The Wye at Monmouth also receives the Trothy River, and the confluence of the three valleys makes a comparatively open basin, which, however, again narrows into another romantic glen a short distance below the town. Wild woods border the steep hills, and the Wye flows through the western border of the Forest of Dean, an occasional village attesting the mineral wealth by its blackened chimneys. Here, below Redbrook, was the home of Admiral Rooke, who captured Gibraltar in 1704, and farther down are the ruins of the castle of St. Briard, built in the days of Henry I. to check Welsh forays. Here lived the lord warden of the Forest of Dean, and for three centuries every Whit-Sunday they held the annual "scramble" in the church. It appears that a tax of one penny was levied on every person who pastured his cattle on the common, and the amount thus raised was expended for bread and cheese. The church was crowded, and the clerk standing in the gallery threw out the edibles to the struggling congregation below. The railway closely hugs the swiftly-flowing river in its steep and narrow glen as we pass Offa's Dyke and Chair and the Moravian village of Brockweir. Here the line of fortifications crossed the valley which the king of Mercia constructed to protect his dominions. The valley then slightly expands, and the green sward is dotted by the houses of the long and scattered village of Tintern Parva. The river sharply bends, and in the glen on the western side stand the ruins of the far-famed Tintern Abbey in the green meadows at the brink of the Wye. The spot is well chosen, for nowhere along this celebrated river has Nature indicated a better place for quiet, heavenly meditation not un-mixed with earthly comforts. [Illustration: TINTERN ABBEY.] Walter de Clare founded Tintern Abbey in 1131 for the Cistercian monks, and dedicated it to St. Mary. It was built upon an ancient battlefield where a Christian prince of Glamorgan had been slain by the heathen, but of the buildings erected by De Clare none now exist, the present remains being of later date, and the abbey church that is now in ruin was erected by Roger Bigod, Duke of Norfolk. It is a magnificent relic of the Decorated period. The vaulted roof and central tower are gone, but the arches which supported the latter remain. The row of columns on the northern side of the nave have fallen, with the clerestory above them, but the remainder of the structure has suffered little damage. The western front, with its noble window and exquisite tracery, is very fine. Ivy and ferns overrun the walls and form a coping, while green sward has replaced the pavement, so that it would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting ruin, and as such Tintern is renowned the world over. Lord Houghton has written: