lies in a private park, so the car must wait beside the gardener's
cottage while we walk, borrowed key in hand, across the field to
the scattered fragments of what was once a great Cistercian abbey.
Of the ruins tragically little was left standing by the energetic
commissioners of Henry VIII., though they apologised for some necessary
delay in their congenial work. "Pleasythe your lordship to be
advertysed," wrote Thomas Cromwell's "most bounden beadman" Richard
Bellyseys, "I have taken down all the lead of Jervaulx ... and the
said lead cannot be conveit nor carried until the next sommre, for the
ways in that countre are so foul and deep that no caryage can pass in
wyntre. And as concerninge the taking down of the house I am minded to
let it stand to the next spring of the year, by reason of the days are
now so short it wolde be double charges to do it now." The work was
finished with great thoroughness at last, however, as all may see. Of
the church the barest outline only is left, with the raised platform
where once the high altar stood, and near it the broken figure that is
said to represent the Henry FitzHugh who did so much for West Tanfield
and left such strange orders about his funeral. He desired to be buried
at Jervaulx with all possible haste after his death. "To be carried
thither by daylight, if it come not too late; but if so, then the same
night." The land on which this community first settled, at Fors, was
the gift of one of FitzHugh's ancestors, which may account for his wish
to be buried here.
The case of the last abbot of Jervaulx, Adam Sedbergh, was a sad one;
for he suffered the pains of martyrdom without its exaltation, and
while certainly failing to please himself, pleased no one else. He was
a timid creature, apparently, and when Yorkshire rose in the Pilgrimage
of Grace, he was so much afraid of king and rebels alike that he simply
ran away and hid. The rebel mob came clamouring about the gates of
Jervaulx, crying: "Choose you a new abbot!" and the frightened brothers
gathered hurriedly in the chapter-house. If we follow this path, and
turn down by these crumbling steps, we may stand where they stood that
day; for there is more of the chapter-house still in existence than
of any other part of the building. The roof that covered the monks'
bewildered heads is gone; but here is the wide stone bench on which
they sat, trembling, through that hasty conclave, and here are the
columns and the walls on which their eyes dwelt, unseeingly, while the
rebels threatened them with fire at their gates and their rightful
leader was hiding in the heather. They could think of no better course
than to seek the reluctant Adam, and make a rebel of him whether
he would or no. They found him on the moors at last, and lest his
beautiful abbey should be burnt to the ground because of him, he came
back to face the curses and daggers of the mob, the futile sufferings
of rebellion, the prison-cell in the Tower where his name still shows
upon the wall, and the gallows of Tyburn. His tardy and unwilling
heroism was piteously useless, for not even the flames of the Pilgrims
of Grace could have laid the walls of Jervaulx lower or left its altars
more desolate than did the hammers and picks of the king's agents.
[Illustration: CHAPTER HOUSE, JERVAULX ABBEY.]
Charles Kingsley came here once, and picked a forget-me-not for
his wife--a pleasant memory among so many fierce ones. He was the
last canon of the collegiate church of Middleham, where he stayed
for several days at the time of his instalment, and endured "so
much bustle, and robing and unrobing" that he had no time to think.
Middleham, as a rule, is anything but a bustling place; but in spite
of its demure looks, I believe there are still days when its streets
are, as Kingsley saw them, "crowded with jockeys and grooms." We are
now on our way thither. After passing through East Witton we cross the
Cover, whose pools are dear to fishermen, and were therefore dear to
Kingsley. "Little Cover," he called it affectionately, "in his deep
wooded glen, with his yellow rock and bright white stones, and brown
water clearer than crystal."
We climb into Middleham past the base of an old cross on which is
fixed a modern head. At the top of the hill is the curious structure
called the Swine Cross, with the mutilated stone beast whose identity
has proved so hard to establish. Some say it is the Bear of Warwick;
others recognise in it the Boar of Gloucester. As far as its personal
appearance is concerned it might with equal plausibility be called
the Lion of England or the Hound of the Baskervilles, seeing that its
outline commits the sculptor to nothing and it has no manner of face
whatever. Turning to the left we find the castle looking down upon us
gloomily.
This castle of Middleham is square and stern; more strong than
beautiful. Its keep is Norman, and is the work of a Fitzranulph of the
twelfth century; but the towered wall that hems it round so closely
was built by the Nevilles, who lived here for many years in princely
state. The great Earl of Warwick, when he was not making kings--and,
indeed, sometimes when he was--chose this to be a centre of his pomp
and power; and one of the kings he made, Edward IV., is said to have
been imprisoned here for a short time. The time would have been longer
if Edward had not cajoled his custodian, the Archbishop of York, into
allowing him to hunt in the park. We know from _Henry VI._ how Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, and Lord Hastings lay in ambush in the forest that
is no longer here, and rescued Edward from those who were hunting with
him.
That same Duke of Gloucester, who was a trespasser on this occasion,
came to Middleham as its master later on. Poor Anne Neville, the
kingmaker's daughter, spent most of her sad married life within this
melancholy fortress, with the husband who asked no man to make him
king, but made himself Richard III. We may see the gloomy walls of her
withdrawing room--bereft now of both roof and floor--where she sat so
often sick at heart and ailing; and the banquet-hall where her father
kept such state; and the kitchen where six oxen were sometimes roasted
for one breakfast. There, in the north wall, is the gateway through
which she watched her husband riding out to entrap his little nephews,
and through which she herself soon followed him to see him crowned;
and here at the south-west corner of the outer wall is the tower where
her only son was born. The boy spent practically all his short life
here, all but that brief and brilliant interlude of the coronation at
Westminster and the pageantry at York; and here, too, he died in his
parents' absence. I do not know if Anne ever returned to Middleham. We
hear of her "in a state bordering on madness," and not long afterwards
her tragic life was over.
For many years the castle was left at the mercy of all who cared to
despoil it. It was very literally treated as a quarry; for when all the
faced stone within reach had been removed the walls were hollowed out
below, in the hope that the upper part might fall and so provide more
plunder. Such is the cohesion of the masonry, however, that this design
was more or less frustrated, and the undermined walls still stand like
overhanging cliffs. Here and there, indeed, great masses have fallen
in huge boulders as solid as rock; but perhaps the gunpowder of the
Commonwealth was responsible for these.
There was once a suggestion made, in a letter from Lord Huntingdon to
his "verrye good lord ye lord Treasurer," that Queen Elizabeth should
join in this work of quarrying. She purposed to pay a visit to her city
of York, a visit which was designed to be "no small comforte to all
hyr good subjects, and no less terrour to ye others." But the great
difficulty was to find "a good housse" for her. Huntingdon excitedly
laid his scheme before Burleigh. "Ye meanes ys thys," he wrote. "Hyr
hyghness hathe heare ye Castell of Midham, which ys in greate ruyne
and daylye wasteth, ... but ye tymber ye stone ye lead and ye iron yt
ys theare wold make a fayre housse heare, and as I gesse with good
husbandrye paye all ye chargys. I am sure if your L. dyd see ye place
... you wolde thinke yt most convenient to be pulled downe, rathyr than
yt shuld stande and waste daylye as yt dothe."[1] Fortunately Burleigh
did not think it most convenient, and now the place no longer wastes
daily, but is daily being repaired.
When we crossed Cover Bridge we entered Wensleydale, and a mile or
two beyond Middleham is the pretty little town from which the dale
takes its name. The scenery is quiet and pastoral here, the Ure flows
smoothly, and it is difficult to realise how near we are to the sort of
country Defoe was thinking of when he wrote in his eighteenth-century
way: "The black moorish lands show dismal and frightful." How near we
are to the moorish lands, however, we shall shortly find out, and it
is at Wensley that we have to decide by which road we shall cross them.
But first, here is Wensley Church on the left, with Saxon stones in
it, and a splendid brass that no one who cares for such things would
wish to pass by, and among its graves one that has been thought to be
of interest to every British man and woman. It is an altar-tomb with
fluted corners standing on the right of the path that leads from gate
to porch. Beneath it lies Peter Goldsmith. It has been stated,[2] on
what grounds I cannot discover, that he was surgeon of the _Victory_
at Trafalgar, and that Nelson died in his arms. This is making a great
claim for him. Yet his name is not mentioned in the standard accounts
of Nelson's death,[3] nor does it appear in the list of the _Victory's_
officers. As we all know, Beatty was the surgeon who attended Nelson in
the cockpit. The assistant-surgeon was Neil Smith; the surgeon's mate
was Westerburgh.[4]
This is the country of the Scropes of Bolton, and their names and arms
are conspicuous in the church--over the porch, on the buttresses, on
the carved chancel stalls, and, above all, on Lord Bolton's screened
pew in the north aisle. The carved sides of this were originally part
of the parclose by which the tombs of the Scropes were surrounded in
Easby Abbey. The front of it is ugly and has an eighteenth-century air.
