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A CARDIGANSHIRE CROWN LAND DISPUTE Well into the eighteenth century, about two-thirds of the land of Cardiganshire was in the possession of the Crown of England, popularly known as Crown land.1 It had been so since, at least, the Edwardian con- quest in 1282, when the territory hitherto possessed by the native Welsh princes, passed into the hands of the English king by right of conquest. From time to time, the Crown estate had been added to by escheat and forfeiture, so that by 1536, when the first Act of Union of England and Wales was passed, the Crown was the largest landowner in Wales. It was no wonder, therefore, that when a class of land-hungry gentry emerged after the fifteenth century, intent on building up private estates, that envious eyes were cast upon the Crown estate as a possible sphere for their aggrandisement. Encroachment on Crown property was relatively easy since the administra- tion of such a vast estate was notoriously lax and inefficient. The stewards of Crown lands, who should have been guardians of the Crown's interests, were often in collusion with these predators by selling or letting parcels of land to them at much less than their worth. Stewards were, as often as not, local gentry who were not above exploiting their office to their own advan- tage and that of their friends, especially if they were persons of consequence within their counties. Such an amorphous mass as the Crown estate defied any attempts at reform and efficient administration. Only once had it been surveyed, in 1649, with a view to reform, but after the Restoration of 1660 there was a relapse to the laxity of administration which was characteristic of earlier days. The lack of records of land transfers as well as maps, made it impos- sible to determine the size and location of what property belonged to the Crown and what returns of revenue it should make. Many of the tenures were productive of so small rents that it was scarcely worth the effort to col- lect them, and so, arrears had accumulated over the years, the worst default- ers often being the landed gentry. Thus by the end of the eighteenth century, the Crown estate as well as its revenue had greatly contracted.2 The attempts by the Crown from time to time to recover concealed lands and to enforce its financial claims, invariably provoked local opposi- tion. The Earl of Leicester met with a sharp rebuff in Denbighshire when he tried to exploit a grant made by Queen Elizabeth I which allowed him to take possession of any concealed lands that he discovered in the Forest of Snowdon. For a time after this, the Crown refrained from gifting or selling