The Welsh Marches

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2:09The Crossed Wires Podcast Festival is back, bigger and better this year, in Sheffield. From Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th July 2026, BBC Sounds and Radio 4 Fringe are treating podcast listeners to an exciting line-up of shows all for free including In Our Time. We'll be recording at the Montgomery Theatre on the 4th of July with a special edition of In Our Time on Casablanca. That's Bogart and Bergman and much more. Visit crossedwires.live slash fringe for the full list of programmes and how to get free tickets. This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In 1066, William the Conqueror knew that if he wanted to control England, he'd have to subdue the Welsh forces across the border in an area that became known as the Welsh Marches.

3:11Soon, more and more Norman warlords established effectively their own private kingdoms, later their bases for invading Ireland. These marcher lords built castles here, where new towns grew up, new ways of life, with one law for the English and another for the Welsh. And I say here because we're at the Hay Festival, and Hay-on-Wye is in these marches. Indeed, one of the very first castles was built here in Hay, just down the road. Well, with me to discuss the Welsh marches are Ilyn Emlyn, lecturer in history and Welsh history at Aberystwyth University, Helen Fulton, professor of medieval literature at the University of Bristol, and Hugh Price, emeritus professor of Welsh history at Bangor University.

4:05Can I have a big warm hey welcome for my guest?

4:20Deeply appropriate, thank you. So let me go first of all to Hugh Price. Hugh, I've sketched out a little bit about the marches, but can you give us some essential details? What were the Welsh marches? Well, I think the first thing to say is that the marches were an essential part of the story of the conquest and colonisation of Wales in the Middle Ages. the marches in the sense we're going to talk about them include as it were the border between England and Wales which is more geographical use of the marches but extended right along the South Wales coast and into parts of mid Wales and later on after the Edwardian conquest also parts of northeast Wales and these were essentially created by lords who fought their way in many cases into Wales as we've heard Hay was an early example of a lordship established in the late 1080s by a Norman Bernard de Neuf Marchais who had lands in Herefordshire and he led troops down the Wye valley they would have been responsible for building the mot which is not at the site of hay castle now which is a bit later probably from the 12th century but near the church in hay and they continued and eventually by the 1090s bernard takes over the welsh kingdom of brecheniog or Brecon and at the same time the powerful Welsh king of southwest Wales, Rhys, Rhys Ap Teudor, is killed and after that the Normans also go further into west and southwest Wales so that's a further stage.

6:14So in a sense Hay is part of an important sort of thread in the story of the making of the marches. So how did these marcher lords, how did they manage to accrue so much power in their hands, particularly their independence from the English king? We don't really know exactly how they accrued that power. What is clear is that the power was very extensive by the time the documentation really gives us details about it in the 13th century. They claimed the right to wage private wars they had rights of jurisdiction there was a law of the march which was a hybrid between if you like English and Welsh law and that's recognized in Magna Carta in 1215 and it says disputes in the march will be judged according to the law of the march and those in England by the law of England and those in Wales by the law of Wales so clearly though there are lots of different lordships and by the end of the 13th century you have about 40 different marcher lordships so it's very fragmented it's very varied at the same time there's a concept that they have something in common and they do have very extensive powers including a jurisdiction but they were under the king of england nevertheless and there's a story relating to a lord who held lands very near to Hay Walter Clifford in 1250 who for some reason was offended by a letter sent to him by King Henry III and forced the royal messenger to eat the letter made of parchment and the wax seal which sounds extremely indigestible but we only know about that because Walter was summoned before the king to answer for this act of defiance.

8:01He was threatened with being imprisoned, with being disinherited, and in the end he had to pay a very large fine to be allowed to go free. So there were limits to the freedom of the Marcher Lords. Helen Fulton, let me come to you. So the Lords had their lands here and their interests in this region, but they had interests all over the place. How would you characterize them? They were the great magnates of their day. They were earls and dukes, people who'd been ennobled by William the Conqueror and his successors. So these were very large land owners. So they had estates in the march, but they also had estates elsewhere in England and increasingly in Ireland as well from the later 12th century.

