The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: The Structure and Personnel of Government: South Wales 1277-1536

PART I.

The Government of South Wales

1. THE ROYAL COUNTIES

The royal counties of Carmarthen and Cardigan in the later middle ages had a unity derived in part from their geography but more powerfully from their history. Norman and English invaders had been a common sight in the area ever since about 1100: Roger de Montgomery, clambering through the mountains of mid-Wales, built a castle at the mouth of the Teifi (Cardigan) in 1093, and a decade later a new fortress (Carmarthen) was under construction near the old Roman station of Maridunum. In time, the lords of Carmarthen and Cardigan came to dominate the countryside of the adjacent Welsh commotes, and possession of these enclaves later became the foundation for a wider suzerainty over Ystrad Tywi and Ceredigion.

The Norman Conquest of Ceredigion commote by commote seems to have been accomplished in classic feudal fashion, the stronghold at Cardigan carrying with it lordship over the commotes that lay between the Dyfi and the Teifi.1 Despite retaliation by the Welsh, particularly under that vengeful dynast, the Lord Rhys (d.1197), the Crown retained its overlordship into the thirteenth century, even though the castle and lordship of Cardigan were handed over to the earl of Pembroke. In 1240, as a result of the treaty sealed at Gloucester in May, the Welsh lords performed homage to Henry III, and in the following year Cardigan, described somewhat earlier as ‘the lock and stay of all Wales’ by an over-enthusiastic Welsh chronicler, was resumed by the king on the earl of Pembroke’s death. It was now patently the core of a royal comitatus which corresponded in its essentials with the old Welsh province of Ceredigion.2 Across the Teifi, royal claims were being announced which were just as wide and extended over the commotes of Cantrefmawr. In 1240 Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg of Dryslwyn, that ‘brave, powerful man’, did homage to King Henry for all the lands he held in chief ‘of the honor of Carmarthen’, while a year later Carmarthen and its surrounding belt of commotes (Derllys, Widigada and Elfed) were also seized when the earl of Pembroke died.3 The king’s intention was evidently to substantiate these claims to suzerainty in old Deheubarth, and the action of 1240–41 at once pared the power of the Marshal earls of Pembroke and placed the Welsh lords of Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi under an expressly feudal obligation to the Crown, to be discharged at Carmarthen or Cardigan. The occasion could not have been more propitious, for the death of Llywelyn the Great pricked the self-confidence of his principality of Gwynedd. King Henry thereupon took steps to make his rights and prerogatives explicit, and in March 1242 an enquiry was launched into the lands of his tenants-in-chief, the ‘metes and bounds of counties’, and his rights generally in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire.4 In the ensuing years the Welsh lords were reconciled one by one to Henry’s determination to exert tighter control over south Wales. In February 1246 Maredudd ap Rhys formally quitclaimed to him the four commotes ‘which he holds and which belong to the castellany of Kardigan’; later in the year Maelgwn Fychan, grandson of the Lord Rhys, did homage and swore fealty to the king for the commotes of Genau’r Glyn and Iscoed Uwch Hirwern.5 And in 1248 Rhys Fychan, lord of Dinefwr, was prepared to display in the king’s county court of Carmarthen the vassalage he had sworn two years earlier.6 The treaty of Woodstock in the previous year formally re-emphasised Henry’s direct lordship over all the Welsh lords of Wales and his right to their homage and fealty.

The king did not retain this direct control over his dominion in south Wales for long after his feudal claims had been enforced. He deputed the lordships of Carmarthen and Cardigan, together with the homage and fealty of their tenants, to his two sons in turn: in 1254 to Edward (aged fifteen) and his heirs as kings of England, and then in 1265 to Edmund (aged ten).7 It was during Edmund’s rule that his father’s work was all but destroyed. The claim that possession of Carmarthen and Cardigan implied suzerainty over Ystrad Tywi and Ceredigion proved fragile when Llywelyn the Last, already prince of Gwynedd, forged a wider principality for himself, capitalising on the bitter political divisions in England in the 1260s. In September 1267 he was able to secure from Henry III in the treaty of Montgomery unequivocal recognition of a principality of Wales to which the Welsh lords south of the Dyfi owed allegiance. Only Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg (d.1271), lord of Dryslwyn, held aloof after years of personal animus towards Prince Llywelyn; his allegiance was reserved to King Henry in 1267, but even this was purchased by the new prince for 5,000 marks three years later.8 The English achievement of the 1240s had been shattered; it was Edward I’s task to reassemble it.

When Llywelyn the Last made war on Edward I in 1277, the king responded by gnawing away at his enlarged principality piece by piece; in particular, he deprived Llywelyn of those commotes in south Wales ruled by his Welsh vassals. By mid-February 1277 the countryside between Carmarthen and the Teifi valley had been subdued and negotiations in April led to the submission of the two Welsh lords of Cantrefmawr, Rhys ap Maredudd, lord of Dryslwyn and of the commotes of Mabudryd and Catheiniog, and Rhys Wyndod, lord of Dinefwr and of the commotes of Maenordeilo, Mallaen, Caeo and Mabelfyw. Even Gruffydd ap Maredudd ab Owain, who ruled Ceredigion south of the Ystwyth with his brother Cynan and young nephew, Llywelyn ab Owain, promised to come to terms.9 Rhys ap Maredudd was the first to seek an agreement with King Edward, for his family had never readily co-operated with the prince of Wales. For this reason, Edward was prepared to listen to his claim to the estates of his kinsman and rival in the Tywi valley, Rhys Wyndod, in return for homage and fealty and rights of passage for the royal armies through Rhys ap Maredudd’s territory. Hence, when Rhys Wyndod too gave up the struggle a fortnight later on 24 April 1277, he was not allowed to retain his entire inherited property: the commotes of Mallaen and Caeo and the castle of Dinefwr were restored to him, sure enough, but Maenordeilo and Mabelfyw may well have been transferred to Rhys ap Maredudd at this juncture, in partial fulfilment of the king’s undertaking earlier in the month. Rhys Wyndod was further stripped of power and possessions when, on 5 June, his ancestral fortress of Dinefwr was seized in the king’s name.10

Further north, Gruffydd and Cynan ap Maredudd and their nephew formally submitted themselves and their lordships to the English commander on 2 May; and at the same time they abjectly surrendered to Edward I all claim to the commotes of Mefenydd and Anhuniog, a not inconsiderable portion of their patrimony. Even Rhys Fychan ap Rhys ap Maelgwn, lord of Ceredigion north of the Ystwyth, was temporarily cowed.11 Thus, within a matter of months Prince Llywelyn’s feudal principality was fraying at its southern edges, where his direct overlordship was being replaced by that of the king himself. This was made graphic to all who saw Rhys ap Maredudd and Rhys Wyndod from Cantrefmawr and Gruffydd and Cynan ap Maredudd ab Owain from Ceredigion, ‘the greatest, strongest, and noblest by birth’ in south Wales, travelling under guard to submit to the king in person.12 Edward’s treatment of them was that of a stern and undoubted overlord: he kept them all waiting, Cynan and Rhys Wyndod were detained as hostages until October, and the young Llywelyn ab Owain was declared a royal ward while his estates (including the commote of Caerwedros) were taken into custody. On 1 July 1277 the four adult Welshmen, together with Rhys Fychan from northern Ceredigion, swore homage formally to King Edward at Worcester.13 Prince Llywelyn had been humiliated, and his feudal position south of the Dyfi had crumbled away.

