unite with them in putting down kingly tyranny and financial
oppression, but eventually they were met by the Earl of Surrey, who
was sent against them, at Ackworth, near Pontefract, and dispersed.
Chambre and others of the leaders were captured and hanged at York;
but Egremont, thanks to the fleetness of his horse, escaped to
Flanders, and was protected by the Yorkist Margaret, Duchess of
Burgundy. What was his ultimate fate is not known.
The Earl was honoured with a most magnificent funeral in the Minster
or Collegiate Church of St. John, Beverley, in a chapel built
expressly for the reception of his remains, and beneath a tomb with
rich Gothic canopy, adorned with sculptured figures, and emblazoned
with the multitude of quarterings of the family. The body, after
having been embalmed, was conveyed to his Castle of Wressil, and hence
to Leckonfield, whence it was taken to Beverley, accompanied by a long
and splendid procession, all robed and accoutred at the expense of the
family. There were twelve lords with "gownes at 10s. the yerd;"
twenty-four lords and knights "with gownes and hods;" sixty squires
and gentlemen "with gownes and typets;" two hundred yeomen "in
gownes;" "one hundred gromes and gentlemen's servants in gownes."
There were also the bearers of the great standard, twelve bearers of
sarcenet banners "betyn with my Lord's armys," sixty bearers of
"Scutchions of Buckram betyn with my Lord's armys," and two officers
of arms from the Herald's Office, London, to superintend the armorial
arrangements, who were paid £20 for "their helpe and payne." Besides
these there were five hundred priests, one thousand clerks, and
representatives from the neighbouring monasteries, all habited in
mourning, and bearing crucifixes, other church ornaments, and vessels
and emblems of mortality. Mingling with these were four hundred
torch-bearers, and bringing up the rear, 13,340 poor persons, who
received, according to the will, a funeral dole of twopence each.
Altogether the cost amounted to £1,037 6s. 8d., equal to, at least,
£10,000 of the present value of money.
The body was met at the great west door of the Minster by the Provost,
Vicars, Canons, choristers, and other officials of the Minster, who
conducted the procession. A mournful anthem was chanted up the nave
into the chancel, where a long and splendid service of masses and
choral singing was performed, and the body lowered into its
resting-place, amid the sobs and lamentations of those who had known
and loved the Earl for his virtues. Of his tomb, with its
"multiplicity of noble carved work and canopied arches," as described
by Leland, there remain only the altar table, with its sides covered
with armorial bearings, but without the figures which ranged round it
in niches, and on the wall above the word "Esperance," the motto of
the family, and "1494," the date of the funeral.
The Burning of Cottingham Castle.
Cottingham is a well-built, picturesque village, midway between Hull
and Beverley, on the ancient road, but a quarter of a mile distant
from the modern highway. It is a place of great antiquity, dating from
the ancient British period, and deriving its name from Ket, a Celtic
female deity, with the Saxon suffixes of ing and ham. In the days of
Edward the Confessor, it belonged to one Gamel, who is supposed to
have held a Thursday market there; and at the time of the Domesday
Book, the manor, four miles in length, with five fisheries of 8,000
eels, was held by Hugh, son of Baldrick.
It was granted by William the Conqueror to Robert de Stuteville,
surnamed Front de Boeuf, from whom it descended to Robert de
Stuteville, or d'Estoteville, who was Sheriff of Yorkshire,
twenty-first Henry II., and from him to William de Stuteville, _temp._
John, who, for some offence, was excommunicated by the Archbishop of
York. He appealed to the King, who came to Cottingham to investigate
the matter, and in the sequel compelled the prelate to give him
absolution. Moreover, he granted to de Stuteville a charter empowering
him to castellate his manor-house, and hold a weekly market and annual
fair.
