[399] See note regarding this name, ante p. 305.
[400] Edward II. is also said to have found a temporary asylum in the parish of Llangynwyd-fawr, in the county of Glamorgan. He had interested himself much in the concerns of his Welsh subjects, arbitrating the feuds, and determining the disputes among the chieftains. In the day of adversity, these condescensions were repaid with loyal devotion to his person; and when harassed by his barons, and deserted by his English subjects, he found a brief sanctuary in Wales, at Neath Abbey, and also, as other writers conjecture, at Tinterne.
[401] Or Grenville, Grainvil, Greenfeld—various spellings for the same name.
[402] See Tewkesbury, vol. i. of this work, p. 172.
[403] On the authority of Girald. Cambrens.; query, Gwentiana, from Gwent, fair?
[404] Tourist in Wales, (1851,) p. 130.
[405] This and most others of the native patronymics are all variously spelt by different writers.
[406] Nevertheless, the old maxim of ἀριστον μεν ὐδωρ has lost nothing of its truth as a medicinal agent in the treatment of human maladies. The superstitious belief that once carried the invalid to drink, “nothing doubting,” of some distant well, necessitated, in many instances, a total change of scenes and habits, which could hardly fail to prove beneficial in many cases, in which the comforts of home and the established rules of treatment had been found quite ineffectual. The cures ascribed to hydropathy in our own time are, in many cases, not a whit less wonderful than those ascribed by monkish legends to the holy wells of England and Wales. The only difference is, that while tradition affirms that new limbs were known to sprout out [as in the claw of a lobster] by the plentiful use of certain waters, hydropathics restrict themselves to the reproduction of lungs only; so that the modern wells have rather an advantage over the ancient in the art of miracle-working.
[407] This daughter afterwards married Sir Henry le Scrope, Knt.
[408] Near the entrance to the lawn in front of the castle, on the road leading to Carew village and church, stands one of the early Crosses, in the centre of which is an elaborate inscription, but which cannot now be deciphered.—Prescot, 164.