Thus far, Edward I had been content to receive the homage and fealty of the Welsh lords of Cantrefmawr and Ceredigion; he had not appropriated their lordships to govern them directly. The only exception was the surrender of Mefenydd and Anhuniog in May 1277, and even these the Welsh lords probably hoped to recover after their own dutiful act of submission. The situation was dramatically changed on 7 August 1277, when Rhys Fychan fled without warning to Prince Llywelyn in Gwynedd, ‘for fear of his being seized by the English who were at Llanbadarn’. Rhys was transparently contravening the fealty he had so recently sworn to King Edward. The English army thereupon overran his commotes of Genau’r Glyn, Perfedd and Creuddyn, which were put in the charge of royal officials based at a new castle which rose on a headland at the mouth of the Rheidol, not far from Llanbadarn.14 The treaty of Conway, concluded between Edward and Llywelyn in November 1277, set the seal to the king’s victory: the personal homage of Rhys Fychan alone among Welsh lords in Wales was reserved to Llywelyn for life, although Rhys’s lordship was now firmly in Edward’s own hands.15

Two years later, this piecemeal and haphazard acquisition of territory in south Wales, which had to be administered by the king’s officials, was taken a step further when Edward persuaded his brother Edmund to transfer to him Carmarthen and Cardigan, in return for property in England.16 Thenceforward, the king could legitimately claim to be direct overlord of all Cantrefmawr and Ceredigion by virtue both of the forfeiture of Llywelyn’s principality outside Gwynedd and of his own feudal position as lord of Carmarthen and Cardigan.

North of the Teifi, the king’s vassals, Gruffydd, Cynan and their nephew, continued to enjoy lordship from Pennardd in the north to Iscoed in the south, but there was no doubting the reality of King Edward’s suzerainty.17 Gruffydd and Cynan resented having to attend the king’s county court at Cardigan after 1279, and they were indignant at the curtailment of their own laws and customs and at the requirement that their tenants plead before royal justices in certain circumstances.18 Close supervision by a sophisticated and well staffed royal administration at Cardigan and Llanbadarn proved profoundly irksome to Welsh lords who had recently experienced what must have been the lighter and more distant overlordship of Prince Llywelyn. Disenchantment made them restless to such a degree that they produced a provocative claim to be the true lords of Genau’r Glyn and Creuddyn (and possibly of Perfedd too). In April 1279 Gruffydd and Cynan had acknowledged that Rhys Fychan and his forebears had held these commotes, but a year later they blithely (and uncharitably) maintained that Rhys’s possession (and therefore King Edward’s) had been illegal and that Rhys, after all, was the bastard son of a prostitute.19

Although the royal agents in south Wales must have been aware of the tensions that existed, the sudden explosion of rebellion on 24 March 1282 certainly took the keeper of Llanbadarn castle completely by surprise. Three days earlier the Welsh had risen in the north-east, but the news had not yet filtered through to Llanbadarn, where a meeting of the king’s court was taking place. So unsuspecting was the custodian that he accepted an invitation to dine in the little town outside the walls of the new castle with Gruffydd ap Maredudd and the dispossessed and recently vilified Rhys Fychan. His seizure at dinner provoked a mass slaughter of the townsmen and the fall of the half-finished castle to Welsh insurgents. The whole of northern Ceredigion was recovered by Rhys Fychan, and Gruffydd seized his old commote of Mefenydd.20 This blatant flouting of their sworn allegiance earned both Gruffydd and Cynan ap Maredudd the sentence of forfeiture of their property. But southern Ceredigion was still in their hands at the end of July 1282, despite a formal grant of Mabwynion and Gwynionydd to the king’s sole ally among the Welsh lords, Rhys ap Maredudd, on 28 July.21 Not until the beginning of 1283 did Rhys Fychan and Cynan ap Maredudd surrender to the royal army; they again presented themselves before Edward I, who pardoned them on condition that they enter his service. Rhys Fychan did so to the king’s immediate profit, for he quickly turned on Gruffydd ap Maredudd and drove him to seek refuge at Prince David’s court in Gwynedd. Rhys ap Maredudd promptly overran southern Ceredigion.22 It was only when Prince David was betrayed in Snowdonia towards the end of June 1283 that Gruffydd and his nephew Llywelyn were induced to surrender with him; later still, Cynan ap Maredudd and Rhys Fychan, who must have swiftly renewed their Welsh allegiance, were captured and sent under guard to Bridgnorth castle (Salop) on 29 August. The only Welsh lord to secure his release and retain some at least of his estates was the youthful Llywelyn ab Owain, who may have been led astray by volatile uncles. In the Parliament which met in the autumn of 1283 Mabwynion and Gwynionydd, granted to the loyal Rhys ap Maredudd in July 1282, were resumed by the Crown ostensibly because Rhys had seized them before formal delivery had taken place; provided he would assist in the reinstatement of Llywelyn ab Owain, they would be returned to him.23 By the end of 1283, therefore, the whole of Ceredigion had been conquered; much of it lay secure in the king’s hands, the remainder in those of subservient vassals.

In Ystrad Tywi after 1277, both Rhys Wyndod of Dinefwr and his kinsman down river at Dryslwyn, Rhys ap Maredudd, suffered under the same irksome tutelage of royal officials that had annoyed Ceredigion’s lords. To Rhys Wyndod, who sought justice from the king in vain after six of his men had been slain, and who became enmeshed in a frustrating legal battle with John Giffard over the lordship of Llandovery, revolt seemed the only despairing solution by 1282.24 Rhys ap Maredudd, for all his early desertion to King Edward’s side in 1277, was equally outraged by his treatment at the hands of royal administrators, though he may have rated loyalty to the king, even under extreme provocation, more rewarding than rebellion. In June 1280 he was deprived of Maenordeilo, the commote in which the fortress of Dinefwr stood, but compensation was promised elsewhere. His greatest windfall came in the shape of Rhys Wyndod’s forfeited property in 1282. After Rhys ap Maredudd’s own rebellion in 1287, Cantrefmawr and the Cardiganshire commotes of Mabwynion and Gwynionydd were finally surrendered into the hands of Edward I’s officials.25

The administrative structure of late-medieval Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire reflects this turbulent story. The spectacle of the death of princes and of total conquest in north Wales in 1282–83 has attracted far more attention than the untidy, piece-meal acquisition of territory by the Crown over a longer period in the south. Moreover, the statute of Rhuddlan, with the scant regard it gave to Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, has proven an inviting gateway to the study of late-medieval government in north Wales.26 Despite the apparent application of the statute to Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, it is clear that in practice its provisions were never systematically implemented there. It is even doubtful if Edward I ever intended that they should be: the solitary reference to the two shires in the statute is incidental and inexplicit, and was even excluded from what appears to be a fragment of an earlier draft.27 In Sir Goronwy Edwards’s precise words, ‘the Statute of Wales . . . recognised the existence of two shires in south-west Wales’: as far as these shires are concerned it did little more.28 To study the organic growth of south Wales’s administration is, indeed, more complex and more difficult. But, to echo George Owen’s sentiment, ‘. . . feeling they remain as griefs forgotten and thought upon but of few, I have been so bold as to put the same . . . for others to view . . .’.

