CHEPSTOW CASTLE.
The great point of interest is Chepstow Castle, built here to command the Wye, and standing in a fine situation on the edge of the river in a naturally fortified position. Upon the land-side deep trenches and outworks protect it, while a grassy meadow intervenes between its gateway and the Wye, that here makes a sharp curve. To get the castle in between the crags and the river, it was constructed upon a long and narrow plan, and is divided into four courts. The main entrance on the eastern side is through a ponderous gateway flanked by solid towers and with curiously-constructed ancient wooden doors. Entering the court, there is a massive tower on the left hand with an exterior staircase turret, while on the right the custodian lives in a group of comparatively modern buildings, beneath which is a vaulted chamber communicating with the river. Within this tower, whose walls are of great thickness, Henry Marten was imprisoned. He was one of the court that tried King Charles, and his signature is upon the king's death-warrant. He was a spendthrift, and afterwards had a quarrel with Cromwell, who denounced him as an unbeliever, and even as a buffoon. When Charles II. made the proclamation of amnesty, Marten surrendered, but he was tried and condemned to death. He plead that he came in under the proffer of mercy, and the sentence was commuted to a life imprisonment; and after a short confinement in the Tower of London he was removed to Chepstow, where he died twenty years later, in 1680. Passing into the smaller second court, for the rocks contract it, there is a strong tower protecting its entrance, and at the upper end are the ruins of the great hall, relics of the fourteenth century. Two or three windows, a door, and part of an arcade remain, but roof and floor are gone. A still smaller court lies beyond, at the upper end of which is a gateway defended by a moat, beyond which is the western gate and court of the castle, so that this last enclosure forms a kind of barbican. Chepstow was elaborately defended, and its only vulnerable points were from the meadows on the east and the higher ground to the west; but before the days of artillery it was regarded as impregnable, and excellently performed its duty as a check upon the Welsh. Fitzosbern, Earl of Hereford, built the older parts in the eleventh century, but the most of Chepstow dates from that great epoch of castle-building on the Welsh border, the reign of Edward I. We are told that the second Fitzosbern was attainted and his estates forfeited, but that the king one Easter graciously sent to him in prison his royal robes. The earl so disdained the favor that he burned them, which made the king so angry that he said, "Certainly this is a very proud man who hath thus abused me, but, by the brightness of God, he shall never come out of prison so long as I live." Whereupon, says Dugdale, who tells the tale, he remained a prisoner until he died. Chepstow was then bestowed upon the De Clares, who founded Tintern Abbey, and it afterwards passed by marriage to the Bigod family. Chepstow in the Civil War was held for the king, and surrendered to the Parliamentary troops. Soon afterwards it was surprised at the western gate and retaken. Cromwell then besieged it, but, the siege proving protracted, he left Colonel Ewer in charge. The Royalist garrison of about one hundred and sixty men were reduced to great extremity and tried to escape by a boat, but in this they were disappointed, as one of the besiegers, watching his opportunity, swam across the Wye with a knife in his teeth and cut the boat adrift. Then the castle was assaulted and taken, and the commander and most of the garrison slain. Parliament gave it to Cromwell, but after the Restoration it was returned to the heirs of the Marquis of Worcester, its owner, and it still belongs to his descendant, the Duke of Beaufort. The neighborhood of Chepstow has many pleasant villas in beautiful sites, and the broadening Wye flows a short distance beyond through the meadow-land, and then debouches into the estuary of the Severn.
THE GOLDEN VALLEY.
PONTRILAS COURT.
THE SCYRRID VAWR.
Still journeying westward beyond the beautiful valley of the Wye, we will ascend its tributary, the Monnow, to its sources in the Black Mountains on the borders of Wales. We skirted along the northern side of these mountains with the Wye, while the Monnow takes us fairly into them. The little river Dore is one of the head-waters of the Monnow, and it flows through the picturesque region known as the Golden Valley, just on the edge of Brecon, where the trout-fishing is as attractive as the scenery. All its streams rise upon the flanks of the Black Mountains, and the village of Pontrilas is its railway-station at the entrance to the valley. This village is devoted to the manufacture of naphtha, for which purpose mules bring wood from the neighboring forests, and it was once honored with the presence of a hotel. This was its principal mansion, Pontrilas Court, but it has long since been converted into a private residence. This court is a characteristic Elizabethan mansion, standing in a beautiful garden almost smothered in foliage and running vines. About a mile up the valley is the pretty village of Ewias Harold, with its church on one sloping bank of the little river and its castle on the other. Within the church alongside the chancel there is a recumbent female figure holding a casket in its hands. The tomb upon which it is placed was some time ago opened, but nothing was found within excepting a case containing a human heart. The monument probably commemorates an unknown benefactress whose corpse lies elsewhere, but who ordered her heart sent to the spot she loved best. The castle, standing on an eminence, was once a strong fortress, and tradition says it was built by Harold before he was king, but it does not occupy a prominent place in history. Ascending a hill to the northward, a view is obtained over the valleys of the three picturesque streams—the Dore, Dulas, and Monnow—that afterwards unite their waters; and, proceeding up the Dore, we come to the village of Abbey Dore, with the roofless ruins of its abbey, a part of which is utilized for the parish church, though scarcely anything is now left beyond fragments of the conventual buildings. This was a Cistercian monastery founded by Robert of Ewias in the reign of Henry I. We are now in the heart of the Golden Valley, which seems to be excavated out of a plateau with long, terrace-like hills bounding it on either hand, their lower parts rich in verdure, while their summits are dark and generally bare. Every available part of the lower surface is thoroughly cultivated, its hedgerows and copses giving variety to the scene. As we move up the valley the Scyrrid Vawr raises its notched and pointed summit like a peak dropped down upon the lowlands. This mountain, nearly fifteen hundred feet high, whose name means the "Great Fissure," is severed into an upper and lower summit by a deep cleft due to a landslip. It is also known as the Holy Mountain, and in its day has been the goal of many pilgrims. St. Michael, the guardian of the hills, has a chapel there, where crowds resorted on the eve of his festival. It used to be the custom for the Welsh farmers to send for sackloads of earth out of the cleft in this Holy Mountain, which they sprinkled over their houses and farm-buildings to avoid evil. They were also especially careful to strew portions over the coffins and graves of the dead. At the village of Wormridge, where some members of the Clive family are buried, there is a grand old elm on the village-green around which the people used to assemble for wrestling and for the performance of other rural amusements. At the base of this tree stood the stocks, that dungeon "all of wood" to which it is said there was