Welsh Journals

DEPOSITED COLLECTIONS 4. THE LLANFAIR AND BRYNODOL MANUSCRIPTS, DEEDS, AND DOCU- MENTS. In February of this year (1941) the Reverend R. LI. Langford-James, D.D., B.Mus., St. James's Vicarage, Edgbaston, Birmingham, deposited in the Library an extensive group of muniments of his estates of Llanfair, parish of Llanfairisgaer, and Brynodol, parish of Tudweiliog both in Caernarvonshire. These records have now been examined and the Library's schedule, although it cannot under the present circumstances pretend to be exhaustive, nevertheless affords an adequate idea of their scope and illustrates the development of these two estates and the activities and interests of their owners more or less continuously from the middle of the sixteenth century to about the third decade of the nineteenth. For the first two of the three centuries represented by the collection these estates were in the possession of two independent families each of whom, to the frequent em- barrassment of the reader, bore the surname of Griffith. The Griffiths of Brynodol were descendants of Hugh, a younger son of Griffith John Griffith of Cefnamwlch, parish of Penllech; those of Llanfair were originally of Porthamal or Plas Newydd, Llanedwen, Anglesey, the first occupier of Llanfair being Maurice Griffith, who came to live there in 1602 upon the alienation of Plas Newydd to Sir Henry Bagenall. Subsequently the Llan- fair estate devolved upon the Wynns of Taltreuddyn, Llanbedr, Merioneth, by the marriage of Edward Wynn and Mary Griffith, grand-daughter of Maurice Griffith and sole heiress, and during the following century, in 1748, both the Llanfair and the Taltreuddyn estates were united to that of Brynodol by the marriage of Mary Wynn, who was also sole heiress, and Hugh Griffith. The present collection, as is generally the case with large groups of well-preserved muniments, contains the usual estate and business documents and a variety of personal and official papers, and it focuses in the main on four members of the Griffith families, namely: (a) The afore-mentioned Maurice Griffith, M.P. for Beaumares, 1553, and sheriff of Anglesey, 1561-2, with whom most of the earlier material appears to be associated. (b) Richard Griffith, who, like others of his family, had a residence at Caernarvon and who was an active supporter of the Royalist cause during the Civil War. (c) Hugh Griffith, Brynodol, sheriff of Caernarvonshire, 1777; and (d) The latter's son John Griffith, sheriff of Caernarvonshire, 1813, and Receiver- General of the Land Revenue in North Wales and the County Palatine of Chester. The following description is an attempt at a broad subject classification of these records, and follows the lines already laid down in the Library's preliminary report. MSS 1¾11 may be generally described as literary and historical manuscripts, the more important being single sheets of autograph and copy eulogies of, and elegies to, members of the family of Griffith of Llanfair by Sion Phylip, Griffith Phylip, Huw Machno, and other bards a volume in the autograph of the well-known scribe John Price, Mellteyrn, which includes a transcript of Sir John Wynn's History of the Gwydir Family'; a book of pedigrees of Hugh Griffith, Caernarvon, compiled by John Prichard Prees, 1716-7; and a poll book of the Caernarvonshire parliamentary election, 1768.