THE ROUND CHAPEL, LUDLOW CASTLE.
Within these grey walls we may dream of many things, both pitiful and gay: of all the children who have played and the poets who have written here; of young Prince Arthur, who died here; of his bride, Katherine of Arragon; of poor Princess Mary—“my ladie Prince’s grace,” as they called her quaintly—the Queen of blood and tears. Edward IV. and his brother Edmund, dressed in green gowns, played in these courts as boys, and wrote a letter to their “right noble lord and father,” begging him daily to give them his hearty blessing, and to send them some fine bonnets by the next sure messenger; and here on the right is the roofless tower whose crumbling walls are haunted by the most touching memories in all Ludlow. For these weed-grown stones have echoed to the voices of Edward IV.’s little sons, who lived and laughed here with no thought of that grimmer Tower that is connected for ever with their names. There is still existing a wonderful letter written by the King to “his Castle of Lodelowe,” in which he gives the most minute instructions as to the education and general deportment of the Prince of Wales—not forgetting the baby’s bedtime. His Majesty, indeed, was definite on all points.
“We will that our said son have his breakfast immediately after his mass; and between that and his meat to be occupied in such virtuous learning as his age shall suffer to receive.”
His age at this time was three years. Not only was the virtuous learning to occupy him from breakfast till dinner, but during the latter meal “such noble stories as behoveth to a prince to understand and know” were to be read aloud to him; and “after his meat, in eschewing of idleness,” he was to be “occupied about his learning” again. It is a relief to read that after his supper he was to have “all such honest disports as may be conveniently devised for his recreation.” At eight o’clock his attendants were “to enforce themselves to make him merry and joyous towards his bed”; and, indeed, after so hard a day of virtuous learning and noble stories and honest disports, the poor child must have been glad to get there!
Later on, when Sir Henry Sidney was President of the Council, this ground where we are standing was trodden by his son Philip, the pattern of chivalry, who “fearde no foe, nor ever fought a friend”; and it was through that doorway at the top of the inclined plane—then a flight of marble steps—that little Lady Alice Egerton, not knowing that she was on her way to immortality, passed on the evening that she took part in the first performance of Comus, which Milton had written for her.
It is curious that in this venerable town so many of our thoughts should be claimed by the very young. Ludlow Castle, as one sits here thinking of the past, seems to be peopled with the ghosts of children. And even in the church whose great tower gives Ludlow so distinguished an air, the church where the solemn Councillors of the Marches have their pompous tombs, we find the grave of Philip Sidney’s little sister. “Heare lyethe the bodye of Ambrozia Sydney, iiijth doughter of the Right Honourable Syr Henrye Sydney ... and the Ladye Mary his wyef.” It is sometimes said, too, that Prince Arthur, Henry VII.’s young son, is buried here, but this is not the case. There is a cenotaph that was, perhaps raised in his memory, but his body was taken to Worcester Cathedral.
These are the gentler memories of Ludlow. Of the fiercer kind there is no lack, from the old fighting days of the de Lacy who built the keep, and the de Dinan who built the round chapel, down through centuries of siege and battle to the time of the Civil War, when the King’s flag flew here longer than on any other castle of Shropshire.
Ludlow might well be chosen as a centre for motor drives in Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire. But for the moment we are concerned with Shropshire only, and the centre of that county, in every sense, is Shrewsbury; and so, sad though it is to leave Ludlow so soon, we must glide away down the steep pitch beyond the door of the “Feathers,” past the railway station, past the racecourse, and over the twenty-nine miles of excellent and level road that lie between Ludlow and Shrewsbury.
ENTRANCE TO HALL IN WHICH “COMUS” WAS FIRST PERFORMED.