III. THE WELSH LAND SYSTEM ACCORDING TO THE WELSH LAWS.

Laws of Howel in the tenth century.

The Welsh version of the ancient laws of Wales contains three several codes: The Venedotian of North Wales, the Dimetian and Gwentian of South Wales. They profess to date substantially from Howel dda, who codified the local customs about the middle of the tenth century. They contain, however, later [p190] additions, and the MSS. are not earlier than the end of the thirteenth century. There is a Latin version of the Dimetian code in MS. of the early part of the thirteenth century, which is especially valuable as giving the received Latin equivalent of the Welsh terms used in the laws. And there are also, apart from these codes, triads of doubtful date, but professing to preserve traditional customs and laws of the Welsh nation before the time of the Saxon conquest of Britain.[221]

For the present purpose the actual date of a law or custom is not so important as its own intrinsic character. We seek to gain a true notion of the tribal system, and an economically early trait may well be preserved in a document of later date.

Saxon and Welsh systems contemporary.

There is no reason why we should be even tempted to exaggerate the antiquity of the evidence. The later the survival of the system the more valuable for our purpose. The Saxon and Welsh systems were contemporary systems, and it is best to compare them as such.

It would appear that under this tribal system a district was occupied by a tribe (cenedl) under a petty king (brenhin) or chief.

Free tribesmen of tribal blood.

The tribe was composed of households of free Welshmen, all blood relations; and the homesteads of these households were scattered about on the country side, as they were found to be in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis. They seem to have been grouped into artificial clusters mainly, as we shall see, for purposes of tribute or legal jurisdiction. [p191]

Taeogs without tribal blood.

But all the inhabitants of Wales were not members of the tribes. Besides the households of tribesmen of blood relations and pure descent, there were hanging on to the tribes or their chiefs, and under the overlordship of the latter, or sometimes of tribesmen, strangers in blood who were not free Welshmen; also Welshmen illegitimately born, or degraded for crime. And these classes, being without tribal or family rights, were placed in groups of households and homesteads by themselves. If there were any approach to the Saxon village community in villenage upon a lord's estate under Welsh arrangements, it was to be found in this subordinate class, who were not Welshmen, and had no rights of kindred, and were known as aillts and taeogs of the chief on whose land they were settled. Further, as there was this marked distinction between tribesmen and non-tribesmen, so also there was a marked and essential distinction between the free tribe land occupied by the families of free Welsh tribesmen, called 'tir gwelyawg,' or family land, and the 'caeth land' or bond land of the taeogs and aillts, which latter was also called 'tir-cyfrif' or register land, and sometimes 'tir-kyllydus' or geldable land (gafol-land?).[222]

The main significance of the Welsh system, both as regards individual rights and land usages, turns [p192] on this distinction between the two different classes of persons and the two different kinds of land occupied by them. They will require separate examination.

Let us first take the free tribesmen ('Uchelwyrs' or 'Breyrs') and their 'family land.'

The free tribesmen.

If the professed triads of Dyvnwal Moelmud may be taken to represent, as they claim to do, the condition of things in earlier centuries, the essential to membership in the cenedl, or tribe, was birth within it of Welsh parents.

Free-born Welshmen were 'tied' together in a 'social state' by the three ties of—

Every free Welshman was entitled to three things:—

The homestead or tyddyn.

The free tribesman's homestead, or tyddyn, consisted of three things:—

And the five free strips, afterwards apparently [p193] reduced to four, of each head of a house—free, possibly, in the sense of their having been freed from the common rights of others over them, as well as being free from charges or tribute—we may probably regard as contained in the tyddyn, or as lying in croft near the homesteads.

The holding that of a household or family.

The Gwentian, Dimetian, and Venedotian codes all represent the homestead or tyddyn and land of the free Welshman as a family holding. So long as the head of the family lived, all his descendants lived with him, apparently in the same homestead, unless new ones had already been built for them on the family land. In any case, they still formed part of the joint household of which he was the head.[226]

When a free tribesman, the head of a household, died, his holding was not broken up. It was held by his heirs for three generations as one joint holding; it was known as the holding of 'the heirs of So-and-so.' [227] But within the holding there was equality of division between his sons; the younger son, however, retaining the original tyddyn or homestead, and others having tyddyns found for them on the family land. All the sons had equal rights in the scattered strips and pasture belonging to the holding.[228]

Equality within the family

Thus, in the first generation there was equality between brothers; they were co-tenants in equal [p194] shares of the family holding of which they were co-heirs.

When all the brothers were dead there was, if desired, a re-division, so as to make equality between the co-heirs, who were now first cousins.

When all the first cousins were dead there might be still another re-division, to make equality between the co-heirs, who were now second cousins.

to second cousins.

But no one beyond second cousins could claim equality; and if a man died without heirs of his body, and there were no kindred within the degree of second cousins, the land reverted to the chief who represented the tribe.[229]

Great-grandfather the common ancestor.

The great-grandfather was thus always looked back to as the common ancestor, whose name was still given to the family holding of his co-heirs. The family tie reached from him to his great-grandchildren, and then ceased to bind together further generations.[230]

The Gwely or family couch.

We have seen that even in the twelfth century the household all used one couch, extending round the wall of the single room of the house; this couch was called the 'gwely.' The 'tir gwelyawg' was thus the land of the family using the same couch; and the descendants of one ancestor living together were a 'gweli-gordd.' [231] As late as the fourteenth century, in the Record of Carnarvon, the holdings [p195] are still called 'Weles' and 'Gavells.' They are essentially 'family' or tribal holdings.[232]

And now as to the tenure upon which these holdings of the free tribesmen were held.

