Читать книгу The Pedestrian's Guide through North Wales. A tour performed in 1837 онлайн

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“In ancient days, of high renown,

Not always did yon castle frown

With ivy crested brow;

Nor were its walls with moss embrowned,

Nor hung the lanky weeds around

That fringe its ruins now.”

Fitz-Gwarine.

In the year 843, when Roderick the Great was King of Wales, a British noble, named Ynyr ap Cadfarch, built the Castle of Wittington. He was succeeded by his son Tudor Trevor, whose descendants possessed it for many generations; and many families at this day trace their origin to him.

At the Conquest, Wittington became the property of Pain Peveril, who dying without issue, it was seized by Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury, and passed into the hands of Hugh, his son, who was succeeded by his brother Robert; but he being defeated by Henry I, the castle was restored to the Peverils, in the person of Sir William Peveril, who was a great warrior, and is said to have miraculously recovered from a (supposed) mortal wound by eating the shield of a wild boar. He had a daughter named Mellet, whose exceeding beauty attracted many suitors; but, being of Amazonian mind, she declared she would marry none but the knight who proved himself best and bravest in the field. Her father published this declaration, and promised the Castle of Wittington as her dower. The trial took place at the Peak in Derbyshire, and Guarine de Metz, who had a shield of silver, and a peacock crest, overcame all his rivals, and obtained the beautiful Mellet. His posterity, for nine generations, assumed the name of Fulk, a race of heroes who performed extraordinary feats of arms, and for a full account of which the reader is referred to the history of Wittington, a little book of forty-one pages, by William Davies, L.M.W.S., Head Master of Caernarven School.