Great question, but also a huge one. I’ll leave the reasons to someone else as to why no laws were forthcoming after Edward’s conquest and the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, which enforced English common law in Wales, but hopefully I can explain why the 1535 Act was brought about.

The short answer is a recognition by the Welsh gentry of a need to restore order in Wales, following civil unrest in the 1520s and 1530s. The longer answer, which addresses the timing of the laws and the impetus behind them, has its roots in the inherent system of governance set up by the Normans (the Marches), the Wars of the Roses, the monumental ambition of Henry VIII and the desire of indigenous Welsh people for a quiet life!

Just some biographical stuff first, because it explains the Tudor dynasty’s sentiments towards Wales, or a puzzling lack of them in some cases. Henry VIII’s father, Henry Tudor, captured the throne from Richard III at Bosworth in 1485 and was crowned Henry VII on the field of battle. Henry Tudor was half-Welsh, born at Pembroke Castle to Edmund Tudor, the son of Owen Tudor – Catherine of Valois’ second husband and Henry V’s widow. This was Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne (tenuous at best, I know). In order to gather support on his way to Bosworth, Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven and marched through Wales flying banners with Welsh symbols, red dragons, Arthurian imagery, and courting the local lordships. Henry was outwardly identifying as at least part Welsh, not to mention that his army was around a third Welsh (Davies, 1993, p. 216). I touch on this here. You’d be forgiven for thinking that, after he captured the throne, he’d seek to emolliate relations between England and Wales, or reform the method of governance, but it’s a peculiar aspect of Henry VIIs reign that he did neither. The opportunity was ripe to legislate, Wales was left relatively untouched and unreformed, leading to the need to legislate under his son 50 years later.

The Marcher Lords were powerful nobles instilled by the Normans in the fertile lands of South and South West Wales, and further north into Brecon and Montgomery bordering Powys. Without going into it too much, they were tied to the English crown via land grants, but they enjoyed a great degree of autonomy in how they governed the regions of Wales – such as the ability to build their own castles, grant charters and even declare war! The Wars of the Roses had a devastating effect on the Welsh Marcher Lords, as it did to most of the nobility in England. Many were killed, captured or exiled and their lands were slowly amalgamated into the Crown by the time Henry Tudor ended the conflict with his marriage to Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth of York. Even so, the remaining Marcher Lords remained troublesome to the Crown after Bosworth, causing Henry VII to grant the Council of Wales renewed control and imbuing it with powers to act on behalf of Henry VII’s two sons – his eldest Arthur and his youngest Henry, the future Henry VIII (Williams, 1992, p. 31). This measure wasn’t anywhere near enough to bring the errant Lords to heel and Geraint H. Jenkins rightly asserts that Henry VII was guilty of kicking the can down the road for his son to deal with (Jenkins, 2007, p. 129).

Parliament legislated in 1535 out of administrative expediency, rather than a burning desire to unite Wales with England. Like his Father, Henry VIII ignored Wales immediately after gaining the throne in 1506. There was no reform of the ‘overtly racist’ penal codes of 1401 that relegated Welsh people to second-class citizens in public life (Jenkins, 2007, p. 118), but by the beginning of the 1520s his attention turned towards Wales for different reasons - he’d had his fill of the few remaining Marcher Lords, and their unruly ways in South Wales. They simply didn’t fit in with his view of an early Modern monarchy. Throughout the decade, Henry seized the lands of the Lords he didn’t execute, and by 1531, the last of them, Rhys ap Gruffydd of Dynevor, was executed for high treason at the Tower of London (Llandeilo History, online).

Their removal presented Welsh people with a problem - Henry hadn’t accounted for the actual part the Marcher Lords played in governing Wales, administering public life and dishing out justice (or if he did, he didn't care about it). It was the native Welsh gentry who petitioned Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief legislator, to address the issue and bring ‘perfect order’ (Laws in Wales Ac, 1535) after the Council of the Marches had proved completely ineffective under the stewardship of John Vesey, Bishop of Exeter and ‘great Discord, Variance, Debate, Division, Murmur and Sedition’ (Laws in Wales Ac, 1535) was growing in Wales (Jenkins, 2007, pp. 115-20). The result was a monumental upheaval in the fabric of Welsh society at a stroke of Cromwell's quill. The Act abolished the system of the Marches and sought to apply English methods in Welsh public life, in a variety of areas – the Court of Great Sessions was established, the border of England and Wales was enshrined in law, every region was given a Sheriff and each county was given a Justice of the Peace among a whole host of other measures.

As is so often the case in Anglo-Welsh historical relations, the underlying reason for the actual passing of the law is often misunderstood. Ultimately it was Welsh people who brought about the 1535 law, in their quest for a legal union, albeit prompted to by the power vacuum caused by Henry’s systematic removal of the Marcher Lords and the ensuing administrative disharmony. The Laws brought Wales into step with contemporary methods of governance and legal practice. They are of monumental importance to the story of modern Wales, with many historians considering them to be the very start of it (Jenkins, 1991).

Sources

Davies, John (1993) A History of Wales, Penguin (Middlesex).

Jenkins, Geraint, H. (2007) A Concise History of Wales, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Jenkins, Philip (1991) A History of Modern Wales, Routledge (London).

Llandeilo History (n.d.) https://www.llandeilo.org/dp_lands.html

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 (A.D. 1535 Anno vicesimo septimo Henrici VIII c. 26).

Williams, Glanmor (1992), Wales and the Acts of Union, Headstart.