Welsh Journals

only a few fragments of it remained until 1864.91 Sir William's lands were inherited by his eldest son, Thomas (d. 1565), who was knighted in 1544 and elected MP for Monmouthshire in 1547, but appears to have been less influential in local affairs than his father.92. In accordance with medieval practice, the initial provisions of Sir William's will express concern for the salvation of his soul in terms of conventional piety. The will was drafted by David Broke, one of its two overseers, and although its initial provisions were no doubt approved by Sir William, they do not necessarily reflect his personal religious sentiments. His only bequests to pious causes were a few bequests to churches 6s 8d to the cathedral church of Llandaff, and 20s and 13s 4d respectively to the parish churches of Llanmartin and Langston for tithes forgotten. However, late medieval wills often fail to reflect the full scale of pious donations by testators, who frequently gave funds for pious uses during their lifetimes.93 To a modest extent this was the case with Sir William's will, as is shown by an indenture of 19 September 1536 whereby Sir William granted Morgan ap Ynon and his heirs a lease for 99 years of an old chapel in Catsash in the parish of Langston.94 The lease was conditional upon the lessees paying 2s yearly to the parson of Langston for four masses to be said every year for the souls of Sir William's ancestors and those of himself and his wife, and also upon the lessees repairing the old chapel within five years. It is not clear whether the purpose of the rebuilding was to restore the chapel to ecclesistical use or, more probably, to adapt it for secular purposes, but the other provisions of the indenture reflect Sir William's belief, probably shared by the majority of the population in the 1530s, in the efficacy of masses for the dead. A few years before his death Sir William spoke to the antiquary John Leland, who cited him as his authority for some information concerning the Herberts of Raglan and referred to him as the knight of Low Wentland dwelling at Pen- coed, a fair manor place.95 Sir William may indeed have undertaken much of the building of the now ruined Pencoed Castle, but although he had received the honour of knighthood his landed income was apparently no greater than that enjoyed by William Morgan of Tredegar near Newport, whom Leland noted as being a man of three hundred marks a year ( £ 200) in land with a very fair place of stone.96 Without discussing in detail the fortunes of the Morgans of Tredegar in the early sixteenth century, some comments on the family, based mainly on Mr T. B. Pugh's work on the lordship of Newport, may explain why it was less prominent than that of their kinsmen, the Morgans of Pencoed, during this period.97 Sir Morgan John of Tredegar was succeeded on his death in 1499 or 1500 by his son John ap Morgan, also known as John Morgan. Sir Morgan John