Chapter 4
The Coquet bears the palm for picturesqueness amongst Northumbrian valleys, and is about forty miles in length. From Alwinton, the first village after crossing the Cheviots, where the Alwine joins the Coquet--"a place of slumber and of dreams remote among the hills"--to Warkworth Castle, the stream carries history and romance in every league of its course. Here are such names as Biddlestone, the "Osbaldistone," of "Rob Roy" (there are other claimants such as Chillingham and Naworth); Harbottle, a hamlet of venerable antiquity; Holystone, mentioned already in connection with Paulinus; Hepple, with the remnant of a strong peel tower of the Ogles; and Rothbury, the capital of Upper Coquetdale, a snug township in the midst of an amphitheatre of the wild, stony Simonside hills. In the old days it was a reiving centre of notoriety. All this part of Northumberland, indeed, was a constant freebooting arena, neither Scots nor English being content without some fray on hand. There is not a village, or a town, or farmhouse even, but has some tale to tell of that uncanny period. Cragside, Lord Armstrong's palatial seat, reclaimed, like Abbotsford, from the barren mountain side, is within a mile of Rothbury. Then come Brinkburn Priory, "an ancient fabric awful in repose," founded by William de Bertram, lord of Mitford, in the reign of Henry I.; Felton, a neat little village, where Alexander of Scotland received the homage of the Northumbrian barons; and Warkworth, "proud of the Percy name," one of the quaintest and oldest towns in Northumberland, and teeming with historical and romantic associations. So near the sea, and with some of the rarest river scenery in the county close at hand, the place is in high favour as a holiday resort. A Saxon settlement, all interest centres around its dismantled Castle, believed to have been built by Roger Fitz-Richard, to whom Henry II. granted in 1158 the manor of Warkworth. Strengthened from time to time, it became a Percy possession, and was the chief residence of the family to the middle of the 15th century. At the height of its power it must have been well-nigh impregnable, encircled on three sides by the winding banks and overhanging woods of the Coquet, and on a commanding eminence above it; and though time and many devastating hands have long since riven its ancient walls, the pile still presents a splendid example of a baronial stronghold, second to few on the Borders.
Among Northumbrian towns, Alnwick (the county town) ranks next to Newcastle. But whilst the rise of the latter and its prosperity and colour have been each affected by the great industrial changes of the century, Alnwick's development has been very different. Lying peacefully amidst pastoral hills, by the side of a river unpolluted by modern commerce, this ancient Border town still presents the plain and austere aspect which it wore when the great stage-coaches passed through on their way from London to Edinburgh. In Newcastle, despite its numerous relics of antiquity, one's mind is ever dominated by the potent Present, whereas in Alnwick, it is ever under the spell of the dreamy Past. The quaint, irregular stone-built houses are touched with the sober hues of antiquity, and seem to take their character from the great baronial relic of feudal times. The history of the town is chiefly a record of
"Old unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago."
