THE VALLEY OF THE WYE

Those who have stout hearts and stout boots may, I believe, discover the actual source of the Wye among the rushes of Plynlimmon. Five miles of hard walking over rather dull downs will procure them the satisfaction of seeing the first gleams of the thin silver thread that is destined to grow into the most beautiful river of England. Most of us, however, will be content to meet the Wye for the first time when it is five miles old, so to speak, at the point where it touches the high-road from Aberystwith to Newtown. Even here it is a tiny stream, rushing lightheartedly down the hill over the rocks, unsobered as yet by the dignified reflections of Hereford and Tintern and Chepstow Castle.

These slopes of Plynlimmon are not particularly inspiring, except when regarded as the cradle of the Wye, and of that greater river whose tributary she is, the Severn. It is true that the standard of Wales, with its red dragon, once floated victoriously on the side of this hill, and the short grass has been dyed with the blood of the Flemings, who mustered here to chastise that stout rebel, Owen Glyndwr, and were thoroughly chastised by him instead. But in themselves the heights of Plynlimmon are a little uninteresting. Short grass and rushes are all that grow upon them, and though their rounded outlines have a dignity of their own, the lack of colour makes them rather desolate. It is not till the Wye has passed Llangurig that it begins to earn its fame.

Curiously enough, the Wye’s fame seems to depend mainly on its lower reaches. Nine people out of ten regard it as rising, so to speak, in Hereford; the Upper Wye is unknown to them and considered of no account. Yet to those who know it the Upper Wye, with its rugged hills and its wealth of colours, has a stronger charm even than the wooded loveliness of Symond’s Yat or of Tintern.

At Llangurig—which is a wind-swept village with a nice little inn and a reputation for good fishing—the river and the road that follows it turn sharply to the right, and begin to descend by a very gentle gradient towards Rhayader. The landscape changes gradually. The hills lose their bleak desolation only to become cultivated and commonplace: then the fields yield to moorlands and the rounded curves to bold and jagged rocks; and at last, near the spot where the river Marteg adds its waters to the Wye and the railway joins the road, the great hills rise on each side so precipitously that the way lies almost through a defile. The hilltops are bare and grey, but by the banks of the river is a belt of trees; and as the valley widens the slopes are no longer bare but are glorious in purple and gold, in heather and gorse. And where the flaming sides of the Elan Valley converge with the valley of the Wye stands the tiny town of Rhayader.

This is, I think, the gem of the Wye. It is well, therefore, if possible, to stay here for a day or two; and fortunately there is a nice little hotel to stay in. There are hills near and far, and on every hill are all the colours of the rainbow, and with the passing of every cloud the colours move and change. Close at hand are slopes of bracken topped by rugged crags; far away the hills of the Elan Valley are blue and amethyst. The river rushes through the town, giving to it its name of Rhayader Gwy, the Falls of the Wye, though the falls are not what they once were, I believe, before the bridge was built. Of course there is a castle-mound, for no Welsh town of a respectable age is complete without one. The castle itself has disappeared. The days of its life, indeed, appear to have been few and evil. It was built by “the Lord Rhys,” the mightiest of all the princes of the south, but so strenuous was the life of his day that he was obliged to rebuild it a few years later. Afterwards he was for a short time imprisoned by his own sons, and it was while he was in this undignified position that his castle of Rhayader was seized by his enemies. But these dim memories have lately been eclipsed. Those who visit Rhayader to-day think little of the valorous and potent prince of ancient Wales; they think almost exclusively of the Birmingham Waterworks. We may forgive them for this, for the Birmingham Waterworks are more romantic than one would expect—romantic not merely as all great engineering works must be, with the romance of enterprise and achievement, but also romantically beautiful. One may drive for miles beside the lakes that wind into the heart of the mountains, and would have so natural an air if it were not for their mighty dams of Caban, and Pen-y-Garreg, and Craig Goch. It is a drive worth taking, for the road is good, the mountains tower above it with real grandeur, and the waters have pathos as well as beauty. The legend of buried houses and churches is common to many lakes; but in the case of the lakes of Cwm Elan it is no legend, but a fact, that their waters flow over the ground where generations of men have lived and worked, have ploughed their fields and said their prayers. The affairs of most of them are forgotten as completely as their houses are buried, but there is one memory here that no waters can hide—whether of Cwm Elan or of the chilly Serpentine or of the blue Mediterranean—the memory of Percy and Harriet Shelley. They lived here once, young and happy, and would have thought it a wild prophecy indeed if it had been foretold to them that not only they themselves, but even their quiet homestead among the green fields, would be destroyed by water.

