Image of 'Brecon Collegiate Church and School' in script across the top

Timeline of Important Dates

Below is a timeline showing the important dates related to the foundation and movement of the Brecon Collegiate Church and School. To see the events, mouseover shapes on the timeline. Clicking on a century will bring up a second timeline under the first. The second timeline has all the events listed below. To highlight a certain event, mousever the shapes n the second timeline.

1265 1365 1465 1564 1665 1765
1269: Dominican Friars establish a priory at Brecon, Breconshire.
1283: Bishop Thomas Bek of St Davids establishes a collegiate church at Llangadog, Carmarthenshire.
1287: Bek moves his new Llangadog foundation to Abergwili, Carmarthenshire, on the outskirts of the town of Carmarthen.
1509: Henry VIII crowned King.
1534: Henry VIII breaks with Rome; King declared 'Supreme head on earth of the Church of England'.
1536: William Barlow made Bishop of St Davids; monasteries dissolved; first act incorporating Wales into the English state.
1538: Houses of friars dissolved, including the Dominican house at Brecon.
1539-1540: Barlow writes to Thomas Cromwell, proposing that Abergwili Collegiate Church be re-founded at Brecon and St Davids Cathedral be re-founded at Carmarthen.
1541: Henry VIII issues Letters Patent moving Abergwili Collegiate Church to Brecon under the new name Christ College Brecon. Copy recorded in the Patent Rolls (Witness R).
1543: Second act incorporating Wales into the English state.
1561-1567: Bishop Richard Davies of St Davids and William Salesbury collaborate at Abergwili to translate the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and New Testament into Welsh.
1680-1740: Witnesses C, D, I, and O written: all are copies of the medieval Statutes of St Davids Cathedral, to which the Brecon charter appears as an appendix.
Copies circulate, ending up at St Davids (D and I), St John's College Cambridge (C), and the Harley Collection (O).
1739-1761: Edward Yardley, Archdeacon of Carmarthen, compiles his history of St Davids Cathedral and Diocese, Menevia Sacra.
1719: Browne Willis publishes the Brecon charter in An History of the Mitred Parliamentary Abbies, and Conventual Cathedral Churches, vol. II (Witness W).