A Radnorshire Mormon from Nantmel

The parishes east of Presteigne seem to provide fertile ground for the more radical religious movements of the day.  After all the Lollard John Oldcastle was from Almeley and Ffransis Payne has some interesting things to say about the Quakers of the area, who "in comparison to whom the driest and least joyful members of our most narrow puritan sects would appear like cheerful pagans."

It was to this district that a young fellow from the Ysfa, Llewellyn Mantle of Crugnant, made his way in the 1820s.  Here he found work as a waggoner and in 1835 married a local girl, Kitty Watkins, in Byton parish church.  In 1842 the couple were converted by the latest missionaries to invade the district and quickly determined to join their prophet Joseph Smith and his Latter-Day Saints in Nauvoo Illinois.  You can read about Llewellyn's subsequent adventures here.  The Mantles were in Nauvoo when Smith was murdered, they migrated west, crossing the frozen Mississippi into Iowa. Having lost his sight in 1848 Llewellyn walked the thousand miles to Salt Lake City, arriving there in the autumn of 1851.  He died in Utah in 1901, aged 83.

Its easy to forget just how radical a group the Mormons were, with their polygamy - Llewellyn took a second wife in 1870, a Swiss woman called Margaret Egg - and violent confrontations with their neighbours such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.  Indeed the Mantles' daughter Sarah married the son of the legendary gunfighter Porter Rockwell, Mormondom's "destroying angel."

Shades of Anni Goch

The Radnorshire village of Norton may have a war memorial (in the form of a horse trough) with an inscription commemorating "its faithful sons who fought and died for England" but it also has a place in the history of Welsh literature.

There was a time when some might have claimed that Anni Goch, the subject of four (or is it five?) poems by the bard Ieuan Dyfi, wasn't a real person but a type, a stock figure.  The researches of academic Llinos Beverley Smith in the early 16C records of the Leominster Consistory Court have shown that Anni was real enough. She was the wife of John Lippard of Norton and her adulterous affairs, together with accusations of rape and attempted murder were enough to have her bardic paramour whipped around Presteigne church, while hubby John received similar exercise at Presteigne, Noron and Byton.

It's said that some 160 bardic poems addressed to Radnorshire patrons have survived, to which should be added nearly 30 more for patrons living just across the border in what is now Herefordshire.  Hopefully these will one day be brought to wider Radnorian attention by someone qualified to do so.  In the meantime here's a rough translation of one of the poems to Anni Goch.  As Ieuan Dyfi's work found it's way into the manuscripts Anni's connection with Norton was forgotten and copyists substituted another placename that met the requirements of cynghanedd - Overton in Flintshire.  One manuscript did get it right though - Nortyn:

Cynydd ydwyf yn canu I am a huntsman blowing the horn That musters the host. I'll hunt with my swift hounds, Finding the scent is not easy, It was a hind with a bright form, That escaped me from a nearby forest . Everywhere there are snares I've set for my girl. Ni wn ar hynt yn y rhwyd Yn nydd antur na ddeintiwyd.* She stirs like a hart stirs Retreating and leaving the covert. And I'm like a huntsman's pup Pursuing her like a rampant stag. From Norton, colour of hazy sunshine, Out there she was lost. I don't know what land or region She makes for from my pursuit. Maybe she heads down south to the two Gwents To escape her confinement. The symbol of the island and my chieftain, Sir Water, allow me the field; And if the doe comes from the south, Then, Sir Rhys, allow me to yoke; Not to a wild beast or a tame creature But one who flies with your birds. If to Builth between turf and wind, Sir Wiliam, allow me to hunt. If  Gwynedd's your intention, Sir Tomos, allow me a prison. If to Powys, I'd spy you After the chase and settling the hounds, Further thanks will be paid, To tall Mr. Richard Herbert. If to Hereford, perchance, the fair one Flees, for fear of being mocked, In that land there's a chief, Mr. Owain Pwl, allow me a pure fist, May Ovid not forsake me, This is my complaint, she's hiding. From following the banks of the Wye, Nor a step above Monmouth, If she escapes from this lawsuit, Then to the Vaughans I'll present my case. If to England she tries to flee, I know judgement will come there: the barons of my king, The men of the guard who love wine, Will find the slim, upright girl In one of the winehouses of London. Or failing that, there's a long task To find the girl who I'm seeking, If she's disappeared completely then Dyfi will seek the girl throughout the world. Before the time comes to sing I lose the scent in the hazels. I'm sorrowful like Uthur for Eigr It nurses a pain. Oh for the wizards of Merddin To give me high magic for her! Like Gwdion who they often kept Working endlessly for Huan. If she resists the sorcerers' enchantments Is there a magic word she doesn't know? Beware she doesn't come on a bier To Edmund from the mount to the sea. Was there in the tale of Taliesin A girl from Greece of such great sorcery? In daylight she rules In purgatory her face will be! * Maybe someone can come up with a translation of this couplet which makes sense.

Frontier Post

Although the road from Walton to Presteigne flits to and fro across the border, it's easy enough to tell where you are; the Herefordshire sections being in such a worse state of repair than those of Radnorshire.  Arriving in Presteigne it's reassuring to see Owain Glyndwr's standard flying in the High Street. Some might argue that the reality was that Owain's forces sacked the town, but that would be to forget Edmund Mortimer's call for the Welshmen of Presteigne to give their allegiance to Glyndwr.  Clearly some still do.

On a recent visit I took the opportunity to purchase Mr. Parker's excellent history of the town, it's a book I read when it first came out in 1997 but this was a fairly recently updated edition.

If I have a criticism of this deservedly much praised volume. it's that only about 10% of  the book concerns the medieval town.  Perhaps local historians could make more of Welsh sources.  The public chastisement of the bard Ieuan Dyfi, he was symbolically whipped eight times around Presteigne church in 1501 after admitting adultery with Anni Goch - the basis for the bardic dispute between Ieuan and the female poet Gwerful Mechain.  Then there are the poems by Lewis Glyn Cothi to the lord of Stapleton, Dafydd Goch.  He came from the Fron, near Crossgates.  Or what about Morgan Elfael, the bard from Diserth who lived in Presteigne for at least twenty years and whose burial is recorded in the parish register, now found in Hereford Record Office - As an aside I find it interesting that Morgan was known by his bardic name in the public records (here for example in the lay subsidy for Presteigne, nine lines from the top).  And of course Elen Gethin lived out her days in Nash.

Moving on to a more general point, historians seem to get a bit sniffy when they use Welsh genealogical and historical sources.  They'll qualify a source by mentioning their unreliability or the bard's proneness to exaggeration.  As far as I can see these Welsh sources are no less reliable than the English records.  Are English lawyers and landowners and churchmen always reliable?  I'd make a guess that they were just as much a parcel of rogues as our present day establishments.

A Sober Christian Gentleman

William Stephens, clerk of the peace for Radnorshire and a churchwarden at Presteigne, had obviously taken quite a dislike to the town's young Carmarthen born curate John Davies.  For in 1884 the reverend gentleman and Stephens' 34 year old daughter Agnes were forced to marry "surreptitiously" in London.

The 71 year old Mr Stephens, he was born in Kington of a Llananno family, was not prepared to take this lying down. He had complained to the Bishop of Hereford that Davies was a drunkard and a vulgarian and had brought great scandal upon the church.  In January 1885 the Bishop ordered an ecclesiastical inquiry, which was held, appropriately enough given the charges, in Presteigne's Radnorshire Arms.

Stephens' lawyer presented his case to the Chancellor of the Diocese and the five members of the Ecclesiastical Commission. Davies had fallen drunkenly into the street while alighting from a carriage - witnesses said the horse had lurched unexpectedly and the curate was sober. Davies had frequently been drunk in his lodgings - the proprietors of the lodging house said no such thing although they had been pressed by Stephens to say otherwise. Mr Booker, a former teacher and church organist, recalled an incident of profanity following the death of the vicar's wife. Davies had argued that a hymn was too lively a choice for her funeral service.  He'd even resorted to extemporising a verse to the tune "Brief life is here our portion, tee-tum, tee-tum, tee-tum, Mrs West, old girl is gone" - ah but the ex-schoolteacher had been helped financially by Mr Stephens and admitted under cross-examination that he couldn't swear that Davies was drunk.  All the points in favour of the curate being greeted with laughter and applause from the delighted audience.

With Stephens' case disintegrating amidst accusations that it was brought through malice, the remainder of the curate's 25 character witnesses were excused and Davies himself took the stand.  Under oath he denied all the charges against him and that was the end of the matter.  The happy couple being borne away in a carriage by their many supporters and an evening of "the greatest enthusiasm prevailed."