From Rhayader to Newbridge the road still closely follows the river, which, as we watch it mile by mile, gradually becomes wider and calmer. For the first few miles the banks are wild enough, and very beautiful; then suddenly the river is hidden from us by the deep shades and countless stems of Doldowlod Woods, where James Watt once lived; and by the time we dart out into the sunlight again we are nearing Newbridge. On this road there is nothing to limit our speed except the law, for from end to end of the Wye the surface is good, and there are no hills that deserve the name. At Newbridge we leave the river for a few miles, but join it again near Builth, and cross it to enter that town.

Builth is unattractive. It professes to be a Spa, but I never heard of any one who drank the waters; and it is hardly likely to become popular, since all the charms of Llanwrtyd Wells are but thirteen miles away on the one side, and all the fashion of Llandrindod only seven miles away on the other. Llanwrtyd is a delightful little place, with a good hotel and lovely surroundings, unspoilt as yet by popularity; while Llandrindod, as every one knows, is beloved by so many that it is no longer very lovable. Builth has little to offer in rivalry of these, and indeed makes small show of hospitality, maintaining in this matter the character it earned long ago, when it refused to admit its fugitive prince, the last Llewelyn. It is only a little way from here to the dell whither he struggled through the snow from this his treacherous town, only to find fresh treachery, and to die through its means. His dust lies, they say, at the spot called Cefn-y-Bedd, or the Bank of the Grave; and here in quite recent times a monument of stone has been set up. It stands close to the wayside on the road from Builth to Llanwrtyd.

This, however, is not our road, which follows the Wye very closely for a time; through Erwood, where from the top of a slight rise we have a wide and beautiful view; past Llyswen and the “Three Cocks,” one of the most famous of fishing inns, and through Glasbury to Hay. We are now in a broad and fertile valley; the hills are wooded; the river is growing slow and stately in its demeanour. The whole aspect of the country has changed, for at Hay we shall leave all the wildness of Wales behind us, and shall enter the quiet, homely county of Hereford.

“I cam in crepusculo to the Hay,” says Leland, and he chose his time wisely.

Hay, or La Haie, as it was originally called, was once the meeting-ground of all those turbulent mediæval passions that flourished so exceedingly on the border. For this reason it is full of ghosts. From this, the Welsh side, it has rather an undistinguished air, but when first seen by twilight from the English side, with the Black Mountains lowering behind it, and the remains of its grim castle dominating it, little Hay seizes the imagination. For those who approach it thus in crepusculo, like Leland, the past for ever lives in its commonplace streets more insistently than the present; lives above all in its castle—“the which sumetime hath bene right stately”—the castle with the long, picturesque flight of steps, and the longer and still more picturesque history. Through that great doorway many feet have passed that never came out, for those that entered the castle of Hay did it at their peril. The greater part of the building as it now stands is of Tudor date, but the entrance has by some means survived since King John’s time, and this in spite of difficulties: for the place was plundered during the Border Wars, destroyed by the Welsh themselves in self-defence, rebuilt by Henry III., captured by Llewelyn, retaken by Prince Edward, captured once more by Llewelyn’s grandson, and finally suffered the general fate of Welsh castles. “Now being almost totally decay’d,” says Camden, “it complains of the outrages of that profligate Rebel, Owen Glyn Dowrdwy, who in his March through these Countries consumed it with fire.”

This last disaster may account for the entirely modern appearance of the houses; but there is nothing, no slate roof, no shop-window full of cheap blouses, that can make one forget the haunting presence of those that walk unseen in Hay—the undying ghosts of a hundred battles, murders, and sudden deaths.

Soon after leaving Hay we pass the remains of Clifford Castle. Here was born Jane de Clifford, destined to be so fair that men would call her the Rose of the World; and here no doubt she played her childish games on the banks of the Wye, with no disturbing visions of that harder game which she was to play later on and finally to lose. The story of the avenging poison-cup is untrue, we are told: it was in the nunnery of Godstow that Fair Rosamund died, and was buried beneath the cruellest epitaph, surely, that was ever graven on a tomb.

Two miles beyond Clifford is the toll-bridge of Whitney, and this we cross with a pretty view of the river on each side of us. Our way lies through Letton, past the turn to Monnington—which claims to be the burial-place of Owen Glyndwr—and through Bridge Sollars to Hereford. The landscape all the way is characteristic of the country: a scene of quiet fields and gentle river, of thatched cottages and gay gardens. It is not exciting, but it is extremely pleasant. Characteristic as it is, however, it does not represent Herefordshire at its best. The hills above Ledbury, the hop-gardens round Leominster, the woods and the wide views near Richard’s Castle, are all more distinctive and more beautiful than this part of the Wye Valley. Indeed, if we were not at this moment pledged to follow the Wye we should do well to drive from Hay to Hereford by way of the Golden Valley, though the journey is considerably longer and the road by no means so good. This valley was originally named by the British, from the river that runs through it, the Valley of the Dore, or of the Water, for water is in Welsh dwr. The Normans, jumping to conclusions, translated this into Val d’Or, and so it became the Golden Valley; “which name,” says Camden, “It may well be thought to deserve, for its golden, rich, and pleasant fertility.”

