A Scotchman's Observations--The Prospect--The Anatomy of
Beverley--Historical Associations--The Brigantes--The Druids--
Austin's Stone--The Saxons--Coifi and Paulinus--Down with
Paganism--A Great Baptism--St. John of Beverley--Athelstan and
Brunanburgh--The Sanctuary--The Conqueror--Archbishop
Thurstan's Privileges--The Sacrilegious Mayor--Battle of the
Standard--St. John's Miracles--Brigand Burgesses--Annual
Football--Surrounding Sites--Watton and Meaux--Etymologies--
King Athelstan's Charter.
"On my first coming to England I landed at Hull, whose scenery
enraptured me. The extended flatness of surface--the tall trees loaded
with foliage--the large fat cattle wading to the knees in rich
pasture--all had the appearance of fairy-land fertility. I hastened to
the top of the first steeple--thence to the summit of Beverley Minster,
and wondered over the plain of verdure and rank luxury, without a heathy
hill or barren rock, which lay before me. When, after being duly sated
into dulness by the constant sight of this miserably flat country, I saw
my old bare mountains again, my ravished mind struggled as if it would
break through the prison of the body, and soar with the eagle to the
summit of the Grampians. The Pentland, Lomond, and Ochil hills seemed to
have grown to an amazing size in my absence, and I remarked several
peculiarities about them which I had never observed before."
This passage occurs in the writings of the late James Gilchrist, an
author to whom I am indebted for some part of my mental culture. I quote
it as an example of the different mood of mind in which the view from
the top of the tower may be regarded. To one fresh from a town it is
delightful. As you step on the leads and gaze around on what was once
called "the Lowths," you are surprised by the apparently boundless
expanse--a great champaign of verdure, far as eye can reach, except
where, in the north-west, the wolds begin to upheave their purple
undulations. The distance is forest-like: nearer the woods stand out as
groves, belts, and clumps, with park-like openings between, and
everywhere fields and hedgerows innumerable. How your eye feasts on the
uninterrupted greenness, and follows the gleaming lines of road running
off in all directions, and comes back at last to survey the town at the
foot of the tower!
Few towns will bear inspection from above so well as Beverley. It is
well built, and is as clean in the rear of the houses as in the streets.
Looking from such a height, the yards and gardens appear diminished, and
the trim flower-beds, and leafy arbours, and pebbled paths, and angular
plots, and a prevailing neatness reveal much in favour of the domestic
virtues of the inhabitants. And the effect is heightened by the green
spaces among the bright red roofs, and woods which straggle in patches
into the town, whereby it retains somewhat of the sylvan aspect for
which it was in former times especially remarkable.
Apart from its natural features, the region is rich in associations. The
history of Beverley, an epitome of that of the whole county, tempts one
to linger, if but for half an hour. It will not be time thrown away, for
a glimpse of the past may beneficially influence our further wanderings.
Here the territory of the Brigantes, which even the Romans did not
conquer till more than a hundred years after their landing in Kent,
stretched across the island from sea to sea. Here, deep in the great
forest, the Druids had one of their sacred groves, a temple of living
oaks, for their mysterious worship and ruthless sacrifices. Hundreds of
tumuli scattered over the country, entombing kysts, coffins, fragments
of skeletons, and rude pottery, and not less the names of streets and
places, supply interesting testimony of their existence. Drewton, a
neighbouring village, marks, as is said, the site of Druid's-town, where
a stone about twelve feet in height yet standing was so much venerated
by the natives, that Augustine stood upon it to preach, and erected a
cross thereupon that the worshipper might learn to associate it with a
purer faith. It is still known as Austin's Stone.
The Saxon followed, and finding the territory hollow between the cliffs
of the coast and the wolds, named it Hoell-deira-ness, whence the present
Holderness. It was in the forest of Deira that the conference was held
in presence of Edwin and Ethelburga, between the missionary Paulinus and
Coifi, the high-priest of Odin, on the contending claims of Christianity
and Paganism. The right prevailed; and Coifi, convinced by the arguments
he had heard, seized a spear, and hurrying on horseback to the temple at
Godmanham, cursed his deity, and hurled the spear at the image with such
fury that it remained quivering in the wall of the sacred edifice. The
multitude looked on in amazement, waiting for some sign of high
displeasure at so outrageous a desecration. But no sign was given, and
veering suddenly from dread to derision, they tore down the temple, and
destroyed the sacred emblems. Edwin's timorous convictions were
strengthened by the result, and so great was the throng of converts to
the new faith, that, as is recorded, Paulinus baptized more than ten
thousand in one day in the Swale. According to tradition, the present
church at Godmanham, nine miles distant, a very ancient edifice, was
built from the ruins of the Pagan temple.
