the narrow-minded prejudices of the majority—only a small one—prevented a great public improvement from being carried out! “What a site for a market!” the spirited burgess remarked,—“drainage all the way to the river, and nothing to do but sweep away some old lumbering property that has been standing in the way for a couple of hundred years or more.” It was rather pleasant to find some one who owned to being so thorough a spoliator, though the remarks in reply were not complimentary. There is another drawing of York which occupies the next place, and represents the west end of the Minster, with a college on the right hand side. This is called St. William’s College. It is a very imposing old building, quadrangular in form, and the interior of the quadrangle is extremely impressive and grand, but now it is let off to cottage tenants. The noble pile was built by Henry VI. for the chantry priests to reside in. In one of the rooms Charles I. set up the royal printing presses in the year 1642. This was the time when York may be said to have been his sole metropolis. And opposite this interesting street is Goodramgate, where another college for the vicars choral was established. This also belonged to the Minster. Of course the grand Cathedral forms no part of the scope of this work; but we all of us know how splendidly it towers above the city, making itself conspicuous everywhere; and the tradition that one hears all round the precincts, that high in the windows the gorgeous glass is principally composed of precious stones, becomes half credible if we look to the clerestory on a bright summer’s day,—indeed I am well informed

that in many chapels on the Continent very thin slices of precious stones have been introduced in judicious places, and they form a bright spot for the eye to rest on. Goodramgate or Guthrum’s Gate, or Street, is called after Guthrum, the Danish leader who fought against King Alfred; and here is the Church of St. Crux, in the pavement near which stood until lately a market cross and tolbooth; here also is an old doorway formerly leading to the Merchants’ Hall, the interior of which is extremely interesting. It contains two halls, one of which is hung round with some fine old portraits, and underneath there is a chapel. This hall was formerly an hospital, and was founded about the year 1373, and dissolved by Edward VI., along with many other religious houses, chapels, and chantries.

Walmgate Bar has been kept in good repair and order by the city corporation, and is even in a better state than when W. H. Bartlett made his drawing of it for Britton’s Picturesque Antiquities of English Cities. It is in the entrance from Beverly, Hull, Lincoln, etc., and is supposed to derive its name from a corruption of Watling Street, the great Roman road that has already been alluded to, and in all probability this supposition is correct.

Micklegate Bar forms the chief entrance to York from the London road; and has been more noticed than any of the other bars, from its advantageous position. The stone of the gate singularly shows its variety of date, and corresponds with the architectural features that adorn it. Drake, the historian of York, Britton tells us, regarded the stone-grit as a certain indication of Roman architecture, and he went so far as to suppose that the semicircular arches were of Roman construction from their form; but this hardly stands the test of somewhat more modern criticism, though the Earl of Burlington and other distinguished antiquaries of the period fully held the same view; but Mr. J. Essex, in Archæologia, vol. iv., has quite refuted this, as has also Sir H. Englefield in his observations on the ancient buildings of York. Britton truly says that “no person who has studied the peculiarities of ancient architecture can fail to recognise the Norman style in these three arches. The upper part of the building may be pretty safely referred to the reign of Edward III., whose arms, old France and England quarterly, are sculptured on a large shield in the centre, between two shields bearing the arms of York City.” The outwork was sometimes called the Barbican or Turnpike, from its being guarded by a military engine of that particular name.

Bootham Bar, Britton says, was rebuilt after the dreadful vengeance that William the Conqueror inflicted on the city after its revolt in the year 1070. It crosses the old Roman road, and was much damaged in the wars of the Commonwealth.

Coney Street runs almost parallel to the River Ouse, between Sampson Square and the water; and in many of the houses, such as the old George Hotel, are traces of former splendour; indeed at one time this street was the favourite quarter for the residences of the nobility and gentry. Too frequently Micklegate Bar was used for exhibiting the decapitated heads of partisans of different reigning houses, especially during the wars of the Roses. The heads of Richard Duke of York, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Scrope, and Lords Devonshire and Wiltshire, with many others of similar rank, have been exposed on this bar after the senseless quarrels were over or lulled.

is the unfeminine speech of Queen Margaret after stabbing the Duke of York. Nor does she seem to have felt much remorse, for afterwards, when the head must have been there for some time, she says, in entering York, to Henry—

and as if to show what a common sight such terrible spectacles were in those days, a poetic justice is dealt out in the same play of Henry VI. on Clifford, where Warwick says—

The old prints of London bridge show these shocking accompaniments to ancient street scenes; and indeed to translate them into modern language, the photographs of the Greek brigands that were clustered in a group after murdering some estimable English gentlemen are only a reflex. These photographs, after whatever feeble justice could be done, are yet exposed in London.

