Motor Tours in Wales & the Border Counties

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

It was after this, I believe, when the castle had been rebuilt, that the villain, William de Braose, invited the princes of South Wales to a banquet in these halls, picked a quarrel with them at his own table, and had them massacred before his eyes. He then solemnly thanked God for the fortunate issue of the affair, and more especially for the lands of the dead Seisyllts. For this William de Braose, traitor, murderer, and robber, never forgot to be pious. “He always placed the name of the Lord before his sentences,” says Giraldus; and his letters “were loaded, or rather honoured, with words expressive of the divine indulgence, to a degree not only tiresome to his scribe, but even to his auditors; for as a reward to each of his scribes for concluding his letters with the words ‘by divine assistance’ he gave annually a piece of gold.” In the matter of the murdered Seisyllts, however, his thanksgiving was premature, for there were Seisyllts still alive who fell upon Abergavenny Castle and demolished it.

THE MOAT, RAGLAN CASTLE.

LLANTHONY PRIORY.

It raised its head again and took an active part in larger wars; but it adds little nowadays to the attraction of Abergavenny, whose charms are altogether those of peacefulness and depend on the quiet Usk, and the hills that grow so purple against the evening sky. To reach Llanthony we must drive on into the heart of those hills, with the Skirrid Fawr, or Holy Mountain, on the right and the Sugar Loaf on the left; then, at Llanfihangel Crucorney, turn sharply to the left down a short but very steep hill, and so enter the Vale of Ewyas. Soon after passing Cwmyoy the road grows very narrow and hilly. At Llanthony we can take our car into the cloister-garth, for it is now the courtyard of an inn.

Long ago, when Rufus was king, a horseman drew rein here and looked about him. On every side he saw the grand, clear outline of the hills, and the shadows of the clouds sweeping across the fern and heather, and the dark masses of the woods. Below him the little Honddu glittered among the trees, and far away at the head of the valley the heights of the Black Mountains rose between him and the world. And then and there he vowed that they should rise between him and the world while he lived, and should guard his grave when he was dead. We can see the same hills at this moment rising blue and misty behind the ruined towers of his Priory of Llanthony; and only a few yards away, among the grass and nettles, we can see the spot where William de Lacy, soldier and monk, was buried under the High Altar.

William de Lacy was not the first to whom this valley appealed as being “truly fitted for contemplation, a happy and delightful spot”; for long before his day this very place to which he had wandered by chance had been made sacred by the prayers of the greatest of all Welsh saints, St. David. We may say our prayers on the self-same spot to-day, for over there, just beyond the cloister-garth, where St. David had long before made himself a hermitage, de Lacy built a tiny chapel. For many centuries the richly endowed Priory has been deserted, roofless, desecrated; its very arches are fringed with weeds, and fowls peck at its grass-grown altar steps; but over there in that plain little grey stone building prayers are still rising Sunday by Sunday from the spot where St. David knelt alone.

Here in Llandewi Nanthodeni, or the Church of St. David beside the river Honddu, William de Lacy “laid aside his belt and girded himself with a rope; instead of fine linen he covered himself with haircloth, and instead of his soldier’s robe he loaded himself with weighty iron.” His solitude did not last long. In those roystering days the sudden piety of a soldier of noble birth was not likely to pass unnoticed, and Matilda, Henry I.’s Queen, whom William of Malmesbury describes as singularly holy and by no means despicable in point of beauty, came to visit the hermit in his hill-bound cell, and playfully dropped a large purse of gold into the folds of his coarse garments. His fame grew. Soon there were many who desired to share his seclusion, and still more who, while not quite seeing their way to the forsaking of this world, were anxious to show their interest in the next. The former gave their lives and the latter their money, and so Llanthony Priory rose in all its grace and simplicity, the quiet lines of its architecture in perfect harmony with those of the great hills that encircled it. “The whole treasure of the King and his kingdom,” said Henry I.’s Prime Minister, “would not be sufficient to build such a cloister.” The Court was rather scandalised by this bold statement, till the Prime Minister explained that “he alluded to the cloister of mountains by which this church is on every side surrounded.”

Giraldus describes the place as he saw it in the twelfth century. “A situation truly calculated for religion,” he says, “and more adapted to canonical discipline than all the monasteries of the British Isles.... Here the monks, sitting in their cloisters enjoying the fresh air, when they happen to look up towards the horizon, behold the tops of the mountains as it were touching the heavens, and herds of wild deer feeding on their summits.” It is probable that when the Augustinians of Llanthony looked up towards the horizon it was not altogether for the pleasure of seeing the wild deer. They had other reasons for taking an interest in the hills, which too often were swarming with the hostile Welsh. It was not long, indeed, before the brethren’s terror of the Welsh grew stronger than their love of isolation, and the greater number of them fled to Gloucester, where in a new Priory of Llanthony their meditations were undisturbed.