cient
instrument for the maintenance of his authority in England. A more
important statute followed. Recalling the facts that "the rights,
usages, laws and customs" in Wales "be far discrepant from the laws
and customs of this realm," that its people "do daily use a speech
nothing like, nor consonant to, the natural mother-tongue used within
this realm," and that "some rude and ignorant people have made
distinction and diversity between the King's subjects of this realm"
and those of Wales, "His Highness, of a singular zeal, love and
favour" which he bore to the Welsh, minded to reduce them "to the
perfect order, notice and knowledge of his laws of this realm, and
utterly to extirp, all and singular, the sinister usages and customs
differing from the same". The Principality was divided into shires,
and the shires into hundreds; justice in every court, from the highest
to the lowest, was to be administered in English, and in no other
tongue; and no one who spoke Welsh was to "have or enjoy any manner of
Office or Fees" whatsoever. On the other hand, a royal commission was
appointed to inquire into Welsh laws, and such as the King thought
necessary might still be observed; while the Welsh shires and boroughs
were to send members to the English Parliament. This statute was, to
all effects and purposes, the first Act of Union in English history.
Six years later a further act reorganised and developed the
jurisdiction of the Council of Wales and the Marches. Its functions
were to be similar to those of the Privy Council in London, of (p. 366)
which the Council of Wales, like that of the already established
Council of the North, was an offshoot. Its object was to maintain
peace with a firm hand in a specially disorderly district; and the
powers, with which it was furnished, often conflicted with the common
law of England,[1016] and rendered the Council's jurisdiction, like
that of other Tudor courts, a grievance to Stuart Parliaments.

[Footnote 1013: Cromwell has a note in 1533, "for
the establishing of a Council in the Marches of
Wales" (_L. and P._, vi., 386), and there had been
numerous complaints in Parliament about their
condition (_ibid._, vii., 781). Henry was a great
Unionist, though Separatist as regards his wives
and the Pope.]

[Footnote 1014: See an admirabl