Welsh Journals

The name of the donor was often written in St. Augustine's books in con- junction with the short title and pressmark. Probably what we have in Pen. 28 is 'W. Byholte'.9 William Byholte or de Byholte, a prior of the abbey, gave at least 27 books to St. Augustine's, covering many subjects; two of his manuscripts suggest an interest in law and public affairs.10 Dr. Emden has collected the references to him, showing him active in the years 1292-1318.11 Pen. 28 was at St. Augustine's by the fourteenth century. The most notorious Canterbury student of the Welsh laws before this time is Archbishop John Peckham. When he wrote to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in October 1279 complaining of the Prince's infringement of liberties of the Church, Peckham showed knowledge of the laws of Hywel Dda, though only by hearsay: 'contra quae opponitis leges Howeli Da, quae Decalogo dicuntur in diversis articulis obviare'.12 When, in November 1282, after the terms of peace proposed by him had been rejected, Peckham sent his letter of general denunciation of the morality of Llywelyn and the Welsh, he twice referred to the laws of Howelda and makes it clear that this time it was a written text he had seen: 'ac Howelda in lege sua, quam vidimus'.13 In this letter Peckham included among the sins of the Welsh their casual regard for the indissolubility of marriage and their allowing inheritance to illegitimate offspring. In Pen. 28, in the section concerning the separation of husband and wife, ff. 18v 20, there occur in the margin a number of crosses and nota signs, drawing attention to several of the features of the laws of Hywel Dda that would have seemed most outlandish to a person of Peckham's views.14 Were these made by clerks reading on Peckham's behalf, or even by Peckham himself? It would be gratifying to discover that William Byholte had in-hiryounger days served with Peckham. Besides Peckham, there were of course other thirteenth-century Englishmen with an interest in the laws of Hywel. No doubt, in the years after 1277 when the Crown was much concerned with Welsh Law, or its circumvention,15 some of Edward I's officers acquired copies of the laws. Pen. 28 might conceivably have passed through such hands on its way to Canterbury, though it should be said that its margins betray no marks of interest in the great issue between Edward and Llywelyn, the determination of pleas. There is next to no internal evidence as to where Pen. 28 spent the years between the Dissolution (supposing it remained at St. Augustine's until then) and its acquisition by Robert Vaughan.16 Many St. Augustine's manuscripts came into the possession of Dr. John Dee, a collector who would particularly have prized this one, but nothing like it appears in the surviving lists of his collection,17 nor does it show signs of his hand. A long sojourn outside Wales would explain one thing: the relative absence of marginalia, compared with most medieval Welsh manuscripts. After Peckham's time it would have found few readers. The observations on Pen. 28 that follow have nothing to do with the Canterbury connection. Gwenogvryn Evans dated the manuscript to the last quarter of the twelfth century. This dating appears to have been accepted by all twentieth-