Stonegate Street overlooks the Cathedral from the south side, and at every step there is some view that would gladden the eye of Prout or Cattermole. The south transept opens up at every turn, and forms some new combination with the surrounding quaint old houses. The colouring is extremely rich and beautiful, the various tints of ochre being freely used on the fronts of the buildings, and many quaint old windows and gables thrust themselves in front of their neighbours, as if in amicable rivalry which could be the most picturesque.

In speaking of the Ouse bridge, Britton says, “The superior construction of bridges may justly be the boast of modern architecture. Those of the middle ages were generally built in a clumsy and unscientific manner, with huge piers and straight arches; the passage over them was usually narrow, and in towns they were generally covered by shops and houses built on their sides. Notwithstanding these inconveniences, the picturesque features of some of those old buildings make their destruction a matter of regret to the admirers of antiquity. The Ouse bridge at York was chiefly remarkable for the size of its central arch, which certainly was an extraordinary effort of art, its span exceeding that of any arch in England, until the erection of Blackfriars Bridge in London.[8] This arch was pointed, but approached nearly to a circular curve. It had been built in the reign of Elizabeth after a great flood had swept away part of the bridge with twelve of the houses standing on it,” and it had been recently taken down when Britton wrote. It must have been intensely picturesque. There was a chapel at one end with a lancet front; and under it were two pointed cavernous arches spanning the water; while at the other side were tall houses like those in Rotterdam, with buttresses and mullioned windows.

The illustration here given of Richmond is from the Market Square, and it affords a characteristic idea of the singular scenes that sometimes meet us in outlying country towns. It has been asserted that a cannon fired down the streets of Richmond or Pontefract, at any time of the day, would not be likely to entail a coroner’s inquest. Camden gives a curious charter, by which the town of Richmond was conveyed away in the time of William the Conqueror: “I, William, King of England, do give, and grant to thee, my nephew, Alan, Earl of Bretagne, and to thy heirs for ever, all the villages and lands which of late belonged to Earl Edwin in Yorkshire, with the knights’ fees, and other liberties and customs as freely and honourably (?) as the same Edwin held them. Dated from our siege before York.” Many streets yet retain their Norman names, and the vast castle, of which the keep remains in a state of high preservation, was now built. The keep is 99 feet in height, and the walls are 11 feet in thickness. The tower and chapel, here shown, and so strangely mixed up with houses and shops, formerly stood in the castle walls, and are the remains of the garrison church, which was built in the twelfth century and rebuilt in 1360. This church has had a singular history. The patronage of it was vested in the corporation at the time of the Reformation, and they seem to have used the building for purposes certainly different from those which its founders intended. Until the Town Hall was built in 1756, the north aisle was used for the town sessions; then it was a consistory court; and now it is added again to the church, excepting some small shops, which are, as it were, inserted into it. It is to be hoped that no dispute will ever arise about party walls or rights of any kind, for there would be rather some nice points of law and evidence. Thus, in a curious way, some dwelling-houses are inserted between the nave and the tower; these belong partly to the church and partly to the corporation. The tower, however, belongs entirely to the corporation. The patronage formerly was possessed by Mr. Cooke, but Lord Zetland purchased it and presented it to the trustees of the Grammar School, so that now the whole block is fairly confused. The way in which Richmond was entailed on a follower of the Conqueror is a curious instance of the manner in which such grants were commonly made, and in the Registrum honoris de Richmond there is a most singular illumination of the investment. The lucky nephew is kneeling down, while the king is presenting him with a charter to which the great seal is attached; and thus villages and manors were given away in every direction by the stranger king. Domesday Book is the most extraordinary book perhaps that now exists; it gives an absolutely accurate description of England, excepting some few of the northern counties, and it is quoted at the present day as indisputable authority in the courts of justice. No other country possesses anything at all like it, and it strikingly exhibits the damage done by pillage and conquest.

