Part 7

We climb out of the beck and turn to the right. The narrow glen is thickly wooded, after the manner of Yorkshire dales both large and small, and in a clump of firs stands the Minster of St. Gregory. This is a fine name for so small a building; but it was called a minster nearly nine hundred years ago, and we need not deny it the distinction in its venerable age. It is not for its beauty that we come to see it, though it is picturesque enough in its setting of trees; but chiefly it is for the sake of one stone in its wall, and of the names inscribed upon it--names familiar yet remote, the names of Edward the King and Tosti the Earl. Here they are, carved in the lifetime of those who bore them. It is plain that this great stone was not always, as it is now, under a porch; for it was once a sundial, and here it is always in the shadow. The words upon it are deeply and clearly graven, easily distinguished, and, except for a few words, easily understood. This is the whole inscription, carved in two columns, with one line below the dial:--

"Orm Gamal Suna Bohte STS Gregorius Minster Wonne Hit Wes AEl Tobrocan & Tofalan & He Hit Let Macan Newan From Grunde XPE & STS Gregorius In Eadward Dagum CNG & In Tosti Dagum Eorl, & Hawarth Me Wrohte & Brand, PRS."

(_Orm Gamal's son, bought St. Gregory's Minster when it was all tobroken and tofallen, and he it let be made new from ground to Christ and St. Gregory, in Edward's days, the King, and in Tosti's days, the Earl, & Howarth me wrought, and Brand, Priests._)

The sundial has its own legend:--

"This is Daeges Solmerca Aet Ilcum Tide.' (_This is Day's sunmarker at every time._")

This church, then, was made new from the ground in the middle of the eleventh century; for it was in 1056 that Tosti, the son of the famous Godwin, obtained the earldom of Northumbria; and it was in 1065 that he "impelled the Northumbrians to rebel, by the asperity of his manners," and so lost his earldom. In using these words William of Malmesbury is really most moderate, for Tosti seems to have been a terrible swashbuckler. He murdered, among many others, the son of the very man who rebuilt this church and set up this inscription: "All the sons of the traitor Godwin," says an old chronicler, "were men of such wickedness that if they saw any beautiful town belonging to any one they caused the lord of it to be slain by night, and his offspring to be destroyed, that they might obtain his property." On one occasion Tosti seized his brother Harold by the hair in the king's presence, while he was actually drinking his Majesty's health; whereupon Harold lifted Tosti "up on high, and dashed him down on the floor." Such was the asperity of their manners.

Edward the King is, of course, the Confessor, the "harmless king."

Within the church there are two carved stones round which much discussion circles. Until lately they were in the outer wall, where they naturally suffered much from the climate. One of them--the one that has a cross engraved upon it--once bore the words "Cyning Æthilwald," or "King Ethelwald," in runic letters. Upon the slender foundation of this somewhat vague inscription it has been argued that this is the coffin lid of King Ethelwald: therefore Ethelwald was buried at Kirkdale: therefore Cedd's monastery, where Ethelwald wished to be buried, was at Kirkdale and not at Lastingham. This last conclusion is then turned into a premise, with a view to suggesting that the beautiful stone with the Celtic design upon it may be the coffin lid of Cedd himself. Yet Bede says that Cedd was buried at "Lestingau."

The door of St. Gregory's Minster is locked. We may see the "sunmarker" and its clear lettering without entering the building, and also a slab of stone with an interlaced Celtic pattern which is let into the outer wall; but to see the reputed coffin lids of Ethelwald and Cedd--which are beautiful specimens of Celtic work, whatever their story--we must drive to Nawton village, a mile away, and fetch the key from the Vicarage. This seems hard; and if hard for motorists, a hundred times harder for bicyclists and others. The Yorkshire churches are in the main very kind to the public. Many of them are left open, with a suggestive money-box close to the door, and often with a guide-book that may be borrowed. By this method the church probably gains rather than loses, since it is pleasanter to give half a crown to an old building that deserves it than to give sixpence to an old man who has learnt a few facts by rote, and learnt them wrongly. If it is possible, however, to forgive a church for being closed we must forgive this church of Kirkdale. It has again and again been defaced and desecrated by those curious folk who love their own insignificant initials more than any fairer sight. It is certain that those who care so little for a building as to treat it thus will not journey very far to fetch the key.

The fine high-road that skirts the eastern moors, the road on which we have been travelling since we left Scarborough, comes to an end, in a sense, at Helmsley; for here it splits up into two roads, each of which we must follow for a time. Helmsley itself has its attractions. Among them are an open market square and an ancient cross, pretty houses and an inn covered with flowers, a tiny stream running through the town from end to end, and a castle-keep upon the hill. This is that castle which was "once proud Buckingham's delight," and now stands within the park whose name is borrowed from Duncombe the banker. Helmsley has passed through many hands, of which some helped in the making of history, and some were not over clean. The first name we hear of in connection with the place is no less a one than William the Conqueror, for he, having given Helmsley to one of his followers, chose it on one occasion for his own resting-place, after a heavy march and much hard work of the destructive kind he affected. His host, Earl Morton, lost these lands in the losing cause of Robert Curthose, and they fell to the famous Walter of Espec, one of the leaders in that strange semi-religious victory, the Battle of the Standard, whose heroes were summoned by an archbishop, absolved upon the field by a bishop, and actually overshadowed through the fight by the consecrated Host and the banners of three saints. Just such a mixture as this, of religion and bloodshed, was Walter himself, with his splendid presence, his gigantic height, his bright eyes and noble forehead, his voice "like the sound of a trumpet," his life as a warrior, and his death as a monk. Walter's sister Adeline married Peter de Ros, and it was their great-grandson, Robert de Ros, who built this much dilapidated tower of Helmsley Castle. After long centuries of ownership by unimportant Williams and Roberts and Georges the place came into the fair hands of Katherine, the daughter of the Earl of Rutland, and the wholly undeserved wife of the first Duke of Buckingham. Lady Katherine Manners was not, as is sometimes said, the granddaughter of Sir Philip Sidney, for it was her Uncle Roger, not her father, who married Sidney's daughter. The Duchess of Buckingham inherited all the wealth of her father's house, for her two little half-brothers died "by wicked practice and sorcery": so Helmsley came to Steenie, whose angel-face brought him so much beside his nickname. All his honours and his riches were won, says Clarendon, "upon no other advantage or recommendation than of the beauty and gracefulness and becomingness of his person." Yet something more truly lovable than this, we may be sure, was needed to win his Kate and her broad lands; and indeed the romance that gives this castle of Helmsley its chief interest remained romantic to the end, even though the duchess lived to write: "I pray God never woman may love a man as I have done you."

James I.'s slave-dog, as he called himself, was too busy in court and camp to visit Helmsley much, if ever, but it must have been a fine sight when it was his. The keep, not then a crumbling fragment, rose high above walls and many towers. Here are still the two moats that surrounded them, and the two gateways that once made a double defence. How strong the defences were we may gather from the trouble they gave to Sir Thomas Fairfax when he besieged the castle in the time of the second Duke of Buckingham, and won it at last, not only for the Parliament, but for himself. His grateful country gave him the lands of Helmsley, but at the same time took the precaution of reducing the castle to ruins, so that this shattered keep and gatehouse should never again defend royalist or rebel. The Buckinghams were ever humorists, and the second duke, pondering how he might regain some of his lost possessions, bethought him of marrying Mary Fairfax. After he had been embroiled in many plots and suffered many imprisonments he settled down here within sight of the tower that his father-in-law had reduced to so sad a state.

There, beyond the lawn-tennis court, is the house he lived in. Some of it seems to be older than his day, but he probably was obliged to repair it rather thoroughly after the siege. We may climb those steps, if we will, and enter.

These are haunted rooms. They are not haunted by a very worthy ghost, I fear--not even by Steenie of the dainty leg and the lovely complexion, the gallant adventurer whom many loved much and whom we all love a little--but only by his handsome, vicious son, the son who was born to the sound of all the joy-bells of Westminster, and died in the humble little bed at Kirbymoorside. These rooms were once proud Buckingham's delight; now they tear at one's heart. It is a thing to be glad of, no doubt, that Lord Mayor Duncombe found Buckingham's home too small to hold his vaulting ambitions and so built the palace in the park, leaving us this pitiful relic of departed glory. Yet one marvels that any man should have allowed so much beauty to go to wrack. These great oak panels with their rare design, this splendid moulded ceiling wrought so elaborately with Tudor roses, that frieze of shields and fleurs-de-lys, of mermaids and winged dragons, once made an appropriate setting for the man whom a contemporary called the "finest gentleman of person and wit" he ever saw. Now, in their decayed grandeur, they are appropriate still; a dramatic--almost a melodramatic--symbol of his fate. Half the panelling is gone; shred by shred the plaster of the ceiling is falling on the uneven floor; bare laths and gaping holes disfigure the Tudor roses over our heads; of the mermaids and winged dragons only a few are left. Lumber is piled upon the floor where "all mankind's epitome" was wont to walk; cobwebs and dust deface the windows. Such is the symbol of proud Buckingham, than whom "no man was ever handsomer," yet who was, in the last year of his life, "worn to a thread"; and up there in the park is the symbol of the city knight who bought his property with money not always well-gained, and flourished like a green bay-tree. We see the unromantic, prosperous house of the thrifty Duncombe as we drive away to Rievaulx.

Motorists will find it their best plan to visit the terrace of Rievaulx before seeing the abbey itself. The way lies through a gate on the left at the top of an extremely steep hill; a winding lane leads among trees to a second gate, and here the car may safely be left. A few steps bring us to the famous terrace cut on the hillside by a Duncombe of the eighteenth century. For half a mile the wide and level turf is stretched between the woods that overshadow it on the left, and the woods that fall steeply away from it on the right to the foot of the hill. Beyond the valley another wooded hill rises; to the south are moors. If we stand at the brink of the terrace and look down through a gap in the trees we see, far below us, the pointed arches of Rievaulx Abbey.

At each end of the terrace is a classical temple. At the north end, where we are standing, is the one described in the local guide-book as "a beautiful temple with an Ionic portico." At first sight it gives one a shock. Eighteenth-century buildings so often do give one a shock.

If, however, we forget for a few minutes that Rievaulx Abbey lies down there in the valley, if we forget Walter of Espec and his monks, and remember only the days when this temple was built, the Ionic portico has its uses. It gives us a vision of the age of powder and hoops, of the fair ladies who rustled here on the soft turf when George was king. The closely cropped sward was suited to the dainty feet, the scenery not so "savage" as to wound the dainty susceptibilities. Indeed, in any century, this scene could only heal.

There is a path that winds down the hill to the abbey, and if our car is independent of us this is the best way to go. But if she is unattended and cannot meet us in the valley we must drive down the steep hill to the village. The surface of this hill is composed of ruts and loose stones, but the beauty of the woods is compensation for nearly anything.

If Fountains Abbey speaks of power, Rievaulx breathes peace. Taking everything into consideration, I think its beauty has only one rival in England. The valley of the Rye is far lovelier than Studley Park; the building itself is far lovelier than Bolton. Only Tintern can rival it; not even Tintern can eclipse it. For at Tintern the feeling of Cistercian seclusion can only be acquired through the imagination: a high-road is close at hand; a brisk trade in picture postcards and Goss china is carried on at the abbey door; to be alone is almost impossible. But here at Rievaulx we may chance to stand in perfect solitude, perfect stillness, under the mighty archway that soars in dignified simplicity so far above our heads, and separates us as though by invisible gates from the world. No imagination is needed here to conjure up the aloofness of the white monks--the actual fact is here. Through the empty windows--once filled, in defiance of the early Cistercian ideals, with some of the first efforts of English glass-stainers--we see the wild hillside rising from the very walls, and above it the rampart of trees; the grass under our feet grows like the grass of the field; the world makes no sign, and on each side of us the slender arches point to heaven. There is something here that is more than beauty; the very air seems charged with the prayers of holy men long dead. The weather-worn slab of the high altar is unfortunately enclosed by a railing, which is doubtless needed, in this Christian country, to save it from desecration. Not near this stone, as one might expect, but in the ruined chapter-house, lies the dust of the monk who came here in his old age to hide his "broad but well-featured face" under the shadow of a cowl, and to subdue his trumpet-like voice to the singing of psalms--the monk who had founded this abbey in the days when he was a famous soldier--Walter of Espec.

Walter founded three monasteries: one at Kirkham, which we shall presently see; one here; one at Wardon in Bedfordshire. Incorporated with Leland's Itinerary is a document which tells us how Walter's only son fell from his horse and broke his neck upon a stone cross, and how in consequence Walter founded the monasteries of Kirkham and Rievaulx with some of the wealth for which he had now no heir. Dugdale, the seventeenth-century antiquarian, believed the tale, and told it for truth in his "Monasticon." Yet now we are bidden to reject the story of the younger Walter's sad end; nay, even to doubt that he ever lived! He is not mentioned, say those who know, in the foundation-charter of the abbey; there is nowhere in any document a statement that Walter of Espec ever had a son. However, till we find a definite statement that he had none, we shall probably continue to accept or reject the story according to temperament.

There are still some fragments of the actual church that was built by the eager hands of the monks from Clairvaux, the monks sent by St. Bernard himself to live their austere lives in this valley; but, of course, this rich triforium, these corbels of elaborate carving, these lancets and moulded arches and clustered columns were never seen by Norman Walter. Nor, indeed, would they have met with approval from the saintly abbot of Clairvaux, whose aspirations, like those of all the early Cistercians, tended to severe simplicity in architecture as in life. The vanished nave, it is thought, was part of the Norman work of Bernard's missionary monks, but this glorious chancel and the refectory with the strange doorway belong entirely to the thirteenth century.

Beautiful as are the details it is by the great chancel-arch that we shall always remember Rievaulx. It is the reposefulness of its simple grandeur that strikes the keynote of peace. Its quiet, stately lines rest the eye, and the memory of it rests the heart whenever we think of this fair daughter of Citeaux and mother of Melrose.

Long ago there was a second Cistercian abbey on the banks of Rye. The bells of Old Byland and the bells of Rievaulx clashed with one another, which for some reason shocked the Byland monks. Those who live in towns to-day, and Sunday by Sunday hear the bells of seven or eight churches ringing simultaneously in varying keys, will sympathise with them; but there seems to have been some idea in their minds beyond the obvious one, an idea strong enough to make them migrate first to Stocking and then to the spot where we may see the ruins of their abbey. Those who can spare the time will find that the beautiful west front of the second Byland repays them well for driving the few miles between the two ruins. The community that finally settled on this spot had been through a great deal. When they came here it was more than fifty years since the thirteen monks necessary to found a new house had left Furness to wander in their ox-waggon from place to place--from Furness to Cumberland, from Cumberland to Thirsk, from Thirsk to Byland-on-the-Moor, from Byland-on-the-Moor to Stocking, and from Stocking to their final home at last. None of the original thirteen can have seen the trefoiled door and gigantic wheel-window of the west front; for this, the most striking part of the existing ruin, was probably the finishing touch to a very splendid church.

Those who reach Byland may perhaps like to drive about a mile and a half beyond it, to see the interesting church at Coxwold, and the house where Laurence Sterne lived for some time and wrote the greater part of "Tristram Shandy," alternated with many sermons. From Coxwold a series of byways will take them to the high-road at Brandsby.