Well before 1277 the castles and towns of Carmarthen and Cardigan had dominated their immediate neighbourhood with its Welsh population; it was an area which came to be known as the ‘Welshry’ of each stronghold. At Carmarthen it embraced the commotes of Derllys, Widigada and Elfed, and even after the Edwardian Conquest of Cantrefmawr this area (with Derllys and Elfed amalgamated administratively) was known as comitatus Wallensium de Kaermerthin. The Englishry of Carmarthen naturally included the castle itself, the infant town beside it and the demesne lands appropriated to it.29 Although Rhys Wyndod of Dinefwr finally capitulated in 1282, Edward I granted some of his estates in Cantrefmawr to Rhys ap Maredudd of Dryslwyn; for the moment only Dinefwr castle and the commote of Maenordeilo were withheld and put in the custody of the king’s justiciar.30 It was Rhys’s own rebellion in 1287 which placed his considerable inheritance in Cantrefmawr, administered from Dryslwyn castle, at the king’s disposal. For the time being its unity was preserved and the commotes continued to be administered from Dryslwyn as a lordship or stewardship of their own; as such, on 24 September 1287 they were granted to Alan de Plucknet, who accounted directly to the Westminster Exchequer for their revenue.31 Only in July 1290, when the king’s justiciar in south Wales, Robert de Tibetot, received Rhys’s former castle and estates, was the independent existence of the stewardship of Cantrefmawr severely curtailed, although it continued to boast its own steward for two centuries to come.32 The English ‘county’ of Carmarthen was thereby enlarged to include six further commotes, the altera pars comitatus Anglicorum de Kaermerthin.33 If contemporaries were struck by the incongruity of attaching to Carmarthen commotes which were more distant and, doubtless, more Welsh than Widigada and Elfed, they did not record their feelings.

North of the Teifi the royal ‘county’ of the thirteenth century had consisted of Cardigan itself and the adjacent half-commote of Iscoed Is Hirwern. It is doubtful if a formal distinction between an Englishry and a Welshry was ever practicable in such a constricted environment, but the logic of government made it implicit in the administrative differences that survived to the end of the middle ages between Iscoed, with its Welsh court, customs and rents, and the castle, town and demesnes of Cardigan itself.34 The remainder of Cardiganshire fell to the Crown after 1277. In that year five commotes in Uwch Aeron were seized by Edward I and grouped about Llanbadarn as a stewardship; Is Aeron followed in 1282–83 and formed another stewardship based on Cardigan.35

The royal government of south Wales was therefore quite separate and in some respects markedly different from that of the north, but together they formed the king’s principality of Wales during the later middle ages: even in 1431–32 officials in the south were regarded as serving principatus Wallie in comitatu de Cardigan (and de Kermerdyn).36 In time, as the details of constitutional reality at the time of the Conquest were forgotten, the logic of geography and convenience of terminology dictated that the northern part of the king’s dominion should become known as ‘the principality of north Wales’ and the southern part as ‘the principality of south Wales’. This terminological separation may have happened in the Black Prince’s lifetime, but it became common parlance in the fifteenth century.37 Even the king’s seal for use in the local Exchequer in south Wales bore the legend pro principatu South Wal’ in Henry VI’s reign.38 The government at Westminster, the king’s Council, the prince of Wales and local clerks were all guilty of this usage at various times during the century. It was comparatively late in appearing in one of the most formal of all medieval writings, the parliamentary statute, but in 1495 the statute abrogating certain offices and leases of land in Wales was to apply ‘in the Principalite of South Wales’.39

This ‘principality of south Wales’ was administered directly by the king’s officials during the later middle ages, except for those periods when his eldest son was prince of Wales and governed the principality.40 Yet, within Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire there were several franchises whose lords, tenants-in-chief of the king as of his principality of Wales, enjoyed certain jurisdictional privileges. Each was required, along with his tenants, to attend the royal courts held at Carmarthen or Cardigan—the great and petty sessions, the English county court, and the courts of obligations and fresh force.41 But in the routine administration of these franchises royal officers played no part: rents from land, income from fairs and markets, fines from local courts, all accrued to the local lord, his officials accounting to him alone and not to the king’s justiciar or chamberlain of south Wales. Here the king acted as feudal overlord and not as direct lord. Only forfeiture, death or a minority could bestow on these royal representatives any internal authority in these territories.

In origin and character the franchises were of several kinds: those whose existence preceded Edward I’s wars and enshrined the customs of Welsh baronial tenure (tir pennaeth); those in the possession of parvenu immigrants rewarded by Edward I with land which was henceforward held by the English tenure of knight service; and those held by religious bodies, secular and regular. In Cardiganshire the half-commotes of Iscoed Uwch Hirwern and Gwynionydd Is Cerdyn, together with a small estate at ‘Starrok’ in Mabwynion, remained in the possession of a line of Welsh barons descended from the Lord Rhys.42 Llywelyn ab Owain, whose youth may have been his salvation in 1277–82, was allowed this attenuated lordship in return for his fealty and service: the former was expressed in an ebediw or relief of 1oos. payable on the death of each lord of the estate, and the latter included suit at the Cardigan county court and military service in Wales whenever the king should require it.43 Llywelyn was succeeded in 1308 by his two sons, Owain and Thomas, who divided the inheritance in hallowed Welsh fashion. Complementing the obligations they both owed to the king as of his principality were rights which they enjoyed in their barony and which were specified in an enquiry made in 1344: a fortnightly court in which Welsh law dominated the procedures and the right to hear even Crown pleas which arose within their territory; only cases of false sealing and false money were denied them. These were details of a tenure common to many Welsh baronies in later medieval Wales; known as tir pennaeth, it approximated to the independent privilege of an English marcher lord with the obligation of knight service grafted on to it.44 With time, however, English customs of tenure and terminology could hardly be resisted in an environment dominated so completely by the Crown and its agents after 1282. It is no surprise, therefore, to observe these estates of Llywelyn ab Owain’s ceasing to be held by Welsh baronial tenure when the part that descended to Owain Glyndŵr, son and heir of Elen, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas ap Llywelyn, was forfeited in 1400, and the other half descended through Elen’s sister, Margaret, to the de la Poles of Mawddwy and to the Burgh family in the fifteenth century.45

