is surrounded by an exceedingly picturesque country. A fine view is
afforded from the stone-arched bridge over the Tweed--westward the
Eildon Hills, beloved of Scott, are visible in the blue distance,
and, nearer at hand, the moorish facade of Floors Castle, against a
mass of somber woods. The river is greatly broadened here and the
meeting of its waters with the Teviot is celebrated in song and story.
Of Kelso Abbey little remains save the shattered central tower and
a few straggling walls. It was one of the smaller ecclesiastical
establishments of Scotland founded by David I. in 1130 and was burned
by the English during the invasion of 1545.
Closely following the beautiful Tweed road, which for the greater part
of the distance to Coldstream keeps in full view of the river, we
re-cross the border quite early on the following morning.
XIV
MORE YORKSHIRE WANDERINGS
Flodden Field lies adjacent to the road which we pursued southward
from the Tweed, but there is little now to indicate the location
of the historic battlefield. Song and story have done much to
immortalize a conflict whose results were not especially important or
far-reaching--the world knows of it chiefly through the vivid lines
of "Marmion." It is not worth while to follow our hasty flight to the
south; we are again bound for the Yorkshire moors and the distance we
must cover ere night will not admit of loitering.
At Chillingham Castle we see the herd of native wild cattle made
famous by Landseer's picture. The keeper led us into the park within
a hundred yards of a group of animals, which have become so tame
that they took no notice of our presence. The cattle are white, with
long curving horns and black muzzles, and the purity of the stock is
carefully maintained. The herd is believed to be a direct descendant
of the wild ox of Europe, the progenitor of our domestic cattle, and
its preservation is quite analogous to the few remaining buffaloes in
America. The animals retain many peculiarities of their wild state;
one of the most remarkable of these is the habit which the young calves
have of dropping suddenly to the ground when surprised. The bulls are
often dangerous and it is related that King Edward, when Prince of
Wales, killed one of the animals, arresting with a well-aimed shot its
savage charge toward him. Evidently the present prince did not care to
repeat his father's experience, for he had been at Chillingham a few
days before and declined the opportunity offered him by the Earl of
Tankerville of slaying the king of the herd.
"'E said 'e 'adn't time," explained the keeper with an air of disgust
that showed he looked on the prince's excuse as a mere subterfuge.
On a former occasion we had failed to gain admittance to Alnwick
Castle, owing to a visit of the king the previous day. We were more
successful this time and were conducted through the portions usually
shown to visitors, chiefly the remaining parts of the old fortress--the
"castle good" that in early days "threatened Scotland's wastes." The
home of the warlike Percys for many generations, few castles in England
have figured more in ballad and story and few have been the center of
more stirring scenes. But the old castle is almost lost in the palace
of today, upon which the late Duke of Northumberland is said to have
expended the enormous sum of three hundred and sixty thousand pounds
sterling. The walls at present enclose an area of five acres and it
would be hard to imagine more pleasing vistas of forest and meadowland
than those which greet one from the battlements. The great park is
worthy of the castle, and taken altogether there is perhaps no finer
feudal estate in England.
From Alnwick to Newcastle and from Newcastle to Darlington the road is
familiar; only an occasional town or village interferes with our flight
to the southward. Newcastle, with its bad approaches and crowded,
slippery streets, causes the greatest loss of time, but we make it up
on the broad, level stretch of the Great North Road to Darlington. At
Richmond we leave the lowlands and strike directly across the rough
moorland road to Leyburn in Wensleydale.
Here in the remote Yorkshire hills is one of the most romantic bits
of England and within a comparatively small space is much of historic
interest. Shall we go to Bolton Castle, which we see off yonder, grim
and almost forbidding in the falling twilight? Its jagged towers
and broken battlements are outlined darkly against the distant
hills; indeed, in the dim light it seems almost a part of the hills
themselves. We follow the rough narrow road that dwindles almost to a
footpath as it approaches the village. Our car splashes through a
rapid, unbridged little river, climbs the steep bank, creeps through
tangled thickets, until it emerges into the main street of Castle
Bolton, if a wide grass-grown road with a few lichen-covered cottages
on either side may be dignified with the name. At the end of the
street, towering over the slate-roofed hovels about it, is the castle,
its walls in fairly good repair and three of its four original towers
still standing. The fourth crumbled and collapsed from the battering
Cromwell gave it--for even this remote fortress in the moors did not
escape the vengeance of the Protector.
[Illustration: CASTLE BOLTON, WENSLEYDALE, YORKSHIRE.]
Bolton Castle, nevertheless, is better preserved than the majority of
those which have been abandoned to ruin; the great entrance hall, some
of the stairways, the room of state and many chambers are still intact.
One may climb the winding stairs and from the towers look down upon the
mass of ruined grandeur--sagging and broken roofs, vacant doorways and
windows and towers whose floors have fallen away--the melancholy work
of time and weather, for these have chiefly affected the castle since
it was dismantled by its captors. One is relieved to turn from such a
scene to the narrow green valley through which the river runs and out
beyond it to the wide prospect of brown hills with gray villages and
solitary cottages.
The history of Bolton Castle is long and varied--too long to tell in
detail. It was built in the twelfth century by Richard, the first Lord
Scrope, founder of the family, which figured so largely in the fierce
struggles of the northern border. From that time to the death of the
last representative of the family in 1630, Bolton Castle was almost
continually the center of stirring scenes. The Archbishop of York
in 1405 was a Scrope, and he preached a fiery sermon denouncing the
reigning King Henry as an usurper. The bold churchman lost his head for
his temerity, but his execution sowed the seed of the long and terrible
wars of the Roses. Nor will the reader of "Marmion" forget Scott's
reference to "Lord Scrope of Bolton, stern and stout," who with "all
Wensleydale did wend" to join the English at Flodden Field. The closing
scene came like the closing scene of many an English castle, when Col.
Scrope, the last owner, was compelled to surrender to the forces of
Parliament and the castle was dismantled. Since then it has stood stern
and lonely in the Yorkshire hills, and nearly three centuries of decay
have added to the ruin wrought by the captors.
But there is a roselight of romance that enwraps the shattered towers
of Bolton, for does not the moorland ruin call up a thousand memories
of Mary Stuart, yet in the flower of her youth, ere long years of
imprisonment had stolen the color from her face and touched it with
the shade of melancholy that seldom left it? Here was her first prison;
she came as an unwilling guest after her ill-advised visit to Carlisle
in 1568, and remained a charge of Lord Scrope for nearly two years.
The room she occupied is large and gloomy, with but one small window
looking westward over the hills--the same window, legend declares, by
which she escaped from the castle, only to be shortly recaptured by
Lord Scrope's retainers. Her captivity at Bolton, while less rigorous
than in later years, was none the less a captivity, and while she was
allowed to go hawking, she was always under close surveillance. Very
likely she did try to escape, for in such an escapade the unhappy queen
never lacked for accomplices, even among her gaolers. But fate was ever
unkind to Mary Stuart, and though many times her fortune seemed evenly
balanced, some lack of judgment on part of herself or her followers
thwarted the plans for regaining her liberty. They tell that in leaving
Bolton in this attempt, her friends followed the river road to Leyburn
when a dash over the moors to the north might have insured success.
It all seems very real to one who stands in the gloomy apartment at
twilight and looks from the window down the steep narrow road leading
to the valley--no doubt the one Mary followed in her effort to get
out of her arch-enemy's clutches, which ended in such heart-breaking
failure.
But it is waxing late and we will descend the same hill and follow
the same road to Leyburn. Leyburn is gray and bleak in the falling
night, with a wide bare market place paved with rough cobblestones,
shorn, alas, a few decades ago, of its fine old market cross and town
hall--in a spirit of "improvement!" The prospect for good cheer is far
from flattering, but we must stop in Leyburn perforce. The Bolton Arms
seems to promise the best, but it is full and the Golden Lion offers
the only alternative. It is a typical second-class village inn, not
overly clean. It appears more of an alehouse than hotel, for a crowd of
villagers and farmers is tippling at the bar.
