[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TEMPLE, WITH THE MAUSOLEUM IN THE DISTANCE.]
Leaving the railway-station in the valley of the Derwent, and mounting the hills to the westward, a little village is reached on the confines of the park. Beyond the village the road to the park-gates pa.s.ses through meadow-land, and is bordered by beautiful beech trees arranged in cl.u.s.ters of about a dozen trees in each, producing an unusual but most happy effect. The gateway is entered, a plain building in a castellated wall--this being Walpole"s "fortified city"--and, proceeding up a slope, the fine avenue of beeches crosses another avenue of lime trees. Here is placed an obelisk erected in honor of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, which also bears an inscription telling of the erection of Castle Howard. It recites that the house was built on the site of the old castle of Hinderskelf, and was begun in 1702 by Charles, the third Earl of Carlisle, who set up this inscription in 1731. The happy earl, pleased with the grand palace and park he had created, thus addresses posterity on the obelisk:
"If to perfection these plantations rise, If they agreeably my heirs surprise, This faithful pillar will their age declare As long as time these characters shall spare.
Here, then, with kind remembrance read his name Who for posterity performed the same."
The avenue then leads on past the north front of the castle, standing in a fine situation upon a ridge between two shallow valleys. The bed of the northern valley has been converted into a lake, while on the southern slopes are beautiful and extensive lawns and gardens. The house forms three sides of a hollow square, and within, it is interesting in pictures and ornaments. It is cut up, however, into small rooms and long, chilly corridors, which detract from its good effect. The entrance-hall is beneath the central dome and occupies the whole height of the structure, but it is only about thirty-five feet square, giving a sense of smallness. Frescoes decorate the walls and ceilings. The public apartments, which are in several suites opening into each other and flanked by long corridors, are like a museum, so full are they of rare works of art, china, gla.s.s, and paintings. Much of the collection came from the Orleans Gallery. There are also many portraits in black and red chalk by Janet, a French artist who flourished in the sixteenth century.
Some of the paintings are of great value, and are by Rubens, Caracci, Ca.n.a.letti, Tintoretto, t.i.tian, Hogarth, Bellini, Mabuse, Holbein, Lely, Vand.y.k.e, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and others. The Castle Howard collection is exceptionally valuable in historical portraits. The windows of the drawing-room look out upon extensive flower-gardens, laid out in rather formal style with antique vases and statues. Beyond these gardens is seen a circular temple placed upon a knoll, the "mausoleum" which so moved Walpole. Here the former owners of the castle are buried, a constant _memento mori_ to the tenants of the house, though the taste certainly seems peculiar that has made the family tomb the most prominent object in the view from the drawing-room windows.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GATEWAY, KIRKHAM PRIORY.]
Not far from Castle Howard are the ruins of Kirkham Priory. A charming fragment of this n.o.ble church remains in a gra.s.sy valley on the margin of the Derwent. Here, nearly eight hundred years ago, the Augustinians established the priory, the founder being Sir Walter l"Espec, one of the leaders of the English who drove back King David"s Scottish invasion at the battle of the Standard, near Durham. Sir Walter had an only son, who was one day riding near the site of Kirkham when a wild boar suddenly rushed across his path. The horse plunged and threw his rider, who, striking head-foremost against a projecting stone, was killed. Sir Walter, being childless, determined to devote his wealth to the service of G.o.d, and founded three religious houses--one in Bedfordshire, another at Rievaulx, where he sought refuge from his sorrows, and the third at the place of his son"s death at Kirkham. Legend says that the youth was caught by his foot in the stirrup when thrown, and was dragged by his runaway horse to the spot where the high altar was afterwards located.
Sir Walter"s sister married into the family of De Ros, among the ancestors of the Dukes of Rutland, and they were patrons of Kirkham until the dissolution of the monasteries. Little remains of it: the gate-house still stands, and in front is the base of a cross said to have been made from the stone against which the boy was thrown.
Alongside this stone they hold a "bird-fair" every summer, where jackdaws, starlings, and other birds are sold, with a few rabbits thrown in; but the fair now is chiefly an excuse for a holiday. The church was three hundred feet long, with the convent-buildings to the southward, but only scant ruins remain. Beyond the ruins, at the edge of the greensward, the river glides along under a gray stone bridge. At Howsham, in the neighborhood, Hudson the railway king was born, and at Foston-le-Clay Sydney Smith lived, having for his friends the Earl and Countess of Carlisle of that day, who made their first call in a gold coach and got stuck fast in the clay. Here the witty vicar resided, having been presented to a living, and built himself a house, which he described as "the ugliest in the county," but admitted by all critics to be "one of the most comfortable," though located "twenty miles from a lemon." Subsequently Smith left here for Somersetshire.
