Wyseman's Report settling the boundary dispute 1595
An extract from Barrie Griffith's book Kenfig Folk Part 2
(Available to purchase, but only a few left)
The Wyseman map. The hillock called Thorborough is the triangle on the boundary below Sker House with a mear stone indicated adjoining it on the left (the other is on the other side of New Close)
THE WYSEMAN REPORT OF 1595
A very early example of this secrecy occurs in 1592 when the Earl of Pembroke’s surveyor, Thomas Wyseman, returned to Kenfig in relation to an on-going dispute between the burgesses and Jenkin Turberville of Sker. Wyseman’s draft of his final report[1] is perhaps one of the most interesting and informative documents relating to Kenfig that I have come across. It traces the history of the dispute right back to 1397 when Kenfig Down (the area now largely covered by the Pyle & Kenfig Golf Club course) was given to the medieval town by Thomas Le Despenser as a common.
He did this to compensate the burgesses for the amount of common land they had already lost to sand encroachment, but some time later he or his successors revised this original gift and gave a third of the down nearest Neath Abbey’s grange at Sker to its Abbot. At the same time he imposed freehold rents on the two occupants – five shillings on the Abbot; ten shillings on the burgesses.
Shortly after the dissolution of Neath Abbey the Turbervilles of Penlline secured ownership of the former grange at Sker, and in 1561 Christopher Turberville installed his eldest son Jenkin there on the occasion of the latter’s marriage. Although Jenkin and his new wife lived at the house, the majority of the land was let to Watkin Lougher of Tythegston who, sometime prior to 1571 obtained permission from Jenkin and his father to enclose part of Kenfig Down. The resultant “New Close”, however, extended into the Borough portion of the common to such an extent that it enclosed some three acres of their property.
The burgesses accordingly advised the steward of the Earl of Pembroke, and awaited results. When no action was taken they reported the matter again, and again, and again! They also spoke to Thomas Wyseman about it when he arrived in 1582 to report on their illegal enclosures at The Rugge. In fact they asked him to request the Earl of Pembroke for permission to fence part of their boundary with Sker presumably to physically prevent Turberville taking any more of their land. Like everything else in that report however their petition seems to have been quietly shelved and forgotten.
Not until twenty-one years had elapsed from their original complaint did the burgesses’ persistent nagging at last achieve results, and Thomas Wyseman was despatched to report on the matter. In part the Earl’s indifference seems to have been that of the absentee landlord concerning a relatively minor matter in an obscure corner of his widespread estates. At the same time he may have felt that this was something over which the burgesses ought to take action for themselves, and if so then in fairness he had a point. The ten shillings rent they paid annually was a fixed amount that could not be varied, and in practice the burgesses were the owners of their two thirds of the common. Whilst technically ownership was vested in the Earl he could not sell, dispose of, or develop it – those rights rested with the Corporation.
The boundary of the common was not the same as that between the two manors; Sker’s portion actually lying within the manor of Kenfig Borough. The original document relating to the division was still extant in Wyseman’s day, and either he saw it amongst the archives at Cardiff Castle, or the burgesses showed him their copy. This they would have expected him to ask to see, but what must have raised a few eyebrows was his demand to also view the borough charters setting out their boundaries. These they duly produced, but when the surveyor then asked them to recite the boundary as it currently existed, consternation set in!
It is apparent from their ordinance relating to the enclosure of Waun Cimla that the burgesses of the day were fully aware that their borough had originally been a lot smaller than it was in 1592. As set out in their charter of 1397 (which they had gladly produced for Wyseman’s inspection) it was simply confined to an area about the castle between Maudlam and Kenfig River. They possessed in fact no charters relating to the enlarged boundary of the borough they now occupied; one of the reasons why I believe the expansion was originally intended only as a temporary arrangement. Wyseman’s request now brought this deficiency to the fore, and with it the awful realisation that they had no legal document with which to oppose any future possible claims concerning the true extent of their territory from either the Earls of Pembroke, the Mansels of Margam, or anyone else.
Wyseman does not name any of the burgesses who formed part of the delegation that met with him to settle this dispute, but according to Leslie Evans the Portreeve in 1592 was a John Evan, probably the son of Evan Griffith whom we met earlier. Old Evan himself was actually still alive though now an old man in his late sixties or early seventies and it is very likely that he was one of the witnesses from whom Wyseman took evidence in the course of his enquiry.
Presumably it was John Evan, in his capacity as Portreeve, that came up with a none too cunning plan aimed at concealing from Wyseman the fact that the boundaries of the 1397 charter in front of him actually bore no relation whatsoever to the those in being at this time.
Since the borough boundaries were not an issue in this dispute it rather seems to me that in noting these details Wyseman was only '‘going through the motions” to show his employer the diligence with which he had investigated the dispute. Consequently he probably wasn’t taking too much notice of what was said on the point and this is perhaps why he failed to detect John Evan’s rather unsubtle subterfuge.
To cover the obvious discrepancies between their boundary marks and those mentioned in the charter John Evan simply re-located two of the latter and incorporated them into his description of the existing ones. He also ‘neglected’ to mention that the present boundary crossed the river Kenfig to include Higher Kenfig on the northern side. This would immediately have given the game away since the charter in front of Wyseman stated quite baldly that the river itself had been the northern boundary in 1397. Despite this the description of the boundary is of considerable value to us today in that only one other detailed recitation of it[2] (made in 1661) survives from these early centuries. Despite the presence of the two interlopers in the 1592 description the two agree very closely with each other, and Wyseman’s description[3] is therefore worth including in full.
“The southe syde is from The Botehaven adioyning to the Seavern Sea alonge by lang[side a] p’cell of the buyldings of the grange or ffarme [of] the Skarre. And from thence along[side the]southesyde of certen bounds, p’cell of th[e] sayde grange or ffarme callyd Goutesfur[long] unto the waye or lane leadynge to Newton Notasshe, unto a hepe of stones there”.
Unfortunately the edge of the original document has worn away leaving gaps (indicated by brackets), but these do not unduly affect the interpretation. The name “Botehaven” (Boat Haven) is interesting. My first thought was that, as we know the boundary commenced at Sker Point this was an example of Elizabethan black humour for so many fine ships have made their last and final landfall on those treacherous rocks. On Wyseman’s map the location is called “The Black Rocks” and maps from the latter days of the borough indicate that the boundary started at an inlet in the heart of Sker Point known today as Pwll y Dyfan. This is a large pool with a sandy beach actually inside the rocks that form the reef and is connected to the open sea by a narrow, almost ruler-straight cleft through them.
This undoubtedly is the ‘Botehaven’ of Wyseman’s account, and it would just be possible, with favourable wind, tide and weather, for a small boat to slip in and out of this inlet. My next thought was why should anyone want to use it for this purpose when there are plenty of open beaches nearby where such a craft could be stored simply by dragging it up above the high tide level? Is this perhaps a clue to the manner in which fugitive Roman Catholic priests slipped in and out of nearby Sker House undetected? Without local knowledge nobody would ever suspect that a small boat was sailing in and out of the midst of this fearsome reef with its evil reputation as a graveyard of shipping!
The later 1661 account merely states that the boundary started at the sea and makes no mention of Goutesfurlong (‘The Furlong Gutter’) simply stating that it skirted the end of the medieval barn at Sker known as Ty yr Ychen. By this time the “hepe of stones” on the road to Nottage had been replaced by a marker stone, though I hasten to add that this is not the one adjoining the gate of the track that until recently led to the house. This was spotted lying in the adjoining field by ‘Albie’ Evans, a local man with an interest in history. Realising that it was not of local material he deduced that it was presumably a former ‘standing stone’ and prevailed upon the farmer not to break it up but to rescue and re-erect it at its present location.
John Evan, on behalf of the burgesses, then gave his own interpretation of the next portion of the boundary from the cairn alongside the highway: -
“Then yt tornythe eastwards to a crosse callyd Crosse Green, & from thens to Howlotesford, & from thens to Taddelcrosse”.
The corresponding account from the 1661 record confirms that since Wyseman’s day the various twists and turns of the boundary here had been better delineated with marker stones. From one in ‘Y Kae Issha’ field (at the rear of the Pyle & Kenfig Golf Clubhouse) it ran to another stone on the south part of Heol y Broom, and from there to “a stone lyeing at Groes y gryn”. This last is the ‘Crosse Green’ of Wyseman’s account, and the crossroads we now call Cornelly Cross in North Cornelly.
From this point the two accounts differ. The 1661 boundary is described as running from Croes y Green to ‘another stone lyeing in Kae Pwll y Kyffylau, and from that stone on the eastern side of Marlas House unto a cross called Croes Jenkin”. This is the same portion described in Wyseman’s account, but here the standing stone on Marlas road (still known as Croes Seinkyn to this day) is called ‘Taddelcrosse’, a name plucked directly from the charter of 1397. The same is true of ‘Howlotesford’ which (given the topography of the location) must have been the point on the Avan Fach stream where it was formerly crossed by a lane known locally as Lon y Cariadon which used to run through the fields from near Marlas Farm to Hall in North Cornelly. The 1397 charter however indicates quite clearly that ‘Howlotesford’ was located on the river Kenfig, and is almost certainly the one adjoining Llanmihangel Farm!
The real ‘Taddelcrosse’ in its modern guise of ‘Croes y Ddadl’ still exists, as a Sutton stone base that formerly supported a wooden cross. It lies almost hidden by sand and vegetation near the crossroads in the dunes between Marlas and Maudlam.
Having made this statement John Evan and his burgesses must have silently prayed that Wyseman would not take it into his head to inspect the boundary himself! As it turned out, and as the investigation into the boundary of the common progressed they undoubtedly began to regret using this ploy which ultimately rebounded on their own heads.
Their account of the boundary continues:
“The north syde thens comyth to a meade called Shocoke, nowe the possessyons of Thomas Mansell esquire; ffrom thens to the morva dyche; from thens to Halfewayestone; from thens to Grenewall, and so to the sea. And so alonges’d the sea syde, all the weste side thereof”
The description makes no mention of the fact that this boundary was actually north of the river Kenfig, though in fairness the same is true of the one made in 1661. By then the turn in the boundary at ‘Shocoke’ (‘Shock-oak’ – an oak tree damaged by lightening) had been marked by a cross erected at ‘Kae Garw’, and there is no mention of the Morva Ditch. Instead it continued directly to ‘a stone by Notch Coarton’ on the road from Margam to Kenfig which is presumably identical with the ‘Halfway Stone’ mentioned in 1661.
Until the 1990s it was thought that this was a reference to the Pumpeius Stone near Eglwys Nunnydd, but a workman making a trench here uncovered what was undoubtedly the original Halfway Stone a few yards further south. This was a lot smaller, and engraved with a curious design of three adjoining crosses enclosed by squares. It is believed that originally it was part of a larger Christian monument dating from the Dark Ages from which this portion was cut and put to a more mundane use. When this marker was erected in the 15th century the Pumpeius Stone would have been lying flat on the ground (it was later raised to a standing position by the Elizabethan historian Rees Merrick) so the latter would not have been suitable as a boundary marker at that time.
As to the remainder of the boundary the two accounts agree except that the later one makes no mention of the Greenwall which is nevertheless referred to in other documents of the time. So the burgesses managed to fool Thomas Wyseman that their existing boundary was the same as it had always been. But then, to again quote a modern idiom, ‘it all went pear shaped’!
Eight years earlier Evan Griffith had apparently been able to muddy the status of the Earl’s warren in the dunes sufficiently for Wyseman to believe that the Burgesses had a point regarding the status of the land there, but now he had the charter of 1397 in front of him. As he pointed out, it specifically omitted from the land given to the burgesses on Kenfig Down the dune land nearest to the sea which the Lord had retained for himself as a rabbit warren. The burgesses might have been able to make a convincing case if they had been able to point out that the borough boundary had been enlarged to include this land subsequent to the original charter! As they had already effectively denied any such alteration had ever been made they could now only bite their tongues and say nothing!
It got worse! Their claim to the common land between Kenfig Down and the River Kenfig that they called “The Sands” at the time of Wyseman’s 1584 enquiry rested on the fact that the northern boundary was given as the demesne lands of the Earl. This, so they claimed, was Castle Meadow in the vicinity of the castle ruins, but Wyseman spotted that a block of demesne land occupied the land between Kenfig Pool and the road to Nottage. Logically, he pointed out, this would have been the land referred to since it lay immediately north (and closer to) the acknowledged southern boundary with Sker. Furthermore the document dividing the Down between the burgesses and the Abbot of Neath had allocated the a third of the land, and the burgesses the remaining two thirds. Had their claim been true, then the Abbot’s third would actually have been larger than the area of Sker Grange!
The burgesses were now in a flat spin, but there was worse to come concerning certain rights they claimed in respect of Kenfig Pool. This, Wyseman pointed out, lay between the demesne and the rabbit warren so was part of the “lordes demesne or waste” rather than “the burgesys’ comon, beyinge not reppossed [“included”] in their chartre”. This last he considered conclusive evidence since, he added, any special rights enjoyed there by their predecessors would undoubtedly have been recorded in that document.
To realise the seriousness of this situation it has to be remembered that almost all the burgesses, even those living in cottages, kept at least one cow, and that other than the pool or the river there was hardly any other standing water in the area. The inhabitants of both Kenfig and Maudlam relied on wells from which to draw water for domestic use. Fine for humans, but a cow drinks something like seventeen gallons of water a day! At several locations in the vicinity I have noted over-grown remains of former dew-ponds dug by farmers in an attempt to provide an additional water supply for their cattle, but undoubtedly most took their stock down to the pool once or twice a day for water.