The three ‘vills’ of Llechweddlwyfai in Creuddyn, Cellan in Mabwynion and Rhydonnen in Perfedd were held on similar terms after the Conquest by descendants of that administrative patriarch, Ednyfed Fychan, adviser to Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd and husband of Gwenllian, daughter of the Lord Rhys; together they founded a line of Welsh barons in south Wales. In the great enquiry which the Black Prince’s officials conducted into his rights in south Wales in 1344, it was stated that these scattered properties were held by the brothers Hywel and Tudur ap Goronwy ap Tudur ap Goronwy ab Ednyfed Fychan, whose privilege dated de tempore quo non existit memoria.46 Their franchise was more circumscribed than that enjoyed by Llywelyn ab Owain and his heirs, for although Hywel and Tudur had cognisance of pleas in their courts, they were forbidden to hear cases involving the king or prince. Moreover, half the fines imposed by them on felons went to the Crown, whose reeve from the neighbouring commote had power to attend the courts when felons were being tried; if he failed to put in an appearance on three successive occasions, the action could proceed—always provided that half the fines were reserved to the Crown. Perhaps the loyal minister of Gwynedd’s princes had surrendered a degree of independence in the interests of princely centralisation, something which the male line of Deheubarth could not contemplate.47 Hywel predeceased his brother, and when Tudur too died in 1367 ‘without heir tail’ the entire inheritance escheated to the king.48 Welsh customary tenure was once again about to be modified by contagious English practices. On 1 December 1391 the estate was granted in fee simple to Rhydderch ab Ieuan Llwyd in return for £200, a promise of compensation by the Crown if any part was recovered (presumably by Tudur’s kinsmen), and the repayment of any costs Rhydderch might incur ‘in maintaining the king’s title’ to an estate formerly held by tir pennaeth.49

A similar transformation occurred at Llangybi and Betws Bledrws in Mabwynion, which were held ‘according to Welsh law and the custom of those parts’ by yet another descendant of the prolific Ednyfed Fychan and his wife Gwenllian. These properties came into the possession of Edward II’s trusty esquire, Rhys ap Gruffydd, whose officials held a fortnightly court with a competence that embraced Crown pleas, though not pleas of false sealing or false coinage. In all other respects, his liberty was as regal in scope as that of any other Welsh baron after the Conquest, while at Llansadwrn in Carmarthenshire Rhys was lord of yet another estate held on identical terms. Barely a year before his death in 1356, Sir Rhys (as he had become) inherited the remainder of Llansadwrn and a small property at Llanrhystud in Cardiganshire on the death of his kinsman, Ieuan ap Gruffydd Llwyd, archdeacon of Anglesey and representative of a third branch of ‘Wyrion Eden’.50 By the time that Thomas Gruffydd, Sir Rhys’s grandson, entered into this extensive inheritance after 1380, each of the properties was stated by the Crown’s officials to be held of the king by knight service rather than by Welsh baronial tenure; in 1433 his son John was required to pay a £5 relief for them.51

By the fifteenth century fatality and mischance had brought to an end most of the Welsh houses with baronial lineages stretching back into the pre-Conquest era. Combined with the divisive Welsh custom of partible inheritance, preserved longest by these very families, and the robust encroachment of English land law, they resulted in the destruction not only of the barons themselves but also of tir pennaeth. Even so, these franchises never became commote ground, to be directly administered by the Crown from Carmarthen or Cardigan.

Franchises created by English kings and princes after the Conquest were naturally held by a tenure already familiar in England. Just as in north-east Wales, even before the death of Llywelyn the Last in 1282, Edward I had created a block of new marcher lordships from the forfeited lands of the Welsh, so also in the south he had a number of supporters to reward who could act as a social and political counter-weight to the indigenous Welsh lords he had recently defeated and dispossessed. An extensive but inhospitable part of Genau’r Glyn was granted by Edward to his dependable military commander, Roger Mortimer, by charter dated at Bristol on 27 December 1284. As early as 10 June 1280 Bogo de Knovill, the king’s justiciar in south Wales, had delivered 50 librates of land to Roger in return for a fee-farm of £50 per annum. Now, in 1284, the ‘metes and bounds’ of his Welsh property were accurately surveyed. He and his heirs were to hold the lordship for half a knight’s fee, the king retaining jurisdiction over Crown pleas and the right to estovers and other produce from Llyscoed wood for the supply of Llanbadarn castle not many miles away. Although larger than the stretch of Genau’r Glyn which remained in royal hands, the marshy Mortimer property accounted for only about half the commote’s wealth.52 By 1294 Roger was dead and his son Llywelyn granted the lands to Geoffrey Clement, senior, on 3 August 1294, in exchange for an estate elsewhere.53

Geoffrey, just like Roger Mortimer, had served Edward I in his recent Welsh campaigns, and on 3 May 1287 the king ordered that landed provision be made for him in Cardiganshire. It came in February 1290 in the shape of land and rents worth £9 11s. 4d. in the commote of Pennardd in return for military service; on 21 June 1290 the grant was extended to include the entire commote, valued at £13 per annum.54 As with Genau’r Glyn, the king’s intention was that this estate should be held in fee simple by knight service in Wales, as well as in return for an annual payment of £3 to support the constable of Llanbadarn castle.55 While Pennardd continued throughout the later middle ages to be administered as a private lordship held of the principality of Wales, it seems likely that the Clement interest in Genau’r Glyn was converted into a purely financial one. Above all else, plain convenience probably motivated Geoffrey Clement II to agree with Edward of Caernarvon in 1301 to share the income from the commote. The community of administration which thenceforward existed in Genau’r Glyn is pictured at work in 1344, when Robert Clement admitted that he derived profit from all pleas in curia de Geneu’r Glyn, except those of the Crown or at the king’s special order; he alone received the profits from cases in which his own bailiff had been the apprehending officer.56 In Pennardd, by contrast, Robert claimed to have his own court, held every three weeks, and cognisance of all pleas, even those of the Crown; he also had acquired the privilege in 1292 of a weekly market and an annual fair at both Tregaron and Llangeitho. Robert’s obligations were those of a lord holding by knight service of the principality of Wales: military service to the king or prince, and suit at the central courts of Cardiganshire.57 The Clements were lords in Genau’r Glyn and Pennardd until, shortly before 1461, their heiress, Matilda, married Sir John Wogan and took the properties to his Pembrokeshire family.58

On 5 December 1280 Edward I had granted the gwestfa of Llyswen in Anhuniog (later to be known as the lordship or manor of Aberaeron) to John de Knovill. Probably the demesne estate of the local Welsh lord before the Conquest, it was henceforth to be held in fee simple for the service of a barded horse at Llanbadarn in wartime—a tenure which was familiar to the king’s officers in England and would serve a valuable purpose in the disturbed days ahead. Like the Clement lordships, Llyswen lay outside royal commotal government, but its tenants paid suit to Cardiganshire’s county court and sessions; the entire gwestfa was worth 12 marks per annum to de Knovill in 1280.59 Its franchise included, predictably, a court held every three weeks which had competence over all except Crown pleas, and from 1284 a market and annual fair at Llyswen.60 The estate survived intact until the early-fifteenth century, when it was divided, each part then being held for the service of a quarter of a knight’s fee.61

Although the lordship of Lampeter was not disposed of by Edward I to a deserving servant, it was eventually withdrawn from the web of royal government by his son. On 25 May 1317 Edward II granted it for life to the loyal Rhys ap Gruffydd, a Welsh baron by virtue of other estates in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire but lord of Lampeter on wholly English terms. His judicial powers embraced Crown pleas, although not those of false sealing or coinage, and at Lampeter he enjoyed the right to hold a weekly market and annual fair according to a charter dating from 1285.62 Lampeter continued to be held on a life tenancy for a full half-century after Rhys’s death in 1356. It was only when Rhys ap Dafydd ap Thomas secured it and the lordship of Aberaeron early in the fifteenth century that its tenure became hereditary (in fee simple) in return for the usual knight service.63

