Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542
The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 were parliamentary measures by which Wales was annexed to the Kingdom of England, the legal system of England was extended to Wales and the norms of English administration were introduced. The intention was to create a single state and legal jurisdiction. The Acts were passed during the reign of King Henry VIII of England, who came from the Welsh Tudor dynasty.
Before these Acts, Wales was excluded from Parliamentary representation and divided between the Principality of Wales, and many feudal statelets; the marcher Lordships.
The Act declared King Henry's intentions, that because of differences in law and language:
– and therefore:
Names and dates of the Acts
They are sometimes misleadingly known as the Acts of Union, but the legal short title of each Act has since 1948 been "The Laws in Wales Act". They are also often seen cited by the years they received Royal Assent, 1536 and 1543 respectively, although the official citation uses the preceding years, as each of these Acts this date was passed between 1 January and 25 March, at a time when New Year's Day fell on 25 March.Background
From the conquest of Gwynedd in 1282–83 until the passing of the Laws in Wales Acts, the administrative system of Wales had remained unchanged. By the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 the territory of the native Welsh rulers had been broken up into the five counties of Anglesey, Caernarfon, Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Merioneth. Even though the five counties were subject to English criminal law, the "Principality" was the king of England's own personal fief and Welsh law continued to be used for civil cases. The rest of Wales, except for the county of Flint, which was part of the Principality, and the Royal lordships of Glamorgan and Pembroke, was made up of numerous small lordships, each with its own courts, laws and other customs.When Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond seized the English throne in 1485, becoming Henry VII, no change was made to the system of governing Wales, though he remained concerned about the power of the Marcher Lords and the lawlessness and disorder in the Welsh Marches. To deal with this there was a revival of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which had been established in the reign of Edward IV. After the deaths of many of the Marcher lords during the Wars of the Roses, many of the lordships had passed into the hands of the crown.
Henry VIII did not see the need to reform the government of Wales at the beginning of his reign, but gradually he perceived a threat from some of the remaining Marcher lords and therefore instructed his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, to seek a solution. His solution was the annexation or incorporation of Wales which, along with other significant changes at the same time, led to the creation of England as a modern sovereign state.
The Acts have been known as the "Acts of Union", but they were not popularly referred to as such until 1901, when historian Owen M. Edwards assigned them that name—a name some historians such as S. B. Chrimes regard as misleading, as the Acts were concerned with harmonising laws, not political union.
The Acts
This harmonisation was done by passing a series of measures between 1536 and 1543. These included:- An Acte for Laws & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like fourme as it is in this Realme, was passed in 1536 in the 8th session of Henry VIII's 5th Parliament, which began on 4 February 1535/6, and with effect from 21 December 1993; and
- An Acte for certaine Ordinaunces in the Kinges Majesties Domynion and Principalitie of Wales, was passed in 1543 in the 2nd session of Henry VIII's 8th Parliament, which began on 22 January 1542/3, and repealed with effect from 3 January 1995.
The Acts were given their short titles by the Statute Law Revision Act 1948, s.5, sch.2.
Effects of the Acts
These Acts also had the following effects on the administration of Wales:- the marcher lordships were abolished as political units, and five new counties were established on Welsh lands, thus creating a Wales of 13 counties;
- other areas of the lordships were annexed to Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Merionethshire;
- the borders of Wales for administrative/government purposes were established and have remained the same since; this was unintentional as Wales was to be incorporated fully into England, but the status of Monmouthshire was still ambiguous in the view of some people until confirmed by the Local Government Act 1972. For ecclesiastical purposes, several areas of England were parts of Welsh dioceses until disestablishment of the Church in Wales in 1920: the area around Oswestry, Shropshire — part of St Asaph diocese — was the largest.
- Wales elected members to the English Parliament;
- the Council of Wales and the Marches was established on a legal basis;
- the Court of Great Sessions was established, a system peculiar to Wales;
- a Sheriff was appointed in every county, and other county officers as in England;
- the courts of the marcher lordships lost the power to try serious criminal cases;
- all courts in Wales were to be conducted in the English language, not Welsh;
- the office of Justice of the Peace was introduced, nine to every county;
- each county or shire consisted of fewer than a dozen hundreds corresponding with varying degrees of accuracy to the former commotes.
Despite historians such as G. R. Elton, who treated the Acts as merely a triumph of Tudor efficiency, modern British, and particularly Welsh, historians are more likely to investigate evidence of the damaging effects of the Acts on Welsh identity, culture, and economy. While the Welsh gentry embraced the Acts and quickly attempted to merge themselves into English aristocracy, the majority of the population could have found themselves adrift amid a legal and economic system whose language and focus were unfamiliar to them.
The Acts and the Welsh language
An example of the effects on the Welsh language is the first section of the 1535 Act, which states:The same section then goes on to say that:
Section 20 of the 1535 Act made English the only language of the law courts and said that those who used Welsh would not be appointed to, or paid for, any public office in Wales:
This language clause laid the foundation for a thoroughly anglicised ruling class of landed gentry in Wales, which would have many consequences.
The parts of the 1535 Act relating to language were definitively repealed only in 1993, by the Welsh Language Act 1993, though annotations at read that sections 18–21 were repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1887.