Welsh Journals

Theophylact's Welsh visitation suggests Offa may have entertained a dream of incorporating Powys into his Mercian archbishopric. If so, there is no record of any protest from the men of Powys. The Flintshire place-name Bistre is of Anglo-Saxon origin, a contraction of Bishop's tree. It is in the region of Englefield or Tegeingl, taken over by the English in the Offan expansion. The name suggests the tree was either an episcopal boundary mark or the place where the bishop regularly stopped on his visitations. The episcopal centre at St Asaph seems to have been in abeyance at this time, so that the question is raised whether the Mercian bishop of Lichfield claimed these newly acquired Mercian areas as being within his jurisdiction. Prestatyn was not far away, and on the northern extremity of Offa's Dyke. Here again the Anglo-Saxon origin of the name suggests this priest's tun was within the sphere of influence of the Church in Mercia. A similar extension of its influence is suggested in southern Powys by the Radnorshire place-name Presteign. If Mercian priests were prepared to have their tuns on the threshold of Powys, not only must they have expected to live in peace and safety, but also to have had satisfactory relations with their Welsh counterparts. Despite the anti-Welsh spirit of his Ecclesiastical History, the Annales Cambriae record the death of Bede in 735, as well as that of Cuthbert, abbot of Jarrow and Wearmouth, in 777. The Welsh Triads speak of 'Three men who received the wisdom of Adam, Cato the old, and Bede, and Sibli the wise.' the Book of Taliesin assured its readers that 'the books of Bede tell no lies'79. The well known similarity between the decoration on the twin crosses at Sandbach, a few miles north-east of Crewe, and the Pembrokeshire Pennaly cross is further evidence of the Anglo-Welsh cultural relationship. All of these crosses are influenced by Northumbrian art. The Viking raids began in 786, displacing Northumbrian artists, who made their way by land as well as by sea westward. Like the ninth century Pillar of Eliseg at Valle Crucis, these monuments point 'unmistakably to cultural connexions at this time between Wales and England'80. Similarly, the eighth century movement which brought the Church in Mercia into a closer relationship with the Continent was paralleled in Wales. The new method for calculating the date of Easter came into gradual use from 768, and Welsh churchmen began to see the attraction of a visit to Rome. Cyngen, prince of Powys, after a long reign, closed his career with a pilgrimage to Rome, where he died in 854. The sparse population, Welsh or English, of the Marches must have been an important contributary factor to the similarity between the Church in Mercia and Powys. Allowing for the fact some Christian monuments have been destroyed and that others remain undiscovered, their distribution in the Marches remains thin. The majority of early Christian Welsh monuments are