The Convent at Bardsey (Enlli) was one of the most ancient religious Institutions in North Wales, for Eineon Frenin, one of the Regnli of the County is said, in conjunction with Emyr Llydaw, to have founded a College in that Island, about the middle of the 9th Century, and Lleudad (Landatus) is generally supposed to have been the first Abbot. Dufrig, (Dubritius) Archbishop of Caerleon, is represented in our Welsh Annals to have resigned in favour of St. David’s, and to have retired to Bardsey, where he died about the year 612, from which circumstance, it is evident that there must have been a religious establishment here prior to that period. It seems likely to have been a seat of the _Culdees_, or _Colidei_, the first religious recluses of Great Britain, who sought Islands and desert places, in which they might in security worship the true God. It was certainly resorted to in very early times, for we are assured, from undoubted authority, that it flourished as a Convent in the days of _Cadvan_, King of Britain, who was coeval with Dubritius, it was an Abbey, dedicated to St. Mary, and in the _Sebright_ MSS. a petition is recorded, says Mr. Pennant, from the Abbot to Edward II. in which he sets forth the injuries he had received from the Sheriff of Carnarvon, who had extorted from him 68_s._ 6_d._ contrary to his Deed of ffeoffment, on which the King directed Roger de Mortimer, Justiciary of Wales, to make enquiry into the matter, who reported that the Abbot held his Lands, in the County of Carnarvon, in puram et perpetuam elemosynam, without any service or secular acknowledgment; and further, that David, Lord of Lleyn, and brother to the last Prince of Wales, had exacted the same sum, as did his _Pencynydd_, or Master of his Dogs, possibly under pretence of maintaining them; the King therefore, by his special favor, and by advice of his Council, does for ever remit the said sum and all arrears, and directs that no one in future, either on his account or that of his heirs, ever should molest the Convent. The slaughter of the Monks, at Bangor Iscoed, about the year 607, is supposed to have contributed to the population of this Island, for not only the brethren who escaped, but numbers of other pious Britons fled hither, to avoid the rage of the Saxons.