Let us now journey westward from the Dee into Wales, coming first into
Flintshire. The town of Flint, it is conjectured, was originally a Roman
camp, from the design and the antiquities found there. Edward I., six
hundred years ago, built Flint Castle upon an isolated rock in a marsh
near the river, and after a checquered history it was dismantled in the
seventeenth century. From the railway between Chester and Holyhead the
ruins of this castle are visible on its low freestone rock; it is a
square, with round towers at three of the corners, and a massive keep at
the other, formed like a double tower and detached from the main castle.
This was the "dolorous castle" into which Richard II. was inveigled at
the beginning of his imprisonment, which ended with abdication, and
finally his death at Pomfret. The story is told that Richard had a fine
greyhound at Flint Castle that often caressed him, but when the Duke of
Lancaster came there the greyhound suddenly left Richard and caressed
the duke, who, not knowing the dog, asked Richard what it meant.
"Cousin," replied the king, "it means a great deal for you and very
little for me. I understand by it that this greyhound pays his court to
you as King of England, which you will surely be, and I shall be
deposed, for the natural instinct of the dog shows it to him; keep him,
therefore, by your side." Lancaster treasured this, and paid attention
to the dog, which would nevermore follow Richard, but kept by the side
of the Duke of Lancaster, "as was witnessed," says the chronicler
Froissart, "by thirty thousand men."
Rhuddlan Castle, also in Flintshire, is a red sandstone ruin of striking
appearance, standing on the Clwyd River. When it was founded no one
knows accurately, but it was rebuilt seven hundred years ago, and was
dismantled, like many other Welsh castles, in 1646. It was at Rhuddlan
that Edward I. promised the Welsh "a native prince who never spoke a
word of English, and whose life and conversation no man could impugn;"
and this promise he fulfilled to the letter by naming as the first
English Prince of Wales his infant son, then just born at Caernarvon
Castle. Six massive towers flank the walls of this famous castle, and
are in tolerably fair preservation. Not far to the southward is the
eminence known by the Welsh as "Yr-Wyddgrug," or "a lofty hill," and
which the English call Mold. On this hill was a castle of which little
remains now but tracings of the ditches, larches and other trees
peacefully growing on the site of the ancient stronghold. Off toward
Wrexham are the ruins of another castle, known as Caergwrle, or "the
camp of the giant legion." This was of Welsh origin, and commanded the
entrance to the Vale of Alen; the English called it Hope Castle.
Adjoining Flintshire is Denbigh, with the quiet watering-place of
Abergele out on the Irish Sea. About two miles away is St. Asaph, with
its famous cathedral, having portions dating from the thirteenth
century. The great castle of Denbigh, when in its full glory, had
fortifications one and a half miles in circumference. It stood on a
steep hill at the county-town, where scanty ruins now remain, consisting
chiefly of an immense gateway with remains of flanking towers. Above the
entrance is a statue of the Earl of Lincoln, its founder in the
thirteenth century. His only son was drowned in the castle-well, which
so affected the father that he did not finish the castle. Edward II.
gave Denbigh to Despenser; Leicester owned it in Elizabeth's time;
Charles II. dismantled it. The ruins impress the visitor with the
stupendous strength of the immense walls of this stronghold, while
extensive passages and dungeons have been explored beneath the surface
for long distances. In one chamber near the entrance-tower, which had
been walled up, a large amount of gunpowder was found. At Holywell, now
the second town in North Wales, is the shrine to which pilgrims have
been going for many centuries. At the foot of a steep hill, from an
aperture in the rock, there rushes forth a torrent of water at the rate
of eighty-four hogsheads a minute; whether the season be wet or be dry,
the sacred stream gushing forth from St. Winifrede's Well varies but
little, and around it grows the fragrant moss known as St. Winifrede's
Hair. The spring has valuable medicinal virtues, and an elegant dome
covering it supports a chapel. The little building is an exquisite
Gothic structure built by Henry VII. A second basin is provided, into
which bathers may descend. The pilgrims to this holy well have of late
years decreased in numbers; James II., who, we are told, "lost three
kingdoms for a mass," visited this well in 1686, and "received as a
reward the undergarment worn by his great-grandmother, Mary Queen of
Scots, on the day of her execution." This miraculous spring gets its
name from the pious virgin Winifrede. She having been seen by the Prince
of Wales, Caradoc, he was struck by her great beauty and attempted to
carry her off; she fled to the church, the prince pursuing, and,
overtaking her, he in rage drew his sword and struck off her head; the
severed head bounded through the church-door and rolled to the foot of
the altar. On the spot where it rested a spring of uncommon size burst
forth. The pious priest took up the head, and at his prayer it was
united to the body, and the virgin, restored to life, lived in sanctity
for fifteen years afterwards: miracles were wrought at her tomb; the
spring proved another Pool of Bethesda, and to this day we are told that
the votive crutches and chairs left by the cured remain hanging over St.
Winifrede's Well.
South of Denbigh, in Montgomeryshire, are the ruins of Montgomery
Castle, long a frontier fortress of Wales, around which many hot
contests have raged: a fragment of a tower and portions of the walls are
all that remain. Powys Castle is at Welsh Pool, and is still
preserved--a red sandstone structure on a rocky elevation in a spacious
and well-wooded park; Sir Robert Smirke has restored it.