Lancaster is a fine name, if it is but pronounced as it should be; but the traveller who may chance to be something of a connoisseur in fine old place-names is a little shocked to find the town locally known as “Lankystir” and the county as “Lankyshire.” The old stirring history of the place wilts and droops in that horrible pronunciation.

There is, after all, a very great deal in a name. A “Lancashire man” has a commercial sound: you detect the chink of coin in it, and it has, in truth, a modern appropriateness, for Lancashire is nowadays nothing if not commercial. Call him, however, a “Lancastrian,” and he becomes at once to the imagination an embattled warrior worthy of figuring, with all the circumstances of chivalry, in the Wars of the Roses.

There are still some few traces of the Roman antiquity of Lancaster, in the castle—the castle on the river Lune, that gave the place its name—but it is in Norman and mediÆval circumstances that it chiefly figures. The castle, the very beginning and origin of Lancaster, stands on a bold hill rising above the Lune in so convenient a situation for defence that Nature might almost have thoughtfully provided it for the purpose, and represents the stronghold built by Roger of Poictou, who held all Lancashire from William the Conqueror. Exactly how much of the once formidable Roman castrum he found here cannot be known, for the Normans were more intent upon conquering and securing their military successes with fortresses, than upon preserving antiquities. The cult of the antique was, in fact, not yet born; and when, about 1094, the great Roger began to build the grim keep that still remains the chief feature of Lancaster Castle, he spared nothing in the way of Roman altars and sculptured relics that might in any way serve his turn. To him and his builders they were relics of old, forgotten things, already dead and damned with Paganism and the Roman rule, some, six hundred years: as remote a period, for example, as from our day backwards to that of Edward the Second, which seems to ourselves no inconsiderable space of time.

So into the foundations of his immensely thick castle walls, and into the rubble core of them went many Roman inscribed stones that antiquaries would now dearly prize. Adrian’s Tower, with the Well Tower, was built originally in Roman times: the first so early as A.D. 125, and the Well Tower in A.D. 305, by Constantius Chlorus. Roger, the Norman, seems to have repaired and added to these. In Roman times the basement of Adrian’s Tower was a place where the corn for the garrison was ground. Later it became a bakery, and has since 1892 been a museum. In the excavations of 1890, an old floor and a considerable deal of rubbish were removed, to a depth of eight and a half feet, revealing the original level. In the course of these works a portion of the Roman millstone for grinding corn was discovered, and here it remains, in company with such diverse objects as a Roman altar, found in the foundations of the Shire Hall in 1797; some pikes captured from the Scottish rebels of 1715, forbidding festoons of fetters, and a “madman’s chair,” fitted with bolts and chains, as used at the time when the dark lower chambers of the keep served the purpose of county lunatic asylum, and, together with the fearful treatment accorded the lunatics, served only to confirm them in their lunacy. There are indeed some very fearful things in this old fortress, place of judgment, and prison of Lancaster Castle, which has been everything, from the home of kings down to debtors’ prison and county gaol.

As Shire Hall, Sessions House, Assize Courts, and gaol it still remains. Prominent among the gruesome sights of the castle are the dungeons in the Well Tower, one below the other, in the basement, where prisoners lay in darkness, secured to the floor by the iron rings that still remain. The roof of the upper dungeon bears witness to the method of its construction. The earth having been first spread with a strongly made layer of wattled osiers, liquid cement was then run over them, and in drying formed a compact mass.

The earth was then easily excavated beneath the ingeniously constructed roof. Some few of the osiers still remain in it.

More modern resources of justice are seen in the Drop Room, and in the Crown Court itself, where, at the back of the dock, may yet be seen the “Holdfast” and the branding-iron once used in branding malefactors with an M on the brawn of the left thumb. The operation was performed in Court and the success of it announced by the Head Gaoler in the formula, “A fair mark, my Lord!”

The tragical memories of Lancaster Castle range from mediÆval deeds of blood down to the executions of prisoners taken in the Jacobite rebellions, and to the merely sordid executions since it has been a gaol. From 1799 to 1889, when the castle ceased to be a gaol for the whole of Lancashire, no fewer than 228 criminals were hanged here.

He is a fortunate visitor who comes to Lancaster at the opening of Assize (unless he comes for trial), for old times live again in the pageant of the Judges’ reception by the Javelin-men, in their costume of blue and yellow, who escort them to their lodgings, and stand attendant in Court at the opening of the commission of Oyer and Terminer.

The impressive approach to Lancaster Castle is by way of John o’ Gaunt’s gateway, one of the many works added by that historic personage, Shakespeare’s “time-honoured Lancaster,” when his father, Edward the Third, created him Duke of Lancaster and raised Lancashire in consequence to the condition of County Palatine. The “time-honoured” one himself stands in effigy in a niche over the door-way. One would like to think the statue contemporary with him, but the guide-books, from which no derogatory secrets are hid, tell the disappointing tale that it dates only from 1822.

John o’ Gaunt is not to be avoided in Lancaster, castle or town. He is, indeed, to be found pretty well all over the country, for he was not merely Duke of Lancaster (although that was no small matter), but owned manors in almost every part of England. Moreover, from him sprang the House of Lancaster, the Red Rose, whose struggles with the Yorkist White Rose form so long and bloody a series of chapters in English history. Here, in Lancaster, from “John o’ Gaunt’s Chair,” the topmost turret of the castle keep, down to Horseshoe Corner, the great Duke is everywhere, and figures on picture-postcards, china, and silver spoons with a fine impartiality. Horseshoe Corner is an otherwise commonplace crossing of streets where, in the middle of the roadway, a horseshoe is inserted. It is the representative, at this long interval of time, of a shoe cast by John o’ Gaunt’s horse on the spot, and is renewed every seven years.

St. Mary’s Church, adjoining the castle, and separated from it only by that sad spot on the terrace where criminals were hanged in the times of public executions, is a fine bold structure of Perpendicular character, and possibly a good deal might be said of it in the architectural way; but it interests me chiefly as containing a memorial brass, now very much the worse for wear, to Thomas Covell, Governor of the castle forty-eight years, Coroner forty-six years, and six times Mayor of Lancaster. He died in 1639, aged seventy-eight, and is the subject of the following encomiastic verse:

He is represented standing, with hands clasped in prayer; a long robe, open in front, disclosing his tall military jack-boots.

No merrier fellow than the good Covell ever presided over dungeon and little-ease. Prisoners who were fortunate enough to be consigned to Lancaster Castle used it as a country house; and, so that they fairly gave their parole to return, went and came very much as they pleased. Some of them, that is to say. Popish recusants were sure of the best attention, and the Bishop of Carlisle, writing with some heat upon the subject, declared “they have liberty to go when and whither they list; to hunt, hawk, and go to horse-races.” Enjoying life himself, Covell was kindly disposed to others of like temperament. To Burton, however, one of the Puritans who was sent to Lancaster Castle to have his ears cropped, this high-spirited Governor was a “beastly man.”

“Drunken Barnaby” was not of that opinion. Doubtless the two drank many a noggin together; Barnaby writing him down—

John Taylor, the so-called “Water Poet,” who on his “Pennyless Pilgrimage” to Edinburgh and back levied toll on many men’s hospitable tables, tells how

and in short he was very much, in the amateur way, what his brother was professionally, who kept the “George” inn, in the town; and, strange to say, his wife was no less hospitable than himself.

We are not accustomed to think of Lancaster as a seaport, but it was once much more important in that way than Liverpool itself. To be sure, that was long ago, but not so very, very long: no further back, indeed, than the time of Charles the First, who, in levying what has been called the “objectionable” tax—but what tax is not, to the taxee?—of Ship Money, assessed Lancaster at £30, Liverpool at £25, and Preston at £20. What Manchester has laboriously and expensively done in its Ship Canal might more easily and cheaply be effected by Preston and Lancaster, lying nearer the sea: and doubtless a time will come—but with that we have no concern. Meanwhile there are salmon in the Lune, as wanderers along the riverside by Crook o’ Lune may discover, and Lancaster as yet knows nothing of great commercial docks. With modern developments, however, the Town Council has felt the need of a borough motto. “Time-honoured Lancaster” was suggested, but the Heralds’ College, sticklers for accuracy, pointing out that this referred to John o’ Gaunt and not to the town, suggested “Luck to Loyne” instead; and accordingly, “Luck to Loyne” it is.

The finest view of Lancaster is from the Skerton Bridge crossing the river Lune at a point where the castle and the old church of St. Mary group finely on the castle hill, and rightly form the most prominent objects, historical as they are. Unfortunately for the view, railway developments have done a good deal to destroy its majestic simplicity. A railway bridge of the most atrocious lattice-girder type, crossing from the point known by the curious name of “Green Ayre,” cuts the finest picture in half, and a number of sidings have abolished the verdant banks of the Lune for a good distance and form undesirable neighbours to the embowered beauty of Ladies’ Walk.

Skerton Bridge, which takes the road out of Lancaster to Carlisle, in 1900 replaced the old Lune Bridge built in 1788, which itself replaced a much older structure.

But the commercial spirit has seized historic Lancaster, and factories of various kinds thrust their chimneys into the sky. Oilcloth-making by hand was started in a small way many years ago, in an old shed rented by a journeyman house-painter, Williamson by name. The enterprise quickly prospered and grew into a wealth-producing wholesale business. The journeyman painter’s son is now Baron Ashton, much to the dissatisfaction of many jealous folk who gave his father a job in the days of small things. It is a romance of industry, and has helped to change the appearance of Lancaster, the quiet, grave country-town of yore. There was until recent years a bleak and barren upland known as Lancaster Moor, overlooking the town: it is now transformed, with trees and shrubs, as the “Williamson Park.” A huge new Town Hall is also a Williamson product, and overlooking all Lancaster and dwarfing the importance of the old castle itself, a mammoth bugbear of a thing called the “Ashton Memorial” arrests the eye from far and near, like a St. Paul’s dome on the hilltop. Entering Lancaster from the north, you can no more miss seeing it than you could miss seeing St. Paul’s from Ludgate Hill. American tourists ask, in their picturesque way, “Who in thunder built it?” and they are told that it is built to the honour and glory of the Williamson family. It arouses terrible thoughts of what may yet be in store for the historic places of Old England, when each ennobled maker of wall-papers, drain-pipes, and the like shall feel that the merits of his race demand advertising as prominently as his wares.