SCARBOROUGH AND WHITBY.
The coast of Yorkshire affords the boldest and grandest scenery on the eastern sh.o.r.e of England. A great protruding backbone of chalk rocks projects far into the North Sea at Flamborough Head, and makes one of the most prominent landmarks on all that rugged, iron-bound coast. This is the Ocellum Promontorium of Ptolemy, and its lighthouse is three hundred and thirty feet above the sea, while far away over the waters the view is superb. From Flamborough Head northward beyond Whitby the coast-line is a succession of abrupt white cliffs and bold headlands, presenting magnificent scenery. About twenty-three miles north of Flamborough is the "Queen of Northern Watering-places," as Scarborough is pleased to be called, where a bold headland three hundred feet high juts out into the North Sea for a mile, having on each side semicircular bays, each about a mile and a quarter wide. At the extreme point of the lozenge-shaped promontory stands the ruined castle which named the town Scar-burgh, with the sea washing the rocky base of its foundations on three sides. Steep cliffs run precipitously down to the narrow beach that fringes these bays around, and on the cliffs is the town of Scarborough, while myriads of fishing-vessels cl.u.s.ter about the breakwater-piers that have been constructed to make a harbor of refuge.
It would be difficult to find a finer situation, and art has improved it to the utmost, especially as mineral springs add the attractions of a spa to the sea air and bathing. The old castle, battered by war and the elements, is a striking ruin, the precipitous rock on which it stands being a natural fortress. The Northmen when they first invaded Britain made its site their stronghold, but the present castle was not built until the reign of King Stephen, when its builder, William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle, was so powerful in this part of Yorkshire that it was said he was "in Stephen"s days the more real king." But Henry II. compelled the proud earl to submit to his authority, though "with much searching of heart and choler," and Scarborough afterwards became one of the royal castles, Edward I. in his earlier years keeping court there. It was there that Edward II. was besieged and his favorite Gaveston starved into surrender, and then beheaded on Blacklow Hill in violation of the terms of his capitulation. Scarborough was repeatedly attacked by the Scotch, but it subsequently enjoyed an interval of peace until the Reformation. In Wyatt"s rebellion his friends secured possession of the castle by stratagem. A number of his men, disguised as peasants, on market-day strolled one by one into the castle, and then at a given signal overpowered the sentinels and admitted the rest of their band.
The castle, however, was soon recaptured from the rebels, and Thomas Stafford, the leader in this enterprise, was beheaded. From this event is derived the proverb of a "Scarborough warning"--a word and a blow, but the blow first. In Elizabeth"s reign Scarborough was little else but a fishing-village, and so unfortunate that it appealed to the queen for aid. In the Civil War the castle was held by the Royalists, and was besieged for six months. While the guns could not reduce it, starvation did, and the Parliamentary army took possession. Three years later the governor declared for the king, and the castle again stood a five months" siege, finally surrendering. Since then it has fallen into decay, but it was a prison-house for George Fox the Quaker, who was treated with severity there. A little way down the hill are the ruins of the ancient church of St. Mary, which has been restored.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SCARBOROUGH SPA AND ESPLANADE.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: SCARBOROUGH FROM THE SEA.]
The cliffs on the bay to the south of Castle Hill have been converted into a beautifully-terraced garden and promenade. Here, amid flowers and summer houses and terraced walks, is the fashionable resort, the footpaths winding up and down the face of the cliffs or broadening into the gardens, where music is provided and there are nightly illuminations. Millions of money have been expended in beautifying the front of the cliffs adjoining the Spa, which is on the seash.o.r.e, and to which Scarborough owed its original fame as a watering-place. The springs were discovered in 1620, and by the middle of the last century had become fashionable, but the present ornamental Spa was erected only about forty years ago. There is a broad esplanade in front. There are two springs, one containing more salt, lime, and magnesia sulphates than the other. In the season, this esplanade--in fact, the entire front of the cliffs--is full of visitors, while before it are rows of little boxes on wheels, the bathing-houses that are drawn into the water. The surf is usually rather gentle, however, though the North Sea can knock things about at a lively rate in a storm.
