The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, by Giraldus Cambrensis

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The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwinthrough Wales
by
Giraldus Cambrensis

p.viiINTRODUCTION

Gerald the Welshman—GiraldusCambrensis—was born, probably in 1147, at Manorbier Castlein the county of Pembroke.  His father was a Norman noble,William de Barri, who took his name from the little island ofBarry off the coast of Glamorgan.  His mother, Angharad, wasthe daughter of Gerald de Windsor [0a] by his wife, thefamous Princess Nesta, the “Helen of Wales,” and thedaughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr Mawr, the last independent Prince ofSouth Wales.

Gerald was therefore born to romance and adventure.  Hewas reared in the traditions of the House of Dinevor.  Heheard the brilliant and pitiful stories of Rhys ap Tewdwr, who,after having lost and won South Wales, died on the stricken fieldfighting against the Normans, an old man of over fourscore years;and of his gallant son, Prince Rhys, who, after wrenching hispatrimony from the invaders, died of a broken heart a few monthsafter his wife, the Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in a skirmishat Kidwelly.  No doubt he heard, though he makes but sparingallusion to them, of the loves and adventures of his grandmother,the Princess Nesta, the daughter and sister of a prince, the wifeof an adventurer, the concubine of a king, and the paramour ofevery daring lover—a Welshwoman whose passions embroiledall Wales, and England too, in war, and the mother ofheroes—Fitz-Geralds, Fitz-Stephens, and Fitz-Henries, andothers—who, regardless of their mother’s eccentricityin the choice of their fathers, p. viiiunited like brothers in the mostadventurous undertaking of that age, the Conquest of Ireland.

Though his mother was half Saxon and his father probably fullyNorman, Gerald, with a true instinct, described himself as a“Welshman.”  His frank vanity, so naïve asto be void of offence, his easy acceptance of everything whichProvidence had bestowed on him, his incorrigible belief that allthe world took as much interest in himself and all that appealedto him as he did himself, the readiness with which he adaptedhimself to all sorts of men and of circumstances, his credulityin matters of faith and his shrewd common sense in things of theworld, his wit and lively fancy, his eloquence of tongue and pen,his acute rather than accurate observation, his scholarshipelegant rather than profound, are all characteristic of a certainlovable type of South Walian.  He was not blind to thedefects of his countrymen any more than to others of hiscontemporaries, but the Welsh he chastised as one who lovedthem.  His praise followed ever close upon the heels of hiscriticism.  There was none of the rancour in his referencesto Wales which defaces his account of contemporary Ireland. He was acquainted with Welsh, though he does not seem to havepreached it, and another archdeacon acted as the interpreter ofArchbishop Baldwin’s Crusade sermon in Anglesea.  Buthe could appreciate the charm of the Cynghanedd, thealliterative assonance which is still the most distinctivefeature of Welsh poetry.  He cannot conceal his sympathywith the imperishable determination of his countrymen to keepalive the language which is their differentiaamong thenations of the world.  It is manifest in the story which herelates at the end of his “Description ofWales.”  Henry II. asked an old Welshman of Pencaderin Carmarthenshire if the Welsh could resist his might. “This nation, O King,” was the reply, “mayoften be weakened and in great part destroyed by the power ofyourself and of p.ixothers, but many a time, as it deserves, it will risetriumphant.  But never will it be destroyed by the wrath ofman, unless the wrath of God be added.  Nor do I think thatany other nation than this of Wales, or any other tongue,whatever may hereafter come to pass, shall on the day of thegreat reckoning before the Most High Judge, answer for thiscorner of the earth.”  Prone to discuss with his“Britannic frankness” the faults of his countrymen,he cannot bear that any one else should do so.  In the“Description of Wales” he breaks off in the middle ofa most unflattering passage concerning the character of the Welshpeople to lecture Gildas for having abused his owncountrymen.  In the preface to his “Instruction ofPrinces,” he makes a bitter reference to the prejudice ofthe English Court against everything Welsh—“Can anygood thing come from Wales?”  His fierce Welshmanshipis perhaps responsible for the unsympathetic treatment which hehas usually received at the hands of English historians. Even to one of the writers of Dr. Traill’s “SocialEngland,” Gerald was little more than “a strong andpassionate Welshman.”

Sometimes it was his pleasure to pose as a citizen of theworld.  He loved Paris, the centre of learning, where hestudied as a youth, and where he lectured in his earlymanhood.  He paid four long visits to Rome.  He wasCourt chaplain to Henry II.  He accompanied the king on hisexpeditions to France, and Prince John to Ireland.  Heretired, when old age grew upon him, to the scholarly seclusionof Lincoln, far from his native land.  He was the friend andcompanion of princes and kings, of scholars and prelateseverywhere in England, in France, and in Italy.  And yetthere was no place in the world so dear to him asManorbier.  Who can read his vivid description of the oldcastle by the sea—its ramparts blown upon by the winds thatswept over the Irish Sea, its fishponds, its garden, and itslofty nut trees—without feeling that here, after all, p. xwas the home ofGerald de Barri?  “As Demetia,” he said in his“Itinerary,” “with its seven cantreds is thefairest of all the lands of Wales, as Pembroke is the fairestpart of Demetia, and this spot the fairest of Pembroke, itfollows that Manorbier is the sweetest spot inWales.”  He has left us a charming account of hisboyhood, playing with his brothers on the sands, they buildingcastles and he cathedrals, he earning the title of “boybishop” by preaching while they engaged in boyishsport.  On his last recorded visit to Wales, a broken man,hunted like a criminal by the king, and deserted by the ingratecanons of St. David’s, he retired for a brief respite fromstrife to the sweet peace of Manorbier.  It is not knownwhere he died, but it is permissible to hope that he breathed hislast in the old home which he never forgot or ceased to love.

He mentions that the Welsh loved high descent and carriedtheir pedigree about with them.  In this respect also Geraldwas Welsh to the core.  He is never more pleased than whenhe alludes to his relationship with the Princes of Wales, or theGeraldines, or Cadwallon ap Madoc of Powis.  He hints, notobscurely, that the real reason why he was passed over for theBishopric of St. David’s in 1186 was that Henry II. fearedhis natio et cognatio, his nation and his family.  Hebecomes almost dithyrambic in extolling the deeds of his kinsmenin Ireland.  “Who are they who penetrated into thefastnesses of the enemy?  The Geraldines.  Who are theywho hold the country in submission?  The Geraldines. Who are they whom the foemen dread?  The Geraldines. Who are they whom envy would disparage?  TheGeraldines.  Yet fight on, my gallant kinsmen,

“Felices facti si quid mea carminapossuit.”

Gerald was satisfied, not only with his birthplace andlineage, but with everything that was his.  He makescomplacent references to his good looks, which he had p. xiinheritedfrom Princess Nesta.  “Is it possible so fair a youthcan die?” asked Bishop, afterwards Archbishop, Baldwin,when he saw him in his student days. [0b]  Even in hisletters to Pope Innocent he could not refrain from repeating acompliment paid to him on his good looks by Matilda of St.Valery, the wife of his neighbour at Brecon, William deBraose.  He praises his own unparalleled generosity inentertaining the poor, the doctors, and the townsfolk of Oxfordto banquets on three successive days when he read his“Topography of Ireland” before that university. As for his learning he records that when his tutors at Pariswished to point out a model scholar they mentioned GiraldusCambrensis.  He is confident that though his works, beingall written in Latin, have not attained any great contemporarypopularity, they will make his name and fame secure forever.  The most precious gift he could give to Pope InnocentIII., when he was anxious to win his favour, was six volumes ofhis own works; and when good old Archbishop Baldwin came topreach the Crusade in Wales, Gerald could think of no betterpresent to help beguile the tedium of the journey than his own“Topography of Ireland.”  He is equally pleasedwith his own eloquence.  When the archbishop had preached,with no effect, for an hour, and exclaimed what a hardheartedpeople it was, Gerald moved them almost instantly to tears. He records also that John Spang, the Lord Rhys’s fool, saidto his master at Cardigan, after Gerald had been preaching theCrusade, “You owe a great debt, O Rhys, to your kinsman,the archdeacon, who has taken a hundred or so of your men toserve the Lord; for if he had only spoken in Welsh, you would nothave had a soul left.”  His works are full ofappreciations of Gerald’s reforming zeal, hisadministrative energy, his unostentatious and scholarly life.

Professor Freeman in his “Norman Conquest”described p.xiiGerald as “the father of comparativephilology,” and in the preface to his edition of the lastvolume of Gerald’s works in the Rolls Series, he calls him“one of the most learned men of a learned age,”“the universal scholar.”  His range of subjectsis indeed marvellous even for an age when to be a“universal scholar” was not so hopeless of attainmentas it has since become.  Professor Brewer, his earliesteditor in the Rolls Series, is struck by the samecharacteristic.  “Geography, history, ethics,divinity, canon law, biography, natural history, epistolarycorrespondence, and poetry employed his pen by turns, and in allthese departments of literature he has left memorials of hisability.”  Without being Ciceronian, his Latin was farbetter than that of his contemporaries.  He was steeped inthe classics, and he had, as Professor Freeman remarks,“mastered more languages than most men of his time, and hadlooked at them with an approach to a scientific view which stillfewer men of his time shared with him.”  He quotesWelsh, English, Irish, French, German, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek,and with four or five of these languages at least he had anintimate, scholarly acquaintance.  His judgment of men andthings may not always have been sound, but he was a shrewdobserver of contemporary events.  “The cleverestcritic of the life of his time” is the verdict of Mr.Reginald Poole. [0c]  He changed his opinions often: hewas never ashamed of being inconsistent.  In early life hewas, perhaps naturally, an admirer of the Angevin dynasty; helived to draw the most terrible picture extant of their lives andcharacters.  During his lifetime he never ceased to inveighagainst Archbishop Hubert Walter; after his death he repented andrecanted.  His invective was sometimes coarse, and his abusewas always virulent.  He was not over-scrupulous in hismethods of controversy; but no one can rise from a reading of hisworks without p.xiiia feeling of liking for the vivacious, cultured,impulsive, humorous, irrepressible Welshman.  Certainly noWelshman can regard the man who wrote so lovingly of his nativeland, and who championed her cause so valiantly, except with realgratitude and affection.

But though it is as a writer of books that Gerald has becomefamous, he was a man of action, who would have left, had Fatebeen kinder, an enduring mark on the history of his own time, andwould certainly have changed the whole current of Welsh religiouslife.  As a descendant of the Welsh princes, he took himselfseriously as a Welsh patriot.  Destined almost from hiscradle, both by the bent of his mind and the inclination of hisfather, to don “the habit of religion,” he could notjoin Prince Rhys or Prince Llewelyn in their struggle for thepolitical independence of Wales.  His ambition was to becomeBishop of St. David’s, and then to restore the Welsh Churchto her old position of independence of the metropolitan authorityof Canterbury.  He detested the practice of promotingNormans to Welsh sees, and of excluding Welshmen from highpositions in their own country.  “Because I am aWelshman, am I to be debarred from all preferment inWales?” he indignantly writes to the Pope. Circumstances at first seemed to favour his ambition.  Hisuncle, David Fitz-Gerald, sat in the seat of St.David’s.  When the young scholar returned from Parisin 1172, he found the path of promotion easy.  After themanner of that age—which Gerald lived to denounce—hesoon became a pluralist.  He held the livings of Llanwnda,Tenby, and Angle, and afterwards the prebend of Mathry, inPembrokeshire, and the living of Chesterton in Oxfordshire. He was also prebendary of Hereford, canon of St. David’s,and in 1175, when only twenty-eight years of age, he becameArchdeacon of Brecon.  In the following year Bishop Daviddied, and Gerald, together with the other archdeacons of thediocese, was nominated by the chapter for the king’schoice.  p.xivBut the chapter had been premature, urged, no doubt, bythe impetuous young Archdeacon of Brecon.  They had notwaited for the king’s consent to the nomination.  Theking saw that his settled policy in Wales would be overturned ifGerald became Bishop of St. David’s.  Gerald’scousin, the Lord Rhys, had been appointed the king’sjusticiar in South Wales.  The power of the Lord Marches wasto be kept in check by a quasi-alliance between the Welsh princeand his over-lord.  The election of Gerald to the greatestsee in Wales would upset the balance of power.  DavidFitz-Gerald, good easy man (vir suâ sorte contentusis Gerald’s description of him), the king could tolerate,but he could not contemplate without uneasiness the combinationof spiritual and political power in South Wales in the hands oftwo able, ambitious, and energetic kinsmen, such as he knewGerald and the Lord Rhys to be.  Gerald had made no secretof his admiration for the martyred St. Thomas àBecket.  He fashioned himself upon him as Becket did onAnselm.  The part which Becket played in England he wouldlike to play in Wales.  But the sovereign who had destroyedBecket was not to be frightened by the canons of St.David’s and the Archdeacon of Brecon.  He summoned thechapter to Westminster, and compelled them in his presence toelect Peter de Leia, the Prior of Wenlock, who erected forhimself an imperishable monument in the noble cathedral whichlooks as if it had sprung up from the rocks which guard the cityof Dewi Sant from the inrush of the western sea.

It is needless to recount the many activities in which Geraldengaged during the next twenty-two years.  They have beenrecounted with humorous and affectionate appreciation by Dr.Henry Owen in his monograph on “Gerald the Welshman,”a little masterpiece of biography which deserves to be betterknown. [0d]  In p. xv1183 Gerald was employed by theastute king to settle terms between him and the rebellious LordRhys.  Nominally as a reward for his successful diplomacy,but probably in order to keep so dangerous a character away fromthe turbulent land of Wales, Gerald was in the following yearmade a Court chaplain.  In 1185 he was commissioned by theking to accompany Prince John, then a lad of eighteen, who hadlately been created “Lord of Ireland,” to the city ofDublin.  There he abode for two years, collecting materialsfor his two first books, the “Topography” and the“Conquest of Ireland.”  In 1188 he accompaniedArchbishop Baldwin through Wales to preach the ThirdCrusade—not the first or the last inconsistency of whichthe champion of the independence of the Welsh Church wasguilty.  His “Itinerary through Wales” is therecord of the expedition.  King Richard offered him theBishopric of Bangor, and John, in his brother’s absence,offered him that of Llandaff.  But his heart was set on St.David’s.  In 1198 his great chance came to him. At last, after twenty-two years of misrule, Peter de Leia wasdead, and Gerald seemed certain of attaining his heart’sdesire.  Once again the chapter nominated Gerald; once morethe royal authority was exerted, this time by Archbishop Hubert,the justiciar in the king’s absence, to defeat theambitious Welshman.  The chapter decided to send adeputation to King Richard in Normandy.  The deputationarrived at Chinon to find Coeur-de-Lion dead; but John wasanxious to make friends everywhere, in order to secure himself onhis uncertain throne.  He received the deputationgraciously, he spoke in praise of Gerald, and he agreed to acceptthe nomination.  But after his return to England Johnchanged his mind.  He found that no danger threatened him inhis island kingdom, and he saw the wisdom of thejusticiar’s policy.  Gerald hurried to see him, butJohn point blank refused publicly to ratify his consent to thenomination which he had already given p. xviin private.  Then commenced thehistoric fight for St. David’s which, in view of the stillactive “Church question” in Wales, is even nowinvested with a living interest and significance.  Geraldcontended that the Welsh Church was independent of Canterbury,and that it was only recently, since the Norman Conquest, thatshe had been deprived of her freedom.  His opponents reliedon political, rather than historical, considerations to defeatthis bold claim.  King Henry, when a deputation from thechapter in 1175 appeared before the great council in London andhad urged the metropolitan claims of St. David’s upon theCardinal Legate, exclaimed that he had no intention of givingthis head to rebellion in Wales.  Archbishop Hubert, more ofa statesman than an ecclesiastic, based his opposition on similargrounds.  He explained his reasons bluntly to thePope.  “Unless the barbarity of this fierce andlawless people can be restrained by ecclesiastical censuresthrough the see of Canterbury, to which province they are subjectby law, they will be for ever rising in arms against the king, tothe disquiet of the whole realm of England.” Gerald’s answer to this was complete, except from the pointof view of political expediency.  “What can be moreunjust than that this people of ancient faith, because theyanswer force by force in defence of their lives, their lands, andtheir liberties, should be forthwith separated from the bodycorporate of Christendom, and delivered over to Satan?”

The story of the long fight between Gerald on the one hand andthe whole forces of secular and ecclesiastical authority on theother cannot be told here.  Three times did he visit Rome toprosecute his appeal—alone against the world.  He hadto journey through districts disturbed by wars, infested with theking’s men or the king’s enemies, all of whomregarded Gerald with hostility.  He was taken and throwninto prison as King John’s subject in one town, he wasdetained by p.xviiimportunate creditors in another, and at Rome he wasbetrayed by a countryman whom he had befriended.  He himselfhas told us

            Ofthe most disastrous chances
Of moving accidents by flood and field,

which made a journey from St. David’s to Rome a moreperilous adventure in those unquiet days than an expedition“through darkest Africa” is in ours.  At lastthe very Chapter of St. David’s, for whose ancient rightshe was contending, basely deserted him.  “The laity ofWales stood by me,” so he wrote in later days, “butof the clergy whose battle I was fighting scarceone.”  Pope Innocent III. was far too wary apolitician to favour the claims of a small and distracted nation,already half-subjugated, against the king of a rich and powerfulcountry.  He flattered our poor Gerald, he delighted in hiscompany, he accepted, and perhaps even read, his books.  Butin the end, after five years’ incessant fighting, thedecision went against him, and the English king’s nomineehas ever since sat on the throne of St. David’s. “Many and great wars,” said Gwenwynwyn, the Prince ofPowis, “have we Welshmen waged with England, but none sogreat and fierce as his who fought the king and the archbishop,and withstood the might of the whole clergy and people ofEngland, for the honour of Wales.”

Short was the memory and scant the gratitude of hiscountrymen.  When in 1214 another vacancy occurred at a timewhen King John was at variance with his barons and his prelates,the Chapter of St. David’s nominated, not Gerald, their oldchampion, but Iorwerth, the Abbot of Talley, from whose reformingzeal they had nothing to fear.  This last prick ofFortune’s sword pierced Gerald to the quick.  He hadfor years been gradually withdrawing from an active life. He had resigned his archdeaconry and his prebend stall, he hadmade a fourth pilgrimage, this time for his soul’s p. xviiisake,to Rome, he had retired to a quiet pursuit of letters probably atLincoln, and henceforward, till his death about the year 1223, hedevoted himself to revising and embellishing his old works, andcompleting his literary labours.  By his fight for St.David’s he had endeared himself to the laity of his countryfor all time.  The saying of Llewelyn the Great wasprophetic.  “So long as Wales shall stand by thewritings of the chroniclers and by the songs of the bards shallhis noble deed be praised throughout all time.”  Theprophecy has not yet been verified.  Welsh chroniclers havemade but scanty references to Gerald; no bard has ever yet sungan Awdlor a Pryddestin honour of him who foughtfor the “honour of Wales.”  His countrymen haveforgotten Gerald the Welshman.  It has been left to SirRichard Colt Hoare, Foster, Professor Brewer, Dimmock, andProfessor Freeman to edit his works.  Only two of hiscountrymen have attempted to rescue one of the greatest ofWelshmen from an undeserved oblivion.  In 1585, when theRenaissance of Letters had begun to rouse the dormant powers ofthe Cymry, Dr. David Powel edited in Latin a garbled version ofthe “Itinerary” and “Description ofWales,” and gave a short and inaccurate account ofGerald’s life.  In 1889 Dr. Henry Owen published,“at his own proper charges,” the first adequateaccount by a Welshman of the life and labours of GiraldusCambrensis.  When his monument is erected in the cathedralwhich was built by his hated rival, the epitaph which he composedfor himself may well be inscribed upon it—

Cambria Giraldus genuit, sic Cambria mentem
Erudiit, cineres cui lapis iste tegit.

And by that time perhaps some competent scholar will havetranslated some at least of Gerald’s works into thelanguage best understood by the people of Wales.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the enormous serviceswhich three great Welshmen of the twelfth p. xixcenturyrendered to England and to the world—such services as wemay securely hope will be emulated by Welshmen of the nextgeneration, now that we have lived to witness what Mr. TheodoreWatts-Dunton has called “the great recrudescence of Cymricenergy.” [0e]  The romantic literature ofEngland owes its origin to Geoffrey of Monmouth; [0f] Sir Galahad, the stainless knight, themirror of Christian chivalry, as well as the nobler portions ofthe Arthurian romance, were the creation of Walter Map, thefriend and “gossip” of Gerald; [0g] and John Richard Green has truly calledGerald himself “the father of popular literature.” [0h]  He began to write when he wasonly twenty; he continued to write till he was past the allottedspan of life.  He is the most “modern” as wellas the most voluminous of all the mediæval writers. Of all English writers, Miss Kate Norgate [0i] has perhaps most justly estimated thereal place of Gerald in English letters. “Gerald’s wide range of subjects,” she says,“is only less remarkable than the ease and freedom withwhich he treats them.  Whatever he touches—history,archæology, geography, natural science, politics, thesocial life and thought of the day, the physical peculiarities ofIreland and the manners and customs of its people, thepicturesque scenery and traditions of his own native land, thescandals of the court and the cloister, the petty struggle forthe primacy of Wales, and the great tragedy of the fall of theAngevin Empire—is all alike dealt with in the bold,dashing, offhand p.xxstyle of a modern newspaper or magazine article. His first important work, the ‘Topography ofIreland,’ is, with due allowance for the difference betweenthe tastes of the twelfth century and those of the nineteenth,just such a series of sketches as a special correspondent in ourown day might send from some newly-colonised island in thePacific to satisfy or whet the curiosity of his readers athome.”  The description aptly applies to all thatGerald wrote.  If not a historian, he was at least a greatp.xxijournalist.  His descriptions of Ireland have beensubjected to much hostile criticism from the day they werewritten to our own times.  They were assailed at the time,as Gerald himself tells us, for their unconventionality, fortheir departure from established custom, for the freedom andcolloquialism of their style, for the audacity of their stories,and for the writer’s daring in venturing to treat themanners and customs of a barbarous country as worthy theattention of the learned and the labours of the historian. Irish scholars, from the days of Dr. John Lynch, who publishedhis “Cambrensis Eversus” in 1622, have unanimouslydenounced the work of the sensational journalist, born out of duetime.  His Irish books are confessedly partisan; the“Conquest of Ireland” was expressly designed as aneulogy of “the men of St. David’s,” thewriter’s own kinsmen.  But in spite of partisanshipand prejudice, they must be regarded as a serious and valuableaddition to our knowledge of the state of Ireland at the latterend of the twelfth century.  Indeed, Professor Brewer doesnot hesitate to say that “to his industry we areexclusively indebted for all that is known of the state ofIreland during the whole of the Middle Ages,” and as to the“Topography,” Gerald “must take rank with thefirst who descried the value and in some respects the limits ofdescriptive geography.”

When he came to deal with the affairs of state on a largerstage, his methods were still that of the modernjournalist.  He was always an impressionist, a writer ofpersonal sketches.  His character sketches of thePlantagenet princes—of King Henry with his large round headand fat round belly, his fierce eyes, his tigerish temper, hislearning, his licentiousness, his duplicity, and of Eleanor ofAquitaine, his vixenish and revengeful wife, the murderess of“Fair Rosamond” (who must have been known to Gerald,being the daughter of Walter of Clifford-on-the-Wye), and of thefierce brood that they reared—are of extraordinaryinterest.  His impressions of the men and events of histime, his fund of anecdotes and bon mots, his referencesto trivial matters, which more dignified writers would neverdeign to mention, his sprightly and sometimes malicious gossip,invest his period with a reality which the greatest offiction-writers has failed to rival.  Gerald lived in thedays of chivalry, days which have been crowned with a halo ofdeathless romance by the author of “Ivanhoe” and the“Talisman.”  He knew and was intimate with allthe great actors of the time.  He had lived in the Paris ofSt. Louis and Philip Augustus, and was never tired of exaltingthe House of Capet over the tyrannical and bloodthirsty House ofAnjou.  He had no love of England, for her Plantagenet kingsor her Saxon serfs.  During the French invasion in the timeof King John his sympathies were openly with the Dauphin asagainst the “brood of vipers,” who were equally aliento English soil.  For the Saxon, indeed, he felt the twofoldhatred of Welshman and Norman.  One of his opponents isdenounced to the Pope as an “untriwe Sax,” and theSaxons are described as the slaves of the Normans, the merehewers of wood and drawers of water for their conquerors. He met Innocent III., the greatest of Popes, in familiarconverse, he jested and gossiped with him in slippered ease, hemade him laugh at his endless stories of the glory of Wales, theiniquities of the Angevins, and the bad Latin of ArchbishopWalter.  He p.xxiiknew Richard Cœur-de-Lion, the flower ofchivalry, and saw him as he was and “not through a glassdarkly.”  He knew John, the cleverest and basest ofhis house.  He knew and loved Stephen Langton, the precursorof a long line of statesmen who have made English libertybroad—based upon the people’s will.  He was afriend of St. Hugh of Lincoln, the sweetest and purest spirit inthe Anglican Church of the Middle Ages, the one man who coulddisarm the wrath of the fierce king with a smile; and he was thefriend and patron of Robert Grosstete, afterwards the greatBishop of Lincoln.  He lived much in company with Ranulph deGlanville, the first English jurist, and he has“Boswellised” some of his conversations withhim.  He was intimate with Archbishop Baldwin, the saintlyprelate who laid down his life in the Third Crusade on theburning plains of Palestine, heart-broken at the unbridledwickedness of the soldiers of the Cross.  He was the nearkinsman and confidant of the Cambro-Normans, who, landing inLeinster in 1165, effected what may be described as the firstconquest of Ireland.  There was scarcely a man of note inhis day whom he had not seen and conversed with, or of whom hedoes not relate some piquant story.  He had travelled much,and had observed closely.  Probably the most valuable of allhis works, from the strictly historical point of view, are the“Itinerary” and “Description of Wales,”which are reprinted in the present volume. [0j]  Here he is impartial in hisevidence, and judicial in his decisions.  If he errs at all,it is not through racial prejudice.  “I amsprung,” he once told the Pope in a letter, “from theprinces of Wales and from the barons of the Marches, and when Isee injustice in either race, I hate it.”

The text is that of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who published anEnglish translation, chiefly from the texts of Camden andWharton, in 1806.  The valuable historical notes have beencurtailed, as being too elaborate for p. xxiiisuch avolume as this, and a few notes have been added by the presenteditor.  These will be found within brackets. Hoare’s translation, and also translations (edited by Mr.Foster) of the Irish books have been published in Bohn’sAntiquarian Library.

The first of the seven volumes of the Latin text of Gerald,published in the Rolls Series, appeared in 1861.  The firstfour volumes were edited by Professor Brewer; the next two by Mr.Dimmock; and the seventh by Professor Freeman.

W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS.

January1908.

The following is a list of the more important of the works ofGerald:—

Topographia Hibernica, Expugnatio Hibernica,Itinerarium Kambriæ, Descriptio Kambriæ, GemmaEcclesiastica, Libellus Invectionum, De Rebus a se Gestis,Dialogus de jure et statu Menevensis Ecclesiæ, DeInstructione Principum, De Legendis Sanctorum, SymbolumElectorum.

p. 3FIRSTPREFACE
TO STEPHEN LANGTON, ARCHBISHOP OFCANTERBURY

As the times are affected by thechanges of circumstances, so are the minds of men influenced bydifferent manners and customs.  The satirist [Persius]exclaims,

“Mille hominum species et mentis discolorusus;
Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno.”

“Nature is ever various in her name;
Each has a different will, and few the same.”

The comic poet also says, “Quot capita totsententiæ, suus cuique mos est.” “As many men, so many minds, each has his way.” Young soldiers exult in war, and pleaders delight in the gown;others aspire after riches, and think them the supremegood.  Some approve Galen, some Justinian.  Those whoare desirous of honours follow the court, and from theirambitious pursuits meet with more mortification thansatisfaction.  Some, indeed, but very few, take pleasure inthe liberal arts, amongst whom we cannot but admire logicians,who, when they have made only a trifling progress, are as muchenchanted with the images of Dialectics, as if they werelistening to the songs of the Syrens.

But among so many species of men, where are to be found divinepoets?  Where the noble assertors of morals?  Where themasters of the Latin tongue?  Who in the present timesdisplays lettered eloquence, either in history or poetry? Who, I say, in our own age, either builds a system of ethics, orconsigns illustrious p.4actions to immortality?  Literary fame, which usedto be placed in the highest rank, is now, because of thedepravity of the times, tending to ruin and degraded to thelowest, so that persons attached to study are at present not onlynot imitated nor venerated, but even detested.  “Happyindeed would be the arts,” observes Fabius, “ifartists alone judged of the arts;” but, as Sydonius says,“it is a fixed principle in the human mind, that they whoare ignorant of the arts despise the artist.”

But to revert to our subject.  Which, I ask, haverendered more service to the world, the arms of Marius or theverses of Virgil?  The sword of Marius has rusted, while thefame of him who wrote the Æneid is immortal; and althoughin his time letters were honoured by lettered persons, yet fromhis own pen we find,

         “—— tantum
Carmina nostra valent tela inter Martia, quantum
Chaonias dicunt, aquila veniente, columbas.”

Who would hesitate in deciding which are more profitable, theworks of St. Jerom, or the riches of Crœsus? but where nowshine the gold and silver of Crœsus? whilst the world isinstructed by the example and enlightened by the learning of thepoor cœnobite.  Yet even he, through envy, sufferedstripes and contumely at Rome, although his character was soillustrious; and at length being driven beyond the seas, found arefuge for his studies in the solitude of Bethlehem.  Thusit appears, that gold and arms may support us in this life, butavail nothing after death; and that letters through envy profitnothing in this world, but, like a testament, acquire an immortalvalue from the seal of death.

According to the poet,

“Pascitur in vivis livor, post fataquiescit;
      Cum suus ex merito quemque tueturhonor.”

And also

“Denique si quis adhuc prætenditnubila, livor
Occidet, et meriti post me referentur honores.”

p. 5Those whoby artifice endeavour to acquire or preserve the reputation ofabilities or ingenuity, while they abound in the words of others,have little cause to boast of their own inventions.  For thecomposers of that polished language, in which such various casesas occur in the great body of law are treated with such anappropriate elegance of style, must ever stand forward in thefirst ranks of praise.  I should indeed have said, that theauthors of refined language, not the hearers only, the inventors,not the reciters, are most worthy of commendation.  You willfind, however, that the practices of the court and of the schoolsare extremely similar; as well in the subtleties they employ tolead you forward, as in the steadiness with which they generallymaintain their own positions.  Yet it is certain that theknowledge of logic (the acumen, if I may so express it, ofall other sciences as well as arts) is very useful, whenrestricted within proper bounds; whilst the court (i.e.courtly language), excepting to sycophants or ambitious men, isby no means necessary.  For if you are successful at court,ambition never wholly quits its hold till satiated, and alluresand draws you still closer; but if your labour is thrown away,you still continue the pursuit, and, together with yoursubstance, lose your time, the greatest and most irretrievable ofall losses.  There is likewise some resemblance between thecourt and the game of dice, as the poet observes:—

“Sic ne perdiderit non cessat perderelusor,
      Dum revocat cupidas alea blandamanus;”

which, by substituting the word curiafor alea,may be applied to the court.  This further proof of theirresemblance may be added; that as the chances of the dice andcourt are not productive of any real delight, so they are equallydistributed to the worthy and the unworthy.

Since, therefore, among so many species of men, each followshis own inclination, and each is actuated by different desires, aregard for posterity has induced me p. 6to choose the study of composition;and, as this life is temporary and mutable, it is grateful tolive in the memory of future ages, and to be immortalized byfame; for to toil after that which produces envy in life, butglory after death, is a sure indication of an elevatedmind.  Poets and authors indeed aspire after immortality,but do not reject any present advantages that may offer.

I formerly completed with vain and fruitless labour theTopography of Ireland for its companion, the king Henry theSecond, and Vaticinal History, for Richard of Poitiou, his son,and, I wish I were not compelled to add, his successor in vice;princes little skilled in letters, and much engaged inbusiness.  To you, illustrious Stephen, archbishop ofCanterbury, equally commendable for your learning and religion, Inow dedicate the account of our meritorious journey through therugged provinces of Cambria, written in a scholastic style, anddivided into two parts.  For as virtue loves itself, anddetests what is contrary to it, so I hope you will considerwhatever I may have written in commendation of your latevenerable and eminent predecessor, with no less affection than ifit related to yourself.  To you also, when completed, Idestine my treatise on the Instruction of a Prince, if, amidstyour religious and worldly occupations, you can find leisure forthe perusal of it.  For I purpose to submit these and otherfruits of my diligence to be tasted by you at your discretion,each in its proper order; hoping that, if my larger undertakingsdo not excite your interest, my smaller works may at least merityour approbation, conciliate your favour, and call forth mygratitude towards you; who, unmindful of worldly affections, donot partially distribute your bounties to your family andfriends, but to letters and merit; you, who, in the midst of suchgreat and unceasing contests between the crown and thepriesthood, stand forth almost singly the firm and faithfulfriend of the British church; you, who, almost the only one dulyelected, fulfil the scriptural designation of the episcopalcharacter.  It is not, however, p. 7by bearing a cap, by placing acushion, by shielding off the rain, or by wiping the dust, evenif there should be none, in the midst of a herd of flatterers,that I attempt to conciliate your favour, but by mywritings.  To you, therefore, rare, noble, and illustriousman, on whom nature and art have showered down whatever becomesyour supereminent situation, I dedicate my works; but if I failin this mode of conciliating your favour, and if your prayers andavocations should not allow you sufficient time to read them, Ishall consider the honour of letters as vanished, and in hope ofits revival I shall inscribe my writings to posterity.

p. 8SECONDPREFACE
TO THE SAME PRELATE

Since those things, which are knownto have been done through a laudable devotion, are not unworthilyextolled with due praises; and since the mind, when relaxed,loses its energy, and the torpor of sloth enervates theunderstanding, as iron acquires rust for want of use, andstagnant waters become foul; lest my pen should be injured by therust of idleness, I have thought good to commit to writing thedevout visitation which Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, madethroughout Wales; and to hand down, as it were in a mirror,through you, O illustrious Stephen, to posterity, the difficultplaces through which we passed, the names of springs andtorrents, the witty sayings, the toils and incidents of thejourney, the memorable events of ancient and modern times, andthe natural history and description of the country; lest my studyshould perish through idleness, or the praise of these things belost by silence.

p.9CONTENTS

p. 11THEITINERARY THROUGH WALES
BOOK I

CHAPTER I
JOURNEY THROUGH HEREFORD ANDRADNOR

In the year 1188 from theincarnation of our Lord, Urban the Third [11] being the head of the apostolic see;Frederick, emperor of Germany and king of the Romans; Isaac,emperor of Constantinople; Philip, the son of Louis, reigning inFrance; Henry the Second in England; William in Sicily; Bela inHungary; and Guy in Palestine: in that very year, when Saladin,prince of the Egyptians and Damascenes, by a signal victorygained possession of the kingdom of Jerusalem; Baldwin,archbishop p.12of Canterbury, a venerable man, distinguished for hislearning and sanctity, journeying from England for the service ofthe holy cross, entered Wales near the borders ofHerefordshire.

