Welsh Journals

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FIFTH SERIES.— VOL. Ill, NO. IX. JANUARY 1886. NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF MONMOUTHSHIRE. Monmouthshire is the border-land between Wales and England. Some years ago there was a very hot feud in the county as to whether it ought to be considered Welsh or English ; but it is now generally considered to have been the marches all through the middle ages, the neutral ground, or the battlefield, as the case might be. Anciently Welsh, and the abode of the tribe of the Sihires, it was conquered by the Romans, and again by the Normans ; and though its language and its local names were Welsh, it became legally English in the reign of Henry VIII. In the reign of Charles II it was included in the Oxford circuit; and the Lord Marcher's Court, which was held at Ludlow in Shrop¬ shire, was finally got rid of in the reign of William III, on the petition of the Welsh people. The Welsh lan¬ guage continued to be spoken until recent times, for we read of an English stranger being buried in Mon¬ mouth in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and in Charles Is time, Captain Dabridgecourt, who was quartered at St. Pierre in 1644, and ordered to make levies for the King, speaks in no very complimentary terms of the slowness of the Welsh to respond to the call; and writ¬ ing to Prince Rupert, he professes his readiness to obey 5TH 6ER., VOL. III. 1