This is the first full-length study of a Welsh family of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries who were not drawn from the princely class. Though they were of obscure and modest origins, the patronage of great lords of the March – such as the Mortimers of Wigmore or the de Bohun earls of Hereford – helped them to become prominent in Wales and the March, and increasingly in England. They helped to bring down anyone opposed by their patrons – like Llywelyn, prince of Wales in the thirteenth century, or Edward II in the 1320s. In the process, they sometimes faced great danger but they contrived to prosper, and unusually for Welshmen one branch became Marcher lords themselves. Another was prominent in Welsh and English government, becoming diplomats and courtiers of English kings, and over some five generations many achieved knighthood. Their fascinating careers perhaps hint at a more open society than is sometimes envisaged.

This is the first full-length study of a Welsh family of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries who were not drawn from the princely class. Though they were of obscure and modest origins, the patronage of great lords of the March – such as the Mortimers of Wigmore or the de Bohun earls of Hereford – helped them to become prominent in Wales and the March, and increasingly in England. They helped to bring down anyone opposed by their patrons – like Llywelyn, prince of Wales in the thirteenth century, or Edward II in the 1320s. In the process, they sometimes faced great danger but they contrived to prosper, and unusually for Welshmen one branch became Marcher lords themselves. Another was prominent in Welsh and English government, becoming diplomats and courtiers of English kings, and over some five generations many achieved knighthood. Their fascinating careers perhaps hint at a more open society than is sometimes envisaged.

Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, this book considers how Welsh (and British) history became an enduringly potent instrument of political power in the late Middle Ages. Brought into the broader stream of political consciousness by major baronial families from the March (the borderlands between England and Wales), this inventive history generated a new brand of literature interested in succession, land rights, and the origins of imperial power, as imagined by Geoffrey of Monmouth. These marcher families leveraged their ancestral, political, and ideological ties to Wales in order to strengthen their political power, both regionally and nationally, through the patronage of historical and genealogical texts that reimagined the Welsh past on their terms. In doing so, they brought ideas of Welsh history to a wider audience than previously recognized and came to have a profound effect on late medieval thought about empire, monarchy, and succession.

Power in Wales in the early middle ages was inextricably tied to political authority. This book analyzes the nature of that power and its relationships, both in theory and in practice. Confronting challenging questions relating to definitions and consequences of military control, alien settlement, land ownership, and political domination, Davies analyzes the impact and nature of English, Irish, and Viking contacts with the Welsh, and assesses their significance for the long-term development of Wales.

In the Middle Ages, the March between England and Wales was a contested, militarised frontier zone, a 'land of war'. With English kings distracted by affairs in France, English frontier lords were left on their own to organize and run lordships in the manner that was best suited to this often violent borderland. The centrepiece of the frontier society that developed was the feudal honour and its court, and in the March it survived as a functioning entity much longer than in England. However, in the twelfth century, as the growing power of the English crown threatened Marcher honours, their lords asserted their independence from the king's courts, and the March became a land where 'the king's writ did not run'. At the same time, the increased military capability of their Welsh adversaries put the Marcher lordships under enormous military and financial strain. Brock Holden describes how this unusual frontier society developed in reaction to both the challenge of the native Welsh and the power of the English kings. Through a multi-faceted examination-political, economic, social, legal, and military-of the lordships of the Central March of Wales, it examines how the 'feudal matrix' of Marcher power developed over the course of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.

The twelve essays in Crossing Borders: Boundaries and Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Britain examine marches and margins as jurisdictional, legal, and social expressions of power, building upon the scholarship of Professor Cynthia J. Neville.