  had  with  thirty  farmers  in  the  Vale  of 
Clwyd  as  to  their  condition,  and  of  which  he  gave  the 
Commission  a  summary  in  his  evidence.^  Concerning  his 
children  working  on  his  own  farm,  one  farmer  wrote  :  "They 
get  only  food  and  clothing,  and  they  are  worse  clothed  than 
the  servants."  Another  used  the  words,  "  They  work  like 
slaves,  but  are  not  clothed  as  they  should  be,  and  their 
shoes  are  worse  than  their  clothes."  And  a  third  wrote : 
"  They  get  food  and  clothing,  but  are  worse  clothed  than 
labourers'  children."  Lastly,  in  answer  to  a  question  of 
Lord  Kenyon's  as  to  the  farmers'  daughters  more  especially, 
Mr.  Gee  said  :  "When  you  see  farmers'  daughters  in  Denbigh 
they  are  in  their  best,  but  if  you  saw  them  at  home,  as  I 
have  seen  them,  I  am  sure  it  would  touch  your  feelings." 

There  are  two  or  three  remarks  of  a  more  general  nature 
which  it  occurs  to  us  to  make  at  this  point ;  and  among 
other  things  we  may  mention,  that  as  regards  the  relative 
importance  of  respectable  clothing  and  good  food,  the 
former  stands  higher  in  the  estimation  of  the  average 
Welsh  man  or  woman  of  the  farming  or  of  the  labouring 
class  than  it  does  in  that  of  an  English  person  of  the  same 
sex  and  position  in  life.  Formerly,  when  the  communica- 
tion with  England  was  more  costly  and  precarious  than  it 
has  been  ever  since  railways  have  become  available,  a 
Welsh  rustic  who  happened  to  have  relatives  settled  in  the 
west  of  England  was  not  more  struck  by  anything  than 
what  he  considered  their  extravagance  in  the  matter  of 
food  and  their  lack  of  proper  pride  in  that  of  dress.  His 
own  tendency  would  be  rather  to  stint  himself  in  food  in 
order  to  spend  more  on  clothes  in  which  to  appear  on 
Sunday,  and,  however  desirous  of  attending  the  Sunday 
School  or  the  other  meetings  at  his  chapel,  he  would  stay 
at  home  rather  than  attend  in  his  week-day  clothes.  This 
tendency  is  still  more  perceptible  among  the  mining  portion 

^  Qu.  64,004,  64,014. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     567 

of  the  population,  and  especially  the  quarrymen  of  North 
Wales.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  it  is  sometimes  carried 
to  excess,  leading  to  pecuniary  difficulties  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  way  in  which  the  women,  for  instance,  in 
the  quarry  districts  can  dress,  gives  evidence  to  a  natural 
taste,  to  a  sense  of  colour  and  proportion  which  may  be 
sometimes  looked  for  in  vain  in  ladies  of  a  higher  position 
in  life  in  England.  The  ideal  of  the  well-wisher  of  the 
Welsh  people,  in  matters  of  this  kind,  should  be  to  encourage 
economy  without  discouraging  what  artistic  instincts  they 
may  have  inherited  as  a  part  of  their  natural  endowment. 

From  an  antiquarian  point  of  view  there  is  probably 
little  to  be  said  of  Welsh  dress  from  the  Tudor  times  to 
the  present  day,  except  what  might  be  said  of  the  fashions 
in  England  during  the  same  time.  Even  the  so-called 
Welsh  hat  which  was  still  to  be  seen  worn  in  the  sixties 
by  women  in  Cardiganshire,  less  frequently  in  Merioneth, 
Carnarvonshire,  and  Anglesey,  has  nothing  distinctly 
Welsh  :  it  was  introduced  from  England,  as  may  be  seen 
from  the  examination  of  paintings  dating  from  the  Stuart 
times.  How  early  Welsh  dress  had  been  assimilated  to 
the  fashions  prevailing  in  England  it  is  impossible  to  say 
in  the  absence  of  a  systematic  investigation  of  the  subject. 
But  if  one  pursues  it  back  into  antiquity,  one  will  find 
peculiarities  of  dress  becoming  synonymous  with  marks  of 
race.  Thus  we  have  a  Gallia  Bracata,  which  was  charac- 
terised by  the  men  wearing  the  braces,  "  breeches  or 
trousers,"  and  the  poet  Martial,  in  the  first  century  of  our 
era,  speaks  of  the  bracce  of  a  Briton,  alluding,  probably,  to 
some  of  the  Brythons  who  still  lived  on  the  Continent  ; 
but  the  dress  of  those  in  this  country  was  presumably  the 
same.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Highland  kilt  probably 
represents  the  dress  of  the  Goidels  of  this  country  in 
former  times.  This  is  found  delineated  on  an  old  figured 
stone  preserved  at  The  Knoll,  near  Neath.     Its  surface  is 


568         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

occupied  mostly  by  a  rudely-carved  human  figure  inter- 
preted, according  to  the  late  Professor  Westwood,  to  be  in 
the  attitude  of  prayer,  the  only  dress  represented  being  a 
short  apron  or  kilt,  reaching  from  the  waist  to  the  middle  of 
the  legs  ;  this  garb  is  formed  of  a  series  of  longitudinal  strips 
radiating  from  a  waistband,  and  giving  the  appearance  of 
a  short  and  very  thickly  quilted  petticoat,  just  as  in  several 
of  the  Irish  figures  on  the  shrine  of  St.  ^lanchan.^  Another 
stone  appears  to  show  a  figure  clothed  in  a  similar  short 
kilt :  it  is  at  Landevailog,  in  Brecknockshire,  and  bears 
the  minuscule  inscription,  Briamail  Fioic^  that  is  to  say, 
the  cross  of  Bi-igomagliLS  Flavits,  and  Professor  Westwood 
ascribed  it  hesitatingly  to  the  eleventh  century,  but  it  may 
well  date  considerably  earlier. 

An  inscribed  stone  of  the  same  class  as  that  of  Briamail 
occurs  at  Lanamlech,  near  Brecon,  and  shows  two  figures, 
regarded  by  Professor  Westwood  as  clad  in  long  shirt-like 
garments  reaching  down  to  the  knees  ;  he  supposed  one 
of  them  to  represent  St.  John.  The  inscription  states  in 
faulty  Latin  that  the  stone  was  put  up  by  a  certain  Moridic, 
whose  name  wears  a  somewhat  Goidelic  aspect  ;  and  the 
whole  is  supposed  by  the  same  authority  to  date  before 
the  neighbourhood  of  Brecon  had  felt  the  pervading 
influence  of  the  Normans.^ 

Giraldus  Cambrensis,  in  his  "  Itinerarium  Kambriae," 
written  in  the  twelfth  century,  describes  the  personal 
appearance  of  Kynwric,  son  of  Rhys,  prince  of  South 
Wales,  and  remarks,  as  to  his  dress,  that  he  was  clad  in  a 
thin  cloak  only  and  a  shirt,  and  that  his  shins  and  feet  were 
left  naked,  regardless  of  thistles  and  thorns.*      The  rude 

^  We  lake  this  account  of  the  stone  from  the  late  Professor  Westwood's 
'*  Lapidarimn  Wallix,"  p.  37  ;  see  also  his  plate  xxv.,  fig.  3. 

-  Ibid.,  p.  59,  plate  xxxiii. 

^  See  the  **  Lapidarium  Wallicie,"  pp.  68,  69,  and  jilate  xxxviii.,  figs.  3,  4,  5. 

*  Giraldus's  words  are  to  be  found  in  book  ii.,  chapter  iv.,  and  run  thus  :^ 
' '  Adolescens  ipse  \Kenetvrictis  films  Rest]  Jlaviis  ct  crispns,  pulcher  et  procerstts^ 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     569 

drawings  of  the  officers  of  the  Welsh  court,  given  in  a 
Hengwrt  manuscript  of  the  early  part  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  present  the  same  general  appearance  as  regards 
dress. ^  The  same  may  also  be  said  of  the  pen-and-inlc 
sketches  of  Welshmen  to  be  found  in  the  margin  of  the 
Registruin  MimimentoriLin  {Liber  A),  a  volume  made  up 
of  documents  belonging  to  the  Veign  of  Edward  I.  now 
preserved  at  the  Record  Office.^  The  Welshman  of  that 
period  appears  to  have  been  somewhat  more  scantily 
clothed  than  the  Irishman,  if  we  may  judge  by  their 
respective  figures  in  this  manuscript,  but  while  the  latter  is 
quite  unshod,  the  Welshman  wears  one  shoe,  namely,  on 
the  left  foot.  Even  as  late  as  the  commencement  of  the 
present  century,  many  of  the  poorer  peasantrj-  went  about 
barefooted.  An  English  barrister  resident  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Newcastle  Emlyn,  in  giving  evidence  in  1843 
before  the  Commissioners  of  Inquiry  for  South  Whales, 
referred  thus  to  the  matter  (Qu.  5,566):  "  Formerly,  twenty 
years  ago,  you  saw  the  women  walking  about  without  shoes 
and  stockings,  but  now  you  never  see  such  an  occurrence  in 
this  part  of  the  country."  At  the  present  day  the  children 
of  small  farmers,  and  of  labourers  or  shepherds,  are  allowed 
to  go  barefooted  for  a  month  or  two  in  summer  :  otherwise 
shoes  and  stockings  are  the  rule  in  every  countryside.     To 

lit  patricB  gentiqtie  morem  gereret^  pallio  tentii  solum  et  interula  indtitus^  tibiis, 
et  pedihus  midis  tribulos  et  spinas  nonfor/mdantibus;  vir  non  arte  qiiidem,  sed 
natitra  immitiis  ;  phirinmui  qiiippe  dignitatis  ex  se  -brccterrens,  ex  adjtincto 
paruni."'     See  p.  252  above. 

1  See  Aneurin  Owen's  edition  of  the  '*  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  Wales" 
{Public  Record  Office,  MDCCCXLI.),  vol.  ii.,  pp.  749 — 814.  and  the  Editor's 
preface,  vol.  i.,  p.  xxxii. 

-  See  Thomas  Wright's  "History  of  Caricature  and  Grotesque,"  pp.  177— 
180  ;  and  "  Y  Cymmrodor,"  x.  201.  Two  of  these  sketches  of  Welshmen  are 
reproduced  in  Wright's  work;  the  first  "represents  a  Welshman  armed  with 
bow  and  arrow,  whose  clothing  consists  apparently  only  of  a  plain  tunic  and  a 
light  mantle,"  while  a  shoe  is  worn  on  his  left  foot.  "  The  second  [Welshman] 
carries  a  spear,  which  he  apparently  rests  on  the  single  shoe  of  his  left  foot, 
while  he  brandishes  a  sword  in  his  left  hand." 


570         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

return,  however,  to  the  mediaeval  peculiarities  of  dress  to 
which  we  have  referred,  it  is  impossible  to  say  at  present 
how  far  we  should  be  justified  in  regarding  them  as  survivals 
of  the  dress  characteristic  of  the  Goidels  of  Britain  in  early 
times.  In  any  case,  the  analogous  survival  of  their  idioms 
and  laws  suggests  it  as  a  proper  subject  of  an  inquiry 
which  we,  unfortunately,  cannot  prosecute. 

In  this  chapter  we  have  abstained  from  discussing  either 
diet  or  dress  from  the  economical  point  of  view :  it  is 
all  the  more  necessary  to  observe  the  same  distinction 
with  regard  to  the  large  mass  of  evidence  taken  by  the 
Commissioners  on  the  next  subject,  namely,  the  housing  of 
the  farmers  and  those  immediately  depending  on  them. 
So  we  shall  here  deal  with  the  questions  of  dwelling-houses 
chiefly  in  so  far  as  they  exercise  obvious  influence  on  the 
habits  and  mode  of  life  of  the  people  engaged  in  agricul- 
ture. A  great  many  complaints  were  made  to  them  from 
tenants  as  to  their  houses  being  out  of  repair ;  and  in  some 
cases  they  proved  almost  incredible  neglect  on  the  part  of 
all  concerned,  while  in  some  instances  the  houses  were  so 
old  and  so  poor  that  the  landowner  did  not  think  it  worth 
the  while  to  put  them  in  repair.  Here  and  there  he 
appeared  to  be  improving  the  houses  on  his  estate  as  fast 
as  the  outlay  of  capital  would  admit,  which  meant  that  some 
of  the  tenants  who  had  to  wait  for  their  turn  experienced 
hardship  for  years.  Now  and  then  also  the  rebuilding  of 
an  old  house  involved  the  tenant  in  great  discomfort  for  a 
shorter  time.  In  some  instances^  we  were  told  of  the  walls 
having  to  be  propped  up  to  prevent  their  falling  and 
killing  the  inmates  ;  in  others  we  were  informed  of  a 
family  having  for  a  time  to  live  in  a  barn,  or  in  a  stable. 
In  one  case  we  heard  of  frogs  leaping  about  the  bedroom, 
and  in  several  mention  was  made  of  snow  falling  on  the 

^  Qu-  45>56o,  45.564,   41,846,  42,857,  44,443,  46,421,  64,407,  38,745, 
42,367—72,  42,813. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     571 

beds.  But  however  great  the  inconvenience  and  hardship 
which  such  cases  as  these  involved,  it  is  right  to  distinguish 
those  which  may  be  regarded  as  more  or  less  temporar)- 
and  transitional  from  those  in  which  the  bad  or  inadequate 
accommodation  has  been  normal,  and  more  or  less  per- 
manent. We  may  here  cite  the  words  of  Mr.  J.  C.  Jones, 
of  Lanarth,  who  expressed  his  opinion,  with  regard  to  the 
neighbourhood  of  Aberayron,  as  follows:^  "Although  great 
progress  has  been  made  of  late  years  in  regard  to  better 
buildings,  I  venture  to  say  some  landlords  house  their 
dogs  and  horses  better  than  they  do  their  tenants  ; "  and 
Mr.  Richard  Rowlands,  an  Anglesey  labourer,  whom  we 
have  already  cited,  expressed  himself  to  the  same  effect  as 
regards  the  housing  afforded  the  labourers  by  the  farmers 
of  Anglesey." 

Mr.  Henry  Jones,  a  tenant  farmer,  representing  the 
farmers  of  Clynnog,  in  Carnarvonshire,  stated  in  his 
evidence^  that  there  are  but  few  comfortable  houses  in 
his  neighbourhood,  and  those  but  recently  built.  The  rest 
are,  according  to  him,  old  houses,  with  very  inadequate 
sleeping  accommodation,  and  very  rarely  provided  with 
proper  sanitary  arrangements. 

One  of  the  most  general  complaints  was  that  as  to 
insufficient  accommodation,  especially  for  men  and  women 
to  sleep.  Mr.  Richard  Edwards,  a  tenant  farmer  from 
Pennal,  in  Merionethshire,  gave  the  following  descrip- 
tion ^  of  what  had  been  his  home  :  "  The  house  was  an 
old-fashioned  one,  a  kitchen  and  two  bedrooms  downstairs, 
and  two  bedrooms  over  the  kitchen  and  dairy.  There  was 
no  flooring,  and  the  fire  was  on  the  ground.  The  chimney 
was  a  big  old-fashioned  one,  through  which  the  sky  could 
easily  be  seen,  and  through  which  the  rain  and  snow  came 
down  freely.     The  sleeping  accommodation  upstairs  was 

1  Qu.  65,031,  49,103.  2  Qu_  22,557. 

3  Qu.  12,769  -72.  ■*  Qu.  70,536. 


572         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

very  deficient,  inconvenient,  and  unhealthy.  The  female 
inmates  of  the  house  had  to  pass  through  the  men's  bed- 
room to  their  own.  The  house  being  a  low  one  the  beds 
were  quite  close  to  the  slates  of  the  roof,  and  we  had  to 
bend  down  so  as  not  to  touch  the  roof  The  roof  was  also 
in  a  bad  condition  ;  there  was  no  ceiling  and  no  kind  of 
plastering.  The  wind  drove  the  rain  and  snow  between 
the  slates,  and  I  remember  on  many  occasions  in  winter 
being  covered,  when  in  bed  at  night,  with  about  five  inches 
of  snow.  We  lived  in  the  house  in  this  condition  for  many 
years.  I  mention  these  facts  because  there  are  still  farmers 
living  in  such  houses." 

The  Rev.  William  Williams,  a  Baptist  minister,  living  at 
Knighton,  speaking  of  the  houses  in  that  district,  used  the 
following  words  :  ^  **  Of  course,  there  are  some  excellent 
farmhouses  and  excellent  cottages,  and  particularly  in  this 
neighbourhood.  There  are  a  good  many  excellent  cottages, 
better  than  small  farms  up  in  the  country  ;  there  are  others 
again,  especially  small  farmhouses,  that  are  not  at  all  well 
arranged  internally,  and  not  with  sufficient  room.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  presence  of  ladies  in  the  court,  I  could 
give  you  dreadful  instances,  shocking  instances,  of  the  way 
sleeping  accommodation  is  arranged,  tending  greatly  to 
indecency  and  immorality."  He  explained  in  another 
an.swer  that  he  alluded  to  houses  where  there  would  be, 
for  instance,  a  father  and  mother,  and  children  between 
fifteen  and  twenty  years  of  age,  all  sleeping  in  the  same 
room  ;  and  he  added  that  he  had  himself  known  cases  of 
that  kind. 

Miss  Kate  Jenkins,  while  speaking-  as  to  farms  in  the 
Vale  of  Towy,  and  admitting  that  the  buildings  are  on  the 
whole  improving,  instanced  several  bad  cases  known  to 
her,  adding,  as  a  general  remark,  that  "  W^elsh  farmers  will 
inhabit  houses  no  English  farmer  would  live  in." 

1  Qu.  54,947—9,  54.966—7.  -  Qii.  38,024,  38,033-0.  39>745- 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     573 

Mr.  Thomas  Davies,  a  tenant  farmer,  who  gave  his 
evidence  at  Lansawel,  in  Carmarthenshire,  specified 
certain  very  poor  buildings,  and  spoke  ^  in  particular  of 
one  farmhouse  as  "  having  one  sleeping-room  upstairs, 
where  both  the  sexes  sleep,  with  no  divisions  between 
them,  no  ceiling  overhead  between  them  and  the  slate 
roof,  and  the  wind  and  the  snow  getting  in  through  the 
crevices." 

Air.  John  Thomas,  tenant  farmer  and  butter  merchant, 
specified  in  his  evidence,^  given  to  the  Commission  at 
Landeilo,  a  number  of  farms  with  bad  buildings,  and 
gave  certain  particulars,  in  which  he  spoke  of  "  one 
farm  where  all  the  buildings  are  deplorably  bad,  the 
farmer  and  his  wife  sleeping  downstairs,  and  the  men 
and  maid-servants,  the  carpenter,  the  tailor,  and  the 
sons  on  their  holidays,  all  sleeping  in  the  same  room 
upstairs,  for  there  are  a  vast  number  of  farmhouses  which 
have  no  partition  at  all  upstairs  ;  another  farm,  rent  80/., 
where  a  visitor  would  have  to  sleep  either  with  the  servant 
over  the  cows,  or  in  the  same  room  with  the  servant-girl." 
We  make  one  more  extract  from  his  evidence  to  the  fol- 
lowing effect  : — **In  another  farm,  whose  rent  is  88/.,  there 
is  only  one  fireplace,  and  that  is  in  the  kitchen,  the  onl}- 
room  where  the  women  can  do  their  work.  The  son  of 
this  farmer  has  a  high  social  position,  but  when  he  comes 
home  for  his  holidays  he  has  to  sleep  with  the  servant-man 
on  the  dowlod  over  the  cows,  or  in  the  loft  where  the 
servant-girl  sleeps,  and  which  is  not  partitioned."  He 
added  the  following  remarks  :  *'  If  the  doctors  of  Wales 
told  all  they  knew  on  the  subject,  they  would  put  to  shame 
many  landlords  who  talk  glibly  of  morality.  It  is  sheer 
hypocrisy  on  their  part  to  talk  of  it,  when  they  know  that 
the  hearts  of  many  of  their  tenants  bleed  because  of  this 
perilous  inconvenience." 

'  Ou.  39.745  •-  Q.i.  38,252. 


574         ^^^    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

Mr.  Jenkin  Thomas,  son  of  a  tenant  farmer,  living  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Cardiff,  gives  the  following  description^ 
of  the  house  in  which  he  was  brought  up  :  "  We  were  a 
family  of  thirteen — eleven  children  and  our  parents — living 
in  this  house  on  the  farm.  There  were  three  bedrooms 
in  the  house  and  two  front  rooms,  and  a  small  back 
kitchen,  a  small  pantry,  and  a  small  dairy.  In  conse- 
quence, we,  as  a  family,  had  to  put  three  beds  in  the 
same  room,  and  seven  of  us  slept  in  the  same  room, 
and  we  had  not  room  even  to  walk  between  these 
three  beds.  We  had  to  go  over  a  bed  to  get  into 
bed.  The  servant-men,  in  consequence,  had  to  sleep 
out  in  the  buildings,  and  that  was  a  great  inconvenience 
to  us." 

These  extracts  lead  us  to  mention  the  accommodation 
for  farm  servants,  and,  first  of  all,  to  say  that  in  some 
districts  servant-men  sleep  in  the  farmhouses,  or  adjuncts 
to  the  farmhouses  ;  but  in  the  case  of  the  counties  of  Flint 
and  Denbigh,  and  in  some  instances  in  Anglesey  also,  it  is 
not  unusual  for  the  access  to  their  bedrooms  to  be  by 
means  of  outside  stairs.  The  prevailing  custom  in  the 
greater  part  of  Wales,  however,  is  for  them  to  have  their 
beds  made  in  the  lofts  of  the  outhouses,  such  as  the  barns, 
cowhouses,  or  the  stables.  This  has  been  spoken  of 
repeatedly  as  highly  unsatisfactory  for  more  reasons  than 
one.  In  Anglesey,  Mr.  John  Hughes,  a  farm  labourer 
appointed  to  give  evidence  by  a  committee  of  the  farm 
labourers  of  that  county,  spoke  to  the  lack  of  accommoda- 
tion for  the  servant-men  in  the  farmhouses,  and  added  the 
following  words  :  **  The  day-schools  teach  the  children 
until  they  have  passed  Standard  V.,  or  until  they  are 
thirteen  years  of  age,  and  then  they  go  to  the  farmers,  and 
they  are  put  to  sleep  and  live  with  the  cattle,  and  they 
lose  all  that  they  have  learnt  in  the  school,  and  become 

1  Qu.  26,530—1. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     575 

of  the  same  nature  as  the  beasts.     That  is  the  truth  of  the 
matter."  ^ 

Mr.  David  Davies,  a  farm  labourer  from  Langybi,  in 
Carnarvonshire,  spoke  as  follows  :  ^  '*  The  places  allotted 
by  the  farmers  to  their  servants  to  sleep  are  altogether 
improper  on  account  of  size  and  situation,  being  only  small 
rooms,  with  very  limited  head  room,  scarcely  sufficient  for 
an  ordinary  man  to  stand  erect  in.  Other  servants  sleep 
in  lofts  above  the  cattle  either  in  stables  or  cowhouses. 
There  is  seldom  room  in  the  farmhouses  themselves  ;  they 
generally  are  very  small,  and  without  rooms  upstairs.  They 
try  and  place  one  bed  in  such  a  position  as  to  screen 
another.  I  have  been  sleeping  one  of  six  in  a  loft  above 
cows  :  there  was  not  sufficient  room  for  a  person  to  stand 
erect  in.  There  were  three  beds  placed  in  the  room.  The 
narrow  space  between  the  beds  was  all  the  room  we  had. 
I  have  been  walking  miles  during  the  half-year  in  order  to 
sleep  elsewhere  than  in  this  room." 

Another  point  at  which  the  inadequacy  of  the  farmhouse 
accommodation  was  pointed  out  to  the  Commission 
more  than  once  is  in  connection  with  the  question  of  the 
treatment  of  the  servant-men  or  labourers  resident  on  a 
farm.  In  some  cases  we  have  been  told  that  they  are 
welcome  to  pass  their  evenings  in  the  kitchen  ;  but  in  the 
majority  of  instances^  that  seems  to  be  hardly  the  case,  and 
for  the  valid  reason  that  there  is  no  room  to  spare  for 
them.  On  this  point,  Mr.  Samuel  Hughes,  chairman  of  the 
Anglesey  County  Council,  stated*  that  "the  farm  labourers 
are  not  looked  upon  kindly  if  they  stay  in  the  house  on  a 
winter's  nighr  ;  they  expect  them  to  go,"  he  said,  "to  their 
stable,  and  to  their  loft."  This  statement  is  corroborated 
by  the  evidence^  of  one  of  their  own  number,  Mr.  Richard 

1  For  the  evidence  see  Qu.  55,564 — 8,  56,428,  59,063 — 6,  63,106,  63,123 — 8, 
19,611,  and  also  20,889,  20,903,  42,588—9. 

2  Qu    11,766.  3  Qu,  31,463,   47,?35— 9. 
■*  Qu.  21,964.  ^  Qu.  22,561. 


576         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

Rowlands ;  for,  according  to  him,  they  may  go  to  the 
kitchen  for  some  time,  but  he  adds  that  in  most  places 
they  will  be  turned  out,  as  the  farmer  may  want  to  make 
some  other  use  of  that  room  ;  and  another  Anglesey 
labourer,  Mr.  John  Hughes,  who  has  already  been  cited, 
spoke  concerning  the  A berffraw^ district  as  follows  :  ''There 
is  no  accommodation  whatever  provided  for  the  labourers 
for  the  evening,  only  let  them  go  where  they  will."  Against 
this,  however,  must  be  placed  the  evidence^  of  Mr.  Thomas 
Prichard,  farmer,  landowner,  and  agent  of  the  Bodorgan 
estate  and  other  properties  in  Anglesey,  who  stated  that 
some  farmers  welcomed  their  servant-men  to  spend  their 
evenings  in  the  kitchen,  and  some  did  not. 

Dr.  Rowlands,  speaking,  as  already  suggested,  of  the 
district  around  Lanaelhaiarn,  in  Carnarvonshire,  stated  that 
the  servant-men  have  no  accommodation  for  the  evenings 
except  the  lofts  of  the  stables.  And  the  same  state  of 
things  was  spoken  to  as  prevalent  in  the  western  portion 
of  Denbighshire  by  Mr.  Hugh  Owen,  whose  evidence  was 
taken  at  Conway,  and  by  Mr.  William  Jones,  who  spoke  as 
to  the  district  of  Cerrig  y  Drudion,  in  that  county.^ 

The  same  deficiency  of  accommodation  for  the  evenings 
is  proved  by  the  evidence^  of  Mr.  Thomas  Davies,  who  came 
forward  at  Lansawel.  The  servant-men,  according  to  him, 
besides  having  poor  sleeping  accommodation  in  the  out- 
houses, "have  no  place  to  sit  down  or  read,  or  anything." 

On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  J.  M.  Davies,  of  Froodvale, 
who  spoke  from  his  extensive  acquaintance  with  estates 
especially  in  Carmarthenshire,said,in  answer  to  the  question 
whether  servant-men  have  fire  and  light  in  the  evenings, 
that  "  they  live  in  the  kitchen,  with  every  comfort."  The 
Commission  had  evidence*  to  the  same  effect  from  Mr.  D.  E. 

1  Qu.  20,889. 

-  Qa.    11,679,  15,132-52,    17,275—87. 

^  Qu.  40,002 — 25. 

^  Qu.  37,645.  43-131—3,  46,209,  44,235,  31,463-6. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY,     S77 

Stephens,  a  landowner  in  the  same  county  ;  and  Mr.  J.  C. 
Harford,  a  landowner  in  the  neighbouring  county  of  Cardigan, 
was  of  opinion  that  the  complaint  as  to  a  lack  of  evening 
accommodation  in  the  farmhouses  would  not  apply  to  his 
estate.  Similar  evidence  was  given  by  Mr.  W.  Saunders 
Davies,  a  tenant  farmer,  living  in  the  parish  of  St.  Dogmaels, 
in  Pembrokeshire,  and  by  another  Pembrokeshire  farmer, 
Mr.  Jenkins,  of  Brimaston  Hall. 

In  most  farmhouses  of  modern  construction  there  is, 
besides  a  kitchen  and  a  back  kitchen,  a  room  which  is 
usually  called  the  parlour,  and  that  is  commonly  reserved 
for  emergencies,  such  as  when  strangers  call  to  whom  the 
farmer  or  his  wife  wishes  to  show  respect — for  instance, 
ministers  of  religion.  We  have  heard  of  the  parlour  being 
used  for  keeping  corn  or  butter  or  other  things  for  which  the 
farmer  has  a  lack  of  room.  But  it  is  more  usual  to  find  it 
furnished  with  a  biggish  table  in  the  centre,  with  a  show  Bible 
on  it  and  other  books  which  are  seldom  disturbed,  and  with 
a  number  of  chairs,  each  provided  with  its  antimacassar. 
But  as  motives  of  economy  prevent  the  room  having  a  fire 
regularly  lit  in  it,  a  visitor  finds  it  the  least  comfortable  in 
the  house.  It  is  in  fact  a  kind  of  old-fashioned  drawing- 
room,  ill-ventilated  as  a  rule,  and  very  musty,  not  to  men- 
tion that  practically  it  is  in  many  cases  a  clear  waste  of  so 
much  available  space,  to  the  inconvenience  of  those  whose 
occupations  have  to  be  carried  on  in  the  kitchen.^ 

We  have  received  a  great  mass  of  evidence  as  to  the 
labourers'  cottages,  and  we  may  briefly  say  that  they  vary 
in  kind  from  the  older  cottage — not  yet  extinct — which 
consists  of  a  square  box  with  two  or  three  holes  for  a  door, 
a  window,  and  a  chimney,  to  the  more  modern  specimens 
described  by  Mr.  Davies,-  of  Froodvale,  as  having  each 
three   rooms   upstairs,   and   a  parlour  and  kitchen  on   the 

1  Qu.   ii,8iS-2o,  20,938,  21,960-8,  39,933. 
"  Qi^-  19,594'  37,646. 
W.P.  P  P 


578         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

ground  floor.  Of  the  old  ones  I\Ir.  Davies  spoke  as  follows  : 
"  They  are  going  out  of  fashion  ;  it  is  only  the  old-fashioned 
who  live  in  them  ;  the  young  people  do  not  go  into  them 
— there  are  not  many  of  them."  A  much  less  encouraging 
view  is  expressed  by  Mr.  Thos.  Prichard  in  his  answers  to 
questions  concerning  certain  cottages  at  Aberffraw,  in 
Anglesey.  He  admitted  that  they  were  built  long  ago 
under  old  leases,  and  that  they  are  very  bad,  but  this  he  did 
not  consider  the  worst  feature  of  the  case,  as  the  following 
words  ^  used  by  him  go  to  show  :  "  It  is  the  people's  habits  : 
that  is  the  difficulty.  They  keep  ducks  there.  They  are 
very  fond  of  keeping  ducks,  and  the  floors  are  made  of 
mud,  and  they  will  make  duck-ponds  inside  their  houses  ; 
they  feed  the  young  ducks  in  those  duck-ponds  inside. 
No  matter  how  good  a  cottage  may  be,  if  people  will  keep 
their  poultry  and  their  filth  in  the  house  in  that  way  you 
do  not  know  what  to  do  with  them.  It  is  hopeless.  Yet 
if  I  turned  out  a  person  because  he  had  a  duck-pond  in  his 
floor,  I  should  be  called  I  do  not  know  what, — a  regular 
brute."  Then,  on  being  asked  whether  a  better  class  of 
cottages  with  wooden  floors  would  not  bring  about  a 
change  for  the  better  in  the  people's  way  of  living, 
Mr.  Prichard  answered,  "Well,  I  think  they  would  make  a 
hole  in  the  floor  :  they  would  have  a  duck-pond."  We 
agree  to  a  certain  extent  with  the  witness  ;  for  there  is 
nothing  more  certain  than  that  habits  of  cleanliness  do  not 
spring  up  in  a  day.  People  who  have  been  used  to  live  in 
dirt  in  bad  cottages  would  hardly  keep  new  and  better 
cottages  in  a  state  of  exemplary  cleanliness  and  order. 
The  disgraceful  state  of  things  described  by  Air.  Prichard 
as  actual  at  Aberfl"raw,  the  headquarters  in  ancient 
times  of  the  kings  of  Gwyned,  will  probably  require 
several  generations  to  wipe  av/ay ;  but  in  time,  we 
doubt    not,    better     cottages    will     render    their    inmates 

^  Qn-  1 5> 593-600. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     579 

disposed    to    lead    better    lives    and    cultivate    habits   of 
cleanliness. 

This  last  remark  may  be  applied  also  to  the  housing  of 
the  farmers  themselves,  and  will  serve  to  explain  why  we 
have  written  at  so  great  a  length  on  the  subject,  and  why 
we  attach  so  much  importance  to  it.  If  we  summarise  the 
evidence  from  which  we  have  made  these  extracts,  it  comes 
to  this  :  improvement  is  going  on  steadily  in  the  dwelling- 
house  accommodation  of  the  farming  population  of  Wales, 
but  much  remains  to  be  done  to  give  the  farmers  proper 
houses  and  to  supply  the  number  of  passable  cottages 
required  for  the  labourers  in  certain  districts. 

Now  that  we  have  passed  under  review  the  conditions 
under  which  the  agricultural  population  exists  as  to  diet  and 
dress  and  dwellings,  we  propose  to  consider  the  kind  of  life 
which  they  ordinarily  live.  It  has  been  stated  more  than 
once  in  the  evidence  collected  by  the  Commission  that  the 
Welsh  farmer  leads  a  much  harder  life  than  the  English 
farmer,  and  that  it  is  not  unusual  for  him  to  take  a  part 
himself  in  the  work  on  the  farm,  as  well  as  to  superintend 
and  direct  the  work  of  those  whom  he  engages.  The 
hours  of  his  labourers  have  of  late  years  been  shortened, 
but  hardly  those  of  the  servant-men  who  have  the  charge 
of  the  horses  required  for  the  tilling  of  the  land  ;  and  there 
has  been  no  shortening  of  the  service  required  of  the  female 
servants.  As  a  rule  they  know  little  respite  from  early 
morning  till  late  at  night,  and  only  one  person  has  more 
than  they  to  do  and  more  care  on  her  shoulders  :  that  is 
their  mistress,  the  farmer's  wife.  It  is,  however,  needless 
to  say  that  the  pressure  of  work  varies  very  greatly  with 
the  season  of  the  year,  and  that  the  men  of  the  household 
have  their  slack  times  and  a  good  deal  of  leisure,  not  to 
mention  one  day  regularly  every  week,  namely,  Sunday. 
Furthermore,  the  farmer  or  his  wife,  or  both,  devote  most 
of  one  day  to  attending  the  nearest  market  for  the  disposal 

P  P  2 


58o         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

of  the  farm  produce  and  the  purchase  of  necessaries  for  the 
house.  This  has  become  in  some  cases  so  completely 
a  habit,  that  mxany  a  farmer  may  be  found  regularly  in  the 
town  on  market-days  whether  he  has  any  business  to 
transact  there  or  not. 

As  a  rule  a  farming  neighbourhood  is  a  model  of  peace 
and  quietness,  and  when  one  of  the  inhabitants  dies  almost 
everybody  hies  to  the  funeral,  as  in  all  other  Celtic  lands. 
As  an  exception  to  the  general  peace  one  may  perhaps 
mention^  the  bickering  and  squabbling  which  arise  between 
farm.ers  or  shepherds  in  the  upland  districts  owing  to  the 
lack  of  fences  to  keep  the  sheep  within  their  boundaries. 
In  the  case  of  some  of  the  larger  estates  a  better  state  of 
feeling  has  been  established  as  one  of  the  results  of  proper 
fences  having  been  put  up.  As  a  rule,  however,  the  country 
districts  are  comparatively  free-  from  all  serious  crimes,  but 
men  are  now  and  then  brought  before  the  magistrates  for 
trespassing  in  quest  of  game  or  fish.  Let  us  add  that  the 
Commission  heard  a  complaint  from  Anglesey  as  to  the 
roughness  and  recklessness  of  the  farm  labourers  in  that 
county.  We  allude  to  Mr.  Thomas  Prichard's  evidence^ 
where  he  says  that  the  men's  accommodation  is  not  so 
good  as  the  women's,  and  explains  that  '*  it  is  not  entirely 
owing  to  the  farmer's  fault."  For  he  proceeds  to  say:  "The 
men  are  such  ruffians,  they  will  break  or  spoil  anything  in 
the  .  shape  of  furniture  which  is  put  into  their  rooms. 
When  Mr.  Leufer  Thomas  went  round  we  visited  many 
sleeping-places,^  and  it  so  happened  that  we  saw  a  man 
doing  mischief  in  one."  When  asked  further  to  explain 
his  meaning  and  to  say  whether   he  charged   them   with 

»  Qu.   70, 158.  _ 

-  For  some  criminal  statistics  in  point,  sec  tlie  Report  of  the  Welsh  Land 
Commission,  Appendix  E. ,  Tables  XXXV.,  XXXVI. 

■■'  Qu.  19,462,  19,465- 

■*  This  was  when  Mr.  L.  Thomas  was  acting;  as  Assistant  Commissioner  on 
the  Labour  Commission. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY,     581 

wilful  damage,  the  answer  was,  "  Certainly  I  do.  They 
break  things :  if  you  put  pots  and  pans  and  things  of  that 
kind  into  a  room  like  that,  you  will  find  them  all  broken 
in  the  morning."  We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  this 
evidence,  and  we  cannot  help  noticing  that  it  coincides 
with  the  bitterest  complaint  made  to  the  Commission  by 
labouring  men  as  to  the  treatment  which  they,  on  the  other 
hand,  receive  from  the  farmers.  The  evidence  in  point  has 
already  been  mentioned,  and  we  may  add  that  one  of  the 
witnesses  in  question  used  words  to  the  effect  that  the  gulf 
between  the  farmers  and  their  labourers  is  widening.^ 

One  other  question  remains  to  be  mentioned  here, 
namely,  that  of  immorality.  This  has  long  occupied  the 
attention  of  every  one  who  is  interested  in  the  improvement 
of  the  condition  of  the  agricultural  population,  and  of  the 
morals  of  the  country  generally  ;  and,  as  far  back  as  we  can 
remember,  the  pulpits  of  all  religious  denominations  in 
Wales  have  more  or  less  persistently  thundered  forth 
against  it.  It  has  been  repeatedly  pointed  out  to  us  in  the 
course  of  the  evidence  how  inadequate  accommodation 
in  farmhouses  and  cottages  must  make  against  chastity 
and  in  favour  of  immorality.  One  of  the  witnesses.  Dr. 
Rowlands,  already  cited  concerning  Lanaelhaiarn,  in  the 
Fwitheli  union  of  Carnarvonshire,  drew  a  comparison^ 
between  the  agricultural  labourers  and  the  quarrymen  of 
Trefor,  in  the  same  parish,  to  the  disadvantage  of  the 
former.  He  did  not  consider  the  moral  state  of  the 
country  very  bad,  though  he  admitted  that  illegitimacy  did 
occur;  but  he  stated  that  to  the  affiliation  cases  brought 
before  the  magistrates  at  the  petty  sessions  the  parties 
were  always  farm  labourers,  and  he  used  the  following 
words  :  ''  I  have  not  seen  a  single  case  brought  before  the 
magistrates  between  people  that  are  working  in  the  quarry. 
They  live  quite  differently.      I  never  saw  a  young  man  and 

1  Qu.  20,957-44.  2  Q^^  11,691-3. 


582         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,   (chap,  xiii.) 

young  woman  belonging  to  the  quarry  bring  a  case  before 
the  magistrates  to  Pwttheli  since  I  have  been  in  Lanael- 
haiarn.  There  are  several  hundreds  of  people  living  in 
Trefor,  but  I  have  not  seen  a  single  case  there.  In  the 
farmhouses  it  is  different  ;  therefore  I  conclude  that  there 
must  be  some  mischief  in  the  sleeping  accommodation,  and 
in  the  connection  between  them  and  the  farmhouses." 