The date of the survey is 1086, and it may be seen by special permission. It is said that by the Conquest the rental of England diminished in twenty years to one-fourth of what it was under Edward the Confessor. Thierry has shown in his history how complete the spoliation of the kingdom was by the Norman conquerors. “The king’s name was placed at the head of the county, with a list of his domains and revenues; then followed the names of the chief and inferior proprietors, in the order of their military rank and their territorial wealth. The Saxons, who by special favour had been spared the spoliation, were found only in the lowest schedule; for the number of that race who still continued to be free proprietors, or tenants in chief to the king, as the conquerors called it, were such only for small domains. They were inscribed at the end of each chapter under the name of thanes of the king, or by some other designation of domestic service in the royal household. The rest of the names of an Anglo-Saxon form, that are scattered here and there through the roll, belong to farmers holding by a precarious title a few fractions, larger or smaller, of the domains of the Norman earls, barons, knights, sergeants, and bowmen.”

There is little of interest in Ripon besides the Cathedral. The houses have generally been

modernised, and they do not seem to be more than about a century or a century and a half old. The dedication of Ripon Church was attended by Egfrid, king of Northumbria, who feasted the people for three days; and here it may be in place to allude to these dedications as bearing on some village customs that have died out happily in nearly every part of England—the rush-bearings, the wakes, and church ales. Gregory the Great bade St. Augustine not to destroy the pagan temples, but only the idols that were in them, purifying the site and sprinkling it with holy water, etc.; and because the people were in the habit of assembling on certain days, and having their orgies and feasts to their gods, the crafty pontiff knew it would weaken his hold on them to bring such things to a sudden conclusion, and ordered that these bacchanalia were still to be continued, but kept on the saint’s day the church was dedicated to; and in the then condition of the people that would tend rather to attach them to the new religion. The Unicorn Inn in Ripon has some slight traces of antiquity, but it is more as a foreground to the west front of the Cathedral, than to any particular merits of its own, it owes its architectural value.

The fine old three-gabled house at Wakefield, here shown, was probably built about the same time as the battle of Wakefield; it is now divided into small shops, and the carved work has been much defaced and removed. There is nothing in it essentially different from any other black-and-white house that may be seen in Chester or elsewhere.

Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, figures in the third part of “Henry VI.,” and is now in ruins, and the Duke of York wished to remain here on the defensive against the army of 20,000 that Queen

Margaret had mustered under promise of plunder if her cause should be successful. The Duke’s forces mustered not more than a quarter of the number, but the Earl of Salisbury prevailed on him to advance to meet the Queen’s army. When the Yorkists advanced in good order they probably did not even guess at the superior forces they were pitted against, and as their leader was allowed to advance towards Wakefield he was cut off from Sandal, and was nearly the first to fall. His head, as we have seen, was put on York gates, and scenes of exceptional barbarity, even for the Wars of the Roses, followed Margaret’s victory. The Duke of York’s son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, was murdered with great cruelty after the battle, by Lord Clifford, at Wakefield bridge. He is made to say in “Henry VI.”

The chapel on Wakefield bridge, which was in a ruinous condition till the late Vicar of Wakefield restored it, was built by Edward IV., the brother of the young Rutland who was murdered by Clifford. He erected it on the spot where his brother was slain. The intercession of the young Rutland for his life is powerfully told in Shakespeare, and the gibes and jeers that Clifford gave way to when he stabbed him. Even Clifford’s own party could not excuse this act, for Rutland is always described as an extremely amiable gentle youth. Hall says that not a few of his party after the murder stigmatised Clifford as “no gentleman,” a censure that we cannot say errs on the side of severity when judged by our modern ideas. These wayside chapels, we are told,

were the only places of public worship to which no burial-ground was attached. “They had no walled enclosure, and could never have been more alone than many are now on the highways to Walsingham. Those near Hillborough have been planted on the bleak brows of elevated ground near the roadside, and are without particular architectural distinction, etc. The interior, which could once afford rest to the weary and a pittance to the distressed, is now too desolate to be sought as a refuge by cattle.” This chapel at Wakefield was at one time such a place, for it is supposed to have been originally built in the time of Edward II., and no doubt correctly so supposed, but it was transformed or almost rebuilt in the superb form we see it now, in the reign of Edward IV. In case this wonderful chapel may not be understood with sufficient clearness, it may be well to remark that it occupies a sort of large pier, an exaggerated kind of buttress to the bridge. The windows are certainly curious and beautiful: the singular part of them is that they contain a two-centred head in a square, the spandrels being pierced.