8:51They held lands in Ireland as well. So for example, Hay and Brecon and Radnor were owned for a long time by the very powerful de Brea's family in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. And that family of de Brea's is a Norman family, also owned lands in England, France and Ireland and later on in the 15th century the town of Oswestry which formed its own little centre for a marcher lordship around Oswestry. That town and the lands around it were owned for a long time by the Fitzallan family, the Earls of Arundel and they owned Oswestry from about the late 12th century right through to the 16th century in an almost unbroken line and they were a very powerful family the earls of Arundel and of course they owned Arundel Castle in West Sussex near Brighton and also very large amounts of land in Norfolk and Suffolk so they're another example of one of these powerful marcher lords families that also owned lots of land elsewhere.

9:56So we're covering about 400 years here and that's a long time in which relationships evolve and go off in various directions. So this relationship between the rulers and the ruled, can you tell us about a poet, Yolo Gough, and his poem to Edward III, written in what was perhaps a golden period for the Lords? Yes, it was written in the late 14th century, and it's a very interesting example of a praise poem written in Welsh to an English monarch in the late 14th century. Welsh court poetry was a very vibrant and dynamic cultural phenomenon and we have a very, very large body of court poetry in Welsh surviving, mostly written to Welsh patrons but also increasingly during the 14th and 15th centuries written to marcher lords and their families.

10:55But the poem to Edward III I think is quite unusual being written to an actual monarch and I think the whole point was not that Edward III was ever going to read it or understood any Welsh, but the idea was to show him that the Welsh was supportive of the king's efforts during the Hundred Years' War. So the poem mentions the seizure of Calais, for example. In 1347, Edward III seized Calais, and in fact the English owned Calais right up until the middle of the 16th century. So that was a major military victory. So the poem praises Edward for his military prowess. The poet says, The heart and breast of the lion.

11:38He says, A good angel in the thick of battle. And the poet also calls him, The eagle of Windsor, because Edward was born in the castle at Windsor. so the poem really makes a lot of Edward's military prowess as a way of showing that the Welsh appreciated many Welsh fought in the Hundred Years' War on behalf of the king and the idea of the poem was to celebrate Edward's successes in those battles. Hlynemlen, let's go back to the beginning again. Who were the most powerful forces in Wales when the Marchal Lords first started to invade? Well, Wales in the 11th century was a country of many kings and many kingdoms across the whole country.

12:31So there was a sense of a common Welsh identity, although the Welsh would have called themselves Britons in the 11th century rather than Welsh, but there was this sense of Welsh identity across the country. But that wasn't reflected politically. So you had different kings, different kingdoms. We might know some of their names now as the names of counties like Gwynedd and Pwyis and Glamorgan and so on. So there were these kingdoms, but they changed all the time. There was a period of flux in Welsh politics as a kingdom depended on the personal power, the aggressive personality of the king himself.

13:09Now, before the Normans arrived on the borders of Wales, there had been one powerful king, Griffith a Plywelyn, who had managed to unite the whole of Wales under his control. but a few years before the Battle of Hastings we had Harold Godwinson of course who was defeated the Battle of Hastings invaded Wales that led to the collapse of Griffitha Plywelyn's kingdom incidentally Harold Godwinson also married Griffitha Plywelyn's wife Eildgith so poor Eildgith was Queen of Wales then Queen of England and that really left a power vacuum in Wales where you had a number of kings a number of kingdoms then, trying to vie for power against one another.

13:55So it's quite a turbulent time, and of course 1066 complicated matters even further. So the Normans come in, and fairly soon after they start establishing the Marchlands, they actually use these territories as a launch pad to invade Ireland. Why was that? Well, they'd had 100 years or so of trying to conquer Wales. They'd managed successfully at the beginning, but the Welsh had learned how to fight back. And after a while, Wales seemed to harden it to crack, I suppose, to many of these marching lords. And they looked across at Ireland, and when the opportunity arose, there was an exiled king of Ireland, king of Leinster, who invited the Normans to help him to invade his country.

