Bishops of Llandaff and St. David's about the jurisdiction, P. Honorius describes the five lordships in dispute as so many parishes: "illas quinque plebes uidelicet Guoher. Chedueli . Cantre bachan. estrateu. Erchin."

In the first half of the following century a terrible revenge was taken in the upper part of this valley. The Welsh Chronicle informs us that "in 1135, Morgan ap Owen, a man of considerable quality and estate in Wales, remembering the wrong and injury he had received at the hands of Richard Fitz Gilbert, slew him, together with his son Gilbert." And Giraldus Cambrensis enables us to identify the spot where it took place as "the passage of Coed Grono," i.e., of the Wood on the Grwyney, or, as it was afterwards called, the "Wood of Vengeance" (Coed dial). This Richard [de Clare] had two castles in Cardiganshire, and was on his way thither when he met his death. "At the passage of Coed Grono, and at the entrance into the wood, he dismissed him (Brian de Wallingford, Lord of this province) and his attendants, though much against their will, and proceeded on his journey unarmed, from too great a presumption of security, preceded only by a minstrel and a singer, one accompanying the other on a fiddle. The Welsh awaiting his arrival, with Iorwerth, brother of Morgan of Caerlleon, at their head, and others of his family, rushed upon him unawares from the thickets, and killed him and many of his followers.3 This spirit of bitter retaliation, arising from the unscrupulous greed of the Normans, was strong in this district; as, indeed, it

1 Book of Llandav, p. 46.

2 Is this personal name, "Grono," the origin of the name of the river "Grwyney"? The transition from the full form "Goronwy" to Grwyney would be easy; but to have a river named after a person would be most unusual, and the river-name" Grwyney" may be the truer form of the word "Coed Gronwy," as it is sometimes called.

3 The Itinerary through Wales (Bohn), p. 365.

must have been wherever the Marcher Lords planted their invading foot. "The natives of these parts (ie., the mountains of Talgarth and Ewyas), actuated by continual enmities and implacable hatred, are perpetually engaged in bloody contests. Indeed, in the stanzas on "the characteristics of different parts of Wales" (Cynneddfau amryw o Barthau Cymru) we find these features stereotyped on this part of the Borderland.

Brecknock is full of treason, and there is war in Ystrad Towey.

"In Ewyas is found hatred and starvation;

"In Glyn bwch are mangling and sharp words;

In Talgarth robbery and shame, bribes and lawyers.'

Some fifty years later in the century, Giraldus himself passed through, when in 1188 he accompanied Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, on his crusading mission through Wales. On their way from Llanddew,* near Brecon, to Abergavenny, they did not follow the shorter and easier route down the Usk Valley, but "took the road to Talgarth, a small village a little to the south-east of the road leading from Brecknock to Hay; from whence, climbing up a steep pitch, now called "Rhiw Cwnstabl," or the Constable's ascent, he crossed the Black Mountains of Llanelieu to the source of the Gronwy-fawr river, which rises in that eminence and

1 The Itinerary through Wales, p. 353.

2 "A Brycheiniog yn llawn brad a chad yn ystrad towri.

Cnawd

yn euas gas ac oerfel

Ynglyn bwch trwch trychu chwedel

A lledrad ynhalgarth a gwarth a gwerth a Chwnsel.”

Myf. Arch. (Ed. 1870), p. 357.

3 This was Giraldus's own residence, of which he writes:"Collateralem & propinquum principali de Brecheinoc castro loculum habens & domicilium felici quadam mediocritate studiis idoneum atque labori. Quem suis semper delitiis plenum & æternitatis amicum Crosi divitiis longe præfero: quinimo cunctis que perire ac preterire possunt, incomparabiliter antepono.-Itin. Cambr., vol. i, p. 97.