William Stephens died in 1890, who knows if he was ever reconciled to his daughter's new husband.  John and Agnes Davies, she died in 1932, are found in later censuses living in Northamptonshire and Dorset.  Sadly the 1901 census records that their only child had been "feeble-minded" since birth.

UPDATE:

There's a brief mention of this - names withheld - in Mr Parker's History of Presteigne, which also reminds us of an earlier incident involving the church organist who had played the Dead March when the happy couple returned from their London elopement.  This incensed the good folk of Presteigne who burnt an effigy of the organist to the accompaniment of the self same tune played by a band.

Inspector Maddox tells it best by relating the charges brought by the organist against nine men for: "unlawfully and maliciously making or having caused to be made, a certain effigy or figure intended to represent the complainant, with having carried or caused it to be carried through the street of Presteigne, and made or caused to be made a great noise or disturbance with a band of music, and having caused a large number of people to collect around the said effigy in a certain field in the township of Stapleton, and having burned same in the presence of about three hundred people, with having riotously and tumultuously caused certain music to be played and making a great noise and disturbance, thereby creating a breach of the peace."

The nine were bound over and the town's police sergeant, whose evidence was deemed too flippant by the powers that be, reduced to the rank of a second class constable.  The organist, perhaps wisely,  moved back to Oxfordshire.

Putting on Weight

The Radnorshire Society Transactions - and many thanks to the National Library for making so much historical information available on-line - has a couple of references to a murder committed in 1554 by a William Treylo of Ackhill. William had killed one John Hebbe in Presteigne by striking him a single blow to the head with a hedge bill.

Another Treylo - a name probably derived from a local placename Maes Treylow near Discoed and responsible for modern day surnames such as Traylor, Trelloe and Trillo - who fell foul of the law was John Treylo, also of Ackhill, who was seemingly pressed to death in 1578, the punishment reserved for those who refused to plead and sometimes chosen in order to avoid a guilty verdict and the subsequent confiscation of family property by the crown. Pressing continued until 1741 while burning at the stake, a punishment by then reserved for women, wasn't abolished until 1790.

Forgotten Radnorians

Now here's a name that shouts out a Radnorshire origin. His father was from Presteigne but the family roots were in Llanbister, where else.

Gummer or Gummey

I can't say that I'm a great fan of the politician John Selwyn Gummer although I did applaud when he encouraged his young daughter to eat a nourishing beefburger during the CJD panic a few years ago. It's well known that Gummer's father was a South Walian but how many are aware that his family originated on the Radnorshire/Herefordshire border? Gummer's grandfather was born in Kington and his great-grandfather in Lyonshall, although to agricultural labouring Radnorshire parents from Old Radnor, who sensibly moved back over the border.

So who were these Gummers or Gumma as it is sometimes recorded in the census returns? For although the name is found elsewhere in England there is certainly a hotspot in the Presteigne and Kington areas. The obvious answer would be that it is derived from the Gumma farm on the road between Discoed and Presteigne, after all there's a Ieuan Voghan Gumma mentioned in a document dated 1481 and brought to light in E J L Cole's article Clandestine Marriages, The Awful Evidence From A Consistory Court, which appeared in the Radnorshire Society Transactions for 1976. Of course you can't be sure of such a connection without a lot more evidence and it's true that there are no Gummers in subsequent records such as the 1670 Hearth Tax. What you do find are names like Gummey, Gommey etc. which could, I suppose, be derived from another local placename Combe - there's a Rees Combe mentioned in Mr Cole's article along with his wife Deylee Wythell (I used to imagine that could be translated as Irish Deylee but it's more likely to be another local placename Weythell). Mr Cole considers that the name Agomey indeed means "of Gumma" so perhaps Baron Deben's roots are to be found in that particular farm after all.

Ramblings aside it is clear that the eastern fringe of Radnorshire - and it is very much a fringe in a county where the Welsh patronymic system predominated - did give rise to hereditary surnames derived from local villages and farms. I'll look at some of them later.

Around the Radnorshire Blogs

Llandod exiles might be interested in the Radnor Bird blog and their excellent snaps of the feathered inhabitants of the Spa town's famous Lake. Plus, of course, the newly arrived family of otters. See here.

I seem to remember that some of the last otter hunts would have been on the Wye around Builth in the mid 1970s. So some things, at least, have changed for the better.