14:43And so they thought, well, Ireland might be an easier prospect than what they were facing in Wales. So, Hugh Price, just as a follow-up to that, I've heard a lot of Irish historians argue to me that Ireland was the first colony, the first colonisation experiment of the English. But arguably, with the March of Lords, you could say that Wales was the first colony. What do you think of that? Well, you could certainly argue that. I think that there's a century earlier in a way, sort of late 11th rather than late 12th century. And I know from personal experience that Irish historians are very wedded to this idea that they're the first colony.

15:20I'm not sure it's that productive a sort of debate to have, really. What is, I think, interesting is that the march along to go to Ireland have had experience of similar kind of warfare. and indeed one of their great spokesmen, Gerald of Wales, the Ecclesiastican writer, made the point that because they were used to that kind of terrain and that kind of warfare, they were the most suitable to conquer Ireland and they should be sort of treated better by the king on account of that. So staying with you, Hugh, within the marches there was a sort of two-tier life. There was one law in areas known as the Welsh Ries and another law in the English Ries.

16:04What were these Ries? Well, we're talking about the organisation of, I think, the majority of marcher lordships. And what you tend to have was the lower lying land where you'd have the castle, the borough, sometimes a priory church which were the sort of key sort of symbols if you like of marcher domination and then you may have some low-lying agricultural land that they're all inhabited by settlers really and then higher up the welsh are they remain or some may have been forced to move and they have mainly a pastoral economy keeping cattle and so on and there are big differences is in the Englishries, they're organised more like English sort of manors.

16:53They pay, the tenants pay rents and perform services on an individual basis. But say, if you take the Lordship of Hay, where there is actually a survey in 1340, we know that, well, first of all, the English and Welsh are listed always separately. There's a very sharp ethnic distinction. And secondly, the Welsh, who live in these scattered villes up in the Black Mountains, some of them as high as 2 ,000 feet up, that they pay a communal payment of cattle every other year of 24 cows, which is based on a sort of traditional Welsh payment. So that's a nice illustration of the difference there, whereas nearly all the names in the English are English.

17:36And they become a target of Oanglindur later on, for example. And this persists, the urban concentration of English, then the rural concentration of Welsh and Welsh speakers? Well, to some extent, I mean, there was a rural element to the English, in as much as that, like in a lot of other situations in Europe, you get peasant colonists coming in and clearing more land and trying to grow crops of a sort of more agrarian economy. And they come in and do that, or they're reclaiming land from the sea or whatever. whereas in the uplands it's the Welsh and so that does have a certain amount of ongoing influence though in the late Middle Ages sometimes this changes.

18:22For example in Glamorgan where the Normans had taken over the Vale of Glamorgan, the low-lying land, by the 15th century there seems to be a movement of Welsh people into the lowlands there so the picture is very diverse in fact. Helen, as I said, we're looking at a period of around 400 years. Was there a culture emerging in the March lands which was distinct from either Welsh or English culture? Yes, I think there definitely was. It's most visible in the 14th and 15th centuries, I suppose, sort of second half of the period of the March of Lordships, where a very distinctive culture began to emerge.

19:04And it's really what you might call a border culture, as you might expect, so it has things in common with other border areas even today. So multilingualism and a certain amount of multiculturalism was evident. Intermarriage was very common, so people might have had a primary allegiance to being either English or Welsh, but actually their family, going back a few generations, was very enmeshed in both English and Welsh. Most people were bilingual or multilingual. there was a sense of community a sense of territory of who owned what land it was really important to know where the jurisdictions were so there was a very particular kind of culture because of the people who lived in the borders that found expression through the kind of poetry prose the manuscripts the churches the monasteries the way in which society was organized was quite distinctive to the march.

