Monmouth—History of the Castle—Apartment of Henry of Monmouth—Ecclesiastical remains—Benedictine priory—Church of St. Mary—Church of St. Thomas—Monnow Bridge—Modern town—Monmouth caps—The beneficent parvenu.
Monmouth lies embowered among gentle hills, only diversified by wood, corn, and pasture; but to view it either from the Wye, or any of the neighbouring eminences, one would be far from supposing it to have so tame, or at least so quiet a site. From one point, its spire is seen passing through a deep and mysterious wood; from another, it hangs perched on a precipitous ridge; and from the Wye it rises with considerable stateliness in the form of an amphitheatre. It stands at the confluence of the Wye and the Monnow, from which it derives its English name.
A royal fortress existed here before the conquest, a circumstance which renders its early history full of fearful vicissitudes, although these are but very imperfectly traced. In the time of Henry III., the castle, after changing hands repeatedly, was taken and rased to the ground. “Thus the glorie of Monmouth,” says Lambarde, “had clean perished, ne had it pleased God longe after in that place to give life to the noble King Henry V., who of the same is called Henry of Monmouth.” It was a favourite residence of the father of this prince, King Henry IV., and also of his father, John of Gaunt, “time honoured Lancaster,” to whom it came by his marriage with Blanch, daughter and heiress of Henry, duke of Lancaster, whose title he was afterwards granted. Henry V. was born here in 1387, and from this circumstance is styled Henry of Monmouth. This prince enlarged the duchy of Lancaster with his maternal inheritance, and obtained an act of parliament that all grants of offices and estates should pass under the seal of the duchy. Henry VI. and VII. possessed the castle of Monmouth, as part of the duchy, by right of inheritance; but between these reigns it was given by Edward IV. to Lord Herbert, afterwards earl of Pembroke. Although the duchy, however, continued in the crown, the castle, together with other possessions in Monmouthshire, was alienated, and became private property, but at what period does not clearly appear. In the reign of Elizabeth, it is ascertained, by different grants, to have been still parcel of the duchy, and also in that of James I., by the following presentment made under a commission: “Item, wee present that his majestie hath one ancient castell, called Monmouth Castell, situated within the liberties of the said towne, which is nowe, and hath been for a long time, ruinous and in decaye, but by whom it hath byn decayed wee knowe not, nor to what value, in regarde it was before our rememberment, savinge one greate hall which is covered and mayntayned for the judges of the assise to sitt in. And for and concerning any demean lands belonginge to the same castell, wee knowe not of any more save only the castell hill, wherein divers have gardens, and the castell green, which is inclosed within the walls of the said castell.”
Before the end of the seventeenth century, we find the castle in the hands of the first duke of Beaufort, if the following anecdote, indicative either of an ambitious or a fantastic spirit, can be believed. “The marchioness of Worcester,” says the author of the Secret Memoirs of Monmouthshire, “was ordered by her grandfather, the late duke of Beaufort, to lie in of her first child in a house lately built within the castle of Monmouth, near that spot of ground and space of air, where our great hero Henry V. was born.”
Whatever mutilations this castle may have undergone since the days of its royal magnificence, by whomever it may have been at length “decayed,” or at whatever period it came into the hands of the Beauforts, this at least is certain, that there is now not more than enough left to indicate its site. “The transmutations of time,” says Gilpin, “are often ludicrous. Monmouth Castle was formerly the palace of a king, and the birthplace of a mighty prince; it is now converted into a yard for fattening ducks.” The ruins, however, must have been concealed from his view by the stables and other outhouses that had risen from the fragments, so as completely to hide them from the townward side. Coxe, a much more correct observer, although less learned in the laws of the picturesque, describes them in 1800 as presenting, when viewed from the right bank of the Monnow, “an appearance of dilapidated grandeur which recalls to memory the times of feudal magnificence.”
Although the roof and great part of the walls had already fallen, the site of two remarkable apartments could be traced distinctly; that in which Henry was born, and another adjoining which had been used, even within the memory of some of the inhabitants, for the assizes. The latter was sixty-three feet in length and forty-six in breadth, and was no doubt the “greate hall” mentioned in the presentment quoted above as being “mayntayned for the judges of the assise to sitt in.”
The apartment of Henry of Monmouth is thus described by the archdeacon:
“The apartment which gave birth to the Gwentonian hero was an upper story, and the beams that supported the floor still project from the side walls; it was fifty-eight feet long, and twenty-four broad, and was decorated with gothic windows, of which some are still remaining, and seem to be of the age of Henry III. The walls of this part are not less than ten feet in thickness. About fifty years ago, a considerable part of the southern wall fell down with a tremendous crash, which alarmed the whole town, leaving a breach not less than forty feet in length. On the ground floor beneath are three circular arches terminating in chinks, which have a very ancient appearance; at the north-eastern angle, within a stable, may be seen a round tower six feet in diameter, which was once a staircase leading to the grand apartment.”
To the right of this apartment, the same author traced the vestige of the original walls in a private house built within the ancient site. They were from six to ten feet, formed of pebbles and mortar, and is so compact a mass as not to yield in hardness to solid stone.
