page_title: St Donat's Castle
section_title: Stradling family: 1300–1738
hierarchical_section_title: St Donat's Castle / History / Stradling family: 1300–1738
caption_attribution_description: Slovenčina: Vstup do St. Donat's
context_page_description: St Donat's Castle, St Donats, Wales, is a medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, about 16 miles to the west of Cardiff, and about 1 ¹⁄₂ miles to the west of Llantwit Major. Positioned on cliffs overlooking the Bristol Channel, the site has been occupied since the Iron Age, and was by tradition the home of the Celtic chieftain Caradog. The present castle's origins date from the 12th century when the de Haweys and later Peter de Stradling began its development. The Stradlings held the castle for four hundred years, until the death of Sir Thomas Stradling in a duel in 1738.
  During the 18th century, the castle's status and condition declined and by the early 19th century it was only partly habitable. The later 19th and early 20th centuries saw several restorations. In 1852, it was purchased by John Whitlock Nicholl Carne, who claimed descent from the Stradlings but whose efforts at reconstruction were not well regarded. More enlightened improvements were made by its subsequent owner, the coal magnate Morgan Stuart Williams. The castle's transformation occurred after its purchase in 1925 by William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper tycoon.
context_section_description: According to tradition, the site of St Donat's was the place to which Caradog, the Celtic chieftain, returned after being released from imprisonment in Rome by the emperor Claudius. After the Norman invasion of Wales in the mid-11th century, a timber castle was constructed on the site. The earliest surviving parts of the present castle, the keep and the inner ward, were built in the late 12th century by the de Hawey family. Ownership passed to the Stradling family through the marriage of Sir Peter Stradling to Joan de Hawey. The Stradlings were adventurers from Strättligen in Switzerland, who came to South Wales in the late 13th century. Sir Peter, his wife and later her second husband John de Pembridge, extended the castle around 1300, building the outer gatehouse and curtain wall and enlarging the keep and inner gatehouse.
  The Stradling family served as magistrates, members of parliament, sheriffs and deputy lieutenants of Glamorganshire from the 13th to the 18th centuries. A number achieved more than local fame. The third Sir Edward Stradling, in a run of nine Edwards, fought at the Battle of Agincourt, married a great-granddaughter of Edward III and established himself as a powerful landowner and courtier. One of Edward's sons, Henry, was seized by pirates in the Bristol Channel while travelling from his Somerset estates to St Donat's, and was released only on payment of a large ransom. This event has subsequently been much embellished by, among others, Taliesin Williams in his account The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn: A Poem, with Notes Illustrative of Various Traditions of Glamorganshire, which involves the eponymous Breton pirate and the witch Mallt-y-Nos. 
  Henry Stradling's nautical misadventures continued; after acceding to the baronetcy, he died of a fever at Famagusta, returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
  The Stradlings remained adherents of the Catholic faith following the Reformation and experienced persecution as a consequence. Sir Thomas Stradling (1495–1571) was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1561, following accusations of his having used the appearance of a "miraculous" cross in the trunk of an ash tree on the St Donat's estate to encourage support for the Catholic cause. His son, the scholar Edward Stradling (1528/9–1609) established a celebrated, and exceptionally large, library at St Donat's which was considered the finest in Wales of its time. The historian Graham Thomas records the Stradling tradition of educating their sons abroad, which led to the library holding extensive collections of foreign-language texts, particularly Italian works. Edward Stradling wrote a history of the area, The Winning of the Lordship of Glamorgan out of Welshmen's Hands, which established the legend of the Twelve Knights of Glamorgan, including the inaccurate claim that the first Stradlings had arrived with William the Conqueror, rather than some 200 years later. He was also the patron of Siôn Dafydd Rhys and funded the production and publication of the latter's Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve Linguae Institutiones et Rudimenta, the first Welsh language grammar to be published in Latin and thus widely accessible.
  During the English Civil War the Stradlings, prominent Royalists, supported Charles I and hosted the archbishop James Ussher, when he had to flee Cardiff. Three Stradlings fought at the Battle of St Fagans in 1648 and two were forced into exile after the King's execution. After the Civil War, the family declined in importance and ceased to occupy any significant position in the country and, ultimately, within Glamorgan. They retained ownership of St Donat's Castle until the death of Sir Thomas Stradling in a duel in France in 1738. The exact circumstances of his death are uncertain; he was travelling with his university friend Sir John Tyrwhitt, with whom he had reputedly made a pact, each promising the other his inheritance in the event of his death. Sources dispute whether the duel was actually between Stradling and Tyrwhitt, or was contrived by Tyrwhitt. In either event, Stradling was killed and Tyrwhi
caption: The castle gateway
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