5. ‘By reason of her sex and widowhood’: an early modern Welsh gentlewoman in the court of Star Chamber*

Sadie Jarrett

In 1608, Dame Margaret Lloyd (1565–1650) sued her younger brother, John Salesbury (1575–1611), in the court of Star Chamber. John was the head of the Salesbury family and the owner of their estates at Rhug in Merionethshire and Bachymbyd in Denbighshire, North Wales. Margaret, a widow, accused John of assembling armed men and instructing them to enter her house in Denbighshire with force and threaten the lives of those in the household. John countered that Margaret lived in the house illegally and that she had abducted her young son from his rightful guardian. This is a classic example of a forcible entry case, and Margaret presented herself as a woman maintaining the boundaries of her home.¹ However, Margaret’s suit also provides a rare insight into the relationship between a Welsh gentlewoman and her male relatives at a time when Wales was adapting to laws which sometimes conflicted with Welsh gentry society’s established views on women. Margaret’s suit demonstrates perceptions of acceptable female behaviour in early modern Wales, and how the male kindred responded to perceived transgressions. The case is particularly pertinent in early seventeenth-century Denbighshire, a former marcher lordship of North Wales that was only two generations removed from Welsh laws which limited a woman’s ability to hold land, and where custom still preferred male kinsmen over mothers as the guardians of a deceased man’s children.

This chapter uses the example of Margaret Lloyd to highlight the role of widows in Welsh gentry society. Importantly, although Margaret Lloyd ostensibly had limited agency, she was able to access Star Chamber and had recourse to sue her brother. Deborah Youngs has noted the untapped potential of the records of Star Chamber to understand the ability of early modern women to access justice.² After a brief assessment of the limited historiography on early modern Welsh women, this chapter begins with a consideration of the cultural perceptions of women in late medieval and early modern Wales. Next, it examines the effects of the Acts of Union (1536 and 1543) on people’s access to justice in Wales. It then looks at widowhood in early modern Wales and the Salesbury family itself to demonstrate Margaret’s position within the family and wider society. Finally, it presents a critical analysis of Margaret’s Star Chamber suit and John Salesbury’s answer to her bill, and places their respective arguments within the context of Welsh gentry society. Although John unsurprisingly claimed he was not guilty, there are notable gaps in his account where he did not deny Margaret’s story, including the threats of violence. The chapter argues that the constructed stories within the suit, truthful or not, provide valuable evidence of Margaret Lloyd’s relationship with her male kindred.³ The suit presents Margaret Lloyd as a confident agent within the constraints of a patriarchal society.

The history of women at all levels of society in early modern Wales lacks much comprehensive research. In Michael Roberts’s words, ‘men loom very large’ in early modern Wales.⁴ In 2004, Christine Peters surveyed the historiography of early modern women in Britain and found little work on Wales.⁵ Katharine Swett comments that, although there are rich enquiries into early modern English women and a burgeoning interest in the Welsh gentry, studies of early modern women in England do not include Welsh women, and studies of the early modern Welsh gentry do not include women at all.⁶ John Gwynfor Jones’s pioneering 1998 book on the Welsh gentry focuses almost entirely on men, even when discussing the family and the household, areas of gentry life which might reasonably be expected to include women.⁷ To an extent, this lack of research on early modern Welsh women stems from an absence of easily available sources: men dominated administrative and legal life in Wales and women often appear in the historical record only at the time of their marriage and after their husband’s death. Simone Clarke notes the ‘scarcity ... of anecdotal accounts and personal papers written by women or about women [in pre-modern Wales]’.⁸ Medieval and early modern Welsh poetry, a potentially important source of information on the lives of women, presents them as ‘girls’ or ‘mothers’, linguistic stereotypes which hint at their expected role in society.⁹ The poetry also emphasizes women’s expected roles in the household, with a focus on providing hospitality and charity.¹⁰ It is a challenge to find women in many of the surviving sources of early modern Wales, and the current historiography of early modern Welsh women is limited.¹¹ This is in stark contrast to the many studies of early modern women at multiple social levels in England, and it is all too easy to assume that the experiences of Welsh women were identical to those of their English counterparts.¹²