But it is improbable that either the fertility of the “Gilden Vale” or the remains of Abbeydore Monastery will tempt a motorist to leave the splendid road that will lead him into Hereford by Letton, and Bridge Sollars, and the White Cross that was set up in the fourteenth century when the plague was raging in Hereford, to mark the spot where the infection ceased, and where, in consequence, it was safe to hold a market. Here, on the left, lies the suburb of Widemarsh and beyond it the Racecourse, where the promising youth who was afterwards Edward I. showed at an early age that genius for extremely practical jokes that he used at the expense of the Welsh later on. He was the prisoner of Simon de Montfort on this occasion, and was taking a ride with a certain number of attendants. He guilelessly suggested that his guards should ride races among themselves, while he amused himself by looking on; then, when their horses were tired, he upon his fresh one galloped off to Dinmore Hill, where the Mortimers of Wigmore were waiting for him. This incident took place in Widemarsh; and in Widemarsh too is a relic that is worth seeking out before we drive into the heart of the town—the preaching-cross of the Dominicans, which, with the ruins of a thirteenth-century monastery, stands among the cabbages of the Coningsby Hospital. The latter is an Elizabethan foundation, and with the red coats of its pensioners is in itself a picturesque object in a town that is not very rich in visible memorials of its great history. We may look in vain for the castle that was, according to Leland, the largest and strongest in all England; the castle that was repaired by King Harold and was once so splendid with its ten wall-towers and great keep; where Ranulph of Normandy stayed, and Tostig, and King John, where John of Gaunt was governor, were Simon de Montfort imprisoned Prince Edward after the Battle of Lewes, where Isabella proclaimed her son Edward III. Protector of England, and where Owen Tudor was a prisoner. As it suffered no less than three sieges during the Civil War, and when they were over its remains were sold for £85, we need not be surprised that the castle is now represented by a public garden, where the youthful citizens of Hereford may play leap-frog over the spot where kings have feasted and made history. And not only has the castle disappeared, but even of the old houses there are very few remaining, as may be judged by the name of the fine one that stands in the principal street of the town. In Chester, Worcester, or Shrewsbury, “The Old House” would not be a very distinguishing name!

The chief point of interest in Hereford is, of course, the Cathedral, with its long and somewhat confusing history. An endless number of people have had a hand in the building of it, apparently, from the days when Offa of Mercia enriched the shrine of his murdered guest, Ethelbert of East Anglia, till the quite recent and rather unfortunate day when the west front was finished. The consequence of this diversity of builders is that Hereford Cathedral, with its austere Norman south transept, its Early English Lady-Chapel, its Decorated south choir-transept, and its Perpendicular cloister, is a complete Guide of Architecture.

It was as the shrine of St. Ethelbert that it first became important. There is a good deal of disagreement on the subject of Ethelbert’s death. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance, says tout court that in 792 Offa commanded the head of King Ethelbert to be cut off; whereas Matthew of Westminster gives quite a different version of the affair, completely exonerating Offa, “that most noble and most illustrious and most high-born king.” It was Offa’s queen, Quendritha, he says, who caused a peculiarly comfortable armchair to be placed in the bedroom of her visitor the King of East Anglia, and beneath it “a deep hole to be dug”—with very unpleasant consequences for the visitor. When the horrified Offa heard of Ethelbert’s fate he shut himself up and refused food. “But,” adds Matthew, “although he was quite innocent of all participation in the King’s death, he nevertheless sent a powerful expedition and annexed the Kingdom of the East Angles to his own dominions.”

The murdered guest, whoever his murderer, was first buried at the spot still called St. Ethelbert’s Well, and afterwards in Hereford Cathedral, to its great enrichment.

There are several roads from Hereford to Ross, none of which follow the river closely. The most commonly used—being the least hilly—is by Bridstow and Much Birch. Between this road and the Wye are still to be seen traces of the College of Llanfrother, founded by Dubritius, that great Archbishop of Caerleon who preached so movingly at King Arthur’s coronation and then resigned his see to the still greater St. David. On the other side of the Wye is a shorter, but after the first five or six miles a more hilly route, with some fine backward views and some glimpses of the river. The surface of this road is all that can be desired, and the hills are by no means formidable; but as one approaches Ross the country is rather uninteresting.

