The Gentry of North Wales in the Later Middle Ages

Antony Carr

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786831378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

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.

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 Dŵr 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’.¹ 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.² 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 Dŵr.³ 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 1536.⁴ 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 1536.⁵ 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 300–1400.⁶ 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 line-ages which had rarely obtained the seal of approval of the heralds (although they were subsequently to form part of many family coats of arms).⁷ 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.⁸ 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.⁹

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.¹⁰ 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 1200.¹¹ 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 cohe...