In iron times, when laws of battle were,
That weakly folk, of prowess small in fight,
The galling gyves of vassalage should bear;
Ere castle seneschals, with pale affright,
Heard the shrill horn wind of the errant knight—
A foeman firm affianced to be
To all who wrong’d the feeble of their right—
Such folk the Church let from their thraldom free,
A deed that had not shamed the Knight of Chivalry.
Econ. of Monast. Life.
We were told of a pleasing custom, transmitted from early times, and still observed here, that of repairing every Palm-Sunday to the graves of departed friends, and ornamenting them with flowers—much in the same way as the populace of Paris repair every All Saints’ morning to Père-la-Chaise, to scatter flowers and evergreens over the graves of their relations.
One of the finest points of view is the centre of the new iron bridge, comprising the castle, the vessels at anchor under the stupendous wall of rock on which it is erected; with the lawns and groves of Piercefield—a favourite and familiar name in the list of picturesque tours—closing the landscape. The former bridge[3] was of prodigious height, erected on piles. The present structure was founded in 1815; and in the March of that year, the tide rose from low-water mark to the remarkable height of fifty-one feet two inches. The new bridge consists of five arches, the centre one of which is one hundred and twelve feet in span; the two adjoining arches have a span of seventy feet, and the two outer ones a span of fifty-four feet each. It is of massive cast-metal, resting on stone piers; and its total length is five hundred and thirty-two feet.
The depth of the moorings in the river here is so great, that, at low water, ships of 700 tons burthen may ride safely at anchor. The rise of tide is from thirty to nearly sixty feet, a circumstance scarcely to be paralleled—and caused by the extraordinary swell of water at the rocks of Beechley and Aust, which, by protruding far into the Severn, near the month of the Wye, obstruct the flow of tide, and thus impel it with increased rapidity into the latter.[4] In January, 1768, according to our local guide, it attained the height of seventy feet: its greatest rise of late years has been fifty-six feet.
In 1634, we are informed, Colonel Sandys attempted to make the Wye navigable by means of locks; but after much labour and expense, the experiment failed, and the locks were removed. Every one curious in the phenomena of natural history, has heard of the intermitting well of Chepstow, which ebbs and flows inversely with the tide—that is, when the tide ebbs, the well flows; and when the tide flows, the well ebbs: when the tide is at its height, the well is nearly dry; a little before which it begins to subside, and soon after the ebb it gradually returns. It is neither affected by wet nor dry weather, but is entirely regulated by the tide. It is thirty-two feet in depth, and frequently contains fourteen feet of excellent water.
In melancholy connection with the old bridge of Chepstow, is a family calamity which drew from the late poet Campbell an epitaph[5] worthy of his pen. The victims by the sudden catastrophe were a lady and her two daughters, personal friends of the poet, and for whom he entertained sentiments of great esteem and regard. The lady and her daughters were on a visit at Chepstow; and, after hearing sermon, went on the river in a boat. The tide was running strong at the time; and in his attempt to clear the centre arch of the bridge, the boatman missed his aim—the frail bark struck against the wooden pier, and upset; and the lady and her two daughters were carried down by the stream and lost. Their lifeless remains were afterwards recovered, and buried in the churchyard of Monckton, where a tomb, erected to their memory, bears the following inscription:—
“In deep submission to the will above,
Yet with no common cause for human tears,
This stone to the lost Partner of his love,
And for his children lost, a mourner rears.
One fatal moment, one o’erwhelming doom,
Tore threefold from his heart the ties of earth—
His Mary, Margaret, in their early bloom,
And Her who gave them life, and taught them worth.
“Farewell, ye broken pillars of my fate!
My life’s companion, and my two first-born!
Yet while this silent stone I consecrate
To conjugal, paternal love forlorn—
Oh, may each passer-by the lesson learn
Which can alone the bleeding heart sustain—
Where friendship weeps at virtue’s funeral urn—
That, to the pure in heart, to die is gain!”
It is somewhat remarkable, that the text of Scripture which they had just heard expounded in the parish church the same morning, was—“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Of the principal victim in this calamity, Campbell thus speaks in a private letter to a friend:—“We looked to Mrs. Shute as truly elevated in the scale of beings for the perfect charity of her heart. The universal feeling of lamentation for her, accords with the benign and simple-minded beauty of her character.”
As the limits and object of this work do not permit us to enlarge our remarks on the particular history of Chepstow, we now proceed to that of the castle, whose roofless walls, and moss-clad ramparts, carry us back to the Norman Conquest, and fill an ample page in its subsequent history. The present structure, on a Roman or Saxon foundation, is ascribed to William Fitzosborne, Earl of Hereford,[6] upon whom his kinsman the Conqueror had bestowed vast possessions, in this and the neighbouring counties, which could only be secured by sword and stronghold. On the forfeiture of his son Roger, it passed to the Clares, another great Norman family.