Northern Manners—Cottingham—The Romance of Baynard Castle—Beverley—Yorkshire Dialect—The Farmers’ Breakfast—Glimpses of the Town—Antiquities and Constables—The Minster—Yellow Ochre—The Percy Shrine—The Murdered Earl—The Costly Funeral—The Sister’s Tomb—Rhyming Legend—The Fridstool—The Belfry.

Journeying from Hull to Beverley by ‘market-train’ on the morrow, I had ample proof, in the noisy talk of the crowded passengers, that Yorkshire dialect and its peculiar idioms are not “rapidly disappearing before the facilities for travel afforded by railways.” Nor could I fail to notice what has before struck me, that taken class for class, the people north of Coventry exhibit a rudeness, not to say coarseness of manners, which is rarely seen south of that ancient city. In Staffordshire, within twenty miles of Birmingham, there are districts where baptism, marriage, and other moral and religious observances considered as essentials of Christianity, are as completely disregarded as among the heathen. In some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire similar characteristics prevail; but rude manners do not necessarily imply loose morality. Generally speaking the rudeness is a safety-valve that lets off the faults or seeming faults of character; and I for one prefer rudeness to that over-refinement prevalent in Middlesex, where you may not call things by their right names, and where, as a consequence, the sense of what is fraudulent, and criminal, and wicked, has become weakened, because of the very mild and innocent words in which ‘good society’ requires that dishonesty and sin should be spoken of.

If we alight at Cottingham and take a walk in the neighbourhood we may discover the scene of a romantic incident. There stood Baynard Castle, a grand old feudal structure, the residence of Lord Wake. When Henry VIII. lay at Hull, he sent a messenger to announce a royal visit to the castle, anticipating, no doubt, a loyal reception; but the lord instead of pride felt only alarm, for his wife, whom he loved truly, was very beautiful, and he feared for the consequences should the amorous monarch set eyes on her beauty. He resolved on a stratagem: gave instructions to his confidential steward; departed at dead of night with his wife; and before morning nothing of the castle remained but a heap of smoking ruins. The king, on hearing of the fire, little suspecting the cause, generously sent a gift of two thousand pounds, with friendly words, to mitigate the loss; but the wary lord having evaded the visit, refused also to receive the money. And now, after lapse of centuries, there is nothing left but traces of a moat and rampart, to show the wayfarer where such an ardent sacrifice was made to true affection.

Even among the farmers, at whose table I took breakfast at the Holderness Hotel, at Beverley, there was evidence that broad Yorkshire is not bad Dutch, as the proverb says:

The farmers talked about horses, and, to my surprise, they ate but daintily of the good things, the beef, ham, mutton, brawn, and other substantial fare that literally burdened the table. Not one played the part of a good trencherman, but trifled as if the victim of dinners fashionably late; and still more to my surprise, when the conversation took a turn, they all spoke disdainfully of walking. That sort of exercise was not at all to their liking. “I ha’n’t walked four mile I don’t know when,” said one; and his fellows avowed themselves similarly lazy. My intention to walk along the coast to the mouth of the Tees appeared to them a weakminded project.

Beverley has a staid, respectable aspect, as if aware of its claims to consideration. Many of the houses have an old-world look, and among them a searching eye will discover unmistakable bits of antiquity. A small columnar building in the market-place is called the market-cross; beyond it stands a rare old specimen of architecture, St. Mary’s church, the scene of the accident recorded by the ancient rhymer:—

Beyond the church, one of the old town gates, a heavy stone arch, bestrides the street. At the other end of the town, screened by an ancient brick wall, you may see the house of the Black Friars—more venerable than picturesque—besides little glimpses of the middle ages on your straggling saunter thither. Among these are not a few of that sort of endowments which give occasion for abuses, and perpetuate helplessness. And of noticeable peculiarities you will perhaps think that one might be beneficially imitated in other towns. A Constable Lives Here is a notification which you may read on sundry little boards, topped by a royal crown, nailed here and there over the doors.

But the minster is the great attraction, rich in historical associations and architectural beauty. The edifice, as it now appears, has all been built since the destruction by fire, in 1138, of an older church that stood on the same spot. The style is diverse, a not uncommon characteristic of ancient churches: Early English at the east end, Decorated in the nave, and Perpendicular in the west front and some minor portions. This western front is considered the master-work, for not one of its features is out of harmony with the others—a specimen of the Perpendicular, so Rickman signifies, not less admirable than the west front of York Minster of the Decorated. The effect, indeed, is singularly striking as you approach it from a quiet back street. I found a seat in a favourable point of view, and sat till my eye was satisfied with the sight of graceful forms, multiplied carvings, the tracery and ornament from base to roof, and upwards, where the towers, two hundred feet in height, rise grandly against the bright blue sky.