The archbishop proceeded to Radnor, [12a] on Ash Wednesday (CaputJejunii), accompanied by Ranulph de Glanville, privycounsellor and justiciary of the whole kingdom, and there metRhys, [12b] son of Gruffydd, prince of SouthWales, and many other noble personages of those parts; where asermon being preached by the archbishop, upon the subject of theCrusades, and explained to the Welsh by an interpreter, theauthor of this Itinerary, impelled by the urgent importunity andpromises of the king, and the persuasions of the archbishop andthe justiciary, arose the first, and falling down at the feet ofthe holy man, devoutly took the sign of the cross.  Hisexample was instantly followed by Peter, bishop of St.David’s, [12c] a monk of the abbey of Cluny, and thenby Eineon, son of Eineon Clyd, [12d] prince of Elvenia,and many other persons.  Eineon rising up, said to Rhys,whose daughter he had married, “My father and lord! withyour permission I hasten to revenge the injury offered to thegreat father of all.”  Rhys himself was so fullydetermined upon the holy p. 13peregrination, as soon as thearchbishop should enter his territories on his return, that fornearly fifteen days he was employed with great solicitude inmaking the necessary preparations for so distant a journey; tillhis wife, and, according to the common vicious licence of thecountry, his relation in the fourth degree, Guendolena,(Gwenllian), daughter of Madoc, prince of Powys, by femaleartifices diverted him wholly from his noble purpose; since, asSolomon says, “A man’s heart deviseth his way, butthe Lord directeth his steps.”  As Rhys before hisdeparture was conversing with his friends concerning the thingshe had heard, a distinguished young man of his family, by nameGruffydd, and who afterwards took the cross, is said thus to haveanswered: “What man of spirit can refuse to undertake thisjourney, since, amongst all imaginable inconveniences, nothingworse can happen to any one than to return.”

On the arrival of Rhys in his own territory, certain canons ofSaint David’s, through a zeal for their church, havingpreviously secured the interest of some of the prince’scourtiers, waited on Rhys, and endeavoured by every possiblesuggestion to induce him not to permit the archbishop to proceedinto the interior parts of Wales, and particularly to themetropolitan see of Saint David’s (a thing hitherto unheardof), at the same time asserting that if he should continue hisintended journey, the church would in future experience greatprejudice, and with difficulty would recover its ancient dignityand honour.  Although these pleas were most strenuouslyurged, the natural kindness and civility of the prince would notsuffer them to prevail, lest by prohibiting thearchbishop’s progress, he might appear to wound hisfeelings.

Early on the following morning, after the celebration of mass,and the return of Ranulph de Glanville to England, we came toCruker Castle, [13] two miles distant from p. 14Radnor, wherea strong and valiant youth named Hector, conversing with thearchbishop about taking the cross, said, “If I had themeans of getting provisions for one day, and of keeping fast onthe next, I would comply with your advice;” on thefollowing day, however, he took the cross.  The sameevening, Malgo, son of Cadwallon, prince of Melenia, after ashort but efficacious exhortation from the archbishop, and notwithout the tears and lamentations of his friends, was markedwith the sign of the cross.

But here it is proper to mention what happened during thereign of king Henry the First to the lord of the castle ofRadnor, in the adjoining territory of Builth, [14a] who had entered the church of SaintAvan (which is called in the British language Llan Avan), [14b] and, without sufficient caution orreverence, had passed the night there with his hounds. Arising early in the morning, according to the custom of hunters,he found his hounds mad, and himself struck blind.  After along, dark, and tedious existence, he was conveyed to Jerusalem,happily taking care that his inward sight should not in a similarmanner be extinguished; and there being accoutred, and led to thefield of battle on horseback, he made a spirited attack upon theenemies of the faith, and, being mortally wounded, closed hislife with honour.

Another circumstance which happened in these our days, in theprovince of Warthrenion, [14c] distant from p. 15hence only afew furlongs, is not unworthy of notice.  Eineon, lord ofthat district, and son-in-law to prince Rhys, who was muchaddicted to the chase, having on a certain day forced the wildbeasts from their coverts, one of his attendants killed a hindwith an arrow, as she was springing forth from the wood, which,contrary to the nature of her sex, was found to bear horns oftwelve years’ growth, and was much fatter than a stag, inthe haunches as well as in every other part.  On account ofthe singularity of this circumstance, the head and horns of thisstrange animal were destined as a present to king Henry theSecond.  This event is the more remarkable, as the man whoshot the hind suddenly lost the use of his right eye, and beingat the same time seized with a paralytic complaint, remained in aweak and impotent state until the time of his death.

In this same province of Warthrenion, and in the church ofSaint Germanus, [15a] there is a staff of Saint Cyric, [15b] covered on all sides with gold andsilver, and resembling in its upper part the form of a cross; itsefficacy has been proved in many cases, but particularly in theremoval of glandular and strumous swellings; insomuch that allpersons p.16afflicted with these complaints, on a devout applicationto the staff, with the oblation of one penny, are restored tohealth.  But it happened in these our days, that a strumouspatient on presenting one halfpenny to the staff, the humoursubsided only in the middle; but when the oblation was completedby the other halfpenny, an entire cure was accomplished. Another person also coming to the staff with the promise of apenny, was cured; but not fulfilling his engagement on the dayappointed, he relapsed into his former disorder; in order,however, to obtain pardon for his offence, he tripled theoffering by presenting three-pence, and thus obtained a completecure.

At Elevein, in the church of Glascum, [16a] is a portable bell, endowed with greatvirtues, called Bangu, [16b] and said to havebelonged to Saint David.  A certain woman secretly conveyedthis bell to her husband, who was confined in the castle ofRaidergwy, [16c] near Warthrenion, (which Rhys, son ofGruffydd, had lately built) for the purpose of hisdeliverance.  The keepers of the castle not only refused toliberate him for this consideration, but seized and detained thebell; and in the same night, by divine vengeance, the whole town,except the wall on which the bell hung, was consumed by fire.

The church of Luel, [16d] in theneighbourhood of Brecheinoc p. 17(Brechinia), was burned, alsoin our time, by the enemy, and everything destroyed, except onesmall box, in which the consecrated host was deposited.

It came to pass also in the province of Elvenia, which isseparated from Hay by the river Wye, in the night in which kingHenry I. expired, that two pools [17] of no small extent,the one natural, the other artificial, suddenly burst theirbounds; the latter, by its precipitate course down thedeclivities, emptied itself; but the former, with its fish andcontents, obtained a permanent situation in a valley about twomiles distant.  In Normandy, a few days before the death ofHenry II., the fish of a certain pool near Seez, five miles fromthe castle of Exme, fought during the night so furiously witheach other, both in the water and out of it, that theneighbouring people were attracted by the noise to the spot; andso desperate was the conflict, that scarcely a fish was foundalive in the morning; thus, by a wonderful and unheard-ofprognostic, foretelling the death of one by that of many.

But the borders of Wales sufficiently remember and abhor thegreat and enormous excesses which, from ambitious usurpation ofterritory, have arisen amongst brothers and relations in thedistricts of Melenyth, Elvein, and Warthrenion, situated betweenthe Wye and the Severn.

p.18CHAPTER II
JOURNEY THROUGH HAY ANDBRECHEINIA

Having crossed the river Wye, weproceeded towards Brecheinoc, and on preaching a sermon at Hay,[18a] we observed some amongst themultitude, who were to be signed with the cross (leaving theirgarments in the hands of their friends or wives, who endeavouredto keep them back), fly for refuge to the archbishop in thecastle.  Early in the morning we began our journey toAberhodni, and the word of the Lord being preached at Landeu, [18b] we there spent the night.  Thecastle and chief town of the province, situated where the riverHodni joins the river Usk, is called Aberhodni; [18c] and every place where one river fallsinto another is called Aber in the British tongue.  Landeusignifies the church of God.  p. 19The archdeacon of that place(Giraldus) presented to the archbishop his work on the Topographyof Ireland, which he graciously received, and either read orheard a part of it read attentively every day during his journey;and on his return to England completed the perusal of it.

I have determined not to omit mentioning those occurrencesworthy of note which happened in these parts in our days. It came to pass before that great war, in which nearly all thisprovince was destroyed by the sons of Jestin, [19a] that the large lake, and the riverLeveni, [19b] which flows from it into the Wye,opposite Glasbyry, [19c] were tinged with adeep green colour.  The old people of the country wereconsulted, and answered, that a short time before the greatdesolation [19d] caused by Howel, son of Meredyth, thewater had been coloured in a similar manner.  About the sametime, a chaplain, whose name was Hugo, being engaged to officiateat the chapel of Saint Nicholas, in the castle of Aberhodni, sawin a dream a venerable man standing near him, and saying,“Tell thy lord William de Braose, [19e] who has the audacity p. 20to retain theproperty granted to the chapel of Saint Nicholas for charitableuses, these words: ‘The public treasury takes away thatwhich Christ does not receive; and thou wilt then give to animpious soldier, what thou wilt not give to apriest.’”  This vision having been repeatedthree times, he went to the archdeacon of the place, at Landeu,and related to him what had happened.  The archdeaconimmediately knew them to be the words of Augustine; and shewinghim that part of his writings where they were found, explained tohim the case to which they applied.  He reproaches personswho held back tithes and other ecclesiastical dues; and what hethere threatens, certainly in a short time befell this withholderof them: for in our time we have duly and undoubtedly seen, thatprinces who have usurped ecclesiastical benefices (andparticularly king Henry the Second, who laboured under this vicemore than others), have profusely squandered the treasures of thechurch, and given away to hired soldiers what in justice shouldhave been given only to priests.

Yet something is to be said in favour of the aforesaid Williamde Braose, although he greatly offended in this particular (sincenothing human is perfect, and to have knowledge of all things,and in no point to err, is an attribute of God, not of man); forhe always placed the name of the Lord before his sentences,saying, “Let this be done in the name of the Lord; let thatbe done by God’s will; if it shall please God, or if Godgrant leave; it shall be so by the grace of God.”  Welearn from Saint p.21Paul, that everything ought thus to be committed andreferred to the will of God.  On taking leave of hisbrethren, he says, “I will return to you again, if Godpermit;” and Saint James uses this expression, “Ifthe Lord will, and we live,” in order to show that allthings ought to be submitted to the divine disposal.  Theletters also which William de Braose, as a rich and powerful man,was accustomed to send to different parts, were loaded, or ratherhonoured, with words expressive of the divine indulgence to adegree not only tiresome to his scribe, but even to his auditors;for as a reward to each of his scribes for concluding his letterswith the words, “by divine assistance,” he gaveannually a piece of gold, in addition to their stipend. When on a journey he saw a church or a cross, although in themidst of conversation either with his inferiors or superiors,from an excess of devotion, he immediately began to pray, andwhen he had finished his prayers, resumed his conversation. On meeting boys in the way, he invited them by a previoussalutation to salute him, that the blessings of these innocents,thus extorted, might be returned to him.  His wife, Matildade Saint Valery, observed all these things: a prudent and chastewoman; a woman placed with propriety at the head of her house,equally attentive to the economical disposal of her propertywithin doors, as to the augmentation of it without; both of whom,I hope, by their devotion obtained temporal happiness and grace,as well as the glory of eternity.

It happened also that the hand of a boy, who was endeavouringto take some young pigeons from a nest, in the church of SaintDavid of Llanvaes, [21] adhered to the stone on which heleaned, through the miraculous vengeance, p. 22perhaps, ofthat saint, in favour of the birds who had taken refuge in hischurch; and when the boy, attended by his friends and parents,had for three successive days and nights offered up his prayersand supplications before the holy altar of the church, his handwas, on the third day, liberated by the same divine power whichhad so miraculously fastened it.  We saw this same boy atNewbury, in England, now advanced in years, presenting himselfbefore David the Second, [22a] bishop of SaintDavid’s, and certifying to him the truth of this relation,because it had happened in his diocese.  The stone ispreserved in the church to this day among the relics, and themarks of the five fingers appear impressed on the flint as thoughit were in wax.

A small miracle happened at St. Edmundsbury to a poor woman,who often visited the shrine of the saint, under the mask ofdevotion; not with the design of giving, but of taking somethingaway, namely, the silver and gold offerings, which, by a curiouskind of theft, she licked up by kissing, and carried away in hermouth.  But in one of these attempts her tongue and lipsadhered to the altar, when by divine interposition she wasdetected, and openly disgorged the secret theft.  Manypersons, both Jews and Christians, expressing their astonishment,flocked to the place, where for the greater part of the day sheremained motionless, that no possible doubt might be entertainedof the miracle.

In the north of England beyond the Humber, in the church ofHovedene, [22b] the concubine of the rectorincautiously sat down on the tomb of St. Osana, sister of kingOsred, [22c] which projected like a wooden seat; onwishing to retire, she could not be removed, until the peoplecame to her assistance; her clothes were rent, her p. 23body was laidbare, and severely afflicted with many strokes of discipline,even till the blood flowed; nor did she regain her liberty, untilby many tears and sincere repentance she had showed evident signsof compunction.

What miraculous power hath not in our days been displayed bythe psalter of Quindreda, sister of St. Kenelm, [23a] by whose instigation he waskilled?  On the vigil of the saint, when, according tocustom, great multitudes of women resorted to the feast atWinchelcumbe, [23b] the under butler of that conventcommitted fornication with one of them within the precincts ofthe monastery.  This same man on the following day had theaudacity to carry the psalter in the procession of the relics ofthe saints; and on his return to the choir, after the solemnity,the psalter stuck to his hands.  Astonished and greatlyconfounded, and at length calling to his mind his crime on thepreceding day, he made confession, and underwent penance; andbeing assisted by the prayers of the brotherhood, and havingshown signs of sincere contrition, he was at length liberatedfrom the miraculous bond.  That book was held in greatveneration; because, when the body of St. Kenelm was carriedforth, and the multitude cried out, “He is the martyr ofGod! truly he is the martyr of God!”  Quindreda,conscious and guilty of the murder of her brother, answered,“He is as truly the martyr of God as it is true that myeyes be on that psalter;” for, p. 24as she was reading the psalter, bothher eyes were miraculously torn from her head, and fell on thebook, where the marks of the blood yet remain.

Moreover I must not be silent concerning the collar(torques) which they call St. Canauc’s; [24] for it is most like to gold in weight,nature, and colour; it is in four pieces wrought round, joinedtogether artificially, and clefted as it were in the middle, witha dog’s head, the teeth standing outward; it is esteemed bythe inhabitants so powerful a relic, that no man dares swearfalsely when it is laid before him: it bears the marks of somesevere blows, as if made with an iron hammer; for a certain man,as it is said, endeavouring to break the collar for the sake ofthe gold, experienced the divine vengeance, was deprived of hiseyesight, and lingered the remainder of his days in darkness.

A similar circumstance concerning the horn of St. Patrick (notgolden indeed, but of brass [probably bronze], which lately wasbrought into these parts from Ireland) excites ouradmiration.  The miraculous power of this relic firstappeared with a terrible example in that country, through thefoolish and absurd blowing of Bernard, a priest, as is set forthin our Topography of Ireland.  Both the laity and clergy inIreland, Scotland, and Wales held in such great venerationportable bells, and staves crooked at the top, and covered withgold, silver, or brass, and similar relics of the saints, thatthey were much more afraid of swearing falsely by them than bythe gospels; because, from some hidden and miraculous power withwhich they are gifted, and the vengeance of the saint to whomthey are particularly pleasing, their despisers and transgressorsare severely punished.  The p. 25most remarkable circumstanceattending this horn is, that whoever places the wider end of itto his ear will hear a sweet sound and melody united, such asariseth from a harp gently touched.

In our days a strange occurrence happened in the samedistrict.  A wild sow, which by chance had been suckled by abitch famous for her nose, became, on growing up, so wonderfullyactive in the pursuit of wild animals, that in the faculty ofscent she was greatly superior to dogs, who are assisted bynatural instinct, as well as by human art; an argument that man(as well as every other animal) contracts the nature of thefemale who nurses him.  Another prodigious event came topass nearly at the same time.  A soldier, whose name wasGilbert Hagernel, after an illness of nearly three years, and thesevere pains as of a woman in labour, in the presence of manypeople, voided a calf.  A portent of some new and unusualevent, or rather the punishment attendant on some atrociouscrime.  It appears also from the ancient and authenticrecords of those parts, that during the time St. Elwitus [25a] led the life of a hermit atLlanhamelach, [25b] the mare that used to carry hisprovisions to him was covered by a stag, and produced an animalof wonderful speed, resembling a horse before and a stagbehind.

p. 26Bernardde Newmarch [26a] was the first of the Normans whoacquired by conquest from the Welsh this province, which wasdivided into three cantreds. [26b]  He marriedthe daughter of Nest, daughter of Gruffydd, son of Llewelyn, who,by his tyranny, for a long time had oppressed Wales; his wifetook her mother’s name of Nest, which the Englishtransmuted into Anne; by whom he had children, one of whom, namedMahel, a distinguished soldier, was thus unjustly deprived of hispaternal inheritance.  His mother, in violation of themarriage contract, held an adulterous intercourse with a certainknight; on the discovery of which, the son met the knightreturning in the night from his mother, and having inflicted onhim a severe corporal punishment, and mutilated him, sent himaway with great disgrace.  The mother, alarmed at theconfusion which this event caused, and agitated with grief,breathed nothing but revenge.  She therefore went to kingHenry I., and declared with assertions more vindictive than true,and corroborated by an oath, that her son Mahel was not the sonof Bernard, but of another person with whom she had been secretlyconnected.  Henry, on account of this oath, or ratherperjury, and swayed more by his inclination than by reason, gaveaway her eldest daughter, p. 27whom she owned as the legitimatechild of Bernard, in marriage to Milo Fitz-Walter, [27] constable of Gloucester, with thehonour of Brecheinoc as a portion; and he was afterwards createdearl of Hereford by the empress Matilda, daughter of the saidking.  By this wife he had five celebrated warriors; Roger,Walter, Henry, William, and Mahel; all of whom, by divinevengeance, or by fatal misfortunes, came to untimely ends; andyet each of them, except William, succeeded to the paternalinheritance, but left no issue.  Thus this woman (notdeviating from the nature of her sex), in order to satiate heranger and revenge, with the heavy loss of modesty, and with thedisgrace of infamy, by the same act deprived her son of hispatrimony, and herself of honour.  Nor is it wonderful if awoman follows her innate bad disposition: for it is written inEcclesiastes, “I have found one good man out of a thousand,but not one good woman;” and in Ecclesiasticus,“There is no head above the head of a serpent; and there isno wrath above the wrath of a woman;” and again,“Small is the wickedness of man compared to the wickednessof woman.”  And in the same manner, as we may gathergrapes off thorns, or figs off thistles, Tully, describing thenature of women, says, “Men, perhaps, for the sake of someadvantage will commit one crime; but woman, to gratify oneinclination, will not scruple to perpetrate all sorts ofwickedness.”  Thus Juvenal, speaking of women,say,

“— Nihil est audacior illis
Deprensis, iram atque animos a crimine sumunt.
— Mulier sævissima tunc est
p. 28Cumstimulos animo pudor admovet.
— colllige, quod vindicta
Nemo magis gaudet quam fœmina.”

But of the five above-mentioned brothers and sons of earlMilo, the youngest but one, and the last in the inheritance, wasthe most remarkable for his inhumanity; he persecuted David II.,bishop of St. David’s, to such a degree, by attacking hispossessions, lands, and vassals, that he was compelled to retireas an exile from the district of Brecheinoc into England, or tosome other parts of his diocese.  Meanwhile, Mahel, beinghospitably entertained by Walter de Clifford, [28a] in the castle of Brendlais, [28b] the house was by accident burned down,and he received a mortal blow by a stone falling from theprincipal tower on his head: upon which he instantly dispatchedmessengers to recal the bishop, and exclaimed with a lamentablevoice, “O, my father and high priest, your saint has takenmost cruel vengeance of me, not waiting the conversion of asinner, but hastening his death and overthrow.” Having often repeated similar expressions, and bitterly lamentedhis situation, he thus ended his tyranny and life together; thefirst year of his government not having elapsed.

A powerful and noble personage, by name Brachanus, was inancient times the ruler of the province of Brecheinoc, and fromhim it derived this name.  The British histories testifythat he had four-and-twenty daughters, p. 29all of whom, dedicated from theiryouth to religious observances, happily ended their lives insanctity.  There are many churches in Wales distinguished bytheir names, one of which, situated on the summit of a hill, nearBrecheinoc, and not far from the castle of Aberhodni, is calledthe church of St. Almedda, [29a] after the name ofthe holy virgin, who, refusing there the hand of an earthlyspouse, married the Eternal King, and triumphed in a happymartyrdom; to whose honour a solemn feast is annually held in thebeginning of August, and attended by a large concourse of peoplefrom a considerable distance, when those persons who labour undervarious diseases, through the merits of the Blessed Virgin,received their wished-for health.  The circumstances whichoccur at every anniversary appear to me remarkable.  You maysee men or girls, now in the church, now in the churchyard, nowin the dance, which is led round the churchyard with a song, on asudden falling on the ground as in a trance, then jumping up asin a frenzy, and representing with their hands and feet, beforethe people, whatever work they have unlawfully done on feastdays; you may see one man put his hand to the plough, andanother, as it were, goad on the oxen, mitigating their sense oflabour, by the usual rude song: [29b] p. 30one manimitating the profession of a shoemaker; another, that of atanner.  Now you may see a girl with a distaff, drawing outthe thread, and winding it again on the spindle; another walking,and arranging the threads for the web; another, as it were,throwing the shuttle, and seeming to weave.  On beingbrought into the church, and led up to the altar with theiroblations, you will be astonished to see them suddenly awakened,and coming to themselves.  Thus, by the divine mercy, whichrejoices in the conversion, not in the death, of sinners, manypersons from the conviction of their senses, are on these feastdays corrected and mended.

This country sufficiently abounds with grain, and if there isany deficiency, it is amply supplied from the neighbouring partsof England; it is well stored with pastures, woods, and wild anddomestic animals.  River-fish are plentiful, supplied by theUsk on one side, and by the Wye on the other; each of themproduces salmon and trout; but the Wye abounds most with theformer, the Usk with the latter.  The salmon of the Wye arein season during the winter, those of the Usk in summer; but theWye alone produces the fish called umber, [30a] the praise of which is celebrated inthe works of Ambrosius, as being found in great numbers in therivers near Milan; “What,” says he, “is morebeautiful to behold, more agreeable to smell, or more pleasant totaste?”  The famous lake of Brecheinoc supplies thecourntry with pike, perch, excellent trout, tench, andeels.  A circumstance concerning this lake, which happened ashort time before our days, must not be passed over insilence.  “In the reign of king Henry I., Gruffydd, [30b] son of Rhys p. 31ap Tewdwr, held under the king onecomot, namely, the fourth part of the cantred of Caoc, [31] in the cantref Mawr, which, in titleand dignity, was esteemed by the Welsh equal to the southern partof Wales, called Deheubarth, that is, the right-hand side ofWales.  When Gruffydd, on his return from the king’scourt, passed near this lake, which at that cold season of theyear was covered with water-fowl of various sorts, beingaccompanied by Milo, earl of Hereford, and lord of Brecheinoc,and Payn Fitz-John, lord of Ewyas, who were at that timesecretaries and privy counsellors to the king; earl Milo, wishingto draw forth from Gruffydd some discourse concerning his innatenobility, rather jocularly than seriously p. 32thusaddressed him: “It is an ancient saying in Wales, that ifthe natural prince of the country, coming to this lake, shallorder the birds to sing, they will immediately obeyhim.”  To which Gruffydd, richer in mind than in gold,(for though his inheritance was diminished, his ambition anddignity still remained), answered, “Do you therefore, whonow hold the dominion of this land, first give thecommand;” but he and Payn having in vain commanded, andGruffydd, perceiving that it was necessary for him to do so inhis turn, dismounted from his horse, and falling on his kneestowards the east, as if he had been about to engage in battle,prostrate on the ground, with his eyes and hands uplifted toheaven, poured forth devout prayers to the Lord: at length,rising up, and signing his face and forehead with the figure ofthe cross, he thus openly spake: “Almighty God, and LordJesus Christ, who knowest all things, declare here this day thypower.  If thou hast caused me to descend lineally from thenatural princes of Wales, I command these birds in thy name todeclare it;” and immediately the birds, beating the waterwith their wings, began to cry aloud, and proclaim him.  Thespectators were astonished and confounded; and earl Milo hastilyreturning with Payn Fitz-John to court, related this singularoccurrence to the king, who is said to have replied, “Bythe death of Christ (an oath he was accustomed to use), it is nota matter of so much wonder; for although by our great authoritywe commit acts of violence and wrong against these people, yetthey are known to be the rightful inheritors of thisland.”

The lake also [32] (according to the testimony of theinhabitants) p.33is celebrated for its miracles; for, as we have beforeobserved, it sometimes assumed a greenish hue, so in our days ithas appeared to be tinged with red, not universally, but as ifblood flowed partially through certain veins and smallchannels.  Moreover it is sometimes seen by the inhabitantscovered and adorned with buildings, pastures, gardens, andorchards.  In the winter, when it is frozen over, and thesurface of the water is converted into a shell of ice, it emits ahorrible sound resembling the moans of many animals collectedtogether; but this, perhaps, may be occasioned by the suddenbursting of the shell, and the gradual ebullition of the airthrough imperceptible channels.  This country is wellsheltered on every side (except the northern) by high mountains;on the western by those of cantref Bychan; [33a] on the southern, by that range, ofwhich the principal is Cadair Arthur, [33b] or the chair of Arthur, so p. 34called fromtwo peaks rising up in the form of a chair, and which, from itslofty situation, is vulgarly ascribed to Arthur, the mostdistinguished king of the Britons.  A spring of water riseson the summit of this mountain, deep, but of a square shape, likea well, and although no stream runs from it, trout are said to besometimes found in it.

Being thus sheltered on the south by high mountains, thecooler breezes protect this district from the heat of the sun,and, by their natural salubrity, render the climate mosttemperate.  Towards the east are the mountains of Talgarthand Ewyas. [34a]  The natives of these parts,actuated by continual enmities and implacable hatred, areperpetually engaged in bloody contests.  But we leave toothers to describe the great and enormous excesses, which in ourtime have been here committed, with regard to marriages,divorces, and many other circumstances of cruelty andoppression.

CHAPTER III
EWYAS AND LLANTHONI

In the deep vale of Ewyas, [34b] which is about an arrow-shot broad,encircled on all sides by lofty mountains, stands p. 35the church ofSaint John the Baptist, covered with lead, and built of wroughtstone; and, considering the nature of the place, not unhandsomelyconstructed, on the very spot where the humble chapel of David,the archbishop, had formerly stood decorated only with moss andivy.  A situation truly calculated for religion, and moreadapted to canonical discipline, than all the monasteries of theBritish isle.  It was founded by two hermits, in honour ofthe retired life, far removed from the bustle of mankind, in asolitary vale watered by the river Hodeni.  From Hodeni itwas called Lanhodeni, for Lan signifies an ecclesiasticalplace.  This derivation may appear far-fetched, for the nameof the place, in Welsh, is Nanthodeni.  Nant signifies arunning stream, from whence this place is still called by theinhabitants Landewi Nanthodeni, [35] or the church ofSaint David upon the river Hodeni.  The English thereforecorruptly call it Lanthoni, whereas it should either be calledNanthodeni, that is, the brook of the Hodeni, or Lanhodeni, thechurch upon the Hodeni.  Owing to its mountainous situation,the rains are frequent, the winds boisterous, p. 36and theclouds in winter almost continual.  The air, though heavy,is healthy; and diseases are so rare, that the brotherhood, whenworn out by long toil and affliction during their residence withthe daughter, retiring to this asylum, and to theirmother’s [36a] lap, soon regain their long-wished-forhealth.  For as my Topographical History of Irelandtestifies, in proportion as we proceed to the eastward, the faceof the sky is more pure and subtile, and the air more piercingand inclement; but as we draw nearer to the westward, the airbecomes more cloudy, but at the same time is more temperate andhealthy.  Here the monks, sitting in their cloisters,enjoying the fresh air, when they happen to look up towards thehorizon, behold the tops of the mountains, as it were, touchingthe heavens, and herds of wild deer feeding on their summits: thebody of the sun does not become visible above the heights of themountains, even in a clear atmosphere, till about the hour ofprime, or a little before.  A place truly fitted forcontemplation, a happy and delightful spot, fully competent, fromits first establishment, to supply all its own wants, had not theextravagance of English luxury, the pride of a sumptuous table,the increasing growth of intemperance and ingratitude, added tothe negligence of its patrons and prelates, reduced it fromfreedom to servility; and if the step-daughter, no less enviouslythan odiously, had not supplanted her mother.

It seems worthy of remark, that all the priors who werehostile to this establishment, died by divine visitation. William, [36b] who first despoiled the place of itsherds and storehouses, being deposed by the fraternity, forfeitedhis right of sepulture amongst the priors.  Clement p. 37seemed tolike this place of study and prayer, yet, after the example ofHeli the priest, as he neither reproved nor restrained hisbrethren from plunder and other offences, he died by a paralyticstroke.  And Roger, who was more an enemy to this place thaneither of his predecessors, and openly carried away every thingwhich they had left behind, wholly robbing the church of itsbooks, ornaments, and privileges, was also struck with aparalytic affection long before his death, resigned his honours,and lingered out the remainder of his days in sickness.

In the reign of king Henry I., when the mother church was ascelebrated for her affluence as for her sanctity (two qualitieswhich are seldom found thus united), the daughter not yet beingin existence (and I sincerely wish she never had been produced),the fame of so much religion attracted hither Roger, bishop ofSalisbury, who was at that time prime minister; for it is virtueto love virtue, even in another man, and a great proof of innategoodness to show a detestation of those vices which hitherto havenot been avoided.  When he had reflected with admiration onthe nature of the place, the solitary life of the fraternity,living in canonical obedience, and serving God without a murmuror complaint, he returned to the king, and related to him what hethought most worthy of remark; and after spending the greaterpart of the day in the praises of this place, he finished hispanegyric with these words: “Why should I say more? thewhole treasure of the king and his kingdom would not besufficient to build such a cloister.”  Having held theminds of the king and the court for a long time in suspense bythis assertion, he at length explained the enigma, by saying thathe alluded to the cloister of mountains, by which this church ison every side surrounded.  But William, a knight, who firstdiscovered this place, and his companion Ervistus, a priest,having heard, perhaps, as it is written in the Fathers, accordingto the opinion of Jerome, “that the church of Christ p. 38decreased invirtues as it increased in riches,” were accustomed oftendevoutly to solicit the Lord that this place might never attaingreat possessions.  They were exceedingly concerned whenthis religious foundation began to be enriched by its first lordand patron, Hugh de Lacy, [38] and by the lands andecclesiastical benefices conferred upon it by the bounty ofothers of the faithful: from their predilection to poverty, theyrejected many offers of manors and churches; and being situatedin a wild spot, they would not suffer the thick and wooded partsof the valley to be cultivated and levelled, lest they should betempted to recede from their heremitical mode of life.

But whilst the establishment of the mother church increaseddaily in riches and endowments, availing herself of the hostilestate of the country, a rival daughter sprang up at Gloucester,under the protection of Milo, earl of Hereford; as if by divineprovidence, and through the merits of the saints and prayers ofthose holy men (of whom two lie buried before the high altar), itwere destined that the daughter church should be founded insuperfluities, whilst the mother continued in that laudable stateof mediocrity which she had always affected and coveted. Let the active therefore reside there, the contemplative here;there the pursuit of terrestrial riches, here the love ofcelestial delights; there let them enjoy the concourse of men,here the presence of angels; there let the powerful of this worldbe entertained, here let the poor of Christ be relieved; there, Isay, let human actions and declamations be heard, but here letreading and prayers be heard only in whispers; there letopulence, p.39the parent and nurse of vice, increase with cares, herelet the virtuous and golden mean be all-sufficient.  In bothplaces the canonical discipline instituted by Augustine, which isnow distinguished above all other orders, is observed; for theBenedictines, when their wealth was increased by the fervour ofcharity, and multiplied by the bounty of the faithful, under thepretext of a bad dispensation, corrupted by gluttony andindulgence an order which in its original state of poverty washeld in high estimation.  The Cistercian order, derived fromthe former, at first deserved praise and commendation from itsadhering voluntarily to the original vows of poverty andsanctity: until ambition, the blind mother of mischief, unable tofix bounds to prosperity, was introduced; for as Seneca says,“Too great happiness makes men greedy, nor are theirdesires ever so temperate, as to terminate in what isacquired:” a step is made from great things to greater, andmen having attained what they did not expect, form the mostunbounded hopes; to which the poet Ovid thus alludes.