Next to the ruined castle of an ancient town, come the ecclesiastical remains; for the stronghold of the chief, and the cell of the monk, were usually the nucleus round which the town was gathered. The principal relics of the latter kind in Monmouth are those of a benedictine priory of black monks, dedicated to St. Mary, which was founded as a cell to the monastery of St. Florence, near Saumur in Anjou, by Wikenoc, lord of Monmouth in the reign of Henry I. The ruins are small, but interesting; and not the less so from containing an apartment distinguished by a rich gothic bay window, pointed out by tradition as the study of that mysterious personage, Geoffry of Monmouth. The church of the priory stood on the site of the present parish church of St. Mary, of which the tower and the lower part of the spire are the only remains of the original. This spire, which is “lofty, and light, and small,” is the grand scenic feature of the town when viewed from a distance; and in return, it affords to the traveller who will take the trouble to ascend it a point from which to view the country to most advantage. The beautiful vale in which the town stands, with its undulating eminences, among which wander the Wye, the Monnow, and the Trothy, is seen in an almost circular form, enclosed from the vulgar world, by a line of hills mantled with woods and forests.
The ancient church of St. Thomas stands near the bridge of the Monnow, and from its circular arches, and extreme simplicity of appearance, is probably older than the conquest. This does not apply, however, to the entire building, the western window, and some other morÇeaux, displaying the ornamented Gothic of a late period. The antiquity of the building, it should be said, is rendered the more probable by its standing beyond the bridge, where the suburbs of the modern town are supposed to occupy the site of the British town during the Saxon era.
The bridge, of which a view is given in Grose’s Antiquities, is itself an object of interest, containing, on its centre, the Monnow Gate, the only one of the four original gates, mentioned by Leland, that remains entire. Both bridge and gate bear evidence of very high antiquity, and were probably erected by the Saxons as a barrier against the Welsh. The town was farther fortified by a wall and moat, of which the latter was entire in the time of Leland, and some fragments of the former remaining. But all vestiges of those defences have now vanished, with the exception of the Monnow Gate, and some pieces of a tower.
Of the modern town, it can be said that it is neat and clean, with one broad and well-built street. It is neither mean nor elegant, and presents no offensive contrast to the beautiful scenery by which it is surrounded. The navigation of the Wye is its principal support, for at the present day at least it has no manufactories, although celebrated in that of its own Henry for caps. “If your majestie is remembered of it, the Welchmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps.” The account given of this staple article by Fuller, in his Worthies, is worth quoting.
“These,” says he, “were the most ancient, general, warm, and profitable coverings of men’s heads in this island. It is worth our pains to observe the tenderness of our kings to preserve the trade of cap-making, and what long and strong struggling our state had to keep up the using thereof, so many thousands of people being thereby maintained in the land, especially before the invention of fulling-mills, all caps before that time being wrought, beaten, and thickened, by the hands and feet of men, till those mills, as they eased many of their labour, outed more of their livelihood. Capping anciently set fifteen distinct callings on work, as they are reckoned up in the statute: 1. carders, 2. spinners; 3. knitters; 4. parters of wool; 5. forfers; 6. thickeners; 7. dressers; 8. walkers; 9. dyers; 10. battelers; 11. shearers; 12. pressers; 13. edgers; 14. liners; 15. band-makers, and other exercises. No wonder then that so many statutes were enacted in parliament to encourage this handicraft.” * * * * “Lastly; to keep up the usage of caps, it was enacted, in the 13th of Queen Eliz. cap. 19, that they should be worne by all persons (some of worship and quality excepted) on sabbath and holy days, on the pain of forfeiting ten groats for the omission thereof.
“But it seems that nothing but hats would fit the heads (or humours rather) of the English, as fancied by them fitter to fence their fair faces from the injury of wind and weather, so that the 39th of Queen Elizabeth this statute was repealed; yea, the cap, accounted by the Romans an emblem of liberty, is esteemed by the English (falconers and hunters excepted) a badge of servitude, though very useful in themselves, and the ensign of constancy, because not discomposed, but retaining their fashion, in what form soever they may be crouded.
“The best caps were formerly made at Monmouth, where the capper’s chapel doth still remain, being better carved and gilded than any other part of the church. But on the occasion of a great plague happening in this town, the trade was some years since removed hence to Beaudley, in Worcestershire, yet so that they are called Monmouth caps unto this day. Thus this town retains, though not the profit, the credit of capping, and seeing the child keeps the mother’s name, there is some hope in due time she may return to her.”
Monmouth appears also to have dealt largely in ale, if we may judge by a grant of Henry IV. as lord of the manor, to its burgesses. “That the brewers of ale there, who were anciently held to pay the king’s ancestors and progenitors eight gallons of ale at every brewing, in the name of Castlecoule, during the time the king, or his heirs, were dwelling in the said town, should now pay in lieu thereof 10d. each brewing, except when the king, his heirs or his councils, holding his sessions there, were present in the said town, in which case the ancient custom of Castlecoules should be observed.”
We must not omit an anecdote connected with the history of a free-school, founded here in the reign of James I. William Jones, born at Monmouth, as Burton tells us in his History of Wales, was forced to quit the place for not being able to pay ten groats. He removed to the great field for adventurers, London, and became first a porter, then a factor, and afterwards went over to Hamburgh, where he found such sale for his Welsh cottons, that in a very short time he realised a handsome fortune. He founded a school in his native place, allowing fifty pounds a year to the master, and a hundred pounds salary to a lecturer, together with an almshouse for twenty poor people, each having two rooms and a garden, and two shillings and sixpence a week. It is said, however, by other authorities, that Jones was a native of Newland, in Gloucestershire; and after having made his fortune in London, that he returned thither in the assumed character of a beggar, to try the liberality of his townsmen. In this he found them wanting, for they tauntingly told him to go and ask relief at Monmouth, where he had lived at service. He took their advice, and being better received there, founded the above charities in token of his gratitude.
