Jane Morris, the daughter, was a comely wench, and a farmer of the neighbourhood named Robert Parker had taken a fancy to her, but as he was much her senior, she did not receive his addresses cordially. Shortly before the death of James Morris, a young man named John Newton had been taken into service at Oakfield. He was a shy, reserved man, but honest and hardworking, and with his energetic help the widow’s affairs began to mend, and the prospect of a sale of the property became remote. Moreover, Jane and John Newton fell in love with each other, and the mother considered that the match would be altogether what was best for the farm. Both Parker and Pearce were incensed and disappointed, and determined upon being revenged on John Newton.
An opportunity for accomplishing this purpose occurred. Newton had been attending a fair in the neighbourhood, and had been detained by business to a late hour. He did not leave till six in the evening, and the night was one in November. At some little distance from the town Pearce and Parker awaited him, and after a struggle overmastered him, brought him back into the town, and took him before a magistrate, charging him with an attempt to rob them on the highway. Newton was committed and tried.
At the assizes he employed no counsel for his defence, did not cross-question the witnesses, but contented himself with solemnly protesting his innocence. However, the testimony of the two men Pearce and Parker was clear, positive, and unshaken. They were men of respectability and repute, and he was pronounced “Guilty.”
When Newton was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him, he repeated his assertion that he was guiltless. “But, my lord,” he said, “if it be true that I am guiltless in this matter, I am not so in another with which I am not charged, and of which none know but myself. And I ask of Almighty God to bear testimony to my innocence of the crime wherewith I am charged, by not suffering the grass, for one generation at least, to cover my grave.”
Newton was executed and buried in this corner of the churchyard, and his grave is the blank spot spoken of.
Parker soon after left the neighbourhood, became a dissolute and drinking man, and was killed by the blasting of the rock in the limeworks in which he had found employment. Pearce became low, dissipated, and gradually wasted away.
Curiously enough, the English county border of Shropshire does not follow Offa’s Dyke south of Montgomery, but stretches inwards a mile and three-quarters in length, forming a tongue half a mile across.
A chain of camps extends north and south from Montgomery above the Severn Valley.
The towns where there is real activity in Montgomeryshire are Welshpool and Newtown.
Welshpool is a pleasantly situated little place among the hills, about half a mile from the Severn. It takes its name from the Llyndu, in the park of Powis Castle; but the Welsh name for it is Trallwng, or Trallwm, “across the vortex”—that is to say, the llyn, which tradition says will some day burst its bounds and overwhelm the town.