Up along the rise from Queen’s Head, past Aston Park, where sepulchral burrows of prehistoric man are seen beneath the trees, the way lies on to Oswestry. The town of “Odgerstree,” as the country people call it, is entered soon after passing the old toll-house of Gallows Tree Gate. Once called Maserfield, it lost that name at an early date, and acquired its present title when history was very young indeed. It owes the name of Oswald’s-tre, or Oswald’s Town, to the Christian King Oswald of Northumbria, slain here in the year 642 in battle with the heathen Penda, King of Mercia. Oswald had taken the offensive, and as a raider only met his deserts; but the Church accounted him a martyr, made him a saint, and dedicated to him a religious house that in the course of time rose here. The parish church bears the name of St. Oswald to this day, and his Well, not so holy as it once was, may be found near by.

From the earliest times Oswestry was a fortified place. It stands two miles on the English side of Offa’s Dyke, that boundary between the Welsh and the Saxons, and, occupying an advanced position, close upon the more rugged Welsh mountains, was greatly exposed to sudden inroads of the Welsh. Five miles away stood the great castle of Chirk, placed there to command the easy road from Wales into England by the Vale of Llangollen; but Oswestry was a fortified post and a market town in one. Sometimes it would be attacked; at others, the Welsh resorted to it as the only place where their needs could be supplied. In course of time the requirements of trade broke down the barrier between the two nations, and Oswestry, from being a Saxon outpost where the roving Welshman, when caught, was surely put to death, became itself half Welsh. The results are plain to see, even now. Offa’s Dyke, along almost the whole of its length, still sharply divides the two races, and only in the immediate neighbourhood of Oswestry is the division blurred and indistinct. Here English names and Welsh mingle, and each understands something of the other: even Welsh place-names exist on the English side of the Dyke.

The Civil War of Charles I.’s time was the last occasion of Oswestry being besieged. It was held for the King by a band of Shropshire loyalists who, to render themselves more secure against attack, partly demolished the tower of the church, standing outside the town walls and likely to afford the besiegers a great advantage. But the siege did not last long. A breach was made in the defences, and a youth named Cranage, “enlivened by the Parliamentary generals with wine,” volunteered to go under fire and explode a petard at the Castle gate. The gate was blown in and the garrison surrendered.

After that period the Castle remained in ruins, and the town walls and gates were left to decay. So long ago as 1782 the work of removing the gates was begun, and now not a fragment remains. Of the Castle, once planted on a hilly site in the town, only some shapeless walls in a public garden are left. When the craze for modernising Oswestry began, a hundred and twenty years ago, the market rights still belonged to the Earls of Powis, Lords of the Manor, who were paid “Toll-Thorough” on all goods entering the town, and on the gates being removed to widen the streets, the places where tolls were still payable were marked by carved stones. One of these may be seen in Church Street, on the site of the New Gate that stood until 1782. It occupies an eminently greasy position in the party-wall dividing two butchers’ shops, and bears the words “Toll-Thorough” and the date. The arms of the Earls of Powis are still to be seen, boldly carved on it, but the Corporation purchased the market rights and abolished tolls in 1833.

History of the larger sort had then been done with, but some interesting happenings may be recounted. For example, the Princess Victoria passed through Oswestry with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, on her Welsh tour, en route for Wynnstay, August 4th, 1832—the tour that made King William IV. so indignant. It was “almost a Royal Progress,” he said. Oswestry was a happy town that day. The Princess’s carriage changed horses at the “Wynnstay Arms,” the Honourable Thomas Kenyon presented a copy of the History of Oswestry, and everybody cheered. There was at that time a diary-keeping tradesman in the town, a Pepys in his little way, and a most engaging wrestler with the art of spelling. He tells how “Tom Kinaston” (postboy at Knight’s “Wynnstay Arms”) “got drunk and whas turnd from Mr. Knites as Post Boy; alsow a woman kild at Winstay, thear being such a crowd to See the Royal Pursaneags. Oswestry was the seam as a wood from Pentrey Poeth to Betrey St. With rchs across the streets and frunt of the houses all covered with Laurel and ock.”

The “Wynnstay Arms,” mentioned in this amusing account, was the chief inn of coaching days, and remains much the same in appearance. It was once known as the “Cross Foxes,” the two names meaning the same thing, for two foxes, “counter-salient,” as the heralds say, placed back to back, form a prominent feature in the arms of the Wynnes of Wynnstay, the great landowning family of this district.

The Wynne arms are satirically referred to by Gwillim, who says: “They are not unlike Samson’s foxes that were tied together by the tails, and yet these two agree; they came into the field like two enemies, but they meant nothing like fighting, and therefore pass by each other, like two crafty lawyers which come to the Bar as if they meant to fall out deadly about their clients’ cause; but when they have done, and their clients’ purses are well spunged, they are better friends than ever they were, and laugh at those geese that will not believe them to be foxes till they, too late, find themselves fox-bitten.”

Another charge in the old coat of the Wynnes is a spread eagle, referred to in the proud motto of the family: “Eryr Eryrod Eryri” = “The Eagle of the eagles of North Wales.”

Much might be said of the Wynnes, if one had a mind to it, for each succeeding Sir Watkin has been a species of Providence to the district, from Oswestry to Llangollen, and many of them great sporting figures in North Wales. One of that long line has put upon record his method of conveying his rents to London in days of old. His precautions might well fit the escorting of a convoy through an enemy’s country, and although dealing only with a period covering the close of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth century, read like a mediÆval romance.

First of all, the “fourgon,” as he styles his carriage, was thoroughly overhauled, so that no defects might remain to cause a breakdown on the long and arduous four or five days’ journey. Then the iron bullet-proof lining of the carriage was examined, and four of his most muscular gamekeepers selected to accompany him. All at last being ready, two keepers were seated on the box, each provided with a double-barrelled gun, and two others, similarly armed, in the dickey. Sir Watkin would personally superintend the loading of the carriage with the products of his rent-roll, and would then take his seat, accompanied by his land-bailiff. After a day’s journey of between forty and fifty miles, the coach would be drawn up at some hostelry well known to Sir Watkin, and the treasure guarded throughout the night by two of the keepers and by the two carriage-dogs which had trotted beneath the equipage all day. With such precautions, it is not altogether remarkable that the worthy Baronet’s fortress on wheels was never attacked.

Carriage dogs—Dalmatian hounds or “plum-pudding” dogs—are not so fashionable as they were. Until recent years they were often to be seen trotting at an even pace under the carriages of the aristocracy and the wealthy during the London season, and were almost wholly kept for the sake of style and display. They were then, apart from being somewhat companionable and soothing to the nerves of restive horses, wholly useless; but—just as the waist-belt of a groom is the now meaningless survival of the necessary belt by which ladies riding pillion on horseback in the old days clung to the horseman—they had originally a very good reason for existence. Carriage dogs, in fact, date from more than two centuries ago, when families, travelling in their “chariots” between their country and their town houses, and often carrying great store of valuables with them, were always accompanied by these dogs, whose especial business was by no means comprised solely in keeping pace with the equipage. Indeed, the serious part of their profession only began when the wayside inn was reached, and the carriage put up in the coach-house. Throughout the night they kept watch and ward over their master’s goods; and ill fared the thief, or even the incautious stable-hand, who went near.