The Wye and Its Associations Part 3

[Picture: The New Weir]

Gilpin calls the New Weir the second grand scene on the Wye.

"The river," says he, "is wider than usual in this part, and takes a sweep round a towering promontory of rock, which forms the side-screen on the left, and is the grand feature of the view. It is not a broad, fractured piece of rock, but rather a woody hill, from which large projections in two or three places burst out, rudely hung with twisting branches, and s.h.a.ggy furniture; which, like the mane round the lion's head, gives a more savage air to these wild exhibitions of nature. Near the top a pointed fragment of solitary rock, rising above the rest, has rather a fantastic appearance-but it is not without its effect in marking the scene . . . On the right side of the river, the bank forms a woody amphitheatre, following the course of the stream round the promontory. Its lower skirts are adorned with a hamlet, in the midst of which volumes of thick smoke, thrown up at intervals from an iron forge, as its fires receive fresh fuel, add double grandeur to the scene. . . .

"But what peculiarly marks this view, is a circ.u.mstance on the water.

The whole river at this place makes a precipitate fall-of no great height indeed, but enough to merit the name of a cascade, though to the eye above the stream it is an object of no consequence. In all the scenes we had yet pa.s.sed, the water moving with a slow and solemn pace, the objects around kept time, as it were, with it; and every steep, and every rock which hung over the river, was solemn, tranquil, and majestic. But here the violence of the stream, and the roaring of the waters, impressed a new character on the scene: all was agitation and uproar, and every steep and every rock stared with wildness and terror."

Let us add the testimony of another great authority on the picturesque; more especially as his remarks serve to corroborate our own on the effect received by the river from objects which elsewhere are mean and common.

"A scene at the New Weir on the Wye, which in itself is truly great and awful, so far from being disturbed, becomes more interesting and important by the business to which it is destined. It is a chasm between two high ranges of hills, that rise almost perpendicularly from the water: the rocks on the sides are mostly heavy ma.s.ses, and their colour is generally brown; but here and there a pale craggy shape starts up to a vast height above the rest, unconnected, broken, and bare: large trees frequently force out their way amongst them; and many of these stand far back in the covert, where their natural dusky hue is heightened by the shadow that overhangs them. The river too, as it retires, loses itself in the woods, which close immediately above, then rise thick and high, and darken the water.

In the midst of all this gloom is an _iron forge_, covered with a black cloud of smoke, and surrounded with half-burnt ore, with coal, and with cinders: the fuel for it is brought down a path, worn into steps narrow and steep, and winding among precipices; and near it is an open s.p.a.ce of barren moor, about which are scattered the huts of the workmen. It stands close to the cascade of the Weir, where the agitation of the current is increased by large fragments of rocks, which have been swept down by floods from the banks, or shivered by tempests from the brow; and the sullen sound, at stated intervals, of the strokes from the great hammer in the forge, deadens the roar of the waterfall. Just below it, while the rapidity of the stream still continues, a ferry is carried across it; and lower down the fishermen use little round boats called truckles (coracles), the remains perhaps of the ancient British navigation, which the least motion will overset, and the slightest touch may destroy. All the employments of the people seem to require either exertion or caution; and the ideas of fear or danger which attend them give to the scene an animation unknown to the solitary, though perfectly compatible with the wildest romantic situation." {85}

To this, however, we must add as a note, that both Weir and forge have now vanished. The more headlong rush and louder roar of the river mark the place where the former stood; and some limekilns contribute the smoke of the latter without its noise.

During the whole of this part of the pa.s.sage, the stream is interrupted by fragments of rock, around which the water rushes tumultuously; but at the New Weir these interruptions, above noticed, acquire a character of sublimity, when taken in conjunction with the rest of the picture. The river, roaring and foaming, is in haste to escape, and at length is lost to the eye, as it seems to plunge for ever into sepulchral woods.

Beyond this, there are several other rock scenes, but none that will bear description after the foregoing; although to the traveller wearied with excitement, they come in with good effect. Below New Weir, the river stretches with a curve between Highmeadows Wood on the left bank, and the precipitous cliffs of the Great Doward on the right. Then the Little Doward peeps over a screen of rocks and shrubs. These two hills are called King Arthur's Plain, and between these is King Arthur's Hall, the level of an exhausted iron mine. Then we pa.s.s a cl.u.s.ter of rocks called St. Martin's or the Three Sisters, and a pool of the river named St.

