CHAPTER XIII

BRECON

Dreary country-The Happy Valley-Irish invasion of Brecon-BrychanLater history of Brycheiniog-Conquest by Bernard Newmarch-Battle of Bannium-Nest and Mabel - Bannium-Pencefngaer-S. Alud— Llanddew-Henry Vaughan-Sir David Gam-Bishop Morton-The Duke of Buckingham-Llangorse-A Cranoge-Trevecca-Bedd Gwyl Illtyd Bronllys-The Brecknock Beacons Buallt - Builth - James Howel-The springs of Llangammarch—The last Llewelyn—His death— The Plantagenet.

TH

HE line from Cardiff to Brecon crawls by iron and coal mines, heaps of slag, mean collections of cottages, then over bald and dreary moorland, till it sweeps down into the vale of the Usk, and at once we are in an earthly paradise, where all is beautiful, rich, and prosperous. From the seamy side we have passed to the fair face. The great Brecon basin is like the Happy Valley of Rasselas. Its prosperity is due largely to the overflow of wealth from the sordid fringe to the south. But natural fertility gives to it a charm apart from that furnished by fine parks and gentlemen's extensive grounds. And we cannot wonder that it proved a bite at which every invader has snapped.

The first to come down on it, and that over the mountain lip to the west, were the Irish. We know nothing of the details, only the fact that the Irish King, Anlac (Amalgaidh), was firmly settled there, married to the daughter of the native prince, at the very beginning of the fifth century. What are now Cardiganshire, Carmar

thenshire, and Pembrokeshire were already in the possession of the Irish, and the invasion of Brecon by Anlac was probably not so much one of wife-hunting as of conquest.

The rich and fertile basin was then called Garth Madryn; later it acquired its name of Brycheiniog from Brychan, the son of Anlac, a great personality, who has not only stamped his name on the county, but has left an indelible impression on the ecclesiastical history of Wales and Cornwall; and yet of him we know almost nothing. He seems, like Charlemagne, to have had a considerable number of wives, and, like Charlemagne also, to have been a great patron of the Church.

What little is known of him may be summed up in a few words. His father committed him to be fostered by the Prince of Powys, and he there seduced Banhadlen, the daughter of the prince, and by her became the father of S. Cynog, to whom he gave his bracelet.

This escapade probably led to his having to leave Powys. He is credited by the Welsh with having had three wives-one was a Spaniard-by whom he had many children. The Bretons gave him a third wife, and the Irish a fourth.

The Welsh say that he was the father of twenty-four sons and twenty-four daughters-the Cornish add several to this number, the Irish others, and the Bretons one. The Triads record that he "brought up his children and grandchildren in learning and the liberal arts, that they might be able to show the faith in Christ to the nation of the Cymry," which was very considerate of him; but they must have had tough work to inspire the rudiments of Christian morality into the Cymry, shaken by the example of their father and prince. However, the genealogies of the offspring of Brychan are not to be relied on, for it is certain that grandchildren, and perhaps even great-grandchildren, were included in the number. All that is really meant by the family record is that those named belonged

by blood to the tribe, and had tribal rights in the land Brychan had ruled. The Welsh records have no more to say of him than that he was buried in Ynys Brychan in the north. This would lead one to suspect that he was turned out of his principality; and this is made likely by the fact that most of his reputed sons entered the ecclesiastical state, and so qualified themselves to be left in undisturbed possession of small llans or churches. Indeed, only two of them embraced the military profession, and one of these held a principality in North Carmarthen, and the other an eastern slip of Brecknock.

A curious representation of Brychan is in fifteenthcentury stained glass in S. Neot's Church, Cornwall, representing him as a king enthroned with a lapful of children. It was due, doubtless, to the upheaval of the Welsh, assisted by the refugees from Strath Clyde, and the expulsion of the Irish, that so large a migration of the Brychan family took place. Some escaped to Ireland, into Wexford and Wicklow, and many into North-East Cornwall.

The later history of Brycheiniog presents the usual picture of internal feuds, and all remains obscure till we come to the close of the eleventh century, but it is certain that it was raided several times by the Mercians and West Saxons. For, indeed, the Happy Valley lay unfortunately open towards the east, either by the valley of the Usk, or, more easily still, by that of the Wye, from which it is divided by merely a neck of slight elevation. In fact, the Afon Llynfi, a feeder of the Wye, flows out of the Llangorse Lake that lies in the basin, not much over a mile from the Usk. Ethelbald, King of Mercia, we know, attempted to ravage Brycheiniog, and a bloody battle was fought at Carno, in the parish of Llangattwg, near Crickhowel. Brycheiniog was again invaded by the great Lady of the Mercians, Ethelfleda, daughter of King Alfred. This was in 916. She stormed the fortress of