this truth, the Wars of the Roses abound with much
instruction. The handful of foreign mercenaries
with which Henry vii. won his crown,—though
the real heir, the Earl of Warwick (granting Edward
iv.’s children to be illegitimate, which
they clearly were according to the rites of the Church),
had never lost his claim, by the defeat of Richard
at Bosworth;—the march of the Pretender
to Derby,—the dismay it spread throughout
England,—and the certainty of his conquest
had he proceeded;—the easy victory of William
iii. at a time when certainly the bulk of the
nation was opposed to his cause;— are all
facts pregnant with warnings, to which we are as blind
as we were in the days of Alfred.
The Ruins of Penmaen-mawr.
In Camden’s Britannia there is an account of
the remarkable relics assigned, in the text, to the
last refuge of Gryffyth ap Llewellyn, taken from a
manuscript by Sir John Wynne in the time of Charles
I. In this account are minutely described, “ruinous
walls of an exceeding strong fortification, compassed
with a treble wall, and, within each wall, the foundations
of at least one hundred towers, about six yards in
diameter within the walls. This castle seems
(while it stood) impregnable; there being no way to
offer any assault on it, the hill being so very high,
steep, and rocky, and the walls of such strength,
—the way or entrance into it ascending with
many turnings, so that one hundred men might defend
themselves against a whole legion; and yet it should
seem that there were lodgings within those walls for
twenty thousand men.
“By the tradition we receive from our ancestors,
this was the strongest refuge, or place of defence,
that the ancient Britons had in all Snowdon; moreover,
the greatness of the work shows that it was a princely
fortification, strengthened by nature and workmanship.”
[287]
But in the year 1771, Governor Pownall ascended Penmaen-mawr,
inspected these remains, and published his account
in the Archaeologia, vol. iii. p. 303, with a sketch
both of the mount and the walls at the summit.
The Governor is of opinion that it never was a fortification.
He thinks that the inward inclosure contained a carn
(or arch-Druid’s sepulchre), that there is not
room for any lodgment, that the walls are not of a
kind which can form a cover, and give at the same
time the advantage of fighting from them. In
short, that the place was one of the Druids’
consecrated high places of worship. He adds,
however, that “Mr. Pennant has gone twice over
it, intends to make an actual survey, and anticipates
much from that great antiquary’s knowledge and
accuracy.”
We turn next to Mr. Pennant, and we find him giving
a flat contradiction to the Governor. “I
have more than once,” [288] says he, “visited
this noted rock, to view the fortifications described
by the editor of Camden, from some notes of that sensible
old baronet, Sir John Wynne, of Gwidir, and have found
his account very just.
