THE DALES

In the motorist's life there are hours that can never be forgotten. It may be some hour of sunshine that haunts us, when the warm wind, we remember, was heavy with the scent of gorse or pungent with the stinging breath of the sea; or some hour when the road lay white and straight before us across a moor, and the waves of heather rolled away from us to the horizon in long curves of colour, and as we sped over the miles we seemed no nearer to the shore of the purple sea nor to the end of the white straight road; or it may be, perhaps, the hour of our gradual approach to some ancient city transfigured in the sunset, "soft as old sorrow, bright as old renown." But, whatever the scene may be, whether moor or fen, forest or shore, there are two elements which are always present in the motorist's memory of a happy run—a good surface, and a good engine.

No one could travel in Yorkshire, I think, without adding to his store of unforgotten hours. So great is the variety of scenery and interest that all must somewhere find the landscape that appeals to them. Some will remember those moors of Cleveland that have no visible limit, and some the many-coloured dales of the West Riding, and some the straight roads of the plain where the engine hums so gaily. Some will ever after dream of the day when they followed the course of the wooded Tees; others will dream of the distant towers of York or Beverley, or of the heights and depths of the Buttertubs Pass. And, to be quite frank, there are some to whom this last exciting dream will be rather of the nature of a nightmare.

In more ways than one Yorkshire is a good field for motoring. Throughout the greater part of the county there are few hedges, and the stone walls that take the place of these are low. The roads are wide and their surface good, except in unfrequented places. Now in Yorkshire the places that are unfrequented are very few indeed, and it is in connection with this fact that the motorist has the greatest advantage over every other kind of tourist. He can choose his own time for visiting Bolton or Fountains or the incomparable Rievaulx; he can see them when the dew is on the grass and the glamour of solitude is in the woods. To be alone with our emotions is what we all desire in the presence of wide spaces or stately aisles; and in this county, where there is so much beauty to be seen and so many to see it, those only who possess "speed as a chattel" can ever hope to be alone. It is almost impossible to lay too much stress on our advantages, as motorists, in this matter of securing peace.

Looking back upon a tour among the Yorkshire dales, I see that the keynote was struck at the very outset by the little town of Skipton, with its grey granite houses and slated roofs, its wide street and the castle above it, the ancient church and the tombs of the great. Such are a hundred Yorkshire villages and little towns. Each of them, it seems, is connected with some historic name. In the case of Skipton the name is Clifford. If the first builders of the castle and the church were not Cliffords, but de Romilles, it was the Cliffords who made both castle and church what they now are. It was a Clifford who built the long gallery and the octagon tower that we see beyond the grass of the great outer court; it was a Clifford who repaired all the other towers; a Clifford who devised the curious shell-pictures that line the guardroom; Cliffords who lived for centuries in the castle, and the few Cliffords that died in their beds who enriched the church with their tombs. Their motto, "DÉsormais," stands up against the sky in letters of stone above the round towers of their gateway, and their arms are carved above the inner door. The court on which this door opens, the "Conduit Court," as it is called, is the very core of Skipton, and one of the most romantic places I have ever seen. It would seize the dullest imagination—this little paved enclosure shut in on every side, the long flight of steps, the doorways with the crumbling carvings, the mullioned windows, the yew-tree that has seen so many centuries, the low stone seat with its shields, the Norman archway through which all the Cliffords have passed. Most of the feet that came this way awoke ringing echoes under the old arch, for the Cliffords were wont to be dressed in coats of mail. They were all mighty in war. The first armour-clad baron of the name, he who began the building of this court and died at Bannockburn, has clattered through this doorway; and after him the hero of CrÉÇy; and later on that other who fought for Henry V. and died at Meaux; and he who fell at St. Albans in the cause of Lancaster; and his son and avenger, called "the Butcher," who slew that "fair gentleman and maiden-like person," the young Earl of Rutland, and was himself slain at Towton; and the great sailor, Cumberland, who made nine voyages and fought the Spaniards for Queen Elizabeth. Here, too, when he came to his own at last, has stood that strange, romantic figure, the Shepherd Lord, who spent his youth in hiding among the northern hills, yet who, despite his love of solitude and learning, could not forget his long ancestry of fighting men, and himself fought on Flodden Field.

Among all these heroes the kings who have come through this doorway cut rather a sorry figure: Edward II., a sorry figure in any company; Richard III., a usurper here as in larger courts, playing the master while the true lord of Skipton was keeping sheep; and Henry VIII., who came here to take part in a wedding—a spectator for once. The bride on this occasion was his niece, Eleanor Brandon, the daughter of that love-match that was so great a failure, between the Duke of Suffolk and Mary, Princess of England and Queen Dowager of France. The wedding ceremony took place in the long gallery, which was built for the occasion by the bridegroom's father. Lady Eleanor's granddaughter, Lady Pembroke, was more closely connected with this spot where we are standing than any Clifford who came before her.

Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, who rustled through this archway many a time, no doubt, while the castle of her ancestors was being repaired at her charges, was a very busy woman. "Her house was a home for the young, and a retreat for the aged; an asylum for the persecuted, a college for the learned, and a pattern for all." She restored six castles, we are told, and built seven churches and two hospitals; she erected a monument to Spenser; she wrote some memoirs, too, with a record of all these things, and wherever she made her mark she stamped her initials. You can see them, very large and clear, if you look overhead upon the leaden spouting of this court, and you may see them again in the windows of the church. Anne Clifford's disposition was in no respect a retiring one, as we may gather from her famous answer to the Secretary of State who wished a nominee of his own to stand for her borough of Appleby. "I have been bullied by a usurper," she said, "and neglected by a Court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shall not stand."

Her work in restoring her castle of Skipton was no light undertaking, for it had lately endured a three years' siege by the army of the Parliament, and its seven towers must have been sadly battered before the day of its proud surrender. So defiant was that surrender that the garrison marched out through the great entrance gate beneath the motto of the Cliffords, "accordingley to the Honour of a Souldier, with colours flying, Trumpets sounding, Drums beating, Matches lighted at both ends, and Bullets in their Mouthes," while the commissioned officers took with them "their wearing apparell that was properley their owne in their Portmantles."

One other pious work did Anne perform. She made a magnificent tomb for her father the Admiral, third Earl of Cumberland—who fought the Armada with the Queen's glove in his hat—and she set upon it seventeen armorial shields, all gilt and painted, and a mighty black marble slab, and a list of honours. We may see it in the chancel of the church she repaired; this grey church that stands so picturesquely at the end of the long street, with the hollyhocks and daisies brightening its dark walls. Opposite to the grave of Lady Pembroke's father is that of her little brother, "an infant of most rare towardness in all the appearances that might promise wisdome"; and near to this is the splendid tomb, with restored brasses, of the first Earl of Cumberland. Such of the earlier Cliffords as found burial at all, including the Shepherd Lord, were laid in Bolton Abbey, whose monks were connected with this church and gave it the delicately carved screen that adds so much to its beauty.

It is sometimes said or hinted that Jane Clifford, the Rose of the World, was in some way connected with Skipton. This can hardly be the case, however, for the Fair Rosamund was born and spent her childhood on the banks of the Wye, and was laid in her temporary grave at Godstowe long before Edward II. gave this castle to the Cliffords who came after her.

From Skipton, where homely comfort may be found at the sign of the "Black Horse," an expedition should be made to Malham and its famous Cove, about twelve miles away; and if time allows, the run may be lengthened very enjoyably by rejoining the main road at Hellifield and skirting the moors as far as Clapham or Ingleton. In this way we shall see something of the craggy country of Craven, of which Camden wrote long ago: "What with huge stones, steep rocks, and rough ways, this place is very wild and unsightly." The huge stones and steep rocks are still there, but the way by which we go is very far from being rough; it is, on the contrary, such an exceptionally fine road that it seems almost a pity to leave it. Those who wish to see Malham, however, must turn off at Gargrave or Coniston.

Much has been written concerning Malham Cove, and many long adjectives used. Some writers have even declared themselves terrified by it; but these, I think, must have been of a timid temperament. It is the position of the place, no doubt, that has this overwhelming effect upon some minds: the sudden and unexpected presence of a great semi-circular cliff amid quiet undulating fields. If one could be carried blindfold to the foot of it I can imagine that it would be truly imposing; but it is visible from a distance as a grey scar on the face of the green hillside, and thus a good deal of its effect is lost in the course of a gradual approach. The best way to reach it is to walk across the fields from Malham village, following the course of the Aire, the stream that tunnels its way so strangely into the Cove. There is, it is true, a narrow and steep road which commands a fine view of it as a whole, but there is no room here for any but a small car to turn, and there is no doubt that the cliff can best be seen on foot.

This is true also of its more imposing neighbour, Gordale Scar. Says Wordsworth—

"Let thy feet repair

To Gordale chasm, terrific as the lair
Where young lions couch,"

and indeed, as the hill that approaches Gordale Chasm is nearly as terrific as the chasm itself, it is certainly best, if not imperative, to repair to it on thy feet. I believe that the tarn which lies upon the moor above Malham Cove, and long ago belonged to the monks of Fountains, may be reached by road, but I have not been there myself.

