Now all this was fulfilled in the Marquess’s own day, who, having built the one gate and begun the other, yet by reason of the distractions of the time, was forced to discontinue the latter, which at the time of the siege remained unfinished. Some one standing by while this prophecy was mentioned, exhorted the Marquess—half in jest, half in earnest—to make haste and finish his red-gate house, because we should have no quiet until that were up.
“Hark’ye,” said the Marquess, “nobody shall ever prophesy so much money out of my purse in such times as these! Besides, the prophet does not say until, but before—‘before the red gate is up;’ and, for aught I know, if I should make haste with that building, I should hasten the war to my own sorrow; for the prophet says, ‘before the red-gate house shall be finished, there shall be wars all over the land.’ But what if I had built neither the one nor the other, how could this prophecie have concerned me?”
“Oh, my Lord,” said one of the company, “it is done; and you could not otherwise choose but to do what you did.”
“Ay; but I can choose,” said the Marquess, “whether I will believe the prophet or not.”
“Another prophecie there was,” continues our authority, “that the king of the country should lose a great battle, [Naseby,] and afterwards fly to Raglan Castle for safety; that the enemy should pursue him; and that after a short time he should leave the Castle, and that the enemy should besiege and set fire to the Castle wall. All of which was literally fulfilled.”
Moreover it was said, that “an eagle should come into the park and be there slain, which should be a forerunner to the destruction of that house; which I saw literally performed; but yet executed by one that never heard of the prophecie. It was furthermore foretold, that a cloud of bats should hang over the Castle before its final demolishment; this, three days before, all the Castle beheld to their no small astonishment, and it continued a quarter of an hour, about twilight, so thick that you could not, towards the middle of them, see the sky, though clear. Being shot at with hail-shot, some of them fell down, and the rest flew away.
“The Marquess being told of this, asked what those kind of creatures might signify. Some about him answered, that they were scripture emblems of ruin and desolation.[275] He then asked if they were all gone. It was told him that they were. Whereupon the Marquess asked us whether or no the enemy had begirt us round. It was answered that they had. ‘Then,’ said his Lordship, ‘I am glad of it; for then those emblems of ruin cannot fly away from us, but they must also fly over the heads of the enemy.’”
The Chaplain then proceeds, according to the superstitious belief of the times, to relate the following prediction regarding the King himself:—“The strangest prophecie of all,” he affirms, “both for signification and accomplishment, is this, which I read before I saw it in this book, and fourteen years before the war.” He then gives it in the Welsh language, and explains that fab-anne, as it is one word, signifies a baby, and joined to another Welsh word, should imply a crowned infant, that, on growing up to man’s estate, and ruling these realms for a season, should at last “fall by the stroke of an axe,” or, “he shall be slain with an axe.” We shall not detain our readers by following the Chaplain through the various arguments by which he appears to establish the truth of this singular prediction; but, referring them to the “Apophthegms,” in which it is recorded, we proceed to another portion of our history.
As soon as the Castle was fairly occupied by the new garrison, the work of demolition began. The peasantry were summoned to their aid; but on the great tower their united labours made but slight impression. So, “after battering the top with pickaxes,” they resolved to effect their purpose more expeditiously, and, transferring their implements to the foundation, succeeded in undermining it. As they proceeded, the gaps were propped up with timber, and when the personal risk became too imminent to continue the work, they set fire to the timber, and the instant the charred props gave way, down came a solid mass of the
Tower of Gwent, half filling the moat, where it now lies; a specimen of as firmly compacted a structure as ever was framed by the hand of man. The mortar, indeed, seems harder and more durable than the materials which it cements together. Of its massive construction the annexed woodcut, showing the staircase in the centre of the wall, and the engravings opposite, give a very clear and distinct notion.