Part 10
To visit Wressle Castle we must leave the direct road to Howden, turning to the left immediately after crossing the Derwent. Here again the sad landscape seems to have infected the building. Theoretically it has all the elements of romance, and to read of it without seeing it is to conjure up a picture of decaying splendour, of venerable walls eloquent of revelry and war, a picture worthy of the great names of Percy and Lacy and Seymour. A castle founded by that Earl of Worcester whose headless body lies in Shrewsbury Abbey because he fought for Richard II.'s lost cause, a castle that has seen all the might of the Northumberlands and all the tragedy of civil war, must surely have "the grand air." So one thinks till one has seen Wressle. In the background is a building, shabby but not ruined; in the foreground is a cabbage-patch.
Yet once this place was all magnificence, made "al of very fair and greate squarid stone both withyn and withoute." Leland tells us of its halls and great chambers, and its five towers, and its brewhouse without the wall, and its "botery, pantery, pastery, lardery, and kechyn." All these things were exceedingly fair, he says, and so were the gardens within the moat and the orchards without. It was here where the cabbages are that those fair gardens grew. And in the orchards were mounds, "writhen about with degrees like turninges of cokilshilles, to cum to the top without payn." Most fondly of all he describes the "study caullid Paradise," with the ingenious device of ledged desks for holding books. There, looking down upon us from the upper part of the tower nearest to the road, are the empty windows of that Paradise whose inhabitants were driven out of it for ever by the flaming sword of Civil War.
This is only a fragment of the original castle. The Northumberlands needed a considerable amount of house-room, for they had, it appears, two hundred and twenty-nine servants. There were gentlemen to wait before noon and gentlemen to wait after noon, and gentlemen to wait after supper; there were yeoman officers, and groom officers, and grooms of the chambers; there was a groom for brushing clothes, a groom of the stirrup, a groom to dress the hobbies and nags, a groom to keep the hounds, a groom to keep the gates, and an endless list of others. The day came when the servants in this house were called upon by the Parliament to demolish it themselves, and were given a month to do it in. This one side of the quadrangle was all they left. It is possible, I believe, to climb one of the towers to see the view--but I cannot think it desirable. The view from the bottom of the tower is not so attractive as to make one wish for more.
A very great relief to the eye is Howden, about three miles further on. The town itself is not without a certain degree of picturesqueness, though it was scarcely a happy thought to surmount the ancient steps of the cross in the market-place by a modern street lamp. However, from that same market-place we see, behind the red houses, the ruined gable-end of the church that is Howden's pride, whose lovely tower is one of the landmarks of the plain. The peculiarly slender and graceful effect of this tower is partly owing, I think, to the unusual height of the lower stage compared with the upper. Those tall lancets were the work of Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, whose palace stood over there to the east of the church, where the pretty gardens are. If we venture a little way on foot along that lane at the corner of the square, we may see, without trespassing, the beautiful old ivy-covered wall and the blocked gatehouse with the shield upon it, within which the bishops of Durham were wont to seek rest and change. Camden's tale, to the effect that Bishop Skirlaw built "the huge tall steeple" as a refuge for the inhabitants in times of flood, need not be believed; it was probably the invention, as a certain quaint old book suggests, of "some doating scribe, desirous of assimilating the steeple of Howden Church to the tower of Babel."
In the thirteenth century the Archbishop of York, seeing that this church was "very wide and large," and rich enough to support "many spiritual men," made it collegiate. Hence arose the need for the chapter-house that Walter Skirlaw built on the south side of the choir, and made so wonderfully beautiful that even now, robbed as it is of its groined roof and much of its rich ornament, it dwells in one's mind as a thing apart. The Decorated choir, which was first the work and afterwards the shrine of the thirteenth-century poet, John Hoveden, is itself a ruin; for when the church lost its prebends and its riches in the reign of Edward VI. there was neither need nor means left for keeping this part of the building in repair. The nave is still the parish church.
