SUMMARY OF TOUR IN THE SOUTH

Distances.

Roads.

Usually good and level.

IV

YORK AND THE SOUTH

No man knows the spell of York till he has approached it by road in the evening. Of all the fresh experiences that the motor-car has brought to us there are few from which the imagination gains so much as from this way of entering old and beautiful towns. We have too long accepted the roof of a railway station as our first view of such places. It is not an inspiring view. But to see York Minster from afar, shining under the evening sky and lifted high above the city; to watch it growing larger and larger, rising higher and higher, increasing in beauty every moment, until at last one drives slowly into its huge shadow; to pass under one of the great gates that have survived so many centuries, so many wars, so many pageants, that have welcomed so many kings, and dripped with the blood of so many warriors; to see the ancient streets for the first time idealised by the dusk of twilight, will help us, if anything will, to recall and realise something of what York has been during the eighteen hundred years of her history.

The past is very insistent here. Here are the walls, encircling the whole city, that were built by Edward I. and repaired after the Civil War. We may drive round them, and pass in and out of the four gates that were once so hard to enter: Monk Bar, by which we come in from Kirkham under the arms of England and France quartered together; and Bootham Bar on the Newcastle Road; and Micklegate Bar on the Tadcaster Road; and Walmgate Bar, where the restored barbican reminds us that it was undermined during the long siege of the Civil War. All these bars are turreted and ornamented with painted shields and statues or helmets of stone; three of them still have their portcullises; three still bear the arms of France.

Walmgate, or Watling Gate, Bar is the most picturesque of them on the inner side, for it carries on its stone pillars an Elizabethan house of timber and plaster. But by far the richest in memories is Micklegate Bar. Some of these memories are of a very ghastly kind, for it was here that the heads of "traitors" were set up. It was here that Harry Hotspur's head looked down upon his doubly treacherous old father, the Duke of Northumberland, as that time-server rode out through the gate in perfect friendliness with Henry IV., and found it advisable, no doubt, to ignore the thing that stared above the parapet. Here, in Henry V.'s reign, the head of Lord Scrope of Masham was set up because he favoured the House of York; and here, half a century later, was the head of the Duke of York himself, crowned with paper—to be replaced, almost before Margaret of Anjou had finished laughing at it, by the head of the man who put it here—Clifford the Butcher. The hideous series closed with the followers of Prince Charlie in the Forty-five.

Meantime there were other sights to be seen at Micklegate Bar. Richard III., fresh from one coronation and eager for another, was received here "with great pomp and triumph" by the citizens and the clergy "in their richest copes," and passed through this archway with his stolen crown upon his head, followed by his luckless queen and the little boy who was so soon to die. His successor's daughter, Margaret Tudor, entered York very gaily by this gate with five hundred lords and ladies, on her way to her unhappy marriage with James IV. of Scotland. James I. was on his way to Scotland, too, when he rode to Micklegate Bar from Tadcaster, with the sheriffs of York bearing their white rods before him. He waited here while the Mayor, kneeling in the road, presented him with a sword and the city keys, and a cup and a purse, "and made a worthy speech at the delivery of each particular." Still braver was the scene when Charles I. came in, with that strange army that was no army; the army that was commanded by an "amateur general" and was intended to overawe the Scots by pomp. "The progress was more illustrious than the march, and the soldiers were the least part of the army," says Clarendon. This sombre bar was gay enough that day. So splendid a procession has seldom been seen as that which filed through its dark shadow then, all glittering and glowing, while the trainbands of the city, magnificent in scarlet and silver and feathered caps, greeted Charles with a volley, and the civic authorities on their knees greeted him with flattery. It was not many years before another sort of scene was enacted on this spot: when the army of Fairfax—commanded by no amateur—was drawn up in a double line that stretched away from this gate for a mile, and the two Royalist generals who had defended the city so finely, Glenham and Slingsby, marched out between the two lines with the remnant of the garrison, with all the honours of war. That was the most stirring sight, I expect, that Micklegate Bar has seen.

Fairfax and the other victorious generals marched to the Minster and "sang a psalm." What that psalm must have meant to Fairfax we can hardly realise. The siege had lasted for thirteen weeks; more than four thousand of his men had died in the course of it; twenty-two times they had assaulted the walls. He was himself a Yorkshireman, and like all Yorkshiremen, loved and honoured the city that has held so proud a place in English history, and the Minster that is the city's crown. No wonder he marched straight from the gate to the Minster and sang a psalm! What York Minster meant to Fairfax it must in a lesser degree mean to every Englishman. It combines superlative interest with superlative beauty. We may come to it primed with its history—the history that begins with the Roman temple whose foundations are hidden beneath it, the history that includes so many great names; we may know that Paulinus of the seventh century—the tall, majestic man with the hawk-face whom Bede has described for us—built the first church here of wood, and was the first Archbishop of York; that three other churches stood here and were destroyed before the present building was begun in the thirteenth century and slowly rose to its perfection; but when we see it we can remember nothing but its beauty. It completely dominates York. It is impossible to forget its presence for a moment, whether it be dim and blurred in the dawn or flushed with the light of sunset.