Directly across the river from Leyburn is Middleham, the old-time
capital of Wensleydale and one of the quaintest and least modernized
towns it was our good fortune to see. The drab-colored buildings
straggle up the hill upon whose crest sits Middleham Castle, grim, vast
and wholly ruinous. And after wandering through the maze of shattered
walls and tottering towers, it seemed to us that here was the very
ideal of ruined castles. We had seen many of them, but none more
awe-inspiring, none more suggestive of the power of the cataclysm which
left such fortresses, seemingly impregnable as the hills themselves,
in shapeless wreck and ruin. Here and there the ivy and wall flower
mantled the nakedness of the mouldering stone, and a stout sapling of
several years' growth had fastened its roots in the deep mould high on
one of the towers. Truly, Cromwell did his work well at Middleham. Such
a stronghold could be dealt with only by gunpowder mines, which were
responsible for the cracked and sundered walls and the shapeless masses
of stone and mortar which have never been cleared away.
[Illustration: MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, WENSLEYDALE.]
There are memories connected with Middleham Castle as grim as the ruin
itself; for with them is intertwined the name of Richard of Gloucester,
the hunchback whose crimes, wrought into the imperishable lines of
Shakespeare, have horrified the world. When he came here the castle
was owned by the Nevilles, and here he married Anne, the daughter of
the house, and thus became possessed of the estate. Here his only son,
for whom he committed his unspeakable crimes, was born and here his
ambitions were blasted by the boy's early death.
But it is no task of mine to tell the story of Richard III.--only to
recall his associations with Middleham. And we noted on one of the two
ancient town crosses the rudely carved figure of a boar, the emblem of
this ruthless king. Altogether, Middleham is very unique--old-world
describes it better than any other term, perhaps. There is scarcely a
jarring note of any kind; the only thing approaching mediocrity and
seemingly much out of place, is the Victoria Jubilee Fountain. And
the customs of the town still have a savor of medievalism--bulls were
baited within the memory of living men.
The thought that first occurs, when one learns that Jervaulx Priory
is not far from Middleham, is of Prior Aylmer and "Ivanhoe"--showing
how the creations of the Wizard of the North often take precedence in
one's mind over actual history--nay, rather have supplanted historical
knowledge altogether, for we know nothing of the history of Jervaulx
and will not take the pains to learn. It is enough to wander through
its grounds, now kept with all possible care and neatness--every
moss-grown stone replaced as nearly as possible in its original
position and every detail of the abbey marked with exactness on the
sward--and to know that the old story of monastic poverty, pomp and
downfall has been repeated here. It is near the roadside and though
private property, one may easily gain access by application at the
keeper's cottage. The ruins are scanty indeed--little more than mere
outlines of the abbey church and monastery and a few isolated columns
and fragments of wall is to be seen--but the landscape gardener has
come to the rescue and out of the scattered fragments has wrought an
harmonious and pleasing effect. The situation is one of surpassing
loveliness, just at the foot of the hills on the river Ure, which
rushes between almost precipitous banks, over which its tributaries
fall in glittering cascades. The soft summer air is murmurous with
their music and the song of birds. There is no one but ourselves on the
ground; no guide is with us to drone over prosaic history and to point
out nave and transept--and this and that. As we wander almost dreamily
about, we come very near to the spirit of monastic days. It is easy to
imagine the old-time state of the abbey under Prior Aylmer, "when the
good fathers of Jervaulx drank sweet wines and lived on the fat of the
land." Even in that halcyon time it is doubtful if the surroundings
were half so lovely as today.
But we have mused long enough at Jervaulx--"Jervo," as the railway
company officially declares it; "Jarvey," as the natives perversely
term it. The day is still young and an uninterrupted run over the
winding moorland road brings us to Ripon before noon. The low
square-topped towers of the cathedral break on our view as we descend
the hill to the Ure, upon whose banks Ripon sits.
Ripon Cathedral is well-nigh forgotten by pilgrims who would see the
great Yorkshire churches--so far is it surpassed by York Minster
and Beverley. But after all, it is an imposing church and of great
antiquity, for a monastery was established on the present site in the
seventh century and St. Wilfred, the famous Archbishop of York, built
the minster. Of this ancient building the crypt still remains, and to
see it we followed the verger down a steep, narrow flight of stairs
into a series of dungeonlike apartments beneath the forward end of the
nave.
Perhaps the most curious relic is St. Wilfred's Needle, a small window
in the thick wall of the crypt, and various merits have been attributed
to anyone who could pass through it. In old days this was proof of
innocence against any charge of crime; but just now the young woman
who can perform the somewhat acrobatic feat will be married within a
year--rather a discrimination against the more buxom maidens.
About four hundred years after the founding of the Saxon monastery,
the present church was built; but it was not until 1836 that it was
elevated to the rank of a cathedral. Like York Minster, Ripon is
singularly devoid of tombs of famous men, though there are many fine
monuments and brasses to the noble families of the vicinity. The
architecture is strangely mixed, owing to the many alterations that
have been made from time to time. The exterior must have been far more
imposing before the removal of the wooden spires which rose above the
towers. Ripon is a quiet, old-world market town, progressive in its
way, but having little resource other than the rich agricultural
country around it. There are many quaint streets and odd corners that
attract the lover of such things. A queer relic of the olden days that
arouses the curiosity of the visitor is the blowing of a horn at nine
in the evening before the town cross by the constable. The sojourner
will not be at a loss for comfortable entertainment, since the Unicorn
Hotel fulfills the best traditions of English inns.
To come within hailing distance of York means that we cannot remain
away from that charming old city; and the early afternoon finds us
passing Bootham Bar. The rest of the day we give to a detailed study of
the minster--our fourth visit, nor are we weary of York Minster yet.
Pontefract--the Pomfret of olden time--lies about twenty miles
southwest of York. Its very name takes us back to Roman times--Pontem
Fractem, the place of the broken bridge. It is a town that figured much
in early English history and its grim old castle may hold the mystery
of the death of King Richard II. We came here under lowering skies,
and passing the partly ruined church, climbed the steep hill where the
castle--or rather the scanty remnant of it--still stands. Verily, "ruin
greenly dwells" about the old fortress of Pontefract; the walls were
laden heavily with ivy, the greensward covered the floor of the keep,
and the courtyard has been converted into a public garden. There is so
little left that it would require a vivid imagination to reconstruct
the strong and lordly fortress, which endured no fewer than three
sieges during the civil war. The first resulted disastrously to the
Parliamentary forces and the second was successful only after a long
period and very heavy losses, and even then the garrison was given the
honors of the war; yet after all this strenuous work, the castle was
again lost to the Royalists through a trifling bit of strategy.
The commander became so negligent through a false sense of security
that a handful of adventurers gained admission to the castle, and
driving out the few soldiers who happened to be inside--most of the
garrison was quartered in the town--possessed themselves of the
fortress. A third siege was thus made necessary and such was the
strength of the castle that nearly a year elapsed before it finally
fell--holding out for some time after Charles was beheaded. Even then,
favorable terms were again granted to the defenders, though Col.
Morris, who devised the successful capture, and five others, were
specifically excepted from the amnesty. Much to the disgust of the
captors, Morris escaped for the time, though a little later he was
taken and hanged at York. Thus ended the active history of Pontefract
Castle, but it was considered dangerous to the Commonwealth and was
almost completely razed, the walls being mined with gunpowder.
[Illustration: RUINS OF PONTEFRACT CASTLE.]
Pontefract was undoubtedly the prison to which the Duke of Lancaster
consigned King Richard II.,
"That disastrous king on whom
Fate, like a tempest, early fell,
And the dark secret of whose doom
The keep of Pomfret kept full well."
And yet it is not certain that Richard perished while a prisoner in
the castle. A tradition exists that he escaped and lived many years an
humble peasant. Pontefract was a very storm center in the wars of the
Roses, for almost within sight of its towers was fought the battle of
Towton Moor, the bloodiest conflict that ever took place on English
soil.
