county towns, and many lesser towns still, were social centres. Only the
wealthier among the country squires and those interested in politics to
the extent of having a seat in the House visited London; the rest
resorted to their county town, in which they had their town-houses and
social circles. Those times are to be found reflected in the pages of
Jane Austen and other early novelists, who picture for us the snug
coteries that then flourished and the romances that ran their course
within the unromantic-looking Georgian mansions now either occupied by
local professional men or wealthy trades-folk, or else divided into
tenements. It was the era before great suburbs began to spring up around
every considerable town, to smother the historic in the commonplace; the
time before manufacturing industries arose to smirch the countryside and
to rot the stonework of ancient buildings with smoke and acid-laden air;
the days when life was less hurried than now. York, two days’ journey
removed from London, had its own society and a very varied one,
consisting of such elements as the Church, the Army, and the Landed
Interest, which last must also be expressed in capital letters, because
in those days to be a Landowner was a patent of gentility. Outside these
elements, excepting the dubious ones of the Legal and Medical
professions, there was no society. Trade rendered the keepers of
second-hand clothes-shops and wealthy manufacturers equally pariahs and
put them outside the pale of polite intercourse. Society played whist in
drawing-rooms; tradesmen played quoits, bowls, or skittles in grounds
attached to inns, or passed their evenings in convivial bar-parlours.
Yet York must have been a noted place for conviviality, if we are to
believe the old poet:—
York, York for my monie,
Of all the cities that ever I see,
For merry pastime and companie,
Except the citie of London.
And for long after those lines were written they held good. Not many
other cities had York’s advantages as a great military headquarters, as
well as the head of an ecclesiastical Province, and its position as a
great coaching centre to and from which came and went away many other
coaches besides those which fared the Great North Road was commanding.
Cross-country coach-routes radiated from the old cathedral city in every
direction; just as, in fact, the railways do nowadays. It is no part of
our business to particularise them, but the inns they frequented demand a
notice. Some of these inns were solely devoted to posting, which in this
broad-acred county of wealthy squires was not considered the extravagance
that less fortunate folks thought it. Chief among these was—alas! that
we must say _was_—the “George,” which stood almost exactly opposite the
still extant “Black Swan” in Coney Street. A flaunting pile of business
premises occupied by a firm of drapers now usurps the site of that
extremely picturesque old house which rejoiced in a sixteenth-century
frontage, heavily gabled and enriched with quaint designs in plaster, and
a yawning archway, supported on either side by curious figures whose
lower anatomy ended in scrolls, after the manner of the Renaissance. The
“George” for many years enjoyed an unexampled prosperity, and the
adjoining houses, of early Georgian date, with projecting colonnade, were
annexed to it. When it went, to make way for new buildings, York lost
its most picturesque inn, for the York Tavern, now Harker’s Hotel, though
solid, comfortable, and prosperous-looking, with its cleanly stucco
front, is not interesting, and the “Black Swan” is a typical redbrick
building of two hundred years ago, square as a box, and as little
decorative as it could possibly be. As for the aristocratic Etteridge’s,
which stood in Lendal, it may be sought in vain in that largely rebuilt
quarter. Etteridge’s not only disdained the ordinary coaching business,
but also jibbed at the average posting people—or, perhaps, to put it more
correctly, even the wealthy squires who flung away their money on posting
stood aghast at Etteridge’s prices. Therefore, in those days, when
riches and gentility went together—before the self-made millionaires had
risen, like scum, to the top—Etteridge’s entertained the most select, who
travelled in their own “chariots,” and were horsed on their almost royal
progresses by Etteridge and his like.
From the purely coaching point of view, the “Black Swan” is the most
interesting of York’s hostelries. To the York Tavern came the mails,
while the “Black Swan” did the bulk of the stage-coach business, from the
beginning of it in 1698 until the end, in 1842. It was here that the old
“York in Four Days” coaching bill of 1706 was discovered some years ago.
