County

The county of Carmarthen was consolidated and enlarged by the Act of Union. It was further enlarged in 1543 by a proviso in the Act (34 and 35 Hen. VIII, c.26) transferring the lordships of Laugharne and Llanstephan from Pembrokeshire. Although the Act of Union did not name Carmarthen as the meeting place of the county court, the town was the traditional venue and all the elections for the knights of Carmarthenshire took place there save in the autumn of 1553 when the court met at Llandovery in the north-east of the county.

The status of Carmarthen, as the administrative centre for South Wales was confirmed at the Union. The Norman borough of New Carmarthen, with charters dating from the 13th century and administered by a mayor, lay beside the royal castle. The original settlement known as Old Carmarthen, with the parish church of St. Peter, belonged to the priory of St. John until the Dissolution, when efforts by the 3rd Lord Ferrers as steward of New Carmarthen to exercise the privileges of the priory in the suburb led to violence.

Cardiganshire was enlarged and consolidated at the Union. Thomas Phaer described it as ‘very bare ... and mountainous, all along the coast no trade of merchandise but all full of rocks and dangers’. The few roads were unmetalled and travellers were vexed by bandits who the president of the council in the marches thought had the support of the local gentry.

Breconshire was one of the four new counties set up at the Union. On the attainder of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham in 1521 the old lordship of Brecon had escheated to the crown. Several parcels of the lordship of Brecon were sold or let by the crown, the most important being the lordship of Builth granted to the 1st Earl of Pembroke in 1550. In 1540 the King made Sir William Vaughan of Porthaml chancellor and receiver of the lordship of Brecon, and on Vaughan’s surrendering his patent in 1546 he was succeeded by his son Roger who held the appointment until his death.

The leading families in Caernarvonshire lived mainly along the north coast or in the east of the county, the Gruffydds at Penrhyn, the Pulestons at Caernarvon and the Wynns at Gwydir; among the knights of the shire only John Wyn ap Hugh and David Lloyd ap Thomas came from the poorer and more remote peninsula of Llyn. In the mid 16th century the county was free from the feuding which divided the neighbouring island of Anglesey, the disputes between the various interrelated families being less deep-rooted and persistent.

Anglesey was one of the poorer Welsh shires. All the knights down to 1558 were kinsmen, but dissension within the Gruffydd family across the Menai strait at Penrhyn divided the island. The chief protagonists, Sir Richard Bulkeley and William Lewis, were cousins. Their mutual dislike was aggravated by the hostility of the families long established there towards the Bulkeleys, recent migrants to the island yet by the 1540s among the most powerful of North Wales families. When in the autumn of 1553 Lewis was returned, the sheriff was accused of misconduct and found guilty.

The Cinque Ports consisted of a group of towns on the south-east coast originally associated to supply ships for the service of the crown both in defence against invasion and in the protection of cross-Channel traffic. By the 13th century the confederation was made up of the five ’head ports’ of Dover, Hastings, Hythe, New Romney and Sandwich, the two ’ancient towns’ of Rye and Wichelsea, and outliers known as ’limbs’ or ’members’ stretching from Seaford in Sussex to Brightlingsea in Essex.

Early Tudor Yorkshire was still predominantly agricultural, but there was a flourishing cloth industry in the West Riding, and coal, iron and lead were being worked.

Worcestershire fell within the jurisdiction of the council in the marches of Wales, but this met only rarely at Worcester and few Worcestershire men sat on it, although in 1553-5 the bishop of Worcester, Nicholas Heath, was lord president. The crown, the bishop and the duchy of Lancaster held land in the shire, the bishop’s property including Oswaldslow, the largest hundred, but there was no resident temporal peer. Some local families, notably those of Dudley, Lyttelton, Sheldon and Windsor, profited from the Dissolution.VCH Worcs. ii. 197-8, 212; P. H.

In the early 16th century Wiltshire was one of the chief industrial centres of England, with a flourishing cloth trade, mainly in the west of the shire but extending south-east to Salisbury and Wilton. Two important statutes, one in 1552 fixing the size and weight of Wiltshire cloth (5 and 6 Edw. VI, c.6 amended in 1558), and the Weavers’ Act of 1555 (2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c.11), attempting to encourage the industry in corporate and market towns and to maintain old standards of apprenticeship, reflect the problems and impending decline of the great urban clothiers of the county.