Ross itself may be regarded as a monument to one John Kyrle.

The lisping babe, however, is making a mistake, for the Man of Ross only taught the spire to rise forty-seven feet; and, moreover, it has been destroyed by lightning and rebuilt since his day (which was a very long day, lasting from 1637 to 1724). “A small exaggeration you must allow me as a poet,” said Pope. But the fame of John Kyrle does not depend upon the spire alone, for he did much to improve the town, and did it, too, on a very small income. “He was a very humble, good-natured man ... of little or no literature,” an eighteenth-century diarist says of him. “His estate was £500 per ann., and no more, with which he did wonders.” It was not, however, by means of this modest estate alone that he won his lasting fame as a philanthropist, but also by untiring energy and skill in the art of beggary, and the judicious use of other men’s money. In the case of the church bell it was his own money that he used, and his own silver goblet also. While the bell was in process of casting he drank to Church and King, and then flung the goblet into the molten metal—that after serving for the sacred toast it might be for ever consecrated to sacred uses. This incident adds a touch of the picturesque to the sterling qualities of the benevolent old gentleman to whom Ross owes its public walks, and the Prospect that quaint Gilpin of the eighteenth century described as “an amusing view.” Ross repays him by keeping his name green. It also—not entirely without difficulty—keeps green the two elm-suckers that long ago forced their way beneath the wall of the church and rose (being elms of Ross) in the pew of John Kyrle. They have been dead for some time, but they are still draped carefully with foliage to keep up the illusion. The church itself is fairly old, and has some interesting monuments, including an ugly one tardily raised to the memory of the Man of Ross.

In the town the most cherished relics are, of course, Kyrle’s house and the carved monogram he is supposed to have placed on the outer wall of the Market Hall. The letters “F.C.” are interlaced with a heart, and are said to represent the words, “Faithful to Charles in heart,” for Kyrle was devoted to the Stuarts. Charles I. himself slept once in this town, and other kings have visited it, but none has distinguished himself here save George IV. The Mayor of Ross sallied forth to meet him, as mayors use, wreathed in smiles and primed with speeches. By way of response to all this loyalty and eloquence, however, “the first gentleman in Europe” merely pulled down the blinds of the carriage! History does not record the mayor’s next proceeding. The position strikes one as difficult.

Close to Ross and on our way to Monmouth is Wilton, which is reached by a beautiful and ancient bridge of six arches, whence there is a good view of Ross, clustered prettily on its hill and surmounted by its heaven-directed spire. Part of this bridge was broken down during the Civil War to prevent Cromwell’s army from reaching Hereford. The castle, too, fell into the hands of the Royalists, though its owner had carefully refrained from supporting either side, with the result that he offended both. The ruins now enclose a private garden and are fairly picturesque though they hardly compensate for an interrupted run. Within these walls, of which so very little is left, the poet Spenser was once entertained in the days of the Greys. Later on the castle was owned by the family of Brydges, one of whom, when he was Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower, was the means, either deliberately or from mere procrastination, of securing for England one of the most glorious reigns in her history. The warrant for the execution of Princess Elizabeth reached the Tower, but Charles Brydges delayed to carry it out. While he was waiting Queen Mary died.

From Wilton to Monmouth the scenery grows in beauty. At Goodrich Cross we should turn sharply to the left to visit the castle, and this is a matter that will take some time. For in the first place the castle is at some distance from the road, and in the second place there is much to see, and much, too, to hear. Yet there is little history connected with Goodrich, considering its age and dignity, and the great names of Pembroke and Talbot that are bound up with it. Its name, apparently is a corruption of Godric, who built a fort here before the Conquest, though the oldest part of the present ruin is said to date from the twelfth century. In the Civil War it endured two sieges, and it was after the second one, which lasted for five months, that the Parliament dismantled it. Except on this one dramatic occasion, Goodrich figured little in public life. It is the antiquary rather than the historian who will find it of absorbing interest, for the arches and Norman ornaments of the keep date from Stephen’s reign, and many styles of architecture are represented in the various galleries, sallyports, and towers, which have been gradually added by the successive owners of the castle. Greatest of these was Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury and hero of forty fights, “a valiant man, of an invincible, unconquered spirit.” He is said to have added a room to the keep, whence he must often have seen, as we may see, the Malvern Hills and the Welsh mountains in the distance, with Symond’s Yat and the Kymin nearer at hand.

Below Goodrich is Huntsham Ferry, which Henry IV. was in the act of crossing when he heard of the birth of his son, afterwards Henry V. So great was his excitement on this occasion that he impulsively presented the ferry and its profits to the ferryman, whose heirs held this possession for generations.

