In a comparison made by an admiring friend between him and the dissolute Lord Rochester of Charles II.’s time—a comparison showing Mytton to be Rochester’s superior in every kind of extravagance and depravity—it was said that Rochester was drunk continually for five years, and Mytton beat him by seven. He had a breath like a wine-vault and a complexion like a beet-root, as a result of these excesses. They, naturally, did not lessen his extravagances, but never left him helpless. “Damn this hiccup!” he exclaimed one night, when standing in his nightshirt, about to get into bed, “but I’ll frighten it away,” that being the usually accepted theory of ridding one’s self of that distressing spasm. So saying, he took a lighted candle and, applying it to the tail of his shirt, was instantly enveloped in flames. By the exertions of two friends, who rushed to his aid and tore the blazing garments piecemeal from him, he was saved from being burnt to death; but his only remark was, as he staggered, naked, to bed, “The hiccup is gone, by God!”

He ran his course to its appointed and inevitable end. The fine timber of his estate went to pay for his racing, hunting, gambling, and drinking extravagances, and for others still less reputable, and the estate followed. A relative remonstrated with him, and deplored the approaching necessity of alienating those ancestral acres. “How long,” asked Mytton, “has the property been in the family?”

“Five hundred years,” was the reply.

“Then,” rejoined the reckless Squire, with an oath, “it is high time it went out of it.” Imprisonment for debt, and exile to the Continent came later. Brandy did what port could not, and sent the graceless scion of an ancient stock to his death-bed. His body was brought from London and laid among the ashes of worthier men, who had passed on to their descendants the patrimony they had received, Halston passed away with the Mad Squire to other hands, and his son lived and died landless, filling the position of bailiff to a Shropshire nobleman.

XXX

Up along the rise from Queen’s Head, past Aston Park, where sepulchral burrows of prehistoric man are seen beneath the trees, the way lies on to Oswestry. The town of “Odgerstree,” as the country people call it, is entered soon after passing the old toll-house of Gallows Tree Gate. Once called Maserfield, it lost that name at an early date, and acquired its present title when history was very young indeed. It owes the name of Oswald’s-tre, or Oswald’s Town, to the Christian King Oswald of Northumbria, slain here in the year 642 in battle with the heathen Penda, King of Mercia. Oswald had taken the offensive, and as a raider only met his deserts; but the Church accounted him a martyr, made him a saint, and dedicated to him a religious house that in the course of time rose here. The parish church bears the name of St. Oswald to this day, and his Well, not so holy as it once was, may be found near by.

From the earliest times Oswestry was a fortified place. It stands two miles on the English side of Offa’s Dyke, that boundary between the Welsh and the Saxons, and, occupying an advanced position, close upon the more rugged Welsh mountains, was greatly exposed to sudden inroads of the Welsh. Five miles away stood the great castle of Chirk, placed there to command the easy road from Wales into England by the Vale of Llangollen; but Oswestry was a fortified post and a market town in one. Sometimes it would be attacked; at others, the Welsh resorted to it as the only place where their needs could be supplied. In course of time the requirements of trade broke down the barrier between the two nations, and Oswestry, from being a Saxon outpost where the roving Welshman, when caught, was surely put to death, became itself half Welsh. The results are plain to see, even now. Offa’s Dyke, along almost the whole of its length, still sharply divides the two races, and only in the immediate neighbourhood of Oswestry is the division blurred and indistinct. Here English names and Welsh mingle, and each understands something of the other: even Welsh place-names exist on the English side of the Dyke.

The Civil War of Charles I.’s time was the last occasion of Oswestry being besieged. It was held for the King by a band of Shropshire loyalists who, to render themselves more secure against attack, partly demolished the tower of the church, standing outside the town walls and likely to afford the besiegers a great advantage. But the siege did not last long. A breach was made in the defences, and a youth named Cranage, “enlivened by the Parliamentary generals with wine,” volunteered to go under fire and explode a petard at the Castle gate. The gate was blown in and the garrison surrendered.

After that period the Castle remained in ruins, and the town walls and gates were left to decay. So long ago as 1782 the work of removing the gates was begun, and now not a fragment remains. Of the Castle, once planted on a hilly site in the town, only some shapeless walls in a public garden are left. When the craze for modernising Oswestry began, a hundred and twenty years ago, the market rights still belonged to the Earls of Powis, Lords of the Manor, who were paid “Toll-Thorough” on all goods entering the town, and on the gates being removed to widen the streets, the places where tolls were still payable were marked by carved stones. One of these may be seen in Church Street, on the site of the New Gate that stood until 1782. It occupies an eminently greasy position in the party-wall dividing two butchers’ shops, and bears the words “Toll-Thorough” and the date. The arms of the Earls of Powis are still to be seen, boldly carved on it, but the Corporation purchased the market rights and abolished tolls in 1833.

History of the larger sort had then been done with, but some interesting happenings may be recounted. For example, the Princess Victoria passed through Oswestry with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, on her Welsh tour, en route for Wynnstay, August 4th, 1832—the tour that made King William IV. so indignant. It was “almost a Royal Progress,” he said. Oswestry was a happy town that day. The Princess’s carriage changed horses at the “Wynnstay Arms,” the Honourable Thomas Kenyon presented a copy of the History of Oswestry, and everybody cheered. There was at that time a diary-keeping tradesman in the town, a Pepys in his little way, and a most engaging wrestler with the art of spelling. He tells how “Tom Kinaston” (postboy at Knight’s “Wynnstay Arms”) “got drunk and whas turnd from Mr. Knites as Post Boy; alsow a woman kild at Winstay, thear being such a crowd to See the Royal Pursaneags. Oswestry was the seam as a wood from Pentrey Poeth to Betrey St. With rchs across the streets and frunt of the houses all covered with Laurel and ock.”