of
the Roman fort, 3 m. to the west, at Y Gaer, which some identify as
Bannium. He subsequently founded, near the castle, the Benedictine
priory of St John, which he endowed and constituted a cell of Battle
Abbey. In time a town grew up outside the castle, and its inhabitants
received a series of charters from the de Bohuns, into which family the
castle and lordship passed, the earliest recorded charter being granted
by Humphrey, 3rd earl of Hereford. Under the patronage of his
great-grandson, the last earl of Hereford (who lived in great splendour
at the castle), the town became one of the chief centres of trade in
South Wales, and a sixteen days' fair, which he granted, still survives
as a hiring fair held in November. Further charters were granted by
Henry IV. (who married Hereford's co-heiress), by Henry V., who gave the
town two more fairs, and by the Stafford family, to which the castle and
lordship were allotted on the partition of the Bohun estates in 1421.
Henry Stafford, 2nd duke of Buckingham, resided a good deal at the
castle, and Morton, bishop of Ely, whose custody as a prisoner was
entrusted to him, plotted with him there for the dethronement of Richard
III., for which Stafford was executed in 1483. His son, Edward, the 3rd
duke, who was born in the castle in 1478, had the estates restored to
him, but, in 1521, suffered a like fate with his father, and the
lordship and castle then vested in the crown. Both were acquired in the
next century by the ancestors of Viscount Tredegar, to whom they now
belong. By a statute of 1535 Brecon was made the county town of the new
shire of Brecknock, and was granted the right of electing one burgess to
represent it in parliament, a right which it retained till it was merged
in the county representation in 1885. A chancery and exchequer for the
counties of Brecknock and Radnor were also established at Brecon Castle,
and from 1542 till 1830 the great sessions, and since then the assizes,
and at all times the quarter sessions for the county, have been held at
Brecon. The borough had also a separate court of quarter sessions till
1835. The town was incorporated by a charter granted by Philip and Mary
in 1556 and confirmed by Elizabeth in the nineteenth year of her reign.
A charter granted by James II. was never acted upon. The borough was
placed under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and until then the
town of Llywel, which is 10 m. off, formed a ward of the borough. There