Huw Pryce

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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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In Our Time · The Welsh Marches · 25 Jun 2026 podcast

And they do have very extensive powers, including of jurisdiction.

But they were under the King of England, nevertheless.

And there's a story relating to a lord who held lands very near to Hay, Walter Clifford, in 1250, who, for some reason, was offended by a letter sent to him by King Henry III and forced the royal messenger to eat the letter made of parchment

and the wax seal, which sounds extremely indigestible.

But we only know about that because Walter was summoned before the king to answer for this act of defiance.

He was threatened with being imprisoned, with being disinherited, and in the end he had to pay a very large fine to be allowed to go free.

So there were limits to the freedom of the March of Lords.

Well, you could certainly argue that.

I think that there's a century earlier in a way, sort of late 11th rather than late 12th century.

And I know from personal experience that Irish historians are very wedded to this idea that they're the first colony.

I'm not sure it's that...

productive a sort of debate to have, really.

What is, I think, interesting is that the march along to go to Ireland have had experience of similar kind of warfare.

And indeed, one of the great spokesmen, Gerald of Wales, the ecclesiastic and writer, made the point that because they were used to that kind of terrain and that kind of warfare, they were the most suitable to conquer Ireland.

And they should be sort of treated better by the king on account of that.

Well, we're talking about the organisation of, I think, the majority of marcher lordships.

And what you tend to have was the lower-lying land, where you'd have the castle, the borough, sometimes the priory church, which were the sort of key symbols, if you like, of marcher domination.

And then you may have some low-lying agricultural land that they're all inhabited by settlers, really.

And then higher up...

The Welsh, they remain, or some may have been forced to move, and they have mainly a pastoral economy, keeping cattle and so on.

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