Seven hundred years ago, this was just as it is now, the readiest road by which to enter North Wales. Accordingly, when Henry II. set himself to conquer the Welsh, and to stamp their national life out of existence, he led his army to the Ceiriog. There was fought the battle of Crogen, and when Henry had won it he pushed on across the rough country of the Berwyn mountains to Corwen. He had been better advised to advance by the more ample valley of the Dee, and the Vale of Llangollen; but Henry Plantagenet was the Buller of his age, and his rank bad luck and ill generalship combined caused him to lead his army the hardest way. Arrived at Corwen, amid the dense woods and thickets that then covered the hillsides, he found the chieftains of all Wales, having sunk their own quarrels for a time, assembled with a host of followers to bar his passage. They knew their wild country, he did not, and so, in fearful weather, commenced a disastrous retreat, and was not safe from pursuit until the walls of Oswestry were in sight. Not for him was the conquest of Wales. To a greater than he, in a hundred and twenty years’ time, was to fall that achievement, and even when Llewelyn, the last independent Prince of Wales, was slain in 1282, and his country subdued, there yet remained the long-drawn rebellion of Owain Glyndwr that was to break out a hundred and twenty years later, and for ten years to imperil the English rule. Castell Crogen gave place to the present castle of Chirk, built by Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, who murdered his ward, Gruffydd ap Madoc, to obtain possession. From that time this was one of the strongest fortresses on the Borders. In long years after the Mortimers, and many another family who had held it, had gone their ways, Chirk came into the possession of the Myddeltons. The first was a Sir Thomas, of Queen Elizabeth’s time, who, from being a wealthy London citizen and Lord Mayor, became in 1595 the purchaser of this estate. His brother was the famous Sir Hugh Myddelton who brought the first water supply to London by the New River, and whose paltry stone statue, set up in modern times, stands at the beginning of this very road to Holyhead, on Islington Green. The son of the first Sir Thomas had some stirring experiences in the castle his father had bought. The spacious days of Elizabeth were done, and the bitter years of civil war had come to shake the country from end to end. This Sir Thomas was a man of changeable views. He at first took arms for the Parliament, and in his absence found his castle of Chirk seized and held for the King. He lay siege, and unsuccessfully, to his own house, then changed sides, and was himself besieged in it by his former allies to such effect that he was obliged to surrender. It cost this injudicious trimmer £80,000 to repair the damage done. That Cromwell suffered his fortress to stand is sufficiently remarkable; but here it frowns to-day a splendid specimen of feudal architecture without, and a