They feem to have been copied from the great chimney-piece

in the hall.

I CANNOT trace the time of building of this part of the house. It must have been at left early in the time of Henry VI. but probably more antient, for in Bolton Hall, in Bowland, Yorkshire (the moft antique feat we know) is a hall in a leffer scale indeed, but greatly fimilar; and in that house it is well known that the unfor tunate prince concealed himself for a long time. Pofterity may find the account in my Tour in Part of the Mercian and Northum • brian Kingdoms.' The great gloomy hall is furnished with a Dais or elevated upper end, and with a long table for the lord and his jovial companions; and another in the fide, the feat of the inferior partakers of the good cheer. To this day the fimilitude of the old times is kept up when the family is at home. The head fervants take their dinner at the Dais, and the numerous inferior fervants fill the long table. The roof is lofty, croffed with long beams. The nen-bren, or top-beam, was in all times a frequent toast, whenever the master of the house's health was drank; and 'Jached y nen-bren y ty,' was the cordial phrase. The chimney-piece is magnificently plain, unlefs where the arms of the house and its alliances are cut on the stone, and properly emblazoned.

THE OLD HALL

THE first are the arms (a lion rampant, ermin, erminé) of COATS OF ARMS. Jevan Vychan, of Pengwern, near Llangollen, (fee Tour in Wales, vol. i. p. 295.) fixteenth in defcent from Owen Tudor. By the marriage of Jevan with Angharad, daughter and fole heiress of Howel ap Tudor ap Ithel Vychan, of Moftyn, he added that estate to his paternal acres in the reign of Richard II.

Is feems (from the Mostyn pedegree) that in 1444 Jevan had

farmed:

FALCON, VAST

FLIGHT OF ONE.

farmed the estate. He wifely determined to turn the leafe into a perpetuity and gaining the lady's affections,

Connubio junxit ftabili, propriamque dicavit.

THE next are the arms of his spouse, the heirefs of Mostyn : directly defcended from the Edwyn lord of Tegengle before mentioned (argent a cross engrailed fable, between four Cornish choughs.)

THE third are the arms of Gloddaeth, (gules a chevron argent between three plates) acquired by the marriage of Howel ap Evan Vychan, fon of the former, in 1460, with Margaret, daughter and heir of Gryffydd ap Rhys ap Gryffydd ap Madoc Gloddaeth ap Madoc ap Jerweth Goch, of Cryddyn, the hundred in which the house ftands.

THE fourth are the arms of Sir Gryffydd Lloyd. Morfydd, one of his daughters and co-heireffes, married Madoc Gloddaeth, who with her received Tregarnedd, in the isle of Anglesey, as her portion. That estate followed the fucceffion of the house, till Gloddaeth was united with that of Moftyn, in which it continued till the year 1750; then it was alienated by the late Sir Thomas Mofyn, to the late Mr. Owen Williams, of Anglefey.

tia

THE walls are furnished in a fuitable manner with antient miliguns, fwords, and pikes; with helmets and breaft-plates; with funeral atchievements, and with variety of fpoils of the chace. A falcon is nailed against the upper end of the room, with two bells, a greater and a leffer, hung to each foot. On two filver rings are infcribed the name of the owner, Mr. Kinloch, of Kulrie, in the county of Angus, on the Eastern fide of Scotland. With these incumbrances it flew from its owner on the morning of the 24th of September, 1772, and was killed near this house on the

morning of the 26th. The precife time it reached our country is not known; therefore we are uncertain whether this bird exceeded in swiftness the hawk which flew thirty miles in an hour in purfuit of a woodcock; or that which made a flight out of Westphalia into Pruffia in a day-instances recorded by the learned Sir Thomas Brown.

THE adjacent kitchen is overlooked by a gallery leading to the antient apartments of the lady of the house, at a period when the odors of the pot and spit were thought no ill favors. From the commanding height of the gallery the good lady might give her orders to her Coges, or fhe-cook, as Syrus is humorously defcribed by Terence to do to his fcullion Dromo :- Let the great eel fport a little longer in the water.-See that you gut the other 'fishes, and stew the great carp well.-Freshen the falt fish.'Look to the baked meats, good Doufe.-Crifp the pig nicely.

Pray do not over-roaft the furloin again.-Boil the pudding 'fufficiently, and do not spare plums and fuet.-Be fure not to 'fmoke the flummery.-Remember, no onions to-day-neigh'bor P. dines with us, &c. &c.'

In the roof to this gallery are numbers of small roofting-holes, to which the inferior maidens of the family nightly repair to rest from their labors.

AT one end of the gallery is a great room, remarkable for a fingular event. During the time that Henry earl of Richmond was fecretly laying the foundation of the overthrow of the house of York, he paffed concealed from place to place, in order to form an interest among the Welb, who favored his caufe on account of their respect to his grandfather Owen Tudor, their countryman. While

KITCHEN.

GREAT ROOM.

HENRY VII.

SQUARE TOWER.

he was at Moftyn, a party attached to Richard III. arrived there to apprehend him. He was then about to dine, but had just time to leap out of a back window, and make his efcape through a hole, which, to this day, is called the King's. Richard ap Howel, then lord of Moftyn, joined Henry at the battle of Bofworth; and after the victory, received from the king, in token of gratitude for his prefervation, the belt and fword he wore on that day; he also preffed Richard greatly to follow him to court: but he nobly anfwered, like the Shunamitish woman: I dwell among mine own people.' The fword and belt were preferved in the houfe still within these few years. It is obfervable that none of our hiftorians account for a certain period of Henry's life, previous to his acceffion. It is very evident that he paffed the times when he disappeared from Bretagny, in Wales. Many cotemporary bards, by feigned names, record this part of his life, under thofe of the LION, the EAGLE, and the like, which were to restore the empire to the Britons for the infpired favorers of the house of Lancaster did not dare to deliver their verfes in other than terms allegorical, for fear of the reigning prince.

In all probability the original of Moftyn was a fquare tower, fuch as may be exemplified entire at Tower, the feat of the Reverend the late Dr. Wynne (see Tour in Wales, ii. p. 427). Part of that at Moftyn is ftill remaining, but concealed by the additional buildings. It is fully fhewn in the view of Mostyn, as it was in the year 1684. The upper part ought to have been embattled, but the top had been in later times covered with an aukward dome. These square towers are still very frequent on the borders of Scotland, built in favage times, as I have attempted to