Part 3 (1/2)
[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 s.h.i.+vered 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 Monmouths.h.i.+re, 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 Monmouths.h.i.+re, ”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.