Manufacture of cloth and flannel—Fine screen and ugly modern church—Sir John Pryce—Aberhafesp Church—S. Mark’s Eve—Bed of an ancient lake—Caersws—Legend of Swsan—Obligations of a chieftain—How a tribe would increase—How to reduce the difficulty of providing land—Llanwnog—S. Gwynnog—Consequences to his family of the publication of the letter of Gildas—View from Llanwnog—Llanidloes Church—Richard Gwynn—Chartist riots—Poetical description of them—Robert Owen—Henry Williams—Richard Davies.

NEWTOWN is new in every particular except in its manufacture, and that of cloth and flannel was old enough in Wales, if we may judge by the spindle-whorls and shuttles found in camp and cairn; but the business once spread over the Principality is now concentrated at Newtown.

The ugly white brick church has taken the place of one that was old, and contained a magnificent screen. This has not been destroyed, but is preserved in a barn at the rectory. There is some talk of placing it once more in the church, where it would be like the proverbial jewel of gold in a swine’s snout.

Sir John Pryce, fifth baronet, of Newtown Hall, was born in 1698, and succeeded to the title and estates on the death of his father in 1720. He married first his first cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Powell. She died in 1731.

One day Sir John was overtaken by a storm of rain whilst out shooting, and took refuge under a tree, and to the same shelter ran a girl, Mary, daughter of a small farmer of Berriew, named John Morris. As the rain continued to fall, Sir John Pryce was given plenty of time to make the girl’s acquaintance, to fall in love with her, and to propose. This led to a second marriage.

But the humble origin of Lady Pryce led to much spiteful comment, and some people would assert that she had not been married to Sir John. This was absolutely untrue, but falsehood is believed if venomous. Whether it were this, or that she could not accommodate herself to her new situation, or the fact that the first Lady Pryce was kept, embalmed, by the bedside, or perhaps all together combined to weigh on her spirits, and she died of despondency after two years of married life. This was in 1739.

In July, 1741, the Rev. W. Felton, curate of Newtown, was dying, when, two days before his death, he received a long letter from Sir John Pryce, from which a few passages may be extracted:—

Sir John wrote an elegy of a thousand lines on his second wife, in which he affirmed that with his latest breath he would “lisp Maria’s name.”

Ere long, however, he fell in love again, and this time with a widow, Eleanor Jones, and married her.

But when the lady found the bodies of his two preceding wives embalmed, one on each side of the matrimonial bed, she absolutely refused to enter it, and ordered their burial “before she would supply their vocation.”

She also died, in 1748. Immediately Sir John wrote off to one Bridget Bostock, “the Cheshire Pythoness,” who pretended to heal the sick by the faith-cure and with her “fasting spittle,” which she supplied in corked and sealed bottles:—

In compliance with this invitation Mrs. Bostock visited Buckland, in Brecknockshire, where Sir John then was, and exerted all her miracle-working powers, but without effect.

Sir John remained inconsolable—for a while. But from his will, dated 20th June, 1760, it appears that he was then meditating a fourth marriage. He, however, died before it took place. In his will he speaks of “that dearest object of my lawful and best and purest Worldly affections, my most dear and most entirely beloved intended wife, Margaret Harries, of the parish of S. Martin, Haverfordwest, spinster.”

He died on October 28th, 1761, and was buried at Haverfordwest.

His son, Sir John Powell Pryce, sixth baronet, was an unfortunate man. Having by some accident injured his eyes, his wife applied to them a strong acid by mistake for a lotion, which entirely blinded him. But this was not all. Want of management, and wasteful living, obliged him to part with one estate after another, and at last he was thrown as a debtor into King’s Bench, where his faithful wife joined him, and spent many years with him in the prison, till he died in 1776. With his son Edward Manley the title expired.

Three miles up the Severn above Newtown are two churches without villages attached—Penstrowed and Aberhafesp—on opposite sides of the Severn.

A story is told of the latter, a modern church with very bad glass in it. Two men, hearing that he who remains in the church porch on S. Mark’s Eve will see or hear something concerning those who are to die in the course of the year, resolved to keep watch there over midnight. One of them, wearied with the day’s work, fell asleep. Presently, in the dead of night, the one who was awake heard a voice from within the church calling his fellow by name. He roused him, and said, “Let us go—it is of no use waiting longer here.”