The house remained one of the very few unaltered inns of coaching days,
the stableyard the same as it was a hundred years or more since, even to
the weather-beaten old painted oval sign of the “Black Swan,” removed
from the front and nailed over one of the stable-doors.
York still preserves memories of the old coachmen; some of them very
great in their day. Tom Holtby’s, for instance, is a classic figure, and
one that remained until long after coaching came to an end. He died in
June 1863, in his seventy-second year, and was therefore, not greatly
beyond his prime when he drove the Edinburgh mail into York for the last
time, in 1842, on the opening of the railway. That last drive was an
occasion not to be passed without due ceremony, and so when the mail,
passing through Selby and Riccall, on its way to the city, reached
Escrick Park, it was driven through, by Lord Wenlock’s invitation, and
accompanied by him on his drag up to the “Black Swan” and to the York
Tavern. The mail flew a black flag from its roof, and Holtby gave up the
reins to Lord Macdonald.
“Please to remember the coachman,” said my lord to Holtby, in imitation
of the professional’s usual formula. “Yes,” replied Holtby, “I will, if
you’ll remember the guard.” “Right,” said that innocent nobleman, not
thinking for the moment that coachmen and guards shared their tips; “he
shall have double what you tip me.” Holtby accordingly handed him a £5
note, so that he reaped a profit of £2. 10s. on the business.
Holtby’s career was as varied as many of the old coachmen’s, but more
prosperous. He began as a stable-hand at the “Rose and Crown,”
Easingwold, and rose to be a postboy. Thence to the box of a
cross-country coach was an easy transition, and his combined dash and
certainty as a whip at last found him a place on the London and Edinburgh
“Highflyer,” whence he was transferred to the mail. During these years
he had saved money, and was a comparatively rich man when coaching ended;
so that although he lost some heavy sums in ill-judged investments, still
he died worth over £3,000. “Rash Tom,” as they called him, from his
showy style of driving, was indeed something of a “Corinthian,” and
coming into contact with the high and mighty of that era, reflected their
manners and shared their tastes. If the reflection, like that of a wavy
mirror, was not quite perfect, and erred rather in the direction of
caricature, that was a failing not found in Tom only, and was accordingly
overlooked. Moreover, Tom was useful. No man could break in a horse
like him, and nowhere was a better tutor in the art of driving. “If,”
said Old Jerry, “Tom Holtby didn’t live on potato-skins and worn’t such a
one for lickin’ folks’ boots, he’d be perfect.” “Old Jerry,” who
probably had some professional grudge against Holtby, referred to
potato-skins as well as to boot-licking in a figurative way. He meant to
satirise Holtby as a saving man and as an intimate of those who at the
best treated Jerry himself with obvious condescension. Jerry himself was
one of the most famous of postboys, and remained for long years in the
service of the “Black Swan.” The burden of his old age was the
increasing meanness of the times. “Them wor graand toimes for oos!” he
would say, in his Yorkshire lingo, talking of the early years of the
nineteenth century, and so they must have been, for that was the tail-end
of the era when all England went mad over Parliamentary elections, and
when Yorkshire, the biggest of all the counties, was the maddest.
Everybody posted, money was spent like water on bribery and corruption,
and on more reputable items of expenditure, and postboys shared in the
golden shower.
