This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: The “Highflyer,” 1812]
_The_
GREAT NORTH ROAD
The Old Mail Road to Scotland
_By_ CHARLES G. HARPER
* * * * *
YORK TO EDINBURGH
* * * * *
_With_ 77 _Illustrations by the Author_, _and from_
_old-time Prints and Pictures_
[Picture: Old-time Coachman]
London:
CECIL PALMER
OAKLEY HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY STREET, W.C. 1
* * * * *
_First Published in_ 1901.
_Second and Revised Edition_—1922.
* * * * *
Printed in Great Britain by C. TINLING & Co., LTD.,
53, Victoria Street, Liverpool.
Also at London and Prescot.
* * * * *
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
YORK TO EDINBURGH
London (General Post Office) to— MILES
York 196¾
Clifton 198¼
Rawcliff 200¼
Skelton 201¼
Shipton 202¾
Tollerton Lanes 206½
Easingwold 210¼
White House 211¾
Thormanby 214¼
Birdforth 215
Bagby Common (“Griffin” Inn) 217½
Mile House 218½
Thirsk 220½
South Kilvington 222
Thornton-le-Street 223½
Thornton-le-Moor 224¾
Northallerton 229¼
Lovesome Hill 229¾
Little Smeaton (cross River Wiske) 231¾
Great Smeaton 232¾
High Entercommon 233¾
Dalton-on-Tees 236¾
Croft (cross River Tees) 237¾
Oxneyfield Bridge (cross River Skerne) 238
Darlington 241¾
Harrogate 243½
Coatham Mandeville 245¾
Aycliffe 246¾
Traveller’s Rest 248
Woodham 249¼
Rushyford Bridge 250½
Ferryhill 253
Low Butcher Race and Croxdale 255
Sunderland Bridge 255¾
Browney Bridge (cross River Wear) 256
Durham (cross River Browney) 260
Durham Moor (Framwellgate) 261
Plawsworth 263½
Chester-le-Street 266
Birtley 269
Gateshead Fell 271
Gateshead (cross River Tyne) 273½
Newcastle-on-Tyne 274½
Gosforth 277
Seaton Burn 280¾
Stannington Bridge (cross River Blyth) 284
Stannington 284½
Clifton 286½
Morpeth (cross River Wansbeck) 289¼
Warrener’s House 291¼
Priest’s Bridge 293¼
West Thirston (cross River Coquet) 299¼
Felton 299¾
Newton-on-the Moor 302½
Alnwick (cross River Aln) 308½
Heiferlaw Bank 310
North Charlton 314¾
Warenford 318¾
Belford 323
Detchant Cottages 325¼
Fenwick 328
Haggerston 331
Tweedmouth (cross River Tweed) 337½
Berwick-on-Tweed 338
Lamberton Toll 341
(ENTER SCOTLAND)
Greystonelees 343½
Flemington Inn and Burnmouth (cross River Eye) 344
Ayton 346
Houndwood 351¾
Grant’s House 354½
Cockburnspath 358
Dunglass Dene 359¼
Broxburn 363½
Dunbar 365
Belhaven 365¾
Beltonford 367½
Phantassie 370
East Linton 370½
Haddington 376
Gladsmuir 379¾
Macmerry 381½
Tranent 383¾
Musselburgh (cross North Esk River) 387¼
Joppa 389¼
Portobello 390
Jock’s Lodge 391½
Edinburgh 393
_Via_ FERRYBRIDGE, WETHERBY, AND BOROUGHBRIDGE.
Doncaster (cross River Don) 162¼
York Bar 164
Red House 167¼
Robin Hood’s Well 169¼
Went Bridge (cross River Went) 172¾
Darrington 174½
Ferrybridge (cross River Aire) 177½
Brotherton 178½
Fairburn 180
Micklefield 184
Aberford 186½
Bramham Moor 186½
Bramham 190¼
Wetherby (cross River Wharfe) 194¼
Kirk Deighton 195¼
Walshford Bridge (cross River Nidd) 197¼
Allerton Park 200¾
Nineveh 202½
Ornham’s Hall 204¼
Boroughbridge (cross River Ure) 206¼
Kirkby Hill 207¼
Dishforth 210½
Asenby 212¼
Topcliffe (cross River Swale) 212¾
Sand Hutton 217
Newsham 219
South Otterington 220¾
North Otterington 222¼
Northallerton 225¼
Edinburgh 389
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[Picture: Decorative heading]
PAGE
The “Highflyer,” 1812 Frontispiece
Old York: The Shambles 6
The Walls of York 9
York Castle: Clifford’s Tower 14
York Minster, from the Foss 33
All Saints’ Pavement 41
Jonathan Martin, Incendiary 45
York Minster on Fire 49
Bootham Bar 52
Skelton Church 53
The “Spotted Dog,” Thornton-le-Street 60
York Bar 63
Robin Hood’s Well 64
The Battlefield of Towton and surrounding country 70
Saxton 71
Towton Dale 72
Lead Chapel 74
Ruined Mill overlooking Aberford 76
Barwick-in-Elmete 77
Moor End 80
Nineveh 81
The Edinburgh Express, 1837 85
Croft Bridge 93
Sockburn Falchion 94
“Locomotion” 98
“The Experiment” 99
“I say, fellow, give my buggy a charge of coke, 101
your charcoal is too d—d dear”
The Iron Road to the North 105
Traveller’s Rest 108
Rushyford Bridge 109
Ferryhill: The Abandoned Road-Works 111
Merrington Church 113
Road, Rail, and River: Sunderland Bridge 115
Entrance to Durham 117
Durham Cathedral, from Prebend’s Bridge 121
The Sanctuary Knocker 125
Durham Cathedral and Castle from below Framwellgate 127
Bridge
Framwellgate Bridge 130
Penshaw Monument 132
The Coal Country 137
A Wayside Halt 138
Travellers arriving at an Inn 145
Modern Newcastle: from Gateshead 153
Old Newcastle: showing the Town Bridge, now 157
demolished
“The Drunkard’s Cloak” 162
“Puffing Billy” 165
The Gates of Blagdon Park 167
Morpeth 169
The Market-place, Morpeth 173
Felton Bridge 174
Alnwick 175
Alnwick Castle 185
Malcolm’s Cross 188
Bambrough Castle 192
The Scottish Border: Berwick Town and Bridge from 197
Tweedmouth
Lamberton Toll 203
Off to the Border 205
Cockburnspath Tower 213
The Tolbooth, Dunbar 215
Bothwell Castle 220
Haddington Abbey, from Nungate 221
Edinburgh, from Tranent 223
Musselburgh 228
Calton Hill 232
The “White Horse” Inn 235
“Squalor and Picturesqueness” 238
Canongate 239
Old Inscription, Lady Stair’s House 241
The “Heave Awa” Sign 242
A Tirle-pin 243
Greyfriars 245
The Wooden Horse 247
Stately Princes Street 249
