THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN WALES.*

MR. SEEBOHM'S new volume is intended to form part of a larger essay dealing with the history of Tribal Society. The book before us describes the structure of such a system, as it may have existed in Wales ; the methods of the system, and the extension of the inquiry to similar societies elsewhere, are to form the subject of another instalment. The present volume is an amplification of the Welsh sections in The English Village Community which some of Mr. Seebohm's

readers thought the most interesting portion of his book ; and though he now speaks too diffidently of his former labours, his friends will be glad to find that his position is substantially unchanged. He endeavoured to show on the former occasion that during the twelfth century there were survivals of a "tribal economy" in Wales; and he now seeks to prove that such survivals lasted on till the change of laws under Henry VIII., while their origins are carried back to the age when Cunedda and his sons came to establish in Wales the tribal methods of Cumbria.

We find the tribe described as " a bundle of kindreds ; " in other words, a principality was occupied by a tribe composed of households of free Welshmen, all related to each other. We take no account of the strangers and broken men who did not share in the normal privileges. The Welsh system, according to Mr. Seebohm, " was made through- out to turn on the possession of Cymric blood." Mr. Skene supported the opinion, which now appears somewhat old- fashioned, that though Powys and the Severn Valley were " Cymric " districts, the stronghold of the race was a Cumbria between the line of the Dee and Humber and the narrower boundary connecting the Forth and Clyde. We believe that he brought Cunedda from a region near Edin- burgh and the Pentland Hills. Cunedda has always been a popular figure, though somewhat mysterious and dim in shape; but we are beginning to know more about him, owing to the industry of Professor Rhys, and the skill with which Sir Herbert Maxwell has drawn the hero's portrait in A Duke of Britain. We are to suppose that this chieftain came in the fifth century from the North, with a tribal following, "to drive out the Gwyddyls from Wales." Mr. Seebohm com- pares him, in some respects, to the great Hermann, whose Roman training is allowed to have been a chief secret of his power :— " That Cunedda came from the North, that his Court may have been at Carlisle, that he may possibly have held office in the Roman army that he wore the gold belt which was the badge of a Roman Dux, and that some of his ancestors' names were Roman, all this is not in the least inconsistent with his being the head-chieftain of Northern Cymric tribes."

In leaving this part of the subject, we may observe that Mr. Seebohm seems to be correct in his suggestion that when the Roman forces were withdrawn, " tribal instincts would rise again into prominence ;" and, so far as we know, he is right in saying that " conquests would be made on tribal lines." This invasion of Cunedda and his sons, in his opinion, "was

• The Tribal System in Wales. By Frederic Seebohm, LL.D., M.A. London; Lopgratus and Co. 1855.

one of those tribal movements of which history is so fall," in which tribes allied in blood to the conquerors were treated as strangers and made subject to tribute. It would be possible in this way to account for the privilege of the free landholders in later times, as well as for the degraded con-

dition of the " natives," or persons born to service. The latter class had none of the rights of kindred, because they were not of the tribal blood :-

"Broadly, then, under the Welsh tribal system, there were two great classes, those of Cymric blood and those who were strangers in blood. There was a deep, if not impassable, gulf between these two classes, quite apart from any question of land or of conquest. It was a division of blood. And it soon becomes apparent that the tenacity with which the distinction was main- tained was at once one of the strong distinctive marks of the tribal system, and one of the main secrets of its strength."

Mr. Seebohm makes a considerable use of the so-called historical triads and similar legal traditions, though he leaves all questions as to their date and authority to Celtic scholars. We observe that in his former volume he quoted "the professed triads of Dyfnwal Moelmud" to show that membership of the tribe depended on "birth within it of Welsh parents." This is not without interest, as indicating that the mediaval scribe put the words of Cunedda into the mouth of the

ancestor of Cymbeline " Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of Britain which did put His brows within a golden crown, and called Himself a King."

Mr. Stephens allowed that a few of the historical triads appear in poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but he made it plain that no collection of them is older than the fourteenth. He was clear that the Molmutian Laws were not composed before the age in which Shakespeare was born. As to the value of documents of this class, he adds the warning that the date of a triad is not determined by its historical contents, and that " Murchison's Geology is not quite so old as the Silurian rocks." Mr. Seebohm remarks that in an inquiry of this kind, " the value of the evidence of Welsh tribal life does not lie in its antiquity." It rather consists, he thinks, in the fact that we have an instance of a tribal system, holding its own "till the era of Codes and Surveys." The evidence as to the date of the codes was summarised in his earlier volume. They are three in number, the Venedotian Code applying to North Wales, and two similar collections for the South. Putting aside modern additions, they all profess to date from the time of Howel the Good, who is said to have codified the local customs about the middle of the tenth century. The existing manuscripts, however, are in no case earlier than the thirteenth century. We shall make one reference to the Gwentian Code, as to the slayer of a kinsman. The malefactor might re- nounce his family, and become "a kin-wrecked man," but his descendants retained their inheritance for nine genera- tions. According to the Venedotian Code, "if the ninth man come to claim land his title is extinguished ; " he is to raise an outcry that he is ceasing to be a proprietor ; and this, we are told, was called "an outcry over the abyss." " What," says Mr. Seebohm, "is this terrible cry over the abyss, but the last despairing cry of a kinsman on the point of losing for ever, for himself and his descendants, his rights of kinship ?"