About three miles from Goodrich we have to climb a short hill with a gradient of 1 in 10; the steepest, I think, on this Wye Valley road. From the top of it we run down on an easy slope past the wall of Wyaston Leys and through the woods behind the Little Doward, with a beautiful view—unfortunately visible only in glimpses—of the winding river as it bends away towards Symond’s Yat. At the foot of the hill we enter Monmouth.

Now Monmouth, or some spot quite near it, is without doubt the best motoring centre on the Wye. The town itself is not so pleasant to stay in as Ross or Tintern, where there are hotels in pretty positions with nice gardens; but to the motorist this is less important than to others, since he will probably spend the day on the road. The important thing is to have a variety of interesting roads upon which to spend it. From Monmouth, one may drive up the Wye to Goodrich, Hereford, and Hay; or down the Wye to Tintern and Chepstow; or through the Forest of Dean on the further side of the river; or to Raglan, eight miles away, and on to Abergavenny; or past Abergavenny and the Holy Mountain into the wild Vale of Ewyas to far Llanthony.

“I’ll tell you, there is goot men porn at Monmouth,” says Fluellen, thinking of his king; and it is of Harry of Monmouth that we too think as we wake the echoes of his birthplace with our horn—those echoes that have so often answered to the “tucket” of John of Gaunt and of many another. Some say that it was John of Gaunt who built the castle in which his grandson was born, but whether this be the case or not there was a castle on this spot long before his day, though little seems to be known of it. The probability is that John of Gaunt improved and repaired the castle that was already there. The existing building has had an unusually chequered career even for a castle, having been in turn a palace, a pig-stye, an assize court, and a barrack. Even in James I.’s time it was said “that his Majestie hath one ancient castell, called Monmouth Castell ... 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.” “Harry’s Window,” but little else, survives as a shrine to the king whose name is still “a name to conjure with.” His statue stands on the town-hall, but the bells of St. Mary’s are the best memorial of Prince Hal, though their story is more characteristic of the rollicking schoolboy of Shakespeare than of the wise and soldierly monarch of history. Time was when these bells rang out over the town of Calais. They were doing so when Harry of Monmouth heard them first, and were, in point of fact, celebrating his departure from the shores of France with so much joyousness that the demonstration seemed to him to be carried too far. He vowed that they should ring no more insolent peals in Calais, and forthwith ordered them to be taken down and carried to his native town.

His town has other memories than his, and even other famous windows than “Harry’s.” There is a fine oriel window, belonging now to a school, but carefully preserved in honour of a twelfth-century archdeacon, who was none other than that Geoffrey of Monmouth whom Camden describes as “an Author well skill’d in Antiquities, but, as it seems, not of entire credit.” I fear there is little to be said in defence of Geoffrey’s credit as a historian, and there are those who say that his window is no more authentic than his writings.

Monmouth, like Hereford, is not rich in relics. Of its defences, its walls and its four gates, there is left only one gate on the Monnow Bridge, but of this the foundations are so old that there is no record of their origin. The form of the gateway itself has been slightly altered from time to time to suit increasing traffic, but its picturesqueness is uninjured. Through its arch we must pass on our way to Raglan and Abergavenny and Llanthony.

It is possible, of course, to see all these places on the same day, but it is not desirable. At Raglan one should have a leisured mind, undisturbed by thoughts of space or time or possible punctures. There are seats on its green terraces where one might sit happily all day under the shadow of the Yellow Tower of Gwent, seeing, not only the straight, stern lines of the great citadel rising from the moat, and the beautiful windows beyond, and the machicolated towers that flank the entrance, but also, as clearly as these, the pageantry and doughty deeds of long-dead but unforgotten Somersets. Some of them lost their heads in defence of the Rose of York, and some lost theirs for the Rose of Lancaster, and one, the most famous of all, lost the home of his fathers in the cause of the thankless Stuarts. Charles I. himself—for whose sake all this splendour of banqueting-halls and state-rooms and strong defences was made a ruin—has stood upon this terrace and looked up at the great keep to which he was so fatal, has feasted in the Elizabethan Hall, has ridden between the entrance-towers in state, and has come to them for safety as a fugitive. It was after the Battle of Naseby that he fled for protection to the house whose hospitalities he knew so well, and whose owner, the first Marquis of Worcester, had raised an army of two thousand men to fight for the King. Somewhere, in some dark corner within those walls that were then so stately, Lord Worcester met his ruined King by stealth, and being aged and infirm was obliged to call for help before he could kneel, as it behoved him, before the fugitive. “Sire,” said the old man weeping, “I have not a thought in my heart that tends not to the service of my God and you;” and he put three hundred pounds into the royal hand that took so much and gave so little. It closed upon this gift, as it closed a few days later upon the waistcoat that the Vicar of Goodrich, Dean Swift’s grandfather, had lined with Broad Pieces. There was one occasion, it is true, when Charles feared his entertainment might be too costly to Lord Worcester, and suggested pleasantly that supplies should be wrung from the neighbouring peasants. But Worcester was prouder than the King, “My castle would not stand long,” he said, “if it leaned upon the country.”

