A Llanelli Chronology
The information in this section is an edited version taken from Llanelli - Birth of a Town a CdRom by William and Benita Rees
1500 to 1599
1500 The exact location of Ffynnon Elli, the Holy Well dedicated to St Elli, is not known for certain. Some believe it was in a field called Cae Ffynnon Elli. (This later became known as Waun Elli Place, at the lower end of New Road, where Brettenham Street is today.) Others believe it may have been the Well near Furnace Gate. What is known for certain is that during the 16th and 17th centuries Ffynnon Elli, was considered to be a healing Well.
1507 Llanelli was beginning to establish sea-trading links with France, Ireland, Lisbon, Oporto and the Channel Islands. Records show that coal, brass, slate, soap, Irish blankets, butter, walnuts, wine and tobacco were all being handled at Carmarthen Bay.
1509 Henry VII, who had shown a great interest in Wales, died. His second son became Henry VIII and showed little interest.
1525 Some time before his demise Sir Rhys ap Thomas, described as ‘Great Commander and Chief Ruler, supporter of Henry Tudor’, came to Llanelli and upheld a claim made by William of Trebeddrod against his brother John Willcock. William and John were the great grandsons of Morris Castle of New Castle and Trebeddrod. When Morris Castle died his youngest son Willcock held Trebeddrod, which then passed to his youngest son John Willcocks, and then to his son John Willcocks.
John youngest son of Willcock ap Morris Castle (grandson of Morris Castle), had two sons, William and John and a dispute arose between the two brothers. Sir Rhys ap Thomas agreed that the older son William, who was in his service, should have Trebeddrod. However, when John evicted his older brother Sir Rhys ap Thomas came to Llanelli to settle the dispute, upheld William’s claim and threatened to hang John from the nearest tree if he tried to evict his brother again.
Sir Rhys ap Thomas continued to control South Wales until his death in 1525.
1531 Rhys ap Gruffydd (grandson of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, KG), was executed for treason against Henry VIII and his lands were confiscated and returned to the Crown. Later his lands were acquired by his kinsman Hugh Vaughan.
1534 The First Act of Supremacy explicitly stated that Henry VIII was head of the Church of England and resulted in his excommunication by the Pope.
Before the Reformation in Wales church services were conducted in Latin – which most of the worshippers did not understand. After the Act, Latin was superseded by English – another language that the Welsh worshippers did not understand.
1535 Another valuation of Llanelli, Llangennech and Llannon churches known as ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ valued the ecclesiastical properties at £6 6s 8d.
1536 Parliament passed the Acts of Union between 1536-1543; the Welsh Marcher Lordships were abolished and the Shire system of government was established. The Lordships of Iscennen, Cydweli and Carnwallon, which had formed the Lordship of Kidwelly, became incorporated in the Shire of Carmarthen. The Acts of Union were designed to emancipate Welshmen. According to the Crown, Welshmen were given ‘all and singular freedoms, liberties, rights, privileges and laws within this realm and other the King’s dominions as other the King’s subjects naturally born within the same have, enjoy and inherit’ [27 Henry VIII, c.26]. ‘An Act for Law and Justice to be ministered in Wales in like form as it is in this Realm’.
The second Act of Supremacy was empowered along with the suppression of the smaller monasteries.
1536 Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII was executed.
1536 A Cistercian monastery thought to have been built at Machynys was destroyed during the Dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII from 1509-47. With the Dissolution tithes would have passed to the Crown and Henry was able to dispose of them as he saw fit.
In the years following the Reformation of Henry VIII’s reign, many Holy wells, chapels and shrines disappeared when they were abandoned or became decayed. Many more were deliberately destroyed during the Dissolution. The wells, chapels and shrines that did survive were subsequently dismantled by farmers and masons, who used the materials from them for building purposes.
1539 Because Henry VIII spent heavily on his wars with France and Scotland the first of the monastic lands were offered for sale. Many were purchased by leading gentry families.
1540 Nearly all the Welsh monasteries had been seized and 250 monks, nuns and friars were pensioned off or permitted to return to lay life.
Royal Officials confiscated land, buildings and valuables for the Treasury.
The Roman Catholic missal, which was a book containing the complete service for mass throughout the year, was replaced by the Protestant prayer-book. This substitution did not make any difference for most Welsh worshippers and to begin with the Reformation did not have much effect locally.