“Luxuriant animi rebus plerumquesecundis,
   Nec facile est æqua commoda mentepati;”

And again:

“Creverunt opes et opum furiosa cupido,
   Et cum possideant plurima, plura petunt.”

And also the poet Horace:

“—scilicet improbæ
Crescunt divitiæ, tamen
   Curtæ nescio quid semper abest rei.
Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam
   Majorumque fames.”

To which purpose the poet Lucan says:

“—O vitæ tuta facultas
Pauperis, angustique lares, o munera nondum
Intellecta Deûm!”

p. 40AndPetronius:

“Non bibit inter aquas nec poma fugaciacarpit
   Tantalus infelix, quem sua vota premunt.
Divitis hic magni facies erit, omnia late
   Qui tenet, et sicco concoquit ore famem.”

The mountains are full of herds and horses, the woods wellstored with swine and goats, the pastures with sheep, the plainswith cattle, the arable fields with ploughs; and although thesethings in very deed are in great abundance, yet each of them,from the insatiable nature of the mind, seems too narrow andscanty.  Therefore lands are seized, landmarks removed,boundaries invaded, and the markets in consequence abound withmerchandise, the courts of justice with law-suits, and the senatewith complaints.  Concerning such things, we read in Isaiah,“Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field tofield, till there be no place, that they be placed alone in themidst of the earth.”

If therefore, the prophet inveighs so much against those whoproceed to the boundaries, what would he say to those who go farbeyond them?  From these and other causes, the true colourof religion was so converted into the dye of falsehood, thatmanners internally black assumed a fair exterior:

“Qui color albus erat, nunc est contrariusalbo.”

So that the scripture seems to be fulfilled concerning thesemen, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you insheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenouswolves.”  But I am inclined to think this avidity doesnot proceed from any bad intention.  For the monks of thisOrder (although themselves most abstemious) incessantly exercise,more than any others, the acts of charity and beneficence towardsthe poor and strangers; and because they do not live as othersupon fixed incomes, but depend only on their labour andforethought for subsistence, they are anxious to obtain lands,farms, p. 41andpastures, which may enable them to perform these acts ofhospitality.  However, to repress and remove from thissacred Order the detestable stigma of ambition, I wish they wouldsometimes call to mind what is written in Ecclesiasticus,“Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor, dothas one that killeth the son before his father’seyes;” and also the sentiment of Gregory, “A good usedoes not justify things badly acquired;” and also that ofAmbrose, “He who wrongfully receives, that he may welldispense, is rather burthened than assisted.”  Suchmen seem to say with the Apostle, “Let us do evil that goodmay come.”  For it is written, “Mercy ought tobe of such a nature as may be received, not rejected, which maypurge away sins, not make a man guilty before the Lord, arisingfrom your own just labours, not those of other men.” Hear what Solomon says; “Honour the Lord from your justlabours.”  What shall they say who have seized uponother men’s possessions, and exercised charity? “O Lord! in thy name we have done charitable deeds, we havefed the poor, clothed the naked, and hospitably received thestranger:” to whom the Lord will answer; “Ye speak ofwhat ye have given away, but speak not of the rapine ye havecommitted; ye relate concerning those ye have fed, and remembernot those ye have killed.”  I have judged it proper toinsert in this place an instance of an answer which Richard, kingof the English, made to Fulke, [41] a good and holy man,by whom p.42God in these our days has wrought many signs in thekingdom of France.  This man had among other things said tothe king; “You have three daughters, namely, Pride, Luxury,and Avarice; and as long as they shall remain with you, you cannever expect to be in favour with God.”  To which theking, after a short pause, replied: “I have already givenaway those daughters in marriage: Pride to the Templars, Luxuryto the Black Monks, and Avarice to the White.”  It isa remarkable circumstance, or rather a miracle, concerningLanthoni, that, although it is on every side surrounded by loftymountains, not stony or rocky, but of a soft nature, and coveredwith grass, Parian stones are frequently found there, and arecalled free-stones, from the facility with which they admit ofbeing cut and polished; and with these the church is beautifullybuilt.  It is also wonderful, that when, after a diligentsearch, all the stones have been removed from the mountains, andno more can be found, upon another search, a few days afterwards,they reappear in greater quantities to those who seek them. With respect to the two Orders, the Cluniac and the Cistercian,this may be relied upon; although the latter are possessed offine buildings, with ample revenues and estates, they will soonbe reduced to poverty and destruction.  To the former, onthe contrary, you would allot a barren desert and a solitarywood; yet in a few years you will find them in possession ofsumptuous churches and houses, and encircled with an extensiveproperty.  The difference of manners (as it appears to me)causes this contrast.  For as without meaning offence toeither party, I shall speak the truth, the one feels the benefitsp. 43ofsobriety, parsimony, and prudence, whilst the other suffers fromthe bad effects of gluttony and intemperance: the one, like bees,collect their stores into a heap, and unanimously agree in thedisposal of one well-regulated purse; the others pillage anddivert to improper uses the largesses which have been collectedby divine assistance, and by the bounties of the faithful; andwhilst each individual consults solely his own interest, thewelfare of the community suffers; since, as Sallust observes,“Small things increase by concord, and the greatest arewasted by discord.”  Besides, sooner than lessen thenumber of one of the thirteen or fourteen dishes which they claimby right of custom, or even in a time of scarcity or faminerecede in the smallest degree from their accustomed good fare,they would suffer the richest lands and the best buildings of themonastery to become a prey to usury, and the numerous poor toperish before their gates.

The first of these Orders, at a time when there was adeficiency in grain, with a laudable charity, not only gave awaytheir flocks and herds, but resigned to the poor one of the twodishes with which they were always contented.  But in theseour days, in order to remove this stain, it is ordained by theCistercians, “That in future neither farms nor pasturesshall be purchased; and that they shall be satisfied with thosealone which have been freely and unconditionally bestowed uponthem.”  This Order, therefore, being satisfied morethan any other with humble mediocrity, and, if not wholly, yet ina great degree checking their ambition; and though placed in aworldly situation, yet avoiding, as much as possible, itscontagion; neither notorious for gluttony or drunkenness, forluxury or lust; is fearful and ashamed of incurring publicscandal, as will be more fully explained in the book we mean (bythe grace of God) to write concerning the ecclesiasticalOrders.

In these temperate regions I have obtained (according to theusual expression) a place of dignity, but no great p. 44omen offuture pomp or riches; and possessing a small residence [44a] near the castle of Brecheinoc, welladapted to literary pursuits, and to the contemplation ofeternity, I envy not the riches of Croesus; happy and contentedwith that mediocrity, which I prize far beyond all the perishableand transitory things of this world.  But let us return toour subject.

CHAPTER IV
THE JOURNEY BY COED GRONO ANDABERGEVENNI

From thence [44b] we proceeded through the narrow, woodytract called the bad pass of Coed Grono, leaving the p. 45noblemonastery of Lanthoni, inclosed by its mountains, on ourleft.  The castle of Abergevenni is so called from itssituation at the confluence of the river Gevenni with theUsk.

It happened a short time after the death of king Henry I.,that Richard de Clare, a nobleman of high birth, and lord ofCardiganshire, passed this way on his journey from England intoWales, accompanied by Brian de Wallingford, lord of thisprovince, and many men-at-arms.  At the passage of CoedGrono, [45] and at the entrance into the wood, hedismissed him and his attendants, though much against their will,and proceeded on his journey unarmed; from too great apresumption of security, preceded only by a minstrel and asinger, one accompanying the other on the fiddle.  The Welshawaiting his arrival, with Iorwerth, brother of Morgan ofCaerleon, at their head, and others of his family, rushed uponhim unawares from the thickets, and killed him and many of hisfollowers.  Thus it appears how incautious and neglectful ofitself is too great presumption; for fear teaches foresight andcaution in prosperity, but audacity is precipitate, andinconsiderate rashness will not await the advice of theleader.

p. 46Asermon having been delivered at Abergevenni, [46] and many persons converted to thecross, a certain nobleman of those parts, named Arthenus, came tothe archbishop, who was proceeding towards the castle of Usk, andhumbly begged pardon for having neglected to meet himsooner.  Being questioned whether he would take the cross,he replied, “That ought not be done without the advice ofhis friends.”  The archbishop then asked him,“Are you not going to consult your wife?”  Towhich he modestly answered, with a downcast look, “When thework of a man is to be undertaken, the counsel of a woman oughtnot to be asked;” and instantly received the cross from thearchbishop.

We leave to others the relation of those frequent and cruelexcesses which in our times have arisen amongst the inhabitantsof these parts, against the governors of castles, and thevindictive retaliations of the governors against thenatives.  But king Henry II. was the true author, and RanulfPoer, sheriff of Hereford, the instrument, of the enormouscruelties and slaughter perpetrated here in our days, which Ithought better to omit, p. 47lest bad men should be induced tofollow the example; for although temporary advantage may seem toarise from a base cause, yet, by the balance of a righteousjudge, the punishment of wickedness may be deferred, though nottotally avoided, according to the words of the poet,—

“Non habet eventus sordida prædabonos.”

For after seven years of peace and tranquillity, the sons andgrandsons of the deceased, having attained the age of manhood,took advantage of the absence of the lord of the castle(Abergevenni), and, burning with revenge, concealed themselves,with no inconsiderable force during the night, within the woodyfoss of the castle.  One of them, name Sisillus (Sitsylt)son of Eudaf, on the preceding day said rather jocularly to theconstable, “Here will we enter this night,” pointingout to him a certain angle in the wall where it seemed thelowest; but since

“—Ridendo dicere verum
Quis vetat?”

and

“—fas est et ab hostedoceri,”

the constable and his household watched all night under arms,till at length, worn out by fatigue, they all retired to rest onthe appearance of daylight, upon which the enemy attacked thewalls with scaling-ladders, at the very place that had beenpointed out.  The constable and his wife were takenprisoners, with many others, a few persons only escaping, who hadsheltered themselves in the principal tower.  With theexception of this stronghold, the enemy violently seized andburned everything; and thus, by the righteous judgment of God,the crime was punished in the very place where it had beencommitted.  A short time after the taking of this fortress,when the aforesaid sheriff was building a castle p. 48atLandinegat, [48] near Monmouth, with the assistance ofthe army he had brought from Hereford, he was attacked at breakof day, when

“Tythoni croceum linquens Auroracubile”

was only beginning to divest herself of the shades of night,by the young men from Gwent and the adjacent parts, with thedescendants of those who had been slain.  Through aware ofthis premeditated attack, and prepared and drawn up in battlearray, they were nevertheless repulsed within theirintrenchments, and the sheriff, together with nine of the chiefmen of Hereford, and many others, were pierced to death withlances.  It is remarkable that, although Ranulf, besidesmany other mortal wounds, had the veins and arteries of his neckand his windpipe separated with a sword, he made signs for apriest, and from the merit of his past life, and the honour andveneration he had shewn to those chosen into the sacred order ofChrist, he was confessed, and received extreme unction before hedied.  And, indeed, many events concur to prove that, asthose who respect the priesthood, in their latter days enjoy thesatisfaction of friendly intercourse, so do their revilers andaccusers often die without that consolation.  William deBraose, who was not the author of the crime we have preferredpassing over in silence, but the executioner, or, rather, not thepreventer of its execution, while the murderous bands werefulfilling the orders they had received, was precipitated into adeep foss, and being taken by the enemy, was drawn forth, andonly by a sudden effort of his own troops, and by divine mercy,escaped uninjured.  Hence it is evident that he who offendsin a less degree, and unwillingly permits a thing to be done, ismore mildly punished than he who adds counsel and authority tohis act.  Thus, in the sufferings of Christ, Judas was p. 49punished withhanging, the Jews with destruction and banishment, and Pilatewith exile.  But the end of the king, who assented to andordered this treachery, sufficiently manifested in what manner,on account of this and many other enormities he had committed (asin the book “De Instructione Principis,” byGod’s guidance, we shall set forth), he began withaccumulated ignominy, sorrow, and confusion, to suffer punishmentin this world. [49a]

It seems worthy of remark, that the people of what is calledVenta [49b] are more accustomed to war, morefamous for valour, and more expert in archery, than those of anyother part of Wales.  The following examples prove the truthof this assertion.  In the last capture of the aforesaidcastle, which happened in our days, two soldiers passing over abridge to take refuge in a tower built on a mound of earth, theWelsh, taking them in the rear, penetrated with their arrows theoaken portal of the tower, which was four fingers thick; inmemory of which circumstance, the arrows were preserved in thegate.  William de Braose also testifies that one of hissoldiers, in a conflict with the Welsh, was wounded by an arrow,which passed through his thigh and the armour with which it wascased on both sides, and, through that part of the saddle whichis called the alva, mortally wounded the horse. Another soldier had his hip, equally sheathed in armour,penetrated by an arrow quite to the saddle, and on turning hishorse round, received a similar wound on the opposite hip, whichfixed him on both sides of his seat.  What more could beexpected from a balista?  Yet the bows used by this peopleare not made of horn, p. 50ivory, or yew, but of wild elm;unpolished, rude, and uncouth, but stout; not calculated to shootan arrow to a great distance, but to inflict very severe woundsin close fight.

But let us again return to our Itinerary.

CHAPTER V
OF THE PROGRESS BY THE CASTLE OF USK ANDTHE TOWN OF CAERLEON

At the castle of Usk, a multitudeof persons influenced by the archbishop’s sermon, and bythe exhortations of the good and worthy William bishop of Landaf,[50a] who faithfully accompanied us throughhis diocese, were signed with the cross; Alexander archdeacon ofBangor [50b] acting as interpreter to theWelsh.  It is remarkable that many of the most notoriousmurderers, thieves, and robbers of the neighbourhood were hereconverted, to the astonishment of the spectators.  Passingfrom thence through Caerleon and leaving far on our left hand thecastle of Monmouth, and the noble forest of Dean, situated on theother side of the Wye and on this side the Severn, and whichamply supplies Gloucester with iron and venison, we spent thenight at Newport, having crossed the river Usk three times. [50c]  Caerleon means the city ofLegions, Caer, in the British language, signifying a city orcamp, for there the Roman legions, sent into this island, wereaccustomed to winter, and from this circumstance it was styledthe city of legions.  This city was of undoubted p. 51antiquity,and handsomely built of masonry, with courses of bricks, by theRomans.  Many vestiges of its former splendour may yet beseen; immense palaces, formerly ornamented with gilded roofs, inimitation of Roman magnificence, inasmuch as they were firstraised by the Roman princes, and embellished with splendidbuildings; a tower of prodigious size, remarkable hot baths,relics of temples, and theatres, all inclosed within fine walls,parts of which remain standing.  You will find on all sides,both within and without the circuit of the walls, subterraneousbuildings, aqueducts, underground passages; and what I thinkworthy of notice, stoves contrived with wonderful art, totransmit the heat insensibly through narrow tubes passing up theside walls.

Julius and Aaron, after suffering martyrdom, were buried inthis city, and had each a church dedicated to him.  AfterAlbanus and Amphibalus, they were esteemed the chief protomartyrsof Britannia Major.  In ancient times there were three finechurches in this city: one dedicated to Julius the martyr, gracedwith a choir of nuns; another to Aaron, his associate, andennobled with an order of canons; and the third distinguished asthe metropolitan of Wales.  Amphibalus, the instructor ofAlbanus in the true faith, was born in this place.  Thiscity is well situated on the river Usk, navigable to the sea, andadorned with woods and meadows.  The Roman ambassadors herereceived their audience at the court of the great king Arthur;and here also, the archbishop Dubricius ceded his honours toDavid of Menevia, the metropolitan see being translated from thisplace to Menevia, according to the prophecy of MerlinAmbrosius.  “Menevia pallio urbis Legionuminduetur.”  “Menevia shall be invested with thepall of the city of Legions.”

Not far hence is a rocky eminence, impending over the Severn,called by the English Gouldcliffe [51] or golden rock, p. 52because fromthe reflections of the sun’s rays it assumes a brightgolden colour:

“Nec mihi de facili fieri persuasioposset,
Quod frustra tantum dederit natura nito rem
Saxis, quodque suo fuerit flos hic sine fructu.”

Nor can I be easily persuaded that nature hath given suchsplendour to the rocks in vain, and that this flower should bewithout fruit, if any one would take the pains to penetratedeeply into the bowels of the earth; if any one, I say, wouldextract honey from the rock, and oil from the stone.  Indeedmany riches of nature lie concealed through inattention, whichthe diligence of posterity will bring to light; for, as necessityfirst taught the ancients to discover the conveniences of life,so industry, and a greater acuteness of intellect, have laid openmany things to the moderns; as the poet says, assigning twocauses for these discoveries,

“—labor omnia vincit
Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas.”

It is worthy of observation, that there lived in theneighbourhood of this City of Legions, in our time, a Welshmannamed Melerius, who, under the following circumstances, acquiredthe knowledge of future and occult events.  Having, on acertain night, namely that of Palm Sunday, met a damsel whom hehad long loved, in a pleasant and convenient place, while he wasindulging in her embraces, suddenly, instead of a beautiful girl,he found in his arms a hairy, rough, and hideous creature, thesight of which deprived him of his senses, and he becamemad.  After remaining many years in this condition, he wasrestored to health in the church of St. David’s, throughthe merits of its saints.  But having always anextraordinary familiarity with unclean spirits, p. 53by seeingthem, knowing them, talking with them, and calling each by hisproper name, he was enabled, through their assistance, to foretelfuture events.  He was, indeed, often deceived (as they are)with respect to circumstances at a great distance of time orplace, but was less mistaken in affairs which were likely tohappen nearer, or within the space of a year.  The spiritsappeared to him, usually on foot, equipped as hunters, with hornssuspended from their necks, and truly as hunters, not of animals,but of souls.  He particularly met them near monasteries andmonastic cells; for where rebellion exists, there is the greatestneed of armies and strength.  He knew when any one spokefalsely in his presence, for he saw the devil, as it were,leaping and exulting upon the tongue of the liar.  If helooked on a book faultily or falsely written, or containing afalse passage, although wholly illiterate, he would point out theplace with his finger.  Being questioned how he could gainsuch knowledge, he said that he was directed by the demon’sfinger to the place.  In the same manner, entering into thedormitory of a monastery, he indicated the bed of any monk notsincerely devoted to religion.  He said, that the spirit ofgluttony and surfeit was in every respect sordid; but that thespirit of luxury and lust was more beautiful than others inappearance, though in fact most foul.  If the evil spiritsoppressed him too much, the Gospel of St. John was placed on hisbosom, when, like birds, they immediately vanished; but when thatbook was removed, and the History of the Britons, by GeoffreyArthur, [53] was substituted in its place, theyinstantly reappeared in greater numbers, and remained a longertime than usual on his body and on the book.

It is worthy of remark, that Barnabas placed the Gospel of St.Matthew upon sick persons, and they were healed; from which, aswell as from the foregoing circumstance, it appears how great adignity and reverence is due to the sacred books of the gospel,and with what danger and p. 54risk of damnation every one whoswears falsely by them, deviates from the paths of truth. The fall of Enoch, abbot of Strata Marcella, [54] too well known in Wales, was revealedto many the day after it happened, by Melerius, who, being askedhow he knew this circumstance, said, that a demon came to himdisguised as a hunter, and, exulting in the prospect of such avictory, foretold the ruin of the abbot, and explained in whatmanner he would make him run away with a nun from themonastery.  The end in view was probably the humiliation andcorrection of the abbot, as was proved from his shortly returninghome so humbled and amended, that he scarcely could be said tohave erred.  Seneca says, “He falls not badly, whorises stronger from his fall.”  Peter was morestrenuous after his denial of Christ, and Paul after beingstoned; since, where sin abounds, there will grace alsosuperabound.  Mary Magdalen was strengthened after herfrailty.  He secretly revealed to Canon, the good andreligious abbot of Alba-domus, his opinion of a certain womanwhom he had seen; upon which the holy man confessed, with tearsin his eyes, his predilection for her, and received from threepriests the discipline of incontinence.  For as that longand experienced subtle enemy, by arguing from certain conjecturalsigns, may foretell future by past events, so by insidioustreachery and contrivance, added to exterior appearances, he maysometimes be able to discover the interior workings of themind.

At the same time there was in Lower Gwent a demon p. 55incubus, who,from his love for a certain young woman, and frequenting theplace where she lived, often conversed with men, and frequentlydiscovered hidden things and future events.  Melerius beinginterrogated concerning him, said he knew him well, and mentionedhis name.  He affirmed that unclean spirits conversed withmankind before war, or any great internal disturbance, which wasshortly afterwards proved, by the destruction of the province byHowel, son of Iorwerth of Caerleon.  At the same time, whenking Henry II., having taken the king of Scotland prisoner, hadrestored peace to his kingdom, Howel, fearful of the royalrevenge for the war he had waged, was relieved from hisdifficulties by these comfortable words of Melerius: “Fearnot,” says he, “Howel, the wrath of the king, sincehe must go into other parts.  An important city which hepossesses beyond sea is now besieged by the king of France, onwhich account he will postpone every other business, and hastenthither with all possible expedition.”  Three daysafterwards, Howel received advice that this event had really cometo pass, owing to the siege of the city of Rouen.  Heforewarned also Howel of the betraying of his castle at Usk, along time before it happened, and informed him that he should bewounded, but not mortally; and that he should escape alive fromthe town.  In this alone he was deceived, for he soon afterdied of the same wound.  Thus does that archenemy favour hisfriends for a time, and thus does he at last reward them.

In all these singular events it appears to me most wonderfulthat he saw those spirits so plainly with his carnal eyes,because spirits cannot be discerned by the eyes of mortals,unless they assume a corporeal substance; but if in order to beseen they had assumed such a substance, how could they remainunperceived by other persons who were present?  Perhaps theywere seen by such a miraculous vision as when king Balthazar sawthe hand of one writing on the wall, “Mane, Techel,Phares,” p.56that is, weighed, numbered, divided; who in the samenight lost both his kingdom and his life.  But Cambria wellknows how in these districts, from a blind desire of dominion, atotal dissolution of the endearing ties of consanguinity, and abad and depraved example diffused throughout the country, goodfaith has been so shamefully perverted and abused.

CHAPTER VI
NEWPORT AND CAERDYF

At Newport, where the river Usk,descending from its original source in Cantref Bachan, falls intothe sea, many persons were induced to take the cross. Having passed the river Remni, we approached the noble castle ofCaerdyf, [56a] situated on the banks of the riverTaf.  In the neighbourhood of Newport, which is in thedistrict of Gwentluc, [56b] there is a smallstream called Nant Pencarn, [56c] passable only atcertain fords, not so much owing to the depth of its waters, asfrom the hollowness of its channel and muddy bottom.  Thepublic road led formerly to a ford, called Ryd Pencarn, that is,the ford p.57under the head of a rock, from Rhyd, which in theBritish language signifies a ford, Pen, the head, and Cam, arock; of which place Merlin Sylvester had thus prophesied:“Whenever you shall see a mighty prince with a freckledface make an hostile irruption into the southern part of Britain,should he cross the ford of Pencarn, then know ye, that the forceof Cambria shall be brought low.”  Now it came to passin our times, that king Henry II. took up arms against Rhys, theson of Gruffydd, and directed his march through the southern partof Wales towards Caermardyn.  On the day he intended to passover Nant Pentcarn, the old Britons of the neighbourhood watchedhis approach towards the ford with the utmost solicitude;knowing, since he was both mighty and freckled, that if thepassage of the destined ford was accomplished, the prophecyconcerning him would undoubtedly be fulfilled.  When theking had followed the road leading to a more modern ford of theriver (the old one spoken of in the prophecy having been for along time in disuse), and was preparing to pass over, the pipersand trumpeters, called Cornhiriet, from hir, long, andcornu, a horn, began to sound their instruments on theopposite bank, in honour of the king.  The king’shorse, startling at the wild, unusual noise, refused to obey thespur, and enter the water; upon which, the king, gathering up thereins, hastened, in violent wrath, to the ancient ford, which herapidly passed; and the Britons returned to their homes, alarmedand dismayed at the destruction which seemed to await them. An extraordinary circumstance occurred likewise at the castle ofCaerdyf.  William earl of Gloucester, son of earl Robert, [57] who, besides that castle, p. 58possessed byhereditary right all the province of Gwladvorgan, [58a] that is, the land of Morgan, had adispute with one of his dependants, whose name was Ivor theLittle, being a man of short stature, but of great courage. This man was, after the manner of the Welsh, owner of a tract ofmountainous and woody country, of the whole, or a part of which,the earl endeavoured to deprive him.  At that time thecastle of Caerdyf was surrounded with high walls, guarded by onehundred and twenty men-at-arms, a numerous body of archers, and astrong watch.  The city also contained many stipendiarysoldiers; yet, in defiance of all these precautions of security,Ivor, in the dead of night, secretly scaled the walls, and,seizing the count and countess, with their only son, carried themoff into the woods, and did not release them until he hadrecovered everything that had been unjustly taken from him, andreceived a compensation of additional property; for, as the poetobserves,

“Spectandum est semper ne magna injuriafiat
Fortibus et miseris; tollas licet omne quod usquam est
Argenti atque auri, spoliatis arma supersunt.”

In this same town of Caerdyf, king Henry II., on his returnfrom Ireland, the first Sunday after Easter, passed thenight.  In the morning, having heard mass, he remained athis devotions till every one had quitted the chapel of St.Piranus. [58b]  As he mounted his horse at thep. 59door, aman of a fair complexion, with a round tonsure and meagrecountenance, tall, and about forty years of age, habited in awhite robe falling down to his naked feet, thus addressed him inthe Teutonic tongue: “God hold the, cuing,” whichsignifies, “May God protect you, king;” andproceeded, in the same language, “Christ and his HolyMother, John the Baptist, and the Apostle Peter salute thee, andcommand thee strictly to prohibit throughout thy whole dominionsevery kind of buying or selling on Sundays, and not to suffer anywork to be done on those days, except such as relates to thepreparation of daily food; that due attention may be paid to theperformance of the divine offices.  If thou dost this, allthy undertakings shall be successful, and thou shalt lead a happylife.”  The king, in French, desired Philip deMercros, [59] who held the reins of his horse, to askthe rustic if he had dreamt this? and when the soldier explainedto him the king’s question in English, he replied in thesame language he had before used, “Whether I have dreamt itor not, observe what day this is (addressing himself to the king,not to the interpreter), and unless thou shalt do so, and quicklyamend thy life, before the expiration of one year, thou shalthear such things concerning what thou lovest best in this world,and shalt thereby be so much troubled, that thy disquietude shallcontinue to thy life’s end.”  The king, spurringhis horse, proceeded a little way towards the gate, when,stopping suddenly, he ordered his attendants to call the good manback.  The soldier, and a young man named William, the onlypersons who remained p. 60with the king, accordingly calledhim, and sought him in vain in the chapel, and in all the inns ofthe city.  The king, vexed that he had not spoken more tohim, waited alone a long time, while other persons went in searchof him; and when he could not be found, pursued his journey overthe bridge of Remni to Newport.  The fatal prediction cameto pass within the year, as the man had threatened; for theking’s three sons, Henry, the eldest, and his brothers,Richard of Poitou, and Geoffrey, count of Britany, in thefollowing Lent, deserted to Louis king of France, which causedthe king greater uneasiness than he had ever before experienced;and which, by the conduct of some one of his sons, was continuedtill the time of his decease.  This monarch, through divinemercy (for God is more desirous of the conversion than thedestruction of a sinner), received many other admonitions andreproofs about this time, and shortly before his death; all ofwhich, being utterly incorrigible, he obstinately and obduratelydespised, as will be more fully set forth (by the favour of God)in my book, “de Principis Instructione.”

Not far from Caerdyf is a small island situated near the shoreof the Severn, called Barri, from St. Baroc [60] who formerly lived there, and whoseremains are deposited in a chapel overgrown with ivy, having beenp.61transferred to a coffin.  From hence a noblefamily, of the maritime parts of South Wales, who owned thisisland and the adjoining estates, received the name of deBarri.  It is remarkable that, in a rock near the entranceof the island, there is a small cavity, to which, if the ear isapplied, a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, theblowing of bellows, strokes of hammers, grinding of tools, androaring of furnaces; and it might easily be imagined that suchnoises, which are continued at the ebb and flow of the tides,were occasioned by the influx of the sea under the cavities ofthe rocks.

CHAPTER VII
THE SEE OF LANDAF AND MONASTERY OF MARGAN,AND THE REMARKABLE THINGS IN THOSE PARTS

On the following morning, thebusiness of the cross being publicly proclaimed at Landaf, theEnglish standing on one side, and the Welsh on the other, manypersons of each nation took the cross, and we remained there thatnight with William bishop of that place, [61a] a discreet and good man.  Theword Landaf [61b] signifies the church situated upon theriver Taf, and is now called the church of St. Teileau, formerlybishop of that see.  The archbishop having celebrated massearly in the morning, before the high altar of the cathedral, weimmediately pursued our journey by the little cell of Ewenith [61c] to the p. 62noble Cistercian monastery of Margan.[62]  This monastery, under thedirection of Conan, a learned and prudent abbot, was at this timemore celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of thatorder in Wales.  On this account, it is an undoubted fact,that, as a reward for that abundant charity which the monasteryhad always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers andpoor persons, in a season of approaching famine, their corn andprovisions were perceptibly, by divine assistance, increased,like the widow’s cruise of oil by the means of the prophetElijah.  About the time of its foundation, a young man ofthose parts, by birth a Welshman, having claimed and endeavouredto apply to his own use certain lands which had been given to themonastery, by the instigation of the devil set on fire the bestbarn belonging to the monks, which was filled with corn; but,immediately becoming mad, he ran about the country in adistracted state, nor ceased raving until he was seized by hisparents and bound.  Having burst his bonds, and tired outhis keepers, he came the next morning to the gate of themonastery, incessantly howling out that he was inwardly burnt bythe influence of the monks, and thus in a few days expired,uttering the most miserable complaints.  It happened also,that a young man was struck by another in the guests’ hall;but on the following day, by divine vengeance, the aggressor was,in the presence of the fraternity, killed by an enemy, and hislifeless body was laid out in the same spot in the hall where thesacred house had been violated.  In our time too, in aperiod of scarcity, while great multitudes of poor were dailycrowding before the gates for relief, p. 63by the unanimous consent of thebrethren, a ship was sent to Bristol to purchase corn forcharitable purposes.  The vessel, delayed by contrary winds,and not returning (but rather affording an opportunity for themiracle), on the very day when there would have been a totaldeficiency of corn, both for the poor and the convent, a fieldnear the monastery was found suddenly to ripen, more than a monthbefore the usual time of harvest: thus, divine Providencesupplied the brotherhood and the numerous poor with sufficientnourishment until autumn.  By these and other signs ofvirtues, the place accepted by God began to be generally esteemedand venerated.

It came to pass also in our days, during the period when thefour sons of Caradoc son of Iestin, and nephews of prince Rhys byhis sister, namely, Morgan, Meredyth, Owen, and Cadwallon, borerule for their father in those parts, that Cadwallon, throughinveterate malice, slew his brother Owen.  But divinevengeance soon overtook him; for on his making a hostile attackon a certain castle, he was crushed to pieces by the sudden fallof its walls: and thus, in the presence of a numerous body of hisown and his brother’s forces, suffered the punishment whichhis barbarous and unnatural conduct had so justly merited.

Another circumstance which happened here deservesnotice.  A greyhound belonging to the aforesaid Owen, large,beautiful, and curiously spotted with a variety of colours,received seven wounds from arrows and lances, in the defence ofhis master, and on his part did much injury to the enemy andassassins.  When his wounds were healed, he was sent to kingHenry II. by William earl of Gloucester, in testimony of so greatand extraordinary a deed.  A dog, of all animals, is mostattached to man, and most easily distinguishes him; sometimes,when deprived of his master, he refuses to live, and in hismaster’s defence is bold enough to brave death; ready,therefore, to die, either with or for his master.  p. 64I do notthink it superfluous to insert here an example which Suetoniusgives in his book on the nature of animals, and which Ambrosiusalso relates in his Exameron.  “A man, accompanied bya dog, was killed in a remote part of the city of Antioch, by asoldier, for the sake of plunder.  The murderer, concealedby the darkness of the morning, escaped into another part of thecity; the corpse lay unburied; a large concourse of peopleassembled; and the dog, with bitter howlings, lamented hismaster’s fate.  The murderer, by chance, passed thatway, and, in order to prove his innocence, mingled with the crowdof spectators, and, as if moved by compassion, approached thebody of the deceased.  The dog, suspending for a while hismoans, assumed the arms of revenge; rushed upon the man, andseized him, howling at the same time in so dolorous a manner,that all present shed tears.  It was considered as a proofagainst the murderer, that the dog seized him from amongst somany, and would not let him go; and especially, as neither thecrime of hatred, envy, or injury, could possibly, in this case,be urged against the dog.  On account, therefore, of such astrong suspicion of murder (which the soldier constantly denied),it was determined that the truth of the matter should be tried bycombat.  The parties being assembled in a field, with acrowd of people around, the dog on one side, and the soldier,armed with a stick of a cubit’s length, on the other, themurderer was at length overcome by the victorious dog, andsuffered an ignominious death on the common gallows.”

Pliny and Solinus relate that a certain king, who was veryfond of dogs, and addicted to hunting, was taken and imprisonedby his enemies, and in a most wonderful manner liberated, withoutany assistance from his friends, by a pack of dogs, who hadspontaneously sequestered themselves in the mountainous and woodyregions, and from thence committed many atrocious acts ofdepredation on the neighbouring herds and flocks.  I shalltake this opportunity of mentioning what from p. 65experienceand ocular testimony I have observed respecting the nature ofdogs.  A dog is in general sagacious, but particularly withrespect to his master; for when he has for some time lost him ina crowd, he depends more upon his nose than upon his eyes; and,in endeavouring to find him, he first looks about, and thenapplies his nose, for greater certainty, to his clothes, as ifnature had placed all the powers of infallibility in thatfeature.  The tongue of a dog possesses a medicinal quality;the wolf’s, on the contrary, a poisonous: the dog heals hiswounds by licking them, the wolf, by a similar practice, infectsthem; and the dog, if he has received a wound in his neck orhead, or any part of his body where he cannot apply his tongue,ingeniously makes use of his hinder foot as a conveyance of thehealing qualities to the parts affected.

