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RHUDDLAN CATHEDRAL A MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN OF FLINTSHIRE HISTORY. There have been two occasions when it has been proposed to transplant the see of St. Asaph and refound it elsewhere. Towards the end of the thirteenth century King Edward I wished to remove the cathedral establishment to Rhuddlan. Negotiations and prepara- tions were carried some way but, for reasons which will become apparent, the scheme lapsed. Again, in the sixteenth century, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, actually got so far as building, at Denbigh, a good part of a church which he intended should become the cathedral of the diocese, but the work was left unfinished and now only the church's ruined outer walls stand on the hill below Denbigh Castle.1 It is with the earlier of these schemes that the present paper is concerned. Our knowledge of it is derived from copies of letters in which Edward I and Bishop Anian sought papal approval for the translation of the see. Two of these letters have long been in print, while a precis of a third appeared some years ago in Dr. J. G. Edwards's Calendar of Ancient Correspondence concerning Wales.* None of these documents, however, is precisely dated, while those that have been printed in full are subject to the additional drawback of not being very easily accessible. A fourth letter, bearing an exact date but not previously printed, is set out in full below. Its discovery provides an opportunity to review the evidence and make the episode better known to readers in Flint- shire, for whom it has a special interest. The earliest of the relevant texts is undoubtedly the letter in which the king asked his representative in Rome to seek the consent of the Pope,4 a sine qua non without which it would not be possible to proceed with the scheme at all. There is nothing in its contents to show when it was sent; but there is a writ of 25 November 1280 which mentions that the men of Rhuddlan "are now building the town and are expending and will expend great costs about making the town, building it and improving it,"8 and it is not unlikely that i. — John Williams, Ancient and Modem Denbigh (Denbigh, 1856), pp. 97 and 291 et seq. 2.-J. G. Edwards, Calendar of Ancient Correspondence concerning Wales (Cardiff, 1935), P- 264. 3.­The two earlier letters, one from the king and one from the bishop, are printed in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 1869), i, pp. 529-31. Both had first appeared in Browne Willis, Survey of St. Asaph (London, 1720), pp. 149-50 and 155-8. The king's letter is included in Rymer's Foedera (London, 1727), ii, pp. 245-6, and in David Wilkins's Concilia Magnae Brit- cmniae (London, 1737), ii, pp. 100-1. 4. Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit., p. 530. 5. Calendar of various Chancery Rous, p. 188.