The  Commission  had  evidence  to  somewhat  the  same 
effect/  but  based  on  facts  of  a  more  reassuring  nature, 
from  the  late  Rev.  Sir  T.  H.  Gresley  Puleston,  rector  of 
Worthenbury  and  landowner  in  the  detached  piece  of 
Flintshire.  Asked  whether  he  found  the  morals  of  the 
people  better  in  consequence  of  the  great  improvements 
which  he  had  mentioned  as  having  been  effected  in  their 
cottages,  he  answered,  "  Very  considerably.  I  can  answer 
both  as  a  clergyman  and  as  a  magistrate.  I  could  give 
very  strong  proofs  of  it,  but  I  think  perhaps  it  is  unnecessary ; 
you  will  guess  what  I  mean  :  there  is  a  very  considerable 
moral  improvement  in  the  district." 

The  same  view  was  also  expressed  by  Mr.  Thos.  Davies,- 
tenant  farmer  from  the  parish  of  ILansawel,  in  Carmarthen- 
shire, who,  though  he  ascribed  the  decrease  of  immorality 
in  his  neighbourhood  chiefly  to  the  teaching  of  religion, 
thought  that  proper  accommodation  for  the  men-servants 
would  cause  a  material  improvement  in  their  morals.  For, 
as  he  proceeded  to  say,  "it  would  keep  them  at  home"  ; 
and  he  added  the  words,  "  I  think  that  we  ought  to  get  an 
out-kitchen  for  them,  so  that  they  might  have  a  fire  and 
books,  and  they  might  read  and  write,  and  spend  their 
leisure  hours  there." 

The  charges  brought  against  Wales  on  the  score  of 
immorality  are  doubtless  based  to  a  certain  extent  on  the 
survival  in  some  of  the  agricultural  districts  of  the  old 
custom  of  night  courtship,  which  is  not  peculiar  to  Wales, 

1  Qu.  57,064,  57,033,  57,135-45-  -  Q"-  40.020-5. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     583 

■but  occurs  likewise  among  various  European  peoples  as 
a  survival  from  the  life  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is 
frequently  referred  to  in  the  poems  of  the  fourteenth- 
centur}'  Welsh  poet  D.  ab  Gwilym,  and  it  may  be  briefly 
described  thus  :  the  lover  sallies  forth  at  night  and 
approaches  the  house  where  his  fair  one  lives  ;  then  he 
attracts  her  attention  by  gently  tapping  at  her  window. 
In  some  Welsh  districts  this  is  called  cnocio  or  streicio,  and 
in  parts  of  Germany  it  is  termed  fenstern,  as  when  Hans 
Sachs  sings, — 

"  Erstlich  da  ich  brewtgam  worden, 
Dz.  fenstert  ich  schier  alle  nacht." 

A  similar  practice  is  implied  in  several  of  the  songs  of 
Robert  Burns,  such  as  that  to  Mary  Morrison  : — 

*'  O  Mary,  at  thy  window  be, 

It  is  the  wish'd,  the  trysted  hour  ! 
Those  smiles  and  glances  let  me  see, 
That  make  the  miser's  treasure  poor." 

At  the  window,  as  in  the  case  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  a  con- 
versation ensues,  wdiich  sometimes  ends  in  the  admission  of 
the  lover  into  the  house  ;  and  in  that  case  he  and  the  young 
woman  sit  up  together  the  greater  part  of  the  night.  The 
charge  of  assuming  a  different  position,  for  which  the 
vocabulary  of  the  English  language  provides  the  term 
bundling,  is  usually  denied  and  resented  as  a  calumny.^ 
We  have  already  cited  evidence  to  the  effect  that  Wales 

^  By  way  of  further  references  to  night  courtship  we  may  mention  that  in  old 
Norse  literature  the  work  which  makes  the  most  frequent  allusion  to  the 
practice  is  probably  "  Kormak's  Saga"  (edited  by  Mobius,  Halle,  1886,  also 
published  with  a  Latin  translation,  Copenhagen,  1832).  For  the  German 
terms  for  it  and  references  to  it  in  German  literature  see  Grimm's  Dictionary 
under  the  words  fenstern.  and  kilt,  which  latter  belongs  to  Switzerland.  The 
Dutch  colonists  seem  to  have  carried  the  custom  to  South  Africa,  where  one 
linds  it,  for  instance,  in  Olive  Schreiner's  "Story  of  an  African  P'arm"  (see 
Part  II.,  chapter  v.,  concerning  "  Tant'  Sannie's  Upsitting"  ;  also  "  Thoughts 
on  South  Africa,"  by  the  same  writer,  in  the  "  Fortnightly  Review,"  August 
1896,  pp.  244-51).  As  to  the  custom  in  England  see  the  volume  entitled 
"  Barthomley,"  by  the  Rev.  Edward  Hinchclifife  (London,  1856),  p.  139, 
where  he  touches  on  the  "  sitting  up  "  for  which  he  regarded  Cheshire  and 


584         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiri.) 


is  improving  in  the  matter  of  the  morality  of  its  agricultural 
population,  and  more  could  be  cited  if  necessary.  On  the 
other  hand,  one  witness,  Mr.  Thos.  Prichard,  whose 
evidence  has  already  been  referred  to  more  than  once, 
called  our  attention  to  statistics  which  show  an  increase  of 
illegitimacy  in  certain  parts  of  the  Principality.^  His 
reference  was  chiefly  to  the  following  table  given  in 
Dr.  Leffingwell's  chapter  entitled  "  A  Study  in  Morals."- 
Of  each  thousand  births,  how  many  were  illegitimate  in 
the  following  registration  districts  of  England  and  Wales 
during  the  periods  mentioned  below  ?  That  is  the  question 
put,  and  the  table  supplies  the  answers  as  follows  : — 


Name  of  Registration 
District. 


Longtown  . 
Alston 
Clun  . 
Rhayader   . 
Hrampton  . 
Pwtlheli      . 
LanfyTtin    . 
Churcli  Suction 
I  )o\vnham  . 
Docking     . 
Bromyard  . 
MachynTteth 
Anglesey    . 
Newtown  . 
Walsingham 
All  En(;lam>  . 


Countv,  <tc. 


Cumberland 

Shropshire  . 
vSouth  Wales 
Cumberland 
North  Wales 

Shropshire  . 
Norfolk 

Hereford 
North  Wales 


Norfolk 


Annual  Average, 

1884—8 

(Five  Years). 


177 

I  ;2 
122 

121 

117 
114 
103 

oS 

96 
96 
96 

93 
89 

95 

83 
47 


1842. 

1893 

172 

129 

125 

99 

109 

76 

145 

«5 

172 

121 

76 

9.^ 

80 

86 

109 

105 

86 

91 

104 

90 

125 

79 

80 

92 

78 

94 

103 

67 

104 

88 

67 

42 

parts  of  the  counties  bordering  on  it  as  enjoying  an  unenviable  notoriety.  In 
the  valley  of  the  Thames,  in  the  neighbourhood,  for  instance,  of  Henley,  it 
appears  to  be  known  as  "courting  on  the  bed."  An  early  instance  of 
"bundling"  is  mentioned  by  Chrestien  de  Troyes  in  his  poem  the  "  Conte  du 
Graal  "  ;  the  lines  in  point  are  quoted  in  Nult's  "Studies  in  the  Legend  of  the 
Holy  Grail,"  p.  135.  See  also  Rhys's  "Arthurian  Legend,"  p.  175,  and  Thomas 
Wright's  "  Womankind  in  Western  Europe  from  the  Earliest  Times  to  the 
Seventeenth  Century,"  for  instance,  pp.  166-S. 

'  Qu.  120,90-210. 

-  The  title  of  the  book  is  "  Illegitimacy  and  the  Influence  of  Seasons  upon 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     585 

From  this  it  will  be  seen  that,  as  in  certain  districts  in 
Cumberland  and  Shropshire,  there  has  been  up  to  1888  an 
increase  in  illegitimacy  in  certain  districts  in  North  Wales, 
namely,  Anglesey,  the  PvvHheli  district  of  Carnarv^onshire, 
and  the  two  districts  of  Lanfyftin  and  Machynfteth,  in  Mont- 
gomeryshire, at  the  same  time  that  there  has  been  a  decrease 
in  the  average  for  the  whole  of  England  and  Wales.  We 
are  sorry  that  for  the  purposes  of  comparison  we  have  not 
been  able  to  procure  the  figures  for  all  the  Welsh  districts, 
but  those  we  have  given  show  that,  though  the  worst  Welsh 
spots  are  not  so  bad  as  the  worst  English  ones,  there  is 
plenty  of  room  for  improvement  still. 

We  think  it  right,  however,  to  say  that  we  do  not  believe 
that  the  increase  of  immorality  in  the  Welsh  districts  in 
question  has  been  as  great  as  represented  in  this  table 
between  the  years  1842  and  1888,  for  we  suspect  that  the 
numbers  for  1842  are  too  low,  in  consequence  of  the  con- 
cealment of  illegitimate  births  and  neglect  on  the  part  of 
the  registrars  to  do  their  duty  conscientiously.  So  we  are 
glad  to  be  able  to  add  the  figures  for  the  year  1893,  fi'om 
which  it  will  be  seen  that  Welsh  illegitimacy  is  decreasing, 
except  in  Anglesey. 

Taking  a  somewhat  wider  view  of  the  question,  living 
men  of  ordinary  habits  of  observation  who  have  lived  in 
the  Principality  can  testify  that  ideas  of  chastity  have  made 
great  progress  within  their  memory.  Thus  it  was  far  more 
common  in  the  forties  and  the  fifties  for  farmers'  daughters 
to  be  married  at  last  in  a  hurry  than  it  is  now,  and  we  are 
inclined  to  ascribe  the  improvement  more  to  the  spread  of 
education  than    to  the    influence  of  the  pulpit.^     In   such 

Conduct :  Two  Studies  in  Demography,"  by  Albert  Leffingwell,  M.D.  (London, 
1892).  The  above  table  is  given  at  p.  33  ;  and  we  have  added  to  it  the  figures 
for  the  year  1893. 

1  We  cannot  help  suspecting  that  the  influence  of  the  pulpit  is  in  some 
measure  neutralised  by  a  wide-spread  acquaintance  with  the  biography  of 
certain  Old  Testament  worthies  whose  ideas  of  morality,  if  they  had  any,  can 


586         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

matters  abstract  notions  of  virtue  and  vice  play  a  far  lesser 
role  than  the  ever-present  question,  ''  Is  it  respectable  ? " 
The  farmers'  daughters  who  were  sent  from  home  to  school 
learned  that  the  old  fashion  to  which  we  have  alluded  was 
disgraceful,  and  that  it  was  regarded  so  by  educated  people. 
So  they  set  their  faces  against  it  when  they  returned  home. 
In  time  the  conduct  of  the  better  behaved  of  the  farmers' 
daughters  would  tend  steadily  to  establish  a  better  fashion 
among  the  maid-servants.  We  may  here  remark  that  it 
would  not  only  give  the  latter  a  much-needed  interval  for 
recreation,  but  also  conduce  to  a  higher  state  of  morality, 
if  they  could  be  allotted,  each  in  her  turn,  an  afternoon  a 
week  for  visiting  their  friends,  as  is  usually  done  in  the  case 
of  women  in  domestic  service  in  the  towns.  At  any  rate,  this 
might  be  done,  probably  without  any  serious  inconvenience, 
during  seasons  of  the  year  when  there  is  no  great  pressure 
of  work  at  the  farmer's  home.  In  any  case  we  feel  con- 
fident that  the  improvement  proceeding  in  the  housing  of 
the  agricultural  population  and  the  spread  of  education 
cannot  fail  to  accelerate  the  improvement  in  morals  to 
which  we  allude,  and  to  extend  it  in  the  near  future  to  the 
most  remote  country  districts. 

The  same  influences  make  in  manifold  ways  for  temper- 
ance :  for  instance,  it  is  now  regarded  among  the  agri- 
cultural population  of  Wales  a  disgrace  to  be  found 
drunk.  The  Commission  did  not  ask  many  questions  as 
to  drunkenness  in  the  rural  districts.  But  they  noticed 
that  every  farmer  and  every  labourer  who  came  to  give 
evidence  was  sober  at  the  time,  a  statement  which  they 
could  not  make  of  another  class  of  witnesses  who  came 
before  them.  As  to  the  farm  labourers  and  men-servants  in 
particular,  we  have  very  little  more  to  say,  except  that  it  is 

only  be  relcnedto  a  comparatively  low  level  of  civilisation — a  level,  however, 
above  which,  at  any  rate  in  the  matter  of  the  sexes,  the  East  has  never  shown 
any  great  hurry  to  rise  very  much. 


RURAL    WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY     587 

expected  that,  with  more  adequate  accommodation  for 
their  passing  their  evenings  at  home,  they  will  frequent 
the  public-houses  less.  Where  the  accommodation  is 
inadequate  they  have  to  go  out  somewhere,  and  those  who 
cannot  find  room  in  the  kitchen  naturally  gravitate  to  the 
public-houses,  where  they  are  certain  to  find  a  welcome, 
and  to  hear  the  gossip  of  the  countryside.  Some  evidence 
touching  on  this  point  we  have  already  given  whilst  dealing 
with  the  question  of  dwelling-houses,  so  we  do  not  think  it 
necessary  to  produce  it  here.  Thanks  to  the  pulpit  and 
the  advocates  of  total  abstinence,  it  would  be  difficult,  as 
regards  temperance  and  sobriety,  to  exaggerate  the  change 
which  has  taken  place  for  the  better  in  Wales  within  the 
last  fifty  years.  And  were  we  to  go  back  to  remoter 
generations,  we  might  illustrate  the  improvement  by  refer- 
ences to  the  jest-books  of  the  early  Tudor  period,  where 
one  finds  the  bibulous  propensities  of  Welshmen  frequently 
satirised.  Take,  for  example,  Skelton's  "  Merye  Tales," 
the  burden  of  one  of  which  is  ''  How  the  Welshman  dyd 
desyre  Skelton  to  ayde  hym  in  hys  sute  to  the  kynge  for  a 
patent  to  sell  drynke."^  We  have  possibly  a  survival  of 
this  notion  of  the  Welsh  character  in  the  fiction,  stereotyped 
in  English  literature  of  a  certain  order,  that  Welshmen 
never  mention  cwrw,  "  beer,"  without  calling  it  cwrzv  da^ 
"good  beer,"  a  combination  of  words  resented  by  the 
Welsh-speaking  Cymro  of  the  present  day,  as  he  construes 
it,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to  involve  the  insinuation  that  the 
whole  people  regard  beer  as  the  one  thing  good  and 
needful. 

No  survey  of  the  life  of  the  Welsh  farmer  would  be 
complete  without  some  account  of  the  great  place  which 
religion    and    religious    observances    occupy    in    it.       His 

^  This  tale  is  to  be  found  in  Hazlitt's  "Old  English  Jest-books "  (London, 
1864),  vol.  ii.,  pp.  7-9,  and  it  is  reproduced  in  Thomas  Wright's  "  History  of 
Caricature  and  Grotesque"  (London,  1875),  p.  239. 


588         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

Sunday  is  not  a  day  of  rest  except  in  so  far  as  a  change 
of  occupation  answers  the  purpose  of  rest  In  the  morning 
he  and  as  many  of  his  household  as  can  be  spared  from 
the  farm  go  to  a  service,  mostly  a  sermon,  at  the  chapel 
which  they  attend.  If  the  distance  is  not  too  great  they 
return  home  for  dinner,  and  most  of  them  attend  the 
Sunday  School  in  the  afternoon.  They  come  home  again, 
and  go  back  in  the  evening  for  another  serv^ice  at  their 
chapel.  These  three  meetings  partake  of  the  nature  of 
fixtures  not  only  at  the  dissenting  chapel,  but  also  at  the 
parish  church.  To  these  fixtures  must  be  added  various 
subsidiary  meetings,  such  as  those  for  musical  practice  or 
for  catechising  the  young,  so  that  even  a  farmer  who  is 
not  an  elder  ^  or  the  bearer  of  any  other  office  at  his  chapel 
has  the  hours  of  Sunday  pretty  strictly  allotted.  Besides 
Sunday  there  are  meetings  at  the  chapel  in  the  evening  on 
week-days.  One  of  these,  called  the  Seiet,-  occupies  at 
least  one  evening  of  every  week  ;  it  is  confined  to  com- 
municants and  their  children.  Another  evening  there  may 
be  a  prayer-meeting :  occasionally  there  is  a  sermon,  and 
sometimes  a  lecture  or  a  musical  practice,  not  to  mention 
that  in  a  Welsh-speaking  district  there  usually  exists  a 
literary  society,  which  meets  regularly  during  the  winter 
months.  In  fact,  in  a  fairly  populous  neighbourhood  there 
are  chapel  meetings  of  one  kind  or  another  held  on  most  of 
the  evenings  of  the  week,  but  where  the  population  is  sparse 
and  scattered  the  week-day  meetings  are  not  so  numerous. 

^  The  Welsh  word  is  blacnor,  which  hterally  means  a  leader  ;  but  the  growth 
of  ecclesiastical  ideas  is  all  in  favour  of  diaconus,  which  is  rapidly  gaining 
i;round  in  the  form  c>{ diacon,  with  the  un-Welsh  pronunciation  oi  deiacon. 

'  It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  word  siiet,  pronounced  in  Gwyned  seiat^ 
is  only  an  abbreviation  of  the  English  word  society.  In  fact,  the  elders  have 
till  lately  given  the  preference  to  longer  forms  of  the  word,  namely  syseieti, 
syseu't,  and  siicii,  whicli  are  now  nearly  obsolete.  Lastly,  the  English  origin 
of  the  name  suggests  that  the  institution  which  it  represents  may  possibly 
be  of  English  origin  likewise,  thougli  it  has  acquired  a  thoroughly  Welsh 
character. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     589 

With  regard  to  the  Seict,  one  may  say  that  it  undertakes 
the  religious  initiation  of  the  children.  It  reviews  the 
sermons  of  the  previous  Sunday,  elicits  the  religious 
experiences  of  the  members,  strengthens  the  weak- 
kneed,  admonishes  the  erring,  and  in  due  time  expels 
those  whose  conduct  is  held  to  be  a  scandal  to  the 
community. 

The  vSVz^/,  comprising  every  church  member,  is,  in  a  word, 
a  miniature  democracy,  with  the  power  residing  in  the  elders 
and  the  other  communicants,  and  not  in  the  minister, 
whose  presence,  though  usual,  is  not  essential  to  the 
working  of  the  system.  Where  there  is  a  minister  he  is 
the  mouthpiece  of  the  Seiet,  not  its  ruler.  This  is^  roughly 
speaking,  and  in  so  far  as  concerns  questions  not  requiring 
the  attention  of  the  denomination  on  a  larger  scale,  the 
machinery  of  Calvinistic  Methodism,  an  organisation  which 
is  to  be  traced  back  to  the  great  religious  awakening  of  the 
eighteenth  century  as  inspired  by  the  teaching  of  the  Puritan 
fathers  and  guided  by  Whitfield  rather  than'  by  Wesley, 
on  the  points  where  those  reformers  differed.  It  is  a 
denomination  of  Welsh  origin,  and  not  a  part  of  an 
organisation  with  its  centre  of  gravity  in  England  or 
Scotland.  So  its  administrative  work  and  the  business  of 
its  chief  assemblies  are  conducted  in  the  vernacular ;  and 
it  has  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  organisation  cover- 
ing the  whole  of  the  Principality  and  embracing  Welsh 
Churches  in  many  of  the  towns  of  England,  that  has 
endured  without  breach  of  continuity  or  disruption  for 
about  a  century  and  a  half 

Its  Calvinism  is  extensively  shared  by  the  two  Non- 
conformist denominations  of  older  standing  in  the  Princi- 
pality, namely,  the  Independents  or  Congregationalists 
and  the  Baptists,  both  of  which  have  by  degrees  adopted 
to  a  large  extent  the  organisation  of  Calvinistic  Method- 
ism by  the  establishment  of  county  unions  and  national 


590         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

unions  of  their  Churches  in  Wales. ^  In  other  words, 
the  Church  polity  of  the  three  great  denominations ^ 
to  which  the  overwhelming  majority  of  Welsh  Non- 
conformists belong,  is  virtually  the  same,  and  almost 
the  precise  antithesis  of  the  polity  of  the  Established 
Church,  where  the  clergyman  is  practically  responsible  for 
everything.  We  do  not  feel  called  upon  to  estimate  the 
respective  merits  of  the  two  systems,  but  we  notice  with  a 
certain  amount  of  curiosity  that  most  of  the  reforms 
mooted  of  late  years  by  clergymen  of  the  Established 
Church  have  as  their  object  the  securing  of  the  more 
systematic  and  active  co-operation  of  the  lay  element.  It  is 
needless  also  to  mention  what  opportunities  their  chapels 
afford  Welsh  Dissenters  of  learning  the  art  of  self-govern- 
ment, and  of  successfully  managing  their  finances;  and 
as  this  lesson  has  been  more  and  more  thoroughly  learnt 
it  is  but  natural  to  find  that  divisions  and  internal  feuds 
have  been  far  less  rife  in  Welsh  religious  communities  of 
late  years  than  they  used  to  be  formerly.  On  the  whole 
we  think  that  the  tone  of  the  following  passage  in  the 
evidence  of  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  E.  Ellis,^  the  parliamentary 
representative  of  the  county  of  Merioneth,  is  not  pitched 
too  high :  "  The  people  in  these  Welsh  villages  have  learnt 
during  the  last  150  years  the  most  valuable  lessons  of  self- 
government.  Their  chapels  have  been  to  them  a  splendid 
education  in  self-government ;  they  manage  these  chapels 
and  manage  their  organisations  with  admirable  skill  and 
success." 

Those  who  are  pleased  to  generalise  on  the    supposed 
characteristics  of  different  races  hold  it  as  an  axiom  that 

^  On  this  and  kindred  questions  see  a  suggestive  letter  by  W.  E.  in  the 
"  British  Weekly"  for  September  15th,  1892  (p.  330). 

-  We  have  said  nothing  of  the  Wesleyan  Methodists,  for  they  are  not  only 
numerically  less  important  than  the  three  denominations  mentioned,  but  they 
are  the  same  in  Wales  as  in  England. 

•*  Qu.  17,065  ;    see  also  footnote  3  at  p.  646  of  the  Report. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     591 

the  Celt  is  more  impulsive  and  imaginative  than  the 
Teuton  ;  and  we  should  perhaps  be  safe  in  assuming  that 
the  Welsh,  for  reasons  which  cannot  be  examined  here, 
participate  in  this  greater  impulsiveness  and  liveliness  of 
imagination.  At  any  rate  the  assumption  of  such  liveli- 
ness of  imagination  would  help  one  to  account  for  the 
comparative  rarity  of  suicide  among  them,  and  also  for 
certain  phenomena  observed  in  the  sphere  of  religion  in 
Wales.  We  allude,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  Diwygiad^  or 
religious  revival,  which  every  now  and  then  comes  over  the 
Principality.  The  last  of  any  magnitude  spent  its  force 
about  the  beginning  of  the  sixties.  Its  most  conspicuous 
feature  was  great  excitement  at  religious  assemblages,  men 
and  women,  with  their  emotions  intensified  by  the  mag- 
netic sympathy  of  numbers,  being  moved  either  to  exceed- 
ing ecstacy  under  a  vivid  realisation  of  the  glory  of  "  things 
invisible,"  or  to  an  uncontrollable  terror  by  a  discovery  of 
their  "  lost  condition."  They  had,  as  it  were,  in  full  prospect 
one  or  other  of  the  spheres  of  Dante's  "Divina  Commedia." 
Regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  conduct  of  those 
concerned,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  men  who  criticised 
the  Diwygiad  from  without  sometimes  alleged  that  it  was 
mere  religious  hysterics,  that  it  led  to  certain  wholesome 
conventionalities  being  forgotten,  and  even  to  a  laxity  of 
morals  among  people  of  an  unstable  disposition.  But  when 
the  spiritual  storm  had  blown  over  it  was  found  that  it  had 
done  more  good  on  the  whole  than  harm.  This  was  proved 
in  most  districts  by  the  beginning  of  a  new  life  by  men  who 
had  been  till  then  given  to  habits  of  intemperance  and  to 
the  spending  of  their  leisure  hours  in  harvesting  sorrow  for 
their  families.  It  is  but  right  to  add  that  most  of  them 
are  believed  to  have  withstood  all  temptation  to  fall  back 
into   their   old   ways.^      We  cannot   help   perceiving    that 

'  Since  these  words  were  written  our  attention  has  been  called  to  some 
eloquent  passages  dealing  .vith  the  Welsh  pulpit  in  Henry  Richard's  "Letters 


592         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

what  we  have  said  of  the  Dizvygiad  may  appear  to  recall 
the  religious  services  of  the  Salvation  Army ;  and  at  first 
sight  the  comparison  would  seem  a  fair  one  to  make.  At 
any  rate  it  might  be  so  if  one  could  conceive  the  spontaneity 
of  the  Welsh  m.eetings  being  subjected  to  system,  and  the 
ebullitions  of  religious  fervency  which  characterised  them 
being  made  chronic.  But  it  is  a  fact  of  some  relevancy 
here  that  the  Salvation  Army,  with  its  Saxon  methods, 
has  never  met  with  any  conspicuous  success  among  the 
Celts  either  in  Wales  or  elsewhere. 

We  have  already  hinted  that  the  Welsh  are  well  endowed 
in  the  matter  of  imagination  and  fancy.  This  faculty  has 
sometimes  played  a  great  role  when  it  was  found  combined 
with  a  certain  kind  of  faith.  The  faith  we  mean  is  that 
which  has  sustained  nations  like  the  Jews  in  their  expecta- 
tion of  a  Messiah  to  come,  or  at  one  time  inspired  the 
Spaniards  with  thebelief  that  the  Cid  Rodrigo  was  to  return 
to  restore  the  glories  of  Castile  ;  and  other  instances  might 
be  mentioned.  From  this  combination  there  sprang  up 
among  the  Brythons  of  yore  a  spirit  of  romance  which 
held  the  Europe  of  the  Middle  Ages  bound,  as  it  were, 
under  a  spell.  There  is  no  great  literature  of  the  Continent 
which  does  not  betray  the  influence  of  the  Brythonic 
hero  Arthur,  whom  his  people  as  late  as  the  time  of 
Henry  II.  expected  to  see  returning  from  the  isle  of 
Avatton  hale  and  strong  and  longing  to  lead  his  men  and 
countrymen  to  triumph  over  the  foe  and  the  oppressor. 
So  real  was  this  sanguine  exj>ectation  that  it  is  supposed 
to  have  counted  with  the  English  king  as  one  of  the 
forces  which  he  had  to  quell  in  order  to  obtain  quiet  from 
the  Welsh.     So  the  monks  of  Glastonbury  proceeded  to 

and  Essays  on  Wales"  (London,  1884),  pp.  26-30.     Alluding  to  the  religious 
revivals  which   we  have  in  view,  Mr.  Richard  gives  his  opinion  of  them  as 
follows: — "With  some  serious  drawbacks,  no  one  acquainted  with  the  inner   » 
life  of  the  country  can  doubt  that   they  have  been  of  incalculal)le  value  to 
Wales." 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENJ   DAY.     593 

discover  there  the  coffin  of  Arthur,  his  wife  and  his  son. 
This  was  to  convince  the  Welsh  of  the  unreasonableness 
of  their  reckoning  on  the  return  of  Arthur,  who  had  been 
dead  some  six  hundred  years.  The  Welsh,  however,  went 
on  believing  here  and  there  in  the  eventual  return  of 
Arthur  ;  and  in  modern  times  a  shepherd  is  now  and  then 
related  to  have  chanced  on  a  cave  where  Arthur's  Men 
are  sleeping  in  the  midst  of  untold  treasure,  awaiting  the 
signal  for  their  sallying  forth  to  battle.  This  is  located  in 
various  spots  in  Wales,  as  also  in  the  Eildon  hills,  near 
Melrose,  in  South  Scotland.  Similar  expectations  have 
been  connected  in  Ireland  with  the  names  of  several  of 
the  heroes  of  local  stories  current  in  that  country.  Take, 
for  instance,  The  O'Donoghue,  who  is  supposed  to  be 
sleeping  with  eyes  and  ears  open  beneath  the  lakes  of 
Killarney  till  called  forth  to  right  the  wrongs  of  Erin,  or 
the  unnamed  king  who  sleeps  among  his  host  of  mighty 
spearmen  in  the  stronghold  of  Greenan-Ely,  in  the  high- 
lands of  Donegal,  awaiting  the  peal  of  destiny  to  summon 
him  and  his  men  to  fight  for  their  country. 

Nor  was  Arthur  the  only  hero  of  the  Brythons  who  was 
expected  to  return  from  the  other  world.  One  gathers  from 
certain  passages  in  the  thirteenth-century  manuscript  of  the 
poetry  associated  with  the  name  of  Taliessin  that  a  similar 
expectation  once  attached  to  Cadwaladr,  sometimes  called 
the  Blessed,  the  last  king  of  the  Brythons  to  contest  the 
lordship  over  what  is  now  the  north  of  England  with  the 
Angles  of  Deira  and  Bernicia  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
seventh  century.  Indeed,  there  is  reason  to  think  that 
this  sort  of  superstition  did  not  wholly  die  out  in  certain 
parts  of  the  Principality  till,  so  to  say,  the  other  day. 
The  Rev.  Benjamin  Williams,  a  clergyman  and  Welsh 
antiquary  who  has  not  been  dead  many  years,  contributed 
to  the  "  Brython  "  for  1858  an  article  in  which  he  alluded 
to  a  certain  Owain  Lawgoch,  "  Owain  of  the  Red  Hand." 

w.p.  Q  Q 


594        THE    WELSH   PEOPLE.  (ci-iAr.  xiii.) 

Popular  imagination,  we  learn,  represented  Owain  Lawgoch 
as  a  hero  expected  to  return  eventually  to  reign  over 
Britain.  In  the  meanwhile  he  was  by  some  supposed  to 
be  biding  his  time  in  foreign  lands,  and  by  others  to  be 
slumbering  in  a  treasure  cave,  where  certain  intruders 
once  on  a  time  beheld  him,  a  man  of  seven  foot  in  stature, 
sitting  in  an  ancient  chair  with  his  head  resting  on  his  left 
hand,  while  the  other,  the  red  hand,  grasped  a  mighty 
sword  of  state  which  had  come  down  to  him  as  an  official 
heirloom  from  the  ancient  kings  of  Britain.  This  Owain 
Lawgoch  was  the  subject  of  ballads  sung  at  Welsh  fairs, 
and  l\Ir.  Williams  quotes  the  following  couplet  : — 

Yr  Owen  hwn  y'v  Ha?-)-^)'  Nazvfed,       "  This  Owain  is  Henry  the  Ninth, 
SyU yn  t?-ii^'o  ^ngiolad esironied.^  Who  tarries  in  a  foreign  land." 

Mr.  Williams's  statement  is,  that  this  '^  is  sometimes 
heard  sung" — '' clywir  canii,  weithiau'' — which  means  that 
he  or  some  of  his  friends  had  heard  it  sung  not  long  before 
the  time  of  his  writing.  Now  it  turns  out  that  Owain 
Lawgoch  was  a  historical  man  :  he  lived,  as  we  have  found 
(pp.  343 — 4),  in  the  time  of  Edward  III.  and  his  son,  the 
Black  Prince.  His  deeds  of  valour  in  the  French  wars  fill 
not  a  few  of  the  pages  of  Froissart. 

The  faith  and  fancy  which  have  combined  to  waft  across 
five  centuries  and  more  the  echo  of  Owain  Lawgoch's  name 
to  our  time  will  help  one  to  understand  a  phenomenon 
touched  upon  in  the  evidence  ;  we  mean  the  success  which 

'  Since  the  above  was  written  we  have  learned  from  a  Welsh  scholar,  the 
Rev.  John  Fisher,  of  Ruthin,  that  this  comes  from  a  ballad  in  a  twopenny 
book  published  at  Carmarthen  in  1847,  entitled  Prophwydoliaeth  Myrdin 
AF;'///,  "  The  Prophecy  of  Merlin  the  Wild."  The  booklet  contains  two  poems 
or  ballads,  both  of  which  speak  of  Owain  Lawgoch  :  the  couplet  cited  occurs  in  the 
first  of  the  poems,  while  the  second,  which  is  similar,  closes  with  the  date  of 
the  year  1668  in  rhyme.  Mr.  Fisher  has  never  heard  either  ballad  sung,  but  there 
are,  he  says,  old  people  still  living  in  his  native  Valley  of  the  L\\  chwr  who 
could  repeat  scraps  here  and  there  of  both  ballads.  We  are  indebted  to  Mr. 
Fisher  also  for  calling  our  attention  to  Froissart's  account  of  Owain,  and  for 
other  valuable  hints.      See  above,  p.  343. 


RURAL  WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     595 

at  one  time  used  to  attend  the  efforts  of  Mormon 
missionaries  among  the  people  of  certain  parts  of  Wales. 
It  appears  to  have  been  most  remarkable  in  the  mining 
districts  of  South  Wales,  but  it  now  and  then  involved 
the  inhabitants  of  rural  districts,  such,  for  example,  as  the 
village  of  St.  Bride's  Major,  in  the  south  of  Glamorgan- 
shire, mentioned  by  Mr.  J.  M.  Randall,  one  of  the  agents 
engaged  in  the  management  of  Lord  Dunraven's  Welsh 
estates.  We  refer  to  the  following  passage  :  ^  "  You  say 
about  forty  years  ago  there  was  a  large  exodus  of  the 
working  classes  from  your  district.'"' — ''Yes,  particularly 
from  the  village  of  St.  Bride's  Major.  There  was  a  large 
exodus  to  Salt  Lake  City.  I  think  they  went  to  join  the 
Mormons,  on  religious  grounds." 

Now  there  were  two  things  in  the  preachings  of  the 
Mormon  missioners  which  were  calculated  particularly  to 
attract  the  ignorant  in  Wales,  namely,  the  imminent 
approach  of  the  end  of  the  world  and  the  coming  of  Christ 
in  the  flesh  to  reign  with  His  saints  in  a  temporal  kingdom 
in  the  West.  The  latter  doctrine  belone^ed  to  an  order 
of  ideas  which  we  have  shown  to  have  been  far  from 
unfamiliar  among  the  Brythons  and  other  nations. 
Probably,  however,  a  certain  class  of  people  was  still  more 
influenced  by  an  apprehension  of  the  immediate  approach 
of  the  end  of  the  world  ;  for  even  now  the  crazes  on  this 
subject  which  are  propagated  from  time  to  time  by  a 
certain  type  of  English  divines,  whose  favourite  study 
seems  to  be  the  Apocalypse  and  the  Prophet  Daniel,  are 
apt  to  command,  perhaps,  a  more  anxious  hearing  in 
Wales  than  they  usually  obtain  in  England.  And  in  the 
earlier  fifties  apprehension  and  fear  were  helped  by  the 
uneasiness  created  by  the  Crimean  war,  and  it  was  in 
some  measure  prolonged  by  the  strange  appearance  some- 
what later  of  Donati's  Comet.     Many  timid  people  there 

'  Qu.  5,625 — 6  :  see  also  p.  53  of  t lie  Report. 

QQ  2 


596         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

undoubtedly  were  who  connected  these  things  with  the  events 
set  forth  in  the  sixteenth  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Revelation, 
including  among  them  the  stealthy  coming  of  Christ  and 
the  gathering  together  of  mighty  hosts  to  Armageddon. 
These  and  other  reasons  of  the  same  nature  seem  to  have 
made  Wales  a  favourable  arena  for  the  activity  of  the 
Mormons  for  a  time,  and  the  success  which  attended  that 
activity  had  the  effect  of  giving  the  Welsh  the  reputation 
of  being  a  very  superstitious  people.  A  great  change 
however,  has  come  over  the  country  within  the  last  thirty 
years,  as  any  one  can  testify  who  attem^pts  nowadays  to 
collect  folklore  in  the  Principality.  His  task  has  become 
an  exceedingly  difficult  one  so  far  as  regards  the  Welsh 
men  and  women  of  the  present  day,  for  not  only  have  they 
ceased  to  give  any  credence  to  the  stories  and  legends 
of  the  past,  but  they  go  so  far  as  only  to  own  with 
reluctance  to  having  ever  heard  them.  In  fact,  such  folklore 
is  rapidly  passing  into  oblivion  as  far  as  concerns  the 
rustic  of  the  type  that  formerly  revelled  in  it ;  and  so 
would  the  creed  of  the  Latter-day  Saints  too  but  for  its 
apostles  continuing  to  haunt  the  Principality.  Some  have 
been  seen  and  heard  preaching  there  the  peculiar  tenets 
of  that  creed  within  the  last  four  or  five  years  ;  but  the 
success  of  earlier  days  appears  to  have  deserted  their 
ministry,  leaving  it  to  interest  solely  the  student  of  psycho- 
logical pathology. 

A  Avord  must  now  be  said  as  to  the  opportunities  for 
recreation  and  the  means  of  improvement  within  the  reach 
of  the  agricultural  population.  Few  country  places  have 
any  ground  set  apart  for  recreation  and  athletic  exercise, 
and  even  where  ground  had  been  reserved  for  that  purpose 
under  the  Acts  of  Parliament  authorising  the  enclosure  of 
common  land,  the  Commission  usually  found  that  it  was 
little  used,  or  not  at  all.^  The  growth  of  interest  in  such 
1  Qii.  543  cVjr/.,  643— 695. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     597 

games  as  that  of  cricket  and  of  football  belongs  chiefly 
to  the  younger  part  of  the  population  of  the  towns  and 
mining  centres,  though  football  is  by  no  means  a  new- 
game  in  the  Principality.  It  used  to  be  a  very  popular 
pastime  prior  to  the  Nonconformist  revival,  but  as  the 
principal  day  for  it  used  to  be  Sunday  it  was  put  down 
with  stern  severity  by  all  the  Nonconformists,  who  held 
decided  Sabbatarian  views.  In  Catholic  times  there  were 
numerous  saints'  days  and  festivals  on  which  the  game 
might  be  played,  but  as  these  holidays  have  nearly  all 
ceased  to  be  observed  and  Sunday  is  out  of  the  question, 
football  mostly  ceased  in  the  country  districts.  There  is, 
however,  we  think  another  and  a  deeper  reason  why 
neither  football  nor  any  other  athletic  exercise  is  regularly 
practised  in  country  places,  and  that  is  the  natural  lack  of 
inclination  to  further  physical  effort  on  the  part  of  men 
who  have  to  work  through  a  long  day  in  the  open  air. 
Recreation  to  suit  them  must,  we  think,  p  irtake  largely  of 
the  nature  of  cessation  from  serious  bodily  exertion  ;  they 
want  some  change  of  occupation  which  involves  rest  for 
the  limbs  wearied  by  the  day's  toil.  In  other  words,  they 
may  be  expected  to  prefer  something  of  the  nature  of 
reading,  singing,  chatting  together,  playing  some  easy 
game  of  the  nature  of  chess,  or  at  most  a  game  of  quoits  ; 
not  to  mention  that  the  hours  of  labour  of  the  farmer  and 
his  servants  make  it  impossible  that  their  recreation  should 
be  found  for  them  out  of  doors,  at  least  for  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  year. 

