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This is a study of the landed gentry of north Wales from the Edwardian conquest in the thirteenth century to the incorporation of Wales in the Tudor state in the sixteenth. The limitation of the discussion to north Wales is deliberate; there has often been a tendency to treat Wales as a single region, but it is important to stress that, like any other country, it is itself made up of regions and that a uniformity based on generalisation cannot be imposed. This book describes the development of the gentry in one part of Wales from an earlier social structure and an earlier pattern of land tenure, and how the gentry came to rule their localities. There have been a number of studies of the medieval English gentry, usually based on individual counties, but the emphasis in a Welsh study is not necessarily the same as that in one relating to England. The rich corpus of medieval poetry addressed to the leaders of native society and the wealth of genealogical material and its potential are two examples of this difference in emphasis.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786831378 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Wales Press |
| Publication date: | 10/12/2017 |
| Series: | Studies in Welsh History |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 745 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
WHO WERE THE GENTRY?
This is a study of those families which came to be the leaders of native society in north Wales in the later Middle Ages. The period covered is that between the Edwardian conquest of Gwynedd, finalised in 1282-3, and the coming of the Tudor dynasty in 1485, followed by the first Act of Union of 1536. These were the families which were to form that ruling class which was to retain its local power and its influence until the nineteenth century, when its dominance was brought to an end by a combination of radical politics, religious nonconformity and agricultural depression. The rise of such families stemmed especially from three factors: the dominance of particular lineages in their communities, the holding of administrative offices, first under native rulers and then under the Crown or marcher lords, and the acquisition of land, as a market developed from the fourteenth century onwards. This chapter considers the concept of the community and its leadership; the second examines the tenure of office, and the third the development of landed estates. Subsequent chapters will discuss the political background, marriages, lifestyles and social values, cultural patronage and the gentry in the century after the Glyn Dwr revolt.
The society from which the medieval Welsh gentry sprang was, like most contemporary societies, hierarchic; it has been described as 'a hierarchical society ruled by warrior freemen'. It had probably once consisted of an unfree majority which underlay a smaller free element but by the fourteenth century the unfree were almost certainly outnumbered by the free. Freedom stemmed from blood, birth and descent, rather than from wealth and land. It was descent which gave the free individual his place in society, and the principle operated on two levels. The larger lineage or kindred group was descended from a common ancestor many generations back, but for more practical purposes the significant grouping was the four-generation agnatic kindred descended from a common great-grandfather. Membership of this group had extensive implications under Welsh law, including the liability to pay or to receive compensation in cases of homicide and the right to inherit shares in the hereditary lands of the kindred. The significance of the kindred explains the importance of genealogy in Wales, a feature often mocked over the centuries by English commentators, but one for which there were very sound practical and social reasons. An awareness of genealogy enabled individuals to realise exactly who they were and how they fitted into the kindred. This was further clarified by the Welsh system of nomenclature which involved the use of the patronymic. An individual's name indicated exactly who he was and how he had inherited his rights in the hereditary lands of the kindred; the name was both pedigree and title deed.
Wales consisted of a number of kingdoms, some more important than others but each with its own dynasty. Each kingdom, or gwlad, was made up of cantrefs or commotes. By the thirteenth century the northern kingdom of Gwynedd had emerged as the most powerful and it was the ruler of Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, who was recognised by the English Crown as prince of Wales in the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267. The other Welsh rulers would do homage to him as their overlord and he in turn would do homage to the king of England for the principality of Wales. This obviously had an impact on the other native rulers who had previously done homage directly to the Crown and it was not particularly to the taste of the king, Henry III, who had been determined not to permit it. But the Montgomery settlement, brokered by the papal legate, was part of a general reconciliation after a civil war. The other rulers, described in more than one treaty as the barons of Wales, were now the tenants-in-chief of the prince and formed what was, in effect, a native Welsh aristocracy. Few of them, however, survived the conquest of 1282-3 and one dynasty, the rulers of Powys Wenwynwyn, became marcher lords in their own right. Their lordship passed by marriage to the Shropshire family of Charlton following the death of the last native lord, Gruffudd de la Pole, in 1309. The other survivors were known as Welsh barons, holding of the prince by a tenure called Welsh barony or pennaeth. The commote of Edeirnion in the county of Merioneth was held in its entirety by a group of such lords, all descended from Owain Brogyntyn, one of the sons of Madog ap Maredudd of Powys, as was the adjacent commote of Dinmael in the lordship of Denbigh, which was similar to Edeirnion in its relationship to the lord's administration. Glyndyfrdwy in Merioneth, along with the small marcher lordship of Cynllaith Owain on the other side of the Berwyn range, was also held by a remnant of the Powys Fadog dynasty which would later produce Owain Glyn Dwr. In the southern principality part of the Deheubarth dynasty retained a fragment of its ancestral lands in Cardiganshire and an even smaller territory was in the hands of the lineage of Ednyfed Fychan. The commote of Mawddwy remained in the possession of a branch of the dynasty of Powys Wenwynwyn until the early fifteenth century. This handful of lords formed the native Welsh aristocracy; they sometimes saw military service in the fourteenth century but they were of little account. Only the Edeirnion and Dinmael lords were still there in 1536. Wales, divided between the English Crown and various marcher lords after 1282, no longer had any place for an aristocracy of its own although some leaders of the native community did serve and hold office in the march; here many lords were non-resident English magnates who might often be dependent on local notables to manage their lordships for them. The remains of the native nobility were really irrelevant and it was to be the gentry or squirearchy who mattered.