From Malham the way is narrow and surprisingly tortuous as far as Hellifield, but here we rejoin the splendid high road we left at Coniston, and speed along it through Ribblesdale to Settle. This small town has progressive ambitions. It "treats" the surface of its main road, it lights its streets by electricity, it has a fine new garage and a hotel that has the air of being nice. It is attractive, too, and pretty as well as praiseworthy, with hills behind it and a tiny weir above the bridge. Beyond it we pass the ebbing and flowing spring of Giggleswick in its stone basin by the wayside; climb the long hill under the grey crags of Giggleswick Scar, with a splendid backward view, and run down by wood and beck to Clapham, where the village cross stands close to the stream in the shadow of the trees. Not very far away is the famous cave, bristling with stalactites. After leaving Clapham we cross a wide heath, with the throttle open.

First and last this is a good run. On the left is the open country; on the right that wild land of huge stones and steep rocks that seemed to Camden so unsightly, in an age when the whole duty of a landscape was to smile. Clambering on the hillside in a cleft of the crags are the narrow, winding streets of Ingleton, and a viaduct spanning the valley. This valley, which is hardly wider than a gorge, is said to be well worth exploring; but neither its waterfall, Thornton Force, nor its caves of Yordas and Weathercote, can be seen by road. They hardly concern us here. It concerns us rather to return to Skipton, and thence to strike up into the heart of the hills.

Climbing the road above the castle we see how Skipton lies in a hollow among the moors. Behind us to the south is the BrontË country; Haworth and its graves far off beyond Airedale, and Stonegappe only three miles away. It was at Stonegappe that Charlotte reluctantly taught the little Sidgwicks, and no doubt made them suffer nearly as much as she suffered herself from her over-sensitive feelings. Embsay Moor appears on our right as we rise, and beyond it the savage outline of Rylstone Fell, with the ruined watch-tower of the Nortons, the foes of the Cliffords, showing desolately against the sky upon the topmost crag. Of the Nortons and their tower, and the daughter of their house, and of the White Doe of Rylstone and her weekly journey across the moors to the grave of the youth with whom the Nortons ended, Wordsworth has told us. We are running down now into "the valley small," where the house of the Nortons once stood, and here is the Church where

"the bells of Rylstone played

Their Sabbath music—God us ayde!"

At Threshfield we turn to the left and are in Wharfedale.

The names of all these Yorkshire Dales are very familiar in our ears. Wharfedale, Wensleydale, Swaledale, Teesdale—they are all words with a charm in them. And here, as we glide out of a wood, is Wharfedale spread before us; and we know at last that it is not only in the name that the charm lies.

The river flows below through the wide valley and winds away in shining curves into the far distance, past the bluff outline of Kilnsey Crag, past the dark belt of firs, till it vanishes among the folds of the jewelled hills. For in their liquid brilliancy the colouring of all these dales is that of gems, of amethyst and emerald, of sapphire and turquoise and opal; and the sunlight that floods them on the days when we are fortunate has the luminous gold of the topaz. As we drive under the overhanging crag of Kilnsey—"the highest and steepest that ever I saw," says Camden—and pass the tiny village where the sheep belonging to the Abbey of Fountains used to be shorn, the hills begin to close in, till, as we draw near Kettlewell, they rise round us so protectively that we seem to have entered a new and calmer world. Kettlewell itself is so calm as to appear asleep. Its grey houses, shadowed by trees and sheltered by the mighty shoulder of Great Whernside, are defended from every wind, and from every sound but the rippling of the Wharfe. Beyond this peaceful spot, where we cross the river, the road is rather rough, and after passing through pretty Buckden it is also extremely narrow. However, it leads to Hubberholme, and no more than that need be asked of any road.

At Hubberholme the river is still wide, and thickly strewn with stones; the slopes of the hills are very near and steep, and are clothed with bracken and fir-trees, and deeply cleft by tiny becks; masses of wild flowers fringe the banks with clouds of mystic blue; and beyond an old stone bridge stands the church, low and grey, with a paved pathway and a porch bright with crimson ramblers. The rough walls have stood in this lonely spot for many centuries. The door is open, and we may see for ourselves the strange state of the masonry within, whose builders, when they left it thus rugged and unplastered, little thought that its unfinished appearance would be tenderly cherished by the antiquarians of a future age. A rare rood-loft of oak divides the tiny chancel from the nave. This loft dates from the year 1558, the last year that the Old Faith reigned in England; and in this remote hiding-place among the hills it escaped the vigilant eye of Elizabeth and the destructive hands of the Puritans.

On returning to Kettlewell we shall find it worth our while to continue the journey down the dale on the road that passes through Conistone, for though it is not so good, as regards surface, as that on the right bank of the river, it commands a different—and a very lovely—series of views. From Grassington we cross to Linton, on the right bank, where there are some little falls whose prettiness is hardly striking enough to allure us from our way; and at Burnsall we should keep to the same side of the stream rather than follow the public conveyances to the left bank. Horse-drawn travellers may well be excused for shirking the hill above Burnsall; but few gradients have any terrors for us, and the backward view of Wharfedale from the high hillside is more beautiful than anything we have yet seen in Yorkshire. The two roads meet near Barden Tower, the beloved retreat of the Shepherd Lord.

Henry, the tenth Lord Clifford, was a very small boy when his father, "the Butcher," lost his estates, his cause, and his life, on the blood-red grass of Towton. It was not without reason that John Clifford was surnamed "the Butcher." It was in vain that young Rutland knelt to him for mercy on Wakefield Bridge, "holding up both his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear." "By God's blood," snarled Clifford, "thy father slew mine, and so will I do thee and all thy kin!" And he plunged his dagger into the boy's heart. "In this act," says the historian, "the Lord Clifford was accounted a tyrant and no gentleman. With his hands still dyed with the son's blood he savagely cut off the head of the dead father, the busy, plotting head of Richard, Duke of York, and carried it, crowned with paper, 'in great despite and much derision,'" to the Lancastrian Queen. "Madam, your war is done," he cried, "here is your King's ransom!" Margaret of Anjou, for all her manly ways, became rather hysterical at the hideous sight, laughing violently with pale lips; and Clifford's triumph was short. While he lay with an arrow through his throat upon the field of Towton—which we shall see later on—his little son was hurried away to a shepherd's hut in the north, where in the course of twenty-five years or so on the hillside he learnt more than the tending of sheep. He became the gentlest of his line, a lover of learning, a watcher of the skies; and though at last Skipton came back to him, and Brougham, and Pendragon, and many another castle, he lived here quietly in this simple tower above the wooded Wharfe, befriending the poor, reading his books, and now and then reading the stars as well, with his friends the monks of Bolton.

"And ages after he was laid in earth,
The good Lord Clifford was the name he bore."

His descendant, the notable Lady Pembroke, whose initials are so conspicuous at Skipton, expended some of her energy here at Barden. This was one of the six castles she restored, and over the door we may read the inscription she placed there according to her habit, with all her names and titles recorded at length, and a reference to a complimentary text about "the repairer of the breach."

Those who wish to see the famous Strid—and none should miss the sight—may leave their cars by the wayside at a point not very far from Barden Tower; but this is not the course I recommend. The Bolton woods are beautiful beyond description, and it is only by walking or driving through them from the Abbey to the Strid, or even to Barden Tower, that one can fully enjoy their ferny slopes and serried stems, and the little shining streams that slip through them to the Wharfe. George Eliot and George Lewes once spent a whole day wandering together along these paths, and we might follow in their footsteps very happily, I think. Those who prefer to drive must hire carriages, for motors are not admitted to the woods; but the existence of a very nice little hotel at Bolton Bridge makes everything easy.

By one means or another the Strid must be seen. Here the Wharfe is contracted into a narrow cleft, an abrupt chasm between low masses of rock; and the angry river, suddenly straitened in its course, has in its convulsions bitten into the stone till it is riddled with a thousand holes and hollows. When the river is low it is possible to leap across from rock to rock. This is the leap that Alice de Meschines' boy attempted but failed to achieve so many years ago, when the hounds he held in leash hesitated to follow him, and so dragged him back into the torrent. "I will make many a poor man's son my heir," said his mother; and the priory that her parents had founded at Embsay was moved by her to Bolton, and greatly enriched in memory of the drowned Boy of Egremond. Here is the stone from which he leapt, they say, and here the stone he never reached, and both are polished by the feet of those who have been more successful. This legend—and I fear the unkinder "myth" would be the more accurate word—has prompted several poets to make verses, but has signally failed to inspire them.

