Easter Things

Companionable Reader,

My blogging this Easter has been without doubt sparse, and I can only apologise – an unfortunate mix of work and more work has quite kept me from my keyboard, and left the internet rather more sensible for a short while.

So, I hear you, what have I been up to this Easter? I shan’t bore this honest post with details, but I’ve been busy. My dissertation is now a good 5,000 lines of code, probably more, I’m not really sure I care to count them. The write-up itself, though unfinished, is easily 13,000 words right now, and has a good 3,000 words yet to go. I hope there’s not a word limit.

The ghost walk has been running. I’ve been writing more of my history of Danbury Place. The new MAHG website is coming along just fine.

Now, it seems to have passed midnight, and I think I’ll be off.

George Carleton’s Little Note

Erruptious Reader,

It was probably something you ate.

(tl;dr – one of my old books has writing in it.)

I made a little discovery today of something that reminded me of the joyous liberality of our present times, and I thought it interesting to post here, and hopefully entertain you while you eat those cornflakes*.

I have been doing a little research lately on my third edition of Bellarmine’s Disputations – the Catholic response to the Protestant reformations of the 16th century that systematically and cleverly argues for the return of Catholicism to the Protestant countries. The text itself had a dramatic effect across Europe, especially in England and Germany – two Protestant heartlands – and esteemed clergymen were paid to write rebuttals to what was seen as an incredibly dangerous doctrine to the Protestant cause.

My copy of this fascinatingly important text dates from 1591, a third edition of the first volume, printed in Paris because I’m fairly certain it was banned from being printed this side of the channel. My copy is full of handwritten notes in a mixture of Latin and Ancient Greek, save for one where the reader was so taken aback by what they read that they forgot all their learning and spelt out their horror in plain English.

When I first bought the book I didn’t pay much attention to the writing, since I believed it belonged to a late 17th/early 18th century owner, and I instead focussed on what I believed to be earlier names written in other parts of the book.

Well, looks like I was very wrong; having taken a new look at the book the writing is clearly that of someone who learned to write towards the end of the 16th century, since the style and notations used are of that period. What’s more is the handwriting matches a name written neatly onto the title page of the book; George Carleton.

The date of the handwriting, the depth of knowledge shown by the annotations, and the subject of the book itself point to this George Carleton being the George Carleton who was born in 1559 at Carleton Hall in Cumbria. He rose to bishop of Llandaff in 1618 and a year later became the bishop of Chichester.

Even more interestingly, he wrote a book called Iurisdiction, regall, episcopall, papall, which was one of the many rebuttals to Bellarmine’s Disputations published in those times of religious trouble. So it seems that I own not only a copy of the Disputations, but, within its margins, own the first manuscript notes of Carleton’s Iurisdiction written in about 1609, the year before that book’s first edition appeared.

Anyway, before I went on excitedly about books and the history that a single margin note can contain, I mentioned how one particular one of them had reminded me of the difficulty and the passions that rose up on either side of the Catholic and Protestant countries.

Carleton’s one English note, where the text surprised him so much he gave up writing in Latin or Ancient Greek, reads thus:

O Lord! how is t[his] long suffering al[low]ed. O show th[y] servannts the judgm[en]t of the great whore.

The square brackets are where either the words are shortened, or the 19th century trimming of the pages has removed some of the writing.

This note accompanies an area underlined in the introduction to the book, which roughly translates to:

On the one hand, we understand not the human counsel, prudence, and strength, that has long stopped the Roman Pontifactum; just as much as we understand this rock, founded by God, and by Him strengthened, and of the angels that guard the one heaven. However, by the providence of God and his protection, they may in no way against the gates of hell prevail, whether it be for them the gates of the persecuting tyrants, or their acceptance of the madness of these times, or the anger of those causing these schisms, whether they know their crimes or not.

The note that Carleton wrote refers to the judgement of the ‘great whore’ in Revelation 19:2, where God sends an evil immortal harlot to hell for corrupting the earth.

In this single momentary thought that he penned, he sums up his belief that God and the earth suffer from the corruption of the Catholic church, and voices his wish that Catholics will all be sent to hell for eternity.

Perhaps we forget just how much anger there once was between different parts of the same religion, and though there is far from peace yet between the different dreams of God, there is so little war compared to what there once was. And so much difference in thought, compared to the absolute hate that once existed in so many.

I think I was just surprised to find a little moment of hate written on the page of one of my books over 400 years on.

*I wouldn’t blame you if you aren’t.

The Historical Mysteries of Aberystwyth

Enquiring Reader,

While researching the odd bit of Aberystwyth’s history, I’ve come across several small shreds of the past that have quite stumped me, and I have been entirely unable to unravel them. Since I only really have a few weeks left in the town, and since I’m trying to finish off this eclectic series of posts on the history of Aberystwyth, I thought I’d collect them together and see if anyone else knows or can find out the answers.

I might just have been an idiot and not seen the obvious, they probably aren’t really mysteries at all.

