Paying suit

Serving two masters (4) In 1279 the brothers Rhys and Hywel ap Gruffudd lost their lands in Wales. On 8 November the king ordered Hywel ap Maredudd (one of Rhys’s colleagues on the commission to govern Wales) and John Perres to inquire into the rights of the brothers in Caeo, a commote of Cantref Mawr, which they had been unjustly ‘diseissed’ (deprived) of by Rhys ap Maredudd.

This case gives an idea of the chaotic rivalry that existed between the descendants of the Lord Rhys of Deheubarth. Rhys and Hywel were both descended from Lord Rhys via their grandfather’s marriage to his daughter, Gwenllian. Caeo itself was held by Rhys Wyndod, lord of Dinefwr and another descendant. The commote was claimed by Rhys ap Maredudd, lord of Dryslwyn and yet another descendant. Presumably this means that the brothers held their part of Caeo from Rhys Wyndod as chief lord.

Rhys ap Maredudd’s specific complaint was that Hywel ap Maredudd refused to pay suit at Rhys’s court of Llansadwrn. To owe suit required a man to attend a specific court and pay a fee to have his cases heard; Rhys was thus concerned with the loss of prestige and revenue if Hywel was allowed to detach himself from the lord of Dryslwyn’s jurisdiction.

To pay suit was a part of English common law, and Rhys asked the king to have a writ to the royal bailiffs at Dinefwr to distrain Hywel and force him to pay suit, ‘as he was accustomed to do in the time of the father of Rhys’. This all gave rise to an awkward situation in which one of the team of four Welsh justices appointed to govern Wales and the Marches was himself a sub-tenant of a regional lord of Cantref Mawr. This man and his brother also apparently owed legal services to a neighbouring lord of Cantref Mawr, who refused to acknowledge his cousin’s authority in Caeo and did his best to muscle in on the territory. Unfortunately the outcome of the case is unknown.

Caeo itself was a fairly important trading centre. A survey of 1303-4 discovered that the hamlet of Cynwil inside Caeo was home to eight ‘chensers’ or censarii, who paid for the privilege of buying and selling freely within the town in weekly markets and annual fairs. The presence of a market at Cynwil is indicated by the collection of petty tolls from people passing through the hamlet. A percentage of these fees and tolls would have been creamed off by the local bigwigs, which might explain why they were all squabbling over possession of the commote.