VII
THE most exciting of these Homeric election contests was the fierce
election for Yorkshire in 1807. At that time the huge county, larger
than any other two counties put together, returned only two
representatives to Parliament, and the City of York was the sole
voting-place. Yorkshire, roughly measuring eighty miles from north to
south, and another eighty from east to west, must have contained ardent
politicians if its out-voters appeared at the poll in any strength. But
if polling-places were to seek and voting the occasion of a weary
pilgrimage, at least the authorities could not be accused of allowing too
little time for the exercise of that political right. The booths
remained open for fifteen days. William Wilberforce had for years been
the senior member, and had hitherto held a secure position. On this
particular occasion the contest lay between the rival houses of
Fitzwilliam and Lascelles, Whigs and Tories respectively, intent upon
capturing the junior seat. Lord Milton, the eldest son of Earl
Fitzwilliam, and the Honourable Henry Lascelles, heir to the Earl of
Harewood, were the candidates. Lord Harewood expressed his intention of
expending, if necessary, the whole of his Barbados estates, worth £40,000
a year, to secure his son’s return, and equal determination was shown by
the other side. With such opponents, it was little wonder that Yorkshire
was turned into a pandemonium for over a fortnight. All kinds of
vehicles, from military wagons, family chariots, and mourning-coaches at
one extreme, to sedan-chairs and donkey-carts at the other, were pressed
into service. Invalids and even those _in articulo mortis_ were herded
up to the poll.
“No such scene,” said a Yorkshire paper, “had been witnessed in these
islands for a hundred years as the greatest county in them presented for
fifteen days and nights. Repose and rest have been unknown, unless
exemplified by postboys asleep in the saddle. Every day and every night
the roads leading to York have been covered by vehicles of all kinds
loaded with voters—barouches, curricles, gigs, coaches, landaus,
dog-carts, flying wagons, mourning-coaches, and military cars with eight
horses, have left no chance for the quiet traveller to pursue his humble
journey in peace, or to find a chair at an inn to sit down upon.”
As a result, Wilberforce kept his place, Viscount Milton was elected
second, and Lascelles was rejected. The figures were:—
Wilberforce 11,806
Milton 11,177
Lascelles 10,988
Only some thirty-four thousand voters in the great shire!
It was said that Earl Fitzwilliam’s expenses were £107,000 and his
unsuccessful opponent’s £102,000. Wilberforce, who in the fray only
narrowly kept at the head of the poll, was at little expense, a public
subscription which reached the sum of £64,455 having been made on his
behalf. A great portion of it was afterwards returned by him. He
afterwards wrote that had he not been defrauded of promised votes, his
total would have reached 20,000. “However,” said he, “it is unspeakable
cause for thankfulness to come out of the battle ruined neither in
health, character, or fortune.” It was in this election that a voter who
had plumped for Wilberforce and had come a long distance for the purpose,
boasting that he had not spent anything on the journey, was asked how he
managed it. “Sure enow,” said he, “I cam all d’way ahint Lord Milton’s
carriage.”
A story is told of a bye-election impending in Yorkshire, in which Pitt
had particularly interested himself. Just upon the eve of the polling he
paid a visit to the famous Mrs. B—, one of the Whig queens of the West
Riding, and said, banteringly, “Well, the election is all right for us.
Ten thousand guineas for the use of our side go down to Yorkshire
to-night by a sure hand.”
“The devil they do!” responded Mrs. B—; and that night the bearer of the
precious burden was stopped by a highwayman on the Great North Road, and
the ten thousand guineas procured the return of the Whig candidate. The
success of that robbery was probably owing to the “sure hand” travelling
alone. Had he gone by mail-coach, the party funds would have been safe,
if we may rely upon the _bona fides_ of the York Post Office notice,
dated October 30, 1786, which was issued for the reassurance of those
intending to travel by mail, and says: “Ladies and gentlemen may depend
on every care and attention being paid to their safety. They will be
guarded all the way by His Majesty’s servants, and on dark nights a
postillion will ride on one of the leaders.” The notice concluded by
saying that the guard was well armed. This was no excess of caution, or
merely issued to still the nerves of timid old ladies, for at this period
we find “safety” coaches advertised, “lined with copper, and secure
against bullets”; and recorded encounters with armed highwaymen prove
that these precautions were not unnecessary.