Even as matters were, his castle did not stand long. It held for the King till the last barrel of powder was opened; but the sad day came when the gallant old man of eighty-five passed for the last time through his own great gateway, between those warlike towers that had fought their last fight. He marched out to the sound of music and with all the honours of war, but his heart was broken, and after a short imprisonment in the custody of Black Rod, he died. “When I spoke with the man,” he said of his guardian, “I found him a very civil gentleman, but I saw no black rod.”

With this splendid old warrior the glory of Raglan departed. Fairfax so dealt with it that neither blood nor wine should ever be spilt within its walls again; and the work begun by him was finished by private enterprise. It is said that twenty-three staircases have been stolen from the ruins of Raglan.

About eight miles beyond Raglan is Abergavenny, lying peacefully—forgetful of its lurid past—in the shadow of the Holy Mountain. There is about Abergavenny now a peculiar serenity that is only equalled by the darkness of its history. Not very much is left of the Castle, of which Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian, said that “it was more dishonoured by treachery than any other in Wales”; and what there is of it is dishonoured now by swing-boats and asphalt lawn-tennis courts. If these attractions appeal to us we may enter the walls by paying twopence; but in the twelfth century the Seisyllts—the ancestors of the Cecils—found that entering Abergavenny Castle cost them more than this. One of them, in the absence of the Norman lord of the place, was having a friendly chat one day with the constable. There was a part of the wall that was in some way weaker than the rest, and Seisyllt, pointing laughingly to this spot, said in the manner of one who jests, “We shall come in there to-night.” The constable took the precaution of keeping guard till daylight, then went to sleep. A few hours later he and his wife were prisoners and the castle was captured and burnt.

It was after this, I believe, when the castle had been rebuilt, that the villain, William de Braose, invited the princes of South Wales to a banquet in these halls, picked a quarrel with them at his own table, and had them massacred before his eyes. He then solemnly thanked God for the fortunate issue of the affair, and more especially for the lands of the dead Seisyllts. For this William de Braose, traitor, murderer, and robber, never forgot to be pious. “He always placed the name of the Lord before his sentences,” says Giraldus; and his letters “were loaded, or rather honoured, with words expressive of the divine indulgence, to a degree not only tiresome to his scribe, but even to his auditors; for as a reward to each of his scribes for concluding his letters with the words ‘by divine assistance’ he gave annually a piece of gold.” In the matter of the murdered Seisyllts, however, his thanksgiving was premature, for there were Seisyllts still alive who fell upon Abergavenny Castle and demolished it.

It raised its head again and took an active part in larger wars; but it adds little nowadays to the attraction of Abergavenny, whose charms are altogether those of peacefulness and depend on the quiet Usk, and the hills that grow so purple against the evening sky. To reach Llanthony we must drive on into the heart of those hills, with the Skirrid Fawr, or Holy Mountain, on the right and the Sugar Loaf on the left; then, at Llanfihangel Crucorney, turn sharply to the left down a short but very steep hill, and so enter the Vale of Ewyas. Soon after passing Cwmyoy the road grows very narrow and hilly. At Llanthony we can take our car into the cloister-garth, for it is now the courtyard of an inn.

Long ago, when Rufus was king, a horseman drew rein here and looked about him. On every side he saw the grand, clear outline of the hills, and the shadows of the clouds sweeping across the fern and heather, and the dark masses of the woods. Below him the little Honddu glittered among the trees, and far away at the head of the valley the heights of the Black Mountains rose between him and the world. And then and there he vowed that they should rise between him and the world while he lived, and should guard his grave when he was dead. We can see the same hills at this moment rising blue and misty behind the ruined towers of his Priory of Llanthony; and only a few yards away, among the grass and nettles, we can see the spot where William de Lacy, soldier and monk, was buried under the High Altar.

William de Lacy was not the first to whom this valley appealed as being “truly fitted for contemplation, a happy and delightful spot”; for long before his day this very place to which he had wandered by chance had been made sacred by the prayers of the greatest of all Welsh saints, St. David. We may say our prayers on the self-same spot to-day, for over there, just beyond the cloister-garth, where St. David had long before made himself a hermitage, de Lacy built a tiny chapel. For many centuries the richly endowed Priory has been deserted, roofless, desecrated; its very arches are fringed with weeds, and fowls peck at its grass-grown altar steps; but over there in that plain little grey stone building prayers are still rising Sunday by Sunday from the spot where St. David knelt alone.