The estates of the Church were in quite a different category. Although the shires of Cardigan and Carmarthen lay within the large, sprawling diocese of St. David’s, the estates and tenants of the bishop owed no obligation to the king or prince through the royal officials at Carmarthen and Cardigan.64 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries several tenacious bishops successfully defended a juridical position in Wales which was, to all intents and purposes, that of a marcher lord. In 1330 Bishop Henry Gower secured a royal statement guaranteeing his sole right to try all pleas (except those concerning the king himself) by his own writ in his demesne estates and implying that this was immemorial custom.65 However, the vague language of the charter bestowing the principality of Wales on the Black Prince in 1343 allowed the prince to claim certain novel rights in the bishopric. The temporalities of the see were placed in his custody in June 1347, evidently as a result of harassment by the prince, who seems to have taken this as his cue in August to appoint a justice for the bishopric and to pocket all judicial profits—a prerogative which he claimed had long been customary. But the Crown’s grant had not fundamentally prejudiced its right to the direct homage of the bishop, and in 1357, after ten years of aggressive princely pretensions, this was underlined in the king’s order to his son that he meddle no further with the bishopric and its estates.66 The confirmatory charter which Bishop Adam Houghton secured from the king in 1383 put the vindicated episcopal position plainly: in response to his petition that the bishops of St. David’s ‘have always used royal jurisdiction in all their demesnes of the said bishopric, in cognisance of all pleas personal and real and those of the Crown at their own prosecution and that of others . . . and that no king or lord marcher ever intermeddled therein’, Edward III agreed that ‘all their tenants and those dwelling in their demesnes shall not be bound to answer elsewhere than in the court of the said bishop . . .’.67 In Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, then, the bishopric had the aspect of an independent but morcellated lordship within another lordship.

The priors, abbots and convents of some of the religious houses in south Wales stood in yet a different relationship to the principality of Wales. Most of their property was held in free alms as a result of pious gifts by benefactors spanning the centuries of each house’s existence. As in Ireland, they were bound by no obligation of military service, and the undying nature of such institutions deprived the Crown of the opportunities inherent in the forfeiture, death or minority of a secular tenant-in-chief. But in the later middle ages there is no denying their legal obligation to attend the county court of Carmarthen or Cardigan and the sessions which had emerged more recently. The priory of St. John’s at Carmarthen enjoyed properties located principally in the ‘Old Town’ of Carmarthen, abutting the new plantation of the conquerors; there its reeve guarded a judicial and administrative independence—even a commercial privilege—against periodic encroachment by royal officials. The prior’s tenants could not be impleaded in any of the king’s local courts in south Wales, but they did owe suit at Carmarthen’s county court and the sessions of the principality.68 The estates of the abbeys of Whitland, Talley, Strata Florida, Cwmhir and Llanllŷr were similarly placed. Relations between their tenants and the royal authorities in the vicinity were ordinarily confined to those same courts at Carmarthen or Cardigan, and when the Black Prince’s commissioners reached south Wales in 1343 the head of each religious house was ready to swear fealty to his new lord.69 Even this obligation was occasionally challenged by an abbot or prior who felt that little risk was involved. Strata Florida was known to resist royal officers who enforced the king’s rights, although when the Clements claimed suit of court from the abbey’s estates in Pennardd, its tenantry there were quick to retort that only the king could legitimately make such a demand. Some of the houses displayed a more sustained resistance, for in 1344 the prince’s justices were informed that neither Strata Florida, Whitland, Talley, Cwmhir nor Llanllŷr had paid their customary suit of court at Cardigan for forty years.70 What was constitutionally binding was often practically ignored.

The county of Carmarthen which was created by the legislation of 1536 was as large again as the area of Carmarthenshire directly ruled by the king in the later middle ages. The additional areas, however, had already had a long and close relationship with Carmarthen, for after the Edwardian Conquest they were lordships, principally within Cantref Bychan and Cantref Gwarthaf, which were held of the king as of his principality of Wales. In north-east Wales a number of new lordships stood in a similar relationship to the principality, most probably because they were carved out of the forfeited territority of Llywelyn the Last and his allies.71 The situation was somewhat comparable in the south. In Cantref Bychan, rising from the Tywi valley and stretching towards the lordship of Brecon, Rhys Wyndod had established himself at Llandovery early in Edward I’s reign, and from there his control radiated into the commotes of Hirfryn and Perfedd, and, through his brothers Gruffydd and Llywelyn, probably into Iscennen and its craggy castle of Carreg Cennen. Rhys’s precarious policy of alternating between reluctant loyalty and overt rebellion during 1277–82 caused the loss of this dominion; Rhys ap Maredudd was his theoretical supplanter in Hirfryn and Perfedd and at Llandovery, but John Giffard of Brimpsfield (Glos.) actually reaped the harvest. Iscennen was formally granted to Giffard in 1283. The outcome of Rhys ap Maredudd’s own revolt in 1287–88 was the secure establishment of Giffard in all three commotes in 1289 as lord of Llandovery and Iscennen; as such he did homage and swore fealty to the king as of his principality of Wales, and his tenants owed suit to the Carmarthen county court. Thereafter, Llandovery passed in 1299 to John’s daughter, Katherine, who took it to her husband, Nicholas Audley, in the hands of whose family the lordship remained until 1490.72 In the October of that year the lordship was stated to be held by Prince Arthur as of ‘the honor, or earldom, of Kaermerdyn’.73

Iscennen’s history followed a divergent course. In 1299 the commote was inherited by John Giffard’s young son, also called John, during whose minority it was duly administered from Carmarthen by the justiciar and chamberlain; but when John Giffard, junior, rebelled in 1322 it was forfeited to the king and granted to the younger Hugh Despenser with a remodelled franchise which threatened to sever its relationship with the principality of Wales. In 1323 Despenser was relieved of the obligation to pay suit for Iscennen to the county court at Carmarthen and was guaranteed immunity from royal interference ‘by reason of the principality of Wales’; henceforward, the commote should stand in as independent a condition as Glamorgan or any other marcher lordship.74 Henry of Lancaster, earl of Derby, was enfeoffed with Iscennen in 1340 and promptly incorporated it administratively into his independent lordship of Kidwelly.75 Yet, the legal ties of its tenants to the Crown’s principality continued to hold, and on occasion the commote was expected to be represented at the county court and central sessions held at Carmarthen. Thus, in 1334 the deputy-justiciar of south Wales investigated a murder committed in Iscennen, and in 1337–38 tenants from the commote pleaded at the petty sessions, although this was seemingly a rare appearance.76 After 1399 there was no longer any good practical reason for recalling the constitutional niceties of a theoretical relationship, except perhaps by a ruthless and insensitive government. In 1413, for example, Henry V tried to extend the general fine for dissolving the annual sessions of the principality to the commote of Iscennen, but within two years he had to admit, willingly or otherwise, that this particular contribution was not leviable because Iscennen lay within the duchy of Lancaster. And then when Gruffydd ap Nicholas made efforts in the mid-fifteenth century to force Iscennen’s inhabitants ‘to take justice at Cairmardine and nat at Kidwelly’, his action was recalled with bitterness by John Leland a century later.77

In the south-west, in Cantref Gwarthaf, the lordship of Laugharne preserved its close ties with the caput of its honor, Carmarthen. Its tenants paid regular suit to the courts and sessions held at Carmarthen, and when its lord, Guy de Brian, died in 1349, an enquiry recorded that he had held Laugharne in return for homage to the Black Prince and the service of two knights’ fees and suit at the Carmarthen county court.78 Llanstephan was similarly bound, and the obligation to attend the great sessions at least was brought home to its tenants in the fifteenth century, if only to ensure a contribution to the general fine for the sessions’ dissolution.79 The remainder of Cantref Gwarthaf had an identical relationship with Carmarthen: the tripartite lordship of St. Clears (Traean March, Traean Morgan and Traean Clinton) could escheat to the Crown with feudal propriety and its affairs be dealt with at Carmarthen, while the community of Ystlwyf sometimes fell foul of the king’s officials in his sessions.80 Needless to say, both lordships were expected to contribute to the general fines granted in the great sessions of the fifteenth century.81

The remaining lordship which was appurtenant to the county of Carmarthen after the Edwardian Conquest was Emlyn Uwch Cuch. Even in the days of Cynan ap Hywel in the thirteenth century this territory was held in return for military service to be discharged at Carmarthen and attendance at the county court there. It was when Rhys ap Maredudd, to whose father the lordship had been granted by the earl of Pembroke, revolted in 1287 that Emlyn Uwch Cuch came into the king’s possession, to be directly ruled by his officers for a season.82 This relationship was scarcely modified by the passage of time: it was still the case in the fifteenth century that ‘all persons dwelling within the town and commote aforesaid be intendant as well to the great and petty sessions as to the king’s county of Kermardyn and contribute to all things pertaining to the said great sessions’.83

The lordships of Cantref Bychan and Cantref Gwarthaf and the lordship of Emlyn Uwch Cuch all enjoyed a wide measure of independence as marcher lordships in the later middle ages, but their basic relationship to the Crown as of its principality of Wales was preserved with varying degrees of firmness, doubtless depending on the forcefulness of royal officials or the courage of their own lord.84 The lords of these franchises appurtenant to the principality were feudally bound to pay suit to those courts held at Carmarthen and Cardigan whose competence extended to lay and ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief alike; military service was an obligation imposed only on the secular barons.85 But in the day-to-day routine of government these franchises ordinarily excluded royal officers: rents of land, profits of fairs and markets, and fines from local courts were the property of the local lord whose officials scarcely ever accounted to the chamberlain of south Wales. Only during periods of vacancy, forfeiture or minority did the Crown intervene, either to let a secular lordship at farm or else divert its income to the south Wales Exchequers, leaving internal administration untouched and under distant scrutiny from the justiciar.

1 J. G. Edwards, ‘The Normans and the Welsh March’, Proc. British Academy, XLII (1956), 168. The essential narrative of the history of west Wales was established by J. E. Lloyd in The Story of Ceredigion (Cardiff, 1937), and A History of Carmarthenshire (2 vols., Cardiff, 1935–39), vol. I, ch. 2.

2 T. Jones (ed.), Brut y Tywysogyon, Peniarth MS. 20 Version (Cardiff, 1952), pp. 80–81. In the early-thirteenth century it had been usual to refer to the territories around Carmarthen and Cardigan as ‘honors’ or castellarie; after 1241 the royal claims were expressed in the use of comitatus as well as ‘honor’. J. G. Edwards, ‘The Early History of the Counties of Carmarthen and Cardigan’, English Historical Rev., XXXI (1916), 91–92.

3 Calendar of Close Rolls, 1237–42, p. 198.

4 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232–47, pp. 292–93. For relations between the Crown, Dafydd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd and the Welsh lords in these crucial years, see G. A. Williams, ‘The Succession to Gwynedd, 1238–1247’, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XX (1964), 393–413, esp. pp. 397–99.

5 C.P.R., 1232–47, pp. 474, 493.

6 Ibid., p. 485; C.C.R., 1247–51, p. 113.

7 C.P.R., 1247–58, p. 369; Calendar of Charter Rolls, 1427–1516, p. 287; ibid., 1257–1300, p. 215. Edmund ordered a full-scale enquiry into his rights there in August 1268 and the resultant survey survives as Longleat MS. 628. The Lord Edward may have ordered a similar survey sometime after 1254.

8 J. G. Edwards (ed.), Littere Wallie (Cardiff, 1940), pp. xlii–xliii. For the most recent statement of Llywelyn’s position, see J. G. Edwards, The Principality of Wales, 1267–1967 (Caernarvon, 1969), pp. 6–8.

9 J. G. Edwards (ed.), Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales (Cardiff, 1935), pp. 70–72, 55–56; Jones, Brut (Peniarth), p. 118; Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 49.

10 Ibid., pp. 36–37, 48–49, 165–66, 201–2; C.P.R., 1272–81, p. 212.

11 Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 41; Jones, Brut (Peniarth), p. 118; C.P.R., 1272–81, p. 208.

12 Edwards, Cal. Ancient Correspondence, pp. 70–71; Jones, Brut (Peniarth), p. 118.

13 Ibid., p. 118; T. Jones (ed.), Brut y Tywysogyon, Red Book of Hergest Version (Cardiff, 1955), p. 267; R. A. Roberts, ‘Cymru Fu: Some Contemporary Statements’, Trans. of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1895–96, p. 105.

14 J. C. Davies (ed.), The Welsh Assize Roll, 1277–84 (Cardiff, 1940), pp. 185–86; Jones, Brut (Red Book), p. 267.

15 Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 120.

16 C.Ch.R., 1257–1300, p. 218 (November 1279).

17 Llywelyn ab Owain had been a royal ward since May 1277, but on 15 February 1279 his lands were restored to him and his homage taken by the king: Calendar of Chancery Rolls, Various, 1277–1326, p. 180.

18 Ibid., p. 171; C. T. Martin (ed.), Registrum Epistolarum Johannis Peckham Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis (Rolls Series, 3 vols., 1882–85), II, 453–54. Gruffydd and Cynan kept in touch with Prince Llywelyn and in May 1278 were at his court at Dolwyddelan castle: Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 43.

19 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, I, 346; Davies, Welsh Assize Roll, pp. 185–87, 278–80. Their claims were still being pressed in February 1281 and figured among the Welsh grievances forwarded to the king through Archbishop Peckham in 1282: C.Chanc.R., Var., p. 206; Martin, Epist. Johannis Peckham, II, 453.

20 Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. lxiii; idem, Cal. Ancient Correspondence, pp. 44–45; Jones, Brut (Peniarth), p. 120; idem, Brut (Red Book), pp. 269–71; H. T. Riley (ed.), Chronicon Willelmi Rishanger (Rolls Series, 1865), p. 98; J. Williams ab Ithel (ed.), Annales Cambriae (Rolls Series, 1860), p. 106.