CHAPTER VIII
PASSAGE OF THE RIVERS AVON ANDNETH—AND OF ABERTAWE AND GOER

Continuing our journey, [65] not far from Margan, where thealternate vicissitudes of a sandy shore and the tide commence, weforded over the river Avon, having been considerably delayed bythe ebbing of the sea; and under the guidance of Morgan, eldestson of Caradoc, proceeded along the sea-shore towards the riverNeth, which, on account of its quicksands, is the most dangerousand inaccessible river in South Wales.  A pack-horsebelonging p.66to the author, which had proceeded by the lower way nearthe sea, although in the midst of many others, was the only onewhich sunk down into the abyss, but he was at last, with greatdifficulty, extricated, and not without some damage done to thebaggage and books.  Yet, although we had Morgan, the princeof that country, as our conductor, we did not reach the riverwithout great peril, and some severe falls; for the alarmoccasioned by this unusual kind of road, made us hasten our stepsover the quicksands, in opposition to the advice of our guide,and fear quickened our pace; whereas, through these difficultpassages, as we there learned, the mode of proceeding should bewith moderate speed.  But as the fords of that riverexperience a change by every monthly tide, and cannot be foundafter violent rains and floods, we did not attempt the ford, butpassed the river in a boat, leaving the monastery of Neth [66] on our right hand, approaching again tothe district of St. David’s, and leaving the diocese ofLandaf (which we had entered at Abergevenny) behind us.

It happened in our days that David II., bishop of St.David’s, passing this way, and finding the ford agitated bya recent storm, a chaplain of those parts, named Rotherch Falcus,being conversant in the proper method of crossing these rivers,undertook, at the desire of the bishop, the dangerous task oftrying the ford.  Having mounted a large and powerful horse,which had been p.67selected from the whole train for this purpose, heimmediately crossed the ford, and fled with great rapidity to theneighbouring woods, nor could he be induced to return until thesuspension which he had lately incurred was removed, and a fullpromise of security and indemnity obtained; the horse was thenrestored to one party, and his service to the other.

Entering the province called Goer, [67a] we spent the night at the castle ofSweynsei, [67b] which in Welsh is called Abertawe, orthe fall of the river Tawe into the sea.  The next morning,the people being assembled after mass, and many having beeninduced to take the cross, an aged man of that district, namedCador, thus addressed the archbishop: “My lord, if I nowenjoyed my former strength, and the vigour of youth, no almsshould ransom me, no desire of inactivity restrain me, fromengaging in the laudable undertaking you preach; but since myweak age and the injuries of time deprive me of this desirablebenefit (for approaching years bring with them many comforts,which those that are passed take away), if I cannot, owing to theinfirmity of my body, attain a full merit, yet suffer me, bygiving a tenth of all I possess, to attain a half.” Then falling down at the feet of the archbishop, he deposited inhis hands, for p.68the service of the cross, the tenth of his estate,weeping bitterly, and intreating from him the remission of onehalf of the enjoined penance.  After a short time hereturned, and thus continued: “My lord, if the will directsthe action, and is itself, for the most part, considered as theact, and as I have a full and firm inclination to undertake thisjourney, I request a remission of the remaining part of thepenance, and in addition to my former gift, I will equal the sumfrom the residue of my tenths.”  The archbishop,smiling at his devout ingenuity, embraced him withadmiration.

On the same night, two monks, who waited in thearchbishop’s chamber, conversing about the occurrences oftheir journey, and the dangers of the road, one of them said(alluding to the wildness of the country), “This is a hardprovince;” the other (alluding to the quicksands), wittilyreplied, “Yet yesterday it was found too soft.”

A short time before our days, a circumstance worthy of noteoccurred in these parts, which Elidorus, a priest, moststrenuously affirmed had befallen himself.  When a youth oftwelve years, and learning his letters, since, as Solomon says,“The root of learning is bitter, although the fruit issweet,” in order to avoid the discipline and frequentstripes inflicted on him by his preceptor, he ran away, andconcealed himself under the hollow bank of a river.  Afterfasting in that situation for two days, two little men of pigmystature appeared to him, saying, “If you will come with us,we will lead you into a country full of delights andsports.”  Assenting and rising up, he followed hisguides through a path, at first subterraneous and dark, into amost beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woodsand plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full lightof the sun.  All the days were cloudy, and the nightsextremely dark, on account of the absence of the moon andstars.  The boy was brought before the king, and introducedto him in the presence of the court; who, having examined him p. 69for a longtime, delivered him to his son, who was then a boy.  Thesemen were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned intheir make; they were all of a fair complexion, with luxurianthair falling over their shoulders like that of women.  Theyhad horses and greyhounds adapted to their size.  Theyneither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on milk diet, made up intomesses with saffron.  They never took an oath, for theydetested nothing so much as lies.  As often as they returnedfrom our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition,infidelities, and inconstancies; they had no form of publicworship, being strict lovers and reverers, as it seemed, oftruth.

The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes bythe way he had first gone, sometimes by another: at first incompany with other persons, and afterwards alone, and madehimself known only to his mother, declaring to her the manners,nature, and state of that people.  Being desired by her tobring a present of gold, with which that region abounded, hestole, while at play with the king’s son, the golden ballwith which he used to divert himself, and brought it to hismother in great haste; and when he reached the door of hisfather’s house, but not unpursued, and was entering it in agreat hurry, his foot stumbled on the threshold, and falling downinto the room where his mother was sitting, the two pigmiesseized the ball which had dropped from his hand, and departed,shewing the boy every mark of contempt and derision.  Onrecovering from his fall, confounded with shame, and execratingthe evil counsel of his mother, he returned by the usual track tothe subterraneous road, but found no appearance of any passage,though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearlythe space of a year.  But since those calamities are oftenalleviated by time, which reason cannot mitigate, and length oftime alone blunts the edge of our afflictions, and puts an end tomany evils, the youth having been brought back by his friends andmother, and p.70restored to his right way of thinking, and to hislearning, in process of time attained the rank ofpriesthood.  Whenever David II., bishop of St.David’s, talked to him in his advanced state of lifeconcerning this event, he could never relate the particularswithout shedding tears.  He had made himself acquainted withthe language of that nation, the words of which, in his youngerdays, he used to recite, which, as the bishop often had informedme, were very conformable to the Greek idiom.  When theyasked for water, they said Ydor ydorum, which meant bring water,for Ydor in their language, as well as in the Greek, signifieswater, from whence vessels for water are calledὑδζιαι; and Dûr also, inthe British language, signifies water.  When they wantedsalt they said, Halgein ydorum, bring salt: salt is calledἁλ in Greek, and Halen in British, for thatlanguage, from the length of time which the Britons (then calledTrojans, and afterwards Britons, from Brito, their leader)remained in Greece after the destruction of Troy, became, in manyinstances, similar to the Greek.

It is remarkable that so many languages should correspond inone word, ἁλ in Greek, Halen in British, and Halgeinin the Irish tongue, the g being inserted; Sal in Latin, because,as Priscian says, “the s is placed in some words instead ofan aspirate,” as ἁλς in Greek is calledSal in Latin,ἑμι—semi—ἑπτα—septem—Selin French—the abeing changed intoe—Salt in English, by the addition of ttothe Latin; Sout, in the Teutonic language: there are thereforeseven or eight languages agreeing in this one word.  If ascrupulous inquirer should ask my opinion of the relation hereinserted, I answer with Augustine, “that the divinemiracles are to be admired, not discussed.”  Nor do I,by denial, place bounds to the divine power, nor, by assent,insolently extend what cannot be extended.  But I alwayscall to mind the saying of St. Jerome; “You willfind,” says he, “many things incredible andimprobable, which nevertheless are true; for nature cannot in anyrespect prevail p.71against the lord of nature.”  These things,therefore, and similar contingencies, I should place, accordingto the opinion of Augustine, among those particulars which areneither to be affirmed, nor too positively denied.

CHAPTER IX
PASSAGE OVER THE RIVERS LOCHOR ANDWENDRAETH; AND OF CYDWELI

Thence we proceeded towards theriver Lochor, [71a] through the plains in which Howel, sonof Meredyth of Brecheinoc, after the decease of king Henry I.,gained a signal victory over the English.  Having firstcrossed the river Lochor, and afterwards the water calledWendraeth, [71b] we arrived at the castle of Cydweli.[71c]  In this district, after thedeath of king Henry, whilst Gruffydd p. 72son of Rhys, the prince of SouthWales, was engaged in soliciting assistance from North Wales, hiswife Gwenliana (like the queen of the Amazons, and a secondPenthesilea) led an army into these parts; but she was defeatedby Maurice de Londres, lord of that country, and Geoffrey, thebishop’s constable. [72]  Morgan, one ofher sons, whom she had arrogantly brought with her in thatexpedition, was slain, and the other, Malgo, taken prisoner; andshe, with many of her followers, was put to death.  Duringthe reign of king Henry I., when Wales enjoyed a state oftranquillity, the above-mentioned Maurice had a forest in thatneighbourhood, well stocked with wild animals, and especiallydeer, and was extremely tenacious of his venison.  His wife(for women are often very expert in deceiving men) made use ofthis curious stratagem.  Her husband possessed, on the sideof the wood next the sea, some extensive pastures, and largeflocks of sheep.  Having made all the shepherds and chiefpeople in her house accomplices and favourers of her design, andtaking advantage of the simple courtesy of her husband, she thusaddressed him: “It is wonderful that being lord overbeasts, you have ceased to exercise dominion over them; and bynot making use of your deer, do not now rule over them, but aresubservient to them; and behold how great an abuse arises fromtoo much patience; for they attack our sheep with such anunheard-of rage, and unusual voracity, that from many they arebecome few; from being innumerable, only numerous.” To make her story more probable, she caused some wool to beinserted between the intestines of two stags which had beenembowelled; and her husband, thus artfully deceived, sacrificedhis deer to the rapacity of his dogs.

p.73CHAPTER X
TYWYRIVER—CAERMARDYN—MONASTERY OF ALBELANDE

Having crossed the river Tywy in aboat, we proceeded towards Caermardyn, leaving Lanstephan andTalachar [73a] on the sea-coast to our left. After the death of king Henry II., Rhys, the son of Gruffydd,took these two castles by assault; then, having laid waste, byfire and sword, the provinces of Penbroch and Ros, he besiegedCaermardyn, but failed in his attempt.  Caermardyn [73b] signifies the city of Merlin, because,according to the British History, he was there said to have beenbegotten of an incubus.

This ancient city is situated on the banks of the noble riverTywy, surrounded by woods and pastures, and was strongly inclosedwith walls of brick, part of which are still standing; havingCantref Mawr, the great cantred, or hundred, on the eastern side,a safe refuge, in times of danger, to the inhabitants of SouthWales, on account of its thick woods; where is also the castle ofDinevor, [73c] built p. 74on a lofty summit above the Tywy, theroyal seat of the princes of South Wales.  In ancient times,there were three regal palaces in Wales: Dinevor in South Wales,Aberfrau in North Wales, situated in Anglesea, and Pengwern inPowys, now called Shrewsbury (Slopesburia); Pengwern signifiesthe head of a grove of alders.  Recalling to mind thosepoetical passages:

“Dolus an virtus quis in hosterequirat?”

and

“Et si non recte possis quocunque modorem,”

my pen shrinks with abhorrence from the relation of theenormous vengeance exercised by the court against its vassals,within the comot of Caeo, in the Cantref Mawr.  NearDinevor, on the other side of the river Tywy, in the CantrefBychan, or the little cantred, there is a spring which, like thetide, ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours. [74a]  Not far to the north ofCaermardyn, namely at Pencadair, [74b] that is, the headof the chair, when Rhys, the son of Gruffydd, was more bystratagem than force compelled to surrender, and was carried awayinto England, king Henry II. despatched a knight, born inBritany, on whose wisdom and fidelity he could rely, under theconduct of Guaidanus, dean of Cantref Mawr, to explore thesituation of Dinevor castle, and the strength of thecountry.  The priest, being desired to take the knight bythe easiest and best road to the castle, led him purposely asideby the most difficult and inaccessible paths, and wherever theypassed through woods, the priest, to the general surprise of allpresent, fed upon grass, asserting that, in times of need, the p. 75inhabitantsof that country were accustomed to live upon herbs androots.  The knight returning to the king, and relating whathad happened, affirmed that the country was uninhabitable, vile,and inaccessible, and only affording food to a beastly nation,living like brutes.  At length the king released Rhys,having first bound him to fealty by solemn oaths and the deliveryof hostages.

On our journey from Caermardyn towards the Cistercianmonastery called Alba Domus, [75a] the archbishop wasinformed of the murder of a young Welshman, who was devoutlyhastening to meet him; when turning out of the road, he orderedthe corpse to be covered with the cloak of his almoner, and witha pious supplication commended the soul of the murdered youth toheaven.  Twelve archers of the adjacent castle of St. Clare,[75b] who had assassinated the young man,were on the following day p. 76signed with the cross at Alba Domus,as a punishment for their crime.  Having traversed threerivers, the Taf, then the Cleddeu, under Lanwadein, [76a] and afterwards another branch of thesame river, we at length arrived at Haverford.  Thisprovince, from its situation between two rivers, has acquired thename of Daugleddeu, [76b] being enclosed andterminated, as it were, by two swords, for cleddue, in theBritish language, signifies a sword.

CHAPTER XI
OF HAVERFORD AND ROS

A sermon having been delivered atHaverford [76c] by the archbishop, and the word of Godpreached to the people by the archdeacon, whose name appears onthe title-page of this work, many soldiers and plebeians wereinduced to take the cross.  It appeared wonderful andmiraculous, that, although the archdeacon addressed them both inthe Latin and French tongues, those persons who understoodneither of those languages were equally affected, and flocked ingreat numbers to the cross.

An old woman of those parts, who for three preceding years hadbeen blind, having heard of the archbishop’s arrival, senther son to the place where the sermon was to be preached, that hemight bring back to her some p. 77particle, if only of the fringe ofhis garment.  The young man being prevented by the crowdfrom approaching the archbishop, waited till the assembly wasdispersed, and then carried a piece of the earth on which thepreacher had stood.  The mother received the gift with greatjoy, and falling immediately on her knees, applied the turf toher mouth and eyes; and thus, through the merits of the holy man,and her own faith and devotion, recovered the blessing of sight,which she had entirely lost.

The inhabitants of this province derived their origin fromFlanders, and were sent by king Henry I. to inhabit thesedistricts; a people brave and robust, ever most hostile to theWelsh; a people, I say, well versed in commerce and woollenmanufactories; a people anxious to seek gain by sea or land, indefiance of fatigue and danger; a hardy race, equally fitted forthe plough or the sword; a people brave and happy, if Wales (asit ought to have been) had been dear to its sovereign, and hadnot so frequently experienced the vindictive resentment andill-treatment of its governors.

A circumstance happened in the castle of Haverford during ourtime, which ought not to be omitted.  A famous robber wasfettered and confined in one of its towers, and was often visitedby three boys, the son of the earl of Clare, and two others, oneof whom was son of the lord of the castle, and the other hisgrandson, sent thither for their education, and who applied tohim for arrows, with which he used to supply them.  One day,at the request of the children, the robber, being brought fromhis dungeon, took advantage of the absence of the gaoler, closedthe door, and shut himself up with the boys.  A greatclamour instantly arose, as well from the boys within, as fromthe people without; nor did he cease, with an uplifted axe, tothreaten the lives of the children, until indemnity and securitywere assured to him in the most ample manner.  A similaraccident happened at Chateau-roux in France.  The lord ofthat p. 78placemaintained in the castle a man whose eyes he had formerly putout, but who, by long habit, recollected the ways of the castle,and the steps leading to the towers.  Seizing an opportunityof revenge, and meditating the destruction of the youth, hefastened the inward doors of the castle, and took the only sonand heir of the governor of the castle to the summit of a hightower, from whence he was seen with the utmost concern by thepeople beneath.  The father of the boy hastened thither,and, struck with terror, attempted by every possible means toprocure the ransom of his son, but received for answer, that thiscould not be effected, but by the same mutilation of those lowerparts, which he had likewise inflicted on him.  The father,having in vain entreated mercy, at length assented, and caused aviolent blow to be struck on his body; and the people around himcried out lamentably, as if he had suffered mutilation.  Theblind man asked him where he felt the greatest pain? when hereplied in his reins, he declared it was false and prepared toprecipitate the boy.  A second blow was given, and the lordof the castle asserting that the greatest pains were at hisheart, the blind man expressing his disbelief, again carried theboy to the summit of the tower.  The third time, however,the father, to save his son, really mutilated himself; and whenhe exclaimed that the greatest pain was in his teeth; “Itis true,” said he, “as a man who has had experienceshould be believed, and thou hast in part revenged myinjuries.  I shall meet death with more satisfaction, andthou shalt neither beget any other son, nor receive comfort fromthis.”  Then, precipitating himself and the boy fromthe summit of the tower, their limbs were broken, and bothinstantly expired.  The knight ordered a monastery to bebuilt on the spot for the soul of the boy, which is still extant,and called De Doloribus.

It appears remarkable to me that the entire inheritance shoulddevolve on Richard, son of Tankard, governor of the aforesaidcastle of Haverford, being the p. 79youngest son, and having manybrothers of distinguished character who died before him.  Inlike manner the dominion of South Wales descended to Rhys son ofGruffyd, owing to the death of several of his brothers. During the childhood of Richard, a holy man, named Caradoc, led apious and recluse life at St. Ismael, in the province of Ros, [79a] to whom the boy was often sent by hisparents with provisions, and he so ingratiated himself in theeyes of the good man, that he very often promised him, togetherwith his blessing, the portion of all his brothers, and thepaternal inheritance.  It happened that Richard, beingovertaken by a violent storm of rain, turned aside to thehermit’s cell; and being unable to get his hounds near him,either by calling, coaxing, or by offering them food, the holyman smiled; and making a gentle motion with his hand, broughtthem all to him immediately.  In process of time, whenCaradoc [79b] p. 80had happily completed the course ofhis existence, Tankard, father of Richard, violently detained hisbody, which by his last will he had bequeathed to the church ofSt. David; but being suddenly seized with a severe illness, herevoked his command.  When this had happened to him a secondand a third time, and the corpse at last was suffered to beconveyed away, and was proceeding over the sands of Niwegaltowards St. David’s, a prodigious fall of rain inundatedthe whole country; but the conductors of the sacred burthen, oncoming forth from their shelter, found the silken pall, withwhich the bier was covered, dry and uninjured by the storm; andthus the miraculous body of Caradoc was brought into the churchof St. Andrew and St. David, and with due solemnity deposited inthe left aisle, near the altar of the holy proto-martyrStephen.

It is worthy of remark, that these people (the Flemings), fromthe inspection of the right shoulders of rams, which have beenstripped of their flesh, and not roasted, but boiled, candiscover future events, or those which have passed and remainedlong unknown. [80]  They know, also, what istranspiring at a distant place, by a wonderful art, and aprophetic kind of spirit.  They declare, also, by means ofsigns, the undoubted symptoms of approaching peace and war,murders and fires, domestic adulteries, the state of the king,his life and death.  It happened in our time, that a man ofthose parts, whose name was William Mangunel, a person of highrank, and excelling all others in the aforesaid art, had a wifebig with child by her own husband’s grandson.  Wellaware of the fact, he ordered a ram from his own flock to be sentto his wife, as a present from her neighbour, which was carriedto the cook, and dressed.  At dinner, the p. 81husbandpurposely gave the shoulder-bone of the ram, properly cleaned, tohis wife, who was also well skilled in this art, for herexamination; when, having for a short time examined the secretmarks, she smiled, and threw the oracle down on the table. Her husband, dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of hersmiling, and the explanation of the matter.  Overcome by hisentreaties, she answered: “The man to whose fold this rambelongs, has an adulterous wife, at this time pregnant by thecommission of incest with his own grandson.”  Thehusband, with a sorrowful and dejected countenance, replied:“You deliver, indeed, an oracle supported by too muchtruth, which I have so much more reason to lament, as theignominy you have published redounds to my owninjury.”  The woman, thus detected, and unable todissemble her confusion, betrayed the inward feelings of her mindby external signs; shame and sorrow urging her by turns, andmanifesting themselves, now by blushes, now by paleness, andlastly (according to the custom of women), by tears.  Theshoulder of a goat was also once brought to a certain person,instead of a ram’s—both being alike, when cleaned;who, observing for a short time the lines and marks, exclaimed,“Unhappy cattle, that never was multiplied! unhappy,likewise, the owner of the cattle, who never had more than threeor four in one flock!”  Many persons, a year and ahalf before the event, foresaw, by the means of shoulder-bones,the destruction of their country, after the decease of king HenryI., and, selling all their possessions, left their homes, andescaped the impending ruin.

It happened also in Flanders, from whence this people came,that a certain man sent a similar bone to a neighbour for hisinspection; and the person who carried it, on passing over aditch, broke wind, and wished it in the nostrils of the man onwhose account he was thus troubled.  The person to whom thebone was taken, on examination, said, “May you have in yourown nose, that which you wished to be in mine.”  Inour time, a soothsayer, on p. 82the inspection of a bone, discoverednot only a theft, and the manner of it, but the thief himself,and all the attendant circumstances; he heard also the strikingof a bell, and the sound of a trumpet, as if those things whichwere past were still performing.  It is wonderful,therefore, that these bones, like all unlawful conjurations,should represent, by a counterfeit similitude to the eyes andears, things which are passed, as well as those which are nowgoing on.

CHAPTER XII
OF PENBROCH

The province of Penbroch adjoinsthe southern part of the territory of Ros, and is separated fromit by an arm of the sea.  Its principal city, and themetropolis of Demetia, is situated on an oblong rocky eminence,extending with two branches from Milford Haven, from whence itderived the name of Penbroch, which signifies the head of theæstuary.  Arnulph de Montgomery, [82a] in the reign of king Henry I., erectedhere a slender fortress with stakes and turf, which, on returningto England, he consigned to the care of Giraldus de Windesor, [82b] his constable and lieutenant-general,a p. 83worthyand discreet man.  Immediately on the death of Rhys son ofTewdwr, who a short time before had been slain by the treacheryof his own troops at Brecheinoc, leaving his son, Gruffydd, achild, the inhabitants of South Wales besieged the castle. One night, when fifteen soldiers had deserted, and endeavoured toescape from the castle in a small boat, on the following morningGiraldus invested their armour bearers with the arms and estatesof their masters, and decorated them with the militaryorder.  The garrison being, from the length of the siege,reduced to the utmost want of provisions, the constable, withgreat prudence and flattering hopes of success, caused four hogs,which yet remained, to be cut into small pieces and thrown downto the enemy from the fortifications.  The next day, havingagain recourse to a more refined stratagem, he contrived that aletter, sealed with his own signet, should be found before thehouse of Wilfred, [83] bishop of St. David’s, who wasthen by chance in that neighbourhood, as if accidentally dropped,stating that there would be no necessity of soliciting theassistance of earl Arnulph for the next four months tocome.  The contents of these letters being made known to thearmy, the troops abandoned the siege of the castle, and retiredto their own homes.  Giraldus, in order to make himself andhis dependants more secure, married Nest, the sister of Gruffydd,prince of South Wales, by whom he had an illustrious progeny ofboth sexes; and by whose means both the maritime parts of SouthWales were retained by the English, and the walls of Irelandafterwards stormed, as our Vaticinal History declares.

p. 84In ourtime, a person residing at the castle of Penbroch, found a broodof young weasels concealed within a fleece in his dwelling house,which he carefully removed and hid.  The mother, irritatedat the loss of her young, which she had searched for in vain,went to a vessel of milk that had been set aside for the use ofthe master’s son, and raising herself up, polluted it withher deadly poison; thus revenging, as it were, the loss of heryoung, by the destruction of the child.  The man, observingwhat passed, carried the fleece back to its former place; whenthe weasel, agitated by maternal solicitude, between hope andfear, on finding again her young, began to testify her joy by hercries and actions, and returning quickly to the vessel, overthrewit; thus, in gratitude for the recovery of her own offspring,saving that of her host from danger.

In another place, an animal of the same species had broughtout her young into a plain for the enjoyment of the sun and air;when an insidious kite carried off one of them.  Concealingherself with the remainder behind some shrubs, grief suggested toher a stratagem of exquisite revenge; she extended herself on aheap of earth, as if dead, within sight of the plunderer, and (assuccess always increases avidity) the bird immediately seized herand flew away, but soon fell down dead by the bite of thepoisonous animal.

The castle called Maenor Pyrr, [84] that is, the mansionof p. 85Pyrrus,who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh callInys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus, is distant about three milesfrom Penbroch.  It is excellently well defended by turretsand bulwarks, and is situated on the summit of a hill extendingon the western side towards the sea-port, having on the northernand southern sides a fine fish-pond under its walls, asconspicuous for its grand appearance, as for the depth of itswaters, and a beautiful orchard on the same side, inclosed on onepart by a vineyard, and on the other by a wood, remarkable forthe projection of its rocks, and the height of its hazeltrees.  On the right hand of the promontory, between thecastle and the church, near the site of a very large lake andmill, a rivulet of never-failing water flows through a valley,rendered sandy by the violence of the winds.  Towards thewest, the Severn sea, bending its course to Ireland, enters ahollow bay at some distance from the castle; and the southernrocks, if extended a little further towards the north, wouldrender it a most excellent harbour for shipping.  From thispoint of sight, you will see almost all the ships from GreatBritain, which the east wind drives upon the Irish coast,daringly brave the inconstant waves and raging sea.  Thiscountry is well supplied with corn, sea-fish, and imported wines;and what is preferable to every other advantage, from itsvicinity to Ireland, it is tempered by a salubrious air. Demetia, therefore, with its seven cantreds, is the mostbeautiful, as well as the most powerful district of Wales;Penbroch, the finest part of the province of Demetia; and theplace I have just described, the most delightful part ofPenbroch.  It is evident, therefore, that Maenor Pirr is thepleasantest spot in Wales; and the author may be pardoned forhaving thus extolled his native soil, his genial territory, witha profusion of praise and admiration.

p. 86In thispart of Penbroch, unclean spirits have conversed, nor visibly,but sensibly, with mankind; first in the house of Stephen Wiriet,[86a] and afterwards in the house of WilliamNot; [86b] manifesting their presence by throwingdirt at them, and more with a view of mockery than ofinjury.  In the house of William, they cut holes in thelinen and woollen garments, much to the loss of the owner of thehouse and his guests; nor could any precaution, or even bolts,secure them from these inconveniences.  In the house ofStephen, the spirit in a more extraordinary manner conversed withmen, and, in reply to their taunts, upbraided them openly witheverything they had done from their birth, and which they werenot willing should be known or heard by others.  I do notpresume to assign the cause of this event, except that it is saidto be the presage of a sudden change from poverty to riches, orrather from affluence to poverty and distress; as it was found tobe the case in both these instances.  And it appears to mevery extraordinary that these places could not be purified fromsuch illusions, either by the sprinkling of holy water, or theassistance of any other religious ceremony; for the prieststhemselves, though protected by the crucifix, or the holy water,on devoutly entering the house, were equally subject to the sameinsults.  From whence it appears that things pertaining tothe sacraments, as well as the sacraments themselves, defend usfrom hurtful, but not from harmless things; from annoyances, butnot from illusions.  It is worthy of note, that in our time,a woman in Poitou was possessed by a demon, who, through hermouth, artfully and acutely disputed with the learned.  Hesometimes upbraided people with p. 87their secret actions, and thosethings which they wished not to hear; but when either the booksof the gospel, or the relics of saints, were placed upon themouth of the possessed, he fled to the lower part of her throat;and when they were removed thither, he descended into herbelly.  His appearance was indicated by certain inflationsand convulsions of the parts which he possessed, and when therelics were again placed in the lower parts, he directly returnedto the upper.  At length, when they brought the body ofChrist, and gave it to the patient, the demon answered, “Yefools, you are doing nothing, for what you give her is not thefood of the body, but of the soul; and my power is confined tothe body, not to the soul.”  But when those personswhom he had upbraided with their more serious actions, hadconfessed, and returned from penance, he reproached them nomore.  “I have known, indeed,” says he, “Ihave known but now I know not, (he spake this as it were areproach to others), and I hold my tongue, for what I know, Iknow not.”  From which it appears, that afterconfession and penance, the demons either do not know the sins ofmen, or do not know them to their injury and disgrace; because,as Augustine says, “If man conceals, God discovers; if mandiscovers, God conceals.”

Some people are surprised that lightning often strikes ourplaces of worship, and damages the crosses and images of him whowas crucified, before the eyes of one who seeth all things, andpermits these circumstances to happen; to whom I shall onlyanswer with Ovid,

“Summa petit livor, perflant altissimaventi,
   Summa petunt dextra fulmina missa Jovis.”

On the same subject, Peter Abelard, in the presence of Philipking of France, is said to have answered a Jew, who urged theseand similar things against the faith.  “It is truethat the lightning descending from on high, directs itself mostcommonly to the highest object on p. 88earth, and to those most resemblingits own nature; it never, therefore, injures your synagogues,because no man ever saw or heard of its falling upon aprivy.”  An event worthy of note, happened in our timein France.  During a contention between some monks of theCistercian order, and a certain knight, about the limits of theirfields and lands, a violent tempest, in one night, utterlydestroyed and ruined the cultivated grounds of the monks, whilethe adjoining territory of the knight remained undamaged. On which occasion he insolently inveighed against the fraternity,and publicly asserted that divine vengeance had thus punishedthem for unlawfully keeping possession of his land; to which theabbot wittily replied, “It is by no means so; but that theknight had more friends in that riding than the monastery;”and he clearly demonstrated that, on the other hand, the monkshad more enemies in it.

In the province of Penbroch, another instance occurred, aboutthe same time, of a spirit’s appearing in the house ofElidore de Stakepole, [88] not only sensibly,but visibly, under the form of a red-haired young man, who calledhimself Simon.  First seizing the keys from the person towhom they were entrusted, he impudently assumed thesteward’s office, which he managed so prudently andprovidently, that all things seemed to abound under his care, andthere was no deficiency in the house.  Whatever the masteror mistress secretly thought of having for their daily use orprovision, he procured with wonderful agility, and without anyprevious directions, saying, “You wished that to be done,and it shall be done for you.”  He was also wellacquainted with their treasures and secret hoards, and sometimesupbraided them on that account; for as often as they seemed toact sparingly p.89and avariciously, he used to say, “Why are youafraid to spend that heap of gold or silver, since your lives areof so short duration, and the money you so cautiously hoard upwill never do you any service?”  He gave the choicestmeat and drink to the rustics and hired servants, saying that“Those persons should be abundantly supplied, by whoselabours they were acquired.”  Whatever he determinedshould be done, whether pleasing or displeasing to his master ormistress (for, as we have said before, he knew all theirsecrets), he completed in his usual expeditious manner, withouttheir consent.  He never went to church, or uttered oneCatholic word.  He did not sleep in the house, but was readyat his office in the morning.

He was at length observed by some of the family to hold hisnightly converse near a mill and a pool of water; upon whichdiscovery he was summoned the next morning before the master ofthe house and his lady, and, receiving his discharge, deliveredup the keys, which he had held for upwards of forty days. Being earnestly interrogated, at his departure, who he was? heanswered, “That he was begotten upon the wife of a rusticin that parish, by a demon, in the shape of her husband,”naming the man, and his father-in-law, then dead, and his mother,still alive; the truth of which the woman, upon examination,openly avowed.  A similar circumstance happened in our timein Denmark.  A certain unknown priest paid court to thearchbishop, and, from his obsequious behaviour and discreetconduct, his general knowledge of letters and quick memory, sooncontracted a great familiarity with him.  Conversing one daywith the archbishop about ancient histories and unknown events,on which topic he most frequently heard him with pleasure, ithappened that when the subject of their discourse was theincarnation of our Lord, he said, amongst other things,“Before Christ assumed human nature, the demons had greatpower over mankind, which, at his coming, was much diminished; p. 90insomuch thatthey were dispersed on every side, and fled from hispresence.  Some precipitated themselves into the sea, othersinto the hollow parts of trees, or the clefts of rocks; and Imyself leaped into a well;” on which he blushed for shame,and took his departure.  The archbishop, and those who werewith him, being greatly astonished at that speech, began to askquestions by turns, and form conjectures; and having waited sometime (for he was expected to return soon), the archbishop orderedsome of his attendants to call him, but he was sought for invain, and never re-appeared.  Soon afterwards, two priests,whom the archbishop had sent to Rome, returned; and when thisevent was related to them, they began to inquire the day and houron which the circumstance had happened?  On being told it,they declared that on the very same day and hour he had met themon the Alps, saying, that he had been sent to the court of Rome,on account of some business of his master’s (meaning thearchbishop), which had lately occurred.  And thus it wasproved, that a demon had deluded them under a human form.

I ought not to omit mentioning the falcons of these parts,which are large, and of a generous kind, and exercise a mostsevere tyranny over the river and land birds.  King HenryII. remained here some time, making preparations for his voyageto Ireland; and being desirous of taking the diversion ofhawking, he accidentally saw a noble falcon perched upon arock.  Going sideways round him, he let loose a fine Norwayhawk, which he carried on his left hand.  The falcon, thoughat first slower in its flight, soaring up to a great height,burning with resentment, and in his turn becoming the aggressor,rushed down upon his adversary with the greatest impetuosity, andby a violent blow struck the hawk dead at the feet of theking.  From that time the king sent every year, about thebreeding season, for the falcons [90] of p. 91this country,which are produced on the sea cliffs; nor can better be found inany part of his dominions.  But let us now return to ourItinerary.

