The itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales Part 8

The itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales Part 8

It is to be remarked that three princes, {190} distinguished for their justice, wisdom, and princely moderation, ruled, in our time, over the three provinces of Wales: Owen, son of Gruffydd, in Venedotia, or North Wales; Meredyth, his grandson, son of Gruffydd, who died early in life, in South Wales; and Owen de Cevelioc, in Powys. But two other princes were highly celebrated for their generosity; Cadwalader, son of Gruffydd, in North Wales, and Gruffydd of Maelor, son of Madoc, in Powys; and Rhys, son of Gruffydd, in South Wales, deserved commendation for his enterprising and independent spirit. In North Wales, David, son of Owen, and on the borders of Morgannoc, in South Wales, Howel, son of Iorwerth of Caerleon, maintained their good faith and credit, by observing a strict neutrality between the Welsh and English.

CHAPTER XIII

Of the journey by Wenloch, Brumfeld, the castle of Ludlow, and Leominster, to Hereford

From Shrewsbury, we continued our journey towards Wenloch, by a narrow and rugged way, called Evil-street, where, in our time, a Jew, travelling with the archdeacon of the place, whose name was Sin (Peccatum), and the dean, whose name was Devil, towards Shrewsbury, hearing the archdeacon say, that his archdeaconry began at a place called Evil-street, and extended as far as Mal-pas, towards Chester, pleasantly told them, "It would be a miracle, if his fate brought him safe out of a country, whose archdeacon was Sin, whose dean the devil; the entrance to the archdeaconry Evil-street, and its exit Bad-pa.s.s." {191}

From Wenloch, we pa.s.sed by the little cell of Brumfeld, {192} the n.o.ble castle of Ludlow, through Leominster to Hereford leaving on our right hand the districts of Melenyth and Elvel; thus (describing as it were a circle) we came to the same point from which we had commenced this laborious journey through Wales.

During this long and laudable legation, about three thousand men were signed with the cross; well skilled in the use of arrows and lances, and versed in military matters; impatient to attack the enemies of the faith; profitably and happily engaged for the service of Christ, if the expedition of the Holy Cross had been forwarded with an alacrity equal to the diligence and devotion with which the forces were collected. But by the secret, though never unjust, judgment of G.o.d, the journey of the Roman emperor was delayed, and dissensions arose amongst our kings. The premature and fatal hand of death arrested the king of Sicily, who had been the foremost sovereign in supplying the holy land with corn and provisions during the period of their distress. In consequence of his death, violent contentions arose amongst our princes respecting their several rights to the kingdom; and the faithful beyond sea suffered severely by want and famine, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and most anxiously waiting for supplies. But as affliction may strengthen the understanding, as gold is tried by fire, and virtue may be confirmed in weakness, these things are suffered to happen; since adversity (as Gregory testifies) opposed to good prayers is the probation of virtue, not the judgment of reproof. For who does not know how fortunate a circ.u.mstance it was that Paul went to Italy, and suffered so dreadful a shipwreck? But the ship of his heart remained unbroken amidst the waves of the sea.

CHAPTER XIV

A description of Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury {193}

Let it not be thought superfluous to describe the exterior and inward qualities of that person, the particulars of whose emba.s.sy, and as it were holy peregrination, we have briefly and succinctly related. He was a man of a dark complexion, of an open and venerable countenance, of a moderate stature, a good person, and rather inclined to be thin than corpulent. He was a modest and grave man, of so great abstinence and continence, that ill report scarcely ever presumed to say any thing against him; a man of few words; slow to anger, temperate and moderate in all his pa.s.sions and affections; swift to hear, slow to speak; he was from an early age well instructed in literature, and bearing the yoke of the Lord from his youth, by the purity of his morals became a distinguished luminary to the people; wherefore voluntarily resigning the honour of the archlevite, {194} which he had canonically obtained, and despising the pomps and vanities of the world, he a.s.sumed with holy devotion the habit of the Cistercian order; and as he had been formerly more than a monk in his manners, within the s.p.a.ce of a year he was appointed abbot, and in a few years afterwards preferred first to a bishopric, and then to an archbishopric; and having been found faithful in a little, had authority given him over much. But, as Cicero says, "Nature had made nothing entirely perfect;" when he came into power, not laying aside that sweet innate benignity which he had always shewn when a private man, sustaining his people with his staff rather than chastising them with rods, feeding them as it were with the milk of a mother, and not making use of the scourges of the father, he incurred public scandal for his remissness. So great was his lenity that he put an end to all pastoral rigour; and was a better monk than abbot, a better bishop than archbishop.

Hence pope Urban addressed him; "Urban, servant of the servants of G.o.d, to the most fervent monk, to the warm abbot, to the luke-warm bishop, to the remiss archbishop, health, etc."

This second successor to the martyr Thomas, having heard of the insults offered to our Saviour and his holy cross, was amongst the first who signed themselves with the cross, and manfully a.s.sumed the office of preaching its service both at home and in the most remote parts of the kingdom. Pursuing his journey to the Holy Land, he embarked on board a vessel at Ma.r.s.eilles, and landed safely in a port at Tyre, from whence he proceeded to Acre, where he found our army both attacking and attacked, our forces dispirited by the defection of the princes, and thrown into a state of desolation and despair; fatigued by long expectation of supplies, greatly afflicted by hunger and want, and distempered by the inclemency of the air: finding his end approaching, he embraced his fellow subjects, relieving their wants by liberal acts of charity and pious exhortations, and by the tenor of his life and actions strengthened them in the faith; whose ways, life, and deeds, may he who is alone the "way, the truth, and the life," the way without offence, the truth without doubt, and the life without end, direct in truth, together with the whole body of the faithful, and for the glory of his name and the palm of faith which he hath planted, teach their hands to war, and their fingers to fight.

Footnotes:

{1} It is a somewhat curious coincidence that the island of Barry is now owned by a descendant of Gerald de Windor's elder brother - the Earl of Plymouth.

{2} "Mirror of the Church," ii. 33.

{3} "Social England," vol. i. p. 342.

{4} Published in the first instance in the "Transactions of the Cymmrodaian Society," and subsequently amplified and brought out in book form.

{5} Introduction to Borrow's "Wild Wales" in the Everyman Series.

{6} Geoffrey, who ended his life as Bishop of St. Asaph, was supposed to have found the material for his "History of the British Kings" in a Welsh book, containing a history of the Britons, which Waltor Colenius, Archdeacon of Oxford, picked up during a journey in Brittany.

{7} Walter Map, another Archdeacon of Oxford, was born in Glamorganshire, the son of a Norman knight by a Welsh mother. Inter alia he was the author of a Welsh work on agriculture.

{8} Green, "Hist. Eng. People," i. 172.

{9} "England under the Angevin Kings," vol. ii. 457.

{10} Project Gutenberg has released "The Description of Wales" as a separate eText - David Price.

{11} Giraldus has committed an error in placing Urban III. at the head of the apostolic see; for he died at Ferrara in the month of October, A.D. 1187, and was succeeded by Gregory VIII., whose short reign expired in the month of December following. Clement III. was elected pontiff in the year 1188. Frederick I., surnamed Barbarossa, succeeded Conrad III. in the empire of Germany, in March, 1152, and was drowned in a river of Cilicia whilst bathing, in 1190. Isaac Angelus succeeded Andronicus I. as emperor of Constantinople, in 1185, and was dethroned in 1195. Philip II., surnamed Augustus, from his having been born in the month of August, was crowned at Rheims, in 1179, and died at Mantes, in 1223. William II., king of Sicily, surnamed the Good, succeeded in 1166 to his father, William the Bad, and died in 1189. Bela III., king of Hungary, succeeded to the throne in 1174, and died in 1196. Guy de Lusignan was crowned king of Jerusalem in 1186, and in the following year his city was taken by the victorious Saladin.

{12} New Radnor.

{13} Rhys ap Gruffydd was grandson to Rhys ap Tewdwr, prince of South Wales, who, in 1090, was slain in an engagement with the Normans. He was a prince of great talent, but great versatility of character, and made a conspicuous figure in Welsh history. He died in 1196, and was buried in the cathedral of St. David's; where his effigy, as well as that of his son Rhys Gryg, still remain in a good state of preservation.

{14} Peter de Leia, prior of the Benedictine monastery of Wenlock, in Shropshire, was the successful rival of Giraldus for the bishopric of Saint David's, vacant by the death of David Fitzgerald, the uncle of our author; but he did not obtain his promotion without considerable opposition from the canons, who submitted to the absolute sequestration of their property before they consented to his election, being desirous that the nephew should have succeeded his uncle. He was consecrated in 1176, and died in 1199.

{15} In the Latin of Giraldus, the name of Eineon is represented by AEneas, and Eineon Clyd by AEneas Claudius.

{16} Cruker Castle. The corresponding distance between Old and New Radnor evidently places this castle at Old Radnor, which was anciently called Pen-y-craig, Pencraig, or Pen-crug, from its situation on a rocky eminence. Cruker is a corruption, probably, from Crug-caerau, the mount, or height, of the fortifications.

{17} Buelth or Builth, a large market town on the north-west edge of the county of Brecon, on the southern banks of the Wye, over which there is a long and handsome bridge of stone. It had formerly a strong castle, the site and earthworks of which still remain, but the building is destroyed.

