Photo: Hudson.
CARMARTHEN QUAY (p. [180]).
The Normans could not, in spite of their sternest efforts, make much impression on Wales as a whole for a century or two after the battle of Senlac. But they could, thanks to Milford Haven, nibble at its south-western extremity. This is what they did, and with the planting here by Henry I. of a large colony of Flemings the earlier stock seems to have been either absorbed or superseded.
Milford Haven, with its arms of tidal water extending twenty miles into the heart of the country, was a grand aid to conquest in these parts. The Norman lords who were invited hither to carve out careers for themselves had much success. They raised castles at the extremities of Milford’s water-ways, and thus assured to themselves broad controlling powers. Enough if mention be made of only the important fortresses of Pembroke, Haverfordwest, and Carew.
The last of these may be first visited. Its situation at the head of a dammed tidal inlet, low-lying and with no prominent hills near, is unworthy of so noble a ruin. But Gerald de Windsor, the Norman lord who built it (having received the land as a dowry with his Welsh wife, Nesta, daughter of Prince Rhys ap Tewdwr of Dinefawr, or Dynevor), probably cared little for the picturesque. The strong western towers still bear witness to him; but to the mere tourist by far the most interesting part of the castle is the east side, over against the water, with its high wall and the lofty great, flaunting skeletons of the windows of the palace above, their white mullions bowing forward with inimitable grace. Unfortunately, one cannot romance about the rooms to which these majestic oriels and bays belonged. This part of the castle is of the sixteenth century, and was left unfinished.
Carew Castle (Caerau = fortified camps) still belongs to the Carews. The Windsors took the name of this possession of theirs, and held the castle for more than three hundred years. Then their line of lordship was interrupted; and it was during this period that the great Sir Rhys ap Thomas (whom Henry VII. made a Knight of the Garter for the part he played before and at Bosworth Field in aid of the House of Tudor) held such revels here as have made Carew almost a by-word. Among other shows was a “feate of arms” of five days’ duration, to which knights flocked from all parts of England and Wales. These guests filled the castle and more: five hundred, “moste of them of goode ranke,” were accommodated with tents in the park adjacent, of which no trace remains. Sir Rhys himself, in gilt armour, on a “goodlie steede,” attended by two pages on horseback and a herald, “was the judge of the jousts.” This same mighty noble received Henry VII. at Carew before Bosworth Field was fought; and, if tradition speak true, with his own hands killed Richard of Gloucester, who would dearly have liked ere then to have killed him. Sir Rhys lies in the parish church of Carmarthen, with about seven feet of armoured stone for a monument; and a very small effigy of a wife lies by his side. With the Civil Wars came the castle’s destruction. The Carews of Crowcombe, in Somersetshire, are now lords of the castle, and anyone may tread its grass and broken stones on payment of a threepenny bit.