It was founded by the Saxons, who styled it Alainwick, "the town on the clear water." Like Carlisle, its history is largely one of attack and retaliation. The Scottish Sovereigns were peculiarly unfortunate at Alnwick. For here Malcolm Canmore was speared to death in 1093, and William the Lion made prisoner in 1174, and inside the castle of to-day with its gilded ceilings, luxurious upholstery, and majestic mantels of Italian workmanship and marbles, are still to be seen the dour dungeons in which many a Scot died miserably while the Percy and his retainers feasted above. King John burned Alnwick to the ground in 1216, David I. besieged and captured it. Each of the Edwards visited the place. It was again devastated by the Scots in 1427. In 1463, it was held for Edward IV., and in 1464 it fell into the hands of Queen Margaret. Royalists and Roundheads occupied Alnwick during the wars between Charles and his Parliament, but after 1700 it settled down to comparative quiet. The Castle, of course, dominates the place. There is what William Howitt calls "an air of solemn feudality" overhanging the whole town. Streets and buildings, and the general tone harmonize well with the prevailing conditions. Only one of its four gates survives--the gloomy, old, weather-beaten Bondgate, built by the haughty Hotspur about the year 1450. The Cross dates from the same period. The most interesting and venerable structure is the Church of St. Mary and St. Michael, founded about the beginning of the 14th century, Perpendicular in style, and abundant in Percy memorials. But the chief object of interest is the Castle with the Castle enclosure (some five acres in extent). The Castle itself is the most magnificent specimen of a feudal fortress in England, a verdict in which all who see it will agree. What an extraordinarily fascinating and profoundly impressive place, from the very stones of the courtyard to the defiant-looking warrior figures on the battlements of the barbican, and elsewhere. What an endless succession of towers and turrets (some of them with distinctive names, Hotspur and Bloody Gap) archways and corridors, walls and embrasures, and all the grim massive paraphernalia of the past, apparently as doggedly determined as ever. Perhaps, as one writer puts it, only a Percy could live quite at his ease as master of Alnwick Castle. One cannot imagine the average man making himself congenially at home here. But the inside comforts are an overflowing compensation for a somewhat forbidding exterior. We are told that even the towers at the angles of the encircling walls are museums of British and Egyptian antiquities, and game trophies, collected by members of the family. The fourth Duke has left much to show for the quarter of a million he lavished upon the building--exquisite wood carving, frescoes, marbles, and canvases. Mantovani, who restored the Raphael frescoes in the Vatican, was not too great a man to be hired by a Percy to adorn his Border castle. The walls of the grand staircase are panelled with beautiful marbles. There are unique paintings: the dining-room, a noble apartment, is pompous with Percys in fine frames, bewigged, robed and plain; the first Duke and his wife, who helped him to a dignity neither his money nor his courtly manners could have won for him, hang suitably in the place of honour above the hearth. Vandyck, Moroni, and Andrea del Sarto are worthily represented in the castle. Giorgione, who did so well the comparatively little he had time for, is here in his "Lady with the Lute." Raphael, Guido, and Titian are also within these swarthy outer walls, Titian's landscape contribution being specially notable, like Giovanni Bellini's "The Gods enjoying the Fruits of the Earth." One looks from it to the fair Northumberland country beyond the windows and then at the splendour and taste of the castle, and fancies, inevitably, that the Percys themselves have in these later days obtained quite their share of the privileges of Bellini's gods. Nothing that makes for domestic pleasure is lacking at Alnwick Castle. There is a stately library of some 15,000 books, with chairs for dreaming and chairs for study; and, not to slight meaner comforts, there is a kitchen that is a model of its baronial kind, about fifty yards distant from the dining-hall, with which it communicates by an underground passage. The first English possession acquired by the house of Percy north of the Tees was Dalton, afterwards called Dalton-Percy. Then came Alnwick, originally owned by the De Vescis, and purchased from them about 1309; Warkworth; Prudhoe-on-Tyne, one of the most picturesque of Northumbrian fortresses; Cockermouth; and Keeldar, in the Cheviots. And what of the Percys who ruled, and still rule, at Alnwick in their day of might? Very ancient is the name, numbering among its early patriarchs such grand old heroes as Manfred the Dane, and
"Brave Galfred, who to Normandy With vent'rous Rollo came; And from his Norman Castles won, Assumed the Percy name."
The pedigree traces the descent of Angus de Perci up to Manfred, and that of Josceline de Louvain up from Gerberga, daughter and heiress of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, to Charlemagne, and in the male line to the ancient Dukes of Hainault. This same Josceline, who was brother-in-law to King Henry I., married in 1168, Agnes, the great Percy heiress, and assumed the name of his wife:
"Lord Percy's heir I was, whose noble name By me survives unto his lasting fame; Brabant's Duke's son I wed, who, for my sake, Retained his arms, and Percy's name did take."
Their youngest son, Richard de Percy, then head of the family, was one of the chief barons who extorted Magna Charta from King John, and the ninth Lord, Henry, gave much aid to Edward I. in the subjugation of Scotland. It was he who purchased Alnwick. His son--another Henry--defeated David II. at Neville's Cross (1346); his grandson fought at Crécy; his great-grandson, the fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick, was marshal of England at the coronation of Richard II., and was created the same day Earl of Northumberland. By far the greater part of the romance of the Percys has centred round Harry Hotspur (eldest son of the preceding), whom the dead Douglas defeated at Otterburn, and who fell himself at Shrewsbury (1403) fighting against Henry IV. The soubriquet of Hotspur was given him because "in the silence of the night, when others were quietly sleeping, he laboured unwearied, as though his spur were hot."
PLATE 9
VIEW OF ALNWICK CASTLE
FROM A WATER COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 38, 49, and 53 to 58_)
The first Earl was slain at Bramham Moor (1408). The second Earl fell fighting for Henry VI. at St. Albans in 1455. The third at Towton (1461), and it was his brother the fourth Earl who comforted himself as he lay bleeding to death on Hedgley Moor (1464) that he had "saved the bird in his bosom." The fifth Earl was murdered in 1489. The sixth Earl was the lover of Anne Boleyn, maid of honour to Queen Catherine, and had King Henry VIII. for his rival, who in great wrath commanded Cardinal Wolsey to break off the engagement between them. The seventh Earl for espousing the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded in 1572. The eighth Earl in 1585 was found dead in bed with three pistol shots through his breast, whether by suicide or murder. The ninth Earl was imprisoned for fifteen years in the Tower on a baseless suspicion of being privy to the Gunpowder Plot. The tenth Earl fought on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, and with the death of Josceline, the eleventh Earl, in 1670, the male line of the family came to an end. The eleventh Earl's only child--an heiress--married the Duke of Somerset, who was created in 1749 Baron Warkworth, and Earl of Northumberland, with remainder (having no male issue) to his son-in-law Sir Hugh Smithson, of Stanwick, a Yorkshire knight who in his youth had been an apothecary in Hatton Gardens. Sir Hugh succeeded to the Earldom in 1750, and was created in 1766 Earl Percy and Duke of Northumberland. The seventh Duke succeeded in 1899.
From Alnwick it is fourteen miles to Bamborough, "King Ida's castle, huge and square." No traveller along the great north road between Alnwick and Berwick can fail to be struck with an object so boldly prominent as Bamborough. Far and wide it meets the vision, and is the more conspicuous from the flat character of its surroundings and the very open coast. Its base is an almost perpendicular mass of basaltic rock overlooking the sea, at a height of 150 feet. Founded in 547, it suffered many a siege, most of all at the hands of the Danes in 933. In the years that followed it was being constantly rebuilt, and as constantly stormed and broken again. As the great bombards left it in the fourth Edward's reign, so it lay dismantled for centuries. In 1720, Lord Crewe, the philanthropic Bishop of Durham, purchased the Castle and bequeathed it for charitable purposes--the reception and care of the poor, etc. In 1894 it was acquired by the late Lord Armstrong, at a cost of a quarter of a million, and fitted up as a convalescent home. The charming village of Bamborough, nestling within easy distance, has some celebrity as a health resort. The church in which St. Aidan died is one of the oldest in the country, and the churchyard contains Grace Darling's tomb. The Farne Islands, the scene of her brave exploit, are easily visible from the shore. There are seventeen in all, forming three distinct groups, Longstone, the heroine's home, lying farthest out. It was from the lighthouse on this latter island that the noble maiden of barely twenty-two descried the wreck of the _Forfarshire_, the 7th September, 1838, and formed her resolve at rescue. "He that goes out and sees the savage and iron nature of the rocks will not avoid wondering at the desperate nature of the attempt," crowned by an almost superhuman triumph. On the great Farne, or House Island, his favourite place of retirement, St. Cuthbert died in 687. How his followers bore, from shrine to shrine, the uncorrupted body of their Bishop is a tradition well-known. "For the space of seven years," says Reginald of Durham, "Saint Cuthbert was carried to and fro on the shoulders of pious men through trackless and waterless places; when no house afforded him a hospitable roof, he remained under covering of tents." Further, we are told how the monks first carried their precious burden to the stone church at Norham; thence towed it up the river to Tillmouth; on to Melrose, the Saint's home-sanctuary by the Tweed; thence through the Lowland glens towards the English Border where, descending the head-waters of the Tyne, they came to Hexham; passing westward to Carlisle in Cumberland, and Dufton Fells in Westmoreland, and over into Lancashire; then once more eastward to the monastery at York; and finally northward again to a last resting place in Durham, when
"After many wanderings past, He chose his lordly seat at last Where his Cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear."
