The Economy

The most pressing need of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd after the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267 was for ready cash to maintain his new principality and to pay its military and political costs, above all the payments promised for the treaty. The nature of the principality, based as it was on homage by bilateral agreements, was such that he could not tax the lands of the other Welsh rulers who were now his tenants-in-chief and consequently most of the costs had to be paid for from his own patrimony of Gwynedd, which was not the richest part of Wales. There was already money in circulation and some urban settlements had developed, following the pattern set by the towns that had grown up in the march around Norman castles; examples in Gwynedd were Pwllheli and Nefyn in Llyn, Caernarfon and Dolgellau. Llan-faes in Anglesey on the Menai Straits was Gwynedd’s principal commercial centre with a market, fairs, a ferry across the Straits and a flourishing port; a large part of Gwynedd’s external trade went through it.26 Nor was it only in Gwynedd that towns began to develop; other examples were Welshpool, Llanidloes and Machynlleth in Powys and Lampeter in Ceredigion. The prince was able to take his share of the profits of trade in the form of tolls, but he also had another source of income. The years before the conquest saw a rapid growth in the commutation of food renders and services due from both free and unfree tenants to cash payments; only in the demesne townships around the courts themselves did the renders and services, essential to the maintenance of an itinerant court, survive. Commutation was one of the only ways by which Lly-welyn could raise cash and post-conquest evidence indicates that the prince went beyond what was customarily due to him in the last desperate years of independence; occasional renders and impositions became annual ones and even weights and measures were adapted to the prince’s advantage. There can be no doubt that the rule of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in Gwynedd in his last years was harsh and heavy-handed and that his fall might not have been entirely unwelcome to many of his leading subjects.

The medieval Welsh economy was predominantly agricultural, based on mixed farming with some cereals being grown even on the poorest-quality soils. Individual holdings were made up of scattered strips in open-fields, although infield-outfield cultivation may have been common in upland areas. Before 1300 there seems to have been a considerable amount of forest clearance and assarting, with marginal land being brought under the plough to meet a rising demand for food. Ploughing and harrowing were among the labour services due from the prince’s bondmen before the conquest. Crops included wheat, barley, oats and legumes; wheat could only be grown on the most fertile soils and was usually produced for the market, while oats, which flourished on poorer soils, was the most common crop, forming a substantial part of the diet of much of the population. On the demesne lands of some marcher lordships direct exploitation continued until the middle of the fourteenth century; since most lords were absentees, most production must have been for the market. Crop yields in the south-east seem to have resembled those in contemporary England, but in other parts of Wales they were a good deal lower. On the manor of Troy in the lordship of Monmouth, for example, the yield of wheat in 1308-9 was 5.2 bushels for every bushel of seed; in 1329 it was 7.5, and in 1339 it was 4. In Gwynedd at the end of the thirteenth century, on the other hand, it was the very low figure of 1.5.27 The extent of arable farming is shown by the number of mills mentioned in contemporary sources; many tenants owed suit of mill to the prince or to the lord who was entitled to multure or a share of the corn ground (the rate of multure seems to have been far lower in Wales than in England), but many lineages had their own mills. Most of them were watermills but there were a few windmills, such as that built at Newborough in Anglesey in 1305.28

The pastoral economy, apart from the Cistercian lands, had depended mainly on cattle until the second half of the fourteenth century; for some marcher lords Wales was a source of food for their households in England. Sheep became generally more common after about 1350 and pigs and goats were universal; there were few, however poor, who did not have at least one cow. Other resources included the forest and contemporary evidence suggests that it was carefully managed with sustainability always in mind. The forest was a source of building timber and firewood; it also yielded charcoal for smelting metal, bark for tanning and honey from wild bees. Tenants could turn their pigs loose to forage on payment of pannage and there were various small wood-based industries, among them the manufacture of treen or wooden utensils. The sea was another resource; the Irish Sea herring fishery sustained ports like Nefyn and Aberystwyth and the offshore islands also provided seals, hunted for skins, meat and blubber for making oil. Ramsey Island off the Pembrokeshire coast produced large numbers of rabbits, an annual cull of which brought the bishop of St David’s a supply of meat, along with skins that could be sold to provide cheap fur.29 Fish, both fresh and dried or salted, was an important part of the contemporary diet; there were fisheries in most rivers, lords and free tenants had weirs and fish traps, and most monasteries had fishponds.