{18} Llan-Avan, a small church at the foot of barren mountains about five or six miles north-west of Buelth. The saint from whom it takes its name, was one of the sons of Cedig ab Cunedda; whose ancestor, Cunedda, king of the Britons, was the head of one of the three holy families of Britain. He is said to have lived in the beginning of the sixth century.

{19} Melenia, Warthrenion, Elevein, Elvenia, Melenyth, and Elvein, places mentioned in this first chapter, and varying in their orthography, were three different districts in Radnorshire: Melenyth is a hundred in the northern part of the county, extending into Montgomeryshire, in which is the church of Keri: Elvein retains in modern days the name of Elvel, and is a hundred in the southern part of the county, separated from Brecknockshire by the Wye; and Warthrenion, in which was the castle built by prince Rhys at Rhaiadyr-gwy, seems to have been situated between the other two.

Warthrenion may more properly be called Gwyrthrynion, it was anciently one of the three comots of Arwystli, a cantref of Merioneth. In the year 1174, Melyenith was in the possession of Cadwallon ap Madawc, cousin german to prince Rhys; Elvel was held by Eineon Clyd and Gwyrthrynion by Eineon ap Rhys, both sons-in-law to that ill.u.s.trious prince.

{20} The church of Saint Germa.n.u.s is now known by the name of Saint Harmans, and is situated three or four miles from Rhaiadyr, in Radnorshire, on the right-hand of the road from thence to Llanidloes; it is a small and simple structure, placed on a little eminence, in a dreary plain surrounded by mountains.

{21} Several churches in Wales have been dedicated to Saint Curig, who came into Wales in the seventh century.

{22} Glasc.u.m is a small village in a mountainous and retired situation between Builth and Kington, in Herefordshire.

{23} Bangu. - This was a hand bell kept in all the Welsh churches, which the clerk or s.e.xton took to the house of the deceased on the day of the funeral: when the procession began, a psalm was sung; the bellman then sounded his bell in a solemn manner for some time, till another psalm was concluded; and he again sounded it at intervals, till the funeral arrived at the church.

{24} Rhaiadyr, called also Rhaiader-gwy, is a small village and market-town in Radnorshire. The site only of the castle, built by prince Rhys, A.D. 1178, now remains at a short distance from the village; it was strongly situated on a natural rock above the river Wye, which, below the bridge, forms a cataract.

{25} Llywel, a small village about a mile from Trecastle, on the great road leading from thence to Llandovery; it was anciently a township, and by charter of Philip and Mary was attached to the borough of Brecknock, by the name of Trecastle ward.

{26} Leland, in his description of this part of Wales, mentions a lake in Low Elvel, or Elvenia, which may perhaps be the same as that alluded to in this pa.s.sage of Giraldus. "There is a llinne in Low Elvel within a mile of Payne's castel by the church called Lanpeder.

The llinne is caullid Bougklline, and is of no great quant.i.te, but is plentiful of pike, and perche, and eles." - Leland, Itin. tom. v.

p. 72.

{27} Hay. - A pleasant market-town on the southern banks of the river Wye, over which there is a bridge. It still retains some marks of baronial antiquity in the old castle, within the present town, the gateway of which is tolerably perfect. A high raised tumulus adjoining the church marks the site of the more ancient fortress. The more modern and s.p.a.cious castle owes its foundation probably to one of those Norman lords, who, about the year 1090, conquered this part of Wales. Little notice is taken of this castle in the Welsh chronicles; but we are informed that it was destroyed in 1231, by Henry II., and that it was refortified by Henry III.

{28} Llanddew, a small village, about two miles from Brecknock, on the left of the road leading from thence to Hay; its manor belongs to the bishops of Saint David's, who had formerly a castellated mansion there, of which some ruins still remain. The t.i.thes of this parish are appropriated to the archdeaconry of Brecknock, and here was the residence of our author Giraldus, which he mentions in several of his writings, and alludes to with heartfelt satisfaction at the end of the third chapter of this Itinerary.

{29} Aberhodni, the ancient name of the town and castle of Brecknock, derived from its situation at the confluence of the river Hodni with the Usk. The castle and two religious buildings, of which the remains are still extant, owed their foundation to Bernard de Newmarch, a Norman knight, who, in the year 1090, obtained by conquest the lordship of Brecknock. [The modern Welsh name is Aberhonddu.]

{30} Iestyn ap Gwrgant was lord of the province of Morganwg, or Glamorgan, and a formidable rival to Rhys ap Tewdwr, prince of South Wales; but unable to cope with him in power, he prevailed on Robert Fitzhamon, a Norman knight, to come to his a.s.sistance.

{31} This little river rises near the ruins of Blanllyfni castle, between Llangorse pool and the turnpike road leading from Brecknock to Abergavenny, and empties itself into the river Usk, near Glasbury.