evening. Of all the fresh experiences that the motor-car has brought to
us there are few from which the imagination gains so much as from this
way of entering old and beautiful towns. We have too long accepted the
roof of a railway station as our first view of such places. It is not
an inspiring view. But to see York Minster from afar, shining under
the evening sky and lifted high above the city; to watch it growing
larger and larger, rising higher and higher, increasing in beauty every
moment, until at last one drives slowly into its huge shadow; to pass
under one of the great gates that have survived so many centuries,
so many wars, so many pageants, that have welcomed so many kings, and
dripped with the blood of so many warriors; to see the ancient streets
for the first time idealised by the dusk of twilight, will help us, if
anything will, to recall and realise something of what York has been
during the eighteen hundred years of her history.
The past is very insistent here. Here are the walls, encircling the
whole city, that were built by Edward I. and repaired after the Civil
War. We may drive round them, and pass in and out of the four gates
that were once so hard to enter: Monk Bar, by which we come in from
Kirkham under the arms of England and France quartered together; and
Bootham Bar on the Newcastle Road; and Micklegate Bar on the Tadcaster
Road; and Walmgate Bar, where the restored barbican reminds us that it
was undermined during the long siege of the Civil War. All these bars
are turreted and ornamented with painted shields and statues or helmets
of stone; three of them still have their portcullises; three still bear
the arms of France.
[Illustration: WALMGATE BAR, YORK.]
Walmgate, or Watling Gate, Bar is the most picturesque of them on the
inner side, for it carries on its stone pillars an Elizabethan house of
timber and plaster. But by far the richest in memories is Micklegate
Bar. Some of these memories are of a very ghastly kind, for it was
here that the heads of "traitors" were set up. It was here that Harry
Hotspur's head looked down upon his doubly treacherous old father,
the Duke of Northumberland, as that time-server rode out through the
gate in perfect friendliness with Henry IV., and found it advisable,
no doubt, to ignore the thing that stared above the parapet. Here, in
Henry V.'s reign, the head of Lord Scrope of Masham was set up because
he favoured the House of York; and here, half a century later, was the
head of the Duke of York himself, crowned with paper--to be replaced,
almost before Margaret of Anjou had finished laughing at it, by the
head of the man who put it here--Clifford the Butcher. The hideous
series closed with the followers of Prince Charlie in the Forty-five.
[Illustration: MICKLEGATE BAR, YORK.]
Meantime there were other sights to be seen at Micklegate Bar. Richard
III., fresh from one coronation and eager for another, was received
here "with great pomp and triumph" by the citizens and the clergy "in
their richest copes," and passed through this archway with his stolen
crown upon his head, followed by his luckless queen and the little
boy who was so soon to die. His successor's daughter, Margaret Tudor,
entered York very gaily by this gate with five hundred lords and
ladies, on her way to her unhappy marriage with James IV. of Scotland.
James I. was on his way to Scotland, too, when he rode to Micklegate
Bar from Tadcaster, with the sheriffs of York bearing their white rods
before him. He waited here while the Mayor, kneeling in the road,
presented him with a sword and the city keys, and a cup and a purse,
"and made a worthy speech at the delivery of each particular." Still
braver was the scene when Charles I. came in, with that strange army
that was no army; the army that was commanded by an "amateur general"
and was intended to overawe the Scots by pomp. "The progress was more
illustrious than the march, and the soldiers were the least part of
the army," says Clarendon. This sombre bar was gay enough that day. So
splendid a procession has seldom been seen as that which filed through
its dark shadow then, all glittering and glowing, while the trainbands
of the city, magnificent in scarlet and silver and feathered caps,
greeted Charles with a volley, and the civic authorities on their knees
greeted him with flattery. It was not many years before another sort of
scene was enacted on this spot: when the army of Fairfax--commanded by
no amateur--was drawn up in a double line that stretched away from this
gate for a mile, and the two Royalist generals who had defended the
city so finely, Glenham and Slingsby, marched out between the two lines
with the remnant of the garrison, with all the honours of war. That was
the most stirring sight, I expect, that Micklegate Bar has seen.
Fairfax and the other victorious generals marched to the Minster and
"sang a psalm." What that psalm must have meant to Fairfax we can
hardly realise. The siege had lasted for thirteen weeks; more than
four thousand of his men had died in the course of it; twenty-two
times they had assaulted the walls. He was himself a Yorkshireman, and
like all Yorkshiremen, loved and honoured the city that has held so
proud a place in English history, and the Minster that is the city's
crown. No wonder he marched straight from the gate to the Minster and
sang a psalm! What York Minster meant to Fairfax it must in a lesser
degree mean to every Englishman. It combines superlative interest with
superlative beauty. We may come to it primed with its history--the
history that begins with the Roman temple whose foundations are hidden
beneath it, the history that includes so many great names; we may know
that Paulinus of the seventh century--the tall, majestic man with
the hawk-face whom Bede has described for us--built the first church
here of wood, and was the first Archbishop of York; that three other
churches stood here and were destroyed before the present building was
begun in the thirteenth century and slowly rose to its perfection; but
when we see it we can remember nothing but its beauty. It completely
dominates York. It is impossible to forget its presence for a moment,
whether it be dim and blurred in the dawn or flushed with the light of
sunset.