In  winter  the  farmers  and  their  families  have  long" 
evenings  at  their  disposal,  and  it  is  interesting  to  notice 
how  they  spend  them.  A  few  generations  ago  the  house- 
hold of  an  upland  farmer  on  the  Cardiganshire  side  of 
Plinlimmon  would  sit  round  a  good  peat  fire  ;  some  of  the 
women  would  take  up  their  knitting,  some  would  peel 
rushes  for  rushlights,  a  servant-man  would  carve  a  wooden 


598         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,    (chap,  xiii.) 

spoon  or  a  ladle,  and  somebody  would  read  to  the  com- 
pany. When  they  grew  tired  of  that,  somebody  would 
relate  a  story  or  propound  riddles  ;  and  so  things  went  on 
till  all  retired  to  rest.  Somewhat  the  same  domesticity 
is  suggested  by  the  evidence  of  Mr.  \V.  L.  Williams,  who, 
speaking  of  Carmarthenshire,  said  :  ^  "  I  remember  the  time 
when  servants  had  a  kind  of  domestic  competition  on  the 
hearth  as  to  who  could  make  the  best  wooden  spoon  or 
basket,  or  string  onions.  There  is  now  nothing  of  the 
kind  :  the  servants  are  gradually  losing  their  character  as 
members  of  the  family,  and  do  not  remain  as  much  in  the 
farm  kitchen.  They  have  little  or  no  domestic  life."  At 
Bedgelert  and  other  places  in  the  Snowdon  district  the 
neighbours  used  to  spend  their  evenings  in  one  another's 
houses  on  what  they  termed  "  knitting  nights,"  when  they 
used  to  knit  and  entertain  one  another  with  stories  about 
fairies,  bogies,  or  any  other  popular  subject.-  In  the 
parish  of  Lanaelhaiarn,  in  Arfon,  an  evening  of  that 
description  used  to  be  called  a  pilnos  or  "  rus\\-pceii7ig 
night,"  though  we  read  of  the  occupation  of  the  company 
gathered  together  being  rather  the  dressing  of  hemp  and 
the  carding  of  wool.  But  the  entertainment  consisted 
chiefl}'  in  telling  stories,  a  fact  which  need  surprise  no  one 
i  ^  a  district  which  forms  the  classical  ground  of  the  old- 
world  tales  of  the  "  Mabinogion  "  and  has  a  topography  that 
re-echoes  the  names  of  the  goddess  Don's  descendants.^ 
In  Merionethshire,  Bala  and  its  neighbourhood  were 
formerly  celebrated  for  the  trade  done  in  them  in  woollen 
stockings,  and  Pennant,  alluding  to  what  he  terms  a 
"  knitting  assembly  "  or  Cymorth  Giuaiiy  uses  the  following 

J  Qu.  37,829. 

-  Sea  '•  Y  Cymmrodor,"  vol.  v.,  pp.  49,  50. 

^  Jbid.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  169.  See  also  pp.  162 — 165,  rom  which  it  appears  that 
it  is  in  this  part  of  Arfon  alone  that  the  name  Don  has  survived  in  the  language 
of  the  hearth  :  elsewhere  it  has  been  obtained  from  books,  as  proved  by  its 
being  pronounced  Don  or  Donn  and  iroaicd  as  a  masculine. 


RURAL  WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY,     599 

words  :^  "Durinf^  winter  the  females,  through  love  of 
society,  often  assemble  at  one  another's  houses  to  knit  ; 
sit  round  a  fire,  and  listen  to  some  old  tale,  or  to  some 
ancient  song,  or  the  sound  of  a  harp." 

The  happy  gathering  of  the  family  round  the  winter  fire 
continues  in  most  countrysides  much  as  in  years  gone  by, 
except  on  the  one  hand  that  the  comforts  now  enjoyed  are 
frequently  greater,  and  that  on  the  other  the  charmed 
circle  is  apt  in  our  day  to  be  somewhat  encroached  upon 
by  the  frequency  of  evening  meetings  at  the  chapel,  unless 
that  happens  to  be  situated  at  too  great  a  distance  to  be 
often  attended.  In  any  case  this  raises  the  question  of 
the  extent  of  the  accommodation  afforded  by  the  farm- 
house for  those  who  would  like  to  spend  their  evenings  at 
home,  but  we  have  already  considered  it  at  some  length. 
So  we  revert  to  Mr.  W.  L.  Williams's  words  to  the  effect 
that  for  some  reason  or  other  the  servant-men  tend,  as 
stated  by  him,  to  consider  themselves  or  to  be  considered 
by  their  employers  less  intimately  members  of  the  family 
nowadays  than  they  did  formerly.  This  forms  a  third 
exception  to  our  general  statement,  and  it  is  to  be 
regretted,  we  think,  on  the  ground  of  morality  and 
temperance,  and  of  honest  service  ;  but  it  is  a  tendency 
which  is  growing  and  likely  to  grow  the  more  completely 
labour  becomes,  like  other  commodities,  ruled  by  the 
highest  bid  without  any  predilection  for  person  or  place. 
So  the  question  of  resorts  and  recreations  in  country 
villages  must  become  a  more  and  more  pressing  one.  The 
labourers  and  servant-men  who  quit  the  farm  kitchen 
cannot  all  be  accommodated  in  the  smithy  or  the  shoe- 
maker's workshop ;  and  all  are  agreed  that  it  is  not 
desirable  that  they  should  make  a  habit  of  frequenting 
the  village  public. 

The   Commission    took   some  evidence    on    this    point, 

1  PennaiU's  "  Tours  in  Wales,"  ii,,  pp.  210,  211,  of  tlie  edition  of  1810. 


6oo         THE    WELSH  PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

and  beginning  with  the  least  ambitious  order  of  suggestions 
made  to  them,  we  quote  first  the  views  of  INIr.  J.  M. 
Prichard,  farmer,  m.agistrate,  and  barrister-at-law,  who 
came  before  them  at  Langefni,  and  spoke  as  follows  :^ 
"Now  Lady  Reade  has  shown  an  example  which  I 
should  very  much  like  to  see  Class  A  landlords  who  are 
able  to  afford  it,  follow.  She  had  three  public-houses 
at  Lanfaethlu,  and,  being  a  temperance  reformer,  she 
did  away  with  two  licences.  She  thought  that  one  was 
quite  enough,  and  that  is,  I  think,  the  policy  which 
is  followed  now.  She  did  it  without  appealing  to  us 
as  magistrates  at  all.  She  dropped  these  two  licences  ; 
she  wanted  to  see  less  drink  in  the  villages.  The  only 
result  of  dropping  these  two  licences  was  to  create  more 
drinking.  The  three  houses  that  were  there  before  did 
not  pay  at  all  ;  you  might  have  bought  both  licences  for 
lOO/.  each  or  50/.,  but  when  there  was  only  one  public- 
house,  that  house  was  immediately  enlarged  and  made 
very  comfortable  and  nice  ;  three  or  four  parlours  were 
added,  and  the  result  is,  there  is  more  business  done  at 
that  one  than  was  ever  done  at  the  three.  That,  I 
suppose,  did  not  suit  Lady  Reade  ;  she  naturally  did  not 
like  to  see  so  much  drinking  in  the  neighbourhood,  so 
near  by,  she  built  a  coffee-house,  which  has  been  a  very 
great  success.  I  think  if  the  landlords  would  build  more 
of  those — not  make  an  attempt  at  once  to  do  away  with 
the  few  places  that  the  workmen  have  to  sit  down  in,  but 
first  of  all  build  coffee-houses,  or  build  them  some  places  of 
entertainment,  where  they  can  enjoy  themselves  of  an 
evening,  and  afterwards  petition  the  magistrates  to  do 
away  with  the  licences,  that  would  be  a  good  policy." 

Mr.  Prichard  in  dealing  further  with  this  subject  instanced 
ILanfachrcth,  Bodedern,  and  Trefor  as  centres  where  places 
of  entertainment   might  prove  a  great  boon  to  that  part 

1  Qu.  18,623,  18,624. 


RURAL  WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     60 1 

of  the  country,  and  he  thought  it  best  to  entrust  the 
estabHshing  of  them  to  the  County  Council.  A  little  later 
this  view  was  advocated  by  Mr.  S.  Hughes,^  the  chairman 
of  the  County  Council  himself,  who,  however,  in  repre- 
senting the  desirability  of  having  places  for  refreshments 
in  every  country  village,  gave  some  prominence  to  the 
intellectual  requirements  of  the  persons  concerned  :  "  I 
think  there  should  be  some  sort  of  temperance  house 
there,"  he  said,  "  with  periodicals  and  some  books." 

This  brings  us  to  the  evidence  about  reading-rooms. 
As  regards  the  majority  of  country  districts,  it  was  simply 
negative  :  there  are  none.  But  in  one  instance  a  w^itness 
went  further,  namely,  Mr.  William  Edwards,-  Lecturer  on 
Agriculture  under  the  Cheshire  County  Council,  formerly 
Secretary  to  the  Anglesey  Farmers'  Society,  and  otherwise 
intimately  acquainted  with  that  county.  After  dwelling 
in  severe  terms  on  the  lack  of  a  reading-room  or  any 
recreation-ground  at  the  village,  for  instance,  of  Lanfair, 
in  Anglesey,  and  the  responsibility  of  the  neighbouring 
landowners  in  the  matter,  he  drew  a  contrast  between  that 
county  and  Cheshire  in  the  following  terms  :  "  During  the 
last  fortnight  I  have  been  in  Cheshire,  I  could  not  help 
noticing  that  there  was  a  very  vast  amount  of  difference 
there  in  the  small  villages,  as  compared  to  ours."  He 
went  on  to  say  :  "  In  almost  every  small  village  you  go  to, 
there  is  a  public  room,  all  the  papers  come  there,  there  are 
science  classes  and  that  sort  of  thing,  and  lectures  are 
given  on  all  conceivable  subjects." 

On  the  other  side  we  feel  bound  to  quote  the  evidence 
of  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley,  who  owns  land  both  in 
Anglesey  and  Cheshire  :  we  refer  to  the  following  passage, 
Question  19,831. — "Have  you  done  anything  in  the  way 
of  encouraging  libraries  in  the  villages,  in  order  to  prevent 
the  prowling  around  the  neighbourhood  by  the  farm  boys 
1  Qu.  21,971—2.  "  Qu.  43,085 — 6. 


6o2         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

at  night  ?  " — "  Yes,  I  have.  I  did  one  thing,  and  tried  to  do 
another.  I  have  made  a  beginning  with  a  hbrary  of  Welsh 
books  in  my  principal  farm  at  Bodewryd ;  it  is  in  the 
middle  of  the  property  I  have  there.  Then  at  Bodedern 
I  heard  that  Archdeacon  Wynne  Jones,  when  he  was  the 
owner,  had  attempted  to  establish  a  reading-room,  and 
that  the  project  had  fallen  through.  I  offered  to  build  an 
additional  room,  either  as  a  school  class-room,  or  simply 
as  a  reading-room  adjoining  the  school  at  Bodedern.  The 
schoolmaster  was  perfectly  willing  to  keep  it  open  at  night, 
and  to  receive  people  there  for  amusing  themselves,  for 
reading  and  so  on  ;  but  although  I  have  offered  to  provide 
the  building,  I  have  not  been  able  to  get  further  than 
that.  They  have  not  yet  said  that  anybody  would  be 
glad  to  have  it,  nor  made  any  proposal  to  me  as  to  which 
spot  the  building  should  stand  on." 

We  have  dwelt  so  long  on  the  case  of  Anglesey  partly 
because  it  is  a  typically  agricultural  county,  and  partly 
because  the  Anglesey  evidence  on  this  question  happens  to 
be  explicit  and  concrete.  But  the  same  apparent  lack  of 
intellectual  interest,  which  is  suggested  by  Lord  Stanley's 
words  cited  above,  meets  us  elsewhere.  In  some  instances 
where  reading-rooms  have  been  in  existence  they  are  not 
conspicuously  successful,  and  in  others  they  have  failed 
altogether.  As  regards  the  Anglesey  instances,  his  Lord- 
ship does  not  offer  any  explanation  why  his  generosity 
was  not  more  appreciated  either  at  Bodedern  or  Bodewryd  ; 
and  we  turn  to  another  part  of  the  Principality  and  cite 
a  case  which  is  explained  by  the  witness  dealing  with  it, 
namely,  Miss  Kate  Jenkins.  She  spoke,  as  already  stated, 
of  the  parish  of  Langadock,  in  the  Vale  of  the  Towy,  and 
used  the  following  words  :^  "  I  do  not  think  the  right 
people  take  it  [the  reading-room  movement]  up,  or  if  they 
do  they  do  not  take  it  up  in  the  right  way.     We  had  a 

'  Qu.  38,053. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     603 

reading-room  at  Langadock.  I  did  not  go  to  it  at  all  ; 
I  happened  to  be  away  from  home  at  the  time,  but  when 
I  came  back  I  found  it  was  not  a  success.  The  farmers* 
sons  did  not  go  there,  only  just  the  Church  people  went. 
I  asked  them  why  they  did  not  attend,  and  told  them  it 
was  very  bigoted.  They  said  instead  of  forming  a  com- 
mittee and  getting  all  the  farmers  together  in  that  way, 
which  would  be  self-government  by  the  people,  the  vicar 
arrancred  everything,  and  when  everything  was  finished  he 
called  a  committee  together.  It  was  very  kind  of  him 
and  I  have  no  doubt  he  wanted  to  do  it,  but  it  was  all 
finished  at  that  time,  and  when  the  people  came  they 
found  inside  the  books,  'St.  Cadog's  Church  Lending 
Library,'  and  the  Nonconformists  (of  course  foolishly)  took 
umbrage  and  never  came  near,  or  very  few  of  them.  It  is 
now  dead  because  nobody  goes  there." 

The  habit  of  turning  into  a  reading-room  to  seek  infor- 
mation or  mental  improvement  has  probably  got  to  grow 
among  the  rural  population,  and  to  do  so  under  the 
fostering  influence  of  careful  and  protracted  cultivation. 
This  is  the  first  point  to  be  considered  in  any  attempt  to 
account  for  the  failure  of  reading-rooms  in  country  villages. 
But  reasons  of  the  kind  assigned  by  Miss  Jenkins  in  the 
case  cited  by  her  are  not  imaginary  :  they  constitute  a 
vej^a  causa.  Any  undertaking  which  labours  under  the 
least  suspicion  of  aiming  at  proselytising  or  of  being  an 
act  of  patronising,  whether  on  the  part  of  the  Church  of 
England  or  any  dissenting  body,  of  noblemen  or  wealthy 
commoners,  is  in  the  present  temper  of  the  Welsh  people 
doomed  to  certain  failure.  In  the  long  run  the  people 
will  not  have  it,  even  though  that  attitude  should  expose 
them  to  the  charge  of  indifference  or  ingratitude.  We 
cannot  help  referring  here  to  the  instances  of  reading-rooms 
mentioned  in  the  evidence^  of  Mr.  Price  of  Rhiwlas,  given 

1  Qu.  18,492. 


Go4         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

in  the  course  of  one  of  the  Commissioners'  sittings  at  Bala. 
They  do  credit  to  the  generosity  of  those  who  originated 
them  and  carried  them  on,  in  some  cases  with  considerable 
success  ;  but  we  cannot  admit  that  the  references  to  them 
successfully  rebut,  as  they  were  intended  to  do,  the  follow- 
ing passage  in  the  evidence  of  Mr.  Thomas  E.  Ellis  :^ 
*'  Now  these  figures  speak  for  themselves.  The  occupiers 
pay  the  land  tax,  the  poor,  public  health,  education,  high- 
way, police,  and  county  rates,  yet  in  Merioneth,  where 
140,335/.  was  paid  as  rent  in  1889 — 90,  the  county  is  ill- 
provided  with  public  institutions.  In  a  land  and  among 
a  peasantry  singularly  devoted  to  social  converse  there  is 
not  a  public  village  hall — keenly  fond  of  reading,  there  is 
not  a  public  library.  In  a  changeable  climate  mainly  damp 
and  with  homes  small  and  confined  there  is  not  a  sin^-le 
hospital  or  public  dispensary.  In  a  land  whose  people  are 
singularly  attached  to  the  soil  and  its  associations  the 
dwellings  of  peasants  and  cottagers  are  allowed  to  fall  to  ruin. 
I  venture  to  think  this  is  too  severe  a  strain  and  cannot  last." 
J\lr.  Ellis  maintained  his  position  and  explained,  as 
follows,  the  meaning  which  he  attached  to  his  words  : 
"When  I  say  a  public  village  hall,  I  mean  not  a  couple  of 
rooms,  which  may  be  let  with  or  without  rent  for  a  time 
and  at  the  will  of  the  landowner  or  of  a  resident,  but  a 
building  with  rooms  and  conveniences  which  is  the  pro- 
perty of  a  parish  or  of  a  village.  Of  such  a  building  I  believe 
there  is  not  a  single  instance  in  the  county  of  Merioneth." 
Reviewing  Mr.  Price  of  Rhiwlas'  instances,  he  spoke  of  one 
of  them  as  follows  :  "  The  Lanbedr  room  and  hall  is  a 
very  admirable  one,  and  does  a  very  great  deal  of  good, 
but  the  hall  is  the  property  of  Mr.  Pope,  and  with  great 
generosity  he  has  allowed  these  rooms,  I  think,  to  be 
used  freely  by  the  public.  But  it  is  not  the  property  of 
Lanbedr  ;  and  if  Mr.  Pope  went  away  from  the  district  I 

^  Qii.  16,918,  18,508 — 10. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY,     605 

do  not  believe  there  is  any  guarantee  except  the  guarantee 
of  his  generosity  that  would  leave  it  as  a  public  institution. 
It  is  in  no  sense  the  public  library  of  Lanbedr."  Further 
on  he  speaks  of  the  instances  adduced  from  Corwen  and 
Dolgeiiey  as  little  spasmodic  attempts  made  by  small  groups 
of  individuals  in  those  two  towns.  "  There  is  no  continuity 
whatsoever,"  he  added,  "  about  these  reading-rooms,  and 
they  are  in  no  sense  public  libraries."  Of  a  reading-room 
at  LanuwchHyn  he  said  :  "  It  was  started  by  getting  one 
or  two  rooms  in  a  house,  and  a  certain  number  of  books 
was  placed  there,  but  they  were  the  mere  surplusage  of 
other  libraries,  and  a  good  deal  of  the  literature  was  about 
such  subjects  as  the  Lost  Ten  Tribes."  Lastly,  with 
regard  to  a  portion  of  the  old  barrack  utilised  at  Bala  as 
a  reading-room,  and  supported  by  subscriptions,  his  words 
were  :  "  They  have  two  or  three  comfortable  rooms,  so  far 
as  they  go.  There  is  a  little  room  which  is  called  a  library, 
but  I  do  not  believe  the  Commission  would  give  more  than 
about  5/.,  if  they  would  give  5/.,  for  the  whole  stock  of 
books  that  are  there.  They  are  antiquated,  and  the 
majority  of  them  perfectly  useless  and  unserviceable.  But," 
he  added,  "these  subscriptions  to  what  one  may  call  a 
casual  reading-room,  which  is  rented  in  an  old  barrack  here 
in  the  town,  is  a  very  different  thing  to  a  handsome  building 
which  is  owned  by  the  people,  and  controlled  by  them." 

These  utterances  of  Mr.  Ellis's  as  a  farmer's  son  and 
a  man  enjoying  a  position  of  eminence  in  the  political 
party  to  which  he  belonged,  fix,  probably,  a  minimum  of 
reform  below  which  no  future  well-wisher  of  the  agricul- 
tural population  of  Wales  can  well  allow  his  demands  to 
fall.  Even  the  seemingly  otiose  adjective  referring  to 
architecture  is,  if  we  mistake  not,  fraught  with  future 
significance.^     But  we  have  cited  Mr.  Ellis's  evidence  at 

^  After  ihe  visit  of  the  Commission  to  Bala  Mr.  Ellis  addre^-sed  more  thaa 
one  meeting  of  Wclslimcn  on  the  subject  of  architecture  in  the  Principality. 


6o6         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

so  great  a  length,  mainly  because  he  lays  his  finger  on  two 
of  the  weak  points  in  the  present  reading-room  system  : 
we  have  used  the  wrong  word — there  is  no  system,  but 
there  ought  to  be  a  system.  And  one  essential  part  of 
such  system  must  be  the  exclusion  of  all  possible  suspicion 
of  proselytising  and  patronising,  as  we  have  already  hinted  ; 
or  in  other  words,  suggested  by  this  evidence,  the  unequi- 
vocal ownership  and  control  of  the  reading-room  or  library 
by  the  people  for  the  people.  The  other  weak  point 
indicated  by  the  evidence  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  well- 
meant  efforts,  ah'eady  mentioned,  to  encourage  reading  is 
the  lack  displayed  of  discretion  to  select  or  of  means  to 
buy  suitable  books.  The  surplusage  of  other  libraries, 
antiquated  and  unserviceable  volumes,  cannot  be  expected 
to  form  good  intellectual  pabulum  for  a  farmer  or  even  a 
farmer's  man,  and  a  reading-room  that  relies  on  the  Lost 
Ten  Tribes  must  speedily  find  itself  more  lost  than  they. 

Having  dealt  at  so  great  a  length  with  the  question 
of  reading-rooms,  we  may  remark  that  the  evidence  did 
not  show  that  they  were  all  unsuccessful,  and  that,  even 
had  such  been  the  case,  we  should  not  feel  compelled, 
seeing  what  the  history  of  these  undertakings  has  indi- 
vidually been,  to  consider  that  their  want  of  success  forms 
adequate  proof  that  the  rural  population  of  Wales  cares 
nothing  about  books.  In  fact  the  contrary  statement  has 
been  more  than  once  made  to  us — for  example,  by  Mr. 
Ellis  in  the  evidence  already  quoted  ;  not  to  mention  the 
curious  instance  given  at  Lansawel  by  Mr.  Thomas  Davies. 
Being  asked  as  to  farm  servants  whether  they  take  a 
delight  in  reading,  Mr.  Davies  replied  :  ^  "  Yes,  I  had  a  farm 
servant  who  left  me  last  year  :  he  had  been  with  me  nine 
years,  and  he  was  reading  the  Bible  once  a  year  ever}' 
year  right  through,  genealogies  and  all."  On  this  we 
have  to  remark,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  man  in  question 

^  Qii.  40,026 — 8. 


RURAL  WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     607 

did  his  reading  under  difficulties  as  regards  accommodation, 
and  on  the  other  hand  that  his  case  is  probably  not  a  pure 
instance  of  love  of  reading,  but  to  a  certain  extent,  at  all 
events,  of  a  sense  of  religious  duty.  We  think  it  a  mistaken 
sense  <^f  religious  duty,  but  it  is  by  no  means  uncommon 
in  the  Principality,  and  has  in  the  estimation  of  strangers 
earned  for  the  Welsh  people  the  character  of  being  devoted 
to  Bibliolatry.  It  probably  is  a  survival  from  a  time  when 
the  Bible  was  almost  the  only  extensive  book  which  was 
as  a  matter  of  fact  accessible  to  all  in  their  own  language  ; 
and  it  is  to  some  extent  the  result  of  the  Bible  being 
practically  the  only  Sunday-school  book  still.  On  the 
principle,  however,  that  a  fact  or  two  may  prove  of  more 
value  than  a  mass  of  opinion  or  theory,  we  have  had  the 
curiosity  to  inquire  what  has  happened  in  one  of  the  most 
rural  parishes  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bala  subsequently 
to  the  time  when  the  Commission  took  the  evidence  there 
which  we  have  in  part  cited,  and  above  all  since  the 
machinery  of  the  Parish  Council  has  come  into  existence. 
We  refer  to  Lanuwchiiyn,  and  our  inquiry  was  directed 
to  one  of  the  best  known  men  in  Wales,  Mr.  Owen  Morgan 
Edwards,  P'ellow  and  Tutor  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford, 
and  a  native  of  Lanuwchiiyn,  where  he  spends  more  than 
half  of  each  year.  He  has  been  good  enough  to  send  us 
the  following  letter  bearing  the  date  of  Lincoln  College, 
Oxford,  P'ebruary  i,  1S96: — 

"We  adopted  the  Public  Libraries  Act  at  Lanuwchftyn 
almost  as  soon  as  our  Parish  Council  got  into  working 
order.  The  parish  is  entirely  agricultural,  and  its  scattered 
village  is  a  very  small  one.  All  took  an  interest  in  the 
movement  for  a  library:  114  voted  for  it,  and  only  19 
against. 

"  We  started  with  a  little  over  400  books,  and  the 
number  is  continually  increasing,  the  farmers  and  labourers 
themselves  presenting  many. 


6o8         THE    WELSH   PEOPLE,  (chap,  xiii.) 

"Within  the  first  two  months  after  opening  it,  354  books 
were  taken  out,  the  demands  upon  the  library  is  increasino, 
and  in  spite  of  the  Parish  Council's  willingness  to  spend 
money  and  of  continual  gifts,  we  find  ourselves  unable  to 
cope  with  the  demand.  Books  on  agriculture,  Daniel 
Owen's  novels,  books  on  history,  and  books  on  technical 
subjects  are  in  greatest  demand — all  in  Welsh,  of  course. 

**  The  success  of  the  movement  we  attribute  to  the  fact 
that  the  people  feel  the  library  belongs  to  them,  and  is 
under  their  sole  management." 

For  details  concerning  the  growth  and  volume  of  the 
periodical  literature  published  in  the  Principality  we  refer 
the  reader  to  our  chapter  on  the  Language  and  Litera- 
ture ;  ^  and  we  confnic  ourselves  here  to  one  or  two 
remarks  on  those  of  our  periodicals  and  newspapers  which 
are  in  Welsh.  There  is  no  daily  paper  published  in  that 
language,  but  there  are  a  good  number  of  weekly  ones,  of 
which  some  are  more  or  less  closely  identified  with  indi- 
vidual religious  denominations. 

Speaking  generally  of  the  Welsh  newspapers,  we  may 
say  that  they  agree  in  eschewing  news  about  horse-racing 
and  in  devoting  but  little  of  their  space  to  games  of  any 
kind.  They  are  chary  in  their  accounts  of  divorce  cases 
and  indecent  assaults,  but  they  are  rather  more  accessible 
to  accounts  of  murder  and  tales  of  horror.  They  are  more 
literary  than  English  papers  of  the  like  standing,  and  they 
are  always  open  to  poets  and  versifiers.  The  editors  hail 
with  delight  anything  of  an  antiquarian  nature,  and  any 
history  or  biography,  especially  relating  to  Wales.  They 
maybe  said  to  be  on  the  whole  Puritan  in  their  tone.  The 
majority  of  them  are  devoted  to  the  interests  of  the  Liberal 
Party,  and  only  one  has  adopted  a  socialistic  or  collectivist 
attitude. 

1  See  pp.  533 — 5,  above  ;  also  the  Report,  pp.  653 — 5,  and  the  Appendices 
to  it,  especially  C.  III.,  pp.  195 — 200. 


RURAL   WALES  AT  THE  PRESENT  DAY.     609 

This   brief   survey  of  the  journaHstic  literature  current 
in   Wales   will  serve  also  to  indicate  the  general  charac- 
teristics of  the  monthly  and  quarterly  periodicals,  as  well 
indeed  as  of  all  the  other  books  which  are  in  request  in 
Wales.     The  tone  of  all  is  expected  to   be  more  or  less 
religious  ;    and  even    if  they  happen  to  be    novels,    they 
must  devote  ample  space  to  the  religious  aspects  of  the 
characters  which  they  delineate.     Books  of  biography  and 
travels  are  always  acceptable  ;  and  so  are  those  that  deal 
with  Welsh  history  and   antiquities.     The  world  of  fancy 
has   its  unfailing  charm  for  the  Cymro,  and  he  is  always 
accessible  to    the  muse    of  poetry.       Lastly,    it    is  to  his 
credit    that   the    Gzvy'doniadur,  a  high-class  encyclopaedia 
in   the   Welsh   language,  has  found  ready  acceptance.     It 
began  to  be  issued  in  the  year   1854,  under  the  editorship 
of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Parry,  of  Bala  ;   and  the  late  Mr.  Gee,  the 
originator  and  guiding  spirit  of  the  series,  had  in  the  year 
1896  the    gratification — as    editor,    this    time,    as    well  as 
publisher — to  see  completed  a  second  edition  of  the  work 
in  ten  massive  volumes,  comprising  nearly  10,000  articles. 
Inquiries  made  by  one  of  us  have  elicited  the  information 
that  the  whole  undertaking  has  cost  more  than   20,000/., 
and  that  the  veteran  publisher  was  satisfied  with  the  way 
in    which  his   enterprise  had  been  backed   by  his  Welsh- 
speaking  countrymen.     We  leave  these  bare  facts  to  speak 
for  themselves  as  to  the  current  literature  which  Welshmen 
read,  and  more  especially  the  rural  population.^ 

^  Since  this  chapter  was  written,  our  iitteiiion  has  been  drawn  to  an 
interesiin<^  esiiay  in  VVel^-h  on  "  Rural  Life  in  Wales"  ("  Bywyd  Gwledig  yn 
NL;hymru  "),  by  Mr.  Charles  Ashion.  'Ihis  i,-,  [irintel  at  pp.  36 — 92  of  the 
"'Jransaclionsof  the  National  Eisledfod  of  Wales,'"  Bangor,  1S90. 


W\P.  R  R 


APPENDIX  A. 

LIST   OF   THE   CANTREFS   AND   CYMWDS   OF 

WALES. 

There  are  several  lists  of  these  ancient  divisions  extant ;  of 
these,  the  three  oldest,  each  however  representing  a  distinct  text, 
are  : — 

1.  The  list  in  the  Red  Book  of  Herges f,  which  has  been  diplo- 
matically reproduced  as  an  appendix  to  Brut  y  Tywysogio7i  in 
Rhys  and  Evans'  Oxford  series  of  Welsh  texts,  vol.  ii.  (pp.407 — 12), 
and  was  previously  printed,  but  very  inaccurately,  at  the  bottoms 
of  pp.  606 — 12  of  vol  ii.  of  the  Myvyrian  Archaiology  of  Wales 
(ist  edition,  or  at  pp.  737  ^/  seq.  in  the  2nd  or  Denbigh  edition). 

2.  The  text  from  the  Cwtta  Cyfarwyd,  printed  by  Mr. 
Gwenogvryn  Evans  in  Y  Cym?nrodor  ix.  327 — 31. 

3.  A  list  copied  in  the  15th  century  from  (ultimately)  a  lost 
MS.  of  the  1 2th  or  13th,  preserved  in  MS.  Cott.  Domitian,  A. 
\*iii.  (Brit.  Mus.),  and  printed  in  Leland's  Itinerar)^,  edition  1769, 
vol.  v.,  folios  16 — 18. 

Among  other  lists  which  are  of  later  date,  being  in  fact  com- 
posed subsequently  to  the  division  of  Wales  into  counties,  the  more 
important  and  most  frequently  quoted  are  : — 

4.  The  list  given  in  Sir  John  Price's  Description  of  Wales  (of 
which  the  oldest  known  MS.,  dated  1559,  is  that  marked  Caligula 
A.  vi.,  among  the  Cottonian  MSS.  in  the  British  Museum).  This 
list  was  edited  by  Humphry  Lwyd,  and  is  printed  in  Dr.  David 
Powel's  Historie  of  Cambria,  1584,  pp.  i — 22  (and  presumably  in 
all  subsequent  editions  of  that  work  ;  in  the  Merthyr  edition  of 

R  R  2 


6i2  APPENDIX   A. 

t8i2  it  occupies  pp  i. — xxiv.).  It  was  also  printed  in  a  separate 
form  by  William  Hall  at  Oxford  in  1663,  where  it  is  said  to  have 
been  merely  "  perused  "   by  Humphry  Lwyd  ( Y  Cymmrodor  xi. 

p.  54). 

5.  A  list,  virtually  identical  with  No.  4,  is  they?ri-/of  the  two 
printed  in  the  Myvyrian  Archaiology  of  Wales ^  vol.  ii.,  at  the  tops 
of  pp.  606 — 13  (in  the  ist  edition  ;  or  at  pp.  735 — 7  in  the  2nd 
edition),  and  erroneously  thought  to  be  and  quoted  as  being  from 
the  Red  Booh  of  Hergest.  There  are  also  numerous  other  less 
important  lists  in  existence. 

We  reprint  here  the  list  from  Sir  John  Price's  Description  of 
Wales. 

"  About  the  year  870,  Rodericus  Magnus,  king  of  Wales, 
divided  the  country  into  three  territories,  which  they  called 
kingdoms,  and  which  remained  until  of  late  days. 

These  three  were  : — 

GwvNEDD,  or  North  Wales  ; 
Powvs  Land  ;  and 
Deheubarth,  or  South  Wales. ^ 

"GwYNEDD  had  upon  the  north  side  the  sea,  from  the  River 
Dee  at  Basing-^'erke  to  Aberdyfi,  and  upon  the  west  and  south- 
west the  River  DyP,  which  divided  it  from  South  Wales  and  in 
some  places  from  Powys  Land,  and  on  the  south  and  east  it  is 
divided  from  Powys,  sometimes  with  mountains  and  sometimes 
with  rivers,  till  it  came  to  the  River  Dee  again. 

This  land  of  old  time  divided  into  four  parts  : — 

^»**^4*   ''^'**''*^*'        (i.)  Alon^  having  three  cantrefs  or   hundreds  which  were  sub- 
divided into  six  commots,  namely  : — 

(a.)  Aberffraw,  with  two  commots,  Lleyn  and  Malltraeth. 
(J).)  ("emais,  with  two  commots,  Talibolion  and  Twrcelyn. 
{c.)  Rossyr,  with  two  commots,  Tyndaethwy  and  Maenai. 

^  As  to    the  alleged  division    by  Rodericus    (Rhodri)    see   above,   p.    144 
et  seq. 


APPENDIX   A.  613 

1-^1    loC'v      ^2.)  Ar/on,  having  four  cantrefs  and  ten  commots,  namely:  — 

{a.)  Aber,  with  three  commots,  Y  Llechweddochaf,  Y  Llechwedd- 

isaf,  and  Nant-Conway. 
(d.)  Arfon,  with  two  commots,  Uwch-Gwyrfai  and  Isgwyrfai. 
(c.)  Dunodig,  with  two  commots,  Ardiidwy  and  Efionyth. 
(d.)  Lleyn,    with    three   commots,   Cymytmayn,    Tinllayn,    and 

Canologion. 

i,    ^  (3.)  Meirionydd,  containing  three    cantrefs,   and    each    cantref 

three  commots  : — 

((Z.)  Meireon,    with    three    commots,    Talybont,    Pennal,    and 

Ystumaner. 
{b.)  Arustly,    with    three    commots,    Uwchcoed,    Isboed,    and 

Gwarthrenium. 
{c.)  Penllyn,  with  three  commots,  Uwchmeloch,  Ismeloch,  and 

Michaint. 


1^  .  (4.)    Y    Berfeddwlad^    containing    five    cantrefs    and    thirteen 

commots  : — 

(«.)  Rhyfonioc,  with  two  commots,  Uwchalet  and  Isalet. 

{b.)  Ystrad,  with  two  commots,  Hiraethog  and  Cynmeirch. 

(f.)  Rhos,     with     three    commots,    Uwchdulas,     Isdulas,    and 

Creuddyn. 
iyd.)  Dyffryn-Clwyd,  with  three  commots,  Coleigion,  Llannerch, 

and  Uogeulyn. 
(f.)  Tegengl,    with    three    commots,   Cynsyled,    Prestatyn,   and 

Ruthlan. 

"The  second  kingdom  was  Mathrafael.  To  this  kingdom 
belonged  the  country  of  Powys  and  the  land  between  Wye  and 
vSevern.  Which  part  had  upon  the  south  and  west.  South  Wales, 
with  the  Rivers  Wye  and  Tywy,  and  other  mears.  Upon  the 
north  Gwynedd,  and  upon  the  east  the  Marches  of  England,  from 
Chester  to  the  Wye,  a  little  above  Hereford. 


bi4  APPENDIX  A, 

This  part  called  Powys,  was  divided  into  Powys  Fadoc  and 
Powys  Wenwynwyn  : — 

(i.)  Poivys  FadoCy  contained  five  cantrefsand  fifteen  commots  : — 
(a.)  Y  Barwn,  with  three  commots,  Dynmael,  Edeyrnion,  and 

Glyndyfrdw^. 
{b.)  Y  Rhiw,  with  three  commots,  Yal,  Ystratalyn,  and  Hop. 
{c.)  Uwchnant,     with      three     commots,      Merffordd,     Maelor 

Gymraeg,  and  Maelor  Saesneg. 
{d.)  Trefred,  with  three  commots,  Croesfain,  Tref  y  Waun,  and 

Croesoswallt. 
{e.)  Rhaider,  with  three  commots,  Mochnant  Israiader,  Cynllaeth, 

and  Nanheudw)'. 

(2.)  Powys  Wenwy?iwyn  had  likewise  five  cantrefs  and  twelve 
commots : — 

{a.)  Y  Fyrnwy,  with  three  commots,  Mochnant  uwch  Raiader, 

Mechain  Iscoed,  and  Llannerch  Hudol. 
{b.)  Ystlic,  with  three  commots,  Deuddwr,  Corddwr  Isaf,  and 

Ystrad  Marchell. 
{c.)  Llyswynaf,    with   two   commots,    Caerneon   and    Mechain 

Uwchcoed. 
{d.)  Cedewain,  with  two  commots,  Conan  and  Hafiren. 
((?.)  Conan,  with  two  commots,  Cyfeilioc  and  Mowddwy. 

(Arustly  was  in  old  time  in  this  part,  but  afterwards  it  came  to 
the  princes  of  Gwynedd.) 

(3.)  The  third  part  belonging  to  Mathrafael,  was  the  land 
betwee?t  the  Wye  and  Severity  containing  four  cantrefs  and  thirteen 
commots: — 

(<7.)  Melieiiydd,    with    three   commots,    Ceri,   Swyddygre    Rhi- 

walallt,  and  Glyn  Erthon. 
{I).)  Elfel,  with  three  commots,  Uwchmynydd,  Ismynydd,  and 

Llechddyfnog. 
(r.)  Y  Clawdd,  with  three  commots,  Dyffryn  Teyfediad,  Swyd- 

dynogen,  and  Pennwellt. 
{d.)  Buellt,  with  three  commots,  Swydd  y  Farn,  Dreulys,  and 

Isyrwon. 


APPENDIX    A.  615 

"The  last  kingdom  of  Wales,  called  Dynefawr,  was  divided 
into  six  parts  : — 

(i.)   Caredigion^  containing  four  cantrefs  and  ten  commots  : — 

(rt.)  Penwedic,  with  three  commots,  Geneurglyn,  Per^odd,  and 

Creuthyn. 
{b}j  Canawl,    with   three   commots,    Mefenyth,    Anhunoc,  and 

Pennarth. 
(<:.)  Castell,  with  two  commots,  Mabwynion  and  Caerwedros. 
{d.)  Syrwen,  with  two  commots,  Gwenionydd  and  Iscoed. 

(2.)  Dyfed,  containing  eight  cantrefs  and  twenty-three  commots : — 

{a.)  Emlyn,    with    three    commots,    Uwchcuch,    Iscuch,    and 

Lefethyr. 
{b.)  Arberth,  with  three  commots,  Penrhyn  ar  Elays,  Esterolef, 

and  Talacharn. 
(c.)  Daugledden,  with  three  commots,  Amgoed,  Pennant,  and 

Efelfre. 
{d.)  Y    Coed,    with    two    commots,    Llanhayaden    and    Castell 

Gwys. 
(e.)  Penfro,  with  three  commots,  Coed  yr  haf,  Maenorbyrr,  and 

Penfro. 
{/.)  Rhos,  with  three  commots,  Hwlffordd,  Castell  Gwalchmai, 

and  Ygarn. 
{g.)  Pubidioc,    with    three    commots,    Mynyw,    Pencaer,    and 

Pebidioc. 
{h.)  Cemais,    with    three   commots,    Uwchnefer,    Isnefer,    and 

Trefdraeth. 