Edinburgh, New Town, 1847, from Mons Meg Battery 251
Skyline of the Old Town 255
[Picture: Chapter Heading: The Great North Road]
I
AT last we are safely arrived at York, perhaps no cause for comment in
these days, but a circumstance which “once upon a time” might almost have
warranted a special service of prayer and praise in the Minster. One
comes to York as the capital of a country, rather than of a county, for
it is a city that seems in more than one sense Metropolitan. Indeed, you
cannot travel close upon two hundred miles, even in England and in these
days of swift communication, without feeling the need of some dominating
city, to act partly as a seat of civil and ecclesiastical government, and
partly as a distributing centre; and if something of this need is even
yet apparent, how much more keenly it must have been felt in those “good
old days” which were really so bad! A half-way house, so to speak,
between those other capitals of London and Edinburgh, York had all the
appearance of a capital in days of old, and has lost but little of it, in
these, even though in point of wealth and population it lags behind those
rich and dirty neighbours, Leeds and Bradford. For one thing, it has a
history to which they cannot lay claim, and keeps a firm hold upon titles
and dignities conferred ages ago. We may ransack the pages of historians
in vain in attempting to find the beginnings of York. Before history
began it existed, and just because it seems a shocking thing to the
well-ordered historical mind that the first founding of a city should go
back beyond history or tradition, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other equally
unveracious chroniclers have obligingly given precise—and quite
untrustworthy—accounts of how it arose, at the bidding of kings who never
had an existence outside their fertile brains.
When the Romans came, under Agricola, in A.D. 70, York was here. We do
not know by what name the Brigantes, the warlike tribe who inhabited the
northern districts of Britain, called it, but they possessed forts at
this strategic point, the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss, where
York still stands, and evidently had the military virtues fully
developed, because it has seemed good to all who have come after them,
from the Romans and the Normans to ourselves, to build and retain castles
on the same sites. The Brigantes were a great people, despite the fact
that they had no literature, no science, and no clothes with which to
cover their nakedness, and were they in existence now, might be useful in
teaching our War Office and commanding officers something of strategy and
fortification. They have left memorials of their existence in the names
of many places beginning with “Brig,” and they are the sponsors of all
the brigands that ever existed, for their name was a Brito-Welsh word
meaning “hill-men” or “highlanders,” and, as in the old days, to be a
highlander was to be a thief and cut-throat, the chain of derivative
facts that connects them with the bandits of two thousand years is
complete.
A hundred and twenty years or so after the Romans had captured the
Brigantes’ settlement here, we find York suddenly emerging, a
fully-fledged Roman city, from the prehistoric void, under the name of
Eboracum. This was in the time of the Emperor Septimus Severus, who died
in A.D. 211 in this _Altera Roma_, the principal city of Roman Britain.
For this much is certain, that, as Winchester was, and London is, the
capital of England, so was York at one time the chief city of the Roman
colony, the foremost place of arms, of rule, and of residence; and so it
remained until Honorius, the hard-pressed, freed Britain from its
allegiance in A.D. 410 and withdrew the legionaries. Two hundred years
is a considerable length of time, even in the history of a nation, and
much happened in Eboracum in that while. Another Roman emperor died
here, in the person of Constantius Chlorus, and his son, Constantine the
Great, whom some will have it was even born here, succeeded him. Both
warred with the Pictish tribes from the North; that inhospitable North
which swallowed up whole detachments; the North which Hadrian had
conquered over two hundred years before, and now was exhausting the
energies of the conquerors. Empire is costly in lives and treasure, and
the tragedy of Roman conquest and occupation is even now made manifest in
the memorials unearthed by antiquaries, recording the deaths of many of
the Roman centurions at early ages. Natives of sunny Italy or of the
south of France, they perished in the bleak hills and by the wintry
rivers of Northumbria, much more frequently than they did at the hands of
the hostile natives, who soon overwhelmed the magnificence of Eboracum
when the garrisons left. The civilisation that had been established
here, certainly since the time of Severus, was instantly destroyed, and
Caer Evraue, as it came to be called, became a heap of ruins. Then came
the Saxons, who remodelled the name into Eoferwic, succeeded in turn by
the Danes, from whose “Jorvic,” pronounced with the soft J, we obtain
Yorvic, the “Euerwic” of Domesday Book, and finally York. But whence the
original “Eboracum” derived or what it meant is purely conjectural.