This is a mistaken approach because early modern Wales was distinct, culturally and socially, from its neighbour. As such, one should be open to the ways in which the roles of women in Welsh society differed from those of their English counterparts. The medieval Welsh legal system had significantly limited women’s right to hold or inherit land, and society prioritized the importance of the male kindred.¹³ Under Welsh law, land ultimately belonged to this kindred and, after a man’s death, his holdings transferred to his nearest male relatives within four generations. Inheritance was partible, rather than primogenital.¹⁴ Parts of the Welsh legal system remained in use until the sixteenth century and there is also evidence of later, unofficial survival, particularly in inheritance practices which continued to provide for younger sons.¹⁵ Women did hold land in medieval Wales: heiresses were crucial to the establishment of the Mostyn family, for example.¹⁶ Nevertheless, women were significantly disadvantaged by Welsh law and, although the Welsh legal system officially ended in 1536, it continued to exert cultural power.¹⁷ However, in a gentry society which valued ancestry over wealth, Welsh women had significant cultural importance.¹⁸ For instance, the Welsh gentry depicted their ancestors in ‘achau’r mamau’, elaborate pedigrees in the maternal line which traced their mothers’ descent from important figures in Welsh history and legend.¹⁹ Welsh bards praised women for their illustrious ancestors and importance within the household. For example, when Rhys Cain praised Katherine ferch Ieuan, the wife of Robert Salesbury (d. 1550) of Rhug and Bachymbyd, he described her as the ‘merch gwyrwallt marchog euraid’ [‘yellowish-red-haired daughter of a golden knight’] and warned Robert ‘cadw’r lloer i gadw’r llys’ [‘to guard the beautiful woman (lit. moon) to guard the court’].²⁰ This emphasized that a wife was central in a gentry plasty, loosely translated as country house; Katherine’s presence was vital for the continued success of the household. Culturally, as demonstrated in praise poetry, gentlewomen were valued as wives and mothers, but also as fulcrums of the plasty.

In 1536, the ‘Act for Laws and Justice to be Ministered in Wales in like form as it is in this Realm’, more commonly known today as the 1536 Act of Union, extended the English legal system to the whole of Wales. Coupled with the supplementary 1543 act, the Acts of Union officially swept away the remaining vestiges of Welsh law. The daily administration of Wales was now overseen by the Council in the Marches, which also acted as a court of law for Wales. However, Welsh litigants could also access the central courts in London. This included the court of Star Chamber, where Margaret Lloyd sued her brother. In 1929, Ifan ab Owen Edwards calendared many of the Welsh cases in Star Chamber and emphasized the court’s importance to the Welsh gentry: they used it as a court of appeal away from the influence of their rivals.²¹ The legal jurisdictions of the Council in the Marches and Star Chamber overlapped: both dealt with issues of corruption, oppression and violence, and inhabitants of Wales and the Marches could start a suit in both or either court.²² It is a matter of debate whether the Welsh gentry were more or less inclined to use Star Chamber than their English counterparts; they are often described as litigious, but statistical analysis is not helped by the process of suit and countersuit, as well as the tendency for plaintiffs to begin suits on the same matter in the various courts available to them, or indeed the wrong court for the matter in question.²³ Social and political factors affected the likelihood of the Welsh gentry choosing to plead their suit in Star Chamber; Howell Lloyd calculates that Denbighshire, accounting for 9.9% of Wales’s population, provided 16.9% of Wales’s Star Chamber suits and highlights a marked increase in Welsh cases at Star Chamber during the dispute between the earls of Pembroke and Essex in the 1590s.²⁴ Suits involving women were rare, and Tim Stretton believes they comprised just 8.5% of cases during the reign of James I.²⁵ Thus, it stands to reason that suits involving Welsh women were even rarer. Using Deborah Youngs’s calculations, for the 190 or so Welsh cases brought to Star Chamber during the reign of Henry VIII, sole women, predominantly widows, were complainants in 7% of cases, or 0.28% of the estimated 5,000 total suits.²⁶