But it would take a volume to record the vicissitudes that have
befallen the mouldering ruin at our feet. The rain is falling more
heavily; let us on to Wakefield, whose spire we might easily see were
it not for the gray veil which hides the landscape. For Wakefield
spire is the loftiest in Yorkshire--a slender, pointed shaft rising
to a height of two hundred and forty-seven feet over a much altered
church that was elevated to the rank of cathedral in 1888. As it now
stands, the interior is chiefly Perpendicular, though there are many
touches of the Decorated and Early English styles. It is characterized
by grace and lightness, giving an altogether pleasing effect. The
windows exhibit as fine modern glass as we saw in the Kingdom, and go
far to prove that the disrepute into which modern glass has fallen is
largely due to lack of artistic taste and a desire for cheapness. Such
windows as those at Wakefield are far from a reproach on the art of the
stained-glass maker. So much has the church been restored and added to
that it gives as a whole an impression of newness that seems strange in
an English cathedral--for there has been no cathedral built in England
since St. Paul's, more than two hundred years ago.
When we come to Barnsley, a few miles to the south, the rain, which has
gradually increased, is falling in torrents, and we resolve to take
respite from the cold and damp for our belated luncheon. We seek out
the King's Head, for an English friend has told us that twenty-five
years ago this hotel was famous for the best mutton chop in England.
Traditions never die in Britain, and we doubt not the King's Head
still retains its proud distinction. It does not, however, present an
especially attractive appearance; it is rather dingy and time-worn, but
any place might seem a little dreary on such a day. Yes, the King's
Head still serves the Barnsley chop, and we will have it, though we
must wait a half hour for it. And the recollection of the luncheon
comes like a gleam of sunshine into a dark, rainy day, and effaces all
memory of the first unfavorable impression of the King's Head.
A Barnsley chop defies all description; its mighty dimensions might be
given, its juicy tenderness might be descanted upon; all the language
at the epicure's command might be called into action, and yet, after
all, only he who has actually eaten a Barnsley chop would have an
adequate idea of its savory excellence. O, yes! They imitate it at
other hotels, both in and out of Barnsley, so said the manageress, but
after all, the King's Head alone can prepare the original and only
Barnsley chop; it alone has devised the peculiar process whereby the
truly wonderful result is obtained. Verily, after eating it we sallied
forth into the driving rain feeling something of the spirit of the
ancient Roman who declared, "Fate cannot harm me--I have dined today."
Three or four miles out of Barnsley on a byway off the Doncaster road
is the village of Darfield, whose church illustrates the interest one
may so often find in out-of-the-way spots in England. Thither we drove
through the heavy rain, and as we stopped in front of the church at
the end of the village street, a few of the natives who happened to be
abroad paused under dripping umbrellas to stare at us. I do not wonder
at their astonishment, for from their point of view persons motoring
in search of old churches on such a day might well have their sanity
questioned.
The ceiling is painted blue, with stars and feathery clouds--clearly a
representation of the heavens--and it seemed an age since we had seen
them, too. There are many elaborate carvings; the massive Jacobean
cover over the baptismal font, the fine black-oak bench-ends of the
seventeenth century, and a splendid coffer in the vestry, are all
treasures worthy of notice. A Bible with heavy wooden covers is chained
to a solid oaken stand--suggestive of the days when a man's piety might
lead him to steal the rare copies of the Scripture. A beautifully
wrought though scarred and dilapidated alabaster tomb has recumbent
figures of a knight and his lady in costumes of the time of Richard
II., and another tomb bears some very quaint devices, among them an owl
with a crown upon its head.
It is our third visit to Doncaster, and the giant church tower has
become a familiar object. Its very stateliness is exaggerated by the
dead level of the town and today it rises dim and vast against the
leaden, rain-swept sky, but though it is easily the most conspicuous
object in the town, the fine old church does not constitute Doncaster's
chief claim to fame. Here is the horse-racing center of Yorkshire, and
on its "Leger Day" it is probably the liveliest town in England. The
car shops of the Great Northern Railway keep it quietly busy for the
rest of the year. But as the racing center of a horse-loving shire, it
would be strange if it had not acquired during the ages a reputation
for conviviality. That it had such a reputation a century or more ago
is evidenced by the example of its mayor, set forth by a ballad-maker
of the period: