Whitchurch, near it, hath a fine church, built by the Earl of Bridgwater; and so to Chester, an ancient and large city, with a commanding castle. The city consists of four large streets, which make an exact cross, with the town-house and Exchange in the middle; but you don’t walk the streets here, but in galleries up one pair of stairs, which keeps you from the rain in winter, and sun in summer; and the houses and shops, with gardens, go all off these galleries, which they call rows. The city is walled round, and the wall so firmly paved that it gives you an agreeable prospect of the country and river, as you walk upon it. The churches are very neat, and the cathedral an august old pile; there is an ancient monument of an Emperor of Germany, with assemblies every week. While I continued at Chester, I made an excursion into North Wales, and went into Denbigh, the capital of that country, where are the remains of a very great and old castle, as is also at Flint, the capital of Flintshire. These castles were the frontier garrisons of Wales before it came under the subjection of England. The country is mountainous, and full of iron and lead works; and here they begin to differ from the English both in language and dress.
From Flint, along the seaside, in three hours I arrived at the famous cold bath called St. Winifred’s Well; and the town from thence called Holywell is a pretty large well-built village, in the middle of a grove, in a bottom between, two hills. The well is in the foot of one of the hills, and spouts out about the bigness of a barrel at once, with such force that it turns three or four mills before it falls into the sea. The well where you bathe is floored with stone surrounded with pillars, on which stands a neat little chapel dedicated to St. Winifred, but now turned into a Protestant school. However, to supply the loss of this chapel, the Roman Catholics have chapels erected almost in every inn for the devotion of the pilgrims that flock hither from all the Popish parts of England. The water, you may imagine, is very cold, coming from the bowels of an iron mountain, and never having met with the influence of the sun till it runs from the well.
The legend of St. Winifred is too long and ridiculous for a letter; I leave you to Dr. Fleetwood (when Bishop of St. Asaph) for its description. I will only tell you, in two words, that this St. Winifred was a beautiful damsel that lived on the top of the hill; that a prince of the country fell deeply in love with her; that coming one day when her parents were abroad, and she resisting his passion, turned into rage, and as she was flying from him cut off her head, which rolled down the hill with her body, and at the place where it stopped gushed out this well of water. But there was also a good hermit that lived at the bottom of the hill, who immediately claps her head to her body, and by the force of the water and his prayers she recovered, and lived to perform many miracles for many years after. They give you her printed litanies at the well. And I observed the Roman Catholics in their prayers, not with eyes lifted up to heaven, but intent upon the water, as if it were the real blood of St. Winifred that was to wash them clean from all their sins.
In every inn you meet with a priest, habited like country gentlemen, and very good companions. At the “Cross Keys,” where I lodged, there was one that had been marked out to me, to whom I was particularly civil at supper; but finding by my conversation I was none of them, he drank and swore like a dragoon, on purpose, as I imagine, to disguise himself. From Holywell in two hours I came to a handsome seat of Sir John Conway’s at Redland, and next day to Conway.
I do not know any place in Europe that would make a finer landscape in a picture than Conway at a mile’s distance. It lies on the side of a hill, on the banks of an arm of the sea about the breadth of the Thames at London, and within two little miles of the sea, over which we ferry to go to the town.
The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at proper distances on the walls; and the castle with its towers, being very white, makes an august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both sides of the bay or river, covered with wood. But when you cross the ferry and come into the town, there is nothing but poverty and misery. The castle is a heap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls only standing vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince of their own.
They speak all Welsh here, and if a stranger should lose his way in this county of Carnarvon, it is ten to one if he meets with any one that has English enough to set him right. The people are also naturally very surly, and even if they understand English, if you ask them a question their answer is, “Dame Salsenach,” or “I cannot speak Saxon or English.” Their Bibles and prayer-books are all printed in Welsh in our character; so that an Englishman can read their language, although he doth not understand a word of it. It hath a great resemblance of the Bas-Bretons, but they retain the letter and character as well as language, as the Scots and Highlanders do.
They retain several Popish customs in North Wales, for on Sunday (after morning service) the whole parish go to football till the afternoon service begins, and then they go to the ale-house and play at all manner of games (which ale-house is often kept by the parson, for their livings are very small).
They have also offerings at funerals, which is one of the greatest perquisites the parson hath. When the body is deposited in the church during the service for the dead, every person invited to the burial lays a piece of money upon the altar to defray the dead person’s charges to the other world, which, after the ceremony is over, the parson puts in his pocket. From Conway, through the mountainous country of Carnarvon, I passed the famous mountain of Penmaen-Mawr, so dreadfully related by passengers travelling to Ireland. It is a road cut out of the side of the rock, seven feet wide; the sea lies perpendicularly down, about forty fathoms on one side, and the mountain is about the same height above it on the other side. It looks dismal, but not at all dangerous, for there is now a wall breast-high along the precipice. However, there is an ale-house at the bottom of the hill on the other side, with this inscription, “Now your fright is over, take a dram.” From hence I proceeded to a little town called Bangor, where there is a cathedral such as may be expected in Wales; and from thence to Carnarvon, the capital of the county. Here are the vestiges of a large old castle, where one of the Henrys, King of England, was born; as was another at Monmouth, in South Wales. For the Welsh were so hard to be reconciled to their union with England at first, it was thought policy to send our queens to lie-in there, to make our princes Welshmen born, and that way ingratiate the inhabitants to their subjection to a prince born in their own country. And for that reason our kings to this day wear a leek (the badge of Wales) on St. David’s Day, the patron of this country; as they do the Order of the Thistle on St. Andrew’s Day, the patron of Scotland.
Carnarvon is a pretty little town, situated in the bottom of a bay, and might be a place of good trade, if the country afforded a consumption.