The Salesburys of Rhug and Bachymbyd were an early modern gentry family with their powerbase in northeast Wales.²⁷ They were one of the many cadet branches of the Salusburys of Lleweni, who moved from the English estates of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, to settle in his new marcher lordship of Denbigh, created after Edward I’s conquest of Wales in 1282/3. From the 1470s, John, a younger son of Thomas Salusbury of Lleweni, began purchasing a small estate at Bachymbyd, near Ruthin, and his son Piers acquired the Rhug estate in Merionethshire through his marriage to Margaret Wen, a Welsh heiress. By the mid sixteenth century, the Salesburys of Rhug and Bachymbyd also owned much of the land in the valley between their two estates, a distance of about fifteen miles. With estates in both Merionethshire and Denbighshire, the Salesburys had access to political offices in two counties, as well as a large network of relationships through their tenants and servants. The Salesburys were also part of an extended kindred, one of the multiple branches of the Salusbury family in North Wales, and fully embedded in Welsh gentry society. Within their local community, the Salesburys were powerful, wealthy and conscious of their status. This status was based on their pedigree, the illustriousness of their ancestors, which gave the Welsh gentry a God-given right to own land and hold authority. In early modern Wales, the gentry were also increasingly influenced by European humanist ideals, filtered through their own cultural understanding of their role in society.²⁸ The Salesburys were embedded in the world of the early modern Welsh gentry, established in their position by the late fifteenth century and connected to other families through extensive marriage and kinship bonds. The Salesburys understood the ideals and expectations of Welsh gentry society, even if they did not always abide by them.

Margaret Lloyd was born in 1565, the eldest child of John Salesbury (1533–80) and his wife, Elizabeth Salusbury (d. c.1584) of Lleweni (see figure 5.1).²⁹ When John Salesbury died in November 1580, he named three children in his will: the future Sir Robert (1567–99), John and Margaret.³⁰ He also included his posthumous child, a third son called William (1580–1660). Sir Robert was the heir and received the Salesbury patrimony; John, the second son, received the park and township of Segrwyd, Denbighshire; and Margaret received a marriage portion of £800 from the profits of the Salesbury estates.³¹ Not long after the death of her father, Margaret married the future Sir John Lloyd (c.1560–1606) of Bodidris, Denbighshire. Like most of the Salesbury women, little survives of Margaret’s time as a wife. However, the marriage created or confirmed a successful alliance. Sir John Lloyd was a close associate of Margaret’s brother, John Salesbury, and they served as soldiers together, both participating in the earl of Essex’s 1601 revolt.³² The two men were also joint antagonists of the Salesburys’ cousins, the powerful Salusburys of Lleweni, and they supported the candidacy of their ringleader, Sir Richard Trevor of Trevalyn, against Sir John Salusbury of Lleweni in the schismatic Denbighshire parliamentary election of October 1601.³³ Sir John Lloyd died in 1606 in Newry, Ireland, where he held land, and Dame Margaret Lloyd became a widow. Their eldest son, Evan Lloyd (d. 1637), inherited the family estates and divided his time between North Wales and Ireland.³⁴ Meanwhile, Margaret’s brother and the Salesbury heir, Sir Robert Salesbury, died of an illness in 1599, leaving the estates to his young son, John.³⁵ The boy died aged ten on 1 January 1608 and his uncle, John Salesbury, inherited the family estates and became the patriarch of the Salesbury family.³⁶ In the same year, Margaret sued John in the court of Star Chamber.

Figure 5.1: Key members of the Salesbury family.

Widowhood could be a dangerous time for a gentry family. It risked alienating the widow’s land from the estate for an unknown and potentially lengthy number of years, with the added threat that a widow could remarry and temporarily subsume the land into another family’s estate. On the other hand, gentry families also contained daughters who could be potentially widowed, and it was in a family’s interest to negotiate a good settlement in the event of their son-in-law’s death. Under English common law, a widow received a dower, a life interest in a third of any freehold land her husband had possessed during marriage, while manorial law made provision for widows to receive a proportion of their husbands’ copyhold land. From the sixteenth century, the growing practice of jointure, commonly agreed in a marriage settlement along with the wife’s portion size, provided a widow with an interest in property or an annuity from property that might be less than a third, replacing her right to dower in a manner that left her husband’s freehold land free of traditional encumbrances.³⁷ Under ecclesiastical law, a widow was entitled to a third of her husband’s moveable goods, or half if they had no children.³⁸ In contrast, reflecting the limitations on women holding land under medieval Welsh law, Wales retained customary provision for widows which entitled them to a proportion, usually a third, of their husband’s moveable goods, but no land. This proportion increased to a half under the custom of North Wales. The Acts of Union did not affect customary widowhood provision, and Wales retained the custom of a widow’s entitlement to part of her husband’s moveable goods until 1696.³⁹ Widows ostensibly had a right to claim dower from the thirteenth century, following Edward I’s attempts to compel dower provision throughout Wales in the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan. However, there remained a distinction between Welsh and English land tenure, with only the latter dowered.⁴⁰ After the Acts of Union, all land was held under English tenure and widows could claim dower in addition to the customary provision of moveable goods. The receipt of a jointure, however, forfeited any customary entitlement, a more advantageous situation for a gentry estate as the heir received all its moveable goods not bequeathed by last will and testament, which included livestock. A widow’s entitlement to livestock challenged the gentry’s efforts at estate-building, and it was in the estate’s interest to provide a jointure to women who married into the family. The jointure enabled a woman to support herself as a widow and the land would be subsumed back into the estate after her death. It was also possible for families to use Welsh or English widowhood provision in different circumstances. For example, Katharine Swett sees the decision of Sir John Wynn (1553–1627) of Gwydir to use the English practice of jointure for his sons’ marriages and Welsh customary provision for his daughters’ marriages as a father tailoring marriages in his children’s best interests.⁴¹ However, Christine Peters challenges her interpretation, suggesting it shows only that Sir John had different levels of negotiating power when he organized marriages with English families.⁴²