21 C.Chanc.R., Var., pp. 229, 233, 236–37; Edwards, Litt. Wall., pp. 165–66.

22 J. E. Morris, The Welsh Wars of Edward I (Oxford, 1901), pp. 184–85, 194; Edwards, Litt. Wall., pp. 159–60; C.P.R., 1281–92, p. 84.

23 Morris, op. cit., pp. 192–94; Williams ab Ithel, Annales Cambriae, p. 107; Exchequer, K.R., Various Accounts, 351/9 m.11–12; Edwards, Litt. Wall., pp. 74–75, 133, 159–60; C.P.R., 1281–92, p. 84. For the ultimate fate of these Welsh lords of Ceredigion, see Ralph A. Griffiths, ‘Gentlemen and Rebels in Later Mediaeval Cardiganshire’, Ceredigion, V (1965), 145–46.

24 Martin, Epist. Johannis Peckham, II, 451; Davies, Welsh Assize Roll, pp. 163–73, 268–70, 289–91, 294, 310–11, 316–17, 320–21, 327–29, 331–32, 338; C.Chanc.R., Var., p. 177. Rhys Wyndod was at Prince Llywelyn’s castle at Dolwyddelan in May 1278 with Gruffydd and Cynan ap Maredudd: Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 43.

25 J. B. Smith, ‘The Origins of the Revolt of Rhys ap Maredudd’, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXI (1965), 151–63; Ralph A. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Rhys ap Maredudd, 1287–88’, Welsh History Rev., III, no. 2 (1966), 121–43.

26 E.g., Waters, op. cit.

27 Statutes of the Realm (Record Commission, 11 vols., 1810–28), I, 55–56; Bowen, Statutes of Wales, pp. 2–27; W. H. Waters, ‘A First Draft of the Statute of Rhuddlan’, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, IV (1929), 345–48.

28 Edwards, Principality of Wales, p. 12 (the italics are his).

29 M. Rhys (ed.), Ministers’ Accounts for West Wales, 1277–1306 (Cymmrodorion Record Series, XIII, 1936), p. 248. Sir Goronwy Edwards (English Historical Rev., XXXI (1916), 94–95) thought that Derllys formed part of the Englishry too, but, apart from the demesne lands carved out of it, it is clear from its later amalgamation with Elfed and the similarity of its officers and customs with those of the other two commotes that it was in the Welshry. Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 215; see p. 69.

30 Rhys, op. cit., p. 39 n. 3. On 16 October 1283 Rhys ap Maredudd acknowledged this, probably with reluctance: Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 122; Griffiths, Welsh History Rev., III, no. 2 (1966), 126.

31 C.Chanc.R., Var., p. 311; Rhys, op. cit., pp. 58–63, 454–66. The same is true of Philip ab Owain ap Meurig, who took possession on 27 January 1290: C.Chanc.R., Var., p. 324; Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 184.

32 C.Chanc.R., Var., pp. 327, 353–54; T. Rymer (ed.), Foedera, conventiones, literae . . . (10 vols., The Hague, 1739–45), vol. I, part 3, p. 70.

33 Edwards, English Historical Rev., XXXI (1916), 95; Rhys, op. cit., pp. 246, 252–66.

34 Ibid., pp. 296–302.

35 Roberts, Trans. Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1895–96, pp. 111–31 (infra manerium de Lampader); Edwards, English Historical Rev., XXXI (1916), 95; Rhys, op. cit., pp. 268, 282.

36 Special Collections, Ministers’ Accounts, 1161/4 m.1; 1167/4 m.1. Unless otherwise stated, unpublished records referred to in footnotes are to be found in the Public Record Office, London.

37 On 16 March 1347 a complaint was received by the Black Prince from his subjects ‘of our principality of South Wales’ (de notre princeaute de Suthgales), and two months later notification was sent by him to his officers ‘of our principality of South Wales’ (de notre princeaute de Suthgales): Register of Edward the Black Prince (4 vols., 1930–33), I, 59, 78–79; Exchequer, T.R., Misc. Books 144 f. 51, 70v.

38 W. de Gray Birch (ed.), A Descriptive Catalogue of the Penrice and Margam Abbey Manuscripts (4 vols. in 6 parts, 1893–1905), I, 83; N.L.W., Penrice and Margam MS. 244.

39 C.P.R., 1476–85, pp. 474–75 (letters patent, 1484); Privy Seal Office, Warrants for the Privy Seal, Series I /18/11 (signet letter, 1450); Min. Acc. 1210/6 m.3d (the prince of Wales, 1479); 1167/7 m.11 (a clerk at Carmarthen, 1438–39); Rot. Parl., VI, 465 (1495).

40 For a list of the princes of Wales, see Francis Jones, The Princes and Principality of Wales (Cardiff, 1969), p. 104, and Edwards, Principality of Wales, pp. 29–30. Richard, prince of Wales in 1376–77, was the son of the Black Prince and grandson of the king.

41 See below pp. 22–25. Dr. R. R. Davies (‘The Law of the March’, Welsh History Rev., V, no. 1 (1970), 14–15) notes the way in which attendance at the comitatus in the marcher lordships reflected the obligation of feudal tenants to the lord of their lordship.

42 For a discussion of Welsh barons and Welsh baronial tenure after 1282, see A. D. Carr, ‘An Aristocracy in Decline: the Native Welsh Lords after the Edwardian Conquest’, Welsh History Rev., V, no. 2 (1970), 103–29.

43 Rentals and Surveys, Roll 770. On 10 November 1291 Llywelyn was allowed to hold a weekly market and an annual fair in his lordship at Llandysul: C.Ch.R., 1257–1300, p. 407.

44 Placita de Quo Warranto, Edward I–III (Record Commission, 1818), p. 819; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, V, 42–43. See Carr, Welsh History Rev., V, no. 2 (1970), 112–16.

45 For the descent of these estates, see ibid., pp. 123–24.

46 Placita de Quo Warranto, p. 818; Carr, Welsh History Rev., V, no. 2 (1970), 123.

47 For Llywelyn the Last’s ‘ruthless vigour’ in attempting political consolidation in his principality, even over the Welsh lords who were his vassals, see Edwards, Principality of Wales, p. 8 and n. 9.

48 Tudur’s property yielded £4 3s. 0d. in 1389–90 after its escheat: Min. Acc. 1159/6 m.6. See G. Roberts, Aspects of Welsh History (Cardiff, 1969), pp. 190–93.

49 C.P.R., 1391–96, p. 4. When John ap Rhydderch died in 1408 he was said to have held the lands by knight service: Min. Acc. 1160/4 m.5.

50 Placita de Quo Warranto, p. 819; C.I.P.M., X, 276; Carr, Welsh History Rev., V, no. 2 (1970), 122–23.

51 Min. Acc. 1164/5 m.6d. John resisted paying relief for over twelve years and contested the exact terms of the service, but even he finally succumbed in 1445: Min. Acc. 1161/9 m.7d; 1162/1 m.11d; /3 m.10.

52 C.Ch.R., 1217–1300, p. 281; Rhys, op. cit., p. 30; C.Ch.R., Var., pp. 182, 185–86; C.I.M., I, 387, where the boundary of the Mortimer property is described. This Roger Mortimer is to be distinguished from his namesake of Wigmore, who died in 1282.

