A PEEP AT PEMBROKE
To-day we will leave North Wales and travel south to take a glimpse at
Pembrokeshire, in some ways one of the most interesting counties in
Wales.
Between the northern and southern parts of the country runs a stream,
flowing into St. Bride’s Bay, which divides the Welsh Pembroke from a
district known as “Little England beyond Wales.”
Here, in this latter region, one hears nothing but English spoken.
The towns, the people, are typically English, or, at least, very far
from being typically Welsh. This is how a seventeenth-century writer
accounts for the fact:
“This same division was in ancient time inhabited wholly by Welshmen,
but a great part thereof was won from them by the Englishmen under the
conduct of Earl Strongbow, and divers others, and the same planted
with Englishmen whose posterity enjoys it to this day, and keep their
language among themselves without receiving the Welsh speech or
learning any part thereof, and hold themselves so close to the same
as to this day they wonder at a Welshman coming among them, the one
neighbour saying to the other: ‘Look! there goeth a Welshman!’”
The interesting thing about this is that these people of South Pembroke
were probably not English at all in origin, but Flemings, who came over
from Flanders many centuries ago, and settled there with their woollen
manufactures--a trade which perhaps accounts for the superiority of
“Welsh flannel” to-day.
These were, like their Welsh neighbours, a very religious and
emotional people, and more ready, perhaps, than the former to leave
the land of their adoption for the perils of the Holy War. For a
writer of the time of the early Crusades tells the story of a certain
Archbishop’s journey through Wales to rouse volunteers for the war in
far-off Palestine; and to him “it appears wonderful and miraculous
that, although he addressed the Pembroke people both in the Latin
and French tongues, these persons, who understood neither of these
languages, were much affected, and flocked in great numbers to the
cross.... They are,” he goes on to say, “a brave and robust people,
ever most hostile to the Welsh--a people well versed in commerce and
woollen manufactures, anxious to seek gain by sea or land, in defiance
of fatigue and danger, a hardy race, equally fitted for the plough or
the sword.”
Suppose we take a steamer from the charming little seaport town of
Tenby, and follow the coast-line of Pembroke up to Milford Haven.
Romantic cliffs guard the land, and limestone caverns hint at smuggling
expeditions in the good old days. Here is Caldy Island, where stood one
of the oldest of Benedictine priories; and here, at St. Gowan’s Head,
the cliff, rising to a great height above the sea, is split up into a
narrow cleft by the force of the waves.
Across this chasm is built a little cell, known as St. Gowan’s Chapel,
from which a doorway leads to a cave in the cliff, shaped exactly like
a human figure. The legend says that St. Gowan, a holy man of God, was
praying in his cell when his heathen foes came battering at the door.
He called upon the rock to be his shelter, and immediately it opened
to admit him. When his enemies had gone away baffled, and the saint
had emerged, the impression of his form was found in the cliff; and
nowadays they say that if you stand in the cavity and wish, and then
turn round without changing your mind, the wish is sure to come true.
Now we are entering Milford Haven, “the finest harbour in the United
Kingdom,” stretching ten miles inland, with its many bays, creeks,
and roadsteads. Sailing up the right-hand shore, we presently reach
Pembroke Dock, two miles from the town of Pembroke, where stand the
ruins of one of the earliest built and strongest of the many castles of
Wales.
From its huge towers and turrets Strongbow started on that adventurous
journey of his with the aim of conquering Ireland. For many years after
the conquest of Wales its grim keep, with its conical roof capped by an
enormous millstone, menaced the rebel Welsh. There, in 1456, was born
Henry Tudor, one day to be Henry VII. of England, and there he spent
the first ten years of his boyhood. There also was his landing-place
when he came to drive the usurping Richard from the throne.
Its story during the Civil War is strange enough. Pembroke Castle,
under Poyer, the Mayor of Pembroke, was the only place in Wales that
declared for the Parliament. But it looked as though this was only done
for love of opposition to the majority, for when the war was over and
troops were being sent back home, Poyer refused to give up his post
as Governor of the Castle, and roused up the whole of South Wales for
the Royalist cause, then practically dead. Great must have been the
surprise of the Puritans, but before long Cromwell himself was putting
the rebels to flight and battering at the walls of Pembroke Castle,
where so many had taken refuge.