( 3 . )   Carfnart hens  hire,  having  four  cantrefs  and  fifteen  commots  :— 

{a.)  Finioc,     with    three    commots,     Harfryn,    Derfedd,    and 

Isgeneny. 
(b.)  Eginoc,  with  three  commots,  Gwyr,  Cydweli,  and  Carnwill 

eon. 
{c.)  Bychan,  with  three  commots,  Mallaen,  Caio,  and  Maenor 

Deilo. 
{d.)  Mawr,  with  four  commots,  Cethinoc,  Elfyw,  Uchdryd,  and 

Wydigada. 


6i6  APPENDIX   A. 

(4.)  Morganwg^  containing  four  cantrefs  and  fifteen  commots  : — 

{a.)  Croneth,  with  three  commots,   Rwngneth  a.c  Afan,  Tir  yr 

llwndrwd,  and  Maenor  Glynogwr. 
{b.)  Pennythen,    with    four    commots,    Meyscyn,    Glynrhodny 

Maenor  Talafan,  and  Maenor  Ruthyn. 
(iT.)  Brenhinol,    with    four    commots,     Cibowr,     Senghennyth, 

Uwchcaeth,  and  Iscaeth. 
{d.)  Gwentllw,    with    two    commots,    y    Rhardd    Ganol    and 

Eithafdylgion. 

(5.)   Gwent^  having  three  cantrefs  and  ten  commots  : — 

{a.)  Gwent,  with  three  commots,  Y  mynydd,  Iscoed  Llefnydd, 

and  Tref  y  grug. 
(/^.)  Iscoed,    with    four    commots,    Brynbuga,     Uwchcoed,     y 

Teirtref,  and  Erging  ac  Ewyas. 
(r.)  Coch. 

(6.)  Brecheiniog,  having  three  cantrefs  and  eight  commots  : — 

{a.)  Selef,  with  two  commots,  Selef  and  Trahayern. 

{p.)  Canol,    with    three    commots,    Talgorth,    Ystradyw,    and 

Brwynllj^s  or  Eghvys  Yail. 
(<:.)  Mawr,  with  three  commots,  Tir  Raulff-Llywell  and  Cerrig- 

Howel." 


APPENDIX   B.       ""'•vT^^.  i^L.  .^^ 


(See  page  2t,.) 

PRE-ARYAN   SYNTAX   IN    INSULAR  CELTIC. 

*'  The  noiion  of  a  '  mixed  lan.juage '  must  have  much  mor  ^  weight  assigned  to 
it  than  has  heretofore  been  allowed." — O.  Schrader,  Prehistoric  Antiquities. 
Eng.  trans,  p.  113. 

The  syntax  of  Welsh  and  Irish  differs  in  some  important 
respects  from  that  of  the  languages  belonging  to  the  other  branches 
of  the  Aryan  family.  Professor  Rhys  suggested  many  years  ago 
that  these  peculiarities  are  due  to  the  influence  of  a  pre-Aryan 
language ;  this  suggestion  led  me  to  make  the  comparisons 
summarised  in  this  paper.  The  substance  of  that  part  of  the 
paper  which  deals  with  Egyptian  was  communicated  to  Professor 
Rhys  in  April,  1891  ;  the  other  comparisons  were  made  later  ;  but 
hitherto  they  have  all  remained  unpublished.  I  now  gladly  avail 
myself  of  the  opportunity  kindly  offered  to  publish  them  in  the 
pages  of  "The  Welsh  People." 

When  one  language  is  supplanted  by  another,  the  speakers 
find  it  comparatively  easy  to  adopt  the  new  vocabulary,  but  not 
so  easy  to  abandon  the  old  modes  of  expression ;  and  thus,  whilst 
the  old  language  dies,  its  idiom  survives  in  the  new.  The  neo- 
Celtic  languages,  then,  which  are  Aryan  in  vocabulary,  and  largely 
non-Aryan  in  idiom,  appear  to  be  the  acquired  Aryan  speech  of  a 
population  originally  speaking  a  non-Aryan  language.  This  view 
does  not  necessarily  imply  that  the  ancestors  of  the  Welsh  and 
Irish  belonged  almost  exclusively  to  the  conquered  pre-Celtic  race  : 
we  may  suppose  that  the  invading  armies  of  Celts  destroyed  a 
large  part  of  the  aboriginal  male  population,  and  took  possession 


6i8 


APPENDIX   B. 


of  their  wives,  thus  producing  an  amalgamated  race,  who,  however, 
learnt  their  speech  from  their  non-Celtic  mothers. 

These  non-Celtic  inhabitants  of  Britain  are  believed  by  anthro- 
pologists to  be  of  the  same  race  as  the  ancient  Iberians,  and  to 
have  migrated  through  France  and  Spain  from  North  Africa,^- 
where  the  race  is  represented  by  the  Berbers  and  the  ancient 
Egyptians.  "  The  skulls  of  the  pure  Iberian  race,  such  as  those 
found  in  the  long  barrows  of  Britain,  or  the  Caverne  de  THomme 
Mort,are  of  the  same  type  as  those  of  the  Berbers  and  the  Guanches, 
and  bear  a  considerable  resemblance  to  the  skulls  of  the  ancient 
Egyptians. ''2  Again,  on  the  Hnguistic  side,  M.  de  Rochemonteix 
has  shown  in  his  "  Rapports  grammaticaux  entre  I'egyptien  et  le 
berbere,"^  that  a  relation  exists  between  the  Berber  languages  and 
ancient  Egyptian,  which  are  now  usually  included  in  one  family, 
called  the  Hamitic.  If  the  Iberians  of  Britain  are  related  to  the 
speakers  of  these  languages,  it  is  natural  to  expect  that  their 
language  also  belonged  to  the  Hamitic  family — in  other  words, 
that  the  pre- Aryan  idioms  which  still  live  in  Welsh  and  Irish  were 
derived  from  a  language  allied  to  Egyptian  and  the  Berber 
tongues.  And  if  there  is  evidence  that  this  is  so — if  we  find,  on 
comparison,  that  neo-Celtic  syntax  agrees  with  Hamitic  on  almost 
every  point  where  it  differs  from  Aryan,  we  have  the  linguistic 
complement  of  the  anthropological  evidence,  and  the  strongest 
corroboration  of  the  theory  of  the  kinship  of  the  early  inhabitants 
of  Britain  to  the  North  African  white  race. 

Egyptian  preserves  a  very  ancient  form  of  Hamitic  speech ;  and 
we  can  assume  with  confidence  that  it  approaches  much  nearer 
to  the  primitive  Hamitic  type  of  language  than  the  Berber  tongues 
which  we  are  acquainted  with  only  in  their  modern  form.  Egyptian 
may  therefore  be  expected  to  agree  more  closely  in  general  struc- 
ture with  our  hypothetic  pre-Celtic  dialect ;  and  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  consider  first  those  parallels  which  are  offered  by  it. 


1  A.  II.  Keane,  "  Ethnolog)-,"  1896,  pp.  135-6. 

-  Isaac  Taylor,  ''Origin  of  the  Ar}'ans,"  p.  220.  See  also  Sergi,  "Origine 
e  cliffusione  della  stirpe  mediterranea  "  (Rome,  1895),  p.  79. 

"*  In  tlie  "  Memoires  du  Congres  international  des  Orientalistes,"  ire  Session, 
t.  ii.,  p.  66  ct  seq. 


APPENDIX   B.  619 

I.  T/ie  order  of  words  in  the  sentence. — As  the  relations  of  words 
in  an  Aryan  sentence  are  sufficiently  shown  by  inflexions,  the 
order  of  the  words  may  vary ;  but  normally  the  verb  comes  last. 
In  Welsh  and  Irish  the  verb  usually  comes  first :  thus  in  Welsh, 
DariiennoTt  Ifan  y  Ityfr,  "  Evan  read  the  book  "  ;  in  med.  Irish, 
Aliss Patrice Dubthach^  "Patrick requested  Dubthach."  O'Donovan 
in  his  "Irish  Grammar"  (p.  357)  says  :  "  In  the  natural  order  of  an 
Irish  sentence  the  verb  comes  first,  the  norr.inative,  with  its 
dependents,  next  after  it,  and  next  the  object  of  the  verb."  Com- 
pare with  the  above  the  following  rules  given  by  Renouf  in  his 
"Egyptian  Grammar"  (p.  57)^:  "The  order  of  the  words  in  an 
Egyptian  sentence  is  constant.  When  the  verb  is  expressed  it 
precedes  the  subject.  If  both  the  nearer  and  the  remoter  objects 
of  a  verb  are  nouns,  the  former  is  placed  after  the  subject  and  the 
latter  comes  last." " 

But  there  appears  in  Welsh  another  form  of  sentence  in  which 
the  noun  comes  first.  No  distinction  is  made  in  any  of  our  Welsh 
grammars  between  this  and  the  simple  form  of  sentence  in  which 
the  verb  comes  first ;  and  the  Welsh  translators  of  the  Bible  con- 
stantly misuse  it  for  the  simple  form ;  as  Job  a  atebo'd,  instead  of 
atebod Job,  for  "Job  answered."  This  misuse  of  the  construction 
is  absolutely  unknown  in  the  spoken  language  ;  and  such  a  phrase 
as  Job  a  atebod  is  never  heard  except  when  the  fact  of  some  one 
having  answered  is  known  and  the  doubt  in  the  hearer's  mind  is 
as  to  who  it  was  that  answered.  In  short,  the  verb  "  to  be  "  is 
understood  with  Job,  and  a  is  the  relative  pronoun  ;  thus  Job  a 
atebod  means  "  (it  was)  Job  who  answered."  ^  In  Egyptian,  says 
Renouf  (p.  57),  "a  noun  at  the  beginning  of  a  sentence  implies 
the  ellipsis  of  the  verb  '  to  be.' " 

But  a  noun  may  also  stand  quite  independently  at  the  begin- 
ning of  a  sentence.     In  Irish,  writes  O'Donovan  (p.  357),  "when 


^  The  references  in  this  paper  to  Renoufs  "Grammar"  were  made  to  the 
2nd  edition  ;  but  as  the  3rd  seems  to  be  an  exact  reprint  of  the  2nd  they  hold 
good  of  the  3rd  also. 

"  See  also  Brugsch,  "Grammaire  hieroglyphique,"  p.  100. 

^  The  full  meaning  is  seen  when  the  contrast  is  expi'essed  :  Pazil  a  lefarod, 
nid Pedr,  *'  (it  was)  Paul  who  spoke,  not  Peter." 


620  APPENDIX  B, 

the  noun  is  placed  before  the  verb,  it  does  not  immediately  connect 
with  the  verb,  but  rather  stands  in  an  absolute  "sXdXQ^''  i  So  Renouf, 
speaking  elsewhere  of  a  noun  coming  first,  says  :  "  The  noun  is 
not  the  grammatical  subject  of  the  verb,  but  what  grammarians 
call  the  '  nominative  absolute '  "  (p.  47). 

In  Welsh  and  Irish  an  adjective  or  a  noun  in  the  genitive  case 
is  placed  after  the  noun  which  it  qualifies  ;  as,  Welsh,  gwr  mawr^ 
Irish,  fear  mo r^  "vir  magnus "  ;  Welsh,  Cdn  Selyf,  '"the  Song  of 
Solomon  ";  Irish,  inghean  Shaidhbke,^''  the  daughter  of  Sabia."  So 
in  Egyptian  pa  ?ietdr  aa  -  (Welsh,  y  duw  mawr),  "  the  great 
god  "  ;  t'ruu  td^  (Welsh,  eithafoelt  daear),  "the  ends  of  the  earth." 
Of  course,  the  same  order  is  preserved  when  the  relation  of  the 
genitive  is  expressed  by  means  of  a  preposition.  Now,  M. 
Bergaigne*  has  shown  that  in  the  primitive  Aryan  sentence  the 
qualifying  word,  whether  adjective  or  genitive,  came  before  the 
word  qualified.  In  Welsh  and  Irish,  then,  w^e  have  a  divergence 
from  the  primitive  Aryan  order,  and  an  adoption  of  the  same 
order  as  that  found  in  Egyptian. 

2.  Persofial  Suffixes. — In  Egyptian  "  the  suffixes  representing 
the  different  persons  are  : — 


Singular. 

Plural 

■. 

I  St  person 

a. 

1st  person 

n. 

2nd     .,       masc. 

k. 

2nd     ,, 

ten. 

2nd     ,,       fem. 

t. 

3rd      „ 

sen. 

3rd      ,,       masc. 

/ 

3rd      „ 

set,  ?/,  or  u?t.''^ 

^rd      ,,       fem. 

s 

or 

set. 

These  suffixes  (which,  with  one  exception,  do  not   exist  inde- 
pendently)  are  added    to    verbs,   prepositions,  and    nouns.      In 


^  This  construction,  he  says,  is  "unquestionably  faulty."  Similarly  in  some 
Welsh  grammars,  such  as  that  of  Tegai,  distinct  vely  Welsh  idioms,  if  found 
at  all,  will  be  found  under  such  a  heading  as  "  Common  Errors.  ' 

-  Renouf,  "Eg.  Gram.,"  p.  51. 

•'  Ibiii.,  p.  21. 

••  "Memoires  de  la  Soc.  dc  Linguistique  de  Paris,"  iii,  i,  2,  3,  quoted  by 
i>ayce,  "  Sc.  of  Lang.,"  i.  p.  425. 

^  Renouf,  "Eg.  Gram.,"  p.  17. 


APPENDIX   B.  621 

Welsh  and  Irish  they  are  represented  (i)  by  inflexional  personal 
endings  already  existing  in  Aryan  ;  (2)  by  agglutinative  personal 
pronouns.  In  what  follows,  I  use  a  dot  '  between  an  inflexion 
and  a  root  in  writing  Welsh  and  Irish,  thus  gwe/'a/,  "  I  see  " ; 
and  a  hyphen  between  a  suflixed  pronoun  and  the  word  to  which 
it  is  attached,  thus  gwe/-kt,  "she  sees." 

Welsh  grammarians  say  that  in  Welsh,  usually  at  any  rate,  the 
verb  agrees  with  its  subject  in  number  and  person  ;  and  most 
writers,  notably  the  translators  of  the  Bible,  have  attempted  to 
some  extent  to  observe  the  rule.  But  natural  spoken  Welsh 
knows  nothing  of  such  an  agreement ;  the  verb  is  always  put  in 
the  third  person  singular  (which  is  thus  virtually  an  impersonal 
form^),  except  when  the  subject  is  the  personal  pronoun  implied 
by  the  ijiflexion  ;  thus,  daethant  is  "they  came,"  but  "the  men 
came  "  is  daeth  y  dy7iio7i.  This  principle  was  stated  as  follows,  in. 
an  article  contributed  by  me  to  the  Welsh  quarterly  Y  Geninejiy 
in  October,  1890,  before  I  was  aware  of  the  existence  of  anything 
analogous  to  it  outside  Celtic  :  "  The  '  inflected '  forms  daet/iu7n, 
daethoch,  daethant,  and  the  like,  may  be  called  prono7?iinal  forms, 
and  they  should  not  be  used  except  when  the  pronoun  is  the 
subject  of  the  verb.  If  the  subject  is  a  noun,  the  simple 
impersonal  form  dae/h  should  be  used  :  daeth  y  dynion,  not 
daethant y  dytiion.  The  meaning  of  daethant  y  dynion,  if  it  has 
any  meaning,  is  'the  men  they  came.'"  I  now  quote  the  rule  of 
Egyptian  grammar  as  given  by  Renouf  (p.  47):  "The  suffixes 
stand  for  pronouns,  and  as  such  take  the  place  of  the  subject 
when  the  latter  is  not  expressed.  When  the  subject  is  expressed, 
the  suffix  must  be  omitted.  We  say  dny^se^i,  they  live ;  but  Cin^ 
rietdrii,  the  gods  live.  Netdru  dn^-sen  would  signify  'the  gods, 
they  live.' " 

The  coincidence  is  absolute.  The  pronominal  suffixes  in 
Egyptian  are  not  mere  signs  of  relation ;  each  has  a  substantial 
meaning  of  its  own,  and  must  not  be  used  when  that  meaning  is 


'  It  wiii  .  e  r,n(.!er.-.louJ  thai  ihis  is  what  T  inenn  in  this  pnj.'cr  when  I  speak 
of  the  inipersoual  form.  Ktymolofrically  it  is  the  Ary:in  jtci  [icrs.  sin^.,  but 
actually  it  is  impersi  nal — Ih.U  is  what  W  elsh  and  Jri-h  have  made  it. 


622  APPENDIX   B. 

already  expressed  by  another  word.  In  Welsh  the  idea  of  pro- 
nominal suffixes  has  been  completely  transferred  to  the  Aryan 
inflexions  of  the  verb. 

It  is  the  same  in  Irish.  "  It  must  be  confessed,  however,"  says 
O'Donovan  (p.  357),  "that  in  the  Irish  language,  ancient  or 
modern,  no  agreement  is  observed  between  the  nominative  case 
and  the  verb,  except  in  the  relative  and  the  third  person  plural, 
and  that  even  this  agreement  would  appear  to  have  been  originally 
adopted  in  imitation  of  the  Latin  lano;uage."  Indeed,  in  Irish, 
the  impersonal  form  of  the  verb,  besides  being  used  when  the 
subject  is  a  noun,  may  be  employed  with  a  suffixed  pronoun  to 
take  the  place  of  an  inflected  personal  form.  This,  of  course, 
represents  the  Egyptian  method  still  more  faithfully ;  and  it  has 
almost  wholly  supplanted  verbal  inflexion  in  Scotch  Gaelic.^ 
^  In  Irish  an  ending  of  an  inflexional  character  may  be  used  to 
denote  the  object  of  the  verb.  "  These  same  pronominal 
elements,"  says  Windisch,  in  his  "Irish  Grammar"  (Eng.  trans., 
p.  56),  meaning  the  elements  attached  to  prepositions,  "also 
become  suffixed  to  verbal  forms  in  the  sense  of  subjects  a^id 
objects ;  thus,  ainsmnn,  protegat  nos  {ainis,  protegat),  iaithiufin^  est 
nobis  {taith^  est)."  Renouf  says  of  Egyptian  (p.  48)  :  "  The 
suffixes  appended  to  verbs,  either  directly  or  with  the  intervention 
of  particles,  may  represent  the  object  as  well  as  the  subject  of  a 
verb ;  thus,  mas-se^i,  superat  eos,  tes-nek,  nectit  tibi."  In  Welsh, 
the  object  is  expressed  by  the  ordinary  suffixed  pronoun ;  thus, 
the  Egyptian  nehe??i-ten-ud,  "  defendite  vos  me,"  ^  may  be  rendered 
literally  into  Welsh  diffynn"wch-fi. 

The  neo-Celtic  passive  voice  is  more  properly  an  impersonal 
verb^  j  its  inflexional  ending,  which  is  the  same  for  all  persons, 
stands  for  the  indefinite  subject,  and  the  suffixed  pronoun  denotes 
the  object;  thus  Welsh  cerir-ji^  *'on  m'aime."  In  Egyptian,  the 
passive  is  formed  by  the  suffix  tu,  which  also  means  the  same  as 

1  Professor  Rhys  notes  :  "  One  tense  at  least  his  remains  of  inflections,  the 
so-called  past  sul)junctive." 

-  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  58. 

2  Anwyl,  '*  Welsh  Gram.,  Accidence,'  p.  41 :  H'Donovan,  ''  Irish  Gram.," 
p.  183. 


APPENDIX  B.  623 

the  French  "on";^  thus  z-fu  er  fef,  "on  vint  pour  dire,"  Welsh 
de2i"wyd  i  ddywedyd.  The  Egyptian  tu  is  feminine  in  form  ;  and 
in  Welsh,  when  the  indefinite  subject  is  denoted  by  a  suffixed 
pronoun,  that  pronoun  is  the  third  person  singular  feminine  hi ; 
as  mae-hi yn  glawio,  "it  is  raining." 

In  Welsh  and  Irish,  when  the  object  of  a  preposition  is  a 
personal  pronoun,  it  takes  the  form  of  a  pronominal  suffix  which 
is  so  fused  with  the  preposition  as  to  be  indistinguishable  from 
an  inflexion  ;  thus,  in  Welsh,  "  for  us  "  is  not  er  ni,  but  ero??i. 
In  Welsh,  three  "  conjugations "  of  prepositions  may  be  dis- 
tinguished— those  in  which  the  first  person  singular  ends  in  -af^ 
-of,  yf.  It  is  needless  to  point  out  how  un-Aryan  this  conjuga- 
tion of  prepositions  is ;  but,  as  above  stated,  in  Egyptian  the 
endings  which  form  personal  verbs  are  also  affixed  to  prepositions. 
Thus,  Egyptian  em,  "  in  "  {di?i  in  combination),  Welsh  j;/,  Irish  in; 
Egyptian  dm-a,  dm-ek,  dm-ef,  "in  me,  in  thee,  in  him,"  Welsh 
ynn'of,  ynn'ot,  yn'do  ;  Irish,  ind'ium,  ind'iut,  ind'id. 

The  Egyptian  suffixes  are  attached  to  nouns  in  the  sense  of 
possessive  pronouns  :  thus,  tfe-d,  "  my  father  "  ;  tfe-f,  "his  father." 
I  believe  we  have  in  Welsh  a  few  nouns  taking  pronominal 
suffixes,  which,  like  those  attached  to  prepositions,  are  of  the 
same  form  as  verbal  inflexions.  Hyd  means  "length,"  hyd 
hyn,  "the  length  of  this,"  i.e.,  as  far  as  this;  ar  hyd  Gwy,  "on 
the  length  of  the  Wye,"  i.e.,  along  the  Wye  (Zeuss-Ebel,  p.  685). 
Now,  "  along  me  "  may  be  expressed  by  ar  fy  hyd.,  in  which  hyd 
is  plainly  a  noun,  or  by  ar  hydof,  or  simply  hydof ;  and  so  for  all 
persons.  With /z>'^,  "length,"  and  >^_y^<?/" or  «r /^J^'^<?/J  "along  me," 
compare  the  Egyptian  xeft,  "face,"  and  xeftd  or  em  xeftd,  "  before 
me."  The  Welsh  noun  eido,  "  property,"  has  not  hitherto  been 
satisfactorily  explained.  It  may  have  prefixed  to  it  a  possessive 
pronoun,  as  fy  eido,  "  my  property  "  ;  or  it  may  take  a  personal 
ending,  with  or  without  the  article  yr  prefixed ;  thus,  eidof  or  yr 
eidof  "my  property";  eidot  or  jir  eidof,  "thy  property,"  It  is 
usually  explained  as  a  possessive  pronoun,  and  equated  with  the 


1  Pierret,  "  Vocabulaire  hieroglyphique,"  p.  665  ;  Renouf,  op.  ciL,  p.  18. 
-  Brugsch,  "  Grainmaire  hieroglyphique,"  p.  57. 


624  APPENDIX  B. 

Irish  di,  "  his  "  or  "  her  "  ;  i  so  that  ei'Tio/  means  "  my  his."  This 
explanation,  though  not  impossible,  leaves  something  to  be 
desired,  especially  as  the  old  first  and  second  persons  plural  are 
einym^  eifiwch,  which  again  cannot  be  explained  from  the  first 
plural  possessive  ei?i,  since  this  was  invented  by  Salesbury  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  old  form  being  an.-  But.  even  \{  eidof  is 
a  pronoun,  it  is  like  no  Aryan  pronoun ;  rather  it  resembles  the 
Coptic  series  of  pronouns  : /Z;/,  "  il  mio";/^/^,  "il  tuo";  pof^ 
"il  suo  '"'  ;^  or  the  Berber  oua-i,  "le  mien  "  ;  oua-k,  "  le  tien."* 

But  instances  of  nouns  with  personal  inflexions  are  rare  in 
Welsh  ;  and  (unless  eiitof  be  one)  are  confined  to  prepositional 
phrases."  This,  indeed,  is  only  what  we  should  expect ;  for  in 
the  Aryan  language  acquired  by  our  Iberians  the  noun  had 
other  endings  for  which  personal  inflexions  could  be  substituted 
only  in  very  exceptional  cases.  The  possessive  pronoun  is  usually 
prefixed  to  the  noun  in  Welsh  and  Irish  (which  may  also  be  done 
in  Egyptian) ;  but  a  suffixed  pronoun  is  frequently  added  to  the 
noun,  as  if  it  had  been  felt  that  the  force  of  the  old  suffix  ought 
not  to  be  altogether  lost.  In  written  Welsh,  as  a  rule,  this 
suffixed  pronoun  is  artificially  suppressed  :  but  it  is  always  heard 
in  spoken  Welsh,  except  when  it  is  reflexive :  ^  thus,  Pa?i  wel-u 
i  dad^  "when  he  sees  his  (suum)  father"  ;  but  Pan  wel'af  i  dad-o^ 
"when  I  see  his  father";  and  Pa7i  wel-o  i  dad-o,  "when  he  sees 
his  (ejus)  father." 

3,  Periphrastic  Conjugation. — Speaking  from  the  point  of  view 
of  word-building,  one  may  say  that  the  base  of  the  verb  in 
Egyptian  consists  of  a  verbal  noun  or  infinitive,  as  a?ix,^''   living" 

1  Zeuss-Ehel,  "Gram.  Celtica,"  p.  t,2)1 'y  Bni^niann,  "Grundriss,"  Eng. 
trail  .  iii.,  p.  339. 

2  Pro'essor  Rhs  writes;  "They  may  all  coniain  a  noun  etymon  corre- 
sponding to  A.-S.  (igen,  '  property,'  related  to  the  modern  owv.'''' 

^  Rossi,  "Gram,  copto-t^eroglifica,"  p.  64.  'Ihese  are  mostly  adjectival  in 
ancient  Egyptian  :  .-ec  15rugsch,  op.  cit,,  p.  11. 

••  Hanoteau,  "  Gramniaire  tamachek',"  p.  33. 

•'•  So  also  in  Coptic,  l\o~.si,  op.  ci!.,  p.  66. 

•^  In  which  ca.'e  'he  nee^l  of  it  i~.  not  fell  ;  just  as  in  many  languages  the 
pronoun  wh;  n  rellexive  is  replaced  by  the  article  :  thus  in  Italian,  Mi  doul  // 
capo,  U'  t  niio  cipo. 


APPENDIX   B,  625 

or  "to  live  ";  but  it  becomes  a  verb  by  the  addition  of  a  subject, 
as  in  the  instance  above  quoted,  a//^  netdrii,  "  the  gods  Hve,"  or 
of  a  pronominal  suffix,  as  an^d^  "  I  live,"  an^ek^  "  thou  livest." 
The  element  n  or  dii  added  to  the  root  forms  a  tense-stem, 
whose  meaning  however  seems  to  be  somewhat  vague  :  meh-7id  or 
meh-dfi-d,  "  je  remplis "  (pres.  or  pret.,  Brugsch),  rey^nd^  "  io  ho 
saputo  "  (Rossi).  There  is  no  other  simple  form  of  verb,  but  a 
large  variety  of  tenses  can  be  expressed  periphrastically. 

{a)  Perhaps  the  most  common  form  of  periphrastic  conjugation 
is  the  following:  (i)  verb  "to  be,"  with  personal  suffix  or  other 
subject ;  (2)  preposition  ;  (3)  crude  form  of  verb  as  verbal  noun. 
In  Welsh  and  Irish,  although  these  languages  retain  many  of  the 
Aryan  tenses,  this  construction  is  extremely  common  ;  and,  in 
Welsh  at  any  rate,  has  long  tended  to  supplant  the  synthetic  form 
of  conjugation,  as  being  more  precise,  though  weaker.  The  three 
prepositions  commonly  used  for  this  purpose  in  Egyptian  are 
em^  "in,"  er^  "to,"  "  for," //^r,  "above,"  "  upon,"  indicating  the 
present,  future,  and  perfect  respectively.  These  correspond  in 
use  with  the  Welsh  prepositions  7;?,  "  in,"  am^  "  for,"  wedi^  "  after." 
Thus : 

Egyptian  :  du-k        em  meh?- 

Welsh :        wy't        yn  ftanw. 

English  :      art  thou  in  filling  ;  i.e.,  thou  art  filling.  • 

Egyptian :  du-d   er  se7?i    er  ta   dnt.'^ 

Welsh  :        wyf  amfynd  i    V    mynylt. 

English  :     am  I  for  going  to  the  mountain  ;  i.e.,  I  shall  go,  &c. 

Egyptian:  du-f     her       kem       taif hemet.'^ 
Welsh :        mae-ef  wedi      cael       ei   wraig. 

English  :     is  he  j    ?      [  finding  his  wife  ;  i.e.,  he  has  found,  &c. 

A  very  large  proportion  of  simple  assertions  heard  in  spoken 
Welsh,  probably  about  a  third  of  the  total  number,  are  cast  in 

*  Brugsch,  op,  cit.,  p.  45. 
-  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  50. 

3  Compare  therezipon  and  thereafter.     In  Welsh,  *' after  hearing  from  you  " 
and  "  upon  hearing  from  you  "  would  both  be  wedi  clywed  octizurtkych. 

W.P.  S  S 


626  APPENDIX  B. 

this  form.  In  the  present  sense  we  have  in  English  a  similar 
construction  :  he  is  a-coming  (/.^.,  on  coming.)  This  is  not  Teutonic ; 
is  it  not  borrowed  from  Celtic  ?  In  the  perfect  sense  it  has  been 
transferred  from  Irish  into  Irish-English;  as  when  an  Irishman 
says  "  I  am  after  having  my  dinner,"  meaning  that  he  has  had  it. 
Of  course  the  English  comic  papers  always  mistake  him  to  mean 
that  he  is  in  quest  of  it,  which  shows  how  foreign  the  construction 
is  to  English. 

{b)  There  are  also  in  Egyptian  periphrastic  verbal  forms  without 
prepositions,  of  which  the  following  are  the  most  common  types. 
"  He  knows  "  may  be  expressed  :  (i.)  du  re^-ef^  literally  "  is  knows 
he  " ;  (ii.)  du-f  rex-ef,  "  is-he  knows-he  "  ;  (iii.)  du-f  rex-,  "  is-he 
knows."  With  (i.)  may  be  compared  the  use  in  mediaeval  Welsh 
of  the  impersonal  proclitic  form  ys  of  the  verb  "to  be  "  before 
a  finite  verb;  e.g.^  ys  attebwys  Oivein}  "is  answered  Owen," 
i.e.^  Owen  answered ;  j'J  ethyw  geniiyf  deuparth  vy  oet,^  "is  went 
with  me  two  parts  of  my  life,"  that  is,  two-thirds  of  my  life  are 
spent.  AVith  (ii.)  and  (iii.)  the  use  of  sef  {ys-ef,  est  is)  or  syd 
(ys-yzt,  est  id)  at  the  beginning  of  a  sentence ;  e.g.,  sefyiv  hivjuiw,'-^ 
"  est-is  est  ille  "  ;  yssyd  yssif  aissul  a  rodaf  itt,^  "  est-id  est-id 
consilium  quod  do  tibi."  The  verb  "  to  be,"  which  serves  only 
to  mark  an  assertion,  would  be  liable  to  drop,  leaving  behind  its 
affixed  pronoun  ;  and  this  is  possibly  the  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  the  verb  in  simple  assertions  in  spoken  Welsh  has  usually 
a  pronominal  element  before  it :  fe  wtiaeth  ef  hyn,  "  he  did  this  "  ; 
yr  oed  ef  yiio  (yr  =  mediaeval  yd'),  "  he  was  there."  At  any  rate,  this 
is  what  actually  took  place  in  Egyptian  itself,  where  the  old  auxiliary 
frequently  disappears  in  Coptic,  leaving  its  personal  affix  to  stand 
at  the  beginning  of  the  verb.^  It  may  be  objected  to  this  explana- 
tion that  the  pronoun  is  always  followed  by  the  relative  in  mediaeval 


^  Skene,  "Four  Anc.  Books  of  Wales,"  ii.  p.  189. 

2  Rhys  and  Evans,  "  Mabinogion,"  p.  104. 

2  /did.,  p.  3,  1.  I. 

^  /did.,  p.  118. 

^  De  Rochemonteix,  op.  cit.,  p.  97.  In  Welsh,  the  conj.  ac  is  a  before  a 
consonant,  but  we  say  a^  ??ii  7velais,  etc.  (see  Rev.  xiii.,  xiv.,  xv.,  xx.,  xxi.), 
which  shows  that  vii  was  preceded  by  a  word  now  lost  beginning  with  a  vowel. 


APPENDIX   B.  627 

Welsh,  ?ni  a  welaf^  ef  a  Ttaw.  Mediaeval  prose  writers  certainly 
had  a  tendency  to  reduce  everything  to  this  form  ;  but  in  these 
cases  the  a  is  mostly  artificial.  In  the  oldest  piece  of  written 
Welsh  now  in  existence,  the  Juvencus  fragment,  we  have  Ti 
dicoiies}  not  //  a  dicojies  ;  and  in  the  Gododin,  Ef  diodes  gor77ies^ 
ef  dodes  ffin ;  ti  disgy7inut^-'  and  so  throughout :  so  also  in  the 
Black  Book,  mi  disgoganafe.'^  In  some  cases,  however,  the  a  may 
be  legitimate,  slightly  modifying  the  sense  :  ac  yssef  a  dygyrch,'^ 
*'and  is-he  that  snatches,"  i.e.,  and  he  snatches.  This  seems  to 
be  similar  in  form  to  the  Egyptian  au-fpu  mer,^  "  is-he  that  loves," 
i.e.,  he  loves,  "  egli  ama." 

Periphrastic  forms  with  the  verb  "  to  do  "  are  very  simple  in 
Egyptian  :  dri-d  iner,  Welsh  giviiaf  gam,  "  I  do  love  "  ;  dri-k  mer, 
\<!^^gwne'i garu,  "tu  ami."^  In  Welsh,  the  verbal  noun  is  very 
commonly  placed  first,  followed  by  a  and  the  auxiliary  verb  ;  thus, 
my  net  a  oriic  Kei  y  V  gegin^  "  go  that  did  Kay  to  the  kitchen," 
i.e.,  Sir  Kay  went  into  the  kitchen.     Compare : 

Egyptian  :  seper  pu     dr-nef        er paif  pe.^ 
Welsh :        dyfod  a       w?ideth-ef  i    ^w     dy. 
English  :     come  that  did  he        to  his    house. 

4.  The  preposition  yii. — The  syntactical  similarity  of  the  Welsh 
preposition  jF^2,  in  all  its  uses,  to  the  Egyptian  preposition  em  is  so 
remarkable  that  it  deserves  a  section  to  itself. 

(i)  Like  other  prepositions,  both  take  pronominal  suffixes  : 

Egyptian  :  dii-k  d?n-d,  dii-d  dm-eh.^ 
Welsh  :  wyt  yjtn'of  wyf  ynn'of. 
English  :     art  thou  in  me,   am  I  in  thee. 

That  is,  "  thou  art  in  me,  I  am  in  thee." 


^  Skene,  op.  cit.,  ii.  p.  r. 

"  Ibid.,  pp.  69,  74. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  18. 

"^  "  Mabinogion,"  p.  127. 

^  Rossi,  op.  cit.,  p.  113. 

*"'  Ibid.,  p.  114. 

-"  "  Mabinogion,"  p.  163. 

^  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  21. 


S  S  2 


628  APPENDIX  B. 

(2)  In  periphrastic  conjugation  both  mark  the  present  tense,  as 
above  noted  ;  dii-f  em  meh,  mae-efyn  ifanw,  "he  is  filling." 

(3)  Renouf  says  (p.  56) :  "  The  usual  sense,  however,  of  the 
[crude  form  of  the]  verb  preceded  by  e7?i  is  participial  or  gerun- 
dive." Similarly  few  Welsh  grammars  omit  to  say  that  the  present 
participle  is  formed  by  prefixing  _>7^  to  the  infinitive  :  as  Dr.  Davies, 
"ex    Infinitis     fiunt    participia,    pra^posita   pr^epositione    yn,    vt 

yn  cane,  amans."  ^ 

(4)  Both  are  used  in  the  sense  of  "  in  "  before  the  name  of  a 
place;  e.g.,  Egyptian  eni  Adu,  "in  Elephantine,"  Welsh  yn 
ILiindain^  "in  London  ";  Egyptian  em  tet-d,  Welsh  yn  (fy)  tfaw-i, 
"  in  my  hand."  Also  before  a  noun  of  time  :  Egyptian  em  kerht^ 
A\'elsh  y7i  (jv)  nos,  "  at  night."  In  this  sense  both  form  a  large 
number  of  prepositional  expressions  :  Welsh  yn  ol,  Egyptian  em  say 
"  derriere,  apres,  d'apres,  selon,  par  suite  de."  "^ 

(5)  The  Egyptian  e^n  and  the  Welsh  yn  are  used  to  introduce 
the  complement  after  the  verbs  of  being,  becoming,  Szc.  Thus, 
"  I  am  a  child,"  "  thou  art  a  god,"  "  he  is  a  servant  of  Osiris  "  : 

Egyptian  :  die-d    em   serd.^ 
Welsh  :        wyf  yn    blenty7i. 
English :      am  I         child. 

Egyptian  :  U7in-tf  em  ses         en  Asdr.^ 
Welsh :        mae-efyn  was       i    Asar. 
English  :     is  he         servant  of  Osiris. 

No  English  word  can  represent  the  preposition  here ;  occasionally 
it  may  be  rendered  approximately  by  "  as,"  thus  x^  ^^^^  neter 
cyfod yn  'duw,  "rise  as  a  god  "  f'  but  it  means  more  than  "  as  "  or 
"like"  :  it  implies  absolute  identity.     It  is  true  that  into,  ek,  etc., 

^  "  Antiq.  Ling.  Brit.  Rudimenta  "  (a.D.  162 1),  p.  95. 

^  Birch,  *'  Egyptian  Texts,"  p.  18. 

^  Brugsch,  op.  cit. ,  p.  86. 

■*  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  32. 

°  Birch,  op.  cit.,  p.  2^. 

^  Rossi,  op.  cit.,  p.  IC5. 

'  Birch,  op.  cit.,  p.  16. 


du-k 

€771 

neter.'' 

wy't 

yn 

TtitcV. 

art  thou 

god. 

APPENDIX  B.  629 

may  occur  sporadically  in  Aryan  languages  in  a  similar  manner 
after  verbs  of  "making";  but  the  peculiarity  of  the  Welsh  con- 
struction is  that  the  preposition  introduces  every  kind  of  comple- 
ment, and  to  omit  it  is  the  exception,  not  the  rule.  It  comes, 
like  the  Egyptian  em,  before  an  adjective  as  well  as  a  noun  ; 
e.g.,  "  thou  art  mighty  "  : 

Egyptian :  iinu-eli     em    user^ 
Welsh :        wyt        yii  gadarn. 
English  :     art  thou         mighty. 

(6)  Allied  to  the  above  construction,  but  sufficiently  distinct 
from  it,  is  the  use  of  yn  before  any  adjective  to  form  an  adverb. 
This  is  the  only  way  in  which  adverbs  can  be  formed  from 
adjectives  in  Welsh,  and  the  same  method  is  always  employed  in 
Egyptian.     Thus,  Egyptian  em  neyt,  Welsh  j';?  gryf,  "  strongly  "  : 

'  Egyptian  :  aq-es  er  pet         ei7i   seytn? 

"Welsh :        aeth-hi      i    nef       yn    ebrwy'd. 
English  :     went  she  to  heaven         suddenly. 

The  use  of  the  preposition  y7i  before  an  adjective  has  long  puzzled 
writers  on  Welsh  grammar ;  but  the  difficulty  disappears  if  we 
suppose  that  the  idiom  was  taken  over  from  a  language  in  which, 
as  in  Egyptian,  no  line  could  be  drawn  between  an  adjective  and 
an  abstract  noun. 

