NEWTOWN
Manufacture of cloth and flannel--Fine screen and ugly modern
church--Sir John Pryce--Aberhafesp Church--S. Mark’s Eve--Bed
of an ancient lake--Caersws--Legend of Swsan--Obligations of a
chieftain--How a tribe would increase--How to reduce the difficulty
of providing land--Llanwnog--S. Gwynnog--Consequences to his
family of the publication of the letter of Gildas--View from
Llanwnog--Llanidloes Church--Richard Gwynn--Chartist riots--Poetical
description of them--Robert Owen--Henry Williams--Richard Davies.
NEWTOWN is new in every particular except in its manufacture, and that
of cloth and flannel was old enough in Wales, if we may judge by the
spindle-whorls and shuttles found in camp and cairn; but the business
once spread over the Principality is now concentrated at Newtown.
The ugly white brick church has taken the place of one that was old,
and contained a magnificent screen. This has not been destroyed, but is
preserved in a barn at the rectory. There is some talk of placing it
once more in the church, where it would be like the proverbial jewel of
gold in a swine’s snout.
Sir John Pryce, fifth baronet, of Newtown Hall, was born in 1698, and
succeeded to the title and estates on the death of his father in 1720.
He married first his first cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas
Powell. She died in 1731.
One day Sir John was overtaken by a storm of rain whilst out shooting,
and took refuge under a tree, and to the same shelter ran a girl, Mary,
daughter of a small farmer of Berriew, named John Morris. As the rain
continued to fall, Sir John Pryce was given plenty of time to make the
girl’s acquaintance, to fall in love with her, and to propose. This led
to a second marriage.
But the humble origin of Lady Pryce led to much spiteful comment, and
some people would assert that she had not been married to Sir John.
This was absolutely untrue, but falsehood is believed if venomous.
Whether it were this, or that she could not accommodate herself to
her new situation, or the fact that the first Lady Pryce was kept,
embalmed, by the bedside, or perhaps all together combined to weigh on
her spirits, and she died of despondency after two years of married
life. This was in 1739.
In July, 1741, the Rev. W. Felton, curate of Newtown, was dying, when,
two days before his death, he received a long letter from Sir John
Pryce, from which a few passages may be extracted:--
“DEAR MR. FELTON,--I waited an opportunity yesterday of conferring
with you in private; but, not finding the room in which you sat clear
a minute, I am forced to communicate this way my thoughts. I have
abundant reason to believe that you will immediately enter upon a
happier state when you make an exchange, and I desire that you will do
me the favour to acquaint my two Dear Wives, that I retain the same
tender Affections and the same Honour and Esteem for their Memories
which I ever did for their persons, and to tell the latter, that I
earnestly desire, if she can obtain the Divine permission, that she
will appear to me, to discover the persons who have wronged her, and
put me into a proper method of vindicating those wrongs which robbed
her of her life and me of all my happiness in this world.
“I heartily wish you the Divine protection and assistance, and am
“Your Friend and Humble Servant,
“JON PRYCE.
“P.S.--I have sent you a Bottle of Mint Water, which, if you find too
strong, you may dilute with Spring Water to what size you please.”
Sir John wrote an elegy of a thousand lines on his second wife, in
which he affirmed that with his latest breath he would “lisp Maria’s
name.”
Ere long, however, he fell in love again, and this time with a widow,
Eleanor Jones, and married her.
But when the lady found the bodies of his two preceding wives embalmed,
one on each side of the matrimonial bed, she absolutely refused to
enter it, and ordered their burial “before she would supply their
vocation.”
She also died, in 1748. Immediately Sir John wrote off to one Bridget
Bostock, “the Cheshire Pythoness,” who pretended to heal the sick by
the faith-cure and with her “fasting spittle,” which she supplied in
corked and sealed bottles:--
“MADAM,--Being very well informed by very creditable people that you
have done several wonderful cures, even when Physicians have failed
... why may not God enable you to raise the Dead as well as to heal
the Sick, give sight to the Blind and hearing to the Deaf? Now I
have lost a wife whom I most dearly loved, and I entreat you for God
Almighty’s sake that you would be so good as to come here, if your
actual presence is absolutely requisite, to raise up my dear wife,
Dame Eleanor Pryce, from the Dead.... Pray let me know by return
of the Post, that I may send you a Coach and Six and Servants to
attend you here, with orders to defray your expenses in a manner most
suitable to your desires.
