Abstract
In January 1576 Dr David Lewis, a prominent lawyer from Abergavenny and a baron of the Admiralty Court, complained bitterly to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State, about the condition of parts of the old marcher lordships in central and south-east Wales, forty years after the passing of the Tudor legislation of 1536–43. He expressed anxiety about the situation because of the persistence of some practices that he considered to be damaging to good government in those lordships. His letter relates chiefly to such customs and, among other matters, he referred specifically to arddel and cymortha, and concluded that ‘contempts and disorders must be severely punished and the better the man offender the greater the offence, and the punishment ought to be the more, which must be rather in body by imprisonment than in the purse’.1 Lewis was obviously disillusioned and his observation echoed Rowland Lee’s opinion on an earlier occasion. In his mind there were far too many deficiencies and incompetent officials allowed to exercise their authority. The Council in the Marches had lost its grasp of affairs.
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Notes
Cal. of State Papers Dom., 1547–1580 (London, 1856), CVII(4), p. 514; D. Ll. Thomas, ‘Further Notes on the Council of the Marches’, Y Cymmr., XVII (1899), App. B, pp. 128–33;
D. Mathew, ‘Some Elizabethan Documents’, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, VI (1931), pp. 74–7. For a comprehensive study of the Welsh gentry and local government in Wales, see G. E. Jones, The Gentry and the Elizabethan State (Swansea: Christopher Davies, 1977).
G. Owen, The Description of Pembrokeshire, ed. H. Owen (London: Bedford Press, 1906), III, p. 24.
St. 34–35 Henry VIII c. 26, in I. Bowen (ed.), Statutes of Wales, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), p. 102; P. Williams, Council in the Marches, pp. 17–18.
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W. O. Williams (ed.), Calendar of the Caernarvonshire Quarter Sessions Records: I, 1541–1558 (Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 1956), pp. 2–29, W. R. B. Robinson, ‘The Tudor Revolution in Welsh Government’, 1536–1543; Its Effects on Gentry, Participation, English Historical Review, CCCCVI (1988).
D. R. Thomas, ‘The Life and Work of Bishop Davies and William Salesbury’ (Oswestry: Caxton Press, 1902), App. C, p. 49;
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PRO, SP 12, 159/1; P. Williams, Council in the Marches under Elizabeth I, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1958), pp. 259–60.
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W. Vaughan, The Golden Fleece (1626), Pt ii, pp. 31, 35.
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See W. P. Griffith. ‘Schooling and Society’, in J. G. Jones (ed.), Class, Community and Culture in Tudor Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1989), pp. 110, 119.
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G. E. Jones, ‘A Case of Corruption’, in S. Williams (ed.), Glamorgan Historian, V ((Cowbridge: D. Brown, 1968), pp. 121–32; idem, ‘Local Administration and Justice in Sixteenth-century Glamorgan’, Morgannwg, IX, (1965), pp. 11–37.
Historical Manuscripts Commission. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury (Hatfield MSS.), XIII (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1910), pp. 481–2; J. G. Jones, ‘Law and Order in Merioneth after the Acts of Union 1536–43’, Journal of the Merioneth Historical Society, X, (1986), pp. 125–6.
J. E. Lloyd and R. T. Jenkins (eds), (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1959), Dictionary of Welsh Biography s.n.;
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J. G. Evans (ed.), Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1898), I, pp. 271–2. See also N. W. Powell, ‘Crime and the Community in Denbighshire during the 1590s: The Evidence of the Records of the Court of Great Sessions’, in Jones (ed.), Class, Community and Culture in Tudor Wales, pp. 261–88.
J. Penry, Three Treatises Concerning Wales, ed. D. Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1960), pp. 41–2.
NLW, MS, 9051E, 159. See W. O. Williams, ‘The County Records’, Trans. Caerns. Hist. Soc., X (1949), p. 90. For detailed studies of the evidence provided by Caernarfonshire Quarter Sessions records, see J. G. Jones, ‘Caernarvonshire Administration: The Activities of the Justices of the Peace, 1603–1660’, Welsh History Review, V (1970), pp. 130–63; idem, ‘Aspects of Local Government in pre-Restoration Caernarvonshire’, Trans. Caerns. Hist. Soc., XXX (1972), pp. 7–32.
Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council, 1625–26, p. 321.
Cal. State Papers Dom., 1637–8, CCCLXXX, no. 98, p. 220; M. D. Gordon, ‘The Collection of Ship Money in the Reign of Charles I’, Trans. Royal Historical Society, IV (1910), pp. 141–53;
A. H. Dodd, ‘Wales in the Parliaments of Charles I’, Trans. Cymmr. (1946–7), pp. 34–5; Jones, ‘Caernarvonshire Administration’, pp. 152–3.
B. E. Howells (ed.) Pembrokeshire County History: III, Early Modern Pembrokeshire 1536–1815 (Haverfordwest: Pembrokeshire Historical Society, 1987), p. 155.
J. G. Jones, ‘Sir John Wynn of Gwydir and His Tenants: The Dolwyddelan and Llysfaen Land Disputes’, Welsh History Review, XI (1982), pp. 1–30;
G. D. Owen, Wales in the Reign of James I (London: Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press, 1988), pp. 59–63.
A. H. Dodd, ‘The Pattern of Politics in Stuart Wales,’ Trans. Cymmr. (1948), pp. 9–20;
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BL, Stowe MS 570, f. 79; H. A. Lloyd, The Gentry of South-West Wales, 1540–1640 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1968), p. 143.
Lloyd, The Gentry of South-West Wales, pp. 167–73; idem. ‘Wales and the Star Chamber’, Welsh History Review, V (1971), pp. 157–60; P. Williams, ‘Star Chamber and the Council in the Marches of Wales, 1559–1603’, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XVI (1956), pp. 287–97; idem. Council in the Marches under Elizabeth I, pp. 213–25; idem, ‘The Activity of the Council in the Marches under the Early Stuarts’, Welsh History Review, I (1961), pp. 133–60.
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© 1994 J. Gwynfor Jones
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Jones, J.G. (1994). Law, Order and Government. In: Early Modern Wales, c.1525–1640. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23254-3_4
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