About
1153, Ivor Bach (or the Little), a neighbouring Welsh chieftain, seized
the castle and for a time held William, earl of Gloucester, and the
countess prisoners in the hills. In 1404 Owen Glendower burnt the town,
except the quarters of the Friars Minors. In 1645, after the battle of
Naseby, Charles I. visited the town, which until then had been mainly
Royalist, but about a month later was taken by the Parliamentarians. In
1648, a week after the Royalists had been decisively defeated by Colonel
Horton at St Fagan's, 4 m. west of Cardiff, Cromwell passed through the
town on his way to Pembroke.

Outside the north-west angle of the castle, Richard de Clare in 1256
founded a Dominican priory, which was burnt by Glendower in 1404. Though
rebuilt, the building fell into decay after the Dissolution. The site
was excavated in 1887. Outside the north-east angle a Franciscan friary
was founded in 1280 by Gilbert de Clare, which at the Dissolution became
the residence of a branch of the Herbert family. Its site was explored
in 1896. The only other building of historic interest is the church of
St John the Baptist, which is in the Perpendicular style, its fine tower
having been built about 1443 by Hart, who also built the towers of
Wrexham and St Stephen's, Bristol. In the Herbert chapel is a fine altar
tomb of two brothers of the family. A sculptured stone reredos by W.
Goscombe John was erected in 1896. The original church of St Mary's, at
the mouth of the river, was swept away by a tidal wave in 1607:
Wordsworth took this as a subject for a sonnet.

In 1555 Rawlins White, a fisherman, was burnt at Cardiff for his
Protestantism, and in 1679 two Catholic priests were executed for
recusancy. Cardiff was the birthplace of Christopher Love (b. 1618),
Puritan author, and of William Erbury, sometime vicar of St Mary's in
the town, who, with his curate, Walter Cradock, were among the founders
of Welsh nonconformity.

As to Roman Cardiff see articles by J. Ward in the _Archaeologia_ for
1901 (vol. lvii.), and in _Archaeologia Cambrensis_ for 1908. As to
the castle and the Black and Gray Friars see _Archaeologia
Cambrensis_, 3rd series, viii. 251 (reprinted in Clark's _Medieval
Military Architecture_), 5th series, vi. 97; vii. 283; xvii. 55; 6th
series, i. 69. The charters of Cardiff and "Materials for a History of
the County Borough from the Earliest Times" were published by order of
the corporation in _Cardiff R