BRECON CASTLE was founded by Bernard de Newmarch in the reign of William Rufus. Llewelyn prince of Wales besieged it when asserting the rights of his ancestry and friends, but without success. Passing through the hands of the Braoses and Bohuns, it fell to the king-making Buckingham, when it became the seat of chivalric splendour. To his care Dr. Morton, bishop of Ely, was committed by Richard the Third; and the remaining turret is still called Ely tower by the natives, and described to have been his prison. Buckingham, fired with resentment by the ingratitude of Richard, whom he had raised to power, contrived, with his prisoner, in this place, the means of his overthrow. The plot succeeded, but the duke was betrayed and taken before its completion, and lost his head: the more wary priest retired in secresy during its operation, and preserved his to wear the metropolitan mitre in the ensuing reign. Bernard also founded a Benedictine priory for six monks westward of the town; it was dedicated to St. John, subordinate to Battle abbey in Sussex, and became collegiate under Henry the Eighth. The church is a grand cruciform building, 200 feet in length by 60 in width, and has an embattled tower 90 feet high rising from the centre of the building. A cloister extends from the church to the priory-house; where the tourist, as he paces the refectory, or great dining-room, may speculate on monkish carousals, where blue-eyed nuns, were jovially toasted, and secret confessions anticipated. But the most fascinating attraction of the town is its two delightful walks: the one traced on the margin of the noble Usk; the other, called the priory walk, a luxuriant grove impendent over the brawling Hondy, once assigned to the meditations of monkish fraud, but now more happily applied to the use of the townspeople, and enlivened on fine evenings by a brilliant promenade of Cambrian beauties. This town, built on the site of a Roman station, {330} was originally called Aber-Hondy. After the departure of the Romans, the lordship of Brecon remained in the hands of the Britons till the reign of William Rufus; when Bernard de Newmarch, a Norman baron of great skill and prowess, having assembled a large body of troops, made a successful inroad into the country, killed the British chief Bledhyn ap Maenyrch, and retailed his son prisoner in Brecon castle during his life; though he, at the same time, allowed him a nominal share of his father’s territories. He then fortified the town with a castle, and an encircling wall, having three gates; and further strengthened his cause by taking to wife Nesta, grand-daughter of Gruffyth prince of Wales.