Earlier perhaps a mercer of Llanrhaeadr yng Nghinmeirch North of Ruthin, mentioned in the Will of Thomas Pritchard Chief Agent of Chirk Castle proved in 1691.31

“Gent of Bodangharad in the County of Denbigh” Referred to in the Marriage Settlement between his son and “heir apparent” Richard Jones and Mary Williams “of Cadwgan in the County of Denbigh” dated 1716. His different surname from his son demonstrates the change of Welsh surnames at this time for gentry (later for others) from the patronymic to fixed surnames. Bodyangharad is near Ruthin in the parish of Llanfwrog, not far from Penygaltegva where his second son Thomas Jones, father of Magdalen, was described as of in Ruth Speed’s will.

Since Penygalltegfa was in Bodangharad Ucha (upper) township this could refer to one and the same place. There is stil standing a large house called Bodangharad Farm.

Certainly Richard Jones and later Ruth Speed held property in Bodangharad which Richard Jones inherited from John David.

John David described as “of Pengalltegva” was buried at Llanfwrog on Sept 19th 1727. His will is at the National Library of Wales. He is described in the will as “of Llanvoorog” (ie Llanfwrog). He gives his residuary estate to his son Thomas but no real estate is involved as this no doubt was dealt with by the earlier marriage settlement of his elder son Richard mentioned above.

The arms used by his son and illustrated on the memorial in Gresford Church and on the sinister side of Henry Jones’ bookplate: Gules two lions passant regardant in pale argent, in the usual Welsh tribal way either:

1) Indicate descent from Iorwerth ap Gruffydd of Bersham in Esclusham, see page 18 of Vol 3 The History of the Princes, the Lords Marcher, and the Ancient Nobility of Powys Fadog, and the Ancient Lords of Arwystli, Cedewen, and Meirionydd by J.Y.W. Lloyd, 1882.16 Also see Volume 2 page 127 as it appears the Jones-Parry family are also descendedd from Cynrwrig ap Rhiwallon.

Iorwerth appears to have been in turn descended from Tudor Trevor’s third son Dyngad, Lord of Maelor Cymraeg, his son Rhiwallon (Born about 965AD, of Maelor Gymraeg) and his son Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon, the 12th century arglwydd, or lord, of Maelor Gymraeg who is reputed to have rescued Gruffydd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd, from imprisonment in Chester.

Born about 995AD, of Maelor Gymraeg. Cynwrig married Annesta (Anne), daughter of Idnerth Benfras, Lord of Maesbrook, by whom he had two sons, Dafydd and Rhiwallon. Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon is sometimes confused with Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn, who was killed by the sons of Gruffudd in Lleyn.

2) Or or according to Siddons Vol II of The Development of Welsh Heraldry29 another entirely different later person living around 1200 CE : Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon ap Dolffin ap Rhiwallon of the Royal Tribe of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn whose pedigree appears on page 54 of the Bleddyn pages of Bartrum’s Welsh Genealogies 300-1400.

Debate not yet resolved! This also has an impact on the question of who is the ancesteor of the so called Progeny of Ken (Kenrick or Cynwrig) in Welsh Maeleor around Wrexham in medieval times.


See this site for more interesting details of the Cynwrig Tudor Trevor file tribe:

https://thefireonthehill.wordpress.com

The History of the Township of Brymbo

“We know fairly little of Brymbo in the time when Powys was a thriving kingdom. It was clearly a frontier area, as Offa’s Dyke cuts it in half. At the time of Domesday, much of the area had been in English hands for some time, although it was lightly populated, if at all. The Cheshire hundred of Exestan stretched around Wrexham as far as Offa’s Dyke, while to the north the hundred of Atti’s Cross covered much of later Flintshire. The preponderance of English township and other names – Esclusham, Bersham, Stansty, and of course Harwood – is a record of this period of English administration.

As mentioned in my previous post, the mining community of Minera, partly made up of Welshmen and partly of emigrants from Cheshire, first begins to appear in records from the 13th century. From the 14th century onwards, however, we have a series of “extents”, or surveys, which provide a more detailed picture of land ownership and which show a period of transition between Welsh and English systems, although by this time Welsh families have recovered occupation of the farmland itself. Welsh freeholders, who often held land jointly in loose, extended kindred groups, can be seen gradually becoming the gentry of the 16th and 17th centuries, enthusiastically adopting the Anglo-Norman fashion for heraldry as they went.

The First Extent of Bromfield and Yale (1315) was eventually transcribed and published by T P Ellis in 1924 as part of the Cymmrodorion Records Series. It shows that most of the area later known as the Maelor Gymraeg, including the townships of Esclusham, Broughton, Bersham and Brymbo, was at that time held by freemen belonging to a clan identified by Ellis as the “Progenies of Ken”. “Ken” in this context – Kenrick or Cynwrig – is the same gentleman (mis)named Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon, the “lord of Maelor Gymraeg”, by the 17th century Welsh heralds. His family and entourage probably originated in Trefydd Bychain, a tref in the vicinity of Llandegla, and at some point – perhaps during the reign of William Rufus, according to Ellis – swept down into the lower country to retake richer farmlands which had once been in Welsh hands but had since been occupied by the English.

By 1315 we find a single gwely or group of Cynwrig’s descendants – “Group IV” under Ellis’ classification – recorded as the freemen of much of Bersham, Esclusham and Brymbo. In fact, Brymbo is held almost entirely by them. They also hold “half of Esclusham except 1/16″, and two parts of Bersham. These were a line of men shown in later genealogies as descended from Niniaw, supposedly one of Cynwrig’s sons. Here are their names:

Morgan ap Hwfa, Hwfa Foel [“bald Hugh”], Philip ap Aur, Madoc ap Atha [Adda], Gronw his brother, Hwfa ap Atha, Ken[rick] ap Hwfa ap Aur, Llywelyn ap Aur, […] ap Madoc, Iennaf [Ieuaf?] ap Madoc, Atha ap Madoc, Eigon of Gwersyllt, Ior[werth] ap Madoc, Hywel ap Madoc, Griffi[th] ap Madoc, Griffi[th] ap Eigon, Ithel ap Eigon, Eigon Foel, Llywelyn ap Eigon, David ap Gronw, Ririd ap Philip, Hwfa ap Ithel, Ithel ap Ithel, Ior[werth] ap Owain, Atha his brother, David Lloyd [“grey David”], Hywel his brother, Madoc his brother, Hwfa Goch [“red Hugh”], Madoc his brother, Ienna ap Madoc, Tudur his brother, Bullen ap Madoc , Ken Foel ap Bullen, Ior ap Ivor, Tudur his brother, Eden his brother, Hwfa ap Tudur, Ririd his brother, Gronw Cynfelin [“yellow-haired Goronwy”], Madoc his brother, Ior his brother, Hwfa ap Ithel, Ior ap Madoc Foel, Eigon, Ken, and Gwyn his brothers, Ior ap Eden and Llewelyn Oen [“Llewelyn the lamb”]

In this period of transition between Welsh and English systems, their land was held jointly, and they jointly rendered various payments to the lordship. The direct descendants of these men, often styled as “gentry” under a more rigorously Anglo-Norman view of land ownership and inheritance though little more than independent farmers, continued to hold land in the manor of Esclusham for many more years. In fact even in the 1620 survey of Norden, we can see a John ap John, or John Jones, having a claimed descent from “Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon” and holding a fairly modest parcel of land freehold in Brymbo. Other families became major landowners under the English administration. The 1620 survey notes the land in Brymbo formerly belonging to Edward Jones of Plas Cadwgan in Esclusham, who had proudly claimed a pedigree showing descent from Cynwrig, and some held by John Roberts of Hafodybwch, who also possessed hundreds of acres.”


The nearest large house is Pool Park, which during the 18th Century was owned by Edward Jones. it was sold to the Bagot family (see Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage) in 1810.

John David or Davies was according to the same site perhaps related to Edward Jones of Plas Cadwgan (demolished only in 1967) executed for treason in 1586 for having taken part in the Babington plot.

“Amongst the list of Brymbo landowners given in Norden’s 1620 survey of Bromfield and Yale is the following more unusual entry: “Redd, vij s. Thomas Buckley tenet quatuo’ tenetmenta cum pertinenciis nuper terr’ Edwardi Johnes probitione. Attinct’ “. This may not mean a great deal if you’re unfamiliar with Latin abbreviations. Behind it, however, lies the dramatic story of Edward Jones, Esq, perhaps the only one of the area’s gentry executed for plotting – or allegedly plotting – their monarch’s death.

