From London to Land's End and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"

A small expense would still make this castle a habitable and beautiful place, lying high, and overlooking a fine country; there is also a fine prospect from the churchyard, and the church is very neat. I saw abundance of pretty ladies here, and well dressed, who came from the adjacent counties, for the convenience and cheapness of boarding. Provisions of all sorts are extremely plentiful and cheap here, and very good company.

I stayed some days here, to make an excursion into South Wales and know a little of the manners of the country, as I design to do at Chester for North Wales. The gentry are very numerous, exceedingly civil to strangers, if you don’t come to purchase and make your abode amongst them. They live much like Gascoynes – affecting their own language, valuing themselves much on the antiquity of their families, and are proud of making entertainments.

The Duke of Powis, of the name of Herbert, hath a noble seat near this town, but I was not at it; the family followed King James’s fortunes to France, and I suppose the seat lies neglected. From Ludlow in a short day’s riding through a champaign country I arrived at the town of Shrewsbury.

Shrewsbury stands upon an eminence, encircled by the Severn like a horse-shoe; the streets are large, and the houses well built. My Lord Newport, son to the Earl of Bradford, hath a handsome palace, with hanging gardens down to the river; as also Mr. Kinnaston, and some other gentlemen. There is a good town-house, and the most coffee-houses round it that ever I saw in any town; but when you come into them, they are but ale-houses (only they think that the name of coffee-house gives a better air). King Charles would have made them a city, but they chose rather to remain a corporation, as they are, for which they were called the “proud Salopians.” There is a great deal of good company in this town, for the convenience of cheapness; and there are assemblies and balls for the young ladies once a week. The Earl of Bradford and several others have handsome seats near it; from hence I came to Wrexham, in Wales, a beautiful market-town; the church is the beautifullest country church in England, and surpasses some cathedrals. I counted fifty-two statues as big as the life in the steeple or tower, which is built after the manner of your Dutch steeples, and as high as any there. I was there on a market-day, and was particularly pleased to see the Welsh ladies come to market in their laced hats, their own hair hanging round their shoulders, and blue and scarlet cloaks like our Amazons – some of them with a greyhound in a string in their hands.

Whitchurch, near it, hath a fine church, built by the Earl of Bridgwater; and so to Chester, an ancient and large city, with a commanding castle. The city consists of four large streets, which make an exact cross, with the town-house and Exchange in the middle; but you don’t walk the streets here, but in galleries up one pair of stairs, which keeps you from the rain in winter, and sun in summer; and the houses and shops, with gardens, go all off these galleries, which they call rows. The city is walled round, and the wall so firmly paved that it gives you an agreeable prospect of the country and river, as you walk upon it. The churches are very neat, and the cathedral an august old pile; there is an ancient monument of an Emperor of Germany, with assemblies every week. While I continued at Chester, I made an excursion into North Wales, and went into Denbigh, the capital of that country, where are the remains of a very great and old castle, as is also at Flint, the capital of Flintshire. These castles were the frontier garrisons of Wales before it came under the subjection of England. The country is mountainous, and full of iron and lead works; and here they begin to differ from the English both in language and dress.

From Flint, along the seaside, in three hours I arrived at the famous cold bath called St. Winifred’s Well; and the town from thence called Holywell is a pretty large well-built village, in the middle of a grove, in a bottom between, two hills. The well is in the foot of one of the hills, and spouts out about the bigness of a barrel at once, with such force that it turns three or four mills before it falls into the sea. The well where you bathe is floored with stone surrounded with pillars, on which stands a neat little chapel dedicated to St. Winifred, but now turned into a Protestant school. However, to supply the loss of this chapel, the Roman Catholics have chapels erected almost in every inn for the devotion of the pilgrims that flock hither from all the Popish parts of England. The water, you may imagine, is very cold, coming from the bowels of an iron mountain, and never having met with the influence of the sun till it runs from the well.

The legend of St. Winifred is too long and ridiculous for a letter; I leave you to Dr. Fleetwood (when Bishop of St. Asaph) for its description. I will only tell you, in two words, that this St. Winifred was a beautiful damsel that lived on the top of the hill; that a prince of the country fell deeply in love with her; that coming one day when her parents were abroad, and she resisting his passion, turned into rage, and as she was flying from him cut off her head, which rolled down the hill with her body, and at the place where it stopped gushed out this well of water. But there was also a good hermit that lived at the bottom of the hill, who immediately claps her head to her body, and by the force of the water and his prayers she recovered, and lived to perform many miracles for many years after. They give you her printed litanies at the well. And I observed the Roman Catholics in their prayers, not with eyes lifted up to heaven, but intent upon the water, as if it were the real blood of St. Winifred that was to wash them clean from all their sins.

In every inn you meet with a priest, habited like country gentlemen, and very good companions. At the “Cross Keys,” where I lodged, there was one that had been marked out to me, to whom I was particularly civil at supper; but finding by my conversation I was none of them, he drank and swore like a dragoon, on purpose, as I imagine, to disguise himself. From Holywell in two hours I came to a handsome seat of Sir John Conway’s at Redland, and next day to Conway.

I do not know any place in Europe that would make a finer landscape in a picture than Conway at a mile’s distance. It lies on the side of a hill, on the banks of an arm of the sea about the breadth of the Thames at London, and within two little miles of the sea, over which we ferry to go to the town.

