Acommote (Welsh:cwmwd, sometimes spelt in older documents ascymwd, pluralcymydau, less frequentlycymydoedd)[1] was asecular division of land inMedievalWales. The word derives from the prefixcym- ("together", "with") and the nounbod ("home, abode").[1] The English word "commote" is derived from the Middle Welshcymwt.[2]
The basic unit of land was thetref, a small basic village or settlement. In theory, 100trefi made up acantref (literally, "one hundred settlements"; plural:cantrefi), and half or a third of acantref was acymwd, although in practice the actual numbers varied greatly. Together with thecantrefi, commotes were the geographical divisions through which defence and justice were organised. In charge of a commote would be a chieftain probably related to the ruling Prince of the Kingdom. His court would have been situated in a specialtref, referred to as amaerdref. Here, the bonded villagers who farmed the chieftain's estate lived, together with the court officials and servants.[3] Commotes were further divided intomaenorau ormaenolydd.
Domesday Book has entries for those commotes that in 1086 were underNorman control, but still subject to Welsh law and custom. However, it refers to them using the Anglo-Norman word "commot" instead ofhundred[citation needed], the word used at the time for the equivalent land division inEngland. The commotes mentioned in the Domesday Book, in general, represented recentAnglo-Norman advances into Welsh territory. Although the commotes were assessed for military service and taxation, their obligations were rated incarucates (derived from Latin for cattle or oxen), not in hides as on the English side of the border.
The customs of the commotes are described in the Domesday accounts of the border earldoms ofGloucestershire,Herefordshire,Shropshire andCheshire. The principal commotes described in Domesday wereArchenfield,Ewias, and the commotes ofGwent in the south;Cynllaith,Edeirnion, andIâl (Shropshire accounts); andEnglefield,Rhos andRhufoniog (Cheshire accounts).
In legal usage, the English word 'commote' replacedcwmwd following theEdwardian conquest of Wales in the 13th century, when English was made the official language for all legal documents. The Welsh, most of whom knew not a word of English, naturally continued to usecwmwd and still do so today. In much of Wales, commotes had become more important thancantrefi by the mid-13th century and administration ofWelsh law became the responsibility of the commote court rather than thecantref court.Owain Glyndŵr called representatives from the commotes for his two parliaments during therising of 1400–1409.
The boundaries of commotes, or in some cases cantrefi, were in many cases subsequently more accurately represented by church rural deaneries than by the hundreds issuing from the 16th century Acts of Union.
A considerable number of the names of adjacent medieval Welsh commotes containis (meaning "lower", or "below" as a preposition) anduwch (originallyuch and meaning "higher", or "above" as a preposition), with the dividing line between them being a natural boundary, such as a river, mountain or forest. Melville Richards noted that, in almost every instance where this occurs, the point of central authority was in the "is division" when the commote was named, and he suggested that such commotes were originally named in the sense of 'nearer' and 'farther' based on the location of that central authority—i.e., the terminology is for administrative purposes and not a geographical characterisation.[4]
Richards attributed the use ofis anduwch to some confusion in translating Latinsub (meaning "lower") andsupra (meaning "upper") into Welsh in too literal a sense, when the proper sense was to considersub to be an administrative synonym for Latincis (meaning "this side of"), and to considersupra to be an administrative synonym for Latintrans (meaning "the other side of").[4]
A number of smaller units, such as manors, parishes and townships, also use the administrative distinction ofis anduwch, sometimes in their Latin forms (e.g., the manor of Clydach in Uwch Nyfer, divided into Sub Clydach and Ultra (Supra) Clydach).[5]
This is unrelated to the common use ofisaf anduchaf in farm names, where the terms are used in the geographical sense.[6]
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TheRed Book of Hergest (1375–1425) provides a detailed list of commotes in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.[7] The list has some overlaps and is ambiguous in parts, especially in the Gwynedd section. It should also be borne in mind that the number and organisation of the commotes was different in the earlier Middle Ages; some of the units and divisions listed here are late creations. The original orthography of the manuscript is given here together with the standard modern Welsh equivalents.
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