THE OLD ROAD FROM MENAI VILLAGE TO HOLYHEAD
MILES Menai Village 237¼ Braint 239½ Ceint 242½ Llangefni 244¾ Bodffordd 247 Gwyndû and Glanyrafon 249¾ Llynfaes 250¼ Trefor 251¼ Bodedern 254 Llanyngenedl 255¼ Valley and Four-Mile Bridge 258¼ Trearddur Bay 261½ (Cross Causeway over Straits to Holy Island) Holyhead 263½
There are said to be no fewer than a hundred and forty different ways of spelling the name of Birmingham, all duly vouched for by old usage; but it is not proposed in these pages to recount them, or to follow the arguments of those who have contended for its derivation from “Bromwicham.” It is singular that in the first mention we have of the place, in Domesday Book, it is spelt “Bermingham,” almost exactly as it is to-day, and this lends much authority to the view that we get the place-name from an ancient Saxon tribe or family of Beormingas.
When the original Beormingas, the Sons of Beorm (whoever he may have been), settled here, in the dim Saxon past, they founded better than they knew; but they chose a hill-top, a place where no river runs, unless we choose thus to dignify the little stream called the Rea. This lack of watercourses mattered nothing at all to mediæval Birmingham, but when, in spite of all disabilities, the place rose into commercial importance, the want began to be severely felt, and herculean have been the efforts in modern times to effect a proper water-supply.
Little but scattered mention is heard of Birmingham and its smiths before the Civil War, but when that struggle broke out, they were heard of to some purpose. Its 4000 inhabitants in 1643 were Puritans to a man, and warlike. They furnished 15,000 sword-blades for Cromwell’s troops, and at a convenient opportunity waylaid the King’s carriage and seized it, his furniture, and his plate. For these enormities Prince Rupert came later from Daventry and punished them severely in a battle on Camp Hill, overlooking the town. Many Birmingham men were slain that day, and eighty houses burnt; the whole affair piteously related in a tract of that time called “The Bloody Prince; or, a Declaration of the Most Cruell Practises of Prince Rupert and the rest of the Cavaliers, in fighting against God and the true Ministers of his Church.” A woodcut intended to portray that sanguinary Prince appears on the cover, with Birmingham flaming furiously in the background; Daventry in the rear. The rest of the Cavaliers appear to be manœuvring somewhere else; at any rate, Rupert is alone, on horseback, with a mild expression of countenance and a big pistol.