Northern Manners--Cottingham--The Romance of Baynard Castle--
Beverley--Yorkshire Dialect--The Farmers' Breakfast--Glimpses
of the Town--Antiquities and Constables--The Minster--Yellow
Ochre--The Percy Shrine--The Murdered Earl--The Costly Funeral
--The Sister's Tomb--Rhyming Legend--The Fridstool--The Belfry.
Journeying from Hull to Beverley by 'market-train' on the morrow, I had
ample proof, in the noisy talk of the crowded passengers, that Yorkshire
dialect and its peculiar idioms are not "rapidly disappearing before the
facilities for travel afforded by railways." Nor could I fail to notice
what has before struck me, that taken class for class, the people north
of Coventry exhibit a rudeness, not to say coarseness of manners, which
is rarely seen south of that ancient city. In Staffordshire, within
twenty miles of Birmingham, there are districts where baptism, marriage,
and other moral and religious observances considered as essentials of
Christianity, are as completely disregarded as among the heathen. In
some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire similar characteristics prevail;
but rude manners do not necessarily imply loose morality. Generally
speaking the rudeness is a safety-valve that lets off the faults or
seeming faults of character; and I for one prefer rudeness to that
over-refinement prevalent in Middlesex, where you may not call things by
their right names, and where, as a consequence, the sense of what is
fraudulent, and criminal, and wicked, has become weakened, because of
the very mild and innocent words in which 'good society' requires that
dishonesty and sin should be spoken of.
If we alight at Cottingham and take a walk in the neighbourhood we may
discover the scene of a romantic incident. There stood Baynard Castle, a
grand old feudal structure, the residence of Lord Wake. When Henry VIII.
lay at Hull, he sent a messenger to announce a royal visit to the
castle, anticipating, no doubt, a loyal reception; but the lord instead
of pride felt only alarm, for his wife, whom he loved truly, was very
beautiful, and he feared for the consequences should the amorous monarch
set eyes on her beauty. He resolved on a stratagem: gave instructions to
his confidential steward; departed at dead of night with his wife; and
before morning nothing of the castle remained but a heap of smoking
ruins. The king, on hearing of the fire, little suspecting the cause,
generously sent a gift of two thousand pounds, with friendly words, to
mitigate the loss; but the wary lord having evaded the visit, refused
also to receive the money. And now, after lapse of centuries, there is
nothing left but traces of a moat and rampart, to show the wayfarer
where such an ardent sacrifice was made to true affection.
Even among the farmers, at whose table I took breakfast at the
_Holderness Hotel_, at Beverley, there was evidence that broad Yorkshire
is not bad Dutch, as the proverb says:
"Gooid brade, botter, and cheese,
Is gooid Yorkshire, and gooid Friese."
The farmers talked about horses, and, to my surprise, they ate but
daintily of the good things, the beef, ham, mutton, brawn, and other
substantial fare that literally burdened the table. Not one played the
part of a good trencherman, but trifled as if the victim of dinners
fashionably late; and still more to my surprise, when the conversation
took a turn, they all spoke disdainfully of walking. That sort of
exercise was not at all to their liking. "I ha'n't walked four mile I
don't know when," said one; and his fellows avowed themselves similarly
lazy. My intention to walk along the coast to the mouth of the Tees
appeared to them a weakminded project.
Beverley has a staid, respectable aspect, as if aware of its claims to
consideration. Many of the houses have an old-world look, and among them
a searching eye will discover unmistakable bits of antiquity. A small
columnar building in the market-place is called the market-cross; beyond
it stands a rare old specimen of architecture, St. Mary's church, the
scene of the accident recorded by the ancient rhymer:--
"At Beverley a sudden chaunce did falle,
The parish chirche stepille it fell
At evynsonge tyme, the chaunce was thralle,
Ffourscore folke ther was slayn thay telle."
Beyond the church, one of the old town gates, a heavy stone arch,
bestrides the street. At the other end of the town, screened by an
ancient brick wall, you may see the house of the Black Friars--more
venerable than picturesque--besides little glimpses of the middle ages
on your straggling saunter thither. Among these are not a few of that
sort of endowments which give occasion for abuses, and perpetuate
helplessness. And of noticeable peculiarities you will perhaps think
that one might be beneficially imitated in other towns. A CONSTABLE
LIVES HERE is a notification which you may read on sundry little boards,
topped by a royal crown, nailed here and there over the doors.
But the minster is the great attraction, rich in historical associations
and architectural beauty. The edifice, as it now appears, has all been
built since the destruction by fire, in 1138, of an older church that
stood on the same spot. The style is diverse, a not uncommon
characteristic of ancient churches: Early English at the east end,
Decorated in the nave, and Perpendicular in the west front and some
minor portions. This western front is considered the master-work, for
not one of its features is out of harmony with the others--a specimen of
the Perpendicular, so Rickman signifies, not less admirable than the
west front of York Minster of the Decorated. The effect, indeed, is
singularly striking as you approach it from a quiet back street. I found
a seat in a favourable point of view, and sat till my eye was satisfied
with the sight of graceful forms, multiplied carvings, the tracery and
ornament from base to roof, and upwards, where the towers, two hundred
feet in height, rise grandly against the bright blue sky.
However much you may admire yellow ochre on door-steps, door-posts, and
in the passages and on the stairs of dwelling-houses, you will think it
out of place when used to hide the natural colour of the masonry in a
noble church. For me, the effect of the interior was marred by the
yellow mask of the great pillars. The eye expects repose and harmony,
and finds itself cheated. Apart from this, the lofty proportions, the
perspective of the aisles, the soaring arches, the streaming lights and
tinted shadows, fail not in their power to charm. Your architect is a
mighty magician. All the windows, as is believed, were once filled with
stained glass, for the large east window was glazed in 1733 with the
numerous fragments that remained after the destroyers of ecclesiastical
art had perpetrated their mischief. The colours show the true old tone;
and the effect, after all, is not unpleasing.