After leaving Howden we have to pass, with what speed we may, over ten more miles of absolutely level, absolutely uninspiring country. Then we go through North Cave, where George Washington's ancestors used to live; and at last the road begins to rise over Kettlethorpe Hill. The flat land is laid out like a map below us; far away upon the horizon--which is level as the sea--rises "the huge tall steeple" of Howden; and between the plain of Yorkshire and the rising-ground of Lincolnshire are the sullen waters of that great river that has brought England so much of her prosperity. Not always, however, has the Humber brought prosperity. More than a thousand years ago the fleet of the avenging Danes, Hinguar and Hubba, swept up between these low banks, to lay this rich country waste. Right into the heart of the land they sailed, and ceased not to destroy till all the country of the fens was desolate. Now this calamity and much more besides--the destruction of Lindisfarne and Whitby, of Croyland and Ely and Peterborough, and the death of St. Edmund the King--was brought about by the jealousy of one obscure individual. For Lothbroc the Dane, being a guest at Edmund's Court, had showed so much skill in the trapping of birds and beasts that the King's head-keeper, as one may call him, was "inflamed with mortal envy." So he slew Lothbroc treacherously. Then the King sent the murderer to sea in a little boat, without sail or oars, and the boat drifted to the shores of Denmark. And the wicked keeper sought the sons of Lothbroc, whose names were Hinguar and Hubba, and told them that their father had been slain by order of King Edmund. So Hinguar and Hubba swore by "their almighty gods that they would not leave that murder unpunished"; and verily they fulfilled their oath.
Two hundred years later another Dane, Sweyn of the Forked Beard, "a cruel man, and ready for the shedding of blood," sailed up to conquer the north. Just beyond that island that lies close to the left bank, where we see the Ouse suddenly widen into the Humber, Sweyn turned into the river Trent. And "all England groaned like a bed of reeds shaken by the west wind."
At the top of the hill we pass through a wonderful avenue of beeches and sycamores; then run down a long and pleasant slope into Walkington; and soon the blue towers of Beverley appear.
The brief run across the common above Beverley will probably be the last of our memorable moments in Yorkshire: the last of those memories which we motorists--while the days are long and the winds are soft and the engine purrs contentedly hour after hour--hoard up to enjoy again and again, not only through the winter but through the years. This particular moment is a very short one; but it will be long, I think, before we forget the beauty of the town of Beverley as it lies in the blue dusk of a summer evening, with its matchless towers dominating it.
Yes, surely, they are matchless! See how the straight, clean lines of their tall buttresses--those parallel lines that are repeated again and again in the Perpendicular panels, and even in the deep shadows cast by the masonry--give the impression of slenderness and height. Not anywhere, not at Lincoln, not at York, are there towers of a design so complete and finished, of a simplicity so exquisite. Nowhere else does the accumulation of straight lines produce so rich a whole; nowhere else are the very shadows used to enhance the effect. There is much that is beautiful in Beverley Minster, but in the main it is these twin towers that are going to be our compensation for all those miles we have driven between flat fields, "enclosid," as Leland says, "with hegges."
The monastery of Beverley was founded, or at all events much frequented in the eighth century, by a certain Archbishop of York, who retired hither "out of a pious aversion to this world," and has been known ever since as St. John of Beverley. Bede's account of this saint is well worth reading. He was a man of many miracles, of much kindliness, of some sharpness of tongue. Never was there a saint of so much commonsense, mingled with the compelling power that works miracles in every age. There was a "dumb boy," for instance, who had also a sore head. The archbishop divined the nervous nature of the dumbness, and cured it so thoroughly that the youth talked incessantly for a day and a night, as long as he could keep awake. Then the archbishop "ordered the physician to take in hand the cure of his head." The shrewd saint recognised his own limitations. On another occasion he was brought to heal a dying nun. "What can I do to the girl," he asked tartly, "if she is like to die?"
