Lordship and the Social Elite in the Lordship of Gower during the Wars of the Roses

Summary

‘The possession of land [to quote Professor Pollard] was the key to social dominance and political power’ in much of Europe in the fifteenth century. At the same time, in England and Wales – region by region, county by county, lordship by lordship – land, society and power were marked by differences as well as common features in administrative structures, management styles and political and social experiences, and, in an age of civil strife, certain peculiarities and disharmonies. In these contexts, the marcher lordships of Wales had a singular character and a distinctive part to play during the Wars of the Roses.

The rulers and inhabitants of these lordships in southern and eastern Wales, Gower among them, had recently experienced Owain Glyn Dŵr's revolt, either directly in many areas, or less directly in others as unsettling news arrived from neighbouring communities and lordships. There was physical destruction, and rural and urban folk alike were inclined (or induced) to adopt a variety of attitudes, for or against the rebels. In Gower some would have chosen the rebel side and others not, yet all – including the marcher lord himself – would surely have striven to emerge as peaceably and securely as possible after hostilities had generally ceased in the lordship by 1406. Such reactions were widespread in the decades that followed the revolt, whether in royal counties (such as Carmarthenshire) or the lordships of English nobles who were the marcher lords, among them the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, whose family had been lords of Gower since 1331 (apart from the years 1354–97). In this connection, it is still worth quoting the perceptive comment of G.M. Trevelyan in his classic (if in other respects dated) history of the English people: ‘The Wars of the Roses were to a large extent a quarrel among Marcher Lords. For the great Lords Marcher were closely related to the English throne, and had estates and political interests both in England and the Welsh March.’ Some of the implications and limitations of this observation for lords and their social elites are worth exploring in the lordship of Gower. At a seigneurial level, Gower became enmeshed in the wider political disputes about possession of the crown no earlier than the summer of 1460.