Y Dysgwr Araf has recently revived his Welsh language blog. While landodlip seems to have called it a day after being threatened with m'learned friend.

Presteigne blogger Ian Marchant was recently lifted for non-payment of parking fines. See his old blog, or the new website. Now I was recently in Presteigne and ended up in the car park above the High Street, off Heol Joe Deakins. The pay and display machine was out of order and, by the look of things, had been for quite a while. Of course there were plenty of the usual signs threatening dire consequences for failure to display the necessary ticket. So what should a visitor do? Risk leaving the car and ending up with a fine or clamped by infallible authority, or just drive on? No wonder the car park was virtually empty.

Forgotten Radnorians - Sir Harford Jones

With a collection of his papers recently selling at Sotheby's for £217k, Presteigne born Harford Jones (1764-1747) can hardly said to be forgotten by those with an interest in the history of Iran and Iraq. An adventurer, linguist, agent of the East India Company, jewel merchant, author and ambassador to the court of the Shah of Persia, Harford Jones spent the years between 1783 and 1811 in places that feature prominently in today's headlines; Basra, Baghdad and Tehran.

Of course Radnorians will be interested in his local connections - what for example happened to the three children, by his Armenian mistress Maria Gorjee, brought back to Boultibrooke by his wife?

In his recent book on Radnorshire politics Keith Parker describes Harford Jones as pompous, yet many will surely sympathise with his enlightened political standpoints. Jones was a supporter of parliamentary reform and of the cottagers in their struggle against the enclosure of the commons, he also opposed tithes and was a campaigner against the abolition of the Court of Great Sessions.*

* Many people seem to think that an independent Welsh legal system ended with the laws of Hywel Dda. Infact the Court of Great Sessions was a separate and powerful Welsh institution until it was abolished in 1830.

Forgotten Radnorians - Anni Goch

Perhaps the border village of Norton might not strike the casual observer as being the most "welsh" place in Wales, yet it was the home of that formidable femme fatale and figure in Welsh literature Anni Goch.

Anni first appears in the public record in 1501/02 when she and the bard Ieuan Dyfi were brought before a church court accused of adultery. Ieuan confessed and was sentenced to be symbolically whipped eight times around Presteigne church. Anni denied the charge and later turned up in court with four compurgators who swore that she had been raped.

It was probably this incident that caused Ieuan to compose his often copied diatribe against Anni Goch in particular and womankind in general. A poem that caused the proto-feminist bard Gwerful Mechain to reply with her famous defence of the female gender.

Further light is thrown on the relationship between Anni and Ieuan by another church case brought in 1517. On this occasion John Lippard of Norton, Anni's husband was accused of bigamy, having contracted a marriage while still being wed to Anni. Lippard confessed and was sentenced to be whipped around the churches of Presteigne, Norton and Byton. His defence being that he had left Anni because she had plotted to kill him. Anni was brought to the court where she gave evidence that her marriage to Lippard had lasted only six months, that she had committed adultery with Ieuan Dyfi and two others and that her husband had sold her to the bard. The judge was so impressed with Anni's testimony that he demanded that poor Lippard restore full conjugal rights to his spurned wife within three days, on pain of excommunication.

Perhaps Ieuan had a point after all?

Sarah Chandler

Sarah Chandler was the most celebrated of the 65 Radnorians, including 9 women, transported to Australia between 1788 and 1852. In 1814 Chandler was found guilty of altering three Kington Bank one pound notes and sentenced to death, Judge George Hardinge being unmoved by the fact that the 37 year old forger was pregnant and had seven children under the age of ten - Hardinge of course had also sentenced poor Mary Morgan to the gallows.

Chandler's plight excited a good deal of sympathy in Radnorshire. She was described as "a very jolly good looking woman" and her husband Thomas Chandler of Dolley, Presteigne was said to have kept her short of money and to have treated her cruelly. The hangman was cheated however when Chandler's brothers managed to effect her escape from Presteigne jail in August 1814, she was not recaptured until she was discovered in Birmingham more than two years later. Petitions on Sarah's behalf were subsequently received from many leading citizens, including the High Sheriff and the owners of the Kington Bank. Hardinge's recommendation that she should nonetheless hang was overturned and in 1817 she sailed for New South Wales to commence a life sentence.

All this is well known, but an article in the Northern Star of 1845 provides some further interesting information on Sarah Chandler's background. It seems that Sarah was a member of a notorious family from Bugeildy called Bowen. A family whom the Star claimed lived mainly by plunder and were a terror to the neighbourhood. The article was prompted by the fact that five members of the clan languished at that time in Presteigne jail for various offences. The exact relationships are a little confused but seem to include Sarah's brothers Francis and William and William's son William Bowen Jones held for theft, Francis' son Francis jnr and his wife Ann were also being held for transportation for sheep stealing. A few months before Sarah's son Richard Chandler and her 16 year old nephew Morgan Bowen had been transported for shearing a flock of sheep and selling the fleeces in Newtown. Another of Sarah's sons, Peter, had already been transported in 1824.

Who were these Bowens? A Morgan Bowen of Bugeildy had been prosecuted for attempting to ravish a certain Anne Evans in 1775. Bowen was of gentry status, as was Sarah Chandler's mean-spirited husband. Perhaps they belonged to that class of people called the manwyr by sixteenth century bards in Radnorshire, families of the old bonheddig or noble class who had fallen on hard times after the Acts of Union and who were often a source of dissatisfaction and rebellion.

I don't know what happened to Sarah in Australia. Her brother Francis died in Melbourne in 1853, his wife surviving until 1876. Young Morgan the shearer lived on until 1902.

Welsh in Presteigne

How much Welsh was spoken in Presteigne in 1670, at the time of the Hearth Tax Return? Mr Howse thought that the language disappeared from the streets of the town soon after it became the administrative centre of the new county of Radnorshire in 1542. It is certainly the place in the county most likely to be anglicised. The town was close to historically English speaking parishes* and the 1670 return shows that more than half the population had English surnames. The English were particulary strong amongst the middle class:

Social Class based on Surnames and Hearths

Hearths	% of total	% Welsh	% English
+ 5 Hearths	5.5	57	43
4-5 Hearths	16.5	43	57
2-3 Hearths	19.7	32	68
1 Hearth Charged	13.4	41	59
1 Hearth Uncharged	44.9	59	41
Total population		49	51

Mr Howse offers no evidence for his view and admits that sixteenth century wills from the town are "full of Welsh names, with their aps to the second and third generation back." Likewise the town's other historian Mr Parker notes that even in 1620 some 18% of Presteigne landowners were still using the patronymic system rather than surnames.

Even as late as 1675 there is a record of forty of "the poorest Welsh children" of the town being put to school to learn English. This would be around a third of the school age population and interestingly around a third of the town's population in the Hearth tax were poor and with Welsh surnames.

By 1800 the Welsh language was certainly gone from Presteigne, this would suggest that it finally disappeared from the lips of townsfolk during the first half of the eighteenth century, maybe 200 years after the demise accorded it by Mr Howse.

* Elsewhere along the border many parishes in England continued to be Welsh speaking long after the border between Wales and England was drawn in 1536, in Herefordshire south of the Wye for example or in the Oswestry district. The parishes east of Presteigne were nearly all English speaking and so Presteigne was truly a border town.

A Forgotten Radnorian

Born in Presteigne in 1865, the son of a stone mason, Thomas Griffiths emigrated to Australia, enlisted as a gunner in 1886 in the Victorian Artillery and rose through the ranks to become a Brigadier General in the Australian Imperial Force. His Australian Dictionary of Biography entry has him being educated in Wrexham, which may be true, although the 1881 census still shows him living at home in Presteigne and working as a carpenter.

Described as one of the great figures in the Australian Army, how far would Griffiths have progressed if he had enlisted in the British Army? I think we all know the answer to that!

Crockett, the Lion-Conqueror

James Crockett, the Lion-conqueror was born around 1831 in Presteigne, the son of a circus musician and the 6'9'' Miss Cross, the Nottinghamshire giantess. His Radnorshire birthplace is confirmed in the 1851 census as well as in contemporary newspaper reports.

At first Crockett followed his father's profession by playing in the band of Sanger's Circus, but weakened lungs saw him take on the role of lion-tamer. In 1861 Crockett shot to fame when his lions escaped into Astleys Amphitheatre, killing a young lad in the process. Armed only with a whip the lion-conqueror succeeded in returning the beasts to their cage.

Having played in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg, Crockett crossed the Atlantic to the United States in 1864 and it was there the following year that he died. The Lion-Conqueror dropped dead after having spent the morning riding in a 4th of July procession in Cincinnati wearing a tin helmet inspite of the intense heat.