Cylchgronau Cymru

his opportunities to stand forth as the most important freeholder in the Nethergorther. By the end of the century, the Williams estate occupied most of the Nethergorther, reducing the old townships to single farms.53 Williams's success was undoubtedly accelerated by the strict enforcement of male succession and the suppression of gavelkind after 1542 64 While the life-blood of the traditional life drained away, Stafford deliberately retained, and indeed revived, rights and dues which were increasingly archaic but of financial advantage to himself. He relied upon Humphrey Lloyd, Reynold Williams and others hostile to the old order, distrusted John Corbet and other long-established officials, and sustained the clumsiness and roughness of the lesser officers. In all this, Stafford brought to a head an opposition which had its roots in the fundamental problem of the Welsh marches. ANDREW H. ANDERSON University of Newcastle, New South Wales. 61 C.R.O..D1721/1/1, p. 383, f. 207; D1721/1/10, pp. 177-80; Whitfield, loc. cit., part I, 63-66; part n, 327-29; VCH., Shropshire, VIII, 185, 193-94, 202-3, 207-8. Lands were sold only by licence of the lord and were surrendered in court to the use of the purchaser. C.R.O., D1721/1/1, pp. 332-25, ff. 181-83, pp. 356-57, ff. 194-95; D1721/1/10, pp. 177-80; D1721/1/12, p. 219; E. A. Lewis, An Inventory of the Early Chancery Proceedings concerning Wales (1937), no. 1307/37-38; William Rees, op. cit., pp. xxii-iv; Diet. Welsh Biog., s. Lloyds of Leighton; J. Beverley Smith, loc. cit., pp. 147-49. In September 1537 the brothers Robert and Richard Lloyd received a large free tenement in the Overgorther for themselves and the heirs male of their bodies. Gavelkind was still a tradition in Causland in 1551, but it had been petitioned against in the new county of Montgomery and Humphrey Lloyd was actively opposed to it. A sign of the changes wrought by the act of 1542, which had particular application to the lordships incorporated in English counties, was perhaps Richard Lloyd's surrender in December 1546 of his title and right in the Overgorther tenement, Stafford receiving L5 from Robert for his goodwill.