The horrible grey marbled paint that defaces the woodwork suggests the
nineteenth. The famous brass, which lies within the communion rails,
is so beautiful as to appeal to the most ignorant in such matters, and
dates from the fourteenth century. It marks the grave of two men--Sir
Simon of Wensley, priest, and the seventeenth-century rector who
desired to be buried under the same stone and brass.
Our course, after leaving Wensley, depends on our further intentions.
The course I recommend is this: to drive up Wensleydale on the lower
road, past the cascades and village of Aysgarth--named by the Danes
Asgard, the home of the gods--past Bainbridge and Hawes; to cross the
river at Yorebridge, and return by Askrigg and Redmire, making a short
digression to Bolton Castle; then, turning to the left beyond Redmire,
to strike across the "moorish lands" to Richmond. These Yorkshire
moors, which seemed so "ill-looking" to Defoe, are neither black nor
frightful in our later eyes, but glorious with colour and light. The
old road from Leyburn across Barden and Hipswell Moors has rather a bad
surface, and a hill that is stiff enough to account for the making of
the new road; but on a sunny summer's evening the view from the highest
point is lovely beyond words. Beautiful it must be at all seasons and
in all weathers, but it is only when the air is clear that the head of
Swaledale may be seen on one side of the ridge and the far-away slopes
of Wensleydale on the other, and it is only when the sun is sinking
that those distant hills are washed with gold. The moors sweep round
us far and near; a line of dark firs crosses them mid-way; patches of
vivid green break through the heather; and down in the valley the
Swale shows as a thin thread of twisted silver. Behind us, towards
Middleham, the more level country is a dark blue streak beyond the
crimson of the sunlit heather. The white road, straight and narrow,
lies before us.
Those who choose this way will have little to regret, and will have one
real advantage: they will approach Richmond by the road which gives the
finest view of that fair town. They must remember, however, that there
is a very steep downward gradient at one point between the moors and
the river, and at the bottom of it a sharp turn over a bridge. The run
up Swaledale may easily be achieved from Richmond, where there is a
comfortable hotel.
The other alternative is to cross from Wensleydale to Swaledale by way
of the Buttertubs Pass. Now, I do not wish to be too encouraging about
this pass! It is a place for the well-equipped only, and for those
who do not suffer too much when their tyres are suffering. Many cars,
of course, have passed this way, and many more will do so; but none
the less it is not a suitable road for motoring. It is precipitous in
places, narrow everywhere, and the surface is almost entirely composed
of loose stones. Moreover, a grassy slope, so steep as to be almost a
precipice, drops away from the edge of it; and though I am assured the
pass is perfectly safe, there are points in it where nothing but faith
in one's driver can make it comfortable! The scenery is magnificent.
Starting from Wensley, we must take the upper of the two roads to
Redmire marked on Bartholomew's map, for the lower one, apparently,
runs through Lord Bolton's park. It occurs to one here, as in several
other places in Yorkshire, that it would be a good plan if map-makers
would adopt some distinctive way of marking private roads. The views
from the high ground are lovely. All Wensleydale lies before us--green
as an emerald in the valley, bare and grey on the hilltops, dimly blue
in the distance. Over it all lies that haze of luminous gold that the
sunshine gives to these dales. Far away, but clearly visible, Bolton
Castle stands up on the hillside, massive and grey and relentless, a
queen's prison. At Redmire Station we turn aside to see it.
