The Full Story
A wife walks out. With half of everything. Half the herd, half the silver. And the law is on her side. This is Wales, over 1,000 years ago.
The Welsh call it Cyfraith Hywel, the Law of Hywel, after Hywel ap Cadell, the king Wales still calls Hywel the Good, who comes to rule more of Wales than any king before him. The story the old law books tell is that around 945 he summons lawmen from every corner of Wales to a hall on the river Taf. There the laws of the Welsh are set in order.
Open that book and a different Middle Ages looks back. An insult has a price in silver, called sarhaed. A woman holds her price in her own name. A husband who strikes his wife without cause pays compensation to her, no one else. Marriage is an agreement between 2 people: if a husband strays, the law makes him pay his wife. On the third occasion she can leave him. After 7 years of marriage the law counts a couple's property as shared. If the marriage ends she takes half, by right.
Children born outside marriage inherit like any other, if the father acknowledges them: the father's sin, says the law, must not be held against the son. And when blood is spilled, this law refuses the feud. Galanas, a life-price paid by the killer's kindred to the family wronged, ends the vengeance, by law.
Across the border, under the common law, a wife's property passes to her husband, for centuries yet.
Then Edward the First breaks the Welsh princes. In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan sweeps the criminal law aside. In the farms and the families, Hywel's law holds on for another 250 years. Then the Acts of Union under Henry VIII outlaw it altogether. English law becomes the only law in Wales. English becomes the only tongue its courts can speak.
After nearly 600 years, the Law of Hywel is closed.
But a parliament can close a book, not a memory. Around 80 of the old law books survive, copied hand to hand, the oldest made some 300 years after Hywel died and still carrying his name. Today that name stands over the hospitals of west Wales.
Britain remembers most of its kings for their wars. Wales remembers this one for his fairness.
Why This Matters
Britain's history of women's legal standing is usually told as starting in the Victorian era. Wales got there first, by about 900 years. The law credited to Hywel Dda gave a wife a defined price for her own injury, a share of the marriage's property and the right to leave with half of it. It was not equal by modern standards and the channel never claims it was. But it is a real, sourced, remarkable fact about these islands: a Welsh king's law took women's standing seriously in the 10th century, centuries before the rest of these islands caught up. When the crown finally abolished it, under Edward I and then Henry VIII, the idea did not die with the statute. It survived in manuscripts, in memory and in a health board that still carries Hywel's name.
Key Facts
- ✓Hywel ap Cadell (Hywel Dda, 'Hywel the Good') came to rule more of Wales than any Welsh king before him and is credited with codifying Welsh law, traditionally at an assembly near Whitland around 945 (Dictionary of Welsh Biography; Wikipedia)
- ✓Under Cyfraith Hywel, a wife had her own defined compensation (sarhaed) for injury, paid to her; a husband who struck her without lawful cause owed her payment directly (Wikipedia)
- ✓After 7 years of marriage a couple's property was counted as shared. On separation a wife was entitled to half; a husband's infidelity also entitled her to compensation and, on a third occasion, the right to leave him (Wikipedia)
- ✓Children acknowledged by their father inherited equally regardless of birth. Galanas, a life-price paid by a killer's kindred, replaced blood feud under the law (Wikipedia)
- ✓The Statute of Rhuddlan (1284) replaced Welsh criminal law after Edward I's conquest. The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542 under Henry VIII abolished the remaining Welsh civil law, making English the sole language of the courts (Wikipedia)
- ✓Around 80 manuscripts of the Welsh laws survive, the earliest from the 13th century; the Hywel Dda University Health Board today serves Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire (Dictionary of Welsh Biography; Wikipedia)