[Sidenote: The Cymric unit of landholding was the gwely.] The chief fact revealed by the examination of the Extents and Surveys of different parts of Wales made after the English conquest, taken together with the Cymric Codes, was that the unit of society and of land-occupation under Cymric tribal custom was not the individual, and not the immediate family, but the group of kindred known as the ‘_Wele_’ or ‘_Gwely_.’ Such and such a Villata or District is described in the surveys as in the occupation of the gwelys of so and so, the Latin word used for gwely being ‘lectus’ or bed. [Sidenote: The gwely was a family group of a great-grandfather and his descendants.] The form of society thus revealed was _patriarchal_ in the sense that the common ancestor (generally conceived to be the great-grandfather) during his life, and even after his death, was regarded as the head of the _gwely_ or group of his descendants for three generations. In his name as its head this family group occupied land and had grazing rights over certain districts, sometimes alone, more often in common with other family groups. As to what is meant by land ownership in the full modern sense, the question may not have arisen, or it might have come in gradually sooner or later, as agriculture came more and more into prominence. What property, strictly speaking, the tribesmen owned consisted mainly of herds of cattle. Naturally, therefore, what rights over land they may have had were mainly rights of occupation and grazing in certain districts for their herds. Their agriculture was secondary, and consisted of the right to plough up such portions of the waste or common pasture as year by year might be required for their corn crop. All that need be said at this moment about their agriculture is that it was an open field husbandry, the result of the co-ploughing of a common plough-team normally of 8 oxen, the joint contribution of several tribesmen. [Sidenote: The young tribesman is dependent on the chief, not on his father. The tribesmen recover their _da_ or cattle from him as their chief for their maintenance.]