CONWAY is an interesting and eminently picturesque town, surrounded, as it still is, by its old walls, and possessing the ruins of the finest castle in Wales—it may perhaps be said in England. This castle occupies one point of the triangle that encloses the town, and has the harbour on one side and the River Gyffin on the other.
The castle was begun in 1283 by Edward I. on the site of a Cistercian monastery, Aber Conwy, and was constructed after the designs of Henry de Elreton, the architect of Carnarvon, and it is said that the workmen employed upon it were brought from Rutlandshire, which produced the best masons in England. It is an extensive structure, and possessed a magnificent dining-hall, built on a curve, the roof formerly sustained by eight stone arches, but of these only two remain. It was lighted by nine Early English windows. At the east end is a chapel, with an apse and a groined roof, lighted by three lancet windows.
The castle was in a decayed condition in the reign of James I. However, it was garrisoned for Charles in the Civil Wars by the warlike Archbishop Williams of York, who, huffed at being superseded by Prince Rupert, went over to the Parliamentary faction and assisted in the attack on the town in 1646. General Mytton took the castle, which was defended by Irish soldiers, and so great was the resentment felt against these auxiliaries, that he had them all tied back to back and flung into the river to drown.
Charles II. granted the castle to the Earl of Conway, who, in 1665, stripped the lead from the roofs and carried off the timbers to convert them to his own use. If it had not been for this, what a residence it would have made for the Princes of Wales, and how pleased the Welsh people would have been to have their Prince living among them!
The Welsh are a loyal people, which the Irish are not, and they are sensitive to consideration. Why should not the Prince of Wales have a stately residence in the Principality? Why should his title be a title only recalling cruel injustice done to this people in the past?
Conway Castle is indisputably finer than any on the Rhine, and its situation and the grouping of the towers are eminently picturesque. The crimson valerian has spread as a gorgeous mantle about the rock on which it is built, and adheres as drops of blood to the crumbling walls.
A short account of Archbishop Williams will not come amiss. John Williams was born at Aberconwy in 1582, and was the second son of William Williams of Cochwillan, in Carnarvonshire. At the age of sixteen he entered S. John’s College, Cambridge. He was a young man of good parts, robust constitution, and with a keen eye for the main chance. It was said of him that he never required more than three hours of sleep out of the twenty-four. He became fellow of his college in 1603. His method in study was this. If he desired to master a subject, he put everything else on one side and concentrated his attention upon it, grappled it to him, and did not let it go till he had thoroughly got to know it in all its aspects.
Having made the acquaintance of Archbishop Bancroft, he obtained access to the King, who took particular notice of him, and when he entered Holy Orders he obtained one preferment after another. In 1617 he was made a prebendary of Lincoln, Peterborough, Hereford, and S. David’s, in addition to a rectory in Northamptonshire and a sinecure in North Wales. He was also chaplain to the King, and had to receive and entertain that eccentric man Marco Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato, who had quarrelled with the Pope and came to England. In 1619, not satisfied with all his preferments, he obtained the deanery of Salisbury, and the year following, that of Westminster. In 1621 he was made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, and was raised to the bishopric of Lincoln, which he held along with the deanery of Winchester and his Northamptonshire rectory.
On the death of James I., whom he attended at the last, he fell out with the Duke of Buckingham, and Charles I. took the Great Seal from him in 1626. Afterwards, on some charges brought against him in the Star Chamber, he was fined ten thousand pounds, suspended from all his functions, dignities, and emoluments, and sent to prison in the Tower for three years and a half. The King was, however, soon reconciled to him, cancelled all orders that had been made against him, and in 1641 he was advanced to the archbishopric of York.
When war broke out between the King and the Parliament, he took the side of the former, and had to fly from York, as the younger Hotham was marching on York, and had sworn to capture and kill him for having commented strongly on the manner in which Sir John Hotham had seized on the King’s magazine of arms at Hull.