Welsh Journals

circuits, with Glamorgan forming part of the Brecknock circuit of Brecon, Radnor and Glamorgan. The courts were held twice a year in each county, usually in the county towns. The Court of Great Sessions had the power to exercise all jurisdiction exercisable by the central courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas, and also had equitable jurisdication. It therefore dealt with a great variety of criminal and civil cases ranging from murder and assault to trespass and disputes over personal property. Its officials included the Attorney General, a senior and a second judge, the Prothonotary (principal notary or chief clerk, responsible for the record of the court), the Chamberlain and Chancellor, the court marshall and the court crier. Great Sessions for Glamorgan were held in March and August. For twenty years (1768-88) they were held not in Cardiff but in Cowbridge, where the amenities of the Bear Inn, the facilities of the House of Correction and the more central location of the town all recommended themselves to the judges. But in 1788 the Sessions returned to Cardiff where they continued to be held, in the Town Hall and other appointed premises, until their abolition in 1830. It was customary for the judges to be met on the outskirts of the town and conducted to their lodgings by the sheriff of the county (an official nominated by the judges), while the sheriff, justices and other county officials would at- tend church with the judges at the outset of the Sessions to hear a sermon preached by the sheriffs chaplain. The Court of Great Sessions was abolished by Act of Parliament in 1830 (1 Wm.IV cap. 70), and thereafter the Welsh counties were integrated into the Assize circuits of England. John Bird in his diary uses the terms Great Sessions and Assizes interchangeably, a confusion the more understandable when it is remembered that many legal cases originating in Cardiff or Glamorgan in the eighteenth century were brought not before the Great Sessions but before the Assize Courts at Hereford, Gloucester and elsewhere (e.g. the case of Homfray versus Griffiths in 1790). Officials of the Brecknock Circuit in the late Eighteenth Century: Thomas Caldecott, Attorney General 1789-1827 (Deputy: Henry Allen). William Wil- liams, Deputy Prothonotary 1784-99, Prothonotary 1799-1805. Sir Charles Gould, Chamberlain and Chancellor 1799-1807. George Hardinge and Abel Moysey, Judges. For further details of the working of the court and lists of officials, see W.R.Williams The history of the Great Sessions in Wales 1542-1830 (Breck- nock, 1899).