All that is left of Bolton Priory is before us when we reach the Cavendish Memorial. Close to this spot, though hidden from the road, is the log hut known as Hartington Seat, the point of view whence the ruin looks its loveliest. We are at the edge of a wooded cliff. The Priory lies far below us in its level graveyard, framed in trees; the river sweeps away from our feet, and after curving thrice, disappears into the blue haze of the hills. Between the churchyard and the foot of the red cliffs beyond the Wharfe lies the regular line of the monks' stepping-stones, by which for many centuries, probably, the congregation of the faithful came from the hills to their devotions; and came, too, on other occasions, laden with fruit or game for the hospitable table of the prior. Do not go to Bolton on a bank holiday, nor, if you can help it, in August, lest you should find as many people as were there in the days of its splendour, when the canons and the lay-brethren and the men-at-arms and the thirty servants and the unnumbered serfs and the frequent guests made it a stirring place. Yet it is always possible to find an early hour when there is peace in the ruined choir, where somewhere in the shadow of the arcaded walls the dust of the Shepherd Lord lies under the grass. Bolton was sold to the Shepherd's son, the first Earl of Cumberland, at the time of the Dissolution, when the building of the west tower was brought to a sudden standstill, and the nave, the parish church, was separated by a wall from the choir, the monks' church, which would be needed no more. There stands the tower, still unfinished; and here is the nave, now, as then, a parish church, where for seven hundred years without interruption, it is said, services have been held Sunday by Sunday. The beauty of the interior, unfortunately, is not great. The Early Victorian Age has left its fatal stamp upon it. It was not till forty years ago that the walls were cleansed of whitewash; and in 1851 a large sum of money was mis-spent at the Great Exhibition in acquiring some dreadful glass.

The motorist's route from Bolton Bridge to Harrogate is undoubtedly the moorland road by Blubberhouses. The contour-book describes it as rough and steep; but the steepness is nowhere very severe, and the surface is now excellent, while the moors have their usual charms—charms not only for the artist, though these are appealing enough, but special charms for the motorist too, the delight of an unfenced road and a wide country. Not that this road lies altogether on the moors. There are woods here and there, and soft, green beds of bracken, and slopes of massive rock; and presently we pass the great reservoir of the Leeds waterworks. Then the country opens out again, and we have a series of fine wide views till Harrogate appears below us, occupying a considerable proportion of the landscape.

Harrogate is exactly what one would expect it to be: a place of large hotels and fine shops, a place whose ideals are comfort and prosperity. Those who like to motor round a centre—a plan which has many advantages—could hardly find a better base for their operations.

"The great merit of Harrogate," wrote George Eliot, "is that one is everywhere close to lovely open walks." Our field has widened since her day, but Harrogate's great merit is still its merit as a centre. In this respect it is superior even to York, though in itself not worthy to be named with that incomparable city. To the west, within easy distance, are Nidderdale and Wharfedale; to the north are Ripon, Fountains, and Jervaulx, with Middleham and even Wensleydale for the enterprising; to the south is Kirkstall Abbey on the outskirts of Leeds. Byland and Rievaulx may be seen in a single day's drive, and only twenty-one miles away is York itself.

Harrogate is so entirely, so aggressively modern, so resolute to let bygones be bygones, that one learns with something of a shock how it came by its name. Harrogate, it appears, means the Soldiers' Hill on the Road. The soldiers who lived on the hill were Roman: the road was the Roman road through the forest of Knaresborough. Except for this faint hint of an earlier and more strenuous life, the history of Harrogate is the history of its "Spaw." These crowded acres were a bare, uninhabited common at the end of the sixteenth century, when Captain Slingsby, wandering one day across the Stray, was led by the tewits to a spring that cured him of his ills, which had hitherto yielded only to the waters of Germany. He set a roof over the precious spot, and so this spring became the fons et origo of modern Harrogate. And the Stray, though now in the heart of a large town, is still uninhabited, still common-land; for a century after the discovery of the Tewit Well, when hotels were already thick upon the surrounding ground, an Act of Parliament was passed by which two hundred acres of land were presented for ever to the people of Harrogate, to serve for the daily walks of those who drank the waters.

At Knaresborough, only three miles further on, we are in a very different world, the world of old houses and older tales, of monarchs and saints, of William the Conqueror and the proud de Stutteville, of Richard, king in name but not in deed, and of Oliver, king in deed but not in name—an inspiring world, one would think. The first view of the town, too—the river, and the high, unusual bridge, and the red houses on the hillside, and above them the castle that had once so proud a crown of towers—seems to promise much. Looking at that fragment of a fortress we remember those who have owned it; the de Burgh who built it; the de Stutteville who fought in the Battle of the Standard; Piers Gaveston, who is better forgotten; de Morville, murderer of Beckett, hiding here from justice; Queen Philippa, whom we are glad to remember for any reason; John of Gaunt; Charles I. And we remember Richard II., a prisoner in the one tower that still stands, alone with his humiliating memories.

This one glimpse of the castle and its past, however, is all that Knaresborough can give us of romance. It is almost best to ask no more, for a nearer view of the crumbling keep will leave us very sad. The path that leads to it, the path that took de Morville to safety and Richard to prison, is neatly asphalted, and lighted with gas-lamps on stone bases, which the local guide-book describes as "ornamental." Hard by the door through which the sad king passed from his shame at Westminster, and went forth again to the mystery of Pontefract, stands a penny-in-the-slot machine. A custodian will show us the guardroom and its relics, and even the dungeon; but we must be careful to look at them in the right order, or we shall be rebuked. The wolf-trap must be seen before the Conqueror's chest, and Philippa's chest before the armour from Marston Moor. By this time the glamour has faded. Even the fine view from the castle rock must be inspected—inspected is the right word—from nicely painted seats, placed at regular intervals in the shelter of clipped evergreens.

The most satisfactory place in Knaresborough is the Old Manor beside the river, where the original "roof-tree" round which the house was built still grows up through the rooms, and would be taller if a too zealous workman had not aspired to "make it tidy." A great deal of beautiful furniture has been gathered in the panelled rooms, including the sturdy and simple oak bedstead in which Oliver Cromwell slept when he was staying in the house that faces the Crown Hotel, in the upper part of the town. Perhaps the bed was brought here when Oliver's lodging was pulled down and rebuilt, as happened some time ago. The floor of his room was carefully preserved; that floor on which the landlady's little girl, peeping through the keyhole at "this extraordinary person," saw him kneeling at his prayers. It was in this town that he gathered his troops to meet the Scottish invasion, and from hence that he marched out, by way of Otley, Skipton, and Clitheroe, to defeat the Duke of Hamilton at Preston. The siege of the castle was not his work: Fairfax had taken it by assault some years earlier. Cromwell had sad memories in connection with Knaresborough, for it was somewhere in its neighbourhood that his second boy, Oliver, was killed. "I thought he looked sad and wearied," said a contemporary who met him just before the battle of Marston Moor, "for he had had a sad loss—young Oliver had got killed to death not long before, I heard; it was near Knaresborough."

To see the Dropping Well we must cross the river by bridge or ferry, and walk along a pretty path under the beeches. Here, as everywhere in Knaresborough, disillusion dogs our steps. This beautiful curiosity of nature, this great overhanging rock, worn smooth by the perpetual dripping of the water, framed in moss and ferns, has been made into a "side-show," with a railing, an entrance fee, and a row of bowler hats, stuffed parrots, and other ornaments in process of petrifaction. On the other side of the river is St. Robert's Chapel. Here, too, the world is too much with us.

Leland, that stout traveller, who "was totally enflammid with a love to see thoroughly al those partes of this opulente and ample reaulme ... and notid yn so doing a hole worlde of thinges very memorable," tells us how Robert Flower, the son of a man "that had beene 2 tymes mair of York," came to these rocks by the river Nidd "desiring a solitarie life as an hermite." He made himself this chapel, "hewen owte of the mayne stone"; and he seems to have had some persuasive power of goodness or wisdom that turned his enemies into friends. "King John was ons of an il-wille to this Robert Flour," yet ended by benefiting him and his, an unusual developement in the case of King John; and de Stutteville, who lived up at the castle, had actually set out to raid the hermitage, suspecting it to harbour thieves, when he too, persuaded by a vision or otherwise, suddenly became the hermit's friend. This tiny sanctuary, eight or nine feet long, with its altar and groined roof and recesses for relics, all wrought in the solid rock, would be a place to stimulate the imagination if it were not that the surroundings and the guide are such as would cause the strongest imagination to wilt.

Some say that the black slab of marble which is now a memorial to Sir Henry Slingsby in the parish church once formed the altar-top in St. Robert's Chapel; others say it came from the Priory, and was raised there in honour of the saint who "forsook his fair lands" and caused the Priory's foundation. The slab lies in the Slingsby chapel, and records that Sir Henry was executed "by order of the tyrant Cromwell." Carlyle tells us that this Slingsby, "a very constant Royalist all along," was condemned for plotting the betrayal of Hull to the Royalists.