The Salesburys of Rhug and Bachymbyd rapidly adopted the practice of jointure: from the late sixteenth century, they settled jointures on their wives, with its inheritance secured for the couple’s legitimate children. Margaret Lloyd’s oldest brother, Sir Robert (d. 1599) provided a jointure for his wife, Elinor Bagnall, who died fifty-seven years after Sir Robert in 1656.⁴³ In 1608, when Margaret Lloyd sued her middle brother, John, in Star Chamber, part of John’s estates was therefore reserved for their widowed sister-in-law, Elinor, and it would not return to the Salesburys’ control for almost fifty years. After John Salesbury’s death in 1611, the estates passed to Margaret’s youngest brother, William (1580–1660). In 1617, William settled the entirety of the Rhug estate on his wife, Dorothy (d. 1627), for her jointure and afterwards to their eldest son, Owen, then in tail to William’s heirs, first his sons, then his daughters, then his right heirs.⁴⁴ This was a generous grant during a time of financial trouble for the Salesbury estates, and it demonstrates particularly well how marriage settlements protected a wife’s interest in property, as well as the interests of the couple’s children.⁴⁵ A jointure could protect a family’s future and it often gave gentlewomen control of significant amounts of land as widows. In 1645, William and his younger son Charles (d. 1666) agreed a marriage settlement with John Thelwall, the father of Charles’s future wife, Elizabeth (d. 1693). Among other holdings, the settlement provided the Pool Park estate, an extension of the Salesburys’ estate at Bachymbyd, as Elizabeth’s jointure. It was secured for the term of Charles and Elizabeth’s lives, then to Charles and Elizabeth’s sons, then their daughters, then William’s right heirs.⁴⁶ In the seventeenth century, there was an expectation that widows of gentlemen would have access to land. In 1635, William’s eldest son, Owen (1613–58), married Mary Goodman (d. 1676) without William’s consent and thus they did not have a marriage settlement. However, Mary, a wealthy heiress of both her father and uncle, had control of at least the Plas Isa estate, Denbighshire, after Owen’s death, which she leased out with her mother.⁴⁷

Before the development of jointure, the Salesburys’ provision for their widows was less cohesive. When Robert Salesbury died in 1550, he bequeathed his wife Katherine a third of all his lands, tenements and hereditaments with appurtenances in the counties of Denbighshire, Flintshire and Merionethshire for the term of her life ‘in full recompence of her dower ... if she will so accept’. Most of the Salesbury estate at this time was copyhold and thus governed by manorial law.⁴⁸ The proportion of copyhold land allocated to a widow varied between manors; it could be a third of the land or even the entire estate.⁴⁹ However, the risk that Katherine might refuse the bequest suggests that Robert hoped to persuade Katherine to accept a third of all his land rather than insist on the North Wales custom of moveable goods as well. If Katherine refused to accept the land and claimed her full dower, then Robert voided his bequest. Dower provision was never particularly common in Wales and, only a decade or so after the Acts of Union, Robert’s bequest reflects that the Salesburys historically held land converted to English tenure.⁵⁰ Robert and Katherine’s son, John (1533–80), also used a dower to provide for his wife, Elizabeth (d. c.1584), although he augmented the dower with a grant of either Clocaenog Park or Pool Park.⁵¹ There was clearly a degree of administrative continuity in the family, with land set aside from the main estate to provide for widows; John’s son, Sir Robert Salesbury, also granted Clocaenog Park to his wife, Elinor, and it was very close to Pool Park. Robert’s will suggests that Katherine had some agency in her widowhood provision: she will receive the lands ‘if she will so accept’. Almost certainly, Katherine received advice from her male relatives, but Robert’s will places the decision entirely on Katherine: it is her choice. This fits with contemporary complaints that women were knowledgeable of their rights as widows and they were willing to challenge in court for them. George Owen (c.1552–1613) of Henllys, Pembrokeshire, criticizing women as gossips and mocking their learning, wrote that ‘the women of our country would erect an Inn of Court and study the law to defend their common cause, wherein I think they were like to profit, for that there are of them many ripe wits and all ready tongues’.⁵² While this does not present a favourable image of women, it does suggest that they could be confident defenders of ‘their common cause’, to men’s disapproval. Women were the main plaintiffs or defendants in a quarter of all Chancery suits, highlighting the extent to which women were willing to protect their rights to property as well as the willingness of others to challenge those rights.⁵³ These legal records present some of the most visible accounts of early modern Welsh gentlewomen, including Dame Margaret Lloyd.

Margaret was described in her bill of petition as ‘of Bersham’, near Wrexham, Denbighshire, and this may have been her jointure or dower land.⁵⁴ However, by the time of the incident portrayed in her Star Chamber suit, Margaret had moved to Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch, Denbighshire to stay at a messuage belonging to her son, Roger of London, a minor. Roger and his grandmother, Elizabeth Lloyd, bought the land, including a garden and orchard, from Harry ap Harry of Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch for £100 on 12 June 1605, as well as further parcels of land from Richard Heaton of Llanynys, Denbighshire. Roger received the land by right of survivorship when his grandmother died in 1606, and Margaret and Roger went to live there together.⁵⁵ Margaret said that she was Roger’s guardian and ‘tutrix’ and they lived peaceably at Roger’s house in Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch. The messuage was at the centre of the dispute between Margaret and her brother, who both presented slightly different accounts of the incident which caused Margaret’s Star Chamber suit.

In her bill of petition, Margaret said only that her underage son, Roger, received the land in question after his grandmother’s death with no further details about the inheritance. The joint answer to the bill, given by John Salesbury, Piers Salesbury, Henry Underwood and John Anwyll, is from John’s perspective; he is described as ‘this defendant’.⁵⁶ In his answer, John contested Margaret’s version. John agreed that Elizabeth Lloyd, Roger’s grandmother, bought the messuage, but claimed that she organized a loan of £120 with interest from Sir Thomas Myddleton (c.1556–1631) of Chirk, even though the land only yielded £9 a year. According to John, when the grandmother died and Roger inherited the land, Margaret did not want Roger responsible for paying the debt. Margaret asked John, their cousin Edward Thelwall, and Margaret’s eldest son, Evan, to buy the land and discharge the debts. In return, Evan also agreed to pay Roger £200 for the land when Roger reached his majority at the age of twenty-one. Margaret asked Evan to be responsible for Roger’s education and ‘bringing up’, and Evan agreed out of ‘duty’ to his mother and ‘love’ for his brother. Evan duly discharged the debt and entered into the lands, leasing it to a tenant called Edward ap Robert since 1606. Evan also ‘tooke his ... brother [Roger] into his charge and kept him at schoole’. However, when Evan was away from North Wales, John claimed that Margaret ‘inveigled’ Roger from his rightful guardian, ‘takeing opportunity of the absence of [Evan Lloyd]’. John said that Margaret knew that Roger was in North Wales while Evan was away; given Roger’s description in Margaret’s bill as ‘of London’, he was presumably sent to boarding school there and was not usually resident in the locality. John himself was also incapacitated because he was ‘sickly and lately recovered of a dangerous and desperate sickenes’. John’s answer implies that Margaret knew John had the ability to influence the situation, to protect his nephew Evan’s land and constrain his sister’s actions.

