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of its chambers have gone, but on the first floor Henry Marten, 
the regicide, was a prisoner from the restoration of Charles II., 
1660, to his death in 1680. Cromwell had previously used the 
same chamber to incarcerate Dr. Jeremy Taylor in 1656 on the 
charge of privity to a rising of the Royalists. 
The Castle of Striguil or Chepstow, or what remains of it in 
the two further quadrangles, is of Edward II. date, about 1300, 
and the work of the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, who became 
possessed of the Castle by marrying the heiress of the Marshalls, 
Earls of Pembroke. This family had also acquired the ownership 
by marrying the sole heiress of the great Norman family of De 
Clare, her father being Richard Strongbow, Eari of Pembroke 
and Lord of Chepstow and Raglan, who died 1176. William 
Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, who had resigned the title of 
Pembroke to the king, was beheaded after the battle of Banbury, 
1469, and his heiress carried the Castle with the Barony of 
Herbert of Chepstow and Raglan into the family of Somerset, 
afterwards Dukes of Beaufort, which is now about to alienate all 
its Monmouth property. The third quadrangle contains a lofty 
building, once of three stories of very elegant Early English 
architecture, usually, but erroneously styled the Chapel, which on 
the first floor was the grand Baronial Hall. There are layers of 
Roman tiles in the walls, which are no proof of the period of its 
erection being said to have been brought from the ruins of Isca 
Silurum (Caerwent), only four miles distant, and used by the 
later masons in their work. This Castle was ruined by Colonel 
Ewer, Commander of the Parliamentary forces, 1648, who 
breached the walls, killed Sir Nicholas Kemys, who held it for 
the king, and took prisoners 16 officers and 120 men, the sole 
garrison. This ended its career as a military stronghold. 
A brake awaited the party on leaving the Castle, and the 
Tintern road was taken by Piercefield park to the summit of the 
Wynd Cliff, where the world renowned view over the winding 
Wye, and wooded cliffs, and its distant junction with the Severn 

