By the marriage of the Lady Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour, with Henry the Eighth, and the birth of their son, afterwards Edward the Sixth, the house of Penhow was placed in a situation to compete with that of Raglan; and by the fortuitous influence thus acquired, the Seymours took a leading authority in the management and direction of county affairs. This castle, or rather fortalice, appears to have derived its strength, more from its isolated and once inaccessible position, than from the extent of its walls or outworks. A portion of the interior has been repaired and rendered habitable, or rather a house has been erected on the site of the old _berçeau_, and thus future patriots and statesmen may yet “come forth of Penhow.” <g>Llanvair</g>, about six miles west from Chepstow, was the ancient residence of the Kemeys family, from whom sprang Sir Nicholas Kemeys, the last governor of Chepstow Castle, whose heroic but tragical fate has been already noticed in these pages. The ruins of this ancient homestead are too inconsiderable to challenge more than a passing glance from the tourist. The same may be said of Dinham, a hamlet in the parish of Llanvair-Discoed. <g>Goldcliffe</g>, “so called,” says Camden, “because the stones there, of a golden colour, by reverberation of the sunne shining full upon them, glitter with a wonderful brightnesse. Neither can I be easilie perswaded that nature hath given this brightnesse in vaine unto the stones, and that there should be a flowre here without fruit; were there any man that would serch into the veines there, and using the direction of Art, enter into the inmost and secretest bowels of the earth.”[105] But what was a mystery in the days of Giraldus, and even of Camden, admits of a very simple solution. The Gold Cliff, so called, consists of a rock nearly perpendicular, which rises abruptly to the height of a hundred feet in an extensive moor.[106] It consists of limestone strata, nearly horizontal and parallel, supported by a base of brown sandstone, abounding with yellow mica. The brilliant effect of the sun upon this micaceous surface, was a reason for the old belief in the neighbourhood, that the rock contained gold, and was therefore considered as a situation of peculiar value and sanctity.[107] The <g>church</g> of Goldcliffe belonged to a priory founded and endowed in 1113, by Robert de <g>Chandos</g>, eighteen years earlier than that of Tinterne Abbey, who, by the persuasion of Henry the First, annexed it to the Abbey of <g>Bec</g>, in Normandy, whence a prior and twelve Black, or Benedictine, friars were conveyed to it. On the suppression of alien priories, Henry Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, obtained of King Henry the Sixth the patronage of the priory, with permission to annex it to the Abbey of St. Mary, at Tewkesbury, to which it was made a cell in 1442. The Cambro-Britons, however, being offended at this measure, obliged the prior and monks of