Martin's Well, where the water is said to be seventy feet deep. Various seats and cottages give variety to the picture, situated in the midst of rich woods and undulating eminences; and at length the landscape sinks calmly down, and Monmouth-"delightsome Monmouth"-is seen in long perspective, terminating a reach of the river.

CHAPTER VII.

Monmouth-History of the Castle-Apartment of Henry of Monmouth-Ecclesiastical remains-Benedictine priory-Church of St.

Mary-Church of St. Thomas-Monnow Bridge-Modern town-Monmouth caps-The beneficent parvenu.

Monmouth lies embowered among gentle hills, only diversified by wood, corn, and pasture; but to view it either from the Wye, or any of the neighbouring eminences, one would be far from supposing it to have so tame, or at least so quiet a site. From one point, its spire is seen pa.s.sing through a deep and mysterious wood; from another, it hangs perched on a precipitous ridge; and from the Wye it rises with considerable stateliness in the form of an amphitheatre. It stands at the confluence of the Wye and the Monnow, from which it derives its English name.

A royal fortress existed here before the conquest, a circ.u.mstance which renders its early history full of fearful vicissitudes, although these are but very imperfectly traced. In the time of Henry III., the castle, after changing hands repeatedly, was taken and rased to the ground.

"Thus the glorie of Monmouth," says Lambarde, "had clean perished, ne had it pleased G.o.d longe after in that place to give life to the n.o.ble King Henry V., who of the same is called Henry of Monmouth." It was a favourite residence of the father of this prince, King Henry IV., and also of his father, John of Gaunt, "time honoured Lancaster," to whom it came by his marriage with Blanch, daughter and heiress of Henry, duke of Lancaster, whose t.i.tle he was afterwards granted. Henry V. was born here in 1387, and from this circ.u.mstance is styled Henry of Monmouth. This prince enlarged the duchy of Lancaster with his maternal inheritance, and obtained an act of parliament that all grants of offices and estates should pa.s.s under the seal of the duchy. Henry VI. and VII. possessed the castle of Monmouth, as part of the duchy, by right of inheritance; but between these reigns it was given by Edward IV. to Lord Herbert, afterwards earl of Pembroke. Although the duchy, however, continued in the crown, the castle, together with other possessions in Monmouthshire, was alienated, and became private property, but at what period does not clearly appear. In the reign of Elizabeth, it is ascertained, by different grants, to have been still parcel of the duchy, and also in that of James I., by the following presentment made under a commission: "Item, wee present that his majestie hath one ancient castell, called Monmouth Castell, situated within the liberties of the said towne, which is nowe, and hath been for a long time, ruinous and in decaye, but by whom it hath byn decayed wee knowe not, nor to what value, in regarde it was before our rememberment, savinge one greate hall which is covered and mayntayned for the judges of the a.s.sise to sitt in. And for and concerning any demean lands belonginge to the same castell, wee knowe not of any more save only the castell hill, wherein divers have gardens, and the castell green, which is inclosed within the walls of the said castell."

Before the end of the seventeenth century, we find the castle in the hands of the first duke of Beaufort, if the following anecdote, indicative either of an ambitious or a fantastic spirit, can be believed.

"The marchioness of Worcester," says the author of the Secret Memoirs of Monmouthshire, "was ordered by her grandfather, the late duke of Beaufort, to lie in of her first child in a house lately built within the castle of Monmouth, near that spot of ground and s.p.a.ce of air, where our great hero Henry V. was born."

Whatever mutilations this castle may have undergone since the days of its royal magnificence, by whomever it may have been at length "decayed," or at whatever period it came into the hands of the Beauforts, this at least is certain, that there is now not more than enough left to indicate its site. "The trans.m.u.tations of time," says Gilpin, "are often ludicrous.

Monmouth Castle was formerly the palace of a king, and the birthplace of a mighty prince; it is now converted into a yard for fattening ducks."

The ruins, however, must have been concealed from his view by the stables and other outhouses that had risen from the fragments, so as completely to hide them from the townward side. c.o.xe, a much more correct observer, although less learned in the laws of the picturesque, describes them in 1800 as presenting, when viewed from the right bank of the Monnow, "an appearance of dilapidated grandeur which recalls to memory the times of feudal magnificence."

Although the roof and great part of the walls had already fallen, the site of two remarkable apartments could be traced distinctly; that in which Henry was born, and another adjoining which had been used, even within the memory of some of the inhabitants, for the a.s.sizes. The latter was sixty-three feet in length and forty-six in breadth, and was no doubt the "greate hall" mentioned in the presentment quoted above as being "mayntayned for the judges of the a.s.sise to sitt in."

The apartment of Henry of Monmouth is thus described by the archdeacon:

"The apartment which gave birth to the Gwentonian hero was an upper story, and the beams that supported the floor still project from the side walls; it was fifty-eight feet long, and twenty-four broad, and was decorated with gothic windows, of which some are still remaining, and seem to be of the age of Henry III. The walls of this part are not less than ten feet in thickness. About fifty years ago, a considerable part of the southern wall fell down with a tremendous crash, which alarmed the whole town, leaving a breach not less than forty feet in length. On the ground floor beneath are three circular arches terminating in c.h.i.n.ks, which have a very ancient appearance; at the north-eastern angle, within a stable, may be seen a round tower six feet in diameter, which was once a staircase leading to the grand apartment."

To the right of this apartment, the same author traced the vestige of the original walls in a private house built within the ancient site. They were from six to ten feet, formed of pebbles and mortar, and is so compact a ma.s.s as not to yield in hardness to solid stone.

Next to the ruined castle of an ancient town, come the ecclesiastical remains; for the stronghold of the chief, and the cell of the monk, were usually the nucleus round which the town was gathered. The princ.i.p.al relics of the latter kind in Monmouth are those of a benedictine priory of black monks, dedicated to St. Mary, which was founded as a cell to the monastery of St. Florence, near Saumur in Anjou, by Wikenoc, lord of Monmouth in the reign of Henry I. The ruins are small, but interesting; and not the less so from containing an apartment distinguished by a rich gothic bay window, pointed out by tradition as the study of that mysterious personage, Geoffry of Monmouth. The church of the priory stood on the site of the present parish church of St. Mary, of which the tower and the lower part of the spire are the only remains of the original. This spire, which is "lofty, and light, and small," is the grand scenic feature of the town when viewed from a distance; and in return, it affords to the traveller who will take the trouble to ascend it a point from which to view the country to most advantage. The beautiful vale in which the town stands, with its undulating eminences, among which wander the Wye, the Monnow, and the Trothy, is seen in an almost circular form, enclosed from the vulgar world, by a line of hills mantled with woods and forests.

The ancient church of St. Thomas stands near the bridge of the Monnow, and from its circular arches, and extreme simplicity of appearance, is probably older than the conquest. This does not apply, however, to the entire building, the western window, and some other morceaux, displaying the ornamented Gothic of a late period. The antiquity of the building, it should be said, is rendered the more probable by its standing beyond the bridge, where the suburbs of the modern town are supposed to occupy the site of the British town during the Saxon era.

The bridge, of which a view is given in Grose's Antiquities, is itself an object of interest, containing, on its centre, the Monnow Gate, the only one of the four original gates, mentioned by Leland, that remains entire.

Both bridge and gate bear evidence of very high antiquity, and were probably erected by the Saxons as a barrier against the Welsh. The town was farther fortified by a wall and moat, of which the latter was entire in the time of Leland, and some fragments of the former remaining. But all vestiges of those defences have now vanished, with the exception of the Monnow Gate, and some pieces of a tower.

Of the modern town, it can be said that it is neat and clean, with one broad and well-built street. It is neither mean nor elegant, and presents no offensive contrast to the beautiful scenery by which it is surrounded. The navigation of the Wye is its princ.i.p.al support, for at the present day at least it has no manufactories, although celebrated in that of its own Henry for _caps_. "If your majestie is remembered of it, the Welchmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps." The account given of this staple article by Fuller, in his Worthies, is worth quoting.

