THE castle of Denbigh (_Dinbach_, the little fort) occupies the crown of
a rocky eminence on the south side of the noble vale of Clwyd, and
commanding an extensive prospect over that rich and beautiful vein of
country. This impregnable fortress, with one thousand pounds in lands,
was granted by Edward the First to Davydd, the brother of Llewellyn, as a
marriage portion with the Earl of Derby’s widow, whom he espoused at the
king’s request. Davydd forfeited these grants by his rebellion, which
enabled Edward to reward one of his English followers with this noble
estate. The fortunate grantee was Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and of
Denbigh, who had married the daughter and sole heiress of Long-sword,
Earl of Salisbury, by whom he had two sons, Edmund and John, who both
died young, one of them by a fall into a very deep well within the castle
of Denbigh; and a daughter named Alicia, espoused by Thomas Plantagenet,
Earl of Lancaster, who, in right of this lady, became Earl of Lincoln and
of Sarum, Lord of Denbigh, Halton, Pomfret, and constable of Chester
Castle. The melancholy death of his son Edmund so afflicted the earl,
that Leland assures us it caused him to desert his proud castle without
completing its great design. Upon the attainder of Thomas of Lancaster,
son-in-law of Lacy, the lordship of Denbigh was conferred upon Hugh
D’Espencer, a favourite of Edward the Second; but this unpopular person
being also cut off by violence, Roger Mortimer obtained a grant of his
estates, in fulfilment of a promise made to his mother by Edward the
Third, before he ascended the throne, “that he would bestow one thousand
pounds upon her son if ever he should succeed to the crown of England.”
The proprietorship of this impregnable rock seems to have inspired its
lords with ideas of independence, uniformly growing up into rebellion.
Mortimer was infected with the same anti monarchical notions, and met
with a similar fate. The succession of tragedies was at length arrested
by a Sir William Montacute, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, who continued a
grateful and zealous adherent of the crown. Salisbury dying without
issue, and the attainder of Mortimer being reversed, Denbigh was
restored, by marriage, to the house of York, and, consequently, to the
crown once more.
Queen Elizabeth bestowed the lordship of Denbigh upon her favourite
Leicester, who did not conciliate the affections of the Welsh people with
the same zeal he did those of his royal mistress, and an insurrection of
the tenantry was the consequence of his tyrannical government. In the
year 1696 a similar unpopular grant was made of the lordships of Denbigh,
Bromfield, and Yale to the Earl of Portland; but the resistance given to
the investment of the grantee by the Welsh gentry was so decided, that
parliament petitioned the crown to reverse the grant.
Edward the Fourth, while Duke of York, sustained a siege here from the
army of Henry the Sixth, and ultimately effected his escape. Charles the
First lodged in the castle for a short period after his retreat from
Chester; and the Siambr y Brennin, or king’s apartments, though totally
ruined, are still pointed out. The Welsh, however, have greater cause of
self-gratulation, and may point to this monument of departed power with
more pride, from the gallant defence which they made from its walls,
under the conduct of the brave William Salisbury, against the
parliamentary forces, than from any adventitious circumstance involved in
its sad and eventful history.
The ruins are of great extent, and the grand portal is nearly entire; but
from the mode of its erection, as well as the means of its destruction,
they afford but little that is picturesque in their appearance. The
ground plan was at first surrounded by double walls, parallel to each
other, and distant only by six or eight feet, the intermural space was
then filled up with rubble stone and hot mortar, which on cooling became
a solid conglomerate. Upon the barbarous dismantling of the castle,
after the Restoration, which was done by springing a mine of gunpowder
beneath it, the walls separated and fell from the grouting, exposing a
mass of shattered fragments, without the advantage of a single tree or
any impending object to throw a relieving shadow over the melancholy
heap.
Near to the grand entrance of the castle stand the side walls of an
unfinished church, one hundred and seventy feet in length, and pierced by
many spacious windows. These were raised by the Earl of Leicester, and
destined for the celebration of the reformed service; but he did not
like, or, as others say, did not live to visit his oppressed Welsh
tenantry, and left this pious work unfinished. A subscription was some
years afterwards set on foot, and ample funds obtained for roofing over
the walls, but the Earl of Essex, on his way to Ireland, procured a loan
of the sum collected, and no effort was ever after made to save the whole
from falling to decay.
An interesting and national spectacle was exhibited on the bowling-green
under the castle walls of Denbigh, in the autumn of 1828; it is called in
Welsh an Eistedfodd, and means a meeting of the bards. This is an
institution of ancient origin, and was formerly held under a precept or
commission from the crown, directed to the principal inhabitants in the
district where the meeting was intended to be held. The latest royal
mandate for the holding of an Eistedfodd was issued by Queen Elizabeth,
and directed to the ancestors of some of the most respectable families
now resident in Flint and Denbigh shires. The bardic assemblage of 1828
was accompanied by circumstances of a very peculiar and gratifying
character, and the remembrance of it will long be cherished by all
Cambrians who witnessed it, with feelings of the deepest and warmest
enthusiasm. The verdant platform of the bowling-green commands one of
the richest and happiest prospects in nature; the eye sweeps down the
green hills on the south, and passing over the noble and broad valley of
the Clwyd, climbs rapidly the Clwydian hills, where it finds an index to
a brighter prospect in the national monument on Moel Ffammau. Here a
handsome obelisk on the highest of the hills commemorates the fiftieth
year of the eventful reign of King George the Third. This accidental
circumstance gave an additional interest to this bardic meeting, for, by
a singular coincidence, Sir E. Mostyn, a descendant of Sir Piers, one of
the persons named in the precept of Elizabeth, was president of the
Eistedfodd. A noble individual, the representative of the brave William
Salisbury, the defender of the castle, graced the assemblage by his
presence. A dignitary of the church, who embodied those gallant actions
in a valuable history, judged some of the bardic effusions, and a royal
prince looked gratefully over the heads of an innocent and happy people
towards the monument which their loyalty and affection had raised to his
venerable father.
[Picture: Valle Crucis Abbey; Ruthin Castle; Wynnstay. London.
Published by T. T. & J. Tegg, Cheapside, Oct. 1st 1832]