Like most of the other landowners hereabouts Edward Jones was a distant cousin of Brymbo’s Griffith family, being the great-great grandson of Edward ap Morgan of Brymbo via the latter’s daughter, Janet. In the male line, however, Jones was a descendant of Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon, the 12th century arglwydd, or lord, of Maelor Gymraeg. Thanks to the latter his family still had a very large estate in Esclusham; but they also held several parcels of land in Brymbo. They also had an old, rambling mansion known as Plas Cadwgan, located on Offa’s Dyke a little west of today’s village of Bersham: at the time of the hearth tax it was assessed for 16 hearths, a far larger building than any in Brymbo itself (there was a large mound at its back door long thought to be a Bronze Age site, though now assumed to be a mediaeval motte of some kind).

Jones’s father, also Edward, had been the Keeper of the Wardrobe to Queen Elizabeth, and had served as High Sherriff of Denbighshire in the 1570s. He died in 1581 (leaving money to set up a grammar school in Wrexham, amongst other legacies) having set his young son up in influential London circles. It was mixing in this kind of company that was eventually to lead to his downfall.

Jones was recommended to high-powered courtier the Earl of Leicester; he became close friends with another of Leicester’s proteges and a fellow Denbighshire man, Thomas Salusbury of Lleweni. It was perhaps under Salusbury’s influence that Jones, from a family that had previously appeared respectably orthodox, was to profess the Catholic faith. Both men became drawn into a circle of young recusants who despite their associations with the Court were also devoted to aiding and harbouring Jesuit missionaries: a dangerous business at the time.

It was to get considerably more dangerous, however, thanks to the attentions of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s Principal Secretary: Walsingham was desperate for evidence of Mary, Queen of Scots’ involvement in a treasonous plot against Elizabeth. He finally identified Anthony Babington, a wealthy, fashionable and perhaps rather arrogant member of Salusbury and Jones’s group, as the possible organiser of such a plot. Babington was devoted to Mary, had contacts amongst Mary’s supporters on the Continent, and was carelessly indiscreet. With the help of early cryptography and – according to some – the additional help of agents provocateurs, Walsingham gathered up evidence of a plan to kill Elizabeth and install Mary on the throne with Spanish backing. The net soon closed around Babington, Salusbury, and any others like Jones who had associated themselves with the ‘conspirators'; Jones was said to have been at home in Denbighshire when he heard the news. He attempted to help Salusbury to escape, but they were both soon caught.

In their evidence and subsequent show trials, several of the conspirators blamed Babington. Jones was denounced as having discussed plans for a Denbighshire rising with Salusbury as part of the plot, but maintained that his only concern had been to try and keep Salusbury away from the bad influence of the traitors as much as possible: in his argument against the inevitable death sentence, he is supposed to have said “I beseech your honours to be a means to her majesty for mercy, for I desiring to be counted a faithful friend, am now considered for a false traitor. The love of Thomas Salisbury hath made me hate myself, but God knows how far I was from intending any treason.” However, he continued, if “mercy be not to be had“, he asked that his debts were paid, and asked regarding the land he had inherited “that some consideration may be had of my posterity“; he was married and had a daughter but no son, and the land was entailed to his heirs male. Whether he had genuinely discussed plans for a rebellion or not, Jones was executed on Tower Hill on 27th September 1586.

After his death, his property was forfeit to the Crown. Some of it was eventually bought by the Buckley (or, later, Bulkeley) family, hence the “Thomas Buckley” noted under Brymbo in Norden’s survey; there was a farm or house known as Plas Bulkeley in Esclusham for many years. At this point the land in Brymbo becomes rather hard to trace: Norden sadly gives no clues as to its location. Jones’s daughter Anne, however, was allowed to keep Plas Cadwgan itself and some of its attached land, which through her own daughter was to come to one of the many branches of the large and powerful Myddleton family. The house in fact lasted until the late 1960s, when it was finally (and regrettably) demolished, like so many of the area’s other architecturally significant buildings. Fortunately it was properly surveyed, and images and other records are held by the RCAHMW, so you can still get some idea of the old residence of the Jones family.”