Firstly, there’s an odd stone plaque on the wall of a shop about halfway down Great Darkgate Street; it’s weather worn but dates from the early 19th century and explains the earlier presence of the manor house of the Pryse family on the same site. The house it talks about it probably the house that the Pryses are recorded to have retreated to during the winter each year, when their main home at Castle House was being beaten by the annual storms. But why is there a plaque to remember that building? What did the old house look like, and who put up a plaque to remember it by?

Next, what did become of all of the silver plate of St. Marys? The church fell into the sea in about 1650 following being blasted by the explosion of the castle, did all of the church silver and other treasures go with it? If so, there’s a treasure-trove of Tudor silver somewhere at the bottom of Cardigan Bay.

Then there’s the questionable location of the Parliamentarian siege camp that I’ve already posted about on this blog. I’m fairly convinced it was on Pen Dinas, but are there any earthworks* remaining from it?

There’s the several mysterious castles that existed before the current one, and even the dubious dates of when they went out of use. Where exactly they were around Aberystwyth, and why there’s no earthworks remaining of them in a landscape that sees far more sheep than ploughs, is a mystery, and I wish I could find out a bit more about them!

This drawing is somewhat of a mystery, too.

Aberystwyth Castle, A Tour to South Wales by Thomas Martyn, 1801

This is perhaps one of the only surviving images of the castle before the early Victorian ‘restoration work’ changed the structure from the tumbled walls that had been left by Cromwell’s men. The picture’s drawn from about where the war memorial is now, and rather peculiarly seems to show a mid-18th century window set into the northern most tower of the castle (left side of the image). If this image is to be believed, which seems sensible since all other parts of it are correct, then part of the castle was inhabited long after it had been blown up. I made my own suggestion about this mystery a few weeks later.

Finally (for now, at least, since there’s plenty more I’ve forgotten and will add when they come back to me), there’s the mystery of the story of the rock that the seafront shelter stands on (or at least, for now, used to). Where does the story that it was the site of the old town gibbet come from? It would make sense if the gibbet and gallows stood outside of the town on one of the roads, to warn new comers and travellers not to cause trouble, but somewhere at some time it seems to have been an established belief that there was a place of execution on that small rock by the sea.

(Many more things to come once I remember them.)

Also, for anyone who questions whether Plas Crug was ancient or not, I personally take this page to prove it to be not.

*For several months, this appeared as ‘earthworms’ and I can only apologise to you, kind reader, since it is indeed true earthworms do not have a long enough life span for any alive today to have ever been used to defend a camp during the English Civil War.

A Map of Aberystwyth Castle

Subsistent Reader,

With only a few months left now in this excellent town, I shall do my best to sum up the final shards of my meagre research on Aberystwyth’s history. This, therefore, (or at least I plan) shall be my last post on the castle, and I thought it sensible to do a simple overview with my complete plan of the structure, and some brief notes.

• a. Town wall.
• b. Outer ward.
• c. Inner ward.
• d. Site of bridges over moat, with barbican.
• e. Castle well.
• f. Great Towers, possibly with Solar and Governor’s Quarters above.
• g. Possible site of 14th century ‘Long Hall’, possibly later pre-Civil War armoury.
• h. Originally this was an isolated spit of land only accessible through the castle, allowing it to be supported by ship during times of siege. This area was possible once the ‘third baily’, which even by the 15th century had been almost entirely lost to the sea.
• i. Northern inner ward gate, the only remaining relatively complete structure.
• j. Kitchens, which the stables stood against ‘under one roof’.
• k. Stairs to wall walks.
• l. Possible later kitchen or bakehouse.
• m. Great hall with later central dividing wall; the remaining internal stairs suggest that either there were living quarters above, or it was in fact a first-floor hall with the ground-floor used for storage.
• n. Location of door blocked in shortly before the siege; possibly evidence of Bushell’s 1630s improvements.
• o. Possible site of Bushell’s mint.
• p. Possibly, the room above this was the chapel, since the chapel seems to have stood ‘against the great hall’.
• q. Above this chamber was the ‘King’s Hall’

Giant Squid Spotted by Aberystwyth Fisherman

Stalwart Reader,

Just a short post today, since I couldn’t help but comment on the news released this week that possibly confirms the presence of the legendary giant squid in the waters around this town.

With the discovery of the incredible image in the collections of Ceredigion Museum, Paul Malakili, a local man who often fishes off of the northern end of the beach, recounted a strange story of what he believes confirms the unlikely tale.

The original image clearly emphasises the size of the squid, and it is unlikely to have really been that large, however it does bear a striking resemblance to the creature that Malakili describes.

Supposedly, just after the storms over Christmas had churned up the local seabed, Paul had gone down to the beach to see whether there was any chance that he could go fishing again soon. It was at that time, he says it must have been about the 21st of January, when he spotted a strange shape about 10 meters from the shore. He counted several tentacles rising out of the water, the flick of a tail rising behind them, and then nothing.

Putting it down at the time to perhaps a large Jellyfish or a lump of debris washed into the sea by the storm, he did not report the matter. But, with the amazing discovery of this new image, Malakili has come forward – is it really possible that squid could be in the local waters?

I’ll certainly be more careful next time I go for a beach-side stroll!