CHAPTER XIII
OF THE PROGRESS BY CAMROS ANDNIWEGAL

From Haverford we proceeded on ourjourney to Menevia, distant from thence about twelve miles, andpassed through Camros, [91a] where, in thereign of king Stephen, the relations and friends of adistinguished young man, Giraldus, son of William, revenged hisdeath by a too severe retaliation on the men of Ros.  Wethen passed over Niwegal sands, at which place (during the winterthat king Henry II. spent in Ireland), as well as in almost allthe other western ports, a very remarkable circumstanceoccurred.  The sandy shores of South Wales, being laid bareby the extraordinary violence of a storm, the surface of theearth, which had been covered for many ages, re-appeared, anddiscovered the trunks of trees cut off, standing in the very seaitself, the strokes of the hatchet appearing as if made onlyyesterday. [91b]  The soil was very black, and thewood like ebony.  By a wonderful revolution, the road forships became impassable, and looked, not like a shore, but like agrove cut down, perhaps, at p. 92the time of the deluge, or not longafter, but certainly in very remote ages, being by degreesconsumed and swallowed up by the violence and encroachments ofthe sea.  During the same tempest many sea fish were driven,by the violence of the wind and waves, upon dry land.  Wewere well lodged at St. David’s by Peter, bishop of thesee, a liberal man, who had hitherto accompanied us during thewhole of our journey.

p. 93BOOKII

p.94PREFACE

Since, therefore, St. David’sis the head, and in times past was the metropolitan, city ofWales, though now, alas! retaining more of the namethanof the omen, [94] yet I have notforborne to weep over the obsequies of our ancient and undoubtedmother, to follow the mournful hearse, and to deplore withtearful sighs the ashes of our half-buried matron.  I shall,therefore, endeavour briefly to declare to you in what manner,from whence, and from what period the pall was first brought toSt. David’s, and how it was taken away; how many prelateswere invested with the pall; and how many were despoiled thereof;together with their respective names to this present day.

p.95CHAPTER I
OF THE SEE OF SAINTDAVID’S

We are informed by the Britishhistories, that Dubricius, archbishop of Caerleon, sensible ofthe infirmities of age, or rather being desirous of leading alife of contemplation, resigned his honours to David, who is saidto have been uncle to king Arthur; and by his interest the seewas translated to Menevia, although Caerleon, as we have observedin the first book, was much better adapted for the episcopalsee.  For Menevia is situated in a most remote corner ofland upon the Irish ocean, the soil stony and barren, neitherclothed with woods, distinguished by rivers, nor adorned bymeadows, ever exposed to the winds and tempests, and continuallysubject to the hostile attacks of the Flemings on one side, andof the Welsh on the other.  For the holy men who settledhere, chose purposely such a retired habitation, that by avoidingthe noise of the world, and preferring an heremitical to apastoral life, they might more freely provide for “thatpart which shall not be taken away;” for David wasremarkable for his sanctity and religion, as the history of hislife will testify.  Amongst the many miracles recorded ofhim, three appear to me the most worthy of admiration: his originand conception; his pre-election thirty years before his birth;and what exceeds all, the sudden rising of the ground, at Brevy,under his feet while preaching, to the great astonishment of allthe beholders.

Since the time of David, twenty-five archbishops presided overthe see of Menevia, whose names are here subjoined: David,Cenauc, Eliud, who was also called p. 96Teilaus, Ceneu, Morwal, Haerunen,Elwaed, Gurnuen, Lendivord, Gorwysc, Cogan, Cledauc, Anian,Euloed, Ethelmen, Elauc, Malscoed, Sadermen, Catellus,Sulhaithnai, Nonis, Etwal, Asser, Arthuael, Sampson.  In thetime of Sampson, the pall was translated from Menevia in thefollowing manner: a disorder called the yellow plague, and by thephysicians the icteric passion, of which the people died in greatnumbers, raged throughout Wales, at the time when Sampson heldthe archiepiscopal see.  Though a holy man, and fearless ofdeath, he was prevailed upon, by the earnest intreaties of hispeople, to go on board a vessel, which was wafted, by a southwind, to Britannia Armorica, [96] where he and hisattendants were safely landed.  The see of Dol being at thattime vacant, he was immediately elected bishop.  Hence itcame to pass, that on account of the pall which Sampson hadbrought thither with him, the succeeding bishops, even to ourtimes, always retained it.  But during the presidency of thearchbishop of Tours, this adventitious dignity ceased; yet ourcountrymen, through indolence or poverty, or rather owing to thearrival of the English into the island, and the frequenthostilities committed against them by the Saxons, lost theirarchiepiscopal honours.  But until the entire subjugation ofWales by king Henry I., the Welsh bishops were always consecratedby the bishop of St. David’s; and he was consecrated by hissuffragans, without any profession or submission being made toany other church.

From the time of Sampson to that of king Henry I., nineteenbishops presided over this see: Ruelin, Rodherch, Elguin,Lunuerd, Nergu, Sulhidir, Eneuris, Morgeneu, who was the firstbishop of St. David’s who ate flesh, and was there killedby pirates; and he appeared p. 97to a certain bishop in Ireland on thenight of his death, shewing his wounds, and saying,“Because I ate flesh, I am become flesh.” Nathan, Ievan (who was bishop only one night), Argustel,Morgenueth, Ervin, Tramerin, Joseph, Bleithud, Sulghein, Abraham,Wilfred.  Since the subjugation of Wales to the presenttime, three only have held the see: in the reign of king HenryI., Bernard; in the reign of king Stephen, David II.; and in thereign of king Henry II., Peter, a monk of the order of Cluny; whoall, by the king’s mandate, were consecrated at Canterbury;as also Geoffrey, prior and canon of Lanthoni, who succeeded themin the reign of king John, and was preferred to this see by theinterest of Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwardsconsecrated by him.  We do not hear that either before orafter that subjugation, any archbishop of Canterbury ever enteredthe borders of Wales, except Baldwin, a monk of the Cistercianorder, abbot of Ford, and afterwards bishop of Worcester, whotraversed that rough, inaccessible, and remote country with alaudable devotion for the service of the cross; and as a token ofinvestiture, celebrated mass in all the cathedral churches. So that till lately the see of St. David’s owed nosubjection to that of Canterbury, as may be seen in the EnglishHistory of Bede, who says that “Augustine, bishop of theAngles, after the conversion of king Ethelfred and the Englishpeople, called together the bishops of Wales on the confines ofthe West Saxons, as legate of the apostolic see.  When theseven bishops [97] appeared, Augustine, sitting in hischair, with Roman pride, did not rise up at their entrance. Observing his haughtiness (after the example of a holy anchoriteof their nation), they immediately returned, and treated him andhis statutes with contempt, publicly proclaiming that they wouldnot acknowledge him for their archbishop; alleging, that if henow refused to rise up to us, how much p. 98more will he hold us in contempt, ifwe submit to be subject to him?”  That there were atthat time seven bishops in Wales, and now only four, may be thusaccounted for; because perhaps there were formerly more cathedralchurches in Wales than there are at present, or the extent ofWales might have been greater.  Amongst so many bishops thusdeprived of their dignity, Bernard, the first French [i.e.Norman] bishop of St. David’s, alone defended the rights ofhis church in a public manner; and after many expensive andvexatious appeals to the court of Rome, would not have reclaimedthem in vain, if false witnesses had not publicly appeared at thecouncil of Rheims, before pope Eugenius, and testified that hehad made profession and submission to the see ofCanterbury.  Supported by three auxiliaries, the favour andintimacy of king Henry, a time of peace, and consequent plenty,he boldly hazarded the trial of so great a cause, and soconfident was he of his just right, that he sometimes caused thecross to be carried before him during his journey throughWales.

Bernard, however commendable in some particulars, wasremarkable for his insufferable pride and ambition.  For assoon as he became courtier and a creature of the king’s,panting after English riches by means of translation, (a maladyunder which all the English sent hither seem to labour), healienated many of the lands of his church without eitheradvantage or profit, and disposed of others so indiscreetly andimprovidently, that when ten carucates [98] of land were required for militarypurposes, he would, with a liberal hand, give twenty or thirty;and of the canonical rites and ordinances which he had miserablyand unhappily instituted at St. David’s, he would hardlymake use of one, at most only of two or three.  With respectto the two sees of Canterbury and St. David’s, I willbriefly explain my opinion of their p. 99present state.  On one side, youwill see royal favour, affluence of riches, numerous and opulentsuffragan bishops, great abundance of learned men and wellskilled in the laws; on the other side, a deficiency of all thesethings, and a total want of justice; on which account therecovery of its ancient rights will not easily be effected, butby means of those great changes and vicissitudes which kingdomsexperience from various and unexpected events.

The spot where the church of St. David’s stands, and wasfounded in honour of the apostle St. Andrew, is called the Valeof Roses; which ought rather to be named the vale of marble,since it abounds with one, and by no means with the other. The river Alun, a muddy and unproductive rivulet, [99a] bounding the churchyard on thenorthern side, flows under a marble stone, called Lechlavar,which has been polished by continual treading of passengers, andconcerning the name, size, and quality of which we have treatedin our Vaticinal History. [99b]  Henry II.,on his return from Ireland, is said to have passed over thisstone, before he devoutly entered the church of St. Andrew andSt. David.  Having left the following garrisons in Ireland,namely, Hugh de Lacy (to whom he had given Meath in fee) inDublin, with twenty knights; Fitz-Stephen and Maurice Fitzgerald,with other twenty; Humphrey de Bohun, Robert Fitz-Bernard, andHugh de Grainville at Waterford, with forty; and WilliamFitz-Adelm and Philip de Braose at Wexford, with twenty; on thesecond day of Easter, the king embarked at sunrise on board avessel in the outward port of Wexford, and, with a south wind,landed about noon in the harbour of Menevia.  Proceedingtowards the shrine of St. David, habited like a pilgrim, andleaning on a staff, he met at the white gate a procession of thecanons of the church coming forth to p. 100receive him with due honour andreverence.  As the procession solemnly moved along, a Welshwoman threw herself at the king’s feet, and made acomplaint against the bishop of the place, which was explained tothe king by an interpreter.  The woman, immediate attentionnot being paid to her petition, with violent gesticulation, and aloud and impertinent voice, exclaimed repeatedly, “Revengeus this day, Lechlavar! revenge us and the nation in thisman!”  On being chidden and driven away by those whounderstood the British language, she more vehemently and forciblyvociferated in the like manner, alluding to the vulgar fictionand proverb of Merlin, “That a king of England, andconqueror of Ireland, should be wounded in that country by a manwith a red hand, and die upon Lechlavar, on his return throughMenevia.”  This was the name of that stone whichserves as a bridge over the river Alun, which divides thecemetery from the northern side of the church.  It was abeautiful piece of marble, polished by the feet of passengers,ten feet in length, six in breadth, and one in thickness. Lechlavar signifies in the British language a talking stone. [100]  There was an ancient traditionrespecting this stone, that at a time when a corpse was carriedover it for interment, it broke forth into speech, and by theeffort cracked in the middle, which fissure is still visible; andon account of this barbarous and ancient superstition, thecorpses are no longer brought over it.  The king, who hadheard the prophecy, approaching the stone, stopped for a shorttime at the foot of it, and, looking earnestly at it, boldlypassed over; then, turning round, and looking towards the stone,thus indignantly inveighed against the prophet: “Who willhereafter give credit to the lying Merlin?”  A personstanding by, and observing what had passed, in order to vindicatethe injury done to the prophet, replied, with a loud voice,“Thou art not that p. 101king by whom Ireland is to beconquered, or of whom Merlin prophesied!”  The kingthen entering the church founded in honour of St. Andrew and St.David, devoutly offered up his prayers, and heard mass performedby a chaplain, whom alone, out of so large a body of priests,Providence seems to have kept fasting till that hour, for thisvery purpose.  Having supped at St. David’s, the kingdeparted for the castle of Haverford, distant about twelvemiles.  It appears very remarkable to me, that in our days,when David II. presided over the see, the river should haveflowed with wine, and that the spring, called Pistyll Dewi, orthe Pipeof David, from its flowing through a pipe intothe eastern side of the churchyard, should have run withmilk.  The birds also of that place, called jackdaws, frombeing so long unmolested by the clergy of the church, were grownso tame and domesticated, as not to be afraid of persons dressedin black.  In clear weather the mountains of Ireland arevisible from hence, and the passage over the Irish sea may beperformed in one short day; on which account William, the son ofWilliam the Bastard, and the second of the Norman kings inEngland, who was called Rufus, and who had penetrated far intoWales, on seeing Ireland from these rocks, is reported to havesaid, “I will summon hither all the ships of my realm, andwith them make a bridge to attack that country.” Which speech being related to Murchard, prince of Leinster, hepaused awhile, and answered, “Did the king add to thismighty threat, If God please?” and being informed that hehad made no mention of God in his speech, rejoicing in such aprognostic, he replied, “Since that man trusts in human,not divine power, I fear not his coming.”

p.102CHAPTER II
OF THE JOURNEY BY CEMMEIS—THEMONASTERY OF ST. DOGMAEL

The archbishop having celebratedmass early in the morning before the high altar of the church ofSt. David, and enjoined to the archdeacon (Giraldus) the officeof preaching to the people, hastened through Cemmeis [102a] to meet prince Rhys at Aberteive. [102b]  Two circumstances occurred inthe province of Cemmeis, the one in our own time, the other alittle before, which I think right not to pass over insilence.  In our time, a young man, native of this country,during a severe illness, suffered as violent a persecution fromtoads, [102c] as if the reptiles of the wholeprovince had come to him by agreement; and though destroyed byhis nurses and friends, they increased again on all sides ininfinite numbers, like hydras’ heads.  His attendants,both friends and strangers, being wearied out, he was drawn up ina kind of bag, into a high tree, stripped of its leaves, andshred; nor was he there secure from his venomous enemies, forthey crept up the tree in great numbers, and consumed him even tothe very bones.  The young man’s name was SisillusEsceir-hir, that is, Sisillus Long Leg.  It is also recordedthat by the hidden but never unjust will of God, another mansuffered a similar persecution from rats.  In the sameprovince, during the reign of king Henry I., a rich man, who hada residence on the northern side of the Preseleu p. 103mountains,[103a] was warned for three successivenights, by dreams, that if he put his hand under a stone whichhung over the spring of a neighbouring well, called the fountainof St. Bernacus, [103b] he would findthere a golden torques.  Obeying the admonition on the thirdday, he received, from a viper, a deadly wound in his finger; butas it appears that many treasures have been discovered throughdreams, it seems to me probable that, with respect to rumours, inthe same manner as to dreams, some ought, and some ought not, tobe believed.

I shall not pass over in silence the circumstance whichoccurred in the principal castle of Cemmeis at Lanhever, [103c] in our days.  Rhys, son ofGruffydd, by the instigation of his son Gruffydd, a cunning andartful man, took away by force, from William, son of Martin (deTours), his son-in-law, the castle of Lanhever, notwithstandinghe had solemnly sworn, by the most precious relics, that hisindemnity and security should be faithfully maintained, and,contrary to his word and oath, gave it to his son Gruffydd; butsince “A sordid prey has not a good ending,” theLord, who by the mouth of his prophet, exclaims “Vengeanceis mine, and I will repay!” ordained that the castle shouldbe taken away from the contriver of this wicked plot, Gruffydd,and bestowed upon the man in the world he most hated, his brotherMalgon.  Rhys, also, about two years afterwards, intendingto disinherit his own daughter, and two granddaughters p. 104andgrandsons, by a singular instance of divine vengeance, was takenprisoner by his sons in battle, and confined in this same castle;thus justly suffering the greatest disgrace and confusion in thevery place where he had perpetrated an act of the most consummatebaseness.  I think it also worthy to be remembered, that atthe time this misfortune befell him, he had concealed in hispossession, at Dinevor, the collar of St. Canauc of Brecknock,for which, by divine vengeance, he merited to be taken prisonerand confined.

We slept that night in the monastery of St. Dogmael, where, aswell as on the next day at Aberteivi, we were handsomelyentertained by prince Rhys.  On the Cemmeis side of theriver, not far from the bridge, the people of the neighbourhoodbeing assembled together, and Rhys and his two sons, Malgon andGruffydd, being present, the word of the Lord was persuasivelypreached both by the archbishop and the archdeacon, and many wereinduced to take the cross; one of whom was an only son, and thesole comfort of his mother, far advanced in years, who,steadfastly gazing on him, as if inspired by the Deity, utteredthese words:—“O, most beloved Lord Jesus Christ, Ireturn thee hearty thanks for having conferred on me the blessingof bringing forth a son, whom thou mayest think worthy of thyservice.”  Another woman at Aberteivi, of a verydifferent way of thinking, held her husband fast by his cloak andgirdle, and publicly and audaciously prevented him from going tothe archbishop to take the cross; but, three nights afterwards,she heard a terrible voice, saying, “Thou hast taken awaymy servant from me, therefore what thou most lovest shall betaken away from thee.”  On her relating this vision toher husband, they were struck with mutual terror and amazement;and on falling asleep again, she unhappily overlaid her littleboy, whom, with more affection than prudence, she had taken tobed with her.  The husband, relating to the bishop of thediocese both the vision and its fatal prediction, took the cross,p. 105whichhis wife spontaneously sewed on her husband’s arm.

Near the head of the bridge where the sermons were delivered,the people immediately marked out the site for a chapel, [105a] on a verdant plain, as a memorial ofso great an event; intending that the altar should be placed onthe spot where the archbishop stood while addressing themultitude; and it is well known that many miracles (theenumeration of which would be too tedious to relate) wereperformed on the crowds of sick people who resorted hither fromdifferent parts of the country.

CHAPTER III
OF THE RIVER TEIVI, CARDIGAN, ANDEMELYN

The noble river Teivi flows here,and abounds with the finest salmon, more than any other river ofWales; it has a productive fishery near Cilgerran, which issituated on the summit of a rock, at a place called Canarch Mawr,[105b] the ancient residence of St. Ludoc,where the river, falling from a great height, forms a cataract,which the salmon ascend, by leaping from the bottom to the top ofa rock, which is about the height of the longest spear, and wouldappear wonderful, were it not the nature of that species of fishto leap: hence they have received the name of salmon, fromsalio.  Their particular manner of leaping (as I havespecified in my Topography of Ireland) is thus: fish of thiskind, naturally swimming against the p. 106course of the river (for as birdsfly against the wind, so do fish swim against the stream), onmeeting with any sudden obstacle, bend their tail towards theirmouth, and sometimes, in order to give a greater power to theirleap, they press it with their mouth, and suddenly freeingthemselves from this circular form, they spring with great force(like a bow let loose) from the bottom to the top of the leap, tothe great astonishment of the beholders.  The churchdedicated to St. Ludoc, [106a] the mill,bridge, salmon leap, an orchard with a delightful garden, allstand together on a small plot of ground.  The Teivi hasanother singular particularity, being the only river in Wales, oreven in England, which has beavers; [106b] in Scotland theyare said to be found in one river, but are very scarce.  Ithink it not a useless labour, to insert a few remarks respectingthe nature of these animals—the manner in which they bringtheir materials from the woods to the water, and with what skillthey connect them in the construction of their dwellings in themidst of rivers; their means of defence on the eastern and p. 107westernsides against hunters; and also concerning their fish-liketails.

The beavers, in order to construct their castles in the middleof rivers, make use of the animals of their own species insteadof carts, who, by a wonderful mode of carnage, convey the timberfrom the woods to the rivers.  Some of them, obeying thedictates of nature, receive on their bellies the logs of wood cutoff by their associates, which they hold tight with their feet,and thus with transverse pieces placed in their mouths, are drawnalong backwards, with their cargo, by other beavers, who fastenthemselves with their teeth to the raft.  The moles use asimilar artifice in clearing out the dirt from the cavities theyform by scraping.  In some deep and still corner of theriver, the beavers use such skill in the construction of theirhabitations, that not a drop of water can penetrate, or the forceof storms shake them; nor do they fear any violence but that ofmankind, nor even that, unless well armed.  They entwine thebranches of willows with other wood, and different kinds ofleaves, to the usual height of the water, and having madewithin-side a communication from floor to floor, they elevate akind of stage, or scaffold, from which they may observe and watchthe rising of the waters.  In the course of time, theirhabitations bear the appearance of a grove of willow trees, rudeand natural without, but artfully constructed within.  Thisanimal can remain in or under water at its pleasure, like thefrog or seal, who shew, by the smoothness or roughness of theirskins, the flux and reflux of the sea.  These three animals,therefore, live indifferently under the water, or in the air, andhave short legs, broad bodies, stubbed tails, and resemble themole in their corporal shape.  It is worthy of remark, thatthe beaver has but four teeth, two above, and two below, whichbeing broad and sharp, cut like a carpenter’s axe, and assuch he uses them.  They make excavations and dry hidingplaces in the banks near their dwellings, and when they hear thep. 108strokeof the hunter, who with sharp poles endeavours to penetrate them,they fly as soon as possible to the defence of their castle,having first blown out the water from the entrance of the hole,and rendered it foul and muddy by scraping the earth, in orderthus artfully to elude the stratagems of the well-armed hunter,who is watching them from the opposite banks of the river. When the beaver finds he cannot save himself from the pursuit ofthe dogs who follow him, that he may ransom his body by thesacrifice of a part, he throws away that, which by naturalinstinct he knows to be the object sought for, and in the sightof the hunter castrates himself, from which circumstance he hasgained the name of Castor; and if by chance the dogs should chasean animal which had been previously castrated, he has thesagacity to run to an elevated spot, and there lifting up hisleg, shews the hunter that the object of his pursuit isgone.  Cicero speaking of them says, “They ransomthemselves by that part of the body, for which they are chieflysought.”  And Juvenal says,

“—Qui se
Eunuchum ipse facit, cupiens evadere damno
Testiculi.”

And St. Bernard,

“Prodit enim castor proprio de corporevelox
   Reddere quas sequitur hostis avarus opes.”

Thus, therefore, in order to preserve his skin, which issought after in the west, and the medicinal part of his body,which is coveted in the east, although he cannot save himselfentirely, yet, by a wonderful instinct and sagacity, heendeavours to avoid the stratagems of his pursuers.  Thebeavers have broad, short tails, thick, like the palm of a hand,which they use as a rudder in swimming; and although the rest oftheir body is hairy, this part, like that of seals, is withouthair, and smooth; upon which account, in Germany and the arcticregions, where beavers abound, great and religious persons, in p. 109times offasting, eat the tails of this fish-like animal, as having boththe taste and colour of fish.

We proceeded on our journey from Cilgerran towardsPont-Stephen, [109a] leaving Cruc Mawr, i.e.thegreat hill, near Aberteivi, on our left hand.  On this spotGruffydd, son of Rhys ap Tewdwr, soon after the death of kingHenry I., by a furious onset gained a signal victory against theEnglish army, which, by the murder of the illustrious Richard deClare, near Abergevenny (before related), had lost its leader andchief. [109b]  A tumulus is to be seen on thesummit of the aforesaid hill, and the inhabitants affirm that itwill adapt itself to persons of all stature and that if anyarmour is left there entire in the evening, it will be found,according to vulgar tradition, broken to pieces in themorning.

CHAPTER IV
OF THE JOURNEY BY PONT STEPHEN, THE ABBEYOF STRATFLUR, LANDEWI BREVI, AND LHANPADARN VAWR

A sermon having been preached onthe following morning at Pont Stephen, [109c] by the archbishop and archdeacon, andalso by two abbots of the Cistercian order, John of Albadomus,and Sisillus of Stratflur, [109d] who faithfullyp. 110attendedus in those parts, and as far as North Wales, many persons wereinduced to take the cross.  We proceeded to Stratflur, wherewe passed the night.  On the following morning, having onour right the lofty mountains of Moruge, which in Welsh arecalled Ellennith, [110a] we were met nearthe side of a wood by Cyneuric son of Rhys, accompanied by a bodyof light-armed youths.  This young man was of a faircomplexion, with curled hair, tall and handsome; clothed only,according to the custom of his country, with a thin cloak andinner garment, his legs and feet, regardless of thorns andthistles were left bare; a man, not adorned by art, but nature;bearing in his presence an innate, not an acquired, dignity ofmanners.  A sermon having been preached to these three youngmen, Gruffydd, Malgon, and Cyneuric, in the presence of theirfather, prince Rhys, and the brothers disputing about taking thecross, at length Malgon strictly promised that he would accompanythe archbishop to the king’s court, and would obey theking’s and archbishop’s counsel, unless prevented bythem.  From thence we passed through Landewi Brevi, [110b] that is, the church of David ofBrevi, situated on the summit of that hill which had formerlyrisen up under his feet whilst preaching, during the period ofthat celebrated synod, when all the bishops, abbots, and clergyof Wales, and many other persons, were collected p. 111thither onaccount of the Pelagian heresy, which, although formerly explodedfrom Britain by Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, had lately beenrevived in these parts.  At this place David was reluctantlyraised to the archbishopric, by the unanimous consent andelection of the whole assembly, who by loud acclamationstestified their admiration of so great a miracle.  Dubriciushad a short time before resigned to him this honour in due format Caerleon, from which city the metropolitan see was transferredto St. David’s.

Having rested that night at Lhanpadarn Vawr, [111] or the church of Paternus the Great,we attracted many persons to the service of Christ on thefollowing morning.  It is remarkable that this church, likemany others in Wales and Ireland, has a lay abbot; for a badcustom has prevailed amongst the clergy, of appointing the mostpowerful people of a parish stewards, or, rather, patrons, oftheir churches; who, in process of time, from a desire of gain,have usurped the whole right, appropriating to their own use thepossession of all the lands, leaving only to the clergy thealtars, with their tenths and oblations, and assigning even theseto their sons and relations in the church.  Such defenders,or rather destroyers, of the church, have caused themselves to becalled abbots, and presumed to attribute to themselves a title,as well as estates, to which they have no just claim.  Inthis state we found the church of Lhanpadarn, without ahead.  A certain old man, waxen old in iniquity (whose namewas Eden Oen, son of Gwaithwoed), being abbot, and his sonsofficiating at the altar.  But in the reign of king HenryI., when the authority of the English prevailed in Wales, themonastery of St. Peter at Gloucester held quiet possession ofthis church; but after his death, the English being driven out,the monks were expelled from their cloisters, and their placessupplied by the same p. 112violent intrusion of clergy andlaity, which had formerly been practised.  It happened thatin the reign of king Stephen, who succeeded Henry I., a knight,born in Armorican Britain, having travelled through many parts ofthe world, from a desire of seeing different cities, and themanners of their inhabitants, came by chance to Lhanpadarn. On a certain feast-day, whilst both the clergy and people werewaiting for the arrival of the abbot to celebrate mass, heperceived a body of young men, armed, according to the custom oftheir country, approaching towards the church; and on enquiringwhich of them was the abbot, they pointed out to him a manwalking foremost, with a long spear in his hand.  Gazing onhim with amazement, he asked, “If the abbot had not anotherhabit, or a different staff, from that which he now carriedbefore him?”  On their answering, “No!” hereplied, “I have seen indeed and heard this day a wonderfulnovelty!” and from that hour he returned home, and finishedhis labours and researches.  This wicked people boasts, thata certain bishop [112] of their church (for it formerly was acathedral) was murdered by their predecessors; and on thisaccount, chiefly, they ground their claims of right andpossession.  No public complaint having been made againsttheir conduct, we have thought it more prudent to pass over, forthe present, the enormities of this wicked race withdissimulation, than exasperate them by a further relation.

p.113CHAPTER V
OF THE RIVER DEVI, AND THE LAND OF THESONS OF CONAN

Approaching to the river Devi, [113a] which divides North and South Wales,the bishop of St. David’s, and Rhys the son of Gruffydd,who with a liberality peculiarly praiseworthy in so illustrious aprince, had accompanied us from the castle of Aberteivi,throughout all Cardiganshire, to this place, returned home. Having crossed the river in a boat, and quitted the diocese ofSt. David’s, we entered the land of the sons of Conan, orMerionyth, the first province of Venedotia on that side of thecountry, and belonging to the bishopric of Bangor. [113b]  We slept that night atTowyn.  Early next morning, Gruffydd son of Conan [113c] came to meet us, humbly and devoutlyasking pardon for having so long delayed his attention to thearchbishop.  On the same day, we ferried over the bifurcateriver Maw, [113d] where Malgo, son of Rhys, who hadattached himself to the archbishop, as a companion to theking’s court, discovered a ford near p. 114thesea.  That night we lay at Llanvair, [114a] that is the church of St. Mary, inthe province of Ardudwy. [114b]  Thisterritory of Conan, and particularly Merionyth, is the rudest androughest district of all Wales; the ridges of its mountains arevery high and narrow, terminating in sharp peaks, and soirregularly jumbled together, that if the shepherds conversing ordisputing with each other from their summits, should agree tomeet, they could scarcely effect their purpose in the course ofthe whole day.  The lances of this country are very long;for as South Wales excels in the use of the bow, so North Walesis distinguished for its skill in the lance; insomuch that aniron coat of mail will not resist the stroke of a lance thrown ata small distance.  The next morning, the youngest son ofConan, named Meredyth, met us at the passage of a bridge,attended by his people, where many persons were signed with thecross; amongst whom was a fine young man of his suite, and one ofhis intimate friends; and Meredyth, observing that the cloak, onwhich the cross was to be sewed, appeared of too thin and of toocommon a texture, with a flood of tears, threw him down hisown.

p.115CHAPTER VI
PASSAGE OF TRAETH MAWR AND TRAETH BACHAN,AND OF NEVYN, CARNARVON, AND BANGOR

We continued our journey over theTraeth Mawr, [115a] and Traeth Bachan, [115b] that is, the greater and the smallerarm of the sea, where two stone castles have newly been erected;one called Deudraeth, belonging to the sons of Conan, situated inEvionyth, towards the northern mountains; the other named CarnMadryn, the property of the sons of Owen, built on the other sideof the river towards the sea, on the head-land Lleyn. [115c]  Traeth, in the Welsh language,signifies a tract of sand flooded by the tides, and left barewhen the sea ebbs.  We had before passed over the notedrivers, the Dissenith, [115d] between the Mawand Traeth Mawr, and the Arthro, between the Traeth Mawr andTraeth Bachan.  We slept that night at Nevyn, on the eve ofPalm Sunday, where the archdeacon, after long inquiry andresearch, is said to have found Merlin Sylvestris. [115e]

p.116Beyond Lleyn, there is a small island inhabited by veryreligious monks, called Cælibes, or Colidei.  Thisisland, either from the wholesomeness of its climate, owing toits vicinity to Ireland, or rather from some miracle obtained bythe merits of the saints, has this wonderful peculiarity, thatthe oldest people die first, because diseases are uncommon, andscarcely any die except from extreme old age.  Its name isEnlli in the Welsh, and Berdesey [116a] in the Saxonlanguage; and very many bodies of saints are said to be buriedthere, and amongst them that of Daniel, bishop of Bangor.

The archbishop having, by his sermon the next day, inducedmany persons to take the cross, we proceeded towards Banchor,passing through Caernarvon, [116b] that is, thecastle of Arvon; it is called Arvon, the province opposite toMôn, because it is so situated with respect to the islandof Mona.  Our road leading us to a steep valley, [116c] with many broken ascents anddescents, we dismounted p. 117from our horses, and proceeded onfoot, rehearsing, as it were, by agreement, some experiments ofour intended pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  Having traversed thevalley, and reached the opposite side with considerable fatigue,the archbishop, to rest himself and recover his breath, sat downon an oak which had been torn up by the violence of the winds;and relaxing into a pleasantry highly laudable in a person of hisapproved gravity, thus addressed his attendants: “Whoamongst you, in this company, can now delight our wearied ears bywhistling?” which is not easily done by people out ofbreath.  He affirming that he could, if he thought fit, thesweet notes are heard, in an adjoining wood, of a bird, whichsome said was a woodpecker, and others, more correctly, anaureolus.  The woodpecker is called in French, spec,and with its strong bill, perforates oak trees; the other bird incalled aureolus, from the golden tints of its feathers, and atcertain seasons utters a sweet whistling note instead of asong.  Some persons having remarked, that the nightingalewas never heard in this country, the archbishop, with asignificant smile, replied, “The nightingale followed wisecounsel, and never came into Wales; but we, unwise counsel, whohave penetrated and gone through it.”  We remainedthat night at Banchor, [117] p. 118themetropolitan see of North Wales, and were well entertained by thebishop of the diocese. [118a]  On thenext day, mass being celebrated by the archbishop before the highaltar, the bishop of that see, at the instance of the archbishopand other persons, more importunate than persuasive, wascompelled to take the cross, to the general concern of all hispeople of both sexes, who expressed their grief on this occasionby loud and lamentable vociferations.

