Welsh Journals

of Wales, A. C. Reeves described it as a 'frontier region between Wales and England or as that land not under the authority of the English king or of Welsh lords, a territory of quite diverse geography and varying in extent according to who at any point in time exercised authority there'.3 But this is the historian's view and rather easier to get at. What terms did contemporaries use to describe the lands between England and Wales? More precisely, when did the term come to describe the Anglo-Norman lordships in Wales and the border land? These were further defined by the power lords exercised within their lands which separated them from lands held to the east in England and to the west in Wales. When writers wished to identify the location of lands, what terminology did they use? It is almost a universal trait of the sources for Angevin England, from whatever pen they emanated, that lands which we would describe as lying in the March were described as located in Wallia. Pembroke and Margam Abbey were described as being in Wales but other writers reveal a wide geographical licence. Throughout the Angevin period and, indeed, beyond, the Exchequer records referred to Herefordshire in Wallia, and the chroniclers Roger of Howden and Roger of Wendover followed suit. The city of Hereford, the Herefordshire castle of Kington, the Shropshire castle of Bridgnorth and a church in Brecon given to Battle Abbey were all described as being in Wales. Perhaps even more surprising, the lords of the March in the Angevin period, in their charters and also in the chronicles and royal records, were described as holding their lands not in Marchia but in Wallia. The lands of Walter de Lacy, William de Braose, William Marshal, Robert Fitz Richard of Haverford, and the Mortimers were all described at various times as situated in Wallia. It seems from this evidence that border castles and Marcher lands were regarded, geographically, as part of Wales rather than of England. The earliest evidence of a lord describing his lands as part of the March does not seem to occur until 1265, when a writ from John Fitz Alan (d.1267) was addressed to his constable of Oswestry et ceteris ballivis ac fidelibus suis de Marchia.4 This is not to suggest that lands were not described as lying in Marchia at an earlier date. The earliest reference in a chronicle 3 The Marcher Lords (Swansea, 1983), p. 11. 4 U. Rees (ed.), Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey, (Cardiff, 1985), p. 21 (no. 10).