So the burgesses duly reaped what they themselves had sown! The 1397 charter and the 1661 survey with its (true) recitation of their boundaries are carefully preserved amongst the treasured borough archives, but not so the copy of Wyseman’s report! We know that they received one as, strange to say, they preserved a copy of his accompanying map that is now in the National Library at Aberystwyth. The latter, however, does not show the borough boundary, and one suspects that the ‘loss’ of the report with its incriminating evidence may not have been entirely accidental!
It may be too that following this experience they also agreed to mutually ‘forget’ about the variation in the size of the borough, and to stand or fall by those outlined in the 1397 charter. Certainly the fact that the medieval borough was smaller is never again alluded to in their records and everyone seems to have come to accept that the boundaries then were the same as those when the borough was abolished in 1886. Only in recent times has the discrepancy been realised and the burgesses’ fraud exposed
Thanks to Wyseman’s good nature the watering of cattle at Kenfig Pool did not subsequently become an issue. In fact in his report he highlighted the lack of standing water in the district and specifically suggested to the Earl that the tenants of Sker in particular be allowed to bring their herds through the borough common to drink there. So in the end the burgesses got away with it, but it had been a near run thing!
Jenkin Turberville
They are often referred to as “The Turbulent Turbervilles”, and none were more deserving of that title than the Jenkin Turberville with whom the burgesses found themselves in conflict over his alleged encroachment on their common! Glamorgan during the Elizabethan era was a violent, unruly place with a corrupt and unprincipled legal system where Jenkin stands out as one of its most notorious citizens.
He was a member of one of the oldest Glamorgan families, claiming descent from Pagan de Turberville of Coity who, if he was not a contemporary of Robert FitzHamon, certainly arrived here not long after the latter’s conquest of the former Welsh kingdom. Their principal seat at Coity passed out of the hands of the family in the fourteenth century, but other ‘cadet’ branches continued elsewhere throughout the county. The one at Penlline near Cowbridge was probably the most important of these, and the one to which Jenkin himself belonged. On his marriage to Margaret Lougher in 1561 his father, Christopher, gave the newly weds the house and manor of Sker as their new home, and they lived here until sometime after 1575, moving to Penlline when Jenkin inherited the family estates. It was about this time that he built the house we see here today, created from the more modest monastic grange building he had inherited.
Throughout his life Jenkin and trouble walked hand in hand, and in his book Sker House local historian Leslie Evans catalogued just some of the many unsavoury incidents that punctuated his life. During his time at Sker, in 1568, he and his cronies the Carnes of Ewenny Priory raised a small army and attacked the home of a John Thomas at Brocastle near Crack Hill. When arrested for his part in the affair Jenkin resisted violently, and was subsequently rescued by some of his followers. So far as is known he was never in fact prosecuted for his part in the affair as those who formed the judiciary in Glamorgan were often either members of his family or friends. Thomas Carne, the instigator of the attack upon Brocastle, actually held the office of High Sheriff on three occasions between 1561 and 1580!
Seven years later Jenkin, together with members of the Lougher and Stradling families accompanied by an mob of some one hundred armed retainers, descended on the annual fair held at Ewenny and caused total mayhem. John Kemys the Under-Steward for the Manor of Ogmore and his officers, who were responsible for policing the event, attempted to intervene. They were, he later deposed, “so pitifully hurt with shot arrows, beaten, maymed, and evil entreated that a great number of them did hardly escape with their lives”. If the authorities did indeed succeed in calling Jenkin to account for this affray then it had little impact. The following year he was almost certainly a member of a mob of Turbervilles and their supporters who fought a running battle through the streets of Cowbridge with the Bassets of Beaupre and their adherents.
Perhaps the most shocking example of the impotence or unwillingness of the authorities to curb the violence of Jenkin and his contemporaries is mentioned in the Acts of the Privy Council for 1591-2. Servants in the employ of Jenkin and Carne were arrested for the murder of a Lewis Rosser of Welsh St Donats, and it was strongly suspected at the time that in committing this crime they had merely been carrying out their employers’ wishes. The culprits, having successfully escaped from custody, surrendered themselves back to the authorities convinced that they would escape conviction as the High Sheriff of the day was related to their masters!
Against incidents such as these Jenkin’s implication in the appropriation of three acres of the burgess’s land pales into insignificance, but it is clearly obvious why the Corporation were so keen to get the Earl of Pembroke on their side! When Thomas Wyseman arrived at Kenfig they accompanied him to the location of New Close where he had arranged with Turberville to hold a site meeting to view the disputed boundary. When they arrived there was no sign of the latter.
Having waited a reasonable amount of time for Jenkin or his representatives to arrive, Wyseman took such evidence as the burgesses produced which hinged upon the location of a hillock called ‘Thorborough’ or ‘Tormel’. This done he released them and their witnesses and remained awaiting the arrival of Turberville or for some message to indicate why he had been detained.
The object of his vigil was probably comfortably ensconced in Sker House, and we can imagine him sitting in an upstairs room sipping wine and watching the proceedings on the border of his property with some amusement. Eventually, however, Wyseman’s stubborn refusal to simply pack up and go home brought its own reward. We can only conjecture what Turberville’s ploy was, but had Wyseman left he could have claimed that he had been unavoidably detained and arrived to discover that the meeting had finished and everyone gone home. As the hours ticked by however this excuse became increasingly untenable for what explanation could he then offer for his failure to send a messenger to notify Wyseman of his indisposition?
Six hours after the original time set for the meeting Jenkin and his supporters finally made their way across the dunes to where Wyseman was still patiently awaiting them. The charade was now almost played out, but Turberville led the surveyor to a location well inside the borders of the borough’s common. This, he declared, was the true location of Thorborough Hill, and all of the enclosure known as New Close was therefore well within his bounds. Wyseman was not impressed. What Turberville showed him, he tells us, was not “one other hill, but a good level parcel of ground” nor was he disposed to accept Turberville’s argument that “all the same was called Thorborough with there many hills together”. In fact, he had already collected indisputable proof that the location of the hillock was where the burgesses claimed it to be.
I can’t help liking old Thomas Wyseman. His report is a fair and masterly summing up of the grounds for the dispute, and as indicated earlier, he had considerable compassion for the parties involved. He was also no fool, and his wanderings about the dunes whilst awaiting Turberville’s arrival had not been aimless. During the course of them he located two old ‘mear stones’ – boundary markers erected sometime in the past. One lay on the eastern side of the hillock the burgesses had identified as Thorborough, the other between New Close and the Kenfig to Nottage road.
Both parties in the dispute agreed on the point at which the boundary touched the coast and that it had run inland to a pool alongside the road known as “Goutesfurlong”. Wyseman had determined that these two fixed points, the two mear stones, and the hill identified by the burgesses all lay in a straight line beyond which the northern edge of New Close clearly protruded. It was game, set and match to the Corporation!