After abducting Roger, Margaret then proceeded to seize the messuage leased to Evan’s tenant, Edward ap Robert. According to John, Margaret had no lawful claim on the messuage where she lived with Roger, and she went from her house in Bersham to take it from the tenant. Edward ap Robert lived with his wife’s family and thus ‘the premisses was but slenderly defended and that onely with a mayd servant and one child’. On the night of 7 May 1608, Margaret and her accomplices ‘did breake downe the dore of the said house and did also breake the lock of the said dore’. When Edward arrived at the house the following morning, he ‘found his Cattell impounded’ and Margaret refusing to let him inside the house. Margaret’s servants, ‘as this defendant [John Salesbury] was credibly enformed’, ‘drew their swords and weapons’ upon the ‘pore tenant’. In the absence of his landlord Evan Lloyd, the tenant went to John Salesbury for aid. John was living at his Bachymbyd estate, two miles from Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch. After Edward ap Robert ‘acquainted him with the outrages’, John says he ‘sent Robert Salusbury gentleman [Margaret’s] uncle’ and ‘Pyers Salusbury’ her third cousin ‘to entreat’ Margaret to return the messuage to the tenant. Although initially she refused to leave, ‘afterwarde the said Dame Margaret Lloyd was perswaded to depart the said house’. John himself did not go to the property; he was ‘farre of from the said house’, presumably still recovering from his illness. John did not explain how the men persuaded Margaret to leave the house.

Margaret gave a different account.⁵⁷ She accused her brother of assembling armed men at Bachymbyd, including ‘Piers Salusburie his servante in liverie who is a Commone drunkarde and was herefore detected of willfull murther’; Harry Salusbury, a former soldier; Simon Salusbury; Piers Salusbury, the son of Hugh Salusbury; Robert Salusbury of Pant Glas, gentleman; Robert Salusbury of Maes Cadarn, gentleman; and around fourteen other named men, ‘all of them beinge the servantes followers and retainers of [John Salesbury] ... beinge moste desperate and dissolute people and att all times readie to execute any willfull violente and unlaweful acte which [John Salesbury] shall Commaund or directe them to doe’. Margaret said that there were around thirty men in total and they went from Bachymbyd to Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch. According to Margaret’s account, the men intended to take the land forcibly from Margaret and her son, ‘well knowinge’ that Margaret and Roger could not withstand an attack due to ‘the tendernes of his age [and] by reason of her Sex and widowhood’. Margaret was inside the house, ‘muche affrighted’, and she, along with the local constable, ‘entreated’ the men ‘to keepe your Majesties peace’. Margaret told them that there were lawful means to claim title to the land. However, the men retorted that ‘they Cam thither by the said John Salusburie his expresse Commaundemente to pull [Margaret] out of the house either alive or dead’. The men proceeded to attack the house: they ‘Suddenlie therewith then and there with greate violence pulled downe A beame and parte of the said house’. With drawn weapons, the men broke down the door and attacked Margaret and her three servants, who were ‘in verie greate danger of their lives’. The men pulled them out of the house though they were ‘greviouslie wounded’. In her bill of petition, Margaret complained that the men now had possession of the house and lands ‘without any Colour of title’. According to Margaret, John ‘hath afterwardes given out speeches that he hadd appointed the aforesaid Riotous persons to Comytt the outrages ... and that he would beare them out and save them harmles for the same whatsoever it should cost him’.

Margaret took her case to Star Chamber very soon after the incident, a court far from the influence of her brother and son. John and his fellow defendants gave their joint answer on 4 July 1608, less than two months after the alleged attack. Although the emphasis and interpretation are different, the two accounts are not incompatible. Margaret and John agree that Roger was living with her on 8 May 1608, they agree that her male relatives came to take Roger away, they agree that Margaret resisted them. However, there are no further records concerning the case. There is no judgement and no indication of what happened to Margaret or Roger. Margaret’s Star Chamber suit is a fleeting, constructed insight into the life of an early modern Welsh widow and it presents interestingly contradictory accounts of her character. In her version, Margaret is a widowed mother living with a handful of servants and caring for her young son, subject to violent mistreatment by her male relatives at the instigation of her brother. In John’s version, Margaret is a subversive and unreliable woman, breaking her agreement with her eldest son, overstepping the boundaries of acceptable female behaviour and in need of correction by her male kin. Margaret’s Star Chamber case highlights the problematic nature of widowhood when early modern Welsh society privileged the male kindred. At a time when women marrying into the Salesbury family acquired the security of jointure and marriage settlements, Margaret’s case shows that widows required more than just land and they could be disadvantaged when they contravened custom.