Nearly every one, I suppose, has seen it. Nearly every one has felt, on passing through the entrance in the south transept, that breathless sensation of awe that is almost fear, of reverence that is almost worship. The first sight of those immense arches, so absolutely simple, so indescribably majestic, with the lancets of the Five Sisters behind them, is overwhelming. It is only gradually that memory returns, and the great nave slowly fills with the processions of the past, with the weddings and funerals and coronation pageants that have swept by, century after century, to choir or chapter-house. Young Edward III. and Philippa of Hainault were a comely pair when they were married here in the presence of the Parliament and Council, surrounded by the nobles of England and Scotland. Not very many years later their little son was carried to his grave in the north aisle of the choir. Much was spent in alms and masses, many pounds of wax were burnt, many widows watched round the little coffin before William of Hatfield was laid in this tomb where we see his effigy, a slender, boyish figure lying very straightly under the high canopy. In the next century a sinister scene took place here: Richard Crookback mourning for his brother, coming here to hear a requiem sung, with his head full of plots against the dead man's little sons. Very soon he was here again, entering those splendid doors with the iron scrollwork, which lead into the chapter-house where he was crowned for the second time—the chapter-house that Pius II. described as "a fine lightsome chapel, with shining walls and small, thin-waisted pillars quite round." "As the rose is the flower of flowers," said the monks, "so is this the house of houses."

There are not very many notable tombs here, though there is much illustrious dust. Here was buried the head of King Edwin of Northumbria, who so "often sat alone by himself for a long time, silent as to his tongue, but deliberating in his heart" whether he should become a Christian. This Minster is in a sense the fruit of his deliberations. There is no monument to him, nor to Earl Tostig of the violent temper, whose body was carried here from Stamford Bridge; but the founder of the present building lies in his robes under a canopy in the south transept. We may see, too, in the Lady Chapel, the marble tomb of Archbishop Scrope, the builder of Bolton Castle, who preached a sermon in this Minster inciting the people to take up arms, and lost his head in consequence. And near the altar of the same chapel is a little black kneeling figure that deserves attention. It is a monument to Frances Matthew, the wife of Tobie Matthew, Archbishop of York, and the daughter of William Barlow, Bishop of Chichester. "She had four sisters married to four bishops.... So that a bishop was her father, an archbishop her father-in-law, she had four bishops her brethren, and an archbishop her husband." Unless I am much mistaken she had also an abbess for her mother, which was the strangest thing of all. There was a William Barlow, at one time Bishop of St. David's, who is said to have married an abbess as soon as the Reformation made it possible, and had five daughters married to five bishops. Frances Matthew must surely have been one of these. Tradition says that Bishop Barlow, who had many unpleasant traits, stripped the lead from the Palace of St. David's and dowered his daughters with it; but Frances must have been a baby, if indeed she was born, when her father was guilty of this thievish vandalism. She herself is described as being above her sex, and even above the times—but indeed all the women who were buried in ages gone by seem to have been superior to all the rest. She gave her husband's library to the Minster.

Close to her mural monument is the largest window in England. There is no building, I believe, that has so much ancient and beautiful glass as this, and it is a miracle to be thankful for that it was not destroyed in the last century, when the poor maniac set fire to the Minster because he disliked the buzzing of the organ. The soft-toned window of the Five Sisters is the loveliest of all.

But all these are modern things. Down in the crypt we shall find ourselves in touch with the century of Paulinus and St. Chad and St. Wilfrid, the three earliest Archbishops of York; for here is the herringbone work of the first stone church, and here, they say, are the pillars of the building that succeeded it and was destroyed by the Danes. This is the spot on which the Roman temple stood, and the wooden church where King Edwin was baptized, and the altar on which Ulphus the Saxon laid his horn. This Ulphus was a prince in Deira, whose sons were of a quarrelsome temper, and were likely, he thought, to fall out over the division of his property after his death. So "he presently took this course to make them equal." He carried his favourite drinking-horn, his horn of ivory and gold, to York, and filling it there he knelt before the altar of the Minster and drank the wine in token that he endowed the church with all his lands for ever. That this brought peace to his family I rather doubt; but the lands of Ulphus are to this day in the possession of York Minster, and the horn of Ulphus is to this day within its walls. If we go through this door in the south aisle of the choir we may see it—an elephant's tusk, rich tawny in colour, finely carved. It disappeared mysteriously at the time of the Civil War, but somehow fell into the hands of Fairfax, whose son returned it to the Minster. How it came to Fairfax is not recorded; but is it not possible that he may have quietly taken possession of it, knowing how unsafe it was in the hands of the Puritans, and have told his son to give it back in less troubled times? Or was it perhaps one of those relics which would have "irrecoverably perished in the late wars" if Fairfax had not paid "that industrious antiquary, Mr. Dodsworth," to collect them? We know that Fairfax had "a peculiar respect" for antiquities, and that it was owing to his unceasing care that the Minster suffered so little in the war.

It is not in a few days that York can be seen. Only those really know the place who live within the enchanted walls; we should linger here as long as possible, and return again and again. Yet those whose time is limited will find that even a couple of nights spent at the justly famous Station Hotel will enable them to see more than the Minster without suffering from that sense of hurry that spoils pleasure.

York has not hurried. In the Museum Gardens, themselves a wonderful museum, we may realise how many centuries she has taken to become what she is. Here is a tower that was raised by the Romans. The date of it is uncertain, but Mr. Wellbeloved tells us it was probably built when the Conquering Legion came to Eboracum. This, says Gibbon, was at the beginning of the second century; so this tower of many angles takes us back to the time of Hadrian, to days before the Emperor Severus died here in the palace that has altogether vanished, bidding his sons let all their conduct tend to each other's good; days long before the death of Constantius and the accession of Constantine the Great. It is not true that Constantine was born in York, but it was here that he went through his little performance of reluctant modesty when the soldiers made him Emperor—weeping and spurring his horse while they pursued him with the imperial robes.

In the same garden are the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey. The Benedictine monks who founded this community came from Whitby, and were perhaps the builders of the Norman apse we saw at Lastingham, where they paused for a time on their way to York. It is easy to see that this remnant of a most beautiful church was not of their raising: there is nothing Norman here, nothing but the purest Gothic work. It was while the earlier eleventh-century church was still standing that a strange scene took place here; when the Archbishop of York with his retinue clamoured long upon the abbey gates in vain, while the abbot refused to open to him; then forced his way at last into the abbey and pronounced an interdict—here where the grass grows under our feet—against the abbot and his monks. The cause of all this commotion was that little band of brethren who built the Abbey of Fountains with so much toil and endurance. They were at that time monks of St. Mary's, and had appealed to Archbishop Thurstan to reform their house. Abbot Geoffrey, however, preferred to remain unreformed; and so the fiery prelate swept off with the zealous thirteen and set them down in the wilderness beside the Skell to live as austerely as they would. The Abbey of St. Mary, in spite of the interdict, grew very great as well as beautiful.

Not only at the Dissolution, but far later, this monastery was horribly ill-treated. Its stones have built a palace and a prison; they have been used for mending, and have been made into quicklime. The palace they built has to a great extent vanished, but the Tudor house that stands near Bootham Bar—the red house with the arms of James I. over the door—is either actually a part of it or was rebuilt from its ruins. It was in that house that Strafford lived when he was President of the Council of the North; both James I. and Charles I. stayed in it when they came to York; and it was probably there that Henrietta Maria lived for three months when she brought materials of war to the city.

There are other stones of St. Mary's still to be seen, by which we may partly guess the glory that has departed. There are countless numbers of them in this garden; every flower-bed is bordered with them, and the lower part of the guesthouse, down there across the grass, is literally stacked with statues and mouldings and bosses of wonderful richness. This Hospitium is used as a museum. It is a little bewildering, with its mingled associations of mediÆval monks and Roman matrons. Here are all the things that we are accustomed to see in collections of Roman relics—pottery, tiles, jewellery, everything from a tesselated pavement to a circus ticket. One thing there is, however, to which we are not accustomed; a thing whose interest is rather painful, if not morbid; a coil of a woman's hair, as bright and brown as if it had been laid in its stone coffin only yesterday. The hair of poor Flavia or Placida would be better buried, I think.

The prison that was built from the stones of St. Mary's Abbey is on the site of William the Conqueror's castle. It is still called the Castle, but there is nothing left of the fortress except one round grey tower, standing alone on a little hill. Its walls have been concerned with many great deeds; much valour has defended it and much besieged it; much English History has been made in the shadow of it. Yet Clifford's Tower is generally remembered chiefly in connection with the wild scene of horror that took place here at the time of Richard I.'s coronation, when the Jews of York rushed to the castle for shelter, with their ducats and their daughters, and were besieged by the mob. Here, where the steps wind up between the tidy laurels, the mad crowd yelled and battered on the walls, while the White Friar who led them shrieked: "Down with the enemies of Christ!" Here within the tower, where the grass is strewn with exquisite fragments of Gothic ornament—probably from St. Mary's—the starving Jews were huddled with their families till they grew desperate. They killed their wives and children, and then they killed themselves. A few surrendered, begging for baptism, converted by these strange methods; but they were allowed no baptism but that of blood.

As we drive slowly through the streets of York, peering now at some carved archway, now at some time-worn coat-of-arms, passing here under the overhanging eaves of St. William's College, or there under the lantern tower of St. Helen's, we feel that the life of the past is still existing in this city, in some strange astral way, hidden within the life of the present. The past is not merely a picturesque memory here. Even if we had never heard the magic name of York, I think we should feel that her streets were crowded with figures we could not see.

A modern note is struck as we drive out of the town past the racecourse, and find to our pleasure that the splendid road is "treated" with some preparation that makes it absolutely dustless. This is the road by which the Stewart Kings approached York with so much show and colour, and by which their supporters marched away, defeated, but with honours of war. Like them, we are going to Tadcaster. The middle of the bridge that spans the Wharfe at Tadcaster is the boundary between the West Riding and the Ainsty, or County of York City; and this is why it was the spot where the sheriffs welcomed the Kings of England when they came to York. It was not on this actual bridge, however, that Charles was met by the citizens; for this one was made from the ruins of the castle early in the eighteenth century. Both castle and bridge, it would seem, were useless by the time they had passed from hand to hand in the Civil War. Tadcaster was an important place then, an outpost of York; even as its predecessor, Calcaria, had been an outpost to Eboracum.

A couple of miles beyond Tadcaster we pass through the village of Towton. It was near here, in the fields that lie between the main road and the river Cock, that the White Rose overcame the Red after ten hours of "deadly battle and bloody conflict." It was on the night before the actual battle that Lord Clifford and his company "were attrapped or they were ware," and Clifford, having taken off his gorget for some reason, was killed by an arrow "stricken into the throat." "This end had he," says the chronicler, "which slew the young Earl of Rutland kneeling upon his knees." If we leave the high-road for a few minutes, turning to the right beyond Towton, we shall be crossing the actual battlefield, the ground that was such a horrible medley of snow and blood on that Palm Sunday when "both the hosts approached in a plain field," the ground in which the Yorkists stuck the spent arrows of the Lancastrians, "which sore annoyed the legs of the owners when the battle joined." The falling snow, too, "somewhat blemished and minished" their sight, and the end of it was that King Henry's men turned and fled towards Tadcaster. We cannot see "the little broke called Cocke" from this spot, but there on the right is the depression in the fields through which it runs. So many men were "drent and drowned" that day in the Cock that their comrades, it is said, crossed the stream on their dead bodies, and even the river Wharfe was red with blood. From this scene of slaughter, which "did sore debilitate and much weaken the puysance of this realme," Edward IV. rode into York as its master.

