. Owen Glyndwr and the last struggle for Welsh independence, with a brief sketch of Welsh history;. of Deheubarth. Each man had just soNorman en- Hiuch territory as he could win by thecroachments. sword, and, what was more important,only so much as he could keep by it. They allheld their lands, whose limits were but vaguely de-fined by charter or title-deed, since they were un-definable, direct from the King of England, andhad by virtue of their office the right to sit in Par-liament, and to support the royal canopy at corona-tions with silver spears. In their own domains they possessed absolu
. Owen Glyndwr and the last struggle for Welsh independence, with a brief sketch of Welsh history;. of Deheubarth. Each man had just soNorman en- Hiuch territory as he could win by thecroachments. sword, and, what was more important,only so much as he could keep by it. They allheld their lands, whose limits were but vaguely de-fined by charter or title-deed, since they were un-definable, direct from the King of England, andhad by virtue of their office the right to sit in Par-liament, and to support the royal canopy at corona-tions with silver spears. In their own domains they possessed absoluteauthority, so far as they could exercise it, even overthe lives of their tenants. Small towns began togrow under the protection of their castle walls, andwere occupied by their retainers. Courts wereestablished in each lordship, and justice was adminis-tered to the Anglo-Norman minority after Englishcustom and to the Welsh majority after the customof old Welsh law, and in the native tongue. Let merepeat, I am but generalising. The condition ofWales at the opening of the thirteenth century was. 1400] Introductory Sketch 55 far too complex to admit of analytical treatmentwithin such a brief space as this. The exceptions toevery rule were numerous. The King of waiesintheEngland himself, for example, owned many thirteenthlordships and was represented in them by ^^^ ^^^a Justiciar or Bailiff, and sometimes this function-ary was actually a Welshman. Here and thereagain a Welsh noble held property as a NormanBaron from the King while occasionally a Nor-man did allegiance for his barony to a WelshPrince, and posed as a Welshman. The landed system of Wales in the Middle Agesis still more hopeless for purposes of brief descrip-tion. The indigenous tribal system, when land washeld in families, or gwelis, by the de- Landed scendants of a privileged though perhaps large class, had been steadily undergoing modifi-cation since the later Saxon period,* and in alldirections it was ho
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