The Gwestva or food rent.

It was a free tenure, subject to the obligation to pay Gwestva, or 'food rent,' to the chief, and to some incidents which marked an almost feudal relationship to the chief, viz.:—

(1) The Amobr, or marriage fee of a female.

(2) The Ebediw,[233] or death payment (heriot).

(3) Aid in building the king's castles.

(4) Joining his host in his enterprises in the country whenever required, out of the country six weeks only in the year.[234]

These were the usual accompaniments of free tenure everywhere, and are no special marks of serfdom.

The tunc pound in lieu of it.

Several homesteads were grouped together in 'maenols' or 'trevs' for the purpose of the payment of the Gwestva, as we shall see by-and-by. This consisted in Gwent, of a horse-load of wheat-flour, an ox, seven threaves of oats, a vat of honey, and 24 pence of silver.[235] And as the money value of the Gwestva was always one pound, so that its money equivalent was known as 'the tunc pound,' holdings of family land were spoken of, as late as the fourteenth century, as 'paying tunc' [236]—the gwestva, or tunc pound in lieu [p196] of it, being the distinctive tribute of the free tribesmen.

Such was the tenure of the family land, and these were the services of the free tribesmen.

A free tribal tenure.

There is no trace here of villenage, or of the servile week-work of the Saxon serf. The tribesmen had no manorial lord over them but their chief, and he was their natural and elected tribal head. So, when Wales was finally conquered, the tunc was paid to the Prince of Wales, and no mesne lord was interposed between the tribesman and the Prince.

Thus the freedom of the free tribesman was guarded at every point.

The aillts or taeogs.

Their tyddyns and ploughs.

Turning now to the other class, the aillts or taeogs—who in the Latin translations of the laws are called villani—the key to their position was their non-possession of tribal blood, and therefore of the rights of kindred. They were not free-born Welshmen; though, on the other hand, by no means to be confounded with caeths, or slaves. They must be sworn men of some chieftain or lord, on whose land they were placed, and at whose will and pleasure they were deemed to remain.[237] Each of these taeogs had his tyddyn—his homestead, with corn and cattle yard. In his tyddyn he had cattle of his own. In South Wales several of these taeogs' homesteads were grouped together into what was called a taeog-trev. Further, the arable fields of the 'taeog-trev' were ploughed on the open-field system by the taeogs' [p197] common plough team, to which each contributed oxen.

Equality in the taeog-trev.

But the distinctive feature of the taeog-trev was that an absolute equality ruled, not between brothers or cousins of one household, as in the case of the family land of the free tribesmen, but throughout the whole trev. Family relationships were ignored. All adults in the trev—fathers and sons, and strangers in blood—took equal shares, with the single exception of youngest sons, who lived with their fathers, and had no tyddyn of their own till the parent's death. This principle of equality ruled everything.[238] The common ploughing must not begin till every taeog in the trev had his place appointed in the co-tillage.[239] Nor could there be any escheat of land in the taeog-trev to the lord on failure of heirs; for there was nothing hereditary about the holdings. Succession always fell (except in the case of the youngest son, who took his father's tyddyn) to the whole trev.[240] When there was a death there was a re-division of the whole land, care, however, being taken to disturb the occupation of the actual tyddyns only when absolutely needful.[241]

Per capita no account of blood relationship.

The principle upon which the taeog's rights rested was simply this: where there was no true Welsh blood no family rights were recognised. In the absence of these, equality ruled between individuals; they shared 'per capita,' and not 'per stirpes.'

Their register land.

The land of a taeog-trev was, as already said called 'register land' [242]—tir cyfrif. [p198]

There were other incidents marking off the taeog from the free Welshman. He might not bear arms;[243] he might not, without his lord's consent, become a scholar, a smith, or a bard, nor sell his swine, honey, or horse.[244] Even if he were to marry a free Welsh woman, his descendants till the fourth, and in some cases the ninth degree, remained taeogs. But the fourth or ninth descendant of the free Welsh woman, as the case might be, might at last claim his five free strips, and become the head of a new kindred.[245]

Incidents to their tenures.

Even the taeog was, however, under these laws, hardly a serf. With the exception of his duty to assist the lord in the erection of buildings, and to submit to kylch, i.e. to the lord's followers, being quartered upon him when making a 'progress,' and to dovraith, or maintenance of the chief's dogs and servants, there seems to have been no exaction of menial personal services.[246]

Food-rents.

The taeogs' dues, like those of free Welshmen, consisted of fixed summer and winter contributions of food for the chief's table. In Gwent they had to provide in winter a sow, a salted flitch, threescore loaves of wheat bread, a tub of ale, twenty sheaves of oats, and pence for the servants. In summer, a tub of butter and twelve cheeses and bread.[247]

These tributes of food were called 'dawnbwyds,' gifts of food, or 'board-gifts,' and from these the taeog or register land is in one place in the Welsh laws called tir bwrdd, or 'board-land' (terra mensalia, [p199] or 'mensal land' [248]), a term which we shall find again when we come to examine the Irish tribal system.

The caeth or slave.

Lastly, it must not be forgotten that beneath the taeogs, as beneath the Saxon geneat and gebur, were the 'caeths,' or bondmen, the property of their owners,[249] without tyddyn and without land, unless such were assigned to them by their lord. These caeths were, therefore, not settled in separate trevs, but scattered about as household slaves in the tyddyns of their masters.