At Saxton we turn to the left and rejoin the high-road to Pontefract, and after some miles of good going but cheerless scenery we cross the Aire at Ferrybridge. It was this crossing of the Aire at Ferrybridge that caused the death of Clifford the Butcher on the eve of Towton; for he, "being in lusty youth and of frank courage," attempted to prevent Edward of York from passing the river, and so was himself cut off from the Lancastrian army. He did actually secure the bridge. Lord Fitzwalter was keeping the passage for Edward "with a great number of tall personages," but Clifford and his light-horse stole up to this spot early in the morning "or his enemies were ware, gat the bridge, and slew the keepers of the same." This was the beginning of the carnage of Towton. Lord Fitzwalter, hearing the racket, rose from his bed and hurried, poleaxe in hand, to join in the fray, but "before he knew what the matter meant" he was killed. A few hours later Clifford, too, was dead.

For the last few minutes we have been travelling on the road that holds, perhaps, for road-lovers, more glamour in its name than any other—the Great North Road. We have no time to think of the romance of it, of the millions who have trodden its dust, of the gay-hearted vagabonds or anxious kings who have passed this way, for we turn from it too soon and take the road to Pontefract.

I do not know if it was on this identical road between Ferrybridge and Pontefract that Edward IV. and Warwick rode out to the field of Towton; it was in any case on a very different surface. The town of Pontefract itself is strangely unimposing for a place of such great renown; the houses are unpicturesque, the surrounding country dull. Yet Camden says it is sweetly situated, and is remarkable for producing liquorice. There are other things for which Pontefract has been remarkable in its day; but as we mount the slope into the long, straggling town there is little to show that it has ever been concerned with affairs of more vital importance than liquorice. There is, it is true, a fine church greatly ruined on our right, which has the air of having lived through a good deal. It was battered to pieces in the course of three sieges, and the transept only has been rebuilt. The strange Perpendicular tower, of which the lower part is square and the upper octagonal, seems oddly enough to have suffered less than the body of the building, for it has been very little restored. This church of All Saints was connected with a religious house whose brethren served the castle chapel; but it was not the abbey that Camden "industriously omits" from his description of Pontefract, because even in his day there was hardly a sign of it left. In his day the walls of this forlorn nave were still unbroken, and rising high above it on the hill were all the towers of the castle, a splendid cluster, with the great Norman wall encircling them, and the Round Tower of Ilbert de Lacy tallest of all. Of this "high and stately, famous and princely impregnable castle and citadel," as it was called only a few years before the Civil War, there is deplorably little for us to see. Hardly one stone was left upon another by General Lambert. The dÉbris were heaped over the foundations, soil was spread over all, and the sinister fortress whose walls had echoed the sighs of royal prisoners and the last groan of a king, the "guilty closure" that was drenched with blood and tears, was devoted to the rearing of silkworms and other such innocent uses. During the last century, however, a good deal was excavated, and we may without great difficulty find out the scene of much that has happened here.

"Oh, Pomfret! Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,
Fatal and ominous to noble peers!"

The names of those to whom it has been fatal make a long list. The most illustrious name on that list is Richard Plantagenet.

That Richard was by some means done to death in this castle is, I believe, certain; but how he died and where is unknown. The old tale that tells how Sir Piers Exton and his eight men rushed into the room where the imprisoned king was dining, and how Richard "right valiantly defended himself," but was finally struck on the head with a poleaxe by Sir Piers, who "withal ridded him of his life in an instant," was discredited when Richard's grave at Westminster was opened, and the skull, which was perfectly preserved, showed no mark of a blow. Another theory is the one believed by Northumberland and Harry Hotspur, who accused Henry IV. of having traitorously caused their sovereign lord and his "with hunger, cold, and thirst to perish, to be murdered." If we skirt the lawn-tennis court and turn down a little path to the left we shall find, behind the raised bowling-alley, a fragment of vaulted ceiling and a wall with three little recesses in it. This is reputed to be Richard's prison. I do not know if there be any real evidence that it was so. There is certainly not the evidence of a continuous tradition; for until the siege destroyed it a room in the round tower was shown to visitors as the scene of Piers Exton's fabulous exploit with the poleaxe—a room in which there was a post all hacked and cut by the blows aimed at the King! When the post disappeared the scene of Richard's death moved to this Gascoign Tower where we see the vaulted ceiling. It is curious how often the only fragment left of a building happens to be the scene of the event in the building's history that is most likely to appeal to popular sentiment. One grows suspicious of local traditions!

Richard II. was not the only prince to be imprisoned in Pontefract Castle. James I. of Scotland was here, and with him were the Dukes of OrlÉans and Bourbon and other prisoners taken on the field of Agincourt. Henry V. was a little anxious at one time lest he should lose "the remnant of his prisoners of France," for a plot was on foot to rescue them. "I will," wrote the King, "that the Duke of OrlÉans be kept still within the Castle of Pomfret, without going to Robert's Place or to any other disport; for it is better he lack his disport than we were deceived of all the remnant."

Of all those who actually met their death here Thomas Earl of Lancaster—he whom Gaveston called the Actor—had the hardest fate. The place belonged to him, and he had done much for it. Among other things he built or repaired the tower called Swillington, the tower that was destined to be his own prison, whose fragments we may see down there guarding the moat on the north side. His hatred of Gaveston and the Despencers, Edward II.'s favourites, brought him to this plight; to this dark tower whose walls he had made so thick, whose entrance was a trap-door in the roof; to his mock trial by his enemies in the great hall that stood here on the north side of the lawn; to his condemnation and ignominious death. It was here within this court, somewhere near the northern boundary wall, that he stood facing the Despencers as they venomously sent him to the block; it was here that he uttered his last despairing words: "Shall I die without answer?" Then they muffled his head in an old hood and set him, the King's uncle, on "a lean mare without a bridle," and so led him out among the mocking soldiers to his death. We can see, from the castle ramparts, the hill where he was beheaded. It is called St. Thomas's Hill to this day, for later on he was canonised and his grave in St. John's Priory became a shrine. The site of the priory—the monastery that Camden industriously omitted—is between the hill and the castle.

Pontefract was fatal to many of Edward IV.'s followers and kin. Before his final triumph at Tewkesbury some of his supporters were imprisoned here. "John Pylkyngton, Mr. W. att Cliff, and Fowler ar taken," we read in the Paston Letters, "and in the Castyll of Pomfrett, and ar lyck to dye hastyly, withowte they be dead." Very hastily, too, and without trial, Edward's brother-in-law Lord Rivers, and stepson Sir Richard Grey died here by order of Richard III.

It really seems as though there had been something sinister in the atmosphere of this place. Even its one gay memory—the visit of Henry VIII. and his fifth bride—is overshadowed by the scaffold; for it was here that Katherine Howard put a weapon into her husband's hand by making Francis Derham her private secretary.

Indeed Pontefract has no cheerful annals: they are all of battle, murder, and sudden death. There was very little bloodshed, I believe, when the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace took the castle; but who can guess how many died during the three sieges of the Civil War? The place was Crown property, but after two sieges it surrendered to the army of the Parliament. It is rather difficult to ascertain by what particular form of treachery it was recovered by the Royalists. The deed was done, in any case, by one Colonel Marris, whom Clarendon describes as "a stout and bold undertaker in attempts of the greatest danger." Stout and bold he certainly was, but not very attractive; for he began by deserting the royal cause, and then, when he wished to turn his coat again, was enabled to carry out his plot by his close friendship with the governor. Being always welcome he made friends with some of the guard. The garrison, as it happened, needed new beds, so when Marris and some others appeared at the gates laden with beds they were admitted at once. They carried the beds into that solid-looking house that was on our right as we entered the castle, the house that bears the arms of Lancaster over the door. It was the Main Guardhouse. There they flung the beds upon the floor and overpowered the friendly guard.

So Pontefract came back to the Crown, the Parliamentary garrison were imprisoned in the magazine, and the third siege began. The magazine in which Colonel Cotterell and his men lived for eleven weeks is under the lawn-tennis court. If you borrow a taper from the custodian you can go down into it, and read, on the wall of the staircase, the names that some of these soldiers cut in the stone.

When the time came for discussing terms of surrender General Lambert said that Marris and five others must be given up to him. The governor asked and was granted six days in which the six men might do their best to escape. On the fifth day they had all disappeared and the garrison surrendered. Two of the six, however, were still within the castle, in a secret place beneath the Pipe Tower, which stood over there beyond the Norman Keep. They were walled up "with great store of waste stones," and had food for a month beside them. The situation was a critical one. They heard their garrison march away, some to Newark, some to the enemy's camp, some to their homes, the officers with their horses and arms, even the men with Portmantles and Snapsacks; heard the rumbling of the three waggons that carried the wounded; heard, during ten awful days, the incessant clamour and crash of the first hurried dismantling of the castle, the clamour that might be their death at any moment; heard at last the withdrawal of the Parliamentary troops. Then they took down their wall of waste stones, and stole away.

These men who imprisoned themselves were the last prisoners of Pontefract Castle, for after this the historic ground was sown with liquorice; but the Main Guardhouse was spared, as we see, and for another century or two kept up the gloomy traditions of the place as a prison.

The country that lies between Pontefract and Beverley is by no means beautiful. It is so aggressively dull that it may almost be called ugly. It is not for the sake of the scenery, truly, that we cover so many miles of Southern Yorkshire, but chiefly for the sake of Beverley Minster; and there are many, no doubt, who will prefer to make York or Pontefract the last stopping-place of their tour. Those who do not care for historical memories unless there be something beautiful connected with them I advise to drive across from York to Beverley by the most direct road.

Half-way between Pontefract and Knottingley we have once more a flashing glimpse of the Great North Road and the immense signposts that mark its dignity, and are in themselves a lesson in geography; at Chapel Haddlesey we cross a toll-bridge. These are the only incidents on this singularly uneventful route until we reach Selby; but as all good motorists very well know, the road without incidents is often as happy as the country without history, and the particular road that lies through these melancholy fields and unattractive villages is very fine. Those who depend on horses or trains cannot vary their speed according to the beauty of the country, but to us is given the special joy of sauntering through lovely landscapes and hurrying on when there is nothing to be seen.

In 1906 the name of Selby was brought into tragic prominence by the fire that made its abbey roofless and "only not a wreck." But as there are disastrous victories so there are beneficent calamities; and Selby Abbey, it seems, whose restoration has already been a triumph of energy, will soon be more complete than it has been since 1690, when the tower fell and ruined the south transept.