CHAPTER VII
THE ISLAND OF MONA

From hence, we crossed over a smallarm of the sea to the island of Mona, [118b] distant from thence about two miles,where Roderic, the younger son of Owen, attended by nearly allthe inhabitants of the island, and many others from the adjacentcountries, came in a devout manner to meet us.  Confessionhaving been made in a place near the shore, where the surroundingrocks seemed to form a natural theatre, [118c] many persons were p. 119induced totake the cross, by the persuasive discourses of the archbishop,and Alexander, our interpreter, archdeacon of that place, and ofSisillus, abbot of Stratflur.  Many chosen youths of thefamily of Roderic were seated on an opposite rock, and not one ofthem could be prevailed upon to take the cross, although thearchbishop and others most earnestly exhorted them, but in vain,by an address particularly directed to them.  It came topass within three days, as if by divine vengeance, that theseyoung men, with many others, pursued some robbers of thatcountry.  Being discomfited and put to flight, some wereslain, others mortally wounded, and the survivors voluntarilyassumed that cross they had before despised.  Roderic, also,who a short time before had incestuously married the daughter ofRhys, related to him by blood in the third degree, in order, bythe assistance of that prince, to be better able to defendhimself against the sons of his brothers, whom he haddisinherited, not paying attention to the wholesome admonitionsof the archbishop on this subject, was a little while afterwardsdispossessed of all his lands by their means; thus deservedlymeeting with disappointment from the very source from which heexpected support.  The p. 120island of Mona contains threehundred and forty-three vills, considered equal to threecantreds.  Cantred, a compound word from the British andIrish languages, is a portion of land equal to one hundredvills.  There are three islands contiguous to Britain, onits different sides, which are said to be nearly of an equalsize—the Isle of Wight on the south, Mona on the west, andMania (Man) on the north-west side.  The two first areseparated from Britain by narrow channels; the third is muchfurther removed, lying almost midway between the countries ofUlster in Ireland and Galloway in Scotland.  The island ofMona is an arid and stony land, rough and unpleasant in itsappearance, similar in its exterior qualities to the land ofPebidion, [120a] near St. David’s, but verydifferent as to its interior value.  For this island isincomparably more fertile in corn than any other part of Wales,from whence arose the British proverb, “Mon mam Cymbry,Mona mother of Wales;” and when the crops have beendefective in all other parts of the country, this island, fromthe richness of its soil and abundant produce, has been able tosupply all Wales.

As many things within this island are worthy of remark, Ishall not think it superfluous to make mention of some ofthem.  There is a stone here resembling a human thigh, [120b] which possesses this innate virtue,that whatever distance it may be carried, it returns, of its ownaccord, the following night, as has often been experienced by theinhabitants.  Hugh, earl of Chester, [120c] p. 121in the reign of king Henry I.,having by force occupied this island and the adjacent country,heard of the miraculous power of this stone, and, for the purposeof trial, ordered it to be fastened, with strong iron chains, toone of a larger size, and to be thrown into the sea.  On thefollowing morning, however, according to custom, it was found inits original position, on which account the earl issued a publicedict, that no one, from that time, should presume to move thestone from its place.  A countryman, also, to try the powersof this stone, fastened it to his thigh, which immediately becameputrid, and the stone returned to its original situation.

There is in the same island a stony hill, not very large orhigh, from one side of which, if you cry aloud, you will not beheard on the other; and it is called (by anti-phrasis) the rockof hearers.  In the northern part of Great Britain(Northumberland) so named by the English, from its situationbeyond the river Humber, there is a hill of a similar nature,where if a loud horn or trumpet is sounded on one side, it cannotbe heard on the opposite one.  There is also in this islandthe church of St. Tefredaucus, [121] into which Hugh,earl of Shrewsbury, (who, together with the earl of Chester, hadforcibly entered Anglesey), on a certain night put some dogs,which on the following morning were found mad, and he himselfdied within a month; for some pirates, from the Orcades, havingentered the port of the island in their long vessels, the earl,apprised of their approach, boldly met them, rushing into the seaupon a spirited horse.  p. 122The commander of the expedition,Magnus, standing on the prow of the foremost ship, aimed an arrowat him; and, although the earl was completely equipped in a coatof mail, and guarded in every part of his body except his eyes,the unlucky weapon struck his right eye, and, entering his brain,he fell a lifeless corpse into the sea.  The victor, seeinghim in this state, proudly and exultingly exclaimed, in theDanish tongue, “Leit loup,” let him leap; and fromthis time the power of the English ceased in Anglesey.  Inour times, also, when Henry II. was leading an army into NorthWales, where he had experienced the ill fortune of war in anarrow, woody pass near Coleshulle, he sent a fleet intoAnglesey, and began to plunder the aforesaid church, and othersacred places.  But the divine vengeance pursued him, forthe inhabitants rushed upon the invaders, few against many,unarmed against armed; and having slain great numbers, and takenmany prisoners, gained a most complete and bloody victory. For, as our Topography of Ireland testifies, that the Welsh andIrish are more prone to anger and revenge than any other nations,the saints, likewise, of those countries appear to be of a morevindictive nature.

Two noble persons, and uncles of the author of this book, weresent thither by the king; namely, Henry, son of king Henry I.,and uncle to king Henry II., by Nest, daughter of Rhys, prince ofSouth Wales; and Robert Fitz-Stephen, brother to Henry, a man whoin our days, shewing the way to others, first attacked Ireland,and whose fame is recorded in our Vaticinal History.  Henry,actuated by too much valour, and ill supported, was pierced by alance, and fell amongst the foremost, to the great concern of hisattendants; and Robert, despairing of being able to defendhimself, was badly wounded, and escaped with difficulty to theships.

There is a small island, almost adjoining to Anglesey, whichis inhabited by hermits, living by manual labour, and servingGod.  It is remarkable that when, by the p. 123influenceof human passions, any discord arises among them, all theirprovisions are devoured and infected by a species of small mice,with which the island abounds; but when the discord ceases, theyare no longer molested.  Nor is it to be wondered at, if theservants of God sometimes disagree, since Jacob and Esaucontended in the womb of Rebecca, and Paul and Barnabas differed;the disciples also of Jesus disputed which of them should be thegreatest, for these are the temptations of human infirmity; yetvirtue is often made perfect by infirmity, and faith is increasedby tribulations.  This island is called in Welsh, YnysLenach, [123a] or the ecclesiastical island, becausemany bodies of saints are deposited there, and no woman issuffered to enter it.

We saw in Anglesey a dog, who accidentally had lost his tail,and whose whole progeny bore the same defect.  It iswonderful that nature should, as it were, conform itself in thisparticular to the accident of the father.  We saw also aknight, named Earthbald, born in Devonshire, whose father,denying the child with which his mother was pregnant, and frommotives of jealousy accusing her of inconstancy, nature alonedecided the controversy by the birth of the child, who, by amiracle, exhibited on his upper lip a scar, similar to one hisfather bore in consequence of a wound he had received from alance in one of his military expeditions.  Stephen, the sonof Earthbald, had a similar mark, the accident being in a mannerconverted into nature.  A like miracle of nature occurred inearl Alberic, son of Alberic earl of Veer, [123b] whose father, during the pregnancy ofhis p.124mother, the daughter of Henry of Essex, having labouredto procure a divorce, on account of the ignominy of her father,the child, when born, had the same blemish in its eye, as thefather had got from a casual hurt.  These defects may beentailed on the offspring, perhaps, by the impression made on thememory by frequent and steady observation; as it is reported thata queen, accustomed to see the picture of a negro in her chamber,unexpectedly brought forth a black child, and is exculpated byQuintilian, on account of the picture.  In like manner ithappened to the spotted sheep, given by Laban out of his flock tohis nephew Jacob, and which conceived by means of variegatedrods. [124]  Nor is the child always affectedby the mother’s imagination alone, but sometimes by that ofthe father; for it is well known that a man, seeing a passengernear him, who was convulsed both behind and before, on going homeand telling his wife that he could not get the impression of thissight off his mind, begat a child who was affected in a similarmanner.

p.125CHAPTER VIII
PASSAGE OF THE RIVER CONWY IN A BOAT, ANDOF DINAS EMRYS

On our return to Banchor from Mona,we were shown the tombs of prince Owen and his younger brotherCadwalader, [125a] who were buried in a double vaultbefore the high altar, although Owen, on account of his publicincest with his cousin-german, had died excommunicated by theblessed martyr St. Thomas, the bishop of that see having beenenjoined to seize a proper opportunity of removing his body fromthe church.  We continued our journey on the sea coast,confined on one side by steep rocks, and by the sea on the other,towards the river Conwy, which preserves its waters unadulteratedby the sea.  Not far from the source of the river Conwy, atthe head of the Eryri mountain, which on this side extends itselftowards the north, stands Dinas Emrys, that is, the promontory ofAmbrosius, where Merlin [125b] uttered hisprophecies, whilst Vortigern was seated upon the bank. There were two Merlins; the one called Ambrosius who prophesiedin the time of king Vortigern, p. 126was begotten by a demon incubus, andfound at Caermardin, from which circumstance that city derivedits name of Caermardin, or the city of Merlin; the other Merlin,born in Scotland, was named Celidonius, from the Celidonian woodin which he prophesied; and Sylvester, because when engaged inmartial conflict, he discovered in the air a terrible monster,and from that time grew mad, and taking shelter in a wood, passedthe remainder of his days in a savage state.  This Merlinlived in the time of king Arthur, and is said to have prophesiedmore fully and explicitly than the other.  I shall pass overin silence what was done by the sons of Owen in our days, afterhis death, or while he was dying, who, from the wicked desire ofreigning, totally disregarded the ties of fraternity; but I shallnot omit mentioning another event which occurred likewise in ourdays.  Owen, [126] son of Gruffyth,prince of North Wales, had many sons, but only one legitimate,namely, Iorwerth Drwyndwn, which in Welsh means flat-nosed, whohad a son named Llewelyn.  This young man, being only twelveyears of age, began, during the period of our journey, to molesthis uncles David and Roderic, the sons of Owen by Christiana, hiscousin-german; and although they had divided amongst themselvesall North Wales, except the land of Conan, and although David,having married the sister of king Henry II., by whom he had oneson, was powerfully supported by the English, yet within a fewyears the legitimate son, destitute of lands or money (by the aidof divine vengeance), bravely expelled from North Wales those whowere born in public incest, though supported by their own wealthand by that of p.127others, leaving them nothing but what the liberality ofhis own mind and the counsel of good men from pity suggested: aproof that adulterous and incestuous persons are displeasing toGod.

CHAPTER IX
OF THE MOUNTAINS OF ERYRI

I must not pass over in silence themountains called by the Welsh Eryri, but by the English Snowdon,or Mountains of Snow, which gradually increasing from the land ofthe sons of Conan, and extending themselves northwards nearDeganwy, seem to rear their lofty summits even to the clouds,when viewed from the opposite coast of Anglesey.  They aresaid to be of so great an extent, that according to an ancientproverb, “As Mona could supply corn for all the inhabitantsof Wales, so could the Eryri mountains afford sufficient pasturefor all the herds, if collected together.”  Hencethese lines of Virgil may be applied to them:—

“Et quantum longis carpent armentadiebus,
Exigua tautum gelidus ros nocte reponet.”

“And what is cropt by day the night renews,
Shedding refreshful stores of cooling dews.”

On the highest parts of these mountains are two lakes worthyof admiration.  The one has a floating island in it, whichis often driven from one side to the other by the force of thewinds; and the shepherds behold with astonishment their cattle,whilst feeding, carried to the distant parts of the lake.  Apart of the bank naturally bound together by the roots of willowsand other shrubs may have been broken off, and increased by thealluvion of the earth from the shore; and being continually p. 128agitated bythe winds, which in so elevated a situation blow with greatviolence, it cannot reunite itself firmly with the banks. The other lake is noted for a wonderful and singularmiracle.  It contains three sorts of fish—eels, trout,and perch, all of which have only one eye, the left beingwanting; but if the curious reader should demand of me theexplanation of so extraordinary a circumstance, I cannot presumeto satisfy him.  It is remarkable also, that in two placesin Scotland, one near the eastern, the other near the westernsea, the fish called mullets possess the same defect, having noleft eye.  According to vulgar tradition, these mountainsare frequented by an eagle who, perching on a fatal stone everyfifth holiday, in order to satiate her hunger with the carcasesof the slain, is said to expect war on that same day, and to havealmost perforated the stone by cleaning and sharpening herbeak.

CHAPTER X
OF THE PASSAGE BY DEGANWY AND RUTHLAN, ANDTHE SEE OF LANELWY, AND OF COLESHULLE

Having crossed the river Conwy, [128a] or rather an arm of the sea, underDeganwy, leaving the Cistercian monastery of Conwy [128b] on the western bank of the river toour right hand, we arrived at Ruthlan, a noble castle on the p. 129riverCloyd, belonging to David, the eldest son of Owen [129a] where, at the earnest invitation ofDavid himself, we were handsomely entertained that night.

There is a spring not far from Ruthlan, in the province ofTegengel, [129b] which not only regularly ebbs andflows like the sea, twice in twenty-four hours, but at othertimes frequently rises and falls both by night and day. Trogus Pompeius says, “that there is a town of theGaramantes, where there is a spring which is hot and coldalternately by day and night.” [129c]

Many persons in the morning having been persuaded to dedicatethemselves to the service of Christ, we proceeded from Ruthlan tothe small cathedral church of Lanelwy; [129d] from whence (the archbishop havingcelebrated mass) we continued our journey through a country richin minerals of silver, where money is sought in the bowels of theearth, to the little cell of Basinwerk, [129e] where we passed the night.  Thefollowing day we traversed a long quicksand, and not without somedegree of apprehension, leaving the woody district of Coleshulle,[129f] or hill of coal, on our right hand,where Henry II., who in our time, actuated by youthful andindiscreet ardour, made a hostile irruption into Wales, andpresuming to pass through that narrow and woody defile,experienced a signal defeat, and a very heavy loss p. 130of men. [130]  The aforesaid king invaded Walesthree times with an army; first, North Wales at theabove-mentioned place; secondly, South Wales, by the sea-coast ofGlamorgan and Goer, penetrating as far as Caermarddin andPencadair, and returning by Ellennith and Melenith; and thirdly,the country of Powys, near Oswaldestree; but in all theseexpeditions the king was unsuccessful, because he placed noconfidence in the prudent and well-informed chieftains of thecountry, but was principally advised by people remote from themarches, and ignorant of the manners and customs of thenatives.  In every expedition, as the artificer is to betrusted in his trade, so the advice of those people should beconsulted, who, by a long residence in the country, are becomeconversant with the manners and customs of the natives; and towhom it is of high importance that the power of the hostilenation, with whom, by a long and continued warfare, they havecontracted an implacable enmity and hatred, should be weakened ordestroyed, as we have set forth in our Vaticinal History.

In this wood of Coleshulle, a young Welshman was killed whilepassing through the king’s army; the greyhound whoaccompanied him did not desert his master’s corpse foreight days, though without food; but faithfully defended it fromthe attacks of dogs, wolves, and birds of prey, with a wonderfulattachment.  What son to his father, what Nisus to Euryalus,what Polynices to Tydeus, what Orestes to Pylades, would haveshewn such an affectionate regard?  As a mark of favour tothe dog, who was almost starved to death, the English, althoughbitter enemies to the Welsh, ordered the body, now nearly putrid,to be deposited in the ground with the accustomed offices ofhumanity.

p.131CHAPTER XI
OF THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER DEE, AND OFCHESTER

Having crossed the river Dee belowChester, (which the Welsh call Doverdwy), on the third day beforeEaster, or the day of absolution (holy Thursday), we reachedChester.  As the river Wye towards the south separates Walesfrom England, so the Dee near Chester forms the northernboundary.  The inhabitants of these parts assert, that thewaters of this river change their fords every month, and, as itinclines more towards England or Wales, they can, with certainty,prognosticate which nation will be successful or unfortunateduring the year.  This river derives its origin from thelake Penmelesmere, [131a] and, although itabounds with salmon, yet none are found in the lake.  It isalso remarkable, that this river is never swollen by rains, butoften rises by the violence of the winds.

Chester boasts of being the burial-place of Henry, [131b] a Roman emperor, who, after havingimprisoned his carnal and spiritual father, pope Paschal, gavehimself up to penitence; and, becoming a voluntary exile in thiscountry, ended his days in solitary retirement.  It is alsoasserted, that the remains of Harold are here deposited.  Hewas the last of the Saxon kings in England, and as a punishmentfor his perjury, was defeated in the battle of Hastings, foughtagainst the Normans.  Having received many wounds, and losthis left eye by an p.132arrow in that engagement, he is said to have escaped tothese parts, where, in holy conversation, leading the life of ananchorite, and being a constant attendant at one of the churchesof this city, he is believed to have terminated his days happily.[132]  The truth of these twocircumstances was declared (and not before known) by the dyingconfession of each party.  We saw here, what appeared novelto us, cheese made of deer’s milk; for the countess and hermother keeping tame deer, presented to the archbishop three smallcheeses made from their milk.

In this same country was produced, in our time, a cowpartaking of the nature of a stag, resembling its mother in thefore parts and the stag in its hips, legs, and feet, and havingthe skin and colour of the stag; but, partaking more of thenature of the domestic than of the wild animal, it remained withthe herd of cattle.  A bitch also was pregnant by a monkey,and produced a litter of whelps resembling a monkey before, andthe dog behind; which the rustic keeper of the military hallseeing with astonishment and abhorrence, immediately killed withthe stick he carried in his hand; thereby incurring the severeresentment and anger of his lord, when the latter becameacquainted with the circumstance.

In our time, also, a woman was born in Chester without hands,to whom nature had supplied a remedy for that defect by theflexibility and delicacy of the joints of her feet, with whichshe could sew, or perform any work with thread or scissors, aswell as other women.

p.133CHAPTER XII
OF THE JOURNEY BY THE WHITE MONASTERY,OSWALDESTREE, POWYS, AND SHREWSBURY

The feast of Easter having beenobserved with due solemnity, and many persons, by theexhortations of the archbishop, signed with the cross, wedirected our way from Chester to the White Monastery, [133a] and from thence towards Oswaldestree;where, on the very borders of Powys, we were met by Gruffydd sonof Madoc, and Elissa, princes of that country, and many others;some few of whom having been persuaded to take the cross (forseveral of the multitude had been previously signed by Reiner, [133b] the bishop of that place), Gruffydd,prince of the district, publicly adjured, in the presence of thearchbishop, his cousin-german, Angharad, daughter of prince Owen,whom, according to the vicious custom of the country, he had longconsidered as his wife.  We slept at Oswaldestree, or thetree of St. Oswald, and were most sumptuously entertained afterthe English manner, by William Fitz-Alan, [133c] a noble and liberal p. 134youngman.  A short time before, whilst Reiner was preaching, arobust youth being earnestly exhorted to follow the example ofhis companions in taking the cross, answered, “I will notfollow your advice until, with this lance which I bear in myhand, I shall have avenged the death of my lord,” alludingto Owen, son of Madoc, a distinguished warrior, who had beenmaliciously and treacherously slain by Owen Cyfeilioc, hiscousin-german; and while he was thus venting his anger andrevenge, and violently brandishing his lance, it suddenly snappedasunder, and fell disjointed in several pieces to the ground, thehandle only remaining in his hand.  Alarmed and astonishedat this omen, which he considered as a certain signal for histaking the cross, he voluntarily offered his services.

In this third district of Wales, called Powys, there are mostexcellent studs put apart for breeding, and deriving their originfrom some fine Spanish horses, which Robert de Belesme, [134a] earl of Shrewsbury, brought into thiscountry: on which account the horses sent from hence areremarkable for their majestic proportion and astonishingfleetness.

Here king Henry II. entered Powys, in our days, upon anexpensive, though fruitless, expedition. [134b]  Having dismembered the hostageswhom he had previously received, he was compelled, by a suddenand violent fall p.135of rain, to retreat with his army.  On thepreceding day, the chiefs of the English army had burned some ofthe Welsh churches, with the villages and churchyards; upon whichthe sons of Owen the Great, with their light-armed troops,stirred up the resentment of their father and the other princesof the country, declaring that they would never in future spareany churches of the English.  When nearly the whole army wason the point of assenting to this determination, Owen, a man ofdistinguished wisdom and moderation—the tumult being insome degree subsided—thus spake: “My opinion, indeed,by no means agrees with yours, for we ought to rejoice at thisconduct of our adversary; for, unless supported by divineassistance, we are far inferior to the English; and they, bytheir behaviour, have made God their enemy, who is able mostpowerfully to avenge both himself and us.  We therefore mostdevoutly promise God that we will henceforth pay greaterreverence than ever to churches and holy places.” After which, the English army, on the following night,experienced (as has before been related) the divinevengeance.

From Oswaldestree, we directed our course towards Shrewsbury(Salopesburia), which is nearly surrounded by the riverSevern, where we remained a few days to rest and refreshourselves; and where many people were induced to take the cross,through the elegant sermons of the archbishop andarchdeacon.  We also excommunicated Owen de Cevelioc,because he alone, amongst the Welsh princes, did not come to meetthe archbishop with his people.  Owen was a man of morefluent speech than his contemporary princes, and was conspicuousfor the good management of his territory.  Having generallyfavoured the royal cause, and opposed the measures of his ownchieftains, he had contracted a great familiarity with king HenryII.  Being with the king at table at Shrewsbury, Henry, as amark of peculiar honour and regard, sent him one of his ownloaves; he immediately brake it into small pieces, likealms-bread, and having, p. 136like an almoner, placed them at adistance from him, he took them up one by one and ate them. The king requiring an explanation of this proceeding, Owen, witha smile, replied, “I thus follow the example of mylord;” keenly alluding to the avaricious disposition of theking, who was accustomed to retain for a long time in his ownhands the vacant ecclesiastical benefices.

It is to be remarked that three princes, [136] distinguished for their justice,wisdom, and princely moderation, ruled, p. 137in ourtime, over the three provinces of Wales: Owen, son of Gruffydd,in Venedotia, or North Wales; Meredyth, his grandson, son ofGruffydd, who died early in life, in South Wales; and Owen deCevelioc, in Powys.  But two other princes were highlycelebrated for their generosity; Cadwalader, son of Gruffydd, inNorth Wales, and Gruffydd of Maelor, son of Madoc, in Powys; andRhys, son of Gruffydd, in South Wales, deserved commendation forhis enterprising and independent spirit.  In North Wales,David, son of Owen, and on the borders of Morgannoc, in SouthWales, Howel, son of Iorwerth of Caerleon, maintained their goodfaith and credit, by observing a strict neutrality between theWelsh and English.

CHAPTER XIII
OF THE JOURNEY BY WENLOCH, BRUMFELD, THECASTLE OF LUDLOW, AND LEOMINSTER, TO HEREFORD

From Shrewsbury, we continued ourjourney towards Wenloch, by a narrow and rugged way, calledEvil-street, where, in our time, a Jew, travelling with thearchdeacon of the place, whose name was Sin (Peccatum),and the dean, whose name was Devil, towards Shrewsbury, hearingthe archdeacon say, that his archdeaconry began at a place calledEvil-street, and extended as far as Mal-pas, towards Chester,pleasantly told them, “It would be a miracle, if his fatebrought him safe out of a country, whose archdeacon was Sin,whose dean the devil; the entrance to the archdeaconryEvil-street, and its exit Bad-pass.” [137]

From Wenloch, we passed by the little cell of Brumfeld, [138] p. 138the noble castle of Ludlow, throughLeominster to Hereford leaving on our right hand the districts ofMelenyth and Elvel; thus (describing as it were a circle) we cameto the same point from which we had commenced this laboriousjourney through Wales.

During this long and laudable legation, about three thousandmen were signed with the cross; well skilled in the use of arrowsand lances, and versed in military matters; impatient to attackthe enemies of the faith; profitably and happily engaged for theservice of Christ, if the expedition of the Holy Cross had beenforwarded with an alacrity equal to the diligence and devotionwith which the forces were collected.  But by the secret,though never unjust, judgment of God, the journey of the Romanemperor was delayed, and dissensions arose amongst ourkings.  The premature and fatal hand of death arrested theking of Sicily, who had been the foremost sovereign in supplyingthe holy land with corn and provisions during the period of theirdistress.  In consequence of his death, violent contentionsarose amongst our princes respecting their several rights to thekingdom; and the faithful beyond sea suffered severely by wantand famine, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and mostanxiously waiting for supplies.  But as affliction maystrengthen the understanding, as gold is tried by fire, andvirtue may be confirmed in weakness, these things are suffered tohappen; since adversity (as Gregory testifies) opposed to goodprayers is the probation of virtue, not the judgment ofreproof.  For who does not know how fortunate a circumstanceit was that p.139Paul went to Italy, and suffered so dreadful ashipwreck?  But the ship of his heart remained unbrokenamidst the waves of the sea.

CHAPTER XIV
A DESCRIPTION OF BALDWIN, ARCHBISHOP OFCANTERBURY [139]

Let it not be thought superfluousto describe the exterior and inward qualities of that person, theparticulars of whose embassy, and as it were holy peregrination,we have briefly and succinctly related.  He was a man of adark complexion, of an open and venerable countenance, of amoderate stature, a good person, and rather inclined to be thinthan corpulent.  He was a modest and grave man, of so greatabstinence and continence, that ill report scarcely ever presumedto say any thing against him; a man of few words; slow to anger,temperate and moderate in all his passions and affections; swiftto hear, slow to speak; he was from an early age well instructedin literature, and bearing the yoke of the Lord from his youth,by the purity of his morals became a distinguished luminary tothe people; wherefore voluntarily resigning the honour of thearchlevite, [140] p. 140which he had canonically obtained,and despising the pomps and vanities of the world, he assumedwith holy devotion the habit of the Cistercian order; and as hehad been formerly more than a monk in his manners, within thespace of a year he was appointed abbot, and in a few yearsafterwards preferred first to a bishopric, and then to anarchbishopric; and having been found faithful in a little, hadauthority given him over much.  But, as Cicero says,“Nature had made nothing entirely perfect;” when hecame into power, not laying aside that sweet innate benignitywhich he had always shewn when a private man, sustaining hispeople with his staff rather than chastising them with rods,feeding them as it were with the milk of a mother, and not makinguse of the scourges of the father, he incurred public scandal forhis remissness.  So great was his lenity that he put an endto all pastoral rigour; and was a better monk than abbot, abetter bishop than archbishop.  Hence pope Urban addressedhim; “Urban, servant of the servants of God, to the mostfervent monk, to the warm abbot, to the luke-warm bishop, to theremiss archbishop, health, etc.”

This second successor to the martyr Thomas, having heard ofthe insults offered to our Saviour and his holy cross, wasamongst the first who signed themselves with the cross, andmanfully assumed the office of preaching its service both at homeand in the most remote parts of the kingdom.  Pursuing hisjourney to the Holy Land, he embarked on board a vessel atMarseilles, and landed safely in a port at Tyre, from whence heproceeded to Acre, where he found our army both attacking andattacked, our forces dispirited by the defection of the princes,and thrown into a state of desolation and despair; fatigued bylong expectation of supplies, greatly afflicted by hunger andwant, and distempered by the inclemency of the air: finding hisend approaching, p.141he embraced his fellow subjects, relieving their wantsby liberal acts of charity and pious exhortations, and by thetenor of his life and actions strengthened them in the faith;whose ways, life, and deeds, may he who is alone the “way,the truth, and the life,” the way without offence, thetruth without doubt, and the life without end, direct in truth,together with the whole body of the faithful, and for the gloryof his name and the palm of faith which he hath planted, teachtheir hands to war, and their fingers to fight.

FOOTNOTES:

[0a]  It is a somewhat curiouscoincidence that the island of Barry is now owned by a descendantof Gerald de Windor’s elder brother—the Earl ofPlymouth.

[0b]  “Mirror of theChurch,” ii. 33.

[0c]  “Social England,”vol. i. p. 342.

[0d]  Published in the first instancein the “Transactions of the Cymmrodaian Society,” andsubsequently amplified and brought out in book form.

[0e]  Introduction to Borrow’s“Wild Wales” in the Everyman Series.

[0f]  Geoffrey, who ended his life asBishop of St. Asaph, was supposed to have found the material forhis “History of the British Kings” in a Welsh book,containing a history of the Britons, which Waltor Colenius,Archdeacon of Oxford, picked up during a journey in Brittany.

[0g]  Walter Map, another Archdeacon ofOxford, was born in Glamorganshire, the son of a Norman knight bya Welsh mother.  Inter aliahe was the author of aWelsh work on agriculture.

[0h]  Green, “Hist. Eng.People,” i. 172.

[0i]  “England under the AngevinKings,” vol. ii. 457.

[0j]  Project Gutenberg has released“The Description of Wales” as a separateeText—David Price.

[11]  Giraldus has committed an errorin placing Urban III. at the head of the apostolic see; for hedied at Ferrara in the month of October, A.D. 1187, and was succeeded by GregoryVIII., whose short reign expired in the month of Decemberfollowing.  Clement III. was elected pontiff in the year1188.  Frederick I., surnamed Barbarossa, succeeded ConradIII. in the empire of Germany, in March, 1152, and was drowned ina river of Cilicia whilst bathing, in 1190.  Isaac Angelussucceeded Andronicus I. as emperor of Constantinople, in 1185,and was dethroned in 1195.  Philip II., surnamed Augustus,from his having been born in the month of August, was crowned atRheims, in 1179, and died at Mantes, in 1223. William II., kingof Sicily, surnamed the Good, succeeded in 1166 to his father,William the Bad, and died in 1189.  Bela III., king ofHungary, succeeded to the throne in 1174, and died in 1196. Guy de Lusignan was crowned king of Jerusalem in 1186, and in thefollowing year his city was taken by the victorious Saladin.

[12a]  New Radnor.

[12b]  Rhys ap Gruffydd was grandson toRhys ap Tewdwr, prince of South Wales, who, in 1090, was slain inan engagement with the Normans.  He was a prince of greattalent, but great versatility of character, and made aconspicuous figure in Welsh history.  He died in 1196, andwas buried in the cathedral of St. David’s; where hiseffigy, as well as that of his son Rhys Gryg, still remain in agood state of preservation.

[12c]  Peter de Leia, prior of theBenedictine monastery of Wenlock, in Shropshire, was thesuccessful rival of Giraldus for the bishopric of SaintDavid’s, vacant by the death of David Fitzgerald, the uncleof our author; but he did not obtain his promotion withoutconsiderable opposition from the canons, who submitted to theabsolute sequestration of their property before they consented tohis election, being desirous that the nephew should havesucceeded his uncle.  He was consecrated in 1176, and diedin 1199.

[12d]  In the Latin of Giraldus, thename of Eineon is represented by Æneas, and Eineon Clyd byÆneas Claudius.

[13]  Cruker Castle.  Thecorresponding distance between Old and New Radnor evidentlyplaces this castle at Old Radnor, which was anciently calledPen-y-craig, Pencraig, or Pen-crûg, from its situation on arocky eminence.  Cruker is a corruption, probably, fromCrûg-caerau, the mount, or height, of thefortifications.

[14a]  Buelth or Builth, a large markettown on the north-west edge of the county of Brecon, on thesouthern banks of the Wye, over which there is a long andhandsome bridge of stone.  It had formerly a strong castle,the site and earthworks of which still remain, but the buildingis destroyed.

[14b]  Llan-Avan, a small church at thefoot of barren mountains about five or six miles north-west ofBuelth.  The saint from whom it takes its name, was one ofthe sons of Cedig ab Cunedda; whose ancestor, Cunedda, king ofthe Britons, was the head of one of the three holy families ofBritain.  He is said to have lived in the beginning of thesixth century.

[14c] Melenia, Warthrenion, Elevein,Elvenia, Melenyth, and Elvein, places mentioned in this firstchapter, and varying in their orthography, were three differentdistricts in Radnorshire: Melenyth is a hundred in the northernpart of the county, extending into Montgomeryshire, in which isthe church of Keri: Elvein retains in modern days the name ofElvel, and is a hundred in the southern part of the county,separated from Brecknockshire by the Wye; and Warthrenion, inwhich was the castle built by prince Rhys at Rhaiadyr-gwy, seemsto have been situated between the other two.  Warthrenionmay more properly be called Gwyrthrynion, it was anciently one ofthe three comots of Arwystli, a cantref of Merioneth.  Inthe year 1174, Melyenith was in the possession of Cadwallon apMadawc, cousin german to prince Rhys; Elvel was held by EineonClyd and Gwyrthrynion by Eineon ap Rhys, both sons-in-law to thatillustrious prince.

[15a]  The church of Saint Germanus isnow known by the name of Saint Harmans, and is situated three orfour miles from Rhaiadyr, in Radnorshire, on the right-hand ofthe road from thence to Llanidloes; it is a small and simplestructure, placed on a little eminence, in a dreary plainsurrounded by mountains.

[15b]  Several churches in Wales havebeen dedicated to Saint Curig, who came into Wales in the seventhcentury.

[16a]  Glascum is a small village in amountainous and retired situation between Builth and Kington, inHerefordshire.

[16b]  Bangu.—This was a handbell kept in all the Welsh churches, which the clerk or sextontook to the house of the deceased on the day of the funeral: whenthe procession began, a psalm was sung; the bellman then soundedhis bell in a solemn manner for some time, till another psalm wasconcluded; and he again sounded it at intervals, till the funeralarrived at the church.

[16c]  Rhaiadyr, called alsoRhaiader-gwy, is a small village and market-town inRadnorshire.  The site only of the castle, built by princeRhys, A.D. 1178, now remains at ashort distance from the village; it was strongly situated on anatural rock above the river Wye, which, below the bridge, formsa cataract.

[16d]  Llywel, a small village about amile from Trecastle, on the great road leading from thence toLlandovery; it was anciently a township, and by charter of Philipand Mary was attached to the borough of Brecknock, by the name ofTrecastle ward.

[17]  Leland, in his description ofthis part of Wales, mentions a lake in Low Elvel, or Elvenia,which may perhaps be the same as that alluded to in this passageof Giraldus.  “There is a llinne in Low Elvel within amile of Payne’s castel by the church called Lanpeder. The llinne is caullid Bougklline, and is of no great quantite,but is plentiful of pike, and perche, andeles.”—Leland, Itin.tom. v. p. 72.

[18a]  Hay.—A pleasantmarket-town on the southern banks of the river Wye, over whichthere is a bridge.  It still retains some marks of baronialantiquity in the old castle, within the present town, the gatewayof which is tolerably perfect.  A high raised tumulusadjoining the church marks the site of the more ancientfortress.  The more modern and spacious castle owes itsfoundation probably to one of those Norman lords, who, about theyear 1090, conquered this part of Wales.  Little notice istaken of this castle in the Welsh chronicles; but we are informedthat it was destroyed in 1231, by Henry II., and that it wasrefortified by Henry III.

