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It follows, therefore, that just so far as the arguments of Mr. Lewis are based solely or mainly upon the Dyfnwal Moelmud Triads, must they be received with caution. It does not follow that they are altogether fallacious, but they can be accepted as no more than the plausible conclusions of a scholar unfortified by contemporary cor

roboration.

Unfortunately many of the author's speculations have no more firm bases than the documents referred to. These Triads, with their assumption of hoar antiquity, and their portrayal of a state of society of almost idyllic perfection, have deceived many. Their author, whoever he may have been, or at whatever period he may have flourished, was a man of remarkable intellectual power, combining much historic knowledge with the vivid imagination of a poet, and creating out of the mingled fact and fiction seething within his active brain a pleasing but utterly unreal picture of the pastoral life in which he conjectured the early Welsh to have lived. But, while too much of Mr. Lewis's work is vitiated by inaccurate generalisations, there still remain many important speculations of considerable novelty and value. It would be manifestly impossible, in the space at our disposal, to follow the author through his expositions of the different features of Welsh political and social life. In an Introductory Summary he has briefly set forth the results of the investigations which are recorded at length in his subsequent chapters, and which we may conveniently adopt as affording an example of the author's usual style:

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"The free Welsh community was organised in this manner. the base were the freeholding heads of households. Every man, however, belonged to a joint family, or trev, as well as to a family. Every trev belonged to a cenedl or kindred, with its pencenedl or chief, elders, and other officers. All the kindreds together were organised into a cantrev, or enlarged trev; though the cantrev was often, for convenience, divided into cwmmwds, or neighbourhoods, similarly organised with a cantrev.

"The cantrev had a chief or lord, who had—(1), a royal court (of ceremony), with a staff of officers; and (2), a legal court, over which he presided (or, in his absence, his maer or reeve), giving it sanction as ruler, but not as judge; and in which (except in some parts where a different practice seems to have come in at a late date) the freeholding heads of households, or breyrs as they were called, acted as judges of law and fact. In fact, the freeholders, as a confrater nity, arbitrated or decided their disputes under sanction of their administrative and executive chief. In this court, too, other matters of public interest, or which needed to be done notoriously, were settled......The chief and officers of the kindred retained divers powers; but the enlarged trev appears to have possessed most of the authority and jurisdiction which may have belonged to a trev before it became so enlarged. Sometimes several cantrevs were combined into one country, or gwlad, under one prince; but the cantrev with its court remained a complete organisation. There were

a maer and canghellor, and other officers of country, in each cantrev, and the prince went about from palace to palace, holding a court in each of his cantrevs, each of which had in turn to support his establishment. At a subsequent-period these principalities were held under one common over-lord as a cywlad, or common country; but the cantrev institutions remained, though some alterations were effected in the way of appeals and legislation.

"So far we have dealt with the Free Brotherhood; but they, after all, formed only an oligarchy. Under them were divers orders who had nothing to do with the settlement of disputes or affairs. First, there were alltuds, i.e., strangers, refugee Welshmen, and others settling within the cantrev. In time they became recognised inferior members of the community, with lands, rights, and privileges, but still under burdens to the breyr who protected and answered for them. They were aillts, i.e., protected ones, having no share in the free privileges of the brotherhood. Then there were aillts, or taeogs, who became such by reason of having forfeited their free privileges. All these aillts were allowed in time to become free citizens, and to hold their lands freely. There were also alltuds of the king, who by favour of the prince were at once located by him on public land, and in a shorter time became free citizens, without ever becoming aillts. And there were aillts or taeogs of the king, who seem to have been always in servitude, and probably were members of a conquered race. Lastly, there were caeths, or bondmen, in personal, and not prædial servitude. There appear to be no signs in the laws of any class superior to the breyrs, except the prince's family. There were no nobles.

"As to the land, all the wastes belonged to the free community of the cantrev in common. Of the rest, the greater part belonged to the free joint families. The prince, however, had some which was tilled by his aillts, who paid dues and rendered other services to him. The various officers of court and country had lands attached to their offices. There were also certain open lands which were common fields, in which every free Welshman was entitled to have an allotment of fixed size, of five free erws, for tillage, but no proprietary right."

With many of the conclusions here expressed, the writer of the present notice agrees, from others he dissents, while there are one or two that seem to be of considerable importance as setting forth some points of Welsh usage in a fresh and instructive manner.

Considerable attention has latterly been drawn by Mr. Seebohm and other scholars to the communal system of agriculture pursued by the early Welsh and other Celtic peoples. With it was closely connected a fiscal system that appears to us now-a-days to be complex and unworkable, but was probably well adapted to the requirements of a nation in its early stages of development. In the time of Howel, and at the later date of the first manuscript of what is known as the Venedotian Code, and at the still later date of the Survey of John de Delves, much of the arable land, though in ever

decreasing area, still remained cut up into strips averaging one erw, and cultivated by a combination of tribesmen conjoined for the purpose of finding the plough-team, who divided the number of erws according to their contribution towards the joint ploughing. For revenue purposes, the cultivable land of the free tribesmen was thus divided four erws to every tyddyn (farmstead), four tyddyns to every rhandir, four rhandirs to every gafael, four gafaels to every trev, four trevs to every maenol. For the support of the tribal chieftain, the maenol was assessed to one pound, so apportioned between its several subdivisions that each erw bore its proportion of the tax, amounting to one farthing.

To this explanation of the symmetrical system of landed division in Gwynedd, first suggested by Mr. Seebohm, our esteemed fellowmember, Mr. A. N. Palmer, assents. The author of the work now under review, however, held that "the whole of this elaborate scheme, with its affectation of numerical exactness, bears the impress of unreality", and he has argued that it was no more than a theoretical scheme, presumably of the legist who drafted the Code, or of the writer of the manuscript in which it is found. Mr. Seebohm's book on the English Village Community was not published until the latter half of 1883; Mr. Lewis died in 1884; it is possible, therefore, that further study of Mr. Seebohm's arguments might have modified his views. This suggestion is rendered all the more probable from the circumstance that the author has misquoted Mr. Seebohm (inadvertently, no doubt), though this error should have been corrected by the Editor. Indeed, that portion of the chapter dealing with Mr. Seebohm's conclusions appears to have been hurriedly interpolated.

Now, while the differences between the landed system of North and that of South Wales are difficult of explanation, and while it is clear that the explanation that suits one scheme will not do for the other, it is quite certain that the primitive landed system of Wales, with its affectation of numerical exactness, was not an arbitrary scheme. The same principle of arithmetical arrangement was in vogue in Ireland, as Mr. Seebohm has sufficiently shown, and as may be seen still more clearly from documents at the Record Office which do not appear to have been known to him. Whether a system of taxation was connected with that of the Irish land divisions is not so certain, but there can be no doubt that it was so in Wales. Not only so, but when the English kings obtained sufficient power to be enabled to make grants of privileges and dues arising out of Welsh lands, they granted the render previously paid to the Welsh chieftain from a clearly recognised area to their own dependents. See on this The Athenæum, 23 Nov. 1889, s. v. "Gwestva.

Upon points of Cymric usage, which for their proper elucidation require a knowledge of the social and economic history of other branches of the Celtic family, Mr. Lewis's conclusions cannot be considered satisfactory. He seems to have known little or nothing of ancient Ireland, or, indeed, of the general principles which

underlie the customary procedure of all the Aryan nations. He took the two volumes of Aneurin Owen's edition of the Welsh Laws, and made what he could of them; but with one important exception, he made no effort to study their main features in actual operation. It is quite otherwise when we turn to the second division of the book, that dealing with English institutions and the British element contained therein. Here we have references in abundance to early legal treatises, to chroniclers, and to the works of recognised scholars who have written upon the origin and development of English usages. The fulness with which English procedure is discussed renders this portion of Mr. Lewis' work an important contribution to our constitutional history; but with all his diligence he met with little success in his attempt at proving the indebtedness of English laws and customs to those of Wales. In a really able chapter on the origin and progress of the system of trial by jury his conclusions are thus given :

"How did the ancient English or Anglo-Saxons come to adopt such a system (i.e., compurgation)? We trace back compurgation in England almost to the time when the people of Anglo-Saxon England are supposed to have first become acquainted with Christianity, and we must suppose it then to have been based on the above Welsh principle (that the compurgators should be the nearest of kin to the accused), as we afterwards find it to have been, because there was no known source or means from or by which such principle could have been introduced. Indeed, it is impossible to believe that compurgation having once existed on the principle of evidence, could have reverted to the older and ruder principle. But even at

this early date to which we can trace the institution in England, there was no known existing foreign source to which we can attribute the origin of the English system. From what we know of the relations between the Anglo-Saxons and the unconquered Britons, it is not to be believed that the institution, though like their own, came from them. But the institution goes back among the Britons to an unknown date, probably to the introduction of Christianity among them; and as a portion of the race, as a Christian people, occupied England before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, it would seem not only possible, but probable, that they might have been the people and channel from and through which the English derived the system of compurgation in question. In these hesitating tones only is the conclusion stated, because no sane man would attempt to dogmatise on such a subject." (Pp. 410-11.)

Mr. Lewis has another excellent chapter upon "Socage, Gavelkind, and Borough English", in which are some very discriminating remarks upon early English and Welsh tenures; but when (on p. 483) he remarks that "the lands of gavelkind tenants in Kent are often styled 'gavel-lands', and so the gavel-lands to be found in many manors out of Kent may reasonably be taken to refer to lands under the same tenure", he is altogether wrong. The terms "gavelkind" and "gafol-land" have nothing to do with each other.

The former denotes a method of succession to land; the latter, the tenure under which the holder of land rendered certain servile "gafol" to his lord. The Editor ought to have saved his friend from such an unfortunate slip as this; but we observe that throughout the whole of the second half of the book there is not a single note or suggestion of amendment from the Editor's pen, such as are frequent in the first part. It seems clear that the subjects discussed were altogether beyond him.

We must make brief reference to one difficult point in Welsh land-tenure, that in the opinion of the present writer receives considerable enlightenment from the exposition of Mr. Lewis. Students of the Record of Caernarvon know that in the Survey of North Wales some lands are said to have been "de natura de Trefgewery", whilst others are described as being "de Treweloge". Mr. Lewis considered that the former term denotes the land held in common by the king's villeins, each of whom was liable, in default of the rest, for the whole tribute arising to the lord from the trev, whilst treweloge means tir gwelyawg, or inheritance-land descendible from father to sons, having the lord's dues apportioned amongst the several family holdings. The latter was the more honourable tenure, and there existed means of elevating the tenants from one grade to the other. At the period of the Survey certain tenants, described as "trefgewery", put forward claims to be considered as weloge", but they were not admitted. Of Trefgoed, in the comot of Dinllaen (Carnarvonshire), it is said, "this vill is of the nature of trefgewery. The tenants say the tenure is that of treweloge, but the jury say that it is trefgewery"; and in proof of the servile nature of the tenure of trefgewery, we have a plea of the reign of Richard II, which appears to have escaped the notice of Mr. Lewis, relating to the same hamlet of Trefgoed, when reference was made to the Survey of John de Delves, and in which the land is said to be held of the king "in bundagio".

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Upon the very important question of the amelioration of this form of holding, Mr. Lloyd observes :

"Usually the change into treweloge implied an apportionment of the dues. As to the food-paying villeins, this change was facilitated by the commutation of their dues into a money-rent, which was easily apportioned. In the case of the labour-tenants the change could hardly be made without the substitution of money-rent for service. There must, then, have generally been the direct and formal concurrence of the lord in effecting the change into treweloge; and there is reason to believe that there was something in the nature of a formal arrangement, under which the several tenants of a vill were at once freed altogether from the conditions of trefgewery tenure; the common right as well as the common liabilities were abolished, and each tenant was made to hold immediately and separately of the lord at the apportioned rent; and consequently each became the owner of an ordinary heritable property, which meant in Welsh law a family property."

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