Welsh Journals

THE LEWES FAMILY OF ABERNANTBYCHAN* THOSE who have rummaged in seventeenth century Cardiganshire history will probably have become vaguely aware of the prominence in the public affairs of the county of the Lewes family of Abernant- bychan, later of Coedmor. Although three groups of records of the family have come down to us it is unfortunately the fact of this prominence rather than the intrinsic interest of the surviving documents that will have to justify an account of the family. Members of the family were thirteen times returned to Parliament, yet nothing new comes to light concerning their political or parliamentary activities, perfunctory though these may largely have been. Colonel James Lewes had a conspicuous part during the Civil War and under the Commonwealth, yet it remains one of which we only catch glimpses. We have next to no means of judging the intellectual qualities and interests of any of the family. It does, however, seem that Abernant- bychan was not among the Cardiganshire plasau which continued into the seventeenth century to patronize the Welsh poets, even though Sir John Lewes married a daughter of Gogerddan, the last great home of such patronage in the county no poems written to or for a member of the family appear to be extant. No portraits of any of the family are recorded. The material we are left with, in the three groups of records mentioned, consists for the most part of deeds, and the account that follows is primarily a story of land, its purchase and descent. A section so cut does not provide a very instructive view of history it is, how- ever, a necessary aid to the understanding of family archives. The three archives in which groups of Abernantbychan records are to be found are those of Gogerddan,1 Coedmor, and Noyadd Tre-fawr.8 On the whole the Abernantbychan records that are now in the Gogerddan and Coedmor archives are those that, given the descent of estates described below, one would expect to find where they are a fairly small number of deeds relating to the Coedmor estate are among the Gogerddan muniments, and vice-versa, no doubt because of imperfect sorting when John Lewes sold the Coedmor estate. The presence of Abernantbychan deeds in the Noyadd Tre- fawr archive on the other hand makes prima facie no archival sense whatsoever and one has to search for an explanation. The Noyadd Tre-fawr archive contains besides that of Abernant- bychan a substantial stray group of deeds and papers relating to the Lewes family of Gellidywyll (in the parish of Cenarth) for the period *Based on an address delivered to the Society at Aberystwyth, 28 June 1969.