"The castelle," says Leland, "as no great howse, is al compactid in
4 or 5 towers." Outwardly, it is probably much the same as in his
day: a square of cold, grey stone with a tower at each corner, gloomy
and forbidding, with no attempt at ornament, no break in the solid
masonry except the tiny windows. To Leland it was simply the castle
of the Scropes, the work of the famous Chancellor who fought at Créçy
in his younger days, the fortress of a family that was perpetually
distinguishing itself. So he looked at it and passed it by. It was
"no great howse." But we see it with other eyes, because it has been
touched by the charm that wins us in spite of our better judgment, just
as it won men long ago in spite of theirs--the glamour of the Queen of
Scots. The banquet hall where so many Scropes have feasted--bishops,
statesmen, judges, Knights of the Garter--leaves us cold; we do not
care to know there was a chantry here; even the cruel dungeon in the
ground, with the hole through which the victim was lowered and the bolt
to which he was fastened and the slab of stone that was fixed over the
top, only calls for a passing shudder. To us the interest of Bolton
Castle is centred in the whitewashed room upstairs.
[Illustration: BOLTON CASTLE.]
It was a summer evening, "one hour after sunsetting," when Mary
rode into that grass-grown court with Sir Francis Knollys and Sir
George Bowes, and two companies of soldiers, and six ladies, and
forty-three horses, and four cartloads of luggage. She was not yet very
unhappy. "She hath been very quiet," wrote Knollys of the journey,
"very tractable, and void of displeasant countenance." She was less
tractable when the time came for her to leave Bolton: she had learnt
much meanwhile. For the months spent at Bolton were the crisis of her
misfortunes. In this upper room she sat "knitting of a work" in the
deep recess of the window, or writing endless letters by the fire,
or turning young Christopher Norton's head, while the Casket Letters
were being read at Hampton Court, and her accusers were discussing her
character at York, and her "dear cousin and sister" was pressing her
to abdicate her throne. It was in this room that she wrote at last to
her advisers: "I pray you do not speak to me again about abdication,
for I am deliberately resolved rather to die than to resign my crown;
and the last words that I shall utter in my life shall be the words of
a Queen of Scotland."
She wrote a vast number of other letters here. Some were to the young
Queen of Spain, her sister-in-law, who, as Elizabeth of France, had
been her playmate at the Court of Henri II.; some were about the care
of her infant son; and some, of a conciliatory kind, were to the Queen
of England. "Toutesfoyes," she wrote, "sur votre parolle il n'est rien
que je n'entreprisse, car je ne doutay jamays de votre honneur et
royalle fidelitay."
It was here, too, that she wrote her first English letter to her
custodian, Sir Francis Knollys--her schoolmaster, as she called him,
who had been giving her lessons, apparently without any marked success.
"It is sed Seterday my unfrinds wil be wth zou; y sey nething, bot
trest weil. An ze send one to zour wiff ze may asur her schu wold a
bin weilcom to a pur strenger.... Thus affter my commendations I pray
God heue you in his kipin.
"Your assured gud frind,
"MARIE R.
"Excus ivel vreitn furst tym."
Mary's rooms have lately been restored; but this plain stone fireplace
is the same by which she sat shivering while the news of the
Westminster Conference was so long in coming through the snow, hoping
against hope that the English Queen would not "make her lose all";
turning over in her mind the scheme for marrying her to Don John of
Austria; reading specious letters from Elizabeth pleading "the natural
love of a mother towards her bairn"; and smiling upon Knollys till
he credited her with "an eloquent tongue, a discreet head, a stout
courage, and a liberal heart adjoined thereunto." This is the window
through which she looked out over Wensleydale, luminous in the August
sunshine or white with snow, and realised gradually that she was indeed
a prisoner, she who "loved greatly to go on horseback." She was allowed
to ride in the park, it is true; but her riding was a mockery with
twelve soldiers at her horse's heels.
Yet she was not always sad. She had her lighter moments and pastimes
other than knitting. "The Queen here is merry, and hunteth," wrote
Knollys, "and passeth her time in pleasant manner." She even coquetted
with the Reformed Faith, and "grew into a good liking of the Liturgy";
and she took pleasure (of a more convincing kind) in having her hair
busked by Mistress Mary Seaton, whom she declared to be the finest
busker in any country. Knollys, apparently, was not insensible to the
charms of a _coiffure_. "This day she did set such a curled hair upon
the Queen that it was like to be a periwig that showed very delicately;
and every other day she hath a new device of hairdressing, without any
cost, and yet setteth forth a woman gaily well."
