Such, then, being the leading features of the _Tuath_ or tribe, and the _Finé_ or sept, so far as we can gather them from the Ancient Laws of Ireland, and as we find them exemplified in the later condition of the country, which it is essential for our purpose to indicate, we must now pass over to the mainland of Great Britain, and examine how far we can likewise trace them in the Ancient Laws of its Welsh population; and here we see clearly enough that a tribal system possessing in the main the same characteristics lies at the foundation of their social organisation. It was likewise modified in the main by the same influences, but that of the Church was earlier encountered, and it could hardly escape being affected by another influence to which the Irish tribe was not exposed, viz., that of the Roman institutions during the period when the Welsh population formed a part of the Roman province—an influence, however, which would be more intense in the southern and eastern districts, and more superficial in the mountainous region of the west, and in the frontier districts between the Roman walls, whose Welsh population afterwards formed the kingdom of Strathclyde. The Welsh codes which have been preserved are those of Gwynedd or North Wales, and Dyved and Gwent, the west and east divisions of South Wales. Besides these we have some fragments of Commentaries printed under the title of Anomalous Laws, and we have also the advantage of possessing a Latin version of the Laws of Dyved, which gives us the equivalent of the Welsh terms in the Latin of the feudal charters. The oldest of these codes are certainly the Laws of Gwynedd or North Wales, and they recognise the influence of the Church as establishing the sanction of marriage, requiring legitimacy in the sons, and introducing a law of primogeniture in the succession to land which did not exist in the Irish system, when it declares, ‘An innate _Bon-eddig_ is a person who shall be complete as to origin in Wales both by the mother and by the father. The ecclesiastical law says again that no son is to have the patrimony but the eldest born to the father by the married wife.’ The rule was not, however, universally accepted, for it is added, ‘The law of Howel, however, adjudges it to the youngest son as well as to the oldest.’[225]