This church was formerly a possession of the Perrots of Haroldstone, until in Queen Elizabeth's reign the Crown became, as it has ever since remained, the patron of the living. Let us glance back into the past as we stroll through the clean, bustling streets of the little Western metropolis. From the earliest times Haverfordwest held a position second only in importance to that of Pembroke, as a bulwark of The Little England beyond Wales. Its castle, built by Gilbert de Clare, first Earl of Pembroke, stood as a protection to the English settlement against the incursions of the hardy mountaineers, who had been driven back by the advancing immigrants upon the wild hill fastnesses of the interior. The lofty walls of Gilbert's ruined castle, dominating the town that clusters around its feet, and the mediæval churches that rise amidst its steep, paved streets, recall the vanished _prestige_ of Haverfordwest; while a characteristic vein of local dialect, which lingers yet despite of Board Schools, attests the foreign ancestry of some of the worthy townsfolk. Curiously enough, Haverfordwest forms a county all to itself; and is further distinguished by the fact that, alone amongst the towns of Great Britain, the place boasts a Lord-Lieutenant all its own, a privilege obtained from the Crown by a very early charter, when Pembrokeshire was a County Palatine. The town formerly returned its own member to Parliament, but of late the representation has been merged in the districts of Pembroke, Tenby and Haverfordwest. [Illustration: SAINT MARY'S HAVERFORDWEST.] But it is time to look about us, so we now make our way to St. Mary's church, in the centre of the town. Contrasted with the primitive structures we have seen in the country parishes, this is a noble church indeed, having been in large part constructed during the best period of Gothic architecture. The lofty nave is covered with a flat wooden ceiling, relieved by enriched bosses at the intersections of the beams, and upborne by handsome brackets against the walls. It is connected with the adjacent aisle by a series of richly-moulded arches, supported upon tall clustered pillars. On the north side of the chancel stands a group of thirteenth-century pillars and arches of still more elaborate character, whose capitals are encrusted with a variety of grotesque figures intertwined amongst deeply-cut foliage. Handsome traceried windows admit a flood of light into the chancel, whose walls display monuments and epitaphs of no little beauty and interest. In a remote untended corner of the church lies the mutilated effigy of an ecclesiastic, whose sober livery, and wallet embellished with scallop-shells, mark him as a pilgrim who has crossed the seas to the shrine of St. James of Compostella, in Spain.