Mrs. Jordan acquired a good deal of money by her profession, and she was not an extravagant person. She had a large family, and was a good mother. A person who had married one of her daughters had involved her in a debt of £2,000, and this so preyed on her spirits that it shortened her days. She withdrew from England and settled at S. Cloud, near Paris, and died there July 5th, 1816, aged fifty, and is buried at S. Cloud.
Llanrhaiadr is three miles from Denbigh. The church has some fine old glass in the east window, representing a Jesse tree. There is a wonderful genealogical tombstone in the churchyard to a certain John ap Robert, ap David, ap Gruffydd, ap David Vaughan, and so on back to Cadell Deyrnllwg, king of Powys.
A curious story is connected with an interment in this churchyard.
“Anne Parry had opened her house for the preaching of the Methodists in this place, and originated a Sunday-school in the neighbouring village. She ended a life of laborious benevolence by a peaceful death, and forty-three years after her decease, on the occasion of her son’s burial in the same tomb, her coffin was opened, and the body of this excellent woman was found to be in a perfect state of preservation, undecayed in the slightest degree, and her countenance bearing the hues of living health. The very flowers which had been strewed upon her body, it is said, were as fresh in colour, and as fragrant in odour, as when they were first plucked from their native boughs. The body of this lady was exhumed about three years afterwards (in 1841), and was nearly in the same state of preservation. This was corroborated by the mayor of Ruthin in 1841. The compiler of this account received the same information on the very day the lady had been re-interred, not only from the parish clerk and the mayor of Ruthin, but from several other parties who saw the body.”[4]
Some allowance must be made for exaggeration here. That a body in certain undetermined circumstances may remain undecomposed is doubtless true, but the statement relative to the flowers must be dismissed as impossible.
Between Denbigh and Ruthin, and three miles from the latter, is Llanynys. Here, at Bachymbyd, an ancient mansion, are “The Three Sisters,” noble chestnuts planted by the three daughters of Sir William Salusbury. The property passed into the hands of Sir Walter Bagot through a singular circumstance. He had been shooting in the neighbourhood, and a favourite pointer strayed, and he could not recover it. Some time after Sir William Salusbury found the dog, and sent it to Sir Walter with his compliments. This led to an exchange of compliments, and next time Sir Walter Bagot was in the neighbourhood he called at Bachymbyd to express his gratitude. He there met the daughters of Sir William, and fell in love with one of them, proposed, and was accepted. Before the lady left for her new home she and her sisters planted these trees.
Ruthin is a pleasant little town, with its castle, but the latter is not old, having been almost wholly rebuilt. Portions of the earlier castle still remain.
The castle was founded in 1281 by Edward I., and was granted to Reginald de Grey. This man did his utmost to exasperate the Welsh to fresh insurrection, and Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a journey into Wales to mediate between the King and Llewelyn, and allay the irritation. He complained to Edward, but in vain, of the rapacity of Reginald, whom he accused of committing the most flagrant acts of injustice, of depriving officers of the places they had purchased and of commissions that had been granted to them, of revoking just sentences when they jarred with his interests, and of compelling the peasantry to plough his lands without wages.
A contest about a common called Croesau, between Ruthin and Glyndyfrdwy, led to the insurrection of Owen Glyndwr.
During the reign of Richard II. a controversy had arisen relative to rights over this common. Reginald de Grey, who held Ruthin Castle, had claimed it. Owen disputed the claim, and gained his suit in a court of law. But no sooner was the usurper Henry of Lancaster on the throne than De Grey took possession of the common. Glyndwr appealed to Parliament, but his appeal was dismissed. Not satisfied with this infringement of his neighbour’s rights, De Grey resolved on utterly ruining him. Henry had summoned Owen among his barons to attend him on his expedition to Scotland, and had confided the summons to De Grey to deliver. De Grey treacherously withheld it, and then represented Owen as wilfully disobedient. Owen was accordingly sentenced, unheard, to be deprived of his lands, and De Grey seized them.