extensive shattered walls and ruinated towers, makes a solemn,
majestic appearance. Having arrived on the island, which is destitute
of tree or shrub, except a few blasted thorns and briers, we left our
horses at a lonely public-house, situated close by the side of the
eastern shore, and proceeded to inspect the ruins of the castle. The
main tower has been defended by two moats, two walls, and several
small towers. We crossed the exterior fosse or ditch, and entered the
outer bayle or yard, through a ruinous guard-tower, overleaning a
steep precipice formed by the surges of the sea. The ancient pass,
where the drawbridge over the outer ditch was fixed, has been long
washed away. The greater part of the outer wall is also demolished,
for in those places which are out of the reach of the tide the stones
have been removed for various purposes.
"The drawbridge over the exterior ditch of these castles used commonly
to be defended by a fortification consisting of a strong high wall
with turrets, called the barbacan or antemural; the great gate or
entrance into the outer bayle or yard was often fortified by a tower
on each side, and by a room over the intermediate passage; and the
thick folding-doors of oak, by which the entrance was closed, were
often strengthened with iron, and faced by an iron portcullis or
grate, sliding down a groove from the higher part of the building.
"A chapel commonly stood in the outer bayle: accordingly, just at our
entrance into that part we saw the ruins of a building which is said
to have been the chapel belonging to this castle.
"At the inside of the yard we came to the inner fosse, moat, or ditch,
and arriving at the place where the drawbridge had been fixed, we
entered the inner bayle or court by the ancient passage through the
interior wall, the entrance whereof had evidently been secured by a
portcullis, and defended by a room over the passage.
"We now proceeded to the entrance into the main tower or keep; but the
doorway into the porch, which precedes it, being walled up, we were
obliged to creep into the edifice by a narrow aperture. The entrance
has been secured by a portcullis. The main tower has consisted of
three storeys, each divided into three oblong apartments by two
interior side walls being carried from bottom to top.
"The rooms on the ground-floor have been very low, and lighted by long
apertures, extremely narrow, at the outside of the walls, but a
considerable width in the inside, perhaps so constructed for the use
of the bow. The apartments have communicated with each other; and
there has been a winding staircase leading from one of them to the
rooms above, and to the top of the castle. Under the ground-floor of
these ancient castles used commonly to be dark and dismal apartments,
or dungeons, for the reception of prisoners, but nothing of the kind
is known to be here. The porch is called the dungeon.
"The second floor has been on a level with the first landing at the
principal entrance. The rooms have been lofty, and lighted by small
pointed windows, and many of them have had fireplaces. The apartments
on the third floor have been apparently similar to those on the
second. The side apartments have been lighted by several small pointed
windows, but those in the middle have been very dark and gloomy.
"The great door of the castle opens into one of these intermediate
apartments. On the left-hand side of the entrance has been a spiral
staircase, leading to the rooms above and to the top of the castle,
which has had a flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and several
turrets. The walls of this tower are very strong and firm; a deep
buttress is placed at each corner, and one against the middle of each
side wall. A small square tower has stood at the southern corner, but
the greater part of it has been thrown down by the sea. The foundation
of one side wall is also undermined the whole of its length, and as it
in some places overhangs the precipice formed by the waste of the sea,
and as the castle is not situated upon a rock, but upon hard loamy
soil, this side must inevitably fall in a few years.
"Many huge fragments of the wasted walls are scattered upon the shore,
under the cliff from whence they have fallen; and notwithstanding the
concussion they have received in falling from a great height, and the
frequent surges of the sea, they are as firm as ever, and in many
places exhibit the shape of the edifice.
"The corners and doorcases of the guard-towers, the buttresses,
window-frames, and several parts of the main tower, are constructed
with red freestone; but all the other parts of the walls which in
general are about six or seven feet in thickness, are formed of round
stones collected from the adjacent shores. The inside of the walls has
been constructed with small stones, and plenty of fluid mortar to fill
the interstices.