St. John of Beverley was born at Harpham, a village near
Driffield--Deirafeld--in 640. Diligent in his calling, and eminently
learned and conscientious, he became Archbishop of York. In 700 he
founded here an establishment of monks, canons, and nuns, and rebuilt or
beautified the church, which had been erected in the second century; and
when, after thirty-three years of godly rule over his diocese, he laid
aside the burden of authority, it was to the peaceful cloisters of
Beverley that he retired. "He was educated," says Fuller, "under
Theodorus the Grecian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, yet was he not so
famous for his teacher as for his scholar, Venerable Bede, who wrote
this John's life, which he hath so spiced with miracles, that it is of
the hottest for a discreet man to digest into his belief." He died in
721, and was buried in his favourite church, with a reputation for
sanctity which eventually secured him a place in the calendar.
Was it not to St. John of Beverley that Athelstan owed the victory at
Brunanburgh, which made him sole monarch of Northumbria? The fame of the
"great battle" remains, while all knowledge of the site of Brunanburgh
has utterly perished, unless, as is argued in the Proceedings of the
Literary and Historical Society of Liverpool, it was fought near
Burnley, in Lancashire. It was celebrated alike in Anglo-Saxon song and
history. Greater carnage of people slain by the edge of the sword, says
the ancient chronicle, had never been seen in this island, since Angles
and Saxons, mighty war-smiths, crossed the broad seas to Britain.
Athelstan, in fulfilment of his vow, laid up his sword at the shrine of
St. John, and added largely to the revenues and privileges of the
church. A stone cross, erected on each of the four roads, a mile from
the minster, marked the limits of the sanctuary which he conferred. One
of these yet remains, but in a sadly mutilated condition.
When the Conqueror came and laid the country waste from Humber to Tees,
trampling it into a "horrible wilderness," he spared Beverley and the
surrounding lands, yielding, as was believed, to the miraculous
influence of the patron saint. One of his soldiers, who entered the town
with hostile intent, became suddenly paralysed, and smitten with
incurable disease; and a captain falling, by accident, as it seemed,
from his horse, his head was turned completely round by the shock. These
were warnings not to be disregarded; and Beverley remained a scene of
fertile beauty amid the desolation.
One of John's successors, Archbishop Thurstan, took pleasure also in
fondling Beverley. He cut the canal, a mile in length, from the river
Hull to the town: he gave to the inhabitants a charter of incorporation
conferring similar privileges to those enjoyed by the citizens of York,
whereby they were free from all fines and dues in England and Normandy;
had the right to pontage--that is, a toll on all the barges and boats
that passed under a bridge, as well as on the vehicles over it; and to
worry debtors as rigorously as they chose, without fear of retaliation.
In these anti-church-rate days it is surprising enough to read of the
power exercised by an archbishop in the twelfth century. Thurstan had
rule over the baronies of Beverley and five other places, with power to
try and execute criminals, and punish thieves without appeal. In all the
baronies the prisons were his; to him belonged the gibbet, pillory, and
cucking-stool in the towns; the assize of bread and beer; waifs and
wrecks of the sea; the right to 'prises' in the river Hull, diligently
enforced by his watchful coroners; besides park and free warren, and all
his land released from suit and service.
That taking of prises, by the way, was a standing cause of quarrel
between the burghers of Hull and Beverley. The right to seize two casks
of wine from every vessel of more than twenty tons burthen that entered
the river, one before, the other behind the mast, was a grievance too
much akin to robbery to be borne with patience. The merchants, wise in
their generation, tried to save their casks by discharging the cargoes
into smaller vessels before entering the port; but the coroners detected
the evasion, and took their prises all the same. Hence bitter quarrels;
in which the Beverley ships, dropping down the stream to pursue their
voyage, were many times barred out of the Humber by the men of Hull.
Once, when the archbishop appeared at the port to defend his right, the
mayor, losing temper, snatched the crosier from the dignitary's hand,
and, using it as a weapon, actually spilt blood with the sacred
instrument.
Never was the saint's influence more triumphantly felt than when
Thurstan's fiery eloquence roused the citizens of York to march against
David of Scotland. The Scottish king, to support Maud's claim against
Stephen, ravaged Northumbria with such ferocious devastation, that it
seemed but a repetition of the Norman havoc, and provoked the Saxon part
of the population to join in repelling the invader. After threatening
York, David moved northwards, followed by the Yorkshire army, which had
rendezvoused at the castle of Thirsk. To inspire their patriotism, a
great pole, topped by a crucifix, and hung with the standards of St.
John of Beverley, St. Peter of York, and St. Wilfred of Ripon, was
mounted on wheels, and placed where every eye could behold it. The
Scottish army was overtaken three miles beyond Northallerton, on the
22nd of August, 1138. The king, seeing the threefold standard from afar,
inquires of a deserter what it means; whereupon he replies, in the words
of the ballad:
"A mast of a ship it is so high,
All bedeck'd with gold so gay;
And on its top is a Holy Cross,
That shines as bright as day.
"Around it hang the holy banners
Of many a blessed saint:
St Peter, and John of Beverley,
And St. Wilfrid there they paint."
The king begins to have misgivings, and rejoins:
"Oh! had I but yon Holy Rood
That there so bright doth show,
I would not care for yon English host,
Nor the worst that they could do."
But in vain: the Yorkshire blood was up, no quarter was given, and ten
thousand Scotchmen bit the dust. So complete was the victory, that the
oppressed Saxons boasted of it as an indemnity for their former
sufferings; and the Battle of the Standard remains memorable among the
greatest battles of Yorkshire, and the Standard Hill among her
historical places.
Was it not the same St. John who afterwards appeared in full pontificals
to Stephen, and warned him to stay his purpose of building a castle at
Beverley? and was it not again his banner, saved from the fire when the
town and minster were burnt in 1186, which rendered Edward I. victorious
in his invasion of Scotland? Did not his tomb sweat blood on that famous
day of Agincourt, and the rumour thereof bring Henry V. and his lovely
Kate hither on a pilgrimage?
Then the chronicler tells us that one while the provost and burgesses,
resolving to enlarge and beautify the minster, brought together the best
workmen from all parts of England; and later, that the corporation
repaired the edifice with stones taken from the neighbouring abbey of
Watton. And so bitter became the quarrels between Hull and Beverley,
that some of the chief men encouraged the insurrectionary movements
known as the _Rising of the North_ and the _Pilgrimage of Grace_, with
no other purpose than to damage their rivals. The burgesses of Beverley,
not having the fear of the marshal before their eyes, were accused of
unfair trading: of keeping two yard measures and two bushels: unlawfully
long and big to buy with--unlawfully short and small to sell with. And
when in process of time the trade of the town decayed, evil-minded
persons looked on the change as a judgment. At present there is little
of manufacture within it besides that of the implements which have made
the name of Crosskill familiar to farmers.
Some old customs lingered here obstinately. The cucking-stool was not
abolished until 1750, which some think was a hundred years too soon.
Ducking-stool-lane preserves its memory. And down to 1825, an annual
match at football was played on the Sunday before the races, to which
there gathered all the rabble of the town and adjacent villages, who for
some years successfully resisted the putting down of what had become a
nuisance. Instead of abolishing the game, it would have been better to
change the day, and hold weekly football matches on the race-course.
From the tower-top the eye takes in the site of Leckonfield, where the
Percys had a castle; of Watton Abbey, where an English Abelard and
Heloise mourned and suffered; of the scanty remains of Meaux Abbey,
founded about 1140, by William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle. Concerning
this nobleman, we read that he had vowed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
but grew so fat as to be detained at home against his will. Feeling
remorse, he consulted his confessor, who advised him to establish a
convent of Cistercians. A monk from Fountains, eminent alike for piety
and skill in architecture, was invited to choose a site. He selected a
park-like tract commanding a view of the Humber. The earl, loving the
place, bade him reconsider his choice; but the monk, striking his staff
into the ground, replied, "This place shall in future be called the door
of life, the vineyard of heaven, and shall for ever be consecrated to
religion and the service of God." The abbey was built and tenanted by
cowls from Fountains, and flourished until floods and high tides wasted
the lands, and the Reformation destroyed the house.
But though one man may write a poem while "waiting on the bridge at
Coventry," another may hardly, without presumption, write a long chapter
on the top of a tower. Let me end, therefore, while descending, with a
scrap of etymology. Beaver lake, that is, the lake of floating islands,
sacred to the Druids, is said by one learned scribe to be the origin of
the name Beverley. Another finds it in the beavers that colonized the
river Hull, with lea for a suffix, and point to an ancient seal, which
represents St. John seated, resting his feet on a beaver. Did not the
wise men of Camelford set up the figure of a camel on the top of their
steeple, as a weathercock, because their river winds very much, and
camel is the aboriginal British word for crooked? Other scholars trace
Beverley through Bevorlac, back to _Pedwarllech_--the four stones.
And here, by way of finish, are a few lines from Athelstan's charter:
"Yat witen all yat ever been
Yat yis charter heren and seen
Yat I ye King Athelstan
Has yaten and given to St. John
Of Beverlike yat sai you
Tol and theam yat wit ye now
Sok and sake over al yat land
Yat is given into his hand."