With regard to the later evidence we are told to rely on the support given to each other by the codes and surveys. We doubt if the latter documents require any such help ; but we may agree that the codes would be fortified by show- ing that their rules might produce the results described in a survey. Among the official records we should give the first place to Domesday-book. The district of Archenfield is there surveyed as part of Herefordshire, but the tenures are stated to be Welsh. In this district the King had ninety-six free men, with their serfs, paying a joint rent of honey, so much in lieu of sheep-rents, and so much for smoke-silver. They owed military service, and some of them had to act as Doomsmen or Magistrates. Most of these details appear from the confirmation of their tenure in the reign of Edward I. Upon a death the tenant's sons inherited equally, with the exception of certain heirlooms, such as the best bed, which went to the eldest.

The earliest survey discussed in the volume before us was made for the whole of Anglesey in 1294. An Extent taken in 1339 relates to the Royal estates and rights in the smaller district of Aberffraw. These records show the existence of several grades of tenure, some of the freeholders being subject to quit-rents and services, and the "natives," or villeins, supplying provisions and personal labour. In some cases a whole hamlet was held by free tenants, and another by "natives ; " but as a rule the holdings were mixed. Some of the native tenancies were given up on condition that each customary estate in the hamlet should be responsible for the dues of all the rest.

The Record of Carnarvon is a compilation of the fifteenth century, made under an order of the Beaumaris Sessions in the ninth year of Henry VII. It was published by command in 1838, with an introduction by Sir Henry Ellis. Mr. Seebohm gives us extracts from the surveys of the four- teenth century, with which the Record commences. He also makes great use of the valuable Survey of Denbigh, which dates from 1335. We are also furnished with a deed, executed twenty years later, by which the Bishop of St. Asaph's enfran- chised a "wele," or "bed," of native-tenants, and released them from their joint obligations. Mr. Seebohm considers that no general enfranchisement took place till after the Welsh conquest ; in particular cases, however, as on the Crown estates, some of the servile tenures were not freed until the reign of Elizabeth.

The records and surveys contain an account of a peculiar usage, which resembles some of the old English methods of granting or letting for a number of lives. A particular hamlet was regarded as containing a certain number of " weles," some free, and some held by native-tenants. Each of these were granted to a man to hold for his own life and for three later descents. When he died his sons divided his holding, according to the Welsh form of gavelkind, either into new " weles," or into " gavels " or portions, according to circum- stances. On the death of one of the sons, his share would be divided into portions ; this would be the second descent. The third took place on the death of the owner of one of the sub- divisions ; and after that the whole settlement came to an end. The land reverted to the lord; but it was the practice, at least in some districts, for the relations of the last holders to have a preference, if the lord wished to let the land again. This is the simplest case of the usage, and it is easy to imagine cases of much greater complexity. It will be understood that the surface of the land was not divided, but that the kins- men in their different grades and proportions held the estate as a separate unit in a kind of family partnership. Roughly speaking, the estate was held first by the grantee, then by his sons, then by his grandsons, and lastly, by the second- cousins. Mr. Seebohm tells us that the rule as to great- grandsons seems to have been somewhat relaxed after the Conquest. We see no evidence in the surveys showing that there was a chief of the " wele " or any of its divisions; but a single land-owner, with a family ready to succeed under the customary settlement, may of coarse be compared to a chief- tain with a troop of kinsmen to support. Mr. Seebohm gives us a striking picture of the married tribesman, as he is seen in the codes ; it seems to be uncertain who was to provide for his maintenance. " The household of the married tribesman was that of a little dairy-farmer with separate homestead, chiefly engaged in making butter and cheese, but with a car and yoke of oxen for carrying and ploughing, with corn-crops growing on his five free erws,' as well as corn in the bin which for household use was ground by the quern, or at the chief- tain's mill, into flour." It appears by the earlier volume that " erw " is a Welsh word for "acre," and that the word, as used in the Welsh laws, meant a strip in the open fields.

It is unlikely that the codes are mere fictions ; it is, indeed, almost certain that the customs described in the surveys had some relation to the ancient laws. If we regard the people of Wales as a tribe, described as an association of kindreds, everything to do with partible descent and holding land in partnership may fairly form part of a history of the Tribal System. As the case stands at present, the surveys do not seem to throw much light on the details in the codes. The same remark applies to the evidence taken from the Book of Llandaff and the Lives of St. Chad and St. Cadoc, although it is certainly interesting in itself, and very graphically brought before the reader. Mr. Seebohm's former book was remarkable, not only for its more serious merits, but also for the picturesque way in which local details were described. His present work, apart from Welsh and Latin, deserves attention for passages of the same kind. We may instance the account of Aberffraw, and the " porths," or natural harbours, "running up between ridges of rock, and ending in a sandy beach." Each member of the manor near the coast had its own " porth," and sometimes a " dinas," or place of refuge for cattle, in a rocky peninsula, running out into the sea. The mill is placed on the river, just above high-tide ; " the church is ancient, for it contains a fine old Norman arch, and stands on an ancient site above the river;" the palace of the Welsh Princes stood close by, and below its ruins lie now, as centuries ago, " the little strips or gardens of the cottages," divided by turf balks.