Tony Hopkins, former county archivist at Gwent Archives and one of our History RATS, considers the effects of Henry VIII’s policies on Monmouthshire and the Gwent Levels.
John Speed’s 1610 map of Monmouthshire.
The Tudor period saw momentous religious and administrative changes that affected Monmouthshire.
The pivotal decade was the 1530s when Henry VIII passed three acts which were particularly significant; one dissolved the monasteries, another ‘assimilated’ Wales with England and created the county of Monmouthshire, while a third regulated the commissions responsible for maintaining sea defences, of especial importance to coastal Gwent. These acts had a profound effect on the society and economy of the Levels, and the fortunes of Chepstow, Newport and Cardiff, the three towns adjoining the Levels.
In the years 1536-9 the landscape along the Severn’s Shore was traversed by John Leland as part of his itinerary in Wales. He observed it to be “sumwhat low and fulle of dikes to drene it” so that plenty of beans and corn could be grown.[1] Leland's description suggests that maintenance of the sea defences and land drainage systems was sufficiently regulated to make good use of the rich agricultural potential of the Gwent Levels. Their economic fortunes were also linked to those of the adjoining urban centres at Chepstow on their eastern edge, Newport between the Caldicot and Wentlooge Levels, and Cardiff on their western flank.
As he journeyed through Wales in the mid-1530s, Leland was probably aware of momentous changes being made by Henry VIII’s administration.[2] They were to have a direct effect upon the country and thereby the Levels. In particular, what was later to be called the Act of Union, passed in 1536, created the county of Monmouthshire and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, begun in the same year, affected the Levels where several monasteries possessed land. The impact of these two Acts upon the Levels is assessed below.
Effective water management has ever been a priority for those living and working on the Levels. The Statute of Sewers Act of 1531 created locally appointed commissioners and Courts of Sewers to oversee the management of flood-prone coastal farmland. This act was the basis for the work of the Court of Sewers until the Land Drainage Act of 1930.
Under the 1531 Act, commissions lasted three years, although this was later extended to ten. The sheriff was required to summon jurors from each locality.[3] These reported to the Court of Sewers on the state of embankments, sluices (gouts) and sewers and advised on the works to be done and their cost. They also provided the names of the landowners or tenants responsible for their maintenance and repair. This was a court of record commensurate with Quarter Sessions, and wielded considerable authority
The end of the Tudor Period
As it did in the rest of Wales and England, it is likely that the population of Monmouthshire increased from the 1570s on, and this helped create hardship and economic difficulties.[4] However, there were frequent checks on the growth of the population in the form of epidemics and harvest failure which could sometimes be very localised . The exceptional levels of mortality recorded in Caerwent’s parish register in 1572, 1587-88, 1590 and 1597 suggests plague although there may have been a wider outbreak too.[5]
Frequently local hardships had a ripple effect further afield as did prosperity. In the north of the county, Grosmont had struggled for some years before 1591 with its market having failed owing to poverty and the ‘scarcity of the people there’. Things seem to have improved by 1591, however, such that a plea was made to the crown to allow the weekly market and annual fair to be resumed. This, it was said, would benefit not only the town but the whole county.[6]
The end of the sixteenth century was a period of mixed fortunes, if the towns are a measure. Newport was benefitting from its Bristol connections, its ships (along with Caerleon’s) maintaining regular traffic with the city and other local ports.[7] The town’s market appears to have been thriving in 1586 when two justices visited it and reported that it was reasonably well furnished with corn and grain.[8] The weekly market was a magnet for the people who lived in the hinterland of the town. They paid a small toll which enabled them to sell their wool and grain and other produce; and once a year Newport’s fair brought in a variety of foreign traders and packmen not normally allowed to trade in the town. A traveller passing through in 1592 even complained that he had to find another route home because his way was obstructed by the shops that had been erected in his usual thoroughfare.[9]