Nicholas de Stuteville died seventeenth Henry III., leaving two
daughters, Joan and Margaret, as his co-heiresses, the former of whom
married Hugh de Wake, descended from Leofric, viceroy Earl of Mercia,
and his wife the famous Godiva, and from Hereward le Wac (the Wake),
Lord of Brunne, the last, and one of the most formidable, opponents of
the Norman Duke William, in his conquest of England. John, his
grandson, was summoned as a baron twenty-third Edward I., whose
daughter, Margaret, married Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, third
son of King Edward I., and had issue, Joan, "the fair maid of Kent,"
who inherited the Barony of Wake, which she transmitted to her issue
by her first husband, Thomas de Holand, and which fell in abeyance in
1497, as it still continues. She married, secondly, Edward, the Black
Prince, and by him was mother of King Richard II.
King Edward I. was celebrating Christmas with the Wakes at Cottingham,
when, being out hunting, he came to Wyke-super-Hull, and, struck with
its capabilities as a port, granted the charter which laid the
foundation of its future greatness, and changed its name to
Kingstown-upon-Hull; and at the same time gave his host a charter of
free warren over his manor, and authority to erect a gallows for the
execution of criminals. Thomas, his son, in the following reign,
obtained a charter of confirmation, with the privilege of holding a
weekly market and two annual fairs, and authority to convert his
residence into a castle of defence, and to garrison it with armed men.
This Thomas founded, adjacent to the castle, a monastery of Austin
Friars, on a site with a defective title, in consequence of which it
was removed to Haltemprice, on another part of the estate.
The feudal barony was held _in capite_ by the service of one barony,
and consisted of 4,000 acres, with £200 yearly rental from free
tenants.
It was a beautiful August day in the year 1540. The reapers were in
the fields about Cottingham, sickle in hand, cutting down the golden
corn, and lumbering wains with solid wooden wheels, and drawn by oxen,
were carrying away the sheaves to garner in the homesteads; the fruit
of a thousand trees in the orchards surrounding the village hung, rich
and luscious, pendant from the boughs, and ripening to perfection
under the bright sunshine. The village consisted of a scattering of
cross-timbered houses with wattled and mud-walled frames, latticed
windows, and thatched roofs. From the midst thereof rose in proud and
lofty dignity the majestic walls, turrets, and bastions of the
Stutevilles, the Wakes, and now of the Holands, surrounded by a moat,
which was crossed by a drawbridge, and the entrance defended by a
barbican and a portcullis. Upon its battlements might be seen three or
four men-at-arms, lounging lazily about, and amusing themselves by
watching the passage of vessels and boats up and down the Humber. The
pleasant clack of the baronial mill, and the occasional uplifted
voices of the denizens of the farm-yards and pastures, alone broke the
silence of the slumberous summer afternoon. In a hamlet within ken of
the out-lookers on the parapets of the castle might be seen the now
deserted house of the Augustinian Friars, at Haltemprice; for here no
longer the Canons dropped their beads, muttered their prayers, or
chanted their anthems; the ruthless hand of Henry had driven them
forth upon the wide world to become supplicants for charity, alongside
those who had erstwhile found succour at their gate. The priory and
site had in the present year been granted to Thomas Culpepper, but he
had not yet taken possession, and it lay desolate and silent, as did,
at the same time, many another noble abbey and priory, scattered over
the face of England.
Lord Wake, as he was called by courtesy, although he was only a tenure
Baron, had been out in the direction of the now thriving town of
Kingston-upon-Hull, and about the middle of the afternoon he came
riding over the drawbridge, and passed through the arched gateway into
the courtyard of his castle. Upon his fist he carried a favourite
hawk, and he was accompanied by his falconer, and three or four
liveried retainers. He leaped agilely from his horse, which was taken
charge of by a groom, and, handing his hawk to the falconer, he passed
through a portal to the domestic apartments, where he was met by his
wife, a singularly beautiful woman, not much past the bloom of
girlhood, and as modest, chaste, and pious as she was charming in
feature, person, and demeanour. "What sport have you had this morning,
husband mine?" inquired she, after an affectionate embrace.
"Excellent," he replied; "my falcon has done wonders, he brought down
a heron, who, from his size, must have been the patriarch of the shaw;
but, dearest life! sport of that kind, brave as it may be, is as
naught to the happiness I experience in thy dear society." Other
expressions of endearment of a similar kind passed as they sat down to
dinner, composed chiefly of venison and boar's flesh. Lord Wake was a
great hunter in the surrounding woods of his domain, and as he sat at
dinner he was surrounded by half a dozen petted boar and stag hounds,
who gambolled at will about the apartment, or sat on their haunches,
looking up at their master in anxious expectation of stray bones,
which were thrown to them with no niggard hand.
The meal passed over almost in silence, which was only broken
occasionally by remarks and discussion on domestic topics; but when it
was finished, and Lady Wake had taken up her embroidery-frame, her
husband told her that his sport had brought him to the gates of
Kingstown, where he learnt that the King was in the town, who had
arrived there unexpectedly. He was on his progress to York to meet his
nephew, James V. of Scotland, and had come by a circuitous route "for
fear of the enraged people," who, exasperated at the dissolution of
the religious houses, and the King's assumption of supremacy over the
Church, had two or three years previously raised a formidable
insurrection, which they denominated the "Pilgrimage of Grace." The
Mayor (Henry Thurcross), Lord Wake said, had sent the Sheriff to meet
his Highness at the "boarded bridge" of Newland, on the confines of
the county of Hull; had himself, with the aldermen, received him with
great obeisance and due formalities at Beverley-gate, and had
conducted him to the Manor Hall, the usual residence of Royalty when
in the town, where he now was enjoying the splendid hospitality of the
Corporation.
"The caitiff," exclaimed Lady Wake, "what does he want down here? His
presence betokens no good, and woe betide those with whom he
sojourns."
"Bluff King Hal," as he was frequently termed, was no favourite with
the better class of ladies; and especially with such as were of a
devout turn of mind, and were regular and punctual in the performance
of their religious duties, as enjoined by their father-confessors. His
propensity for chopping off the heads of his wives, or of divorcing
them when a new beauty enthralled his amorous susceptibilities, caused
him to be held in detestation by all right-minded women; and his
sacrilegious deposition of the Holy Father's authority in England,
combined with his so-called brutal dispersion of the religious
fraternities and sisterhoods of the realm, and unwarrantable plunder
of the holy places of the land, caused him to be looked upon by the
devout as an incarnation of Satan. Such were the views of Lady Wake,
who felt keenly the loss of Haltemprice, which had been to her a
sanctuary of heaven, and to which she had been a most generous
benefactor.
Whilst Lord and Lady Wake were conversing on this subject, the sound
of a trumpet was heard outside, followed by the opening of the great
gate at the summons, "In the King's name," and the clatter of a
horse's hoofs over the drawbridge and into the courtyard. Lord Wake
hastened out and found an herald seated on horseback, who, when he
announced himself as the lord of the castle, gave three blasts of his
trumpet, and then delivered his message:--"His Highness the King
Henry, the eighth of the name, by the grace of God, defender of the
faith, and supreme head of the Church of England, to the Lord of the
Barony of Cottingham, usually styled Lord Wake, greeting--It is His
Highness's pleasure that on the morrow he will come, God willing, to
Baynard Castle, and partake of the hospitality of the noble Baron and
Lady Wake. God save the King." In the course of conversation with
the magnates of Hull, at the Manor Hall, he had made inquiry
respecting persons of note residing in the neighbourhood, and Lord
Wake was mentioned as keeping up a magnificent establishment within
three or four miles of the gates of Hull, and as being blessed with a
wife of surpassing beauty. The King's licentious propensities were at
once aroused at hearing this. "Fore God," quoth he, "I will betake me
thither, and with mine own eyes see whether this Yorkshire beauty is
the paragon you represent her to be;" and he summoned his herald into
his presence and despatched him with the above message to Cottingham.
Lord Wake was thrown into consternation at receiving the King's
greeting and message, and, before giving an answer, went indoors to
consult his wife.
"Holy Mary!" said she, "what a disaster! We must avoid it in some way
or other. Never will I meet the woman-slayer and desecrator of God's
temples within these walls."
"True," he replied, "we must find some means of averting it if
possible, but meanwhile it will be necessary to send a civil and loyal
reply," and returning to the courtyard, he bade the herald inform the
King that he felt highly flattered at His Highness's condescension in
proposing a visit to his humble house, and that on the following day
preparations should be made for greeting him in the best way his
humble means afforded. When the herald had departed, Lord Wake
pondered deeply on the dilemma in which he found himself placed by the
King's proffered visit. He felt that it was impossible, except by
taking some desperate step, to evade it, but something must be done,
as he felt assured that the honour of himself and that of his wife
were at stake, well knowing, as he did, the unbridled passion of the
King, and that if it were thwarted the most perilous consequences
might ensue. The confiscation of his estates might be looked for in
such case; but better, thought he, lose my land, than my wife her
honour. This train of thought led him to think of his castle, where he
had lived so happily with the beloved of his heart, when suddenly the
idea struck him--What if I burn down my castle! The King could not
come for entertainment amidst its ruined walls and smoking embers, and
though I should sacrifice my home, I should preserve what is far
dearer to me--my wife, pure and undefiled as when I led her to the
altar. The more he thought of the project, the more fully he became
assured of its practicability as an effectual bar of defence against
the King's intentions. He submitted the idea to Lady Wake, who,
without the slightest hesitation, concurred in the proposal.
The seneschal of the castle was then called in--a faithful old
retainer, who had been in the family for two or three generations of
lords, and who might be intrusted with the keeping of any secret of
his master. He was informed of the nature of the peril hanging over
the family, and of the method projected by Lord Wake to avert the
evil. He had been born and bred up in the castle; knew every nook and
corner of it; loved it with a devoted affection, almost as if it had
been a thinking, sentient being; and could not without an excess of
grief see it destroyed; yet he recognised at once the necessity of the
case, and not being able to devise an alternative, so as to save the
old towers and walls, undertook, as proposed by his master, to fire
the castle that night.
Lord and Lady Wake then proceeded to pack up all the more portable
articles of value, jewels, money, family papers, and heirlooms, which
were conveyed secretly to the unoccupied Priory of Haltemprice, and
thither they went themselves, issuing from a postern, and crossing the
moat by means of a raft stationed there for the purpose. When the
retainers, men-at-arms, and domestics, all save the sentinals on duty,
had retired to rest, the seneschal, heaped together a quantity of
combustible materials in proximity to a mass of old and dry woodwork
panelling on the walls, which he set fire to. The flames soon caught
hold of the woodwork, which, blazing up, got a complete hold of the
building. He then rang the alarm-bell and roused up the sleepers,
telling them that he had been awakened by the smell of burning. Of
course all was done that could be done, under his direction, for the
subjugation of the fire, but the appliances were so utterly
inefficient, consisting merely of a line of men passing a chain of
buckets from hand to hand after being filled from the moat, that the
fire soon overcame all their efforts to extinguish it, and the roof
soon after falling in, it blazed up into the midnight sky,
illuminating the country for miles round. The flames were distinctly
visible from Hull and Beverley, and numbers of persons from both towns
hurried to the scene of disaster, but could afford no assistance, the
fire having by that time gained such an ascendency that they could but
stand and gaze, awe-stricken, on the scene of devastation.
Intelligence was conveyed to the King the following morning of the
"accidental" fire at Baynard Castle, and to show his sympathy he
offered to contribute £2,000 towards its restoration, which was
respectfully declined by Lord Wake, and the King, after sundry
measures for the improvement of the port of Kingstown, crossed the
Humber and returned to London.
The tradition adds, further, that this Lord Wake, dying without issue
male, the manor was divided between his three daughters, who were
respectively married to the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of
Westmoreland, and Baron Powis, and that those portions thus acquired
the names they still bear of Cottingham Richmond, Cottingham
Westmoreland, and Cottingham Powis.
Tradition, however, is prone to error, and in this narrative there are
several discrepancies and anachronisms. There was then no Baron Wake,
the barony having fallen into abeyance more than a century previously;
but the holder of the manor, being a feudal Baron, might bear the
title by courtesy. Secondly, Leland saw the ruins of the burnt castle
in 1538, two or three years before the visit of King Henry to Hull,
and he mentions the division of the manor into four parts as having
taken place previously, the fourth part being held by the King.
The Alum Workers.
Nestling in a lovely valley in the most romantic part of Cleveland
lies the little town of Guisborough, with the mouldering ruins of its
once famous Priory. At the time of the Conquest it consisted of three
manors, which were given to the Earl of Moreton, and soon after,
united into one manor, passed to Robert de Brus, Lord of Skelton, to
hold _in capite_, by military service. In the year 1129 he founded the
Priory of Canons of the Augustine order, and endowed it with a manor
of twenty caracutes and two oxgangs, with the tenements, mill, and all
other appurtenances. It flourished apace, grew rich, and nurtured some
learned and eminent men within its cloisters, until it fell beneath
the ruthless axe of Henry VIII.
The Chaloners of Guisborough are of Welsh descent, tracing their
ancestry to Trayhayrne, son of Maloc Krwm, one of the fifteen peers
of Wales. His grandson, Madoc, otherwise Chaloner, was ancestor of
Thomas Chaloner, of Beaumaris, one of whose sons was Roger Chaloner, a
citizen and silk mercer of London, whose son, Sir Thomas, Knight (born
1521), was eminent as a statesman, diplomatist, and poet; was employed
on several embassies; was knighted at the battle of Pinkie for
bravery; and was author of several esteemed works--"The Praise of
Folly," "De Republica Anglorum," and many others. He purchased the
manor of Guisborough of Sir Thomas Legh, to whom it had been granted
at the Dissolution, for the sum of £998 13s. 4d.
"These towering rocks, green hills, and spacious plains,
Circled with wood, are Chaloner's domains.
A generous race, from Cambro-Griffin traced,
Fam'd for fair maids and matrons wise and chaste."
His portrait was painted by Holbein and by Antonio More, the former
engraved by Holler, the latter exhibited at Leeds in 1868.
Sir Thomas, Knight, his son (born 1559, died 1615), succeeded to the
Guisborough estates, and was the discoverer of the alum mines. He was
twice married, and had issue several children, of whom the
eldest--William--was created baronet in 1620, by the title of Sir
William Chaloner, Bart., of Guisborough, in the county of York; Rev.
Edward, D.D., an eminent polemical writer; and Thomas and James,
Parliamentarian officers and regicides. At college he gained some
reputation by his Latin and English verses, but was not equal to his
father as a poet. He was, however, a good naturalist, at the time when
the science was little understood and less studied. In 1580-84, he
made _le grand tour_, and spent some time in Italy, where he
associated with all the most eminent literary and scientific men of
the day.
Being a keen observer of natural objects and phenomena, he had noticed
that on a certain part of his Guisborough estate the soil never froze,
that it was speckled with divers colours, chiefly yellow and blue,
which sparkled in the sunshine, and that the trees and shrubs which
grew thereon spread their roots laterally, and penetrated the earth
very superficially, and that their leaves were of a peculiar tint of
green. When in Rome he paid a visit to the Pope's alum works at
Puzzeoli, where he noticed with his quick, observant eye that the
earth and trees presented the same remarkable features as those on
his Guisborough estate, and he immediately came to the conclusion
that his land was impregnated with alum. He hastened back to England
to test his hypothesis, which he soon verified by experiment, and saw
that a mine of wealth lay beneath his feet. But how to work and
prepare it he knew not, and there was no one in England who did, and
scarcely any one in Europe, outside of Italy, which then had a
monopoly of alum, and he set his wits to work to devise some means for
separating it from the earth, and preparing it as a manufactured
commodity for the market.
Alum is a mineral salt found in clay and other earths, and is a
valuable commodity used in various manufactures, and for other
purposes. It was first extracted from the earth in which it was
embedded, and prepared for use in the East, chiefly at Edessa, in
Syria; afterwards near Constantinople; and, on the fall of the Eastern
Empire, the alum workers transferred the industry to Italy where it
was established in various places, and was confined to the Peninsula
for more than a century, after which it spread into Germany, France,
and Flanders. The Popes had works at Rome and Civita Vecchia, and
carefully guarded their secret, not allowing the workmen to leave the
country on any pretence whatever, under pain of excommunication, as
the profits of the sale brought a handsome revenue to their coffers.