Faced with such incontrovertible evidence Turberville appeared to cave in. Wyseman then suggested that the proper way to bring this dispute to a formal conclusion would be by a joint commission that would appoint an independent jury of parishioners to hear the evidence and give a verdict. “To w’ch the said Jenkyn Turbervyle (being thereunto advised by his friends then present ………) appointed and praid the said Thomas Wyseman to be a means that his Lo[ordship] maye like thereof, and assent thereunto”.
But, somehow or other, the cunning old fox escaped his just deserts yet again! Take a walk through this part of the dunes today and there, just as it is indicated on the map Wyseman made to accompany his report, lies the disputed enclosure known as New Close, it’s boundary still projecting well into the Borough common!
Jenkin’s violent and unruly existence was, however, now approaching its end, though it was not to come about in a manner one would wish even for their worst enemy. He and his wife, like almost all members of the Turberville family, were staunch Roman Catholics, and although they had formally ‘submitted’ in 1587, continued to practice their faith in secret. In 1596 the authorities obtained information that they were harbouring Roman Catholic priests at Penlline Castle including the notorious Father Morris Clynnog. A raid upon the castle produced the necessary evidence if not the priests, and Jenkin and his two oldest sons were arrested and sent to the Tower of London. Here he, and they would have been tortured unmercifully to extract information concerning the present whereabouts of the priests and the organisation of clandestine Catholic worship in Glamorgan. Although eventually released, Jenkin’s death followed almost immediately afterwards, so this vicious and unscrupulous man actually ended his life as a martyr for his faith!
The Wyseman Map.
Now housed at the National Library of Wales the map of Kenfig that Thomas Wyseman made to accompany his report is an interesting and valuable artefact from the Borough’s past. At the same time it is important to realise that the (modern) description of it as “A Map of Kenfig Borough” is in fact misleading.
For a start it does not extend to the eastern boundary, nor does it show Higher Kenfig which lay north of the river. As we have seen, this last may well have been simply because Wyseman had been kept in ignorance about its very existence! At the same time all he was actually interested in portraying was the area of common land that was the subject of the dispute, and only this element of the map is accurate. Elsewhere he simply indicated other features such as the castle and the village of Maudlam (“Kenfege buroughe”) that are mentioned in his report. Several important features that can be shown to have existed at this time beyond the boundary of Kenfig Down are not therefore shown. Whilst Wyseman showed the continuation of Heol Kenfig (the road to Nottage) from the Down through the sandhills to Pont Velin Newydd for example, he includes neither the road from that bridge to North Cornelly nor the one along Heol Millhill and its associated hamlet. Similarly we cannot place too much reliance upon his representation of any elements within this peripheral area of the map – the tower is shown at the wrong end of Maudlam church for a start! So whilst the map indicates seventeen houses strung along Heol Las to form the village of Kenfig (alias Maudlam), and whilst there are indications that this representation may indeed be fairly accurate, it is at best only an indication of its general form.
The Earl versus Margam.
Jenkin Turberville was not however the only one attempting to gain land at the expense of the burgesses’ common. At about the same time the New Close affair was reaching it’s climax in 1592 the burgesses’ landlord, the Earl of Pembroke, was also getting embroiled in a similar dispute with Sir Edward Mansel of Margam (fl 1521-1585). Theirs was a wide ranging dispute covering alleged infractions at Avan and Llangynwyd as well as Kenfig, but it is tempting to see the belated and tardy action taken by the Earl against Turberville as an attempt to secure the support of the burgesses in this particular dispute. If any legal proceedings followed the initial skirmishing then the evidence of the burgesses relating to these complaints affecting their borough would be crucial. Pembroke’s despatch of Wyseman to sort out the vexed question of the encroachment on Kenfig Down may therefore have been taken in a spirit of “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”!
Unfortunately the only details we have concerning this disagreement is a draft of Sir Edward’s initial response to the allegations which is undated[4]. Having itemised the Earl’s allegations in one column he then set out his own response to each alongside. The notes are therefore very brief, and we do not know the eventual outcome of the matter.
Seven complaints in all were made against Mansel relating to his actions at Kenfig, two of which he flatly denied. To the accusation that he had “abridged” (enclosed) part of Kenfig Common he stated quite baldly “I have never abbridged any bounds, nor ever enclosed one fote of comon of mine owne or other mens”. He also denied that he (or more likely his tenants) had ever taken any “conies upon ye sands betwene the borough and ye sea”, adding that he had never ever claimed such right on this land. This was the strip of land immediately adjoining the coast, which was the Earl’s rabbit warren, so the latter had, in effect, accused Mansel of poaching!
Against a similar allegation that Mansel had been illegally fishing in Kenfig Pool the latter defended his actions by claiming the right to do so by “prescription”. By this he meant that he had an ancient right to fish those waters, perhaps claimed as a successor to the abbots of Margam. If so then he may have been on rather dangerous ground. In his archives at Margam he would have been in possession of a document[5] dated 1365 regarding the prosecution of various parties by the Abbot of Margam for illegal fishing in Avan River and Kenfig Pool. What he might not have been so keen for others to see was another document in this collection regarding the subsequent proceedings at Kenfig church[6]. In it the charge relating to Kenfig Pool is not mentioned suggesting that it was never proceeded with. Whilst other documents clearly indicate the Abbot enjoyed fishing rights in the river, none so far as I am aware relate to the pool. In fact these 14th century documents are the earliest known mention of it. The defence put forward by the accused challenged the monastic claim to own the fishing rights at Kenfig and Avan, so faced with the lack of documentary material to back his claim in respect of the pool it seems the Abbot withdrew this charge before it came to court·. If Sir Edward was therefore relying on these documents to prove his “right of prescription”, his case rested on a very flimsy foundation.
Two of the other allegations relate to alleged illegal enclosures. Forty acres of marshland at Kenfig was, Mansel claimed, part of his estate that had descended to him, and that the “three quarters of an acre of medowe grownde by ye castell” he had enclosed lay on his side of the river which formed their joint boundary at this point.
Wyseman in his report makes a confusing reference (the document is also damaged at this point) to “a medwe then near adioynynge to the said castle callyd the Lord’s Meade”. This implies that it belonged to the Earl, but it seems that the Mansels also held some property on the Kenfig side of the river at this point. A survey of the manor of Higher Kenfig made in 1633[7] mentions ten (customary) acres of waste land described as being enclosed on three sides by the river, and on the fourth by “the ould church yarde”. The jurors cited as their authority an earlier survey made in 1582 and certain other deeds, one of which was the original gift of this land to Margam Abbey still stored in the estate’s archives[8].
[1] PM 9616
[2] A Survey of the Manor included by Thomas Gray in “The Buried City of Kenfig” p 240 et seq.
[3] From Wyseman’s report, PM 9616.
[4] Clarke, Cartae MCCCLXXV
[5] PM 231
[6] PM 232
· The case would have been tried at the Court for the Hundred of Kenfig, and it is interesting to note
that at this time this was held in the church rather than the castle. At the hearing the Abbot had no
trouble proving that the right of fishery in the Avan River had been granted to the monks by
previous Lords of Glamorgan, and the men were duly convicted.
