Welsh Journals

The Customs of Powys (B. M. Add. M5., 9867). By T. P. ELLIS, M.A., I.C.S. (retd.) 1. INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. Mr. Stanley Davies has asked me to write an article explanatory of the document B.M. Add. MS., 9867 which appeared in Part LVI. (December, 1895) of the Montgomeryshire Collections. To explain the legal references therein in detail would need an exposition of large parts of old Welsh Custom, and I think the best method of approach is to make some general observations, and for the elucidation of legal points, to refer the reader to the pages of 1 Welsh Tribal Law and Custom in the Middle Ages.' The document purports to be a resume of the Customs of Powys prepared by a gathering of Welsh landlords at Porth y Greor in the 22nd year of Henry V. As Henry V. did not reign for twenty-two years, it is clear that the ascription is inaccurate. There is a tradition that some kind of gathering did take place in the time of the Lancastrians, when misgovernment or no govern- ment was the order of the day in Wales, that that gathering took over the control of affairs in the Berwyn country, and bound itself to observe and enforce law and order according to the principles of old Welsh law. But whether that tradition be well founded or not, the docu- ment is not a document, nor even a resume of a document, prepared by men so acting. It appears to be nothing more nor less than a haphazard col- lection of notes on some points of Welsh custom prepared by a student of Welsh law without much sense of arrangement and is, in some particulars, of doubtful accuracy. What we have is a carelessly copied copy of an original series of notes. It is late in time, and I would not place the original as earlier than the end of the 16th century. It contains some genuine pieces of Welsh legal lore, inter- spersed with some valueless Triadic aphorisms, and what appear to