"These," says he, "were the most ancient, general, warm, and profitable coverings of men's heads in this island. It is worth our pains to observe the tenderness of our kings to preserve the trade of cap-making, and what long and strong struggling our state had to keep up the using thereof, so many thousands of people being thereby maintained in the land, especially before the invention of fulling-mills, all caps before that time being wrought, beaten, and thickened, by the hands and feet of men, till those mills, as they eased many of their labour, outed more of their livelihood. Capping anciently set fifteen distinct callings on work, as they are reckoned up in the statute: 1. carders, 2. spinners; 3. knitters; 4. parters of wool; 5. forfers; 6. thickeners; 7. dressers; 8. walkers; 9.

dyers; 10. battelers; 11. shearers; 12. pressers; 13. edgers; 14.

liners; 15. band-makers, and other exercises. No wonder then that so many statutes were enacted in parliament to encourage this handicraft." * * * * "Lastly; to keep up the usage of caps, it was enacted, in the 13th of Queen Eliz. cap. 19, that they should be worne by all persons (some of worship and quality excepted) on sabbath and holy days, on the pain of forfeiting ten groats for the omission thereof.

"But it seems that nothing but hats would fit the heads (or humours rather) of the English, as fancied by them fitter to fence their fair faces from the injury of wind and weather, so that the 39th of Queen Elizabeth this statute was repealed; yea, the cap, accounted by the Romans an emblem of liberty, is esteemed by the English (falconers and hunters excepted) a badge of servitude, though very useful in themselves, and the ensign of constancy, because not discomposed, but retaining their fashion, in what form soever they may be crouded.

"The best caps were formerly made at Monmouth, where the capper's chapel doth still remain, being better carved and gilded than any other part of the church. But on the occasion of a great plague happening in this town, the trade was some years since removed hence to Beaudley, in Worcestershire, yet so that they are called Monmouth caps unto this day. Thus this town retains, though not the profit, the credit of capping, and seeing the child keeps the mother's name, there is some hope in due time she may return to her."

Monmouth appears also to have dealt largely in ale, if we may judge by a grant of Henry IV. as lord of the manor, to its burgesses. "That the brewers of ale there, who were anciently held to pay the king's ancestors and progenitors eight gallons of ale at every brewing, in the name of Castlecoule, during the time the king, or his heirs, were dwelling in the said town, should now pay in lieu thereof 10d. each brewing, except when the king, his heirs or his councils, holding his sessions there, were present in the said town, in which case the ancient custom of Castlecoules should be observed."

We must not omit an anecdote connected with the history of a free-school, founded here in the reign of James I. William Jones, born at Monmouth, as Burton tells us in his History of Wales, was forced to quit the place for not being able to pay ten groats. He removed to the great field for adventurers, London, and became first a porter, then a factor, and afterwards went over to Hamburgh, where he found such sale for his Welsh cottons, that in a very short time he realised a handsome fortune. He founded a school in his native place, allowing fifty pounds a year to the master, and a hundred pounds salary to a lecturer, together with an almshouse for twenty poor people, each having two rooms and a garden, and two shillings and sixpence a week. It is said, however, by other authorities, that Jones was a native of Newland, in Gloucestershire; and after having made his fortune in London, that he returned thither in the a.s.sumed character of a beggar, to try the liberality of his townsmen. In this he found them wanting, for they tauntingly told him to go and ask relief at Monmouth, where he had lived at service. He took their advice, and being better received there, founded the above charities in token of his grat.i.tude.

CHAPTER VIII.

Welsh pedigree of queen Victoria-A poet's flattery-Castles of Monmouthshire-Geoffrey of Monmouth-Henry of Monmouth-The Kymin-Subsidiary tour-Sir David Gam-White Castle-Scenfrith-The Castle spectres-Grosmont-Lanthony Abbey.

"Monmouthshire," as has been well observed, "though now an English county, may be justly considered the connecting link between England and Wales, as it unites the scenery, manners, and language of both." In ancient times, it was a debatable land of another kind, when Romans, Saxons, and Normans, strove by turns against the aboriginal Britons.

During the Roman invasion it was a part of the territory of the Silures, who inhabited the eastern division of South Wales, and were one of the three great Welsh tribes; but in the conflict of the Saxons, Gwent (its British name) played the most distinguished part of all, under its sovereign Utha Pendragon and the renowned king Arthur. To Gwent, moreover, if chronicles say true, we are indebted for our present sovereign lady, who is descended collaterally from its princes. Merrich, the son of Ithel, king or prince of Gwent, died without issue male, leaving one daughter, Morvyth, who espoused Gwno, great grandson to Rees ap Theodore, prince of South Wales, and lineal ancestor of Sir Owen Tudor, grandfather of Henry VII. "So that it appears," say the Secret Memoirs of Monmouthshire, "that the kings of Scotland and England are originally descended from Morvyth, this Gwentonian prince's daughter, and heir to Meyrick, last king of Gwent, who, according to several authentic British pedigrees, was lineally descended from Cadwalladar, the last king of Britain, and as our historians do testify, did prognosticate, fifteen hundred years past, that the heirs descended of his loins should be restored again to the kingdom of Britain, which was partly accomplished in king Henry VII., and more by the accession of James I. to the British throne, but wholly fulfilled in the happy union of all Britain by the glorious queen Anne; whom G.o.d long preserved of his great goodness, and the succession of the Protestant line."

We know not what value may be attached to this ill.u.s.trious ancestry by Queen Victoria; but her predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, was fond of tracing her descent from the ancient kings of her country-a predilection which the courtly Spenser does not omit to flatter in his Faerie Queene.

"Thy name, O soveraine Queene, thy realme and race, From this renowned prince derived arre, Who mightily upheld that royal mace Which thou now bear'st, to thee descended farre From mighty kings and couquerors in warre, Thy fathers and thy grandfathers of old, Whose n.o.ble deeds above the northern starre, Immortall fame for ever hath enrold; As in that _old man's booke_ they were in order told."

The _old man_ have referred to is Geoffrey of Monmouth, of whom more anon.

It is to the Norman invasion that Monmouthshire owes its castles; for the great barons were not employed by the state, as had been the case with the Saxons, to conquer the territory, but were invited to enter upon adventures at their own cost, and for their own gain. The lands they subdued became their own; they were created lords-barons over them; and castles speedily bristled up all over the territory to maintain the authority so acquired. Pennant states the number for Wales at a hundred and forty-three, of which Monmouthshire, as the frontier region between the belligerents, had of course the greatest proportion, amounting, it is said, to at least twenty-five. In these baronial lands, the writs of ordinary justices of the royal courts were not current. The barons marchers, as they were called, had recourse to their feudal lord the king in person; and the same abuses and confusion were the result which we have noticed in Herefordshire, till Henry VIII. abolished this anomalous government, divided Wales into twelve shires, and withdrew Monmouthshire into the list of the English counties. It is interesting to trace the chain of fortresses thus destined to become, still earlier than in the natural course of time, a series of ruins. They extend, in this county, along the banks of the Monnow, the Wye, and the Severn, and from Grosmont, diagonally, to the banks of the Rumney; while castellated mansions, such as Raglan, which we shall notice presently (at first only a rude fortress), arose in all quarters to keep the natives in due respect.

King Arthur, mentioned above as prince of Gwent, did not reign at Monmouth, but at Caerleon; although he is closely a.s.sociated with the former place, inasmuch as the gothic room in the priory which we have pointed out, on the authority of tradition, as the study of Geoffrey of Monmouth, was in all probability the birthplace of his most heroic achievements. Geoffrey, in fact, for it is needless to attempt to conceal the fact from our readers, was an historical romancer rather than an historian. The groundwork of his celebrated performance was Brut y Breninodd, or the Chronicle of the Kings of Britain, written by Tyssilio, or St. Telian, bishop of St. Asaph, in the seventh century; but Geoffrey owns himself, that he made various additions to his original, particularly of Merlin's prophecies. After all, however, if we may venture to express our private opinion on so recondite a subject, it seems to us that a monkish history, of the seventh century, must have been reasonably fertile in itself in wonderful incidents and legendary tales, and that in all probability Geoffrey of Monmouth deserves less credit as a romancer than he has received from one party, as well as less credit as an historian than he has received from the other.

However this may be, the work has served as a valuable storehouse for our poets and romancers. It has even supplied the story of King Lear to Shakspeare, who deepened the pathos by making Cordelia die before her father; whereas, in the original story, Lear is restored to his kingdom, and Cordelia to life. Milton drew from it his fiction of Sabrina in the Mask of Comus; and in early life he had formed the design of writing an epic poem on the subject taken up from Geoffrey by Spenser, in the second book of the Faerie Queene-

"A chronicle of Briton kings, From Brute to Arthur's reign."

Dryden, also, intended to produce an epic poem on the subject of king Arthur, but he contented himself with an opera, in which he has sublimely described the British worthy

"in battle brave, But still serene in all the stormy war, Like heaven above the clouds; and after fight As merciful and kind to vanquished foe As a forgiving G.o.d."