in Bradfield Church a stone dragon, five feet in length, which had some
connection with the family. To this worthy, who, it is supposed, may
have been an attorney or counsellor, the parishioners of Penistone,
having decided upon appealing to the law courts, applied to undertake
their case, and make battle on the terrible dragon in his den among
the rocks of the forest of Wharncliffe. He readily complied with their
wish, and with great boldness and valour prepared for the conflict
by going to Sheffield and ordering a suit of armour, studded with
spikes--that is, arming himself with the panoply of law, and then
went forth and made the attack. The fight is said, in the ballad
narrative, to have lasted two days and nights, probably the duration
of the lawsuit, and in the end he killed the dragon, or won his suit,
thus relieving the people of Penistone from any further annoyance or
unjust exaction from that quarter. Sir Francis Wortley persuaded his
cousin Wordsworth, the freehold lord of the manor (ancestor, lineal or
collateral, of the Poet Wordsworth), to stand aloof in the matter, and
now the Wortley and the Wordsworth are the only estates in the parish
that pay tithes.
To commemorate the event an exceedingly humorous and cleverly satirical
ballad was written, which, being also a lively burlesque on the
ballad romances of chivalry, served the same purpose towards them
that Cervantes' "Don Quixote" did for the prose fictions of the same
character. Thus opens the ballad--
"Old stories tell how Hercules
A dragon slew at Gerna,
With seven heads and fourteen eyes
To see and well discerna;
But he had a club, this dragon to drub,
Or he had ne'er I warrant ye;
But More of More Hall with nothing at all,
He slew the dragon of Wantley.
"This dragon had two furious wings,
Each one upon each shoulder;
With a sting in his tail, as long as a flail,
Which made him bolder and bolder.
He had long claws, and in his jaws
Four and forty teeth of iron;
With a hide as tough as any buff,
Which did him round environ."
It then goes on to describe how "he ate three children at one sup, as
one would eat an apple." Also all sorts of cattle and trees, the forest
beginning to diminish very perceptibly, and "houses and churches,"
which to him were geese and turkeys, "leaving none behind."
"But some stones, dear Jack, that he could not crack,
Which on the hills you will finda."
These stones are supposed to be a reference to the Lyonel Rowlestone,
who was the leader of the opposition. There are many local allusions
of a similar character, which would no doubt add much to the keenness
of the satire and the humour, but which are lost to us through our
ignorance of the circumstances and persons alluded to.
"In Yorkshire, near fair Rotherham," was his den, and at Wantley a well
from which he drank.
"Some say this dragon was a witch,
Some say he was a devil;
For from his nose a smoke arose
And with it burning snivel."
"Hard by a furious knight there dwelt," who could "wrestle, play at
quarter-staff, kick, cuff, and huff; and with his hands twain could
swing a horse till he was dead, and eat him all up but his head." To
this wonderful athlete came "men, women, girls, and boys, sighing and
sobbing, and made a hideous noise--O! save us all, More of More Hall,
thou peerless knight of these woods; do but slay this dragon, who won't
leave us a rag on, we'll give thee all our goods." The Knight replied--
"Tut, tut," quoth he, "no goods I want;
But I want, I want, in sooth,
A fair maid of sixteen, that's brisk and keen,
With smiles about her mouth;
Hair black as sloe, skin white as snow,
With blushes her cheeks adorning;
To anoint me o'er night, e'er I go to the fight,
And to dress me in the morning."
This being agreed to, he hied to Sheffield, and had a suit of armour,
covered with spikes five or six inches long, made, which, when he
donned it, caused the people to take him for "an Egyptian porcupig,"
and the cattle for "some strange, outlandish hedgehog." When he rose
in the morning,
"To make him strong and mighty
He drank, by the tale, six pots of ale
And a quart of _aqua vitæ_."
Thus equipped and with his valour braced up, he went to Wantley,
concealing himself in the well, and when the dragon came to drink, he
shouted "Boh," and struck the monster a blow on the mouth. The knight
then came out of the well, and they commenced fighting, for some time
without advantage on either side--without either receiving a wound. At
length, however, after fighting two days and a night, the dragon gave
him a blow which made him reel and the earth to quake. "But More of
More Hall, like a valiant son of Mars," returned the compliment with
such vigour that--
"Oh! quoth the dragon, with a deep sigh,
And turned six times together;
Sobbing and tearing, cursing and swearing
Out of his throat of leather;
More of More Hall! O, thou rascal!
