Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

“ Such enthusiasm is not sufficient by itself to produce true religion; it is compatible with a very imperfect morality and a very low stage of Christianity. Still it belongs to the great central fires which keep the human soul alive, and it has in various forms been God’s special gift to the Celtic races of mankind, especially in this country. If we were to remove it out of our national existence England would not be the great nation that she now is, and the English Church would lose one powerful means of raising the spiritual energies of the people. ”

“ Yet there was one channel in which the old British character displayed itself that directly bore on practical life—namely, the quick temper, the vivacious intelligence, which impart to other useful qualities exactly the stimulus they most need. Not seldom can we trace in families the sudden turn given to a sluggish, steady, stagnant stock of purely English extraction by contact with the imaginative, lively, mercurial character of Welsh or Celtic parentage. ”

“ Remember that there are things in heaven and earth more than our plain homely English philosophy has dreamed of. Such innocent, beautiful stories and thoughts, from whatever quarter they come, though not in themselves religious, yet smooth and purify the course of life. They prepare us for the poetry of parables like the Pilgrim’s Progress—they prepare us for the poetry of the Psalms and of the Prophets of the Bible. ”

“ That Tudor race, in their quick understanding, in their fiery temper, the true representatives of their ancient Celtic lineage, were the instruments raised up by God’s providence at the critical season of the new birth of England in the Reformation, for guiding, stimulating, freshening the Church and the nation to the performance of new duties, the fulfilment of new hopes, the application of new truths. ”

“ As these mountains, these bays, these rocks, which gave to us in their early days our poetic and romantic thoughts, have, in these later days, given to us our quarries and our harbours and our lighthouses and our piers, so it is that out of every generous and inspiring thought there may come at last the most solid, the most useful, the most comprehensive materials of God’s glory and man’s usefulness. ”

“ But there is a more general influence which has left its permanent mark on England. Within that old cathedral of St. David, of which I just now spoke, the most conspicuous tomb which rises in the midst of it, and which, according to the tradition of the place, saved the cathedral itself from destruction, is that of Edmund Tudor, father of Henry VII. and grandfather of Henry VIII., who, for its sake, spared the venerable church where it stands. ”

“ Let us then, Englishmen or Welshmen, who are assembled here, ask, in no spirit of boastfulness or rivalry, but of thankfulness to God, what are the special gifts for good which the British Celtic race has contributed to our common country? As the Israelites had for their ancestors Abraham and Sarah, before their own special patriarch Israel or Jacob—ancestors by whom they were connected with other races besides their own, Edomite, Arabian, Mesopotamian—so we were Britons before we were Englishmen ”

“ First let us remember that these graces of the Cambrian or Celtic character, which our Heavenly Father has thus vouchsafed to us, are also by His good providence blended in the English race with exactly those qualities which furnish their counterpoise—with that self-control, that moral discipline, that solid steadiness of purpose, without which poetic sentiment, religious fervour, mental vivacity are often useless, or worse than useless. ”

“ Take your stand on any good religious lesson, learnt from whatever quarter—any piece of fresh fragment of knowledge, cut out of your inner experience—a good text from your Bible, a good prayer from your prayer-book, a good hymn from your hymn-book, a good counsel, or example of friend or teacher anywhere, which has enabled you better to know yourself, and better to know what God is,—stand fast upon it, and look out over the wide sea of your future years, and the still wider ocean of eternity p. ”

“ There is one more addition which the Welsh people, the British element of our race, has made to the course of English history. There is something in the Celtic blood, something in the Cambrian stock, which, mingling with the Saxon and Norman races, has unquestionably produced a larger result, such as without it would, humanly speaking, have been difficult or impossible. ”

“ Holyhead mountain has repeatedly been a witness to fierce struggles for mastery between the natives and invaders, who from time to time landed, and tried to make good their footing, on that wild picturesque coast, guarded as it is to the west by jagged rocks, and with only here and there a creek into which a boat might be pushed in calm weather. ”

“ Even now, with all the help that modern invention and careful thought can give, there are tragic tales of shipwreck and loss of life on those cruel rocks; and what must it have been in ancient times, when there was nothing between daring men and death but their rough boats, which it would take little to dash into a thousand atoms? ”

“ This is the true “predestination” of God’s counsels; this is the true “election” of the chosen vessels. Race and nationality, as well as family, are the precious gifts of God, to be used and recognised and taken account of as amongst the mighty moving powers of the world. ”

“ Each diviner into futurity descended the chasm to the well, and there, if after having taken a mouthful of holy water and grasped two handfuls of sand from the charmed font, he or she could accomplish the re-ascent with them safely, each would obtain the wish of their heart before the close of the year. ”

“ What, then, are the best peculiarities of the Welsh people?
(1) To the ancient Cambrian British race we owe that distant atmosphere of romance, of sentiment, of poetry, which neither Saxon nor Norman have given or could have given us. ”

