Cylchgronau Cymru

THE JAM| £ FAMILY OF TYGLYN AERON THE epitaphs in Cilcennm churchyard commemorate a generous sprinkling of Bridgets, all of them descended from Bridget Rees (1779 — 1857) who rests with her husband against the east wall of the parish church. This lady has held the imagination of the neighbourhood through four generations and more her life story lives on as one that surpasses its prototype, that of Cefhydfa, because"so far from buckling under parental authority and pining away to an early death, Bridget James of Tyglyn Aeron married her David Rees and reared him a houseful of children. Time has since magnified the story through widening the social gulf between Bridget and David local tradition has elevated the Jameses to the peerage through' forging a link with Lord James of Hereford, while David Rees on his part has been reduced to the station of a groom in the stables of Tyglyn Aeron. The one tenuous link that actually connects the James families of Tyglyn and Hereford is that they both found wives in Presteigne-there was no blood tie between them-and David Rees, although employed at Tyglyn, was hardly a menial servant. The accretion of fancy that gathers round a traditional story protects nevertheless a kernel of truth. Bridget's title to a distinguished lineage is grounded on fact, partly because the James family of Pen- gwern, Cenarth, from whom she was descended, has its place in the West Wales pedigrees, including Peniarth MS. 156 (Trans. Hist. Soc. W. Wales, II, 15). They took their surname from James the son of John Morus who was the vicar of Cenarth around 1600, and whose neighbour, Llewelyn Thomas Parry of Gellioerlas, bought the Tyglyn property in the vale of Aeron about 1620. On the death of Parry in 1635, Tyglyn passed to his half-brother John Parry of Tre'rdefaid, under whose will (1641) it descended to his second daughter Joan. From Joan's first marriage came the Jones family of Tyglyn. Her husband Rees Jones died in 1647 leaving a young family of a son and two daughters, over whom he appointed my loving cousin David James, Master of Arts, to be the tutor and guardian'. In the event, David James, the heir of Pengwern and the grandson of the vicar of Cenarth, exceeded the testator's instruction he married Joan as her second husband and started off the James family in the vale of Aeron. This marriage it was that gave Bridget of Tyglyn Aeron her best claim to a distinguished ancestry because Joan, as a Parry of Neuadd Drefawr, was descended from Cunedda Wledig. The lands of Tyglyn held by David James (1615-1682) in right of his wife were assessed at £ 3 for the lay subsidy of 1664, and those of her son, Henry Jones, were valued at £ 1 a total of £ 4. The only identical assessment in the immediate vicinity was that of Lloyd Jack, the