"To this mode of construction, to the excellent binding quality of the
stones, and to the slow drying of the grout-work in the inside, may be
attributed the great tenacity of the walls of this fabric, more than
to any uncommon or unknown method of composing the mortar.
"The roofs of the numerous guard-houses in the surrounding walls of
this castle have apparently been flat. Upon these, and along the
walls, which in most castles were topped by a parapet and a kind of
embrasure called crennels, the defenders of the castle were stationed
during a siege, and from thence discharged arrows, darts, stones, and
every kind of annoyance they could procure, upon their enemies.
"There were often subterraneous passages leading from the lowest part
of the main tower to a great distance; and by these the besieged could
make their escape in time of imminent danger, when the outworks were
carried by storm.
"On the north-east side of the outworks of this castle has been a
large pond or reservoir for supplying the ditches with water in cases
of sudden emergency. There has also been a fish-pond on the north-west
side.
"Though many variations were made in the structure of castles, as the
plan was often modified by the architect according to the site
occupied by the edifice, yet the most perfect and magnificent were
generally constructed with all the different parts we have mentioned.
"The walls contain no decorations of art, and are equally destitute
of all natural embellishments; the rugged outlines of dilapidation,
associating with the appearance of past magnificence, are the
qualities which chiefly interest the imagination, while comparing the
settled tranquillity of the present with the turbulent ages that are
past, and contemplating the view of this mouldering fabric.
"The island of Fouldrey has certainly been much larger at the erection
of the castle than it is at present; but the sea, having reduced it to
its present small compass, has abated the rapid career of its
destruction. It now wastes the western shore of Walney, and forms a
new tract out of the ruins, which proves a barrier to its progress
upon the Peel of Fouldrey, and at some future period may be an
accession to this island, in place of the land which it has lost."
The period when it was reduced to ruins is not well ascertained, but
it is probable that this was one of the fortresses which fell under
the dismantling orders of the Commonwealth.
The port is very large and commodious, and would float a first-rate
ship of war at low water.
In 1789 a body of commissioners and trustees, appointed to improve the
navigation of the river Lune, built a lighthouse on the south-east end
of the isle of Walney. It is an octagonal column, placed upon a
circular foundation of a little more than twenty feet in diameter. At
the plinth, its diameter is eighteen feet, and diminishes gradually
with the elevation through fifty-seven feet to fourteen. The ascent
from the bottom to the lantern is by a staircase, consisting of
ninety-one steps, winding up the inside of the pillar. The whole
height is about sixty-eight feet. At the base of the column there is a
small dwelling for the keeper and his family.
* * * * *
It was in the "merry month of May," in the year 1487, scarcely two
years after Richard's overthrow at Bosworth, and Earl Richmond's
usurpation of the English crown by the title of King Henry the
Seventh, that a great armament, landing on the barren island of
Fouldrey, took possession of the castle, a fortress of great strength
commanding the entrance to the bay of Morecambe, and a position of
considerable importance to the invaders. It occupied, with the
outworks and defences, nearly the whole area of the island (a few
acres only), two or three fishermen's huts at that time being
irregularly scattered on the beach below. Built by the monks of
Furness in the first year of Edward III., as a retreat from the
ravages of the Scots, and a formidable barrier against their
approaches by sea, it was now unexpectedly wrested from its owners,
becoming a point of resistance from whence the formidable power of
Henry might be withstood, and in the end successfully opposed.
A royal banner floated from the battlements: the fortress had been
formally taken into possession by the invaders in the name of their
king, previously proclaimed at Dublin by the title of Edward the
Sixth. The youth was crowned there with a diadem taken from an image
of the Virgin, priests and nobles espousing his cause with more than
ordinary enthusiasm; and Henry, in the second year of his reign, was
threatened, from a source as unexpected as it was deemed contemptible,
with the loss of his ill-gotten sovereignty.
Lambert Simnel, according to some historians, was the real name of
this "pretender;" but there be others who scruple not to assert, that
he was in reality the unfortunate Earl of Warwick, son to Clarence,
elder brother of Richard III., and that he had made his escape from
the Tower, where he long suffered an ignominious confinement by the
cruel policy of Henry. The prior claims of this young prince to the
English crown could not be doubted, and Margaret, the "bold" Duchess
of Burgundy, sister to Edward IV., had furnished the invaders with a
body of two thousand chosen Flemish troops, commanded by Martin
Swartz, a brave and experienced officer. With them came the Earl of
Lincoln, related to Edward IV. by intermarriage with Elizabeth, the
king's eldest sister.
This nobleman had long entertained ambitious views towards the crown;
his uncle Richard, it is said, in default of issue to himself, having
expressed the intention of declaring Lincoln his successor. The Lord
Lovel, too, a bitter enemy of the reigning prince, who had fled to the
court of Burgundy beforetime for protection, was entrusted with a
command in the expedition. To these were joined the Earl of Kildare,
the king's deputy for Ireland, with several others of the nobility
from the sister kingdom. The countenance thus unexpectedly given to
the rebellion by persons of the highest rank, and the great accession
of military force from abroad, raised the courage and exultation of
the Irish to such a pitch that they threatened to overrun England,
nothing doubting but their restless and disaffected spirit would be
fully met by a similar disposition on the part of those whom they
invaded. In supposing that the inhabitants in the north of England,
and especially in Lancashire, would immediately join their standard,
they had not calculated wisely. The king, in crushing the hopes of the
Yorkists, had made himself, at that period, too popular in the
county; the reluctance, too, which it may be supposed that Englishmen
would feel in identifying themselves with a troop of foreign
adventurers, as well as their general animosity against the Irish, to
whom the "northerns" never bore any good-will, being too near
neighbours to agree,--these circumstances taken into account, the
ultimate failure of the expedition might have been easily
prognosticated. Sir Thomas Broughton, a gentleman of some note in
Furness, was the only person of weight and influence in the county who
joined their standard, and he soon found himself a loser by his
defection.
This brief preliminary statement we have thought essential to the
right understanding and development of our plot.
The evening was dark and lowering, the sky broken into wild irregular
masses of red and angry clouds. The sun, after throwing one fierce
look over the broad and troubled sea, had sunk behind a hard, huge
battlement of cloud, on the round waving edges of which ran a bright
burning rim, that looked like a train of fire ignited by the glowing
luminary behind.
The beach round the little island of Fouldrey is mostly covered with
pebbles thrown up by the tide, occasionally intermingled with rock and
patches of dark verdure. A few boats may be seen with their
equipments, and two or three straggling nets upon the shore. A distant
sail occasionally glides across the horizon; but the usual aspect is
that of solitude, still and uninterrupted, the abode of sterility and
sadness. Now, the narrow bay by the island was glittering with gallant
streamers. Ships of war, in all their pride and panoply, majestically
reposed upon its bosom. All was bustle and impatience. The
trumpet-note of war brayed fiercely from the battlements. Incessant
was the march of troops in various directions. Tents were pitched
before the castle. Guards were appointed; and this hitherto peaceful
and solitary spot resounded with the din of arms, and the hoarse clang
of preparation for the approaching strife.
Messengers were constantly passing to and from the mainland. The
insignia of royalty were ostentatiously displayed, and the captains
and leaders within the fortress fulfilled the duties of this mimic and
motley court in honour of their anticipated sovereign.
Under a steep cliff, washed by the sea at high water, but of no great
height, and above which the higher walls of the castle or keep might
be discovered, sat two fishermen, the owners, or rather occupiers, of
one of the cottages built under the very walls of the fortress, where
these peaceful inhabitants had placed their little nests, protected
and covered by the wing of their loftier but more exposed and
dangerous neighbour.