20:04And the March of Lords respected Welsh culture and Welsh traditions or not? Well, the March of Lords themselves were probably a bit far removed from Welsh culture, but the sort of lower level of English gentry certainly appreciated Welsh culture. They were the ones who mostly intermarried with Welsh people. and it's clear from the manuscript evidence that English speakers were almost as keen on preserving Welsh language culture as were Welsh speakers. Herin, Hughes mentioned the Magna Carta, which I found astonishing that they actually specify a legal system which is separate from both Wales and England and presumably on an equal footing.

20:52To what extent did that develop to the marches becoming a state within a state over that long durée, as it were? Yeah, it is an interesting situation which they found themselves in. Obviously, the King of England is their overlord, and yet their lordships fall outside of the Kingdom of England in many ways. So they hold power by the 13th, 14th centuries. They hold power which elsewhere is exorcised by the king. So the exercise of justice. They're the universal landlord. Everyone holds their land from them in the lordship. They also have the power to wage war, to have their private armies, have treaties with Welsh rulers to fight wars against one another, which wouldn't be thinkable in their English territories.

21:37And there's all sorts of other powers which were usually held by kings. So whether that's raising taxes, establishing boroughs, they have the right to royal fish, such as sturgeons and porpoise. and other things. So all these minor details which colour the image of the type of power that they had. And you see this encapsulated in a number of different examples. Here he was already referred to, one of the best examples of Walter Clifford who had the messenger eat the seal. Another example of 14th century of John Charlton Lord of Pauys whose mantra seemed to have been I am Pope, I am King I am bishop and abbot in my land.

22:19So in the sense that the king has no right to exercise justice in his lordship. I suppose what complicates matter as well, though, is that the king could also be a marcher lord. So he could be king, but also certain lordships fell into royal hands. And so the king had these rights as a marcher lord in certain parts of Wales, rather than as king, in a sense. I think I ought to explain for our audience here in Hay that the chronicler who relayed that story about the messenger having to eat the seal was one Matthew Parris. I'm not entirely sure whether it's the same Matthew Parris who presents great lives, but who knows?

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25:44So, 1282, Hugh, is obviously a very important date, 1282 to 1284, because Edward I subdues the rest of Wales outside of the marchers. What changes for the marcher lords once the rest of Wales is under the control of the English king? I think the biggest change is that they are now faced with a much more stable situation. I mean, in the 12th and 13th centuries, there'd been quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. Welsh rulers had recaptured some of the areas, like Ceredicion in West Wales, which had initially been taken by the March and so on, and a lot of warfare, as well as intermarriage and all sorts of connections.

26:26But anyway, it's been stabilised, and I think that's important and gives them a greater opportunity perhaps to further develop their lordships and their power in them. But also an important result of the conquest is that Edward rewards some of his friends and followers with new marcher lordships carved out of the sort of eastern part of the old Principality of Gwynedd. So in northeast Wales, so you have the lordship of Rithyn or Dufferin-Cloyde, lordship of Denby, Bromfield and Yale and so on. So these are new creations, and they in turn have new settlers coming in, both to the countryside and to the towns there.

27:06So the march is in fact expanded, and the fragmentation of Wales is in a sense increased. But now, instead of there being what was called before the conquest Pura Walia, or Welsh Wales, and Marchia Walia, the March of Wales, Now you have the royal principality of Wales, if you like, the principality of North Wales and South Wales, and then the March of Wales. So the configuration's changed. And that's the territory that is given to the Prince of Wales as well. Yes. This is when this emerges. It seems slightly counterintuitive, Helen, that at this point, after Edward I's military victory, that it becomes a sort of golden age for the marches.

27:51And yet I'm struggling a bit with that because once the rest of Wales is conquered, then the function of the marches as a sort of aggressive invading or defensive force seems to disappear. So what changes would you see when you looked around after Wales becomes attached to the crown of England? I think after 1282, the march has become less of a frontier, less of a military zone, and more of a settled, more urbanised zone. And I suppose one of the main cultural changes was the rise of towns, because Edward I built these enormous castles around the north of Wales, like Flint and Conwy and Carnarvon.

