The Cattle Trade between Wales and England from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

Caroline Skeel

doi:10.2307/3678397

The Cattle Trade between Wales and England from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009

Caroline Skeel

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Early in the Civil War some North Welsh gentlemen addressed to the King a petition, the draft of which is preserved in the National Library at Aberystwyth:

“ To the King's most excellent ma'tie. The humble petition of yo'r Ma'ties Loyall subjects subscribed for and on the behalfe of themselues and the rest of the inhabitants of yo'r Ma'ties six counties of North Wales, Sheweth, That the sale of yo'r petitioners' cattle and Welch cottons being the principall and most considerable commodities of these countries, cottons usuallie vented in Shrewsbury and our cattle driven and sould in most parts of England, hath bin and is the onelie support of yo'r petitioners' being and livelihood, among whom there (be) many thousand families in the mountainous part of this countrey who sowing little or noe corne at all, trust merely to the sale of their cattle, wooll and Welch cottons for provision of bread.”

Type: Research Article
Information: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 9 , December 1926 , pp. 135 - 158

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3678397 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1926

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References

^{page 135 note 1} Sir John Williams' MSS., Misc. Coll. Of Letters and Documents.

^{page 135 note 2} Compare the permission to trade with London given to the clothiers of Reading in 1643 by Sir Arthur Aston, Governor of Newbury. V.C.H, Berkshire, I, p. 392.

^{page 136 note 1} Cf. Journal of Prior William More, ed. Fegan, E. (Worcestershire Historical Society), p. 259Google Scholar : “reward to a man that browht vij blacke oxen thyff stolen that were seasend a pon at Wolverley beyng conveyd to batnall parke.”

^{page 136 note 2} Cymm. Soc, Trans., 1822, p. 25.

^{page 137 note 1} I am indebted for this information to the kindness of Mr. Bryner Jones of the Welsh Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. It should be added that the valuable Welsh Black of modern days is the Large Black, while the old Welsh Black was probably small.

^{page 137 note 2} Chamberlain's Accounts (Lancashire and Cheshire Rec. Soc, p. 59 (68 oxen bought for the Lord's larder at Abergelowe and Ruthyn and sent to Macclesfield). The word “porthmon” (drover), a loan-word from English, is found in Welsh literature, so Canon Fisher tells me, as early as the fourteenth century.

^{page 137 note 3} Cal. Close Rolls, Ed. II, 1307–13, p. 292.

^{page 137 note 4} Episcopal Registers (Diocese of Winchester), John de Sandale and Rigaud de Asserio (Hampshire Record Society), p. 263 (App.).

^{page 137 note 5} The Household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (unpublished M.A, thesis in the Library of the University of London), p. 133.

^{page 138 note 1} Wylie, The Reign of Henry V, I, p. 39, n. 4.

^{page 138 note 2} Cal. Pat. Rolls, H. V., 1416–22, p. 48.

^{page 138 note 3} Manners and Household, Expenses (Roxburghe Club), p. 184.

^{page 138 note 4} 26 H. VIII, cc. 5 and 7.

^{page 138 note 5} Hist. MSS. Comm., App. to Third Report, House of Lords MSS., p. 6.

^{page 139 note 1} I am indebted for this information to the kindness of Dr. Hubert Hall and Miss M. Wretts-Smith. Ludlow was another notable market for Welsh cattle.

^{page 139 note 2} Hist. MSS. Comm., MSS. of Lord de I'Isle and Dudley, Penshurst Place, I, p. 362.

^{page 140 note 1} In the National Library at Aberystwyth. I am indebted to the Librarian for access to them in 1922 when they were being calendared by Miss Marjorie Hall.

^{page 140 note 2} Lords' Journals, January 19th, 1645/6, and Commons' Journals, March 4, 1644/5, 1 July, and 22 December, 1645.

^{page 141 note 1} I have to thank Miss Lodge, who is editing this volume for the British Academy, for her kindness in allowing me to search the MS. For references to Welsh cattle.

^{page 141 note 2} Sir George Fordham kindly informed me that Bush fair was held at Harlow Bush, two and a half miles from Harlow in Essex.

^{page 141 note 3} Hist. MSS. Comm., MSS. of the Duke of Portland, Vol. VI, p. 78. I am indebted for this reference to Professor William Rees.

^{page 142 note 1} Warner, Walk through Wales in August, 1797 (Bath, 1798), p. 31. I owe this reference to the kindness of Sir George Fordham.

^{page 142 note 2} Mr. J. R. Gabriel of the Training College, Caerleon, has lately talked with an old man who as a boy helped to shoe cattle at Abergwili fair, and who remembers hearing that a drover took cattle to Kent in 1809–10 and smuggled them over to France.

^{page 143 note 1} Article by Mr. Francis Green, “Early Banks in West Wales” (Hist. Soc. of West Wales Trans., Vol. VI).

^{page 144 note 1} I have to thank the Librarian of the National Library for the reference to Mr. Hugh Evans' article in Y Brython (July 2, 1925).

^{page 144 note 2} Cf. Wm. McCombie, Cattle and Cattle-breeders, 1867. “Robert Gall of Kennethmont on one day shod seventy cattle to me near Porth and no rope ever touched them in the field.” I am told that cattle are still shod for “driving” in Italy. The same informant, Mr. Charles Rolfe, who spent many years of cattle-farming in Queensland, tells me that by using ropes cattle can be thrown as follows : “The animal is first of all fastened by the neck to a post, then while it stamps about, a noose is passed round the fore and hind legs on the same side and ropes are fastened to a post : then the head is set free and the tail is pulled, whereupon the animal at once falls on its side without being injured in any way.” Mr. Geo. Eyre Evans informs me that specimens of cattle-shoes now rare are exhibited in the museum of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society, also that Tregaron and Pumpsaint were places in which cattle bound for England were shod. Oxen were always (and are still) shod for ploughing, but usually on the fore-feet only.

^{page 145 note 1} Other Welsh inns with this sign are to be found (1) in Brecon on the main road from Carmarthen to Hereford; (2) on the main road from Merthyr Tydfil to Brecon about half a mile from the Glamorgan border ; another, now a private house, formerly existed at Penydarren on the main road between Merthyr and Dowlais. I owe this information to Miss D. Morgan of Merthyr Tydfil.

^{page 145 note 2} Summarised from Mr. John Lloyd's paper on “The Black Cattle Droves” (with map) in Historical Memoranda of Breconshire, 1903. Mr. John Ballinger tells me that he walked most of these cattle roads years ago with Mr. Lloyd's map and familiarised himself with the centres where the cattle were shod and the enclosures in which they spent the night on the road.

^{page 146 note 1} For these details I am indebted to the help of Mr. Sidney Williams and Capt. T. R. Evans.

^{page 146 note 2} Mr. St. Clair Baddeley, to whom I owe this information, suggests that the “Paen” (an outlying spot in Cirencester where the Whiteway leaves the town in a north-westerly direction) may have been an inn frequented by Welsh drovers. “Paen” is Welsh for “peacock.” When some slummy tenements on the spot were cleared away (cir. 1891) remains were found of the twelfth-century Hospital of St. John.

^{page 146 note 3} Mr. Edward Browne of Albury Heath gave this information to Miss O. M. Heath, who has very kindly passed it on to me.

^{page 148 note 1} With this route may be compared the route given in a poem by- Thomas Prys, Plasiolyn (ob. c. 1620), printed in Cefn Coch MSS., ed. Fisher, J., 1899Google Scholar. A mouse sent from London to North Wales took the following route : Highgate, Barnet, St. Albans, Redburn, Dunstable, Brickhill, Stony Stratford, Dorchester, “Deintri” (i.e. Daventry), Dwnsient (?), Coventry, “Feriden” (i.e. Meriden), Birmingham, Hampton, Totnes, Shifnal, Wattling, Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Llangollen, Ruthin, Hiraethog, Llanrwst. I am indebted for this reference and for much other help to the kindness of Professor W. Garmon Jones.

^{page 149 note 1} I owe this information to the kindness of Rev. Canon Fisher.

^{page 149 note 2} P.R.O., K.R. Port Book, 1312/10 (date 1687–8).

^{page 149 note 3} Ibid., 1278/1.

^{page 149 note 4} The life of the Scottish drover in the nineteenth century is fully described by Wm. McCombie in his Cattle and Cattle-breeding, 1867.

^{page 149 note 5} Early Chancery Proceedings, 61/387, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, VII, 68, cf. I, 97.

^{page 150 note 1} I am indebted for this reference to Miss E. M. Carus-Wilson.

^{page 150 note 2} The names are Richard Gythin, Dave Prysse and Richard Malpasse. I owe my knowledge of this Gild Book to the kindness of Miss Dormer Harris.

^{page 150 note 3} Car. I, c. 1.

^{page 150 note 4} 6 Anne, c. 22, § 8.

^{page 150 note 5} B. Mus. Charter 39063, printed in History Teachers' Miscellany, Vol. Ill, No. 5. Cf. Hist. MSS. Comm., 3rd Rep., App., pp. 151, 179 (Register of persons licensed at Hertford Quarter Sessions to be common drovers, 1603 and 1615).

^{page 150 note 6} “The most of these that walke about be Walchemen.” Tudor Economic Documents, ed. Tawney, and Power, , III, p. 412Google Scholar.

^{page 150 note 7} At this period “drover” seems to have been often used in the sense of “cattle-dealer.”

^{page 151 note 1} Welsh Shrievalty Papers among the Bridgewater MSS. (Shropshire Arch, and Nat. Hist. Trans., 1925).

^{page 151 note 2} Phillips, J. R., The Civil War in Wales and the Marches, I, pp. 73 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 152 note 3} Arch. Camb., 4th Ser., Vol. VI (1875), “Correspondence during the Great Rebellion,” p. 206.

^{page 152 note 4} Letter to Prince Rupert, Jan. 29, 1644/5 (reference kindly given by Mr. J. R. Gabriel).

^{page 153 note 1} “Hynafiaethau Llandegai a Llanllechid,” by Hugh Derfel Hughes, Bethesda, 1866.

^{page 153 note 1} I am indebted for this reference to Prof. J. Glyn Davies, University of Liverpool.

^{page 153 note 2} Printed in the Evesham Journal of June 20, 1925, and kindly communicated to me by E. A. B. Barnard, Esq., F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S., the editor of the column “Old Days in and around Evesham.”

^{page 155 note 1} See “The Life of Cwm Eithin, i.e. Llangwm, Denbighshire,” by Hugh Evans in Y Brython, July 2, 1925.

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The Cattle Trade between Wales and England from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

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