This grand church is the work of many hands. It is a mixture of every style of architecture, both within and without: Early Norman, Transition, Early English, Decorated, Perpendicular. The west front, for instance, has a splendid Norman doorway with five mouldings, and above it an Early English window filled with Perpendicular tracery. No part of this building was raised by the founder; and indeed it was not to this exact spot, but nearer to the Ouse, that Benedict of Auxerre, bringing with him "the glorious finger" of St. Germanus and the memory of a heavenly vision, came to set up his hut. The first benefactor of the foundation was the man who presented a tent to shelter the relic, round which a cluster of wooden buildings grew, and formed the first monastery of Selby. William the Conqueror gave land, and a charter, and many privileges; and Abbot Benedict won from the Pope the much-coveted honour of the mitre. William's charter was dated the year after the birth of Prince Henry, and its great generosity, it is said, was prompted by the fact that Selby was the birthplace of this favourite son of the king, Henry the fine scholar, Henry the lion of justice. To him, says an old chronicler, "Almighty God gave three gifts—wisdom, victory, and riches." Yet his wisdom failed him, alas, in the matter of lampreys!

It was Abbot Hugh, a member of that great house of de Lacy which gave so many fine buildings to England, who raised the abbey on the spot where it still stands. That massive pillar at the east end of the nave, the pillar with the spiral mouldings, was part of his work. It is even possible that some of its stones were actually laid in their places by his strenuous hands, for he worked with the builders. It is a fine picture—the beautiful pillar rising course by course towards the open sky, as Hugh de Lacy, abbot and noble, with infinite care and reverence fixed each stone in its place with a hymn of praise.

The later abbots, the three who in the fourteenth century raised the choir that has been called peerless, were men of another fashion—not especially humble—members of Parliament, entertainers of kings, men of the world. Yet to them, too, we owe much gratitude for all this splendour of ornament, these capitals and bosses, this great east window, this flowing parapet that is so often repeated. And, as a nation, we owe gratitude to all those whose work or money has helped in the recent restoration.[7]

There is nothing but the abbey itself to keep us in Selby. There is no sign by which we may know the spot where Sir Thomas Fairfax, by defeating the Royalists and capturing their colonel, first made his name honoured. We do know, however, that he and his troops marched to Selby on that occasion by this wondrously level road upon which we drive away. For the first mile or so, until we turn away from the Ouse, we are on the road that used to be, in the old coaching days, called the lower road to York. It diverges from the Great North Road at Barnet, and though not the main highway, was the more direct route, and therefore the one chosen by those who were in a hurry. It is for a very short time that we are on it; but surely, for a moment, above the humming of the engine, above the rushing of the wind, we hear the ringing of Black Bess's hoofs.

Five level miles bring us to the door of Hemingborough Church, which is large and renowned, but of a dreariness so gaunt and bare that it altogether fails to charm. Its walls, unsoftened by creepers, rise from the treeless landscape in uncompromising severity; and inside the building the colourless effect is equally depressing, in spite of some fine woodwork. The tall and slender spire is really beautiful, however, and may be seen for miles across the plain.

To visit Wressle Castle we must leave the direct road to Howden, turning to the left immediately after crossing the Derwent. Here again the sad landscape seems to have infected the building. Theoretically it has all the elements of romance, and to read of it without seeing it is to conjure up a picture of decaying splendour, of venerable walls eloquent of revelry and war, a picture worthy of the great names of Percy and Lacy and Seymour. A castle founded by that Earl of Worcester whose headless body lies in Shrewsbury Abbey because he fought for Richard II.'s lost cause, a castle that has seen all the might of the Northumberlands and all the tragedy of civil war, must surely have "the grand air." So one thinks till one has seen Wressle. In the background is a building, shabby but not ruined; in the foreground is a cabbage-patch.

Yet once this place was all magnificence, made "al of very fair and greate squarid stone both withyn and withoute." Leland tells us of its halls and great chambers, and its five towers, and its brewhouse without the wall, and its "botery, pantery, pastery, lardery, and kechyn." All these things were exceedingly fair, he says, and so were the gardens within the moat and the orchards without. It was here where the cabbages are that those fair gardens grew. And in the orchards were mounds, "writhen about with degrees like turninges of cokilshilles, to cum to the top without payn." Most fondly of all he describes the "study caullid Paradise," with the ingenious device of ledged desks for holding books. There, looking down upon us from the upper part of the tower nearest to the road, are the empty windows of that Paradise whose inhabitants were driven out of it for ever by the flaming sword of Civil War.

This is only a fragment of the original castle. The Northumberlands needed a considerable amount of house-room, for they had, it appears, two hundred and twenty-nine servants. There were gentlemen to wait before noon and gentlemen to wait after noon, and gentlemen to wait after supper; there were yeoman officers, and groom officers, and grooms of the chambers; there was a groom for brushing clothes, a groom of the stirrup, a groom to dress the hobbies and nags, a groom to keep the hounds, a groom to keep the gates, and an endless list of others. The day came when the servants in this house were called upon by the Parliament to demolish it themselves, and were given a month to do it in. This one side of the quadrangle was all they left. It is possible, I believe, to climb one of the towers to see the view—but I cannot think it desirable. The view from the bottom of the tower is not so attractive as to make one wish for more.

A very great relief to the eye is Howden, about three miles further on. The town itself is not without a certain degree of picturesqueness, though it was scarcely a happy thought to surmount the ancient steps of the cross in the market-place by a modern street lamp. However, from that same market-place we see, behind the red houses, the ruined gable-end of the church that is Howden's pride, whose lovely tower is one of the landmarks of the plain. The peculiarly slender and graceful effect of this tower is partly owing, I think, to the unusual height of the lower stage compared with the upper. Those tall lancets were the work of Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, whose palace stood over there to the east of the church, where the pretty gardens are. If we venture a little way on foot along that lane at the corner of the square, we may see, without trespassing, the beautiful old ivy-covered wall and the blocked gatehouse with the shield upon it, within which the bishops of Durham were wont to seek rest and change. Camden's tale, to the effect that Bishop Skirlaw built "the huge tall steeple" as a refuge for the inhabitants in times of flood, need not be believed; it was probably the invention, as a certain quaint old book suggests, of "some doating scribe, desirous of assimilating the steeple of Howden Church to the tower of Babel."

