A Month in Yorkshire

The descent is alike rough and steep, bringing you rapidly down to the first farm. A cliff on the right gradually merges into the rounded swell of a green hill; we come to a plantation where, in the open places by the beck, grow wild strawberries; then to trees on one side—ash, holly, beech, and larch, the stems embraced by ivy, and thorns and wild roses between; then trees on both sides, and the narrow track is beautiful as a Berkshire lane—and that is saying a great deal—and the brook which accompanies it makes a cheerful sound as if gladdened by the quivering sunbeams that fall upon it. Everywhere the haymakers are at work, and with merry hearts, for the wind blows lustily and makes the whole dale vocal.

By-and-by the lane sends off branches, all alike pretty, one of which brings us down into the lowest meadows, and on the descent we get glimpses of Bolton Castle, and on the right appears Penhill, shouldering forward like a great promontory. A relic of antiquity may yet be seen on its slopes—obscure remains of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars. The watcher on Penhill was one of those who helped to spread the alarm of invasion in the days of Napoleon the Great, for he mistook a fire on the eastern hills for the beacon on Rosebury Topping, and so set his own a-blaze. We come to Thoralby, a village of comfortable signs within, and pleasant prospects without; and now Wensleydale opens, and another half-hour brings us to Aysgarth, a large village four miles below Bainbridge.

A tall maypole stands on the green, the only one I remember to have seen in Yorkshire. It is a memorial of the sports and pastimes for which Wensleydale was famous. The annual feasts and fairs would attract visitors from twenty miles around. Here, at Aysgarth, not the least popular part of the amusements were the races, run by men stark naked, as people not more than forty years old can well remember. But times are changed; and throughout the dale drunkenness and revelry are giving way to teetotalism, lectures, tea-gatherings, and other moral recreations. And the change is noticeable in another particular: the Quakers, who were once numerous in the dale, have disappeared too.

Some two or three years ago a notion prevailed in a certain quarter that the time was ripe for making proselytes, and establishing a meeting once more at Aysgarth. The old meeting-house, the school-room, and dwelling-house, remained; why should they not be restored to their original uses? Was it not “about Wensleydale” that George Fox saw “a great people in white raiment by a river-side?” Did he not, while on his journey up the dale, go into the “steeple-house” and “largely and freely declare the word of life, and have not much persecution,” and afterwards was locked into a parlour as “a young man that was mad, and had run away from his relations?” From certain indications it seemed that a successful effort might be made; an earnest and active member of the society volunteered to remove with his family from London into Yorkshire to carry out the experiment; and soon the buildings were repaired, the garden was cultivated anew, the doors of the meeting-house were opened; the apostle went about and talked to the people, and gave away tracts freely. The people listened to him, and read his tracts, and were well content to have him among them; but the experiment failed—not one became a Quaker.

At the beginning of the present year (1858) an essay was advertised for, on the causes of the decline of Quakerism, simultaneously with a great increase in the population at large. It appears to me that the causes are not far to seek. One of them I have already mentioned: others consist in what Friends call a “guarded education,” which seeks rather to ignore vice than to implant abhorrence of it; in training children by a false standard: “Do this; don’t do that;” not because it is right or wrong, but because such is or is not the practice of Friends, so that when the children grow old enough to see what a very foolish Mrs. Grundy they have had set before them as a model, they naturally suspect imposition, become restive, and kick over the traces. Moreover, to set up fidgetty crotchets as principles of truth, whereby the sense of the ludicrous is excited in others, and not reverence, is not the way to increase and multiply. Many Quakers now living will remember the earnest controversy that once stirred them as to whether it might be proper to use umbrellas, and to wear hats with a binding round the edge of the brim; and the anxious breeches question, of which a ministress said in her sermon, that it was “matter of concern to see so many of the young men running down into longs, yet the Lord be thanked, there was a precious remnant left in shorts.” And again, silent worship tends to diminish numbers, as also the exceeding weakness—with rare exceptions—of the words that occasionally break the silence; and the absence of an external motive to fix the attention encourages roving thoughts. Hence Darlington railway-shares, and the shop-shelves, and plans for arbours and garden-plots, employ the minds of many who might have other thoughts did they hear—“Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

There is my essay. It is a short one, freely given; for I must confess to a certain liking for the Quakers, after all. Their charities are noble and generous; their views on many points eminently liberal and enlightened; and though themselves enslaved to crotchets, they have shown bravely and practically that they abhor slavery; and their recent mission to Finland demonstrates the bounty and tenderness with which they seek to mitigate the evils of war. There is in Oxfordshire a little Quaker burial-ground, on the brow of a hill looking far away into the west country, where I have asked leave to have my grave dug, when the time comes: that is, if the sedate folk will admit among them even a dead Philistine.

