natural mills; I mean, our mouths. In the former, the lower mill-stone lieth always immoveable; whilst in our mouths the upper jaw always standeth still, and the nether applieth itself in constant motion thereunto. Excellent mill-stones are made in this island. When in motion, in default of grist to grind, they will fire one another; so necessary is foreign employment for active spirits, to divert them from home-bred combustions.

THE WONDERS.

Before we begin on this plentiful topic, be it premised that I conceive the author of that distich was too straight-laced in his belief, thus expressing himself:

Mira canam, non visa mihi sed cognita multis,

Sed nisi visa mihi non habitura fidem.

"Wonders here by me are told,

To many men well known;

But, till my eyes shall them behold,
Their truth I'll never own."

For mine own part, I conceive, he that will not believe is unworthy to be believed; and that it is an injury to deny credit to credible persons, attesting as followeth.

There are divers trees daily dug out of moist and marish places, which are firm and fit for timber.* They are as black within as ebony, and are used by the carvers of that country to inlay cupboards and other wooden utensils. These trees are branched into a double difficulty; first, how they came hither; secondly, how preserved here so long from putrefaction.

Some make the pedigree of these trees very ancient, fetching them from Noah's flood, then overturned with the force thereof. Others conceive them cut down by the Romans when conquering this Island, and shaving away their woods, the covert of rebellion.

Others apprehend them felled (or rather falling) of themselves, their weight meeting with the waterish and failing foundation; and it is more easy for one to confute the conjecture of others, than to substitute a more rational in the room thereof.

But grant this first knot in these trees smoothed-how they came hither; a worse knob remains to be plained, how they are preserved sound so many ages, seeing moisture is the mother of corruption, and such the ground wherein they are found: except any will say, there is clammy bituminous substance about them (like those in Lacashire),† which fenceth them from being corrupted. I could add to the wonder, how hazel nuts are found under ground, with sound kernels in them save it is fitter that the former difficulties be first conjured down, before any new ones be raised up.

• Humphrey Lluyd, in his learned letters to Ortelius. + Camden's Britannia, in that county.

;

"Mon Mam Cymbry."]

PROVERBS.

That is, "Anglesea is the mother of Wales." Not because bigger than Wales (as mothers always are whilst their children are infants), being scarce one twentieth part thereof; nor because (as parents always) ancienter than Wales, which, being an island, may be presumed junior to the continent, as probably made by the interruption of the sea; but because, when other counties fail, she plentifully feedeth them with provision, and is said to afford corn enough to sustain all Wales. Nor is she less happy in cattle than corn; so that this mother of Wales is in some sort a nurse to England. I have seen yearly great droves of fair beasts, brought thence and sold in Essex itself; so that he who considers how much meat Anglesea spends, will wonder that it spares any; how much it spares, that it spends any.

This historical by-word (for proverb properly it is none) we will consider: first, in the original: secondly, in the use: thirdly, in the abuse thereof.

Original.-In the reign of king Henry the Second, in his many expeditions against Wales, one proved very unsuccessful, wherein divers of his camp were sent to essay a passage over Offa's Ditch at Croggen castle. These, being prevented by the British, were most of them slain; and their graves hard by are to be discovered at this day.

Use.-The English afterwards, when having the Welch at advantage, used to say to them, "Crogging, Crogging," as a provocative to revenge, and dissuasive to give them quarter; as if the Romans, on the like occasion, should cry to the Carthaginians, "Cannæ, Cannæ."

Abuse. Continuance of time, which assumeth to itself a liberty to pervert words from their primitive sense, in ignorant mouths hath made it a disgraceful attribute, when the English are pleased to revile the Welch; though, to speak plainly, I conceive not how that word can import a foul disgracing of them, first occasioned by their valiant defeating of us. This byword (though Croggen castle is in Denbighshire) being generally used all over Wales, is therefore placed in this, because the first county thereof.

PRELATES.

GUIDO DE MONA was so surnamed from his birth-place in Anglesea. Some suspect that filius insule may be as bad as filius populi, no place being particularized for his birth; whilst others conceive this sounding to his greater dignity to be deno

* Camden's Britannia, in Anglesea.

minated from a whole island; the village of his nativity being probably obscure, long and hard to be pronounced. He was afterwards bishop of St. David's and lord treasurer of England, under king Henry the Fourth, who highly honoured him; for, when the Parliament moved that no Welchman should be a state officer in England, the king excepted the bishops, as confident of their faithful service. Indeed T. Walsingham makes this Guido the author of much trouble, but is the less to be believed therein, because of the known antipathy betwixt friars and secular prelates; the former being as faulty in their lazy speculation, as the other often offending in their practical overactivity. This bishop died anno 1407.

ARTHUR BULKLEY, bishop of Bangor, was born either in Cheshire, or more probably in this county. But it matters not much had he never been born, who, being bred doctor of the laws, had either never read, or wholly forgotten, or wilfully would not remember, the chapter "De Sacrilegio;" for he spoiled the bishopric, and sold the five bells: being so overofficious, that he would go down to the sea to see them shipped, which, in my mind, amounted to a second selling of them.

