During the whole of this part of the passage, the stream is interrupted by fragments of rock, around which the water rushes tumultuously; but at the New Weir these interruptions, above noticed, acquire a character of sublimity, when taken in conjunction with the rest of the picture. The river, roaring and foaming, is in haste to escape, and at length is lost to the eye, as it seems to plunge for ever into sepulchral woods.
Beyond this, there are several other rock scenes, but none that will bear description after the foregoing; although to the traveller wearied with excitement, they come in with good effect. Below New Weir, the river stretches with a curve between Highmeadows Wood on the left bank, and the precipitous cliffs of the Great Doward on the right. Then the Little Doward peeps over a screen of rocks and shrubs. These two hills are called King Arthur’s Plain, and between these is King Arthur’s Hall, the level of an exhausted iron mine. Then we pass a cluster of rocks called St. Martin’s or the Three Sisters, and a pool of the river named St. Martin’s Well, where the water is said to be seventy feet deep. Various seats and cottages give variety to the picture, situated in the midst of rich woods and undulating eminences; and at length the landscape sinks calmly down, and Monmouth—“delightsome Monmouth”—is seen in long perspective, terminating a reach of the river.
CHAPTER VII.
Monmouth—History of the Castle—Apartment of Henry of Monmouth—Ecclesiastical remains—Benedictine priory—Church of St. Mary—Church of St. Thomas—Monnow Bridge—Modern town—Monmouth caps—The beneficent parvenu.
Monmouth lies embowered among gentle hills, only diversified by wood, corn, and pasture; but to view it either from the Wye, or any of the neighbouring eminences, one would be far from supposing it to have so tame, or at least so quiet a site. From one point, its spire is seen passing through a deep and mysterious wood; from another, it hangs perched on a precipitous ridge; and from the Wye it rises with considerable stateliness in the form of an amphitheatre. It stands at the confluence of the Wye and the Monnow, from which it derives its English name.
A royal fortress existed here before the conquest, a circumstance which renders its early history full of fearful vicissitudes, although these are but very imperfectly traced. In the time of Henry III., the castle, after changing hands repeatedly, was taken and rased to the ground. “Thus the glorie of Monmouth,” says Lambarde, “had clean perished, ne had it pleased God longe after in that place to give life to the noble King Henry V., who of the same is called Henry of Monmouth.” It was a favourite residence of the father of this prince, King Henry IV., and also of his father, John of Gaunt, “time honoured Lancaster,” to whom it came by his marriage with Blanch, daughter and heiress of Henry, duke of Lancaster, whose title he was afterwards granted. Henry V. was born here in 1387, and from this circumstance is styled Henry of Monmouth. This prince enlarged the duchy of Lancaster with his maternal inheritance, and obtained an act of parliament that all grants of offices and estates should pass under the seal of the duchy. Henry VI. and VII. possessed the castle of Monmouth, as part of the duchy, by right of inheritance; but between these reigns it was given by Edward IV. to Lord Herbert, afterwards earl of Pembroke. Although the duchy, however, continued in the crown, the castle, together with other possessions in Monmouthshire, was alienated, and became private property, but at what period does not clearly appear. In the reign of Elizabeth, it is ascertained, by different grants, to have been still parcel of the duchy, and also in that of James I., by the following presentment made under a commission: “Item, wee present that his majestie hath one ancient castell, called Monmouth Castell, situated within the liberties of the said towne, 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, savinge one greate hall which is covered and mayntayned for the judges of the assise to sitt in. And for and concerning any demean lands belonginge to the same castell, wee knowe not of any more save only the castell hill, wherein divers have gardens, and the castell green, which is inclosed within the walls of the said castell.”
Before the end of the seventeenth century, we find the castle in the hands of the first duke of Beaufort, if the following anecdote, indicative either of an ambitious or a fantastic spirit, can be believed. “The marchioness of Worcester,” says the author of the Secret Memoirs of Monmouthshire, “was ordered by her grandfather, the late duke of Beaufort, to lie in of her first child in a house lately built within the castle of Monmouth, near that spot of ground and space of air, where our great hero Henry V. was born.”
Whatever mutilations this castle may have undergone since the days of its royal magnificence, by whomever it may have been at length “decayed,” or at whatever period it came into the hands of the Beauforts, this at least is certain, that there is now not more than enough left to indicate its site. “The transmutations of time,” says Gilpin, “are often ludicrous. Monmouth Castle was formerly the palace of a king, and the birthplace of a mighty prince; it is now converted into a yard for fattening ducks.” The ruins, however, must have been concealed from his view by the stables and other outhouses that had risen from the fragments, so as completely to hide them from the townward side. Coxe, a much more correct observer, although less learned in the laws of the picturesque, describes them in 1800 as presenting, when viewed from the right bank of the Monnow, “an appearance of dilapidated grandeur which recalls to memory the times of feudal magnificence.”
Although the roof and great part of the walls had already fallen, the site of two remarkable apartments could be traced distinctly; that in which Henry was born, and another adjoining which had been used, even within the memory of some of the inhabitants, for the assizes. The latter was sixty-three feet in length and forty-six in breadth, and was no doubt the “greate hall” mentioned in the presentment quoted above as being “mayntayned for the judges of the assise to sitt in.”
The apartment of Henry of Monmouth is thus described by the archdeacon: