The Wye at Monmouth also receives the Trothy River, and the confluence
of the three valleys makes a comparatively open basin, which, however,
again narrows into another romantic glen a short distance below the
town. Wild woods border the steep hills, and the Wye flows through the
western border of the Forest of Dean, an occasional village attesting
the mineral wealth by its blackened chimneys. Here, below Redbrook, was
the home of Admiral Rooke, who captured Gibraltar in 1704, and farther
down are the ruins of the castle of St. Briard, built in the days of
Henry I. to check Welsh forays. Here lived the lord warden of the Forest
of Dean, and for three centuries every Whit-Sunday they held the annual
"scramble" in the church. It appears that a tax of one penny was levied
on every person who pastured his cattle on the common, and the amount
thus raised was expended for bread and cheese. The church was crowded,
and the clerk standing in the gallery threw out the edibles to the
struggling congregation below. The railway closely hugs the
swiftly-flowing river in its steep and narrow glen as we pass Offa's
Dyke and Chair and the Moravian village of Brockweir. Here the line of
fortifications crossed the valley which the king of Mercia constructed
to protect his dominions. The valley then slightly expands, and the
green sward is dotted by the houses of the long and scattered village of
Tintern Parva. The river sharply bends, and in the glen on the western
side stand the ruins of the far-famed Tintern Abbey in the green meadows
at the brink of the Wye. The spot is well chosen, for nowhere along this
celebrated river has Nature indicated a better place for quiet, heavenly
meditation not un-mixed with earthly comforts.
[Illustration: TINTERN ABBEY.]
Walter de Clare founded Tintern Abbey in 1131 for the Cistercian monks,
and dedicated it to St. Mary. It was built upon an ancient battlefield
where a Christian prince of Glamorgan had been slain by the heathen, but
of the buildings erected by De Clare none now exist, the present remains
being of later date, and the abbey church that is now in ruin was
erected by Roger Bigod, Duke of Norfolk. It is a magnificent relic of
the Decorated period. The vaulted roof and central tower are gone, but
the arches which supported the latter remain. The row of columns on the
northern side of the nave have fallen, with the clerestory above them,
but the remainder of the structure has suffered little damage. The
western front, with its noble window and exquisite tracery, is very
fine. Ivy and ferns overrun the walls and form a coping, while green
sward has replaced the pavement, so that it would be difficult to
imagine a more enchanting ruin, and as such Tintern is renowned the
world over. Lord Houghton has written:
"The men who called their passion piety,
And wrecked this noble argosy of faith,--
They little thought how beauteous could be death,
How fair the face of time's aye-deepening sea,
Nor arms that desolate, nor years that flee,
Nor hearts that fail, can utterly deflower
This grassy floor of sacramental power
Where we now stand communicants."
Tintern Abbey is two hundred and twenty-eight feet long. It had no
triforium, and the clerestory windows are rather large. The great east
window was even more elaborate than the western, but all of it has
fallen excepting the central mullion and the stronger portion of the
tracery which branches out on either side from it. There yet remain in
the building a few tiles with heraldic emblems, some broken monuments,
and some heaps of choice carvings, shattered as they fell, but
afterwards collected and piled against the walls. The Duke of Beaufort,
to whose estate it belongs, has done everything possible to arrest
decay, and all is kept in perfect order. A door leads out of the
southern transept to a few fragments of buildings in the fields on that
side, but most of the convent was on the northern side, where its ruins
surround a grass-grown quadrangle. A cloister once ran around it; on the
eastern side is the chapter-house, with the dormitory above, and on the
western side the remains of the abbot's lodgings and the guest-chambers
have been converted into cottages. The refectory and guest-hall are to
the northward, with ruins of the octagonal columns that supported the
roof. Such is this magnificent relic of the Cistercians, and yet it is
but one of seventy-six abbeys that they possessed before Henry VIII.
dissolved them. From the high-road down the valley of the Wye, which
skirts the green meadows along its southern face, is the best view of
the abbey, and the ruddy gray stone ruins, with the grassy fields and
the background of wooded hills beyond the broad river, make up a picture
that cannot easily be forgotten. Yet Tintern is most beautiful of all
when the full moon rising over the eastern hills pours a flood of light
through the broken east window to the place where once stood the high
altar.
The valley of the Wye again broadens, and the river flows in graceful
curves through the meadows, guarded on either hand by cliffs and woods.
