CHAPTER IV

ALONG THE HUMBER

Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh; But if you faint, as fearing to do so, Stay and be secret, and myself will go.’ _Richard II._, Act II., Scene 1.

The atrophied corner of Yorkshire that embraces the lowest reaches of the Humber is terminated by a mere raised causeway leading to the wider patch of ground dominated by Spurn Head lighthouse. This mere ridge of sand and shingle is all that remains of a very considerable and populous area possessing towns and villages as recently as the middle of the fourteenth century.

Far back in the Middle Ages the Humber was a busy waterway for shipping, where merchant vessels were constantly coming and going, bearing away the wool of Holderness and bringing in foreign goods, which the Humber towns were eager to buy. This traffic soon demonstrated the need of some light on the point of land where the estuary joined the sea, and in 1428 Henry VI. granted a toll on all vessels entering the Humber in aid of the first lighthouse put up about that time by a benevolent hermit.

His petition is quaintly worded, and full of interest. It commences:

‘To the wyse Comones of this present Parlement. Besekith your povre bedeman, Richard Reedbarowe, Heremyte of the Chapell of our Lady and Seint Anne atte Ravensersporne. That forasmuche that many diverses straites and daungers been in the entryng into the river of Humbre out of the See, where ofte tymes by mysaventure many divers Vesselx, and Men, Godes and Marchaundises, be lost and perished, as well by Day as be Night, for defaute of a Bekyn, that shuld teche the poeple to hold in the right chanell; so that the seid Richard, havyng compassion and pitee of the Cristen poeple that ofte tymes are there perished ... to make a Toure to be uppon day light a redy Bekyn, wheryn shall be light gevyng by nyght, to alle the Vesselx that comyn into the seid Ryver of Humbre....’

No doubt the site of this early structure has long ago been submerged. The same fate came upon the two lights erected on Kilnsea Common by Justinian Angell, a London merchant, who received a patent from Charles II. to ‘continue, renew, and maintain’ two lights at Spurn Point.

In 1766 the famous John Smeaton was called upon to put up two lighthouses, one 90 feet and the other 50 feet high. There was no hurry in completing the work, for the foundations of the high light were not completed until six years later. The sea repeatedly destroyed the low light, owing to the waves reaching it at high tide. Poulson mentions the loss of three structures between 1776 and 1816. The fourth was taken down after a brief life of fourteen years, the sea having laid the foundations bare.

As late as the beginning of last century the illumination was produced by ‘a naked coal fire, unprotected from the wind,’ and its power was consequently most uncertain. In a great gale in 1803, the keeper was convinced that the tower would be blown down, for the wind was so furious that it increased the heat of the fire until the bars of the hearth melted like lead, and finally extinguished the light. New bars had to be put in before the fire could be rekindled. Smeaton describes how ‘upon the 5th September 1776, the fires were kindled with _stone coal_, which exhibited an amazing light.’

Smeaton’s high tower is now only represented by its foundations and the circular wall surrounding them, which acts as a convenient shelter from wind and sand for the low houses of the men who are stationed there for the lifeboat and other purposes.

The present lighthouse is 30 feet higher than Smeaton’s, and is fitted with the modern system of dioptric refractors, giving a light of 519,000 candle-power, which is greater than any other on the east coast of England. The need for a second structure has been obviated by placing the low lights half-way down the existing tower. Every twenty seconds the upper light flashes for one and a half seconds, being seen in clear weather at a distance of seventeen nautical miles.

That such a narrow spit of shifting sand should exist so tenaciously on a part of the coast suffering so much from the inroads of the sea appears most remarkable until we realize that its existence is probably the result of the erosion of the shore to the north, combined with the opposed action of river and ocean. There seems little doubt that the material composing the spit of land is the waste of the Holderness shore, and possibly contains some of the material of the land on which the romantic town of Ravenserodd stood. Although we must regret the loss of this historic town, all its attractiveness might have been dissipated by this time, even if it had survived, by the processes that turned the picturesque town of Hull into an ugly, if exceedingly prosperous, seaport.

In the Middle Ages great fortunes were made on the Humber without the accompaniment of dirt and unsightly surroundings. Sir William de la Pole was a merchant of remarkable enterprise, and the most notable of those who traded at Ravenserodd. It was probably owing to his great wealth that his son was made a knight-banneret, and his grandson became Earl of Suffolk. Another of the De la Poles was the first Mayor of Hull, and seems to have been no less opulent than his brother, who lent large sums of money to Edward III., and was in consequence appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer and also presented with the Lordship of Holderness.

The story of Ravenser, and the later town of Ravenserodd, is told in a number of early records, and from them we can see clearly what happened in this corner of Yorkshire. Owing to a natural confusion from the many different spellings of the two places, the fate of the prosperous port of Ravenserodd has been lost in a haze of misconception. And this might have continued if Mr. J. R. Boyle had not gone exhaustively into the matter, bringing together all the references to the Ravensers which have been discovered.

There seems little doubt that the first place called Ravenser was a Danish settlement just within the Spurn Point, the name being a compound of the raven of the Danish standard, and _eyr_ or _ore_, meaning a narrow strip of land between two waters. In an early Icelandic saga the sailing of the defeated remnant of Harold Hardrada’s army from Ravenser, after the defeat of the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, is mentioned in the lines:

‘The King the swift ships with the flood Set out, with the autumn approaching, And sailed from the port, called Hrafnseyrr (the raven tongue of land).’

From this event of 1066 Ravenser must have remained a hamlet of small consequence, for it is not heard of again for nearly two centuries, and then only in connexion with the new Ravenser which had grown on a spit of land gradually thrown up by the tide within the spoon-shaped ridge of Spurn Head. On this new ground a vessel was wrecked some time in the early part of the thirteenth century, and a certain man--the earliest recorded Peggotty--converted it into a house, and even made it a tavern, where he sold food and drink to mariners. Then three or four houses were built near the adapted hull, and following this a small port was created, its development being fostered by William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarl, the lord of the manor, with such success that, by the year 1274, the place had grown to be of some importance, and a serious trade rival to Grimsby on the Lincolnshire coast. To distinguish the two Ravensers the new place, which was almost on an island, being only connected with the mainland by a bank composed of large yellow boulders and sand, was called Ravenser Odd, and in the Chronicles of Meaux Abbey and other records the name is generally written Ravenserodd. The original place was about a mile away, and no longer on the shore, and it is distinguished from the prosperous port as Ald Ravenser. Owing, however, to its insignificance in comparison to Ravenserodd, the busy port, it is often merely referred to as Ravenser, spelt with many variations.

The extraordinarily rapid rise of Ravenserodd seems to have been due to a remarkable keenness for business on the part of its citizens, amounting, in the opinion of the Grimsby traders, to sharp practice. For, being just within Spurn Head, the men of Ravenserodd would go out to incoming vessels bound for Grimsby, and induce them to sell their cargoes in Ravenserodd by all sorts of specious arguments, misquoting the prices paid in the rival town. If their arguments failed, they would force the ships to enter their harbour and trade with them, whether they liked it or not. All this came out in the hearing of an action brought by the town of Grimsby against Ravenserodd. Although the plaintiffs seem to have made a very good case, the decision of the Court was given in favour of the defendants, as it had not been shown that any of their proceedings had broken the King’s peace.

Between 1310 and 1340 there are many references to the ships and armed men Ravenserodd was required to furnish for the wars in Scotland, Flanders, and elsewhere. The period of the town’s greatest prosperity was no doubt from a few years before 1298, the year when a royal charter was granted making it a free borough, and about 1340.

It is extremely interesting that one of the earliest names connected with the new port is Peter-atte-see. In the Middle Ages, just such a distinction is what we would expect to be added to the baptismal name of a man who had taken up his abode on a lonely patch of land produced by the action of the sea. It is therefore more than probable that this Peter was either the founder or the son of the founder of Ravenserodd. Later generations altered the name to De la Mare, and it was Martin de la Mare who at first opposed, but afterwards assisted, Edward IV. when he landed at Ravenser Spurn, 1471.

But long before that historic event, earlier even than Henry IV.’s landing on the same spot in 1399, the sea had reclaimed its own. In a short time not only Ravenserodd, but also Ald Ravenser and Sunthorp had been washed away.

The story of this disaster, which appears to have happened between 1340 and 1350, is told by the monkish compiler of the Chronicles of Meaux. Translated from the original Latin the account is headed:

‘_Concerning the consumption of the town of Ravensere Odd and concerning the effort towards the diminution of the tax of the church of Esyngton._

‘But in those days, the whole town of Ravensere Odd, ... was totally annihilated by the floods of the Humber and the inundations of the great sea; ... and when that town of Ravensere Odd, in which we had half an acre of land built upon, and also the chapel of that town, pertaining to the said church of Esyngton, were exposed to demolition during the few preceding years, those floods and inundations of the sea, within a year before the destruction of that town, increasing in their accustomed way without limit fifteen fold, announcing the swallowing up of the said town, and sometimes exceeding beyond measure the height of the town, and surrounding it like a wall on every side, threatened the final destruction of that town. And so, with this terrible vision of waters seen on every side, the enclosed persons, with the reliques, crosses, and other ecclesiastical ornaments, which remained secretly in their possession and accompanied by the viaticum of the body of Christ in the hands of the priest, flocking together, mournfully imploring grace, warded off at that time their destruction. And afterwards, daily removing thence with their possession, they left that town totally without defence, to be shortly swallowed up, which, with a short intervening period of time by those merciless tempestuous floods, was irreparably destroyed.’

The traders and inhabitants generally moved to Kingston-upon-Hull and other towns, as the sea forced them to seek safer quarters.

When Henry of Lancaster landed with his retinue in 1399 within Spurn Head, the whole scene was one of complete desolation, and the only incident recorded is his meeting with a hermit named Matthew Danthorp, who was at the time building a chapel. Perhaps it was thought to have been a happy augury that the first person met should have been a holy man, for on the day following his coronation, Henry IV. granted a royal licence for the hermit to complete the chapel, improperly begun without any official sanction, and also right over all ‘the wreck of the sea and waifs’ for two leagues round the chapel.

Whether the chapel-of-ease at Ravenserodd, built some time between 1235 and 1272, and, therefore, in the Early English period, bore any comparison to those of the neighbouring villages of Patrington and Hedon we do not know, but if the prosperity of the port had led to the building of such a church, its loss is melancholy indeed. The beautiful spire of Patrington church guides us easily along a winding lane from Easington until the whole building shows over the surrounding meadows as it appears in the illustration given here. A farm with a well-filled stack-yard lies on the left, and closely trimmed hedges border the roads, while the village, being on the other side of the church and some big trees, is out of sight. We seem to have stumbled upon a cathedral standing all alone in this diminishing land, scarcely more than two miles from the Humber and less than four from the sea. No one quarrels with the title ‘The Queen of Holderness,’ nor with the far greater claim that Patrington is the most beautiful village church in England. With the exception of the east window, which is Perpendicular, nearly the whole structure was built in the Decorated period; and in its perfect proportion, its wealth of detail and marvellous dignity, it is a joy to the eye within and without. The plan is cruciform, and there are aisles to the transepts as well as the nave, giving a wealth of pillars to the interior. Above the tower rises a tall stone spire, enriched, at a third of its height, with what might be compared to an earl’s coronet, the spikes being represented by crocketed pinnacles--the terminals of the supporting pillars. The four corner pinnacles of the tower, carrying flying buttresses to the spire, are very unusual in form, being widened at their bases to allow the making of an archway through each. This gives them the appearance of grotesque little men, with bent legs, resting one arm on the spire, and might have caused a serious loss of beauty if the whole work had been less perfect in its conception. A curious outside staircase, reached from within, goes over the south window of the transept, giving it a deeply recessed appearance; and the bold buttresses, terminated with crocketed pinnacles, throw broad shadows during the afternoon, which add immensely to the charm of the building. The gargoyles are a wonderful study in eccentricity, each one endeavouring to be more unconventional than his neighbour, and to Poulson they appeared to be in ‘ill accord with the fastidious delicacy of the present age.’ The interior of the church is seen at its loveliest on those afternoons when that rich yellow light Mr. Dean Howells so aptly compares with the colour of the daffodil is flooding the nave and aisles, and glowing on the clustered columns. A good point of view is from the north porch, where you look into the south transept through four arcades of pillars, or from the south transept, looking towards the mellow light at the west end.

In the eastern aisles of each arm of the transept there were three chantry chapels, whose piscinæ remain. The central chapel in the south transept is a most interesting and beautiful object, having a recess for the altar, with three richly ornamented niches above. In the groined roof above, the central boss is formed into a hollow pendant of considerable interest. On the three sides are carvings representing the Annunciation, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. John the Baptist, and on the under side is a Tudor rose. Sir Henry Dryden, in the _Archæological Journal_, states that this pendant was used for a lamp to light the altar below, but he points out, at the same time, that the sacrist would have required a ladder to reach it. An alternative suggestion made by others is that this niche contained a relic where it would have been safe even if visible. I cannot help wondering if the staircase outside the south transept, already mentioned, which makes the roof of this chapel very accessible, has any connexion with this pendant niche. Also in this transept there is a very curious staircase, zigzagging over the tower arch and giving access to the belfry and the space above the vaulting of the aisles, and, therefore, to the top of the chantry; in the centre there is a grotesque dragon-headed corbel, and others at each end of the steps. In the north transept a hoary ladder is bracketed out above the tower arch on enormous corbels.

The fact that the east window belongs to a slightly later period than the rest of the church does not in any way minimize its beauty--it appears to me rather to be a crowning glory; and its glass has a medieval richness produced only with soft colours restful and satisfying to the eye. The screen is considered to be coeval with the church, and has been restored with all the care it deserves. Yet another interest is the remarkable Easter Sepulchre to the north of the sanctuary, which has only suffered the loss of the sculpture in the upper panel. The middle portion shows our Lord coming

from the tomb, with an angel on either side swinging a censer, and below the recess are slumbering soldiers.

Patrington village is of fair size, with a wide street; and although lacking any individual houses calling for comment, it is a pleasant place, with the prevailing warm reds of roofs and walls to be found in all the Holderness towns.

On our way to Hedon, where the ‘King of Holderness’ awaits us, we pass Winestead Church, where Andrew Marvell was baptized in 1621, and where we may see the memorials of a fine old family--the Hildyards of Winestead, who came there in the reign of Henry VI. The well-wooded acres surrounding the old Hall of the Hildyards, although the male line died out nearly a century ago, seem still to be haunted with the memory of that redoubtable soldier, Sir Robert Hildyard, also known to history as ‘Robin of Redesdale,’ who, with Sir John Conyers, led the successful Lancastrian rising which resulted in the defeat and capture of the Earl of Pembroke at Edgcote.

Further on we come to Ottringham, where there is a restored stone reading-desk in the church, as at Pocklington. The tower has a spire, and so also has the church at Keyingham adjoining, making, with Patrington, three conspicuous landmarks along the Humber.

The stately tower of Hedon’s church is conspicuous from far away; and when we reach the village we are much impressed by its solemn beauty, and by the atmosphere of vanished greatness clinging to the place that was decayed even in Leland’s days, when Henry VIII. still reigned.

The father of English topography found the town insulated by creeks where ships lay--

‘but now men cum to it by 3 Bridges, where it is evident to se that sum Places wher the Shippes lay be over growen with Flagges and Reades; and the Haven is very sorely decayid. There were 3 Paroche Chirchis in Tyme of Mynde: but now there is but one of _S. Augustine_: but that is very fair.’

Also we are told that not far from the church garth there were remains of a castle for the defence of the place, and that

‘The Town hath yet greate Privileges with a Mair and Bailives: but wher it had yn _Edwarde_ the 3 Dayes many good Shippes and riche Marchaunts, now there be but a few Botes and no Marchauntes of any Estimation.... Treuth is that when _Hulle_ began to flourish, _Heddon_ decaied.’

No doubt the silting up of the harbour and creeks brought down Hedon from her high place, so that the retreat of the sea in this place was scarcely less disastrous to the town’s prosperity than its advance had been at Ravenserodd; and possibly the waters of the Humber, glutted with their rapacity close to Spurn Head, deposited much of the disintegrated town in the waterway of the other.

The exterior of the church is much discoloured and weathered, suggesting that in places an excess of moisture reaches the walls. Inside, too, there is an atmosphere of neglect, perhaps caused by the need of funds for the proper maintenance of the beautiful building. No great cost would be entailed, however, in keeping the churchyard tidy; and the old shoes, the empty pots, and other litter near the east end, might be removed at a trifling expense. Great Driffield keeps its churchyard as a well-ordered garden, Hedon with less care than is devoted to its green. Surely the ‘Mair and Bailives,’ armed with the mace they believe to be the most ancient in the country, would do well to go in procession to the churchyard, and, having made a careful examination of the litter and counted the tin cans and old shoes, make an urgent report to the incumbent.

The nave of the church is Decorated, and has beautiful windows of that period. The transept is Early English, and so also is the chancel, with a fine Perpendicular east window filled with glass of the same subtle colours we saw at Patrington.

In Preston Church, a mile to the north, are the richly carved fragments of an alabaster Easter sepulchre, or possibly a reredos, found during the restoration in 1880.

In approaching nearer to Hull, we soon find ourselves in the outer zone of its penumbra of smoke, with fields on each side of the road waiting for works and tall shafts, which will spread the unpleasant gloom of the city still further into the smiling country. The sun becomes copper-coloured, and the pure, transparent light natural to Holderness loses its vigour. Tall and slender chimneys emitting lazy coils of blackness stand in pairs or in groups, with others beyond, indistinct behind a veil of steam and smoke, and at their feet grovels a confusion of buildings sending forth jets and mushrooms of steam at a thousand points. Hemmed in by this industrial belt and compact masses of cellular brickwork, where labour skilled and unskilled sleeps and rears its offspring, is the nucleus of the Royal borough of Kingston-upon-Hull, founded by Edward I. at the close of the thirteenth century.

It would scarcely have been possible that any survivals of the Edwardian port could have been retained in the astonishing commercial development the city has witnessed, particularly in the last century; and Hull, despite its interesting history, lays no claim to even the smallest suggestion of picturesqueness. The renaissance of English architecture is beginning to make itself felt in the chief streets, where some good buildings are taking the places of ugly fronts; and there are one or two more ambitious schemes of improvement bringing dignity into the city; but that, with the exception of two churches, is practically all.

When we see the old prints of the city surrounded by its wall defended with towers, and realize the numbers of curious buildings that filled the winding streets--the windmills, the churches and monasteries--we understand that the old Hull has gone almost as completely as Ravenserodd. It was in Hull that Michael, a son of Sir William de la Pole of Ravenserodd, its first Mayor, founded a monastery for thirteen Carthusian monks, and also built himself, in 1379, a stately house in Lowgate opposite St. Mary’s Church. Nothing remains of this great brick mansion, which was described as a palace, and lodged Henry VIII. during his visit in 1540. Even St. Mary’s Church has been so largely rebuilt and restored that its interest is much diminished.

The great Perpendicular Church of Holy Trinity in the market-place is, therefore, the one real link between the modern city and the little town founded in the thirteenth century. It is a cruciform building and has a fine central tower, and is remarkable in having transepts and chancel built externally of brick as long ago as the Decorated Period. The De la Pole mansion, of similar date, was also constructed with brick--no doubt from the brickyard outside the North Gate owned by the founder of the family fortunes. The pillars and capitals of the arcades of both the nave and chancel are thin and unsatisfying to the eye, and the interior as a whole, although spacious, does not convey any pleasing sensations. The slenderness of the columns was necessary, it appears, owing to the soft and insecure ground, which necessitated a pile foundation and as light a weight above as could be devised.

William Wilberforce, the liberator of slaves, was born in 1759 in a large house still standing in High Street, and a tall Doric column surmounted by a statue perpetuates his memory, in the busiest corner of the city. The old red-brick Grammar School bears the date 1583, and is a pleasant relief from the dun-coloured monotony of the greater part of the city. Of the walls, besieged in a half-hearted fashion during the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ trouble, and in a most determined fashion during the Civil War, nothing remains, and, our interest slackening, we suddenly realize that we have been long enough in this shipping city. It is not altogether easy to leave Hull behind, for Hessle, four miles further on, is in the suburban area. Sutton-in-Holderness, to the north, is a pretty hamlet threatened by the skirmishers of the city. In the church is a fine tomb of one of the Lords of Sutton, who owned the place almost from Domesday times until the days when Kingston-upon-Hull began to appear. A most instructive volume devoted to this one village has been written by the late Mr. Thomas Blashill.

In going westward we come, at the village of North Cave, to the southern horn of the crescent of the Wolds. All the way to Howden they show as a level-topped ridge to the north, and the lofty tower of the church stands out boldly for many miles before we reach the town. At first Howden seems a dull and somewhat disappointing town, compared with what we would have expected to have seen surrounding a collegiate church on such imposing lines. There are too many modern houses of that unsatisfactory whity-red brick so extensively used in these parts of Yorkshire. If the houses were colour-washed, this would be unimportant, but only in rare instances is this done, and these are almost invariably the oldest buildings. The cobbled streets at the east end of the church possess a few antique houses coloured with warm ochre, and it is over and between these that we have the first close view of the ruined chancel. The east window has lost most of its tracery, and has the appearance of a great archway; its date, together with the whole of the chancel, is late Decorated, but the exquisite little chapter-house is later still, and may be better described as early Perpendicular. It is octagonal in plan, and has in each side a window with an ogee arch above. The stones employed are remarkably large. The richly moulded arcading inside, consisting of ogee arches, has been exposed to the weather for so long, owing to the loss of the vaulting above, that the lovely detail is fast disappearing. To make a temporary roof of light rafters and boarding, covered with old or smoked tiles, and to fill the windows with plain glass, would be inexpensive, and would not be unsightly. With this first aid carried out, there would be time to collect a sufficient sum for properly restoring this architectural gem.

The west end of the nave is a fine example of Decorated work, and shows in its turrets how much more beautiful the transepts of Beverley might have been if it had been built at a slightly later period. The tower is in two stages, and although it is all Perpendicular, the upper portion is much later than the lower. There are survivals of Early English work in the south transept, where the tombs of several members of the ancient families of Saltmarsh and Metham are of absorbing interest.

About four miles from Howden, near the banks of the Derwent, stand the ruins of Wressle Castle. In every direction the country is spread out green and flat, and, except for the towers and spires of the churches, it is practically featureless. To the north the horizon is brought closer by the rounded outlines of the wolds; everywhere else you seem to be looking into infinity, as in the Fen Country.

The castle that stands in the midst of this belt of level country is the only one in the East Riding, and although now a mere fragment of the former building, it still retains a melancholy dignity. Since a fire in 1796 the place has been left an empty shell, the two great towers and the walls that join them being left without floors or roofs.

Wressle was one of the two castles in Yorkshire belonging to the Percys, and at the time of the Civil War still retained its feudal grandeur unimpaired. Its strength was, however, considered by the Parliament to be a danger to the peace, despite the fact that the Earl of Northumberland, its owner, was not on the Royalist side, and an order was issued in 1648 commanding that it should be destroyed. Pontefract Castle had been suddenly seized for the King in June during that year, and had held out so persistently that any fortified building, even if owned by a supporter, was looked upon as a possible source of danger to the Parliamentary Government. An order was therefore sent to Lord Northumberland’s officers at Wressle commanding them to pull down all but the south side of the castle. That this was done with great thoroughness, despite the most strenuous efforts made by the Earl to save his ancient seat, may be seen to-day in the fact that, of the four sides of the square, three have totally disappeared, except for slight indications in the uneven grass.

A letter dated October 30, 1648, addressed to _Hugh Potter, Esquire_, at Northumberland House, gives a most clear account of the miserable work of destruction:

‘SIR,

‘Yours I received; and since I writ my last, on the same daye, the Commissioners sett on workmen to pull downe and deface that stately structure. They fell upon the Constables Tower, and hath with much violence pursued the work on thursday and ffriday. Their Agents wold showe noe care in preserveinge any of the materialls, but pitched of the Stones from the Battlements to the ground; and the Chymneys that stood upon the Lead downe to the Leades, which made breaches through the roof where they fell. All the Battelements to the roofe, on the ffront of the Castle (excepting the High Tower over the Gate) are bett downe. What materialls could be sav’d Mr. Plaxton did sett on some Tenants to take awaye, and laye in the barne. Belieeve it, Sir, his Lordship hath sustained very deepe losses in his house; I conceive 2000_l._ will not repaire the ruynes there: But I hope their work is at an end; for this day the Major and Mr. Plaxton are sett forward to attend Major Generall Lambert with the Lord Generall’s order to him: And in the meane tyme the soldiers are to hold them of, from doinge further violence to the Castle which I wish had bin done by order 2 dayes sooner.’

The saddest part of the story concerns the portion of the buildings spared by the Cromwellians. This, we are told, remained until a century ago nearly in the same state as in the year 1512, when Henry Percy, the fifth Earl, commenced the compilation of his wonderful Household Book. The Great Chamber, or Dining Room, the Drawing Chamber, the Chapel, and other apartments, still retained their richly-carved ceilings, and the sides of the rooms were ornamented with a ‘great profusion of ancient sculpture, finely executed in wood, exhibiting the bearings, crests, badges, and devises, of the Percy family, in a great variety of forms, set off with all the advantages of painting, gilding, and imagery.’

The chapel was in the tower shown in the picture reproduced here, and was fitted up ‘in a ruder style’ and at a more early period than the other apartments. Bishop Percy describes the sculptured badges as being still in a fair state of preservation, and mentions the motto on the ceiling: _Esperance en Dieu ma Comforte_. At that time--namely, just before the fire which has been mentioned--this chapel was used as the parish church, that building being then a mere ruin with only the west end standing at the distance of a bow-shot from the castle. Since then it has been rebuilt with red brick, and is uninteresting, save for an early tomb slab by the south door. The full measure of the destruction caused first by the Parliamentary agents, and a century and a half later by the fire, can be gauged by reading Leland’s account of the castle written in the reign of Henry VIII. He describes it as being constructed with very fair and great squared stones inside and out, and the tradition at the time was that much of it was brought from France. No subsequent writer has ventured to state whether the stone comes from Caen or any other French quarries, although its power of resisting the action of weather is so remarkable that, despite the fire and the century of total neglect which has since passed, it has a freshness--almost a newness--of aspect hardly to be expected in a castle erected probably between 1380 and 1390.

There was a moat on three sides, a square tower at each corner, and a fifth containing the gateway presumably on the eastward face. In one of the corner towers was the buttery, pantry, ‘pastery,’ larder, and kitchen; in the south-easterly one was the chapel; and in the two-storied building and the other tower of the south side were the chief apartments, where my lord Percy dined, entertained, and ordered his great household with a vast care and minuteness of detail. We would probably have never known how elaborate were the arrangements for the conduct and duties of every one, from my lord’s eldest son down to his lowest servant, had not the Household Book of the fifth Earl of Northumberland been, by great good fortune, preserved intact. By reading this extraordinary compilation it is possible to build up a complete picture of the daily life at Wressle Castle in the year 1512 and later; it is more than possible, for the pictures are ancillary to reading. The prices to be paid for food and many other necessities are given, also the sums given out by the treasurer to each department, and what was to be done with what remained unspent during the year.