Pontefract is rather a disappointment to those who visit it for the first time, and who are expecting to see much of its ancient glories left. The house here shown is rather curious, and evidently of considerable antiquity. The outside stair and the slits in the wall are defensive, but sash windows have replaced mullions, and now it is a good substantial farm-house. The population of the town is said to be nearly 12,000, but they are nearly all cottagers, and apparently in rather humble circumstances. The rocky foundation on which the castle was built is now a valuable quarry of filtering stones, that are sent to all parts of the kingdom. The liquorice-grounds

become a distinctive feature here, and the making of pomfret cakes forms quite an industry among the natives. Few if any castles in England have played so conspicuous a part in the history of the country. It was built by Ilbert de Lacy, a follower of the Conqueror. He received as his share of the plunder 150 manors in Yorkshire, ten in Nottingham, and four in Lincolnshire. The gentle baron took a fancy to Pontefract because he considered that it bore a resemblance to his old home in Normandy, and readily had it transferred from its original possessor to himself. The area enclosed by the castle walls is said to have been about seven acres, and it was of course fortified with all engineering expedients then known. The dungeons are a remarkable feature here, not only on account of their stern forbidding appearance, but from the number and importance of the prisoners who have been confined in them. Pontefract Castle was the seat of the Earl of Lancaster in the reign of Edward II., when the country was torn to pieces by factions, and the Royalists and the house of Lancaster fought for predominance. In one of the battles the Earl of Lancaster was defeated and taken to his own castle, and there, without a hearing, and under circumstances of great barbarity, he was put to death. In the short reign also of Richard III. many great men were confined in these dungeons, and afterwards executed; Woodville, Gray, and Rivers among the rest. This castle held out longer than any other against the army of Cromwell; indeed was not taken till after Charles was executed. A singular tale is told of its final surrender and demolition. It would seem that when the Royalists were reduced to straits, General Lambert, who commanded the Parliamentarians, summoned them to surrender, and offered them honourable terms. The only ones he excepted from these terms were six gentlemen who were obnoxious to Cromwell, and these he said it was desirable to have executed. The garrison, who were composed principally of Nottingham men, objected to this, and asked Lambert to agree to the following singular condition:—the castle was to be held for a week longer, and then surrendered; but if, in the interim, these six gentlemen could escape by fair means, they were to be permitted. Lambert said if he only had his own way he would let them all off free, and rejoice at it, but he was completely tied down by his instructions; however, he would take upon himself to agree to the week. Several skirmishes took place during this week, and four of the six besieged gentlemen effected their escape. It is not improbable that no very great diligence was employed in their capture. Still, however, two remained, Sir Hugh Cartwright and another, and they would not let any further trouble or loss be incurred on their behalf, so they found a chamber in the walls, and caused themselves to be loosely walled in with a month’s provisions in the room. They calculated that the castle would be retaken by the Royalists within the month. The garrison then surrendered, and Lambert reduced the castle to the ruinous condition in which it now is; and the tale that passed current was that he just happened to pass the part where they were concealed, and they escaped and went abroad; at any rate one of them died at Antwerp some time after.

The doorway with the royal arms, which is correctly shown here, is in a cottage opposite the castle, and no doubt at one time was connected with the great establishment. It is evidently only part of a much more important building, and probably stood in the castle enclosures. It is hardly necessary to remark here that it was at Pontefract Castle that Richard II. met his death in the year 1400, when only thirty-five years of age. Nothing is known of the manner of his death. Some suppose that he was murdered or starved to death, as the two gentlemen in Cromwell’s time might have been but for timely accidents; and tradition says that Sir Piers Exton, with a select band of assassins, murdered him there, that a stout resistance was made, and some were killed besides the king.

The well-known scene in “Richard II.” favours this view. The captive, in a long soliloquy in a dungeon that is yet pointed out as his prison, says—

Beverley is near Hull, and perhaps rather remote from the parts of the island that are most commonly traversed. It is a town, however, of great beauty and interest, and contains among other attractions two fine old churches. One, St. Mary’s, has been engraved in some recent works, and the minster has quite the proportions and style of a first-class cathedral. Britton remarks that it resembles Salisbury in plan and general style. The ancient family of Percy were great benefactors to the building; and the shrine, commonly called the Percy Shrine, built apparently in the fifteenth century, is very commonly regarded as the finest piece of workmanship that is left us from the mediæval ages. This family possessed two grand residences in the neighbourhood—Leconfield Manor and Wressel Castle.

