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Like snow have we come to the ground:

No church, no market, no court,

No aught beside now hath Powys.
Gone is her name, her Beloved,
Her head, her owner, her guide,
Her men, her maintenance, her goods,

Her all in this world is gone from her!".

Fragment of Lewis Glyn Cothi's Elegy (trans.).

Cobham's Garden."-John Oldcastle was born about the year 1360, in a castellated mansion, in the parish of Almeley, which derived its appellation of Oldcastle from the fact that it occupied the site of a Roman camp, and from time out of mind had been used as a border fortress. Wickcliffe died in 1384, and we have Oldcastle's own testimony that he had listened, if not to his preaching, at any rate to that of his immediate followers. So it seems probable that this preaching inspired John Oldcastle to enter upon a new crusade to rescue the Church from the power of those whom he regarded as her foes. Except that Oldcastle was himself a devoted follower of Wickcliffe, and expended his fortune in propagating the reformer's doctrines by maintaining preachers in the dioceses of Canterbury, London, Rochester and Hereford, we know very little about his early manhood.

We find him, in November, 1402, appointed to the governorship of Builth, a proof of the confidence which the king reposed in his loyalty; for at that very time Glyndwr was in open resurrection, and Glyndwr, by all accounts, held much the same views on religious matters as Oldcastle himself. Oldcastle so vindicated his claims to loyalty and to skilful administration, that in 1404 the castles of Hay and Brecknock, the most important military positions of the district, were both entrusted to his charge. Member of Parliament in 1405 and High Sheriff for Herefordshire, 1407, two years after he married Joane, granddaughter and heiress of Lord Cobham, and October 26th, 1409, he was summoned to the House of Lords in right of his wife.

For his connection with the Lollards he was convicted of heresy and cast into the Tower; but he managed to escape into this district, influenced, it may be, by the fact that Sir Roger Acton, his co-religionist, had much property and power in Powys-land.

In the latter part of the year 1417, Sir Edward de Cherleton, Lord of Powys, received information that the outlaw lay hid in his own immediate neighbourhood, but it was not without some difficulty that he was apprehended. He defended himself bravely, wounding several of his assailants, and fighting until, according to one account, his legs were broken by a woman striking him with a stool. The scene of Oldcastle's capture is still called "Cobham's Garden," and is situated on the western brow of Broniarth hill, in this parish. A stunted arch and a few yards of stone fencing mark the spot. He was committed to the custody of Sir John Grey, who brought him by slow degrees to London.

The sentence pronounced against him was that he should be taken first to the Tower of London, and thence dragged on a hurdle to the new gallows in St. Giles's Fields, there to be hanged as a traitor and burned as a heretic.

The country-folk are fond of repeating that the Lord of Powys tracked the outlaw with bloodhounds, and that he is bound to preserve that breed for ever; and that the disgrace of having betrayed the good lord to death will never be effaced until an anchorite (meudwy) shall spend seven years of prayer and fasting in a cell beside the castle (Powys Castle or Red Castley Castell Coch).1

1 Extracted from a paper read by Rev. C. J. Robinson, at a meeting of Herefordshire Nat. Hist. Phil. Ant. Lit. Soc., 1870.

END OF PART I.

OBITUARY NOTICE.

THE REV. ELIAS OWEN, M.A., F.S.A.

THE sudden death of Mr. Owen, on Friday, May 19, has removed from our midst a personality widely known and universally respected; from Montgomeryshire one of her most devoted literary sons; and from the Powysland Club a constant and valued contributor, an active member of her Council, and one of her joint Editors.

Mr. Owen was born in 1833, at Holywell, near Penrhos; the eldest son of Mr. James Owen, who removed soon afterwards to Montgomery, and later still to Llanidloes, at the National School of which town he received his education, first as a scholar, and then as a pupil-teacher; and where he had as contemporaries a number of boys who in later life attained positions of honour. Having gained a Queen's Scholarship he went to Culham, and there was placed in First Class Honours. His first and only appointment as Head Master was at Llanllechid, near Bangor; where he read for a degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and after carrying off several prizes, graduated B.A. in 1871 (when he proceeded M. A. in 1878, three of his brothers also took their degree). That same year, 1871, he was ordained Deacon to the Curacy of Llanwnog, and Priest in 1872. In 1875, he removed to the Curacy of Holy Trinity, Oswestry, and in 1876, he was appointed Inspector of Religious Knowledge for the Diocese of St. Asaph, in succession to the late John Arthur Jackson, B.A. In 1881, he was collated to the rectory of Efenechtyd, which he held with his Inspectorship; but he resigned both appointments in 1892