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THE BLACK PRINCE'S QUO WARRANTO (1348) TO the Black Prince's councillors, who directed the Quo Warranto1 enquiries of 1348 in his north Wales dominions, there were probably two principal justifications for the trouble and effort involved. It may have represented a conscious effort on the part of his council to establish firm control over his principality. It may have been in their minds, too, that the consequent fines and amercements would serve to reimburse some of the costs incurred in the recent campaigns of Crecy and Calais.2 Enquiries into franchises had a long history in England, and their potential as both an administrative and a financial device may well have attracted the attention of the prince's council. Not the least of its importance to the historian, however, is the incidental light it throws upon conditions in Gwynedd after half a century of English rule. A striking feature of feudal society was the exercise by private lords of functions later reserved to the governments of states. Such functions were diverse in character and could take, for example, judicial or fiscal forms. The lord of a franchise might claim exemp- tion from certain public burdens, or the right to impose burdens of an arguably 'public' kind upon his tenants. Whatever their nature, such franchises formed valuable additions to a lord's property, conveying both prestige and profit. When central government was weak, landowners tended to usurp liberties for which there was no warrant in grant or custom, a process which could diminish Crown rights stealthily and disastrously. Such encroachments had occurred widely in the reign of Henry III, especially during the period of baronial rebellion and civil war. After Edward I's return from the Holy Land in 1274, the new king's ministers directed their energies towards establishing the nature and extent of franchises claimed by feudal lords in England, testing their legal basis and registering those which could be justified. There is little evidence to suggest that the king acted harshly against claimants even when they could plead 1 Printed in The Record of Caernarvon, ed. H. Ellis (Record Commission, 1838). References below, consisting of page numbers only, refer to this edition. The date of the proceedings can be calculated from a reference on p. 167. M. Sharp, 'The Household of the Black Prince', in T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, V, 382 ff.; B. H. Putnam, The Place in Legal History of Sir William Shareshull (Cambridge, 1950), p. 115.