Carew had the honour of entertaining Henry VII., but Pembroke had the higher honour of being his birthplace, Margaret Beaufort, his mother, being then only in her fifteenth year. Five months later he was an orphan, and Jasper Tudor, his uncle, began his long, exemplary, and singularly fortunate guardianship. Ere then this great castle, at the tip of the most southerly of Milford Haven's arms, had had nearly four centuries of existence. The first castle was only "a slender fortress with stakes and turf," says Giraldus the chronicler. If so, however, it must soon have been ousted by the existing Norman keep, which, with its 70 feet of height and 17 feet of thickness at the base, is anything rather than "a slender fortress." Throughout England there is no better specimen left to us of a feudal keep than this of Pembroke. The castle buildings, as a whole, measure some 500 feet by 400 feet within the walls; and, viewed, from the breezy summit of the keep (reached by broken steps and a rope), are, even in their ruin, a very instructive lesson in feudal history. The gate-house and the keep are by far the best preserved parts; these are both little less serviceable than they were in their prime. The central space, or Outer Ward, is now a grass-plot, kept trim for tennis. One cannot do more than touch on the conventional last scene in this castle's active history. The building was held for Charles I. by Colonel Laugharne and two other Royalists named Powell and Poyer. As was to be expected, they made a stout resistance even to Cromwell, who came hither in person. Eventually, however, supplies were cut off, and the castle surrendered. "The three leaders were condemned to be shot--though the sentence was reduced to one. Lots were drawn, it is said, by a little girl. Two were marked 'Life given by God,' the third was blank, and fell to Poyer, who was shot in Covent Garden, 1649." Since then Pembroke Castle has accepted its _rôle_ as a ruin. The very peacocks that strut about its courtyard seem to understand that their haunt is a superb one. There is little else in Pembroke save two of those pleasant white church-towers which are quite a characteristic, of the shire. Monkton Priory, one of these, has as lengthy a history as the castle. It was founded in 1098, and belonged to a community of Benedictines connected with Jayes in Normandy. Anciently this church, which has a very long back, with the tower about midway in it, was divided by an inner wall between the monks of the priory and the local parishioners. Its Norman nave and Decorated choir are well preserved: indeed, the original builders were as generous of material as they who raised the castle keep. Externally, save for its tower (restored in 1804), and a Norman south doorway, it has a very modern aspect, though its acre or two of gravestones in the churchyard bear witness against appearances.