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THE TREGAER MANUSCRIPT: AN ELEGY FOR CHARLES I THE Gwent Record Office holds the only extant copy of an anonymous seventeenth-century poem in Welsh on the execution of Charles I.1 In September 1996 while I was helping to prepare an exhibition on behalf of the Gwent Record Office for the Monmouthshire Antiquarians' Day School on the topic of the Civil War, a colleague drew my attention to the following entry on a subject index card: 'Welsh Rhyming Couplets on the deposition and execution of Charles I, with translation, seventeenth century (probably contemporary)'. In the strongroom I found 64 anonymous quatrains written on a single leaf of paper together with correspondence between the County Archivist and Professor Geraint Gruffydd dated 1973. Included with the document was a rather inaccurate English translation. An entry in the Record Office's Accessions Register for 4th January 1973 records that the vicar of Dingestow and Tregare [sic] deposited eighteenth- and nineteenth-century documents including overseers of the poor assessment and account books, a churchwardens' account book, a vestry and parish meeting minute book, a tithe map and apportionment and a Charity account book. Although there is no mention of the poem, it must have been in the Tregaer safe as the then County Archivist, Mr W. H. Baker, wrote on 9th January 1973 to Professor A. O. H. Jarman of Cardiff, stating that the poem had been found in Tregaer Church. The latter suggested that Mr Baker write to Professor Geraint Gruffydd, who, in reply to Mr Baker's queries, wrote that the manuscript was not a holograph, but might be in the hand of the fervent Royalist from Blaenau Gwent, Jenkin Richards, who copied into NLW MS 13072B poetry written by himself and others attacking the Puritans of Monmouthshire. Professor Gruffydd has since 1973 changed his mind regarding the identity of the scribe.2 In the present article the form, language and contents of the poem are discussed, with particular attention given to its place within English and Welsh literary traditions of the Stuart period, and its significance in the political and religious life of seventeenth-century Monmouthshire. The poem is printed with a tentative translation; Dr. Gwenllian Awbery has provided an appendix on the language of the poem. The Manuscript (see figure 1). Material The poem is written on a single page of paper which measures 39cm x 15cm when folded in half. The paper has a Norman pot watermark crowned by a five- jewelled crown with fleuron. This paper mark was common on paper imported