Such was St. John of Beverley, of whom we may see a picture, though not, I fear, a portrait, in the south transept of this minster. It represents him receiving from King Athelstane a charter with a portentous seal and the following legend:--
"Als fre make I the as hert may thynke or egh may see."
King Athelstane, it is true, was by no means a contemporary of St. John of Beverley, but he regarded the saint as his special benefactor, and gave many privileges to Beverley on that account--so the symbolism is pretty even if the picture is not. If we walk along the nave till we are beneath the second boss of the vaulted roof, counting from the east, we shall be above the spot where John of Beverley's dust has lain for many centuries. He was originally buried in the porch; probably his bones were moved when the Saxon Church was replaced by a Norman one. I do not know on what authority the local guide informs us that Athelstane's dagger is in this grave. Gibson, who in his additions to Camden describes the opening of the tomb in the seventeenth century, makes mention of no dagger, but only of the sweet-smelling dust, and the six cornelian beads, and the brass pins and iron nails. Athelstane, it is true, left his dagger as a hostage on St. John's grave while he was fighting the Scots; but the story says that he redeemed it on his return by re-founding the monastery as a college, and granting it the right of sanctuary. Hence the legend on the charter.
In the north aisle of the choir, near the entrance to the Percy Chapel, is the visible symbol of that right of sanctuary, the Fridstool, the plain rounded seat in which he that sat was safe even though he were a murderer, the sacred centre of the six circles that conferred each its own amount of security. To this Stool of Peace, in the days when it stood beside the altar, many a man--indeed many a ruffian--has owed his life and the freedom he so little deserved. It was to this very seat that Richard II.'s half-brother, Sir John Holland, came hurrying through the night. Froissart tells the story, how Holland and Lord Ralph Stafford met in a lane but could not see each other for the darkness. "I am Stafford," said one. "And I am Holland," said the other, and added: "Thy servants have murdered my squire whom I loved so much." Then he killed Lord Ralph with a blow. Stafford's servant cried out that his master was dead. "Be it so," said Sir John; "I had rather have put him to death than one of less rank, for I have the better revenged the loss of my squire." In spite of this haughty attitude, however, he lost no time in taking refuge here. The beautiful towers were not in existence then, but the nave through which he hastened was this Decorated nave that we see now, and these Early English arches were above him as he sat in the sanctuary, and close to him was that wonderful canopied tomb near the altar, supposed to be the grave of Eleanor, Lady Percy.
If it were not eclipsed by the minster the church of St. Mary at Beverley would be more famous than it is, for it, too, is full of beauty and interest. But only those who are very enthusiastic lovers of architecture, or who are able to spend some days in the town, will risk confusing their memories of the first with the details of the second.
Beverley, though never fortified, had once three gates. Of these only one still stands, the North Bar. Beneath its crow-stepped parapet Charles I. must have passed with an angry heart when he rode out to York after his futile expedition to Hull. And it is very likely that we, if we are going south, shall drive out of Beverley upon the same road by which he came from Hull the night before, with the first open defiance of one of his own towns ringing ominously in his ears.
Who thinks of history when he goes to Hull? It is, no doubt, like all great commercial centres, of paramount interest to its inhabitants; but to the traveller what is it? A starting-place, a place where there are docks, railway stations, hotels. Even that increasing band of travellers who are learning, with the help of bicycles and motor-cars, to know their country with the intimate knowledge that nearly always means love, to linger in its historic towns, to seek its little villages, and to eat the familiar bacon-and-eggs of its wayside inns, even these are fain to pass through Hull with no thought beyond their anxiety to reach some other place. Beyond the two old churches of Holy Trinity and St. Mary there is nothing here to see except a good deal of prosperity and the squalor that prosperity brings.