I saw the Quaker above-mentioned standing at his door: we were total strangers to each other, but my Bainbridge friend had told him there was a chance of my visiting Aysgarth, and he held out his hand. Soon tea was made ready, and after that he called his son, and led me across the hill-slopes to get the best views, and by short cuts down to Aysgarth Force, a mile below the village, where the Ure rushes down three great breaks or steps in the limestone which stretch all across the river. The water is shallow, and falling as a white curtain over the front of each step, shoots swiftly over the broad level to the next plunge, and the next, producing, even in dry weather, a very pleasing effect. But during a flood the steps disappear, and the whole channel is filled by one great rapid, almost terrific in its vehemence. The stony margin of the stream is fretted and worn into many curious forms, and for a mile or more above and below the bed is stone—nothing but stone—while on each side the steep banks are patched and clothed with trees and bush. The broken ground above the Force, interspersed with bush, is a favourite resort of picnic parties, and had been thronged a few days before by a multitude of festive teetotallers.

The bridge which crosses the river between the Force and the village, with its arch of seventy-one feet span springing from two natural piers of limestone, is a remarkably fine object when viewed from below. Above, the river flows noisily from ledge to ledge down a winding gorge.

Drunken Barnaby, who, by the way, was a Yorkshireman, named Richard Braithwaite, came to Wensleydale in one of his itineraries. “Thence,” says the merry fellow—

“Thence to Wenchly, valley-seated,For antiquity repeated;Sheep and sheep-herd, as one brother,Kindly drink to one another;Till pot-hardy, light as feather,Sheep and sheep-herd sleep together.“Thence to Ayscarthe from a mountaine,Fruitfull valleys, pleasant fountaine,Woolly flocks, cliffs steep and snewy,Fields, fens, sedgy rushes, saw I;Which high mount is called the Temple,For all prospects an example.”

The church stands in a commanding position, whence there is a good prospect down the dale. Besides the landscape, there are times when the daring innovations made by fashion on the old habits may be observed. Wait in the churchyard on Sunday when service ends, and you will see many a gay skirt, hung with flounces and outspread by crinoline, come flaunting forth from the church. And in this remote village, Miss Metcalfe and Miss Thistlethwaite must do the bidding of coquettish Parisian milliners, even as their sisters do in May Fair.

CHAPTER XXIII

A Walk—Carperby—Despotic Hay-time—Bolton Castle—The Village—Queen Mary’s Prison—Redmire—Scarthe Nick—Pleasing Landscape—Halfpenny House—Hart-Leap Well—View into Swaledale—Richmond—The Castle—Historic Names—The Keep—St. Martin’s Cell—Easby Abbey—Beautiful Ruins—King Arthur and Sleeping Warriors—Ripon—View from the Minster Tower—Archbishop Wilfrid—The Crypt—The Nightly Horn—To Studley—Surprising Trick—Robin Hood’s Well—Fountains Abbey—Pop goes the Weasel—The Ruins—Robin Hood and the Curtall Friar—To Thirsk—The Ancient Elm—Epitaphs.

My friend had for some time wished to look into Swaledale; he therefore accompanied me the next morning, as far as the route served, through the village of Carperby, where dwells a Quaker who has the best grazing farm in the North Riding. We passed without calling, for he must be a philosopher indeed, here in the dales, who can endure interruptions in hay-time, when all who can work are busy in the fields. Ask no man to lend you a horse or labourer in hay-time. Servants give themselves leave in hay-time, and go toiling in the sunshine till all the crop is led, earning as much out of doors in three or four weeks as in six months in-doors. What is it to them that the mistress has to buckle-to, and be her own servant for a while, and see to the washing, and make the bread? as I saw in my friend’s house, knowing that in case of failure the nearest place where a joint of meat or a loaf of bread can be got is at Hawes, eight miles distant. What is it to them? the hay must be made, whether or not.

A few light showers fell, refreshing the thirsty soil, and making the trees and hedgerows rejoice in a livelier green. It was as if Summer were overjoyed:

“Even when she weeps, as oft she will, though surely not for grief,Her tears are turned to diamond drops on every shining leaf.”

so our walk of four miles to Bolton Castle was the more agreeable. The old square building, with its four square towers rising above a mass of wood, looks well as you approach from the road; and when you come upon the eminence on which it stands, and see the little village of Bolton, little thatched cottages bordering the green, as old in appearance as the castle, it is as if you looked on a scene from the feudal ages—the rude dwellings of the serfs pitched for safety beneath the walls, as in the days of Richard Lord Scrope, who built the castle four hundred years ago. A considerable portion of the edifice is still habitable; some of the rooms look really comfortable; others are let as workshops to a tinker and glazier, and down in the vaults you see the apparatus for casting sheet-lead. We saw the room in which the hapless Mary was confined, and the window by which, as is said, she tried, but failed, to escape. We went to the top, and looked over into the inner court; and got a bird’s-eye view of the village and of Bolton Park and Hall, amid the wooded landscape; and then to the bottom, down damp stone stairs, to what seemed the lowest vault, where, however, there was a lower depth—the dungeon—into which we descended by a ladder. What a dismal abode! of gloom too dense for one feeble candle to enliven. The man who showed the way said there was a well in one corner; but I saw nothing except that that spot looked blacker than the rest. To think that such a prison should have been built in the “good old times!”

On leaving the village, an old woman gave me a touch of the broadest dialect I had yet heard: “Eh! is ye boun into Swawldawl?” she exclaimed, in reply to my inquiry. We were going into Swaledale, and, taking a byeway above the village of Redmire, soon came to a road leading up the dale to Reeth, into which my friend turned, while I went on to the northern slope of Wensleydale. You ascend by a steep, winding road to Scarthe Nick, the pass on the summit, and there you have a glorious prospect—many a league of hill and hollow, of moor and meadow. From Bolton Castle and its little dependency, which lie well under the eye, you can look down the dale and catch sight of the ruined towers of Middleham; Aysgarth Force reveals itself by a momentary quivering flash; and scattered around, seven churches and eight villages, more or less environed by woods, complete the landscape. The scene, with its wealth of quiet beauty, is one suggestive of peace and well-being, dear to the Englishman’s heart. To one coming suddenly upon it from the dreary moorlands which lie between Wensleydale and Richmond, there would be something of enchantment in the far-spreading view.

I turned my back on it at last, and followed the road across the moors, where the memory of what you have just left becomes fairer by contrast. The route is solitary, and apparently but little frequented, for in ten miles I met only a man and a boy; and the monotony is only relieved after a while by a falling away of the brown slopes on the right, opening a view of the Hambleton Hills. There is one public-house on the way, the Halfpenny House, down in a hollow, by no means an agreeable resting-place, especially for a hungry man with a liking for cleanliness. Not far from it is Hart-Leap Well, sung by Wordsworth:

“There’s neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;And oftentimes when all are fast asleep,This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.”

By-and-by, perhaps, ere you have done thinking of the poem, you come to the brow of a long declivity, the end of the moors, and are rewarded by a view which rivals that seen from Scarthe Nick. Swaledale opens before you, overspread with waving fields of grain, with numerous farmsteads scattered up and down, with a long range of cliff breaking the opposite slope, and, about four miles distant, Richmond on its lofty seat, crowned by the square castle-keep, tall and massive. I saw it lit by the afternoon sun, and needed no better invitation for a half-hour’s halt on the heathery bank.