North of Scarborough the coast extends, a grand escarpment of cliffs and headlands, past Robin Hood"s Bay, with its rocky barriers, the North Cheek and the South Cheek, to the little harbor of another watering-place, Whitby. The cliffs here are more precipitous and the situation even more picturesque than at Scarborough. The river Esk has carved a deep glen in the Yorkshire moorland, and in this the town nestles, climbing the steep banks on either side of the river. The ruins of Whitby Abbey are located high up on the side of the ravine opposite to the main part of the town, and they still present a n.o.ble if dilapidated pile. The nave fell after a storm in the last century, and a similar cause threw down the central tower in 1830. The choir and northern transept are still standing, extremely beautiful Early English work: only fragments of other portions of the abbey remain. This was in olden times the Westminster of Northumbria, containing the tombs of Eadwine and of Oswy, with kings and n.o.bles grouped around them. It has been over twelve hundred years since a religious house was founded at Whitby, at first known as the White Homestead, an outgrowth of the abbey, which was founded by Oswy and presided over by the sainted Hilda, who chose the spot upon the lonely crags by the sea. The fame of Whitby as a place of learning soon spread, and here lived the cowherd Caedmon, the first English poet. The Danes sacked and burned it but after the Norman Conquest, under the patronage of the Percies, the abbey grew in wealth and fame. Fragments of the monastery yet remain, and on the hill a little lower down is the parish church, with a long flight of steps leading up to it from the harbor along which the people go, and when there is a funeral the coffin has to be slung in order to be carried up the steps. Whitby is famous for its jet, which is worked into numerous ornaments: this is a variety of fossil wood, capable of being cut and taking a high polish. It is also celebrated for its production of iron-ore, which indeed is a product of all this part of Yorkshire; while at night, along the valley of the Tees, not far north of Whitby, the blaze of the myriads of furnaces light up the heavens like the fire of Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. Among the tales of the abbey is that which
"Whitby"s nuns exulting told, How to their house three barons bold Must menial service do."
[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITBY ABBEY.]
It appears that three gentlemen--De Bruce, De Percy, and Allaston--were hunting boars on the abbey-lands in 1159, and roused a fine one, which their dogs pressed hard and chased to the hermitage, where it ran into the chapel and dropped dead. The hermit closed the door against the hounds, and the hunters, coming up, were enraged to find the dogs baulked of their prey, and on the hermit"s opening the door they attacked him with their boar-spears and mortally wounded him. It was not long before they found that this was dangerous sport, and they took sanctuary at Scarborough. The Church, however, did not protect those who had insulted it, and they were given up to the abbot of Whitby, who was about to make an example of them when the dying hermit summoned the abbot and the prisoners to his bedside and granted them their lives and lands. But it was done upon a peculiar tenure: upon Ascension Day at sunrise they were to come to the wood on Eskdale-side, and the abbot"s officer was to deliver to each "ten stakes, eleven stout stowers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by you, or some of you, with a knife of one penny price;" these they were to take on their backs to Whitby before nine o"clock in the morning. Then said the hermit, "If it be full sea your labor and service shall cease; and if low water, each of you shall set your stakes to the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them on each side with your yethers, and so stake on each side with your stout stowers, that they may stand three tides without removing by the force thereof. You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most cruelly slay me, and that you may the better call to G.o.d for mercy, repent unfeignedly of your sins, and do good works. The officer of Eskdale-side shall blow, "Out on you, out on you, out on you for this heinous crime!"" Failure of this strange service was to forfeit their lands to the abbot of Whitby.
DURHAM.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL AND CASTLE.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: NORMAN DOORWAY IN DURHAM CASTLE.]
We have now come into a region of coal and iron, with mines and furnaces in abundance, and tall chimneys in all the villages pouring out black smoke. All the country is thoroughly cultivated, and the little streams bubbling over the stones at the bottoms of the deep valleys, past sloping green fields and occasional patches of woods where the land is too steep for cultivation, give picturesqueness to the scene. We have crossed over the boundary from Yorkshire into Durham, and upon the very crooked little river Wear there rise upon the tops of the precipitous cliffs bordering the stream, high elevated above the red-tiled roofs of the town, the towers of Durham Cathedral and Castle. They stand in a remarkable position. The Wear, swinging around a curve like an elongated horseshoe, has excavated a precipitous valley out of the rocks. At the narrower part of the neck there is a depression, so that the promontory around which the river sweeps appears like the wrist with the hand clenched. The town stands at the depression, descending the slopes on either side to the river, and also spreading upon the opposite banks.