Mineral resources were extensively exploited. In the north-east there were several coal mines on Deeside, one being mentioned at Mostyn in 1294. There were other coal workings around Kilgetty and Saundersfoot in the lordship of Pembroke, at Kilvey in Gower and, in the fifteenth century, in Anglesey. Flintshire coal would have found a ready market as domestic fuel in Chester. The lead miners at Holywell and at Minera near Wrexham lived in self-contained and self-regulating communities under their own laws and customs, based on those of the Peak District. There were other lead mines in northern Ceredigion and in Flintshire, where copper was also mined, while iron was worked all over Wales.30

One of the most significant contributions to the medieval Welsh economy was made by the Cistercians.31 The first Cistercian abbey to be founded in Wales was Tintern in Gwent in 1131, and others followed. The austerity of these monks was a reminder of an earlier monastic tradition and they received generous grants of land. Much of this was rough upland pasture, but by their unremitting labour they were able to improve it. They introduced sheep-farming to Wales; with their vast pastures they were able to undertake large-scale wool production. Most of the clip was sold to Italian merchants; the wool of some houses, especially Tintern, was equal in quality to that of the great Yorkshire abbeys like Rievaulx and Fountains. By 1291 Neath and Margam each had about 5,000 sheep, and some of the other abbeys ran them close. But Cistercian economic activity was not limited to sheep-farming; the monks exploited every available resource. The first reference to coal-mining in Glamorgan is by Margam abbey in 1249, and Neath was also working coal, probably for use as domestic fuel. Basingwerk on Deeside and Strata Florida in Ceredigion were both involved in lead-mining and in the production of silver from the ore. Several houses, among them Cymer in Merioneth and Tintern, mined and smelted iron. Corn was grown, much of it on the granges or outlying estates, mainly worked by lay brothers; much of this was to feed the monks themselves, but any surplus would have gone to market. Every abbey had several mills, mainly driven by water power, and fishing and horse-breeding also made an important contribution to the monastic economy. The main commercial activity was the sale of wool, but there was other trade; some had their own harbours and their own ships, among them Neath, Margam and Tintern. Trade was fostered and the monks’ income augmented by markets and fairs.

Norman advances into Wales had been marked by the building of castles; around many of them small towns developed as trading centres. Most of the historic towns of south Wales owe their origins to Norman castles; examples include Cardiff, Swansea, Brecon, Tenby and the oldest royal foundation in Wales, Carmarthen, founded by Henry I. Although many of the original burgesses were English, the ethnic balance could vary substantially and many towns came to have a strong Welsh element in their population. They were service and market centres and sometimes ports, as were the new castle boroughs like Caernarfon, Conwy and Beaumaris founded by Edward I after 1282; manufacturing industry was usually limited to tanning, brewing and the production of cloth. There may have been some early native Welsh urban development; local administrative and religious centres might well have attracted some traders, while Rhuddlan, the earliest recorded medieval Welsh town (it appears in Domesday Book), probably existed before the Normans arrived.

It was far easier to move goods by water than over land. The larger ports like Carmarthen, Tenby, Haverfordwest and Beaumaris had ships that were involved in foreign trade, importing wine from France or Spain and exporting wool, and later cloth, to England, Ireland and France. At these ports goods were transhipped for onward despatch to smaller centres; wine for Caernarfon castle, for example, was transferred to smaller vessels at Beaumaris. Goods were also moved by river; boats plied between Holt on the Dee and Chester and timber was floated down the Conwy to Trefriw, the limit for seagoing craft. Poets mention the delicacies that graced the tables of their patrons, among them oranges, spices and sugar; this evidence underlines the complexity and sophistication of medieval trade. The border markets like Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford were significant here, as was the port of Bristol; Chester and Bristol merchants played an important part in the Welsh economy. Some markets and fairs, like those of Wrexham, Oswestry and Carmarthen, served a regional catchment area; others were on a far smaller scale and at the local level much of the retail trade in small items was in the hands of pedlars.