Here, up these steps upon which Mary's skirts have trailed, is the
room where Mistress Seaton set such a curled hair upon the lovely
head, the room where the Queen slept, or more often lay awake. There
had been some difficulty in making her rooms ready to receive her.
The Scropes were not luxurious, it seems. Her bedding and hangings
came from Sir George Bowes' house, near Barnard Castle; pewter vessels
and a copper kettle were hastily borrowed from the Court of England;
and the neighbours lent some furniture with rather a bad grace. There
is a very strong local tradition that Mary once escaped from Bolton
Castle. The "Queen's Gap" on Leyburn Shawl is pointed out as the scene
of her recapture, and this little bedroom window as the way of her
escape. I cannot find the least evidence that the story is true. But
it was in this room that she lay sick for days, before she was dragged
reluctantly away in the dusk of a January dawn, bitterly cold and
bitterly angry, to her next prison at Tutbury.
This castle held for the king in the Civil War, and that is why it has
lost its north-west tower. The actual fall was in a storm, a hundred
years later than the siege that weakened the masonry.
As we drive away up Wensleydale we look back again and again at the
fortress, which dominates the valley far more conspicuously than its
position on the green hillside seems to warrant. The scenery grows
wilder and the slopes nearer before a steep descent with a bad surface
takes us into Askrigg. Here, in a little open space beside the church,
is a picturesque Jacobean house of grey stone, bearing an inscription
and the date MDCLXXVIII. Its projecting bays are joined by a wooden
gallery, which was designed, it is said, to give a good view of the
bull-baiting that took place before it. There, hidden in the grass, is
the iron ring to which the bull was tied; and close beside it stands
the restored village-cross--a strange conjunction of symbols! In the
fifteenth-century church there are some pillars which are thought
to have been transported from Fors, the original dwelling, about a
mile from here, of the brothers of Jervaulx--the little band of monks
from Savigny, who came to this valley under the leadership of Peter
de Quincy, the Leech, in the reign of Stephen. They found this place
too wild even for their Cistercian ideals, too cold and foggy for the
ripening of crops, too frequently beset by wolves; and so, though
the optimistic Peter was "very certain we shall be able to raise a
competent supply of ale, cheese, bread, and butter," the community
moved nearer to civilisation, leaving behind them nothing for us to see
except a window in a barn and these pillars in Askrigg Church.
[Illustration: ASKRIGG.]
As the road becomes narrower and rougher the scenery every moment grows
more beautiful. Hawes lies on the other side of the valley at the foot
of the blue hills, in a lovely position beside the Ure; and when we
have reached a point exactly opposite to it we turn sharply up a steep
pitch on the right, with a splendid panoramic view of mountains on the
left as we climb.
This is the beginning of the Buttertubs Pass. From this point onwards,
till the road plunges down into Swaledale, the surface is composed
more or less of loose stones. The stiffest upward gradients we shall
have to encounter are within a mile or two of this spot, for the wild
part of the pass--the real moorland--is comparatively level, and by
the time we reach the actual Buttertubs we are already running down.
This is the climax--this point where the downward gradient begins--for
here suddenly the solid earth seems to fall away from us: here suddenly
the rough and narrow road is no longer lying across the far-stretching
moorland, but is hanging high upon the hillside, clinging upon the
extremest edge of a gulf which drops dizzily into a blue sea of
shadows. Thus it clings for miles. Beyond the chasm the bare hillside
rises again above our heads in magnificent curves, glowing with colour,
and cleft here and there into purple gorges. Slightly above the road on
the left are the Buttertubs, strange crater-like hollows of unplumbed
depth, appearing at intervals beside us, with sharp rocks bristling
through the grass at their mouths. As we slowly descend, the hills of
Swaledale rise before us like a wall blocking the defile; and presently
a gate across the road shows that we are near the world again.
[Illustration: THE BUTTERTUBS PASS.]
Truly this is one of the runs that are unforgettable. To be among these
savage heights and depths, these heaving waves of desolate moor, to
have these solitudes above us and these blue shadows so far below us,
is to know something of "the strong foundations of the earth." It is
with a feeling of anti-climax that we close the gate behind us, and, on
a precipitous gradient and no surface worth mentioning, steer slowly
down into Swaledale.