However much you may admire yellow ochre on door-steps, door-posts, and in the passages and on the stairs of dwelling-houses, you will think it out of place when used to hide the natural colour of the masonry in a noble church. For me, the effect of the interior was marred by the yellow mask of the great pillars. The eye expects repose and harmony, and finds itself cheated. Apart from this, the lofty proportions, the perspective of the aisles, the soaring arches, the streaming lights and tinted shadows, fail not in their power to charm. Your architect is a mighty magician. All the windows, as is believed, were once filled with stained glass, for the large east window was glazed in 1733 with the numerous fragments that remained after the destroyers of ecclesiastical art had perpetrated their mischief. The colours show the true old tone; and the effect, after all, is not unpleasing.

The Percy shrine on the north side of the choir is one of the monuments to which, after viewing the carved stalls and the altar screen, the sexton will call your special attention. It is a canopied tomb of exquisite workmanship, enriched with various carvings, figures of knights and angels, crockets and finials; marking the resting-place, as is supposed, of the Lady Idonea Clifford, wife of the second Lord Percy of Alnwick. The Percys played a conspicuous part in Yorkshire history. Another of the family, grandson of Hotspur, reposes, as is said, under a tomb in the north transept. He was not a warrior, but a prebend of Beverley. Then, at the east end, the Percy chapel, which has lost its beauty through mutilation, commemorates Henry, the fourth Earl of Northumberland, who was massacred at his seat, Maiden Bower, near Topcliffe, in 1489. Authorized by Henry VII. to answer the appeal of the leading men of his neighbourhood against a tax which levied one-tenth of their property, by a declaration that not one penny would be abated, he delivered his message in terms so haughty and imperious, that the chiefs losing patience, brought up their retainers, sacked the house and murdered the earl. The corpse was buried here in the minster; and the funeral, which cost a sum equivalent to 10,000l. present value, is described as of surpassing magnificence. Among the numerous items set down in the bill of charges is twopence a piece for fourteen thousand “pore folk” at the burial.

In the south aisle of the nave stands another canopied tomb, an altar tomb of elegant form, covered by a slab of Purbeck marble, which appears never to have had a word of inscription to tell in whose memory it was erected. Neither trace nor record: nothing but tradition, and Venerable Bede. St. John of Beverley had only to send a cruse of water into which he had dipped his finger to a sick person to effect a cure. He once restored the wife of Earl Puch, who lived at Bishop Burton, a few miles distant. The lady drank a draught of holy water, and recovered forthwith from a grievous sickness. She had two daughters who, overawed by the miracle, entered the nunnery at Beverley, where they won a reputation for holiness and good works. It was they who gave the two pastures on which freemen of the town still graze their cattle. The rest of their story is told in the ballad: it was Christmas-eve, says the rhymer, the customary service had been performed in the chapel; the abbess and her nuns slowly retired to pursue their devotions apart in their cells, all save two, who lingered and went forth hand in hand after the others. Whither went they? On the morrow they were missing; and

A miracle! cries the rhymer; and he goes on to tell how that the nuns repair to the chapel and chant a hymn of praise, after which the two sisters, kneeling, entreat the abbess for her blessing, and no sooner has she pronounced Vade in pace, than drooping like two fair lilies, two pale corpses sink to the floor. Then the bells break into a chime wondrously sweet, rung by no earthly hand; and when the sisters are laid in the tomb, they suffer no decay. Years passed away, and still no change touched those lovely forms and angelic features:

Another noteworthy object is King Athelstan’s Fridstool, or chair of peace; the centre of a sanctuary which extended a mile from the minster in all directions. Any fugitive who could once sit therein was safe, whatever his crime. When Richard II. encamped at Beverley, on his way to Scotland, his half-brother, Sir John Holland, having aided in the atrocious murder of Lord Ralph Stafford, fled to the Fridstool, nor would he leave it until assured of the king’s pardon. “The Countess of Warwick is now out of Beverley sanctuary,” says Sir John Paston, writing to his brother in June, 1473—the days of Edward IV. The chair, hewn from a single block of stone, is very primitive in form and appearance; and as devoid of beauty as some of the seats in the Soulages collection. Athelstan was a great benefactor to the church. You may see his effigy, and that of St. John, at the entrance to the choir and over a door in the south transept, where he is represented as handing a charter to the holy man, of which one of the privileges is recorded in old English characters:

Such a generous giver deserved to be held in honour, especially if the eye were to see from the height of the tower, to the top of which I now mounted by the narrow winding-stair. While stopping to take breath in the belfry, you will perhaps be amused by a table of ringer’s laws, and a record of marvellous peals, the same in purport as those exhibited at Hull. You can take your time in the ascent, for sextons eschew climbing, at least in all the churches I visited in Yorkshire.