When I arrived in Carmarthenshire on Sunday the house was called Llwyn Piod (that’s Welsh for Magpie Grove). Yesterday the council and Royal Mail gave their consent for it to be called Fox Hall so change your Address Book.
We went to Cilycwm for lunch. The pub was closed but we went into the church. St Michael’s dates from the 14th century and is Grade I Listed. For a church in a small village in a remote part of Wales it has some impressive monuments and some over-restored 18th century wall paintings. Here are examples of both and the church.
Later we called in at St Cathen’s Church in Llangathen. It dates from the 17th century and is Grade II Listed. The views of the Towy valley are super and the yew trees, as at St Michael’s, thought to be some 1,500 years old. However, there are two memorials that are worth mentioning. First this impressive bedstead effigy depicting Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St David’s, and his wife attended by two pairs of kneeling children. Rudd had hoped to become Archbishop of Canterbury but an injudicious sermon delivered at Richmond Palace to Elizabeth I put paid to that and he retired to his estate near his memorial. He chose as his text “teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” and the sixty-three year old Queen took it personally.
Bishop Rudd’s disgrace reminds me of something John Aubrey wrote in Brief Lives.
This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.
There is a touching and well executed modern headstone in the churchyard which makes me think I would have liked Peter Campbell.
It brings to mind a grave with this inscription at Ripon Cathedral.
Here lies poor,
but honest Bryan Tunstall,
he was a most expert angler,
until Death, envious of his Merit,
threw out his line,
hooked him, and
landed him here
the 21st day of April 1790.
