Act of Union (1536)

the Act of Union of 1536 corresponds in fact to series of measure members of Parliament taken between 1535 and 1542 by which the legal system of the Wales was annexed to the kingdom of England and rules of the English administration introduced in order to create a State and a legal jurisdiction originals frequently called " England and Wales ". The Acts return in particular to two acts of the Parliament ratified in 1536 and 1543 under the reign of the king Henri VIII of England, which belonged to the Welsh dynasty of the Tudor S.

Origins

Conquest of the Kingdom of Gwynedd in 1282 - 83 with the vote of the laws of the Welsh Acts of 1535-1542, the administrative system of the Country of Wales was remained unchanged. By the law of Rhuddlan in 1284, the territory of the native Welsh governments had been replaced by the five counties of Anglesey, of Caernarfon, Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Merioneth. In the same way, although the five counties were subjected to the English criminal law, the " Principauté" was the personal Fief of king d' Angleterre and the Welsh law contuait to be of use in the civil cases. The remainder of Wales, except for the county of Flint, which was part of the Principality, and the royal seigniories of Glamorgan and Pembroke, was composed of many small seigniories, each one with its own courses, laws and other habits.

When Henri VII reached the throne in 1485, no change was brought in the system of the government of the country. But it remained to reform the capacity of the seigniories of the Steps, as well as the absence of laws and the disorder in the Welsh steps. In order to negotiate these reforms the Council of Wales and the Steps was started again, which had been established under the reign of Edouard IV. After the death of many marquis during the War of the Two-Pinks, many seigniories had passed between the hands of the Crown.

Henri VIII did not see the need to reform the government of Wales at the beginning of its reign, but, little by little, he regarded as a threat several of the last lords of the Steps and thus ordered to the chief of his aministration, Thomas Cromwell, to find a solution. Its solution was the Annexation or the incorporation of Wales which, with other significant changes at the same time, brought to the formation in England of a modern Sovereign state.

The Acts became famous under the name of " Acts of Union" , but they did not become everyday usage before 1901, when the historian Owen Mr. Edwards assigned this name to them - a name with many regards misleading, the Acts relating to the harmonization of the laws, not on a political union.

Acts

This harmonization passed by the vote of series of measure between 1536 and 1543. They comprise:

an Act for the Laws & Justice with being managed in Wales as in its Kingdom , voted in 1536, since repealed, with effect the December 21st 1993;
an Act on certain Ordinances in the Dominion and the Principality of Wales of their Majesties , voted in 1543, since repealed, with effect the January 3rd 1995.

The first of these Acts was voted parf a Parliament which did not have Welsh representatives. Its effects did not extend to the English law into force in the Steps. It envisaged a Welsh representation in the futures Parliaments.

Effects of the Acts

These Acts also had effects, thereafter, in the administration of Wales:

the seigniories of the steps were abolished as political units, and five new counties (the Monmouthshire, the Brecknockshire, the Radnorshire, the Montgomeryshire and the Denbighshire) were established, thus creating Wales of 13 counties;
the other zones of seigniories were annexed to the Shropshire, with the Herefordshire, the Gloucestershire, the Glamorgan, the Carmarthenshire, the Pembrokeshire, the Cardiganshire and the Merionethshire;
the borders of Wales were established and are remained the same ones, since - consequence which was not intentional, Wales being incorporated in England, but the statute of the Monmouthshire was always ambiguous before 1974;
the courses of the seigniories of the Steps lost to consider the criminal cases serious;
the office of judge peace was introduced;
Wales elected deputies to represent it with the Parlement of England (Westminster);
the Council of Wales and the Steps was established on legal bases;
the Court of the Great Sessions was established, a particular system in Wales;
a Sheriff was named in each county, as well as other officers of county, as in England.

These measurements were not unpopular among the Welsh, who recognized that they placed them in a legal statute of equality with the English. The reaction of the Welsh elites of the time and the following centuries was very similar - gratitude in front of the introduced laws, making of Wales a pacified and ordered country.

They are only well later that several Welsh started to consider, according to the word of A.O.H. Jarman, “that the privileges of the Citoyenneté were only given to the Welsh of condition so that they forget their particular past and their personality, deny their gallitude and amalgamate with England.”

In spite of historians like G.R. Elton, which treated simply the Acts like a triumph of the effectiveness of the Tudor S, the British and Welsh modern historians are carried to study the obviousness of the effects prejudicial of the Acts on the Welsh identity, its culture and its economy. While the Welsh gentry embraced the acts and tried to amalgamate with the English aristocracy, the majority of the population could have encountered difficulties, vis-a-vis a legal and economic system of which the language and the hearth were not familiar for him.

1535, which declares: “the inhabitants of the same dominion have and use daily a speech, as consumes it, of nothing similar to the maternal language of use naturally in this Kingdom” and affirms the intention “to completely extirpate the singular uses and habits and disasters” in progress with the Wales.

Section 20 of the Act of 1535 institutes English like single legal language in the courses, thus prohibiting fact the employment of Welsh in all the public offices of Wales: Moreover that is issued by the above-mentioned authority that all the judges, police chiefs, Shérif S, coroners, Escheators, administrators and their lieutenants, and all other officers and Ministers for the law, will proclaim and maintain the courses of sessions, of the hundreds, Leets, of the courses of sheriffs, and all other courses in the English language; and all oaths of the officers, the jurys and the investigations, and any other Affadavits, verdicts and bets of law, will be pronounced and made in the English language; and also that henceforth null person nor people making use of the speech or the Welsh language will be able to have or enjoy no office or fee in this kingdom of England Wales or another dominion the King, if it does not use and exerts the English speech or language.

An effect of this clause on the language was to create in Wales the bases of a government of class of the anglicized landowners of the gentry which aut of many consequences.

The parts of the Act of 1535 relating to the language were definitively abolished only in 1993, by the Act on the Welsh language, although annotations on the copy of the Act in sections 18-21 were already abolished by the Act of Revision of the Staff Regulations of the law of 1887. -->

External bonds

complete Text of the Act of 1535
complete Text of the Act of 1542
Laws in the Welsh Act of 1535
Laws in the Welsh Act of 1542
HiJack Union: an article analyzing the reasons for which Wales is not represented on the Union Jack.

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