[18b]  Llanddew, a small village, abouttwo miles from Brecknock, on the left of the road leading fromthence to Hay; its manor belongs to the bishops of SaintDavid’s, who had formerly a castellated mansion there, ofwhich some ruins still remain.  The tithes of this parishare appropriated to the archdeaconry of Brecknock, and here wasthe residence of our author Giraldus, which he mentions inseveral of his writings, and alludes to with heartfeltsatisfaction at the end of the third chapter of thisItinerary.

[18c]  Aberhodni, the ancient name ofthe town and castle of Brecknock, derived from its situation atthe confluence of the river Hodni with the Usk.  The castleand two religious buildings, of which the remains are stillextant, owed their foundation to Bernard de Newmarch, a Normanknight, who, in the year 1090, obtained by conquest the lordshipof Brecknock.  [The modern Welsh name is Aberhonddu.]

[19a]  Iestyn ap Gwrgant was lord ofthe province of Morganwg, or Glamorgan, and a formidable rival toRhys ap Tewdwr, prince of South Wales; but unable to cope withhim in power, he prevailed on Robert Fitzhamon, a Norman knight,to come to his assistance.

[19b]  This little river rises near theruins of Blanllyfni castle, between Llangorse pool and theturnpike road leading from Brecknock to Abergavenny, and emptiesitself into the river Usk, near Glasbury.

[19c]  A pretty little village on thesouthern banks of the Usk, about four miles from Hay, on the roadleading to Brecknock.

[19d]  The great desolation herealluded to, is attributed by Dr. Powel to Howel and Meredyth,sons of Edwyn ap Eineon; not to Howel, son of Meredith.  Inthe year 1021, they conspired against Llewelyn ap Sitsyllt, andslew him: Meredith was slain in 1033, and Howel in 1043.

[19e]  William de Breusa, or Braose,was by extraction a Norman, and had extensive possessions inEngland, as well as Normandy: he was succeeded by his son Philip,who, in the reign of William Rufus, favoured the cause of kingHenry against Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy; and beingafterwards rebellious to his sovereign, was disinherited of hislands.  By his marriage with Berta, daughter of Milo, earlof Hereford, he gained a rich inheritance in Brecknock, Overwent,and Gower.  He left issue two sons: William and Philip:William married Maude de Saint Wallery, and succeeded to thegreat estate of his father and mother, which he kept in peaceablepossession during the reigns of king Henry II. and king RichardI.  In order to avoid the persecutions of king John, heretired with his family to Ireland; and from thence returned intoWales; on hearing of the king’s arrival in Ireland, hiswife Maude fled with her sons into Scotland, where she was takenprisoner, and in the year 1210 committed, with William, her sonand heir, to Corf castle, and there miserably starved to death,by order of king John; her husband, William de Braose, escapedinto France, disguised, and dying there, was buried in the abbeychurch of Saint Victor, at Paris.  The family of SaintWalery, or Valery, derived their name from a sea-port inFrance.

[21] A small church dedicated to SaintDavid, in the suburbs of Brecknock, on the great road leadingfrom thence to Trecastle.  “The paroche of Llanvays,Llan-chirch-Vais extra, ac si diceres, extra muros.  Itstandeth betwixt the river of Uske and Tyrtorelle brooke, thatis, about the lower ende of the town ofBrekenok.”—Leland, Itin.tom. v. p.69.

[22a]  David Fitzgerald was promoted tothe see of Saint David’s in 1147, or according to others,in 1149.  He died A.D.1176.

[22b]  Now Howden, in the East Ridingof Yorkshire.

[22c]  Osred was king of theNorthumbrians, and son of Alfred.  He commenced to reign inA.D. 791, but was deprived of hiscrown the following year.

[23a]  St. Kenelm was the only son andheir of Kenulfus, king of the Mercians, who left him under thecare of his two sisters, Quendreda and Bragenilda.  Theformer, blinded by ambition, resolved to destroy the innocentchild, who stood between her and the throne; and for that purposeprevailed on Ascebert, who attended constantly on the king, tomurder him privately, giving him hopes, in case he complied withher wishes, of making him her partner in the kingdom.  Underthe pretence of diverting his young master, this wicked servantled him into a retired vale at Clent, in Staffordshire, andhaving murdered him, dug a pit, and cast his body into it, whichwas discovered by a miracle, and carried in solemn procession tothe abbey of Winchelcomb.  In the parish of Clent is a smallchapel dedicated to this saint.

[23b]  Winchelcumbe, or Winchcomb, inthe lower part of the hundred of Kiftsgate, in Gloucestershire, afew miles to the north of Cheltenham.

[24]  St. Kynauc, who flourished aboutthe year 492, was the reputed son of Brychan, lord of Brecknock,by Benadulved, daughter of Benadyl, a prince of Powis, whom heseduced during the time of his detention as an hostage at thecourt of her father.  He is said to have been murdered uponthe mountain called the Van, and buried in the church of MerthyrCynawg, or Cynawg the Martyr, near Brecknock, which is dedicatedto his memory.

[25a]  In Welsh, Illtyd, which has beenlatinised into Iltutus, as in the instance of St. Iltutus, thecelebrated disciple of Germanus, and the master of the learnedGildas, who founded a college for the instruction of youth atLlantwit, on the coast of Glamorganshire; but I do not conceivethis to be the same person.  The name of Ty-Illtyd, or St.Illtyd’s house, is still known as Llanamllech, but it isapplied to one of those monuments of Druidical antiquity called acistvaen, erected upon an eminence named Maenest, at a shortdistance from the village.  A rude, upright stone stoodformerly on one side of it, and was called by the country peopleMaen Illtyd, or Illtyd’s stone, but was removed about acentury ago.  A well, the stream of which divides thisparish from the neighbouring one of Llansaintfraid, is calledFfynnon Illtyd, or Illtyd’s well.  This was evidentlythe site of the hermitage mentioned by Giraldus.

[25b]  Lhanhamelach, or Llanamllech, isa small village, three miles from Brecknock, on the road toAbergavenny.

[26a]  The name of Newmarche appears inthe chartulary of Battel abbey, as a witness to one of thecharters granted by William the Conqueror to the monks of Battelin Sussex, upon his foundation of their house.  He obtainedthe territory of Brecknock by conquest, from Bleddyn ap Maenarch,the Welsh regulus thereof, about the year 1092, soon after hiscountryman, Robert Fitzhamon, had reduced the county ofGlamorgan.  He built the present town of Brecknock, where healso founded a priory of Benedictine monks.  According toLeland, he was buried in the cloister of the cathedral church atGloucester, though the mutilated remains of an effigy andmonument are still ascribed to him in the priory church atBrecknock.

[26b]  Brecheinoc, now Brecknockshire,had three cantreds or hundreds, and eight comots.—1.Cantref Selef with the comots of Selef and Trahayern.—2.Cantref Canol, or the middle hundred, with the comots Talgarth,Ystradwy, and Brwynlys, or Eglyws Yail.—3. Cantref Mawr, orthe great hundred, with the comots of Tir Raulff Llywel, andCerrig Howel.—Powel’s description of Wales, p.20.

[27]  Milo was son to Walter, constableof England in the reign of Henry I., and Emme his wife, one ofthe daughters of Dru de Baladun, sister to Hameline de Baladun, aperson of great note, who came into England with William theConqueror, and, being the first lord of Overwent in the county ofMonmouth, built the castle of Abergavenny.  He was woundedby an arrow while hunting, on Christmas eve, in 1144, and wasburied in the chapter-house of Lanthoni, near Gloucester.

[28a]  Walter de Clifford.  Thefirst of this ancient family was called Ponce; he had issue threesons, Walter, Drogo or Dru, and Richard.  TheConqueror’s survey takes notice of the two former, but fromRichard the genealogical line is preserved, who, being calledRichard de Pwns, obtained, as a gift from king Henry I., thecantref Bychan, or little hundred, and the castle of Llandovery,in Wales; he left three sons, Simon, Walter, and Richard. The Walter de Clifford here mentioned was father to thecelebrated Fair Rosamond, the favourite of king Henry II.; andwas succeeded by his eldest son, Walter, who married Margaret,daughter to Llewelyn, prince of Wales, and widow of John deBraose.

[28b]  Brendlais, or Brynllys, is asmall village on the road between Brecknock and Hay, where astately round tower marks the site of the ancient castle of theCliffords, in which the tyrant Mahel lost his life.

[29a]  St. Almedha, though not includedin the ordinary lists, is said to have been a daughter ofBrychan, and sister to St. Canoc, and to have borne the name ofElevetha, Aled, or Elyned, latinised into Almedha.  TheWelsh genealogists say, that she suffered martyrdom on a hillnear Brecknock, where a chapel was erected to her memory; andWilliam of Worcester says she was buried at Usk.  Mr. HughThomas (who wrote an essay towards the history of Brecknockshirein the year 1698) speaks of the chapel as standing, thoughunroofed and useless, in his time; the people thereabouts call itSt. Tayled.  It was situated on an eminence, about a mile tothe eastward of Brecknock, and about half a mile from afarm-house, formerly the mansion and residence of the Aubreys,lords of the manor of Slwch, which lordship was bestowed upon SirReginald Awbrey by Bernard Newmarche, in the reign of WilliamRufus.  Some small vestiges of this building may still betraced, and an aged yew tree, with a well at its foot, marks thesite near which the chapel formerly stood.

[29b]  This same habit is still (in SirRichard Colt Hoare’s time) used by the Welsh ploughboys;they have a sort of chaunt, consisting of half or even quarternotes, which is sung to the oxen at plough: the countrymenvulgarly supposing that the beasts are consoled to work moreregularly and patiently by such a lullaby.

[30a]  The umber, or grayling, is stilla plentiful and favourite fish in the rivers on the Welshborder.

[30b]  About the year 1113,“there was a talke through South Wales, of Gruffyth, thesonne of Rees ap Theodor, who, for feare of the king, had beeneof a child brought up in Ireland, and had come over two yearespassed, which time he had spent privilie with his freends,kinsfolks, and affines; as with Gerald, steward of Penbrooke, hisbrother-in-law, and others.  But at the last he was accusedto the king, that he intended the kingdome of South Wales as hisfather had enjoied it, which was now in the king’s hands;and that all the countrie hoped of libertie through him;therefore the king sent to take him.  But Gryffyth ap Reeshering this, sent to Gruffyth ap Conan, prince of North Wales,desiring him of his aid, and that he might remaine safelie withinhis countrie; which he granted, and received him joiouslie forhis father’s sake.”  He afterwards proved sotroublesome and successful an antagonist, that the kingendeavoured by every possible means to get him into hispower.  To Gruffyth ap Conan he offered “mountaines ofgold to send the said Gruffyth or his head to him.” And at a subsequent period, he sent for Owen ap-Cadogan said tohim, “Owen, I have found thee true and faithful unto me,therefore I desire thee to take or kill that murtherer, that dothso trouble my loving subjects.”  But Gruffyth escapedall the snares which the king had laid for him, and in the year1137 died a natural and honourable death; he is styled in theWelsh chronicle, “the light, honor, and staie of SouthWales;” and distinguished as the bravest, the wisest, themost merciful, liberal, and just, of all the princes ofWales.  By his wife Gwenllian, the daughter of Gruffyth apConan, he left a son, commonly called the lord Rhys, who met thearchbishop at Radnor, as is related in the first chapter of thisItinerary.

[31]  This cantref, which now bears thename of Caeo, is placed, according to the ancient divisions ofWales, in the cantref Bychan, or little hundred, and not in theCantref Mawr, or great hundred.  A village between Lampeterin Cardiganshire and Llandovery in Caermarthenshire, still bearsthe name of Cynwil Caeo, and, from its picturesque situation andthe remains of its mines, which were probably worked by theRomans, deserves the notice of the curious traveller.

[32]  The lake of Brecheinoc bears theseveral names of Llyn Savaddan, Brecinau-mere, Llangorse, andTalyllyn Pool, the two latter of which are derived from the namesof parishes on its banks.  It is a large, though by no meansa beautiful, piece of water, its banks being low and flat, andcovered with rushes and other aquatic plants to a considerabledistance from the shore.  Pike, perch, and eels are thecommon fish of this water; tench and trout are rarely, I believe,(if ever), taken in it.  The notion of its having swallowedup an ancient city is not yet quite exploded by the natives; andsome will even attribute the name of Loventium to it; which iswith much greater certainty fixed at Llanio-isau, betweenLampeter and Tregaron, in Cardiganshire, on the northern banks ofthe river Teivi, where there are very considerable and undoubtedremains of a large Roman city.  The legend of the town atthe bottom of the lake is at the same time very old.

[33a]  That chain of mountains whichdivides Brecknockshire from Caermarthenshire, over which theturnpike road formerly passed from Trecastle to Llandovery, andfrom which the river Usk derives its source.

[33b]  This mountain is now called, byway of eminence, the Van, or the height, but more commonly, bycountry people, Bannau Brycheinog, or the Brecknock heights,alluding to its two peaks.  Our author, Giraldus, seems tohave taken his account of the spring, on the summit of thismountain, from report, rather than from ocular testimony.  I(Sir R. Colt Hoare) examined the summits of each peak veryattentively, and could discern no spring whatever.  The soilis peaty and very boggy.  On the declivity of the southernside of the mountain, and at no considerable distance from thesummit, is a spring of very fine water, which my guide assured menever failed.  On the north-west side of the mountain is around pool, in which possibly trout may have been sometimesfound, but, from the muddy nature of its waters, I do not thinkit very probable; from this pool issues a small brook, whichfalls precipitously down the sides of the mountain, and pursuingits course through a narrow and well-wooded valley, forms apretty cascade near a rustic bridge which traverses it.  Iam rather inclined think, that Giraldus confounded in his accountthe spring and the pool together.

[34a]  The first of these are nowstyled the Black Mountains, of which the Gadair Fawr is theprincipal, and is only secondary to the Van in height.  TheBlack Mountains are an extensive range of hills rising to theeast of Talgarth, in the several parishes of Talgarth, Llaneliew,and Llanigorn, in the county of Brecknock, and connected with theheights of Ewyas.  The most elevated point is called YGadair, and, excepting the Brecknock Van (the Cadair Arthur ofGiraldus), is esteemed the highest mountain in South Wales. The mountains of Ewyas are those now called the Hatterel Hills,rising above the monastery of Llanthoni, and joining the BlackMountains of Talgarth at Capel y Ffin, or the chapel upon theboundary, near which the counties of Hereford, Brecknock, andMonmouth form a point of union.  But English writers havegenerally confounded all distinction, calling themindiscriminately the Black Mountains, or the Hatterel Hills.

[34b]  If we consider the circumstancesof this chapter, it will appear very evidently, that the vale ofEwyas made no part of the actual Itinerary.

[35]  Landewi Nant Hodeni, or thechurch of St. David on the Hodni, is now better known by the nameof Llanthoni abbey.  A small and rustic chapel, dedicated toSt. David, at first occupied the site of this abbey; in the year1103, William de Laci, a Norman knight, having renounced thepleasures of the world, retired to this sequestered spot, wherehe was joined in his austere profession by Ernicius, chaplain toqueen Maude.  In the year 1108, these hermits erected a meanchurch in the place of their hermitage, which was consecrated byUrban, bishop of Llandaff, and Rameline, bishop of Hereford, anddedicated to St. John the Baptist: having afterward received veryconsiderable benefactions from Hugh de Laci, and gained theconsent of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, these same hermitsfounded a magnificent monastery for Black canons, of the order ofSt. Augustine, which they immediately filled with forty monkscollected from the monasteries of the Holy Trinity in London,Merton in Surrey, and Colchester in Essex.  They afterwardsremoved to Gloucester, where they built a church and spaciousmonastery, which, after the name of their former residence, theycalled Llanthoni; it was consecrated A.D. 1136, by Simon, bishop of Worcester,and Robert Betun bishop of Hereford, and dedicated to the VirginMary.

[36a]  The titles of mother anddaughter are here applied to the mother church in Wales, and thedaughter near Gloucester.

[36b]  William of Wycumb, the fourthprior of Llanthoni, succeeded to Robert de Braci, who was obligedto quit the monastery, on account of the hostile molestation itreceived from the Welsh.  To him succeeded Clement, thesub-prior, and to Clement, Roger de Norwich.

[38]  Walter de Laci came into Englandwith William the Conqueror, and left three sons, Roger, Hugh, andWalter.  Hugh de Laci was the lord of Ewyas, and becameafterwards the founder of the convent of Llanthoni; his elderbrother, Robert, held also four caracutes of land within thelimits of the castle of Ewyas, which king William had bestowed onWalter, his father; but joining in rebellion against WilliamRufus, he was banished the kingdom, and all his lands were givento his brother Hugh, who died without issue.

[41]  This anecdote is thus related bythe historian Hollinshed: “Hereof it came on a time, whilesthe king sojourned in France about his warres, which he heldagainst king Philip, there came unto him a French priest, whosename was Fulco, who required the king in anywise to put from himthree abominable daughters which he had, and to bestow them inmarriage, least God punished him for them.  ‘Thouliest, hypocrite (said the king), to thy verie face; for all theworld knoweth I have not one daughter.’  ‘I lienot (said the priest), for thou hast three daughters: one of themis called Pride, the second Covetousness, and the thirdLecherie.’  With that the king called to him his lordsand barons, and said to them, ‘This hypocrite heere hathrequired me to marry awaie my three daughters, which (as hesaith) I cherish, nourish, foster, and mainteine; that is to say,Pride, Covetousness, and Lecherie: and now that I have found outnecessarie and fit husbands for them, I will do it with effect,and seeks no more delaies.  I therefore bequeath my pride tothe high-minded Templars and Hospitallers, which are as proud asLucifer himselfe; my covetousness I give unto the White Monks,otherwise called of the Cisteaux order, for they covet the divelland all; my lecherie I commit to the prelats of the church, whohave most pleasure and felicitie therein.’”

[44a]  This small residence of thearchdeacon was at Landeu, a place which has been describedbefore: the author takes this opportunity of hinting at his loveof literature, religion, and mediocrity.

[44b]  The last chapter having beenwholly digressive, we must now recur back to Brecknock, orrather, perhaps, to our author’s residence at Landeu, wherewe left him, and from thence accompany him to Abergavenny. It appears that from Landeu he took the road to Talgarth, a smallvillage a little to the south east of the road leading fromBrecknock to Hay; from whence, climbing up a steep ascent, nowcalled Rhiw Cwnstabl, or the Constable’s ascent, he crossedthe black mountains of Llaneliew to the source of the Gronwy-fawrriver, which rises in that eminence, and pursues its rapid courseinto the Vale of Usk.  From thence a rugged and uneven trackdescends suddenly into a narrow glen, formed by the torrent ofthe Gronwy, between steep, impending mountains; bleak and barrenfor the first four or five miles, but afterwards wooded to thevery margin of the stream.  A high ledge of grassy hills onthe left hand, of which the principal is called the Bal, or YFal, divides this formidable pass (the “Malus passus”of Giraldus) from the vale of Ewyas, in which stands the noblemonastery of Llanthoni, “montibus suis inclusum,”encircled by its mountains.  The road at length emergingfrom this deep recess of Coed Grono, or Cwm Gronwy, the vale ofthe river Gronwy, crosses the river at a place called Pont Escob,or the Bishop’s bridge, probably so called from this verycircumstance of its having been now passed by the archbishop andhis suite, and is continued through the forest of Moel, till itjoins the Hereford road, about two miles from Abergavenny. This formidable defile is at least nine miles in length.

[45]  In the vale of the Gronwy, abouta mile above Pont Escob, there is a wood called Coed Dial, or theWood of Revenge.  Here again, by the modern name of theplace, we are enabled to fix the very spot on which Richard deClare was murdered.  The Welsh Chronicle informs us, that“in 1135, Morgan ap Owen, a man of considerable quality andestate in Wales, remembering the wrong and injury he had receivedat the hands of Richard Fitz-Gilbert, slew him, together with hisson Gilbert.”  The first of this great family, Richardde Clare, was the eldest son of Gislebert, surnamed Crispin, earlof Brion, in Normandy.  This Richard Fitz-Gilbert came intoEngland with William the Conqueror, and received from him greatadvancement in honour and possessions.  On the death of theConqueror, favouring the cause of Robert Curthose, he rebelledagainst William Rufus, but when that king appeared in arms beforehis castle at Tunbridge, he submitted; after which, adhering toRufus against Robert, in 1091, he was taken prisoner, and shortlyafter the death of king Henry I., was assassinated, on hisjourney through Wales, in the manner already related.

[46]  Hamelin, son of Dru de Baladun,who came into England with William the Conqueror, was the firstlord of Over-Went, and built a castle at Abergavenny, on the samespot where, according to ancient tradition, a giant called Agroshad erected a fortress.  He died in the reign of WilliamRufus, and was buried in the priory which he had founded atAbergavenny; having no issue, he gave the aforesaid castle andlands to Brian de Insula, or Brian de Wallingford, his nephew, byhis sister Lucia.  The enormous excesses mentioned byGiraldus, as having been perpetrated in this part of Wales duringhis time, seem to allude to a transaction that took place in thecastle of Abergavenny, in the year 1176, which is thus related bytwo historians, Matthew Paris and Hollinshed.  “A.D. 1176, The same yeare, William deBreause having got a great number of Welshmen into the castle ofAbergavennie, under a colourable pretext of communication,proposed this ordinance to be received of them with a corporalloth, ‘That no traveller by the waie amongst them shouldbeare any bow, or other unlawful weapon,’ which oth, whenthey refused to take, because they would not stand to thatordinance, he condemned them all to death.  This deceit heused towards them, in revenge of the death of his uncle Henrie ofHereford, whom upon Easter-even before they had through treasonmurthered, and were now acquited was the likeagaine.”—Hollinshed, tom. ii. p. 95.

[48]  Landinegat, or the church of St.Dingad, is now better known by the name of Dingatstow, orDynastow, a village near Monmouth.

[49a]  [For the end of William deBraose, see footnote 34.]

[49b]  Leland divides this districtinto Low, Middle, and High Venteland, extending from Chepstow toNewport on one side, and to Abergavenny on the other; the latterof which, he says, “maketh the cumpace of HyeVenteland.”  He adds, “The soyle of al Ventelandis of a darke reddische yerth ful of slaty stones, and othergreater of the same color.  The countrey is also sumwhatmontayneus, and welle replenishid with woodes, also very fertyleof corne, but men there study more to pastures, the which be wellinclosed.”—Leland, Itin.tom. v. p.6.  Ancient Gwentland is now comprised within the county ofMonmouth.

[50a]  William de Salso Marisco, whosucceeded to the bishopric of Llandaff, A.D. 1185, and presided over that seeduring the time of Baldwin’s visitation, in 1188.

[50b]  Alexander was the fourtharchdeacon of the see of Bangor.

[50c]  Once at Usk, then at Caerleon,and afterwards on entering the town of Newport.

[51]  Gouldcliffe, or Goldcliff, issituated a few miles S.E. of Newport, on the banks of theSevern.  In the year 1113, Robert de Candos founded andendowed the church of Goldclive, and, by the advice of king HenryI., gave it to the abbey of Bec, in Normandy; its religiousestablishment consisted of a prior and twelve monks of the orderof St. Benedict.

[53]  [Geoffrey of Monmouth.]

[54]  The Cistercian abbey here alludedto was known by the several names of Ystrat Marchel, StrataMarcella, Alba domus de Stratmargel, Vallis Crucis, or Pola, andwas situated between Guilsfield and Welshpool, inMontgomeryshire.  Authors differ in opinion about itsoriginal founder.  Leland attributes it to Owen Cyveilioc,prince of Powys, and Dugdale to Madoc, the son of Gruffydh,giving for his authority the original grants and endowments ofthis abbey.  According to Tanner, about the beginning of thereign of king Edward III., the Welsh monks were removed fromhence into English abbeys, and English monks were placed here,and the abbey was made subject to the visitation of the abbot andconvent of Buildwas, in Shropshire.

[56a]  Cardiff, i.e., thefortress on the river Taf.

[56b]  Gwentluc—so called fromGwent, the name of the province, and llug, open, to distinguishit from the upper parts of Wentland, is an extensive tract offlat, marshy ground, reaching from Newport to the shores of theriver Severn.

[56c]  Nant Pencarn, or the brook ofPencarn.—After a very attentive examination of the countryround Newport, by natives of that place, and from the informationI have received on the subject, I am inclined to think that theriver here alluded to was the Ebwy, which flows about a mile anda half south of Newport.  Before the new turnpike road andbridge were made across Tredegar Park, the old road led to a fordlower down the river, and may still be travelled as far asCardiff; and was probably the ford mentioned in the text, asthree old farm-houses in its neighbourhood still retain the namesof Great Pencarn, Little Pencarn, and Middle Pencarn.

[57]  Robert Fitz-Hamon, earl ofAstremeville, in Normandy, came into England with William theConqueror; and, by the gift of William Rufus, obtained the honourof Gloucester.  He was wounded with a spear at the siege ofFalaise, in Normandy, died soon afterwards, and was buried, A.D. 1102, in the abbey of Tewkesbury,which he had founded.  Leaving no male issue, king Henrygave his eldest daughter, Mabel, or Maude, who, in her own right,had the whole honour of Gloucester, to his illegitimate sonRobert, who was advanced to the earldom of Gloucester by theking, his father.  He died A.D. 1147, and left four sons: William,the personage here mentioned by Giraldus, who succeeded him inhis titles and honours; Roger, bishop of Worcester, who died atTours in France, A.D. 1179; Hamon,who died at the siege of Toulouse, A.D. 1159; and Philip.

[58a]  The Coychurch Manuscript quotedby Mr. Williams, in his History of Monmouthshire, asserts thatMorgan, surnamed Mwyn-fawr, or the Gentle, the son of Athrwy, nothaving been elected to the chief command of the British armies,upon his father’s death retired from Caerleon, and took uphis residence in Glamorganshire, sometimes at Radyr, nearCardiff, and at other times at Margam; and from this event thedistrict derived its name, quasi Gwlad-Morgan, the country ofMorgan.

[58b]  St. Piranus, otherwise calledSt. Kiaran, or Piran, was an Irish saint, said to have been bornin the county of Ossory, or of Cork, about the middle of thefourth century; and after that by his labours the Gospel had madegood progress, he forsook all worldly things, and spent theremainder of his life in religious solitude.  The place ofhis retirement was on the sea-coast of Cornwall, and not far fromPadstow, where, as Camden informs us, there was a chapel on thesands erected to his memory.  Leland has informed us, thatthe chapel of St. Perine, at Caerdiff, stood in ShoemakerStreet.

[59]  So called from a parish of thatname in Glamorganshire, situated between Monk Nash and St.Donat’s, upon the Bristol Channel.

[60]  Barri Island is situated on thecoast of Glamorganshire; and, according to Cressy, took its namefrom St. Baruc, the hermit, who resided, and was buriedthere.  The Barrys in Ireland, as well as the family ofGiraldus, who were lords of it, are said to have derived theirnames from this island.  Leland, in speaking of this island,says, “The passage into Barrey isle at ful se is a fliteshot over, as much as the Tamise is above the bridge.  Atlow water, there is a broken causey to go over, or els over theshalow streamelet of Barrey-brook on the sands.  The isle isabout a mile in cumpace, and hath very good corne, grasse, andsum wood; the ferme of it worth a £10 a yere.  Thereys no dwelling in the isle, but there is in the middle of it afair little chapel of St. Barrok, where much pilgrimage wasusid.”  [The “fair little chapel” hasdisappeared, and “Barry Island” is now, since theconstruction of the great dock, connected with the mainland, itis covered with houses, and its estimated capital value is now£250,000].

[61a]  William de Salso Marisco.

[61b]  The see of Llandaff is said tohave been founded by the British king Lucius as early as the year180.

[61c]  From Llandaff, our crusadersproceeded towards the Cistercian monastery of Margam, passing ontheir journey near the little cell of Benedictines at Ewenith, orEwenny.  This religious house was founded by Maurice deLondres towards the middle of the twelfth century.  It issituated in a marshy plain near the banks of the little riverEwenny.

[62]  The Cistercian monastery ofMargam, justly celebrated for the extensive charities which itsmembers exercised, was founded A.D.1147, by Robert earl of Gloucester, who died in the sameyear.  Of this once-famed sanctuary nothing now remains butthe shell of its chapter-house, which, by neglect, has lost itsmost ornamental parts.  When Mr. Wyndham made the tour ofWales in the year 1777, this elegant building was entire, and wasaccurately drawn and engraved by his orders.

[65]  In continuing their journey fromNeath to Swansea, our travellers directed their course by thesea-coast to the river Avon, which they forded, and, continuingtheir road along the sands, were probably ferried over the riverNeath, at a place now known by the name of Breton Ferry, leavingthe monastery of Neath at some distance to the right: from thencetraversing another tract of sands, and crossing the river Tawe,they arrived at the castle of Swansea, where they passed thenight.

[66]  The monastery of Neath wassituated on the banks of a river bearing the same name, about amile to the westward of the town and castle.  It was foundedin 1112, by Richard de Grainville, or Greenefeld, and Constance,his wife, for the safety of the souls of Robert, earl ofGloucester, Maude, his wife, and William, his son.  Richardde Grainville was one of the twelve Norman knights whoaccompanied Robert Fitz-Hamon, and assisted him in the conquestof Glamorganshire.  In the time of Leland this abbey was ina high state of preservation, for he says, “Neth abbay ofwhite monkes, a mile above Neth town, standing in the ripe ofNeth, semid to me the fairest abbay of alWales.”—Leland, Itin.tom. v. p.14.  The remains of the abbey and of the adjoiningpriory-house are considerable; but this ancient retirement of thegrey and white monks is now occupied by the inhabitants of theneighbouring copper-works.

[67a]  Gower, the western district ofGlamorganshire, appears to have been first conquered by Henry deNewburg, earl of Warwick, soon after Robert, duke of Gloucester,had made the conquest of the other part of Glamorganshire.

[67b]  Sweynsei, Swansea, or Abertawe,situated at the confluence of the river Tawe with the Severn sea,is a town of considerable commerce, and much frequented duringthe summer months as a bathing-place.  The old castle, nowmade use of as a prison, is so surrounded by houses in the middleof the town, that a stranger might visit Swansea without knowingthat such a building existed.  The Welsh Chronicle informsus, that it was built by Henry de Beaumont, earl of Warwick, andthat in the year 1113 it was attacked by Gruffydd ap Rhys, butwithout success.  This castle became afterwards a part ofthe possessions of the see of St. David’s, and was rebuiltby bishop Gower.  [The old castle is no longer used as aprison, but as the office of the “Cambria DailyLeader.”  It is significant that Swansea is stillknown to Welshmen, as in the days of Giraldus, as“Abertawe.”]

[71a]  Lochor, or Llwchwr, was theLeucarum mentioned in the Itineraries, and the fifth Romanstation on the Via Julia.  This small village is situated ona tide-river bearing the same name, which divides the counties ofGlamorgan and Caermarthen, and over which there is a ferry. “Lochor river partith Kidwelli from WestGowerlande.”—Leland, Itin.tom. v. p.23.  [The ferry is no more.  The river is crossed by afine railway bridge.]

[71b]  Wendraeth, or Gwen-draeth, fromgwen, white, and traeth, the sandy beach of the sea.  Thereare two rivers of this name, Gwendraeth fawr, and Gwendraethfychan, the great and the little Gwendraeth, of which Leland thusspeaks: “Vendraeth Vawr and Vendraith Vehan risith both inEskenning commote: the lesse an eight milys of from Kydwelli, theother about a ten, and hath but a little nesche of sand betwixtthe places wher thei go into the se, about a mile beneth thetowne of Kidwely.”

[71c]  Cydweli was probably so calledfrom cyd, a junction, and wyl, a flow, or gushing out, beingsituated near the junction of the rivers Gwendraeth fawr andfychan; but Leland gives its name a very singular derivation, andworthy of our credulous and superstitious author Giraldus. “Kidwely, otherwise Cathweli, i.e. Catti lectus, quiaCattus olim solebat ibi lectum in quercu facere:—There is alittle towne now but newly made betwene Vendraith Vawr andVendraith Vehan.  Vendraith Vawr is half a mileof.”—Leland, Itin.tom. v. p. 22.

[72]  The scene of the battle foughtbetween Gwenllian and Maurice de Londres is to this day calledMaes Gwenllian, the plain or field of Gwenllian; and there is atower in the castle of Cydweli still called Tyr Gwenllian. [Maes Gwenllian is now a small farm, one of whose fields is saidto have been the scene of the battle.]

[73a]  The castle of Talachar is nowbetter known by the name of Llaugharne.

[73b]  Much has been said and writtenby ancient authors respecting the derivation of the name of thiscity, which is generally allowed to be the Muridunum, orMaridunum, mentioned in the Roman itineraries.  Some deriveit from Caer and Merddyn, that is, the city of the prophetMerddyn; and others from Mûr and Murddyn, which in theBritish language signify a wall.  There can, however, belittle doubt that it is derived simply from the Roman nameMuridunum.  The county gaol occupies the site of the oldcastle, a few fragments of which are seen intermixed with thehouses of the town.

[73c]  Dinevor, the great castle, fromdinas, a castle, and vawr, great, was in ancient times a royalresidence of the princes of South Wales.  In the year 876,Roderic the Great, having divided the principalities of North andSouth Wales, and Powys land, amongst his three sons, built foreach of them a palace.  The sovereignty of South Wales, withthe castle of Dinevor, fell to the lot of Cadell.  [Theruins of Dinevor Castle still crown the summit of the hill whichovershadows the town of Llandilo, 12 miles from Carmarthen.]

[74a]  There is a spring very near thenorth side of Dinevor park wall, which bears the name ofNant-y-rhibo, or the bewitched brook, which may, perhaps, be theone here alluded to by Giraldus.

[74b]  Pencadair is a small villagesituated to the north of Carmarthen.

