Huw Pryce
speaker
124 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 25 Jun
Huw Pryce’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, I think the first thing to say is that the marches were an essential part of the story of the conquest and colonisation of Wales in the Middle Ages.
The marches in the sense we're going to talk about them include, as it were, the border between England and Wales, which is more geographical use of the marches.
but extended right along the South Wales coast and into parts of Mid Wales, and later on, after the Edwardian conquest, also parts of North East Wales.
And these were essentially created by lords who fought their way, in many cases, into Wales, as we've heard.
Hay was an early example of a lordship established in the late 1080s by a Norman, Bernard de Neufmarchais, who had lands in Herefordshire, and he led troops down the Wye Valley.
They would have been responsible for building the motte, which is not at the site of Hay Castle now, which is a bit later, probably from the 12th century, but near the church in Hay.
And they continued, and eventually, by the 1090s, Bernard takes over the Welsh kingdom of Brechaeniog, or Brechan, and at the same time,
the powerful Welsh king of southwest Wales, Rhys, Rhys ap Teudor, is killed.
And after that, the Normans also go further into west and southwest Wales.
So that's a further stage.
So in a sense, Hay is part of an important sort of thread in the story of the making of the marches.
We don't really know exactly how they accrued that power.
What is clear is that the power was very extensive by the time the documentation really gives us details about it in the 13th century.
They claimed the right to wage private wars.
They had rights of jurisdiction.
There was a law of the march, which was a hybrid between, if you like, English and Welsh law, and that's recognised in Magna Carta in 1215, and it says disputes...
in the march will be judged according to the law of the march, and those in England by the law of England, and those in Wales by the law of Wales.
So clearly, though there are lots of different lordships, and by the end of the 13th century, you have about 40 different marcher lordships.
So it's very fragmented, it's very varied.
At the same time, there's a concept that they have something in common.
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