The river is here a tidal-stream, having a rise of twelve feet, so that
it is now a strong current, flowing full and swift between grassy banks,
and anon is a shrunken creek, fringed by broad borders of mud. The
railway on the eastern bank runs over the meadows and through occasional
tunnels in the spurs of the cliffs. The high-road climbs the hill on the
western bank, known as the Wynecliff, from the top of which there is a
grand view over the valley and to the southward towards and beyond
Chepstow. This cliff rises nine hundred feet above the river, and is the
great monarch of a realm of crags that poke up their heads in all
directions. Across the Wye, on a tongue of land projecting into the
stream, Sir John Wyntour in the Civil War, with one hundred and eighty
Royalists, hastily built a fort to command the river. Before their
intrenchments were complete the enemy in superior force attacked and
completely routed them; but twenty escaped, and Wyntour, cutting his way
through the assailants' lines, took refuge in the beetling crags behind
known as the Tidenham Rocks. The cavalry pursued him, when he forced his
horse down a part somewhat less precipitous than the rest, reached the
bank in safety, and escaped by swimming his horse over the river. The
precipice is still known as Wyntour's Leap. Below, the Wye flows through
Chepstow, with iron bridges spanning it to carry the road and railway
across. The main part of the town on the western part is built upon a
slope that in places descends somewhat rapidly to the river. Parts of
the old walls are still preserved, strengthened at intervals by round
towers. Chepstow has its ruined church, once a priory, within which
Henry Marten the regicide was buried after twenty years' imprisonment in
the castle.
[Illustration: CHEPSTOW CASTLE.]
The great point of interest is Chepstow Castle, built here to command
the Wye, and standing in a fine situation on the edge of the river in a
naturally fortified position. Upon the land-side deep trenches and
outworks protect it, while a grassy meadow intervenes between its
gateway and the Wye, that here makes a sharp curve. To get the castle in
between the crags and the river, it was constructed upon a long and
narrow plan, and is divided into four courts. The main entrance on the
eastern side is through a ponderous gateway flanked by solid towers and
with curiously-constructed ancient wooden doors. Entering the court,
there is a massive tower on the left hand with an exterior staircase
turret, while on the right the custodian lives in a group of
comparatively modern buildings, beneath which is a vaulted chamber
communicating with the river. Within this tower, whose walls are of
great thickness, Henry Marten was imprisoned. He was one of the court
that tried King Charles, and his signature is upon the king's
death-warrant. He was a spendthrift, and afterwards had a quarrel with
Cromwell, who denounced him as an unbeliever, and even as a buffoon.
When Charles II. made the proclamation of amnesty, Marten surrendered,
but he was tried and condemned to death. He plead that he came in under
the proffer of mercy, and the sentence was commuted to a life
imprisonment; and after a short confinement in the Tower of London he
was removed to Chepstow, where he died twenty years later, in 1680.
Passing into the smaller second court, for the rocks contract it, there
is a strong tower protecting its entrance, and at the upper end are the
ruins of the great hall, relics of the fourteenth century. Two or three
windows, a door, and part of an arcade remain, but roof and floor are
gone. A still smaller court lies beyond, at the upper end of which is a
gateway defended by a moat, beyond which is the western gate and court
of the castle, so that this last enclosure forms a kind of barbican.
Chepstow was elaborately defended, and its only vulnerable points were
from the meadows on the east and the higher ground to the west; but
before the days of artillery it was regarded as impregnable, and
excellently performed its duty as a check upon the Welsh. Fitzosbern,
Earl of Hereford, built the older parts in the eleventh century, but the
most of Chepstow dates from that great epoch of castle-building on the
Welsh border, the reign of Edward I. We are told that the second
Fitzosbern was attainted and his estates forfeited, but that the king
one Easter graciously sent to him in prison his royal robes. The earl so
disdained the favor that he burned them, which made the king so angry
that he said, "Certainly this is a very proud man who hath thus abused
me, but, by the brightness of God, he shall never come out of prison so
long as I live." Whereupon, says Dugdale, who tells the tale, he
remained a prisoner until he died. Chepstow was then bestowed upon the
De Clares, who founded Tintern Abbey, and it afterwards passed by
marriage to the Bigod family. Chepstow in the Civil War was held for the
king, and surrendered to the Parliamentary troops. Soon afterwards it
was surprised at the western gate and retaken. Cromwell then besieged
it, but, the siege proving protracted, he left Colonel Ewer in charge.
The Royalist garrison of about one hundred and sixty men were reduced to
great extremity and tried to escape by a boat, but in this they were
disappointed, as one of the besiegers, watching his opportunity, swam
across the Wye with a knife in his teeth and cut the boat adrift. Then
the castle was assaulted and taken, and the commander and most of the
garrison slain. Parliament gave it to Cromwell, but after the
Restoration it was returned to the heirs of the Marquis of Worcester,
its owner, and it still belongs to his descendant, the Duke of Beaufort.
The neighborhood of Chepstow has many pleasant villas in beautiful
sites, and the broadening Wye flows a short distance beyond through the
meadow-land, and then debouches into the estuary of the Severn.