Yet even these wide streets of central Hull, with all their prosaic traffic, should take our thoughts back to Edward I. These things are the justification of that astute and high-handed king; they are the fulfilment of his prophecy. This sheltered corner of the Humber, he thought, would make a fine position for a commercial town. To think of a thing was to do it at once, with our first Edward; so he bought the land from the Abbey of Meaux, made himself a manor, called the place King's Town, built some houses, and paid people to live in them. Well, there may be some even now who would have to be paid to live in Hull; but none the less Edward was wise here as in most other places.
And, moreover, as we reach the outskirts of this town we may recall that one of the most dramatic scenes in English history was enacted here--that defiance of Charles I. at the walls of his own town, which was the gauntlet flung by the Parliament.
War was yet not declared, but there was great store of ammunition in Hull which might, thought Charles, be useful by and by. So he, with two or three hundred others, set out from York to see about the matter, and as he drew near this town--fortified then with a great wall and many towers--he sent a message to bid the governor dine with him. I do not know if there is any vestige left of the wall to which Charles presently came, or any record of the spot where he paused, dumbfounded, before the gate. This, he surely thought, as he scanned the walls and the closely shut gates and the hostile draw-bridges, this was a strange welcome to his city of Hull, the King's Town! Here were no sheriffs marching out to meet him as at York, nor gay trainbands, nor kneeling mayors; but walls manned with soldiers who were anything but gay, and inhospitable gate-keepers whom he could by no means persuade to let him pass, and on the ramparts the unhappy governor, Sir John Hotham. "And when the King commanded him to cause the port to be opened," says Clarendon, "he answered like a distracted man that no man could understand; he fell upon his knees, used all the execrations imaginable, that the earth would open and swallow him up if he were not his Majesty's most faithful subject." Yet in spite of all his protestations this man "of a fearful nature and perplexed understanding" was quite clear in his mind as to what his intentions were, and not too fearful to carry them out. The King should not come in.
Then solemnly, from below the wall they might not enter, the King's officers made proclamation that Sir John Hotham, Governor of Hull, was a traitor; and Charles, with his head high but his spirits very low, rode on to Beverley in the shadow of the Great Rebellion.
Our plight at this moment is not the same as his. If his difficulty was to enter Hull, ours lies in the leaving of it--supposing, that is to say, that we wish to cross the Humber by the ferry. There are no arrangements of any kind for shipping cars. A narrow, precipitous gangway, with a right-angled turn in the middle, is the only means of passing from the quay to the ferry-boat. The transit is a matter of difficulty for any car--for a large one it is impossible. Hull, however, is a progressive place, as befits the town of that most progressive king who saw its possibilities so long ago. Very soon, we cannot doubt, the shipping of a car on the shores of the Humber will be less like a feat in a circus than it is at present.
