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CROWN AND COMMUNITY IN THE PRINCIPALITY OF NORTH WALES IN THE REIGN OF HENRY TUDOR 'King Henrie the seventh, who by his grandfather Owen Tuder descended out of Wales, being aided by the Welshmen of Bosworth field knowing and pitieng their thraldome and iniuries, tooke order to reforme the same, and granted unto them a charter of liberties, whereby they were released of that oppression, wherewith they were afflicted by lawes more heathenish than christian.' DAVID POWEL was among the sixteenth-century commentators who, in tracing th$; improvement effected by the Tudor monarchs, attributed its initiation to Henry VII.1 The reforms brought about by Henry VII were made, not by a single enactment, but by the grant of several charters. They were conferred upon the three shires of the principality of North Wales, Anglesey, Caernarfon, and Meirion- nydd, and upon a number of lordships in the northern march of Wales. The charters were granted during the last five years of Henry's i reign, and their concession has been regarded as a late departure in royal policy, and one designed to fulfil the king's declared intention to deliver the Welsh from the 'miserable servitudes' which they had long endured.2 This study is concerned with the liberties conceded to the principality of North Wales. The grant of these liberties to the men of Gwynedd is here considered not as an expression of the will of a benevolent monarch of Welsh nationality, but as a concession secured during what may be regarded as the final phase in the inter- action of Crown and community in Gwynedd in the later medieval period. It is, thus, necessary that the terms of the charters be I should like to express my appreciation of the very helpful suggestions offered me by Professor David Williams. Dr. E. B. Fryde, and my wife. 1 David Powel, The Historie of Cambria (1584), pp. 390-1. In William Wynne's edition (1697) the section concerning Henry Tudor is enlarged and states that the king 'granted to the Welsh a charter of liberty and immunity, whereby they were released from the cruel oppression, which since their subjection to the English government they had most cruelly sustained'; Henry VIII had made 'a plenary reformation of what his father had wisely begun'. George Owen esteemed Henry Tudor as a prince who delivered his nation from bondage; the first of the Tudors had inaugurated the emancipation which proved to be 'a joyefull metamorphosis for Wales'. 'The Dialogue of the government of Wales'. 1594, in The Description of Penbrokshire. ed. H. Owen. III, 36-7. 56-7. The declaration attributed to Henry Tudor is contained in a letter alleged to have been addressed to John ap Maredudd. It is quoted in the work of his descendant Sir John Wynn. The History of the Gwydir Family (1927). p. 28. Another text of the declaration. with slight variants, is among the Clenennau papers printed in Clenennau Letters and Papers, ed. T. Jones Pierce (1947). p. 139. The latter document is quite evidently of a date c. 1600 or even later. For a general survey of the reign, see C. A. J. Skeel, 'Wales under Henry VII', in Tudor Studies. ed. R. W. Seton-Watson (1924). pp. 1-25.