SUMMER HOUSE. MADOC AP MEI LER. LET me contraft this to a year of scarcity in our country, that of 1637, when I find, by a diary kept by a Peter Roberts, of St. Asaph, that in the fame year wheat was fold at 21s the hobbet, rye at 15 s. and vetches at 11 S. Change this into the prefent value of filver, the hobbet of wheat at this time would be equal to 29 s. of barley to 20 s. 8 d. and vetches to 15 s. 24d. -a calculation for which I am indebted to the ingenuity of my good affiftant, the Rev. Mr. Henry Parry, of Holywell. VERY near to the house stood a fummer-house, (a building very frequent near the feats of Welsh gentry) with a cellar beneath. These were used as retreats for the jovial owners and their friends, to enjoy, remote from the fair, their toafts and noify merriment. Mine was fo near to ruin, that I was obliged to pull it down. I remember oaks of a vast fize growing near to the house. This, and I may say the other lower parts of the parish, are finely wooded with that noble fpecies of tree, which grows fpontaneously: was this part deferted, it would relapse into its original state, and become an impenetrable foreft. Now let the whole Welshman arife in me! Let me relate how Madoc ap Meiler (furnames were not as yet) ap Thomas ap Owen ap Blydden ap Tudor ap Rhys Sais ap Ednefyd ap Llowarch Gam ap Llyddocca, fil. primogen. TUDOR TREVOR, living A.D. 924 (mifcalled) earl of Hereford, cotemporary with the great king Athelftan, and the greater Edwal Voel, prince of Wales, did take lawful poffeffion of Alice, daughter and heir of Philip o Phicdan, by Margaret, daughter and heir of Dafydd ap Ririd, &c. &c. of Penley in Maelwr. This Philip o Phicdan was fon (See Harleian Library, N° 1792.) to Philip ap Yfwittan Wyddel, of the house houfe of Dungannon, in Ireland, one of the Irish cavaliers who followed Gryffydd ap Conan out of that ifland, to affist him to regain the throne of his ancestors, about the year 1077, ufurped by Trabaern ap Caradog. THE great and decifive victory on the mountains of Carno, in the county of Montgomery, in the fame year, was owing to the valor of Philip. The ufurper was defeated and flain, after the bloodiest contest in our annals. Gryffydd was reinstated in his lawful dominions, and reigned with great dignity during fiftyfeven years. He was not ungrateful to his Milefian general; he bestowed on him great poffeffions in his new-recovered dominions*, of which one of his fons inherited Bychton. It remained in the male line only one generation after wittan, as we have above faid. If we reckon thirty years to a generation, the match between Madoc ap Meiler and Alice must have taken place very early in the next century, if not in the fame. This gives us a priority of landed poffeffion in the parish of Whiteford to any other freeholder: Madoc being only tenth in descent from Tudor Trevor. THIS my ancestor Madoc probably lived alfo by the fword, for I cannot with any certainty prove that before this time he had any landed property. I prefume he was content with his acquifition of the fair Alice, and the Bychton eftate (not Putecaine, as the barbarous Normans made it in the Doomsday Book) at which period (Widfor, i. e. Whiteford) was terra unius carucæ, et ibi erat cum duobus villanis. et XII. inter fervos, et ancilla ibi piscaria, and Sylva, or the wood above mentioned. But I fear we had been long before robbed of the wood at left, and *Hiftoria Gryffyd ap Conan, MS. No 39. Gleddarth Library. ་ poffibly. ARMS. poffibly of our pifcaria, &c. either by our own countrymen or the tyrant Saxons. Madoc fat down quietly on his lands; his offspring feem to have been much refpected, for his fon Jorwerth married the daughters of two princes; his firft wife was daughter of Owen, lord of Tegengl, and his fecond the daughter of the lord of Allington and Ruthenland. We went on begetting fons and daughters for a long space. My fon may boaft of being fixteenth in descent from the great Madoc, or twenty-fifth from Tudor Trevor; where, for brevity fake, I take up the pedegree, otherwise I might reach the renowned Kourda Wledig, after paffing through five moft celebrated defcents. Madoc affumed the arms of Twittan Wyddel, his wife's grandfather, viz. Fyelde filver three barres wavey azure, on the ⚫ mydle barr three fhieldrakes of the fyrste,' and for his next coat, by the name of Philip Phichdan, three boars in palle filver;" these are so defined, and placed quarterly by that able genealogist John Charles Brooke, efq. Somerfet herald, whofe untimely end I find daily reason to deplore. The three boars were the arms of Yonas ap Gronwy, of Penley in Maelwr hundred, in the county of Flint. My father had fome fmall poffeffions in that country, which he fold to improve our estate nearer home. Those probably were derived from Philip Phicdan, and devolved to Mador on his marriage with his daughter Alice. น I OBSERVE that the defcendants of Ffwyttan Wyddel varied in their first coat. Margaret, one of the daughters, and heiress of David ap Kynric, ap Philip Phycdan, bore in a white field two feffes azure, and in each the three fhieldrakes. She married William Salusbury, of Llewenni, (fays the Salusbury Pedegree, |