Christianity, fulfilling Divine promise, had brought “not peace, but a
sword” to the Romans, and the Saxon king, Edwin of Northumbria, had not
long been converted and baptized at York, on the site of the present
Minster, before he was slain in conflict with the heathen. It was
Paulinus, first Archbishop of York, who had baptized Edwin in 625. Sent
to the North of England by Gregory the Great, as Augustine had already
been sent for the conversion of the South, it was the Pope’s intention to
establish two Archbishoprics; and thence arose centuries of quarrelling
between the Archbishops of Canterbury and those of York as to who was
supreme. York, indeed, only claimed equal rights; but Canterbury claimed
precedence. In the Synod of 1072 the Archbishop of York was declared
subordinate to Canterbury, but half a century later, in order to make
peace, Rome adjudged them equal. Even this did not still the strife, and
Roger Pont l’Évêque, the Archbishop of York, who was contemporary with
Becket, and aided the king in his struggle with that prelate, was
especially bitter in the attempt to assert in all places and at all
seasons this equality. He renewed the contention with Becket’s
successor, and provoked an absurd scene at the Council of Westminster in
1176, when, arriving late and finding the Archbishop of Canterbury
present and already seated, he sat down in his lap. The result was, that
the Council of Westminster immediately resolved itself into a faction
fight, in which my lord of York was jumped upon and kicked, for all the
world like a football umpire who has given an unpopular decision. Even
this did not settle either the Archbishop of York or the strife, and so
at last, in 1354, it was decreed that each should be supreme in his own
Province, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be “Primate of All
England,” while his brother of York should bear the title of “Primate of
England”; but whenever an Archbishop of York was consecrated he should
send to the Primate of All England a golden jewel, valued at £40, to be
laid on the Shrine of St. Thomas. “Thus,” says Fuller, in his inimitably
humorous manner, “when two children cry for the same apple, the indulgent
father divides it between them, yet so that he gives the better part to
the child which is his darling.” Rome has long since ceased to have part
or lot in the English Church, but this solemn farce of nomenclature is
still retained.
In such things as these does York retain something of its old pride of
place. Even its Mayor is a Lord Mayor, which was something to be proud
of before these latter days, now Lord Mayors are three a penny, and every
bumptious modern overgrown town is in process of obtaining one. The
first Lord Mayor of York, however, was appointed by Richard the Second,
and thus the title has an honourable antiquity.
In its outward aspect, York is varied. It runs the whole gamut, from the
highest antiquity to the most modern of shops and villas; from the
neatest and tidiest streets to the most draggle-tailed and out-at-elbowed
courts and alleys. From Clifton and Knavesmire, which is a great deal
more respectable and clean than its evil-sounding name would lead the
stranger to suppose, to the Shambles, Fossgate, and Mucky Peg’s Lane (now
purged of offence as Finkle Street) is a further social than geographical
cry, and they certainly touch both extremes. “Mucky Peg” and the knaves
of the waste lands outside the city are as historic in their way as Roman
York, which lies nine feet below the present level of the streets, and
for whose scanty relics one must visit the Museum of the Philosophical
Society in the grounds of the ruined St. Mary’s Abbey. In those grounds
also the only fragment of the Roman walls may be seen, in the lower stage
of the Multangular Tower, once commanding the bank of the river Ouse.
York is perhaps of all English towns and cities the most difficult place
to explore. Its streets branch and wind in every direction, without any
apparent plan or purpose, and thus an exploration of the Walls, of which
the city is, with reason, extremely proud, becomes the best means of
ascertaining its importance and the relative positions of Castle and
Minster. It is no short stroll, for, by the time the whole circuit is
made, a distance of nearly three miles has been covered. These medieval
walls form, indeed, the most delightful promenade imaginable, being built
on a grassy rampart and provided with a paved footpath running on the
inner side of the battlements, and thus commanding panoramic views within
and without the city.
[Picture: Old York: The Shambles]
Endeavour, by an effort of the imagination, to see the ground outside the
walls free from the suburbs that now spread far in almost every
direction, and you have the York of ancient days, little changed; for
from this point of view, looking down upon the clustered red roofs of the
city, with its gardens and orchards, the towering bulk of the Minster,
and the broad expanse of adjoining lawns, nearly all the signs of modern
life are hidden. Something of an effort it is to imagine the great
railway station of York away, for it bulks very largely outside the walls
near the Lendal Bridge; but the mediæval gates of the city help the
illusion, and hint at the importance of the place in those times.
Micklegate Bar, the chief of them, still bears the heraldic shields
sculptured hundreds of years ago, when kings of England claimed also to
be kings of France and quartered the _semée_ of lilies with the lions.