The castle bars the access to the promontory, upon which stands the cathedral. Thus, almost impregnably fortified, the ancient bishops of Durham were practically sovereigns, and they made war as quickly as they would celebrate a ma.s.s if their powers were threatened, for they bore alike the sword and the crozier. Durham was founded to guard the relics of the famous St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, the great ascetic of the early English Church, distinguished above all others for the severity of his mortifications and his abhorrence of women. At his shrine, we are told, none of the gentler s.e.x might worship; they were admitted to the church, but in the priory not even a queen could lodge. Queen Philippa was once admitted there as a guest, but a tumult arose, and she had to flee half dressed for safety to the castle. St. Cuthbert was a hermit to whom the sight of human beings was a weariness and the solitude of the desert a delight. He was born in Scotland about the middle of the seventh century, of humble origin, and pa.s.sed his early years as a shepherd near Melrose. He adopted an austere life, found a friend in the abbot of Melrose, and ultimately sickened of an epidemic, his recovery being despaired of. In answer, however, to the prayers of the monks, he was restored to health as by a miracle, and became the prior of Melrose.
Afterwards he was for twelve years prior of Lindisfarne, an island off the Northumbrian coast, but the craving for solitude was too strong to be resisted, and he became a hermit. He went to Farne, a lonely rocky island in the neighboring sea, and, living in a hut, spent his life in prayer and fasting, but having time, according to the legend, to work abundant miracles. A spring issued from the rock to give him water, the sea laid f.a.gots at his feet, and the birds ministered to his wants. At first other monks had free access to him, but gradually he secluded himself in the hut, speaking to them through the window, and ultimately closed even that against them except in cases of emergency. Such sanct.i.ty naturally acquired wide fame, and after long urging he consented to become a bishop, at first at Hexham, afterwards at Lindisfarne, thus returning to familiar scenes and an island home. But his life was ebbing, and after two years" service he longed again for his hermit"s hut on the rock of Farne. He resigned the bishopric, and, returning to his hut, in a few weeks died. His brethren buried him beside his altar, where he rested eleven years; then exhuming the body, it was found thoroughly preserved, and was buried again in a new coffin at Lindisfarne. Almost two hundred years pa.s.sed, when the Danes made an incursion, and to escape them the monks took the body, with other precious relics, and left Lindisfarne. During four years they wandered about with their sacred charge, and ultimately settled near Chester-le-Street, where the body of St. Cuthbert rested for over a century; but another Danish invasion in 995 sent the saint"s bones once more on their travels, and they were taken to Ripon. The danger past, the monks started on their return, transporting the coffin on a carriage. They had arrived at the Wear, when suddenly the carriage stopped and was found to be immovable. This event no doubt had a meaning, and the monks prayed and fasted for three days to learn what it was. Then the saint appeared in a vision and said he had chosen this spot for his abode. It was a wild place, known as Dunhelm: the monks went to the Dun, or headland, and erected a tabernacle for their ark from the boughs of trees while they built a stone church, within which, in the year 999, the body was enshrined. This church stood until after the Norman Conquest, when the king made its bishop the Earl of Durham, and his palatinate jurisdiction began.
The present Durham Cathedral was begun in 1093, with the castle alongside. As we look at them from the railway-station, they stand a monument of the days when the same hand grasped the pastoral staff and the sword--"half house of G.o.d, half castle "gainst the Scot." Upon the top of the rocks, which are clad in foliage to the river"s edge, on the left hand, supported by ma.s.sive outworks built up from halfway down the slope, rises the western face of the castle. Beyond this, above a fringe of trees, rises the lofty cathedral, its high central tower forming the apex of the group and its two western towers looking down into the ravine. The galilee in front appears built up from the depths of the valley, and is supported by outworks scarcely less solid than those of the castle. Durham, more than any other place in England, is a memorial of the temporal authority of the Church, uniting the mitre and the coronet. The plan of Durham Cathedral is peculiar in having the closed galilee at the western end, instead of the open porch as is usual, while the eastern end, which is wider than the choir, terminates abruptly, having no Lady Chapel, but being in effect cut off, with a gable in the centre and a great rose-window. As the galilee overhangs the ravine, the princ.i.p.al entrance to the cathedral is from a fine northern porch. To the portal is affixed a large knocker of quaint design, which in former days was a Mecca for the fugitive, for the shrine of St. Cuthbert enjoyed the right of sanctuary. When the suppliant grasped this knocker he was safe, for over the door two monks kept perpetual watch to open at the first stroke. As soon as admitted the suppliant was required to confess his crime, whatever it might be. This was written down, and a bell in the galilee tolled to announce the fact that some one had sought "the peace of Cuthbert;" and he was then clothed in a black gown with a yellow cross on the shoulder. After thirty-seven days, if no pardon could be obtained, the malefactor solemnly abjured his native land for ever, and was conveyed to the seacoast, bearing a white wooden cross in his hand, and was sent out of the kingdom by the first ship that sailed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DURHAM CATHEDRAL, FROM AN OLD HOMESTEAD ON THE WEAR.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NAVE, DURHAM CATHEDRAL.]
The interior of Durham Cathedral is regarded as the n.o.blest Norman construction yet remaining in England. The arcade, triforium, and clerestory are in fine proportion; the nave has a vaulted roof of stone, and the alternate columns are cl.u.s.tered in plan, their middle shafts extending from floor to roof. These columns are enriched with zigzag, lattice, spiral, and vertical flutings. This cathedral, begun in 1093, was nearly two centuries building, and the Chapel of Nine Altars, in honor of various saints, was erected at the eastern end in the twelfth century. Some of these altars did duty for a pair of saints, St.
Cuthbert sharing the central one with St. Bede, a name only second to his in the memories of Durham, so that the nine altars were availed of to reverence sixteen saints. Behind the reredos a platform extends a short distance into this chapel at a height of six feet above the floor.
A large blue flagstone is let into the platform, with shallow grooves on either hand. Here stood St. Cuthbert"s shrine, highly ornamented, and having seats underneath for the pilgrims and cripples who came to pray for relief. This being never wanting, we are told that the shrine came to be so richly invested that it was esteemed one of the most sumptuous monuments in England, so numerous were the offerings and jewels bestowed upon it. Among the relics here acc.u.mulated was the famous Black Rood of Scotland, the prize of the battle of Neville"s Cross, fought near Durham. There were also many relics of saints and martyrs, sc.r.a.ps of clothing of the Saviour and the Virgin, pieces of the crown of thorns and of the true cross, vials containing the milk of the Virgin Mother and the blood of St. Thomas, besides elephants" tusks and griffins"
claws and eggs, with myriads of jewels. In 1104, St. Cuthbert"s body was deposited in this shrine with solemn ceremonies, and it rested there undisturbed until the dissolution of the monasteries, reverentially watched, day and night, by monks stationed in an adjoining chamber. Then the shrine was destroyed and the treasures scattered, the coffin opened, and St. Cuthbert buried beneath the slab, so that now the only remnants visible are the furrows worn in the adjoining pavement by the feet of the ancient worshippers. Tradition tells that the exact position of St.
Cuthbert"s grave is known only to three Benedictine monks, of whom Scott writes:
"There, deep in Durham"s Gothic shade, His relics are in secret laid, But none may know the place, Save of his holiest servants three, Deep sworn to solemn secrecy, Who share that wondrous grace."
The corpse, however, rests beneath the blue slab. In 1827 it was raised, and, while other human remains were found, there was disclosed beneath them, in a coffin, a skeleton vested in mouldering robes, and with it various treasures, which, with the robes, accord with the description of those present in St. Cuthbert"s coffin when opened in 1104. The skeleton was reinterred in a new coffin, and the relics, particularly an ancient golden cross and a comb, were placed in the cathedral library.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST, DURHAM CATHEDRAL.]
In the galilee of Durham Cathedral, near the south-eastern angle, is a plain, low altar-tomb that marks the resting-place of St. Bede, commonly known as "the Venerable Bede"--a t.i.tle which angelic hands are said to have supplied to the line inscribed on his tomb. He was the first English historian, a gentle, simple scholar, who spent his life from childhood in a monastery at Jarrow, near the mouth of the Wear, and took his pleasure in learning, teaching, or writing. His great work was the _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_, which occupied many years in compilation, and is still the most trusted history of the period of which it treats. His literary activity was extraordinary, and he produced many other works. He was born near Durham in 672, and died in 735. His devotion to literary work was such that even during his last illness he was dictating to an amanuensis a translation of the Gospel of St. John into Anglo-Saxon, and upon completing the last sentence requested the a.s.sistant to place him on the floor of his cell, where he said a short prayer, and expired as the closing words pa.s.sed his lips.