The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at proper distances on the walls; and the castle with its towers, being very white, makes an august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both sides of the bay or river, covered with wood. But when you cross the ferry and come into the town, there is nothing but poverty and misery. The castle is a heap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls only standing vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince of their own.

They speak all Welsh here, and if a stranger should lose his way in this county of Carnarvon, it is ten to one if he meets with any one that has English enough to set him right. The people are also naturally very surly, and even if they understand English, if you ask them a question their answer is, “Dame Salsenach,” or “I cannot speak Saxon or English.” Their Bibles and prayer-books are all printed in Welsh in our character; so that an Englishman can read their language, although he doth not understand a word of it. It hath a great resemblance of the Bas-Bretons, but they retain the letter and character as well as language, as the Scots and Highlanders do.

They retain several Popish customs in North Wales, for on Sunday (after morning service) the whole parish go to football till the afternoon service begins, and then they go to the ale-house and play at all manner of games (which ale-house is often kept by the parson, for their livings are very small).

They have also offerings at funerals, which is one of the greatest perquisites the parson hath. When the body is deposited in the church during the service for the dead, every person invited to the burial lays a piece of money upon the altar to defray the dead person’s charges to the other world, which, after the ceremony is over, the parson puts in his pocket. From Conway, through the mountainous country of Carnarvon, I passed the famous mountain of Penmaen-Mawr, so dreadfully related by passengers travelling to Ireland. It is a road cut out of the side of the rock, seven feet wide; the sea lies perpendicularly down, about forty fathoms on one side, and the mountain is about the same height above it on the other side. It looks dismal, but not at all dangerous, for there is now a wall breast-high along the precipice. However, there is an ale-house at the bottom of the hill on the other side, with this inscription, “Now your fright is over, take a dram.” From hence I proceeded to a little town called Bangor, where there is a cathedral such as may be expected in Wales; and from thence to Carnarvon, the capital of the county. Here are the vestiges of a large old castle, where one of the Henrys, King of England, was born; as was another at Monmouth, in South Wales. For the Welsh were so hard to be reconciled to their union with England at first, it was thought policy to send our queens to lie-in there, to make our princes Welshmen born, and that way ingratiate the inhabitants to their subjection to a prince born in their own country. And for that reason our kings to this day wear a leek (the badge of Wales) on St. David’s Day, the patron of this country; as they do the Order of the Thistle on St. Andrew’s Day, the patron of Scotland.

Carnarvon is a pretty little town, situated in the bottom of a bay, and might be a place of good trade, if the country afforded a consumption.

The sea flows quite round from Bangor to Carnarvon Bay, which separates Anglesea from the rest of Wales, and makes it an island. Beaumaris, the capital of the island, hath been a flourishing town; there are still two very good streets, and the remains of a very large castle. The Lord Bulkeley hath a noble ancient seat planted with trees on the side of the hill above the town, from whence one hath a fine prospect of the bay and adjacent country; the church is very handsome, and there are some fine ancient monuments of that family and some Knights Templars in it. The family of Bulkeley keep in their family a large silver goblet, with which they entertain their friends, with an inscription round relating to the royal family when in distress, which is often remembered by the neighbouring gentry, whose affections run very much that way all over Wales.

I went from hence to Glengauny, the ancient residence of Owen Tudor, but now belongs to the Bulkeleys, and to be sold. It is a good old house, and I believe never was larger. There is a vulgar error in this country that Owen Tudor was married to a Queen of England, and that the house of York took that surname from him; whereas the Queen of England that was married to him was a daughter of the King of France and dowager of England, and had no relation to the Crown; he had indeed two daughters by her, that were married into English noble families – to one of which Henry VII. was related. But Owen Tudor was neither of the blood of the Princes of Wales himself, nor gave descent to that of the English. He was a private gentleman, of about £3,000 a year, who came to seek his fortune at the English court, and the queen fell in love with him.

I was invited to a cock-match some miles from Glengauny, where were above forty gentlemen, most of them of the names of Owen, Parry, and Griffith; they fought near twenty battles, and every battle a cock was killed. Their cocks are doubtless the finest in the world; and the gentlemen, after they were a little heated with liquor, were as warm as their cocks. A great deal of bustle and noise grew by degrees after dinner was over; but their scolding was all in Welsh, and civilities in English. We had a very great dinner; and the house (called The College) where we dined was built very comically; it is four storeys high, built on the side of a hill, and the stable is in the garret. There is a broad stone staircase on the outside of the house, by which you enter into the several apartments. The kitchen is at the bottom of the hill, a bedchamber above that, the parlour (where we dined) is the third storey, and on the top of the hill is the stable.

From hence I stepped over to Holyhead, where the packet-boats arrive from Ireland. It is a straggling, confused heap of thatched houses built on rocks; yet within doors there are in several of them very good accommodation for passengers, both in lodging and diet.

The packet-boats from Dublin arrive thrice a week, and are larger than those to Holland and France, fitted with all conveniences for passengers; and indeed St. George’s Channel requires large ships in winter, the wind being generally very boisterous in these narrow seas.

On my return to Chester I passed over the mountain called Penmaen Ross, where I saw plainly a part of Ireland, Scotland, England, and the Isle of Man all at once.

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