Nearly every one, I suppose, has seen it. Nearly every one has felt,
on passing through the entrance in the south transept, that breathless
sensation of awe that is almost fear, of reverence that is almost
worship. The first sight of those immense arches, so absolutely simple,
so indescribably majestic, with the lancets of the Five Sisters behind
them, is overwhelming. It is only gradually that memory returns, and
the great nave slowly fills with the processions of the past, with
the weddings and funerals and coronation pageants that have swept by,
century after century, to choir or chapter-house. Young Edward III.
and Philippa of Hainault were a comely pair when they were married
here in the presence of the Parliament and Council, surrounded by
the nobles of England and Scotland. Not very many years later their
little son was carried to his grave in the north aisle of the choir.
Much was spent in alms and masses, many pounds of wax were burnt, many
widows watched round the little coffin before William of Hatfield was
laid in this tomb where we see his effigy, a slender, boyish figure
lying very straightly under the high canopy. In the next century a
sinister scene took place here: Richard Crookback mourning for his
brother, coming here to hear a requiem sung, with his head full of
plots against the dead man's little sons. Very soon he was here again,
entering those splendid doors with the iron scrollwork, which lead
into the chapter-house where he was crowned for the second time--the
chapter-house that Pius II. described as "a fine lightsome chapel, with
shining walls and small, thin-waisted pillars quite round." "As the
rose is the flower of flowers," said the monks, "so is this the house
of houses."
[Illustration: YORK MINSTER.]
There are not very many notable tombs here, though there is much
illustrious dust. Here was buried the head of King Edwin of
Northumbria, who so "often sat alone by himself for a long time,
silent as to his tongue, but deliberating in his heart" whether he
should become a Christian. This Minster is in a sense the fruit of his
deliberations. There is no monument to him, nor to Earl Tostig of the
violent temper, whose body was carried here from Stamford Bridge; but
the founder of the present building lies in his robes under a canopy
in the south transept. We may see, too, in the Lady Chapel, the marble
tomb of Archbishop Scrope, the builder of Bolton Castle, who preached
a sermon in this Minster inciting the people to take up arms, and lost
his head in consequence. And near the altar of the same chapel is a
little black kneeling figure that deserves attention. It is a monument
to Frances Matthew, the wife of Tobie Matthew, Archbishop of York, and
the daughter of William Barlow, Bishop of Chichester. "She had four
sisters married to four bishops.... So that a bishop was her father,
an archbishop her father-in-law, she had four bishops her brethren,
and an archbishop her husband." Unless I am much mistaken she had also
an abbess for her mother, which was the strangest thing of all. There
was a William Barlow, at one time Bishop of St. David's, who is said to
have married an abbess as soon as the Reformation made it possible, and
had five daughters married to five bishops. Frances Matthew must surely
have been one of these. Tradition says that Bishop Barlow, who had many
unpleasant traits, stripped the lead from the Palace of St. David's
and dowered his daughters with it; but Frances must have been a baby,
if indeed she was born, when her father was guilty of this thievish
vandalism. She herself is described as being above her sex, and even
above the times--but indeed all the women who were buried in ages gone
by seem to have been superior to all the rest. She gave her husband's
library to the Minster.
Close to her mural monument is the largest window in England. There is
no building, I believe, that has so much ancient and beautiful glass as
this, and it is a miracle to be thankful for that it was not destroyed
in the last century, when the poor maniac set fire to the Minster
because he disliked the buzzing of the organ. The soft-toned window of
the Five Sisters is the loveliest of all.
But all these are modern things. Down in the crypt we shall find
ourselves in touch with the century of Paulinus and St. Chad and St.