Would I had seen thee never;
With the thing on thy foot, thou has pricked my gut
And I'm quite undone for ever.
"Murder! murder! the dragon cry'd.
Alack! alack! for grief;
Had you but mist that place, you could
Have done me no mischief.
Then his head he shaked, trembled and quaked,
And down he laid and cry'd,
First on one knee, then on back tumbled he:
So groan'd, kick't, and dy'd."
Henry Carey, in 1738, brought out an opera on the subject, entitled
"The Dragon of Wantley," abounding in humour, and a fine burlesque on
the Italian operas of the period, then the rage of fashion. And in
1873, Poynter exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of "More of More
Hall and the Dragon."
The Miracles and Ghost of Watton.
In a sweetly sequestered spot, environed by patriarchal trees of
luxuriant foliage, between the towns of Driffield and Beverley, nestles
a Tudoresque building, which goes by the name of Watton Abbey, although
it never was an abbey, but a Gilbertine Priory. It is now a private
residence, and was occupied for many years as a school, the existing
buildings apparently having been erected since the dissolution, and
there are but few remains of the original convent, saving a portion of
the nunnery, now converted into stables, a hollow square indicating the
site of the kitchen and the moat which originally surrounded the entire
enclosure. A couple of centuries ago there were extensive remains of
the old priory, but they were removed for the purpose of repairing
Beverley Minster. Moreover, the abbey has a haunted room, which,
however, has no connection with the monastic times, although the ghost
that haunts it is usually designated "The Headless Nun of Watton," but
belongs to the civil war period of the seventeenth century. The fact
is that story tellers of the legend confound two altogether different
narratives--the one of a trangressing nun of the twelfth century, and
the other of a murdered lady of the seventeenth, combining their two
histories into one story, as if their persons were identical.
A nunnery was established here in a very early period of Anglo-Saxon
Christianity, probably soon after its re-introduction into Northumbria
by King Oswald, as we find St. John of Beverley performing a miracle
there, which would be about the year 720, after he had resigned his
Bishopric and retired to Beverley. It appears that he was an intimate
friend of the Lady Prioress--Heribury--and made frequent visits to
Watton to administer spiritual advice and ghostly consolation to the
inmates under her charge. On one occasion when he went thither, he
found the Prioress's daughter suffering great agony from a diseased and
swollen arm, the result of unskilful bleeding, and was solicited to go
to her chamber and give her his blessing, which might be the means of
alleviating the pain. He inquired when she had been bled, and was told
on the fourth day of the moon, which he said was a very inauspicious
day, quoting Archbishop Theodore as his authority, and he feared his
prayers would be of no avail. Nevertheless he went to her room, prayed
for her restoration to health, gave her his blessing, and went down to
dinner. They had, however, scarcely seated themselves when a servant
came in, stating that all her pain had gone, her swollen arm had been
reduced to its natural size, and that she was perfectly restored to
health, and was dressing to come down and dine with them.
The nunnery was destroyed, it is presumed, by the Danes at the same
time that the Monastery of Beverley perished at their hands, in the
ninth century, and it lay waste and desolate until the twelfth century,
although we find from the Domesday survey that there were then a church
and priest in the village.
In 1148-9, Eustace Fitz John, Lord of Knaresborough, and a favourite of
King Henry I., at the instance of Murdac, Archbishop of York, refounded
the convent, in atonement for certain crimes he had committed. It
was established for thirteen canons and thirty-six nuns of the new
Gilbertine order, who were to live in the same block of buildings,
but with a party wall for the separation of the sexes; the canons "to
serve the nuns perpetually in terrene as well as in divine matters." He
endowed it with the Lordship of Watton, with all its appurtenances in
pure and perpetual alms for the salvation of his soul, and those of his
wife, his father and mother, brothers and sisters, friends and servants.