The lamp with which this chapter is closed is a good example of old wrought-iron work. It may have been constructed any time from the Edwardean period to the Stewart age; for, singularly enough, there are no features in this class of wrought-iron work that indicate any period in the same way as stone-work does. With close attention some slight character may be detected in a leaf, but generally such an index as this is quite wanting.

Image unavailable: ENTRANCE GATE TO BEVERLEY, YORKSHIRE.
ENTRANCE GATE TO BEVERLEY, YORKSHIRE.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE entrance gate to Beverley is a rather fine specimen of brick architecture, with mouldings and niches all in the same material. It fully carries out the principles of brickwork that have been the subject of a former chapter, and is a delightful entrance to a country town of first-class importance. The houses of Beverley are good, and it is resorted to by many retired merchants and tradesmen who wish to pass what remains of life in quiet.

In the market place, which the engraver has given an excellent idea of, is a quaint cross of the Carolean period. This market place occupies some four acres, and is a perfect gem of picturesque town beauty. The cross must have been among the last that were built as market crosses. The history of these beautiful remains, that have done so much to enliven old towns and cities, may be told in a few words. They were devoted to various uses. Sometimes they were preaching crosses, as the one at Iron Acton, where probably in very warm weather the vicar or incumbent would address the congregation in the open air, or, like the black friars in Hereford, where the pulpit cross seems to have stood in cloisters. Sometimes they were memorial crosses, like the three grand Eleanor crosses that are left us out of the original twelve; and it is satisfactory to be able to think that these beautiful memorials will again be copied very freely. The colonies even are beginning to erect some imitations of the Waltham cross,[9] and indeed its marvellous beauty speaks for itself. At one time there were certainly 5000 crosses in England, but they were so easily destroyed in Cromwell’s time, that very little trace of all this luxuriance of architecture is left. Some crosses may be buried only a foot under the soil, and noble examples lost to our sight; indeed it is by no means uncertain that we shall not be able to add at least one Eleanor cross to our list, if not two. The Chester Cross was buried for years, indeed centuries, before it was discovered in front of St. Peter’s Church, only a few inches below the footwalk, apparently placed reverently by some careful hand; and since these pages have been commenced, and in some very recent alterations to Neston church in this neighbourhood, the remains of three fine stone crosses were exhumed. A cross filled many uses, as has been said, but it was always contrived to make it an object of beauty to the neighbourhood. The Charing Cross that has been recently erected opposite the new hotel is one of the most successful that has been put up in modern days, and much resembles the roadside one at Waltham. From these old crosses proclamations used to be read, and tolls collected from the market people. The modern drinking-fountain also is an adaptation of the idea that suggested some of the crosses, and several of the old conduits might be copied with great advantage. The one at Sherborne, which has been illustrated in these pages, would be an excellent model for a drinking-fountain, and one that has not yet been copied. The covered market cross at Beverley is one of the last that was built, and answered the same purposes as those of Salisbury or Malmesbury. These were merely covered spaces for country people to rest in, in the heat and the rain, and generally connected with some religious house in the neighbourhood. They were usually octagonal and richly groined. That at Chichester is the most elaborate, though the more ancient one at Salisbury, engraved in page 119, is the most graceful and picturesque in the country. One thing strikes us in these crosses—the smallness of the accommodation for a public market; but then, as now, the market square was covered with awnings or tents. And one of the most picturesque sights in England is an old market square like the one at Hexham, or the one at Salisbury, with their booths, on a busy market-day. Sometimes a cross was built on an octagonal shaft surmounted with a crucifix, or a head with niches and small statues, and an octagonal covering was built up round it reaching to about half the height of the original shaft. This, as at Cheddar in Somerset, is sometimes of later date, and sometimes, as at Shepton-Mallet, in the same vicinity, built contemporaneously with the central column. In great numbers of villages we find flights of steps where a cross has once stood; but the eyesore being removed, the Puritans allowed the steps to remain. In Malpas these are of enormous dimensions, and when they were surmounted with a tall cross the effect in this picturesque little country town must have been most striking. As a rule, our modern representations of crosses have not been very successful; they are wanting in lightness and ingenuity. One mode of decoration, however, that is thoroughly unsuited to our climate, we are not likely to see renewed, and that is the gilding of crosses. The magnificent cross at Coventry was regilded in the reign of James II., and is said to have used up 15,403 books of gold.