In the thirteenth century the Archbishop of York, seeing that this church was "very wide and large," and rich enough to support "many spiritual men," made it collegiate. Hence arose the need for the chapter-house that Walter Skirlaw built on the south side of the choir, and made so wonderfully beautiful that even now, robbed as it is of its groined roof and much of its rich ornament, it dwells in one's mind as a thing apart. The Decorated choir, which was first the work and afterwards the shrine of the thirteenth-century poet, John Hoveden, is itself a ruin; for when the church lost its prebends and its riches in the reign of Edward VI. there was neither need nor means left for keeping this part of the building in repair. The nave is still the parish church.

After leaving Howden we have to pass, with what speed we may, over ten more miles of absolutely level, absolutely uninspiring country. Then we go through North Cave, where George Washington's ancestors used to live; and at last the road begins to rise over Kettlethorpe Hill. The flat land is laid out like a map below us; far away upon the horizon—which is level as the sea—rises "the huge tall steeple" of Howden; and between the plain of Yorkshire and the rising-ground of Lincolnshire are the sullen waters of that great river that has brought England so much of her prosperity. Not always, however, has the Humber brought prosperity. More than a thousand years ago the fleet of the avenging Danes, Hinguar and Hubba, swept up between these low banks, to lay this rich country waste. Right into the heart of the land they sailed, and ceased not to destroy till all the country of the fens was desolate. Now this calamity and much more besides—the destruction of Lindisfarne and Whitby, of Croyland and Ely and Peterborough, and the death of St. Edmund the King—was brought about by the jealousy of one obscure individual. For Lothbroc the Dane, being a guest at Edmund's Court, had showed so much skill in the trapping of birds and beasts that the King's head-keeper, as one may call him, was "inflamed with mortal envy." So he slew Lothbroc treacherously. Then the King sent the murderer to sea in a little boat, without sail or oars, and the boat drifted to the shores of Denmark. And the wicked keeper sought the sons of Lothbroc, whose names were Hinguar and Hubba, and told them that their father had been slain by order of King Edmund. So Hinguar and Hubba swore by "their almighty gods that they would not leave that murder unpunished"; and verily they fulfilled their oath.

Two hundred years later another Dane, Sweyn of the Forked Beard, "a cruel man, and ready for the shedding of blood," sailed up to conquer the north. Just beyond that island that lies close to the left bank, where we see the Ouse suddenly widen into the Humber, Sweyn turned into the river Trent. And "all England groaned like a bed of reeds shaken by the west wind."

At the top of the hill we pass through a wonderful avenue of beeches and sycamores; then run down a long and pleasant slope into Walkington; and soon the blue towers of Beverley appear.

The brief run across the common above Beverley will probably be the last of our memorable moments in Yorkshire: the last of those memories which we motorists—while the days are long and the winds are soft and the engine purrs contentedly hour after hour—hoard up to enjoy again and again, not only through the winter but through the years. This particular moment is a very short one; but it will be long, I think, before we forget the beauty of the town of Beverley as it lies in the blue dusk of a summer evening, with its matchless towers dominating it.

Yes, surely, they are matchless! See how the straight, clean lines of their tall buttresses—those parallel lines that are repeated again and again in the Perpendicular panels, and even in the deep shadows cast by the masonry—give the impression of slenderness and height. Not anywhere, not at Lincoln, not at York, are there towers of a design so complete and finished, of a simplicity so exquisite. Nowhere else does the accumulation of straight lines produce so rich a whole; nowhere else are the very shadows used to enhance the effect. There is much that is beautiful in Beverley Minster, but in the main it is these twin towers that are going to be our compensation for all those miles we have driven between flat fields, "enclosid," as Leland says, "with hegges."

The monastery of Beverley was founded, or at all events much frequented in the eighth century, by a certain Archbishop of York, who retired hither "out of a pious aversion to this world," and has been known ever since as St. John of Beverley. Bede's account of this saint is well worth reading. He was a man of many miracles, of much kindliness, of some sharpness of tongue. Never was there a saint of so much commonsense, mingled with the compelling power that works miracles in every age. There was a "dumb boy," for instance, who had also a sore head. The archbishop divined the nervous nature of the dumbness, and cured it so thoroughly that the youth talked incessantly for a day and a night, as long as he could keep awake. Then the archbishop "ordered the physician to take in hand the cure of his head." The shrewd saint recognised his own limitations. On another occasion he was brought to heal a dying nun. "What can I do to the girl," he asked tartly, "if she is like to die?"

Such was St. John of Beverley, of whom we may see a picture, though not, I fear, a portrait, in the south transept of this minster. It represents him receiving from King Athelstane a charter with a portentous seal and the following legend:—

"Als fre make I the
as hert may thynke
or egh may see."

King Athelstane, it is true, was by no means a contemporary of St. John of Beverley, but he regarded the saint as his special benefactor, and gave many privileges to Beverley on that account—so the symbolism is pretty even if the picture is not. If we walk along the nave till we are beneath the second boss of the vaulted roof, counting from the east, we shall be above the spot where John of Beverley's dust has lain for many centuries. He was originally buried in the porch; probably his bones were moved when the Saxon Church was replaced by a Norman one. I do not know on what authority the local guide informs us that Athelstane's dagger is in this grave. Gibson, who in his additions to Camden describes the opening of the tomb in the seventeenth century, makes mention of no dagger, but only of the sweet-smelling dust, and the six cornelian beads, and the brass pins and iron nails. Athelstane, it is true, left his dagger as a hostage on St. John's grave while he was fighting the Scots; but the story says that he redeemed it on his return by re-founding the monastery as a college, and granting it the right of sanctuary. Hence the legend on the charter.