Wilfrid, the three earliest Archbishops of York; for here is the
herringbone work of the first stone church, and here, they say, are
the pillars of the building that succeeded it and was destroyed by the
Danes. This is the spot on which the Roman temple stood, and the wooden
church where King Edwin was baptized, and the altar on which Ulphus
the Saxon laid his horn. This Ulphus was a prince in Deira, whose sons
were of a quarrelsome temper, and were likely, he thought, to fall out
over the division of his property after his death. So "he presently
took this course to make them equal." He carried his favourite
drinking-horn, his horn of ivory and gold, to York, and filling it
there he knelt before the altar of the Minster and drank the wine in
token that he endowed the church with all his lands for ever. That this
brought peace to his family I rather doubt; but the lands of Ulphus are
to this day in the possession of York Minster, and the horn of Ulphus
is to this day within its walls. If we go through this door in the
south aisle of the choir we may see it--an elephant's tusk, rich tawny
in colour, finely carved. It disappeared mysteriously at the time of
the Civil War, but somehow fell into the hands of Fairfax, whose son
returned it to the Minster. How it came to Fairfax is not recorded;
but is it not possible that he may have quietly taken possession of
it, knowing how unsafe it was in the hands of the Puritans, and have
told his son to give it back in less troubled times? Or was it perhaps
one of those relics which would have "irrecoverably perished in the
late wars" if Fairfax had not paid "that industrious antiquary, Mr.
Dodsworth," to collect them? We know that Fairfax had "a peculiar
respect" for antiquities, and that it was owing to his unceasing care
that the Minster suffered so little in the war.
It is not in a few days that York can be seen. Only those really know
the place who live within the enchanted walls; we should linger here
as long as possible, and return again and again. Yet those whose time
is limited will find that even a couple of nights spent at the justly
famous Station Hotel will enable them to see more than the Minster
without suffering from that sense of hurry that spoils pleasure.
York has not hurried. In the Museum Gardens, themselves a wonderful
museum, we may realise how many centuries she has taken to become what
she is. Here is a tower that was raised by the Romans. The date of it
is uncertain, but Mr. Wellbeloved tells us it was probably built when
the Conquering Legion came to Eboracum. This, says Gibbon, was at the
beginning of the second century; so this tower of many angles takes us
back to the time of Hadrian, to days before the Emperor Severus died
here in the palace that has altogether vanished, bidding his sons let
all their conduct tend to each other's good; days long before the death
of Constantius and the accession of Constantine the Great. It is not
true that Constantine was born in York, but it was here that he went
through his little performance of reluctant modesty when the soldiers
made him Emperor--weeping and spurring his horse while they pursued him
with the imperial robes.
In the same garden are the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey. The Benedictine
monks who founded this community came from Whitby, and were perhaps
the builders of the Norman apse we saw at Lastingham, where they
paused for a time on their way to York. It is easy to see that this
remnant of a most beautiful church was not of their raising: there is
nothing Norman here, nothing but the purest Gothic work. It was while
the earlier eleventh-century church was still standing that a strange
scene took place here; when the Archbishop of York with his retinue
clamoured long upon the abbey gates in vain, while the abbot refused to
open to him; then forced his way at last into the abbey and pronounced
an interdict--here where the grass grows under our feet--against the
abbot and his monks. The cause of all this commotion was that little
band of brethren who built the Abbey of Fountains with so much toil and
endurance. They were at that time monks of St. Mary's, and had appealed
to Archbishop Thurstan to reform their house. Abbot Geoffrey, however,
preferred to remain unreformed; and so the fiery prelate swept off with
the zealous thirteen and set them down in the wilderness beside the
Skell to live as austerely as they would. The Abbey of St. Mary, in
spite of the interdict, grew very great as well as beautiful.
[Illustration: ST. MARY'S ABBEY, YORK.]
Not only at the Dissolution, but far later, this monastery was horribly
ill-treated. Its stones have built a palace and a prison; they have
been used for mending, and have been made into quicklime. The palace
they built has to a great extent vanished, but the Tudor house that
stands near Bootham Bar--the red house with the arms of James I. over
the door--is either actually a part of it or was rebuilt from its
ruins. It was in that house that Strafford lived when he was President
of the Council of the North; both James I. and Charles I. stayed in it
when they came to York; and it was probably there that Henrietta Maria
lived for three months when she brought materials of war to the city.
There are other stones of St. Mary's still to be seen, by which we may
partly guess the glory that has departed. There are countless numbers
of them in this garden; every flower-bed is bordered with them, and the
lower part of the guesthouse, down there across the grass, is literally
stacked with statues and mouldings and bosses of wonderful richness.
This Hospitium is used as a museum. It is a little bewildering, with
its mingled associations of mediæval monks and Roman matrons. Here
are all the things that we are accustomed to see in collections of
Roman relics--pottery, tiles, jewellery, everything from a tesselated
pavement to a circus ticket. One thing there is, however, to which we
are not accustomed; a thing whose interest is rather painful, if not
morbid; a coil of a woman's hair, as bright and brown as if it had been
laid in its stone coffin only yesterday. The hair of poor Flavia or
Placida would be better buried, I think.
[Illustration: BOOTHAM BAR, YORK.]
