Nooks and Corners of Old England Part 12

The Scrope who had charge of the Scots queen at Bolton Castle was Henry, the eleventh lord, whose wife was sister to the captive's plotting lover, the Duke of Norfolk, who also lost his head through these ambitious schemes; and doubtless it was the duke who contrived the queen's escape. She had been brought from the castle of Carlisle in July 1568, but after her attempt to escape was promptly removed (on January 26) to Tutbury Castle under charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury. The furniture of her private altar at Bolton, the altar-cloth, part of a rosary, a small bronze crucifix, and an alms-bag, are now preserved at Low Hall, Yeadon, mentioned earlier in this chapter. Her hawking gloves also: these are said to have been given to Lord Scrope upon her leaving.

Some miles to the west of Bolton is Nappa Hall (where the ancient family of Metcalfe lived since the reign of Henry VI., and where Metcalfes live to-day), a fortified manor-house with square towers (suggestive of Haddon), which also claims a.s.sociation with the unfortunate queen. By some accounts she slept here one night, by others two or more; and the tradition in the Metcalfe family says nine, in the highest chamber of the tallest tower. The date is not known, but probably she was brought here on her way from Carlisle Castle. The bed on which she slept, the top of which was very low, is now at Newby Hall, near Ripon. Our sanitary views being very distinct from those enlightened times, the pillars of these sixteenth-century beds are frequently raised (in some cases unnecessarily high), and unless one wished to be half-smothered, this is a natural thing to do if the bed is to be put to practical use; but nowadays the collectors of ancient furniture are again reducing the height, and bringing them down to their original proportions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ASKRIGG.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAPPA HALL.]

In asking the way to Nappa from the village of Askrigg, we were told to follow a "gentleman with a flock of sheep who was going up that way"; but as the distance was the matter of a couple of miles--and Yorkshire miles too, we preferred to follow the telegraph poles, which, after all, was more expeditious and quite as reliable. We give this as an instance of the ordinary pace at which things move in these parts; and perhaps it is as well, otherwise the old Hall built by William Taunton in 1678 (so it says on the door), with its upper balcony of wood looking upon the quaint old market-cross where the bull-ring used to be, might have given way to co-operative stores or some new hideous building.

The village-green of Bainbridge to the west is quite shut in with hills, and in the centre are the stocks, or rather the stone supports minus the most important part, with a rough rock seat which must have added considerably to the victim's discomfort. The princ.i.p.al curiosity, however, is the ancient custom prevailing here of blowing a horn at 10 p.m. during the summer months, to guide belated travellers on the moors.

This was an excellent provision for safety hundreds of years ago, when Bainbridge was practically in the midst of a forest, and even in the twentieth century may have its uses. The older horn, that was used half a century ago, is now in Bolton Castle Museum. It is very large, and curiously twisted. The houses at Bainbridge are of the ordinary ugly Yorkshire type; but on high ground overlooking a ravine stands a nice old gabled grange, which must have tempted many an artist and photographer to pause upon their way to the famous Falls. These, of course, are very fine, but to our mind far less beautiful than the single plunge of water just below the grange, from a wide and scooped-out bed of precipitous rock. Nor are the high, low, and middle Falls of Aysgarth half so picturesque, though in a sense they are more boisterous, like coppery boiling water.

Aysgarth church is perched up high, and you have to climb up many steps to reach it from the moss-grown bridge. The doors of most of the Yorkshire churches we found were kept unlocked; but this was an exception, so down those steps we had to come, to go in search of a key; but reaching the bottom of the flight, up we had to go again to try and find the rectory. Oh! the time that may be lost in hunting for a church key, and what a blessing it would be if notices were stuck up in the porches to say where they were kept. The interior of Aysgarth has a new appearance, but the splendid painted screen from Jervaulx (placed east and west instead of across the chancel) is worth a hunt for the key.

Another screen, dated 1536, has upon it the grotesque carving of a fool's head with long-eared cap. Here again in the village are the stocks; but the Maypole, which once was its pride, long since has made its exit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RICHMOND.]

By far the nearest way to Richmond from Leyburn is across the moor, a rough and desolate road, but preferable to the terrible long way by Catterick, more than double the distance (by rail it is four times the distance!). This is the prettiest village of any on the way (which is not saying much, be it said). The early fifteenth-century church has some good monuments and bra.s.ses, one of the latter to a lady who for many years before she died carried her winding-sheet about with her; and one would naturally suppose one with such gruesome ideas would still walk the earth for the edification of the timid, but she doesn't.