Beverley was at one time surrounded by lakes that were formed by the overflowing of the Humber, and its name is said to be derived from Beaver lake, as at one time these animals were very abundant in this part of Yorkshire. There is a grammar school here of great antiquity.

The towns of Scarborough and Whitby contain nothing at all that could illustrate the subject in hand; indeed, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Whitby only contained thirty or forty houses.

In the adjoining county of Westmoreland there is not very much that comes within our range. The beauty of the county needs no telling here. The English lakes are hardly excelled in beauty anywhere in the world, but of course their requirements for modern travel have caused a modern growth of architecture. The ruins of the castle where Catherine Parr was born are near Kendal, but the town itself contains nothing of interest architecturally.

Appleby, the county town, was at one time a place of importance, but it was twice burned down during the wars, and the present appearance is quite modern. Ambleside is a charming town almost entirely composed of modern detached cottages, each in its own garden.

The county of Northumberland suffered, like Dorset, severely, from incursions of the Danes, though in the former county they were suffered to settle after their overthrow by King Alfred; and Mr. G. Tate, in an interesting history of Alnwick, has given a curious list of Danish words that are still preserved in the dialect spoken about that town.

Indeed he shows that every word which is of strange origin has come from Scandinavia. This work of Mr. Tate’s was reviewed some ten years since, in the Builder, in a very interesting article, from which I do not hesitate to borrow.

The writer says that in general the people who visit Alnwick for the first time feel sadly disappointed. They look upon it as the ancient home of the Percies, and almost expect to find men in mediæval costume, or at any rate they do think that the town should have the appearance of some newly fought field, and there should be some few pieces of armour lying about; and often the disappointment is expressed loudly at the first sight of the small quiet gray town lying in its green basin. Wordsworth and Pennant even make no secret of their chagrin, as they found their hopes all scattered; and Halleck, the American poet, is very much exercised at the appearance of the liveried menial who let him through the ancient halls of Hotspur and his wife, for the modest sum of “ten shillings and sixpence sterling.” Yet it seems that the inhabitants are all antiquaries, either from the associations with which they are surrounded or the force of old customs, and there is hardly a tradesman that does not possess some collection of local antiquities. Mr. Tate reinvests Alnwick, as it were, with some of its ancient glories. He says, “When several of our great towns were mere villages, Alnwick was a walled town and enjoyed a corporate existence; warlike barons, wielding power little less than regal, resided within its great castle, ruled their vassals, and hatched their plots against their sovereign, or devised schemes for public liberty. Malefactors were executed there, and grisly and gory heads were exhibited over the gates; mitred abbots and cowled monks lived hard by, and dispensed a splendid hospitality within their abbeys. Old customs lingered long here; and there yet remains somewhat of the racy savour of olden times, in the tastes and associations of the inhabitants.”

The Percies were in possession of Alnwick at least 120 years before it was walled and fortified, and the wall that surrounded it does not seem to have differed very much from that of Chester. The Border warfare, or rather perhaps armed plunder, that one might almost have supposed was inherited from the Danish blood that flowed in the veins of the northern people, accounts for much of their architecture.

When Worcester says—

he might have been alluding to the neighbours by whom Hotspur was surrounded. It is computed that no less than 2000 men must have been employed in a complicated system of day and night watching to guard against the lawless raids of the Middle Ages. The day watches began their duty at daylight, and blew a horn on the approach of the foe, and all men were bound on pain of death to follow the fray with hue and cry. Goods captured from the Scots were restored to the owner, and the capturer was rewarded. No man was permitted to speak to a Scotsman without leave from the warder, so great a terror did the inroads of the Northerners cause among the English.

Perhaps there may have been a reverse to this picture, and the hands of the Englishmen were not quite clean. The conduct of the stout Earl of Northumberland in Chevy Chase is not such as we can well excuse. He certainly had no pretence of right on his side to take three summer days of pleasure in the Scottish woods, and kill and bring back to Alnwick the chiefest harts in Douglas’s manor. This must always have struck even the most youthful admirer of the beautiful ballad. Then they were not satisfied with moderate, or indeed excellent sport. A hundred fallow deer did not appease the “stout Earl” and his friends, for they seem to have coolly prepared for further hunting. The chronicler simply says—

This ballad is evidently written in the interests of the English, and whoever may have been generally most to blame in the Border quarrels, it is clear that the English on the occasion of Chevy Chase had a good deal of wrong on their side.