“Your unfortunate afflicted petitioner & hble serv^t.
“JOHN PRYCE.”
In compliance with this invitation Mrs. Bostock visited Buckland,
in Brecknockshire, where Sir John then was, and exerted all her
miracle-working powers, but without effect.
Sir John remained inconsolable--for a while. But from his will, dated
20th June, 1760, it appears that he was then meditating a fourth
marriage. He, however, died before it took place. In his will he speaks
of “that dearest object of my lawful and best and purest Worldly
affections, my most dear and most entirely beloved intended wife,
Margaret Harries, of the parish of S. Martin, Haverfordwest, spinster.”
He died on October 28th, 1761, and was buried at Haverfordwest.
His son, Sir John Powell Pryce, sixth baronet, was an unfortunate man.
Having by some accident injured his eyes, his wife applied to them a
strong acid by mistake for a lotion, which entirely blinded him. But
this was not all. Want of management, and wasteful living, obliged him
to part with one estate after another, and at last he was thrown as a
debtor into King’s Bench, where his faithful wife joined him, and spent
many years with him in the prison, till he died in 1776. With his son
Edward Manley the title expired.
Three miles up the Severn above Newtown are two churches without
villages attached--Penstrowed and Aberhafesp--on opposite sides of the
Severn.
A story is told of the latter, a modern church with very bad glass in
it. Two men, hearing that he who remains in the church porch on S.
Mark’s Eve will see or hear something concerning those who are to die
in the course of the year, resolved to keep watch there over midnight.
One of them, wearied with the day’s work, fell asleep. Presently, in
the dead of night, the one who was awake heard a voice from within the
church calling his fellow by name. He roused him, and said, “Let us
go--it is of no use waiting longer here.”
In the course of a few weeks, there was a funeral from the opposite
parish of Penstrowed, and the departed was to be buried in Aberhafesp
churchyard. There is no bridge nearer than that which spans the river
at Caersws, and to take the body that way would mean a journey of over
five miles. It was determined, therefore, to ford the river opposite
Aberhafesp Church. The person who had fallen asleep in the porch
volunteered to carry the coffin across the river, and it was placed on
the saddle in front of him, and, to prevent it from falling, he was
obliged to grasp it with both arms.
The deceased had died of an infectious fever, and the coffin-bearer
was stricken, and within a fortnight was a dead man, and was the first
parishioner who died in the parish of Aberhafesp that year.
The hills fall back above the two churches and allow of a broad level
basin, once the bed of a fine lake, before it was silted up at the end
of the Glacial Period. Here the Afon Garno, Paranon, and Ceryst, meet
the Severn at Caersws, which was an important Roman station, at the
junction of several roads, and where now the Mid-Wales line falls into
the Cambrian Railway.
Caersws derives its name from a traditional Queen Swsan, that carried
on a war with a prince who reigned over a tribe on the south of the
Severn. One day, seeing the enemy mustered on the Llandinam Hills,
she crossed the river with her forces to give battle to the foe. The
prince, occupying higher ground, was able to repel the attack; and the
queen, seeing that her men were routed and in full flight, rode up to
the prince and demanded to be put to death, that she might be buried in
a great cairn beside her braves who had fallen. The prince replied that
she was too gallant to be thus slain, and that he pardoned her; and
further committed himself to her hands. Thenceforth their quarrels were
fought out in private.
The Roman castrum may still be traced--it covers about seven acres.
Excavations made here have given up coins of Vespasian, Domitian, and
of later emperors, also Samian ware. Roman soldiers must have been very
regardless as to the condition of their pockets, for wherever they
went they dropped their money.
The plain would seem to have been a debatable ground from hoar
antiquity, for every height about it is entrenched.
It was one of the first obligations of a chief of a Celtic tribe to
provide every married man who was subject to him with a farm, with
seven acres of arable land, seven of pasture, seven of woodland, and
a share in commons. Now as the tribe grew and multiplied he was put
to great straits, and the only way out of his difficulties, where all
the available land was appropriated, was for him to oust a neighbour
from his territories. This obligation weighed on a chief to the eighth
generation. Now suppose that a man started to found a tribe, and had
three sons, and each of these sons had three, and all married, and in
each generation had the same number. In the eighth, the tribe would
consist of 2,673 marriageable men clamouring to be provided with
farms of seven acres of arable, land, seven of forest, and seven of
pasture. What could the chief do to satisfy them but lead them against
a neighbour?
One way out of the difficulty was the establishment of monasteries.
This explains the development of monachism on the steppes of Tartary,
as well as in Wales and Ireland. On that high and sterile plateau in
Central Asia, only a limited population can be maintained, and it is
to keep down the growth of the population, as a practical expedient,
that so large a portion of the males is consigned to celibacy. And it
was this practical necessity that provoked the ascetic and celibate
societies of the Druids first, and the Christian monks afterwards. When
no new lands were available for colonisation, when the three-field
system was the sole method of agriculture known, then the land which
would now maintain three families at least, would support but one. To
keep the equipoise there were migration, war, and compulsory celibacy
as alternatives. That this really was a difficulty confronting the old
Celtic communities we can see by a story of what occurred in Ireland
in 657. The population had so increased that the arable land proved
insufficient for the needs of the country. Accordingly an assembly
of clergy and laity was summoned by Dermot and Blaithmac, kings of
Ireland, to take the matter into consideration. It was decided that
the amount of land held by any one householder should be restricted;
and further the elders of the assembly directed that prayers should be
offered to the Almighty to send a pestilence “to reduce the number of
the lower class, that the rest might live in comfort.”
S. Fechin of Fore, on being consulted, approved of this extraordinary
proposal. And the prayer was answered from heaven by a second
visitation of the terrible Yellow Plague; but the vengeance of God
caused the force of the pestilence to fall on the nobles and clergy, of
whom multitudes, including the kings and Fechin of Fore himself, were
carried off.
To this day, in Tyrol, where the farms cannot be subdivided, owing to
the mountainous nature of the land, on the death of the father the sons
draw lots who shall marry and take the farm. The rest work under their
more fortunate brother, and remain single.
[Illustration: GILDAS. A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY STATUE AT LOCMINÉ]
Llanwnog lies under the rounded, heathy mountain of Ddifed, in rear
of which are some tarns lying high. The church has in it a very fine
and well-preserved screen and rood-loft, and an old stained-glass
representation of the patron saint and founder of the church.
His name was Gwynnog, and he was a son of Gildas the historian.
At an early age Gildas committed his son to S. Finnian to be educated.
Leaving his master when his education was complete, Gwynnog settled
in this spot above the plain of Caersws, but the scurrilous pamphlet
issued by his father from his safe retreat in Brittany seems to have
fallen like a bombshell among those of his family who were in Wales
and Cornwall, and obliged them to leave the territories of the princes
against whom Gildas had hurled invectives. Cuneglas (or Cynlas) was
prince of Powys at the time. Gildas called him “a bear, wallowing in
filth, a tawny butcher.”
Cuneglas after this was not likely to deal tenderly with a son of the
pamphleteer, and Gwynnog fled for his life to Brittany, to his father.
It seems not improbable that he was elected Bishop of Vannes, where
there had been sorry doings and ecclesiastical scandals, and the Church
was looking out for a respectable ruler.
The Frank historian Gregory of Tours calls him Eunius, and says that he
was over-fond of the bottle. Weroc II. was Count of Vannes at the time,
and he was engaged in hostilities with Chilperic, king of the Franks,
whom he defeated with great slaughter in 578. Chilperic made terms
with the Breton chief, who undertook to pay tribute, but afterwards
made difficulties about fulfilling his engagement, and sent Bishop
Gwynnog, or Eunius, to Chilperic with a list of complaints. Chilperic
was furious at this breach of engagements, and resented it against the
unoffending prelate, whom he sent into exile. Gwynnog died at Angers in
580, just ten years after his father.
The view from Llanwnog across the basin of the Severn at the mountains
up the valleys of the Severn and the streams that pour into it is very
beautiful.
A branch line from Moat Lane leads to Llanidloes at the junction of
the Clywedog and Afon Tylwch with the Severn. Although the mountains
here do not rise to a great height, they are broken and fine, and many
beautiful walks may be taken up the glens of the tributaries of the
Severn and over the heathy moors. The Afon Brochan may be ascended to
a tarn from which the stream flows, or to the pretty lake Llyn Ebyr,
three miles to the north.
Llanidloes possesses one of the finest churches in North Wales, with a
richly carved oak roof, the hammer beams supported by angels bearing
shields.
Richard Gwynn was a native of Llanidloes. He was educated at S. John’s
College, Cambridge, and must have been of poor parentage, for he was a
sizar there. He could not reconcile himself to the religious changes
in the reign of Edward VI., nor to the violence with which fanatics
wrecked the churches; nor would he accept the claim of Queen Elizabeth
to be “Supreme Governor” over the Church in England, the objectionable
title “Supreme Head” having been put aside.
He lived quietly with his wife and children, keeping a school, at one
time at Overton Madog, then at Wrexham, Gresford, and again at Overton;
and had many scholars, as he led an exemplary life, and was well known
for his learning and scholarship. He does not seem to have been mixed
up with any seditious movements, or to have been associated with the
Jesuits. Nevertheless he was arrested in 1580 and cast into prison,
and kept there for four years; he was treated with great harshness, and
frequently tortured to force him to accept the Queen’s supremacy. After
several trials he was finally brought up at Wrexham Assizes in 1584 and
condemned to death for high treason. The sentence was as follows:--
“Richard White (_i.e._ Gwynn) shall be brought to prison from whence
he came, and thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where
he shall hang half dead, and so be cut down alive, his members cast
into the fire, his belly ripped into the breast, his bowels, liver,
lungs, heart, etc., thrown likewise into the fire, his head cut off,
his body be parted into four quarters.”
“What is all this?” said Gwynn. “Is it any more than one death?”
The sentence was carried out on October 15th, 1584.
Llanidloes was the scene of a Chartist outbreak in 1839. The weavers
armed and requisitioned contributions from the neighbourhood. Lord John
Russell, who was Home Secretary, sent down three police officers to
cope with hundreds of rioters well armed with fowling-pieces, pistols,
and hand grenades. The magistrates then, unsupported properly, took
the matter into their own hands and swore in special constables. The
crisis came on April 30th. A man blowing a horn summoned the Chartists
to assemble on the Bridge, and three men were captured on their way
to the assembly, and were conveyed to the “Trewythen Arms.” The crowd
now rushed to attempt a rescue, but was held at bay by fifty special
constables. However, by weight and numbers, the rioters drove them
away after a struggle, entered the inn, and wrecked it; they liberated
the three men who had been taken, and caught the ex-mayor, who appealed
to the mob to spare his life, as he was a doctor who had brought many
of them into the world. They let him go, and he left the town to give
the alarm. For five days Llanidloes was ruled by mob law, but the
Chartist leaders saw that no gross outrages were committed.
Matters had now become too serious to be dealt with in the mild manner
Lord John Russell had thought might suffice. Military aid was sent. An
old lady has recorded her reminiscences of the time.
“The town,” she says, “was in an uproar. The Chartists had been
drilling in the Dingle. The news came that a regiment of soldiers
was coming to put down the riots, and I can remember watching their
arrival. I was standing in a crowd on the Bank, and the soldiers in
red coats and brass helmets came up the Pool road, the band playing
before them. I shall never forget the scene. The women and children
were crying like wild things, they thought everybody was going to be
slaughtered. The soldiers proceeded to Newtown Hall, followed by a
great and excited crowd. Here they were met by George Arthur Evors,
the chief magistrate, who gave instructions to fire. But the officer
in charge refused. ‘What,’ he said, ‘fire upon a lot of women and
children? Certainly not.’ The soldiers, after all, did no harm, but in
the course of a row one man was killed with clubs. After that we did
not hear much about the Chartists. Many of them left the country, and
never returned. Some were arrested and put into gaol, others managed
to hide till things had quieted down, and then came back. But poor
Frost, Jones, and Williams were transported.”
