shire-moots

Updated: April 30, 2025

Efforts were made to subject the four cantreds to the shire courts at Chester; and Geoffrey of Langley, Edward's agent in the south, set up shire-moots at Cardigan and Carmarthen, from which originated the first beginnings of those counties. The bitterest indignation animated Edward's Welsh tenants, whether on the Clwyd or on the Teivi and Towy.

T. F. (Thomas Frederick) Tout - The History of England: From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)

It was no novelty for the crown to strengthen the baronial parliaments by the representatives of the shire-moots, and there were earlier precedents for the holding meetings of the spokesmen of the cities and boroughs.

T. F. (Thomas Frederick) Tout - The History of England: From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)

Long before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and Bannockburn. In all the mediæval achievements of England, in peace and war in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt Americans may without paradox claim their ancestral part.

William Archer - America To-day, Observations and Reflections

The chief centres for the formulation and application of folk-right were in the 10th and 11th centuries the shire-moots, while the witan of the realm generally placed themselves on the higher ground of State expediency, although occasionally using folk-right ideas.

Various - Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1