Sir Matthew Hale's MSS., catalogued No. 5621. There is another in the Lansdowne MSS., British Museum, No. 318, which had belonged to Mr. Powle, but not correct, and in Hargrave's MSS., in the same repository, No. 185. The late John Wilson Croker, of the Admiralty, had also a copy, which he lent to Sir H. Nicolas for his notice regarding it. In addition to these containing the Laws of Oleron, it is worthy of record that upon occasion of our Congress, held in 1845 at Winchester, in a paper then read "On the Municipal Archives of Winchester and Southampton," by Thomas Wright, Esq., he especially notices that, in his examination of the documents belonging to the latter town, he met with a complete code of naval legislation, written in Norman French, on vellum, in a hand apparently of the earlier half of the fourteenth century.1 Mr. Wright has given two extracts to afford some notion of the character of these naval laws, which it is unnecessary here to transcribe, as they do not relate to our present subject; but they were sufficient to assure Sir Harris Nicolas that another copy of "The Black Book of the Admiralty" was to be found among the municipal records of Southampton. The MS. it is well to observe, is bound up in a volume which contains also the code of early laws which governed the guilds of the town. It is preserved in its primitive binding, formed of two oaks boards, about half-an-inch thick, one of them longer than the other, which latter has a square hole in the lower part exhibiting a contrivance for its preservation when in use, as it could then be held up with the hand put through it while citing the laws in the local court. On the larger board is what may be regarded the mark of the merchant guild of the town. It was deemed worthy of being figured for the Transactions of the Winchester Congress; and as that volume is now out of print, is here reproduced. The ordinances to which I have referred specify the duties of an admiral, and make frequent mention of an officer similar to that of high admiral, who had vested in him the command of all the fleets. This is Sir John de Beauchamp of Warwick, already referred to, whose commission is dated July 1360.1 Distinctive marks of the sovereign and the admirals, when at sea, were created by the king having three great lanthorns, one higher than the other two, which were placed on a level. He was permitted, however, to carry more if considered necessary. An admiral carried two great lanthorns in the two parts of the mast head of the ship; whilst a vice-admiral carried only one lanthorn, and that was placed at the top of the mast. The castles of ships were only used for war, and were affixed to merchant vessels when destined to be fighting ships. They had particular artificers for their conformation, who were called castlewrights, hurdigers,2 deliverers, shipwrights, and carpenters. There were three kinds of castles-the ofcastle (aftcastle), topcastle, and forecastle. The seals of many of the seaports represent the castles, and they are seen upon that of Richard Duke of Gloucester. In the fourteenth century a variety of colours were borne by ships. The national banner of St. George, and the banner of the king's arms, which, after 1340, consisted of three lions of England, quartered with the arms of France azure semée of gold fleurs-delys. There were also pennocels with the arms of St. George, and two streamers with the image of the saint after whom she was called, but other charges when she had not a Christian name. The standards of St. George had sometimes a leopard, i. e., the lion of England, in chief. 1 Printed in Sir H. Nicolas's History, p. 208, and is in the Fœdera, iii, 505. THE HON. AND REV. GEORGE THOMAS ORLANDO BRIDGEMAN, M.A. (Continued from page 89.) ON the death of Wenwynwyn, about the year 1218, we have seen that his son, Griffin, the young lord of Powis Wenwynwyn, was a minor, and that his territory was in the custody of Llewelyn ap Jerwerth, Prince of North Wales. On Jan. 28, 1224, the king orders half a merk to be paid to Griffin, “filio Wenhunweni infirmo.”1 On Sept. 29, 1229, the sheriff of Shropshire has paid Griffin, son of Wenunwen, five merks for sustenance of him and his men. On June 9, 1232, the king informs his bailiffs of Pecco (the Peak) that he has restored to Griffin, son of Wenuwen, his vassal (valecto),2 the land which was Wenuwen's in Ashford (co. Derby) saving to Margaret, widow of Wenuwen, and mother of Griffin, her dower therein.3 And on Sept. 23, 1233, by writ dated at Evesham, the king's mandate is issued to B. de Ver, Constable of Clune, ordering him to receive Griffin, son of Wenuwen, and his people (gentem) into the town of Clune whenever it should be necessary. The same mandate is issued to Hubert de Haes, constable of Albo Monasterio (Oswestry), and to William de Becles, constable of Montgomery.1 During this time his lands in Wales were retained by the Prince of North Wales and his sons, between whom they became a bone of contention; for we are informed that in 1238, after the Welsh lords had been summoned by Llewelyn to take an oath of allegiance to David, his son by the lady Joan, his wife (who was the illegitimate daughter of king John), prince David at once proceeded to take from his brother Griffin the lands of Arwystli, Ceri, Cyveilioc, Mawddwy, Mochnant, and Caereinion, leaving to him nothing but the cantref Lleyn (in Caernarvonshire). In 1240, Llewelyn ap Jerwerth, the aged prince of North Wales, died, and was 1 Rot. Lit. Claus., vol. i, p. 583. 2 The original meaning of the word valectus was a young vassal; it was used at first in an honourable sense for the son of a nobleman, afterwards for an armiger or military attendant, and at last for an inferior servant. (Kennett's Parochial Antiquities.) 3 Rot. Lit. Claus., 16 Hen. III, m. 9. 4 Ib., 17 Hen. III, m. 2. 5 Brut-y-Tywysogion. succeeded by his son David. In the following year, we find Griffin ap Wenwynwyn, with other leading men of Wales, petitioning the king for the release of prince Griffin, the elder son of Llewelyn, who had been imprisoned by his brother David.1 David was subsequently compelled to make terms with the king; and, amongst other conditions, it was stipulated that he should restore to the king's subjects all the lands which had been taken from them since the commencement of the wars between king John and his father, Llewelyn, and that he should give up to the king all the homages which king John had received, or ought to have received, especially from the noblemen of Wales.2 Powisland was now made over to its rightful prince; and about the month of August of the same year, 1241, Griffin, son of Wennuwen, fined three hundred merks for seisin of all his father's lands, saving the right of any other; and the king took his homage. Griffin, on his part, promised faithful service for himself and his heirs, and in default, that his lands should be forfeited; for which he gave hostages.3 In the next year we find him married to Hawise, daughter of John le Strange, of Knockin, and by the king's license assigning her dower in the manor of Ashford, co. Derby.* In 1244, when David ap Llewelyn rose in arms against the king, Griffin, mindful 2 Rym. Fod. 3 Rot. Fin., 25 Hen. III, mem. 4. 1 Powel's Chronicle, p. 216,17. Rot. Cart., 26 Hen. III, pt. 1, mem. 7. The village of Ashford in the Water, the Aisseford of Domesday, is situated in a fertile valley on the banks of the Wye. The manor, which included the chapelries or townships of Great Longstone with Holme, and several other townships in the parish of Bakewell, was parcel of the ancient demesnes of the crown. It was granted by king John in the first year of his reign, to Wenwynwyn, father of Griffin (Glover's Derbyshire; Lysons's Magna Britannia); by whom it was forfeited in 1214. On January 31, 1215, it was granted to B. de Insula, to hold during the king's pleasure (Rot. Lit. Claus., vol. i, p. 185-6). Nor do I find that it was ever restored to Wenwynwyn. But by writ of Henry III, dated on February 6, 1223, the sheriff of Derby has orders to go, in company with the king's constable of the Peak, to the manor of Aisford, which Wenunwenus de Kevelioc had held by gift of the late King John, and to cause Margaret, Wenunwen's widow, to have seisin of the third part of the said manor, which the king had assigned to her in dower. (Rot. Lit. Claus., vol. i, p. 532). Brian de Insula, the temporary holder of Ashford, is also commanded, by writ dated at Salop on March 7 of the same year, to give seisin to the same Margaret of a third part of the hamlet of Holm, with its appurtenances, which Wenunwen had formerly held, and which the king had assigned to her in dower as well as the third part of the manor of Aisford (ibid., p. 536). Griffin, son of Wenwynwyn, founded a chantry at Ashford in the year 1257. Extracts from Lichfield Registers, Harl. MS., 4799). The hamlet or village of Sheldon, in the parish of Bakewell, formed part, from a very early period, of the manor of Ashford: Griffin, son of Wenunwen, alienated it, in the reign of Henry III, to Geoffrey de Pickeford; though it was subsequently reunited to Ashford (Lysons's Mag. Brit., from the Hundred Rolls). Hawise, the lady wife of Griffin, had her dower assigned to her in Ashford: but the heirs of Griffin had no further interest there after her death. The manor was granted by King Edward II, in 1319, to his brother, Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent, with whose heirs it remained until it was sold by Henry Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, in 1408, to Sir William Cavendish, ancestor of the Duke of Devonshire, the present possessor. of benefits he had received, remained true to his English allegiance, being almost the only one of his countrymen who refused to join David; for which cause he suffered many losses at the hands of that prince. In the spring of the following year, 1245, by virtue of the king's writ directed to the barons of the exchequer, Griffin, son of Wenunwen, had respite, until the quinzaine of St. Michael, for £100 out of a fine of £200 which he had made to the king for his land in Wales.1 In Trinity Term of the same year he had a writ to be discharged of tallage demanded of him for his manor of Ashford.2 On Nov. 6, 1245, the king, by a patent dated at Lilleshall, orders Fulk Fitzwarin, John le Strange, and Henry de Audley to put an end to a dispute about land in Dendover, between Griffin ap Madoc, Griffin ap Wenhunwen, and Roger de Montalt.3 It appears from the patent rolls of Nov. 8, when the two Griffins were ordered to submit themselves to the arbitration of the king's commissioners above mentioned, that Griffin ap Madoc had held these lands until the time of the last war which the king had raised against David ap Llewelyn (1244?) During the continuance of that war, David had superseded Griffin in the occupation of the said lands; and afterwards Griffin ap Wennunwen, who claimed a right therein, had taken and held them, in turn, from the said David. What may have been the immediate result of the arbitration, I am unable to say; but certainly the commot of Dendor was afterwards held by Griffin ap Wenwynwyn and his descendants. The services and fidelity of Griffin at this trying period were not unacknowledged by the crown; for on March 4, 1251, he had a grant of free warren, to him and his heirs, in all his demesne lands of his manor of Eschford in the county of Derby. A patent of May 15, 1251, ordered that "Roger Sprenghose and Richard de Stretton should not be put on any assize, etc., so long as they should adhere to the crown and be in the service or following (obsequio) of Griffin ар Wenunewen.' And, further, on April 11, 1252, the king had pardoned Griffin an amercement of twenty marks, and his men a smaller sum, to which they had been severally amerced before Magr' Simon de Wautton in a suit of novel disseisin which had been preferred against them by William Gernon for a tenement in Bankewell (Bakewell, co. Derby).7 "6 It was about this time, probably in this same year, that a breach of the peace commenced between the lord of Powis and Thomas Corbet of Caus, which continued many years. On May 9, 1255, justices were appointed to try an action of novel disseizin 1 Madox' Hist. of the Exchequer, vol. ii, p. 215. 3 Eyton's Hist. Shropshire, vol. vii, p. 78. 5 Rot. Chart., 35 Hen. III, No. 11. Rot. Fin., 36 Hen. III, mem. 15. 2 Ibid., p. 222. Rot. Pat., 30 Hen. III, m. 10. |