The place they had chosen for their conference was secluded from
general observation, and their low and heavy speech was concealed from
the prying sentinels above by the hoarse and impetuous voice of the
retiring waves. Not many paces distant was the inlet to a
subterraneous passage, supposed to lead under the deepest foundations
of the castle; but its termination was now a mystery, at any rate, to
the present occupiers and inhabitants of the place. Many strange and
horrible stories were told and believed, of its uses and destination
in times past. Being burdened with a bad name--"some uncleansed murder
stuck to it"--the place ran little risk of disturbance or intruders.
When the tides ran high this outlet was inaccessible, being partly
flooded by the sea. From neglect and disuse an accumulation of sand
and pebbles, washed by the violence of the waves into the cavity, was
deposited there, so that the entrance, which, according to tradition
was once wide and sufficiently lofty for a person to walk upright, was
now dwindled into a narrow and insignificant-looking hole, scarcely
big enough to admit an urchin.
"Thee hasna seen it thysel', then?" said one of the fishermen to his
companion.
"Nea; I waur it' hoose man when it cam'; but"--the speaker looked
wistfully towards the dark entrance we have named,--"but I'se sure
Dick wouldna seay sae if"----
"Dick's a starin' gowk, and a coward too. I'se warrant there waur
plenty o' room 'twixt his carcase and the wa'. That I'd bin there
i'stead! There shouldn't ha' bin room to cram a herrin' tail atween me
an' the ghost's substance. I would ha' hedged him up thus, an' then
master ghost, taken aback, says, 'Friend, by yere sweet leave I would
pass;' but I make out elbows, and arms this'n, facing till him so.
Help! murder!"
This sudden change in the voice and attitude of the speaker, this
sudden exhalation of his courage, unfortunately arose from the parties
having, in the heat and interest of the discourse, turned their backs
to the haunted entrance, and, so intent was Davy in accommodating the
action to the valiant tenor of his speech, that it was only on
turning round, for the purpose of showing to his companion the way in
which he would have disputed a passage with the ghost, that he was
aware for the first time of the presence of that terrible thing, and
within a very few inches too of his own person. They stayed not for
any further exemplification of this theory of ghost-laying, but in an
instant were beyond observation, bounding over the beach, nor once
looking behind them until safe in their little hut, and the door
fastened against the fearful intruder. Davy, being foremost in the
race, sat down, followed by his companion George, who, maugre his
great apprehensions, could not forbear laughing heartily at the sudden
melting away of the big-mouthed valour of this cowardly boaster.
"Praised be our lady of Furness," said the merry taunter, with many
interruptions from laughter and want of breath; "thy heels are as glib
as thy tongue: for which--oh, oh! I am breathed--blown--dispossessed
of my birthright, free quaffing o' the air. Ha, ha! I cannot laugh.
Oh! what a mouth didst thou make at old blacksleeves. Gaping so, I
wonder he mistook not thy muzzle for one of the vents into his old
quarters. A pretty gull thee be'st, to swallow yon black porpoise."
"I tell thee, messmate," returned the other, gravely, "thou hast
miss'd thy tack. It waur but a slip, maybe a kin' of a sudden start
which took me, as they say, by the nape. I jumped back, I own--a foul
accident, by which he took advantage. He comes behind me, thou sees,
and with a skip 'at would have seated him upo' the topmost perch o'
the castle, he lights whack, thump, fair upo' my shoulders. I ran but
to shake the whoreson black slug fro' my carcase. Saints ha' mercy,
but his legs waur colder than a wet sheet. I soon unshipp'd my cargo,
though--I tumbled him into the sea, made a present of old blacksleeves
to the fishes!"
"Thou lying chub," said George, angrily, "did not I watch thee? Why,
thou cub, thou cormorant, thou maker of long lies and quick legs,
didst not o'ershoot me, ay, by some fathoms? I followed hard i' thy
wake, but I see'd nought of all this bull-scuddering of thine. Faith,
but thou didst ply thy courses with a wet sail!"
"Go to, Geordie--go to; a juggle, I tell thee; sheer malice of the
enemy, fow' an' fause as he be." Here he spat on the floor to show his
detestation and contempt; but George, either too ignorant or too idle
to reply, took down a dried fluke from the chimney, and warming it on
the glowing turf for a few minutes, was soon occupied in disposing of
this dainty and favourite repast. Their hut was of the rudest
construction. The walls were of boulder stones from the beach, loosely
set up with mud and slime, and in several places decidedly deviating
from the perpendicular. The roof was thatched with rushes, and shaped
like unto a fish's back, having a marvellous big hump in the middle,
upon which grew a fair tuft of long lank herbage, while bunches of the
biting yellow stone-crop clung in irregular patches of bright green
verdure about the extremities. The interior was lighted by a single
casement, showing an assemblage of forms the most homely and primitive
in their construction. The floor, paved with blue pebbles; the
fireplace, a huge hearth-flag merely, on which lay a heap of glowing
turf, an iron pot depending from a crook above. The smoke, curling
lazily through a raft of fish drying a few feet above the flame, and
acquiring the requisite flavour, with considerable difficulty reached
a hole in the roof, where the adverse and refractory wind not
unfrequently disputed its passage, and drove it down again, to assist
the colds and rheums by its stimulating propensities. A broken chair,
a three-legged stool, and a table with no greater number of
supporters, a truckle-bed, and an accumulation of nets, oars, and
broken implements of the like nature, were the usual deposits about
the chamber. The two fishermen were partners in their gainful trade,
and not having tasted the bliss of conjugal comforts, enjoyed a sort
of negative good from the absence of evil, and lived a tolerably quiet
and harmonious life in these outskirts of creation.
The few simple and primitive inhabitants of the island had been so
bewildered and confounded by the turmoil and disorder consequent upon
the invasion of their hitherto peaceful and quiet resting-place, that
some half-dozen of them, for the first time in their lives, had
quitted their homes; others, secure from their poverty and
insignificance, still remained, though much disturbed with wonder and
silly surmises, and ready to catch at any stray marvels that fell in
their way. The subterraneous and half-concealed passage in the rock,
or rather shale, on which the castle stands, always under the ban of
some vague and silly apprehension, had been reported of late as
manifesting more than equivocal symptoms of supernatural possession.
Dick Empson, or long-nebbed Dick, a sort of shrewd, half-witted
incarnation, it might be, of the goblin or elfin species, a runner of
errands from the abbey of Furness to the castle, and a being whose
pranks and propensities to mischief were well known in the
neighbourhood, had affirmed, but a few hours before, that he saw a
black figure on the previous night issuing from the hole; and that
there was no connection or understanding between this ghostly
appearance and the present occupiers of the castle, was evident from
the mystery and secrecy that attended its movements. This was
doubtless the phantom or goblin that, from time immemorial, had been
the cause of such sinister dispositions towards the "haunted passage."
Davy and his friend had unexpectedly stumbled upon its track, for they
had not calculated on its appearance, at any rate before midnight.
In the Castle, Peel, or Pile of Fouldrey, on that night too, there was
a mighty disturbance, not unaccompanied with vexation and alarm. It
was soon after the first watch. The new-made monarch was asleep in his
chamber--an ill-furnished apartment on the second floor of the main
tower or keep, looking out by a narrow window towards the sea. The
next, or middle chamber, was on a level, and communicating with the
first landing, or principal entrance. The latter apartment, in which
were the guards and others immediately about the king's person, served
the purposes of an ante-room to the presence-chamber.
The room opposite--for there were three divisions on each floor--was
subdivided into several parts, and occupied by the Earl of Lincoln and
his attendants; the rooms above being devoted to Swartz, Lovel, and
Fitzgerald, with their trains. Below were the guard-rooms and offices
assigned to the staff, with the war stores and munitions belonging to
the expedition.
In the same chamber with the king lay his confessor and chief adviser,
one Simon, a wily and ambitious priest, who was the prime agent, if
not mover, in this attempt to overturn the reigning power. No other
individual was suffered to remain through the night in the king's
apartment.