The road from Knaresborough to Ripon follows the valley of the Nidd as far as Ripley. This village has the air of being a feudal survival. Its cottages with their neatness and their flowers, its HÔtel de Ville, and even the "treated" surface of its excellent road, all bear the stamp of a close connection with the castle whose park gates are at the corner. In the sixteenth century the village of Ripley was under the eye of a very masterful lady. It was to this castle that Oliver Cromwell, tired from fighting on Marston Moor, came in search of rest. Rest, however, was denied him. His hostess, whose husband was away, had no sympathy with fatigue that came from resisting the King's Majesty, and so poor Oliver—"sad and wearied," as we know, even before the battle—spent the night on a chair in the hall, while Lady Ingilby, seated opposite to him with a couple of pistols in her hands, kept her relentless eye upon him till the morning. When he rode away she told him it was fortunate for him that he had been so tractable. I think this fierce lady must have been agreeable to Oliver's grim humour.

The approach to Ripon is pretty, by a road shaded with trees. Above the town rises the cathedral, massive and stately if not superlatively beautiful. Though it is not one of our largest cathedrals, its history is immense.

Even St. Wilfrid's seventh-century church was not the first that stood here, for before his remote day Eata had founded a monastery that was hardly built before the Danes burnt it. Indeed, the monastery was destroyed so often—by Danes, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and Scots in turn—that every style of architecture, from Saxon to Perpendicular, is represented in the various restorations. There are even, I believe, in the crypt and chapter-house, fragments of Wilfrid's own church, among them being the curious slit called Wilfrid's Needle, which has been "mighty famous," as Camden said, for a great many centuries. The saint himself was mighty famous in his day, as he well deserved to be. Even still we know a good deal about him, through Bede and others: how, when he was a poor and ignorant boy of fourteen, "not enduring the frowardness of his stepmother, he went to seek his fortune," and was brought to the notice of Queen Eanfled, "whom for his wit and beauty he was not unfit to serve"; and how she sent him to Lindisfarne, where, "being of an acute understanding, he in a very short time learnt the psalms and some books"; and how he refused a wife in France; and was presented by King Alfred of Deira with a monastery at Rhypum, here on this very hill; and was consecrated at CompiÈgne in a golden chair carried by singing bishops; and how he converted the people of Bosham by teaching them to fish with eel-nets, so that "they began more readily at his preaching to hope for heavenly goods"; and how he won the day in the great controversy at Whitby, and finally died as an archbishop and was buried at the south end of the altar here at Ripon. He was a very human saint, and much beloved. His church was destroyed by Edred, but his monastery grew in power. The most beautiful part of the present building is the Early English west front, which dates from the reign of Henry III.

Ripon is altogether charming, and still does homage very prettily to its patron, King Alfred, who made it a royal borough. He it was who ordained that every night a horn should be blown by the wakeman, and that any one who was robbed between the blowing of the horn and the hour of sunrise should be repaid by the townsfolk. From his day to ours each night at nine o'clock the men of Ripon have heard the horn—three long, penetrating blasts before the town hall and three before the wakeman's house. Several centuries ago the wakeman became the mayor, and now he blows the horn by deputy. "Except ye Lord keep ye Cittie," are the words on the town hall, "ye wakeman waketh in vain"; and not far away, at one corner of the market-square, is a pretty old gabled house bearing this legend: "1604. In thys house lived a long time Hugh Ripley, ye last Wakeman and first Mayore of Rippon."

Yet it is not these links with the beginnings of our history, with Wilfrid the Saxon saint and Alfred the Saxon king, that draw so many people to Ripon. Ripon has a greater attraction than these. Only a few miles away is Fountains Abbey.

When approaching Fountains the motorist may feel very thankful that a few additional miles on the road are of little importance to him. By choosing the longer way, through the village of Studley Royal, he will certainly save himself a considerable walk and may possibly secure the unspeakable blessing of solitude. The walk through the park from the main entrance is, I know, regarded as one of the chief beauties of the place, with its Temple of Fame, and its Surprise View, and its little cascades; but except for the view of the Abbey, which is lovely, these artificial prettinesses are more appreciated by those who come forth on "an expedition" than by those who really wish to seize and keep something of the spirit of the place. The distant abbey seen from the east is part of a beautiful landscape, a satisfaction to the eye, a picturesque incident in the long glade; but those who approach it from the west come upon it suddenly in all its vastness, close at hand, and realise, probably for the first time, something of the splendour of the old monasteries.

Here—in this long line of doorways, in this enormous church which the choir of birds still fills with sacred music, this cloister-garth and chapter-house with the rich archways, these stairs and domestic buildings, wall beyond wall and room beyond room—here truly was a power to make a monarch jealous! It is no wonder that Yorkshire, crowded as it was with monasteries, thought a strength like theirs might pit itself against the strength of the king, and rose in protest against the Dissolution; it is no wonder that the king's agents could not find enough chains in the country to hang the prisoners in. If this vast skeleton is so magnificent, of what sort was the actual life! Close your eyes for a moment to it all, and think of the beginnings of it.

Think of those thirteen monks, Prior Richard and his brethren from St. Mary's at York, hungering for a more perfect fulfilment of their vows, who came here long ago, when this green sward was "overgrown with wood and brambles, more proper for a retreat of wild beasts than for the human species." Like wild beasts they lived, with no shelter but the trees and no food but herbs and leaves. They worked with their hands by day, and kept their vigils by night, "but of sadness or of murmuring there was not one sound," says the monk who wrote their story, "but every man blessed God with gladness." They lived under the thatched yews till they had raised a roof for themselves, but even when that was accomplished they were often on the point of starvation. One day when all the food they had was two loaves and a half, a beggar asked for bread. "One loaf for the beggar," was Abbot Richard's decree, "and one and a half for the builders. For ourselves God will provide." The cartload of bread which arrived immediately afterwards as a gift from a pious knight was the cause of much thankfulness among the monks, but of little surprise.

As the years passed, lands and legacies made the monastery rich. And so at last this splendid fabric rose—a triumph of the spirit over circumstances, a monument to those long-buried monks whose toils and sufferings are built into the mighty nave, though surely they never dreamed of such power and wealth as we are forced to dream of as we stand amid this mass of broken walls, now green with moss and weeds, but once the heart of a huge organism. It is a monument, too, to many who came after the brave thirteen: to Abbot Huby, who built the tower and is said to be buried near it; to John of Kent, who gave us the bewildering beauty of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, one of the most exquisite things ever wrought in stone: so spiritual, so aspiring, that it seems to be a prayer made visible, or even—with its slender arrowy columns rising into the air till, like fountains, they break into curves—to be the embodiment of the abbey motto: Benedicite Fontes Domino.

And while we are remembering those who laboured for Fountains, do not let us forget the man who died for it at Tyburn—William Thirsk. This abbot was rash enough to resist the messengers of Privy Seal, and was accused by them of many things. He had, they wrote, "gretly dilapidate his howse" by theft and sacrilege, had sold the plate and jewels of the abbey, and had not even secured a proper price for them. To those who were themselves bent upon theft and sacrilege on a large scale this last offence seemed worst of all. He had actually, they declared contemptuously, been persuaded by a jeweller that a valuable ruby was a mere garnet; "for the trewith ys he is a varra fole and a miserable ideote." He joined in that desperate protest the Pilgrimage of Grace, and so was hanged.

Fortunately for posterity as well as for himself, Thirsk's successor, Brodelay, who was a creature of Thomas Cromwell and chosen with a view to future events, was not a "varra fole," and yielded meekly when his abbey was demanded of him, saving it from the fate of Jervaulx. As it is, too much of it is gone—much that might have been preserved. The cloisters have vanished though the garth is there, with the long flight of steps and the great stone basin in the grass and the yew-tree beside it; and gone, too, is the magnificent infirmary, deliberately destroyed in the days of James I. by the vandal who owned it and was in want of some building material.

One thing, however, still stands, which is, perhaps, the last relic of the monks of Fountains that we should expect to find, and is certainly the most touching relic possible—actually linking us with those far-off days when the patient thirteen were left here in the wilderness by Archbishop Thurstan to keep their vow of poverty with such terrible literalness. Over there, beside the wall, is one of the yew-trees whose boughs, covered with thatch, formed the first monastery of Fountains.

Close to the western entrance is Fountains Hall. Surely we must forgive that wicked man who pulled down the infirmary, since the place he built with the stones is this lovely Jacobean house, a thing as beautiful in its own domestic way as time-worn stone and bays and mullions can make it. A balustrade, a sundial, an old-fashioned garden and ancient yew-hedge make the picture and our pleasure complete.

There is a comfortable hotel at Ripon, and as we have a great deal to see before reaching any other desirable shelter, we shall find it best, I think, to spend a night there either before or after visiting Fountains. From the windows of the Unicorn, on market-day, the paved square is a gay and pleasant sight, with its crowded stalls and bright awnings, and stores of fruit and flowers and basket-work; and here on a summer's night the horn-blower may be dimly seen at nine o'clock in his three-cornered hat and laced coat, doing the bidding of Alfred the Great.

From Ripon there are three ways of reaching Richmond, without taking into account the direct route, which would show us nothing of the dales we came out to see. In either case we must go by Jervaulx and Middleham and Wensley.