We have an English proverb of him who maketh a detrimental bargain to himself, "That he may put all the gains gotten thereby into his eye, and see nothing the worse." But bishop Bulkley saw much more the worse by what he had gotten, being himself suddenly deprived of his sight, who had deprived the tower of Bangor of the tongue thereof.* Thus having ended his credit before his days, and his days before his life, and having sate in that see fourteen years, he died 1555.

in this county;

WILLIAM GLYN, D.D. was born at bred in Queen's College in Cambridge, whereof he was master, until, in the second of queen Mary, he was preferred bishop of Bangor. An excellent scholar, and I have been assured by judicious persons, who have seriously perused the solemn disputations (printed in Master Fox) betwixt the Papists and Protestants, that of the former none pressed his arguments with more strength and less passion than Doctor Glyn: though constant to his own, he was not cruel to opposite judgments, as appeareth by the appearing of no persecution in his diocese ; and his mild nature must be allowed at least causa socia, or the fellow cause thereof. He died in the first of queen Elizabeth ; and I have been informed that Geoffry Glyn, his brother, doctor of laws, built and endowed a free school at Bangor.

SINCE THE REFORMATION.

ROULAND MERRICK, doctor of laws, was born at Bodingan

* Godwin, in the Bishops of Bangor.

in this county; bred in Oxford, where he became principal of New Inn Hall, and afterwards a dignitary in the church of St. David's. Here he, with others, in the reign of king Edward the Sixth, violently prosecuted Robert Farrar, his diocesan, with intention (as they made their boast, to pull him from his bishopric, and bring him into a premunire ;" and prevailed so far, that he was imprisoned.

This bishop Farrar was afterwards martyred in the reign of queen Mary. I find not the least appearance that his former adversaries violented any thing against him under that queen. But it is suspicious that advantage against him (I say not with their will) was grafted on the stock of his former accusation. However, it is my judgment that they ought to have been; and I can be so charitable to believe that Dr. Merrick was penitent for his causeless vexing so good a person."+ Otherwise many more besides myself will proclaim him unworthy to be (who had been a persecutor of) a bishop. He was consecrated bishop of Bangor, December 21, in the second of queen Elizabeth, 1559; and sate six years in his see. I have nothing to add, save that he was father to Sir Gilly Merrick, knight, who lost his life for engaging with the earl of Essex, 1600.

LANCELOT BULKLEY was born in this county, of a then right worshipful (since honourable) family, who have a fair habitation (besides others) near Beaumaris. He was bred in Brazennose college in Oxford; and afterwards became first archdeacon, then archbishop in Dublin. He was consecrated, the third of October, 1619, by Christopher archbishop of Armagh. Soon after he was made by king James one of his privy council in Ireland, where he lived in good reputation till the day of his death, which happened some ten years since.

SEAMEN.

MADOC, Son to Owen Gwineth ap Gruffyth ap Conan, and brother to David ap Owen Gwineth, prince of North Wales, was born probably at Aberfraw in this county (now a mean town), then the principal palace of their royal residence.§ He made a sea voyage westward; and, by all probability, those names of Cape de Breton in Noruinberg, and Penguin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relics of this discovery. If so, then let the Genevese and Spaniards demean themselves as younger brethren, and get their portions in pensions in those parts paid as well as they may, owning us Britons (so may the Welch and English as an united nation style themselves) for

*Fox's Acts and Monuments, an. 1555, p. 1144. † See more in the Martyrs of Carmarthenshire. Sir James Ware, de Præsulibus Lageniæ. Camden's Britannia, in Anglesea.

the heirs, to whom the solid inheritance of America doth belong, for the first discovery thereof. The truth is, a good navy, with a strong land army therein, will make these probabilities of Madoc evident demonstrations; and without these, in cases of this kind, the strongest arguments are of no validity. This sea voyage was undertaken by Madoc about the year 1170.

SHERIFFS.

Expect not my description should conform this Principality to England, in presenting the respective sheriffs with their arms. For as to heraldry, I confess myself luscum in Angliâ, cæcum in Walliá. Besides, I question whether our rules in blazonry, calculated for the east, will serve on the west of Severn? and suspect that my venial mistakes may meet with mortal anger.

I am also sensible of the prodigious antiquity of Welch pedigrees; so that what Zalmana said of the Israelites slain by him at Tabor, "Each of them resembleth the children of a king;"* all the gentry here derive themselves from a prince at least. I quit, therefore, the catalogue of sheriffs to abler pens, and proceed to

THE FAREWELL.

I understand there is in this island a kind of aluminous earth, out of which some (fifty years since) began to make alum and copperas; until they (to use my author's phrase) like unflesht soldiers, gave over their enterprise, without further hope, because at first they saw it not answer their over-hasty expectations.† If this project was first founded on rational probability (which I have cause to believe), I desire the seasonable resumption thereof by undertakers of as able brins and purses, but more patience than the former, as a hopeful forerunner of better success.

Judges viii. 12.

† Speed, in the Description of Anglesea.