The Evolution of an English Town Part 17

[Footnote 1: Scoresby, the Rev. William, D.D., "My Father," p. 108.]

After this voyage young Scoresby went back to school again until 1803 when he became an apprentice on board the _Resolution_, a new ship of Whitby, commanded and partly owned by his father. For several years he made the Greenland voyage in the _Resolution_ and was chief officer when, in the year 1806, his father forced the ship through the pack ice, as far north as 81 3O'. This was for long the highest point reached by any vessel and the ship's cargo was completed in thirty-two days with twenty-four whales, two seals, two walruses, two bears and a narwhal. The elder Scoresby who was about six feet in height was a man of extraordinary muscular power.

His many successful voyages reveal his first-cla.s.s qualities as a seaman and navigator and his good judgment in emergencies seems to have been almost instinctive. Although he is described[1] as an Arctic navigator, exploration was only incidental to whale-catching, but his inventions of the ice-drill and the crow's-nest did much to make Arctic voyages more feasible.

[Footnote 1: "Dictionary of National Biography."]

The versatility of his son William was remarkable, for he may be described as master mariner, author and divine and even then his varied scientific knowledge is overlooked. During his latter years he was particularly interested in magnetism and in 1856 made his last voyage in order to carry out a series of systematic observations.

His life, written by his nephew R.E. Scoresby-Jackson, is of great interest and Cropton may well be proud that it gave Dr Scoresby to the world.

The memory of the _Henrietta_ is not likely to be forgotten so easily as that of the Scoresbys, for gateposts made from whale jaws are common near the coast of north eastern Yorkshire, and one on the road from Pickering to Scarborough, between the villages of Hutton Buscel and East Ayton, bears the name of the famous ship.

A contemporary of the Scoresbys was John Jackson, R.A. He was the son of a tailor of Lastingham and was born at that very remote village on the 31st May 1778. As a boy he showed a predilection for portrait-painting in the sketches he made of his companions, although his father discouraged his efforts in that direction, not wishing to lose his boy's services as an apprentice to the tailoring business. When he was about nineteen he had the good fortune to be introduced to Lord Mulgrave who brought him to the notice of the Earl of Carlisle and soon after we find him studying the great collection of pictures at Castle Howard.

Jackson's first attempt at a painting in oils was a copy of a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds lent to him by Sir George Beaumont. Lastingham was unable to supply him with proper materials, but he managed to obtain some very rough paints and brushes from the village house-painter and glazier, and with these crude materials made such an admirable copy that Sir George or Lord Mulgrave or both together advised him to go to London, promising him 50 a year during the time that he was working as a student. From this time his progress was rapid. In 1804 he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, in 1815 he was elected an a.s.sociate and in 1817 he received the full honours of the Academy. Although he was a Wesleyan Methodist, Jackson was broad-minded in his religious opinions, for he made a copy of Correggio's "Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane" (with the figures increased to life size) for Lastingham parish church. The picture is now on the north side of the apse but its original position was above the communion table and in order to give the picture sufficient s.p.a.ce and light the apse of Transitional Norman date was very roughly treated.

Jackson contributed 50 towards the alterations, but the restoration at a later date has fortunately wiped out these disfigurements.

Another boy destined to become a tailor was Francis Nicholson who was born at Pickering in 1753. His father, who was a weaver, gave young Francis a good education in Pickering, and wisely abandoning the tailoring idea the boy was sent to Scarborough for instruction from an artist. After three years he returned to Pickering and occupied himself in painting portraits and pictures of horses, dogs and game for local patrons. Then followed a period of study in London, where Nicholson made great progress and eventually began to devote himself to water colours, for which in his long life he was justly famous, well deserving the name generally given to him as the "Father of water colour painting."

William Marshall, the agricultural expert and writer to whom we owe the establishment of the Board of Agriculture was baptised at Sinnington on 28th July 1745. He was in his own words "born a farmer" and used to say that he could trace his blood through the veins of agriculturists for upwards of four hundred years. After fourteen years in the West Indies, he undertook, at the age of twenty-nine, the management of a farm near Croydon in Surrey. It was there, in 1778, that he wrote his first book. He showed the ma.n.u.script to Dr Johnson who objected to certain pa.s.sages sanctioning work on Sundays in harvest time, so Marshall omitted them. His greatest work was "A General Survey, from personal experience, observation and enquiry, of the Rural Economy of England."