Here in Llandewi Nanthodeni, or the Church of St. David beside the river Honddu, William de Lacy “laid aside his belt and girded himself with a rope; instead of fine linen he covered himself with haircloth, and instead of his soldier’s robe he loaded himself with weighty iron.” His solitude did not last long. In those roystering days the sudden piety of a soldier of noble birth was not likely to pass unnoticed, and Matilda, Henry I.’s Queen, whom William of Malmesbury describes as singularly holy and by no means despicable in point of beauty, came to visit the hermit in his hill-bound cell, and playfully dropped a large purse of gold into the folds of his coarse garments. His fame grew. Soon there were many who desired to share his seclusion, and still more who, while not quite seeing their way to the forsaking of this world, were anxious to show their interest in the next. The former gave their lives and the latter their money, and so Llanthony Priory rose in all its grace and simplicity, the quiet lines of its architecture in perfect harmony with those of the great hills that encircled it. “The whole treasure of the King and his kingdom,” said Henry I.’s Prime Minister, “would not be sufficient to build such a cloister.” The Court was rather scandalised by this bold statement, till the Prime Minister explained that “he alluded to the cloister of mountains by which this church is on every side surrounded.”

Giraldus describes the place as he saw it in the twelfth century. “A situation truly calculated for religion,” he says, “and more adapted to canonical discipline than all the monasteries of the British Isles.... Here the monks, sitting in their cloisters enjoying the fresh air, when they happen to look up towards the horizon, behold the tops of the mountains as it were touching the heavens, and herds of wild deer feeding on their summits.” It is probable that when the Augustinians of Llanthony looked up towards the horizon it was not altogether for the pleasure of seeing the wild deer. They had other reasons for taking an interest in the hills, which too often were swarming with the hostile Welsh. It was not long, indeed, before the brethren’s terror of the Welsh grew stronger than their love of isolation, and the greater number of them fled to Gloucester, where in a new Priory of Llanthony their meditations were undisturbed.

The beautiful valley, with its great, bare hilltops and mysterious woods, its loneliness and calm, its memories of saintly men, attracted a poet of the last century so strongly that he, like William de Lacy, determined to stay here. Like de Lacy’s monks, however, Walter Savage Landor could not get on with his neighbours, and after buying the ruins of the Priory and building himself half a house he quarrelled so thoroughly with all the countryside that he thought he would have more peace elsewhere. He lived in the rooms that now form an inn, in the Prior’s Lodge, and here Southey stayed with him.

This run from Monmouth to Llanthony is about twenty-five miles in length. If we are not wedded to the high-road we may return to Monmouth by another route—composed almost entirely of byways and in some cases very hilly ones—and so visit Grosmont and Skenfrith Castles. The red towers of Grosmont stand, as the name implies, on a hill that is not climbed without an effort, and the ruin overlooks a village that was once a town, and indeed is technically a town still. It still possesses a charter, I believe, and a Mayor’s staff; but in the matter of size and prosperity it has been no more than a village since the day when Henry V., then Prince of Wales, wrote to his “most redoubted and most sovereign lord and father” in his “most humble manner” to this effect: “On Wednesday the eleventh day of this present month of March (1405) your rebels of the parts of Glamorgan, Morgannoc, Usk, Netherwent, and Overwent, were assembled to the number of eight thousand men, according to their own account; and they went on the said Wednesday in the morning, and burnt part of your town of Grosmont ... and I immediately sent off my very dear cousin, the Lord Talbot, and the small body of my own household ... who were but a very small force in all.... And there, by the aid of the Blessed Trinity, your people gained the field and vanquished all the said rebels, and slew of them by fair account on the field on their return from the chase, some say eight hundred, and some say a thousand, being questioned on pain of death. Nevertheless, whether it were one or the other, on such an account I would not contend.”

That was a sad day for poor Alice Scudamore, who lived hard by at Kentchurch Court beyond the river Monnow; for Alice Scudamore, or Skydmore, was the daughter of Owen Glyndwr, and the dead men whom Prince Henry left upon the field of Grosmont were Owen’s followers. This defeat was Owen’s first serious disaster, and was for him the beginning of the end. It is said that years later, after the end had come, he lived for a time with his daughter in the castellated tower that still stands below the hill of Grosmont; and, indeed, Kentchurch sometimes claims to be his burial-place. But the claims of Monnington, where another of his daughters lived, are generally thought to be more authentic.

