translated by Mary Burdett-Jones
There is lamentation and grief over the taking yesterday of the lord of Denbigh, Humphrey of fair countenance and honoured here, of the long line of Robert. The lakes are overflowing, a month’s sea goes through the host at the death of Master Llwyd. Alas for the crowds because of our agitation about a man who bore the root of learning.
Lost across our lands are the seven arts: grammar, rhetoric, extensive music, the measure of words of powerful work, arithmetic was worth more and was a choice of work of scholarship. No man of our praiseworthy country can have confidence in an astronomer any more. Logic is without its hidden obedient work, I say, and the geometry of seven men.
His coffin, a place which is guarded, is where the knowledge of the world went. He knew the placing of the stars, was wise and powerfull, a cell of grammar, a learned man, he deserves a word; was there anything he did not know? With every art of the world in his head, he led; who had greater genius? With the fresh memory of Adam, when he was healthy, there was no-one more learned.
He showed, when he wished, the peculiar knowledge of two teachers: every ambiguous word, all the power of language, every expression, every metre; if they were old, he explained them in the Bible. Alas for the host about the grey man, a graduate buried. He was a work of scholarship with the honour of the power of Rome. The wise – splendid were the men – were accorded the status of Roman nobles. If he were living in their free days, he would be number eight in Rome. A long life to his lands; we did not lack scholarship with him in our midst. In ability he was an Augustine of languages; in wisdom, he was Seneca; very studious, he added with his great gift Melchisedec. If the wise Llwyd went to the church to be buried, if he did, our learning decays. Where there was praise and knowledge and Mary from heaven, he died. In every roll, every kind of matter, everything in the past, every kind of wind, the course of all the planets, he was the most learned when he was young, and knew the high round ball, and the place of all the signs, and the history of them all, and the width of the earth and its shape. Today there is no man so intensely learned alive nor hope of anyone who has it at his fingertips since he died.
Holy God took took a wise man yesterday, woe to us that he didn’t take a fool. There were signs of weeping yesterday of England’s earls, water coming from their eyes. The Earl of Arundel insisted on being by his bed before he left the house. He is a man with a great, valuable estate and has need of his advice.
There is complaining because he went before January, and the company of Llwyd is cast down. If he went on his journey tonight, there is a great gap after him; he took with him his goodness, the grandson of Rossendale, alas for our area. And tonight it is distressing to name his family of the blood of Peg and the Piggotts.
At the casting down of our glory when a gift was gold, splendid Barbara was terrified; her lordly father through battles with his host was a Lumley. Of the same degree in the regard of the people is the brother of the one with the countenance of Olwen. From great grief there is weeping now, gallons as in the time of Enoch. And from their kind, her husband and herself, we turn with more hope to the three sons, each with the countenance of Abel, through Llwyd in the earl’s line. And two daughters will bring yet more praise to the countries. And further names will remain which grow from a nobleman.
Their father, who went to heaven, was beloved in his country. Yesterday Jesus chose him; would that their mother, if there was a choice, could have two lifetimes.
© copyright Mary Burdett-Jones 2025
‘In praise of Humphrey Llwyd: Poems by Gruffudd Hiraethog, Lewis ab Edward and Wiliam Cynwal, with translations by Mary Burdett-Jones’ in Philip Schwyzer (ed.) Inventor of Britain: The Work and Legacies of Humphrey Llwyd (University of Wales Press, 2025), pp. 215-28 (pp. 222-41), and online