ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interrelation of reform policies in Tudor Ireland and Wales. Through the inheritance of the principality and a variety of historical accidents - attainder, purchase and escheat, the Tudor monarchs had become the largest landed proprietors in Wales, enjoying a supremacy which no individual magnate could dream of challenging. In Wales, relative peace allowed for the stabilization of relations between the lordships through agreed procedures of negotiation and arbitration, and for the development within the lordships of institutions - such as the day of the march - which offered a regular and formal mechanism for the settlement of civil and criminal cases. Intense local fragmentation provided the basis for the construction of elaborate, if unstable, political alliances at provincial and regional level which transcended the old ethnic distinctions between English and Gaelic Irish and served to consolidate the interests of the strong and well-connected among both groups.