In the course of a few weeks, there was a funeral from the opposite parish of Penstrowed, and the departed was to be buried in Aberhafesp churchyard. There is no bridge nearer than that which spans the river at Caersws, and to take the body that way would mean a journey of over five miles. It was determined, therefore, to ford the river opposite Aberhafesp Church. The person who had fallen asleep in the porch volunteered to carry the coffin across the river, and it was placed on the saddle in front of him, and, to prevent it from falling, he was obliged to grasp it with both arms.

The deceased had died of an infectious fever, and the coffin-bearer was stricken, and within a fortnight was a dead man, and was the first parishioner who died in the parish of Aberhafesp that year.

The hills fall back above the two churches and allow of a broad level basin, once the bed of a fine lake, before it was silted up at the end of the Glacial Period. Here the Afon Garno, Paranon, and Ceryst, meet the Severn at Caersws, which was an important Roman station, at the junction of several roads, and where now the Mid-Wales line falls into the Cambrian Railway.

Caersws derives its name from a traditional Queen Swsan, that carried on a war with a prince who reigned over a tribe on the south of the Severn. One day, seeing the enemy mustered on the Llandinam Hills, she crossed the river with her forces to give battle to the foe. The prince, occupying higher ground, was able to repel the attack; and the queen, seeing that her men were routed and in full flight, rode up to the prince and demanded to be put to death, that she might be buried in a great cairn beside her braves who had fallen. The prince replied that she was too gallant to be thus slain, and that he pardoned her; and further committed himself to her hands. Thenceforth their quarrels were fought out in private.

The Roman castrum may still be traced—it covers about seven acres. Excavations made here have given up coins of Vespasian, Domitian, and of later emperors, also Samian ware. Roman soldiers must have been very regardless as to the condition of their pockets, for wherever they went they dropped their money.

The plain would seem to have been a debatable ground from hoar antiquity, for every height about it is entrenched.

It was one of the first obligations of a chief of a Celtic tribe to provide every married man who was subject to him with a farm, with seven acres of arable land, seven of pasture, seven of woodland, and a share in commons. Now as the tribe grew and multiplied he was put to great straits, and the only way out of his difficulties, where all the available land was appropriated, was for him to oust a neighbour from his territories. This obligation weighed on a chief to the eighth generation. Now suppose that a man started to found a tribe, and had three sons, and each of these sons had three, and all married, and in each generation had the same number. In the eighth, the tribe would consist of 2,673 marriageable men clamouring to be provided with farms of seven acres of arable, land, seven of forest, and seven of pasture. What could the chief do to satisfy them but lead them against a neighbour?

One way out of the difficulty was the establishment of monasteries. This explains the development of monachism on the steppes of Tartary, as well as in Wales and Ireland. On that high and sterile plateau in Central Asia, only a limited population can be maintained, and it is to keep down the growth of the population, as a practical expedient, that so large a portion of the males is consigned to celibacy. And it was this practical necessity that provoked the ascetic and celibate societies of the Druids first, and the Christian monks afterwards. When no new lands were available for colonisation, when the three-field system was the sole method of agriculture known, then the land which would now maintain three families at least, would support but one. To keep the equipoise there were migration, war, and compulsory celibacy as alternatives. That this really was a difficulty confronting the old Celtic communities we can see by a story of what occurred in Ireland in 657. The population had so increased that the arable land proved insufficient for the needs of the country. Accordingly an assembly of clergy and laity was summoned by Dermot and Blaithmac, kings of Ireland, to take the matter into consideration. It was decided that the amount of land held by any one householder should be restricted; and further the elders of the assembly directed that prayers should be offered to the Almighty to send a pestilence “to reduce the number of the lower class, that the rest might live in comfort.”

S. Fechin of Fore, on being consulted, approved of this extraordinary proposal. And the prayer was answered from heaven by a second visitation of the terrible Yellow Plague; but the vengeance of God caused the force of the pestilence to fall on the nobles and clergy, of whom multitudes, including the kings and Fechin of Fore himself, were carried off.

To this day, in Tyrol, where the farms cannot be subdivided, owing to the mountainous nature of the land, on the death of the father the sons draw lots who shall marry and take the farm. The rest work under their more fortunate brother, and remain single.

Llanwnog lies under the rounded, heathy mountain of Ddifed, in rear of which are some tarns lying high. The church has in it a very fine and well-preserved screen and rood-loft, and an old stained-glass representation of the patron saint and founder of the church.

His name was Gwynnog, and he was a son of Gildas the historian.

At an early age Gildas committed his son to S. Finnian to be educated. Leaving his master when his education was complete, Gwynnog settled in this spot above the plain of Caersws, but the scurrilous pamphlet issued by his father from his safe retreat in Brittany seems to have fallen like a bombshell among those of his family who were in Wales and Cornwall, and obliged them to leave the territories of the princes against whom Gildas had hurled invectives. Cuneglas (or Cynlas) was prince of Powys at the time. Gildas called him “a bear, wallowing in filth, a tawny butcher.”

Cuneglas after this was not likely to deal tenderly with a son of the pamphleteer, and Gwynnog fled for his life to Brittany, to his father. It seems not improbable that he was elected Bishop of Vannes, where there had been sorry doings and ecclesiastical scandals, and the Church was looking out for a respectable ruler.

The Frank historian Gregory of Tours calls him Eunius, and says that he was over-fond of the bottle. Weroc II. was Count of Vannes at the time, and he was engaged in hostilities with Chilperic, king of the Franks, whom he defeated with great slaughter in 578. Chilperic made terms with the Breton chief, who undertook to pay tribute, but afterwards made difficulties about fulfilling his engagement, and sent Bishop Gwynnog, or Eunius, to Chilperic with a list of complaints. Chilperic was furious at this breach of engagements, and resented it against the unoffending prelate, whom he sent into exile. Gwynnog died at Angers in 580, just ten years after his father.

The view from Llanwnog across the basin of the Severn at the mountains up the valleys of the Severn and the streams that pour into it is very beautiful.

A branch line from Moat Lane leads to Llanidloes at the junction of the Clywedog and Afon Tylwch with the Severn. Although the mountains here do not rise to a great height, they are broken and fine, and many beautiful walks may be taken up the glens of the tributaries of the Severn and over the heathy moors. The Afon Brochan may be ascended to a tarn from which the stream flows, or to the pretty lake Llyn Ebyr, three miles to the north.

Llanidloes possesses one of the finest churches in North Wales, with a richly carved oak roof, the hammer beams supported by angels bearing shields.

Richard Gwynn was a native of Llanidloes. He was educated at S. John’s College, Cambridge, and must have been of poor parentage, for he was a sizar there. He could not reconcile himself to the religious changes in the reign of Edward VI., nor to the violence with which fanatics wrecked the churches; nor would he accept the claim of Queen Elizabeth to be “Supreme Governor” over the Church in England, the objectionable title “Supreme Head” having been put aside.

He lived quietly with his wife and children, keeping a school, at one time at Overton Madog, then at Wrexham, Gresford, and again at Overton; and had many scholars, as he led an exemplary life, and was well known for his learning and scholarship. He does not seem to have been mixed up with any seditious movements, or to have been associated with the Jesuits. Nevertheless he was arrested in 1580 and cast into prison, and kept there for four years; he was treated with great harshness, and frequently tortured to force him to accept the Queen’s supremacy. After several trials he was finally brought up at Wrexham Assizes in 1584 and condemned to death for high treason. The sentence was as follows:—

“Richard White (i.e. Gwynn) shall be brought to prison from whence he came, and thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where he shall hang half dead, and so be cut down alive, his members cast into the fire, his belly ripped into the breast, his bowels, liver, lungs, heart, etc., thrown likewise into the fire, his head cut off, his body be parted into four quarters.”

“What is all this?” said Gwynn. “Is it any more than one death?”

The sentence was carried out on October 15th, 1584.

Llanidloes was the scene of a Chartist outbreak in 1839. The weavers armed and requisitioned contributions from the neighbourhood. Lord John Russell, who was Home Secretary, sent down three police officers to cope with hundreds of rioters well armed with fowling-pieces, pistols, and hand grenades. The magistrates then, unsupported properly, took the matter into their own hands and swore in special constables. The crisis came on April 30th. A man blowing a horn summoned the Chartists to assemble on the Bridge, and three men were captured on their way to the assembly, and were conveyed to the “Trewythen Arms.” The crowd now rushed to attempt a rescue, but was held at bay by fifty special constables. However, by weight and numbers, the rioters drove them away after a struggle, entered the inn, and wrecked it; they liberated the three men who had been taken, and caught the ex-mayor, who appealed to the mob to spare his life, as he was a doctor who had brought many of them into the world. They let him go, and he left the town to give the alarm. For five days Llanidloes was ruled by mob law, but the Chartist leaders saw that no gross outrages were committed.

Matters had now become too serious to be dealt with in the mild manner Lord John Russell had thought might suffice. Military aid was sent. An old lady has recorded her reminiscences of the time.

“The town,” she says, “was in an uproar. The Chartists had been drilling in the Dingle. The news came that a regiment of soldiers was coming to put down the riots, and I can remember watching their arrival. I was standing in a crowd on the Bank, and the soldiers in red coats and brass helmets came up the Pool road, the band playing before them. I shall never forget the scene. The women and children were crying like wild things, they thought everybody was going to be slaughtered. The soldiers proceeded to Newtown Hall, followed by a great and excited crowd. Here they were met by George Arthur Evors, the chief magistrate, who gave instructions to fire. But the officer in charge refused. ‘What,’ he said, ‘fire upon a lot of women and children? Certainly not.’ The soldiers, after all, did no harm, but in the course of a row one man was killed with clubs. After that we did not hear much about the Chartists. Many of them left the country, and never returned. Some were arrested and put into gaol, others managed to hide till things had quieted down, and then came back. But poor Frost, Jones, and Williams were transported.”

A schoolmaster of Newtown named George Thomas wrote a Hudibrastic poem on the riots, containing allusions and sly hits at local characters that were much relished at the time.

According to him—

“The rebels had a bullet mould,
A pistol rusty, crack’d and old,
Some bellows, pipes, and lucifers,
Tweezers, card-plates, and goose-oil cans,
With dust and other nameless pans,
Hot water, soapsuds, toasting prongs,
With cat-calls, horns, and women’s tongues.”

All ended with much noise and little harm done.

“When eggs were spent, tongues peace desir’d,

The spoils of war had brought no crust,

The rebels fled, the troops retir’d,

Covered with glory, sweat and dust.”

In the old churchyard of Newtown may be seen the plain slab that covers the body of Robert Owen, the Socialist. He was born in the place, but his father was from Welshpool, and had set up business as saddler, ironmonger, and postmaster. Robert was born in 1771, and was sent to London to a situation in a haberdasher’s shop. Thence he removed to Manchester, where he started cotton-spinning. His life is too well known to be given in full here, but a few points may be mentioned. He had imbibed very strong anti-religious ideas, and he was persuaded that the whole social world was topsy-turvy, and required reorganising on the new principles that he had excogitated.

“Character,” said he, “is formed for and not by the individual, and society now possesses the most ample means and power to well form the character of everyone by reconstructing society on its own true principles”—that is to say, on those devised by Robert Owen.

In 1797 he started the “New Lanark Twist Company,” in which his theories were to be carried out; but although the system was nominally and theoretically democratic, Robert Owen ruled as an autocrat, and having a splendid organising and business head he made the scheme into a commercial success. Some of the partners could not agree to his plans, so he bought them out, but took in others, who also declined to let him rule despotically, and in disgust he went off to America to found a Socialistic community there on the wreck of an attempted German Communistic venture. This, however, failed, and when he returned to Scotland the partners in the New Lanark Twist Company had increased in number, and gave him to understand that they intended managing it in their own and not in his way.

Then he founded a Communistic Society at Orbiston, in Scotland, but this also slipped from his control. He next started a weekly paper, The Crisis, and an “Equitable Labour Exchange.” The latter came to a disastrous end in 1833. After this little was heard of Robert Owen.

One of his early theories was that the universe was one great self-acting laboratory, and that all life, movement, thought, were results of chemical action.

His conception of the formation of character was bound to end in disappointment. Minds are not mere bits of blank paper on which you may write what you like; souls are not lumps of putty to be moulded to what form you will.

My dear father had been impressed with some of Robert Owen’s doctrines, specially with this, and he set to work to shape my brothers and me each for a special profession, and to give each a separate bent; and the result was that we all went in clean opposite directions to what he purposed, and adopted professions which he had intended the others to enter.

Owen finally took up with table-rapping and Spiritualism, and supposed himself to be a medium through whom the Duke of Kent revealed the mysteries of the other world. Finally, as his health failed, a great longing came over him to return to his native place and die there.

