«The clusters of _villas_ under a _præpositus_ paying food-rent.» There are four groups of thirteen or fourteen 'villas' or trevs, each group under a 'præpositus' or maer; and these four groups, which were in fact Gwentian 'maenols,' rendered as gwestva a food-rent amounting to 47 sextars of honey, 40 pigs, 41 cows, and 28 shillings for hawks. In the district of _Archenfield_ the clusters of trevs do not appear, but the food-rents were similar--_honey_ being a marked item throughout. «Honey rents.» In the Welsh gwestva, also, _honey_ was an important element. It is mentioned as such in the Welsh codes, and it is conspicuous also in the Domesday Survey both of Gwent and Archenfield. «Importance of honey.» Its importance is shown by the fact that in the Gwentian Code a separate section was devoted to 'The Law of Bees.' It begins as follows:--'The origin of bees is from Paradise, and on account of the sin of man they came from thence, and they were blessed by God, and, therefore, the mass cannot be without the wax.'[262] The price of a swarm of bees in August was equal to the price of an ox ready for the yoke, _i.e._ ten or fifteen times its present value, in proportion to the ox. Honey had, in fact, two uses, besides its being the [p208] substitute for the modern sugar--one for the making of mead, which was three times the price of beer; the other for the wax for candles used in the chief's household, and on the altar of the mass.[263] The lord of a taeog had the right of buying up all his honey;[264] and in North Wales, according to the Venedotian Code, _all_ the honey of the king's aillts or taeogs was reserved for the court.[265] The mead brewer was also an important royal officer in all the three divisions of Wales. It is not surprising, then, that the tribute of honey, which formed so important a part of the Welsh gwestva, should be retained as an item in the tribute of the trevs of Gwent after their conquest by Harold. V. EARLIER EVIDENCE OF THE PAYMENT OF WELSH GWESTVA, OR FOOD-RENT. From the combined evidence of the Domesday Survey and the 'Ancient Laws of Wales,' the fact has now been learned that in the eleventh century, as it had done previously probably for 400 years, the river Wye separated by a sharp line the Saxon land, on which the manorial land system prevailed, from the Welsh land, on which the Welsh tribal land system prevailed. On the one side of the river, at the date of the Survey, clusters of scattered homesteads of free Welshmen contributed food-rents in the form of gwestva to the conqueror of their chief, and taeogs their dawn-bwyds. On the other side the _villata_ of geneats and geburs, besides paying gafol, performed servile week-work upon the demesne lands of the lord of the [p209] village or manor. It may be well, however, to seek for some earlier evidence of the payment of gwestva on the Welsh side of the river.