A Month in Yorkshire Part 3

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 a.s.sociations 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 pa.s.sages 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 n.o.ble 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 gla.s.s, 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 s.e.xton 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 ma.s.sacred 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 10,000_l._ present value, is described as of surpa.s.sing 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

"The snow did melt, the Winter fled Before the gladsome Spring, And flowers did bud, the cuckoo piped, And merry birds did sing:

"And Spring danced by, and crowned with boughs Came l.u.s.ty Summer on: And the bells ring out, for 'tis the eve, The eve of blessed St. John.

"But where bide they, the sisters twain?

Have the holy sisters fled?

And the abbess and all her nuns bewail'd The sisters twain for dead.

"Then walk they forth in the eventide, In the cool and dusky hour; And the abbess goes up the stair of stone High on the belfry tower,

"Now Christ thee save! thou sweet ladye, For on the roof-tree there, Like as in blessed trance y-rapt, She sees the sisters fair.

"Whence come ye, daughters? long astray: 'Tis but an hour, they tell, Since we did chant the vesper hymn, And list the vesper bell.

"Nay, daughters, nay! 'tis months agone: Sweet mother, an hour we ween; But we have been in heaven each one, And holy angels seen."

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 p.r.o.nounced _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 pa.s.sed away, and still no change touched those lovely forms and angelic features:

"And pilgrims came from all the land, And eke from oversea, To pray at the shrine of the sisters twain, And St. John of Beverley."

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 a.s.sured 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:

#Als Fre make I The As hert may thynke or Egh may see.#

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 s.e.xtons eschew climbing, at least in all the churches I visited in Yorkshire.

CHAPTER V.

A Scotchman's Observations--The Prospect--The Anatomy of Beverley--Historical a.s.sociations--The Brigantes--The Druids-- Austin's Stone--The Saxons--Coifi and Paulinus--Down with Paganism--A Great Baptism--St. John of Beverley--Athelstan and Brunanburgh--The Sanctuary--The Conqueror--Archbishop Thurstan's Privileges--The Sacrilegious Mayor--Battle of the Standard--St. John's Miracles--Brigand Burgesses--Annual Football--Surrounding Sites--Watton and Meaux--Etymologies-- King Athelstan's Charter.

"On my first coming to England I landed at Hull, whose scenery enraptured me. The extended flatness of surface--the tall trees loaded with foliage--the large fat cattle wading to the knees in rich pasture--all had the appearance of fairy-land fertility. I hastened to the top of the first steeple--thence to the summit of Beverley Minster, and wondered over the plain of verdure and rank luxury, without a heathy hill or barren rock, which lay before me. When, after being duly sated into dulness by the constant sight of this miserably flat country, I saw my old bare mountains again, my ravished mind struggled as if it would break through the prison of the body, and soar with the eagle to the summit of the Grampians. The Pentland, Lomond, and Ochil hills seemed to have grown to an amazing size in my absence, and I remarked several peculiarities about them which I had never observed before."

This pa.s.sage occurs in the writings of the late James Gilchrist, an author to whom I am indebted for some part of my mental culture. I quote it as an example of the different mood of mind in which the view from the top of the tower may be regarded. To one fresh from a town it is delightful. As you step on the leads and gaze around on what was once called "the Lowths," you are surprised by the apparently boundless expanse--a great champaign of verdure, far as eye can reach, except where, in the north-west, the wolds begin to upheave their purple undulations. The distance is forest-like: nearer the woods stand out as groves, belts, and clumps, with park-like openings between, and everywhere fields and hedgerows innumerable. How your eye feasts on the uninterrupted greenness, and follows the gleaming lines of road running off in all directions, and comes back at last to survey the town at the foot of the tower!

Few towns will bear inspection from above so well as Beverley. It is well built, and is as clean in the rear of the houses as in the streets.

Looking from such a height, the yards and gardens appear diminished, and the trim flower-beds, and leafy arbours, and pebbled paths, and angular plots, and a prevailing neatness reveal much in favour of the domestic virtues of the inhabitants. And the effect is heightened by the green s.p.a.ces among the bright red roofs, and woods which straggle in patches into the town, whereby it retains somewhat of the sylvan aspect for which it was in former times especially remarkable.

Apart from its natural features, the region is rich in a.s.sociations. The history of Beverley, an epitome of that of the whole county, tempts one to linger, if but for half an hour. It will not be time thrown away, for a glimpse of the past may beneficially influence our further wanderings.

Here the territory of the Brigantes, which even the Romans did not conquer till more than a hundred years after their landing in Kent, stretched across the island from sea to sea. Here, deep in the great forest, the Druids had one of their sacred groves, a temple of living oaks, for their mysterious worship and ruthless sacrifices. Hundreds of tumuli scattered over the country, entombing kysts, coffins, fragments of skeletons, and rude pottery, and not less the names of streets and places, supply interesting testimony of their existence. Drewton, a neighbouring village, marks, as is said, the site of Druid's-town, where a stone about twelve feet in height yet standing was so much venerated by the natives, that Augustine stood upon it to preach, and erected a cross thereupon that the worshipper might learn to a.s.sociate it with a purer faith. It is still known as Austin's Stone.