The waits were suppressed in 1831 by the Corporation. They used to last from Martinmas to January, and Mr. Tate remembers the criers perambulating the town at night with a “Good morrow, masters all! half-past three on a frosty morning;” and once or twice a week altering their apostrophe to the name of a householder, “Good morrow, Mistress Turner! half-past two on a cloudy morning.” Singular as such customs may seem now, it is only a comparatively few years since constables used to perambulate the city at night time in Liverpool and other large towns, using almost similar language. Fortunately the establishment of new police has deprived them of the power of paying off some old grudge against any particular inhabitant who might be supposed to require information about the time of night and the state of the weather; and the watchman with his lantern has now become a thing of the past,—more so even than mail-coaches with their rumbles and horns, which, indeed, have not even yet disappeared from some of the more remote parts of the island.

Hexham is a very imposing-looking town, as it is approached from the railway. The Moot Hall and the Abbey Church occupy commanding features in the landscape. The Abbey Church was at one time a cathedral, dedicated to St. Andrew. Every building in Hexham that can boast of any antiquity bears testimony to the disturbed state of the old times. This is the case also with Haltwhistle, on the left bank of the Tyne, and other Northumbrian towns. Those who are in the habit of spending time in amateur gardening may be interested to know that the gloves called “Hexham tans” are manufactured here, and sent into the country to be sold at exactly double the price they bring in Hexham. Formerly hats like the Monmouth caps were made here, but, as in Monmouth, all the factories are now closed. Hexham has produced two remarkable chroniclers—John of Hexham and Prior Richard.

The Black Gate at Newcastle-on-Tyne is a singular example of the architecture of the period we have been describing. Gloomy and forbidding it looks, as if really every man’s hand was against his neighbour, and his neighbour’s against him. It has been recently destroyed, but the engraving is taken from a photograph that was fortunately made before. Of course the windows are modern in comparison with the rest of the building. This gate was built at an enormous cost in the reign of Henry III., and, as a recent chronicler has said, “it is apt to convey a gloomy impression of Norman character and times, in passing under the low and narrow arch. Louring and characteristic is the effect of its great depth, thirty-six feet, and suggestive of thoughts of the awful dungeons of the mighty barons, and the deeds of cruelty too often perpetrated in them.” The older fortifications were quite inadequate for the defence of Newcastle against the Scots, who seem to have ravaged it at will. Part of them remained until very recently behind the priory of Black Friars.

The history of the walls is very illustrative of the times. On one of the inroads of the Scots, after they had exhausted the old programme of plunder and fire, they carried off a wealthy citizen with them to Scotland, and held him for ransom. This was not long in coming, and on his return to his town he resolved to protect the city with walls in order to prevent similar accidents. In this he was assisted by the inhabitants and the King, and he was enabled to build a wall of twelve feet high and eight feet thick, strongly resembling, it is said, the walls of Avignon. This wall measured about a mile and three quarters in circuit, and was surrounded with a ditch of more than twenty yards in breadth. There were said to be seven gates in these walls, and seventeen round towers, and effigies of men cut in stone to represent watchers. All these works were completed in the fourteenth century.

A description of Durham would hardly be complete without some reference to St. Cuthbert, to whom the See owes its origin. He was originally a cowherd, but believing that he had a calling for holy orders he left his sheep in the wilderness and soon obtained admission. His piety and austere life at once marked him out for high office, and he ultimately became Bishop of Lindisfarne. This office was no sinecure in his day, and it required all the efforts of the ecclesiastics and their see to preserve any of their property from the ravages of the Danish invasions, which seem to have occurred as often as it was supposed there was anything worth plundering, and they could collect sufficient men to plunder, with the necessary ships and arms.

Lindisfarne Island is the part most exposed to any incursions of the Danes, and the ecclesiastics finally grew tired of the wearisome and unequal contest and determined to remove to safer quarters; and after various wanderings, in which they carried with them the body of St. Cuthbert, they finally rested at