Interesting geneological fact of the day

Sir Rhys ap Griffith, my great grandfather of 13 greats was beheaded for high treason in the Tower of London.  I guess that explains who was the family screw-up and lost all my money.

Sir Rhys ap Thomas died in 1525. His son and heir, Sir Griffith, who had held an appointment in the household of Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in his father's lifetime. Accordingly, Sir Rhys was succeeded by his grandson, Rhys ap Griffith, a youth of some seventeen years, recently married to the lady Catherine Howard, daughter of the second Duke of Norfolk. Owing to his youth, or more probably to the royal attitude, Rhys did not succeed to his grandfather's offices of Justice and Chamberlain of South Wales, which were granted to Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers. This led to friction between Ferrers and Rhys which came to a head in 1529 when the latter, accompanied by armed retainers forcibly resisted the new Justice's attempts to hold sessions in the town of Carmarthen. As a result Rhys was arrested, together with about eighty of his supporters, among them the "captaynes and ryngleders" who had led and directed the riots. In November of that year Rhys appeared before the Court of Star Chamber, and both he and Ferrers were severely censured for their conduct, and ordered to remain at amity and to make peace between their warring retinues.
But the matter did not end there. Ever mindful of his family's primacy in Wales, Rhys continued to consider ways and means of embarrassing Ferrers towards whom his hostility had by no means been diminished by his experiences in the Star Chamber, and he became involved in more dangerous activities, or at least activities that could be interpreted as such by a hostile observer. And so, in October 1530 he was arrested on charges of high treason and thrown into the Tower. He was tried, found guilty on the flimsiest evidence, and beheaded on Tower Hill on 4 December 1531, while his enormous landed possessions worth £10,000 a year, together with personal property valued at £30,000 passed into the King's hands. It was a political trial, Rhys's real offence probably being his adherence to Catholicism and his declared opposition to Anne Boleyn whom the king had determined to marry.