The entrance to Richmond by the nearest way is very charming. You come suddenly upon the castle perched up over the river, and as you wind down the hill the grouping of its towers is thrown into perspective, forming a delightful picture with the river and the bridge for a foreground.

Three kings have been prisoners within these formidable Norman walls: two kings of Scotland, William and David Bruce, and after the lapse of three centuries, Charles I., who pa.s.sed here on his way to Holdenby. The stalls and misericordes in the fine old church came from Easby Abbey.

They are boldly carved, and one of them represents a sow playing a fiddle for the edification of her little pigs. There is a curious coloured mural monument, on the east side of the chancel, of Sir Timothy Hutton and his wife and children--twelve of them, including four babes, beneath two of which are these verses:

"As carefull mothers do to sleeping say, Their babes that would too long the wanton play; So to prevent my youths approaching crimes, Nature my nurse had me to bed betimes."

The next is less involved:

"Into this world as strangers to an inn This infant came, guest wise; Where when 't had been and found no entertainment worth her stay, She only broke her fast and went away."

Altogether it is a cheery tomb. Faith, Hope and Charity are there, one of whom acts as nurse to one of the babes. Her ladyship's expression is somewhat of the Aunt Sally type, but that was the sculptor's fault. The ancient church plate includes a chalice dated 1640. The registers are beautifully neat and clean, and full of curious matter, such as the banns being read by the market-cross.

Apropos of Yorkshire marriages, the odd custom prevails in some parts of emptying a kettle of boiling water, down--not the backs of the happy pair, but down the steps of the front door as they drive away, that the threshold may be "kept warm for another bride," we presume for _another_ swain. The way also of ascertaining whether the future career of those united will be attended with happiness is simple and effective. All you have to do is, as the bride steps out of the carriage, to fling a plate containing small pieces of the wedding-cake out of a window upon the heads of the onlookers. If the crowd is a small one, and the plate arrives on the pavement and is smashed to pieces, all will go well; but if somebody's head intervenes, the augury is ominous; which, after all, is only natural, for is it not likely that one thus greeted would call at the house to bestow his blessing upon somebody? What a pity this pretty custom is not introduced into the fashionable marriages of St George's, Hanover Square. It would at least create a sensation.

For the rest of Richmond church, well--it was restored by Sir Gilbert Scott. It is regrettable to find the piscina on a level with the floor, beneath a pew seat!

The curfew still rings at Richmond, telling the good people when to go to bed; but whether they go or not is another matter. We are told it is, or was, also rung for them to get up again at six o'clock; and the aged official whose duty it was to ring the morning bell, like a wise man, did so at his leisure, lying in bed with the rope hanging from the ceiling.[35]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EASBY ABBEY.]

From the churchyard, Easby Abbey is seen in the distance in a romantic spot by the river: and the walk there is delightful, along the terrace above the Swale. Like the rest of these fine structures, it was destroyed by the vindictive Henry in 1535. The water close at hand, the old abbot's elm, and the little church and gatehouse beyond, altogether make this a spot in which to linger and ruminate. The church walls are covered with curious and very well preserved paintings of the twelfth century, giving a good idea of the costume of the period. The tempting serpent, too, is shown twisted in artistic coils around a very pre-Raphael looking tree; and in another scene the partakers of the fruit are doubled up with remorse, or dyspepsia.

So close at hand as is Bolton on Swale, to the east, it would be a pity not to mention Henry Jenkins, who died there in 1670, aged one hundred and sixty-nine!--a man in Charles II.'s reign who remembered the dissolution of the monasteries, and who recollected as a boy a.s.sisting in carrying arrows in a cart to the battle of Flodden field (where veteran soldiers remembered the accession of King Edward IV.), was a wonder compared with the feeble memory of our present-day centenarians, who rarely recollect anything worth recording. When we think how nearly we are linked with 1670 by the life of Mrs. William Stuart, who died in the late queen's reign, and who heard from the lips of her grandmother how she had been taken to Court in a black-draped Sedan when Whitehall was in mourning for the death of the king's sister, Henrietta, d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans,--it would have been possible for the little girl to have spoken with old Jenkins, and thus with only three lives to have linked the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. with that of Victoria.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] We have described these relics (now in the possession of Mrs.

Martin-Edmunds) in detail in the _Memoirs of the Martyr King_.

[32] In the account in _Secret Chambers_ of the inscription on the swords, it is given in error as "Shortly."

[33] See _Some Beauties of the Seventeenth Century_.

[34] See _King Monmouth_.

[35] This and other information we have derived from Mr. Harry Speight's interesting work, _Romantic Richmond_.