You descend to the wheat-fields, and see no more of the town until close upon it. Swale, as you will notice while crossing the bridge, still shows the characteristics of a mountain stream, though broader and deeper than at Thwaite, where we last parted company with it. Very steep is the grass-grown street leading from the river up to the main part of the town, where, having found a comfortable public-house, I went at once to the castle. It occupies the summit of a bluff, which, rising bold and high from the Swale, commands a noble prospect over what Whitaker calls “the Piedmont of Richmondshire.” On the side towards the river, the walls are all broken and ruinous, with here and there a loophole or window opening, through which you may look abroad on the landscape, and ponder on the changes which have befallen since Alan the Red built a fortress here on the lands given to him in reward for prowess by the Conqueror. It was in 1071 that he began to fortify, and portions of his masonry yet remain, fringed with ivy and tufts of grass, and here and there the bugloss growing from the crevices. Perhaps while you saunter to and fro in the castle-garth the keeper will appear and tell you—though not without leave—his story of the ruins. If it will add to your pleasure, he will show you the spot where George IV. sat when Prince of Wales, and declared the prospect to be the finest he had ever beheld. You will be told which is Robin Hood’s Tower, which the Gold Tower—so called because of a tradition that treasure was once discovered therein—and which is Scolland’s Hall, where knights, and nobles, and high-born dames held their banquets. And here you will be reminded of Fitzhughs and Marmions, Randolph de Glanville, and William the Lion, of Nevilles and Scropes, and of the Lennox—a natural son of Charles II.—to whom the dukedom of Richmond was given by the merry monarch, and to whose descendants it still belongs.

One side of the garth is enclosed by a new building to be used as barracks or a military depôt, and near this, at the angle towards the town, rises the keep. What a mighty tower it is! ninety-nine feet high, the walls eleven feet thick, strengthened on all sides by straight buttresses, an impressive memorial of the Normans. It was built by Earl Conan, seventy-five years after Red Alan’s bastions. The lowest chamber is dark and vaulted, with the rings still remaining to which the lamps were hung, and a floor of natural rock pierced by the old well. The chief entrance is now on the first floor, to which you mount by an outer stair, and the first things you see on entering are the arms and accoutrements of the Yorkshire militia, all carefully arranged. The view from the top delights your eye by its variety and extent—a great sweep of green hills and woods, the winding dale, and beyond, the brown heights that stretch away to the mountains. You see the town and all its picturesque features: the towers of St. Mary’s and of the old Gray Friars’ monastery, and Trinity Chapel at one side of the market-place, now desecrated by an intrusion of petty merchandise. And, following the course of the river downwards, you can see in the meadows among the woods the ruins of the Abbey of St. Agatha, at Easby. A few miles farther, and the stream flows past Catterick, the Cattaractonium of the Romans; and Bolton-on-Swale, the burial-place of old Jenkins.

On leaving the castle, make your way down to the path which runs round the face of the precipice below the walls, yet high enough above the river for pleasing views: a good place for an evening stroll. Then descend to a lower level, and look back from the new bridge near the railway station; you will be charmed with the singularly picturesque view of the town, clustered all along the hill-top, and terminated by the imposing mass of ruins and the lordly keep. And there is something to be seen near at hand: the station, built in Gothic style, pleasantly situate among trees; St. Martin’s Cell, founded more than seven hundred years ago, now sadly dilapidated, and used as a cow-stall. Beyond, on the slope of the hill, stands the parish church, with a fine lofty tower; and near it are the old grammar school, famous for good scholars; and the Tate Testimonial, a handsome Gothic edifice, with cloisters, where the boys play in rainy weather. It was in that churchyard that Herbert Knowles wrote the poem

“Methinks it is good to be here,”

which has long kept his name in memory.

Turn into the path on the left near the bridge, follow it through the wood which hangs on the slope above the river, then between the meadows and gardens, and past the mill, and you come to Easby Abbey, a charming ruin in a charming spot. You see a gentle eminence, rich in noble trees—the “abbot’s elm” among them—with a mansion on the summit, and in the meadow at the foot the group of ruins, not so far from the river but that you can hear it murmuring briskly along its stony channel. They occupy a considerable space, and the longer you wander from kitchen to refectory, from oratory to chapter-house, under broken arches, from one weedy heap of masonry to another, the more will you become aware of their picturesque beauties. The effect is heightened by magnificent masses of ivy, and trees growing out from the gaping stones, and about the grounds, screening and softening the ancient walls with quivering verdure. Here, for centuries, was the burial-place of the Scropes, that powerful family who became possessors of Easby not long after the death of Roald, constable of Richmond, founder of the abbey in 1152. Hence the historical associations impart a deeper interest to the loveliness of nature and the beauty of architecture.

The gate-house, also mantled with ivy, stands isolated in the meadow beyond, and Easby church between it and the ruins. And a pretty little church it is—a very jewel. Ivy creeps over it, and apparently through it, for a thick stem grows out of the wall three feet from the ground. Above the porch you may see three carved shields, time-worn memorials of Conyers, Aske, and Scrope.

To linger here while the sun went down, and the shadows darkened behind the walls, and the glory streamed through the blank windows, was a rare enjoyment. It was dusk when I returned to the town, and there I finished with another stroll on the path under the castle, thinking of the ancient legend, and wishing for a peep at the mysterious vault where King Arthur’s warriors lie asleep. Long, long ago, a man, while wandering about the hill, was conducted into an underground vault by a mysterious personage, and there he saw to his amazement a great multitude lying in deep slumber. Ere he recovered, his guide placed in his hands a horn and a sword; he drew the blade half out of the sheath, when lo! every sleeper stirred as if about to awake, and the poor mortal, terror-stricken, loosed his hold, the sword slid back, and the opportunity of release was lost, to recur no more for many a long day. The unlucky wight heard as he crept forth a bitter voice crying:

“Potter, Potter Thompson!If thou had either drawnThe sword or blown that horn,Thou’d been the luckiest manThat ever was born.”

By nine o’clock the next morning I was in Ripon, having been obliged to content myself with a glimpse of Northallerton from the railway; and to forego a ramble to the Standard Hill. I was soon on the top of the minster tower looking abroad on the course of the Ure, no longer a dale, as where we last saw it, but a broad vale teeming with corn, and adorned with woods, conspicuous among which are the broad forest-like masses of Studley Royal—the site of Fountains Abbey. Norton Conyers, the seat of the Nortons, whose names figure in Wordsworth’s poem, lies a few miles up the stream; and a few miles in the other direction are Boroughbridge and Aldborough, once important British and Roman stations. There the base Cartismandua, betrayer of Caractacus, held her court? there the vast rude camp of the legions grew into a sumptuous city; and there was fought one of the battles of the Roses, fatal to Lancaster; and there for years was a stronghold of the boroughmongers. The horizon no longer shows a ring of bleak moorlands, but green swells and wood all round to the east, where the hills of Cleveland terminate the view.

Then, while sauntering on the floor of the stately edifice we may remember that in 661 the King of Northumbria gave a piece of land here to one of his abbots for the foundation of a religious house: that Wilfrid, the learned bishop, replaced the first modest structure by a magnificent monastery, which the heathen Danes burnt and wasted in 860; but Wilfrid, who was presently created Archbishop of York, soon rebuilt his church, surpassing the former in magnificence, and by his learning and resolute assertion of his rights won, for himself great honour, and a festival day in the calendar. The anniversary of his return from Rome whither he went to claim his privileges, is still celebrated in Ripon, by a procession as little accordant with modern notions as that which perpetuates Peeping Tom’s infamous memory at Coventry. The present edifice was built by Roger of Bishopbridge, Archbishop of York in the twelfth century, and renowned for his munificence; but the variations of style—two characters of Norman, and Perpendicular, and a medley in the window, still show how much of the oldest edifice was incorporated with the new, and the alterations at different times.

The crypt is believed to be a portion of the church built by Wilfrid; to reach it you must pass through narrow, darksome passages, and when there, the guide will not fail to show you the hole known as Wilfrid’s needle—a needle of properties as marvellous as the garment offered to the ladies of King Arthur’s court—for no unchaste maiden can pass through the eye. The bone-house and a vault, walled and paved with human bones, still exists; and the guide, availing himself of a few extraordinary specimens, still delivers his lecture surrounded by ghastly accompaniments.

Without seeing the minster, you would guess Ripon to be a cathedral town; it has the quiet, respectable air which befits the superiorities of the church. The market cross is a tall obelisk, and if you happen to be near it at nine in the evening, you will, perhaps, think of the sonorous custom at Bainbridge, for one of the constables blows three blasts on the horn every night at the mayor’s door, and three more by the market cross. And so the days of Victoria witness a custom said to have been begun in the days of Alfred. The horn is an important instrument in Ripon; it was brought out and worn on feasts and ceremonial days by the “wakeman,” or a serjeant; certain of the mayors have taken pride in beautifying it, and supplying a new belt, and the town arms show a golden horn and black belt ornamented with silver.