INDEX
AGINCOURT, Battle of, 195
Ainsty of York, 187
Airedale, 15
Aire, River, 13, 189
Alan, Count of Brittany, 73, 79
Alfred the Great, 36, 37, 44
Alfrid, King of Deira, 36
Allerston, 124
Anne Boleyn, 160, 161
Appleton-le-Moor, 133
Arkengarth Dale, 71
Arthur, King, 74, 75
Aske Hall, 79
Aske, Robert, 113
Askrigg, 57, 66, 67
Athelstane, King, 215, 216
Atton, Family of, 122
Aysgarth, 56
Ayton Castle, 122, 164
BAINBRIDGE, 57
Baliol, Bernard, 82, 83
Baliol College, 83
Baliol, Guy, 82
Baliol, John, the elder, 83, 84
Baliol, John, King of Scotland, 82, 83
Barden Moor, 57
Barden Tower, 19, 21
Barlow, Bishop, 177, 178
Barnard Castle, 65, 81, 82-84
Barnet, 205
Bay Town, 107
Bear of Warwick, 50
Beatty, Sir William, 55
Beckett, Thomas à, 28
Bede, The Venerable, 35, 76, 129, 140, 174, 214
Bellyseys, Richard, 47
Benedict, Abbot of Selby, 202, 203
Beverley, 4, 200, 201, 212-218, 221
Black Bess, 205
Blubberhouses, 25
Boar of Gloucester, 50, 83
Bolton Bridge, 22, 25
Bolton Castle, 57, 59-66, 177
Bolton, Lord, 56, 59
Bolton Priory, 5, 11, 21, 23-25, 149
Bolton Woods, 21, 22
Bootham Bar, York, 170, 183
Bosham, St. Wilfrid at, 36
Bosworth, Battle of, 159
Boulby Cliff, 95
Bourbon, Duke of, 195
Bowes, Sir George, 61, 65
Boy of Egremond, 22, 23
Brandon, Lady Eleanor, 8
Brandsby, 154, 157
Bridlington, 119
Brodelay, Abbot of Fountains, 42
Bromflete, Margaret, 122, 164
Brompton, 123, 124
Brontë, Anne, 115, 116
Brontë, Charlotte, 15, 115, 116
Brontë Country, The, 15
Brotton, 94, 95
Brougham Castle, 20
Bruce, David, 74, 75
Bruce, Family of, 92-95, 125
Bruce, Robert, 94
Buckden, 17
Buckingham, First Duke of, 135, 143, 144, 145
Buckingham, Second Duke of, 133-135, 141, 144-146
Buckingham, Katherine Duchess of, 143, 144
Buckingham, Mary Duchess of, 144
Burgh, de, 28
Burleigh, Lord, 53, 54
Burnsall, 19
Buttertubs Pass, 4, 58, 59, 67-69
Byland Abbey, 26, 153, 154
Byland, Old, 152, 153
Byron, Lord, 78
CÆDMON, 101, 104, 105
Camden, Quotations from, 12, 14, 17, 35, 91, 191, 192, 196, 209
Carlyle, Thomas, 33, 114
Cavendish Memorial at Bolton, 23
Chapel Haddlesey, 201
Charles I., 28, 74, 172, 173, 184, 187, 218, 220, 221
Citeaux, 152
Civil War, 9, 31, 33, 34, 53, 65, 100, 113, 114, 126, 135, 144, 170, 180, 187, 192, 197-200, 204, 207, 208, 218, 220, 221
Clairvaux, 151
Clapham, 11, 14
Clarence, Duke of, 159
Clarendon, Quotations from, 143, 173, 198, 221
Clares, Arms of the, 165
Claughton, 109
Cleveland Moors, 4, 79, 91, 92, 95, 108, 131
Clifford "the Butcher," 7, 19, 20, 122, 171, 188-190
Clifford, Family of, 6-11, 15, 122
Clifford "the Shepherd Lord," 7, 8, 11, 19-21, 24, 122
Clifford's Tower, York, 185, 186
Clitheroe, 30
Cock, River, 188, 189
Colman, 104
Compiègne, 36
Coniston, 12, 13
Conistone, 18
Conquering Legion, 181
Constantine the Great, 162, 181
Constantius, Emperor, 181
Cook, Captain, 91, 96, 97
Cotherstone, 84
Cotterell, Colonel, 199
Cover, River, 50, 54
Coxwold, 154, 157
Craven, 5-15
Cromwell, Oliver, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34
Cromwell, Thomas, 41, 42, 47
Cropton, 127
