On the decay of Druidism a
town sprang up on the site and in the neighbourhood of the "upper
circle," in which in the sixth century a convent or university was
founded by Deiniol, who eventually became Bishop of Bangor. This
Deiniol was the son of Deiniol Vawr, a zealous Christian prince who
founded the convent of Bangor Is Coed, or Bangor beneath the wood
in Flintshire, which was destroyed, and its inmates almost to a man
put to the sword by Ethelbert, a Saxon king, and his barbarian
followers at the instigation of the monk Austin, who hated the
brethren because they refused to acknowledge the authority of the
Pope, whose delegate he was in Britain. There were in all three
Bangors; the one at Is Coed, another in Powis, and this
Caernarvonshire Bangor, which was generally termed Bangor Vawr or
Bangor the great. The two first Bangors have fallen into utter
decay, but Bangor Vawr is still a bishop's see, boasts of a small
but venerable cathedral, and contains a population of above eight
thousand souls.
Two very remarkable men have at different periods conferred a kind
of lustre upon Bangor by residing in it, Taliesin in the old, and
Edmund Price in comparatively modern time. Both of them were
poets. Taliesin flourished about the end of the fifth century, and
for the sublimity of his verses was for many centuries called by
his countrymen the Bardic King.
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