[75a]  Alba Domus was called in WelshTy Gwyn ar Daf, or the White House on the river Taf.  In thehistory of the primitive British church, Ty Gwyn, or white house,is used in a sense equivalent to a charter-house.  The WhiteHouse College, or Bangor y Ty Gwyn, is pretended to have beenfounded about 480, by Paul Hên, or Paulius, a saint of thecongregation of Illtyd.  From this origin, the celebratedCistercian monastery is said to have derived itsestablishment.  Powel, in his chronicle, says, “Forthe first abbey or frier house that we read of in Wales, sith thedestruction of the noble house of Bangor, which savoured not ofRomish dregges, was the Tuy Gwyn, built the yeare 1146, and afterthey swarmed like bees through all the countrie.” (Powel, p. 254.)—Authors differ with respect to the founderof this abbey; some have attributed it to Rhys ap Tewdwr, princeof South Wales; and others to Bernard, bishop of SaintDavid’s, who died about the year 1148.  The latteraccount is corroborated by the following passage inWharton’s Anglia Sacra: “Anno 1143 ducti sunt monachiordinis Cisterciensis qui modo sunt apud Albam Landam, in WestWalliam, per Bernardum episcopum.”  Leland, in hisCollectanea, says, “Whitland, abbat.  Cistert., Rhesusfilius Theodori princeps Suth Walliæ primusfundator;” and in his Itinerary, mentions it as a conventof Bernardynes, “which yet stondeth.”

[75b]  Saint Clears is a long,straggling village, at the junction of the river Cathgenny withthe Tâf.  Immediately on the banks of the former, andnot far from its junction with the latter, stood the castle, ofwhich not one stone is left; but the artificial tumulus on whichthe citadel was placed, and other broken ground, mark its ancientsite.

[76a]  Lanwadein, now called Lawhaden,is a small village about four miles from Narberth, on the banksof the river Cleddeu.

[76b]  Daugleddeu, so called from Dau,two, and Cled, or Cleddau, a sword.  The rivers Cledheu havetheir source in the Prescelly mountain, unite their streams belowHaverfordwest, and run into Milford Haven, which in Welsh iscalled Aberdaugleddau, or the confluence of the two riversCledheu.

[76c]  Haverford, now calledHaverfordwest, is a considerable town on the river Cledheu, withan ancient castle, three churches, and some monasticremains.  The old castle (now used as the county gaol), fromits size and commanding situation, adds greatly to thepicturesque appearance of this town.  [The old castle is nolonger used as a gaol.]

[79a]  The province of Rhos, in whichthe town of Haverfordwest is situated, was peopled by a colony ofFlemings during the reign of king Henry I.

[79b]  St. Caradoc was born of a goodfamily in Brecknockshire, and after a liberal education at home,attached himself to the court of Rhys Prince of South Wales, whomhe served a long time with diligence and fidelity.  He wasmuch esteemed and beloved by him, till having unfortunately losttwo favourite greyhounds, which had been committed to his care,that prince, in a fury, threatened his life; upon which Caradocdetermined to change masters, and made a vow on the spot toconsecrate the remainder of his days to God, by a single andreligious life.  He went to Llandaff, received from itsbishop the clerical tonsure and habit, and retired to thedeserted church of St. Kined, and afterwards to a still moresolitary abode in the Isle of Ary, from whence he was takenprisoner by some Norwegian pirates, but soon released.  Hislast place of residence was at St. Ismael, in the province ofRhos, where he died in 1124, and was buried with great honour inthe cathedral of St. David’s.  We must not confoundthis retreat of Caradoc with the village of St. Ismael on theborders of Milford Haven.  His hermitage was situated in theparish of Haroldstone, near the town of Haverfordwest, whosechurch has St. Ismael for its patron, and probably near a placecalled Poorfield, the common on which Haverfordwest races areheld, as there is a well there called Caradoc’s Well, roundwhich, till within these few years, there was a sort of vanityfair, where cakes were sold, and country games celebrated. [Caradoc was canonised by Pope Innocent III. at the instance ofGiraldus.]

[80]  This curious superstition isstill preserved, in a debased form, among the descendants of theFlemish population of this district, where the young womenpractise a sort of divination with the bladebone of a shoulder ofmutton to discover who will be their sweetheart.  It isstill more curious that William de Rubruquis, in the thirteenthcentury, found the same superstition existing among theTartars.

[82a]  Arnulph, younger son of Roger deMontgomery, did his homage for Dyved, and is said, by our author,to have erected a slender fortress with stakes and turf atPembroke, in the reign of king Henry I., which, however, appearsto have been so strong as to have resisted the hostile attack ofCadwgan ap Bleddyn in 1092, and of several lords of North Wales,in 1094.

[82b]  Walter Fitz-Other, at the timeof the general survey of England by William the Conqueror, wascastellan of Windsor, warden of the forests in Berkshire, andpossessed several lordships in the counties of Middlesex,Hampshire, and Buckinghamshire, which dominus Otherus is said tohave held in the time of Edward the Confessor.  William, theeldest son of Walter, took the surname of Windsor from hisfather’s office, and was ancestor to the lords Windsor, whohave since been created earls of Plymouth: and from Gerald,brother of William, the Geralds, Fitz-geralds, and many otherfamilies are lineally descended.  The Gerald here mentionedby Giraldus is sometimes surnamed De Windsor, and alsoFitz-Walter, i.e.the son of Walter; having slain Owen,son of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, chief lord of Cardiganshire, he wasmade president of the county of Pembroke.

[83]  Wilfred is mentioned by BrowneWillis in his list of bishops of St. David’s, as theforty-seventh, under the title of Wilfride, or Griffin: he diedabout the year 1116.

[84]  Maenor Pyrr, now known by thename of Manorbeer, is a small village on the sea coast, betweenTenby and Pembroke, with the remaining shell of a largecastle.  Our author has given a farfetched etymology to thiscastle and the adjoining island, in calling them the mansion andisland of Pyrrhus: a much more natural and congenial conjecturemay be made in supposing Maenor Pyrr to be derived from Maenor, aManor, and Pyrr the plural of Por, a lord; i.e.the Manorof the lords, and, consequently, Inys Pyrr, the Island of thelords.  As no mention whatever is made of the castle in theWelsh Chronicle, I am inclined to think it was only a castellatedmansion, and therefore considered of no military importance inthose days of continued warfare throughout Wales.  It is oneof the most interesting spots in our author’s Itinerary,for it was the property of the Barri family, and the birth-placeof Giraldus; in the parish church, the sepulchral effigy of anear relation, perhaps a brother, is still extant, in goodpreservation.  Our author has evidently made a digression inorder to describe this place.

[86a]  The house of Stephen Wiriet was,I presume, Orielton.  There is a monument in the church ofSt. Nicholas, at Pembroke, to the memory of John, son and heir ofSir Hugh Owen, of Bodeon in Anglesea, knight, and Elizabeth,daughter and heir of George Wiriet, of Orielton, A.D. 1612.

[86b]  The family name of Not, or Nott,still exists in Pembrokeshire.  [The descendants of Sir Hughcontinued to live at Orielton, and the title is still inexistence.]

[88]  There are two churches inPembrokeshire called Stackpoole, one of which, called StackpooleElidor, derived its name probably from the Elidore de Stakepolementioned in this chapter by Giraldus.  It contains severalancient monuments, and amongst them the effigies of across-legged knight, which has been for many years attributed tothe aforesaid Elidore.

[90]  Ramsey Island, near St.David’s, was always famous for its breed of falcons.

[91a]  Camros, a small village,containing nothing worthy of remark, excepting a largetumulus.  It appears, by this route of the Crusaders, thatthe ancient road to Menevia, or St. David’s, led throughCamros, whereas the present turnpike road lies a mile and a halfto the left of it.  It then descends to Niwegal Sands, andpasses near the picturesque little harbour of Solvach, situatedin a deep and narrow cove, surrounded by high rocks.

[91b]  The remains of vast submergedforests are commonly found on many parts of the coast of Wales,especially in the north.  Giraldus has elsewhere spoken ofthis event in the Vaticinal History, book i. chap. 35.

[94]  Giraldus, ever glad to punupon words, here opposes the word nomentoomen.  “Plus nominis habens quàmominis.”  He may have perhaps borrowed thisexpression from Plautus.  Plautus Delphini, tom. ii. p.27.—Actus iv., Scena iv.

[96]  Armorica is derived from theCeltic words Ar and Mor, which signify on or near the sea, and socalled to distinguish it from the more inland parts ofBritany.  The maritime cities of Gaul were called“Armoricæ civitates—Universis civitatibusquæ oceanum attingunt, quæque Gallorum consuetudineArmoricæappellantur.”—Cæsar. Comment, lib. vii.

[97]  The bishops of Hereford,Worcester, Llandaff, Bangor, St. Asaph, Llanbadarn, and Margam,or Glamorgan.

[98]  The value of the carucate israther uncertain, or, probably, it varied in different districtsaccording to the character of the land; but it is considered tohave been usually equivalent to a hide, that is, to about 240statute acres.

[99a]  This little brook does not, inmodern times, deserve the title here given to it by Giraldus, forit produces trout of a most delicious flavour.

[99b]  See the Vaticinal History, booki. c. 37.

[100] Lechlavar, so called from the words inWelsh, Llêc, a stone, and Llavar, speech.

[102a]  Cemmeis, Cemmaes, Kemes, andKemeys.  Thus is the name of this district variouslyspelt.  Cemmaes in Welsh signifies a circle or amphitheatrefor games.

[102b]  [Cardigan.]

[102c]  There is place in Cemmaes nowcalled Tre-liffan, i.e.Toad’s town; and over achimney-piece in the house there is a figure of a toad sculpturedin marble, said to have been brought from Italy, and intendedprobably to confirm and commemorate this tradition ofGiraldus.

[103a]  Preseleu, Preselaw, Prescelly,Presselw.

[103b]  St. Bernacus is said, byCressy, to have been a man of admirable sanctity, who, throughdevotion, made a journey to Rome; and from thence returning intoBritany, filled all places with the fame of his piety andmiracles.  He is commemorated on the 7th of April. Several churches in Wales were dedicated to him; one of which,called Llanfyrnach, or the church of St. Bernach, is situated onthe eastern side of the Prescelley mountain.

[103c]  The “castrum apudLanhever” was at Nevern, a small village between Newportand Cardigan, situated on the banks of a little river bearing thesame name which discharges itself into the sea at Newport. On a hill immediately above the western side of the parishchurch, is the site of a large castle, undoubtedly the onealluded to by Giraldus.

[105a]  On the Cemmaes, orPembrokeshire side of the river Teivi, and near the end of thebridge, there is a place still called Park y Cappel, or theChapel Field, which is undoubtedly commemorative of thecircumstance recorded by our author.

[105b]  Now known by the name ofKenarth, which may be derived from Cefn y garth—the back ofthe wear, a ridge of land behind the wear.

[106a]  The name of St. Ludoc is notfound in the lives of the saints.  Leland mentions a St.Clitauc, who had a church dedicated to him in South Wales, andwho was killed by some of his companions whilst hunting. “Clitaucus Southe-Walliæ regulus inter venandum asuis sodalibus occisus est.  Ecciesia S. Clitauci in SoutheWallia.”—Leland, Itin., tom. viii. p.95.

[106b]  The Teivy is still very justlydistinguished for the quantity and quality of its salmon, but thebeaver no longer disturbs its streams.  That this animal didexist in the days of Howel Dha (though even then a rarity), themention made of it in his laws, and the high price set upon itsskin, most clearly evince; but if the castor of Giraldus, and theavanc of Humphrey Llwyd and of the Welsh dictionaries, be reallythe same animal, it certainly was not peculiar to the Teivi, butwas equally known in North Wales, as the names of placestestify.  A small lake in Montgomeryshire is called Llyn yrAfangc; a pool in the river Conwy, not far from Bettws, bears thesame name, and the vale called Nant Ffrancon, upon the riverOgwen, in Caernarvonshire, is supposed by the natives to be acorruption from Nant yr Afan cwm, or the Vale of theBeavers.  Mr. Owen, in his dictionary, says, “That ithas been seen in this vale within the memory of man.” Giraldus has previously spoken of the beaver in his Topography ofIreland, Distinc. i. c. 21.

[109a]  Our author having made a longdigression, in order to introduce the history of the beaver, nowcontinues his Itinerary.  From Cardigan, the archbishopproceeded towards Pont-Stephen, leaving a hill, called Cruc Mawr,on the left hand, which still retains its ancient name, andagrees exactly with the position given to it by Giraldus. On its summit is a tumulus, and some appearance of anintrenchment.

[109b]  In 1135.

[109c]  Lampeter, or Llanbedr, a smalltown near the river Teivi, still retains the name ofPont-Stephen.

[109d]  Leland thus speaks of YstradFflur or Strata Florida: “Strateflere is set round aboutwith montanes not far distant, except on the west parte, whereDiffrin Tyve is.  Many hilles therabout hath bene wellwoddid, as evidently by old rotes apperith, but now in them isalmost no woode—the causes be these.  First, the woodcut down was never copisid, and this hath beene a cause ofdestruction of wood thorough Wales.  Secondly, after cuttingdown of woodys, the gottys hath so bytten the young spring thatit never grew but lyke shrubbes.  Thirddely, men for themonys destroied the great woddis that thei should not harborowtheves.”  This monastery is situated in the wildestpart of Cardiganshire, surrounded on three sides by a lofty rangeof those mountains, called by our author Ellennith; a spotadmirably suited to the severe and recluse order of theCistercians.

[110a]  [Melenydd or Maelienydd.]

[110b]  Leaving Stratflur, thearchbishop and his train returned to Llanddewi Brefi, and fromthence proceeded to Llanbadarn Vawr.

[111]  Llanbadarn Fawr, the church ofSt. Paternus the Great, is situated in a valley, at a shortdistance from the sea-port town of Aberystwyth inCardiganshire.

[112]  The name of this bishop is saidto have been Idnerth, and the same personage whose death iscommemorated in an inscription at Llanddewi Brefi.

[113a]  This river is now calledDovey.

[113b]  From Llanbadarn our travellersdirected their course towards the sea-coast, and ferrying overthe river Dovey, which separates North from South Wales,proceeded to Towyn, in Merionethshire, where they passed thenight.  [Venedotia is the Latin name for Gwynedd.]

[113c]  The province of Merionyth wasat this period occupied by David, the son of Owen Gwynedd, whohad seized it forcibly from its rightful inheritor.  ThisGruffydd—who must not be confused with hisgreat-grandfather, the famous Gruffydd ap Conan, prince ofGwynedd—was son to Conan ap Owen Gwynedd; he died A.D. 1200, and was buried in amonk’s cowl, in the abbey of Conway.

[113d]  The epithet“bifurcus,” ascribed by Giraldus to the river Maw,alludes to its two branches, which unite their streams a littleway below Llaneltid bridge, and form an æstuary, whichflows down to the sea at Barmouth or Aber Maw.  The ford atthis place, discovered by Malgo, no longer exists.

[114a]  Llanfair is a small village,about a mile and a half from Harlech, with a very simple church,placed in a retired spot, backed by precipitous mountains. Here the archbishop and Giraldus slept, on their journey fromTowyn to Nevyn.

[114b]  Ardudwy was a comot of thecantref Dunodic, in Merionethshire, and according to Leland,“Streccith from half Trait Mawr to Abermaw on the shore XIImyles.”  The bridge here alluded to, was probably overthe river Artro, which forms a small æstuary near thevillage of Llanbedr.

[115a]  The Traeth Mawr, or the largesands, are occasioned by a variety of springs and rivers whichflow from the Snowdon mountains, and, uniting their streams, forman æstuary below Pont Aberglaslyn.

[115b] The Traeth Bychan, or the smallsands, are chiefly formed by the river which runs down thebeautiful vale of Festiniog to Maentwrog and Tan y bwlch, nearwhich place it becomes navigable.  Over each of these sandsthe road leads from Merionyth into Caernarvonshire.

[115c]  Lleyn, the Canganorumpromontorium of Ptolemy, was an extensive hundred containingthree comots, and comprehending that long neck of land betweenCaernarvon and Cardigan bays.  Leland says, “Al Leneis as it were a pointe into the se.”

[115d]  In mentioning the rivers whichthe missionaries had lately crossed, our author has been guiltyof a great topographical error in placing the river Dissennithbetween the Maw and Traeth Mawr, as also in placing the Arthrobetween the Traeth Mawr and Traeth Bychan, as a glance at a mapwill shew.

[115e]  To two personages of this namethe gift of prophecy was anciently attributed: one was calledAmbrosius, the other Sylvestris; the latter here mentioned (andwhose works Giraldus, after a long research, found at Nefyn) was,according to the story, the son of Morvryn, and generally calledMerddin Wyllt, or Merddin the Wild.  He is pretended to haveflourished about the middle of the sixth century, and ranked withMerddin Emrys and Taliesin, under the appellation of the threeprincipal bards of the Isle of Britain.

[116a]  This island once afforded,according to the old accounts, an asylum to twenty thousandsaints, and after death, graves to as many of their bodies;whence it has been called Insula Sanctorum, the Isle ofSaints.  This island derived its British name of Enlli fromthe fierce current which rages between it and the mainland.  The Saxons named it Bardsey, probably from the Bards,who retired hither, preferring solitude to the company ofinvading foreigners.

[116b]  This ancient city has beenrecorded by a variety of names.  During the time of theRomans it was called Segontium, the site of which is now calledCaer Seiont, the fortress on the river Seiont, where theSetantiorum portus, and the Seteia Æstuarium of Ptolemyhave also been placed.  It is called, by Nennius, CaerCustent, or the city of Constantius; and Matthew of Westminstersays, that about the year 1283 the body of Constantius, father ofthe emperor Constantine, was found there, and honourablydesposited in the church by order of Edward I.

[116c]  I have searched in vain for avalley which would answer the description here given by Geraldus,and the scene of so much pleasantry to the travellers; forneither do the old or new road, from Caernarvon to Bangor, in anyway correspond.  But I have since been informed, that thereis a valley called Nant y Garth (near the residence of AshtonSmith, Esq. at Vaenol), which terminates at about half amile’s distance from the Menai, and therefore notobservable from the road; it is a serpentine ravine of more thana mile, in a direction towards the mountains, and probably thatwhich the crusaders crossed on their journey to Bangor.

[117]  Bangor.—This cathedralchurch must not be confounded with the celebrated college of thesame name, in Flintshire, founded by Dunod Vawr, son of Pabo, achieftain who lived about the beginning of the sixth century, andfrom him called Bangor Dunod.  The Bangor, i.e.thecollege, in Caernarvonshire, is properly called Bangor Deiniol,Bangor Vawr yn Arllechwedd, and Bangor Vawr uwch Conwy.  Itowes its origin to Deiniol, son of Dunod ap Pabo, a saint wholived in the early part of the sixth century, and in the year 525founded this college at Bangor, in Caernarvonshire, over which hepresided as abbot.  Guy Rufus, called by our author Guianus,was at this time bishop of this see, and died in 1190.

[118a]  Guianus, or Guy Rufus, dean ofWaltham, in Essex, and consecrated to this see, at Ambresbury,Wilts, in May 1177.

[118b]  Mona, or Anglesey.

[118c]  The spot selected by Baldwinfor addressing the multitude, has in some degree been elucidatedby the anonymous author of the Supplement to Rowland’s MonaAntiqua.  He says, that “From tradition and memorialsstill retained, we have reasons to suppose that they met in anopen place in the parish of Landisilio, called Cerrig yBorth.  The inhabitants, by the grateful remembrance, toperpetuate the honour of that day, called the place where thearchbishop stood, Carreg yr Archjagon, i.e.theArchbishop’s Rock; and where prince Roderic stood, MaenRoderic, or the Stone of Roderic.”  This account is inpart corroborated by the following communication from Mr. RichardLlwyd of Beaumaris, who made personal inquiries on thespot.  “Cerrig y Borth, being a rough, undulatingdistrict, could not, for that reason, have been chosen foraddressing a multitude; but adjoining it there are two eminenceswhich command a convenient surface for that purpose; one calledMaen Rodi (the Stone or Rock of Roderic), the property of OwenWilliams, Esq.; and the other Carreg Iago, belonging to LordUxbridge.  This last, as now pronounced, means the Rock ofSt. James; but I have no difficulty in admitting, that Carreg yrArch Iagon may (by the compression of common, undiscriminatinglanguage, and the obliteration of the event from ignorant mindsby the lapse of so many centuries) be contracted into CarregIago.  Cadair yr archesgob is now also contracted intoCadair (chair), a seat naturally formed in the rock, with a rudearch over it, on the road side, which is a rough terrace over thebreast of a rocky and commanding cliff, and the nearest way fromthe above eminences to the insulated church of Landisilio. This word Cadair, though in general language a chair, yet whenapplied to exalted situations, means an observatory, as CadairIdris, etc.; but there can, in my opinion, be no doubt that thisseat in the rock is that described by the words Cadair yrArchesgob.”  [Still more probable, and certainly moreflattering to Giraldus, is that it was called “Cadair yrArch Ddiacon” (the Archdeacon’s chair).]

[120a]  This hundred contained thecomots of Mynyw, or St. David’s, and Pencaer.

[120b]  I am indebted to Mr. RichardLlwyd for the following curious extract from a Manuscript of thelate intelligent Mr. Rowlands, respecting this miraculous stone,called Maen Morddwyd, or the stone of the thigh, which onceexisted in Llanidan parish.  “Hic etiam lapis lumbi,vulgo Maen Morddwyd, in hujus cæmiterii vallo locum sibi elongo a retro tempore obtinuit, exindeque his nuperis annis, quonescio papicola vel qua inscia manu nulla ut olim retinentevirtute, quæ tunc penitus elanguit aut vetustateevaporavit, nullo sane loci dispendio, nec illi qui eripuitemolumento, ereptus et deportatus fuit.”

[120c]  Hugh, earl of Chester. The first earl of Chester after the Norman conquest, was Gherbod,a Fleming, who, having obtained leave from king William to gointo Flanders for the purpose of arranging some family concerns,was taken and detained a prisoner by his enemies; upon which theconqueror bestowed the earldom of Chester on Hugh de Abrincis orof Avranches, “to hold as freely by the sword, as the kinghimself did England by the crown.”

[121]  This church is at Llandyfrydog,a small village in Twrkelin hundred, not far distant fromLlanelian, and about three miles from the Bay of Dulas.  St.Tyvrydog, to whom it was dedicated, was one of the sons ofArwystyl Glof, a saint who lived in the latter part of the sixthcentury.

[123a]  Ynys Lenach, now known by thename of Priestholme Island, bore also the title of Ynys Seiriol,from a saint who resided upon it in the sixth century.  Itis also mentioned by Dugdale and Pennant under the appellation ofInsula Glannauch.

[123b]  Alberic de Veer, or Vere, cameinto England with William the Conqueror, and as a reward for hismilitary services, received very extensive possessions and lands,particularly in the county of Essex.  Alberic, his eldestson, was great chamberlain of England in the reign of king HenryI., and was killed A.D. 1140, in apopular tumult at London.  Henry de Essex married one of hisdaughters named Adeliza.  He enjoyed, by inheritance, theoffice of standard-bearer, and behaved himself so unworthily inthe military expedition which king Henry undertook against OwenGwynedd, prince of North Wales, in the year 1157, by throwingdown his ensign, and betaking himself to flight, that he waschallenged for this misdemeanor by Robert de Mountford, and byhim vanquished in single combat; whereby, according to the lawsof his country, his life was justly forfeited.  But the kinginterposing his royal mercy, spared it, but confiscated hisestates, ordering him to be shorn a monk, and placed in the abbeyof Reading.  There appears to be some biographical error inthe words of Giraldus—“Filia scilicet Henrici deEssexia,” for by the genealogical accounts of the Vere andEssex families, we find that Henry de Essex married the daughterof the second Alberic de Vere; whereas our author seems to imply,that the mother of Alberic the second was daughter to Henry deEssex.

[124]  “And Jacob took him rodsof green poplar, and of the hazel, and of the chesnut tree, andpeeled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which wasin the rods.  And he set the rods, which he had peeled,before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs, whenthe flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when theycame to drink.  And the flocks conceived before the rods,and brought forth cattle speckled and spotted.”—Gen.xxx.

[125a]  Owen Gwynedd, the son ofGruffydd ap Conan, died in 1169, and was buried at Bangor. When Baldwin, during his progress, visited Bangor and saw histomb, he charged the bishop (Guy Ruffus) to remove the body outof the cathedral, when he had a fit opportunity so to do, inregard that archbishop Becket had excommunicated him heretofore,because he had married his first cousin, the daughter of Grono apEdwyn, and that notwithstanding he had continued to live with hertill she died.  The bishop, in obedience to the charge, madea passage from the vault through the south wall of the churchunderground, and thus secretly shoved the body into thechurchyard.—Hengwrt.  MSS. Cadwalader brother of Owen Gwynedd, died in 1172.

[125b]  The Merlin here mentioned wascalled Ambrosius, and according to the Cambrian Biographyflourished about the middle of the fifth century.  Otherauthors say, that this reputed prophet and magician was the sonof a Welsh nun, daughter of a king of Demetia, and born atCaermarthen, and that he was made king of West Wales byVortigern, who then reigned in Britain.

[126]  Owen Gwynedd “left behindhim manie children gotten by diverse women, which were notesteemed by their mothers and birth, but by their prowes andvaliantnesse.”  By his first wife, Gladus, thedaughter of Llywarch ap Trahaern ap Caradoc, he had OrwerthDrwyndwn, that is, Edward with the broken nose; for which defecthe was deemed unfit to preside over the principality of NorthWales and was deprived of his rightful inheritance, which wasseized by his brother David, who occupied it for the space oftwenty-four years.

[128a]  The travellers pursuing theirjourney along the sea coast, crossed the æstuary of theriver Conway under Deganwy, a fortress of very remoteantiquity.

[128b]  At this period the Cistercianmonastery of Conway was in its infancy, for its foundation hasbeen attributed to Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, in the year 1185, (onlythree years previous to Baldwin’s visitation,) who endowedit with very extensive possessions and singular privileges. Like Stratflur, this abbey was the repository of the nationalrecords, and the mausoleum of many of its princes.

[129a]  [David was the illegitimate sonof Owen Gwynedd, and had dispossessed his brother, IorwerthDrwyndwn.]

[129b]  This ebbing spring in theprovince of Tegeingl, or Flintshire, has been placed by the oldannotator on Giraldus at Kilken, which Humphrey Llwyd, in hisBreviary, also mentions.

[129c]  See before, the Topography ofIreland, Distinc. ii. c. 7.

[129d]  Saint Asaph, in size, thoughnot in revenues, may deserve the epithet of“paupercula” attached to it by Giraldus.  Fromits situation near the banks of the river Elwy, it derived thename of Llanelwy, or the church upon the Elwy.

[129e]  Leaving Llanelwy, or St. Asaph,the archbishop proceeded to the little cell of Basinwerk, wherehe and his attendants passed the night.  It is situated at ashort distance from Holywell, on a gentle eminence above avalley, watered by the copious springs that issue from St.Winefred’s well, and on the borders of a marsh, whichextends towards the coast of Cheshire.

[129f]  Coleshill is a township inHolywell parish, Flintshire, which gives name to a hundred, andwas so called from its abundance of fossil fuel.  Pennant,vol. i. p. 42.

[130]  The three military expeditionsof king Henry into Wales, here mentioned, were A.D. 1157, the first expedition intoNorth Wales; A.D. 1162, the secondexpedition into South Wales; A.D.1165, the third expedition into North Wales.  In the first,the king was obliged to retreat with considerable loss, and theking’s standard-bearer, Henry de Essex, was accused ofhaving in a cowardly manner abandoned the royal standard and ledto a serious disaster.

[131a]  The lake of Penmelesmere, orPymplwy meer, or the meer of the five parishes adjoining thelake, is, in modern days, better known by the name of BalaPool.  The assertion made by Giraldus, of salmon never beingfound in the lake of Bala, is not founded on truth.

[131b]  Giraldus seems to have beenmistaken respecting the burial-place of the emperor Henry V., forhe died May 23, A.D. 1125, atUtrecht, and his body was conveyed to Spire for interment.

[132]  This legend, which representsking Harold as having escaped from the battle of Hastings, and ashaving lived years after as a hermit on the borders of Wales, ismentioned by other old writers, and has been adopted as true bysome modern writers.

[133a]  Some difficulty occurs infixing the situation of the Album Monasterium, mentioned in thetext, as three churches in the county of Shropshire bore thatappellation; the first at Whitchurch, the second at Oswestry, thethird at Alberbury.  The narrative of our author is sosimple, and corresponds so well with the topography of thecountry through which they passed, that I think no doubt ought tobe entertained about the course of their route.  FromChester they directed their way to the White Monastery, orWhitchurch, and from thence towards Oswestry, where they slept,and were entertained by William Fitz-Alan, after the English modeof hospitality.

[133b]  By the Latin context it wouldappear that Reiner was bishop of Oswestree: “Ab episcoponamque loci illius Reinerio multitudo fuerat antesignata.”  Reiner succeeded Adam in the bishopric ofSt. Asaph in the year 1186, and died in 1220.  He had aresidence near Oswestry, at which place, previous to the arrivalof Baldwin, he had signed many of the people with the cross.

[133c]  In the time of William theConqueror, Alan, the son of Flathald, or Flaald, obtained, by thegift of that king, the castle of Oswaldestre, with the territoryadjoining, which belonged to Meredith ap Blethyn, a Briton. This Alan, having married the daughter and heir to Warine,sheriff of Shropshire, had in her right the barony of the sameWarine.  To him succeeded William, his son and heir. He married Isabel de Say, daughter and heir to Helias de Say,niece to Robert earl of Gloucester, lady of Clun, and left issueby her, William, his son and successor, who, in the 19th HenryII., or before, departed this life, leaving William Fitz-Alan hisson and heir, who is mentioned in the text.

[134a]  Robert de Belesme, earl ofShrewsbury, was son of Roger de Montgomery, who led the centredivision of the army in that memorable battle which secured toWilliam the conquest of England, and for his services wasadvanced to the earldoms of Arundel and Shrewsbury.

[134b]  This expedition into Wales tookplace A.D. 1165, and has beenalready spoken of.

[136]  The princes mentioned byGiraldus as most distinguished in North and South Wales, and mostcelebrated in his time, were, 1. Owen, son of Gruffydd, in NorthWales; 2. Meredyth, son of Gruffydd, in South Wales; 3. Owen deCyfeilioc, in Powys; 4. Cadwalader, son of Gruffydd, in NorthWales; 5. Gruffydd of Maelor in Powys; 6. Rhys, son of Gruffydd,in South Wales; 7. David, son of Owen, in North Wales; 8. Howel,son of Iorwerth, in South Wales.

1.  Owen Gwynedd, son of Gruffydd ap Conan, died in 1169,having governed his country well and worthily for the space ofthirty-two years.  He was fortunate and victorious in allhis affairs, and never took any enterprise in hand but heachieved it.  2. Meredyth ap Gruffydd ap Rhys, lord ofCaerdigan and Stratywy, died in 1153, at the early age oftwenty-five; a worthy knight, fortunate in battle, just andliberal to all men.  3. Owen Cyfeilioc was the son ofGruffydd Meredyth ap Meredyth ap Blethyn, who was created lord ofPowys by Henry I., and died about the year 1197, leaving hisprincipality to his son Gwenwynwyn, from whom that part of Powyswas called Powys Gwenwynwyn, to distinguish it from Powys Vadoc,the possession of the lords of Bromfield.  The poemsascribed to him possess great spirit, and prove that he was, asGiraldus terms him, “linguæ dicacis,” in itsbest sense.  4. Cadwalader, son of Gruffydd ap Conan, princeof North Wales, died in 1175.  Gruffydd of Maelor was son ofMadoc ap Meredyth ap Blethyn, prince of Powys, who died atWinchester in 1160.  “This man was ever the king ofEngland’s friend, and was one that feared God, and relievedthe poor: his body was conveyed honourably to Powys, and buriedat Myvod.”  His son Gruffydd succeeded him in thelordship of Bromfield, and died about the year 1190.  6.Rhys ap Gruffydd, or the lord Rhys, was son of Gruffydd ap Rhysap Tewdwr, who died in 1137.  The ancient writers have beenvery profuse in their praises of this celebrated Prince.  7.David, son of Owen Gwynedd, who, on the death if his father,forcibly seized the principality of North Wales, slaying hisbrother Howel in battle, and setting aside the claims of thelawful inheritor of the throne, Iorwerth Trwyndwn, whose son,Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, in 1194, recovered his inheritance. 8. Howel, son of Iorwerth of Caerleon, appears to have beendistinguished chiefly by his ferocity.

[137]  Malpas in Cheshire.

[138]  It appears that a small collegeof prebendaries, or secular canons, resided at Bromfield in thereign of king Henry I.; Osbert, the prior, being recorded as awitness to a deed made before the year 1148.  In 1155, theybecame Benedictines, and surrendered church and lands to theabbey of St. Peter’s at Gloucester, whereupon a prior andmonks were placed there, and continued till thedissolution.  An ancient gateway and some remains of thepriory still testify the existence of this religious house, thelocal situation of which, near the confluence of the rivers Oneyand Teme, has been accurately described by Leland.

[139]  Baldwin was born at Exeter, inDevonshire, of a low family, but being endowed by nature withgood abilities, applied them to an early cultivation of sacredand profane literature.  His good conduct procured him thefriendship of Bartholomew bishop of Exeter, who promoted him tothe archdeaconry of that see; resigning this preferment, heassumed the cowl, and in a few years became abbot of theCistercian monastery at Ford.  In the year 1180, he wasadvanced to the bishopric of Worcester, and in 1184, translatedto the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury.  In the year 1188,he made his progress through Wales, preaching with fervour theservice of the Cross; to which holy cause he fell a sacrifice inthe year 1190, having religiously, honourably, and charitablyended his days in the Holy Land.

[140]  Giraldus here alludes to thedignity of archdeacon, which Baldwin had obtained in the churchof Exeter.

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