The Saxon followed, and finding the territory hollow between the cliffs of the coast and the wolds, named it Holl-deira-ness, whence the present Holderness. It was in the forest of Deira that the conference was held in presence of Edwin and Ethelburga, between the missionary Paulinus and Coifi, the high-priest of Odin, on the contending claims of Christianity and Paganism. The right prevailed; and Coifi, convinced by the arguments he had heard, seized a spear, and hurrying on horseback to the temple at G.o.dmanham, cursed his deity, and hurled the spear at the image with such fury that it remained quivering in the wall of the sacred edifice. The mult.i.tude looked on in amazement, waiting for some sign of high displeasure at so outrageous a desecration. But no sign was given, and veering suddenly from dread to derision, they tore down the temple, and destroyed the sacred emblems. Edwin's timorous convictions were strengthened by the result, and so great was the throng of converts to the new faith, that, as is recorded, Paulinus baptized more than ten thousand in one day in the Swale. According to tradition, the present church at G.o.dmanham, nine miles distant, a very ancient edifice, was built from the ruins of the Pagan temple.

St. John of Beverley was born at Harpham, a village near Driffield--Deirafeld--in 640. Diligent in his calling, and eminently learned and conscientious, he became Archbishop of York. In 700 he founded here an establishment of monks, canons, and nuns, and rebuilt or beautified the church, which had been erected in the second century; and when, after thirty-three years of G.o.dly rule over his diocese, he laid aside the burden of authority, it was to the peaceful cloisters of Beverley that he retired. "He was educated," says Fuller, "under Theodorus the Grecian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, yet was he not so famous for his teacher as for his scholar, Venerable Bede, who wrote this John's life, which he hath so spiced with miracles, that it is of the hottest for a discreet man to digest into his belief." He died in 721, and was buried in his favourite church, with a reputation for sanct.i.ty which eventually secured him a place in the calendar.

Was it not to St. John of Beverley that Athelstan owed the victory at Brunanburgh, which made him sole monarch of Northumbria? The fame of the "great battle" remains, while all knowledge of the site of Brunanburgh has utterly perished, unless, as is argued in the Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society of Liverpool, it was fought near Burnley, in Lancashire. It was celebrated alike in Anglo-Saxon song and history. Greater carnage of people slain by the edge of the sword, says the ancient chronicle, had never been seen in this island, since Angles and Saxons, mighty war-smiths, crossed the broad seas to Britain.

Athelstan, in fulfilment of his vow, laid up his sword at the shrine of St. John, and added largely to the revenues and privileges of the church. A stone cross, erected on each of the four roads, a mile from the minster, marked the limits of the sanctuary which he conferred. One of these yet remains, but in a sadly mutilated condition.

When the Conqueror came and laid the country waste from Humber to Tees, trampling it into a "horrible wilderness," he spared Beverley and the surrounding lands, yielding, as was believed, to the miraculous influence of the patron saint. One of his soldiers, who entered the town with hostile intent, became suddenly paralysed, and smitten with incurable disease; and a captain falling, by accident, as it seemed, from his horse, his head was turned completely round by the shock. These were warnings not to be disregarded; and Beverley remained a scene of fertile beauty amid the desolation.

One of John's successors, Archbishop Thurstan, took pleasure also in fondling Beverley. He cut the ca.n.a.l, a mile in length, from the river Hull to the town: he gave to the inhabitants a charter of incorporation conferring similar privileges to those enjoyed by the citizens of York, whereby they were free from all fines and dues in England and Normandy; had the right to pontage--that is, a toll on all the barges and boats that pa.s.sed under a bridge, as well as on the vehicles over it; and to worry debtors as rigorously as they chose, without fear of retaliation.

In these anti-church-rate days it is surprising enough to read of the power exercised by an archbishop in the twelfth century. Thurstan had rule over the baronies of Beverley and five other places, with power to try and execute criminals, and punish thieves without appeal. In all the baronies the prisons were his; to him belonged the gibbet, pillory, and cucking-stool in the towns; the a.s.size of bread and beer; waifs and wrecks of the sea; the right to 'prises' in the river Hull, diligently enforced by his watchful coroners; besides park and free warren, and all his land released from suit and service.

That taking of prises, by the way, was a standing cause of quarrel between the burghers of Hull and Beverley. The right to seize two casks of wine from every vessel of more than twenty tons burthen that entered the river, one before, the other behind the mast, was a grievance too much akin to robbery to be borne with patience. The merchants, wise in their generation, tried to save their casks by discharging the cargoes into smaller vessels before entering the port; but the coroners detected the evasion, and took their prises all the same. Hence bitter quarrels; in which the Beverley ships, dropping down the stream to pursue their voyage, were many times barred out of the Humber by the men of Hull.

Once, when the archbishop appeared at the port to defend his right, the mayor, losing temper, s.n.a.t.c.hed the crosier from the dignitary's hand, and, using it as a weapon, actually spilt blood with the sacred instrument.

