them with their own soldiers. They also built towns on the choicest spots in the country for their English followers. It was in this manner most of the castles on the borders of Wales were built; as is evident from their number, there being thirtythree in the county of Salop alone. The whole government and jurisprudence, within their respective limits, depended on' the will of the conquerors; but it sometimes happened that the jurisdiction of one lordship infringed on the rights of another. As they were all equal, these disputes could not be settled by the ordinary decisions of justice. It was necessary therefore that superior courts should be erected for the purpose of accommodating the differences. The lords marchers regularly held their baronial courts, where the inferior lords, who held of them, were obliged to attend. At a subsequent period, the chief court for the Marchers of North Wales was held in Ludlow Castle. To this court appeals might be made, both from the lords themselves against others; and also, from the people against the wrong judgments of the lords. A president and council were instituted to decide on these appeals, and to control, in some degree, the tyrannical authority exercised by those warlike chiefs over their oppressed vassals.

It has been justly observed, that the high privileges of the lords marchers could not, for many reasons, be held by charter. The kings of England, when they gave to any person such lands as he might conquer from the Welsh, could not fix those immunities on any certain precinct, not knowing which, or whether any, would be eventually subdued. The lords themselves were not solicitous to procure such immunities, as it frequently happened that those lands, of which they had taken possession, were afterwards recovered by the Welsh, either by composition with the kings of England, or by force of arms. Another bar to the granting of such charters was, that privileges of so high and regal a nature could not, by the laws of England, be transferred from the crown. It was therefore deemed more politic to suffer the lords to establish, of their own authority, these

absolute

absolute jurisdictions, and to withhold any grant from the sovereign, which, if ever called in question, might be adjudged of no force. Those lordships, however, which were conquered by English princes themselves, were subject to a more regular jurisdiction, being governed, in general, by the laws of England.

In process of time, as the English arms prevailed, those tenures increased, so that the dominion of the marches, which was originally confined to the line of separation from Wales, penetrated at length into the very heart of the country. On the death of Llewelyn, in the eleventh year of Edward the First, the necessity and the grants ceased together; and after this period no more lords marchers were created. The Welsh submitting to Edward, he took the principality into his own hands, conferred it on his son Edward, Prince of Wales, assembled a parliament at Rhudlan Castle, and enacted laws for the government of the country after the English manner. These laws were confirmed on the following year, by the statute of Rutland. From this period no lord marcher could exercise any prerogative, not previously confirmed to him, without a special grant from the crown. The power and consequence of these once absolute baronial chieftains, being thus curtailed and diminished, gradually declined.

*By statute 28 Edward the Third, all the lords marchers were to be perpetually attending and annexed to the crown of England, as they and their ancestors had been at all times past, and not to the principality of Wales, into whose hands, soever it should hereafter come; so that the four counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford, and Salop, were never termed the marches of England, but of Wales. The sovereignty of the crown of England ever extended to Wales itself. By statute 27 Henry the Eighth, for incorporating Wales with England, all lords marchers were to enjoy such liberties, mises, and profits as they had, or used to have, at the first

Gough's Camden, Vol. III. p. 11.

entry

entry into their lands in times past, notwithstanding that act. The court of the president, and council of the Marches of North Wales, was re-established by Edward the Fourth, in honour of the Earl of March, from whom he was descended: it owed its first institution to the prerogative royal transacting matters, and acting judicially by virtue of that authority, to the entire satisfaction of the subjects, for a period of about sixty years; until by 34 Henry the Eighth, that court was confirmed by an act of parliament, then considered expedient by reason of other laws relating to Wales, which were at that time further enlarged and explained. The act concerning the court of Ludlow runs thus; "that there shall be and remain a resident and council in the dominion of Wales and the Marches of the same, with all officers, clerks, and incidents to the same, in manner and form as it hath been heretofore used and accustomed, which resident and council shall have power and authority to hear and determine such causes and matters as be or hereafter shall be assigned to them, by the king's majesty, as heretofore hath been accustomed and used." It is to be observed, that before the enactment of this statute, the lord president always kept his court in some place within the English pale, and not in Wales, which circumstance gave the court a pretext for extending its jurisdiction into the four counties abovementioned. Hence from the indefinite application of the term Marches, a question arose in the reign of James the First, how far these counties were under the jurisdiction of "the lord president of Wales and the Marches thereof," for by statute 34 Henry the Eighth, they were to be excluded from the jurisdiction, and by the 27 Henry the Eighth, several lordships marches were annexed to England, and others annexed to Wales, and those last were properly "Wales and the Marches thereof," within the words of the statute. Besides, the king's writ always running in those four English counties, it is not to be supposed that they should not be comprehended in the jurisdiction of the court of the Marches, then newly established

without

without express words. In the course of the argument on this question an objection was started, on what might properly be reputed the Marches of Wales, upon inference that the word Marches should never have been put into the statute of 34 Henry the Eighth, unless it had a definite import. The answer was, that the words "dominion and principality" of Wales were not extensive enough to comprehend the shires of Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh, which were wholly composed of lordships marchers only, and either or both of the former terms, principality and dominion, would stretch themselves no farther than the eight counties of Wales; so that the word marches in that statute must be only provincial, since by 27 Henry the Eighth, all was made to be either of Wales or England. But if there was a necessity that something might still be reputed marches, then those lordships could only be the marches that were made counties of themselves, and not those that were annexed to either ancient English or Welsh counties, for they were reputed to be of the same nation with those counties respectively. The argument for the jurisdiction of the lord president over the four English counties was, in substance, that the court of the president and council was not erected but confirmed by act of parliament; there was a president and council in the time of Edward the Fourth, as is evident from the words of the statute, which refers twice to the usage; ("which heretofore hath been used;") therefore whatsoever was the intention of the king in erecting this court, was likewise the intention of parliament in establishing it. That the lord president exercised his jurisdiction in the lordships marches of the ancient English counties, nay, in the counties themselves, is confirmed by the constant practice of all times.

The marches of Wales which were comprehended in Shropshire, according to Domesday, and perhaps always so since the making of Offa's Dyke, such as the lordships, towns, parishes, commots, hundreds and cantreds of Oswestry, Whittington,

Maesbrook,

Maesbrook, Knockin, Ellesmere, Down and Cherbury, were by the statute 27 Henry the eighth, above cited, made guildable, and annexed to the county of Salop; but as the act says, no otherwise privileged than as other hundreds within the said county. By a subsequent statute 34 and 35 of the same reign, the town and hundred of Aberton, till then called parcel of Merionethshire, was also annexed to Salop, and all offences committed in that county were to be enquired of in this.

The jurisdiction of the president and council of the marches was abolished by act of parliament in the first year of the reign of William and Mary, at the humble suit of all the gentlemen and other inhabitants of the principality of Wales. The preamble of the act sets forth, that the court was a great grievance to the subject. Among the principal complaints urged against it, may be ranked the mal-practices of its attornies and inferior afficers, "whereby," as the words of the records were, “justice had lacked due execution, and the inhabitants had been sundry ways most grievously vexed and molested, as also by long delays of suits, and new exactions of fees, greatly impoverished; so that the court, which was in the beginning erected for the ease and relief of the inhabitants, was become to them, through such abuses, most grievous and intolerable." The first lord president after the re-establishment by Edward the fourth, was carl Rivers, his brother-in-law; and the last was the earl of Macclesfield, whose commission afterwards ran as lord lieutenant of North and South Wales. An eminent writer of those times, speaking of the abolition of this jurisdiction, observes, "that it had proved an intolerable burthen to Wales and the borders at all times, and a means to introduce an arbitrary power, especially in the late reign, when a new convert family were at the head of it; nor could the earl of Macclesfield, the late president, who kept his court at Ludlow, reduce it to such order as to cease to be a grievance, and therefore it was dissolved."

MS. History of Salop, by Edward Lloyd of Treneweth, cited by Mr. Gough.