Clydog, also written Clydawg or Clodock, is remembered as a sixth-century king of Ergyng, a Welsh kingdom that covered parts of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire. Tradition has him as a pious ruler, trained as a priest at Llancarfan, whose peaceful reign ended through jealousy. A woman fell in love with him and refused to marry anyone else. A Saxon noble who also wanted her shot Clydog with an arrow while he was hunting a deer.
His body was placed on a cart and taken towards burial. At the ford of the River Monnow below the present church the cart broke and the oxen could go no further, so he was buried on that spot. A chapel was built over the grave and became a place of pilgrimage. Visit Herefordshire's leaflet tells the same story, saying the oxen refused to cross the river.
The church that now stands there is twelfth century and very little altered. The parish was part of Wales until 1535. The martyrdom is probably a later reading of the word for shrine, as the Wikipedia article on Clydog notes. This is a saint's legend of the kind that explains why a church stands in an awkward place, and it is tagged traditional.
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