Only a few miles from Ripon is a village less famous, but not less attractive, than any of these: a spot well-known to antiquarians, and doubtless to artists too, but unfamiliar to ordinary folk. The charm of West Tanfield catches the eye at once from the bridge that spans the Ure, and comes as a pleasant surprise in the midst of rather tame scenery. The red-roofed cottages are grouped upon the river-bank, with gay little gardens sloping to the water's edge; behind them rises the church tower, and the square grey gatehouse of the Marmions, with its delicate oriel. This gateway was built by Henry V.'s friend and executor FitzHugh, who married one of the Marmions and lived here, and added to the church that held the splendid tombs of his wife's ancestors. He was not buried here himself, but by his own wish with curious haste at Jervaulx. It is seldom that a little village church possesses such monuments as these of the Marmions, so rich in ornament and so marvellously preserved: the arched and canopied recess that holds the effigy of Sir John; the cloaked and coronetted figure of Maud his wife, who built this aisle and founded chantries here; the emblazoned tomb of the unknown lady with the lion; the knight in mail; and the magnificent monument of that other knight and his wife which is probably a cenotaph in memory of John and Elizabeth Marmion of the fourteenth century. Their effigies lie, perfectly preserved, under a light and graceful "hearse" of ironwork, with seven sconces for candles—the only iron hearse, they say, in England. Every detail of the dress, every line of the features, is distinct. The knight's aquiline nose and full lips, rather sweet in expression, are encircled by a gorget of mail, over whose delicate links droop the ends of his long moustache. A collar of SS clasps his throat.

On the north side of the chancel there is a curious recess, with a squint into the nave and two little windows into the choir. It is unique, I believe, and as regards its origin and uses very baffling.

Beyond West Tanfield the scenery grows in beauty, for we are nearing the hills. Masham lies prettily in a valley, with a setting of moors and dales, gold and emerald when the sun is shining, soft grey and green when the day is dull. Skirting the little town we go on our way to Jervaulx.

The site of Jervaulx is not beautiful, but pleasant and peaceful. It lies in a private park, so the car must wait beside the gardener's cottage while we walk, borrowed key in hand, across the field to the scattered fragments of what was once a great Cistercian abbey. Of the ruins tragically little was left standing by the energetic commissioners of Henry VIII., though they apologised for some necessary delay in their congenial work. "Pleasythe your lordship to be advertysed," wrote Thomas Cromwell's "most bounden beadman" Richard Bellyseys, "I have taken down all the lead of Jervaulx ... and the said lead cannot be conveit nor carried until the next sommre, for the ways in that countre are so foul and deep that no caryage can pass in wyntre. And as concerninge the taking down of the house I am minded to let it stand to the next spring of the year, by reason of the days are now so short it wolde be double charges to do it now." The work was finished with great thoroughness at last, however, as all may see. Of the church the barest outline only is left, with the raised platform where once the high altar stood, and near it the broken figure that is said to represent the Henry FitzHugh who did so much for West Tanfield and left such strange orders about his funeral. He desired to be buried at Jervaulx with all possible haste after his death. "To be carried thither by daylight, if it come not too late; but if so, then the same night." The land on which this community first settled, at Fors, was the gift of one of FitzHugh's ancestors, which may account for his wish to be buried here.

The case of the last abbot of Jervaulx, Adam Sedbergh, was a sad one; for he suffered the pains of martyrdom without its exaltation, and while certainly failing to please himself, pleased no one else. He was a timid creature, apparently, and when Yorkshire rose in the Pilgrimage of Grace, he was so much afraid of king and rebels alike that he simply ran away and hid. The rebel mob came clamouring about the gates of Jervaulx, crying: "Choose you a new abbot!" and the frightened brothers gathered hurriedly in the chapter-house. If we follow this path, and turn down by these crumbling steps, we may stand where they stood that day; for there is more of the chapter-house still in existence than of any other part of the building. The roof that covered the monks' bewildered heads is gone; but here is the wide stone bench on which they sat, trembling, through that hasty conclave, and here are the columns and the walls on which their eyes dwelt, unseeingly, while the rebels threatened them with fire at their gates and their rightful leader was hiding in the heather. They could think of no better course than to seek the reluctant Adam, and make a rebel of him whether he would or no. They found him on the moors at last, and lest his beautiful abbey should be burnt to the ground because of him, he came back to face the curses and daggers of the mob, the futile sufferings of rebellion, the prison-cell in the Tower where his name still shows upon the wall, and the gallows of Tyburn. His tardy and unwilling heroism was piteously useless, for not even the flames of the Pilgrims of Grace could have laid the walls of Jervaulx lower or left its altars more desolate than did the hammers and picks of the king's agents.

Charles Kingsley came here once, and picked a forget-me-not for his wife—a pleasant memory among so many fierce ones. He was the last canon of the collegiate church of Middleham, where he stayed for several days at the time of his instalment, and endured "so much bustle, and robing and unrobing" that he had no time to think. Middleham, as a rule, is anything but a bustling place; but in spite of its demure looks, I believe there are still days when its streets are, as Kingsley saw them, "crowded with jockeys and grooms." We are now on our way thither. After passing through East Witton we cross the Cover, whose pools are dear to fishermen, and were therefore dear to Kingsley. "Little Cover," he called it affectionately, "in his deep wooded glen, with his yellow rock and bright white stones, and brown water clearer than crystal."

We climb into Middleham past the base of an old cross on which is fixed a modern head. At the top of the hill is the curious structure called the Swine Cross, with the mutilated stone beast whose identity has proved so hard to establish. Some say it is the Bear of Warwick; others recognise in it the Boar of Gloucester. As far as its personal appearance is concerned it might with equal plausibility be called the Lion of England or the Hound of the Baskervilles, seeing that its outline commits the sculptor to nothing and it has no manner of face whatever. Turning to the left we find the castle looking down upon us gloomily.

This castle of Middleham is square and stern; more strong than beautiful. Its keep is Norman, and is the work of a Fitzranulph of the twelfth century; but the towered wall that hems it round so closely was built by the Nevilles, who lived here for many years in princely state. The great Earl of Warwick, when he was not making kings—and, indeed, sometimes when he was—chose this to be a centre of his pomp and power; and one of the kings he made, Edward IV., is said to have been imprisoned here for a short time. The time would have been longer if Edward had not cajoled his custodian, the Archbishop of York, into allowing him to hunt in the park. We know from Henry VI. how Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Lord Hastings lay in ambush in the forest that is no longer here, and rescued Edward from those who were hunting with him.

That same Duke of Gloucester, who was a trespasser on this occasion, came to Middleham as its master later on. Poor Anne Neville, the kingmaker's daughter, spent most of her sad married life within this melancholy fortress, with the husband who asked no man to make him king, but made himself Richard III. We may see the gloomy walls of her withdrawing room—bereft now of both roof and floor—where she sat so often sick at heart and ailing; and the banquet-hall where her father kept such state; and the kitchen where six oxen were sometimes roasted for one breakfast. There, in the north wall, is the gateway through which she watched her husband riding out to entrap his little nephews, and through which she herself soon followed him to see him crowned; and here at the south-west corner of the outer wall is the tower where her only son was born. The boy spent practically all his short life here, all but that brief and brilliant interlude of the coronation at Westminster and the pageantry at York; and here, too, he died in his parents' absence. I do not know if Anne ever returned to Middleham. We hear of her "in a state bordering on madness," and not long afterwards her tragic life was over.

For many years the castle was left at the mercy of all who cared to despoil it. It was very literally treated as a quarry; for when all the faced stone within reach had been removed the walls were hollowed out below, in the hope that the upper part might fall and so provide more plunder. Such is the cohesion of the masonry, however, that this design was more or less frustrated, and the undermined walls still stand like overhanging cliffs. Here and there, indeed, great masses have fallen in huge boulders as solid as rock; but perhaps the gunpowder of the Commonwealth was responsible for these.

There was once a suggestion made, in a letter from Lord Huntingdon to his "verrye good lord ye lord Treasurer," that Queen Elizabeth should join in this work of quarrying. She purposed to pay a visit to her city of York, a visit which was designed to be "no small comforte to all hyr good subjects, and no less terrour to ye others." But the great difficulty was to find "a good housse" for her. Huntingdon excitedly laid his scheme before Burleigh. "Ye meanes ys thys," he wrote. "Hyr hyghness hathe heare ye Castell of Midham, which ys in greate ruyne and daylye wasteth, ... but ye tymber ye stone ye lead and ye iron yt ys theare wold make a fayre housse heare, and as I gesse with good husbandrye paye all ye chargys. I am sure if your L. dyd see ye place ... you wolde thinke yt most convenient to be pulled downe, rathyr than yt shuld stande and waste daylye as yt dothe."[1] Fortunately Burleigh did not think it most convenient, and now the place no longer wastes daily, but is daily being repaired.

