Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

THE BLAYNEY FAMILY OF MAELIENYDD, KINSHAM, AND, ULTIMATELY, EVESHAM S. P. THOMAS "Mr John Blayney of Over Kingesham in Radnorshyre (sic) and Mr Richard Baldwyn of Duddlebury in Shropshire visited me at Mortlak. The great-grandfather of the sayd John and my great-grandmother by the father's side were brother and sister." Thus, the celebrated Dr John Dee, 1527-1608, priest, mathematician and astrologer (and genealogist) in his Private Diary for 29th June 1595. His comment is supported by the relevant genealogies' his great- grandmother Eva (= Davydd Ddu) and Richard Blayney of Kinsham (= Jane daughter of Sir John Harley) were both children of Evan or John2 Blayney "of Melyneth" and grand-children of Hywel Blaene (or Blayney) by Mawd, daughter of Sir William ap Thomas. His son William adopted the surname Herbert and was created Earl of Pembroke by Edward IV, circa 1461. This Blayney family was a quite distinct and separate one from the historic and well-documented family of Montgomeryshire and Castle Blayney, Ireland. On the other hand it seems to have been the only other Welsh family ever to have adopted the common topographical term Blaenau ( = end/sources of streams/highlands) as a patronymic or permanent surname Blaene, rather than a nickname. In both cases the name was anglicized in the 16th century as 'Blayney' and in both cases the first recorded use of the name was circa 1400: an intriguing coincidence. Intriguing, too, is the fact that there was a third but apparently temporary occurrence of the name, in Radnorshire about the same time, in the case of Ieuan Blaene of Y DEAN DU line3; who married a daughter of Sir Dafydd Gam. He could have been the Jevan Blayne recorded as one of the Foresters for the lordship of Maelienydd, in the Minister's accounts for 15-16 Richard II, say 1392-3, shewn under "Hirthowel" (Rhyddhywel on the Marteg watershed, five miles south-east of Llanidloes)4. But equally this person could have been the contemporary "Jevan Blaynie" of the Montgomeryshire family, as a young man. There was certainly no contemporary Jevan Blayne or Blayney of the Maelienydd/Kinsham line. For many of the references in this article to this last family, its subject, for years prior to say 1600, the author is greatly indebted to the late E. J. L. Cole, F.S.A. In the course of a long correspondence devoted to the subject, from September 1971 to October 1976 inclusive, Mr Cole gave unstintingly and most generously from the store of information about the families of the Marches accumulated by his scholarship. The Kinsham Blayneys (who will henceforth in this article be referred to as such) claimed descent in the direct male line from Elystan Glodrydd (ap Cyhelin ab Ifor: born 933 and living in 1010)5 Prince of Fferlys, roughly the same region as the Marcher lordship of Maelienydd. Appendix 1 gives this genealogy, as apparently endorsed by Dr John Dee, it being also part of his own6, down to the second generation from Hywel Blaene=Mawd f. Sir William ap Thomas. Hywel himself is shewn in Welsh Genealogies AD 300-15007 as great-grandson of Cadwgan ap