The absence of other records relating to the case makes it impossible to know which version was closest to the truth. Margaret implies that John had no reason to assemble men and remove Roger and her from the messuage. John does not explain how Margaret came to leave the property. Both accounts are filtered through the strong, emotive language of Star Chamber, peppered with stock phrases such as men ‘beinge armed arraied and weaponed in warlike manner’, suggesting that both parties adjusted their accounts to adhere to the court’s conventions.⁵⁸ Still, the case presents important insights into Margaret’s position as a widow in early modern Welsh gentry society. In John’s account, Margaret was a woman whose actions required the intervention of her male relatives. When the tenant, Edward ap Robert, went to John Salesbury for assistance, John was both his landlord’s uncle and his assailant’s brother. Whether John’s story is true or not, it was credible to argue that the tenant was aware John would be able to help him in Evan Lloyd’s absence. Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch is only two miles from Bachymbyd, and the Salesburys were a prominent local family. John’s answer does not elaborate on why Edward ap Robert chose to go to John Salesbury for help, but his relationship to Margaret as well as Evan was surely important. In his answer, John emphasizes the familial connection to Margaret. In the absence of Margaret’s oldest son, John, as Margaret’s brother and the head of the Salesbury family, organized his own kinsmen to curb Margaret’s behaviour and protect Evan’s tenant. These kinsmen were, of course, also Evan’s kinsmen through his mother, an important connection in a society which valued kinship. In his answer, John only mentions two of the kinsmen, his uncle Robert and cousin Piers, but Margaret names twenty men, six of whom – more than a quarter – were kin of some sort. Given the preponderance of various Salusbury branches in early modern Denbighshire, it is difficult to identify their precise relationship to John and Margaret, but they were clearly part of the wider kindred, followers and retainers of the Salesbury patriarch. John himself identifies Piers as their third cousin, showing both the longevity of kinship ties and the distant degree of recognized kin relationships. The other half of the group consisted of yeomen and craftsmen, including John Foulk, a smith, and John ap Ieuan, a miller, with some names, such as Richard ap Robert and Thomas ap Morris, included in a 1601 list of tenants on the Bachymbyd estate.⁵⁹ It is realistic to conclude that they all had some sort of tenurial or patronal relationship with John. The composition of the group of armed men suggests they were John’s plaid, or retinue, which the Welsh gentry used to reinforce their power in the local area. Pleidiau were vital demonstrations of status in later medieval Wales, but similar patronal relationships survived into the early modern period.⁶⁰ Regardless of whether or not the plaid attacked her house, there is credibility in Margaret’s account that John had a plaid consisting of the Salesbury kindred and his tenants.

Margaret’s bill gives a lengthy description of the men’s attack on the house. John’s answer instead focuses on Margaret’s transgression: her broken deal with her eldest son that he would have the land for himself and raise Roger. John says only that Margaret ‘was perswaded to depart the said house’. ‘To persuade’ someone could encompass a whole range of possibilities and certainly does not preclude Margaret’s version of what happened on 8 May 1608 at Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch. It is clear from John’s answer that he believed Margaret’s behaviour transgressed the boundaries of acceptable female behaviour. He said that Margaret is his ‘naturall and sole sister’ and brought the bill ‘not of her owne discrecione but by the instigation ... of some others’, whom John does not name. In his answer, John does not permit Margaret sufficient agency to sue her brother, yet presents her as a conniving and underhanded woman, working to undermine her eldest son. Margaret’s actions were premeditated; she acted ‘takeing opportunity of the absence of [Evan Lloyd]’, ascertaining that Roger was home from school and that the messuage was ‘slenderly defended’, and that John Salesbury was still recovering from his illness. Her eldest son, meanwhile, is a paragon of gentlemanly behaviour, nobly discharging his younger brother’s debts at Margaret’s behest and agreeing to pay him £200 after Roger’s twenty-first birthday, despite the low value of the land in question. Evan also spent around £247 on Roger’s education and keep, before Margaret ‘inveigled him away’. The case particularly emphasizes the difficult position of a widow in early modern Welsh gentry society. On the one hand, Margaret still had access to land and wanted control of her underage child. On the other hand, her eldest son now controlled the family estates and Margaret was a threat to his position.

