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It would not be excessive to describe manuscript BL Add. 22356 – or S as it is known amongst scholars in the field - as one of the high points of the manuscript tradition of Cyfraith Hywel. In this new edition, which includes a full introduction, a critical edition, notes and indexes, we are guided through a large and ambitious lawbook, one which reflects a very rich legal and cultural milieu. The first part of S is an edited version of the Llyfr Blegywryd text, but there are substantial additions to that core text, which mean that S is a highly significant text in terms of the development of the lawbooks by the second half of the fifteenth century. As one of the last law manuscripts to be copied whilst Cyfraith Hywel was still a living legal system, S is without doubt the one legal text which shows all the colours of the sunset at their finest – before Henry VIII drew the blinds on native law by passing the Laws in Wales Acts (or Acts of Union) in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.
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