A schoolmaster of Newtown named George Thomas wrote a Hudibrastic poem
on the riots, containing allusions and sly hits at local characters
that were much relished at the time.
According to him--
“The rebels had a bullet mould,
A pistol rusty, crack’d and old,
Some bellows, pipes, and lucifers,
Tweezers, card-plates, and goose-oil cans,
With dust and other nameless pans,
Hot water, soapsuds, toasting prongs,
With cat-calls, horns, and women’s tongues.”
All ended with much noise and little harm done.
“When eggs were spent, tongues peace desir’d,
The spoils of war had brought no crust,
The rebels fled, the troops retir’d,
Covered with glory, sweat and dust.”
In the old churchyard of Newtown may be seen the plain slab that covers
the body of Robert Owen, the Socialist. He was born in the place, but
his father was from Welshpool, and had set up business as saddler,
ironmonger, and postmaster. Robert was born in 1771, and was sent to
London to a situation in a haberdasher’s shop. Thence he removed to
Manchester, where he started cotton-spinning. His life is too well
known to be given in full here, but a few points may be mentioned. He
had imbibed very strong anti-religious ideas, and he was persuaded that
the whole social world was topsy-turvy, and required reorganising on
the new principles that he had excogitated.
“Character,” said he, “is formed _for_ and not _by_ the individual,
and society now possesses the most ample means and power to well form
the character of everyone by reconstructing society on its own true
principles”--that is to say, on those devised by Robert Owen.
In 1797 he started the “New Lanark Twist Company,” in which his
theories were to be carried out; but although the system was nominally
and theoretically democratic, Robert Owen ruled as an autocrat, and
having a splendid organising and business head he made the scheme into
a commercial success. Some of the partners could not agree to his
plans, so he bought them out, but took in others, who also declined to
let him rule despotically, and in disgust he went off to America to
found a Socialistic community there on the wreck of an attempted German
Communistic venture. This, however, failed, and when he returned to
Scotland the partners in the New Lanark Twist Company had increased in
number, and gave him to understand that they intended managing it in
their own and not in his way.
Then he founded a Communistic Society at Orbiston, in Scotland, but
this also slipped from his control. He next started a weekly paper,
_The Crisis_, and an “Equitable Labour Exchange.” The latter came to a
disastrous end in 1833. After this little was heard of Robert Owen.
One of his early theories was that the universe was one great
self-acting laboratory, and that all life, movement, thought, were
results of chemical action.
His conception of the formation of character was bound to end in
disappointment. Minds are not mere bits of blank paper on which you may
write what you like; souls are not lumps of putty to be moulded to
what form you will.
My dear father had been impressed with some of Robert Owen’s doctrines,
specially with this, and he set to work to shape my brothers and me
each for a special profession, and to give each a separate bent; and
the result was that we all went in clean opposite directions to what he
purposed, and adopted professions which he had intended the others to
enter.
Owen finally took up with table-rapping and Spiritualism, and supposed
himself to be a medium through whom the Duke of Kent revealed the
mysteries of the other world. Finally, as his health failed, a great
longing came over him to return to his native place and die there.
“And as a hare, when hounds and horns pursue,
Pants for the place from whence at first it flew,”
so did he come back to Newtown, and there shortly after expired.
A little way down the Severn below Newtown is Llanllwchaiarn, a church
founded by a brother of S. Aelhaiarn of Guilsfield. The parish is
not of interest in itself, except as having given birth to, and been
the residence of, a remarkable man, Henry Williams, of Ysgafell, one
of the sturdiest Nonconformists of the time of the Restoration. His
father owned the farm, which had belonged to the family for several
generations.
The Conventicle Act, which came into force in 1664, imposed a penalty
of £5 or three months’ imprisonment on anyone frequenting a dissenting
meeting, for the first offence; £10 or six months’ imprisonment
for a second offence; and for a third offence a fine of £100 or
transportation beyond the seas.
