| Description | This collection of papers was lodged in these archives in March 1939, by the great generosity and public spirit of the Right Honble. Lord Penrhyn. They are interesting, important, and rich in picturesque variety, what with one document (PENRH/404) dating back to within a few years of the conquest of Wales, two dispensations by Papal officials (PENRH/6 and PENRH/12), a royal licence in 1438 to build a tower at Penrhyn (PENRH/22-23), the detailed evidence arising out of the litigation over church seats at Llandegai in 1576 (PENRH/68), and the light thrown on the stormy career of Piers Griffith (especially document PENRH/88). In later generations even these entries are overshadowed by the great good fortune of reuniting the two moieties of the estate after their division among co-heiresses at the death of Sir Robert Williams's daughter, Frances, by the accession of wealth from the Pennant estates in Jamaica, and by the tremendous enterprise of Richard [First] Lord Penrhyn in opening up, and make accessible for export, the sates produced in the hundred of Uchaf.
The old Griffith family of Penrhyn were a younger branch of the Tudurs of Penmynydd, descended therefore from Ednyfed Fychain, the powerful adviser of Llywelyn the Great; the Griffith ap Gwilym ap Griffith ap Heilyn of PENRH/5 was grandfather of the first Sir William Griffith, while the ancestor Heilyn was grandson of Ednyfed. This connection accounts for the Anglesey documents in the collection (PENRH/1, ix); what is more surprising is that the Penmynydd nexus was kept intact well into the 15th century, as the will of Gwilym ap Griffith, who died in 1431, describes him as "of Penmynydd", and contains his wish to be buried either in the parish church of Penmynydd, or in the friary of Llanfaes, or in the parish church of Llandegai according to the decision of his executors (PENRH/14). Incidentally, he was first cousin to the famous Owen Tudur. The growing power of this offshoot of Penmynydd was evidenced by Gwilym's marriage with one of the Stanleys of Hooton in Cheshire, a policy developed by his son Sir William, married to one of the Daltons of Northamptonshire, and by the second Sir William's alliance with one of the Troutbecks of Lancashire.
The first Sir William had another good fortune : his mother, Joan Stanley of Hooton, had married again to John Pykemere, a wealthy citizen of Caernarvon, with the result that by a somewhat intricate series of transactions (PENRH/23-27), the Pykemere lands and burgages were vested in her son [Sir] William by the former marriage to Gwilym ap Griffith of Penrhyn - this also accounts for the large number of very interesting Caernarvon documents in the collection (PENRH/282-293). The aggregation of lands in Anglesey, burgages in Caernarvon, and the intense concentration of interest in the townships of Cororion, Bodfeio and Dwygyfylchi within the hundred of Uchaf, brought the family right to the forefront - three Sir Williams followed each other without a break, each of them Chamberlain of North Wales, and each of them celebrated in "cywyddau moliant" found in the Mostyn and Peniarth collections. The third Sir William died in 1531, according to the elegy written by the bard Griffith ap Tudur ap Hoell (MOST/1478 and 585). His eldest son Edward died in 1540, to be followed by his brother Rees, who seems on the whole to have lived a quiet life between the too-generous largesse of his three predecessors and the too-adventurous career of his son Piers (at least, I have found only one cywydd to him that by Huw Pennant, in Jesus College, 15/269. |