CONTENTS OF PART II. (VOL. IX). 2. Old Welsh Folk-Medicine. By E. SIDNEY HARTLAND 3. Observations on the Welsh Nouns, Adjectives, and Adverbs. By MAX NETTLAU, Ph.D. With Notes by Professor 6. On the Circular Huts sometimes called Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, 7. The Possibilities of Welsh Music. By JOSEPH BENNETT 8. An Unpublished Welsh Fragment 9. Reviews and Notices :- ... Facsimile of the Black Book of Carmarthen: Repro- duced by the Autotype Mechanical Process; with a History of Powys Fadog. Vol. VI. By J. Y. W. LLOYD The Index Library. Edited by W. P. W. PHILLIMORE, Editorial communications, Books for Review, etc., should be addressed to Dr. ISAMBARD OWEN, 5, Hertford Street, Mayfair, ** Wanted, copies of Y CYMMRODOR, Vol. iii, Part 1. Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Professor of History in St. David's College, Lampeter. THE history of the Welsh shires is the history of the connexion between England and Wales. The shiring of Wales was the gradual result of the introduction of English laws and English institutions. As in Ireland and Scotland, the establishment of the shire-system was the first result of the extension of English influence. It is impossible, then, for the shires of Celtic Britain to stand in the same intimate relation to the early history and inner life of those districts as the real shires of England proper stand to old English history. They are "departments", administrative districts, established for convenience, rather than organic divisions of land and people. They cannot compare in interest with such districts as Sussex or Kent, which correspond to original kingdoms; or divisions like the West Saxon shires, which go back to the primitive tribal divisions of the Gewissas. They have hardly the interest even of the Mercian shires of 1 This paper is an enlargement and re-arrangement of a lecture read before the Society of Cymmrodorion on March 7th, 1888. VOL. IX. P the Midlands, which, however artificial in their origin, have become real by the force of an eventful history of nearly a thousand years. Yet the Welsh shires are quite as interesting as the shires of Scotland, and even more so than those of Ireland. They mark no mere English conquest for the shire was ever the unit of higher self-government, the outcome of free and representative institutions. The gradual establishment of the Welsh shires marks the incorporation of England and Wales into a single nation, rather than the subjection of the smaller to the greater people. If England put an end to the power of Welsh kings and princes, and of Norman Marcher lords, the institution of the Welsh counties restored some measure of local self-government and of local life and sentiment. For artificial as many Welsh counties doubtless are in their origin, others correspond closely enough to the old native divisions of the land. In some cases the names, in other cases the limits, were those of the old kingdoms, cantreds, commots. Some at least represent real dialectic and physical distinctions that are almost fundamental. Even around the most artificial of the Welsh shires have now gathered the associations of hundreds of years, which have created local feelings and local ties, hardly less strong than those of the English counties themselves. They are at least sufficiently well established to make it no popular work to carve and mangle their ancient limits to gratify a pedantic love of uniformity, or ignorant thirst for change. In attempting to put together the chief facts bearing on the history of Welsh shires, I do not propose to discuss simply the history of the twelve or thirteen counties that now are called Welsh. The modern boundary between what we call "England" and what we call "Wales", is, as every historian knows, no older than the reign of Henry VIII, and did not then, and does not now, correspond with any precision to the limits of the two races. Of course I shall have mainly to deal with the "Welsh shires" in the narrower sense; but the exact delimitation of the border shires must also be dealt with. The introduction of the shire-system into any district which, after the establishment of the West Saxon monarchy of Britain, has any claim to be called "Welsh", must be discussed if the subject is to be fully dealt with. I exclude, however, the "Strathclyde Welsh" and the "West Welsh", and take the "Welsh" in the sense in which we now use the word, to include those regions which the victories of Ethelfrith and Ceawlin cut off from direct relations with their brethren to the north and south. I shall speak first of how parts of Wales became by the eleventh century incorporated with English shires without losing all claim to be called Welsh. I shall next speak of the establishment of shires in Wales itself-of the old Palatine counties that resulted from the Norman conquest of South Wales; of the counties which Edward I established, or tried to establish, even before he became king and conqueror of Gwynedd; of the shires of Gwynedd, and the dependent shire of Flint, which owed their existence to the Edwardian conquest; of the completion of the shire system by Henry VIII; of the new shires which he established, and the old shires which he remodelled; and of his assimilation of the county system of Wales to that of England. This, with a few words as to the counties of towns, will complete a sketch which the limits of a paper must necessarily leave very imperfect. I. The defeat of Gruffydd ab Llewelyn by Harold, the son of Godwine, led to a great extension westwards of the limits of England. The Norman conquest continued further the work of the great English King. The Domesday Survey enables us to realise in detail how much of modern Wales, what large districts inhabited by Welshmen, were then included within the English border shires. The great Palatine county of Cheshire, whose earls exercised within their earldom all the sovereign rights of the king, and who were subjected to the crown by the simple tie of homage and fealty alone-the county of Cheshire included at the time of the Domesday Book all the modern Flintshire and the greater part of the modern Denbighshire. In the same way the towns of Radnor and Monmouth are described as part of Herefordshire. The district between the Wye and the Usk was similarly attached to Gloucestershire, including the places so well known as Chepstow, Caerleon, Caldicot, and Portskewet. One Norman is mentioned as holding "six carucates of land beyond the Usk". But as this region was not regularly divided into hundreds and lordships, it was, in a way, an appendage to Gloucestershire, rather than an integral part of the shire itself. But none of these shires was distinctively or exclusively Welsh; though the influence of Welsh custom can be largely traced within their limits, and in Herefordshire, Welshmen, "living according to Welsh law", are specially recognised as among the inhabitants of the county. 1 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. ii, note SS., collects, and comments on, the record of Domesday Book on this subject. Domesday, vol. i, fol. 162. 3 Domesday, vol. i, fol. 185b: “tres Walenses lege Walensi viventes." "Herefordshire," says Sir H. Ellis, "appears at the time of the Conqueror to have been estimated almost as a Welsh county" (Introduction and Indexes to Domesday, vol. i, pp. 37-38). It was not unfrequently called "in Wales", e.g., Pipe Rolls, 2, 3, and 4 Henry II, p. 143, Record Ed.: "W. de Hereford reddit compotum de firma de Herefordscira in Waliis." There are also constant references to Welsh tenants, paying rents often in kind, in Shropshire. (Domesday, i, fol. 255.) |