Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
was present long before the fourteenth century. The second document is preserved among the archives
of All Souls College, Oxford and is a petition written in 1535 by Harry Hopkin, the vicar of Pennard, to
the king's commissioners at Swansea. The commissioners were engaged in compiling a comprehensive
valuation of ecclesiastical benefices to provide the Crown with an up-to-date assessment of their income
as a basis both for imposing on them a perpetual tax (amounting to one-tenth of their annual net incomes)
and also for levying the whole income of every benefice for the first year following the appointment of a
new vicar.
ItwasthisvaluationinthedeaneryofGowerthatpromptedHopkintosubmitthepetition,becausethe
encroachmentofdriftsandsthataffectedPennardandsomeothercoastalareasofSouthWalesatthistime
had substantially reduced the value of the benefice. Indeed the advance of drift sand along the coast of
Glamorgan was sufficiently serious to be the subject of an Act of Parliament of 1554 ( An Acte touchynge
the Sea Sandes in Glamorganshyere ) and its contribution to the decline of the coastal borough of Kenfig
is well documented. The sand had seriously affected the parish for many years before the petition was
written. Because of the sand tenants had had their rent reduced in 1478, and in 1517 the church was ex-
cused its royal levy. Eventually it was abandoned during the 1520s in favour of a new site 2 kilometres
to the east, along with the 'mansion house' appertaining to it, by which Hopkin presumably meant the
priest's house or vicarage. The glebe lands belonging to the church had also been covered over together
with many other tenements. All this is described in the first part of the petition:
To the kinge's comysshionerz nowe being at Swansey.
In his humble wyse shewyth unto your masterships your oratour Sir Harry Hopkin, vicar of
Penarth in the denery of Gower within the dyosys of Saint David, that where the said churche and
the vicaraige with all the glebe landes to the same belonging or appertaynyng is utterly and clerly
destroyd and overgon with the dryfe sandes of the see. And not only the said church with the man-
sion house and the glebe landes whyche to the same appertained, but also diverz and many other
tenements whyche were within the said paryshe be in like wyse destroyed and decayed by reason
of the said dryfe sandes, in such wyse the proffites of the said churche is gratly decayed …
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