pursues its rapid course into the Vale of Usk. From thence a rugged and uneven track descends suddenly into a narrow glen, formed by the torrent of the Gronwy, between steep impending mountains, bleak and barren for the first four or five miles, but afterwards wooded to the very margin of the stream. A high ledge of grassy hills on the left hand, of which the principal is called the Bal, or Y Fal, divides this formidable pass (Malus Passus') from the Vale of Ewyas, in which stands the noble monastery of Llanthoni (montibus suis inclusum '), encircled by its mountains. The road at length emerging from this deep recess of Coed Grono, or Cwm Gronwy, the vale of the river Gronwy, crosses the river at a place called 'Pont Escob,' or the Bishop's Bridge, probably so called from this very circumstance of its having been now passed by the Archbishop and his suite, and is continued through the forest of Moel till it joins the Hereford road, about two miles from Abergavenny. This formidable defile is at least nine miles in length." Thus skilfully does Sir Richard Colt Hoare work out the slender but suggestive hint given by Giraldus when he wrote. From thence we proceeded through the narrow, woody tract called the "bad pass of Coed Grono," leaving the noble monastery of Lanthoni, enclosed by its mountains on our left. In this memorable journey did the Archbishop and Giraldus visit the church of Partrishow? Most likely they did. For they must, in any case, have passed close by it; and in the account of Llanthoni, which they did not visit, "leaving it on their left," Giraldus's description seems to be almost borrowed from Partrishow: "a deep vale, about an arrow-shot broad;" "a situation truly calculated for

3

1 The Itinerary (Bohn), p. 364 n.

2 Transivimus inde versus Abergeuenni per arctum illud Siluestre, quod malum passum de Coed Grono vocant, nobile Cænobium de Lanthoni montibus suis inclusum a latere sinistro relinquentes."

3 Itin. Cambr., p. 100.

religion, and more adapted to canonical discipline, than all the monasteries in the British isle."

The Norwich Taxation, A.D. 1253, for St. David's is not known to exist; and in the Lincoln Taxation of 1291 the place is not named, nor is any place indicated under Llanbedr, though of course it must have been included. Nor yet does it occur in the Valor of 26 Hen. VIII, 1535; but the presentation of Thomas Williams, by William, Marquis of Worcester, in 1555, was made "to the Rectory of St. Peter's with the chapel of Llanysho, otherwise Llanbedr and Partrisso." Of its intermediate mediæval history, therefore, we know nothing. Whether the two stone altars were erected at the same time is nowhere stated; but from their relative position and symmetry, we have no doubt they were, and both of them were evidently anterior to the rood-loft, which was erected in the fifteenth century over them, leaving a very small portion of each slab on the eastern side, though by far the greatest part of each is on the west. Who designed it or worked out its beautiful carvings is not known; but it was probably the handywork of some of the skilled "conversi," or lay brethren, of Llanthony, while the funds for its production must have come from the liberal gifts of pilgrims and travellers. To the same source, and probably the same period, we may attribute the churchyard cross, the stem of which is still standing, though shorn of its carved and canopied head. Upon the stone bench along the south wall, we pictured ourselves among the rude forefathers of the parish, with pilgrims and strangers from many a distant part; the aged and weary resting-while the younger and stronger stood around-all listening, with strained ears, on some great festival day, to the absorbing Story of the Cross, and reverently looking at Him, to whom the aged priest, as he stood upon its steps, pointed as evidently set forth crucified before their eyes; and surely few places could be more appropriate for such

1 The Itinerary, p. 354.

2 Galatians iii, 1.

moving and inspiring scenes than that quiet, restful, sacred spot. Whether due to this feeling of reverence, or to its seclusion and comparative insignificance, or partly to both, it was greatly spared at the Reformation. and in the Commonwealth régime; but it did not altogether escape: the shrine was denuded of its image, and the head of the cross destroyed. It was probably to the iconoclasm of the Commonwealth that this was due, for then the old rector, Thomas Cecil, who had been a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Proctor of the University, was deprived of his living, in which he was succeeded by Elias Harri, a cobbler.1 But on the Restoration he, too, in turn, was ejected2 and Cecil restored. The most eminent of all the rectors was Francis Godwin, Student of Christ Church, Oxford, appointed in 1584, and promoted to the bishopric of Llandaff in 1601 (in succession to William Morgan, the translator of the Old Testament into Welsh), and thence transferred to Hereford in 1617. He is described by Browne Willis as "a most curious searcher into antiquity," and was the author of A Catalogue of the Bishops of England, 1614, of which a Latin version was published in 1616 under the title of De Presulibus Angliæ.3

The visit to the church ended, we turned homewards, and noticed the evidence of the earlier travellers in the foundations of walls, on the timber-covered patch between the churchyard and the lane; and as we moved downwards between the steep sides of the deepworn track, a wish was expressed that we might find some wayside cross or other memorial of the ancient Pilgrim Road. We had not proceeded more than twenty yards when we saw lying by the roadside a rough and unshaped stone, some 3 ft. 8 in. long by I ft. 8 in. at its broadest part, on which was carved a

p.

1 Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy," in Jones's Brecknockshire, 381 n.

2 Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 2nd ed., p. 123.

3 Llandaff, pp. 67, 68.