VIII
YORK MINSTER, although so huge and imposing a pile when reached, is not
glimpsed by the traveller approaching the city from the Selby route until
well within the streets, and only when Knavesmire is passed on the
Tadcaster route are its three towers seen rising far behind the time-worn
turrets of Micklegate Bar. In bulk, it is in the very front rank among
English cathedrals, but the flatness of its site and the narrow streets
that lead to the Minster Yard render it quite inconspicuous from any
distance, except from a few selected points and from the commanding eyrie
of the City Walls, whence, indeed, it is seen at its grandest. “Minster”
it has been named from time immemorial, but for no apparent reason, for
York’s Chapter was one of secular priests, and as the term “minster”
derives from “monasterium,” this is clearly a misnomer. But as the
larger churches were those in connection with monastic rule, it must have
seemed in the popular view that this gigantic church was rightly a
Minster, no matter what its government.
[Picture: York Minster, from the Foss]
It lies quite away from the tortuous streets by which the traveller
proceeds through York for the road to the North, and it is only when
nearly leaving the city by Bootham Bar that glimpses of its grey bulk are
seen, at the end of some narrow lane like Stonegate or Petergate, framed
in by old gabled houses that lean upon each other in every attitude
suggesting age and decay, or seem to nod owlishly to neighbours just as
decrepit across the cobble-stoned path. These be ideal surroundings. In
the ancient shops, too, are things of rarity and price, artfully
displayed to the gaze of unwary purchasers who do not know the secrets of
the trade in antiques and curiosities, and are quite ignorant of the fact
that they pay twice or thrice the value at such places as these for the
old china, the silver, the chairs, and bookcases of quaint design that
take their fancy. Only a narrow space prevents the stranger from butting
up against the Minster, at the end of these lanes, for here at York we
find no such wide and grassy Cathedral close as that of Winchester, or
those of Canterbury, Wells, or Peterborough. Just a paved yard,
extremely narrow along the whole south side and to the east, with a
broader paved space at the west front, and some mingled lawns and
pavements to the north, where dwell the Dean, the prebendaries, and
suchlike: these are the surroundings of the Minster, which render it
almost impossible to gain a comprehensive view of any part save the west
front.
The Minster—the Cathedral Church of St. Peter, to call it by its proper
title—is the fifth building on this site. First of all in the series was
the wooden chapel erected for the baptism of Edwin, the Saxon king, in
A.D. 627, followed by a stone church, begun by him in 628 and completed
eight years later by King Oswald, who placed the head of Edwin, slain in
battle by the heathen at Hatfield near Doncaster, here in the chapel of
St. Gregory. Thirty-five years later this second church was found by
Wilfrid the Archbishop to be in a state of decay, and he accordingly
repaired the roofs and the walls, which he rendered “whiter than snow by
means of white lime,” as we are told by contemporary chroniclers. In
point of fact, he whitewashed the cathedral, just as the churchwardens of
a hundred years ago used to treat our village churches, for which conduct
we have been reviling them for many years past, not knowing that as
whitewashers they could claim such distinguished kinship. About the year
741 this second building was destroyed by fire and was replaced by
another, completed in 780, itself burnt in 1069. The fourth was then
begun by Thomas of Bayeux, the first Norman archbishop, and completed
about 1080; to be in its turn partly demolished by Roger Pont l’Évêque,
who about 1170 rebuilt the choir on a larger scale. Following him came
Archbishop Gray, who rebuilt the south transept in its present form
between 1230 and 1241; the north transept and the central tower in its
original form being the work of John Romanus, sub-dean and treasurer from
1228 to 1256. To the son of the sub-dean, Archbishop Romanus, fell the
beginning of a new nave, which was commenced by him in 1291, but was not
completed until 1345, and is the existing one. All these rebuildings
were on a progressive scale of size and magnificence, and so by the time
they had been completed it happened that Archbishop Roger’s Late Norman
choir, which had replaced the smaller Early Norman one by Thomas of
Bayeux, was itself regarded as too small and mean, and so was pulled down
to make room for the existing choir, completed about 1400. Thus the
earliest architectural features of the existing Minster above ground are
the Early English transepts, and nothing remains of those vanished early
buildings save some dubious Saxon masonry and Norman walling in the
crypt.
The first impression gained of the exterior of York Minster—an impression
which becomes only slightly modified on further acquaintance—is that of a
vast, rambling, illogical mass of overdone ornament very much out of
repair and very disappointing to the high expectations formed. Nor is
the great central tower greatly calculated to arouse enthusiasm among
those who know that of Lincoln. An immense mass, whose comparative scale
is best seen from a distance, its severity of outline borders closely
upon clumsiness, a defect which is heightened by its obviously unfinished
condition and the clearly makeshift battlements that outrage the skyline
with an effect as of an armoured champion wearing feminine headgear. It
seems clear that the intention, either of the original architect of the
tower, in the Early English period, or of those who re-cased it, some two
hundred years later, was to carry it up another storey. The two western
towers belong to much the same period, the years from 1433 to 1474, and
have more than the usual commonplace appearance of the Perpendicular
style. They form part of the most completely logical west front in
England and almost the least inspired, excepting always that early
Perpendicular fiasco, the west front of Winchester Cathedral. But the
redeeming feature of York’s west front is the beautiful window which,
whether regarded from without or within, is one of the finest details of
the building, its tracery of the flowing Decorated period narrowly
approaching to the French Flamboyant style and resembling in its delicacy
and complicated parts the weblike design seen on the skeleton of a leaf.
A great portion of the Minster is in the Decorated style; not, however,
conceived in the inspired vein of the west window. The nave and
chapter-house cover the period of the sixty years during which Decorated
Gothic flourished, and making the round of the exterior we find its
characteristic mouldings and traceries repeated in a long range of seven
bays, interrupted by the beautiful compositions of north and south
transepts, entirely dissimilar from one another, but individually
perfect, and the most entirely satisfactory features of the exterior.
The architects of that period were more fully endowed with the artistic
sense than those who went before, or those who succeeded them, and their
works, and the more daring and ambitious, but something braggart, designs
of their successors, remain to prove the contention. Eastward, beyond
the transepts, extends the long, nine-bayed choir, the view of it
obscured from the north by the protruding octagonal chapter-house, but
well seen on the south, where the soaring ambition of its designers may
advantageously be compared with the more modest but better ordered art of
the unknown architect who built the south transept. The architects of
the choir would seem to have dared their utmost to produce the largest
windows with the smallest proportion of wall-space, and to have at the
same time been emulative of height. With these obvious ambitions, they
have succeeded to wonderment in rearing a building that is nearly all
windows, with an apparently dangerously small proportion of walling to
hold them together, but a building which has already survived the storms
of five hundred years structurally and essentially sturdy and unimpaired.
A great engineering feat for that time, rather than a masterpiece of
artistry, as those who stand by and compare south transept and choir,
visible in one glance, can see. That the perceptions of those who built
the choir were blunted is proved by the almost flat roof their ambition
for lofty walling has necessitated. With their side walls carried up to
such a height, abutting against the central tower, they could not obtain
the steep pitch of roof which is seen on the transepts, for a higher
pitch would have committed the architectural solecism of cutting above
the sills of the great tower windows, into the windows themselves. Thus
their lofty choir is robbed of half its effect and looks
square-shouldered and ungraceful by comparison.
An odd and entirely inexplicable device is found outside the four eastern
windows of the choir clerestory, north and south, in the placing of the
triforium passage outside the building, and the screening of it and the
windows with a great skeleton framework of stone. The reason of
this—whether it was a mistaken idea of decoration, or for some structural
strengthening purpose—is still to be sought. But the east end is an
equally crude and artless piece of work, almost wholly given up to the
east window; the small flanking windows looking mean and pinched by
comparison, and the abundant decoration characterised by stupid
repetition and want of invention. Here we see the Perpendicular style at
a very low ebb, and thus it is not altogether a disadvantage that the
road is so narrow at this point that a full view of the east end is
difficult to obtain.