Coyly Castle and Lordship. 487 This gatehouse is placed in the middle of the curtain which covers the very narrow south-east front of the town. On each side of the gate-towers is a curtain of about loo feet long, and beyond this a pair of drum mural towers, of half projection. The loops of these towers, like every detail in Coucy, are on a grand scale. Though mere slots, they are lo feet high, and in three tiers. In front of the wall is a fosse of unusual breadth, wholly artificial, and which, like that of the castle, is dug across the peninsula, from one lateral valley to the other. COYTV CASTLE, GLAMORGAN. THE lordship of Coyty is regarded by the Welsh as an Honour of high antiquity, the estate and seat of a royal lineage, and the inheritance of one of the sons of Jestyn, the last native lord of Morganwg. It is divided into the lesser lordships of Coyty Anglia and Wallia, and it formed one of the " members " of the county under the Norman lords. Being a member, and not in the body of the shire, it is not included in the thirty-six and three-fifths knights' fees which paid military service to Cardiff Castle ; but it was, never- theless, held under the lord of Glamorgan, and the castle, manor, and members of Coyty appear accordingly in inquisitions of the Earls of Gloucester and their successors in the reigns of Edward I., II., and III. In the 24th Henry VI., for some probably temporary reason, only the castle and a fourth part of the manor are returned in the chief lord's schedule. Coyty was granted by Fitzhamon to Sir Pagan, or Payne de Turberville, a knight, who probably held Bere-Turberville and other lands in Dorset, and the manor and castle of Crickhowel in Mon- mouthshire. Unlike most of the sites of the Norman castles in Glamorgan, Coyty was evidently an earlier place of strength, and its circular and raised area, and its circumscribing moat, much resemble the earthworks so common in England and • upon the Welsh marches, and usually attributed to the English of the eighth and ninth centuries. Of this position Sir Pagan judiciously availed himself when he received from Fitzhamon Coyty as his share of the spoil. Probably he found some sort of strong house existing, which he and his immediate successors found it convenient to occupy ; for, though the extant masonry cannot be attributed to his age, it is of a date too near to it to have allowed of the decay of a substantial Norman structure. Sir Pagan is reputed to have married Sybil, heiress of the old Welsh lords of Coyty, and thus to have added a title respected by the natives to that acquired by his sword.