The prison that was built from the stones of St. Mary's Abbey is on the
site of William the Conqueror's castle. It is still called the Castle,
but there is nothing left of the fortress except one round grey tower,
standing alone on a little hill. Its walls have been concerned with
many great deeds; much valour has defended it and much besieged it;
much English History has been made in the shadow of it. Yet Clifford's
Tower is generally remembered chiefly in connection with the wild scene
of horror that took place here at the time of Richard I.'s coronation,
when the Jews of York rushed to the castle for shelter, with their
ducats and their daughters, and were besieged by the mob. Here, where
the steps wind up between the tidy laurels, the mad crowd yelled and
battered on the walls, while the White Friar who led them shrieked:
"Down with the enemies of Christ!" Here within the tower, where the
grass is strewn with exquisite fragments of Gothic ornament--probably
from St. Mary's--the starving Jews were huddled with their families
till they grew desperate. They killed their wives and children, and
then they killed themselves. A few surrendered, begging for baptism,
converted by these strange methods; but they were allowed no baptism
but that of blood.
As we drive slowly through the streets of York, peering now at some
carved archway, now at some time-worn coat-of-arms, passing here under
the overhanging eaves of St. William's College, or there under the
lantern tower of St. Helen's, we feel that the life of the past is
still existing in this city, in some strange astral way, hidden within
the life of the present. The past is not merely a picturesque memory
here. Even if we had never heard the magic name of York, I think we
should feel that her streets were crowded with figures we could not
see.
[Illustration: STREET IN YORK.]
A modern note is struck as we drive out of the town past the
racecourse, and find to our pleasure that the splendid road is
"treated" with some preparation that makes it absolutely dustless. This
is the road by which the Stewart Kings approached York with so much
show and colour, and by which their supporters marched away, defeated,
but with honours of war. Like them, we are going to Tadcaster. The
middle of the bridge that spans the Wharfe at Tadcaster is the boundary
between the West Riding and the Ainsty, or County of York City; and
this is why it was the spot where the sheriffs welcomed the Kings of
England when they came to York. It was not on this actual bridge,
however, that Charles was met by the citizens; for this one was made
from the ruins of the castle early in the eighteenth century. Both
castle and bridge, it would seem, were useless by the time they had
passed from hand to hand in the Civil War. Tadcaster was an important
place then, an outpost of York; even as its predecessor, Calcaria, had
been an outpost to Eboracum.
A couple of miles beyond Tadcaster we pass through the village of
Towton. It was near here, in the fields that lie between the main
road and the river Cock, that the White Rose overcame the Red after
ten hours of "deadly battle and bloody conflict." It was on the night
before the actual battle that Lord Clifford and his company "were
attrapped or they were ware," and Clifford, having taken off his gorget
for some reason, was killed by an arrow "stricken into the throat."
"This end had he," says the chronicler, "which slew the young Earl of
Rutland kneeling upon his knees." If we leave the high-road for a few
minutes, turning to the right beyond Towton, we shall be crossing the
actual battlefield, the ground that was such a horrible medley of snow
and blood on that Palm Sunday when "both the hosts approached in a
plain field," the ground in which the Yorkists stuck the spent arrows
of the Lancastrians, "which sore annoyed the legs of the owners when
the battle joined." The falling snow, too, "somewhat blemished and
minished" their sight, and the end of it was that King Henry's men
turned and fled towards Tadcaster. We cannot see "the little broke
called Cocke" from this spot, but there on the right is the depression
in the fields through which it runs. So many men were "drent and
drowned" that day in the Cock that their comrades, it is said, crossed
the stream on their dead bodies, and even the river Wharfe was red with
blood. From this scene of slaughter, which "did sore debilitate and
much weaken the puysance of this realme," Edward IV. rode into York as
its master.
At Saxton we turn to the left and rejoin the high-road to Pontefract,
and after some miles of good going but cheerless scenery we cross the
Aire at Ferrybridge. It was this crossing of the Aire at Ferrybridge
that caused the death of Clifford the Butcher on the eve of Towton; for
he, "being in lusty youth and of frank courage," attempted to prevent
Edward of York from passing the river, and so was himself cut off
from the Lancastrian army. He did actually secure the bridge. Lord
Fitzwalter was keeping the passage for Edward "with a great number of
tall personages," but Clifford and his light-horse stole up to this
spot early in the morning "or his enemies were ware, gat the bridge,
and slew the keepers of the same." This was the beginning of the
carnage of Towton. Lord Fitzwalter, hearing the racket, rose from his
bed and hurried, poleaxe in hand, to join in the fray, but "before he
knew what the matter meant" he was killed. A few hours later Clifford,
too, was dead.
For the last few minutes we have been travelling on the road that
holds, perhaps, for road-lovers, more glamour in its name than any
other--the Great North Road. We have no time to think of the romance
of it, of the millions who have trodden its dust, of the gay-hearted
vagabonds or anxious kings who have passed this way, for we turn from
it too soon and take the road to Pontefract.