There is little to indicate, for much of the early medieval period in Wales, that ownership of land involved anything more than the power to collect rent, produce and profits from that land – whether production was organized through a direct labour force or through tenancies. Most charter texts are surprisingly vague about the powers conveyed when property changed hands, and the proprietary terms that are so characteristic of English and continental charters are strikingly absent. It looks as if landowners' interests were primarily economic, although to the extent that they controlled a dependent workforce they inevitably acquired power over people too. This vagueness is especially marked in the earliest texts, of all types, that is of sixth- to eighth-century material, and is often so for the ninth- and tenth-century period.

By the eleventh century, however, power over property could clearly bring the landowner more than rents and produce and it looks as if the tenth century was a turning point in attitudes and practice. In what follows, I shall investigate the incidence of compensation to landowners for offences committed on their lands; explain the Welsh concepts of nawdd (protection), sarhaed (insult) and braint (privilege), and show how they provide the mental framework for such compensations; detail the establishment of the earliest territorial immunities which excuse the holder from royal demands, and the development (and historical context) of more elaborate immunities held by institutions; and, finally, isolate the essential processes that led to this development. In the end, the individual's right to protect turned into the institution's right to exemption from political dues and demands.