When we crossed Cover Bridge we entered Wensleydale, and a mile or two beyond Middleham is the pretty little town from which the dale takes its name. The scenery is quiet and pastoral here, the Ure flows smoothly, and it is difficult to realise how near we are to the sort of country Defoe was thinking of when he wrote in his eighteenth-century way: "The black moorish lands show dismal and frightful." How near we are to the moorish lands, however, we shall shortly find out, and it is at Wensley that we have to decide by which road we shall cross them.

But first, here is Wensley Church on the left, with Saxon stones in it, and a splendid brass that no one who cares for such things would wish to pass by, and among its graves one that has been thought to be of interest to every British man and woman. It is an altar-tomb with fluted corners standing on the right of the path that leads from gate to porch. Beneath it lies Peter Goldsmith. It has been stated,[2] on what grounds I cannot discover, that he was surgeon of the Victory at Trafalgar, and that Nelson died in his arms. This is making a great claim for him. Yet his name is not mentioned in the standard accounts of Nelson's death,[3] nor does it appear in the list of the Victory's officers. As we all know, Beatty was the surgeon who attended Nelson in the cockpit. The assistant-surgeon was Neil Smith; the surgeon's mate was Westerburgh.[4]

This is the country of the Scropes of Bolton, and their names and arms are conspicuous in the church—over the porch, on the buttresses, on the carved chancel stalls, and, above all, on Lord Bolton's screened pew in the north aisle. The carved sides of this were originally part of the parclose by which the tombs of the Scropes were surrounded in Easby Abbey. The front of it is ugly and has an eighteenth-century air. The horrible grey marbled paint that defaces the woodwork suggests the nineteenth. The famous brass, which lies within the communion rails, is so beautiful as to appeal to the most ignorant in such matters, and dates from the fourteenth century. It marks the grave of two men—Sir Simon of Wensley, priest, and the seventeenth-century rector who desired to be buried under the same stone and brass.

Our course, after leaving Wensley, depends on our further intentions. The course I recommend is this: to drive up Wensleydale on the lower road, past the cascades and village of Aysgarth—named by the Danes Asgard, the home of the gods—past Bainbridge and Hawes; to cross the river at Yorebridge, and return by Askrigg and Redmire, making a short digression to Bolton Castle; then, turning to the left beyond Redmire, to strike across the "moorish lands" to Richmond. These Yorkshire moors, which seemed so "ill-looking" to Defoe, are neither black nor frightful in our later eyes, but glorious with colour and light. The old road from Leyburn across Barden and Hipswell Moors has rather a bad surface, and a hill that is stiff enough to account for the making of the new road; but on a sunny summer's evening the view from the highest point is lovely beyond words. Beautiful it must be at all seasons and in all weathers, but it is only when the air is clear that the head of Swaledale may be seen on one side of the ridge and the far-away slopes of Wensleydale on the other, and it is only when the sun is sinking that those distant hills are washed with gold. The moors sweep round us far and near; a line of dark firs crosses them mid-way; patches of vivid green break through the heather; and down in the valley the Swale shows as a thin thread of twisted silver. Behind us, towards Middleham, the more level country is a dark blue streak beyond the crimson of the sunlit heather. The white road, straight and narrow, lies before us.

Those who choose this way will have little to regret, and will have one real advantage: they will approach Richmond by the road which gives the finest view of that fair town. They must remember, however, that there is a very steep downward gradient at one point between the moors and the river, and at the bottom of it a sharp turn over a bridge. The run up Swaledale may easily be achieved from Richmond, where there is a comfortable hotel.

The other alternative is to cross from Wensleydale to Swaledale by way of the Buttertubs Pass. Now, I do not wish to be too encouraging about this pass! It is a place for the well-equipped only, and for those who do not suffer too much when their tyres are suffering. Many cars, of course, have passed this way, and many more will do so; but none the less it is not a suitable road for motoring. It is precipitous in places, narrow everywhere, and the surface is almost entirely composed of loose stones. Moreover, a grassy slope, so steep as to be almost a precipice, drops away from the edge of it; and though I am assured the pass is perfectly safe, there are points in it where nothing but faith in one's driver can make it comfortable! The scenery is magnificent.

Starting from Wensley, we must take the upper of the two roads to Redmire marked on Bartholomew's map, for the lower one, apparently, runs through Lord Bolton's park. It occurs to one here, as in several other places in Yorkshire, that it would be a good plan if map-makers would adopt some distinctive way of marking private roads. The views from the high ground are lovely. All Wensleydale lies before us—green as an emerald in the valley, bare and grey on the hilltops, dimly blue in the distance. Over it all lies that haze of luminous gold that the sunshine gives to these dales. Far away, but clearly visible, Bolton Castle stands up on the hillside, massive and grey and relentless, a queen's prison. At Redmire Station we turn aside to see it.

"The castelle," says Leland, "as no great howse, is al compactid in 4 or 5 towers." Outwardly, it is probably much the same as in his day: a square of cold, grey stone with a tower at each corner, gloomy and forbidding, with no attempt at ornament, no break in the solid masonry except the tiny windows. To Leland it was simply the castle of the Scropes, the work of the famous Chancellor who fought at CrÉÇy in his younger days, the fortress of a family that was perpetually distinguishing itself. So he looked at it and passed it by. It was "no great howse." But we see it with other eyes, because it has been touched by the charm that wins us in spite of our better judgment, just as it won men long ago in spite of theirs—the glamour of the Queen of Scots. The banquet hall where so many Scropes have feasted—bishops, statesmen, judges, Knights of the Garter—leaves us cold; we do not care to know there was a chantry here; even the cruel dungeon in the ground, with the hole through which the victim was lowered and the bolt to which he was fastened and the slab of stone that was fixed over the top, only calls for a passing shudder. To us the interest of Bolton Castle is centred in the whitewashed room upstairs.

It was a summer evening, "one hour after sunsetting," when Mary rode into that grass-grown court with Sir Francis Knollys and Sir George Bowes, and two companies of soldiers, and six ladies, and forty-three horses, and four cartloads of luggage. She was not yet very unhappy. "She hath been very quiet," wrote Knollys of the journey, "very tractable, and void of displeasant countenance." She was less tractable when the time came for her to leave Bolton: she had learnt much meanwhile. For the months spent at Bolton were the crisis of her misfortunes. In this upper room she sat "knitting of a work" in the deep recess of the window, or writing endless letters by the fire, or turning young Christopher Norton's head, while the Casket Letters were being read at Hampton Court, and her accusers were discussing her character at York, and her "dear cousin and sister" was pressing her to abdicate her throne. It was in this room that she wrote at last to her advisers: "I pray you do not speak to me again about abdication, for I am deliberately resolved rather to die than to resign my crown; and the last words that I shall utter in my life shall be the words of a Queen of Scotland."

She wrote a vast number of other letters here. Some were to the young Queen of Spain, her sister-in-law, who, as Elizabeth of France, had been her playmate at the Court of Henri II.; some were about the care of her infant son; and some, of a conciliatory kind, were to the Queen of England. "Toutesfoyes," she wrote, "sur votre parolle il n'est rien que je n'entreprisse, car je ne doutay jamays de votre honneur et royalle fidelitay."

It was here, too, that she wrote her first English letter to her custodian, Sir Francis Knollys—her schoolmaster, as she called him, who had been giving her lessons, apparently without any marked success.

"It is sed Seterday my unfrinds wil be wth zou; y sey nething, bot trest weil. An ze send one to zour wiff ze may asur her schu wold a bin weilcom to a pur strenger.... Thus affter my commendations I pray God heue you in his kipin.

"Your assured gud frind,

"Marie R.

"Excus ivel vreitn furst tym."

Mary's rooms have lately been restored; but this plain stone fireplace is the same by which she sat shivering while the news of the Westminster Conference was so long in coming through the snow, hoping against hope that the English Queen would not "make her lose all"; turning over in her mind the scheme for marrying her to Don John of Austria; reading specious letters from Elizabeth pleading "the natural love of a mother towards her bairn"; and smiling upon Knollys till he credited her with "an eloquent tongue, a discreet head, a stout courage, and a liberal heart adjoined thereunto." This is the window through which she looked out over Wensleydale, luminous in the August sunshine or white with snow, and realised gradually that she was indeed a prisoner, she who "loved greatly to go on horseback." She was allowed to ride in the park, it is true; but her riding was a mockery with twelve soldiers at her horse's heels.

Yet she was not always sad. She had her lighter moments and pastimes other than knitting. "The Queen here is merry, and hunteth," wrote Knollys, "and passeth her time in pleasant manner." She even coquetted with the Reformed Faith, and "grew into a good liking of the Liturgy"; and she took pleasure (of a more convincing kind) in having her hair busked by Mistress Mary Seaton, whom she declared to be the finest busker in any country. Knollys, apparently, was not insensible to the charms of a coiffure. "This day she did set such a curled hair upon the Queen that it was like to be a periwig that showed very delicately; and every other day she hath a new device of hairdressing, without any cost, and yet setteth forth a woman gaily well."

Here, up these steps upon which Mary's skirts have trailed, is the room where Mistress Seaton set such a curled hair upon the lovely head, the room where the Queen slept, or more often lay awake. There had been some difficulty in making her rooms ready to receive her. The Scropes were not luxurious, it seems. Her bedding and hangings came from Sir George Bowes' house, near Barnard Castle; pewter vessels and a copper kettle were hastily borrowed from the Court of England; and the neighbours lent some furniture with rather a bad grace. There is a very strong local tradition that Mary once escaped from Bolton Castle. The "Queen's Gap" on Leyburn Shawl is pointed out as the scene of her recapture, and this little bedroom window as the way of her escape. I cannot find the least evidence that the story is true. But it was in this room that she lay sick for days, before she was dragged reluctantly away in the dusk of a January dawn, bitterly cold and bitterly angry, to her next prison at Tutbury.

This castle held for the king in the Civil War, and that is why it has lost its north-west tower. The actual fall was in a storm, a hundred years later than the siege that weakened the masonry.

As we drive away up Wensleydale we look back again and again at the fortress, which dominates the valley far more conspicuously than its position on the green hillside seems to warrant. The scenery grows wilder and the slopes nearer before a steep descent with a bad surface takes us into Askrigg. Here, in a little open space beside the church, is a picturesque Jacobean house of grey stone, bearing an inscription and the date mdclxxviii. Its projecting bays are joined by a wooden gallery, which was designed, it is said, to give a good view of the bull-baiting that took place before it. There, hidden in the grass, is the iron ring to which the bull was tied; and close beside it stands the restored village-cross—a strange conjunction of symbols! In the fifteenth-century church there are some pillars which are thought to have been transported from Fors, the original dwelling, about a mile from here, of the brothers of Jervaulx—the little band of monks from Savigny, who came to this valley under the leadership of Peter de Quincy, the Leech, in the reign of Stephen. They found this place too wild even for their Cistercian ideals, too cold and foggy for the ripening of crops, too frequently beset by wolves; and so, though the optimistic Peter was "very certain we shall be able to raise a competent supply of ale, cheese, bread, and butter," the community moved nearer to civilisation, leaving behind them nothing for us to see except a window in a barn and these pillars in Askrigg Church.

As the road becomes narrower and rougher the scenery every moment grows more beautiful. Hawes lies on the other side of the valley at the foot of the blue hills, in a lovely position beside the Ure; and when we have reached a point exactly opposite to it we turn sharply up a steep pitch on the right, with a splendid panoramic view of mountains on the left as we climb.

This is the beginning of the Buttertubs Pass. From this point onwards, till the road plunges down into Swaledale, the surface is composed more or less of loose stones. The stiffest upward gradients we shall have to encounter are within a mile or two of this spot, for the wild part of the pass—the real moorland—is comparatively level, and by the time we reach the actual Buttertubs we are already running down. This is the climax—this point where the downward gradient begins—for here suddenly the solid earth seems to fall away from us: here suddenly the rough and narrow road is no longer lying across the far-stretching moorland, but is hanging high upon the hillside, clinging upon the extremest edge of a gulf which drops dizzily into a blue sea of shadows. Thus it clings for miles. Beyond the chasm the bare hillside rises again above our heads in magnificent curves, glowing with colour, and cleft here and there into purple gorges. Slightly above the road on the left are the Buttertubs, strange crater-like hollows of unplumbed depth, appearing at intervals beside us, with sharp rocks bristling through the grass at their mouths. As we slowly descend, the hills of Swaledale rise before us like a wall blocking the defile; and presently a gate across the road shows that we are near the world again.

Truly this is one of the runs that are unforgettable. To be among these savage heights and depths, these heaving waves of desolate moor, to have these solitudes above us and these blue shadows so far below us, is to know something of "the strong foundations of the earth." It is with a feeling of anti-climax that we close the gate behind us, and, on a precipitous gradient and no surface worth mentioning, steer slowly down into Swaledale.

As we cautiously make our way over the stones of this very trying lane, we are confronted with rather a startling notice board: "No Road." It seems a little late to tell us that now: they might have mentioned it before we crossed the pass! Then it dawns upon us that the amateur hand that traced the letters has sloped the board in the wrong direction. It is really meant to face down the valley, for the discouragement of those who might stray up from Swaledale, ignorant of the pass.

Swaledale, I think, is the most beautiful of all the dales. Of course beauty varies with the weather, and distant Muker in the hollow of the hills cannot be the same on a colourless, grey day as when it lies in a pool of sunshine. But on any day Swaledale must seem, to one who is fresh from the elemental dignity of the pass, to hold a wonderful variety of lovely things: opal hills and soft woods, patches of heather and slopes of fern, fir-trees and feathery birches and clumps of scarlet rowans. There are individual pictures that one remembers as types of the whole. At Gunnerside, for instance, where the road crosses the Swale, cliffs rise from the stony river-bed, and are crowned with overhanging trees, the banks are smothered in masses of burdock leaves, and the whole scene is encircled by the hills. The road is not very good, and there are some steep pitches between Gunnerside and Reeth; but it matters little, for who would care to hurry through such a land as this?

It was on the road near Low Row that John Wesley began his preaching in this part of the world, standing on a table by the wayside. A little further on is Helaugh, once a gayer place than it is at present. The hills above it have echoed many a time to the winding of the horn, when John of Gaunt was lord here and went out to chase the boar. Later on these lands belonged to that strange Duke of Wharton, "the scorn and wonder" of Pope's day, who was a Whig when it was unfashionable and a Jacobite when it became dangerous, who fought against his country and died a monk.

"Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule?
'Twas all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool."

At Reeth, a fascinating place built on a slope at the mouth of Arkengarth Dale, we cross the river again, and find a much better road on the other side.

Between Reeth and Richmond the Swale, flowing softly past its richly wooded banks, is as beautiful as the lower Wye. On the further side of it we see the Norman tower of Marrick Priory, where once twelve blackrobed nuns lived only a mile away from their "white-clothid" sisters of Ellerton. The nuns of Marrick were fortunate, for though they were so few they won a short respite for some unknown reason, and were allowed to stay in their beautiful retreat till the dissolution of the larger monasteries. There are few places in England, I think, that would be easier to love and harder to leave than Swaledale.

Richmond, on its hill, guards the mouth of the valley. This first view of it from Swaledale, with the tower of the castle rising slowly into sight, gives no idea at all of the beauty and strength that have made it famous. We only know how Richmond has won its name when we see it from below, with the buttressed bridge in the foreground, and the bright waters of the Swale reflecting the houses that are clustered at their brink, and the sun-flecked path under the trees, and the roofs, tier above tier, climbing the steep hillside, and above them all—foe of their foes and shelter of their friends—the long curtain-wall and towering keep of the castle. This view of Richmond has been praised so much that one fears disappointment. Yet one is not disappointed. Richmond is not only beautiful: it has that other quality—so much more important than beauty in woman or town—the quality of charm. Richmond is lovable.

It was the Normans who first took advantage of this fine position for a fortress: the Saxon owners of the place were the Earls of Mercia, and had no castle here, for Gilling, their headquarters in the north, was only a few miles away. We may dream, if we like, that Ethelfled, the soldierly daughter of Alfred the Great, and Godiva, the Lady of Coventry, visited this place when their husbands were minded to chase the wolf or the boar in this part of their lands. It is possible that they did so: but there is no authentic history of Richmond before the time when Alan the Breton received from his kinsman, William the Conqueror, "at the siege before York," a grant of "all the towns and lands which lately belonged to Earl Edwin in Yorkshire." It was this Alan who began to build the castle. We may not enter it without permission, for it is now used as barracks; but we can walk up to the gateway at the foot of the great keep and see its buttresses and turrets towering above us; and we can follow the path that surrounds the walls and look at the view that George IV. admired so much. This view of the river from the castle is very pretty, but is by no means comparable to the view of the castle from the river. Possibly George IV. fixed his eyes upon the Culloden Tower among the trees to the right, and was biassed by association.

Three times this castle wall behind us has imprisoned a king. When five English knights and their men-at-arms made their dashing march to Alnwick and captured William the Lion of Scotland, it was to Richmond they brought him; and David Bruce, another Scottish king, was here nearly two hundred years later; and the third was Charles I. Legend, indeed, tells us of a fourth king still imprisoned here; for this castle rock is one of the many places wherein King Arthur lies asleep with all his knights, awaiting the magic blast upon the horn that shall some day wake him. The Breton folk say he waits beneath the island of Agalon; the Welsh look for him to come forth from among the mountains of Glamorganshire.

Soon after Bruce's imprisonment the castle seems to have fallen into disrepair; and this, I suppose, was the reason that John of Gaunt, who was Lord of Richmond, made his hunting expeditions from Helaugh rather than from here. Harry of Richmond, when he became Henry VII., gave this castle of his to his mother, and finding that the "mantill wall" was "in decay of maisone wark," and "all the doyers, wyndoys, and other necessaries," with much beside, were also in decay, he gave orders that the whole should "be new refresshede."