[7] PM 1280
[8] PM 105
The Wyseman map. The hillock called Thorborough is the triangle on the boundary below Sker House with a mear stone indicated adjoining it on the left (the other is on the other side of New Close)
THE WYSEMAN REPORT OF 1595
A very early example of this secrecy occurs in 1592 when the Earl of Pembroke’s surveyor, Thomas Wyseman, returned to Kenfig in relation to an on-going dispute between the burgesses and Jenkin Turberville of Sker. Wyseman’s draft of his final report[1] is perhaps one of the most interesting and informative documents relating to Kenfig that I have come across. It traces the history of the dispute right back to 1397 when Kenfig Down (the area now largely covered by the Pyle & Kenfig Golf Club course) was given to the medieval town by Thomas Le Despenser as a common.
He did this to compensate the burgesses for the amount of common land they had already lost to sand encroachment, but some time later he or his successors revised this original gift and gave a third of the down nearest Neath Abbey’s grange at Sker to its Abbot. At the same time he imposed freehold rents on the two occupants – five shillings on the Abbot; ten shillings on the burgesses.
Shortly after the dissolution of Neath Abbey the Turbervilles of Penlline secured ownership of the former grange at Sker, and in 1561 Christopher Turberville installed his eldest son Jenkin there on the occasion of the latter’s marriage. Although Jenkin and his new wife lived at the house, the majority of the land was let to Watkin Lougher of Tythegston who, sometime prior to 1571 obtained permission from Jenkin and his father to enclose part of Kenfig Down. The resultant “New Close”, however, extended into the Borough portion of the common to such an extent that it enclosed some three acres of their property.
The burgesses accordingly advised the steward of the Earl of Pembroke, and awaited results. When no action was taken they reported the matter again, and again, and again! They also spoke to Thomas Wyseman about it when he arrived in 1582 to report on their illegal enclosures at The Rugge. In fact they asked him to request the Earl of Pembroke for permission to fence part of their boundary with Sker presumably to physically prevent Turberville taking any more of their land. Like everything else in that report however their petition seems to have been quietly shelved and forgotten.
Not until twenty-one years had elapsed from their original complaint did the burgesses’ persistent nagging at last achieve results, and Thomas Wyseman was despatched to report on the matter. In part the Earl’s indifference seems to have been that of the absentee landlord concerning a relatively minor matter in an obscure corner of his widespread estates. At the same time he may have felt that this was something over which the burgesses ought to take action for themselves, and if so then in fairness he had a point. The ten shillings rent they paid annually was a fixed amount that could not be varied, and in practice the burgesses were the owners of their two thirds of the common. Whilst technically ownership was vested in the Earl he could not sell, dispose of, or develop it – those rights rested with the Corporation.
The boundary of the common was not the same as that between the two manors; Sker’s portion actually lying within the manor of Kenfig Borough. The original document relating to the division was still extant in Wyseman’s day, and either he saw it amongst the archives at Cardiff Castle, or the burgesses showed him their copy. This they would have expected him to ask to see, but what must have raised a few eyebrows was his demand to also view the borough charters setting out their boundaries. These they duly produced, but when the surveyor then asked them to recite the boundary as it currently existed, consternation set in!
It is apparent from their ordinance relating to the enclosure of Waun Cimla that the burgesses of the day were fully aware that their borough had originally been a lot smaller than it was in 1592. As set out in their charter of 1397 (which they had gladly produced for Wyseman’s inspection) it was simply confined to an area about the castle between Maudlam and Kenfig River. They possessed in fact no charters relating to the enlarged boundary of the borough they now occupied; one of the reasons why I believe the expansion was originally intended only as a temporary arrangement. Wyseman’s request now brought this deficiency to the fore, and with it the awful realisation that they had no legal document with which to oppose any future possible claims concerning the true extent of their territory from either the Earls of Pembroke, the Mansels of Margam, or anyone else.
Wyseman does not name any of the burgesses who formed part of the delegation that met with him to settle this dispute, but according to Leslie Evans the Portreeve in 1592 was a John Evan, probably the son of Evan Griffith whom we met earlier. Old Evan himself was actually still alive though now an old man in his late sixties or early seventies and it is very likely that he was one of the witnesses from whom Wyseman took evidence in the course of his enquiry.
Presumably it was John Evan, in his capacity as Portreeve, that came up with a none too cunning plan aimed at concealing from Wyseman the fact that the boundaries of the 1397 charter in front of him actually bore no relation whatsoever to the those in being at this time.
Since the borough boundaries were not an issue in this dispute it rather seems to me that in noting these details Wyseman was only '‘going through the motions” to show his employer the diligence with which he had investigated the dispute. Consequently he probably wasn’t taking too much notice of what was said on the point and this is perhaps why he failed to detect John Evan’s rather unsubtle subterfuge.
To cover the obvious discrepancies between their boundary marks and those mentioned in the charter John Evan simply re-located two of the latter and incorporated them into his description of the existing ones. He also ‘neglected’ to mention that the present boundary crossed the river Kenfig to include Higher Kenfig on the northern side. This would immediately have given the game away since the charter in front of Wyseman stated quite baldly that the river itself had been the northern boundary in 1397. Despite this the description of the boundary is of considerable value to us today in that only one other detailed recitation of it[2] (made in 1661) survives from these early centuries. Despite the presence of the two interlopers in the 1592 description the two agree very closely with each other, and Wyseman’s description[3] is therefore worth including in full.
“The southe syde is from The Botehaven adioyning to the Seavern Sea alonge by lang[side a] p’cell of the buyldings of the grange or ffarme [of] the Skarre. And from thence along[side the]southesyde of certen bounds, p’cell of th[e] sayde grange or ffarme callyd Goutesfur[long] unto the waye or lane leadynge to Newton Notasshe, unto a hepe of stones there”.
Unfortunately the edge of the original document has worn away leaving gaps (indicated by brackets), but these do not unduly affect the interpretation. The name “Botehaven” (Boat Haven) is interesting. My first thought was that, as we know the boundary commenced at Sker Point this was an example of Elizabethan black humour for so many fine ships have made their last and final landfall on those treacherous rocks. On Wyseman’s map the location is called “The Black Rocks” and maps from the latter days of the borough indicate that the boundary started at an inlet in the heart of Sker Point known today as Pwll y Dyfan. This is a large pool with a sandy beach actually inside the rocks that form the reef and is connected to the open sea by a narrow, almost ruler-straight cleft through them.
This undoubtedly is the ‘Botehaven’ of Wyseman’s account, and it would just be possible, with favourable wind, tide and weather, for a small boat to slip in and out of this inlet. My next thought was why should anyone want to use it for this purpose when there are plenty of open beaches nearby where such a craft could be stored simply by dragging it up above the high tide level? Is this perhaps a clue to the manner in which fugitive Roman Catholic priests slipped in and out of nearby Sker House undetected? Without local knowledge nobody would ever suspect that a small boat was sailing in and out of the midst of this fearsome reef with its evil reputation as a graveyard of shipping!
The later 1661 account merely states that the boundary started at the sea and makes no mention of Goutesfurlong (‘The Furlong Gutter’) simply stating that it skirted the end of the medieval barn at Sker known as Ty yr Ychen. By this time the “hepe of stones” on the road to Nottage had been replaced by a marker stone, though I hasten to add that this is not the one adjoining the gate of the track that until recently led to the house. This was spotted lying in the adjoining field by ‘Albie’ Evans, a local man with an interest in history. Realising that it was not of local material he deduced that it was presumably a former ‘standing stone’ and prevailed upon the farmer not to break it up but to rescue and re-erect it at its present location.
John Evan, on behalf of the burgesses, then gave his own interpretation of the next portion of the boundary from the cairn alongside the highway: -
“Then yt tornythe eastwards to a crosse callyd Crosse Green, & from thens to Howlotesford, & from thens to Taddelcrosse”.
The corresponding account from the 1661 record confirms that since Wyseman’s day the various twists and turns of the boundary here had been better delineated with marker stones. From one in ‘Y Kae Issha’ field (at the rear of the Pyle & Kenfig Golf Clubhouse) it ran to another stone on the south part of Heol y Broom, and from there to “a stone lyeing at Groes y gryn”. This last is the ‘Crosse Green’ of Wyseman’s account, and the crossroads we now call Cornelly Cross in North Cornelly.
From this point the two accounts differ. The 1661 boundary is described as running from Croes y Green to ‘another stone lyeing in Kae Pwll y Kyffylau, and from that stone on the eastern side of Marlas House unto a cross called Croes Jenkin”. This is the same portion described in Wyseman’s account, but here the standing stone on Marlas road (still known as Croes Seinkyn to this day) is called ‘Taddelcrosse’, a name plucked directly from the charter of 1397. The same is true of ‘Howlotesford’ which (given the topography of the location) must have been the point on the Avan Fach stream where it was formerly crossed by a lane known locally as Lon y Cariadon which used to run through the fields from near Marlas Farm to Hall in North Cornelly. The 1397 charter however indicates quite clearly that ‘Howlotesford’ was located on the river Kenfig, and is almost certainly the one adjoining Llanmihangel Farm!
The real ‘Taddelcrosse’ in its modern guise of ‘Croes y Ddadl’ still exists, as a Sutton stone base that formerly supported a wooden cross. It lies almost hidden by sand and vegetation near the crossroads in the dunes between Marlas and Maudlam.
Having made this statement John Evan and his burgesses must have silently prayed that Wyseman would not take it into his head to inspect the boundary himself! As it turned out, and as the investigation into the boundary of the common progressed they undoubtedly began to regret using this ploy which ultimately rebounded on their own heads.
Their account of the boundary continues:
“The north syde thens comyth to a meade called Shocoke, nowe the possessyons of Thomas Mansell esquire; ffrom thens to the morva dyche; from thens to Halfewayestone; from thens to Grenewall, and so to the sea. And so alonges’d the sea syde, all the weste side thereof”
The description makes no mention of the fact that this boundary was actually north of the river Kenfig, though in fairness the same is true of the one made in 1661. By then the turn in the boundary at ‘Shocoke’ (‘Shock-oak’ – an oak tree damaged by lightening) had been marked by a cross erected at ‘Kae Garw’, and there is no mention of the Morva Ditch. Instead it continued directly to ‘a stone by Notch Coarton’ on the road from Margam to Kenfig which is presumably identical with the ‘Halfway Stone’ mentioned in 1661.
Until the 1990s it was thought that this was a reference to the Pumpeius Stone near Eglwys Nunnydd, but a workman making a trench here uncovered what was undoubtedly the original Halfway Stone a few yards further south. This was a lot smaller, and engraved with a curious design of three adjoining crosses enclosed by squares. It is believed that originally it was part of a larger Christian monument dating from the Dark Ages from which this portion was cut and put to a more mundane use. When this marker was erected in the 15th century the Pumpeius Stone would have been lying flat on the ground (it was later raised to a standing position by the Elizabethan historian Rees Merrick) so the latter would not have been suitable as a boundary marker at that time.
As to the remainder of the boundary the two accounts agree except that the later one makes no mention of the Greenwall which is nevertheless referred to in other documents of the time. So the burgesses managed to fool Thomas Wyseman that their existing boundary was the same as it had always been. But then, to again quote a modern idiom, ‘it all went pear shaped’!
Eight years earlier Evan Griffith had apparently been able to muddy the status of the Earl’s warren in the dunes sufficiently for Wyseman to believe that the Burgesses had a point regarding the status of the land there, but now he had the charter of 1397 in front of him. As he pointed out, it specifically omitted from the land given to the burgesses on Kenfig Down the dune land nearest to the sea which the Lord had retained for himself as a rabbit warren. The burgesses might have been able to make a convincing case if they had been able to point out that the borough boundary had been enlarged to include this land subsequent to the original charter! As they had already effectively denied any such alteration had ever been made they could now only bite their tongues and say nothing!
It got worse! Their claim to the common land between Kenfig Down and the River Kenfig that they called “The Sands” at the time of Wyseman’s 1584 enquiry rested on the fact that the northern boundary was given as the demesne lands of the Earl. This, so they claimed, was Castle Meadow in the vicinity of the castle ruins, but Wyseman spotted that a block of demesne land occupied the land between Kenfig Pool and the road to Nottage. Logically, he pointed out, this would have been the land referred to since it lay immediately north (and closer to) the acknowledged southern boundary with Sker. Furthermore the document dividing the Down between the burgesses and the Abbot of Neath had allocated the a third of the land, and the burgesses the remaining two thirds. Had their claim been true, then the Abbot’s third would actually have been larger than the area of Sker Grange!
The burgesses were now in a flat spin, but there was worse to come concerning certain rights they claimed in respect of Kenfig Pool. This, Wyseman pointed out, lay between the demesne and the rabbit warren so was part of the “lordes demesne or waste” rather than “the burgesys’ comon, beyinge not reppossed [“included”] in their chartre”. This last he considered conclusive evidence since, he added, any special rights enjoyed there by their predecessors would undoubtedly have been recorded in that document.
To realise the seriousness of this situation it has to be remembered that almost all the burgesses, even those living in cottages, kept at least one cow, and that other than the pool or the river there was hardly any other standing water in the area. The inhabitants of both Kenfig and Maudlam relied on wells from which to draw water for domestic use. Fine for humans, but a cow drinks something like seventeen gallons of water a day! At several locations in the vicinity I have noted over-grown remains of former dew-ponds dug by farmers in an attempt to provide an additional water supply for their cattle, but undoubtedly most took their stock down to the pool once or twice a day for water.
So the burgesses duly reaped what they themselves had sown! The 1397 charter and the 1661 survey with its (true) recitation of their boundaries are carefully preserved amongst the treasured borough archives, but not so the copy of Wyseman’s report! We know that they received one as, strange to say, they preserved a copy of his accompanying map that is now in the National Library at Aberystwyth. The latter, however, does not show the borough boundary, and one suspects that the ‘loss’ of the report with its incriminating evidence may not have been entirely accidental!
It may be too that following this experience they also agreed to mutually ‘forget’ about the variation in the size of the borough, and to stand or fall by those outlined in the 1397 charter. Certainly the fact that the medieval borough was smaller is never again alluded to in their records and everyone seems to have come to accept that the boundaries then were the same as those when the borough was abolished in 1886. Only in recent times has the discrepancy been realised and the burgesses’ fraud exposed
Thanks to Wyseman’s good nature the watering of cattle at Kenfig Pool did not subsequently become an issue. In fact in his report he highlighted the lack of standing water in the district and specifically suggested to the Earl that the tenants of Sker in particular be allowed to bring their herds through the borough common to drink there. So in the end the burgesses got away with it, but it had been a near run thing!
Jenkin Turberville
They are often referred to as “The Turbulent Turbervilles”, and none were more deserving of that title than the Jenkin Turberville with whom the burgesses found themselves in conflict over his alleged encroachment on their common! Glamorgan during the Elizabethan era was a violent, unruly place with a corrupt and unprincipled legal system where Jenkin stands out as one of its most notorious citizens.
He was a member of one of the oldest Glamorgan families, claiming descent from Pagan de Turberville of Coity who, if he was not a contemporary of Robert FitzHamon, certainly arrived here not long after the latter’s conquest of the former Welsh kingdom. Their principal seat at Coity passed out of the hands of the family in the fourteenth century, but other ‘cadet’ branches continued elsewhere throughout the county. The one at Penlline near Cowbridge was probably the most important of these, and the one to which Jenkin himself belonged. On his marriage to Margaret Lougher in 1561 his father, Christopher, gave the newly weds the house and manor of Sker as their new home, and they lived here until sometime after 1575, moving to Penlline when Jenkin inherited the family estates. It was about this time that he built the house we see here today, created from the more modest monastic grange building he had inherited.
Throughout his life Jenkin and trouble walked hand in hand, and in his book Sker House local historian Leslie Evans catalogued just some of the many unsavoury incidents that punctuated his life. During his time at Sker, in 1568, he and his cronies the Carnes of Ewenny Priory raised a small army and attacked the home of a John Thomas at Brocastle near Crack Hill. When arrested for his part in the affair Jenkin resisted violently, and was subsequently rescued by some of his followers. So far as is known he was never in fact prosecuted for his part in the affair as those who formed the judiciary in Glamorgan were often either members of his family or friends. Thomas Carne, the instigator of the attack upon Brocastle, actually held the office of High Sheriff on three occasions between 1561 and 1580!
Seven years later Jenkin, together with members of the Lougher and Stradling families accompanied by an mob of some one hundred armed retainers, descended on the annual fair held at Ewenny and caused total mayhem. John Kemys the Under-Steward for the Manor of Ogmore and his officers, who were responsible for policing the event, attempted to intervene. They were, he later deposed, “so pitifully hurt with shot arrows, beaten, maymed, and evil entreated that a great number of them did hardly escape with their lives”. If the authorities did indeed succeed in calling Jenkin to account for this affray then it had little impact. The following year he was almost certainly a member of a mob of Turbervilles and their supporters who fought a running battle through the streets of Cowbridge with the Bassets of Beaupre and their adherents.
Perhaps the most shocking example of the impotence or unwillingness of the authorities to curb the violence of Jenkin and his contemporaries is mentioned in the Acts of the Privy Council for 1591-2. Servants in the employ of Jenkin and Carne were arrested for the murder of a Lewis Rosser of Welsh St Donats, and it was strongly suspected at the time that in committing this crime they had merely been carrying out their employers’ wishes. The culprits, having successfully escaped from custody, surrendered themselves back to the authorities convinced that they would escape conviction as the High Sheriff of the day was related to their masters!
Against incidents such as these Jenkin’s implication in the appropriation of three acres of the burgess’s land pales into insignificance, but it is clearly obvious why the Corporation were so keen to get the Earl of Pembroke on their side! When Thomas Wyseman arrived at Kenfig they accompanied him to the location of New Close where he had arranged with Turberville to hold a site meeting to view the disputed boundary. When they arrived there was no sign of the latter.
Having waited a reasonable amount of time for Jenkin or his representatives to arrive, Wyseman took such evidence as the burgesses produced which hinged upon the location of a hillock called ‘Thorborough’ or ‘Tormel’. This done he released them and their witnesses and remained awaiting the arrival of Turberville or for some message to indicate why he had been detained.
The object of his vigil was probably comfortably ensconced in Sker House, and we can imagine him sitting in an upstairs room sipping wine and watching the proceedings on the border of his property with some amusement. Eventually, however, Wyseman’s stubborn refusal to simply pack up and go home brought its own reward. We can only conjecture what Turberville’s ploy was, but had Wyseman left he could have claimed that he had been unavoidably detained and arrived to discover that the meeting had finished and everyone gone home. As the hours ticked by however this excuse became increasingly untenable for what explanation could he then offer for his failure to send a messenger to notify Wyseman of his indisposition?
Six hours after the original time set for the meeting Jenkin and his supporters finally made their way across the dunes to where Wyseman was still patiently awaiting them. The charade was now almost played out, but Turberville led the surveyor to a location well inside the borders of the borough’s common. This, he declared, was the true location of Thorborough Hill, and all of the enclosure known as New Close was therefore well within his bounds. Wyseman was not impressed. What Turberville showed him, he tells us, was not “one other hill, but a good level parcel of ground” nor was he disposed to accept Turberville’s argument that “all the same was called Thorborough with there many hills together”. In fact, he had already collected indisputable proof that the location of the hillock was where the burgesses claimed it to be.
I can’t help liking old Thomas Wyseman. His report is a fair and masterly summing up of the grounds for the dispute, and as indicated earlier, he had considerable compassion for the parties involved. He was also no fool, and his wanderings about the dunes whilst awaiting Turberville’s arrival had not been aimless. During the course of them he located two old ‘mear stones’ – boundary markers erected sometime in the past. One lay on the eastern side of the hillock the burgesses had identified as Thorborough, the other between New Close and the Kenfig to Nottage road.
Both parties in the dispute agreed on the point at which the boundary touched the coast and that it had run inland to a pool alongside the road known as “Goutesfurlong”. Wyseman had determined that these two fixed points, the two mear stones, and the hill identified by the burgesses all lay in a straight line beyond which the northern edge of New Close clearly protruded. It was game, set and match to the Corporation!
Faced with such incontrovertible evidence Turberville appeared to cave in. Wyseman then suggested that the proper way to bring this dispute to a formal conclusion would be by a joint commission that would appoint an independent jury of parishioners to hear the evidence and give a verdict. “To w’ch the said Jenkyn Turbervyle (being thereunto advised by his friends then present ………) appointed and praid the said Thomas Wyseman to be a means that his Lo[ordship] maye like thereof, and assent thereunto”.
