Leland remarked on the fertility of the Radnorshire valleys on the border with England, and on the quality of the wool produced in the east of the county, but Camden could find little to praise, calling the neighbourhood of Rhayader ‘a vast wilderness, dismal to behold by reason of many crooked ways and high mountains’. Radnorshire was one of the counties set up at the Union.
Since 1453 Calais and its marches had been, with the exception of the Channel Islands (formerly part of the duchy of Normandy), the sole relic of the medieval empire of the English kings in France. The annexation of Tournai in 1513 seemed to presage a revival of the claims of the crown to its former possessions abroad. Tournai had sent deputies to the parlement of France, and in an attempt to resolve the problems arising from the capture of the city Henry VIII granted Tournai representation in the English Parliament.
The lordship of Montgomery had come to the crown as part of the earldom of March, on the attainder of the 3rd Duke of York in 1459. In 7504 Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert, later 1st Earl of Worcester, was named steward of the lordship and constable of the castle, and six years later Somerset’s appointment was renewed in survivorship with his son Henry.
Pembrokeshire was a poor, sparsely populated county, largely dependent on farming and coastal trading. In the absence of much timber its inhabitants used sea-coal for fuel, shipping some as far afield as Bristol and Cork. After its settlement under the Norman kings, the county with an earl of its own had resisted the efforts of successive Welsh princes to reconquer it and had preserved its English character. On the death of Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, in 1495 the earldom of Pembroke passed to the crown and its estates were held in turn by Prince Arthur and the future Henry VIII.
Glamorgan was one of the wealthiest areas in Wales. Although not well suited to farming, the county was rich in coal and iron, and its long coastline with many good harbours on the Bristol Channel made delivery from the mines easy to most destinations. The prosperity of several of its ports was threatened by silting and an Act (I Mary st. 3, c.11) obtained during Mary’s second Parliament was meant to remedy this. At the Union the old county was consolidated and enlarged, and the 2nd Earl of Worcester confirmed in his post as justice of Glamorgan.
Merioneth was an isolated county, far from the headquarters of the council in the marches. With a coastline lacking good anchorages, with infertile soil and a mountainous hinterland, the county went in for cattle breeding and iron production, but general poverty and brigandage hindered the development of either interest. The determined effort of Lewis ab Owen to restore order in Mawddwy failed with his own murder in 1555. The poverty of the region presumably explains why Merioneth alone of the Welsh counties was not provided with a parliamentary borough under the Act of Union.
Until the Union the small county of Flint had been partially dependent on the county palatine of Chester, and the ties between the two remained close throughout the century. After the 3rd Earl of Derby, who was lord of Caergwrle or Hope and other property in the shire, the most influential families were the Hanmers, Mostyns and Salusburys. Of the six knights for Flintshire all but George Wood belonged to, or were allied to, this interknit group of gentle families.
Denbighshire was one of the four new shires in Wales created in 1536, being formed by a fusion of the lordships of Denbigh and Ruthin in Gwynedd with those of Bromfield-and-Yale and Chirk in Powys. Under the Act of Union it was laid down that meetings of the county court should alternate between Denbigh, the ‘head and shire town’ in the west, and Wrexham in the east. The Salusbury family of Lleweni more or less controlled the county until the accession of Elizabeth.
The county of Carmarthen was consolidated and enlarged by the Act of Union. It was further enlarged in 1543 by a proviso in the Act (34 and 35 Hen. VIII, c.26) transferring the lordships of Laugharne and Llanstephan from Pembrokeshire. Although the Act of Union did not name Carmarthen as the meeting place of the county court, the town was the traditional venue and all the elections for the knights of Carmarthenshire took place there save in the autumn of 1553 when the court met at Llandovery in the north-east of the county.
The status of Carmarthen, as the administrative centre for South Wales was confirmed at the Union. The Norman borough of New Carmarthen, with charters dating from the 13th century and administered by a mayor, lay beside the royal castle. The original settlement known as Old Carmarthen, with the parish church of St. Peter, belonged to the priory of St. John until the Dissolution, when efforts by the 3rd Lord Ferrers as steward of New Carmarthen to exercise the privileges of the priory in the suburb led to violence.