"MERRIE CARLISLE"
A glance at the outskirts of Carlisle suggests at once the fact that its founders had considered the strategic value of the site. The old Brigantes never planted their towns without due examination of the whole lie of the land, and especially with a view to its defencibleness. The river-junctions were often their favourite settling places. Hence the origin of Carlisle, and many others of the Border towns--Hawick, Selkirk, Kelso, etc. With its three encompassing streams--the Eden, the Caldew, and the Petteril, which still enclose the Castle and Cathedral hills in a sort of quasi-island, Carlisle has been aptly called "the city of the waters." Its situation certainly is all but perfect, whilst the picturesqueness and the extensiveness of its surrounding scenery are the admiration of all who see it. Built upon a hill which its walls once enclosed but which would now shut out its most populous suburbs, Carlisle commands a prospect only limited by the lofty mountain chain that encircles the great basin in which Cumberland lies. From the summit of the Cathedral or from the Keep of the Castle, the eye sweeps without interruption a vast prepossessing landscape, rich in wood and water and fertile valleys, over which the light and shade are ever gambolling, and the seasons spreading their variegated hues. Southward, across this fair expanse, the majestic Skiddaw rears his noble crest, and Helvellyn his wedge-like peak, radiant with the first and last rays of the sun. Saddleback, and the lesser hills, link the apparently unbroken chain with Crossfell and the eastern range; while further to the left the Northumberland fells bound the horizon. Then come the uplands by Bewcastle and the Border and the pastoral Cheviots. Away round to the west, the magnificent belt is terminated by "huge Criffel's hoary top" standing in solemn grandeur above the Solway.
PLATE 10
VIEW OF PRUDHOE-ON-TYNE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 39 and 56_)
There are few fairer or wider panoramas in Britain, and none more permeated with the very spirit of romance. What Lockhart said of Sandyknowe is equally true of this singularly fascinating view-point. To whichever hand we turn we may be sure there is "not a field but has its battle, and not a rivulet without its song."
Unlike Melrose, which may claim to be the literary capital of the Border Country, Carlisle is the fighting capital. Its most stirring memories are of raiders and rescues, and its very air is
"full of ballad notes Borne out of long ago."
Despite its Cathedral, Carlisle is really more Scottish than English. A town which proclaimed the Pretender must be Scottish enough. No other English town fills so large a place in Scottish history. And even its present manners and customs, and no little part of its dialect, are coloured with Scottish sentiment and tradition. For which it cannot be a whit the worse! Walk about Carlisle, and one is charmed with the exquisite pleasantness of the place, the sense of comfort and prosperity that reigns in its streets and suburbs, the steady flow of traffic running through it, and the welcome geniality of its inhabitants. What a delightful spot is Stanwix yonder, for instance! And the banks of the Eden have something of those "Eden scenes" about them which Burns claimed for the Jed. That Bridge is not unlike Rennie's at Kelso. The public buildings are worth a more minute examination than the passing stranger usually gives. An atmosphere of delicious semi-antiquity is the crowning feature of "Merrie Carlisle," and one feels instinctively that under the inevitable modernity of the place there is an older story written on its stones--
"Old legends, of the monkish page, Traditions of the saint and sage, Tales that have the rime of age, And chronicles of eld."
It is so old a town that one cannot be certain of its origin. The name is apparently British, derived probably from _Caer Lywelydd_, or simply Caer Lywel, "the town or fort of Lywel," but whether this was a tribal, or local, or personal name it would be hazardous to say. By the Romans it was known as _Luguvallium_ or _Luguballia_, possibly "the town or fort by the Wall." This the Saxons abbreviated and altered to _Luel_, the original name, with the prefix _Caer_, hence Caer-Luel, Caerleil, Carleol, Karluil, Karliol, Carliol, Carlile, and Carlisle.