28:38And of course it's ironic that the castles that tourists want to come and see in Wales were actually built by the English to keep the Welsh firmly in their place. But they've become very much associated with the Welsh landscape now. But with the castles came towns and towns further down the eastern border and around the south coast began to grow. And trade and commerce grew in the 14th century. So that a lot of Welsh people were more aware of the advantages of urbanisation. There was still a lot of discrimination against the Welsh. They weren't always allowed to trade in the towns, but they could go in to buy from the towns or they had their markets just outside the towns.

29:19So there was a greater awareness of the kind of goods that could be bought in towns. There was a long period of peace, as Hugh said. After 1282, I think the Welsh sort of realised the game was up, really. Now that England managed the principality, the marcher lords were managing the lordships, ships there was very little space for the welsh to really mount any serious rebellion though of course when you come to 1400 that's exactly what oen glyndor did yes and hodin what were welsh people doing after edward assumes power how did they respond to this what happens to welshness in this period yeah well interesting i mean you've already referred to the fact that this is you know your period of flourishing of welsh culture in many ways in a sense there was peace which allows some of these things to develop and i suppose there were opportunities as well there was lots of discrimination and prejudice against the welsh in the marches but for those of high status what we call the helwer the squire arc in wales the leaders of welsh society those of them who are willing to work with the regime whether that's you know in the principality with the king of england but in the marches were their marcher lords there were positions that they could have to serve their marcher lords and i suppose they were necessary for the marcher lords there was necessary for marcher lords to have these people to connect the lords to the communities of which they had rule people who could move smoothly from welsh society to english society and could flourish and have opportunities from that recently i've looked at a family called the cuffin family in the lordship of Chirk and Oswestry, in that area.

31:06And they managed to successfully have power underneath the rule of the Fitzalan lords. One interesting example, a man called Howell Cuffin, who was a cleric, had the patronage of his marcher lords to maintain, to have power in the church, to have these positions in the church, and to become a wealthy landowner as well. Another family closer to this area is the dynasty of the descendants of a man called Howell Apmeirig. David Stevenson has written a book on this recently, tracking the history of the family from an obscure minor Eichelwir, serving the Mortimer dynasty, the Bowen dynasty of Marchal Lords, serving the crown, and ultimately some of them becoming minor Marchal Lords themselves, or joining the Herefordshire gentry, so the Clanfow family of Herges Court near Kington.

31:58is one of these families. So there were opportunities for those who were willing to grasp the opportunity and those who had a bit of luck as well. Helen, you wanted to come in there. Yes, I wanted to pick up Reen's point about opportunities for cultural expression as well. And the 14th century was really the time of the great manuscript anthologies written in Welsh but also in other languages as well. Very characteristic of the march were these multilingual manuscript anthologies. The most famous of them is probably the Red Book of Hergest, which some of the audience might have heard of. And it's really an anthology of pretty much most of the canonical medieval Welsh literature that we still have surviving.

32:40Poetry, prose, lore, chronicles, little bits of Latin in there as well, but basically a Welsh manuscript written in Glamorgan under the patronage of a Welsh gentry person, Hopkins Abt Thomas. so other manuscript anthologies like Peniarth 50 were written in Latin English and Welsh so all these languages in the one manuscript including a lot of prophecy which was clearly a very popular marcher genre because it's found in many marcher manuscripts and many of the manuscripts that we think of as belonging to England especially those written in the West Midlands actually belong to the march because the march spilled over what is now the modern border the modern border wasn't there and so the marcher lordship spilled over what we think of as the border between wales and england so many of the english manuscripts from the west midlands actually arose out of and were directed to a marcher audience uh hugh in fact all of you have mentioned the castles but hugh can you tell me roughly how many castles there were any of you well there were hundreds i mean it's thought to be one of the most densely sort of castellated areas of i think europe really essentially in britain because of the history of conquest and uh doing and throwing so yeah i wouldn't put a number on it so in the hundreds hundreds and hundreds there's someone who's almost a distillation of the cultures in the marches and that's Gerald of Wales.