But there were less rosy signs too. In 1583 Newport Bridge fell down suddenly ‘to the utter impoverishment of the town’.[10] It had evidently been hastily and shoddily rebuilt in 1533. To make matters worse, Miles Herbert, the Mayor of Newport, and his cronies misused the monies raised for its repair. Since they were re-elected to the town’s council and the case against Herbert was brought by Andrew Morgan, it is clear the town was mired in family feuding.[11] The Morgans were again involved in riots which erupted in the town’s market in 1600 and at the sessions there.[12] Rivalry between them and the Herberts continued to cast a shadow over both the economy and the government of the town, and it was indeed poverty and inadequate governance that were the reasons offered by the ‘Mayor, bailiffs and inhabitants’ of the town in successfully petitioning King James I for a charter of incorporation in 1623.[13]
By the 1540s Cardiff was one of the largest towns in Wales with a substantial number of merchants and tradesmen in its High Street ward.[14] Rice Merrick affirms this positive note in 1578 commenting on the town’s ‘fair houses and large streets’, its ‘fair town hall’ in the High Street, a ‘fair and wide street’, where the town’s market was held.[15] Later in the sixteenth century, Chepstow’s trade was boosted by the wireworks at Tintern. Chepstow’s ships took the wire to Gloucester, Bristol and London.[16] The wireworks employed about 150 people by 1587 and was in profit. A market is recorded at Magor in 1590 which boasted one of several pills along the Levels, well situated to carry away some of the area’s goods and produce.[17]
The Act of Union brought Wales closer to the crown – both Cardiff in 1581 and 1608, and Newport in 1623, were boosted by Royal charters. The creation of Monmouthshire brought greater administrative and judicial cohesion. The promulgation of the notice regarding Grosmont market used the county machinery in the form of the sheriff, and it was the county’s justices who helped resolve the dispute between Edward Nevill and his tenantry in 1611. The introduction of Quarter Sessions may have been especially welcome to the lower orders on the Levels seeking redress where landowners sought to suppress their rights in favour of their own. Nevertheless disorder continued beyond the Act of Union leading justices to claim in 1573 that they could not cope with the number of assaults in the county.[18]
The Levels’ water management, admired by Leland in the 1530s, undoubtedly benefitted from the 1531 Statute of Sewers. As part of the Tudor drive towards administrative tightening, oversight by courts of sewers provided more structure and regulation than the ad hoc arrangements of individual manors and landowners. This approach was to aid the Levels’ recovery following the great tidal inundation of 1606/07.
References
[1] Griffiths, R.A. ‘Three Visitors to Gwynllŵg and Gwentland towards the End of the Middle Ages’, The Monmouthshire Antiquary, XXVII (2011), 84.
[2] Griffiths, R.A. ‘Three Visitors...’, 81.
[3] Rose Hewlett, 'The Gloucestershire Court of Sewers, 1583-1642', Gloucestershire Record Series, vol. 35 (Bristol: Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 2020), xliv-xlix.
[4] Howell, B. 'Law and Disorder in Tudor Monmouthshire' xxxv; Brian Howells, ‘The Lower Orders of Society’, in J. Gwynfor Jones, ed., Class, Community & Culture in Tudor Wales (UWP, 1989), 239-40.
[5] Howells, 'The Lower Orders of Society’, 240; Anne Dunton, ‘“I leave to the poor of the parish...”: poverty in Monmouthshire 1580-1615’, GLH, 117 (2015), 3-5.
[6] NLW Badminton Man/2/593.
[7] Bob Trett, ‘Newport During the Fifteenth Century’, in Evan T. Jones and Richard Stone eds., The World of the Newport Ship (UWP, 2018), 86-7.
[8] Pierce Jones, Brynmor. 'From Elizabeth I to Victoria: The Government of Newport (Mon) 1550-1850 (Newport, 1957), 6.
[9] Jones, 'From Elizabeth I to Victoria'. 6.
[10] Edwards, Ifan Ab Owen ed. 'A Catalogue of Star Chamber Proceedings Relating to Wales' (Cardiff, 1929), 103.
[11] Edwards, ed. 'A Catalogue of Star Chamber Proceedings'. 103.
[12] Edwards, ed. 'A Catalogue of Star Chamber Proceedings'. 103.
[13] Transcribed in William Rees, ed. 'The Charters of Newport' (Newport, 1951), 18-19.
[14] R.A. Griffiths, ‘The medieval boroughs of Glamorgan’, in T.B. Pugh ed., Glamorgan County History III, The Middle Ages (UWP, 1971). 348-50.
[15] B.L. James, ed., Rice Merrick: Morganiae Archaiographia (SWRS, Cardiff, 1983), 87-8.
[16] Ivor Waters, The Port of Chepstow (Chepstow, 1977).
[17] Rippon, S. 'The Gwent Levels: The Evolution of a Wetland Landscape'. (Council for British Archaeology, 1996), 94.
[18] Edwards, ed. 'A Catalogue of Star Chamber Proceedings'. 103.
John Leland, stipple engraving by Thomas Wagerman from a picture by Hans Holbein the Younger.
John Leland (1506 - 1552)
Leland was chaplain and librarian to King Henry VIII. In 1533, he was appointed by Henry to a special position as king’s antiquary, and traveled around England and Wales searching the libraries of cathedrals and monasteries for manuscripts of historical interest. His observations of his travels are a unique source of information about Tudor Britain.