Research Notes:

John Eyton Hên (the old), Lord of Eyton, Seneschall of the Lordship of Bromfield to 1477, then greatly advanced in years.... ³

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Guto composed a poem to request a hunting horn from Sieffrai Cyffin of Oswestry on behalf of Siôn Eutun (or John Eyton), his only poem for Siôn... A number of poems to Siôn by other poets have survived...

[He] was alive in 1439 and the steward of the lordship of Bromfield in 1477. It is likely that he was the John Eyton who was named by Jasper Tudor in a letter sent from Tenby on 25 February 1461... If so, Siôn was a Lancastrian who was joint-steward of Denbigh in the Vale of Clwyd with another of Guto’s patrons, Rhosier ap Siôn Puleston.

It is also likely that he is the Johanne Eyton named in a legal document written in Holt on 19 October 1467... Although the exact nature of the document remains unclear, it seems that Dafydd Bromffild and Wiliam Rodn (two of Guto’s patrons) are named with Wiliam Hanmer, Siôn Eutun, Edward ap Madog, Hywel ab Ieuan ap Gruffudd and Morgan ap Dafydd ap Madog, in connection with maintaining armed men in Bromfield... ‘David Eyton’ and ‘David Bromfield’ are named as witnesses and ‘William Eyton’ in connection with his servant in the presentments of the Wrexham bailiwick jury in 1467). Siôn’s professional connection with Holt is referred to in Gutun Owain’s elegy: Rryol dadl yr Hold ydoedd ‘He was the rule of Holt’s argument’....

When David Holbache founded a grammar school in Oswestry between 1407 and 1421, one ‘John Eyton’ was named as one of the ‘feofees that were put in trust … for the School Lands’.... It is not impossible that this man was Guto’s patron. ¹