Resentment began to grow in the locality when Royal Commissioners who had dealt with the redistribution of the monastic lands and wealth, began to seize gold and silver from churches for the Royal melting pot. At this time religious pilgrimages were also forbidden.
From 1540 to 1640 the chief functions of the Universities were ‘to produce clerics for the State Church, and to give a veneer of polite learning to young gentlemen’.
Around this time Hugh Fychan and his wife Jane settled at Golden Grove, Llandeilo, eventually acquiring land owned by his kinsman Rhys ap Gruffydd that had been confiscated by Henry VIII. Hugh and Jane had one son John and eight daughters and founded the influential and powerful Fychan or Vaughan family of Golden Grove.
Hugh Vaughan’s position of Administrator of the lands confiscated from his kinsman Rhys ap Gruffydd, gave the Vaughans of Golden Grove exceptional opportunities to expand their estates and they were not slow to exploit these. Their acquisition of Crown property was mainly in the form of leases; very little of their acquisitions were formerly monastic lands.
1547 Robert Stepney gave up his lands (Stepneth) alongside the Thames when Henry VIII wanted them for use as a naval docks. Henry VIII was grateful to Robert Stepney and gave him a large Estate in Aldenham, Hertford as a reward. The Stepney family continued the tradition of loyally serving the Crown.
1547 Edward VI, whilst still a young boy, acceded to the throne and ruled until 1553 under the successive Protectorships of the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland. During his reign he appointed Royal Commissioners who reported that there were ‘belles iiij great and small’ at Llanelli Parish Church.
During Edward’s reign Protestantism was promoted, and Royal Commissioners from London were sent to all parts of the realm to destroy chantries, confiscate surviving religious endowments, and to knock down images, crosses and altars. Llanelli did not escape the royal snatchers because an inventory made at the time showed that the small Parish Church had been stripped of ‘Papist’ adornments, many chalices and decorations. After the Dissolution of the Collegiate Church of St Mary’s Leicester, the tithes of Llanelli church and its daughter churches of Llangennech and Llannon, were in the possession of the Crown.
1550 Because transport was mainly by sea and most overland traffic was limited and by foot or horseback, there was little necessity to repair roads, which in some cases were little more than tracks. Nothing had been done about building roads since Roman times and many of the old routes were still in use.
From early times the responsibility and liability for maintaining roads was held by the Lord of the Manor. The Lord was entitled to raise tolls, which were mainly collected at bridges which forded streams or rivers.
However, during the 16th century there was an erosion of the powers of the manorial courts coupled with an increase in traffic using the badly repaired road system.
Seaside was a thriving maritime centre, mainly because of its coastal location and access to convenient shipping places in the tidal Burry Estuary.
The population of Llanelli was about 200 to 300.
1553 John Vaughan (only son of Hugh and Jane Vaughan) followed in his father’s footsteps and became heavily involved in land ownership and politics until he died in 1574.
Mary I, the Roman Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Catharine of Aragon, acceded to the throne from 1553-58, aged 37. As Mary had married Philip, who became King of Spain in 1556, her loyalties were to Spain and not England.
1555 Parliament carried out Queen Mary’s wishes and repealed the anti-Catholic laws, which meant that between 1555 and 1558 many Protestants, were burned at the stake. Llanelli does not appear to have been affected but Robert Farrer and two other Bishops of St David’s met their fate at Carmarthen.
During the reign of Mary I and her husband Philip of Spain an Act of Parliament known as the Statute of Labour was passed which transferred the responsibility of the maintenance of the roads from the manor to the parish. The parish then replaced the manor as the administrative unit. The result of the Act was that every householder or tenant farmer was expected to work on maintaining the road or supply someone to carry out the work on their behalf for four days in every year. The Act remained law for 280 years until the Highways Act of 1835 came into force.
1556 Llanelli was a small village with 12 households in the Manorial Borough administered by the Court Leet in the Commote of Carnwyllion (Carnwallan)
1558 When Mary I died her half sister, the 25-year-old Elizabeth, acceded to the throne and reigned until 1603. At the time she did not have strong religious beliefs of her own but was soon forced to review the situation.
1559 By April the Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity had been passed which stated the doctrines and beliefs of the Church of England in promoting Protestantism.
In effect, during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the Roman Catholic Church had been ousted from Wales and replaced by a state-established church.