The country was divided into six agricultural divisions, the northern one being represented by Yorkshire in two volumes. In the first of these, the preface is dated from Pickering, December 21st, 1787, and the second chapter is devoted to an exceedingly interesting account of the broad valley to which Marshall gives the t.i.tle "The Vale of Pickering." When he died in 1818 he was raising a building at Pickering for a College of Agriculture on the lines he had laid down in a book published in 1799.

His proposal for the establishment of a "Board of Agriculture, or more generally of Rural Affairs" was carried out by Parliament in 1793, and so valuable were his books considered that in 1803 most of them were translated into French and published in Paris under the t.i.tle of "La Maison rustique anglaise." The inscription on Marshall's monument in the north aisle of Pickering church which states that "he was indefatigable in the study of rural economy" and that "he was an excellent mechanic, had a considerable knowledge of most branches of science, particularly of philology, botany and chemistry" is not an over statement of his merits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Ingle-Nook in Gallow Hill Farm near Brompton. Where Wordsworth stayed just at the time of his marriage with Mary Hutchinson.]

In the year 1800 the little farm at Gallow Hill near Brompton was taken by one Thomas Hutchinson whose sister Mary kept house for him. She was almost the same age and had been a schoolfellow of the poet Wordsworth at Penrith and had kept up her friendship with his family since that time, having visited them at Racedown and Dove Cottage, while the Wordsworths had stayed at the Hutchinson's farm at Sockburn-on-Tees. There was nothing sudden or romantic therefore in the marriage which took place at Brompton in 1802. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy went down from London to the pretty Yorkshire village in September, and stayed at the little farmhouse, whose parlour windows looked across the Vale of Pickering to the steep wolds on the southern side. The house, as far as I can discover, has not been altered in the century which has elapsed, and the cosy ingle-nook in the room on the right of the entrance remains full of memories of the poet and his betrothed--his "perfect woman, n.o.bly planned." On the fourth of October the wedding took place in Brompton Church. The grey old steeple surrounded and overhung by ma.s.ses of yellow and brown foliage in the centre of the picturesque, and in many respects, ideal little village, must have formed a perfect setting for the marriage of one who was afterwards to become the Poet Laureate of his country. The register for the years 1754-1810 contains the following entry:--

"_Banns of Marriage_ ...

William Wordsworth of Grasmere in Westmoreland, Gentleman, _and_ Mary Hutchinson _of_ Gallow Hill in the Parish of Brompton _were married in this_ Church _by_ Licence _this_ fourth _Day of_ October _in the year one thousand_ eight _Hundred and_ two _by me_ John Ellis officiating min^r.

This marriage was solemnized between us."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Facsimile of the Signatures in the Register.]

"In the presence of THOMAS HUTCHINSON.

JOANNA HUTCHINSON.

JOHN HUTCHINSON."

The same day Wordsworth with his wife and sister drove to Thirsk and two days afterwards reached Grasmere, where they soon settled down to an uneventful life at Dove Cottage. Dorothy Wordsworth could not "describe what she felt," but we are told that she accepted her sister-in-law without a trace of jealousy.

There is still preserved in Pickering one of the parchments on which were enrolled the names of all those who were liable for service in the militia. It is headed

"Militia Enrollment 1807-8"

and begins:--

"An enrollment of the names of the several persons who have been chosen by ballot to serve in the Militia for five years for the west part of the sub-division of Pickering Lyth in the North Riding of the County of York and also of the several subst.i.tutes who have been produced and approved to serve for the like term and for such further term as the Militia shall remain embodied, if within the s.p.a.ce of five years His Majesty shall order the Militia to be drawn out and embodied and are enrolled in the place of such princ.i.p.als whose names are set opposite thereto in pursuance of an act of the 47th of King George III., Cap. 71, ent.i.tled an act for the speedily completing the Militia of Great Britain and increasing the same under certain delimitations and restrictions (14th Aug. 1807)."