In the north aisle of the choir, near the entrance to the Percy Chapel, is the visible symbol of that right of sanctuary, the Fridstool, the plain rounded seat in which he that sat was safe even though he were a murderer, the sacred centre of the six circles that conferred each its own amount of security. To this Stool of Peace, in the days when it stood beside the altar, many a man—indeed many a ruffian—has owed his life and the freedom he so little deserved. It was to this very seat that Richard II.'s half-brother, Sir John Holland, came hurrying through the night. Froissart tells the story, how Holland and Lord Ralph Stafford met in a lane but could not see each other for the darkness. "I am Stafford," said one. "And I am Holland," said the other, and added: "Thy servants have murdered my squire whom I loved so much." Then he killed Lord Ralph with a blow. Stafford's servant cried out that his master was dead. "Be it so," said Sir John; "I had rather have put him to death than one of less rank, for I have the better revenged the loss of my squire." In spite of this haughty attitude, however, he lost no time in taking refuge here. The beautiful towers were not in existence then, but the nave through which he hastened was this Decorated nave that we see now, and these Early English arches were above him as he sat in the sanctuary, and close to him was that wonderful canopied tomb near the altar, supposed to be the grave of Eleanor, Lady Percy.

If it were not eclipsed by the minster the church of St. Mary at Beverley would be more famous than it is, for it, too, is full of beauty and interest. But only those who are very enthusiastic lovers of architecture, or who are able to spend some days in the town, will risk confusing their memories of the first with the details of the second.

Beverley, though never fortified, had once three gates. Of these only one still stands, the North Bar. Beneath its crow-stepped parapet Charles I. must have passed with an angry heart when he rode out to York after his futile expedition to Hull. And it is very likely that we, if we are going south, shall drive out of Beverley upon the same road by which he came from Hull the night before, with the first open defiance of one of his own towns ringing ominously in his ears.

Who thinks of history when he goes to Hull? It is, no doubt, like all great commercial centres, of paramount interest to its inhabitants; but to the traveller what is it? A starting-place, a place where there are docks, railway stations, hotels. Even that increasing band of travellers who are learning, with the help of bicycles and motor-cars, to know their country with the intimate knowledge that nearly always means love, to linger in its historic towns, to seek its little villages, and to eat the familiar bacon-and-eggs of its wayside inns, even these are fain to pass through Hull with no thought beyond their anxiety to reach some other place. Beyond the two old churches of Holy Trinity and St. Mary there is nothing here to see except a good deal of prosperity and the squalor that prosperity brings.

Yet even these wide streets of central Hull, with all their prosaic traffic, should take our thoughts back to Edward I. These things are the justification of that astute and high-handed king; they are the fulfilment of his prophecy. This sheltered corner of the Humber, he thought, would make a fine position for a commercial town. To think of a thing was to do it at once, with our first Edward; so he bought the land from the Abbey of Meaux, made himself a manor, called the place King's Town, built some houses, and paid people to live in them. Well, there may be some even now who would have to be paid to live in Hull; but none the less Edward was wise here as in most other places.

And, moreover, as we reach the outskirts of this town we may recall that one of the most dramatic scenes in English history was enacted here—that defiance of Charles I. at the walls of his own town, which was the gauntlet flung by the Parliament.

War was yet not declared, but there was great store of ammunition in Hull which might, thought Charles, be useful by and by. So he, with two or three hundred others, set out from York to see about the matter, and as he drew near this town—fortified then with a great wall and many towers—he sent a message to bid the governor dine with him. I do not know if there is any vestige left of the wall to which Charles presently came, or any record of the spot where he paused, dumbfounded, before the gate. This, he surely thought, as he scanned the walls and the closely shut gates and the hostile draw-bridges, this was a strange welcome to his city of Hull, the King's Town! Here were no sheriffs marching out to meet him as at York, nor gay trainbands, nor kneeling mayors; but walls manned with soldiers who were anything but gay, and inhospitable gate-keepers whom he could by no means persuade to let him pass, and on the ramparts the unhappy governor, Sir John Hotham. "And when the King commanded him to cause the port to be opened," says Clarendon, "he answered like a distracted man that no man could understand; he fell upon his knees, used all the execrations imaginable, that the earth would open and swallow him up if he were not his Majesty's most faithful subject." Yet in spite of all his protestations this man "of a fearful nature and perplexed understanding" was quite clear in his mind as to what his intentions were, and not too fearful to carry them out. The King should not come in.

Then solemnly, from below the wall they might not enter, the King's officers made proclamation that Sir John Hotham, Governor of Hull, was a traitor; and Charles, with his head high but his spirits very low, rode on to Beverley in the shadow of the Great Rebellion.

Our plight at this moment is not the same as his. If his difficulty was to enter Hull, ours lies in the leaving of it—supposing, that is to say, that we wish to cross the Humber by the ferry. There are no arrangements of any kind for shipping cars. A narrow, precipitous gangway, with a right-angled turn in the middle, is the only means of passing from the quay to the ferry-boat. The transit is a matter of difficulty for any car—for a large one it is impossible. Hull, however, is a progressive place, as befits the town of that most progressive king who saw its possibilities so long ago. Very soon, we cannot doubt, the shipping of a car on the shores of the Humber will be less like a feat in a circus than it is at present.