Never was the saint's influence more triumphantly felt than when Thurstan's fiery eloquence roused the citizens of York to march against David of Scotland. The Scottish king, to support Maud's claim against Stephen, ravaged Northumbria with such ferocious devastation, that it seemed but a repet.i.tion of the Norman havoc, and provoked the Saxon part of the population to join in repelling the invader. After threatening York, David moved northwards, followed by the Yorkshire army, which had rendezvoused at the castle of Thirsk. To inspire their patriotism, a great pole, topped by a crucifix, and hung with the standards of St.

John of Beverley, St. Peter of York, and St. Wilfred of Ripon, was mounted on wheels, and placed where every eye could behold it. The Scottish army was overtaken three miles beyond Northallerton, on the 22nd of August, 1138. The king, seeing the threefold standard from afar, inquires of a deserter what it means; whereupon he replies, in the words of the ballad:

"A mast of a ship it is so high, All bedeck'd with gold so gay; And on its top is a Holy Cross, That shines as bright as day.

"Around it hang the holy banners Of many a blessed saint: St Peter, and John of Beverley, And St. Wilfrid there they paint."

The king begins to have misgivings, and rejoins:

"Oh! had I but yon Holy Rood That there so bright doth show, I would not care for yon English host, Nor the worst that they could do."

But in vain: the Yorkshire blood was up, no quarter was given, and ten thousand Scotchmen bit the dust. So complete was the victory, that the oppressed Saxons boasted of it as an indemnity for their former sufferings; and the Battle of the Standard remains memorable among the greatest battles of Yorkshire, and the Standard Hill among her historical places.

Was it not the same St. John who afterwards appeared in full pontificals to Stephen, and warned him to stay his purpose of building a castle at Beverley? and was it not again his banner, saved from the fire when the town and minster were burnt in 1186, which rendered Edward I. victorious in his invasion of Scotland? Did not his tomb sweat blood on that famous day of Agincourt, and the rumour thereof bring Henry V. and his lovely Kate hither on a pilgrimage?

Then the chronicler tells us that one while the provost and burgesses, resolving to enlarge and beautify the minster, brought together the best workmen from all parts of England; and later, that the corporation repaired the edifice with stones taken from the neighbouring abbey of Watton. And so bitter became the quarrels between Hull and Beverley, that some of the chief men encouraged the insurrectionary movements known as the _Rising of the North_ and the _Pilgrimage of Grace_, with no other purpose than to damage their rivals. The burgesses of Beverley, not having the fear of the marshal before their eyes, were accused of unfair trading: of keeping two yard measures and two bushels: unlawfully long and big to buy with--unlawfully short and small to sell with. And when in process of time the trade of the town decayed, evil-minded persons looked on the change as a judgment. At present there is little of manufacture within it besides that of the implements which have made the name of Crosskill familiar to farmers.

Some old customs lingered here obstinately. The cucking-stool was not abolished until 1750, which some think was a hundred years too soon.

Ducking-stool-lane preserves its memory. And down to 1825, an annual match at football was played on the Sunday before the races, to which there gathered all the rabble of the town and adjacent villages, who for some years successfully resisted the putting down of what had become a nuisance. Instead of abolishing the game, it would have been better to change the day, and hold weekly football matches on the race-course.

From the tower-top the eye takes in the site of Leckonfield, where the Percys had a castle; of Watton Abbey, where an English Abelard and Heloise mourned and suffered; of the scanty remains of Meaux Abbey, founded about 1140, by William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle. Concerning this n.o.bleman, we read that he had vowed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but grew so fat as to be detained at home against his will. Feeling remorse, he consulted his confessor, who advised him to establish a convent of Cistercians. A monk from Fountains, eminent alike for piety and skill in architecture, was invited to choose a site. He selected a park-like tract commanding a view of the Humber. The earl, loving the place, bade him reconsider his choice; but the monk, striking his staff into the ground, replied, "This place shall in future be called the door of life, the vineyard of heaven, and shall for ever be consecrated to religion and the service of G.o.d." The abbey was built and tenanted by cowls from Fountains, and flourished until floods and high tides wasted the lands, and the Reformation destroyed the house.

But though one man may write a poem while "waiting on the bridge at Coventry," another may hardly, without presumption, write a long chapter on the top of a tower. Let me end, therefore, while descending, with a sc.r.a.p of etymology. Beaver lake, that is, the lake of floating islands, sacred to the Druids, is said by one learned scribe to be the origin of the name Beverley. Another finds it in the beavers that colonized the river Hull, with lea for a suffix, and point to an ancient seal, which represents St. John seated, resting his feet on a beaver. Did not the wise men of Camelford set up the figure of a camel on the top of their steeple, as a weatherc.o.c.k, because their river winds very much, and camel is the aboriginal British word for crooked? Other scholars trace Beverley through Bevorlac, back to _Pedwarllech_--the four stones.

And here, by way of finish, are a few lines from Athelstan's charter: