[334] I get this phrase from the elder Brut, but I follow the order of events in the Annales Cambriæ, 1098. “Omnes Venedoti in Mon insula se receperunt, et ad eos tuendos de Hibernia piratas invitaverunt, ad quos expugnandos missi sunt duo consules, Hugo comes urbis Legionum, et alter Hugo, qui contra insulam castrametati sunt.”

[335] One manuscript of the Annals has “Gentiles de Ybernia.” See vol. i. pp. 121, 122.

[336] They are “Hugi Prúdi oc Hugi Digri” in the Saga (Johnstone, p. 234). In the younger Brut, p. 84, the earls are called “Huw iarll Caerllion a Huw goch [red] o’r Mwythig.” By Caerleon is of course meant Chester. The elder Brut confounds the two earls. The bulk of Earl Hugh of Chester we have long known. In Orderic’s account (768 B) he is “Hugo Dirgane, id est, Grossus.”

[337] See above, [p. 97].

[338] See vol. i. p. 124.

[339] The priory of Penmon was described in 1849 by Mr. Longueville Jones in three articles in the Archæologia Cambrensis, vol. iv. pp. 44, 128, 198, and in an earlier article in the Archæological Journal, i. 118. The date of the original building cannot be very far off either way from the times with which we are dealing. The tower-windows are a kind of transition from Primitive Romanesque to Norman. A doorway of later Norman character seems to be an insertion.

[340] There is a minute description of the castle, by Mr. Longueville Jones, in Archæologia Cambrensis iii. 143. The building of a castle at this time is distinctly asserted in one manuscript of the elder Brut. But the other Brut under 1096 speaks of Earl Hugh of Chester as already lord of Aberlleiniog (Arglwydd Aberlleiniawc).

[341] One manuscript of the Annals (1098 C) seems to make them builders of the castle; “Gentiles pretio corrupti consules in insulam introduxerunt et castra ibi fecerunt.”

[342] Ann. Camb. u. s. “Relicta insula, Hiberniam aufugerunt.” The elder Brut adds that it was “for fear of the treachery of their own men.”

[343] Here Florence (1098) comes to our help. “Interea comites Hugo de Legeceastra et Hugo de Scrobbesbyria Mevaniam insulam, quæ consuete vocatur Anglesege, cum exercitu adierunt, et multos Walanorum quos in ea ceperunt occiderunt, quosdam vero, manibus vel pedibus truncatis testiculisque abscisis, excæcaverunt.”