S. Mawgan, the founder of the church, as also of that in Kerrier, was a man of extraordinary importance to the early Celtic Church in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall. He was the great educator of the saints, and perhaps the first head of a college in Britain. He had under him S. David, Paulinus, and the ill-conditioned Gildas; and he is probably the same as Maucan, “the master,” entrusted by S. Patrick with the education of the clergy for the Irish mission. S. Euny and S. Torney were disciples of his, and it was he who gave to Brig, or Breaca, the rules by which a religious community of women should be governed. His great educational establishment was at Ty Gwyn, or the White House. This was planted on the slope of Carn Llidy, a purple, heather-clothed crag close to S. David’s Head in Pembrokeshire, whence in the evening the sun can be seen setting behind the mountains of Wexford. Here remains of a rude old chapel can be traced, and around it are countless very early interments in unhewn stone graves, pointing east and west. In fact, this is the necropolis of the great missionary home whence streamed the first Christian teachers into Ireland, and whence Scotland, Cornwall, and Wales were supplied with evangelists.[23] His establishment was a double one, of female disciples as well as of males, and the consequences were not always satisfactory. A British king named Drust (523-28) sent his daughter to Ty Gwyn to be educated. In the college were at the time Finnian, afterwards of Clonard, and two other Irishmen, Rioc and Talmage. Rioc fell in love with the girl, and bribed Finnian to be his go-between and get her for him as wife by the promise of a copy of all Mawgan’s books that he undertook to make. Finnian agreed, but by treachery, or as a joke, did the courting for Talmage in place of Rioc. When the circumstances came to the ears of Mawgan he was very angry, and he gave his boy a hatchet, and told him to hide behind the chapel, and when Finnian came to matins to hew at him from behind. But instead of Finnian, the first to arrive was Mawgan himself, and he received the blow destined for Finnian. Happily, either because the boy missed his aim in the dark, or more probably because the order had been given to beat Finnian and not kill him, Mawgan was not mortally wounded. Non, the mother of S. David, was brought up in the same house, and was there when it was visited by Gildas the historian, whose works we have. It does not at all appear that the rule of celibacy was required of clergy, even of abbots, in the early Celtic Church, for this same Gildas was father of two founders of churches in Cornwall--S. Eval and S. Filius, of Philleigh; and S. Kenneth, the crippled Abbot of Gower, was the father of S. Enoder.