He was buried where he had lived, at Jarrow, and as the centuries pa.s.sed the fame of his sanct.i.ty and learning increased. Then a certain aelfred conceived the idea of stealing St. Bede"s remains for the glorification of Durham. Several times baffled, he at length succeeded, and carrying the precious relics to Durham, they were for a time preserved in St.
Cuthbert"s shrine, but were afterwards removed to a separate tomb, which in 1370 was placed in the galilee, where it has since remained. At the Reformation the shrine was destroyed, and St. Bede"s bones, like St.
Cuthbert"s, were buried beneath the spot on which the shrine had stood.
This tomb was opened in 1831, and many human bones were found beneath, together with a gilt ring. The bones in all probability were St. Bede"s remains. Durham Cathedral contains few monuments, for reverence for the solitude of St. Cuthbert whom it enshrined excluded memorials of other men during several centuries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GALILEE AND TOMB OF BEDE.]
The remains of the Benedictine monastery to which the care of these shrines was entrusted are south of the cathedral, forming three sides of a square, of which the cathedral nave was the fourth. Beyond is an open green, with the castle on the farther side and old buildings on either hand. From this green the castle is entered by a gateway with ma.s.sive doors, but, while the structure is picturesque, it is not very ancient, excepting this gateway. It has mostly been rebuilt since the twelfth century. This was the palace of the bishops of Durham, of whom Antony Bek raised the power of the see to its highest point. He was prelate, soldier, and politician, equally at home in peace or war, at the head of his troops, celebrating a ma.s.s, or surrounded by his great officers of state. He was the first who intruded upon the solitude of St. Cuthbert by being buried in the cathedral. Here lived also Richard of Bury, noted as the most learned man of his generation north of the Alps, and the first English bibliomaniac. Bishop Hatfield also ruled at Durham, famous both as architect and warrior. Cardinal Wolsey lived here when Archbishop of York and his quarrel with Henry VIII. resulted in the Durham palatinate beginning to lose part of its power, so that in the days of his successor, Tunstall, it came to be the "peace of the king,"
and not of the bishop, that was broken within its borders. Here also ruled the baron-bishop Crewe, who was both a temporal and a spiritual peer, and Bishop Butler, the profound thinker. But the bishops live there no longer, their palace being moved to Auckland, while the university is located in the castle. It is the Northern University, first projected in Cromwell"s time. About a mile to the westward of Durham was fought the battle of Neville"s Cross in October, 1346. This was a few months after Edward had won the battle of Crecy in France, and the King of Scotland, taking advantage of the absence of the English king and his army, swept over the Border with forty thousand men, devastating the entire country. His chief n.o.bles accompanied him, and to encourage the troops the most sacred relic of Scotland, the "Black Rood," a crucifix of blackened silver, was present on the battlefield.
This had been mysteriously delivered to David I. on the spot in Edinburgh where to commemorate it Holyrood Abbey was afterwards founded.
But, though King Edward was in France, Queen Philippa was equal to the emergency. An army was quickly gathered under Earl Neville, and Durham sent its contingent headed by the warlike bishop. The invaders drew near the walls of Durham, and the English army, inferior in numbers, awaited them. To confront the "Black Rood," the bishop brought into camp an "ark of G.o.d" in obedience to a vision: this was one of the cathedral"s choicest treasures, "the holy corporax cloth wherewith St. Cuthbert covered the chalice when he used to say ma.s.s." This, attached to the point of a spear, was displayed in sight of the army, while the monks upon the cathedral towers, in full view of the battlefield, prayed for victory for the defenders of St. Cuthbert"s shrine. They fought three hours in the morning, the Scotch with axes, the English with arrows; but, as the watching monks turned from prayer to praise, the Scottish line wavered and broke, for the banner of St. Cuthbert proved too much for the Black Rood. The King of Scotland was wounded and captured, and fifteen thousand of his men were slain, including many n.o.bles. The Black Rood was captured, and placed in the Nine Altars Chapel. Afterwards the "corporax cloth" was attached to a velvet banner, and became one of the great standards of England, being carried against Scotland by Richard II. and Henry IV., and it waved over the English army at Flodden. When not in use it was attached to St. Cuthbert"s shrine. At the Reformation the Black Rood was lost, and St. Cuthbert"s banner fell into possession of one Dean Whittingham, whose wife, the historian lamentingly says, "being a Frenchwoman, did most despitefully burn the same in her fire, to the open contempt and disgrace of all ancient relics." A narrow lane, deeply fringed with ferns, leads out of Durham over the hills to the westward of the town, where at a cross-road stand the mutilated remains of Earl Neville"s Cross, set up to mark the battlefield, now a wide expanse of smoky country.