"No English city," says Bishop Creighton, "has a more distinctive character than Carlisle, and none can claim to have borne its character so continuously through the course of English history. Carlisle is still known as 'the Border city,' and though the term 'the Border' has no longer any historical significance, it still denotes a district which has strongly marked peculiarities and retains a vigorous provincial life. There was a time when the western Border was equally important with the Border on the north, when the fortress on the Dee had to be stoutly held against the foe, and when the town which rose among the scrub by the upper Severn was a place of conflict between contending races. But this struggle was not of long duration, and Chester and Shrewsbury ceased to be distinctly Border towns. On the north, however, the contest continued to be stubbornly waged, till it raised up a population inured to warfare, who carried the habits of a predatory life into a time when they were mere survivals of a well-nigh forgotten past. Of this period of conflict Carlisle is the monument, and of this lawless life it was long the capital. Berwick-upon-Tweed alone could venture to share its glory or dispute its supremacy; but Berwick was scarcely a town; it was rather a military outpost, changing hands from time to time between the combatants; it was neither Scottish nor English, more than a castle, but less than a town, an accidental growth of circumstances, scarcely to be classed as an element of popular life. Carlisle, on the other hand, traces its origin to times of venerable antiquity, and can claim through all its changes to have carried on in unbroken succession the traditions of an historic life. It was the necessary centre of a large tract of country, and whether its inhabitants were British or English its importance remained the same. It was not merely a military position, but a place of habitation, the habitation of a people who had to trust much to themselves, and who amidst all vicissitudes retained a sturdy spirit of independence. This is the distinguishing feature of Carlisle; it is 'the Border city.' But though this is its leading characteristic which runs through all its history, it has two other marks of distinction, when compared with other English towns. It is the only town on British soil which bears a purely British name; and it is the only town which has been added to England since the Norman Conquest."
PLATE 11
VIEW OF CARLISLE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 44, and 60 to 70_)
Briefly, the headlines of Carlisle's history are these. Founded originally by the Britons, it was held by the Romans for close on four centuries. Many Roman remains (coins, medals, altars, etc.) have been unearthed, and Hadrian's big Wall (murus and vallum) is still traceable in several quarters. A sad spoliation by Pict and Scot followed the Roman withdrawal. They scarcely left one stone on another. Then came the Saxon supremacy under the good King Egfrith, with the spiritual oversight under Saint Cuthbert, to whom and his successors at Lindisfarne were bestowed in perpetuity the city with fifteen miles around it. But for Egfrith's death fighting the Picts on the far-off moorland of Nechtansmere (Dunnichen in Forfarshire) Carlisle might have risen early and rapidly to a sure place as one of the leading cities in the land. From 685, however, to the Conquest (1066) the place was virtually extinct. It was only then that a new epoch arose for the broken city as for the whole of England. The Conqueror himself is said to have commenced the rebuilding of Carlisle, but the town owes its restoration rather to his son William the Red, who, on his return from Alnwick, after concluding a peace treaty with the King of Scotland in 1092, "observed the pleasantness of its situation, and resolved to raise it from its ruins." The Castle, the Priory, the once massive city walls, were all the work of the Rufus regime, completed by Henry I., who gave cathedral dignity to the church at Carlisle. David I., the "Sair Sanct," raided Carlisle in 1136, and kept court for a time within its walls, which he heightened. It was at Carlisle that his death took place in 1153. From that date to the 'Forty-five, Carlisle's history is mainly that of a kind of "buffer-state" between the two kingdoms. Few cities recall so many martial memories. It was Edward's base of operations in his Scottish wars. It was besieged by Wallace in 1298, by Bruce in 1315--the year after Bannockburn, and again in 1322. Queen Mary's captivity at Carlisle in 1568; Buccleuch's daring and gallant rescue of Kinmont Willie in 1596, immortalised in the best of the Border ballads; the protracted siege by General Leslie in 1644 during the Parliamentary War; and the Pretender's short-lived triumph--these are the rest of its leading events.