But, somehow or other, the cunning old fox escaped his just deserts yet again! Take a walk through this part of the dunes today and there, just as it is indicated on the map Wyseman made to accompany his report, lies the disputed enclosure known as New Close, it’s boundary still projecting well into the Borough common!
Jenkin’s violent and unruly existence was, however, now approaching its end, though it was not to come about in a manner one would wish even for their worst enemy. He and his wife, like almost all members of the Turberville family, were staunch Roman Catholics, and although they had formally ‘submitted’ in 1587, continued to practice their faith in secret. In 1596 the authorities obtained information that they were harbouring Roman Catholic priests at Penlline Castle including the notorious Father Morris Clynnog. A raid upon the castle produced the necessary evidence if not the priests, and Jenkin and his two oldest sons were arrested and sent to the Tower of London. Here he, and they would have been tortured unmercifully to extract information concerning the present whereabouts of the priests and the organisation of clandestine Catholic worship in Glamorgan. Although eventually released, Jenkin’s death followed almost immediately afterwards, so this vicious and unscrupulous man actually ended his life as a martyr for his faith!
The Wyseman Map.
Now housed at the National Library of Wales the map of Kenfig that Thomas Wyseman made to accompany his report is an interesting and valuable artefact from the Borough’s past. At the same time it is important to realise that the (modern) description of it as “A Map of Kenfig Borough” is in fact misleading.
For a start it does not extend to the eastern boundary, nor does it show Higher Kenfig which lay north of the river. As we have seen, this last may well have been simply because Wyseman had been kept in ignorance about its very existence! At the same time all he was actually interested in portraying was the area of common land that was the subject of the dispute, and only this element of the map is accurate. Elsewhere he simply indicated other features such as the castle and the village of Maudlam (“Kenfege buroughe”) that are mentioned in his report. Several important features that can be shown to have existed at this time beyond the boundary of Kenfig Down are not therefore shown. Whilst Wyseman showed the continuation of Heol Kenfig (the road to Nottage) from the Down through the sandhills to Pont Velin Newydd for example, he includes neither the road from that bridge to North Cornelly nor the one along Heol Millhill and its associated hamlet. Similarly we cannot place too much reliance upon his representation of any elements within this peripheral area of the map – the tower is shown at the wrong end of Maudlam church for a start! So whilst the map indicates seventeen houses strung along Heol Las to form the village of Kenfig (alias Maudlam), and whilst there are indications that this representation may indeed be fairly accurate, it is at best only an indication of its general form.
The Earl versus Margam.
Jenkin Turberville was not however the only one attempting to gain land at the expense of the burgesses’ common. At about the same time the New Close affair was reaching it’s climax in 1592 the burgesses’ landlord, the Earl of Pembroke, was also getting embroiled in a similar dispute with Sir Edward Mansel of Margam (fl 1521-1585). Theirs was a wide ranging dispute covering alleged infractions at Avan and Llangynwyd as well as Kenfig, but it is tempting to see the belated and tardy action taken by the Earl against Turberville as an attempt to secure the support of the burgesses in this particular dispute. If any legal proceedings followed the initial skirmishing then the evidence of the burgesses relating to these complaints affecting their borough would be crucial. Pembroke’s despatch of Wyseman to sort out the vexed question of the encroachment on Kenfig Down may therefore have been taken in a spirit of “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”!
Unfortunately the only details we have concerning this disagreement is a draft of Sir Edward’s initial response to the allegations which is undated[4]. Having itemised the Earl’s allegations in one column he then set out his own response to each alongside. The notes are therefore very brief, and we do not know the eventual outcome of the matter.
Seven complaints in all were made against Mansel relating to his actions at Kenfig, two of which he flatly denied. To the accusation that he had “abridged” (enclosed) part of Kenfig Common he stated quite baldly “I have never abbridged any bounds, nor ever enclosed one fote of comon of mine owne or other mens”. He also denied that he (or more likely his tenants) had ever taken any “conies upon ye sands betwene the borough and ye sea”, adding that he had never ever claimed such right on this land. This was the strip of land immediately adjoining the coast, which was the Earl’s rabbit warren, so the latter had, in effect, accused Mansel of poaching!
Against a similar allegation that Mansel had been illegally fishing in Kenfig Pool the latter defended his actions by claiming the right to do so by “prescription”. By this he meant that he had an ancient right to fish those waters, perhaps claimed as a successor to the abbots of Margam. If so then he may have been on rather dangerous ground. In his archives at Margam he would have been in possession of a document[5] dated 1365 regarding the prosecution of various parties by the Abbot of Margam for illegal fishing in Avan River and Kenfig Pool. What he might not have been so keen for others to see was another document in this collection regarding the subsequent proceedings at Kenfig church[6]. In it the charge relating to Kenfig Pool is not mentioned suggesting that it was never proceeded with. Whilst other documents clearly indicate the Abbot enjoyed fishing rights in the river, none so far as I am aware relate to the pool. In fact these 14th century documents are the earliest known mention of it. The defence put forward by the accused challenged the monastic claim to own the fishing rights at Kenfig and Avan, so faced with the lack of documentary material to back his claim in respect of the pool it seems the Abbot withdrew this charge before it came to court·. If Sir Edward was therefore relying on these documents to prove his “right of prescription”, his case rested on a very flimsy foundation.
Two of the other allegations relate to alleged illegal enclosures. Forty acres of marshland at Kenfig was, Mansel claimed, part of his estate that had descended to him, and that the “three quarters of an acre of medowe grownde by ye castell” he had enclosed lay on his side of the river which formed their joint boundary at this point.
Wyseman in his report makes a confusing reference (the document is also damaged at this point) to “a medwe then near adioynynge to the said castle callyd the Lord’s Meade”. This implies that it belonged to the Earl, but it seems that the Mansels also held some property on the Kenfig side of the river at this point. A survey of the manor of Higher Kenfig made in 1633[7] mentions ten (customary) acres of waste land described as being enclosed on three sides by the river, and on the fourth by “the ould church yarde”. The jurors cited as their authority an earlier survey made in 1582 and certain other deeds, one of which was the original gift of this land to Margam Abbey still stored in the estate’s archives[8].
[1] PM 9616
[2] A Survey of the Manor included by Thomas Gray in “The Buried City of Kenfig” p 240 et seq.
[3] From Wyseman’s report, PM 9616.
[4] Clarke, Cartae MCCCLXXV
[5] PM 231
[6] PM 232
· The case would have been tried at the Court for the Hundred of Kenfig, and it is interesting to note
that at this time this was held in the church rather than the castle. At the hearing the Abbot had no
trouble proving that the right of fishery in the Avan River had been granted to the monks by
previous Lords of Glamorgan, and the men were duly convicted.
[7] PM 1280
[8] PM 105