“ The sharpness of wit and liveliness of mind which were amongst the precocious gifts of Henry and Edward and Elizabeth, were common to them with their Welsh ancestors, and contributed in no small degree to the fresh start which England then made in the movements of that moving age. p. 37These qualities, whenever found, though they are not the highest of gifts, are inestimable for enlivening, cheering, enkindling the more powerful and the more highly civilised to action and to enquiry. Cherish them, even if they sometimes outrun discretion ”

“ Over the arch of the recess behind the tomb are engraved these words: “Till the day dawn and the shadows flee away.”
Mrs. Stanley’s wish that there should be no monument to herself has been respected, but the effigy of her husband has been encircled with wrought ironwork, entirely formed of her initials E and S intertwined, an idea suggested by St. Anselm’s Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. The stained glass windows were designed by Sir E. Burne Jones and executed by William Morris, and one of them bears the inscription: “To the dear memory of Ellin Stanley, died at Penrhos, November, 1876.” ”

“ This very church of Holyhead was in great part rebuilt in the time of Henry VII. son of that Edmund Tudor. The rose of the Tudor family is visible to this day on its walls. Owen Tudor, the ancestor of them all, was a native of this island of Anglesey. We are thus reminded of the fact, which we sometimes forget, that, after Saxon and Norman and Plantagenet had done their best and passed away, a Welsh and British dynasty at last was seated once more on the throne of Britain, p. ”

“ The old hermit in his solitude, the preacher in his fervid appeal, was good; but the honest, manly Christian, doing his duty faithfully and truthfully in his own station of life, is better. The sailor who remembers on the broad sea that God’s eye is always upon him; the workman or tradesman who endeavours to render to his Maker the best of all services, the offering of honest labour, the offering of unadulterated food, the offering of an upright p. ”

“ The monument itself is of Carrara marble, designed by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A. It consists of a life-size recumbent figure with watching angels at the head and the feet. With the help of Mr. Watts, R.A., and his knowledge of the original, the sculptor has produced a wonderful likeness, recalling to all who knew him the characteristics of Mr. Stanley’s fine head and impressive features. Mr. Watts, who has himself followed the progress of the memorial for many years with keen interest, considers it one of the finest works of art of modern times. ”

“ Cybi’s Church, within the enclosure, were converted into a public school by Chancellor Edward Wynn, LL.D., of Bodewryd in Anglesey, who by bond, bearing date November 25th, 1748, endowed it with a capital of £120; “the interest whereof is to be paid annually on the 24th November to a schoolmaster, who is to teach six poor boys of the town to read and write.”
Light is thrown upon the wants and difficulties of the last century, in matters of education, by some letters from the Rev. T. Ellis, Rector of Holyhead, to Chancellor Wynn’s sister, Madame Owen of Penrhos. ”

“ Who is there that does not recognise in himself or in those about him what has come to him and them from father, mother—nay, it may even be grandfather or great-grandfather, uncle and aunt—or what may be breathed again into him by brother, sister, cousin. These, if anything in the world, are gifts to us from without. These, if anything, are gifts from God. What we drink in, as we say, with our mother’s milk our mother’s tongue, our mother’s faith and prayers, it p. ”

“ This prince settled himself after his victories at Llaneillan, and was submitted to as Chief or King of Anglesey. There are remains of a strongly fortified camp near the summit of Holyhead mountain, still called Mur Caswallon or Caer-y-Twr.
Caswallon’s son was the famous Maelgwyn Gwynedd, the hero of many battles and the terror of the Saxons. He erected the See of Bangor about the year 550, where, a short time before, Daniel, the son of Dionothus, Abbot of Bangor-is-Coed, had built a college for North Wales clergy. ”

“ William Owen Stanley of Penrhos, Lord Lieutenant of Anglesey, for 34 years a Member of the House of Commons, twin son of the 1st Lord Stanley of Alderley and his wife Lady Maria Josepha Holroyd. Born 1802, Married 1832, Ellin, daughter of Sir John Williams, Baronet, of Bodelwyddan. Died 1884, and buried in this Church, whereof he restored the fabric. A scholar and an antiquary, he dwelt among his own people in the Island of Holyhead, and gave a long life to their welfare. ”

“ It appears, from leases of the collegiate church, that this chapel was endowed with distinct revenues in the reign of Edward III. Some of the ruins were removed in the last century to render the entrance to the present church more convenient, and in digging, a stone coffin was found under an p. 8arch, on the north side of the chancel, containing bones of a large size, and this probably was the shrine of Sirigi, who was canonized by the Irish. ”

“ Cybi, the Collegiate Church of Holyhead, stands at the extreme western corner of Holyhead Island, in a quadrangle measuring 220 feet by 130 feet, three sides of which are enclosed by strong walls, seventeen feet high and six thick. The fourth side is open to the sea, having only a parapet, but is defended by steep rocks. ”

“ The rocks p. 30and seas on which we look from Holyhead—“the shaggy top of Mona high,”—the wide bay “where Deva spreads her wizard stream,” inspired in Milton some of his wildest and most pathetic strains in speaking of his loved companion Lycidas, who was lost off these very coasts. The solid prosaic sense of the Saxon is necessary; the energy and enterprise of the Norman is useful; have been indispensable to the greatness of Britain ”