Cylchgronau Cymru

upon the bishop, that worthy used them to establish an efficient school, the famous Christ's College in Brecon.1 The Valor Ecclesias- ticus gives the inmates of the chantry as four priests, four choristers, and two clerks. A survey of the new college made in 1546 informs us that it had no cure of souls, but that it had a reader of Holy Scriptures (salary £ 6 13s. 4d.), a grammar master (salary £ 13 6s. 8d.), an usher (salary £ 6 13s. 4d.), 20 scholars costing sixpence each per week or in all £ 26 per annum, and a stipendiary priest at a salary of £ 6 13s. 4d. But the surveyor declares that this is not the whole of the school's income, but that there was a surplus of £ 14 10s. Od. yearly, which may represent the invested proceeds of the sale of the property of the friary, although this handsome amount does not correspond with the assessment of 43s. 4d. returned by the farmer in 1539. The college is built upon the actual site of the old Dominican buildings, the chapel being the most notable part of the remains, a magnificent and lasting tribute to the enlightenment and sense of public duty of this bishop of the age of the Revival of Learning. In reading these Accounts one is immediately struck by what seems the extreme poverty of these Welsh Houses so far as the income from real estate is concerned. We know that poverty was the first and essential ideal of the movement, in fact that the desire to expe- rience the salutary effect of a life of poverty was its genesis, and that the brethren were supposed to depend for their maintenance solely upon alms or the proceeds of the endowments of chantries. We also know that some of the religious houses suffered grievously from the depredations of the soldiery during the many campaigns fought in North Wales, such as those of the days of Edward I and Owen Glendower,3 as, for example, the priory of Llanfaes, which at one period had been in such sorry straits that Henry V had to come to its aid and provide for the residence of eight friars. Llanfaes, indeed, appears to have been exceptionally unfortunate, for the weekly market there, which had been a source of income and prestige to the priory, was moved to Beaumaris, and the set-back was very severe.4 1 Valor Ecclesiasticus gives the income of Abergwili as £ 42, and says that it was a foundation of a former bishop of St. Davids. Cf. also Ac. 5598 m. 2 dorse, and State Papers, XVI (1540-1), No. 30. 2 Arch. Camb., June, 1934, p. 135 et seq., ed. E. D. Jones. 3 E.g. Arch. Camb., 1924, p. 130. Monasticon, p. 1582. Cf. also the complaints of the abbot of Basingwerk and also the article on Basingwerk in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, Manchester, 1933, p. 174. Arch. Camb., ut sup.