The Percy shrine on the north side of the choir is one of the monuments
to which, after viewing the carved stalls and the altar screen, the
sexton will call your special attention. It is a canopied tomb of
exquisite workmanship, enriched with various carvings, figures of
knights and angels, crockets and finials; marking the resting-place, as
is supposed, of the Lady Idonea Clifford, wife of the second Lord Percy
of Alnwick. The Percys played a conspicuous part in Yorkshire history.
Another of the family, grandson of Hotspur, reposes, as is said, under a
tomb in the north transept. He was not a warrior, but a prebend of
Beverley. Then, at the east end, the Percy chapel, which has lost its
beauty through mutilation, commemorates Henry, the fourth Earl of
Northumberland, who was massacred at his seat, Maiden Bower, near
Topcliffe, in 1489. Authorized by Henry VII. to answer the appeal of the
leading men of his neighbourhood against a tax which levied one-tenth of
their property, by a declaration that not one penny would be abated, he
delivered his message in terms so haughty and imperious, that the chiefs
losing patience, brought up their retainers, sacked the house and
murdered the earl. The corpse was buried here in the minster; and the
funeral, which cost a sum equivalent to 10,000_l._ present value, is
described as of surpassing magnificence. Among the numerous items set
down in the bill of charges is twopence a piece for fourteen thousand
"pore folk" at the burial.
In the south aisle of the nave stands another canopied tomb, an altar
tomb of elegant form, covered by a slab of Purbeck marble, which appears
never to have had a word of inscription to tell in whose memory it was
erected. Neither trace nor record: nothing but tradition, and Venerable
Bede. St. John of Beverley had only to send a cruse of water into which
he had dipped his finger to a sick person to effect a cure. He once
restored the wife of Earl Puch, who lived at Bishop Burton, a few miles
distant. The lady drank a draught of holy water, and recovered forthwith
from a grievous sickness. She had two daughters who, overawed by the
miracle, entered the nunnery at Beverley, where they won a reputation
for holiness and good works. It was they who gave the two pastures on
which freemen of the town still graze their cattle. The rest of their
story is told in the ballad: it was Christmas-eve, says the rhymer, the
customary service had been performed in the chapel; the abbess and her
nuns slowly retired to pursue their devotions apart in their cells, all
save two, who lingered and went forth hand in hand after the others.
Whither went they? On the morrow they were missing; and
"The snow did melt, the Winter fled
Before the gladsome Spring,
And flowers did bud, the cuckoo piped,
And merry birds did sing:
"And Spring danced by, and crowned with boughs
Came lusty Summer on:
And the bells ring out, for 'tis the eve,
The eve of blessed St. John.
"But where bide they, the sisters twain?
Have the holy sisters fled?
And the abbess and all her nuns bewail'd
The sisters twain for dead.
"Then walk they forth in the eventide,
In the cool and dusky hour;
And the abbess goes up the stair of stone
High on the belfry tower,
"Now Christ thee save! thou sweet ladye,
For on the roof-tree there,
Like as in blessed trance y-rapt,
She sees the sisters fair.
"Whence come ye, daughters? long astray:
'Tis but an hour, they tell,
Since we did chant the vesper hymn,
And list the vesper bell.
"Nay, daughters, nay! 'tis months agone:
Sweet mother, an hour we ween;
But we have been in heaven each one,
And holy angels seen."
A miracle! cries the rhymer; and he goes on to tell how that the nuns
repair to the chapel and chant a hymn of praise, after which the two
sisters, kneeling, entreat the abbess for her blessing, and no sooner
has she pronounced _Vade in pace_, than drooping like two fair lilies,
two pale corpses sink to the floor. Then the bells break into a chime
wondrously sweet, rung by no earthly hand; and when the sisters are
laid in the tomb, they suffer no decay. Years passed away, and still no
change touched those lovely forms and angelic features:
"And pilgrims came from all the land,
And eke from oversea,
To pray at the shrine of the sisters twain,
And St. John of Beverley."
Another noteworthy object is King Athelstan's _Fridstool_, or chair of
peace; the centre of a sanctuary which extended a mile from the minster
in all directions. Any fugitive who could once sit therein was safe,
whatever his crime. When Richard II. encamped at Beverley, on his way to
Scotland, his half-brother, Sir John Holland, having aided in the
atrocious murder of Lord Ralph Stafford, fled to the _Fridstool_, nor
would he leave it until assured of the king's pardon. "The Countess of
Warwick is now out of Beverley sanctuary," says Sir John Paston, writing
to his brother in June, 1473--the days of Edward IV. The chair, hewn
from a single block of stone, is very primitive in form and appearance;
and as devoid of beauty as some of the seats in the Soulages collection.
Athelstan was a great benefactor to the church. You may see his effigy,
and that of St. John, at the entrance to the choir and over a door in
the south transept, where he is represented as handing a charter to the
holy man, of which one of the privileges is recorded in old English
characters:
#Als Fre make I The
As hert may thynke or Egh may see.#
Such a generous giver deserved to be held in honour, especially if the
eye were to see from the height of the tower, to the top of which I now
mounted by the narrow winding-stair. While stopping to take breath in
the belfry, you will perhaps be amused by a table of ringer's laws, and
a record of marvellous peals, the same in purport as those exhibited at
Hull. You can take your time in the ascent, for sextons eschew climbing,
at least in all the churches I visited in Yorkshire.