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Updated: May 13, 2025
Both Plymouth and Falmouth may be spoken of as modern towns compared with Fowey. Its antiquity is proved by the dedication of its church to the Irish St. Finbar, who seems to have been a pupil of the Welsh Dewi, or St. David. Very many of Cornwall's saints came either from Ireland or Wales, and some from Brittany, to which the debt was repaid.
On inquiring of this gentleman, and he referred me also to biographical dictionaries, I found that our name had an origin of unsuspected dignity, not to say sanctity, being no other than that of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, which is shortened and changed in the speech of the common people into Dewi.
"Darfel Gatherel," said I, "is not gibberish; it was the name of the great wooden image at Ty Dewi, or Saint David's, in Pembrokeshire, to which thousands of pilgrims in the days of popery used to repair for the purpose of adoring it, and which at the time of the Reformation was sent up to London as a curiosity, where it eventually served as firewood to burn the monk Forrest upon, who was sentenced to the stake by Henry the Eighth for denying his supremacy.
I replied that the only reason was this that a "Monseigneur" here and there struck me as picturesque; and I reminded him that, as a matter of cold historical fact, most of the archers of Agincourt were mercenaries from Gwent, my native country, who would appeal to Mihangel and to saints not known to the Saxons Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi, Cadwaladyr Vendigeid.
Dewi shortly afterwards became primate of Wales, being appointed to the see of Minevai or Mynyw, which from that time was called Ty Ddewi or David's House, a name which it still retains amongst the Cumry, though at present called by the Saxons Saint David's.
But Owen drew me to the settle by him, and bade me hearken while the king told me the tale I had to learn. Then I heard how Owen, my foster father, was indeed a prince of the old Cornish line that came from Arthur, and how his cousins, Morgan and Dewi, had plotted to oust him from his place at the right hand of Gerent the king, and had succeeded only too well, so that he had had to fly.
About five centuries after his death the crown of canonization having been awarded to Dewi, various churches were dedicated to him, amongst which was that now called Llan Ddewi Brefi, which was built above the cell in which the good man composed his celebrated treatise.
And with no more ceremony he came to where I and the two house-carles yet stood, and looked and laughed a little to himself as he did so. "He is Morgan the prince, right enough," he said. "And I can tell you all the trouble. Your sheriff hung his brother, Dewi, three months since for cattle lifting and herdsman slaying on this side Parrett River, somewhere by Puriton, where no Welshman should be.
News of that sort flies fast. "No news at all," he answered. "What did you expect?" "I had heard of the death of a prince, and do not know the rights thereof." "Why, where have you been? That is old news. It was only Dewi, and he is no loss. The Saxon sheriff hung him, even as the king said he would do to him an he caught him, so maybe it is the same in the end.
When the convocation met there were a great many sermons preached by various learned and eloquent divines, but nothing was produced which was pronounced by the general voice a satisfactory answer to the doctrines of the heresiarch. At length it was resolved to send for Dewi, a celebrated teacher of theology at Mynyw in Pembrokeshire, who from motives of humility had not appeared in the assembly.
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