File NLW MS 13686B. - The Description of Wales

A work, arranged by county, in which the numbers of hundreds, castles, parish churches and fairs are given for the whole of Wales, as well as lists of the chief lordships, market towns, various physical features and the principal gentlemen, their wives and residences. Rough measurements of each county are given with an estimate of the area in square miles "accordinge to the Scales of master Saxtons Mappes" (f. 1). Although the text is dated 1602, B. G. Charles, in NLW Journal, II (1941), pp. 43-5, and in the appendix to George Owen of Henllys - a Welsh Elizabethan (Aberystwyth, 1973), pp. [193]-9, shows that this version, the earliest to survive, was written c. 23 July 1603. A revised text of this work, found in Gough MS (Wales) 3 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, has been partly published in Owen's 'Pembrokeshire' (Cymmrodorion Record Series, No. 1), Parts III-IV (1906, 1936), pp. 287-716.