The  preposition  yn  in  Welsh  is  followed  by  different  mutations 
of  initial  consonants ;  but  these  differences  imply  no  more  than 
that  the  word  in  constructions  (5)  and  (6)  was  originally  similar 
in  form  to  the  archaic  Latin  indu^  as  Zeuss  "  saw  it  must  have  been 
in  construction  (i).  It  is  not,  however,  upon  the  sameness  of  the 
preposition  that  I  wish  to  lay  stress  :  the  preposition  may,  and 
does,  vary ;  thus,  in  Egyptian,  er  is  used  as  commonly  as  em  in 
construction  (6).  But  the  remarkable  thing  is  that  every  one  of 
these   Welsh   constructions,   all  of  which,  except  the  fourth,  are 

1  Ibid.,  p.  38  :  "  User,  victorieux,  puissant,  riche." — Pierret,  "Voc.  Hier.," 

P-  97. 

'^  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  32. 

"^  Zeuss-Ebel,  p.  44.  The  suggestion  that  predicative  and  adverbial  yii 
might  also  have  been  of  this  form  is  due  to  Professor  Rhys. 


630  APPENDIX   B. 

more   or  less   peculiar,    should   have   its    exact    counterpart    in 
Egyptian. 

These  constructions  are  also  found  in  Irish  ;  but  the  preposi- 
tion in  (2)  and  (3)  is  oc,  ag,  and  in  (6)  co,  go,  though  t7i,  ifidy 
appears  in  the  older  periods ;  ^  while  the  "  in  "  of  (5)  has  been 
made  into  "in  his,"  partly  perhaps  on  account  of  the  aspiration 
after  it  corresponding  to  the  Welsh  soft  mutation,  but  chiefly  from 
an  attempt  to  make  the  construction  logical.  At  any  rate,  it  does 
not  seem  to  be  old  in  this  form. 

We  should  expect  the  parent  Berber  language  to  form  a  link 
between  Egyptian  and  Iberian,  and  to  have  developed  in  common 
with  the  latter  certain  features  not  found  in  the  former.  This  is, 
indeed,  what  the  evidence  seems  to  indicate  ;  for,  though  the 
modern  Berber  dialects  have  been  greatly  modified  by  early  contact 
with  Semitic,  they  furnish  parallels  to  most  of  the  peculiarities  of 
neo-Celtic  syntax  which  we  have  not  already  found  matched  in 
Egyptian. 

I.  The  Berber  dialects  agree  with  Egyptian  and  neo-Celtic  ii> 

^  Zeuss  considered  [Z.-M.,  609)  that  the  Irish  adverbial  ind,  with  the  allied 
Welsh  adverbial  and  predicative  jv/,  was  the  dative  of  the  article.  There  is 
extremely  little  to  say  for  this  view  ;  but  the  interchangeability  of  the  Irish  md 
with  the  preposition  go  affords  at  least  a  strong  presumption  that  ind  \s  also  a 
preposition,  and  this  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  its  evident  meaning  is 
utterly  at  variance  with  that  of  the  article.  Compare  in-biuc,  "a  little," 
where  we  have  adverbial  in,  with  in-diti,  "this  day,"  where  we  have  the 
article  ;  or  contrast  the  Welsh  yn  fore  and  y  bore,  which  Zeuss  seems  to  think 
mean  the  same  thing  (Z.-E.,  617), — yn-fore  iawn,  \ia.v  Trpul  (Mark  xvi.  2), 
y  bore,  irrl  to  Trpodt  (Mark  xv.  I ).  The  use  of  Welsh  predicative  yn  is,  if 
possible,  even  more  decisive,  {a)  Mae-efyn  /renin  means  "he  is  a  king," 
not  "  he  is  the  king,"  which  must  be  quite  otherwise  expressed.  (/')  The  pre- 
dicative yn  precedes  words  before  which  the  article  is  inadmissible,  e.^q.,  pob, 
"every"  (i  Cor.  ix.  22).  {c)  The  predicative _j/;/  may  take  the  accent  :  juae- 
e/\'N  barod,  yn  awr  ;  but  the  article  yr  cannot  be  accented,  nor  can  the 
article  jj'«  oi  yn  azcr  (Irish,  ind-or-sa).  (/)  The  predicative  jv^z  softens  the  initial 
consonant  of  a  plural  as  well  as  a  singular  noun  or  adjective,  yn  gochyon  (Mab., 
p.  2,  1.  i),  and  the  dative  plnral  of  the  article  certainly  never  ended  in  a 
vowel,  {e)  The  predicative  or  adverbial  y)i,  which  softens  the  following 
consonant,  is  often  replaced  by  the  y)i  which  nasalises  the  consonant,  and 
which  is  admittedly  a  preposition  ;  ynihell  {ox  yn  bell ;  yn^hynt  for  yn  gynt ; 
yngham  {oit  yn  gain,  contrasted  with  yn  ddi-gani,  J.  D.  Rhys,  Gram.  (1592), 
p.  [xvi]. 


APPENDIX  B,  631 

the  arrangement  of  the  different  parts  of  the  sentence.  "  II  sembje 
que  la  construction  la  plus  generale  soit  la  suivante :  le  verbe, 
puis  le  sujet,  enfin  le  regime :  Chekkadh  a  tue  un  lion,  i?ir'a 
Ckekkadh  ahar  "  -^  in  Welsh,  HalioTt  Chehkadh  Iciv. 

But,  as  in  Welsh,  a  noun  or  its  equivalent  may  come  first  (as 
complement  of  an  implied  verb  "  to  be ")  followed  by  a  relative 
pronoun  (expressed  or  implied)  with  the  verb  and  the  rest  of  the 
sentence.  The  pure  relatives  so  used  are  a  {=.  Welsh  a),  as 
(=  Welsh  jv/,  J'). 

Tamashek' :         midden    a       7iemous  ourger  tidhidhiji?' 
AVelsh  :  givyr       a       ym        nid        gw raged. 

English  :  (it  is)  men         that  we  are  not        women. 
Tamashek' :       s     ta??tachek'    as     isioul        ourger  s   taraht? 
Welsh  :  y?i  Tamashek'  y      sieryd       nid     y?i  Arabeg. 

English  :  (it  is)  in  Tamashek'  that  he  speaks  not      in  Arabic. 

Tamashek'  :         s        takoiiba     as      t      i7ir'a!^ 
AVelsh  :  a       chleTtyf     y      '/       iiadolt. 

English  :  (it  is)  with  (a)  sword  that  him  he  killed. 
Tamashek'  :         nekkoii  a        t      inr'a?i:'' 
Welsh  :  7?iyfi      a       '/      Hadoa. 

English  :  (it  is)  I  that  him  killed. 

Tamashek' :        enteiddJi    a       t       inr'an.^ 
Welsh  :  hwy7itivy  a      '/       Uddod. 

English  :  (it  is)  they  that  him  killed. 

The  form  inr'a?i  is  called  a  participle  in  the  grammars  ;  but  there 
seems  to  be  no  reason  for  such  a  name.  "  En  realite,  il  n'y  a  la 
rien  qui  ressemble  au  participe  francais  ou  arabe " ;  *  it  is  an 
impersonal  form  of  the  verb  used  when  the  relative  is  the 
subject.     Tamashek'    has  feminine   and  plural   forms    of  it,  not 

1  Masqueray,  "  Observations  grammaricales  sur  la  grammaiie  touareg " 
(Paris,  1896),  p.  61. 

2  Hanoteau,  "  Grammaire  tamachek' "  (Paris,  i860),  p.  84.  Cf.  above, 
*'  Paul  a  atebod  nid  Pedr." 

2  Ibid.,  p.  100.  The  French  translation  of  these  sentences  begins  in  each 
case  with  *'  c'est  "or  "  ce  sent." 

"*  Belkassem  Ben  Sedira,  "  Cours  ds  langue  kabyle  "  (A'ger,  1SS7),  p.  civ. 


632  APPENDIX  B, 

known  in  Kabyle  ;  but  the  last  two  instances  show  that  even  in 
Tamashek'  the  simple  form  is  used  after  the  pure  relative,  just  as 
in  the  Welsh  renderings  given  the  third  person  singular,  or  rather 
the  impersonal,  ria^od  is  used  after  the  expj-essed  subject  «, 
although  its  antecedent  is  in  one  case  first  person  singular  and  in 
the  other  third  plural.  In  spite  of  our  grammars,  no  Welshman 
would  venture  in  speaking  to  say  ttaSsant  for  ifadod  in  such  a 
sentence  as  the  last  quoted,  for  fear  of  being  laughed  at.  So  we 
have  in  the  Gododin  Givyr  a  aeth  Gattraeth^  (not  aethaiit)^ 
"  the  men  who  went  to  Cattraeth."     So  in  Egyptian  also  : 

Egyptian :  7ia    rotu    a       s^m     er  feslr' 

Welsh  :       y      gwyr  a       aeth    ii^r)  wlad. 

English  :      the  men    who  went  into  (the)  country. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  so-called  participle  of  the 
Tamashek'  verb  "to  be,"  illa7i^  corresponds  in  use  to  the  Welsh 
syd,  "who  is,"  "who  am,"  etc.  The  third  person  singular,  illa^ 
corresponds  to  the  Welsh  mae ;  as  ilia  r'our-i  aits,  Welsh  7?iae 
gen?zyf  geffyl,  "  is  with  me  horse,"  that  is,  I  have  ahorse;  and 
imous  usually  corresponds  to  yw  (when  the  relative  is  the  comple- 
ment), thus,  anamahai  a  imotis,  Welsh  givas  (a)  yzv,  "  servant  that 
he  is,"  i.e.,  he  is  a  servant ;  ma  imous  aoua,  Welsh  pzvy  yw  hivji, 
"  who  is  this  ?  " 

I  am  tempted  to  think  that  the  resemblance  between  Ulan  and 
syli  goes  deeper  than  the  surface,  for  the  final  n  of  Ulan  seems  to 
be,  like  the  jj'^  of  syut,  a  pronominal  suffix.  When  the  verb  is  pre- 
ceded by  a  particle,  the  suffix  n  (as  is  usual  with  Berber  suffixes) 
becomes  attached  to  the  particle ;  so  they  say  in  Tamashek',  for 

^  Skene,  op.  cit. ,  p.  64,  etc.  In  the  very  few  passages  of  the  Gododin 
where  a  is  followed  by  a  plural  verb,  a  is  almost  certainly  the  object  oi  the  verb. 
In  Williams's  hymn  : 

"  Fy  meiau  trymion,  luoed  mailh, 
A  waedod  tua'r  nen  " 

(181 1  ed.,  p.  742), 

the  ignorant  editors  of  the  new  C.  M.  hymn-book  have  changed  a  iiiaeTtod  \x\io 
waeTfasaui,  because  vieiaii  is  plural,  evidently  thinking  that  this  is  the  subject, 
and  that  the  verb  should  a^q'rcc  with  it. 
-  Brugsch,  op.  cit.,  p.  20. 


APPENDIX  B.  633 

*'  which  is  not,"  not  our  illa-n,  but  our-7i  elli^  just  as  we  say  in 
Welsh,  not  na  s-yd,  but  na-d  oes.  Thus  the  Tamashek'  ma  illan^ 
ma  our  n-elli?  "what  is,  what  is  not?  "  i.e.^  what  news  ?  would  be 
in  Welsh  beth  s-yd,  heth  na-d  oes  ? 

Sydd  is  the  only  distinctively  relatival  form  in  Welsh ;  but  in 
Irish  the  regular  verb  has  a  relatival  inflexion,  with  singular  and 
plural  forms,  used  like  the  Tamashek'  '•  participe."  These  forms, 
as  Professor  Rhys  has  pointed  out,  are  derived  from  the  Aryan 
present  participle  with  some  (probably  pronominal)  suffix.  Thus 
the  Berber  relatival  verb  with  its  pronominal  suffix,  which  suggests 
a  "participe"  to  the  grammarians,  corresponds  to  the  Irish 
relatival  verb  formed  from  the  Aryan  participle  apparently  with 
some  such  suffix. 

With  regard  to  the  position  of  the  adjective  and  the  genitive,  it 
will  suffice  simply  to  mention  that  they  follow  the  noun,  as  in 
Egyptian.- 

If  we  adopt  Prof,  de  Lacouperie's  ideological  notation,-^  the 
above  observations  on  the  order  of  words  in  the  sentence  may  be 
summarised  thus  :  the  syntactical  indices  of  primitive  Aryan  are 

1,  3,  5,  8,  III. ;  those  of  neo-Celtic,   2,  4,  6,  7,  IV. ;  of  Hamitic, 

2,  4,  6,  7,  IV.  Thus  neo-Celtic  differs  from  primitive  Aryan  on 
every  point,  and  agrees  on  every  point  with  Hamitic. 

2.  The  suffixed  pronouns  in  Tamashek'  are  the  following  : — 
Singular:  i,  /,  on;  2,  mas.  h,  fem.  m;  3,  s,  L  Plural:  i,  ner ; 
2,  mas.  'kou7i,  fem.  hemet ;  3,  mas.  sen,  te?i,  fem.  senef,  teiiet. 

The  suffixes  are  added  to  prepositions  and  nouns  in  the  same 

manner  as  in  Egyptian,  and  the  Celtic  parallels  need   not   be 

repeated.     But  it  m.ay  be  noted  here  that  "to  have  "  is  expressed 

in  Berber,  as  in  Welsh  and  Irish,  by  means  of  the  verb  "  to  be  " 

and  a  preposition  with  the  necessary  suffix  ;  thus,  Tamashek'  ilia 

r'our-ek,  Welsh  mae genn'yt,  Irish  ta  le'at,  "is  with  thee,"  i.e.,  thou 

hast.      So  also  in  Coptic,  ou-nta-i,  "  io  he  (e  di  mi),"  ou-7ila-k,  "  tu 

hai  (e  di  tu)."  "^    The  verb  "  to  be  "  is  usually  omitted  in  the  present 

1  Hanoteau,  op.  cit.,  p.  89.  The  vowel  change  after  our  is  not  peculiar  to 
the  "  participe  "  ;  see  ibid.,  p.  ^?>. 

Rene  Basset,  "  Manuel  de  langue  kabyle,"  pp.  61,  67. 
"  Trans.  Phil.  Soc,"  1885-7,  p.  399. 
■•  Rossi,  op.  cit.,  p.  108. 


634  APPENDIX   B. 

tense  in  Kabyle ;  ^  it  may  be  omitted  in  Tamashek' ;  it  may  also 
be  omitted  in  Irish. 

In  the  Berber  languages  the  suffixes  are  not  used  to  form  finite 
verbs,  but  a  conjugation  with  purely  inflexional  prefixes  and 
suffixes  has  been  evolved,  evidently  under  the  influence  of  Arabic, 
for  the  prefixes  agree  too  closely  with  those  of  the  Arabic  aorist 
to  have  been  developed  independently.  It  is  perhaps  due  to  the 
same  influence  that  the  habit  has  grown  of  making  the  verb  agree 
with  its  subject.  This,  however,  is  by  no  means  always  done ; 
we  have  seen  that  there  is  no  agreement  when  the  relative  is  the 
subject ;  and  even  when  the  subject  is  a  plural  noun  following  its 
verb  "  I'accord  peut  n'etre  pas  absolu  en  apparence  entre  le  verbe 
et  son  sujet."- 

The  pronominal  suffixes  in  Berber  are  added  to  the  verb  to 
denote  the  object  direct  or  indirect  :  thus,  Kabyle  tzera-thent,^ 
Welsh,  gweloit-hwynf,  "  he  saw  them " ;  Tamashek'  ekfet-i-tet^^ 
Welsh  rhowch-imi-ht,  "  give  (pi.)  to  me  her,"  give  her  me^ 

When  the  verb  is  preceded  by  a  particle  or  a  relative  or  inter- 
rogative pronoun,  the  pronominal  suffix  v;hich  denotes  the  object 
is  attached,  not  to  the  verb,  but  to  the  particle  or  pronoun.  This 
is  also  the  case  in  Welsh  and  Irish ;  and  the  suffixes  so  placed 
between  the  particle  and  the  verb  are  called  by  Zeuss  "  infixed 
pronouns."  Thus,  Berber  and  neo-Celtic  absolutely  agree  in  the 
rendering  of  such  phrases  as  the  following  : 

Tamashek'  :  iotiout-i,  but  our-K.  eouiter\'' 

Welsh :  trawo(f-¥\,         but  ni-''TU  drewais. 

English  :        he  struck  me^  not  thee  struck  I. 

Kabyle :         izera-Tn^  but  anon -a  ith         izeranS' 

Welsh:  gweio?i-¥.Y,         hutyr/izvn-a'i         gweloct. 

English :        he  saw  Jiim^  he  who  him      saw. 

Three  examples  of  the  suffix  with  a  relative  are  given,  with  their 

^  Basset,  op.  cit.,  p-  15. 
2  HT -u     _ 


2  Masqueray,  op.  cit.,  p.  62. 
^  Basset,  op.  cit.,  p.  16. 
"*  Hanoteau,  op.  cit.,  p.  96. 
5  //fid.,  pp.  95-6. 
^  Basset,  op.  cit.,  p    16. 


APPENDIX  B,  635 

Welsh  equivalents,  in  i  above.  Examples  of  the  suffix  so  placed 
as  indirect  object  are  common  in  older  Welsh  and  Irish  ;  e.g.^ 
Welsh  ;«''m  oes,  "non  mihi  est."  ^ 

The  objective  suffix  does  not  seem  to  be  added  to  the  particle 
in  Egyptian,  so  that  the  construction  was  developed  in  Western 
Hamitic  only.  But  the  detachability  of  the  suffix  results  in  a  very 
similar  construction  in  Egyptian,  where  the  subjective  suffix  is 
attracted  by  negative  and  some  other  particles,  "  de  maniere  que 
les  pronoms  se  trouvent  parfois  ajoutes  a  la  particule  au  lieu 
d'occuper  leur  place  aprh  le  verbeT'^ 

Of  course  a  suffixed  pronoun  can  only  be  used  where  there  is 
something  to  support  it ;  and  as  a  pronoun  is  often  required  to 
stand  in  an  absolute  state  or  as  complement  of  an  implied  verb 
"to  be,"  Welsh  and  Irish,  like  Egyptian  and  Berber,  have  series 
of  independent  pronouns  to  be  used  for  this  purpose ;  as  Welsh 
vii^  mifinaji,  myfi^  myfinnau,  Tamashek'  nek,  nekkou,  nekkoiman, 
nekkouder,  '  1."  Sometimes,  in  Berber,  " nous  avons  affaire  a  un 
redoublement  du  pronom  lui-meme  "  ;  -^  in  Welsh,  we  have  a  whole 
series  of  these  pronouns  formed  by  reduplication,  myfi,  tydi,  nyni^ 
etc.  The  grammatical  resemblance  between  neo-Celtic  and  Hamitic 
is  strikingly  shown  in  the  classification  of  personal  pronouns.  Zeuss 
in  his  great  "  Grammatica  Celtica  "  distinguishes  three  classes  in 
Celtic,  which  he  calls  absolufa,  infixa,  siiffixa,  but  as  the  infixa 
are  only  a  variety  of  the  suffixa  we  have  really  two  classes, 
absoluta  and  siiffixa.  So  the  Berber  personal  pronouns  are  classi- 
fied into  iso/es  and  affixes,-^  and  the  Egyptian  into  assoluti  and 
siiffissi.  ^ 

3.  Berber  conjugation  has  only  one  form,  which  is  commonly 
used  in  a  past  sense,  but  it  may  be  made  present  by  internal 
vowel  change.  The  deficiency  of  tense-forms  is  supplemented 
partly  by  periphrastic  conjugation,  but  chiefly  by  prefixing  a 
particle  to  the  simple  verb. 

The  more  common  method  of  periphrastic  conjugation  is  that 

^  "Ant.  Ling.  Brit.  Rudim.,"  p.  177. 

-  Brugsch,  op.  cit.,  p.  66.     Italics  his  own. 

"^  Basset,  "  Etudes  sur  les  dialectes  berberes"  (Paris,  1894),  p.  78. 

^  Hanoteau,  op.  cit.,  p.  32  ;  Basset,  "  ^Nlanvel,"  p.  10. 

^  Rossi,  op.  cit.,  p-  51. 


636  APPENDIX   B. 

in  which  the  personal  verb  is  preceded  by  a  personal  form  of  the 
verb  "to  be,"  as  e//ir'  zrir','^  "was-I  saw-I,"/.f.,  I  had  seen.  This 
form  is  discussed  under  3  {b)  above.  Traces  of  the  form  with  the 
preposition  are  also  found,  in  which,  however,  the  verbal  noun 
after  the  preposition  is  replaced  by  a  personal  verb,  as  eliir  da 
zerrer\  "  I  was  seeing."  ^  The  alternative,  and  by  far  the  most 
common,  method  of  denoting  time  may  originally  have  been  the 
last-mentioned  form  without  its  verb  "to  be";  but  in  effect  it  is 
merely  the  prefixing  of  a  particle  to  a  personal  verb ;  thus,  erser\ 
*'  I  descended,"  ad'  erser,  "  I  shall  descend."  ^  The  particles 
so  used  are,  in  Kabyle,  ad'  and  r'a  to  mark  the  future,  and  ai 
to  specially  mark  the  past.  ^ 

Although  Welsh  and  Irish  with  their  Aryan  tenses  have  little 
need  of  such  helps,  tense-particles  are  a  familiar  phenomenon 
in  these  languages  also,  especially  in  the  older  periods — such  is 
the  persistence  of  an  old  habit  of  speech.  In  Irish  ?io  is  the  sign 
of  an  incomplete  action,  and  is  used  before  the  present  and  future 
tenses;  ro  and  do  denote  completed  action,  and  are  generally  found 
with  a  past  tense  -.^  "r^  gives  2. preterite  signification  to  the  present 
indicative  and  to  the  present  of  habit."  ^  In  mediaeval  Welsh  dy 
is  occasionally  met  with,  and  ry  very  frequently.  Thus  Kabyle 
ai  zrir  is  Welsh  ry  iveleis,  "  vidi." 

These  tense-particles  in  Berber,  like  other  particles,  attract  the 
objective  pronominal  suffixes,  which  are  thus  placed  between  them 
and  the  verb.  This  is  also  the  case  in  Welsh  and  Irish,  where 
tense-particles  may  be  followed  by  Zeuss's  "  pronomina  infixa." 
Thus  Tamashek'  ad-i-inhi,  "he  will  see  me,''^  ad-A.'S-enne?' ,  "I  shall 
tell  himy^  Compare  Irish,  No-T-alim,  "I  beseech  thee,^^  ro-u-gab, 
"he  seized  me^^ y  Welsh  ry-TYi-ivelas^  "saw  tJiee^ 

^  Basset,  "  Manuel,"  p.  32. 

-  Ibid.,  p.  32. 

3  Ibid.,  p-  27. 

■*  Zeuss-Ebel,  411  seqq.  The  particle  is  do  always  in  modern  Irish;  see 
O'Donovan,  p.  157. 

^  Windisch,  op.  cit.,  p.  70. 

^  Ilanoteau,  op.  cit.,  pp.  96-7. 

'*  Windisch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  134-5. 

^  Skene,  op.  cit.,  p.  56.  Zeuss  says  Welsh  ry  is  an  exception  (p.  373),  but 
surely  instances  like  the  above  are  far  from  rare.    Cf.  rfm  odiuir,  Skene,  p.  158. 


APPENDIX  B.  637 

4.  As  the  Berber  verbal  system  has  been  profoundly  modified 
under  Semitic  influence,  the  equivalent  of  the  Egyptian  em  is  hardly 
to  be  found  in  it,  though  some  of  the  verbal  particles  have  often  a 
distinct  prepositional  force.  The  equivalent  of  em  before  an  adjective 
must  also  be  rare,  since  statements  such  as  "  thou  art  mighty " 
(Egyptian  unn-ek  em  user)  are  usually  expressed  by  turning  the 
complement  into  a  verb,  as  can  also  be  done  in  Egyptian  {user-ek). 
But  we  have  a  distinct  trace  of  the  old  preposition  in  d',  "  in," 
placed  before  the  adjective  in  such  expressions  as  aa'oud'iou  agiii 
d'  amellal^  Welsh  {mae^r)  ceffyl  hwn yii  wyn,  "this  horse  is  white"; 
or  in  comparative  statements  such  as  netla  d'  ar  ezfan  fell-i^  Welsh 
{inae)  efe yii  f-My  7ta-mi\  "  he  is  bigger  than  I." 

The  whole  structure  of  the  neo-Celtic  sentence  and  nearly  all  its 
distinctively  non-Aryan  features  are  embraced  in  the  principles 
discussed  above,  and  have  been  shown  to  have  parallels  in  Hamitic. 
There  are  many  minor  points  of  resemblance  which  are  important 
only  as  supplementing  the  above  general  principles.  A  few  of 
these  may  be  mentioned  here. 

5.  The  pleonastic  use  of  a  pronominal  suffix  after  a  preposition 
governing  a  relative,  e.g.,  Irish,  an  fear  a  raibh  t{i  ag  caint  leis,  "the 
man  whom  thou  wert  talking  to  him.''^  This  is  considered  incorrect 
by  O'Donovan,^  but  it  is  common  to  Irish,  Welsh,  Berber,'^  and 
Egyptian.  In  Welsh,  "  the  relative  will  stand  alone  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  clause,  and  the  preposition  will  follow  the  verb 
with  a  proper  pronominal  suffix";^  in  Egyptian,  "il  relative  pre- 
cede la  frase,  e  la  preposizione  e  rimandata  alia  fine,  e  spesso 
ricongiunta  col  soggetto  per  mezzo  di  un  affisso  pronominale."^ 

6.  The  omission  of  the  copula,  which  is  so  characteristic  of 
Hamitic,  especially  after  a  pronoun.    Egyptian,  mik  Hor,  "I  (am) 

^  Belkassem  Ben  Sedira,  op.  cit.,  p.  cxxvi. 

-  Basset,  "  Manuel,"  p.  68.  The  prepositional  meaning  of  d'  given  in  the 
glossary  of  the  "Manuel"  (p.  50*)  are  "avec"  and  "dans."  Compare  the 
Irish  adverbial  co  and  in. 

3  P.  376. 

^  Basset,  op.  cit,  p.  21. 

^  Hughes,  "Welsh  Syntax,"  in  the  "Transactions  of  the  Aberffraw  Royal 
Eistedfod,"  1849,  p.  175. 

^  Rossi,  op.  cit.,  p.  72. 


638  APPENDIX    B. 

Horas'*;^  Ta-uisishek', nekkou  Mbkkammed,  "I  (am)  Mohammed";- 
Welsh,  Ml  Yscolan,  "I  (am)  Yscolan"  '^  (the  last  two  in  answer  to 
an  inquiring  stranger) ;  Irish,  tii  ar  g-criithuightheoir^  "  thou  (art) 
our  creator  "  ;  *  Welsh,  pwy  y  ?narcha7vc,  "  who  (is)  the  knight  ?  "  ^ 

7.  The  amplification  of  the  negative  by  a  noun  placed  after  the 
verb,  like  the  Yrenoh  pas ;  thus  Kabyle  OUR-/C'  zerir  ara,  Welsh 
literally  ni  '//z  welais  dim,  "  je  ne  t'ai  pas  vu."  This  is  common 
to  Irish, 6  Welsh,  Berber,  and  Coptic;''  and  may  not  the  French 
construction  have  the  same  origin  ? 

8.  The  numerals  in  Welsh  are  usually  followed  by  a  singular 
noun,  iri  dy7i,  "  three  man."  This  is  probably  an  extension  of 
the  original  construction  as  found  in  Irish,  where  all  plural 
numerals  take  plural  nouns,  except  twenty  and  higher  multiples 
of  ten,  which  take  the  singular.^  Most  of  the  Berber  dialects 
have  adopted  the  Arabic  numerals  ;  I  have  been  able  to  examine 
only  two  in  which  the  ancient  system  of  numeration  is  preserved, 
and  in  these  all  plural  numerals  take  the  plural,  except  twenty  and 
other  multiples  of  ten,  which  take  the  singular  in  Zenaga  ^  and  the 
genitive  singular  (with  a  preposition)  in  Tamashek'.^*^ 

In  the  above  comparisons  I  have  confined  myself  strictly  to 
syntax,  and  have  not  ventured  to  suggest  any  phonetic  equation. 
But  there  is  one  point  of  contact  which  it  is  not  easy  to  pass  by. 
Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  fact  of  Celtic  phonology  is  the 
total  disappearance  of  Aryan  /  in  Welsh  and  Irish.     In  Berber, 

'  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  24. 

-  Hanoteau,  op.  cit.,  p.  244. 

^  Skene,  op.  cit.,  p.  42. 

^  O'Donovan,  p.  365. 

^  "  Mabinogion,"  p.  211. 

^  Zeuss-Ebel,  p.  746. 

'  Rossi,  op.  cit.,  p.  148. 

^  O'Donovan  strongly  asserts  that  it  is  singular  ;  it  is  always  found  to  be  so 
when  the  nom.  sing,  differs  in  forni  from  the  gen.  plur.  It  is  not  often  that 
they  can  be  distinguished  even  in  older  Irish,  and  if,  as  Zeuss  says,  genitives 
plur.  occur,  they  are  probably  artificial.  The  fact  that  the  same  numerals 
take  singular  nouns  in  Scotch  Gaelic  shows  that  this  construction  is  primitive 
Goidelic. 

°  Faidherbe,  "  Le  Zenaga,"  p.  28. 

'"  Hanoteau,  op.  cit.,  p.  129. 


APPENDIX  B.  639 

"■  le  p  est  excessivement  rare,  et  ne  se  rencontre  qu'en  Zcnaga."  ^ 
There  are  difficulties  in  the  way  of  connecting  the  two  things,  but 
the  coincidence  is  certainly  striking. 

The  occurrence  in  Semitic  of  many  of  the  modes  of  expression 
above  quoted  is  due  to  the  relation  which  undoubtedly  exists 
between  the  Semitic  and  the  Hamitic  languages.  Of  the  precise 
nature  of  this  relation  it  is  difficult  to  form  a  clear  conception ;  - 
but  it  seems  to  involve  an  intimate  connection  of  some  kind 
between  the  two  families  of  speech  in  the  prehistoric  period, 
though  they  are  probably  not  actually  cognate.  It  is  with 
Hamitic,  however,  rather  than  Semitic,  that  Celtic  syntax  is  in 
agreement ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  it  agrees  with  Egyptian  where 
both  differ  from  Arabised  Berber  ;  it  also  agrees  with  Berber  where 
the  latter  differs  markedly  from  Arabic,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  shift- 
ing of  the  pronominal  suffix  from  the  verb  to  a  preceding  particle.^ 

The  case  for  the  derivation  as  opposed  to  the  independent 
development  of  these  idioms  in  neo-Celtic  is  strengthened  rather 
than  weakened  by  their  appearance  in  Semitic,  since  the  connec- 
tion between  Semitic  and  Hamitic  is  generally  admitted.  Some 
connection  can  probably  be  traced  wherever  any  of  them  occur ; 
thus,  in  Persian,  the  pronominal  suffixes  attached  to  nouns  and 
verbs,  and  the  pleonastic  pronoun  after  the  relative  (construction  5 
above)  may  be  due  to  Semitic  influence.  Is  the  influence  of  a 
Hamitic  substratum  to  be  discovered  in  the  simultaneous  develop- 
ment on  the  same  analytic  lines  of  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian, 
in  their  use  of  infixed  and  postfixed  pronouns  ? 

So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  examine  Basque,  I  have  dis- 
covered little  syntactical  similarity  between  it  and  either  Hamitic 
or  Celtic.  Some  attempts  have  recently  been  made  to  connect  it 
with  Berber  :  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  Basque  should  not 
contain  a  number  of  Iberian  words  ;  but  Van  Eys  doubts  that  it 
is  related  to  Iberian,  and  Pnnce  Lucien  Bonaparte  and  others 
have  tried  to  show  that  it  is  allied  to  Ugric,  in  which  family  Sayce 

^  Basset,  "Etudes,"  p.  4. 

2  See  Budge,  "The  Mummy,"  1893,  pp.  3-5,  where  a  resume  is  given  of 
the  opinions  of  leading  Egyptologists. 

^  "  Cette  particularite,  qui  rend  mobiles  les  pronoms  regimes  directs  et 
indiiects,  n'existe  pas  en  arabe." — Belkassem  Ben  Sedira,  op.  cit.,  p.  clix. 


640  APPENDIX,  B. 

is  inclined  to  class  it.^  Taylor  suggests  that  it  is  the  language  of  the 
broad-headed  French  Basques,  who  belong  chiefly  to  the  Auvergnat 
race,  and  not  of  the  long-headed  Spanish  Basques,  ^Yho  are  chiefly 
Iberian.  These  views  as  to  the  aflinities  and  original  speakers' 
of  Basque  accord  with  the  frequently-expressed  opinion  that  the 
Auvergnats  or  Savoyards  are  of  the  same  stock  as  the  Lapps.^ 

That  the  pre-Celtic  inhabitants  of  Britain  were  an  offshoot  ot 
the  North  African  race  is  shown  by  the  cranial  and  physical 
similarity  between  the  long-barrow  men  and  the  Berbers  and 
Egyptians,  and  by  the  line  of  megalithic  monuments  which 
stretches  from  North  Africa  through  Spain  and  the  west  of 
France  to  Britain,  marking  the  route  of  the  tribes  in  their  migra- 
tion. It  is  not  the  object  of  this  paper  to  dwell  upon  the 
anthropological  evidence,  but  one  further  point  may  be  mentioned. 
Schrader  has  proved  beyond  doubt  that  the  primeval  Aryan 
family  was  purely  agnatic,  counting  every  relationship  through  the 
father ;  and  Zimmer,  in  his  remarkable  paper  '*  Das  Mutterrecht 
der  Pikten,"^  has  shown  that  the  early  inhabitants  of  Britain 
were  cognatic :  "  Auf  einen  Piktenherrscher  und  seine  Briider 
folgt  nicht  etwa  der  Sohn  des  altesten,  sondern  der  Sohn  der 
Schwester."-*  This  state  of  things  has  come  down  to  our  own 
times  among  the  Berbers  :  "  Quand  le  roi  meurt  ou  est  depose, 
ce  qui  arrive  assez  souvent,  ce  n'est  pas  son  fils  qui  est  appele  a 
lui  succeder,  mais  bien  le  fils  de  sa  sceur."  ^ 

The  idea  of  comparing  neo-Celtic  with  Hamitic  was  suggested 
to  me  by  the  view  just  mentioned  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Iberians. 
If  they  are  the  same  people  as  those  who  speak  Hamitic  languages, 
then  the  explanation  of  neo-Celtic  syntax  which  Basque  had  failed 
to  supply  was  to  be  sought  for,  it  seemed  to  me,  in  Hamitic.  The 
appositeness  of  this  comparison  of  idioms  may  be  illustrated  by 
supposing  a  parallel  case.  If  Irish,  like  Iberian,  had  been 
irretrievably  lost,  and  we  were  led  by  anthropological  or  other 

^  "Principles  of  Comp.  Phil.,"  2nd  ed.,  pp.  21,  loi. 

-  De    Quatrefages,    Topinard,    and    Dr.     R.     Cruel,    quoted    by   Keane, 
"Ethnology,"  p.  405  ;  A.  C.  Haddon,  "  Suidy  of  Man."  p.  82. 
^  "  Zeitschrift  flir  Rechtsgeschichte,"  xv.,  pp.  209  se^tj. 
•*  Ion/.,  p.  218, 
^  Planoteau,  op.  cit.,  p.  xv. 


APPENDIX   B.  641 

reasons  to.  infer  a  relationship  between  this  lost  language  and 
Welsh,  a  comparison  of  Irish-English  with  Welsh  would  suggest 
the  derivation  of  the  phrase,  'ke  is  after  co77iing^  from  the  Irish 
equivalent  of  mae  ef  wedi  dyfod.  Now,  as  Irish  is  fortunately 
not  lost,  we  know  this  to  be  actually  the  case.  Further,  the  per- 
sistence of  idiom  as  compared  with  vocabulary  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that,  although  each  word  in  this  phrase  agrees  in  meaning  in 
Welsh  and  Irish,  not  even  the  word  for  "  after"  is  etymologically 
related  (Welsh,  wedi ;  Irish,  iar  n-) ;  and  this  goes  some  way  to 
show  that  they  are  both  translations  of  a  pre-Celtic  word.  These 
two  languages  have  diverged  considerably  in  the  matter  of  pho- 
netics ;  is  it  likely  that  they  would  have  independently  evolved 
syntactical  forms  identical  in  the  two  languages,  but  differing  from 
anything  previously  existing?  The  answer  must  be  that  these 
forms  are  not  independently  evolved,  and  do  not  differ  from  any- 
thing previously  existing.  The  prevalence  in  Welsh  and  Irish  of 
the  very  same  analytical  expressions  shows  that  analysis,  which  is 
usually  regarded  as  a  modern  development,  goes  back  in  these 
languages  to  the  primitive  period.  It  is  the  characteristic  of  the 
language  of  the  people^  and  has  been  supposed  to  be  modern  only 
because  it  is  not  so  apparent  in  the  earlier  literary  language, 
which,  besides  being  largely  artificial,  was  based  upon  the  dialect 
of  a  more  or  less  Aryan  aristocracy. 

J.    MORRIS   JONES. 

University  College,  Bangor, 
March,   1899. 


W.P,  T  T 


APPENDIX   C. 

LIST   OF   LORDSHIPS    UNITED   TO    FORM   NEW 

COUNTIES    OR    ADDED    TO    EXISTING    COUNTIES 

BY   THE    ST.    27    HENRY   VII.    C.    26. 

1.  United  to  form  Monmouthshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  townships,  parishes,  commotes  and  cantreds 
of  Monmouth,  Chepstow,  Matherne,  Llanvihangel,  Magour 
GoldecUffe,  Newport,  Wenllonge,  Llanwerne,  Caerlion,  Usk, 
Trelech,  Tin  tern,  Skynfreth,  Grousmont,  Witecastle,  Reglan, 
Calicote,  Biston,  Abergevenny,  Penrose,  Greenfield,  Maghen,  and 
Hochuyslade,  in  the  country  of  Wales." 

2.  United  to  form  Brecknockshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  townships,  parishes,  commotes  and  cantreds 
of  Brecknock,  Creek howel,  Tretowre,  Penkelly,  English-Talgarth, 
Welsh-Talgarth,  Dynas,  the  Haye,  Glynebough,  Broyulles,  Canter- 
cely,  Lando,  Blainllinby,  Estrodew,  Buelthe,  and  Lingros  ^  in  the 
.^aid  country  or  dominion  of  Wales." 

3.  United  to  form  Radnorshire  : — 

"  The  lordships,  townships,  parishes,  commotes  and  cantreds 
of  New  Radnor,  Elistherman,  Elue-les,  Bongbred,  Glasbury, 
Glawdistre,  Mihelles  Church,  Meleneth,  Blewagh,  Knighton, 
Norton,  Preston,  Commothuder,  Rayder,  Gwethronyon,  and 
Stanage,   in  the  said  country  of  Wales." 

4.  United   to  form  Montgomeryshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  townships,  parishes,  commotes  and  cantreds 
of  Montgomery,   Kedewenkerry,  Cawisland,  Arustely,   Keviliock, 

^  Lingers,  according  to  Rastall. 


APPENDIX   C.  643 

Doythur,    Powesland,    Clunesland,    Balesley,    Tempcester,    and 
Alcester,  in  the  said  country  of  Wales." 

5.  United  to  form  Denbighshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  townships,  parishes,  commotes  and  cantreds 
of  Denbighland,  Ruthin,  Saint  Taffe,  Kinllethowen,  Bromfilde, 
Yale,  Chirke  and  Chirkeland,  Molesdale,^  and  Hopesdale,  in  the 
said  country  of  Wales." 

6.  Added  to  Shropshire  : — 

"  The  lordships,  towns,  parishes,  commotes,  hundreds,  and 
cantreds  of  Oswester,  Whetington,  Masbroke,  Knoking,  Ellesmer, 
Downe,  and  Churbury  hundred  in  the  Marches  of  Wales." 

7.  Added  to  Herefordshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  towns,  parishes,  commotes,  hundreds,  and 
cantreds  of  Ewyas  Lacy,  Ewyas  Harold,  Clifford  Wynforton, 
Yerdesley,  Huntingdon,  Whytney,  Wygmore,  Logharneys,  and 
Stepulton  in  the  said  Marches  of  Wales." 

8.  Added  to  Gloucestershire  : — 

"The  lordships,  towns,  and  parishes  of  Wollastone,  Tidnam, 
and  Bechley,  in  the  said  Marches  of  Wales,  and  all  honours, 
lordships,  castles,  manors,  lands,  tenements,  and  hereditaments 
lying  or  being  Chepstow^  bridge  in  the  said  Marches  of  Wales  and 
Gloucestershire." 

9.  Added  to  Glamorganshire  : — 

"  The  lordships,  towns,  parishes,  commotes,  hundreds,  and 
cantreds  of  Gowerkilvy,  Bishops  Town,  Llandaff,  Singnithe  supra, 
Singhnithe  subtus,  Maskin,  Ogmore,  Glynerotheney,  Tallagarney, 
Ruthien,  Tallavan,  Llanblethyan,  Lantwid,  Tyeryal,  Avan,  Nethe, 
Landewi,  and  the  Clays  in  the  said  country  of  Wales." 

10.  Added  to  Carmarthenshire  : 

"The  lordships,  towns,  parishes,  commotes,  hundreds,  and 
cantreds  of  Lanemthevery,  Abermerlese,  Kedwely,  Eskenning, 
Cornewolthou,  New^castle,  Emel,  Aborgoyly,  in  the  said  country 
of  Wales." 

1  Altered  as  to  Molesdale  by  st.  33  Henry  VIII.,  c.  13,  s.  3. 

T  T  2 


644  APPENDIX   C. 

11.  Added  to  Pembrokeshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  towns,  parishes,  commotes,  hundreds,  and 
cantreds  of  Harverfordwest,  Kilgarran,  Lansteffan,  Langeharne, 
otherwise  called  Tallangharne,  Walwynscastle,  Dewysland,  Llan- 
nehadein,  Lanfey,  Herberth,  Slebeche,  Rosmarket,  Castellan,  and 
Landofleure,  in  the  said  country  of  Wales." 

12.  Added  to  Cardiganshire  : — 

"The  lordships,  town,  parishes,  commotes,  hundreds,  and 
cantreds  of  Tregaron,  Glenergine,  Landway,  and  Ureny,  in  the 
said  country  of  Wales." 

13.  Added  to  Merionethshire  : — 

"  The  lordship,  town,  and  parish  of  Mouth  way,  in  the  said 
country  of  Wales." 

N.B. — In  the  above  extracts  we  have  given  the  names  spelt 
exactly  as  they  appear  in  the  Statute. 


APPENDIX   D. 

NOTE   ON   THE   WELSH   LAWS. 

Since  Chapter  VL  was  printed  the  fifteenth  report  of  the  Royal 
Commission  on  Historical  MSS.  has  been  published.^  We 
find  in  it  the  following  paragraph,  which  no  doubt  expresses 
the  opinions  of  Mr.  Gwenogvryn  Evans,  the  Assistant  Com- 
missioner who  is  charged  with  inspecting  and  reporting  on 
Welsh  MSS.  :— 

"  Manuscripts  of  the  Welsh  Laws  are  numerous,  and  those 
(written  on  vellum)  at  Peniarth,  the  British  Museum,  Oxford,  and 
Cardiff  have  been  inspected.  The  oldest  copy  is  a  Latin  version 
of  the  last  quarter  of  the  twelfth  century,  and  the  next  oldest  is 
the  Welsh  version  known  as  the  Black  Book  of  Chirk,  which  can 
hardly  be  later  than  the  year  1200.  Both  these  manuscripts  are 
at  Peniarth,  and  their  texts  contain  the  substance  of  the  other 
numerous  recensions  of  later  date.  The  prologue  of  the  Chirk 
Codex  states  simply  that  Howel  Da,  'prince  of  all  the  Kymry,' 
finding  no  doubt  much  confusion  in  the  administration  of  the  law 
when  his  lordship  extended  over  Gwyned  and  Powys  in  addition 
to  Dyved,  summoned  six  men  from  every  commote,  four  laics  and 
two  clerics,  to  examine  the  customs  and  laws  of  his  dominion  and 
to  deliberate  thereon.  As  a  result  some  of  the  old  laws  were 
confirmed,  some  amended,  some  abrogated,  and  some  new  ones 
enacted.  These  were  afterwards  solemnly  promulgated  and  con- 
firmed in  a  general  assembly  attended  according  to  the  Latin  text 
by  'all  archbishops,  bishops,  abbots  and  priests.'  But  whether 
this  took  place  before  or  after  Howel's  visit  to  Rome  it  is  not 
stated.     That  Howel  did  go  to  Rome  in  928  we  know  on  the 

^  Parly.  Paper  (C — 9295)  1899. 


646  APPENDIX   D. 

testimony  of  the  Annates  CambricB  and  the  Brut  y  Tywysogion ; 
and  if  we  may  credit  the  prologues  of  the  later  manuscripts  the 
object  of  his  visit  was  to  submit  the  codified  laws  to  the  approval 
of  the  Pope.  This  statement  derives  some  colour  from  the  words 
of  an  unedited  thirteenth  century  manuscript  at  Peniarth,  which 
declares  that  the  Laws  were  drawn  up  in  Latin,  in  order  that  the 
Church  and  the  Pope  might  be  able  to  judge  of  them,  and  that 
the  common  people  might  hold  them  in  greater  respect  from 
their  inability  to  understand  them.  Linguistic  tests,  too,  tend  to 
support  this  assertion  of  a  Latin  original,  and  probability  enforces 
it.  We  should  in  this  way  get  independent  translations  into 
Welsh,  which  would  naturally  give  rise  to  what  came  later  to  be 
regarded  as  different  'Codes,' labelled  respectively 'Venedotian,' 
'  Demetian,'  and  '  Gwentian,'  though  Howel  was  never  King  of 
Gwent  and  Morgannwg.  The  Chirk  Codex  represents  Welsh 
prose  of  any  extent  in  its  most  primitive  form,  and  the  MS.  must 
be  regarded  as  a  transcript  of  an  earlier  one.  No  one  can  doubt 
this  who  will  compare  its  style  with  that  represented  by  the  frag- 
ments of  the  Mabinogion  in  a  MS.  of  about  1230.  In  the  latter 
we  find  Welsh  prose  at  its  best.  How  far  the  Laws  of  Howel  are 
purely  Welsh  in  their  origin  can  never,  probably,  be  determined, 
as  no  copy  of  the  text  in  its  original  form  is  known  to  be  now 
extant.  The  existing  manuscripts  refer  to  the  '  Laws  of  Howel,' 
which  would  not  be  possible  in  a  pure  text ;  and  some  of  them 
have  admittedly  been  revised  by  later  princes.  It  is  also  instructive 
to  note  that  the  older  the  manuscript  the  fewer  the  triads  it 
contains.  The  two  oldest  do  not  contain  a  single  triad  between 
Ihem  ! " 

As  to  the  assertion  of  a  Latin  original,  we  wish  to  call 
attention  to  the  reference  in  the  Preface  to  the  third  book  of  the 
Venedotian  Code  to  "  Hen  lyfr  y  Ty  Gwyn  "  {i.e.^  the  "  Old  Book 
of  the  White  House  "),  as  one  of  the  books  from  which  lorwerth 
ab  Madog  compiled  his  Proof-book  (see  p.  182  above  and  notes  2 
and  4  thereto).  The  preface  to  this  third  Book  is,  if  we  understand 
A.  Owen  aright,  to  be  found  in  the  Black  Book  of  Chirk  (the  MS. 
A  on  which  he  bases  his  text  of  the  Venedotian  Code,  and  which  in 
the  above  extract  is  referred  to  as  the  oldest  MS.).     It  looks  like 


APPENDIX   D.  647 

the  genuine  work  of  a  Welsh  lawyer  making  a  new  edition  of  the 
Proof-book.  He  expressly  mentions  as  among  his  authorities 
three  books  of  Welsh  judges  or  lawyers  who  were,  according  to 
the  independent  Preface  of  the  Demetian  Code,  present  at  Howel's 
assembly.  Of  course,  it  may  be  that  "  Hen  lyfr  y  Ty  Gwyn  "  was 
in  Latin,  but  we  think  it  very  improbable,  not  only  because  we 
can  hardly  suppose  the  Welsh  judges  and  lawyers  of  the  tenth  or 
even  the  twelfth  century  to  have  been  conversant  with  Latin,  but 
because  we  think  the  main  practical  object  of  the  Ty  Gwyn 
convention  was  to  promulgate  an  authoritative  written  set  of  laws 
which  the  king's  officers  could  consult  at  all  times  for  guidance — 
an  object  which  would  only  be  imperfectly  attained  by  simply 
publishing  a  Latin  book.  We  gather  from  A.  Owen's  Preface 
("  Anc.  Laws,"  vol.  i.  p.  xxxii.)  that  the  first  Latin  version  given 
m  his  collection  is  printed  from  the  MS.  referred  to  in  the 
paragraph  quoted  above.  There  the  Welsh  technical  terms  are 
given  first,  and  a  Latin  translation  added  in  brackets.  Thus  : — 
"i.  penteulu  [prefectus  familie] ;  ii.  secundus  offeyrat  teulu  [sacerdos 
familie]."  ("  Anc.  Laws,"  vol.  ii.  p.  749.)  The  inference  we  draw 
from  this — not  a  certain,  but  a  probable  one — is  that  the  Latin  text 
is  a  translation.  The  fact  that  the  Venedotian  Code  is  of  greater 
length  than  the  earliest  Latin  version  may  of  course  be  accounted 
for  by  additions  made  from  time  to  time ;  but  a  comparison  of  the 
arrangement  and  treatment  of  the  various  topics  or  sets  of  rules 
suggests  to  us  that  the  Venedotian  Code  conforms  more  nearly 
to  what  we  infer  was  the  form  of  the  original  Book  of  the 
Law,  and  that  the  Latin  version,  except  as  to  the  laws  of  the 
household  or  court,  is  an  abridgement  of  some  earlier  work. 
The  Venedotian  Code  as  printed  by  Owen  seems  a  new  edition 
of  an  earlier  work  which  was  divided  into  three  parts: — (i.)  the 
laws  of  the  court,  (ii.)  the  laws  of  the  country,  and  (iii.)  the 
Proof-book  or  three  columns  of  laws ;  and  it  looks  as  if  lorwerth 
ab  Madog  was  editor  and  compiler ;  that  in  dealing  with  the  first 
and  second  books  of  the  original  work  he  only  added  or  modified, 
but  when  he  came  to  the  third  book  he  found  that  the  rules 
actually  in  force  had  so  greatly  changed  from  those  contained  in 
the  old  authorities  that  he  made  a  fresh  compilation,  bringmg  the 


648  APPENDIX   D. 

book  up  to  date,  as  we  should  say.  But  while  we  think  on  the 
materials  before  us  that  the  "Old  Book  of  the  White  House"  was 
in  Welsh,  it  may  well  be  that  before  the  assembly  was  held  a 
Latin  version  of  the  Welsh  Laws  had  been  prepared  under 
Howel's  auspices,  and  it  may  be  that  it  was  this  book  that  was 
approved  by  the  Pope  when  he  visited  Rome  in  928.  Notice, 
too,  that  the  Canones  Wallici  contain  texts  identical  with  some 
in  Owen's  second  Latin  version.     (See  above,  p.  177.) 

On  p.  184  we  have  given  Owen's  translation  of  the  title  of  the 
triads  in  his  Book  xiii.  ("Anc.  Laws,"  ii.,  p.  474).  It  has  been 
supposed  that  the  word  "mote"  which  he  employs  means  moot 
or  meeting,  and  the  word  "<rtzr,"  cart  or  waggon.  This  is  erroneous. 
The  Welsh  \iQr6.clud  has  reference  to  motion  ;  and  Owen  probably 
used  "mote"  as  equivalent  to  Latin  7?iotus,^  moving.  Car  does  mean 
a  carriage  or  van  ;  but  car  signifies  a  friend  or  kinsman.  So  the 
most  likely  translation  of  this  obscure  title  is — "  Triads  of  movings 
and  kin-movings,"  or  "  of  flittings  and  kin-flittings."  Motion 
seems  the  constant  or  essential  conception  in  the  mind  of  the 
composer  of  these  triads,  but  no  one  word — neither  "  mote  "  nor 
any  other — can  be  used  throughout  the  series.  The  first  triad, 
if  our  translation  is  right,  refers  to  the  travellings  or  circuits  of 
professional  persons  or  craftsmen.  So  perhaps  we  may  render 
the  first  triad  thus  : — "  the  three  roving  professionalisms  :  bardism, 
metallurgy,  and  harp-playing";  and  the  second  thus: — "the 
three  things  that  constitute  a  travelling  (or  nomadic)  home  :  race, 
status,  and  war."  In  triad  xxiii.  we  find  the  king's  cy/ch  (circuit 
or  progress)  referred  to.  In  triads  x.,  xxviii.,  and  xxxiii.,  we  have, 
however,  apparently  a  van  {car)  introduced.  This  is  probably 
due  to  the  transcriber  of  the  MS.,  or  to  the  editor.  From  a 
lawyer's  point  of  view,  the  Whole  book  looks  very  forced  and 
artificial. 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  OTHER 

WORDS. 


3  3      . 

Aballac,  42 

Abber,  65 

Abber-deon,  64 

Aberdare,  Lord,  492,  498-500,  512 

Aberdaron,  301,  464 

Aberdovey,  295 

Aberffraw,  135,  144,  146,  422 

Aberffraw,  King  of,  188,  229 

Abergwili,  162 

Aberhondu,  281 

Aberiiech,  286 

Aberitwchwr,  284 

Aberiiynog,  465 

Aber  Rheidol,  310 

Aberteifi:  Aberteivi,  254,  315 

Abertowy,  166 

Aberystwyth,  339,  492-4,  500 

Abloyc,  120 

ach  ac  edryu,  244 

ackafi,  29 

Acstyn,  525 

Adaiinan,  50,  64,  72,  97 

Adminios,  41 

Adpar,  531 

adscript!  glebas,  216,  223,  401,  408 

Aedan  ab  Blegored,  161 

^Ifgar,  167-171,  173 

^linoth,  the  Sheriff,  170 

JEUred,  146,  148-150,  306 

^stii,  62 

^tern,  106 

^thelflaed,  ^thelflaeda,  150,  163 

^thelfrith,  107,  109,  151 

.zEthelred,  Ealdorman,  150 

^Ethelred,  the  Unraedig,  161 

iEthelstan,  149,  151,  153 

.Ethelstan,  Bishop,  169 

ag,  oc,  630 


Agricola,  83,  96,  112 
agwedi,  211,  213 
aiitt,  214,  216,  400 
Airem,  445 
Aires,  Airiss,  50 
Alba,  Alban,  77,  115-6 
Albanus,  115 
Albinus,  97 
Albio,  75-6,  81 

Albionum,  Insula,  77 

Aleecht,  loi 

Alfred  of  Beverley,  28 

Allectus,  99,  loi 

Allobrox,  26 

Alnet,  323 

Alti,  51 

Alvryd,  156.  158 

Alyth, loi 

attfro,  26 

aittud,  atttudion,  191-2,  197,  214-5, 

400 
am,  625 
Amaethon,  37 
Amalech,  42 

Amaury  de  Montfort,  334 
amherawdyr,  105 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  102,  iii 
arnmod  dedfol,  225 
ammodwr,  ammodwyr,  211,  225 
amobr,  209 
amour  courtois,  505 
Amserau,  the,  78,  534 
Amwythig,  274  :  see  Pengwern 
Ana,  Anu,  42-3,  55:  see  Anna 
Anainne,  55 
Anarawd,  144-5,  147-9 
Anastatius  III.,  183 
Anatemori,  17 
Ancalites,  92 


650 


INDEX. 


Anderida,  iii 

Aneurin,  Book  of,  76 

Angharad  v.  Maredud",  173 

anghyfarch,   234 

Angle,  27 

Angles,  the,  105,  107,  log 

Anglesey,  95,  112 

Anglia  Transwalliana,  29 

Anluan,  49 

Anna,  41-43,  55,  132-3  :  see  Ann 

Annales  Cambriae,  42,  109,  132 

anniuiged,  40 

annodeu,  234 

Anton,  70 

Antoninus  Pius,  96 

Anwyl,  Prof.,  622 

Apocalypse,  the,  595-6 

Araide,  52 

Aranrot,  37  :  see  Arianrhod 

dArbois  de  Jubainville,  M.,  32 

"Apx'^^'os.  74 

arderchawc  o  goron,  39 

Ardoch,  113 

Ard-ri,  135 

ardehv,  234-6 

ardelwr,  193 

Arden  v.  Robert  ab  Seis5^t,  164 

aref  buyait,  253 

arghvyd.  190-3.  195-6.  205,  240,  438 

Argyle,  81 

argyvreu,  209,  213 

Arianrhod,  37-8,  69 

Armageddon,  596 

Armagh,  Book  of,  52 

Arnulf  of  Montgomery,  282,  289 

Arras,  5 

Art  Corb,  73 

Art  Oenfer,  67 

arth,  68 

Arthen,  K.  of  Keredigion,  137,  140 

Arthgen,  140  :  see  Arthen 

Arthur,  45,  592 

arwaesav,  234-5 

Arwystli,  409 

Ashton,  Charles,  532.  609 

Asser,  141,  145 

Atecotti,  102 

Atrebates,  5,  91,  iii 

Augusta,  III 

Aulus  Plautius,  90,  93 

Aun,    An,    Anau,    41-2  :     see    Ana, 

Anna 
Aurelius  Victor,  99 
Avatlon,  592 
avi,  47 


Avienus,  77 

Avitoria,  18 

Avittoriges,  18 

Avonmore,  99 

Aymon,  Edmond,  Einion,  343. 

Ayre,  Point  of,  27,  525 


B 


Babington,  W.  D.,  35 

Bagaudae,  99 

Bailey,  Sir  J.  R-,  54i.  559 

Balbriggan,  114 

Baldwin,  Archbishop,  313 

Baner  Cymru,  534 

Bangor,  486-7,  490,  493,  496 

bardic  names,  257 

bard  teulu,  254 

baronetcies,  450 

Barrfhinn,  74 

Barrivendi,  74 

Barrow,  60,  88 

Barry,  Edmond,  52,  58 

barthes,  518-9 

Basque,  17,  639,  640 

bastardy,  357,  584 

Batavi,  86 

Batavia,  99 

Batavodurum,  86 

Bathurst,  67 

Baxter,  Richard,  480 

Bede,  107 

BeXepioi/,  78 

Belerium,  75,  78,  81 

Bri\ri(ra/xi,  22 

Belgae,  5,  93,  iii 

Beli,  38-44,  132-3 

Beli  wirawt,  43 

Belinus,  131 

Belkassem  Ben  Sedira,  631,  637,  639 

Bellinus,  41 

belre,  78 

Bendigeitvran,  38 

Bera,  Beara,  Beirre,  5S 

Berba,  60 

Berber,  630,  635,  638-9 

Berhthari,  74 

ber-iau,  249 

Bericos,  93 

Bernard  de  Newmarch,  2S1,  289 

Bernicia,  107 

Berry,  Major-Gen,,  449 

Bertrand,  M.,  32,  83 


INDEX. 


0=11 


^( 


Berwick,  N.,  ii6 

beurla,  78 

Bible,  the  Welsh,  461,  4S0,  (06-7 

bibliolatry,  607 

Bibroci,  92 

Bile,  43 

Billig,  6 

Birch,  Mr..  628 

Bipyos,  88 

Bishop,  Ch.,  456 

Bishop,  L.,  456 

Bivadon,  65 

Black  Book  of  Carmarthen,  the,  627 

Black  Book  of  Chirk,  the,  645 

Black  Death,  the,  362,  404,  418 

blaenor,  588 

Blanch  Parry,  280 

blease,  29 

Bledyn   ab    Cynfyn,    173,    185,   226, 

269-272,  277,  306 
Bledyn  Vard,  342 

Blegywryd,  Blegored,  179,  181,  183 
blyned",  45 
Bodedern,  600-1 
Boderia,  113 
Bodewryd,  602 
Bodotria,  113 
Bonaparte,  Prince  L.,  639 
bonedig,  bonedigion,  191,  204-5,  207, 

440,  445 
Bononia,  99 
Boudicca,  95 
Boulogne,  99 
BovovlySa,  88 
Boyne,  88 
bracae,  567 
Bradley,  H.,  94 
braint,  191-2,  202,  218,  223 
Bramwell,  Lord,  494 
Bran,  38-9-41,  44 
Branwen,  38 
Brecheiniog,  134-5 
Breci,  mucoi,  53 
Breidin,  95 

brenin,  brenhin,  109,  134,  137,  igo 
Brennus,  13 1-2 
Bretagne,  6,  7,  77 
Bretain,  Bretan,  6,  77 
Bretons,  77 
BpeTTavoi,  76 
Bretwalda,  108,  121 
breve  regis,  356 
Brewys,  William,  319-20;    see  Wm. 

de  Braose 
breyr,  breyriaid,  it^i,  204,  208,  225 


Briamail  Flou,  568 

Bricriu's  Feast,  53 ;  see  Fled  Bricrenn 

Bride's  Major,  St.,  595 

Bridgenorth,  290 

briduw,  225 

Brigantes,  85-6,  94-8,  105,  112 

Brigantio,  86-7 

Brigstocke,  W.  O.,  541,  555 

Briotus,  Brutus,  115 

Bristol,  171 

Britannia,  Britania,  77 

Britannia  Prima,  etc.,  104 

Britannica  lingua,  62 

Brittanni,  Britanni,  Brittani,  6,  75-7, 

III 
Brittones,  6,  77,  105 
Bro  Morgannwg,  30 
I3rocmail  ab  Meurig,  146 
Broho,  52 
Broinienaspoi,  50 

Bron  yr  Erw,  272 

Bromfield  and  Yale,  418 

Browyr,  29 

Bruce,  Hon.  W.  N.,  500 

Brude,  Brute,  88 

Brugsch,  M.,  619,  623,  625 

Brun,  149,  153 

brychan, 251 

Brychtyn,  525 

Bryn  Roberts,  Mr.,  M.P.,  499 

Brynmor-Jones  Q.C.,  M.P.,  David, 
498 

Brytanawl  teyrnas,  no 

Brython,  6,  77 

Buain,  mocu,  52 

Buattt,  134-5,  328 

Buanainne,  55 

Buanann,  42,  55 

Budge,  Mr.,  639 

budr,  113 

Bulkeley-Owen,    the    Hon.      Mrs., 
440 

Bulkley,  Sir  Richard,  518-9 

Bullock  Hall,  Mr.,  32 

Burginatium,  86 

Burns,  Robert,  583 

Bute,  the  Marquis  of,  500,  514 

bwa,  blia,  253 

bwdran,  563 

Bychtyn,  525 


Cadeit    ab   Rhodri,    K.   of   Powys, 
137,  140,  1.43-5,  147-9 


6:^2 


IXDEX. 


Cadfael,  74 

Cadfan,  74,  108 

Cadog,  74 

Cadroe,  Life  of  St.,  79 

Caduallo,  45  :  see  Cadwatton 

Cadwaladr  ab  Cadwatton,  106, 108-9, 

121,  123,  125-6,  136-9,  322,  593 
Cadwaladr  ab  Gruffyd,  308-12 
Cadwatton  ab  Cadfan,  45,  74,  107 
Cadwatton  ab  Howel  Drwg,  158,  160 
Cadwaiton  ab  leuaf,  160-1 
Cadwatton  Lawhir,  44-5 
Cadwgan  abBledyn,  271,  276,  281-3, 

286-7,  289-91,   293-5,   297,   299, 

302,  306 
Caereinion,  298 
Caerleon,  27,  82,  247 
Caerwys,  Cayroes,  517-20 
Cassar,  32,  36-7,  41,  53,  76,  83,  85, 

88-90,  92 
caethion,  191 
Caint,  78 
Cairbre  Muse,  57 
Caldey,  218  :  see  Ynys  Byr 
Caledo,  Caledones,  46,  62,  loi 
Caledonii,  97,  102 
Caligula,  41 
Calleva,  82,  91 
Calvus  Patricii,  24,  71 
cam,  20 

Cambridge,  478 
Campestres,  46 
Campsie,  46 
camlwrw,  227,  238-9 
Camulodunon,  89,  90,  94-5 
Camulogenos,  63 
Camulos,  63,  89 
can,  78 
candra,  73 
Candraraja,  73 
canghettor,  190,  192,  195,  202 
Caninefates,  86 
canitaw,  242-3 
Cantii,  6 

Cantion,  Cantium,  6,  75-8,  iii 
cantref,  190,  612-6 
Cantref,  the,  9,  10 
Cantref  Mawr,  310,  314 
Canutulachama,  47 
Canw^Tt  y  Cymry,  505 
Capel  Colman,  465 
caput,  20,  per  capita,  397 
car,  648 
car,  20,  648 
Caradog,  38-41 


Caradog  of  ILancarfan,  124-6,  136-9, 

144.  159.  174.  177 
Caradog  ab  Owain,  270-1 
Caradog  ab  Grufifyd  ab  Rhyderch, 

173,  270 
Caradog,  K.  of  Gwyned,  139 
Carataci  Nepus,  47 
Caratacos,  40-1,  91-5 
Caratauc,    91,     139  :    see    Caradog, 

Caratacos 
Carausius,  97,  99,  loi 
Cardiff,  247-8,  281,  493-4,  496 
Cardigan,  516 

Cargludau,  Triads  of  the,  184,  648 
Carlingford,  Lord,  494 
carttawedrog,  232 
Carmarthen,  248 
Carnarvon,  27 
Carter,  Isaac,  531 
Cartismandua,  95 
Cassi,  92 

Cassibellanus,  45:  see  Cassivellaunos 
Cassiterides,  61 
KaaaiTepos,  61 
Cassivellaunos,  41,  45,  90 
Caswatton,  38,  41,  44-5 
Castle  Martin,  558 
castra,  20 

Catabor,  Catabar,  52 
Catamanus,  108  :  see  Cadfan 
Catelauni,  89 
Catett,  140  :  see  Cadeit 
Cathbad,  68-9 

Catuvellauni,  89,  90,  92-4,  112 
Catwg,  74 
Cauci,  85 

Cawdor,  Earl  of,  492,  558 
Cead walla,  127  :  see  Cadwatton 
ceann,  7 

Cebur,  B.  of  St.  Asaph,  183 
Cedivor,  277 
Cein,  44 

ceiniog  baladyr,  230-1 
Ceiriog,  the  Wood  of,  311 
Ceitweyt,  236 
Celtic  Christianity,  45S-9 
Celtican,  4,  12,  76 
cenedl,  191-2,  194-6,  230 
Cenimagni,  92-3 
Cennfhinn,  73 
Ceretic,  120 
cesad,  87 
ceseil-iau,  249 
cess  noinden,  69 
Cessair,  Cessar,  59-61 


I 


INDEX. 


65J 


cessavit  per  biennium,  443 

Cet  mac  Matach,  49 

Cetytt,  136,  143 

Chalons,  8g 

Charles  I.,  33,  386 

Charles  V.  of  France,  344 

Charles,  David,  489-91 

Charles,  Thomas,  482,  506-7 

Cheshire,  601 

Chester,  21,  151,  163,  173,  247,  326 

Chester,  Lord  Bishop  of,  499 

Chauchi,  Chauci,  85  :  see  Cauci 

Chichester,  92 

chief,  20 

Chirk,  the  Black  Book  of,  185,  645-6 

Chlorus,  99,  loi 

Church,  the  Welsh,  245 

Cilgerran,  318 

Cimbri,  80 

Cinbelin,  91 

Cinnan,  138  :  see  Kynan 

Cint,  88 

Circin,  Terra,  65 

Circuits,    the    Welsh,    378-9,    390, 

392-4 
Cirencester,  104 
Cirgin,  65  :  see  Gerginn 
Ciric,  65  :   see  Gerg 
Ciricus,  St.,  65 
Civil  War,  the,  33 
Clare,  House  of,  297 
Claudius,  92-3 
Clawd  Offa,  140-1 
cledyf,  253 
Clifford,  Roger,  339 
Clocaenog,  3 
Clun, 526 

Clwyd,  the  Vale  of,  171,  173-4 
Clydai,  17 

Clydawc,  Clydog,  151^,. 
Cnegumi,  fill,  17 
cnocio,  583 
Cnut,  161,  163-4 
CO,  go,  630 
Cobranor — ,  48 
Codes,  the,  180-85 
Coelin,  119 
Coeman,  656 
cof  tiys,  242 
Cogidumnos,  92 
Coil  Hen,  132-3 
Coimagni,  65 

Colleges,  the  Theological,  483 
Colonsay,  52 
Coloso,  in,  51 


Columba,  83 

Comes  Britanniae,  103,  105 

Comes  Lit.  Saxonici,  103 

Commios,  91-2 

Commission  of  1846,  484 

Commodus,  97 

commote,  commot,  352,   612-6  :    see 

cymwd 
commorthas,  367 
Compton,  Lord,  385 
Conall  Cernach,  49 
Conan,  136,  138  ;   see  Kynan 
Conchobar,  15,  54,  68 
Condla,  67 

Congen  ab  Cadett,  143 
Conn,  58,  67 

Conway,  Conwy,  100,  125,  335 
Conway,  treaty  of,  335 
copies  of  Court-rolls,  419 
Cor,  52 
Coran,  67 
Corb,  73 

corbeille  de  mariage,  212 
Corbipoi,  50 
Core  Duibne,  57-8 
Corco  Duibne,  52,  58 
Coriondi,  -ae,  85 
Coritavi,  Coritani,  93,  112 
Cork,  88 
Corkaguiny,  52 
Cormac,  25,  42,  50,  55,  77-8 
corn,  112 

Cornandus,  183  :   see  Gornardus,  184 
Cornavii,  112 
Cornet,  castle  of,  344 
Cornewall,  Thomas,  360-1 
Cornish  people,  the,  141 
cornu,  112 
Cornwall,  112, 142 
coroners,  380 
Coroticus,  63 
Corwen,  311,  605 
Cothi,  Lewis  Glyn,  45 
Counties,  the,  642-4 
County  Palatine,  the,  347 
court  chairs,  201 
court  officers,  199 
court  servants,  197 
Court  of  Chancery,  364,  375,  391-2 
Courts  of  the  Three  Princes,  the,  182 
cowyit,  212-3 
Cradawc,  38,  40 
Craddock,  Walter,  462 
crann,  88 
credu,  38 


654 


INDEX. 


cretem,  38 

Crisiant,  312 

Croft,  Sir  Herbert,  384-5 

Cromwell,  449,  480 

Cromwell,  Thomas,  367-8 

Cronium,  80 

crown  of  Britain,  137. 

crown  of  London,  130 

Cruithnech,  76 

Cruithni,  76,  79-80,  loi 

cruth,  79 

cu,  100 

Cu-Chocriche,  72 

Cu-Chorb,  72-3 

Cuchulainn,  68-9,  72 

cuig,  7 

Culann,  68,  72 

Culeon,  64 

Culii,  64 

Cumberland,  26 

Cumbra-land,  26 

Cumbria,  396 

Cunatami,  Cunotami,  503 

Cuneda,  9,  10,  25,  35,  44,  106,  no, 

119-20,  132-4,  194,  215,  255,  396 
Cunigni,  filia,  18 
Cunobelinos,  91-4 
Curi,  Conn',  100 ;  see  Curoi 
Curoi,  Corroi,  65,  100 
Curry,  O',  52,  84 
Custantin,  88 
Cwm-hir,  Abbey,  450 
cwrw,  587 

Cwta  Cyfarwyd,  the,  154,  611 
cyfarwys,  cyfarws,  206 
Cyfeiliog,  326,  329,  409 
Cyfnerth,  Cyvnerth   ab  Morgeneu, 

182,  226 
cyfraith  gyffredin,  217,  304 
Cyfreithiau  y  tlrys,  197 
Cyfraith  Saesneg  a  rhan  Gymraeg, 

359 
cylch,  648 

Cylchgrawn  Cymraeg,  534 
Cymanfaoed  Ysgolion,  508 
Cymmrodorion,  the,  494-5 
Cymorth  Gw-au,  598 
Cymraeg,  119 

Cymro,  Cymry,  25-6,  117-9,  121 
Cymru,  117,  119,  121 
cymwd,  cwmwd,  190,  219,  305,  352, 

356,  552,  612-6 
Cynan  ab  lago  ab  Idwal,  272 
Cynan  ab  Owain  Gwyned,  309,  313 
cynghaws,  242 


Cynobellini,  41 

Cynon,  137  :  see  Kynan  Tindaethwy 

cynwarchad,  223 

Cyrus,  St.,  65 


D 


da,  195,  206,  208-10,  216,  225,  234 

Aa^pwva,  88 

dadleuoed  breninawl,  241 

Daegsastan,  121 

Dafyd  ab  Gwilym,  505 

Dalan,  70 

Dal-Caiss,  96 

Dalon,  51 

Daln-Araide,  52 

Dalriad  Scots,  81,  96 

Dal-Runtir,  51 

Danainne,  55  :  see  Danu 

Danes,    the,    142-4,    148-151,  156-7, 

1 60- 1 
Daniel,  595  , 

Daniel's,  St.,  465 
Dante,  591 

Danu,  Danann,  15,  55-6 
Darlington,  Thomas,  548 
datlewyr,  241 
dattrrann,  64 
David  ab  Griffith,  443 
David  ab  ILywelyn,  no 
Davies,  David,  552,  575 
Davies,  Dr.,  628 
Davies,  Evan,  486 
Davies,  I.  Th.,  553 
Davies,  John,  556 
Davies,  J.  D.,  29 
Davies,  J.  M.,  456,  576-8 
Davies  of  Landwr,  Mr.,  456 
Davies,  Richard,  490 
Davies  of  Bala,  Thomas,  560 
Davies  of   Lansawel,  Thomas,  573, 

576,  582,  606 
Davies,  W.  C,  498 
Davies,  \V.  S.,  577 
Davyd  ab  Gruffyd ab  Owain  Gwyned, 

326,  332,  334,  336,  339-41 
Davydab  Owain  Gwyned,  309,311-2, 

317,  321.  323-4 
De  Domnann,  mac,  56 
Dea,  Fir,  56 
Deargdamhsa,  66 
Decantae,  88 

Decanti,  Decantorum,  88 
Decceddas,  maqui,  47,  88 


I 


I 


INDEX. 


655 


Deceangli,  94 

Decheti,  Decceti,  88 

Decies,  the,  30  :  see  Deisi 

Deer,  Book  of,  64 

Defenanscire,  115 

Deganwy,    88,    141,    276,    282,    3  4, 

328-9,  331 ;  see  Decanti 
Deheubarth,  134-5,  144,  146 
Deheubarthwyr,  134 
Deira,  107 
Deisi,  the,  30,  81,  84 
Demetai,  501 
demography,  585 
Denbigh,  443 
Deorham,  26,  121 
derdrestar,  68 
Derdriu,  68 
Der-Fraich,  72 
Der-Lugdach,  72 
Deva,  103 
Devon,  115 
Devon,  the  River,  115 
dexterales,  Brittones,  140 
diacon,  588 
Diarmait,  15 

Dicaledonae,  Dicalydones,  102 
dilysrwyd,  234 
dim,  638 

Dinas  Emreis,  40 
Dinas  Newyd,  149,  153 
Dingeraint,  297 
Dinefwr,   Dinevwr,    135,    144,    146, 

188,  248 
Dinorwick,  416 
Dio  (Dion)  Cassius,  14,  90,  93,  97-8, 

102 
Diocletian,  104 
Diodorus,  75-6,  78-9 
Aioyevr]s,  73 
dirwy,  226,  238-9  , 
Diserth,  323,  328,  331 
DisestabHshment,  454-5 
distain,  198 
Diviciacos,  5,  88-90 
do,  636 

Dobunni,  22,  90,  iii 
dofraeth,  219 
Docmail,  120 
Dogmael's,  St.,  503 
Doli,  44 

Dolwydelen,  412,  414-16 
Domhnall,  24 

Domnu,  Domnann,  55-6,  1 14-15 
Don,  15,  37,  54,  56,  598  :  see  Danu 
Donald,  24 


Donati's  Comet,  595 

Donoghue,  O',  593 

Donovan,  O',  622,  637-8 

Donu,  Donann:  see  Danu 

Dotoatt,  18 

Dovinia,  mucoi,  52,  54,  57-8 

Doyle,  J.  H..  556 

Draco,  Insulans,  106-7 

Dragomil,  74 

Dronga  Domnand,  114 

Drost,  50,  63 

Drosten,  16,  63 

druid,  52,  112 

druidecht,  69 

Druidism,  83,  112,  255-6 

Druim  Criaich,  15 

Duald  Mac  Firbis,  59 

Duan  Albanach,  the,  115 

Dubinn,  Duibne,  15,  52,  54,  57-8 

Dubnovellaunos,  90 

Dubthach,  64 

Dumeli,  48-9 

Dumnonii,  55,  93,  97,  113-4 

Dun  Cow,  Book  of  the,  53,  57,  65, 

67-9,  84 
Dun  na  m-Barc,  59 
Dunaut,  120 
Dunawd,  106 
Dunloe,  18 
Dunmore  Head,  57 
Dun  Myat,  Dunmyat,  98,  113 
Dux  Bellorum,  105 
Dux  Britanniarum,  118 
Dux  Britanniae,  9,   103,   106-8,  no, 

118 
Dux  Brittonum,  io8-g 
dy,  636 
Dyaus,  89 
Dyfed,  30,  134 
Dyf-lyn,  38 
Dyfnwal   ab    Howel      Da,      155-6 

158 
Dyfnwal  Moel-mud,  24,   130-3,  184, 

215,  218,  245 
Dyfnwal's  Triads,  184 
Dyfnwaiton,  156 
Dygen  Freidin,  95 
Dylan    37 


Eadgar,  154,  156-7 

Eadred,  156 

Eadric  the  Wild,  269,  274 


656 


INDEX. 


Eadward  the  Elder,  149,  151,  153-4 

Eadwig,  154 

Eadwine,  br.  of  Leofric,  166 

Eadwyne  and  Morkere,  270-1 

Ealdgyth,  167,  281 

Ealdred,  Bishop,  170 

ebediw,  221,  225,  424 

Eber,  445 

Eblanii,  45 

Eburacum,  103 

Eccles-Greig,  Eglis-Girg,  65 

Eceni,  92,  94-5,  112 

Ecgbryht,  Eagbert,  108,  141-2 

Eden,  Hon.  R.  H.,  457 

edUng,  the,  201-3 

Edmund  of  Lancaster,  335 

Edmund  Mortimer,  340-1 

edrif,  edryu,  244 

Edwal  Ywrch,  136  :  see  Idwal  Iwrch 

Edward  the  Black  Prince,  343-4 

Edward  of  Carnarvon,  342,  361 

Edward  the  Confessor,  167,  170,  174 

Edward  I.,  no,  333-5,  338—44-  ^5'^. 

358,  361 
Edward  HI.,  361 
Edward  IV.,  363 
Edward  Spencer,  344 
Edwards,  Dr.  L.,  485 
Edwards,  Prof.  Ellis,  496-7 
Edwards,  Owen  M.,  498,  607 
Edwards,  Richard,  571 
Edwards,  Dr.  T.  C,  491 
Edwards,  Wm.,  601 
Edwin,  107,  109 
Edwin  ab  Einion,  163 
Edwyn  ab  Howel  Da,  155,  158 
Efeyd,  37  :  see  Hymeid 
Efnissien,  38 
Eglwys  Cymun,  18 
Egyptian,  618-30,  635,  637 
eido,  623-4 
Eildon,  593 
eittio,  191 
Eitttion  ;   see  Aiitt,  191,  195,  205-7, 

214-6,  219-20 
Eineon  ab  Cedivor,  278-9 
Einion   ab    Owain   ab   Howel    Da, 

158-9 
einym,  624 
eissytl'yn,  196 
Eistedfod,  the,  254,  509,  514,  516-8, 

520,  522-4 
Elaeth,  loi 
Elan,  45 
Eleanor  de  Montfort,  330,34-5,  333-7 


Elen,  30,  150 

eleni,  45 

Elenid,  Elennyth,  45 

Elgar,  169  :  see  IE\{ga.r 

Elised  ab  Anarawd,  152 

Elised  ab  Teudyr,  146 

Ellesmere,  313-4 

EUice  ap  Wm.  Lloyd,  518 

Ellis,  Alex.  J.,  29,  526 

Ellis,  Thomas  E.,  590,  604-6 

Elpa,  77 

Elton,  85 

Elucidarium,  505 

eilyn,  191 

Emain,  87 

Emma,  313 

Emreis,  40 

Enderbie,  124 

English  Tongue,  the,  371 

Enniaun  Girt,  120 

Entifidich,  88 

Eochaid  Feidlech,  15,  53 

Eogain  Inbir,  53 

Eogan  Mor,  58,  66 

Epaticcos,  91 

Epillos,  91 

Erbury,  Wm.,  462 

Ere,  51-2,  58 

Erce,  52,  58 

Ercias,  Erccias,  Maqqui,  52 

'EpSTvot,  88  :  see  Ernai 

Erispoe,  50 

Eriu,  gen.  Erenn,  60 

Ernai,  88 

Ernault,  M.,  38 

Erne,  Lough,  88 

Erp,  64 

Erpenn,  maqui,  64 

Erris,  Irrus,  114 

erw,  erwau,  218-9,  221 

Eryri,  137,  141 

Esgeir  Oervel,  100 

Esyttt,    Esyllht,     136-9,     144 

Etthil 
Etain,  70 
Etern,  120 
Ethered,  Earl,  146 
etifed,  222 
ett,  16 

Etterni  fili,  18 
Etthil,  138  :  see  Esyttt 
Eumenius,  loi 
Eure,  Lord,  384-5 
Euroswyd,  38 
Eutropius,  99 


A 


see 


INDEX. 


657 


Evan  son  of  Evan,  185 
Evans,  J.  G.,  127-8,  611,  645 
Evans,  Sir  John,  41,  91 
Evans,  Stephen,  500 
Evesham,  battle  of,  331 
Exeter,  264 
Extents,  the,  403 
Ewyas,  154 


Freeman,  the  late  Profl,  29,  142 

Freinc,  271 

Frenchmen  in  1052,  168 

Froissart,  343,  594 

Frontu,  22 

fyrnigrwyd"  dywynau,  234 


Faidherbe,  M.,  638 

fer,  72 

Fer  Corb,  73 

Fer  Tlachtga,  72-3 

Fernmail  ab  Meurig,  146 

fenstern,  583 

Festivals,  the  3  Principal,  201 

F'ewyrth  a  modryb  ac  uwd,  562 

Ffaraon,  40 

Fick,  74 

Fidlin,  66 

Finnbharr,  74 

Fir  Dea,  56 

Fir  Domnann,  55-6,  114-5 

Fir  Fortrenn,  102  :  see  Fortrenn 

Firbolg,  88 

Fir  Ulaid,  loi 

Fisher,  John,  594 

Fishguard,  27 

Flanders,  28 

Fled  Bricrenn,  53,  100 

Flemings,  the,  27,  31,  265 

Florence,  28 

fo  muir,  55 

fomhair,  55 

Fomori,  55 

foot-holder,  the,  201 

Forciu,  113:  see  Forth 

Forco,  Forgo,  18 

Forcus,  16  :  see  Vorgos 

Forden,  554-5 

Forteviot,  12,  98,  102,  113 

Forth,  Forthin,  113 

Fortrenn,  12,  102 

Fothad,  98 

Fothrif,  102,  116 

Fothudan,  Fothudain,  98,  115 

Four  Masters,  the,  60,  71 

Fowler,  Richard,  450 

Fraech,  49 

Francton,  Adam  de,  341 

w.p. 


gafael,  gavael,  200,  218 

Galam,  43 

galanas,  226-34,  244-5 

Galatic,  3 

Galfrid,  128  :  see  Geoffrey 

Gallia  Bracata,  567 

Garbaniaun,  132 

gavelkind,  355.  400 

Gant,  88 

gavl,  200 

Gee,  Thomas,  566,  609 

Genaius,  17 

Genittac,  47 

Tevovyia  Mo7pa,  96  :  see  Genunians 

Gentich,  6,  48 

Gentiles  de  Ybernia,  287 

Genunians,  the,  96,  102 

Geoffrey  of    Monmouth,   39,   44-5, 

124-5,  128,  131 
Geoffrey  Plantagenet,  313 
Geona  Cohors,  96 
Gerald  de  Windsor,  245,  282-3,  286, 

290,  294,  301 
Gerbod,  274 
Gerg,  Greg,  Giric,  65 
Gerginn,  Gergind,  Mag,  65 
Gerrcind,  65 
Gilbert  de  Clare,  332, 
Gilbert  son  of  Richard,  297,  300,  347 
Gildas,  30,  105,  107,  177,  258 
Gilla-Muire,  71 
gille,  71 
Gilmore,  71 

Gilfaethw^y,  Gilvaethwy,  37,  71 
Giraldus    Cambrensis,    145,    171-2, 

176,  199,  200,  207,  245-6,  252-4, 

256,  258-60,  313,  568 
Giudi,  Urbs,  116 
Glamorgan,  21,  30 
glain,  glein,  gloin,  62 
Glasiconas,  maqui,  48-g 
Glastonbury,  592 
Gleguising,  146 

U   U 


658 


INDEX. 


Glenn-Gerg,  65 

glesum,  62 

Gloucester,  163,  169,  171 

Glynne,  Wm.,  518 

gobenn3-d,  251 

Godfrey  son  of  Harold,  156-8 

Gododin,  the,  120,  627,  632 

Godwine,  164-5 

Gofannon,  37,  54 

Gorman,  72 

Gornardus,  183 

Goronwy  ab  Cadwgan,  271 

Goronwy  ab  Moreidig,  182 

Gororau  Clawd  Offa,  527 

Gorsed,  the,  517 

gorvodawg,  225 

gosgord,  204 

Gosoctas,  52 

Gouge,  Thomas,  480 

Go  van's,  St.,  29 

Gower,  29,  281-2  :  see  Gwyr 

Granpius,  Graupius,  96 

Greenan-Ely,  593 

Griffid  Savs,  343 

Griffith,  Ellis,  366 

Grifath,  R.  W.  562 

Griffith.  Sir  Rees,  518-9 

Grig,  65 

Gruffyd  ab  Caradog,  272 

GruffydabCynanablago,  110,272-3, 

276,  283,  287,  289,  291,  299,  301, 

303-4,  306,  308,  517 
Gruffyd  ab  Cynfyn,  271 
Gruffyd  ab  Gwenwynwyn,  323,  326, 

329-  331.  334 
Gruffyd  ab  leuan,  517 
Gruffyd    ab    ILewelyn    ab   Seisyitt, 

123, 161-2, 164,  174,  245-6,  253-4, 

269-70,  281 
Gruffyd  ab  Maredud,  277,  339-40 
Gruffyd  ab  Owain  Gwyned,  321-3, 

325 
Gruffyd  ab  Rhyderchab  lestyn,  164, 

167-8,  270 
Gruffyd  ab  Rhys  ab  Tewdwr,  300-1, 

304.  307 
Gruffyd,  Sir  Wm.,  517 
Gruffyd  ab  yr  Ynad  Coch,  342 
Gruffyth,  John,  518 
Gruffyth,  Moris,  518 
Grufud,  109 
Guenedota,  119,  120 
Guernsey,  344 
Guorcein,  44 
Guordoli,  44 


Guotepauc,  133 

Guotodin,9,2i,98,  115  ;  sf^ Gododin, 

Votadini 
gwadol,  209,  211,  213 
Gwair  ab  Rhuvon,  182 
gwely,  195,  196-7,  200,  210,  220,  222, 

397-8  ;  see  wele,  tir  gwelyawg 
Gwenhwyseg,  8 
Gwenitian,  337,  342 
Gwenitwg,  134 
I    Gwent,  78,  134-5,  159 
Gwenwynwyn,  no 
Gwenwynwyn  ab  Owain  Cyfeiliog, 

316 
Gwern,  38-9 
Gweryd,  113 
g^vestey,  204 
gwestva,  204,  218,  220-1 
Gwgan,  Gwgawn  ab  Meurig,  143 
Gwgawn,  292 
Gwiberi,  182,  184 
Gwilym  Hiraethog,  485 
gwlad;  108 

Gwlaci  Morgan,  278  ;  see  Glamorgan 
gwledig,  9,  106,  108-9 
Gwri,  70 

Gwriad  ab  Merfyn,  144 
gwrthdrych,  202-3 
Gwydion,  15,  36-S,  56,  69,  70 
Gwydi-,  33 

Gwydoniadur,  the,  609 
Gwj-ndodeg,  8 
Gwynec\  119,  134-5,  144 
Gwynva  Powys,  188 
Gwyr,  134,  146,  159:  s^^  Gower 
gwyr  nod,  236 
gwyrda,  191,  204 
Gwythelin,  66 
gyrr  kyuieythyaul,  236 


H 

Hadrian,  96-8 
Hafren,  88 
halen,  88 

Hall,  William,  612 
Hanes  Cymru,  124 
Hanoteau,  M.,  624,  631,  637 
Harford,  J.  C.,  577 
Hariberht,  74 
Harlech,  27 

Harold  s.  of  Godwine,   27,   167-74, 
253.  269,  306 


i 


INDEX, 


659 


Harold  Harefoot,  164 

Harri'r  Nawfed,  594 

Harris,  Howell,  472-3 

Harry  aparry,  518 

Harthacnut,  164 

Hastings,  149,  174 

Haverfield,  Mr.,  75,  104 

havod-dy,  248 

Hazlitt,  587 

Helston,  17 

Hely  {j'cad  Bely),  41 

Hemeid,  145  :  see  Hymeid 

Hen  Lyfr  y  Ty  Gwyn,  646-8 

hen-dref,  248 

Hengestendun,  142 

Hengist,  82 

Henry    I.,    28,    274,    289-91,    293-4, 

297-301,  306 
Henry  of  Huntingdon,  125 
Henry  H.,  309-11 
Henry  III.,  no,  318-9,  322,  326,  329, 

333 
Henry  VII.,  343,  363,  365,  384,  47S 
Henry  VIII.,  358,  360-2,  365-6,  368, 

375.  384 
Herber  Evans,  477 
Herbert,  74 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Lord,  358-9, 

369.  514 
Hereford,  151,  167-8,  274 
Hereford,  Bishop  of,  513 
Heriu,  60  ;  see  Eriu 
Herschell,  Lord,  499 
Hethfield,  109 
Heymys,  Jo.,  415 
Hibernia,  87 
Higuel,  109  ;  see  Howel 
Hill  of  Ward,  73 
Himeyt,  150 :  see  Hymeid 
himmel,  89 
Hiraethwy,  164 
Hirbarth,  158 
hir-iau,  249 
Holder,  79,  99 
Horm,  144 

Hopton,  Walter,  349-50 
horn,  112 

hotte  trevet  torture,  366 
Howel  ab  Cadett :  see  Howel  Da 
Howel    Da,    128-30,    147,    149,    150, 

176-9,  181,  183,  185-7,  246 
Howel  Drwg :.  see  Howel  ab  leuaf 
Howel  ab  Edwin,  163-4,  166-7 
Howel  ab  Goronwy,  285,  291-3 
Howel  ab  leuaf,  157-8 


Howel  ab  Owain  Gwyned,  312 
Howel  ab  Rhodri  Molwynog,  136-7, 

139 
Howel  ab  Rhys  ab  Gruff  yd,  145,  315 
Howel  the  Good,  25, 30 ;  see  Howel  Da 
Howell,  T.,  458 
Howth,  114 
Hubert  de  Burgh,  318 
Hiibner,  67 

Hugh  of  Chester,  276,  282 
Hugh  the  Fat,  287,  299 
Hugh  de  Lacy,  335 
Hugh  s.  of  Roger,  284 
Hugh  the  Proud,  287 
Hughes,  John,  574-5 
Hughes,  Miss  E.  P.,  500 
Hughes,  Mr.,  637 
Hughes,  Rees,  518 
Hughes,  S.,  601 
Hughes,  Samuel,  575 
huitaine,  220 
Humber,  112 

Humfrey  Lwyd  (Lloyd),  124-6 
Humphreys,  Richard,  489 
hundred,  the,  305  ;  see  cymwd 
Hymeid,   K.    of   Dyfed,  150-1  ;   see 

Hemeid 
Hy-Neills,  O'Neills,  50 


lacinipoi,  50 

lago  ab  Idwal,  160,  162-4 

lago  ab  Idwal  ab  Meurig,  161 

lago    ab    Idwal    Voel,    155-7,    i^o, 

162-4 
iar,  641 

laripi,  Maqqui,  57 
Ictis,  75,  78-9,  81 
Ictium,  79 

Idnerth  ab  Cadwgan,  286 
Idwal     (  =  Ithel)     ab     Gruffyd     ab 

ILewelyn,  269 
Idwal  Iwrch,  136,  138-140 
Idwal   ab   Meurig  ab   Idwal   Voel, 

1 60- 1 
Idwal  Voel  ab  Anarawd,  14,  17,  149, 

150,  183-4 
lestyn,    lestin    ab    Gwrgan(t),    164, 

278-80 
leuaf  ab  Idwal  Voel,  155-6 
leuan  Gwyned,  485 

U  U  2 


66o 


INDEX. 


imperator,  to6 

in,  630 

in,  ind,  630 

Inber  Domnann,  114 

Inber  M6r,  85 

Indech,  56 

ingnath,  87 

Ini,  125 

inigena,  18 

insignitus  diademate,  39 

iod,  562 

lodeo,  ludeu,  115,  116 

lorvverth   ab    Ble^tyn,    271,    289-91, 

297-9 
lorwerth  ab  Madog,  182,  226,  647 
lorwerth  ab  Owain  Gvvyned,  312 
iot,  562 

loth.  Sea  of,  115 
'loyepvia,  76 
lovipvinhs  vuK^avos,  87 
ipe,  16,  50  :  see  ipuai 

"iTTTrapx^'J.  74 

ipuai,  17,  50 

Irish  Sea,  the,  87 

Irrus  Domnann,  114 

Isabella  de  Braose,  320 

Isca,  27,  82,  104 

Ithel      (  =  Idwan     ab     Gruffytf     ab 

iLewelyn,  269 
Ithel  ab  Rhiryd  ab  Bledyn,  294-5, 

298 
ludeu,  116;  see  lodeo 
lutgual,  138:  see  Idwal 
Iverni,  45,  86-8 
Ivernia,  76 
Ivernis,  88 
Ivor,  125 
Ivor  ab  Alan,  136-7 


J 


James  I.,  384 

James,  Ivor,  29,  500,  530 

Jannett,  Princess,  320 

Jenkins,  James,  557,  577 

Jenkins,  Miss  Kate,  556,  572,  602-3 

Jerome,  103 

Jesus  Coll.  MS.  Twenty,  42 

Joan,  316-8,  320 

John,  King,  315-8 

John,  Owen,  518 

Jones,  Griffith,  472,  481,  507 


Jones,  Henry,  571 

Jones,  John,  124 

Jones,  M.P.,  John,  388-390 

Jones.  J.  C.,  555,  561,  571 

Jones,  J.  E.,  456 

Jones,  F.R.S.,  J.  Viriamu,  497 

Jones,  R.  Foulkes,  561 

Jones,  Thomas,  477 

Jones,  Wm.,  576 

Jonson,  Ben,  513 

Jovis,  8g 

jura  regalia,  356,  358,  372 

Jutes,  105 

Juvencus,  627 


K 


Kabyle,  631-4,  636 

Kamdwr,  271 

Kanovio,  100 

Karl  the  Great,  178 

Keating, 53,  59,  60 

KeJti  Carnant,  286 

Kemble's  Cod.  Dipl,  153 

KeniKvcrth,  331 

Kennadlawg,  the  forest  of,  309 

Kenneth  mac  Alpin,  113 

Kent,  78,  III  ;  see  Caution 

Kenulf,  141 

Kenyon,  G.  T.,  500 

Kenyon,  Lord,  566 

Keredigion,  134,  143 :  see  Cardigan 

Kessarogyon,  109 

Kidweli  (Kidwelly),  134,  146,  282 

Kiepert,  85 

Kil  Owain,  309 

Kilkenny,  84 

Kilsby  Jones,  J.  R.,  477 

kilt,  583 

Kilvawyr,  465 

Kimberley,  Lord,  459 

King's  Bench,  386,  390 

kinsmen,  group  of,  230 

Knutsford,  Lord,  499 

Kulhwch,  106 

Kyle,  119 

Kymry,  no;  s^<:  Cymro 

Kynan  (Conan)  ab  Hcwal,  160-1 

Kynan  Tindaethwy,  130-9 

Kynwric  ab  Rhys,  568 

Kystennin     (Kystenin)     ab      lago, 

157-S 


I 


INDEX, 


66i 


Ladhra,  60 

laechraidi  Lir,  53 

Lamb,  344 

Lambert  B.  of  Menevia,  183 

Lampeter,  493,  499 

Lancaster,  Duchy  of,  372 

Land  of  the  Livdng,  the,  67 

Langton,  Stephen,  318 

Latin  Christianity,  458-9 

Laws,  Edward,  29 

Lecky  M.P.,  Dr.,  460,  473,  482 

Lee,  Rowland,  366-7 

Leffingwell,  Dr.,  584-5 

leges  barbarorum,  179 

Leicester,  93 

Leicester,  Earl  of,  410 

Leinster,  Book   of,    53,    55,    59,  65, 

72 
Leiand,  359 

Leofgar,  Bishop,  169,  170 
Leofric,  164-7,  ^7° 
Leominster,  168 
Lewis,  318:  see  Louis 
Lewis,  the  late  Judge,||5i5 
Lewis,  Wm.,  518 
Liathain,  Ua,  50 
Liber  Landavensis,  128 
Limerick,  the  late  Bishop  of,  6G 
Lincoln,  264 
Lincoln,  Earl  of,  443 
Lindori,  93 
Lir,  laechraidi,  53 
Lloyd  :  see  Humfrey  Lwyd 
Lloyd,  Jeuan,  518 
Lloyd,  Morgan,  490 
Lloyd,  Prof.,  144 
Loegaire,  64 
Logiri,  64  :  see  Lugar 
Lollius  Urbicus,  96 
Londinium,  iii 
London,  iii 
Londonderry,     Dow.     Duchess    of, 

514 
Lords  Marchers,  263,  300,  304,  307, 

310.  330.  357-8.  360,  372 
Lossio  Veda,  46-7,  62 
Lothians,  the,  21 
Louis  of  France,  St.,  318,  330 
Loumarc,  150  :  see  ILywarch 
Lovernii,  Fili,  17 
Lower  Britain,  103-4 
Ludlow,  319,  363 
Lugaid,  53 


Lugar,  Lugir,  64 
Lugudunum,  86 
Luxmores,  the,  468-9 
Lydney,  66 

Itadrad,  226,  234 
ILanaelhaiarn,  565,  581,  598 
ILanarth,  555,  571 
ILanbadarn,  166,  297 
ILanbedr,  604-5 
ILancarfan,  160 
ILandeilo  Fawr,  340 
ILandogo,  526 
ILandona,  464 
ILandydoch,  277-8 
ILandyssilio,  464 
ILandeusant,  464,  556 
JLandewi  Brefi,  295 
ILanfachreth,  600 
ILanfaethlu,  464,  600 
ILanfaglan,  17 
ILanfair  Pwit  Gwyngyrt,  464 
ILanfairynghornwy,  464 
ILanfattteg,  503 
ILanfwrog,  464 
ILanfyttin,  585 
ILangadock,  602-3 
ILangefni,  600 
ILangwytlog,  464 
ILanover,  Lady,  514     • 
ILanrhidian,  284 
ILanrwst,  156 
ILansawel,  606 
ILanstephan,  318 
ILantwit  Major,  30 
ILanuwchilyn,  605-7 
ILanvaches,  462 
ILanvaes,  action  of,  141 
ILanybree,  465 
ILech  Idris,  503 
ILechryd,  465 
ileidr,  48 

tteidr  gwerth,  237 
iien,  251 
Ttenityein,  251 
ILeufer  Thomas,  Mr.,  144 
ILevelys,  40 

ILew  ILawgyffes,  37-8,  69 
ILewelyn  ab  Cadwgan,  271,  289 
ILewelyn  ab  Cedivor,  277-8 
ILewelyn     ab    Gruffyd    ab     Owain 
Gwyned,  no,  325-6,  328-42,  349 
ILewelyn  ab  lorwerth,  no,  165,  343 


662 


INDEX. 


ILewelyn  ab  lorwerth  ab  Owain 
Gwyned,  312,  314-5,  317-21,  343 

]Le\velyn,  Lewis.  557 

ILewelyn  ab  Madog,  253 

ILewelyn  ab  Seisyltt,  160-2 

ILewelyn  ab  Trahaiarn,  298 

]Leyn/i34,  157,  336 

ILoegr,  ILoegyr,  174,  188 

ILud",  40,  67  :  see  Nud 

ILundein,  39  :  see  London 

ILwyd,  Humfrey,  612 

ILwyn  Pina,  309 

ILych  Crei,  277,  282 

ttymry,  562-3 

ILyr,  38,  42  :  see  Lir 

ILyfr  Prawf,  226 

ILyfr  Teilo,  128-9 

E^ywarch  ab  Himeyd,  150 

ILywarch  ILew  Cad,  253 

E^ywarch  ab  Trahaiarn,  294,  299, 
301 

ILywelyn :  see  ILewelyn 


M 


mab   aiiit,    meibion     eitttion  :      see 

Eitttion,  191 
Mabinogion,  the,  158,  504 
mabon,  mapon,  3 
Macalister,  Mr.,  58 
mace,  mac,  3,  72 
Mac  Corb,  73 
Mac  Datho,  48 
Mac  Erce,  52,  58 
Mac  Naue,  72 
Mac  Tail,  18,  72 
maccu,  maccui,  51  :  see  mocu 
maccu  Lugir,  64 
Maccuchor,  Insolae,  52 
Macha,  54 
Machynlleth,  585 
Macorbi,  52 

Maeatae,  97-8,  102  :  see  Miati 
Maelgwn    Gwyned",     10,  44,   106-7, 

no,  119-20,  316 
Maelgwn  ab   Owain  Gwyned,  312, 

317 
Maelor  Saesneg,  440 

maenol,  maenolyd,  204,  214,  218-9: 

see  maenor 
maenor,  maenawr,  218 


Maenor  Byr,  Manorbeer,  218,  245  : 

see  Maenor 
Maenor  (Manor)  Deifi,  218 
maer,  190,  192,  195 
maer-dref,  216,  219-20,  225,  401 
Maes  Hyfeid,  160 
Magesaetas,  the,  170 
Magh  Leana,  battle  of,  59,  66 
Maglocunos,  10,  106 :  see  Maelgwn 
Magnus,  s.  of  Harold,  170 
Maiarai,  97  :  see  Maeatae 
Maig  ab  Howel  Drwg,  158-9 
mail,  71 

Mail  (Mael-)  Patraic,  24,  71 
Mailgenn,  71 
Maine,  Sir  Henry,  186 
Maive,  54 
mam,  20 
Manannan,  53 
Manapia,  85 :  see  Menapia 
Manapii,  85  :  see  Menapii 
Manau,  Manaw,  21,  120 
Manau  Guotodin,  9,  119-20 
Manawydan,  37-40 
Mansell,  Sir  E.,  185 
manor,  218,  305 
Maponos,  2,  3 

maqua-s,  maqui,  3  :  see  mace 
maqui  mucoi,  52 
Maqui  Ttal,  18 
maqui  Vorgos,  18 
marbh,  80 

March  heath-burning,  238 
Marches  of  Wales,  the,  304,  363-7, 

377 
marchog,  206 
mare,  80 
Maredud  ab   Bledyn,    271,    289-90, 

299-303 
Maredud  ab  Edwin,  163-4 
Maredud  ab  Gruffyd  ab  Llewelyn, 

269 
Maredud  ab  ILewelyn,  326 
Maredud  ab  Owain  ab  Edwin,  269 
Maredud  ab  Owain  ab  Gruffyd  ab 

Rhys,   328 
Maredud  ab  Owain  ab  Howel  Da, 

150,  158-60,  162 
Maredud    ab     Rhys    Gryg,    328-g, 

332 
Maredud,  K.  of  Dyfed,  137 
Margam  MSS.,  349 
Marshal,  Wm.,  318 
marw,  80 
Mary,  the  Virgin,  42 


I 


INDEX. 


663 


Masqueray,  M.,  631 

Math,  37,  56,  69,  72 

Mathew,  Myles,  366 

Matholwch  38-9 

Mathonwy,  37,  56 

Mathrafal,  135 

Matilda,  28 

Matugenos,  63 

Maxen's  Dream,  43 

May,  Isle  of,  98 

May  Water,  98 

Mearns,  the,  65 

Meath,  ii 

Mechain,  269 

mechdeyrn  dues,  18S 

mechniaeth,  211,  225 

Medocius,  46 

mei-iau,  249 

Meilir,  123 

Meirion,  9,  10,  106,  120,  131 

Meirionyd",  106,  134,  326 

Melrose,  593 

Menapia,  99  :  see  Manapia 

Menapii,  85-6  :  see  Manapii 

Mendip,  93 

Menevia,  273 

meqqddrroann,  64 

Mercia,  149,  150-I 

Merdyn,  121 

Meredyd :  see  Maredud 

Merfyn  Frych,  136-9,  143 

Merfyn  ab  Rhodri,  144-5,  ^47-8 

Meriaun,  120:  j^^  Meirion 

merin,  115-6 

Mermin,  138;  j^^  Merfyn 

Mesce  Ulad,  56-7 

Meurig  ab  Arthvael,  162 

Meurig    ab    Dyfnwal,    or  ab    Dyfn- 

waTton,  143,  145 
Meurig  ab  Idwal  Voel,  160 
Meyer,  Prof.,  56,  59,  81 
Miati,  Miathi,  97-8 ;  see  Masatae 
Mictim,  Insulam,  78  :  see  Ictis 
Mil,  43,  45 

Milesians,  the  Irish,  45,  49 
Miliuc,  52 
Milodrag,  74 
Minocannus,  41 
Minocynobellinus,  41 
Mise  of  Lewes,  the,  330 
mocu,  51-2  ;  moco,  51-2:  see  maccu, 
Mocudruidi,  51  [mucoi 

Modonnus,  85 
Moel-mud,  24  :  see  Dyfnwal 
Moel-Muaid,  24 


Mog   Nuadat,  Mogh    Nuadhad,  58, 

66-7,  71.  73 
Mog  Ruith,  73 
Mogh  Neid,  66-7,  73 
molad,  87 
Mold,  323-4 
Molloy.  O',  24 
Momera,  59-60 
Mon  :  see  Mona 
Mona,  112,  134 
Monmouthshire,  278 
Monothelite  Controversy,  the,  474 
Montgomery,  24,  275 
Moray  Firth,  the,  97 
Morcunt,  Morcunn,  65 
Mordav,  B.  of  Bangor,  183 
Morgainn  :  see  Morcunt 
Morgan  Hen,  150,  152-4 
Morgan  ILwyd,  462,  531 
Morgannwg  (Morgan wg),  30,  134-5. 

278 
Morgant,  65  :  see  Morgan 
Morgunn  :  see  Morcunt 
Morimarusam,  75,  80-1 
Mormons,  the,  595-6 
Morlais  Jones,  J.,  477 
Morris,  Caleb,  477 
Morris  Jones,  Prof.  J.,  517 
Morris,  Sir  L.,  492,  495 
Mortagne-sur-Mer,  344 
Mortimer,  Roger,  323,  329-30.  335 
Mostyn,  525 
Mostyn,  Peres,  518 
Mostyn,  Wm.,  518-9 
motus,  648 
Moytura,  55 
mu,  mo,  58-9 
Mu  Dovinia,  58-9 
Muad,  Muaid,  24-5 
muchyn,  526 

mucoi,  50-2  :  see  maccu,  mocu 
Mug,  66 :  see  mog,  mogh 
Mug  Corb,  73 
Mug-eime,  25 

Mug-Neit,  73  :  see  Mogh  N. 
Mug-Nuadat,  73  :  see  Mog  N. 
Miillenhoff,  Prof.,  77,  80,  84 
Miiller,  C,  84,  87 
muir,  80 

Muir  nicht,  78,  116 
Muir  nioth,  115-6 
Mundella,  Mr.,  494 
Munremur,  65 
Mynogan,  38,  41-2 
Mynyd  Carn,  272-3 


664 


IXDEX. 


N 
Nad-Fraich,  49,  72  :  see  Nioth-F. 
Nahhtvvdda00s,  64 
Naindidh,  18 
NaiuLauaaris,  22 
nassus,  20 
Natdad,  64 
nativi,   401,  403,   407,    411,  419-20, 

425 
Navan  Fort,  87 
Navvallo,  47 

nawd,  194,  216-7,  228,  238,  250 
nawfed  ach,  231 
naw-nos,  220 
Neath  Valley,  the,  21 
nei,  nai,  48 
Nellis,  Nepotes,  50 
Nelso,  465 
Nennius,  41-3,  98 
Neo-Celtic,  22-3 
nepos,  nepus,  47-8,  50,  62 
Nero,  95 
Nessa,  15,  54 

Nest,  sister  of  Congen,  143 
Nest,     daughter     of     Gruffyd     ab 

ILewelyn,  281 
Nest,  wife  of  Gerald,  294 
Net,  73 

Neta-Segamonas,  72 
Nettasagru,  53 
Newton  Stone,  the,  16-17,  5° 
nez,  20 
ni,  niz,  48 
nia,  niath,  72 
Nia  Corb,  73 
Nia  Segamain,  72 
Nicholas,  Dr.,  490 
Nicholas  de  Myles,  325 
nie,  nia,  nieth,  48,  50-1 
Nieth-Neill,  50-1 ;  see  Nepotes  Nellis 
nightmare,  55 
Nigra,  24 
Nt/ceos,  74 
NiKevs,  74 
^iKofj-axos,  74 
N7kvs,  74 

nioth,  niath,  48,  50 
Nioth-Fruich,  49,  72  :  see  Nad-F. 
Niott-Vrecc,  72 
niotta,  48:  see  nioth,  49 
Nissien,  38 
Nodens,  67 

Nonconformists,  454-8,  462-3 
Norden,  John,  430 
Norsemen,  the  Irish,  166 


Northmen,  142-3 

nos,  48 

Notitia  Dignitatum,  103 

nox,  48 

noz,  48 

Nuada,  Nuadha,  66 

Nuall,  47 

Nudens,  67 

Nud,  67  :  see  Nodens,  ILud 

Nwython,  91 


O 

6,  47,  50 
oc,  ag,  630 
Oenfer,  67 

Offa,  K.  of  Mercia,  140 
Offa's  Dyke,  527 
offe)7rat  teulu,  647 
officers,  357 
Ogams,  3,  502 

Ogygia,  59 

Omagh,  18 

Orderic,  28 

Ordinance  of  Rhudlan,  350 

Ordovices,  9,  10,  40,  45,  95,  501 

Ordwyf,  10 

Oriel,  loi 

Orosius,  41,  43 

Orpen,  Mr.,  87 

osb,  the,  201-2 

Osbern  sheriff  of  Hereford,  274 

Osborne  Morgan,  Sir  G.,  489-90 

Osir,  17 

Osismi,  84 

Osmail,  120 

Osraighe,  84 

Ossory,  84 

Ostiaei,  84 

^nffTiaioi,  84 

Ostiones,  84 

'nariooves,  84 

Ostorius  Scapula,  94 

Oswald,  109 

Otadini,  'nraSivoi,  21,  98:  see  Vota- 

dini,  Gododin 
Otto,  Pope's  Legate,  322 
Ottobon,  the  Legate,  332 
OviWoveos,  22 
OvaSiai,  84 

OvaKovvTioi,  17  :  see  Ulad 
Owain  ab  Cadwgan,  259,  293-7,  299- 

301 
Owain  ab  Davyd,  316-7 


INDEX 


66^ 


Owain  ab    Gruffycf   ab   Cynan  ;  see 

Owain  Gwyned" 
Owaia  ab  Gruffyd"  ab  Gwenwynwyn, 

334 
Owain  (Owen)  ab  Howel  Da,  42,  44, 

138.  155 
Owain  ab  Morgan  Hen,  154 
Owain  Cyfeiliog,  311,  314 
Owain   Goch  ab  Gruffyd"  ab  Owain 

Gwyned,  325-6,  336,  343 
Owain  Glyndwr,  343,  345,  362,  404, 

418,  478 
Owain  Gwyned,  308-312 
Owain  Lawgoch,  343-4,  593-4 
Owen,  Aneurin,  25,  177,  180-4,  188, 

517,  569,  646,  648 
Owen,  Daniel,  608 
Owen,  Edward,  412,  423 
Owen,  George,  31,  425,  446,  558 
Owen's  Dialogue,  George,  3S4 
Owen,  Henry,  28-9,  31 
Owen,  Sir  Hugh,  462,  487,  489-90, 

512,  576 
Owen,  Dr.  Isambard,  497-8 
Owen,  James,  462,  480 
Owen,  John  Lewis,  518 
Owen,  M.,  458 
Owen,  Maynard,  498 
Oxford,  164,  330,  478 
Oxford,  Provisions  of,  330 
Oystermouth,  284 


Padarn  Pesrud",  119:  see  Patern 

pais,  251 

Palmer,  A.  N.,  417 

pan,  20 

Pant,  86 

Pandulf,  318 

Pantulf,  Wm.,  290 

Parisi,  6,  112 

parliament,  members  of,  374 

Parry,  Dr.,  609 

Patern  Pesrut,  106,  119 

Paternus,  119  ;  see  Padarn 

Patrick,  83 

Pausanias,  96 

Peanfahel,  12 

Peckham,  Archbishop,  339-40 

Pedigree  I.,  138-9 

Pedigree  X.,  132-3 

Pembroke,  282 

Pembrokeshire,  348 


pen,  7 

Penardim,  38-9 

Pen-ardu,  38 

Pencadcr,  166 

pencenedl.  penkenedl,  192,  195,  201^, 

Pendaran,  70  [239 

Pengwern,  140  :  see  Amwythig 

Penkridge,  7 

Penmen,  464 

pennaeth,  240 

Pennal,  478 

Penn  Annwn,  70  :  see  Pwytt 

Penneltun,  12 

Pennant,  599 

Pennocrucion,  7 

Tlivvo-oviv^os,  73 

Penrice,  284 

penteulu,  193-4,  198,  250,  646 

penteyrned,  106 

Penwyn.  73 

Perfedwlad.  317-S.  325-6.  328,  331-2. 

336-7,  346 
Perowne,  Dr.,  49') 
Perros  Guirec,  563 
Perth,  113 
Philemon,  80 
Philip  and  Mary,  361 
Philip  VI.  of  France,  343 
Phillimore,  Egerton,  42,  127-8 
Phillips,  Sir  Thos.,  4S2,  548 
Pictania,  Pictinia,  79 
Pictavi,  79 
Pictavia,  79 
Pictones,  Pictores,  79 
Pictus,  Picti,  79,  80 
picus  mah,  553 
Pierret,  M.,  623,629 
pilnis,  598 
Plinlimmon,  597 
Pliny.  75,  77,  80 
poi,  50 

Poictiers,  battle  of,  343 
Poitou,  79 
Pontius,  2 

Pope  Q.C.,  Mr.,  604 
Porius,  503  :  see  Voteporigis 
Porrex,  131 
Porth  Iscoed,  173,  270 
potes,  553-4 
Powel,  David,  125 
Powel,  Dr.  David,  6n 
Powell,  Vavasour,  462 
Powis,  the  Earl  of,  496,  500 
Powys,  134-5,  144 
Powyseg,  8 


666 


INDEX. 


praepositus,  igo  ;  see  maer 

Prasutagus,  95 

pratum,  20 

pre,  20 

pren,  88 

Prestatyn,  311,  525 

Pretanic,  75-6,  80 

TIpeTaviK-aL,  -77,  76 

Price  (Prise)  Sir  John,  126,  611-2 

Price,  Ellice,  518-g 

Price,  Owen,  457 

Price  of  Rhiwlas,  Mr.,  561,  603-4 

Price,  Thos.,  124 

Prichard,  J.  M.,  600 

Prichard,  Vicar,  505 

primogeniture,  400 

Prince  of  Wales,  the,  no,  500 

priodolion  leoed,  199 

Priten,  76  :  see  Prydain 

progenies,  397 

Proof-book,  the,  647 

Prophwydoliaeth  Myrdin,  594 

pryd,  79 

Prydain,  Prydyn,  76,  79,  80 

Prydein  Wledic,  108 

Pryderi,  pryderi,  70 

Pryderi's  Kingdom,  158 

Ptolemy,  45,  78,  85,  87-8,  97,  99 

Puleston,  Robert,  518 

Puleston,  Sir  T.  H.,  582 

pump,  pimp,  2 

Pwil  Dyvach,  166 

Pwit  Gwdyc,  272 

Pwitheli,  585 

pwy,  2,  638 

Pwyit,  53,  69-70,  158 

Pyr,  30,  218,  245  :  see  Porius 

Pytheas,  75-6,  78,  81 

pythewnos,  220 

Pyvog,  312 


Q 

quare  impedit,  357 
quei,  quoi,  2 
Queen's  Officers,  198 
quinque,  2 
Quintus,  2 
quinzaine,  220 
quo  warranto,  360 
Qurtanic,  76 


R 


Radnorshire,  450 

Raguell  V.  Auleod,  272 

raja,  73 

Ralph  the  Earl,  168-9,  253 

Randall,  J.  M.,  595 

Randall,  Dr.  W.,  562 

Ranulph,  Earl  of  Chester,  316 

Ratas,  93 

Rathbone  M.P.,  Wm.,  497,  500 

Ravenstein,  Mr.,  548-9 

Reade,  Lady,  600 

Record  Office,  the,  25 

Red  Dragon,  the,  106 

Rees,  Henry,  489 

Rees,  Thomas,  477 

Reformation,  the,  459,  479 

Regin,  140  :  see  Rein 

Reginald  de  Grey,  349-50 

Regni,  92,  in 

Reichel,  Principal,  497 

Rein,  K.  of  Dyfed,  137,  140 

Rein  Yscot,  162 

Reinach,  M.,  32,  36,  61 

Remi,  88-9 

Renan,  M.,  563 

Rendel,  Lord,  500 

Rene  Basset,  M.,  633,  637 

Renouf,  Mr.,  619,  622,  625,  627-9,  637 

Rex  Anglorum,  141 

Rex  Brettonum,  107,  109 

rhaith,  205,  236,  245 

rhandir,  rhandiroed",  218 

rheithwyr,  259 

Rhiannon,  69,  70,  94 

rhingyii,  195 

Rhiryd  ab  Bledyn,  276-7 

Rhiwaiton  ab  CynfN-n,  173,  269,  306 

Rhodri  ab  Howel  Da,  155,  158 

Rhodri  ab  Owain  Gwyned,  313-4 

Rhodri     Mawr,    128,    136-9,    143-4, 

146-8,  246,  272,  341 
Rhodri  Molwynog,  109,  136-9 
Rhos,  339 
Rhudlan,  171,  275 
Rhudlan,  Statute  of,  184,  306,  347, 

350-1,  375,  400 
Rhun  ab  Maelgwn,  107 
Rhun  ab  Xwython,  91 
Rhuvoniog,  134,  137,  141 
Rhyd  y  Gors,  282-3,  285,  292 
Rhyd  y  Groes,  166 
Rhyderch  ab  Caradog,  271 
Rhyderch  ab  lestyn,  162-3 


INDEX. 


