Welsh Journals

THE WELSH CATTLE TRADE IN THE 18th CENTURY Exchequer K. R. Depositions by Commission Interrogatories to Radnorshire Witnesses. (with acknowledgments to the Board of Celtic Studies Bulletin, Volume VIII, Part I, 1935, and to the Author, Mr. Owen Parry). THE FINANCING OF THE WELSH CATTLE TRADE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. T ITTLE use seems to have been made hitherto of that important class L of documents in the Public Record Office known as Depositions by Commission out of the Exchequer. During the reign of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts alone, those dealing with Wales number over 700, and they throw invaluable light on the evolution of land tenure and agrarian conditions during that critical period. Later in the seventeenth century and particularly during the eighteenth, trading activities became the subject of litigation, and while such cases are comparatively few in number, they contain welcome evidence as to the organization of com- merce from 1680 on. Four of these commercial cases have to do with the cattle trade. Much is already known of the extent of this trade, but comparatively little of the methods of carrying it on, particularly, as to its finance. Two cases, a precis of one is given below, throw considerable light on these points, and at the same time they indicate the hardly suspected existence of a pact of mutual advantage between the taxes administration of the period and those engaged in trade. All the documents of this class have their origin in actions entered at the Court of exchequer in London. When the circumstances demanded it and in order to save the expenses of bringing witnesses to London, the Court issued a commission for the taking of evidence on the spot. The commission was issued to local men of substance, two or more in number and they proceeded to administer the Court's interrogatories to the witnesses of the parties concerned. Where the documents are com- plete the Court's commission, together with the commissioners' oath, is usually attached these are missing in many cases however. Many of