“A very desperate enemy, very many of them gentlemen of quality,
and thoroughly resolved,” so Oliver described them. But the well
of drinking-water had been captured by him, and hunger and thirst
compelled them to surrender. Poyer and two other leaders were sent to
the Tower and condemned to death, but pardon being granted to two of
the three, lots were then drawn. “Life given by God” was written on two
slips; the third was a blank. Poyer drew the last, and, facing death
with the utmost courage, was shot at Covent Garden.
It is tempting to take a glimpse at the stately ruins of Carew Castle,
another great stronghold of old times; but we must hasten on to
the head of the estuary, and thence by land to the ancient town of
Haverfordwest, now a flourishing market-town, the most important in
the county. Again the most striking feature is the great square-walled
castle, concerning which the old Welsh historian tells an exciting
adventure.
It so happened that a certain robber-chief was imprisoned in the
dungeon of the castle at the time that the three young sons of the Earl
of Pembroke and two children of the Governor were playing together
within the walls. The game was shooting with bow and arrows, but the
latter were so badly made that the youngsters began to lament that no
one could make them well enough. Either through a chink in the wall,
or by means of his gaoler, the prisoner conveyed the information that
he was noted for the work of arrow-making, and the boys were soon his
devoted admirers. One day the too confiding gaoler went off to his
dinner, leaving the dungeon door with the key in the lock, that the
boys might visit the interesting maker of arrows. No sooner were some
of them inside, however, than the brigand locked them in with him, and
threatened those who tried to break down the door that he would kill
the children and himself unless the Governor swore to let him go free.
This was done at length, in sheer despair, and the robber was allowed
to depart to his lair in safety.
[Illustration: ST. CATHERINE’S ROCK, TENBY.]
Haverfordwest is the nearest station to St. David’s, the most famous
cathedral in Wales, once the aim of many a pilgrimage, since “two
journeys to St. David’s shrine counted as one to Rome.” And well it
might, since even now there are “sixteen miles and seventeen hills” to
traverse before we reach the sacred spot.
St. David’s Cathedral stands remote in a somewhat desolate country,
upon a strip of craggy seaboard, “the loneliest of British fanes.”
“We descend a narrow street paved with rough stones, we look through
a little gateway on the right, and stand astonished and delighted. A
wonderful prospect bursts upon us: we behold the whole cathedral rising
before us in its stern majesty, with the ruins of St. Mary’s College to
the right, and the magnificent remains of the Bishop’s palace to the
left, while the dark rocks of Carn Llidi form the background to the
striking picture.”[2]
[Footnote 2: D. T. Evans, “Welsh Pictures.”]
The loveliness of the building itself, its massive pillars and delicate
tracery, with the grey, purple, and red colours of the sandstone
from which they are formed, make it one of the most beautiful of
cathedrals; but the most thrilling memory in connection with it is
that, when most of England was still plunged in heathen darkness, a
cathedral stood in this place as the Church of West Britain and the
seat of an Archbishop of the Celtic Church.
The shrine of St. David, or Dewi, the Water-drinker, the patron saint
of Wales, is within, and with him lies the honour of transferring the
seat of the Archbishopric from its more ancient site at Caerleon in
Monmouthshire to this spot. St. David, said by one legend to have been
uncle to King Arthur, became famous by a miracle that occurred in the
sixth century, when he addressed a great meeting of the Fathers of
the early Christian Church, and laid low the false doctrines of one
Pelagius, or Morgan, who was leading the Christians of Britain and
other lands astray.
As the saint, then Abbot of St. Patrick’s Monastery, where now stands
the present cathedral, addressed a crowd composed of “the saints of
Anjou, the saints of England, and of the North, of Man and Anglesey,
of Ireland and Devonshire and Kent,” and of many other places, a white
dove descended from heaven upon his shoulder. “Upon which the ground
on which he was standing,” says the legend, “gradually rose under him,
till it became a hill, from which his voice, like a loud-sounding
trumpet, was clearly heard and understood by all, both near and far
off, seven thousand people, on the top of which hill a church was
afterwards built, and stands till this day.”
This happened farther north at Llandewi-brefi, but it was this miracle
that placed the see of the Archbishopric to which St. David was at once
raised, in Menevia, as this lonely district was called, instead of at
Caerleon, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Merlin: “Menevia shall put on
the pall of Caerleon.”