North Wales comprised the whole of the kingdom of Gwynedd, divided by the Conwy river between Gwynedd Uwch Conwy (above the Conwy) to the west and Gwynedd Is Conwy (below the Conwy) to the east. Under the terms of the Statute of Wales of 1284 Gwynedd Uwch Conwy became the three counties of Anglesey, Caernarfon and Merioneth, all of which were made up of existing commotes or cantrefs. The county of Flint was, for administrative purposes, part of the earldom of Chester. The greater part of the county consisted of the cantref of Tegeingl or Englefield, originally part of Gwynedd Is Conwy but often a bone of contention between Gwynedd and Cheshire; at the time of Domesday Book in 1086 it was part of the latter. There were two detached portions of the county, Hope or Hopedale and Maelor Saesneg, both formerly parts of Powys Fadog, and within the bounds of the later county there were also two small marcher lordships, Mold and Hawarden, which became part of the county in 1536. North Wales included four other marcher lordships, created by Edward I after the conquest of 1282 in settlement of various political and military debts. Two of these, Denbigh and Dyffryn Clwyd or Ruthin, had been in Gwynedd Is Conwy and the other two, Bromfield and Yale, and Chirkland, were made up of commotes and cantrefs which had been in Powys Fadog or northern Powys.
Some free lineages could be very large. In northern Powys in the north-east of Wales the massive Tudur Trefor lineage accounts for no fewer than fifty-two pages in Bartrum's Welsh Genealogies 300-1400. The poet-genealogists of the Tudor period reduced the lineages in the two parts of Gwynedd to the concept of the Fifteen Noble Tribes of Gwynedd, each with its territory. The earliest use of the term is usually reckoned to have been in 1492 and the poets, with their mania for classification, allotted armorial bearings to those lineages which had rarely obtained the seal of approval of the heralds (although they were subsequently to form part of many family coats of arms). As well as the Fifteen Noble Tribes they devised the Five Royal Tribes of Wales which comprised the leading royal houses. These were the lineages of Gruffudd ap Cynan, Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, Rhys ap Tewdwr, Iestyn ap Gwrgant and Elystan Glodrydd, but only the first two concern us. Not all the lineages to which the gentry of north Wales belonged were counted among the Noble or the Royal Tribes. Those in the north-east in the lands which had been part of Powys Fadog were not; this ruled out not only the house of Tudur Trefor but also various other lineages, such as those of Sandde Hardd, Llywarch Holbwrch and Llywelyn Eurdorchog. Nor did all the Gwynedd lineages fit into the Procrustean bed of the tribes. Such lineages as those of Gwalchmai and Carwed in Anglesey, Mabon Glochydd in Caernarfonshire and Iarddur in both counties made a substantial contribution to the rise of the gentry without belonging to the magic circle, but it is the tribes that provide a framework for the study of those leaders of the native Welsh community who can really be described as the Welsh political nation.
Land could be free or unfree. Free or hereditary land was vested in the kindred, in this case the four-generation agnatic group. The individual's share could not be sold or alienated and rights were divided equally between all the sons. There was no concept of legitimacy as the term was generally understood; legitimacy and the right to a share of the inheritance depended on the acceptance and recognition of a son by his father rather than on birth in wedlock. If there were no sons the land went to the next heirs in the four-generation group and if there were no heirs at all it went back into the common stock. The four-generation group which held free hereditary land was known in some regions as the gwely and in others as the gafael; the same name was applied to both the kindred group and its holding and the eponym seems usually to have flourished round about the year 1200. The size of the gwely or gafael itself and of individual shares could vary enormously, depending on the fertility of successive generations, and the holdings of individuals could be coherent or scattered. The gafael was similar to the gwely but usually smaller; it was the usual pattern in Flintshire, Hopedale, Chirkland, Edeirnion, northern Merioneth and northern Caernarfonshire and the Conwy valley, while the two institutions existed side by side in the five commotes of the lordship of Denbigh. The members of gwelyau or gafaelion had owed food renders to the king or the prince for the maintenance of an itinerant court. By the fourteenth century these renders had been commuted to cash rents; indeed, in Gwynedd commutation had begun under the thirteenth-century princes as their need for ready cash to meet the demands of their expanding principality increased. The wealth of free tenants was capable of almost infinite variation; freedom did not necessarily mean wealth and some free tenants might be very poor. In England the minimum annual landed income necessary for a gentleman was usually reckoned to have been between five and ten pounds.
