Welsh Journals

BETWEEN 1604 and 1614 occurred one of the little-known but highly significant conflicts of the troubled reign of James I. During those ten years the gentry of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Gloucestershire struggled, under the leadership of Sir Herbert Croft, to have their counties exempted from the jurisdiction of the Council in the Marches of Wales. Although it directly concerned only a relatively small part of Britain, this controversy had much broader implications. It was an attempt by a group of local governors to gain independence from an institution which was increasingly an agent of centralisation and over which they had no control. It was, at bottom, a power struggle between the two basic elements in the early- Stuart governmental system-the Crown, which ruled from the centre, and the local magnates, who governed at the county level. In this struggle the strengths and weaknesses of both were sharply revealed. Since the Council was first established in the late-fifteenth century, it exercised jurisdiction not only over Wales itself, but over the four English border shires and the county palatine of Chester as well.1 There were several reasons for this. The border shires belonged to the same geographical region as Wales, the mountains of western Britain, and the trade routes from Wales to England ran through these counties. They contained great houses and castles more suitable for the Council's residence than any west of the border. In addition, the English gentry could, hopefully, be mobilized to cope with any Welsh rebellion or foreign invasion through Wales. *This article has grown out of a portion of my doctoral dissertation, 'The career of Sir Herbert Croft (1564?-1629): a study in Local Government and Society' (University of California, Irvine, 1974). The Four Shire controversy has been previously discussed by other historians, most notably by Dr. Penry Williams in his valuable article, 'The Attack on the Council in the Marches, 1603-42', Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymm. (1961, part 1), pp. 1-22, but his emphasis differs greatly from mine, and I am able to give more detailed treatment to the years 1604-14 and to the role of Sir Herbert Croft and the border gentry. Quotations from documents deposited in the British Museum, the National Library of Wales, and the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, are made with the kind permis- sion of those institutions, and quotations from Crown-copyright records in the Public Record Office appear by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. The following abbreviations are used in this article: BM Manuscripts in the British Museum C Chancery Papers, Public Record Office, London. CJ Journal of the House of Commons, Volume 1. E Exchequer Papers, Public Record Office Hatfield MSS Cecil Manuscripts, Collection of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House, Herts. HM El. Ellesmere Manuscripts, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. SP State Papers, Public Record Office. 1 For backround on the Council in the Marches, see Penry Williams, The Council in the Marches of Wales under Elizabeth I (Cardiff, 1958), ch. 1-5.