William Coxe,Thomas Morrice and the Castles Of
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An Accidental Excursion into Monmouthshire William Coxe, Thomas Morrice and the Castles of Monmouthshire - An Accidental Excursion into Monmouthshire Jeremy Knight In August 1798, the historian and traveller Revd. William Coxe (1747- 1828), vicar of Bemerton, Wiltshire, (the poet George Herbert’s old parish outside Salisbury), was staying with his friend and patron Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838) at the latter’s house at Stourhead in Wiltshire. The anniversary of the death of Sir Richard’s wife was approaching and this may have encouraged the two to embark on ‘an accidental excursion into Monmouthshire’. They stayed with Colt Hoare’s friend James Green M.P. at Llansantffraed outside Abergavenny, and it was there that the three friends devised the idea of a history of the county. When the two William Coxe (1747-1828). Engraving by W. T. volumes of Coxe’s An Historical Tour of Fry, 1904, based on an original picture by Sir Monmouthshire appeared in 1801, it was, W. Beechey, RA, drawn by J. Jackson, in ‘A Coxe wrote in his dedication to Colt Hoare, Historical Tour of Monmouthshire’ published by ‘commenced in your company, written at Davies and Co., 1904. your suggestion and embellished by your William Coxe, canon of Salisbury cathedral pencil’. It was also, he might have added, from 1803, and archdeacon of Wiltshire from funded by Colt Hoare’s considerable wealth. 1805, was a documentary historian rather (Coxe 1801, dedication). than an antiquarian. His work on eighteenth- A panel of experts was enrolled to assist. century European history has been praised by Coxe’s friend Thomas Leman (1751-1826) modern historians of the period. (Plumb advised on Roman remains, the pioneer (if 1966).2 However, whilst a careful and erratic) Celtic scholar William Owen Pughe accurate observer, his knowledge of (1759-1835) on Welsh place names,1 a new prehistory, or of medieval architecture, was map of the county was commissioned from that of his time. Round-headed arches were Nathaniel Coltman, and a Cardiff land ‘Saxon’ (or ‘pre-conquest’) or ‘Norman’. surveyor Thomas Morrice (1727-1812), Pointed arches were ‘gothic’ and later. normally employed on the canals and tram Michael Thompson has shown that the true roads of the industrial revolution, provided date of such ‘Saxon’ buildings was already surveyed plans of towns, ancient earthworks known, as demonstrated by Colt Hoare’s use and castles. As a result, Coxe’s of the term for places such as Llanthony Monmouthshire is one of the first historical Priory, whose origin was known from and archaeological works to be illustrated documentary sources (Thompson 1983, 25, with professionally surveyed ground plans of 233). However, the use of ‘pre-conquest’ hillforts, earthworks, and castles. suggests that some measure of ambiguity still THE CASTLE STUDIES GROUP JOURNALTHE NO CASTLE 29: 2015-16 STUDIES GROUP JOURNAL NO 33: 2019-20 204 An Accidental Excursion into Monmouthshire existed, at least among more traditional with sculptured representations of the historians. Coxe’s account of the lords of antiquities of the village shows the motte Chepstow and the history of Chepstow castle (‘Magna Mole‘) with the caption O Quot Hic (Coxe 1801, Vol II, 375-378) covers much Sepulti ‘Oh, How Many are Buried Here?. the same ground as the modern Cadw guides. Of the prominent motte of Twyn Barlwm on He saw that the castle, whilst of Norman its high ridgeway siting, Coxe, after origin, had been altered and added to at discussing theories of its origin and date, different periods. He dismissed the idea that concludes: ‘It might contain the ashes of the early Norman hall block (then ‘the some valiant chief of the Silures, who fell in chapel’) was of Roman origin (‘Some defending his country against the Romans’ fanciful antiquaries have attributed the (Coxe 1802, 75-76 ).4 construction of the castle to Julius Caesar’ The Afterlife of Castles - Chepstow and Coxe 1801, 365) and recognised that the hall Monmouth was largely built of re-used materials (Coxe 1801, 365-391) but the comparative Most castles in Monmouthshire were already architectural detail necessary to relate the ruinous in Elizabethan times, as the traveller structural history of the castle to the Thomas Churchyard, writing in 1588, documentary evidence was not yet available. lamented:- The situation with rural earthwork castles was Most goodly towers, are bare and naked even more fluid. last, / That cov’red were with timber and Eighteenth-century travellers, educated in good lead. /.. The shell of this, I meane the classics, often saw rural earthworks and the walls without, / the worthie work, that field monuments as relics of the Roman army. is so finely wrought../ the firme freestone, The motte-and-bailey at Walterston (‘Coed y that was so derely bought, / Makes men Crusel’), on the Hereford side of the lament, the loss of such a thing /.....To see Monmouth border, but surveyed by Morrice, so strong, and stately worke decay’. lay on the approximate line of the Roman (Churchyard 1776, 54). Abergavenny to Kenchester road. Coxe, Three castles were still maintained as seats though he says nothing of the motte, thought of power by the Somersets of Raglan, Earls the semi-rectangular bailey to be Roman. and Marquesses of Worcester and later (Coxe 1801, 23 and plan). Indeed, it is Dukes of Beaufort. Raglan was their main possible that the motte and inner ward were seat; Monmouth the county and assize town superimposed on an earlier earthwork (fig. 1). and Chepstow a port and gateway to the Similarly, discussing the castle mound built county, whether by land or sea. Chepstow by William II next to St Gwynllyw’s church was also important as the outlet for the supply at Newport (‘Twyn Gwynllyw’), Coxe cited of Forest of Dean timber for the navy and for the earlier opinion of Revd. William Harris Beaufort’s lucrative ironworks around that it was ‘an arx speculatoria or watch Tintern. Raglan and Monmouth castles were tower, which the Romans always constructed both slighted at the end of the Civil War and near their camps’ (Harris 1773, 7; Coxe 1801 the Somersets removed across the Bristol 55).3 The name Twyn Gwynllyw Channel to Badminton in Gloucestershire, (’Gwynllyw’s mound’) follows an older folk signalling their wider involvement in national tradition which saw mottes as burial mounds. politics. At Trellech in Monmouthshire, the sundial During the First Civil war (1642-6), erected by Lady Magdalene Herbert in 1689 Chepstow castle was held for the king, but THE CASTLE STUDIES GROUP JOURNALTHE NO CASTLE 29: 2015-16 STUDIES GROUP JOURNAL NO 33: 2019-20 205 An Accidental Excursion into Monmouthshire surrendered to Parliament in October 1645 nonconformist Nathan Rogers and other after a short siege, when the walls were former Cromwellians at the time of the breached by two brass culverins and an iron Monmouth Rising under James II. During the piece. During the Second Civil War (1648- Dutch Wars, many prisoners of war were held 49) local royalists seized the castle in May there. (C.S.P.D Addenda 1660-1670, 364, 1648. Cromwell, on his way to put down a 384 ) Following the 1648 siege, the southern rising in west Wales, left Colonel Ewer to curtains were lowered in height and complete the siege. An attempt to storm the thickened to resist gunfire, several towers castle gatehouse failed, with the loss of a filled with earth and embrasures made for Major killed by a stone dropped from above. cannon. The south curtain wall of the Lower Ewer ‘raised (razed) the battlements of their Bailey was rebuilt, backed by a substantial towers with our great guns’, silenced the earth rampart, revetted by a stone wall, with castle’s artillery and bombarded the interior a gun port and a series of musket loops along with mortar fire. Finally, after a fortnight’s the parapet. These works can be related to siege, when the south curtain has been recorded expenditure of £300 in 1650 and breached ‘so low that a man may walk into it’ £500 in 1662 (C.S.P.D, 1649-50, 176, 308, the castle was stormed (Knight 2005, 99, 125-6). 381; 1654, 53;1655 256; 1661-2, 490, 521, 5 The story of the earlier part of the period Turner 2000, 20) between these events, when all three castles Under Cromwell, in times of crisis 400-500 stood siege, and the visits of Coxe and Colt locally recruited horse and foot could be Hoare, when they appear in their new role as assembled at Chepstow to reinforce the subjects of antiquarian study is related to a garrison and armed from the stores within the bitter post-war feud in the county. This was castle, In the looming uncertainty of 1659, between Henry Somerset, third Marquess of the garrison was increased to 100. In 1660 Worcester, first Duke of Beaufort from 1682, Henry Somerset, son of the second Marquess and a group of former Cromwellians. It was of Worcester, was appointed governor by the rooted in opposition both to Somerset’s family new royalist government. There was a history of Catholicism and his felling of wood- proposal that the castle be demolished, but land in Wentwood Forest despite long estab- Somerset wrote to Charles II that it was ‘the lished rights of common, and owed more to key to the four adjoining Welsh counties... local than to national factors. It culminated at (and) a bridle to the ill-affected, who abound the time of the so called ‘Popish Plot’ of in those parts’. He offered to pay for a 1678-79, when four Catholic priests were reduced garrison of 60 men, with a Governor, executed in Usk, Cardiff and Hereford.