s
death-warrant. He was a spendthrift, and afterwards had a quarrel with
Cromwell, who denounced him as an unbeliever, and even as a buffoon.
When Charles II. made the proclamation of amnesty, Marten surrendered,
but he was tried and condemned to death. He plead that he came in under
the proffer of mercy, and the sentence was commuted to a life
imprisonment; and after a short confinement in the Tower of London he
was removed to Chepstow, where he died twenty years later, in 1680.
Passing into the smaller second court, for the rocks contract it, there
is a strong tower protecting its entrance, and at the upper end are the
ruins of the great hall, relics of the fourteenth century. Two or three
windows, a door, and part of an arcade remain, but roof and floor are
gone. A still smaller court lies beyond, at the upper end of which is a
gateway defended by a moat, beyond which is the western gate and court
of the castle, so that this last enclosure forms a kind of barbican.
Chepstow was elaborately defended, and its only vulnerable points were
from the meadows on the east and the higher ground to the west; but
before the days of artillery it was regarded as impregnable, and
excellently performed its duty as a check upon the Welsh. Fitzosbern,
Earl of Hereford, built the older parts in the eleventh century, but the
most of Chepstow dates from that great epoch of castle-building on the
Welsh border, the reign of Edward I. We are told that the second
Fitzosbern was attainted and his estates forfeited, but that the king
one Easter graciously sent to him in prison his royal robes. The earl so
disdained the favor that he burned them, which made the king so angry
that he said, "Certainly this is a very proud man who hath thus abused
me, but, by the brightness of God, he shall never come out of prison so
long as I live." Whereupon, says Dugdale, who tells the tale, he
remained a prisoner until he died. Chepstow was then bestowed upon the
De Clares, who founded Tintern Abbey, and it afterwards passed by
marriage to the Bigod family. Chepstow in the Civil War was held for the
king, and surrendered to the Parliamentary troops. Soon afterwards it
was surprised at the western gate and retaken. Cromwell then besieged
it, but, the siege proving protracted, he left Colonel Ewer in charge.
The Royalist garrison of about one hundred and sixty men were reduced to
great extremity and tried to escape by a boat, but in this they were
disappointed,