“And as a hare, when hounds and horns pursue,
Pants for the place from whence at first it flew,”

so did he come back to Newtown, and there shortly after expired.

A little way down the Severn below Newtown is Llanllwchaiarn, a church founded by a brother of S. Aelhaiarn of Guilsfield. The parish is not of interest in itself, except as having given birth to, and been the residence of, a remarkable man, Henry Williams, of Ysgafell, one of the sturdiest Nonconformists of the time of the Restoration. His father owned the farm, which had belonged to the family for several generations.

The Conventicle Act, which came into force in 1664, imposed a penalty of £5 or three months’ imprisonment on anyone frequenting a dissenting meeting, for the first offence; £10 or six months’ imprisonment for a second offence; and for a third offence a fine of £100 or transportation beyond the seas.

Henry Williams was in prison from time to time during nine years. On one occasion a party of soldiers beset his house, and in the skirmish, as they attempted to enter, his father was knocked down and killed. On another the house was fired, and Mrs. Williams, taking one child in her arms and leading another, attempted to cross the Severn from the soldiery, when one of them cocked his pistol and vowed to shoot her. However, the officer knocked the man down, and sent an escort to attend her to a friend’s house.

Another time when Henry Williams was preaching the soldiers fell on him, beat, and nearly killed him. They seized his stock and devastated his farm. There was, however, one field that had been sown with wheat, not yet sprung up, which they could not or did not harm. That field throve amazingly, and the crop next summer surpassed in yield every other in the neighbourhood. Nothing like it had been seen, and at harvest the produce was so abundant as to repay the family for all its losses. There were six, seven, and eight full ears upon each stalk. Two of these stalk-heads have been preserved to the present day; one has on it seven ears, the other eight. The field where this marvellous crop was grown is known to this day as Cae’r Fendith, the Field of Blessing.

Some of the principal persecutors of Henry Williams died so strangely that it was regarded as a judgment of heaven upon them. One dropped suddenly from his chair dead whilst eating his dinner, a second was drowned in the Severn when drunk, and a third fell from his horse and broke his neck close to the house of Henry Williams, which he had plundered.

About half-way between Caersws and Machynlleth is Llanbrynmair, the birthplace of Richard Davies, known in Wales by his bardic name of Mynyddog, who is regarded as the Burns of his native land. He was born in 1833, and his father was a farmer. At an early age the poetic faculty displayed itself in him, and he wrote for several Welsh magazines, and won prizes at local literary meetings. As his education had been but scanty, he laboured hard as a young man to make up for this deficiency. He was a tall, fine man, with an open, pleasant face, was full of a kindly, never caustic, wit; and he speedily became one of the most popular of Welsh poets. There is a freshness and flavour of the soil in his compositions, like those of Burns, but none of the coarseness of the Scotch poet. He died in 1877 at his residence, BronygÂn, in Cemmes. It is hard, almost impossible, to give anything of the charm of his compositions in a translation, and I venture on one with the utmost diffidence.

“BOXER.”

“Full many a lusty horse I’ve viewed,

When following father’s team,

Would draw the plough, make furrow and ridge,

With the coulter’s after gleam.

Now, fair befall
Good horses all!

But never a one can I recall
That could compare, in my esteem,

With Boxer, my father’s horse.

“If I to bet were a bit inclined,

One hundred pounds I’d lay

On every hoof old Boxer had,

The best that fed upon hay.

But he would scorn,
As one well born,

To be accounted not worth a thorn.
He’d toss his head and proudly neigh

Unless he were leading horse.

“The chapel choir for a practice came,

It was upon Monday night,

To the glory of God an anthem sing

In harmony and might.

But each would lead,
And each decreed

That not a note would he proceed,
He’d hold it a purposed slur and slight

Unless he were leading horse.

“A deacon to choose at Tal-y-Coed,

Most woeful discord wrought,

For every chapel-member declared

The office was that he sought.

And he would scorn,
For this thing born,

To be set back, as not worth a thorn,
By all the sciet, a thing of naught!

For he would be leading horse.

“Our Boxer once was set in the shafts

When flow’ry June was gay,

And ordered to draw a wain, upheaped

With burden of balmy hay.

But he thought scorn
As one well born

To be accounted not worth a thorn,
In second place, and behind our bay,

For he would be leading horse.