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THE HAFOD ESTATE UNDER THOMAS JOHNES AND HENRY PELHAM, FOURTH DUKE OF NEWCASTLE IN the warm summer of 1780, Thomas Johnes of Croft Castle in Herefordshire traversed the mountains of mid-Cardiganshire to visit for the first time his inheritance of the Hafod Estate.1 Despite his considerable wealth, his extensive estates in both England and Wales and his intellectual and cultural attainments, Johnes was a deeply unhappy man. His young wife, Maria Burgh, heiress to the Monmouthshire estate of Park Lettice, was sick and was eventually to die in 1782. Following the stunning blow of his wife's death, Johnes spent several months travelling in Europe, returning at the end of the year to pass Christmas with his cousin, John Johnes of Dolaucothi. If his European journey had helped to assuage his grief for the loss of Maria, the bewitching charms of John Johnes's beguilingly beautiful sister Jane soon erased his anguish. As the months passed by, Thomas Johnes's recollections of his first wife faded further and further into the recesses of memory, while his love for Jane Johnes blossomed and, to his delight, was reciprocated. The couple were clandestinely married in 1783. Over the three years since his first visit, Johnes had become increasingly fascinated by the wild beauty of west Cardiganshire, and particularly that of his Hafod inheritance. Completely run down, denuded of timber, its farms occupied by semi-starved tenants devoid of any knowledge of the new agriculture, the 'sublime' qualities of his newly-acquired property appealed to Johnes's highly sophisticated aesthetic sense. Here, moreover, was an opportunity to improve the appalling lot of Cardiganshire's labouring poor, who were suffering desperate privation on account of a series of bad harvests exacerbated by price inflation. The farmers, too, notwith- standing the high product prices prevailing throughout the Napoleonic Wars, found profitable farming almost impossible on their impoverished and derelict farms. Johnes determined to turn his attention to the amelioration of the distressed condition of both 1 Neither Elizabeth Inglis-Jones's delightful Peacocks in Paradise (1970) nor D. Jenkyns, Thomas Johnes o"r Hafod (1948) deals in detail with Johnes's activities as a farmer; nor does W. R. Williams, Colonel Johnes of Hafod (The Red Dragon, X (1886), 132-40). However, Johnes the farmer is briefly considered by D. J. Morgan in Journal of the U.C. W. Agricultural Department, IX (1920), 33-36. Johnes's father, Thomas Johnes of Penybont (d. 1780), although custos rotulorum for Cardiganshire, rarely visited Hafod, preferring instead to live at Croft Castle, the home of his wife, Elizabeth Knight. The Hafod mansion was leased to a mining engineer by the name of Paynter.