The thirty-six men were taken as follows:--

8 from Middleton.

5 " Kirby Misperton.

16 " Pickering.

1 " Ellerburne.

1 " Levisham.

3 " Sinnington.

1 " Thornton.

Jonathan Goodall, a farmer of Middleton, induced Geo. Thompson of Pickering, a farmer's servant, 30 years old, to stand for him, paying him 42.

Wm. Newton, a farmer of Middleton, had to pay Geo. Allen, a linen draper of Richmond, 47, 5s. as subst.i.tute.

The smallest amount paid was 20, and the largest sum was 47, 5s.

Subst.i.tutes seem to have been hard to find in the neighbourhood of Pickering, and those few whose names appear had to be heavily paid. George Barnfather, a farm servant of Kirby Misperton agreed to serve as a subst.i.tute on payment of 42, and a cartwright of Goathland agreed for the same sum, while men from Manchester or Leeds were ready to accept half that amount.

The extreme reluctance to serve of a certain Ben Wilson, a sweep of Middleton, is shown in a story told of him by a very old inhabitant of Pickering whose memory is in no way impaired by her years. She tells us that this Wilson on hearing of his ill-luck seized a carving-knife and going to the churchyard put his right hand on a gate-post and fiercely cut off the two fingers required for firing a rifle. He avoided active service in this way and often showed his mutilated hand to the countryfolk who may or may not have admired the deed.

In 1823 Pickering was kept in touch with Whitby, York and Scarborough by coaches that ran three times a week. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday a coach (Royal Mail) left the "Black Swan" in the market place for Whitby at the painfully early hour of four o'clock in the morning; another Royal Mail left Pickering for York at half-past three in the afternoon on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. The stages were from

Whitby to Saltergate.

Saltergate to Pickering.

Pickering to Malton.

Malton to Spital Beck.

Spital Beck to York.

There was also what was called the "Boat Coach" that ran between Pickering and Scarborough.

One of the last drivers of these coaches became a guard on the North Eastern Railway, and he still lives in Pickering at the time of writing.

The parish chest in the vestry of Pickering Church contains among other papers a number of apprenticeship deeds of a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago, in which the master promises that he will educate the boy and "bring him up in some honest and lawful calling and in the fear of G.o.d," and in most cases to provide him with a suit of clothes at the completion of his term, generally at the age of twenty-one years.

The odd papers registering the arrival of new inhabitants in the district include one dated 1729, and in them we find a churchwarden possessing such a distinguished name as Hotham, signing that surname without a capital, and in 1809 we find an overseer of the poor only able to make his mark against the seal.

The largest bell in the church tower is dated 1755 and bears the inscription, "First I call you to G.o.d's word, and at last unto the Lord."

It is said that this bell was cracked owing to the great strength of one of the ringers, and that the date 1755 is the year of the re-casting. The flagon is the only piece of the church plate belonging to this period. It was made in 1805 by Prince of York.

In the year 1837 the Rev. Joseph Kipling, grandfather of Mr Rudyard Kipling, was living at Pickering, and on the 6th of July of that year a son, John, was born. Mr Joseph Kipling was a Wesleyan minister, and his residence at Pickering was only a temporary one.

Another Wesleyan who was living at this time was John Castillo, the author of many quaint poems in the Yorkshire dialect, and an original local preacher as well. He died in 1845, and his grave is to be seen in the burial-ground of the Wesleyan Chapel. It bears a verse from "Awd Isaac,"

the poem by which he is best known--

"Bud noo his eens geean dim i' deeath, Nera mare a pilgrim here on eeath, His sowl flits fra' her sh.e.l.l beneeath, Te reealms o' day, Whoor carpin care an' pain an' deeath Are deean away."

In 1720 a new chapel was built at Pickering for Protestant Dissenters, but before that time--as early as 1702--Edward Brignall's house was set apart for divine worship by Dissenters. An Independent Church was formed in 1715, the people probably meeting in private houses for several years.