Henry Williams was in prison from time to time during nine years. On
one occasion a party of soldiers beset his house, and in the skirmish,
as they attempted to enter, his father was knocked down and killed. On
another the house was fired, and Mrs. Williams, taking one child in
her arms and leading another, attempted to cross the Severn from the
soldiery, when one of them cocked his pistol and vowed to shoot her.
However, the officer knocked the man down, and sent an escort to attend
her to a friend’s house.
Another time when Henry Williams was preaching the soldiers fell on
him, beat, and nearly killed him. They seized his stock and devastated
his farm. There was, however, one field that had been sown with wheat,
not yet sprung up, which they could not or did not harm. That field
throve amazingly, and the crop next summer surpassed in yield every
other in the neighbourhood. Nothing like it had been seen, and at
harvest the produce was so abundant as to repay the family for all its
losses. There were six, seven, and eight full ears upon each stalk. Two
of these stalk-heads have been preserved to the present day; one has on
it seven ears, the other eight. The field where this marvellous crop
was grown is known to this day as Cae’r Fendith, the Field of Blessing.
Some of the principal persecutors of Henry Williams died so strangely
that it was regarded as a judgment of heaven upon them. One dropped
suddenly from his chair dead whilst eating his dinner, a second was
drowned in the Severn when drunk, and a third fell from his horse and
broke his neck close to the house of Henry Williams, which he had
plundered.
About half-way between Caersws and Machynlleth is Llanbrynmair, the
birthplace of Richard Davies, known in Wales by his bardic name of
Mynyddog, who is regarded as the Burns of his native land. He was
born in 1833, and his father was a farmer. At an early age the poetic
faculty displayed itself in him, and he wrote for several Welsh
magazines, and won prizes at local literary meetings. As his education
had been but scanty, he laboured hard as a young man to make up for
this deficiency. He was a tall, fine man, with an open, pleasant face,
was full of a kindly, never caustic, wit; and he speedily became one
of the most popular of Welsh poets. There is a freshness and flavour
of the soil in his compositions, like those of Burns, but none of
the coarseness of the Scotch poet. He died in 1877 at his residence,
Bronygân, in Cemmes. It is hard, almost impossible, to give anything of
the charm of his compositions in a translation, and I venture on one
with the utmost diffidence.
“BOXER.”
“Full many a lusty horse I’ve viewed,
When following father’s team,
Would draw the plough, make furrow and ridge,
With the coulter’s after gleam.
Now, fair befall
Good horses all!
But never a one can I recall
That could compare, in my esteem,
With Boxer, my father’s horse.
“If I to bet were a bit inclined,
One hundred pounds I’d lay
On every hoof old Boxer had,
The best that fed upon hay.
But he would scorn,
As one well born,
To be accounted not worth a thorn.
He’d toss his head and proudly neigh
Unless he were leading horse.
“The chapel choir for a practice came,
It was upon Monday night,
To the glory of God an anthem sing
In harmony and might.
But each would lead,
And each decreed
That not a note would he proceed,
He’d hold it a purposed slur and slight
Unless he were leading horse.
“A deacon to choose at Tal-y-Coed,
Most woeful discord wrought,
For every chapel-member declared
The office was that he sought.
And he would scorn,
For this thing born,
To be set back, as not worth a thorn,
By all the _sciet_, a thing of naught!
For he would be leading horse.
“Our Boxer once was set in the shafts
When flow’ry June was gay,
And ordered to draw a wain, upheaped
With burden of balmy hay.
But he thought scorn
As one well born
To be accounted not worth a thorn,
In second place, and behind our bay,
For he would be leading horse.
“He backed, as stubborn as mule could be,
And, backing over a rock,
Adown he tumbled, with load atop,
A frightful wreckage and shock.
He broke his back,
For he would not hack
As a common cart-horse; and thus, alack!
The haughty Boxer was dead as a stock
Because he’d be leading horse.
“When folks see merit in any man,
That man will be thrust afore.
But he who elbows and pushes his way
Is surely esteemed a bore.
And I declare
Let all beware
Lest they the fall of Boxer share,
For that’s the fate for him in store
Who’ll only be leading horse.”
[Illustration: OWEN GLYNDWR’S HOUSE, MACHYNLLETH]