53 C.P.R., 1317–21, p. 77, a confirmation on 28 January 1318 of this and the earlier grant of 1284.

54 C.Ch.R., 1427–1516, appendix 1215–88, p. 297; C.Ch.R., Var., p. 325; C.P.R., 1281–92, p. 370. The extension of the grant was made possible by the death, shortly before 31 January 1290, of the wife of the former rebel, Rhys Fychan ap Rhys ap Maelgwn, to whom the king had granted one gwestfa and a quarter in Pennardd for her life: C.I.P.M., II, 484.

55 C.P.R., 1281–92, pp. 370, 491. The payment was twice remitted to Geoffrey.

56 Rhys, op. cit., pp. 79 n.19, 270; Placita de Quo Warranto, p. 819.

57 Ibid., pp. 818–19; C.Ch.R., 1257–1300, p. 421. In 1457 the tenants of Pennardd claimed exemption from the great sessions of Cardiganshire even though the commote was held of the principality of Wales; they were fined £14 16s. 8d. for their effrontery: Min. Acc. 1162/7 m.10; C.F.R., 1422–30, p. 302.

58 Min. Acc. 1224/6 m.9; Letters and Papers . . . Henry VIII, IV, ii, 1463.

59 C.P.R., 1272–81, p. 418; C.I.P.M., V, 39; Rhys, op. cit., p. 30. The valuation had fallen to £5 by 1309.

60 Placita de Quo Warranto, p. 818; C.Ch.R., 1257–1300, p. 280.

61 Min. Acc. ii6i/i m.8; 1162/2 m.10.

62 Edwards, Litt. Wall., p. 164; C.Ch.R., 1257–1300, p. 303; ibid., 1300–26, p. 374; Placita de Quo Warranto, p. 820. For the organisation of the town and its environs (Maenor Lampeter), each with its own court, before the grant to Rhys ap Gruffydd, see Rhys, op. cit., pp. 85, 205, 211, 309–11; E. A. Lewis, ‘The Account Roll of the Chamberlain of West Wales from Michaelmas 1301 to Michaelmas 1302’, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, II (1923), 74–75.

63 C.I.P.M., X, 276; C.P.R., 1377–81, p. 339; Min. Acc. 1162/2 m.10; above infra.

64 For the Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire estates of the bishop, see J. W. Willis-Bund (ed.), The Black Book of St. David’s (1902).

65 C.Ch.R., 1327–41, p. 188 (6 August 1330). For a complaint in the early fourteenth century from the bishop that the sheriff of Carmarthen had taken a plea of fresh force on an episcopal estate, en graunt prejudice de lui et la franchise la Eglise de Seint Davy, see Ancient Petition 106/5272.

66 Reg. Black Prince, I, 88, 108; C.C.R., 1354–60, p. 382 (16 December 1357). For a full treatment of the subject, see D. L. Evans, ‘Some notes on the history of the principality of Wales in the time of the Black Prince’, Trans. Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1925–26, pp. 94–97.

67 C.Ch.R., 1341–1417, pp. 289–90 (21 December 1383).

68 St. John’s also had tenements at New Carmarthen and granges in the Carmarthenshire countryside: G. D. Owen, ‘The extent and distribution of the lands of the priory of St. John’s at Carmarthen’, Carmarthen Antiquary, I (1941), 21–29 and map on p. 26. For the growth of the priory’s estates and jurisdiction, see its cartulary, T. Phillips (ed.), Cartularium S. Johannis Baptistae de Carmarthen (Cheltenham, 1865), and Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 350–51.

69 Exchequer, K.R., Miscellanea 4/34 m.6, printed in Archaeologia Cambrensis, supplementary vol. I (1877), pp. cxlviii–clxxv. For the estates of Whitland, see Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 351–52; of Talley, ibid., I, 352–55, and J. B. Smith and B. H. St. J. O’Neill, Talley Abbey (H.M.S.O., 1967); of Strata Florida, S. W. Williams, The Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida (1889), pp. 107–81, appendix pp. x–lxxvii, and map facing p. 107; and Cwmhir, idem, ‘The Cistercian Abbey of Cwm-Hir, Radnorshire’, Trans. Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1894–95, pp. 62, 69. The small priory at Cardigan may have been exempt even from the obligation of suit of court by virtue of the Lord Rhys’s endowment, as confirmed by successive English kings in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: E. M. Pritchard, Cardigan Priory in the Olden Days (1904), pp. 29–34.

70 Williams, Strata Florida, pp. xxxvi–xxxix; Assize Roll, Justices Itinerant 1/1151 m.1, 1d, 10d (1344). For a petition by the abbot of Whitland in Edward II’s reign against paying suit at Cardigan’s county court, see Anc. Pet. 82/4057.

71 Edwards, Principality of Wales, pp. 15–16; Waters, op. cit., pp. 87–88 et seq.

72 Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 195, 204–5, 206, 231, 234; Williams ab Ithel, Annales Cambriae, p. 106. For the enquiry into John’s estate on his death in 1299, see C.I.P.M., III, 419, 421; compare also ibid., VI, 42–43 (1322), for a better statement of obligation.

73 C.I.P.M. (HenVII), I, 247.

74 Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 231; Rhys, op. cit., pp. 314–15, 380–81; C.P.R., 1321–24, pp. 245–46 (2 February 1323).

75 Somerville, op. cit., p. 39. Kidwelly and Carnwyllion, also within Cantref Bychan, had been conquered by the de Londres family and thenceforward were held directly of the king; they then descended to the Chaworths and to the house of Lancaster: ibid., pp. 18, 72 n.1; The Book of Fees, II, 863.

76 Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 231–32; Calendar of Ancient Deeds, III, 117; C.I.P.M., VII, 45; C.I.M., II, 346; Court Roll 215/21 m.18. In 1361, when Henry of Lancaster died, it was stated quite correctly at Kidwelly that Iscennen was still held of the principality of Wales, whereas Kidwelly and Carnwyllion were held of the king in chief; at Hereford, however, the jurors paraded their ignorance in claiming that all three were held of the principality! C.I.P.M., XI, 105–7.

77 Min. Acc. 1222/12 m.2, 5d; 1223/2 m.1d; L. T. Smith (ed.), John Leland’s Itinerary in Wales (1906), p. 60. Iscennen’s tenants also faced demands for similar subsidies from the king as duke of Lancaster and they may therefore have resisted the implementation of musty claims by Carmarthen’s officials. Subsequent general fines in Carmarthenshire were not imposed there after 1415: e.g., Min. Acc. 1166/11.

78 Min. Acc. 1166/12 m.7; C.I.P.M., IX, 282. In 1438 the lordship was briefly in the king’s hands, was surveyed by the escheator of Carmarthenshire and was answerable to the justiciar and chamberlain at Carmarthen: Min. Acc. 1167/6 m.11. For the descent of the lordship, see Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 238–39.

79 E.g., Min. Acc. 1166/12 m.10–18. For the descent of this lordship, see Lloyd, Hist. of Carmarthenshire, I, 236–37.

80 E.g., Traean March was under Carmarthen’s control before delivery was