From this account we know that the bare stone walls of the apartments were hung with tapestries, and that these, together with the beds and bedding, all the kitchen pots and pans, cloths, and odds and ends, the altar hangings, surplices, and apparatus of the chapel--in fact, every one’s bed, tools, and clothing--were removed in seventeen carts each time my lord went from one of his castles to another. The following is one of the items, the spelling being typical of the whole book:

‘ITEM.--Yt is Ordynyd at every Remevall that the Deyn Subdean Prestes Gentilmen and Children of my Lordes Chapell with the Yoman and Grome of the Vestry shall have apontid theime ii Cariadges at every Remevall Viz. One for ther Beddes Viz. For vi Prests iii beddes after ii to a Bedde For x Gentillmen of the Chapell v Beddes after ii to a Bedde And for vi Children ii Beddes after iii to a Bedde And a Bedde for the Yoman and Grom o’ th Vestry In all xi Beddes for the furst Cariage. And the iiᵈᵉ Cariage for ther Aparells and all outher ther Stuff and to have no mo Cariage allowed them but onely the said ii Cariages allowid theime.’

The daily life of the great nobles was carried on at this time in a scarcely less elaborate and sumptuous manner than that of the king’s court, and an instance of the magnificence of the Earl of Northumberland’s establishment can be taken from the _eleven_ resident priests. Of these, the chief was a doctor or bachelor of divinity, who was dean of the chapel. One of the priests was my lord’s secretary, another his surveyor of lands, another a master of grammar, another rode with my lord, and one was chaplain to the eldest son.

The servants were so numerous that no one had more than one duty, and when one considers the liberal food allowed to every one in the establishment, to obtain a post in my lord’s household must have been an ideal for the hungry agricultural peasant, and accounts to some extent for the ease with which a feudal lord could rely upon the devoted services in peace or war of a hundred or more stout men.

There was ‘an arris-mender’ who was hourly in the wardrobe for working upon ‘my Lordis Arres and Tapstry’; a groom of the chamber looked after the two sons, ‘brushing and dressing of their stuf’; my lord’s armourer was ‘hourely in th’ Armory for dressing of his harness’; a ‘Groim Sumpterman’ attended daily at the stable to dress the sumpter-horses and ‘my Laidis Palfraies,’ and these are, of course, merely instances taken from the different types of office. The clerk of my lord’s ‘foren Expensis,’ who attended to the ‘grossing up’ of the books relating to foreign expenses, was concerned with disbursements outside the household, and not with purchases or expenses abroad, ‘alien’ being the word then used for what is now termed ‘foreign.’

We have seen the astonishingly tall spire of Hemingbrough Church from the battlements of Wressle Castle, and when we have given a last look at the grey walls and the windows, filled with their enormously heavy tracery, we betake ourselves along a pleasant lane that brings us at length to the river. Here we find a curious wooden swing-bridge, guarded by a very high white gate, with a large motor-car in difficulties with a herd of cows at the very narrow opening. From this point the spire gives a picturesque finish to the perspective of road straight ahead, and grows more imposing as we approach the village. The cottages are scattered, and the atmosphere of the place is that of the deepest slumber. A bend of the Ouse is within half a mile, and the low-lying fields intervening were marshes before they were drained. The low wall surrounding the raised ground of the churchyard has, no doubt, been reached by the floods on many occasions. The spire is 120 feet in height, or twice that of the tower, and this hugeness is perhaps out of proportion with the rest of the building; yet I do not think for a moment that this great spire could have been different without robbing the church of its striking and pleasing individuality. There are Transitional Norman arches at the east end of the nave, but most of the work is Decorated or Perpendicular. The windows of the latter period in the south transept are singularly happy in the wonderful amount of light they allow to flood through their pale yellow glass.

The oak bench-ends in the nave, which are carved with many devices, and the carefully repaired stalls in the choir, are Perpendicular, and no doubt belong to the period when the church was a collegiate foundation of Durham.

THE DERWENT AND THE HOWARDIAN HILLS