Marcher lord
A marcher lord (
A marcher lord was the English equivalent of a
The greatest marcher lords included the earls of Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Pembroke and Shrewsbury (see also English earls of March).
County palatine
Some strong earldoms along the Welsh border were granted the privileged status of county palatine shortly after the Norman Conquest, but only that based on Chester survived for a long period.
The term particularly applies to Anglo-Norman lords in Wales, who had complete jurisdiction over their subjects, without recourse to the king of England. The king had jurisdiction only in treason cases, though the lords each bore personal allegiance to the king as feudal subjects.
Formation of the Welsh March
The Welsh Marches contain Britain's densest concentration of
Marcher powers
The Anglo-Norman lordships in this area were distinct in several ways: they were geographically compact and jurisdictionally separate one from another, and they had special privileges which separated them from the usual English lordships. Royal writ did not work in the Marches: Marcher lords ruled their lands by their own law—sicut regale ("like a king") as Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, stated,[1] whereas in England fief-holders were directly accountable to the king. Marcher lords could build castles, a jealously guarded and easily revoked Royal privilege in England. Marcher lords administered laws, waged war, established market towns, and maintained their own chanceries that kept their records (which have been completely lost). They had their own deputies, or sheriffs. Sitting in their own courts they had jurisdiction over all cases at law save high treason. "They could establish forests and forest laws, declare and wage war, establish boroughs, and grant extensive charters of liberties. They could confiscate the estates of traitors and felons, and regrant these at will. They could establish and preside over their own petty parliaments and county courts. Finally, they could claim any and every feudal due, aid, grant, and relief",[2] although they did not mint coins. Their one insecurity, if they did not take up arms against the king, was of dying without a legitimate heir, whereupon the title reverted to the Crown in escheat. Welsh law was frequently used in the Marches in preference to English law, and there would sometimes be a dispute as to which code should be used to decide a particular case.
Feudal social structures, which were never fully established in England, took root in the Marches, which was not legally part of the realm of England. The traditional view has been that the Norman monarchy granted these outright. A revisionist view is that such rights were more common in the 11th century throughout the Conquest, but were largely suppressed in England, and survived in the Marches. Settlement was encouraged: knights were granted their own lands, which they held in feudal service to the Norman lords. Settlement was also encouraged in towns that were given market privileges, under the protection of a Norman
The tendencies of innovations in the
On the local side, the able-bodied population was more directly essential to the local Lord and was able to extract from him carefully defined and highly local liberties. A point of friction was in the Lords' funded churches where they appointed churchmen to livings held tightly under hierarchic control in the manner that had developed in Normandy, where a highly organised church structure was well in the hands of the duke. The Welsh church, on the Celtic plan, closely connected with clan loyalties, brooked little authoritarian influence.
The Marcher lords were progressively tied to the English kings by the grants of lands and lordships in England, where control was stricter, and where many marcher lords spent most of their time, and through the English kings' dynastic alliances with the great magnates. It was less easy to work in the opposite way, and establish a position among the hereditary marcher families, as
Intermarriage with the Welsh
While fierce hostility between the Marcher lords and the Welsh was a fact of life, nevertheless, much intermarriage occurred between the Norman-descended barons and princely Welsh families, (often as a means of cementing a local agreement or alliance). The
End of Marcher powers
By the 16th century, many lordships had passed into the hands of the crown, which governed its lordships through the traditional institutions. The crown was also directly responsible for the government of the
Later claims
In 1563, Elizabeth I granted the former Marcher Lordship of Denbigh to her favourite Robert Dudley, later the earl of Leicester.[3] The grant claimed that Denbigh was given to him,
- "in as large and ample a manner...as was used when it was a lordship marcher with as large wardes as council learned could devise."[3]
Although the Laws in Wales Acts had not been modified – and the claim to have the same rights as a Marcher lordship could not therefore be legally possible – Leicester had such political power that he was able to make this a reality in practice.[3]
Early in the 21st century, businessman
List of Marcher lordships
Marcher lordships in the Welsh Marches and the successor shires[6]
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See also
References
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (September 2008) |
- ^ a b Nelson
- ^ Nelson, ch. 8
- ^ ISBN 978-0719053252. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
- ^ Frank Hinks (4 September 2008). "To the manor bought". Legal Week. Archived from the original on 18 November 2008. Retrieved 5 September 2008.
- ^ Crown Estates Commissioners -v- Roberts & another (2008)
- ISBN 978-0-7083-2115-7
- ^ P. Brown, P. King, and P. Remfry, 'Whittington Castle: The marcher fortress of the Fitz Warin family', Shropshire Archaeology and History LXXIX (2004), 106–127.
Bibliography
- Davies, Robert Rees, Sir, Lordship and society in the March of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford University Press, 1978.
- Davies, Robert Rees, Sir, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford University Press, 2000)
- Nelson, Lynn H. (1966). The Normans in South Wales, 1070–1171. Austin and London: University of Texas Press.
- Reeves, A. C., The Marcher Lords (Dyfed: Christopher Davies), 1983.