Archbishop Murdac was at the time resident at Beverley, the gates of
York having been shut against him; and it may be that the fact of his
predecessor, St. John, the patron-saint of the town where he dwelt,
having performed a great miracle there, was what influenced him in his
desire to see a resuscitation of the monastery. He was a remarkable
man, and had led a somewhat adventurous life. Archbishop Thurstan was
his patron, and gave him some preferments in the church of York, which
he resigned at the pressing invitation of St. Bernard, founder of the
Cistercians, to become a monk at Clervaux. Soon after he was sent by
his superior to found a Cistercian house at Vauclair, of which he was
appointed the first abbot, in 1131, where he remained until 1143,
when, at the recommendation of St. Bernard, he was elected Abbot of
Fountains. Under his judicious and able government the abbey prospered
and threw off not less than seven offshoots--those of Kirkstall, Lix,
Meaux, Vaudy, and Woburn.
On the death of Archbishop Thurstan, King Stephen desired the canons
to elect William Fitzherbert, his nephew and their treasurer, in his
place, which they were willing to do, but the Cistercians, headed
by Murdac, suspecting that undue influence had been made use of,
vehemently opposed his election, and Pope Eugenius, on the appeal of
St. Bernard, suspended Fitzherbert.
Fitzherbert, out of revenge, went with his friends to Fountains, broke
open the door, searched ineffectually for Murdac, then fired the abbey,
and retired. This act caused a great sensation, and the Archbishop
was deprived in 1147. The same year an assembly met at Richmond, and
elected Murdac as Archbishop, who immediately went to Rome and obtained
his pall from Pope Eugenius; but on his return found York barred
against his entrance, upon which he retired to Beverley. Stephen, the
King, refused to recognise him, sequestering the stalls of York, and
fining the town of Beverley for harbouring him. It was at this time
that he promoted the re-establishment of Watton, and placed within
its walls a child of four years of age to be educated, with a view of
taking the veil.
In retaliation, he excommunicated Puisnet, Treasurer of York, and laid
the city under an interdict. Puisnet was afterwards elected Bishop of
Durham, upon which Murdac excommunicated the Prior and Archdeacon, who
came to Beverley to implore pardon, and could only obtain absolution on
acknowledging their fault and submitting to scourging at the entrance
to Beverley Minster. He died at Beverley in the same year (1153), and
was buried in York Cathedral.
Elfleda, the child whom Murdac had placed in the convent, was a merry,
vivacious little creature; and whilst but a child was a source of
amusement to the sisterhood, who, although prim and demure in bearing,
and some of them sour-tempered and acid in their tempers, were wont to
smile at her youthful frolics and ringing laugh; but as she grew older,
her outbursts of merriment, and the sallies of wit that began to
animate her conversation, were checked, as being inconsistent with the
character of a young lady who was now enrolled as novice, preparatory
to taking the veil. As she advanced towards womanhood her form
gradually developed into a most symmetrical figure; and her features
became the perfection of beauty, set off with a transparent delicacy
of complexion, such as would have rendered her a centre of attraction
even among the beauties of a Royal Court. This excited the jealousy of
the sisters, who were chiefly elderly and middle-aged spinsters, whose
homely and somewhat coarse features had proved detrimental to their
hopes of obtaining husbands. They began to treat her with scornful
looks, chilling neglect, and petty persecutions; but when she, later
on, evinced a manifest repugnance to convent life, ridiculed the ways
of the holy sisters, and even satirised them, they charged her with
entertaining rebellious and ungodly sentiments, and subjected her
to penances and other modes of wholesome correction, such as they
considered would subdue her worldly spirit.
Sprightly and light-hearted as she was, Elfleda was not happy, immured
as she was within these detested walls, and condemned to assist in
wearisome services, such as she thought might perhaps be congenial
to the souls of her elder sisters, whose hopes of worldly happiness
and conjugal endearment had been blighted, but which were altogether
unsuited for one so beautiful (for she knew that she was fair, and was
vain of her looks) and so cheerful-minded as herself; and she longed
with intense desire to make her escape, mingle with the outer world,
and have free intercourse with the other sex.
According to the charter of endowment, the lay brethren of the
monastery were entrusted with the management of the secular affairs of
the nunnery, which necessitated their admission within its portals on
certain occasions for conference with the prioress. On these occasions
Elfleda would cast furtive and very un-nunlike glances upon their
persons. She was particularly attracted by one of them, a young man
of prepossessing mien and seductive style of speech, and she felt her
heart beat wildly whenever he came with the other visitors. He noticed
her surreptitious glances, and saw that she was exceedingly beautiful,
and his heart responded to the sentiment he felt that he had inspired
in hers. They maintained this silent but eloquent language of love for
some time, and soon found means of having stolen interviews under the
darkness of night, when vows of everlasting love were interchanged, and
led, eventually, to consequences which at the outset were not dreamt of
by the erring pair.
Suspicion having been excited by her altered form, she was summoned
before her superiors on a charge of "transgressing the conventual
rules and violating one of the most stringent laws of monastic life,"
and as concealment was impossible, she boldly confessed her fault,
adding that she had no vocation for a convent life, and desired to be
banished from the community. This request could not be listened to for
a moment. The culprit had brought a scandal and indelible stain upon
the fair fame of the house, which must, at any cost, be concealed from
the world; and her open avowal of her guilt raised in the breasts of
the pious sisterhood a perfect fury of indignation, and a determination
to inflict immediate and condign punishment on her. It was variously
suggested that she should be burnt to death, that she should be walled
up alive, that she should be flayed, that her flesh should be torn
from her bones with red-hot pincers, that she should be roasted to
death before a fire, etc.; but the more prudent and aged averted these
extreme measures, and suggested some milder forms of punishment, which
were at once carried out. The miserable object of their vengeance was
stripped of her clothing, stretched on the floor, and scourged with
rods until the blood trickled down profusely from her lacerated back.
She was then cast into a noisome dungeon, without light, fettered by
iron chains to the floor, and supplied with only bread and water,
"which was administered with bitter taunts and reproaches."
Meanwhile the young man, her paramour, had left the monastery, and as
the nuns were desirous of inflicting some terrible punishment upon him
for his horrible crime, they extorted from Elfleda, under promise that
she should be released and given up to him, the confession that he was
still in the neighbourhood in disguise, and that not knowing of the
discovery that had been made, he would come to visit her, and make the
usual signal of throwing a stone on the roof over her sleeping cell.
The Prioress made this known to the brethren of the monastery, and
arranged with them for his capture. The following night he came, looked
cautiously round, and then threw the stone, when the monks rushed
out of ambush, cudgelled him soundly, and then took him a prisoner
into the house. "The younger part of the nuns, inflamed with a pious
zeal, demanded the custody of the prisoner, on pretence of gaining
further information. Their request was granted, and taking him to an
unfrequented part of the convent, they committed on his person such
brutal atrocities as cannot be translated without polluting the page
on which they are written; and, to increase the horror, the lady was
brought forth to be witness of the abominable scene." Whilst lying in
her dungeon, Elfleda became penitent, and conscious of having committed
a gross crime, and one night whilst sleeping in her fetters, Archbishop
Murdac appeared to her and charged her with having cursed him. She
replied that she certainly had cursed him for having placed her in so
uncongenial a sphere. "Rather curse yourself," said he, "for having
given way to temptation." "So I do," she answered, "and I regret having
imputed the blame to you." He then exhorted her to repentance and the
daily repetition of certain psalms, and then vanished,--a vision which
afforded her much consolation.
The holy sisters were now much troubled on the question of what should
be done with the infant which was expected daily, and preparations
were made for its reception; when Elfleda was again visited by the
Archbishop, accompanied by two women who, "with the holy aid of the
Archbishop, safely delivered her of the infant, which they bore away
in their arms, covered with a fair linen cloth." When the nuns came
the next morning they found her in perfect health and restored to her
youthful appearance, without any signs of the accouchement, and charged
her with murdering the infant,--a very improbable idea, seeing that she
was still chained to the floor. She narrated what had occurred, but was
not believed. The next night all her fetters were miraculously removed,
and when her cell was entered the following morning she was found
standing free, and the chains not to be found.
The Father Superior of the convent was then called in, and he invited
Alured, Abbot of Rievaulx, to assist him in the investigation of the
case, who decided that it was a miraculous intervention, and the Abbot
departed, saying, "What God hath cleansed call not thou common or
unclean, and whom He hath loosed thou mayest not bind."
What afterwards became of Elfleda is not stated, but we may presume
that after these miraculous events she would be admitted as a thrice
holy member of the sisterhood, despite her little peccadillo.
Alured of Rievaulx, the monkish chronicler, narrates the substance of
the above circumstances, and vouches for their truth. "Let no one,"
says he, "doubt the truth of this account, for I was an eye-witness
to many of the facts, and the remainder were related to me by persons
of such mature age and distinguished piety, that I cannot doubt the
accuracy of the statement."
This is the story of the frail and unfortunate nun; the other, which is
usually dovetailed on the former, is of much more recent date. In the
present house there is a chamber wainscoted throughout with panelled
oak, one of the panels forming a door, so accurately fitted that it
cannot be distinguished from the other panels. It is opened by a secret
spring, and communicates with a stone stair that goes down to the moat;
it may be that the room was a hiding-place for the Jesuits or priests
of the Catholic Church when they were so ruthlessly hunted down and
barbarously executed in the Elizabethan and Jacobean reigns. The room
is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a headless lady with an infant
in her arms, who comes, or came thither formerly, to sleep nightly, the
bed-clothes being found the following morning in a disordered state, as
they would be after a person had been sleeping in them. If by chance
any person had daring enough to occupy the room, the ghost would come,
minus the head, dressed in blood-stained garments, with her infant
in her arms, and would stand motionless at the foot of the bed for a
while, and then vanish. A visitor on one occasion, who knew nothing of
the legend, was put to sleep in the chamber, who in the morning stated
that his slumbers had been disturbed by a spectral visitant, in the
form of a lady with bloody raiment and an infant, and that her features
bore a strange resemblance to those of a lady whose portrait hung in
the room; from which it would appear that on that special occasion she
had donned her head.
According to the legend, a lady of distinction who then occupied the
house was a devoted Royalist in the great civil war which resulted in
the death of King Charles. It was after the battle of Marston Moor,
which was a death-blow to the Royalists north of the Humber, and when
the Parliamentarians dominated the broad lands of Yorkshire, that a
party of fanatical Roundheads came into the neighbourhood of Watton,
"breathing out threatenings and slaughter" against the "malignants,"
and especially against such as still clung to the "vile rags of the
whore of Babylon," vowing to put all such to the sword. The Lady of
Watton, who was a devout Catholic, heard of this band of Puritan
soldiers, who were "rampaging" over the Wolds, and of the barbarous
murders of which they had been guilty. Her husband was away fighting
in the ranks of the King down Oxford way, and she was left without
any protector excepting a handful of servants, male and female, who
would be of no use against a band of armed soldiers, and it was with
great fear and trembling that she heard of their arrival at Driffield,
some three or four miles distant, where they had been plundering
and maltreating "the Philistines;" fearing more for her infant than
herself, as she believed the prevalent exaggerated rumour, that it was
a favourite amusement with them to toss babies up in the air and catch
them on the points of their pikes.
At length news was brought that the marauders were on the march to
Watton, for the purpose of plundering it, as the home of a malignant,
and the lady, for better security, shut herself, with her child and
her jewels, in the wainscoted room, hoping in case of extremity to
escape by means of a secret stair, and in the meanwhile committed
herself and child to the care of the Virgin Mother. It was not long ere
the band of soldiers arrived and hammered at the door, calling aloud
for admittance, but met with no response. They were about breaking
down the door, and went in search of implements for the purpose, when
they caught sight of a low archway opening upon the moat, which they
guessed to be a side entrance to the house, and crossing the moat, they
found the stair, which they ascended and came to the panel, which they
concluded was a disguised door. A few blows sufficed to dash it open,
and they came into the presence of the lady, who was prostrate before
a crucifix. Rising up, she demanded what they wanted, and wherefore
this rude intrusion. They replied that they had come to despoil the
"Egyptian" who owned the mansion, and if he had been present, to smite
him to death as a worshipper of idols and an abomination in the eyes of
God.