There are four arches now to this and three to the other bars, instead of
but the one through which both pedestrian and other traffic went in olden
times; but the side arches have been so skilfully constructed in the
mediæval style that they are not an offence, and are often, indeed, taken
on trust as old by those unlearned in these things. Stone effigies of
men-at-arms still appear on the battlemented turrets, and take on
threatening aspects as seen against the skyline by approaching
travellers. But did they ever achieve their purpose and succeed in
deceiving an enemy into the belief that they were really flesh and blood?
If so, they must in those days have been very credulous folk, to be
imposed upon by such devices.
Crossing the Ouse by Lendal Bridge, where chains stretched across the
river from towers on either bank formerly completed the circle of
defences, Bootham Bar is reached, spanning the exit from York along the
Great North Road. Still a worthy approach to, or exit from, the city, it
wore a yet more imposing appearance until towards the close of the
coaching age, when its barbican, the outworks with which every one of the
York bars was provided, was wantonly destroyed. Those who would recall
the ancient appearance of Bootham Bar and its fellows, as viewed from
without, have only to see Walmgate Bar, whose barbican still remains, the
only one left in the march of intellect and of “improvements.” Then it
presented a forbidding front to the North, and with the walls, which were
here at their highest and strongest, disputed the path of the Scots. The
walls have been broken down and demolished between the river and this
bar, and modern streets driven through, so that something of the grim
problem presented to a northern enemy is lost to the modern beholder; but
the view remains among the finest, and comprises the towers of the
Minster, peering in grandeur from behind this warlike frontal. The Scots
were here soon after Bannockburn. In 1319 an army of 15,000 came down,
and York would probably have fallen had it not been for these strong
defences, the finest examples of military architecture in England. As it
was, they found York too well cared for, and so, destroying everything
outside the walls and leaving it on their left, they endeavoured to pass
south by Ferrybridge. At Myton-upon-Swale, near Boroughbridge, they met
the English, hastily brought up by the Archbishop, and defeated them with
the utmost ease. But prudence was ever a Scottish characteristic, and
so, with much booty, they retreated into Scotland, instead of following
up their advantage.
[Picture: The Walls of York]
The walk along the walls from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar is glorious in
spring, with the pink and white blossoms of apple, pear, and plum-trees,
for here the well-ordered gardens of the ecclesiastical dignitaries are
chiefly situated. Midway, the wall makes a return in a south-easterly
direction. Monk Bar, whose name derives from General Monk, Duke of
Albemarle, was once known as Goodramgate, and the street in which it
stands still bears that name, supposed to be a corruption of “Guthram,”
the name of some forgotten Danish chieftain. At some distance beyond it,
the wall goes off due east, to touch the river Foss at Layerthorpe, where
that stream and the quagmires that once bordered it afforded an excellent
defence in themselves, without any artificial works. Thus it is that the
wall ceases entirely until the Red Tower is reached, on the outer bank of
the Foss, where it recommences and takes a bend to the south-west. From
this point to Walmgate Bar and the Fishergate Postern it is particularly
slight, the necessary strength being provided by the Foss itself, forming
a second line of defence, with the castle behind it. Thence we come to
the broad Ouse again, now crossed by the Skeldergate Bridge, but once
protected, as at Lendal, by chains drawn from bank to bank. On the
opposite bank, on the partly natural elevation of Baile Hill, stood a
subsidiary castle, and here the wall is carried on a very high mound
until it rejoins Micklegate Bar.
There are but few so-called “streets” in York. They are mostly “gates,”
a peculiarity of description which is noticeable throughout the Midlands
and the North. And queerly named some of these “gates” are. There is
Jubbergate, whose name perpetuates the memory of an ancient Jewish
quarter established here; Stonegate, the narrow lane leading to the
Minster, along which went the stone with which to build it; Swinegate, a
neighbourhood where the unclean beasts were kept, and many more. But
most curious of all is “Whipmawhopmagate,” a continuation of Colliergate.
This oddly named place is rarely brought to the notice of the stranger,
because it has but two houses; but, despite its whimsical name, it has a
real, and indeed a very old, existence. Connected with its name is the
institution of “Whip Dog Day,” a celebration once honoured on every St.
Luke’s Day, October 18, by the thrashing of all the dogs met with in the
city. According to the legend still current, it seems that in mediæval
times, while the priest was celebrating the sacrament at the neighbouring
church of St. Crux, he dropped the consecrated pax, which was swallowed
by a stray dog who had found his way into the building. For this crime
the animal was sentenced to be severely whipped, and an annual day was
set apart for the indiscriminate thrashing of his fellows. A more likely
derivation of the name of Whipmawhopmagate is from the spot having been
the whipping-place of religious penitents, or of merely secular
misdemeanants.
II
THE grim blackened walls of York Castle confront the traveller who
approaches the city by Fishergate, and lend a gloomy air to the entrance;
the more gloomy because those heavy piles of sooty masonry nowadays
encircle a prison for malefactors, rather than forming the defences of a
garrison, and keep our social enemies within, instead of a more chivalric
foe without. For over two hundred years York Castle has been an assize
court and a gaol, and the military element no longer lends it pure
romance. Romance of the sordid kind it has, this beetle-browed place of
vain regrets and expiated crimes, of dismal cells and clanking fetters;
but if you would win back to the days of military glory which once
distinguished it, your imaginary journey will be lengthy indeed. These
battlemented walls, enclosing four acres of ground, and with a compass of
over eleven hundred yards, were completed in 1856, and, with the prison
arrangements within, cost £200,000. If, as the poet remarks, “peace hath
her victories, no less renowned than war,” she also needs defences, as
much against the villainous centre-bit as against the foreign foe.
But there is still something left of the York Castle of old, although you
must win to it past frowning portals eloquent of a thousand crimes, great
and small, guarded by prison warders and decorated with notice-boards of
Prison Regulations. Clifford’s Tower, this ancient portion, itself goes
no farther back into history than the time of Edward the First; and of
the buildings that witnessed the appalling massacre of the Jews, in March
1190, nothing fortunately remains. It cannot be to the advantage of
sightseers that the blood-stained stones of that awful time should stand.
History alone, without the aid of sword or shattered wall, is more than
sufficient to keep the barbarous tale alive, of how some five hundred
Jews of all ages and sexes fled for protection to the Castle keep, and
were besieged there for days by Christians, thirsting for their blood.
Their death was sure: only the manner of it remained uncertain. The
wholesale slaughter of Jews at Lynn, Lincoln, and Stamford rendered
surrender impossible, and rather than die slowly in the agonies of
starvation they set the Castle on fire, husbands and brothers slaying the
women and children, and then stabbing themselves. Those few who feared
to die thus opened the gates as morning dawned. “Affliction has taught
us wisdom,” they said, “and we long for baptism and for the faith and
peace of Christ”; but even as they said it the swords and axes of
ruthless assassins struck them down. Christ was avenged, and,
incidentally, many a Christian debtor cried quits with his Jewish
creditor as he dashed out the infidel’s brains. It is not often given to
champions of causes, religious or political, to make one blow serve both
public and private ends, and those Christians were fortunate. At the
same time, sympathy with the murdered Jews may easily be overstrained.
They had but sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Trading and
following the traditional Jewish occupation of usury, they had eaten like
a canker into the heart of York. They had lived in princely style, and
knew how to grind the faces of their Christian debtors, whose lives they
had made miserable, and so simply fell victims to that revenge which has
been aptly described as “a kind of wild justice.”
Clifford’s Tower, standing where these scenes were enacted, is a roofless
shell, standing isolated on its mound within the Castle walls, and
obtains its name, not from its builder, but from Francis Clifford, Earl
of Cumberland, who made a doorway in it in the time of Charles the First.
It was ruined by explosion and fire in 1684, and so remains, shattered
and overgrown with trees and grass, a picturesque object that the eye
loves to linger upon in contrast with the classic buildings that occupy
the old Castle wards, and speak of crime and its penalties. He who would
bring back the crimes and ferocities of a hundred and fifty years or more
to the mind’s eye can have his taste gratified and the most vivid
pictures conjured up at the sight of such choice and thrilling relics as
the horn-handled knife and fork with which the bodies of rebels captured
in the ’45 were quartered; the leathern strap that Holroyd used for the
purpose of hanging his father from the boughs of a cherry-tree; a
fragment of the skull of Eugene Aram’s victim, Daniel Clark; the
curiously varied implements used by wives and husbands who murdered their
yoke-fellows, ranging from the unwifely sledge-hammer and razor wielded
by wives, to the knives and pokers chiefly affected by the husbands;
Jonathan Martin the incendiary’s impromptu flint and steel, and the bell
rope by whose aid he escaped from the Minster; and those prime
curiosities, Dick Turpin’s fetters. Even Turpin’s cell can be seen by
those who, after much diligent application to the Prisons Department of
the Home Office, procure the _entrée_ to the Castle; and in that “stone
jug,” as the criminals of old called their cells, the imaginative can
reconstruct their Turpin as they will. Many a better man than he has
occupied this gloomy dungeon, but scarce a worse.
[Picture: York Castle: Clifford’s Tower]
III
ONE of the most notorious of the criminals who were haled forth from this
condemned hold to end their days on Knavesmire was Richard Turpin, who
was hanged on the 17th of April, 1739. This cruel and mean ruffian,
around whose sordid career the glamour of countless legends of varying
degrees of impossibility has gathered, was the son of a small innkeeper
and farmer at the appropriately named village of Hempstead, in Essex.
The inn, called the “Crown,” almost wholly rebuilt, however, is in
existence to this day, and his baptismal record may yet be read in the
parish register:—“1705, Sept. 21, _Richardus_, _filius Johannis et Mariae
Turpin_.”
Apprenticed to a butcher in Whitechapel, he soon set up in business for
himself, obtaining his cattle by the simple and ready expedient of
stealing them. He married a girl named Palmer, whose name he afterwards
took, and after a career of house-breaking and cattle-lifting in Essex
and parts of Middlesex, in which he figured as one of a numerous gang who
never attacked or plundered unless they were armed to the teeth and in a
great numerical superiority, found the home counties too hot to hold him;
and so, after shooting his friend, one of the three brothers King, all
highwaymen, in the affray at Whitechapel in 1737, in which he escaped
from the Bow Street officers, he fled first into Essex and then into
Lincolnshire. Authorities disagree, both as to the particular King who
was shot, and on the question of whether Turpin shot him accidentally in
aiming at one of the officers, or with the purpose of preventing him
giving evidence disclosing his haunts. The legends make Tom King the
martyr on this occasion, and represent him as bidding Turpin to fly; but
the facts seem to point to Matthew being the victim, and to his cursing
Turpin for a coward, as he died. It is quite certain that a Tom King, a
highwayman, suffered at Tyburn in 1755, eight years later.
As for Turpin, or Palmer, as he now called himself, he settled at Welton,
near Beverley, and then at Long Sutton, Lincolnshire, as a gentleman
horse-dealer. He had not long been domiciled in those parts before the
farmers and others began to lose their stock in a most unaccountable
manner. The wonder is that no one suspected him, and that he could
manage, for however short a period, to safely sell the many horses he
stole. He even managed to mix freely in company with the yeomen of the
district, and despite his ill-favoured countenance, made himself not
unwelcome. But his brutal nature was the cause of his undoing.
Returning from a shooting excursion, he wantonly shot one of his
neighbour’s fowls, and on being remonstrated with, threatened to serve
one of his new friends the same. He was accordingly summoned at the
Beverley Petty Sessions, when it appeared that he had no friends to find
bail for him, and that he was, in point of fact, a newcomer to the
district, whose habits, now investigated for the first time, proved
suspicious. Eventually he was charged with stealing a black mare, blind
of the near eye, off Heckington Common, and was committed to York Castle.
From his dungeon cell he wrote a letter to his brother at Hempstead, to
cook him up a character. The letter was not prepaid, and the brother,
not recognising the handwriting, refused to pay the sixpence demanded by
the Post Office. On such trivial things do great issues hang! The
village postmaster happened to have been the schoolmaster who had taught
Turpin to write. He recognised the handwriting and read the letter. He
was a man of public spirit, and, travelling to York, identified the
prisoner as the Richard Turpin who had long been “wanted” for many
crimes.
After his trial and condemnation the farmers flocked in hundreds to see
him. His last days in prison were as well attended as a levee, and, to
do him justice, his courage, conspicuously lacking at other times, never
faltered at the last. He became one of the shows of that ancient city
for a time, but nothing daunted him. He spent his last days in joking,
drinking, and telling stories, as jovial, merry, and frolicsome as though
the shadow of the gallows was not impending over him. He scouted the
Ordinary, and suffered no twinges of conscience, but busied himself in
preparing a decent costume for his last public appearance. Nothing would
serve him but new clothes and a smart pair of pumps to die in. On the
morning before the execution, he gave the hangman £3. 10s. to be divided
among five men who were to follow him as mourners, and were to be
furnished with black hatbands and mourning gloves. When the time came
and he went in the tumbril to be turned off, he bowed to the ladies and
flourished his cocked hat as though he would presently see them again.
He certainly, when he had mounted the ladder, kept the people waiting for
the spectacle they had come to see, for he talked with the hangman for
over half-an-hour. But when the conversation was ended, he threw himself
off in the most resolute fashion, and had the reward of his courage, for
he died in a moment.
Thus died the famous Turpin, in the thirty-third year of his age. After
the execution his body lay in state for that day and the succeeding night
at the “Black Boar” inn in Castlegate. The following morning it was
buried in the churchyard of St. George’s, by Fishergate Postern, and the
evening afterwards it was dug up again by some of the city surgeons, for
dissection. By this time the mob had apparently agreed that this brutal
horse-stealer, who according to the contemporary _London Magazine_, was
“so mean and stupid a wretch,” was really a very fine fellow; and they
determined that his remains should not be dishonoured. Accordingly they
rescued the body and reinterred it, in black lime, so as to effectually
balk any further attempts on the part of the surgeons.
Dick Turpin, although his name bulks so largely in the legendary story of
the roads, was by no means the foremost of his profession. He was
brutal, and lacked the finer instincts of the artist. It could never,
for instance, have been in his nature to invite the wife of a traveller
he had just robbed to dance a coranto with him on the Common, as Duval
did on Hounslow Heath when the distant clocks were sounding the hour of
midnight. With Turpin it was an oath and a blow. Curses and violence,
not courtesy, were his methods. Therefore, it is with the less
compunction that we may tear away the romance from Richard Turpin and say
that, so far from being the hero of the Ride to York, he never rode to
York at all, except on that fatal morning when he progressed to York
Castle in chains, presently to be convicted and hanged for the unromantic
crimes of horse, sheep, and cattle stealing. He was little better than a
vulgar burglar and horse-thief. It was Harrison Ainsworth who made
Turpin a hero from such very unpromising material, and he, in fact,
invented not only the ride to York, but Black Bess as well. According to
the novelist, Turpin started from Kilburn, and came into the Great North
Road at Highgate, with three mounted officers after him. Thence he
turned into Hornsey, and so by the Ware route, the mare clearing the
twelve feet high toll-gate on the way without an effort. They always do
that in fiction, but the animal that could do it in fact does not exist.
At Tottenham (always according to the novelist, of course) the people
threw brickbats at the gallant Turpin. They “showered thick as hail, and
quite as harmlessly, around him,” and Turpin laughed, as, indeed, he had
an occasion to do, because the Tottenham people must have been the
poorest of marksmen. And so pursuers and pursued swept through Edmonton
and Ware, and quite a number of places which are not on our route. At
Alconbury Hill he comes into view again, and the inconceivable chase
proceeds until Black Bess expires, at sunrise, within sight of the
glorious panorama of York’s spires and towers.
There are very many who believe Ainsworth’s long rigmarole, and take
their ideas of that unromantic highwayman from his novel, but the
dashing, highsouled (and at times maudlin) fellow of those pages is
absolutely fictitious.
IV
AINSWORTH constructed his fictitious hero from a very slight basis of
fact. What a pity he did not rear his narrative on better lines, and
give the credit of the Ride to York to the man who really did it. For it
was done, and it was a longer ride by some twenty-six miles, at least,
than that recounted in the vulgar romance of _Rookwood_. It was, in
fact, a better ride, by a better man, and at a much earlier period.
John Nevison was the hero of this exploit. It was on a May morning in
1676, at the unconscionable hour of four o’clock, that he robbed a
traveller on Gad’s Hill, near Chatham, and, fired with the ambition of
establishing an alibi, immediately set off to ride to York. Crossing the
Thames from Gravesend to Tilbury, he rode on his “blood bay” to
Chelmsford, where he baited and rested his horse for half-an-hour.
Thence on to Cambridge and through the town without drawing rein, he went
through by-lanes to Fenny Stanton, Godmanchester, and Huntingdon, where
he took another half-hour’s rest; continuing, by unfrequented ways, until
York was reached, the same evening. Of course, he must have had several
fresh horses on the way. Stabling the horse that had brought him into
the cathedral city, he hastily removed the travel-stains from his person,
and strolled casually to the nearest bowling-green, where the Mayor of
York happened to be playing a game with some friends. Nevison took the
opportunity of asking him the time, and received the answer that it was
just a quarter to eight. That was sufficient for his purpose. By this
question and the reply he had fixed the recollection of himself and of
the time in the Mayor’s mind, and had his _alibi_ at need. Sure enough,
he needed it a little later, when he was arrested for another highway
robbery, and the Gad’s Hill traveller happened to be the one witness who
could swear to him. Nevison called his York witnesses, who readily
enough deposed to his being there on the evening of the day on which the
traveller swore he had been robbed by him near Chatham. This was
conclusive. No one conceived it possible for a man to have been in two
places so remote in one day, and he was acquitted. Then, when the danger
was past, his sporting instincts prevailed, and he told the story. He
became the hero of a brief hour, and Charles the Second, who dearly loved
a clever rogue, is said to have christened him “Swift Nicks.” If we
roughly analyse this ride we shall find that Nevison’s performance
amounted to about 230 miles in fifteen hours: a rate of over fifteen
miles an hour. To have done as much was a wonderful exploit, even though
(as seems certain) he had remounts at the houses of confederates. He
probably had many such houses of call, for he was one of a numerous band
of highwaymen whose headquarters were at Newark.
This escape served him for eight years longer, for it was in 1684 that
his career came to a close on Knavesmire, where he was hanged on the 4th
of May.
There was something of the Robin Hood in Nevison’s character, if we are
to believe the almost legendary stories told in Yorkshire of this darling
of the Yorkshire peasantry. He robbed the rich and gave to the poor, and
many are the tales still told of his generosity. Such an one is the tale
that tells of his being at a village inn, when the talk turned upon the
affairs of an unfortunate farmer whose home had been sold up for rent.
Among those in the place was the bailiff, with the proceeds of the sale
on him. Nevison contrived to relieve him of the cash, and restored it to
the farmer. Perhaps he was not so well-liked by the cattle-dealers along
the Great North Road, whom he and his gang robbed so regularly that at
length they commuted their involuntary contributions for a quarterly
allowance, which at the same time cleared the road for them and afforded
them protection against any other bands. Indeed, Nevison, or Bracy, as
his real name appears to have been, was in this respect almost a
counterpart of those old German barons on the Rhine, who levied dues on
the travellers whose business unfortunately led them their way. The
parallel goes no greater distance, for those picturesque miscreants were
anything but the idols of the people. Nevison was sufficiently popular
to have been the hero of a rural ballad, still occasionally heard in the
neighbourhood of his haunts at Knaresborough, Ferrybridge, York, or
Newark. Here are two verses of it; not perhaps distinguished by wealth
of fancy or resourcefulness of rhyme:—
Did you ever hear tell of that hero;
Bold Nevison, that was his name?
He rode about like a bold hero,
And with that he gain’d great fame.
He maintained himself like a gentleman,
Besides, he was good to the poor;
He rode about like a great hero,
And he gain’d himself favour therefore.
Yorkshire will not willingly let the fame of her Nevison die. Is not his
Leap shown, and is not the inn at Sandal, where he was last captured,
still pointed out? Then there is the tale of how he and twenty of his
gang attacked fifteen butchers who were riding to Northallerton Fair, an
encounter recounted in a pamphlet dated 1674, luridly styled _Bloody News
from Yorkshire_. Another memory is of the half dozen men who at another
time attempted to take him prisoner. He escaped and shot one of them,
also a butcher. Nevison and butchers were evidently antipathetic.
Released once on promising to enter the army, he, like Boulter, deserted.
That he could break prison with the best he demonstrated fully at
Wakefield; but his final capture was on a trivial charge. It sufficed to
do his business, though, for the prosecution were now prepared with the
fullest evidence against him and his associates, and their way of life.
They had secured Mary Brandon, who acted as housekeeper for the gang.
According to her story, they were John Nevison, of York; Edmund Bracy, of
Nottingham; Thomas Wilbere, of the same town; Thomas Tankard, vaguely
described as “of Lincolnshire”; and two men named Bromett and Iverson.
This last was “commonly at the ‘Talbott,’ in Newarke,” which was their
headquarters. The landlord of that inn was supposed to be cognisant of
their doings, as also the ostler, one William Anwood, “shee haveinge
often scene the said partyes give him good summs of money, and order him
to keepe their horses close, and never to water them but in the night
time.” They kept rooms at the “Talbot” all the year round, and in them
divided their spoil, which in one year, as the result of ten great
robberies, came to over £1,500. No other highwaymen can hold a candle to
this gang, either for their business-like habits or the success of their
operations.
V
THAT once dreaded mid-eighteenth century highwayman, Thomas Boulter,
junior, of Poulshot in Wiltshire, once made acquaintance with York
Castle. The extent of his depredations was as wide as his indifference
to danger was great. A West-countryman, his most obvious sphere of
operations was the country through which the Exeter Road passed; but
being greedy and insatiable, he soon exhausted those districts, and
thought it expedient to strike out for roads where the name of Boulter
was unknown, and along which the lieges still dared to carry their
watches and their gold. He came up to town at the beginning of 1777 from
his haunts near Devizes, and, refitting in apparel and pistols, gaily
took the Great North Road. Many adventures and much spoil fell to him in
and about Newark, Leeds, and Doncaster; but an encounter between
Sheffield and Ripon proved his undoing. He had relieved a gentleman on
horseback of purse and jewellery, and was ambling negligently away when
the traveller’s man-servant, who had fallen some distance behind his
master, came galloping up. Thus reinforced, the plundered one chased Mr.
Boulter, and, running him to earth, haled him off to the nearest Justice,
who, quite unmoved by his story of being an unfortunate young man in the
grocery line, appropriately enough named Poore, committed him to York
Castle, where, at the March assizes, he was duly found guilty and
sentenced to be hanged within fifteen days. Heavily ironed, escape was
out of the question, and he gave himself up for lost, until, on the
morning appointed for his execution, the news arrived that he might claim
a free pardon if he would enter his Majesty’s service as a soldier, and
reform his life. His Majesty badly wanted soldiers in A.D. 1777, and was
not nice as to the character of his recruits; and indeed the British army
until the close of the Peninsular War was composed of as arrant a set of
rascals as ever wore out shoe-leather. No wonder the Duke of Wellington
spoke of his army in Spain as “my blackguards.” But they could fight.
This by the way. To return to Mr. Thomas Boulter, who, full of moral
resolutions and martial ardour, now joined the first marching regiment
halting at York. For four days he toiled and strove in the barrack-yard,
finding with every hour the burdens of military life growing heavier. On
the fifth day he determined to desert, and on the sixth put that
determination into practice; for if he had waited until the morrow, when
his uniform would have been ready, escape would have been difficult.
Stealing forth at dead of night, without mishap, he made across country
to Nottingham, and so disappears altogether from these pages. The
further deeds that he did, and the story of his end are duly chronicled
in the pages of the _Exeter Road_, to which they properly belong.
The authorities did well to secure their criminal prisoners with irons,
because escape seems to have otherwise been easy enough. In 1761, for
instance, there were a hundred and twenty-one French prisoners of war
confined in York Castle, and such captives were of course not ironed.
Some of them filed through the bars of their prison and twenty escaped.
Of these, six were recaptured, but the rest were never again heard of,
which seems to be proof that the prison was scarcely worthy of the name,
and that the city of York contained traitors who secretly conveyed the
fugitives away to the coast.
The troubles and escapades of military captives are all in the course of
their career, and provoke interested sympathy but not compassion, because
we know full well that they would do the same to their foes, did fortune
give the opportunity. Altogether different was the position of the
unfortunate old women who, ill-favoured or crazy, were charged on the
evidence of ill-looks or silly talk with being witches, and thrown into
the noisome cells that existed here for such. Theirs were sad cases, for
the world took witchcraft seriously and burnt or strangled those alleged
practitioners of it who had survived being “swum” in the river close by.
The humour of that old method of trying an alleged witch was grimly
sardonic. She was simply thrown into the water, and if she sank was
innocent. If, on the other hand, she floated, that was proof that Satan
was protecting his own, and she was fished out and barbarously put to
death. Trials for witchcraft were continued until long after the
absurdity of the charges became apparent, and judges simply treated the
accusations with humorous contempt: as when a crazy old woman who
pretended to supernatural powers was brought before Judge Powell. “Do
you say you can fly?” asked the Judge, interposing. “Yes, I can,” said
she. “So you may, if you will then,” rejoined that dry humorist. “I
have no law against it.” The accused did not respond to the invitation.
So farewell, grim Castle of York, old-time prison of such strangely
assorted captives as religious pioneers, poor debtors, highwaymen,
prisoners of war, and suspected witches; and modern gaol whose romance is
concealed beneath contemporary common-places. Blood stains your stones,
and persecution is writ large on the page of your story. Infidel Jews,
Protestants, Catholics, and Nonconformists of every shade of
nonconformity have suffered within your walls in greater or less degree,
and even now the black flag occasionally floats dolorously in the breeze
from your roofs, in token that the penalty for the crime of Cain has been
exacted.
VI