It could be said that the character of society in South West Wales was introspective and closed. This was reflected in the complaint by Robert Craven, who had moved from Lincolnshire and bemoaned the fact that when living in Llanelli in 1559, he encountered bitter prejudice from several local men, including the Gentleman David Philip ab Owen, and the constable William Morgan: ‘These being all Welshmen, and having without any just cause conceived great malice against your said subject’. According to Craven he was besieged with his family in his house which was damaged. About 30 or 40 Welshmen broke into his house and assaulted him and when he complained to the constable he and his wife were put in the stocks.
1561 Alban Stepney came to West Wales as Receiver General of the Diocese of St David’s. It was his marriage to Margaret, daughter of Thomas Catharne, which brought the Stepney family their initial property in Carmarthenshire. The Estate, which included Prendergast Manor and a great deal of land had been augmented at the time of the Dissolution by a lease of St Martin of Haverford.
1562 Under the Statute of Labour Act of 1555 every householder who owned or rented land was required to provide two able men, a cart and horses or oxen to work on the roads four days every year. This period was extended in 1562 from four to six days, which ensured a system of compulsory labour on the roads which became known as the corvee. The dictionary states, that a ‘corvee’ is the obligation to perform gratuitous labour such as maintenance of roads for the Sovereign or the feudal lord. The six days came to be regarded as holidays and gave rise to the phrase ‘a day off for the King’.
1565 Between 1565 and 1570 John Vaughan built a mansion at Golden Grove.
1568 In the 110 years from 1568 to 1678 many local people were reluctant to give up their Roman Catholic faith and there was said to be ‘Catholic Resistance in Wales’. A ‘Recusant’ was a Roman Catholic who refused to attend the Church of Wales when it was legally compulsory to do so.
1569 The three years from 1569 to 1571 were dangerous years when Catholic aristocrats encouraged Mary Queen of Scots to stake an illegal claim to the throne and which caused Elizabeth I to harden her stance against her Catholic subjects.
1570 The Pope excommunicated Elizabeth I which released all her Catholic subjects from their vows of allegiance to the Queen. This resulted in Elizabeth declaring that in future she would treat all her subjects, who remained Catholic, as traitors.
1573 In his will dated 27 February 1573, William Phillips had left all his lands in Iscennen, Carmarthenshire, and Walwyncastle Pembrokeshire, to his daughter Mary, who had married Alban Stepney. By marriages to two local heiresses Alban Stepney had gained substantial estates.
1574 Sometime after 1531 John Vaughan (only son of Hugh Vaughan of Golden Grove), bought Trebeddrod, Llanelli, from the King. When Vaughan (who had married Katherine Morgan of Muddlescombe, near Kidwelly), died in 1574 his estates, including Trebeddrod, Llanelli and the mansion at Golden Grove, passed to his eldest son Walter. Walter Vaughan of Golden Grove continued the family tradition by taking an active part in land ownership and politics. He purchased leased lands in Kidwelly, Llangunnor, Llanstephan, Llanelli and the surrounding areas. He is known to have opened mines in Kidwelly, Llangennech and Llwynhendy.
in 1574 Queen Elizabeth I presented St Elli Parish Church with an Elizabethan Silver Chalice.
1578 Llanelli was shown on a map produced by Christopher Saxton and called Lanelthye.
Fortified castles gradually fell into decline as there was no longer a need for them.
The village of Llanelli continued to develop into an important industrial, trading and shipping centre. The commercial heart of the town had developed around the Parish Church with two suburbs at Seaside and Bigyn.
1581 Parliament passed an Act, which imposed a fine of £20 – an enormous sum of money in those days – on all those who refused to attend their Parish Church.
1583 Elizabeth I granted Sir John Perrott the tithes of Llanelli and its daughter churches. Sir John, who was born in 1530, was purported to be the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and Mary Berkeley who was a lady-in-waiting at the Royal court. Mary Berkeley first married Thomas Perrott and was the second wife of Sir Thomas Jones of Haroldston, near Haverfordwest, described being at the time of the Act of Union already ‘a gentleman of worship in Carmarthenshire, but then dwelling in Pembrokeshire’. Henry VIII knighted Thomas Perrott when he married Mary Berkeley.
1586 John Lloyd was the vicar of Llanelli.
Walter Vaughan’s third son Henry (c. 1586-1660) was born around this time and later married Sage of Derwydd, near Llandybie. After their marriage Trebeddrod formed part of the Derwydd Estate.
1597 Walter Vaughan died and his fourth son, another Walter Vaughan, began to emerge as a formidable landowner and industrialist anxious to exploit the coal resources in and around the town.
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Page updated Monday August 06, 2007