Those, however, who are unable to go beyond Rievaulx, must return to Helmsley. They may follow the Rye for a little while, and then, turning to the left with a last and lovely view of the abbey, may mount the hill through the woods, the fairy-haunted woods of Rievaulx, where the stems are not wrapped about with a confusion of undergrowth, but rise unhampered from a carpet of ferns and creepers. This climb among the dusky trees is very short, but adds to one's sense of Rievaulx's remoteness. The shadowy stillness of these woods is like a veil dropped between the valley and the world.

After driving through Helmsley we cross the Rye, and presently pass the upper entrance of Duncombe Park, the "Nelson Gate," erected as we see "to the memory of Lord Viscount Nelson, and the unparallelled gallant achievements of the British Navy." Between Helmsley and Sheriff Hutton, whither we are bound, lies some very pretty country of a pastoral kind, and a series of picturesque villages, several of which deserve more attention than we are likely to give them.

Here, for instance, is Oswaldkirk, which might well tempt us to pause. It is scattered along the side of a hill, with its little houses half smothered in trees. The tiny church is open, and in it are some fragments of Saxon and Norman work, and a Jacobean pulpit which once held the famous John Tillotson, who began life in a tailor's shop and ended it as Archbishop of Canterbury. His success was chiefly due, I believe, to his eloquence, so we may regard this spot as the cradle of his fortunes, since the sermon he preached here was his first. And here in Oswaldkirk was born another man of mark, the antiquarian to whom we owe so much of our knowledge of the ruined monasteries, Roger Dodsworth. He collaborated with Dugdale in the "Monasticon," which was not published till after his death. The younger man inherited the fruit of his researches, and has more or less eclipsed his name.

A little more than a mile beyond Oswaldkirk is Gilling, one of the prettiest villages in the county. Its wide street is bordered by bright gardens; a tiny stream runs through it under a row of miniature bridges; on the left is a church with some interesting tombs; and on the right, entirely hidden by the trees, is the castle of the Fairfaxes. Only those who have secured special permission are admitted to see this castle and its splendid Elizabethan Hall, of which the fame has reached many who were never in it. It is, according to all accounts, a marvel of rich ornament, of oaken panels and delicate inlay, of carved mouldings and stained glass and armorial shields.

A road with a perfect surface carries us out of the village to the top of a hill--where one patch of heather by the wayside reminds us that we are on Grimston Moor--and on through Brandsby to Stillington. The church we leave behind us as we turn sharply to the left has no special interest beyond the fact that Laurence Sterne preached many of his sermons in it, while he was living at Sutton-in-the-Forest and at Coxwold. Here in Stillington we leave the fine high-road for a very poor one--one that is a mere lane in fact--which leads us past the strange little church of Marton-on-the-Forest, with its crow-stepped gables and tower, to the village of Sheriff Hutton.

"What is this forest call'd?" we may be inclined to ask with Archbishop Scrope in "Henry IV." "'Tis Gaultree Forest, an't shall please your grace." Even in Leland's time there was very little wood in the neighbourhood of Sheriff Hutton, and now the Forest of Galtres, so "impenetrable and swampy" when the Romans set to work to drain it, has practically vanished. A good proportion of it, I think, must always have been forest only in the technical sense, for we hear of it in the reign of Elizabeth as the scene of a yearly horse-race, wherein the prize for the winning horse was a little golden bell. Moreover, there is a tradition that wanderers in the Forest of Galtres, which reached to the outskirts of York, were guided by a light hung in the lantern tower of All Saints Church. Unless a great part of the country were open--"low medows and morisch ground"--this light would not have greatly aided the belated traveller. Be that as it may, the country is now so open that as we draw near Sheriff Hutton we may see with a thrill, if we look very intently along the far horizon, the faint, elusive gleaming of York Minster.