Croyland Abbey, 211
Culloden Tower, Richmond, 74
Cumberland, First Earl of, 11, 24
Cumberland, Third Earl of, 7, 10
Cynebil, 129
DAIRY BRIDGE, 80
Dales, The, 1-86, 89
Danes, The, 35, 105, 109, 120, 179, 211, 212
Darlington, 90
Defoe, Quotations from, 54, 57
Derham, Francis, 197
Derwent, River, 122, 164, 166, 206
Despensers, The, 195, 196
Devorgilla, Princess, 83
Dissolution of Monasteries, 24, 41, 42, 46, 47, 72, 77, 93, 183
Dodsworth, Roger, 156, 180
Douglas, Black, 112, 113
Dropping Well at Knaresborough, 31
Dugdale, 151, 156
Duncombe, Charles, 134, 142, 145, 147
Duncombe Park, 141, 147, 155
EANFLED, Queen, 35, 105
Easby Abbey, 56, 77, 78
Easington, 95
East Ayton, 123
East Witton, 50
Eata, 35
Ebberston, 124
Edmund, King, 211, 212
Edred, King, 36
Edward the Confessor, 137-139
Edward I., 83, 170, 219, 222
Edward II., 8, 11, 196
Edward III., 175, 176
Edward IV., 51, 159, 189, 191, 197
Edward V., 162
Edward, son of Richard III., 52, 161, 162, 172
Edwin, King of Northumbria, 177, 179
Eggleston Abbey, 82
Elfleda, Princess, 105
Elizabeth, Queen, 7, 10, 53, 62, 63, 135
Elizabeth, Queen of Spain, 62
Elizabeth of York, 159, 160, 162
Ellerton Priory, 72
Eliot, George, 22, 26
Ely, 211
Embsay, 23
Embsay Moor, 15
Espec, Walter of, 142, 148, 150-152, 164, 165
Ethelfled, daughter of Alfred the Great, 73
Ethelwald, King of Deira, 128, 139, 140
Euer, Family of, 122
Evesham, 77, 106
Exton, Sir Piers, 193, 194
FAIRFAXES, Castle of the, 156
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 144, 145, 173, 174, 180, 204, 205
Ferrybridge, 189-191
Filey, 119
FitzHugh, Sir Henry, 45, 47
FitzHughs, Castle of the, 84
Fitzranulph, 51
Fitzwater, Lord, 190
Flamborough Head, 119
Flodden, Battle of, 8
Forge Valley, 119, 121-123, 127, 164
Fors, 47, 66, 67
Fossard, Family of, 99
Foston, 163
Fountains Abbey, 5, 13, 17, 26, 37-43, 149, 183
Fountains Hall, 43
Fox, George, 114, 115
Froissart, Quotations from, 216, 217
Furness, 153
GALLOWS HILL, 123
Galtres, Forest of, 157, 158
Gargrave, 12
Gaveston, Piers, 28, 112, 126, 195
Geoffrey, Abbot of St. Mary's, 183
George IV., 74
George Washington, 210
Gibson, Editor of Camden, 215
Giggleswick, 14
Gilling, 73, 78, 79
Gilling, East, 156
Glastonbury, 105
Glenham, General, 173
Godiva, Lady, 73
Godwin, Earl, 138
Goldsmith, Peter, 55
Gordale Scar, 13
Grasmere, 123
Grassington, 19
Great North Road, 79, 190, 201, 205
Great Whernside, 17
Greta Bridge, 80
Greta, River, 80, 81
Grey Friars' Tower, Richmond, 77, 79
Grey, Sir Richard, 197
Grimston Moor, 157
Gros, William le, 112
Guisborough, 91-94
Gunnerside, 70
HACKNESS, 119-121, 122
Hall, John, 95
Hambledon Moors, 79
Hamilton, Duke of, 31
Hampton Court, 62
Harald the Norseman, 111
Harold II., 139
Harrogate, 25-28
Harry Hotspur, 171, 193
Hartington Seat, 23
Hastings, Lord, 51
Hawes, 57, 67
Haworth, 15
Helaugh, 71, 75
Hellifield, 11, 13
Helmsley, 134, 141-147, 154, 156
Hemingborough, 205
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 184
Henry I., 203
Henry III., 112
Henry IV., 126, 171, 194
Henry V., 7, 45, 195
Henry VI., 189
Henry VII., 75, 93, 122, 160
Henry VIII., 8, 46, 77, 93, 161, 197
High Force, 85, 86
Hill House, Richmond, 78
Hinderwell, 98
Hinguar and Hubba, 105, 109, 211, 212
Hipswell Moor, 57
Hodge Beck, 136