Though this attractive town possesses much, it has also lost much. Once it had a wall—built to keep the Scots out—and several gates; but all are gone now, except the postern in Friar's Wynd, and the old pointed arch of Bargate, which we may see from the foot of Carnforth Hill. Gone, too, is the elaborate cross, which, according to all accounts, was an object of beauty in the paved market-place. This is more than can be said for the strange obelisk that has supplanted it. But in this same market-square still stands Holy Trinity Chapel—not beautiful, but very ancient, being that "chapel in Richemont toune" which, Leland says, had "straung figures in the waulles of it. The people there dreme," he goes on, "that it was ons a temple of idoles." Some even dream that this chapel was founded by Paulinus, the seventh-century saint, in memory of an occasion when he baptized an enormous number of converts in the Swale; but, as Bede says the ceremony took place in the river because it was impossible to build oratories "in those parts," this dream is not very credible. It is no dream, I believe, but a fact, that the chapel stands on the site of a Danish temple. In its walls there are now no strange figures of "idoles," but some very strange annexes for a chapel. A butcher's shop is wedged between the tower and the nave, and several other shops are built into its side.

One of the most notable things here is the Grey Friars' Tower, which we passed on entering the town from Swaledale: a peculiarly slender and graceful piece of Perpendicular work. Like the campanile at Evesham, it stands alone because the building of the church connected with it was suddenly brought to an end by the Dissolution. The Franciscans who had their friary here were mostly put to death or imprisoned for life—yet not for long—because they thought it their duty to obey St. Francis rather than Henry VIII.

There are remains of another religious house quite close to Richmond. Very little is left at Easby of the abbey church of St. Agatha, but the position of the ruins beside the river is full of quiet charm. Those who dwelt here were Premonstratensian Canons, whose rather confusing order was founded by the German visionary St. Norbert, and whose white garments were chosen for them by the Virgin herself. They passed to their dormitory through the Norman archway with the ornamented mouldings, the last remaining fragment of the original twelfth-century building raised by Roald, the Constable of Richmond. Until lately a very decorative tree grew up through this archway and figured in every picture of Easby, but it threatened to break down the masonry, and so was sacrificed. It is a sad loss to artists. But the last memorial of Roald would have been a loss still sadder, for, even as it is, Roald is often forgotten in favour of the Scropes, who practically rebuilt St. Agatha's. Their shield is still over the porch of the parish church, a hundred yards away; their dust lies under the rough sods to the west of the north transept. At Wensley we saw the carved sides of what was once their parclose.

We finally leave the town by the same road that leads to Easby, turning off to the left to join the great Roman highway beyond Gilling. It was just here, where the roads fork, that the Lass of Richmond Hill lived in the eighteenth century, till she married the writer of the song; and hither, too, to the same Hill House, came later songs, greater than MacNally's—songs from Byron to his future wife, Miss Milbank. Our last view of Richmond, from Maison Dieu, is worthy of remembrance. The town is spread before us with all its towers; the slender Grey Friars' Tower, the church, the soaring keep; and in the background of hills is the green gap that means so much to those who have lost their hearts to Swaledale. That is behind us now; and on the right is stretched the great green plain of central Yorkshire—the plain that divides the western moors from the moors of Clevedon and Hambledon. Somewhere in that plain is the Great North Road.

Soon after passing Lord Zetland's place, Aske Hall, we drive through the wide street of Gilling, the little village of gardens, where there is nothing left, except a few Saxon stones, to remind us that the great Earls of Mercia made it one of their capitals till Alan of Brittany laid it waste. A little way beyond it we turn a sharp corner and are on the Roman road. After speeding along this for some minutes it is interesting to look back and see the amazing straightness of the white streak that stretches away behind the car and disappears over the crest of the hill. The scenery is dull at first; but presently a new line of moors and dales appears on the horizon, and the roadway itself is shaded with trees and fringed with grass and flowers. Meantime the surface is enough in itself to make a motorist happy.

The car glides up the slope of a little bridge; we pass a screen of trees; and the extreme beauty of the Greta is revealed with a suddenness that is almost startling. This bridge with the stone parapet is the famous Greta Bridge; this is the stream painted by Turner and sung by Scott; there by the roadside are the gates of Rokeby.

"Oh, Brignall banks are fresh and fair,
And Greta woods are green!"

Brignall banks are not in sight, but here are Greta woods—intensely green—flinging their branches across the river till they meet and interlace in an archway over the clear water and the yellow stones.

At the northern limit of Rokeby Park we must leave the highway. There is a road here that is not marked on Bartholomew's map—a road that turns to the right and leads to Mortham Tower, and the Dairy Bridge, and the meeting of the Greta and the Tees. The "battled tower" of Mortham is now inhabited; we may not see the bloodstains on the stairs; but from a little distance the fifteenth-century peel and the Tudor buildings that surround it make a pretty group. Below the grassy knoll on which it stands the Greta dashes down between its overshadowing banks and veiling foliage to join the quieter, statelier Tees.

The beauty of this place is really haunting. Sir Walter Scott has described every inch of it in "Rokeby," with complete accuracy if with no great inspiration. For the wild sweetness of this spot is not such as can be put into words. It is a place of enchantment, where the spell-bound poet can only stammer helplessly, and the plain man for a moment feels himself a poet.

Returning to the main road, we follow the wooded Tees to Barnard Castle. For miles the river is as we saw it at the meeting of the waters, darkly shadowed by trees and bound by rocky banks; more beautiful in itself than Wharfe or Swale, though flowing through a valley that cannot be compared to the other dales except at its head: but there, I think, excelling them all. Through the greater part of Teesdale the beauty of the river is so closely confined to its banks that we only catch a glimpse of it now and then, when actually crossing the stream. One of these glimpses we have from the toll-bridge just below Eggleston Abbey, where we cross for a few minutes into the county of Durham. The ruins of the abbey are visible through the trees, standing on a grassy hill upon the Yorkshire bank of the river.

At Barnard Castle—which is not a very attractive town at first sight, and is sorely disfigured by its portentous museum—we again cross the Tees into Yorkshire, near the point where the familiar towers of the Baliols' ruined fortress stand high above the river on their cliff. This commanding position was granted to the Norman Guy de Baliol by Rufus, and Guy's son Bernard raised on it the castle that was forfeited by his descendant. This Bernard was no friend to the throne on which the later Baliol sat, for he was the most zealous of the five knights who captured William of Scotland and took him to Richmond Castle. When the enterprise seemed about to fail, it was Bernard who cried: "If you should all turn back, I would go on alone!" A little more than a hundred years later John Baliol, King of Scotland, was rashly refusing to be at the beck and call of the English king. "Has the fool done this folly?" asked Edward. "If he will not come to us we will come to him!" So John lost his crown, and Barnard Castle saw the Baliols no more. It was given to the Nevilles, and so with many other things fell into the capacious hands of Richard III., who actually lived here for a time, and has left his symbol, the wild boar, upon the oriel window.

There is one gracious memory that makes these towers sacred. The ruined halls are haunted by the presence of that gentle and sad lady who was the widow of one John Baliol and the mother of another—Devorgilla, daughter of kings, foundress of Baliol College, and in her endless sorrow the builder of Dulce Cor. When her husband died she "had his dear heart embalmed and enshrined in a coffer of ivory, enamelled and bound with silver bright, which was placed before her daily in her hall as her sweet, silent companion." It was here at Bernard Castle that she chiefly lived with that silent companion, until the noble shrine of stone was ready to receive the ivory coffer; it was here she lived on alone, till she too died and was carried out to be buried in Sweetheart Abbey, with John Baliol's "dear heart" upon her breast.

Of the two roads to Middleton-in-Teesdale the one on the Durham side is the best as regards both surface and scenery; but the greater number of those who drive up Teesdale will return to Barnard Castle before going on their way to the north or crossing Yorkshire to the coast, and will probably prefer to drive up the valley by one road and come down it again on the other. On the Yorkshire side there is nothing very striking. Lartington is pretty, and gay with flowers; Cotherstone still has a fragment of the FitzHughs' castle in a field above the river; Romaldkirk has an interesting church. Beyond Mickleton we cross the Lune, which is a miniature copy of the Tees, with the same rocky bed and the same close screen of overarching boughs. A few minutes later we cross the Tees itself and are in Middleton.

The road from Middleton to High Force is surprisingly populous. Here among the hills, where the fields are yielding to moorland, and the river flows under bare crags, one expects a certain amount of loneliness; yet here is a broad and civilised highway, with all the character of a road near some large town. The scenery, however, is wild enough; and more beautiful than anything we have seen. Beyond the river—open now to the sky, no longer veiled by trees—rise the moors, piled high, fold upon fold, grand in outline and glorious in colour, green and purple and crimson. A wood by the wayside blots out river and hills for a moment; then suddenly through a gap we see High Force.

Looking down from the road we see it as a picture framed in trees: the solid wall of rock, the leap of the foaming waters, the cloud of spray, the fir-trees with their spires against the sky, the crimson moors beyond. That white torrent is the boundary of the county, the crown and climax of the beauty of Yorkshire, and our last and most perfect memory of the dales.

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