118 
THE JOURNAL OF ROTANT 
“ The original house, i. e. Lleweni, was built in a.d. 720. This 
venerable and interesting mansion was taken down for materials to 
.build Kinmel Palace. The old Lleweni Library (a collection of 
ancient, curious, and rare works, valuable MSS connected with the 
history of the Salusbury family, and the annals of Denbigh Castle, 
paintings of old masters, &c.) became either scattered or lost.” 
Mr. Gunther rightly attributes the annotations by the former 
-owner of the Herbal to Sir John Salusbury of Lleweni, but errs by 
confusing him with an entirely different person of the same name— 
this is to some extent due to his quoting from the incorrect material 
in Diet. Nat. Biog. The Sir John Salusbury (“ Sion y Bodiau,” i.e. 
= “ John of the Thumbs”), to whom Mr. Gunther refers and more 
or less confuses with his namesake, died March 18, 1578, and there¬ 
fore could not be the botanist who annotated the copy of Gerard in 
1606-08. This Sir John acquired the popular surname of “Bodiau” 
or Thumbs, so we are told, from the fact that he had an extra thumb 
on each hand and two great toes on each foot. His tomb, with a 
remarkable monument to the joint memory of his spouse and himself, 
is one of the features of the parish church (i. e. Whitchurch or 
Eglwys Wen) of Denbigh. 
His eldest son was John Salusbury (M.P. for Denbigh, 1554), who 
married Catherine Tudor of Beren, and died in his father’s lifetime. 
Catherine had two sons by this marriage, Thomas (executed for 
treason, 1586), and John (according to several writers surnamed 
“the Strong”), who succeeded to the Lleweni estate after his brother’s 
tragic end. The botanist was consequently grandson to Sir John y 
Bodiau, and also related (? cousin) to the William Salusbury men¬ 
tioned above. He was parliamentary representative for the county of 
Denbigh and received the honour of knighthood. Dwnn ( Heraldic 
Visitation of Wales , 1846, ii. 331) gives the year of the botanist’s 
death as 1613; but there is a very definite record in Y Cwtta 
Cyfarwydd (1883), p. 35, showing that he died at Lleweni on July 24, 
1612. Whether the title “the Strong” is correctly applied to the 
botanist is possibly open to doubt; it is not clear that he was of 
remarkable strength, and there may be some confusion of persons. 
Both Dwnn and Lloyd ( History of Powys Fa-dog, iv. pp. 330-9, 
1881) attribute this designation to him ; but John Williams indi¬ 
cates ( Records of Denbigh , 1860, p. 126) that the title applies to 
“ John y Bodiau ” ; elsewhere and earlier, however ( Ancient and 
Modern Denbigh, p. 167), the same writer regards the two appel¬ 
lations as applying to different persons. It is probable that there 
has been some confusion between the two Sir Johns, grandfather 
and grandson. The family name is variously spelt Salesbury, Salus¬ 
bury, Salisbury, and Salisberi(e); in some cases father and son 
employed a different spelling. 
