HISTORY OF THE PARISH OF LLANDYSILIO.

BY THOMAS PRYCE OF PENTRE HEILYN.

THE following pages have been written in fulfilment of a promise made to the Council of the Powys-land Club, and as a continuation of their series of the Parochial Histories of the County.

No one can be more sensible of their defects and shortcomings than myself; still it is hoped that the collecting and recording of a few isolated facts connected with this parish may be of some interest, and help to throw light on the general history of the neighbourhood.

There is a continual growth of interest in local history, and although some may be inclined to doubt whether parochial records are worthy of separate publication, many facts may be lighted upon which may eventually prove to be of more than local interest.

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Happy is the country which has no history;" the same may be said of our parish. Situated as it is on the borderland of Wales, our neighbourhood has no doubt been the scene of many a struggle between the Celt, the Roman, the Saxon, Dane, and Norman-a battlefield of which almost all written record is for ever lost. No trace of any strife or commotion, border raid or incursion, now remains; but the Roman has left his mark in the roads which traverse the parish from the four quarters of the compass; the Mercian king raised the dyke which for eleven centuries has borne his name; and the fortified camp on the summit of the Bryn Mawr, overlooking the plain below and the great Roman station of Mediolanum at its foot, has doubtless been

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successively occupied by the fighting men of many different races.

The Annals of Tacitus (lib. xii, cap. 33 to 35) record the last struggle between Caractacus and the Romans under Ostorius Scapula, which almost undoubtedly took place on the Breiddin Hills, on the opposite banks of the Severn; and the event would be watched with anxious eyes by those then in possession of the camp on the Bryn Mawr.

In the ninth century (A.D. 894), from the same spot might have been seen the army of the Danes ascending the Severn Valley, and encamping at Buttington, where they were besieged and defeated with great slaughter by the combined Saxon and Welsh forces.

From the Bryn Mawr were no doubt also witnessed the watch-fires which blazed on every hill and mountain in the country on that memorable summer night in 1588, when the Spanish Armada was approaching our shores. Some two hundred and fifty years later might have been seen from the same hill the preparations made in anticipation of another invasion: Napoleon's army was encamped at Boulogne; all England was under arms, and the drilling of recruits was going on on all sides. The Rhysnant Common was the place of muster for the troops in our parish, and the table is still shown on which it is said the men were paid.

The neighbouring castles of Powis, Mathraval, and Carreghofa guarded the valleys of the Severn, Vyrnwy, and Tanat during many centuries of our history, and we may be assured that the inhabitants of our parish were often called upon to take their part in the struggles which were going on around them.

History records visits to our neighbourhood of several of the Plantagenet kings-John at Mathraval, Henry III at Montgomery, and Edward I at Powis Castle-all on expeditions against the Welsh on the borders. Henry, Earl of Richmond, passed near on his way to the field of Bosworth, where he was crowned seventh of his name, and first king of the House of

Tudor. Tradition says he borrowed a horse1 for his journey from an adherent in Montgomeryshire.

The unfortunate Charles I passed one night in Llandysilio, a couple of days after the defeat of his troops at Rowton Heath, in 1645. No other royal personage appears to have been in the parish till the year 1832, when our present gracious Queen, at that time Princess Victoria, passed through on her journey from Powis Castle to Wynnstay.

Through all the alterations which have taken place in the parish in historic times, there has always been one spot which has been comparatively free from change.

Different races may have borne sway in the land; different dynasties may have occupied the throne; there may have been wars and rumours of wars, plague, pestilence, and famine; but in thinking of their village and their homes, men's thoughts would always revert to one central point, their parish church, the "Llan" in their midst, which, through all the changes, through evil report and through good report, had remained the same. In most cases, then, the history of the church will be the history of the parish, and the scanty records which remain to us are those which have been collected and preserved by the church.

The history of a parish should, as far as possible, be accurate, complete, and interesting. It will not always be practicable to unite these three qualities; but the writer should, I think, endeavour to give an exhaustive account, even at the risk of being considered too long and too minute.

The parish forms a single unit in the district or the county, and many little facts and particulars, in them

1 Shakespeare makes Richard III exclaim, a few days later, "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"

2 Llan signifies an enclosure, an open plain (planum), afterwards used especially to denote the village church, or the village itself. The word may have originally meant the open glade in the sacred groves of the Druids.

selves apparently of small interest or importance, may fit in with and serve to elucidate points which would otherwise be obscure or unexplainable. The reader can, moreover, exercise the modern reader's right of skipping, and pass over anything which may not be of interest to him for the rest, I must claim his indulgence for an account which, I am very well aware, is incomplete and defective.

The parish of Llandysilio is situated in the northeast extremity of the county of Montgomery, and is bounded on the north side by the parish of Llanymynech, with its township of Carreghofa to the northwest, in Montgomeryshire, and the township of Llanymynech proper, to the north-east, in Shropshire.

On the north-west the boundary of the parish commences at the Gutter Pool, in the river Vyrnwy, and follows more or less the course of the river in an easterly direction, past the village of Llanymynech, to the north-east corner of the parish. Here the river takes a sudden turn to the south, and forms the boundary of the parish along the whole of the east side. Leaving the parish at its south-east point, the river again turns to the south-west, passes through the low-lying district of Melverley, and falls into the Severn at Cymmerau,' about two miles farther down.

The northern boundary, as mentioned above, follows in some measure the course of the Vyrnwy from west to east; but it crosses and re-crosses the river some ten or twelve times, apparently in the most capricious manner, with the result that small portions of the parish are situated on the other side of the river in the Carreghofa and Llanymynech districts, and small detached parts of Shropshire are left on the right bank. It is probable that the channel of the river has somewhat changed in the lapse of years, and that the

1 From Cymmer, confluence.