CHAPTER 34
Aquick look at a map revealed that Coity Castle, where Lady Barbara grew up, was only a few miles from the church on the hill where Wilson and Blackett unearthed their Arthurian relics in 1991. This again seemed more than coincidental. Could she, I wondered, have brought something more than just a fortune to the Sidney family? Might she have passed on a secret, something known only to members of her own family? Could this secret explain the presence of the Arthurian relics that Wilson and Blackett found at the ruined church? Suspecting that this might be the case, I made my own plans for a visit to Coity and its surrounding area.
The name Coity, Coitty or Coety, as it is variously spelt, is said to come from the Welsh word Coedydd, meaning an area of uncleared woodland or forest. Although only vestiges of this forest remain today, the land owned by the Lordship of Coity was once heavily wooded, as proven by many Welsh names that apply to places in the vicinity. A brief glance at an Ordnance Survey map for the area reveals names such as Cefn Hirgoed (Long Wood Ridge), Derwen Goppa (Oak Tree Hilltop), Coed Parc Garw (Roughland Wood), Pen yr Allt (Grove Top) and Pencoed (Head of the Wood). Nearby, too, was Coed-y-Mwstwr (Bustle Wood), the location of a cave I once visited with Alan Wilson. Although I have not explored this cave in depth myself, he told me of a legend that a tunnel runs from it for about a mile underground, leading directly to Coity Castle. I have little idea whether this tunnel is a natural feature or, more likely in my opinion, the remains of an old mine that was abandoned in antiquity. However, the cave itself is clearly ancient and, at the time of King Arthur, may have been used as a hermitage.
Certainly, Alan believed this to be the case. He told me that he was convinced that this was the cave once occupied by St Illtyd at the time he was shown St David’s bell. He also believed that it had been used by Illtyd as a temporary burial place for King Arthur prior to his interment at St Peter’son-the-hill. I didn’t know if he was right about any of this, but the fact that the tunnel ran in the direction of Coity Castle seemed significant. For, if true, it implied there might be some sort of connection between Coity and the old church on the hill, and this seemed worthy of further investigation.
Realizing that the marriage of Robert Sidney to Lady Barbara Gamage was a possible link between the Continental Rosicrucianism of the 17th century and Welsh traditions linked to medieval and Dark Age ‘Rosy-cross’ memorial stones in Glamorgan, I decided it was high time I investigated the history both of this small town, which is now a suburb of Bridgend, and of the surrounding district. To my surprise, I discovered that not only did the Lordship of Coity have a unique history, but it also had a special status as the last Welsh ‘kingdom’ to have been held independently of the English Crown. In fact, during the Middle Ages it had been a sort of ‘Monte Carlo’: a tax-free sovereign statelet. In addition, the Lords of Coity had traced their bloodline back to Iestyn ap Gwrgan, the last king of Glamorgan. This explained the presence of Iestyn’s arms on the ceiling of the Sidney Chapel at Penshurst impaled with their own arms, the broad arrow, on the family tomb; clearly, the Sidneys were proud of the ancient-British Royal Blood in their veins. However, I was not yet aware of the full and quite extraordinary significance of this. Investigating further, I discovered that at the time of Iestyn, Coity was already a Royal Lordship; indeed, it was probably established as such centuries earlier. Not surprisingly, it changed hands at the time of the Norman invasion of 1092, but it did so in a unique way.
As discussed, Sir Robert Fitzhammon, the Earl of Gloucester, seized the Vale of Glamorgan from Iestyn and rewarded his ‘twelve knights of despoliation’ with the various manors and castles that were now at his disposal. However, one of these knights, Sir Paine de Turbeville, was left out of this sharing of the spoils. Perhaps for personal reasons – allegedly, he once had a fist fight with Fitzhammon during which he hit the latter so hard that he was left deaf in one ear – Turbeville was given nothing and told to find his own rewards. Accordingly, he did just that by laying siege to Coity Castle.
This castle, which was on the northern fringes of the Vale, was in the possession of a great-grandson of Iestyn called Morgan. A sensible man, he could see that resisting the Normans was likely to lead to unnecessary bloodshed. Accordingly, he came out from his castle, holding his sword in his right hand and his daughter Assar’s (Sara’s) right hand in his left. He challenged Turbeville to either fight with him for the castle in single combat or to marry Assar and receive it peacefully. In this way, no blood needed to be shed and Sir Paine would have the castle as a dowry. Turbeville was not a fool and realized that, having fallen out with Fitzhammon, he needed new allies. There is also good reason to think that he was not originally from Normandy but Brittany. The people living there, the Bretons, are close relatives of the Welsh and spoke (and still speak) a very similar language. If he truly was a Breton, then Turbeville would have been able to understand exactly what Morgan was proposing. In any event, he married the girl and in this way became Lord of Coity.
Now this marriage had profound and unforeseen consequences. Because Sir Paine received his Lordship as a marriage dowry and not as a gift from Fitzhammon, he was not legally obliged to pay taxes either to him or to the English Crown. Instead, he paid a token amount of one gold coin a year to a neighbouring Welsh prince, another descendant of Iestyn’s. This tax-free status for Coity endured until about 1405.*
The Turbeville family retained the Lordship of Coity until 1360, when Sir Richard II de Turbeville died without leaving issue. As he was the last surviving male of his family, he was succeeded as Lord of Coity by Sir Lawrence Berkerolles, the son of his sister Katherine. Then, in 1400, Wales was convulsed by the Owen Glendower rebellion. During this time, virtually all the castles of South Wales, with the notable exception of Coity, were put to the torch. Sir Lawrence, who was still the local Lord, sat out a long siege. He was eventually rescued by a force commanded by Prince Hal, the future Henry V. After this, Coity lost its tax-free status, becoming in this respect like any other small Lordship in England and Wales.
Sir Lawrence Berkerolles died in 1411, allegedly murdered by his wife Mathilde le Despencer. The story goes that she confessed and was punished by being buried alive, with just her head above ground. Left there to die slowly, her sister, Isabel, visited her daily. She would wear a dress with a long train and allow this to drag along the ground so that it would collect dew. As they talked, Mathilde, dying from thirst, could then suck the dew from the hem of the dress and get some small relief from her raging thirst. When, eventually, she did die, her ghost remained earthbound. Local legends call her the ‘White Lady’, and evidently she still haunts the crossroads by St Athans, where she was buried.
As she and Sir Lawrence had no children, a tussle now took place over who should inherit Coity. Eventually it passed to Sarah, the youngest of the late Richard II de Turbeville’s sisters, who was married to William Gamage of Rogiate in Gwent. The Lordship then stayed in the Gamage family until 1584 when John Gamage, the father of Lady Barbara Gamage, died. As his only legitimate heir, she inherited the Lordship, its castle, lands, coal mines and other properties. Following her marriage, all this wealth came with her to her husband, Robert Sidney.*
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* See Chart 13: The Royal Lords of Coity to the First Gamage, page 236
* See Chart 14: The Gamages of Coity, page 238