As a Welsh widow, Margaret’s actions were further constrained beyond primogeniture by the boundaries of Welsh custom. The estate archives of prominent North Wales gentry families, as well as legal records and wills, demonstrate that North Wales custom gave the guardianship of children to male kin, not mothers. Although similar expectations existed in England, Katharine Swett argues that the Welsh cultural focus on male kinship created particularly restrictive conditions of guardianship for widowed mothers.⁶¹ Margaret’s behaviour thus transgressed not only her alleged agreement with Evan, but the received expectations of Welsh society that male kin raised children upon their father’s death. Garthine Walker has demonstrated that abduction was a common accusation levied by men at widowed mothers who took their children away from appointed legal guardians, and the existence of such cases suggests that placing children with male kin after their father’s death could cause considerable distress, whether to the mother, the children or both. For example, George Owen of Henllys related the abduction by her mother of thirteen-year-old Jennett Thomas; her mother claimed she took Jennett from her guardian because he neglected her and Jennett asked to leave.⁶² It is clear from John and Margaret’s accounts that Roger was living with Margaret on 8 May 1608, whether by Roger’s choice or Margaret’s duplicity. However, regardless of the alleged agreement between Margaret and Evan, Margaret evidently wanted to raise Roger herself and, if the agreement existed, she desperately wanted to remove him from Evan’s guardianship.

It is worth remembering too that the suit occurred at a time when Wales was still adjusting to legal change, just two generations after the Acts of Union. Margaret’s suit highlights a clash between the principles of the early modern Welsh gentry and the principles of English law. In Welsh gentry society, Margaret’s behaviour was transgressive, and John acted properly by organizing her male kindred to correct her. According to English law, however, it was John who acted in a transgressive manner, using violence to force a woman and her child out of a house. John accused Margaret of acting against custom, and Margaret accused John of acting against the law. Margaret’s Star Chamber suit is therefore not just a microcosmic study of a Welsh gentlewoman or a revealing portrait of male and female relations in a Welsh gentry family; it is also indicative of Welsh gentry society adapting to different and occasionally conflicting behavioural standards. Margaret Lloyd was a product of the same society as her brother. She knew the behavioural standards expected of her as a Welsh gentlewoman and a widowed mother. These standards emphasized obedience to the male kindred and recognition of a man’s position as head of the family. Margaret’s account, however, presents a greater responsibility to her child. Margaret’s suit thus reveals the intensely patriarchal nature of gentry society in early modern North Wales, but the very fact that Margaret took her case to Star Chamber in the first place demonstrates that Welsh gentlewomen were willing to defend their interests against their male kindred. For Margaret Lloyd, the law provided legitimate defence against a society which privileged male relatives over mothers.

On 8 May 1608, there was a dispute over the ownership of a messuage in Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch, Denbighshire. There may have been armed men who forcibly entered the house and removed the inhabitants, or there may have been reasoned persuasion. The bill of petition and the defendants’ answer presents a constructed account of the relationship between a widow and her closest male relatives, but the documents agree that some sort of incident occurred. However, there remain questions about the purpose of the suit. On 15 September 1610, John Salesbury leased a substantial amount of his land in Denbighshire to his sister, Dame Margaret Lloyd. The lease was for a term of twenty-one years and an annual rent of 6d; the consideration was £10 and the natural love and affection held by John for Margaret and her younger children, especially a younger son called John.⁶³ By this time John Salesbury was significantly in debt, and the lease to Margaret was almost certainly part of his desperate attempt to raise money by alienating parts of his estate, although, depending on the value of the land, it is possible that John genuinely wanted to provide for his nephew. Nevertheless, it is clear that the dispute raised in Star Chamber did not irrevocably harm the relationship between brother and sister. If John did send his plaid to remove her from the messuage, Margaret was not sufficiently aggrieved to refuse to lease land from him. This might indicate that the dispute over the messuage was routine; perhaps the suit was fundamentally a means of establishing who had right title to the land. Even so, within Margaret’s bill of petition and John’s answer, there is revealing evidence of how a widowed Welsh gentlewoman should act and how she should behave in relation to her male kindred. This is not to say that Welsh gentlewomen always or often met these expectations, but that the suit presents an ideal within Welsh gentry society. It is revealing, however, that Margaret Lloyd had sufficient confidence and knowledge to take her suit to Star Chamber within two months of the incident. Of course, she may well have received advice from her kin, and a lawyer constructed her case for her, but Margaret was willing to engage with the legal process and challenge her brother in court. For the Welsh gentry, the ideal widow was obedient to her male kindred, but Dame Margaret Lloyd’s suit in Star Chamber demonstrates that widows had considerable agency and the ability to defend against perceived violations of their interests.