By making a very short detour from the direct road we may see the ruins of Skenfrith Castle on our way back to Monmouth. Even in the seventeenth century this castle was described as having been “decayed time out of the memory of man,” and its remains are now naturally scanty and not especially picturesque. Far more interesting than the castle is the church, with its pretty timbered tower and fine sixteenth-century tombs. At the vicarage is carefully preserved the rarest treasure of this church: a cope that dates from the days before the Reformation.

On the other side of Monmouth, beyond the Wye, is the Forest of Dean, where one may drive for miles through country nearly as grand and quite as thickly wooded as the Black Forest. In most cases the trees are not nearly so fine as those of our own New Forest, for the greater part of this Forest of Dean was cut down to build our victorious fleets of the eighteenth century; but the width of view and the succession of tree-clad hills rising one beyond another, are compensations for the lack of magnificent individual trees. Of these, however, there are a few, such as the Newland Oak and the High Beeches. But on the whole the beauty of Dean Forest lies in its distant views, its great expanses of foliage stretching away from one’s feet to the blue horizon, as at the Speech House and above Parkend, and at many another place; though unfortunately many of these views are partly, if not entirely, spoilt by the black scars and smoking chimneys of the collieries. The Speech House is now a hotel, but it was originally built in Charles II.’s day as a kind of Court House in which to settle disputes connected with the Forest. St. Briavel’s Castle, a few miles further south than this, and nearer the Wye, is a far older relic, for it is said that it once sheltered King John. Be that as it may, the little that is left of this castle is peculiarly attractive. To reach it, or the Speech House, or indeed to drive in the Forest of Dean at all, one must be prepared to encounter long hills with gradients in some places not less than 1 in 7, and roads that have suffered a good deal from the heavy traffic connected with the mines.

There is one expedition from Monmouth that we cannot possibly undertake in a car, yet should by no means omit. The famous Symond’s Yat, with its perfect river scenery, cannot be approached by road, but it is easy to reach it by train, and very delightful to return to Monmouth by water, past the great limestone crags known as the Seven Sisters. At the hotel, where the train deposits one, the attraction is simply the view of the river and its wooded banks, but for the energetic this view may be much enlarged by half an hour’s climb to the summit of the Yat itself, where those who enjoy scenery in proportion to the number of counties visible, may have the satisfaction of seeing seven. It was near Symond’s Yat, at a defile significantly called The Slaughter to this day, that the Danes, under Eric of the Bloody Axe, were defeated by King Alfred’s son Edward the Elder, named also the Unconquered, whom Matthew of Westminster declares to have been “even more glorious than his father for power and dignity.”

The last fifteen miles of the Wye Valley, from Monmouth to Chepstow, where the Wye falls into the estuary of the Severn, are probably as beautiful as any fifteen miles of English road. It is late in May or early in October that we should drive along this road to see it at its best, for the whole landscape is filled with trees. The quiet river, with the road close beside it, winds between two wooded heights from Redbrook to the Severn. A gentle rise takes us out of Redbrook, which has spoilt its beauty by manufacturing tin-plate; then we run down to Bigsweir Bridge, and cross it, with a lovely view downstream; pass Llandogo, where the Wye becomes tidal; pass Brockweir with its ferry; and driving through Tintern Parva come within sight of the unsurpassed beauty of Tintern Abbey.

Go to Tintern again and again, for it never palls. See it when the trees are first breaking into leaf, and all the leaves are of different colours; and see it again against the heavy foliage of the summer woods; and again when the hills behind it are red and gold in autumn. For the Cistercians, though they denied art, were surely admirable artists; and being forbidden by their stern rule to adorn their churches with coloured glass or superfluous carving, they raised for themselves buildings of perfect form in the loveliest places in all England, where in spring and autumn the cold grey stone of their exquisite windows was the frame of fairer colours than were ever stained on glass.

It was of this abbey that the incomparable Gilpin wrote quite gravely: “A number of gable-ends hurt the eye with their regularity and disgust it by the vulgarity of their shape.” A mallet, judiciously used, he suggested, might make improvements. Unfortunately time and long neglect have done only too much towards the ruin of Tintern, without any help from the judicious mallet of Gilpin. For many years the place was utterly uncared for; the stones were used by any one who wished to build a cottage, and an old beggar-woman made her dwelling in the library of the monks. This was long ago: every care is given to Tintern now. The floor of the nave is covered with well-kept turf, the fallen fragments of masonry are gathered together, the weak places of the building are strengthened wherever it is possible. But the alarming curves of the arches bear witness to past neglect, and the timid tourist is appalled by the ominous warning on the notice-board: “Persons who visit this Abbey do so at their own risk.” This is discouraging.