LUMLEY CASTLE AND NEWCASTLE.
Following the Wear northward towards its mouth, at a short distance below Durham it pa.s.ses the site of the Roman city of Conderum, which had been the resting-place of St. Cuthbert"s bones until the Danish invasion drove them away, and it is now known as Chester-le-Street. Here, in the old church of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert, is the rude effigy of the saint which once surmounted his tomb, and here also is the "Aisle of Tombs," a chain of fourteen monumental effigies of the Lumleys, dating from Queen Elizabeth"s reign. Lumley Castle, now the Earl of Scarborough"s seat (for he too is a Lumley), is a short distance outside the town, on an eminence overlooking the Wear. It dates from the time of Edward I., but has been much modernized, the chief apartment in the interior being the Great Hall, sixty by thirty feet, with the Minstrel Gallery at the western end. Here on the wall is a life-size statue of the great ancestor of the Lumleys, Liulph the Saxon, seated on a red horse. North of this castle, across the Wear, is the Earl of Durham"s seat, Lambton Castle, a Gothic and Tudor structure recently restored.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF LUMLEY CASTLE.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: GATEWAY, LUMLEY CASTLE, FROM THE WALK.]
Still journeying northward, we cross the hills between the Wear and the Tyne, and come to the New Castle which gives its name to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the great coal shipping port. This is a strange-looking town, with red-tiled roofs, narrow, dingy, crooked streets, and myriads of chimneys belching forth smoke from the many iron-works. These mills and furnaces are numerous also in the surrounding country, while the neighborhood is a network of railways carrying coal from the various lines to the shipping-piers. But this famous city is not all smoke and coal-dust: its New Castle is an ancient structure, rather dilapidated now, coming down from the reign of Henry II., approached by steep stairways up the rock on which the keep is perched. It has a fine hall, which is used as a museum of Roman relics, and from the roof is a grand view along the Tyne. This castle has a well ninety-three feet deep bored in the rock. Newcastle in its newer parts has some fine buildings. Grey Street, containing the theatre and Exchange, for a s.p.a.ce of about four hundred yards is claimed to be the finest street in the kingdom. In Low Friars Street is the old chapel of the Black Friars monastery, where Baliol did homage to Edward III. for the Scottish throne. Sir William Armstrong lives at Jesmond, just outside Newcastle, and at Elswick, west of the city, are the extensive workshops where are made the Armstrong guns. The great High Level bridge across the Tyne Valley, built by Stephenson, with a railway on top of a roadway, and one thousand three hundred and thirty-seven feet long, is one of the chief engineering works at Newcastle. George Stephenson was born in 1781 at High Street House, Wylam, near Newcastle, while at Frudhoe Castle is a seat of the Duke of Northumberland. At Wallsend, three miles east of Newcastle, begins the celebrated Roman wall that crossed Britain, and was defended by their legions against incursions by the Scots. Its stone-and-turf walls, with the ditch on the north side, can be distinctly traced across the island.
HEXHAM.
Ascending the Tyne, we come to Hexham, an imposing town as approached by the railway, with the Moat Hall and the abbey church occupying commanding features in the landscape. The Moat Hall is a large and ancient tower, notable for its narrow lights and cornice-like range of corbels. The abbey church, formerly the cathedral of St. Andrew, is a fine specimen of Early English architecture, of which only the transept and some other ruins remain, surmounted by a tower rising about one hundred feet and supported upon magnificent arches. Here is the shrine of the ancient chronicler. Prior Richard, an attractive oratory: and the town also produced another quaint historian of the Border troubles, John of Hexham. It is an antique place, and almost all of its old buildings bear testimony to the disturbed state of the Scottish frontier in the olden time, for not far away are the Cheviot Hills that form the boundary, and in which the Tyne takes its rise. Similar evidence is also given in Haltwhistle, Hexham"s suburb, across the narrow river.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HEXHAM.]
ALNWICK CASTLE.