CONWAY is an ancient fortified town, seated on the western bank of the
noble river from which it takes its name, and formerly called
Aber-Conway, i.e. the mouth or embouchure of the chief river. The
position is happily chosen, both as a strong post of defence and a key to
those parts of Denbigh and Caernarvon which lie remote from the sea. In
the arrangement and decorations of the interior the town of Conway has
little to attract a mere spectator, the streets being few, narrow, and
irregular: but the historian and the antiquary will view with much
interest the old Plas Mawr, erected in the year 1585, by Robert Wynne, of
Gwydyr, Esq., uncle of Sir John Wynne the historian. Over the principal
entrance, in Greek characters, are inscribed the words ανεχθ απεχθ, i.e.
bear and forbear; and above may be observed, in Roman capitals, J. H. S.
X. P. S. supposed to be the initials of the words “Jesus Hominum Salvator
et populi salus;” the interpretation of the three first letters is
probably correct, but of the latter three extremely questionable. The
old college, which stands in Castle Street, is adorned with armorial
bearings of the Stanleys, and was possibly an alms-house or charitable
institution of some sort, founded or endowed by that noble family. Of
the old Cistercian Abbey, founded by Llewellyn ap Jorwerth in the year
1185, no traces are now visible; Edward the First transformed the
building into a parish church, removed the monks to Maenan Abbey, on the
Denbighshire side of the river, three miles distant from Llanrwst, and
obliterated all traces of the monkish establishment as far as it was
practicable.
The church is a low unarchitectural structure, built and repaired from
time to time from the mouldering walls of the ancient abbey, without
having borrowed one happy thought from the symmetry of its proportions.
Here is a fine baptismal font, supported by a clustered pillar of gothic
design; and a tablet to the memory of Nicholas Hookes, of Conway, Gent.,
who was the forty-first child of William and Alice Hookes, and himself
the father of twenty-seven. He died on the 20th of March, 1637.
The town was incorporated and made a free borough by Edward the First,
the charter constituting the mayor to be governor of the castle also.
This politic prince erected the castles of Caernarvon, Beaumaris, and
Conway, to awe the turbulent spirit of his dearly acquired subjects; and
whatever merit may be due to the policy of the plan, sufficient
admiration can hardly be awarded to the choice of position and beauty of
design. If he had not been the prince who commanded those walls to be
erected, he might well have wished to have been their architect. The
picturesque features of these fine ruins are quite distinct; Caernarvon
boasts magnitude, Conway a most romantic position, and the great hall of
Beaumaris brings back the spectator immediately into the society of other
days.
The embattled walls which surround the town are coeval with the castle,
and drawn in the form of a British harp, like those encompassing
Caernarvon. The design and style of the castle however are wholly
different, and most happily suited to its bold position. The ground plan
is nearly in form a parallelogram. Two sides of the castle rise from a
steep rock, washed by the tide water of a little creek that runs up along
the town walls, and by the flood of the Conway river. The exterior
presents to view eight noble circular towers, from the walls of which
issue slender machiolated turrets, giving a singular lightness to the
whole design, and connected by massive embattled curtains. A long wall
formerly extended from the southern angle of the castle into the river,
terminated by a little water tower, used to obstruct the passage of
enemies, and facilitate the landing of their friends. The principal
entrance, which is tolerably perfect, was by a drawbridge thrown across a
deep fosse, concealed within a barbacan. The interior is divided into
two distinct parts, an outer and an inner court, the entrance to the
latter impassable by more than one person at a time, and that by the
permission of those within. Around the outer courtyard were the
apartments of the garrison, the chapel, great hall, &c.: the inner area
was encompassed by the apartments of the royal founder and his household.
The walls of a small chamber, still entire, with an open ornamented
casement, bear the name of the Queen’s Oriel, and appear, from a poem of
the age in which it was erected, to have been the ladies’ dressing-room.
At the south-western extremity, beyond the royal apartments, a broad
terrace is raised above the river upon a ledge of solid rock; from this,
as from the oriel, a view of the adjacent country is enjoyed, intersected
by cultivated hills, between which and the castle the Conway is seen to
roll his flood, passing beneath the broad waterway afforded by a
beautiful suspension bridge, which, from the appropriateness of style,
seems an appendage of the ancient pile. A curious proof is here afforded
of the excellence of masonry in the early ages. Although the castle
appears identified with the rock from which it springs, a separation has
taken place in one instance; neither has this occurred from the
disintegration of the walls, which hang out beyond the base of the broken
tower, it is the rock itself that has crumbled away.
There are many historic events of deep interest connected with the story
of this warrior pile. Like the artist of the brazen bull, Edward was the
first who was necessitated to make trial of the sufficiency of his new
state prison. Here he was besieged and nearly reduced by famine, and
only rescued from such a critical situation by the providential arrival
of a fleet with supplies. This was also the appointed rendezvous of
forty thousand loyalists who attached themselves to the fortunes of King
Richard the Second, and were destined to check the career of Bolingbroke.
Here Percy and King Richard held an interview, from which it would appear
that the unhappy prince mistrusted his faithful friends; for, secretly
withdrawing from Conway, he put himself into the hands of Northumberland,
at Flint, by whom he was betrayed into the power of his rival. Amongst
its different vicissitudes Conway Castle was once converted into a public
treasury, and discharged its trust with honour and good fortune. In the
civil wars of King Charles’s time, being held by Dr. Williams, archbishop
of York, for the king, the country gentlemen entrusted to his Grace’s
keeping their title deeds, plate, and most valuable moveables. This
trust he cheerfully undertook and made himself entirely responsible for
their value by giving to each depositor a personal receipt. In the May
of 1645, Prince Rupert was appointed governor of the castle, and by his
order Sir John Owen was substituted for the archbishop in the
guardianship of the valuables lodged within. Sir John constantly evading
the archbishop’s applications on the subject of the deposit, the prelate,
to avoid his own ruin, and seeing no prospect of a return to regal
government, joined the Parliamentarians, assisted Mytton in the reduction
of the castle, and having again got into possession of those treasures
for which he had pledged himself, restored them uninjured to the
respective owners. For these services parliament granted him a free
pardon and a release from all his sequestrations. The singular beauty of
this fortress appears to have obtained for it not only the admiration but
the respect of the ruin-making conquerors of the seventeenth century; but
being at last granted by Charles the Second to Lord Conway, while it was
still roofed and perfect, that gothic personage dismantled the entire
structure, and sold the lead, iron, timber, and all other disposable
materials which could be easily separated.
The suspension bridge at Conway is thrown from the foot of the southern
tower to a small island in the river, the suspension piers corresponding
in design with the rounders of the castle occasion little interruption to
the harmony of the whole, and reduce it to a mere question of taste,
whether the bridge be not an appropriate accession to the scene, and the
very drawbridge of the castle.