667 


Rhys  ab  Gruffyd",  185,282,304,309-11, 

314.  516 
Rhys  Gryg,  316,  319 
Rhys,  J.  D.,  630 

Rhys,  Lord, 516:  s^^RhysabGruffyd 
Rhys  ab  Maelgwn,  339 
Rhys  ab  Maredud",  341 
Rhys  ab  Owain,  270-2 
Rhys,  Prof.,  492,  495-6 
Rhys  ab  Rhyderch,  167-8 
Rhys  ab  Tewdwr,  109,  272-3,  277-8, 

281,  292 
Ribble,  the,  69 
Richard,  B.  of  Bangor,  322 
Richard,  son  of  Baldwin,  292 
Richard,  Earl  of  Chester,  302 
Richard,  Henry,  492,  591-2 
Richard  ab  Howel,  517 
Richard  Marshal,  320 
Richard,  sheriff  of  Shrewsbury,  294, 

298 
n'g-domna,  203 
Rights,  the  Book  of,  84 
rithmours,  518-9 
ro,  636 

Robert  ab  Seisyiit,  164 
Robert  de  Belleme,  289,  290 
Robert  Earl  of  Gloucester,  125 
Robert  Fitz-Hamon,  278-80,  348 
Robert  of  Rhudlan,  274-6,  282 
Roberts,  Dr.  R.  D.,  500 
Roberts,  Gomer,  553 
Roberts,  Principal,  497 
Robinson,  Prebendary,  492 
Rochemonteix,  M.  de,  626 
Rodrigo,  the  Cid,  592 
Roger  of  Shrewsbury,  282 
Rogers,  David,  554 
Roget  de  Belloguet,  32 
roi,  100 
Roig,  54 
Roose,  28 

Rosebery,  Lord,  500 
Rossi,  624,  627-8,  633,  637 
Rotri,  109,  138:  see  Rhodri 
Rowlands,  Daniel,  472-3,  506 
Rowlands,  Dr.,  565,  576,  581 
Rowlands,  Richard,  565,  571,  576 
Rubeas,  80 
Rumaun,  120 
Runtir,  51 
rus,  ruris,  100 
Ruthin  Court  Rolls,  117 
ry,  636 
Rymney,  270  ^-^ 


Sabrann,  88 

Sabrina,  88,  94 

Sachs,  Hans,  583 

Saeson,  hyt  ar  y,  289 

saeth,  253 

Sagramni,  Sagrani,  503 

St.  Asaph,  Bishop  of,  497 

St.  David's,  Bishop  of,  497 

salann,  88 

Salesbury,  Wm.,  462,  513,  517 

Salisbury,  267-8 

Salisbury,  E.  G.,  490 

Salusbury,  John,  518 

Salusbury,  Sir  Roger,  517 

saraad,  197,  217,  227,  229,  231-4,  240, 

244 
Saturday  Review,  the,  29 
Saunders,  Dr.  E.,  464-5,  471 
Saxon  Chronicle,  the,  108 
Saxons,  102,  105,  107 
Sayes  sen.  of  Carmarthen,  de,  329 
Schrader,  O.,  617 
Scota,  59,  114 

Scotorum,  Chronicum,  59-60 
Scottewatre,  116 
Scotti,  87,  101-2 
sechem,  38 
'l.eyo/j.apos,  22 
Segomo,  72 
Segontiaci,  92 
Segontium,  27 
seiet,  seiat,  588-9 
Sein  Henyd",  248 
Selgovae,  97 

Senena,  w.  of  Gruffyd",  322 
Senlac,  174 
Sergi,  Sr.,  618 
Sescenn  Uarbe6il,  100 
Sessions,  the  Quarter,  379 
Sessions,  King's  Great,  377-9,  383-4, 

386,  388.  391-2 
sessom,  38 
Setanta,  69 
Setantii,  69 
sethar,  mac,  49 
Severn,  88  :  see  Hafren 
Severus,  97,  104 
Seward,  473 
Shetland,  16 
Shires,    the   Welsh,    347,  373,   375^ 

376-7 
Shrewsbury,  140,  274,  495 

Sidney,  Sir  H.,  126 
Silchester,  82 


668 


IXDEX 


Silures,  40,  94-5,  501 

Simon  Magus,  73 

Simon  de  Montfort,  333 

Skelton,  587 

Skene,  51.  65 

Slieve  Beagh,  60 

Slieve  Bloom,  84 

Sloe,  the,  100 

Snowdon,  barons  of,  336,  340-1 

Sogin,  51 

Solinus,  80 

Solva,  27 

Southall,  Mr.,  544,  547 

Spain,  58 

Stanley  of  Alderley,  Lord,  G01-2 

Star  Chamber,  the,  364,  386 

Statutum  Wallise,  361 

Stephen,  28,  308-9 

Stephens,  Thomas,  116,  312,  513 

Stephens,  W.  E.,  577 

Stillingfleet,  Dr.,  480 

Stirling,  113 

stirpes,  per,  397 

Stokes,  Dr.  Whitley,  49,  51.  55-  ^5' 

72,  77-8,  100 
StralDO,  75-6,  84 
Strata  Florida,  125 
streicio,  583 
sucan,  553,  563 
Suessiones,  5,  89 
Suetonius,  41,  61,  93 
Suetonius  Paulinus,  95 
Suir,  the,  84 

Sunday  School,  the,  507-9,  527 
surnames,  257 
Swansea,  248 
Sweet,  Dr.  Henry,  29 
sydyn, 196 


Tacitus,  61-2,  92,  94-5,  HI 

taeog,  taeogion,  191,  195,204,  214-5, 

400 
taeog-tref,  216,  225 
tair  Talaeth,  145 
Talaith  of  Aberfrowe,  519 
Talargant,  Talargan,  65 
Taliessin,  Book  of,  43,  76,  87,  119 
Talorcen,  Talorc,  65  :   see  Talargant 
Tamashek',  631,  633,  635,  638 
tan,  226,  237 
tanaiste,  203 


Tara,  14,  15 

Tarbeisonios,  22 

Tasciovant,  90 

Tasciovanus,  90 

Taylor,  Canon  I.,  618 

Tees,  the,  112 

Tegai,  Huw,  620 

Tegeingl,  94.  3ii 

Tehvant,  90 

Teilo,  St.,  129 

teisban  teulu,  193 

Tenuantius,  91  ;  see  Tehvant 

Teuhant,  91  ;  see  Tehvant 

teyr  kolofyn  kyvreyth,  226 

teyrnas  y  Brytanyeit,  109 

Teyrnon,  70 

Theloall,  Symound,  518 

Theodosius,  102 

Thomas  a  Becket,  312 

Thomas,  B.  of  St.  David's,  349-50 

Thomas,  David,  477 

Thomas,  Dr.  David,  500 

Thomas  M.P.,  Alfred,  500,  537 

Thomas,  James,  456 

Thomas,  Jenkin,  574 

Thomas,  John,  573 

Thomas,  Dr.  John,  477 

Thomas,  TLeuter,  580 

Thomas,  Rees,  518 

Thomasson's  tracts,  530 

Tigernach,  79 

Tillotson,  Dr.,  480 

Tincommios,  91-2 

tir   cyfrif,  214,  220,  224-5,   400  :   see 

tref  gevery 
tir  gwelyawg,  194-7,  200,  204-5,  207, 

214-6,  220-3,225,  229,  240,  259: 

see  gwely,  wele 
Tlachtga,  72-3 
Tochmarc  Momera,  60 
Togodumnos,  93 
Toicac,  18 
Toranias,  avi,  47 
Tostig,  27,  171 
Touareg,  631 
Tout,  Prof.,  125,  144,  34S 
Tower  of  Babel,  124 
Traethodyd,  y,  534 
Trahaiarn,  271-2,  293 
trais,  234 

Trait wng  ILewelyn,  29S 
Tre'  Faldwin,  275,  284 
Tredegar,  Lord,  500 
tref,  trefyd",  218,  225 
tref  gyfrif,  tref  gevery,  400,  402 


INDEX. 


66g 


Trefor  ILanaelhaiarn,  581-2 

Trefor  Mon,  600 

Trenanus,  51 

tri,  638 

tri  thywysog  taleithiog,  145 

Triads,  Dyfnwal's,  184 

Tribes,  the  Lost  Ten,  605 

Trinovanles,  89,  go,  92-3,  11 1-2 

Trisantona,  94 

Troughanacmy,  114 

Troy,  124 

Trucculensis,  Portus,  96 

Trysorfa  Gwybodaeth,  533 

Ttal,  Maqui,  18 

Tuath,  Tuatha,  De  Danann,  56-7 

Tudur  Aled,  517 

Tweed,  the,  28 

Ty  Gv/yn,  155,  179,  646:  see  Whit- 
land 

tydyn,  tydynau,  195-6,  205,  218, 
221-2,  225,  398-9 

Typipaun,  120 

tywysog,  tywyssavvc,  no,  134,  190 

tywyssawc  Kymry,  no 

tywyssogyon  Kymry,  no 


U 
ua,  47  :  see  6 
Uarbel,  100 
uchelwr,  uchelwyr,  191,  204-5,  207- 

440,  445  :  see  breyr 
Uchtrud  ab  Edwin,  285,  294 
Uecla,  46 ;  see  Veda,  47 
ui,  hui,  50 
Ulaid,  Ulad,  87 
University  of  Wales,  the,  496 
Uoret,  16-17,  88 
Upper  Britain,  103-4 
upsitting,  583 
Urban,  128 
Uriconium,  94 
Urse  of  Abetot,  274 
Usdiae.  84-7 
Usnech,  Sons  of,  68 
uwd,  562-3 


V 


Vale   of    Glamorgan, 
Bro  Morgannwg 
Valentia,  104,  120 
Van  Eys,  M.,  639 


27,    30 


see 


Vaur,  Vorrenn,  17,  64 

Vectis,  78 

Veda,  46-7,  62-3 

Vellabori,  52 

Velvor,  52 

Vendubari,  74 

Veneti,  83,  85 

Venta,  82 

Ventry,  Lord,  52,  57 

Vep.  Cor.  F.,  63 

Vepogeni,  Nepos,  46,  53,  62-3 

Vepotalus,  63 

Vepus,  63 

Verica,  91 

Verlamion,  90 

Verney,  Lady,  500 

Verturiones,  102 

Vespasian,  92-3 

Vicarius  Britanniarum,  103 

Victor,  18 

Vikings,  the,  287 

Vipoig,  47,  63 

Viriamu  Jones  F.R.S.,  J.,  495 

Viricorbi,  52 

Vitalin,  maqui,  65-6 

Voluntii,  87:  see  Ulaid 

Voret,  50  :  see  Uoret 

Vorgos,  18 

Vorrenn,  64:  see  Vaur 

Vortigern,  82,  121 

Vortiporius,  Vortipori,  30,  503 

Votadini,  21,  98, 112-3  :  see  Gododin 

Votecorigas,  98,  503 

Voteporigis,  98,  503 

Vriconion,  93  :  see  Uriconium 


W 

walda,  108  :  see  Bretwalda 

Wall,  the  Roman,  101-2 

Wallography,  515 

Walpole,  Spencer,  469 

Warrington,  124 

Waterford,  84 

wealdan,  108 

wedi,  625,  G41 

Wedmore,  the  peace  of,  149 

wele,  3/7-8  :  see  gwely  ^ 

Welsh' 389-392 

Werburgh,  Saint,  151 

Wesley,  472,  589 

Westwood,  the  late  Prof.,  568 

Wexford,  99 


670 


INDEX. 


Whitfield,  472,  589 

Whitland,   155,   179,    184-5  •   ^^^   Ty 

Gwyn 
Wight,  Isle  of,  93,  103,  III 
William  s.  of  Baldwin,  283 
William  of  Brabant,  297 
William  de  Braose,  319,  320 
William  I.,  28,  267,  273,  275,  297 
William  II.,  28,  284-7,  289 
William  Fitz-Osbern,  274 
William  of  London,  284 
William  ab  John,  John,  518 
William  of  i\Ialmesbury,  28,  125 
William  ap  Thomas,  Sir,  446 
William    s.    of    William   Marshal, 

318-9 
Williams,  loi 
Williams,  Benj,,  593-4 
Williams,  C,  458 
Williams,  Hugh,  552 
Williams,  Jane,  124 
Williams,  Lewis,  500 
Williams,  Moses,  179,  180 
Williams  of  Pant  y  Celyn,  506 
Williams,  T.  Marchant,  500 
Williams,  Wm.,  572 
Williams  M.P.,  Wm.,  484,  490 
Williams,  W.  IL.,  598-9 
Windisch,  Prof.,  69,  622 
Winsford  Hill,  47 
Witenagemot,  Witan,  the,  151,  153, 

156,  164 
Wleth,  87  :  see  Ulaid 
Worcester,  163 
Wotton,  179,  180 
Wradech  Uecla,  47 
Wright,  Prof.,  29 


Wroth,  Wm.,  462 
Wroxeter,  93 
Wyn,  Robert,  415 
Wynne,  Sir  John,  33,  443 
Wynne,  Maurice,  518 
Wynne,  Owen  S.,  541 
Wynne  of  Peniarth,  Mr.,  457 
Wynne- J  ones.  Archdeacon,  602 
wythnos,  220 


yn,  625,  630 
ynad  Itys,  239 
Ynys  B^r,  218 
Youghal,  84 
ys,  626 

Yspadaden,  197 
Yspwys,  the  Wood  of,  283 
yssid  yssit,  626 
ystrad,  134 
Ystrat  Ciut,  149 
Ystrad  Towi,  134,  143,  271,  284 
Ystrad  Yw  (Ystradyew),  154 
Yvain  de   Galles,   343;  see    Owain 
Lawgoch 


Zenaga,  638 

Zeus,  89 

Zimmer,  Prof.,  36,  41,  640 


INDEX  OF  PRINCIPAL  TOPICS  AND 

TERMS. 


Aberj^stwyth,     college     at,     491-2, 

494 
Aberffraw,  tenants  of,  402,  405-6 

Aborigines,  11-13,  14,  36,  61,  120 
Administration,  Roman,  103-5 
iElfred,  submission 

of  Hemeid  to,  145 

of  Anarawd  to,  148 
iEthelstan,    submission    of    Howel 

Da  to,  153 
Agitation  against  the  Court  of  the 

President   and   Council  of  the 

Marches,  384-5 
Agwedi,  211 
Aittt,  191,  n.  I 
Aiitud,  191-2,  215-6 
Ammod  dedfol,  225 
Ammodwyr,  ib. 
Amobr,  209 
Ancient   Laws   and   Institutes :    see 

Laws 
Annales  Cambrise,  126,  n.  i 
Application  of  English  Law  under 

Queen      Elizabeth     in     North 

Wales,  407-23 
Ardelwr,  193 
Arglwyd",  190 
Argyvreu,  209 
Assembly     at      Ty     Gwyn,     179, 

181 
Authorities     for     early    history    of 
Wales, 

Annales  Cambriae,  126,  n.  i 

Brut  y  Tywysogion,  ih. 

Gwentian  Brut,  ib. 

Liber  Landavensis,  128,  n.  3 

see  Laws,  Inscriptions, 

Pedigrees 


B 

Baily's  Visitation  of  Bangor,  464 

Bailiff,  240 

Bara  ttech,  250,  n.  i 

Bara  plane,  ib. 

Bard,  254-5 

Barrows,  i 

Bath,  251 

Battles, 

Abergwili,  162 

Aberitech,  286 

Aberiteiniog,  288 

Abertowy,  167 

Bronn  yr  Erw,  271 

Brun,  149 

Buailt  (near),  341 

Camulodunon,  95 

Carno,  156 

Cetyit,  136,  143 

Chester,  121,  ib.,  n.  1 

Deganwy,  276 

Deorham,  121 

Dial  Rhodri,  148 

Dinas  Newyd,  149 

Evesham,  331 

Hawarden  Castle,  339 

Hereford,  169,  170 

Kennadlawg,  309 

Leominster,  168 

Lewes,  330 

ILych  Crei,  277 

Mag  Leamna,  66 

Mons  Granpius,  96 

Prestatyn,  311 

Pwtl  Gwdyc,  272 

Rhudlan,  171,  311 

Rhyd  y  Groes,  166 

Yspwys  Wood,  283 
Bed,  251 


672 


INDEX. 


Bible,  translation  of,  461,  461,  n.   i, 

505 
Blegywryd's  verses,  183,  n. 
Bonedig,  191,  204-5 
Brad  (treason),  239 

y  ILyfrau  Gleision,  485 
Braint,  191 
Brenin  :  see  King 
Breyr :  see  Uchelwr 
Briduw,  225 
Britain,  Crown  of,  I2i 

names  of,  77~8o 

Albion,  yy 

Belerium,  78 

Ictis,  id. 
Brythonic  language,  i 
Brythons,  1-8,  lO,  35,  P6,  120 
Bundling,  582-4 


Caeth,  191 

Camlwrw,  227,  238 

Canti'aw,  242 

Cancnes  Wallici,  177,  n.  2,  64S 

Cantii,  6 

Cantref,  Int.  xvii,,  29-34,  190,  240 

Capitular  regulations,  217 

Caradog  of  Lancarvan,  124-6 

Cardiff,  building  of,  247,  273 
college  at,  493-4 

Celts,  I,  4,  5 

Celtic  languages,  1-4,  501-3 

Celtic  church,  458-9,  459,  n.  i 

Cenedl,  description  of,  192-4 
groups  within,  196-7 
of  royal  status,  191,  203,  n.  3 

Ceredigion,  kingdom  of,   134 

Norman  Conquest  of,  297 

Chancellors  of  the  University,  500 

Character  of  the  Welsh, 
in  early  times,  252 
in  modern  times,  590-5 

Charter  of  Henry  VII.,  413,  417 
University,  498 

Chief  Justice,  239 

Christianity,  61,  458-9 

Church  in  Wales, 

absenteeism,  468 
Anglican,  463-68 
Baily's  visitation,  4*^4 
capitular  regulations,  217 
condition  of,    in  17th  and  i8th 

centuries,  463-8 
clergy,  216 
courts  of  the,  217 


I    Church  in  Wales, 

land  of  the,  216-7 
Luxmoore's  case,  468-9 
pluralities,  468-9 
Saunders'  View,  464-5 
Circuit,  of  bards. 

North  Wales,  392,  id.  n.  I 
South  Wales,  393,  id.  nn.  i,  2,  3 
Clerk,  217 
j  of  the  court  of  the  cymwd,  240 

j    Clothes  :  see  Dress 
I    Cnut's  accession,  l6i 
its  effects,  163 
Cof  ILys,  242 
Colleges, 

Aberystwyth,  491,  493-4 
Bangor,  493-4 
Cardiff,  id. 
Normal,  486 
St.  David's,  489 
Theological,  483,  n.  i 
Columns  of  Law,  the  three,  226 
Commendation, 

of  son  to  lord,  205 
of  kings  and  princes,  146,    148, 
151-2,  157.    . 
See   too,     Submission     of     W^elsh 
Princes 
Commission,  Common  Law,  387 
Edward  I.'s,  349-50 
Henry  VIII.'s,  375 
of  1843,  569 

of  1846  as  to  education,  484-5 
Welsh  land.  Preface  and  Note  to 
Reader 
Committee  of  1881  on  education  in 
Wales,  492-3,  512 
to    promote    University,    490-1 

497 
Conferences  as  to  education, 

in  1863,  490 

in  1888,  495 

in  1893,  498 
Conquest  of  Wales, 

Roman,  90-103 

Norman,  261-307 

Edwardian,  337-42 
Conquest  of  ' 

Amwythig,  274 

Brecheiniog,  281 

Buaitt,  id. 

Dyfed,  282 

Gloucestershire,  274 

Gower,  284 

Gwent,  278 

Gwyned,  340-2 


I 


INDEX 


(>73 


Conquest  of 

Herefordshire,  274 

Keredigion,  297 

Kid  weir,  284 

Morgannwg,  278-81 

Powys,  291-303 

Worcestershire,  274 

Ystrad  Towy,  284 
Contracts,  225-6 
Counties,  Welsh, 

list  of.  Int.  XV. 

formation      of..      347-S,     351-2, 

370-5 
Court, 

of  the  cantref,  240 

of  the  cymwd,  ib. 

of  the  king,  239 

of  the  President  and  Council 
of  the  Marches,  362-3. 
363-6,  384-6 

of  Great  Sessions,  377-0,  383. 
386-92 

county,  391 

of  the  Household,  193 

ecclesiastical,  217 
Cowyit,  212,  n.  I 
Crops,  249 
Crusade, 

Baldwin's  preaching  of  a,  246 
Cyfarwys,  206,  id.  n.  2 
Cymro,  Cymry,  Cymru,  Cymraeg, 

meaning  of,  26,  117 

origin  of,  26,  106,  118-20 
Cymwd,  Int.  xvii.  130-1,  133,  190 
Cynghaws,  242 
Cyngheitor,  190 


D 


Ba,  206,  208-9,  210 

Dadenhud.  208,  244 

Dadleuoed  breninawl,  241 

Danes,  27 

Danish  invasions,  142-3 

Dawn-bwyd,  224,  n.  i 

Dee,  rowing  of  Eadgar  on  the,  155 

Deheubarth,  134,  162 

Deheubarthwyr,  zd. 

Demetia,  8 

Descent  on  death  of 

Tir  gwelyawg,  221-2 

Tir  cyfrii,  225 
Dialects  of  Welsh,  8-9 

Gwyndodeg,  8 

W\P. 


Dialects  of  Welsh, 

Gwenhwyseg,  il\,  20- r 

Powyseg,  ?'//. 
Dialwr,  193 
Diet  of  the  Welsh. 

at  present,  551-565 

in  mediaeval  times,  250 
Dirv/}',  238 
Dispute    between    Howel    Da   and 

Morgan  Hen,  153-4 
Division  of  Wales  into 

kingdoms,  130,  144-8 

principalities,  t/f. 

cantrefs  and  cymwds.  Int.  xvii. 

lordships  marchers,  Int.  xviii  . 
356-61 

counties,  Int.  xv. 

hundreds,  i/k 

in  1282,  347-8 
Divorce,  213-14 
Diwygiad,  the,  591 
Dragon,  Red,  106 

of  the  island,  107 
Dress,  at  present,  565-70 

in  early  times,  251 
Druids,  255 
Drunkenness,  586-7 
Dux  Britannia;,  Dux  Britanniarum, 

Int.  xxiv.,  106-7,  11^-9 
Dux  Brittonum,  109 
Dyfed,  134,  150 


Eadgar,      submission      of      Welsh 

rulers  to,  159 
Eadward,      submission     of    Welsh 

rulers  to,  i/k 
Ebediw,  221 

Ecclesiastical  persons,  216 
Ecgbryht,     submission    of    Welsh 

rulers  to,  141 
Edling,  202 
Edward    I.'s    conquest    of    Wales, 

350-4 
his  settlement  of  Welsh  aftairs, 

361 
its  cc  nstitutional  effect,  355-61 
Eistedfoc,  516-524 
Element  iry  schools,  485-6,  529 
Enclosures,  247,  n.  i 
English,  30-1,  543-50 
Epitaph,  see  Inscriptions 

X    X 


674 


INDEX 


Erw,  218-9,  218,  n.  I 
Estates, 

change      from      lordships      to, 
440-52 

formation    and    continuity    of, 

437-440 

smallness  of,  in  Wales,  449-50 
Etifed,  222 
Excerpta  quaedam  de  libro  Davidis, 

177,  n.  2 
Exchequer,  Court  of, 

proceedings   of  Welsh  tenants 
in,  413-7 
Expeditions  into  Wales  of 

Edward  I.,  ^35,  340 

Harold,  17 1-3 

Henry  I.,  290.  302 

Henry  H.,  3C9,  311,  315 

Henry  IH.,  319,   320,  323,  324, 

325 
John,  316 
William  I.,  273 
William  H.,  284-5,  286-7 
Extent 

of  Cidweli,  423 
of  St.  David's,  425 


Farmers,  579-80 
Farmhouses,  570-77 
Flemings,  27-30 
Fosterage,  207 
French,  270 
Fynwy,  Sir,  Int.  xv. 


Galanas,  226,  227-34 
amount  of,  229-30 
assessment  of,  230-1 
division  of,  231-2 
procedure  as  to,  232-3 
spear-penny,  230 
Galatic  language,  4 
Gavael.  200,  n.  i,  218-9 
Glamorganshire,  Int.  xvi. 
Gloucestershire,  274,  280 
Goidelic  language,  1-4,  532 
Goidels,  1-8,  83,  120 
Gortatlea,  inscription  at,  48 


Gosgord",  204 

Great  progress  of  the  king,  204 

Guests,  250 

Gwadol,  209 

Gweision  by  chain,  206 

Gwely,  195,  220 

Gwent,  134-6,  275 

Gwentian  ISrut,  126,  n.  i 

Gwlad,  190 

Gwledig,  106,  108-9,  119 

Gwrda :  see  Uchehvr 

Gwrthdrych,  203,  /^.  n.  3 

Gwyned,  119,  134,  150-1 
laws  of,  1 80- 1 
over-lordship  of,  135 
special  position  of,  306-7 


H 


Habits  of  the  Welsh, 

at  present,  579-90 

in  earlier  times,  251-2 
Harper,  514,  n.  i 
Havod-dy,  248 
Heir,  222 
Hen-dref,  248 
Hereford,  108-9,  274 
History  of  Wales  :  see  Authorities 
Homage  :  see  Submission 
Hospitality,  250 
Household,  king's,  197 — 202 
Household,  Welsh.  250 
Houses  of  the  Welsh, 

early,  199-200 

labourers',  577-79 

modern,  570-77 
Howel  Da, 

assembly  at  Ty  Gwyn,  179,  18 1 

dispute  with  Morgan  Hen,  153-5 

laws  of,  155  el  seq. 

visit  to  Rome,  18 1-4 

visits  to  the  English  court,  153 
Hundreds,  Int.  xvii.,  357,  377 
Husband :  see  Marriage 


Ictis,  78 

Immorality,  581-6 

Infant,  status  of  male.  205-8 
status  of  female,  20:)- 10 
cyvarwys,  206,  ib.  n.  2 


I 


INDEX 


675 


Inscriptions  at  or  near  to 

Ballintaggart,  57 

Bere,  47 

Castle  Dwyran,  98,  n.  i 

Clydai,  17 

Colchester,  46,  62-64 

Corkaguiny,  52,  58 

Dunball,  47 

Dunlo,  18 

Dunmore  Head,  57-8 

Gortatlea,  48 

Helston,  17 

Kilkenny  Museum,  65 

Lanfaglan,  17 

Newton,  17 

Omagh,  18 

Shetlands,  64 

St.  Vigeans,  16 

Valentia,  64 

Ventry's  (Lord)  Residence,  57 

Winsford  Hill,  47 

in  CO.  Waterford,  52 

Ogam,  2,  id.  n.  2,  65 
Instruments  of  husbandry,  249 

of  music,  254 

Roman,  2 
Intermediate  education,  487-8, 492 
Interregnum  in  Gwyned,  159,  n.  3, 

160 
Invasions  of  Wales :  see  Expeditions 
Ireland,  settlements  of  Celts  in,  85 
Irish,  30 


J 

John's  expedition  into  Wales,  316 

relations  with  ILewelyn   Fawr, 
316-7 
Judges,  in  early  times,  241-245 

of    the    Great    Sessions,    377, 
391-2 

English,  in  Wales,  392 
Judicial  procedure,  241-45   ' 
Justice,  Chief, 

under  ancient  Welsh  system, 239 

of  Chester,  277 
Justices  of  the  Peace,  378-9 


K 

Kennadlawg,  battle  of,  309 
Keredigion  :  see  Ceredigion 
Kin,  nearest  of,  37 


Kindred  :  see  Cenedl 

King, 

early,  107-9,  120-1,  135-40 
gosgord  of,  204 
household  of,  197-201 
near  relations  of,  203-4 
progress  of,  204 

Kingship, 

the  Cymric,  147 


Lagana,  250,  n.  i 
Land :  see  Tir 
Landed  gentry,  448-52 
Landlord  and  tenant,  433-7 
Languages, 
Armoric,  2 
Brythonic,  i 
Cornish,  2.  22 

Cymric  :  sec  Welsh  Language 
English,  30 
Galatic,  4 
Goidelic,  i,  2-4 
Manx,  2 

Welsh  :  see  Welsh  Language 
Laws,  Welsh, 

Altera   sinodus    luci  Victoriae, 

177,  n.  2 
Ancient    Laws   and    Institutes, 

180,  id.  n.  3 
assembly  at  Ty  Gwyn,  179,  181 
Blegywryd's  verses,  183 
Canones  Wallici,  177,  n.  2 
character  of  the,  185-8 
Excerpta     quaedam     de     libro 

Davidis,  177,  n.  2 
Hen  Lyfr  y  Ty  Gwyn,  179,  181 
Howel  Da's  visit  to   Rome  in 

connection  with  the,  181 -4 
Latin  versions  of,  181  :  see  App. 

D. 
MSS.  of  the,  176,  181 
origin  of,  186-8 
Prefatio   Gildae   de   penitentia 

177,  n.  2 
Sinodus  Aquilonis    Britanniae, 

177,  n.  2 
Triads    of  Dyfnwal  ISIoelmud, 

184-5 
Legal  profession,  392-4 
Liber  Landavensis,  128,  n.  3 
Life  of  the  Welsh  farmer.   579-80, 
587-8,  595-608 


576 


INDEX. 


Lordships,  Int.  xviii  ,  304-5,  409 
Lords    Marchers,    Int.   xviii.,    304, 
356-61,  370,  372,  382.  438-40 


K. 


ILadrad,  226,  234-7 

definitions  of  wrongs,  as  to  da. 

235 
legal  prosecution  for  theft,  236 

BL,yfr  prawf,  226 

Lys,  cyvreithiau  y,  197 

officers  of  the,  197-8 

And  see  Court  and  King: 


M 

Mabinogi 

of  Math,  37 
Madog's  career,  294-9 
Maenol,  218-9,  218,  n.  2 
Maer,  190 
Manx  language,  2 
Marriage,  Cymric, 

a  contract,  210 

agwedi,  211,  213 

argyvreu,  209,  213 

conflict  with  Church  as  to,  210, 
212 

cowyit,  212,  n.  I 

dower  of  wife,  253 

how  made,  211 

separation   or  divorce,    condi- 
tions of,  213-4 
Maxen's  Dream.  43 
Meals  of  the  Welsh,  250 
^Measurement  of  the  island,  130-4 
INIechain,  battle  in,  269 
Mechniaeth,  225 
Mercia,  division  of,  149-50 

Earls  of,  163 

L^dv  of,  i>o 

relations  of  Gruffydab  ILewelyn 
with,  165 
Migration  of  tribes,  3-7,  9-12 

of  Cuneda,  119-21,  120,  n.  2 
Morgannwg,  Int.  xvi.,  154,  278-81 
Mormonism,    in     relation    to     the 

Welsh,  595-6 
MSS    of   Laws,    176,   181  :    see  Au- 
thorities 
Museum,  claim  for  a  Welsh,  536-7 
Music,  254 
Musical  instruments,  254 


N 
Nawd,  238 

Near  relations  of  the  King,  203-4 
Newspapers,  Welsh,  608-9 
Nonconformity  in  Wales, 

beginning  of,  462 

characteristics  of,  589 

results  of,  473-7 

statistics  as  to,  453-8 

the  great  revival,  469-70,  473 
Normal  colleges  or  schools,  486 
Norman  Conquest  of  Wales, 

its  nature,  261-69 

its   results  as   to   land   tenure, 
504-6.  326-7,  396-406 
Normans,  27,  35 


O 


O  ach  ac  edryu,  plaint  by,  244 

Oaths,  244-5 

Offa's  Dyke,  140- 1 

Office,  braint  of,  217-8 

Ogam,  2,  2,  n.  2,  65 

Ordeals,  245 

Overlordship  of  Gwyned,  13; 


Parishes,  Welsh,  Int.  xvii. 
Parliamentary  representation,  374-5 
Peace  of  Wedmore,  149  :  see  Treaty 
Pedigree, 

importance  of,  257 

of  Morcant,  132,  n.  i 

of  Uwain   ab    Howel  Da,    138, 
n.  2 
Penkenedl.  192-3 
Penteuiu,  193 

I'eriodicals,  Welsh,  533-35,  608 
Person,  difterent  classes  of,  191 -2 
Personal  habits  of  Welsh,  251 
Picts,  14-23,  34 
Plaint  by  dadenhud,  244 

kin  and  reckoning,  ib. 
Poetry.  Welsh.  246-7,254:  .^tv  Bard 

and  Eistedfod 
Population,  Int.  xviii. -xxii. 

Welsh-speaking.  543-50 
Powys,  291-303 

Preachers,  Welsh,  472-3,  477,  n.  i 
Prefatio  Gildae  de  penitentia,  177, 

n.  2 


4 


I 


INDEX. 


677 


Prince  :  se^  Tywysog 
Priodolion  Leoed",  199-201 

Progfress  :  see  Kin^ 
Proof  Book,  226,647 
Pwn  Gwdyc,  battle  of,  272 

Q 

Quarter  Sessions,  379 

Queen's  Court  or  Household,  198 

Quit-rents,  403-4 

R 

Races, 

Aboriginal,  Int.  xxiv.,  11-14,  36, 
61,  120 

Brythons,    1-8,   10,  35,  36,  86, 
120 

Celts,  I,  4-5,  61 

Cymry,  26,  117,  119 

Danes,  27 

English,  30-1 

Flemings,  28-30 

Goidels,  1-8,  83,  120 

Irish,  30 

Normans,  27,  35 

OvoKovuroi,  ib. 

Picts,  14-23,  34 

Romans,  27 

Scandinavians,  27,  31,  35 

Ultonian,  87-8 
Randir,  218 
Reading-rooms,  601-8 
Real  contracts,  225 
Reception  into  the  cenedl,  205 
Recovery  of  da,  235 
Retinue  of  the  king,  204 
Revival,  591 

the  great,  471 -47 5 

its  results,  475-6 
Rhaith,  205,  n.  i 
Rhudlan,  statute  of,  350-6 
Rig  Domna,  203,  n.  3 
Roman  administration,  103-5 

officers,  ib. 
Romans,  27 


Saint  David's  College,  489 
Sale  of  goods,  225 
of  land,  222-3 
Saraad,  228 
Saraad  of  the  king  of  Aberffraw,  229 


Saunders'  Visitation  of  Bmgor,  464 
Scandinavians,  27,  31,  35 
Schools, 

circulating,  481-2 

elementary,  485-6,  529 

grammar,  479 

intermediate,  487-8 

normal,  486 

Sunday,  482,  507-8 
Seiet,  589 

Sein  Henyd,  247,  n.  i 
Separation   of  husband  and   wife, 

213-4 
Sessions, 

Court    of    Great,    377-9,    383, 
386-392 

Quarter,  379 
Sinodus  Aquilonis  Britannige,   177, 

n.  2 
Society,  Welsh  mediaeval,  246 
Son  :  see  Infant 
Spear-penny,  230 
Statute  of  Rhudlan,  350-6,  400 
Statutes:    26  Henry  VII.   cc.  4,  5, 
6,  II,  12. ..367-8 

27  Henry  VIII.  c.  26,  368-75 

34  &    35    Henry  VIII.    c.    26, 

374-383 

I  Wm.   &   Mary,  sess.   i.  c.  2 

386 

II  Geo.    IV.    &    I    Wm.    IV. 
c.  70,  389-90 

Strata  Florida,   meeting  of  Welsh 

vassals  at,  321 
Submission  of  Welsh  princes  to 

.Elfred,  145-6,  148 

^Ethelstan,  1 49-1 51 

Eadgar,  159 

Eadward  the  Elder,  149-51 

Ecgbryht,  141 

Edward  I.,  336 

Harold,  173,  306 

Henry  I.,  295.  303 

Henry  II..  310.  313.  314-5 

Henry  III.,  318-9,  321-2,   325, 

332.  335-7 
John,  315,  319 
Succession  :  sec  Descent 
Swansea,  247,  n.  2 


Taeog,  191,  id.  n.  i,  214  ^z  set/ 
Tan,  226,  237-8 
Tanaist,  203,  ib.  n.  3 


678 


INDEX. 


Teisbanteulu,  193 

Tenant  of  Crown  lands,  418-23 

from  year  to  year,  429-32,  437 

in  South  Wales,  423-29 
Terms  for  judicial  proceedings,  242 
Theological  colleges,  483,  n.  i 
Tir  cyfrif,  222-25 

dawn-bwyd  from,  224,  n.  i 

duties  of  tenants  of,  223-4 

succession  on  death  of,  225 
Tir  gwelyawg,  220-1 

alienation  of,  222-3 

ebediw,  221 

etifed,  222 

gwestva  from,  220 

succession  on  death  to,  221-2 

tunc  pound,  221 
Towns,  163.  247,  id.  n.  2 
Treaty  of 

Alnet,  323 

Conway,  335-6 

Montgomery,  332 

Woodstock,  325 
Triads  of  Dyfnwal  Moelmud,  184-5 
Trial,  method  of,  242-4 
Tribal  system,  186,  188-93,  349-402 
Tribes,  distribution  of  Celtic, 

in  Britain,  1111-6 

on  Continent,  5 

migrations  of,  3-7,  9-12 
Tydyn,  193,  id.  n.  4,  218 
Ty  Gwyn,  assembly  at,  647 
Tywysog,  134 


U 

Uchelwr,  191,  195,  20^  etseg. 
Ultonian  race,  87-8 
I'niversity  of  Wales, 

charter  of,  498-9 

colleges  of  the,  493-4 

Cromwell   and   Baxter's  corre- 
spondence as  to,  480 


University  of  Wales, 

Glyndwr's  project,  469 
modern  movement  for  a,  489- 

91.  494-500 
opposition  in  Parliament  to  the. 

498-500 
St.  David's  College,  489 


W 

Wales, 

divisions  of,  Int.  xv.-xviii. 

its  physical  aspect,  247 
See      cantref,    counties,    cymwd, 
division,  hundred,  lordships, 
parishes 
Warfare,  methods  of  Welsh,  252-4 
Weapons,  253,  ib.  n.  i 
Wedmore,  peace  of,  149 
Wele,  397 
Welsh  books,  530-6 

statistics  as  to,  530,  533 
Welsh  language, 

its  relation  to  kindred  languages, 
502-3 

its  history,  503-11,  513-6 

its  prospects,  5 10- 11 
Wife  :  see  Marriage 
Witenagemot,  attendance  of  Welsh 

princes  at,  152-3,  153,  n.  2,  156 
Wotton's    Leges    Wallicae,   179-80, 

180,  n.  I 


Y 

Ynad  ILys,  239 
Yokes,  249 

Ystrad  Clud,  149,  n.  2 
Ystrad  Towi,  284 


BRADBURY,    AGNEW,    &    CO.    LD.,    PRINTERS,    LONDON    AND   TONBRIDGE. 


/ 


J! 


Rhys,  J.  -  "Hie  Welsh  people. 


PONTIFICAL   INSTITUTE 

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59   QUEENS   PARK 

TORONTO  5.  Canada 


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