DENBIGH CASTLE.
The castle of Denbigh (Dinbach, the little fort) occupies the crown of a rocky eminence on the south side of the noble vale of Clwyd, and commanding an extensive prospect over that rich and beautiful vein of country. This impregnable fortress, with one thousand pounds in lands, was granted by Edward the First to Davydd, the brother of Llewellyn, as a marriage portion with the Earl of Derby’s widow, whom he espoused at the king’s request. Davydd forfeited these grants by his rebellion, which enabled Edward to reward one of his English followers with this noble estate. The fortunate grantee was Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and of Denbigh, who had married the daughter and sole heiress of Long-sword, Earl of Salisbury, by whom he had two sons, Edmund and John, who both died young, one of them by a fall into a very deep well within the castle of Denbigh; and a daughter named Alicia, espoused by Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, who, in right of this lady, became Earl of Lincoln and of Sarum, Lord of Denbigh, Halton, Pomfret, and constable of Chester Castle. The melancholy death of his son Edmund so afflicted the earl, that Leland assures us it caused him to desert his proud castle without completing its great design. Upon the attainder of Thomas of Lancaster, son-in-law of Lacy, the lordship of Denbigh was conferred upon Hugh D’Espencer, a favourite of Edward the Second; but this unpopular person being also cut off by violence, Roger Mortimer obtained a grant of his estates, in fulfilment of a promise made to his mother by Edward the Third, before he ascended the throne, “that he would bestow one thousand pounds upon her son if ever he should succeed to the crown of England.” The proprietorship of this impregnable rock seems to have inspired its lords with ideas of independence, uniformly growing up into rebellion. Mortimer was infected with the same anti monarchical notions, and met with a similar fate. The succession of tragedies was at length arrested by a Sir William Montacute, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, who continued a grateful and zealous adherent of the crown. Salisbury dying without issue, and the attainder of Mortimer being reversed, Denbigh was restored, by marriage, to the house of York, and, consequently, to the crown once more.
Queen Elizabeth bestowed the lordship of Denbigh upon her favourite Leicester, who did not conciliate the affections of the Welsh people with the same zeal he did those of his royal mistress, and an insurrection of the tenantry was the consequence of his tyrannical government. In the year 1696 a similar unpopular grant was made of the lordships of Denbigh, Bromfield, and Yale to the Earl of Portland; but the resistance given to the investment of the grantee by the Welsh gentry was so decided, that parliament petitioned the crown to reverse the grant.
Edward the Fourth, while Duke of York, sustained a siege here from the army of Henry the Sixth, and ultimately effected his escape. Charles the First lodged in the castle for a short period after his retreat from Chester; and the Siambr y Brennin, or king’s apartments, though totally ruined, are still pointed out. The Welsh, however, have greater cause of self-gratulation, and may point to this monument of departed power with more pride, from the gallant defence which they made from its walls, under the conduct of the brave William Salisbury, against the parliamentary forces, than from any adventitious circumstance involved in its sad and eventful history.
The ruins are of great extent, and the grand portal is nearly entire; but from the mode of its erection, as well as the means of its destruction, they afford but little that is picturesque in their appearance. The ground plan was at first surrounded by double walls, parallel to each other, and distant only by six or eight feet, the intermural space was then filled up with rubble stone and hot mortar, which on cooling became a solid conglomerate. Upon the barbarous dismantling of the castle, after the Restoration, which was done by springing a mine of gunpowder beneath it, the walls separated and fell from the grouting, exposing a mass of shattered fragments, without the advantage of a single tree or any impending object to throw a relieving shadow over the melancholy heap.
Near to the grand entrance of the castle stand the side walls of an unfinished church, one hundred and seventy feet in length, and pierced by many spacious windows. These were raised by the Earl of Leicester, and destined for the celebration of the reformed service; but he did not like, or, as others say, did not live to visit his oppressed Welsh tenantry, and left this pious work unfinished. A subscription was some years afterwards set on foot, and ample funds obtained for roofing over the walls, but the Earl of Essex, on his way to Ireland, procured a loan of the sum collected, and no effort was ever after made to save the whole from falling to decay.
An interesting and national spectacle was exhibited on the bowling-green under the castle walls of Denbigh, in the autumn of 1828; it is called in Welsh an Eistedfodd, and means a meeting of the bards. This is an institution of ancient origin, and was formerly held under a precept or commission from the crown, directed to the principal inhabitants in the district where the meeting was intended to be held. The latest royal mandate for the holding of an Eistedfodd was issued by Queen Elizabeth, and directed to the ancestors of some of the most respectable families now resident in Flint and Denbigh shires. The bardic assemblage of 1828 was accompanied by circumstances of a very peculiar and gratifying character, and the remembrance of it will long be cherished by all Cambrians who witnessed it, with feelings of the deepest and warmest enthusiasm. The verdant platform of the bowling-green commands one of the richest and happiest prospects in nature; the eye sweeps down the green hills on the south, and passing over the noble and broad valley of the Clwyd, climbs rapidly the Clwydian hills, where it finds an index to a brighter prospect in the national monument on Moel Ffammau. Here a handsome obelisk on the highest of the hills commemorates the fiftieth year of the eventful reign of King George the Third. This accidental circumstance gave an additional interest to this bardic meeting, for, by a singular coincidence, Sir E. Mostyn, a descendant of Sir Piers, one of the persons named in the precept of Elizabeth, was president of the Eistedfodd. A noble individual, the representative of the brave William Salisbury, the defender of the castle, graced the assemblage by his presence. A dignitary of the church, who embodied those gallant actions in a valuable history, judged some of the bardic effusions, and a royal prince looked gratefully over the heads of an innocent and happy people towards the monument which their loyalty and affection had raised to his venerable father.
VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.
The Vale of Crucis opens into the beautiful scenery of Llangollen, about two miles from the little village. Fancy cannot paint a scene more suited to the indulgence of solemn thought. It is the spot which a recluse, enamoured of the great scenes of nature, where the eye is continually presented with sublime ideas, where every object contributes to soothe, but not transport the mind, would select as an habitation of cheerful solitude. In the days of its greatness it must have been a place consecrated to retirement, but now how much is the solitude of the scene heightened by the accompaniment of a ruined abbey shrouded in forest trees that wave over its mouldering towers,—
Say, ivy’d Valle Crucis; time decay’d
Dim on the brink of Deva’s wandering floods,
Your ivy’d arch glittering through the tangled shade,
Your gray hills towering o’er your night of woods;
Deep in the vale recesses as you stand,
And, desolately great, the rising sigh command:
Say, lonely ruin’d pile, when former years
Saw your pale train at midnight altars bow,
Saw superstition frown upon the tears
That mourn’d the rash, irrevocable vow,
Were one young lip gay Eleanora’s [77] smile?
Did “Zara’s look serene one tedious hour beguile?”
The foundation of the Cistercian Abbey of Valle Crucis is attributed to Gryffydd ap Madoc Maelor, Lord of Bromfield and Yale, about the year 1200; considerable parts of both church and abbey still remain. The former was cruciformed, and exhibits several styles of architecture. The eastern end is the most ancient; it is adorned by three lancet slips, forming one grand window. The entrance was in the west beneath a broad and beautifully ornamented window, above which is a smaller one of a marigold form, decorated with tracery and fret work, and under it may be discovered the following inscription:
A.D.A.M. D.N.S.—fecit hoc opus, pace beatâ quiescat. Amen.
The abbey and cloisters are more imperfect, the latter evidently built in a rich and ornamental style of architecture, well calculated to shed a “dim religious light,” but now desecrated into a farm house and offices.