Welsh Journals

DECEMBER, 1879. THE CAMBRIAN REMEMBRANCER 133 upon the Britons defeated the Picts and Saxons in the year 420. Mr Nehemiah Griffith put up a column in 1736 in remembrance of that great event. Gwysanney, the seat of the Cooke family, is not far from it, and indeed the whole neighbourhood abounds in historic reminiscences, very well de¬ serving of the study of antiquarians. We find the following allusion to the family whence the Cookes of Gwysanney are descended, in Yorke's Royal Tribes of Wales:—" From Cynrig Etell, Lord of Eglwysegle, the twin son of Madog ab Maredudd, and great-grandson of the founder of the tribe, are descended the Davieses of Llannerch or Lleweni fechan, and Gwasanau. The last, it is said, is a corruption of Hosannah, and allusory to the Alleluatic victory gained over the Saxons and Picts beneath it. This old mansion was garrisoned in the civil wars, and taken from the Royalists by the Parliament General, Sir William Brereton, a.tj. 1645. Llannerch came to the family on the marriage of Robert Davies, of Gwasanau, with Anne, eldest daughter and heiress of S'r Peter Mutton, Chief Justice of North Wales. The last of the male line at Llannerch was John Davies, who died a bachelor, in 1785, and he was succeeded by his sisters, co¬ heiresses ; the elder, Letitia, of Llannerch, married to Daniel Leo, Esq. ; the younger, Mary, of Gwasanau, to Phillip Puleston, of Hafod y Wern, Esq." Accoi'dingto Wynn's History of the Gwydir family, Hafod y Wern came into the Puleston family thus:— " Ieuan ab Hywel ab Meredudd, the fourth in descent from Rhodri, Lord of Anglesey, had a daughter and co-possessor, that married Hywel ab Grono ab Hywel of Maelor, and by him she had two daughters, viz., Gwerfyl, married to Tudur ab Hobydili; and Alice, married to John Puleston, a younger son of Emril, and she brought Hafod y Wern; into that family." It was Pennant who started the notion that Gwasanau was a corruption of the word Hosannah, at all events so a writer of the last century says, but Alleluia was the word Gerrriaius instructed his followers to repeat, and it is rather far fetched, therefore, to trace the name of this old house to the English word in question. We must try to find some better derivation for. the name, and I hope some of your learned readers will do so. Estyn ap Tango. Ewxoe Castle.—It has always been a moot point as- to the founder of this important castle. Mr Pennant was unable to give any very definite infor¬ mation about it, but Mr Thomas Hughes, of Chester, has given us in the ' Cheshire Sheaf,' an abstract of a Royal Inquisition dated 1311, which throws con¬ siderable light upon the subject. I quote it from that valuable publication:— "Ewloe manor. Inquisition upon a writ com¬ manding the justice of Chester to certify as to the king's right to the manor of Ewloe, finding that Oweyn Goneith (Gwynedd), sometime Prince of Wales, was seised of the manor of Ewloe, in his demesne as of fee; .at whose death David, son of Oweyn, entered on the said manor as Prince of Wales, and held the same until Thlewelyn, the son of Jor', overcame the said David, and took from him the said principality, together with the manor of Ewloe ; that the said Th!ewelyn died seised of the' said principality and manor, after whose death David son of the said Thlewelyn, entered upon the same manor and died seised thereof. After whose death King Henry 111. occupied the same and four Cantreds, in Wal°s, that is to say, those between the Dee and the Conway, and made Roger de Mohaut his justice of Chester; who attached the same manor to his (the said Roger's) neighbouring lands of Hawrthyn and, Mouhaldesdale, to which it had never belonged, and made a park of the wood of Ewloe ; and so held the same manor and park until Thlewelyn, son of Griff.. son of Thlewelyn, Prince of Wales, recovered the. said four cantreds from Henry III., and again attached them to the Principality of Wales. That the said Thlewelyn ousted the said Roger from the said manor, and attached the same to the Principa¬ lity as it was before, and built a castle, in the corner' of the wood, which was in great part standing at the time of the inquisition, and afterwards gave the said manor to Ithel ap Blethin to hold of him ; that the said Thlewelyn continued seised of the said manor as Prince of Wales until overcome by Edward I., who seised the; said manor not only in right of his conquest, but of the conquest by Henry III. of the said four cantreds. That after the death of Roger de Mohaut, the v^ife of Robert son of the said Roger recovered dower of the said manor, as the freehold ' of the said Roger, Joscelyn de Badelsmere then being justice of Chester. That the king, on the recovery of the said dower against him, removed the said Joscelyn and appointed Reginald de Grey justice of Chester, and .commanded him to inquire by what i rightjthe wife of the said Robert had recovered the said dower: that the said Reginald found that no claim of dower could be founded on the appropria¬ tion made of the manor by the said Roger while he was justice. Upon which finding the said wife was ousted from her dower, and the same taken into the king's hands; and that such was the right of the king to the said manor, which was of the yearly value of 60Z." Mr Hughes concludes not unfairly that Prince Llewelyn built Ewloe Castle about 1258, in the ex¬ pectation, doubtless, of being able to prevent the English from penetrating into the heart of North Wales. We know how entirely he failed in that ex¬ pectation, for Ed-ward the First, pushed his forces right forward, and eventually subjugated the whole of Wales. E. G. S Spectral Appearances on the Mountains.— A local interest has been evoked in relation to these appearances by a writer who noticed them on Yr Eifl. The following from the 'Christian World' is interesting so far as .it goes:—I remember seeing once from the top of Snowdon the whole of Carnar¬ vonshire, and, as far as the eye could see, covered with a perfectly level floor of pure white mist, which