law directed against the baronage.  This was the statute of Westminster the Third, called from its opening words, Quia emptores.  It enacted that, when part of an estate was alienated by its lord, the grantee should not be permitted to become the subtenant of the grantor, but should stand to the ultimate lord of the fief in the same feudal relation as the grantor himself.  This prohibition of further subinfeudation stopped the creation of new manors and prevented the rivetting of new links in the feudal chain, which were the necessary condition of its strength.  Though passed at the request of the barons, it was a measure much more helpful to the king than to his vassals.  It stood to the barons as the statute of Mortmain stood to the Church.

Edward was bent on showing that he was master, and his new son-in-law and the Earl of Hereford became the victims of his policy.  He forced the reluctant Gloucester to admit that the pretensions of the lord of Glamorgan to be the overlord of the bishop of LLandaff and the guardian of the temporalities of the see during a vacancy were usurpations.  Seeing that his marcher prerogatives were thus rapidly becoming undermined, Gloucester put the most cherished marcher right to the test by renewing the private war with the Earl of Hereford which had disturbed the realm during Edward’s absence.  The king issued peremptory orders for the immediate cessation of hostilities.  These mandates Hereford obeyed, but Gloucester did not.  Resolved that law not force was henceforth to settle disputes in the march, Edward summoned a novel court at Ystradvellte, in Brecon, wherein a jury from the neighbouring shires and liberties was to decide the case between the two earls in the presence of the chief marchers.  Gloucester refused to appear, and the marchers declined to take part in the trial, pleading that it was against their liberties.  The case was adjourned to give the recalcitrants every chance, and after a preliminary report by the judges, Edward resolved to hear the suit in person.  In October, 1291, he presided at Abergavenny over the court before which the earls were arraigned.  They were condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture.  Content with humbling their pride and annihilating their privileges, Edward suffered them to redeem themselves from captivity by the payment of heavy fines, and before long gave them back their lands.  The king’s victory was so complete that neither of the earls could forgive it.  In 1295, Gloucester died, without opportunity of revenge; but Hereford lived on, brooding over his wrongs, and in later years signally avenged the trial at Abergavenny.  Meanwhile the conqueror of the principality had shown unmistakably that the liberties of the march were an anachronism, since the marchers had no longer the work of defending English interests against the Welsh nation.[1]

    [1] Mr. J.E.  Morris in chap. vi. of his Welsh Wars of Edward
    I. has admirably summarised this suit.  See also G.T.  Clark’s
    Land of Morgan.