MEMOIR OF PENNANT. 
29 
tent, and to assist liis friends with his advice and ex- 
perience. He visited the Isle of Man, Northamp- 
tonshire, and made the first notes of his tour from 
Chester to London. The most important incident 
which occurred during the latter, took place at Buck- 
ingham, where he narrowly escaped a death suited 
to an antiquary. “I visited the old church at eight 
o’clock in the morning ; it fell before six in the after- 
noon, and I escaped being buried in its ruins.” 
He also made several excursions into North Wales, 
which supplied the materials for the first volume of 
his tour in that country, published in 1778, and there- 
fore the next of his works which we have to examine. 
It forms one thick 4to volume, and commences as 
usual from Downing, upon the same plan as his 
Scotch tours. It, however, contains less of the na- 
tural history of the districts, and is mostly occupied 
with ancient history and antiquities, and is a valuable 
record of the state of the county at the period when 
it was written. The most important portions of the 
work are, a description of the ancient and curious 
city of Chester, which occupies nearly a hundred 
pages, and must be interesting to every reader ; and 
the history of the career of Owen Glyndwr, who so 
long disputed the supremacy of Wales with Henry 
IV., one whom Shakspeare tells not “in the 
roll of common men,” and at whose nativity — 
“ The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, 
Of burning cressets; and at my birth, 
The frame and huve foundation of the earth 
Shak’d like a coward.” 
