Welsh Journals

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN CARDIGANSHIRE MEDIEVAL AND MODERN* It is the privilege of an author or of a lecturer to define very firmly his subject and to state no less firmly the limitations which he has set upon himself Let me, therefore, at the outset say plainly that I lay no claim to being an historian and that I have come to this particular subject this afternoon because of my abiding interest in the forms of the names of places at different periods. I shall, therefore, be almost wholly concerned with the names of the units which have at various times been used for the purpose of local government in our county, and no reference will be made except in passing to the men who ensured the smooth running of local administration. We are told on good authority that there is nothing new under the sun. I am not sure that this is altogether true, but on the other hand it is surprising how very often the old gives way to the new, the new being simply another aspect of the old. It is my purpose, therefore, to attempt to trace the outlines of the development of local government through the ages and to see what changes took place at three points of time, namely, medieval, early modern, and modern. I hope I may not be blamed too much for over simplification and generalization. To begin with we must go back far in time to the period before there was any conception of Wales as a political unit, when the country was divided into provinces or gwledydd, each gwlad with its own royal dynasty and its definite boundaries-boundaries which in some cases go back for fifteen hundred years.1 The gwledydd in this far-off Wales were Gwynedd in the North West, Powys stretching from North to South as far as the River Wye at first, but later to the Severn, and Dyfed in the South West. Lesser units were Ceredigion (apparently owing its name to Ceredig, and therefore dating back to the fifth century), Ystrad Tywi and Brycheiniog as part of the old Deheubarth, and Glywysing, or Morgannwg, and Gwent in the South East. For more effective government these gwledydd were divided into cantrefi, a word which suggests a hundred habitations or settlements. But gradually the cantrefi were themselves further subdivided into commotes (cwmwd, cymydau, a word which still survives in cymydog, neighbour '), and in each commote and cantref the king or the lord had his court to transact the daily business of the area. Local ad- ministration was in the hands of local officials the rhaglaw held the court, the maer collected the tributes due from the bondmen, and the *An address delivered to the Society at Aberystwyth, i December 1962.