The local tenurial structure could be complex. A single gwely could be coterminous with a township as was Gwely Goronwy Foel in Trefollwyn in the Anglesey commote of Menai, held by two heirs, presumably descended from Goronwy Foel. On the other hand, the Anglesey township of Llysdulas in the commote of Twrcelyn was held in 1352 by seven gwelyau of the Carwed lineage and the complexity which could stem from this is shown in a crown rental drawn up in 1549. In the commote of Cafflogion in Llyn at the end of the thirteenth century thirteen gwelyau were scattered over various free townships, each one's share of the limited amount of arable land being made up of strips in open fields. The township of Dinlle in Uwch Gwyrfai in Caernarfonshire was shared by seven free gwelyau of the Cilmin Troed Du lineage, and from one of these, Gwely Wyrion Ystrwyth, came the Glynllifon family, one of the dominant houses in the county. But the more detailed Survey of Denbigh of 1334 can illustrate a far more complicated situation. Gwely Rhys ab Edryd covered five townships and two hamlets in the Abergele area and it consisted of thirty-nine heirs with rights over a total of 1,036 acres. They were the only gwely in three of these townships but elsewhere they had to share with others; in Abergele itself the heirs of Rhys ab Edryd held 689 acres out of a total of 2,908. Here, twenty-two members of the gwely held lands in open fields intermingled with those of 121 members of three other related kindreds and 112 members of two other stocks divided into eighteen free kindreds. Some grants of bond townships made by the thirteenth-century princes of Gwynedd included the delegation of authority over the bondmen and the right to hold courts. These were mainly made to the descendants of Ednyfed Fychan, and most of them were in Anglesey. The grants also involved military service and there were other examples in the cantref of Rhos, part of the lordship of Denbigh after 1282. Some of these tenants did not owe suit of court or rents, among them being the Anglesey townships of Penhwnllys and Twrgarw held by the descendants of Tudur ap Madog of the Iarddur lineage; this was again probably the consequence of grants by one of the princes as rewards for good service.
The unfree element in Welsh society resembled the bondmen, villeins or serfs who existed in most other contemporary societies. They would once have formed a majority of the population but this might no longer have been the case by the end of the thirteenth century, by which time there was no longer any need for their services. This form of social organisation had derived from large arable estates which had needed a substantial occasional labour force at such times as the harvest, but direct exploitation was in decline after the conquest. Each commote had a court and a demesne township, or maerdref, inhabited by bondmen who provided food for the lord's court and for his retinue. The bondman was tied to the soil; he could not leave without the lord's consent, nor could he take holy orders or become a smith or a poet without permission, since these occupations all conferred freedom. Neither could he marry or make a will without his lord's agreement. He could be bought or sold, and many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century deeds record such transactions. He has been described as 'a man without ancestry'; whereas the status of a free man or uchelwr depended on his descent, it did not matter who a bondman's ancestors were. He owed a heavier burden of dues and services than his free counterpart; these might comprise food renders for the upkeep of the prince or lord and his court, labour services on the court buildings and mills, and carrying and agricultural services. By the fourteenth century most of these had been commuted to cash payments but they were greater than those due from the free. In the unfree Gwely Adda Hen in the township of Brynodol in Llyn an annual rent of £2 2s. 8d was due from the tenants and they also owed labour services on the buildings of the prince's court of Nefyn, suit to the prince's mill and carrying services for him from Nefyn to Caernarfon, Cricieth or Pwllheli. In 1284 tenants in the bond township of Tre Feibion Meurig in the commote of Llifon in Anglesey owed corn, oatmeal, billeting for 520 men and eighty horses, pannage and hens.
Tenurial organisation elsewhere was based on the gwely or the gafael. The most onerous form of bond tenure was that known as tir cyfrif in which the entire community owed a fixed burden of renders and services divided equally among all adult males. If only one remained in the township he was responsible for the whole burden. In the event of a mixed marriage the free partner might forfeit his or her inherited land and any offspring of the marriage would be unfree. By the fourteenth century there was little economic justification for bond status and its main function was to raise revenue. The sale of a bondman, recorded in so many deeds, could in no way be seen as a form of slavery. What was sold was authority over the unfree tenant, the right to his labour and the land on which his holding was situated. Every bondman had a holding where he produced food for himself and his family and although this was held at the will of his lord his right to it was to some degree protected. Bondmen could become free; they could purchase their freedom and in 1355 the bishop of St Asaph enfranchised an entire bond gwely on his lands at Bryngwyn in Flintshire. Bond tenants might also stand up for their rights as they did at Penrhosllugwy in Anglesey between 1284 and the 1320s; their protest against an unfair extent went as far as parliament and they eventually won their case.
This division between free and unfree was the main social dividing line but it did not describe the whole of society. Immigrants from other lordships paid a small annual rent to the prince or the marcher lord for the right to reside; these were known as avowry tenants and as vacant land came on the market following the Black Death some succeeded in building up landed estates. There were craftsmen who probably combined the exercise of their crafts with smallholdings. And there were those who had moved over the border from England; in the lordship of Denbigh for example, there were incomers from the estates of the first lord, the earl of Lincoln, in northern England. There was a good deal of mutual suspicion and hostility but there was extensive intermarriage, so much so that the descendants of English settlers like the Salusburies in the lordship of Denbigh and the Bulkeleys in Anglesey might often find their way into the ranks of the native gentry. Relationships here could be complicated; this was far from being a simple agrarian society.
(Continues…)
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