CAREW CASTLE.
ST. DAVID’S CATHEDRAL AND RUINS OF THE BISHOP’S PALACE.
There are a good many things that we may think of in this town: those “people brave and robust,” as Giraldus calls the Flemings whom Henry I. established here; poor Richard II., who gave them their charter; Edward IV., who gave them a high sheriff; the sieges of centuries; the gay French army; but I, when I climb the steep streets of Haverfordwest, long most of all to know the spot on which the Crusades were preached to “a people well versed in commerce and woollen manufactories.” “It appeared wonderful and miraculous,” says the historian, with no consciousness that he is saying anything humorous, “that although the archdeacon addressed them both in the Latin and French tongues, those persons who understood neither of those languages were equally affected, and flocked in great numbers to the cross.”
In the days when people journeyed to St. David’s for the good of their souls it was considered that two pilgrimages to that shrine secured as many spiritual advantages as one pilgrimage to Rome. It seems hard that those who now approach St. David’s by train should not derive some solid benefit of this kind, for the penance must really be very great, since Haverfordwest is the nearest station, and the road between the two places is known as “sixteen miles and seventeen hills.” One passes these sad pilgrims, packed very closely in hired wagonettes behind still sadder horses, and one hopes that good may accrue to their souls, since surely this must be very bad for their bodies. Even bicyclists, our brethren of the road, must find these seventeen hills no easy task. The pilgrimage to St. David’s is pre-eminently one for motorists.
The surface, on the whole, is good, and near the coast the scenery is fine. As the sea comes into sight on our left the rather dull, flat landscape to the right is enlivened by the curiously sudden crag on which stand the remains of Roche Castle, the birthplace of Lucy Walters, the Duke of Monmouth’s mother. After a time the road dips suddenly to the shore at Newgale, where the sands stretch for two miles between low headlands, and where long ago the sea once receded and showed the blackened stumps of a huge submerged forest. Between this and St. David’s are “divers other little creekittes,” says Leland, who has a passion for diminutives of an original kind; and of them all none is so charming as little Solva where the narrow creek runs up far into the land, and a picturesque village climbs the hill, and the “fischerbotes” take refuge now as they did in the sixteenth century, and probably long before it.
A few minutes later appear the outskirts of the strangely squalid village that is the cathedral city of St. David’s. The straggling, ugly street gives little promise of reward for our pilgrimage. Then suddenly we are at the edge of a hill, and we look down into the little dell that holds, perhaps, as much beauty and history and legend as any spot of its size in our country: the cathedral itself, very plain and built of a strange purple stone; close beside it the ruins of St. Mary’s College, founded by John of Gaunt and his wife; and beyond it the far greater ruins of Bishop Gower’s very beautiful palace, with its great rose-window and the arcaded parapet that characterises the bishop’s buildings. And to the seeing eye this little hollow contains far more than these mere stones: it is filled with countless memories of saints, and those who were anything but saints; it is crossed by a long procession of pilgrims; William I., who came to worship before St. David’s shrine and in some sort apologise, as it were, for conquering the country—an apology that was rather premature; Edward I. and his faithful Eleanor, on the same errand, with more reason; William Rufus, with little interest in saints or shrines; Henry II., “habited like a pilgrim, and leaning on a staff,” and met at the gate by a long and solemn procession. Of all these, Edward was the only one who worshipped in this very building, for it is the fourth that has stood on this spot and was raised just after Henry II.’s visit. Much restoration has given it the look of a new building, as seen from the outside. Perhaps this is why, as one passes through the doorway, one is inclined to hold one’s breath from sheer surprise; for St. David’s Cathedral is “all glorious within,” and there is nothing outside to prepare one for the Norman arches with their varied and rich ornament, for the splendour of the fifteenth-century roof, and of the rood-screen that Gower built and is buried in. For nearly two hundred years the nave was covered with whitewash, and indeed it has narrowly escaped worse things at the hands of evil men, for Bishop Barlow, of whom we heard at Lamphey, and heard nothing good, was minded to strip the roof of its lead, and was only stopped in this enterprise by Henry VIII. It was this same bishop who stripped the roof of Gower’s palace and so led to its decay; and being, it seems, a veritable esprit fort, he not only was the first Protestant bishop who took advantage of the permission to marry, but he also took advantage of the dissolution of nunneries and married an abbess. Their five daughters, it is said, all married bishops. Barlow positively hated St. David’s. Why, he asked, should money be spent on these ruinous buildings “to nourish clattering conventicles of barbarous rural persons”? Why not move the see to Carmarthen, since St. David’s was “in such a desolate angle, and in so rare a frequented place, except of vagabond pilgrims”? The Saint himself was merely “an antique gargle of idolatry.” In short, the lead of the roof was the only valuable thing here.
ST. MARY’S COLLEGE, ST. DAVID’S.