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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2010
page 64 note a The classical recollections of the biographer are not to be depended upon. This was a favourite story among the Romans, but was never told of Julius Cæsar. It belongs to an earlier period and a less enlightened age. A friend has kindly referred me to several passages in which the incident is related. I will quote one:—“P. Claudius, bello Punico primo, cum prçlium navale committere vellet, auspiciaque more majorum petiisset, et pullarius non exire cavea pullos nuntiasset, abjici eos in mare jussit, dicens, Quia esse nolunt, bibant.”—Valerius Max. i. 4, 3. The Consul Claudius was the son of the famous blind censor. The naval battle alluded to, is that of Drepanum, B.C. 249. See also Cicero, de Nat. Deor. ii. 3, 7; Suetonius, Vit. Tib. ii. &c.
page 64 note b It was fortunate for Mr. Rawdon that this strange bird, which was most probably an albatross, escaped his murderous intention. The seamen on board Captain Salmon's ship might have been as capricious in their superstition as were the shipmates of the Antient Mariner:—
“And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ‘em woe;
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah, wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow.
“Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
‘Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.”
page 67 note a This capture was the more unfortunate, as it must have happened at the very time that peace was being concluded with France. The treaty was proclaimed on the 28th of Nov. 1655.
page 67 note b Mr. William Jaques was the fourth son of Sir Roger Jaques.
page 67 note c Mr. William Clapham was a younger son of George Clapham, esquire, of Beamsley in Craven, in the county of York. His eldest brother was Sir Christopher Clapham, knight, of Beamsley. Another hrother, Josias Clapham, was a citizen of York; and three others were officers in the army of King Charles I.
page 69 note a Probably the John Plays of Dartmouth, who, after the Restoration, was accused, conjointly with Henry Hatsell of that town, of unjustly concealing from his Majesty 20,000l. remaining in their hands. Cal. State Papers, 1660–61, p. 377.
page 69 note b Probably a younger son of Sir Lancelot Alford of Meaux Abbey in Holderness, Yorkshire, who was knighted by King James I. at York, in 1603. (Collect. Topog. et Herald, vol. iv. p. 178.) In June, 1632, the council of war recommended Captain Lancelot Alford to the King for promotion. (Cal. State Papers, 1631–33, p. 366.)
page 69 note c Tor-Cross, by modern computation seven miles distant from Dartmouth. It is yet a pleasant watering-place. The fresh-water is a lake about 300 acres in extent, which is separated from the sea by a narrow slip of land. It still abounds in fish and wild fowl.
page 70 note a He was appointed Major General of the militia forces in the south-western counties on the 28th May, 1655.
page 70 note b “One Mrs. Fax,” ia a pencil interlineation in the MS.
page 72 note a Brentford.
page 72 note b Mr. Thomas Williams of Layton-Stone in Essex married Martha one of the daughters of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon.
page 72 note c Mr. William Bowyer of Layton-Stone married Catharine another daughter of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon.
page 73 note a Sons of Sir Roger Jaques.
page 73 note b Probably of the family of Sydenham of Brimpton in Somersetshire. Sir Ralph Sydenham, knight, in 1631 had the appointment in reversion of the surveyorship of the ordnance in the Tower, after the Restoration was made Master of the Charter House, and died in 1671.—Cal. State Papers.
page 73 note c Sir Thomas Ingram, knight, was the son of Sir Arthur Ingram, knight, of Temple Newsome in Yorkshire. His lady was Frances Belasyse, daughter of Thomas first Viscount Fauconberg.
page 74 note a The niece of Sir Thomas and Lady Ingram was Grace Belasyse, granddaughter of Thomas first Viscount Faueonberg, and wife of George Saunderson fourth Viscount Castleton (of Ireland). Sandbeck near Bawtry was the seat of the Saundersons, and came from them to the Earls of Scarborough.
page 74 note b This was Thomas second Viscount Faueonberg, who in the following year (1657) married Mary daughter of Oliver Cromwell.
page 74 note c The computation of distances seems to have been very inaccurate in the 17th century. Upon early maps York is stated to be 150 miles distant from London, the true admeasurement being nearly 200 miles. The actual distance from Doncaster to York is 38 miles.
page 74 note d The traveller in former days on the high road from Doncaster to the North was first greeted with the sight of the “steeple of York Minster ” when he arrived at the summit of a hill that overlooks the deep valley of Barnsdale, one of the haunts of the ballad hero, Robin Hood.
Robyn stood in Bernysdale
And lened hym to a tree,
And by him stode Lytell Johan,
A good yoman was he.
From this eminence a most extensive view opens out of the great vale of York. Many a wanderer, like Mr. Rawdon, turning his face towards the place of his nativity after a long absence, has been impressed with similar feelings of delight and gratitude when his eyes once more beheld the towers of our noble minster as they rose from the midst of the plain,
attired with golden light,
Streamed from the west, as with a robe of power.
page 75 note a Lady Jaques.
page 75 note b Saint Crux in York.
page 75 note c Sir Roger Jaques's city residence was in the street called The Pavement, near to the house in the Great Shambles in which Leonard Rawdon had lived and his son Marmaduke was born.
page 75 note d Some of the convivial customs of the citizens of York are sarcastically described in “The Northern Heiress, or The Humours of York,” a comedy produced on the York stage in the reign of Queen Anne. The scene is laid at York :—
“Sir Jeffrey.—Is it your custom to go to one another's houses, guzzle five or six quarts of ale, and then club round to pay for ‘t ?
“Lady Ample.—Nay, Sir Jeffrey, if you find fault with our proceedings you must not be admitted into our society. I do assure you this humour prevails all the town over, and every trivial occasion brings them together.
“Isabella.—Aye, aye, if a friend comes to town, they come to drink with you for joy; if they go out of town, they come to help you to wash away sorrow; so that the good people are resolved to share both your pleasure and your pain, provided they may have a little victuals and drink to keep up their spirits.”
page 75 note e Alderman Henry Thomson, a wine merchant residing in High Ousegate, York, was Lord Mayor of the city in 1636 and 1653. His brother and co-partner Alderman Leonard Thomson was Lord Mayor in 1649 and 1659. They were active and exemplary magistrates. During all the troubles of the Civil War, when many of their brethren deserted the city, they remained at the post of danger, discharging their municipal and social duties to the advantage of their fellow-citizens. They have a claim to live in the recollection of posterity for having materially contributed to the rise and prosperity of several families of the same name, who after the Restoration took rank amongst the highest and most influential of the gentry of Yorkshire. To them, three brothers, Henry Thompson, Stephen Thompson, and Edward Thompson, younger sons of Richard Thompson, esquire, of Kilham, a town situate on the Wolds of the East Riding, were indebted for their mercantile education, and no inconsiderable portion of their wealth. These three brothers settled at York, and carried on the business of wine merchants upon an extensive scale and with great success. Henry, the elder of the three, was Lord Mayor of York in 1663. He was afterwards Sir Henry Thompson, knight, of Escricke, a domain in the neighbourhood of York, previously the seat of the Knyvets and the Howards. From him descended the Thompsons of Escricke, and the Thompsons of Marston in the ainsty of York. Stephen, the second brother, an alderman of York in 1686, was afterwards knighted. He married one of the daughters and coheirs of Alderman Leonard Thomson, and from that marriage the family of Thompson of Kirby Hall near Boroughbridge trace their descent. Edward, the youngest of the three brothers, married another daughter of Alderman Leonard Thomson, was Lord Mayor of York in 1683, and represented the city in three parliaments during the reign of William III. He was the ancestor of the Thompsons of Sheriff Hutton.
page 76 note a Alderman John Gteldart, Lord Mayor in 1645 and 1654, was a draper (as cloth merchants were then denominated), and lived in High-Ousegate, an opposite neighbour of the Thomsons. He acquired wealth by his business, and purchased the manor of Askam Bryan near York, where he built a fine house. He had also estates in the North Riding, and was succeeded by his son John Geldart, esquire, of Wiganthorpe, who married a daughter of Dr. Robert Hitch, Dean of York.
page 76 note b The great old inn called the Talbot, Mr. Drake tells us (Eborac. p. 319), was one of the most ancient timber buildings in the city. In the early part of the last century it was pulled down, and on its site Mr. John Shaw, a proctor in the court of York, built a house which was afterwards the residence of Alexander Hunter, M.D. who in 1786 published at York a new edition of Evelyn's Sylva and Terra. It is now the residence of George Shann, esquire, M.D.
page 76 note c Stephen Watson, alderman and grocer, was Lord Mayor in 1656. He filled that office for the first time in 1646.
page 76 note d The sword-bearer and mace-bearer of the corporation of York are styled the Lord Mayor's esquires.
page 77 note a Newburgh Park, near Coxwold in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the site of an antient priory of Augustinian canons, was then the residence of Lord Fauconberg. It is now the seat of Sir George Orby Wombwell, baronet, the grandson of one of the daughters and coheirs of the last Earl Fauconberg. “Monasterium Neuburgense prope Sylvam Cuculinam,” possesses much interest for historical students. In the seclusion of its cloisters was composed one of the best of our early chronicles, “Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia sive Chronica rerum Anglicarum.”
page 77 note b Charles Fairfax fifth Viscount Fairfax of Emley, in the peerage of Ireland. Gilling Castle, a fine old mansion situate in Ryedale, a few miles distant from Newburgh Park, was the country seat of this branch of the illustrious family of Fairfax.
page 77 note c Sir Marmaduke Langdale, knight, of Holme on Spalding Moor in the county of York, distinguished for his loyalty in the Civil War, was created a peer, by the title of Lord Langdale, when he was in the suite of King Charles II. at Bruges in the year 1658. The biographer has anticipated his elevation. The young lady, who in 1656 was thought by her friends to be a suitable match for Mr. Rawdon, was, most probably, Lenox the eldest daughter of Sir Marmaduke Langdale who was at that time in exile. A few years afterwards she married Cuthbert Harrison, esquire, of Acaster Selby, near York, who had been a captain of foot in the service of King Charles I. His grandfather John Harrison, merchant, was Lord Mayor of York in 1612.
page 77 note d Sir Roger Langley of Sheriff Hutton Park, near York (now the seat of Leonard Thompson, esquire) succeeded in 1651 to the baronetcy which King Charles I. had conferred upon his father in 1641. He was maternally descended from the Lords Lumley.
page 78 note a The worthy knights who had the good fortune to espouse the three sisters of Lord Fauconberg were Sir Henry Jones of Alston in Oxfordshire, Sir William Frankland of Thirkleby in Yorkshire, and Sir Marmaduke Dalton of Hawkswell in Yorkshire.
page 78 note b Sir Francis Ireland, knight, sometime of Nostel Priory in the West Riding of Yorkshire, an estate which he sold in 1629 to Sir John Wolstenholme of London, one of the great contractors and monopolists of that period. Sir Francis Ireland had an only son William Ireland, esquire, of Crofton near Wakefleld, who was captain of a troop of horse in the civil wars, and several daughters, one of whom married Thomas Arthur, esquire. —Hunter's South Yorkshire, vol. ii. p. 215.
page 79 note a The medicinal properties of the mineral spring, called the Spa Well, at Scarborough, were first discovered in the early part of the seventeenth century. About the time of Mr. Rawdon's visit, it had acquired considerable celebrity by the commendation of the York physicians; one of whom, the learned Dr. Robert Wittie, published at York in 1667 an elaborate treatise which he entitled, “Scarbrough Spaw, or a Description of the Nature and the Vertues of the Spaw at Scarbrough, Yorkshire.” In a complimentary poem prefixed to Dr. Wittie's work we have these doggrel lines;—
“Your Scarbrough Spaw I have drunk on,
But never drank of Helicon;
And ‘tis no matter, for I think
Your Scarbrough Spaw far better drink.”
A string of similar verses by another friend of the author concludes thus:—
“Let Epsom, Tunbridge, Barnet, Knaresbrough be
In what request they will,—Scarbrough for me.”
page 80 note a “Little Will Murray,” the well-known groom of the bedchamber to King Charles I. was in 1643 raised to the dignity of Earl of Dysart and Lord Huntingtower in the peerage of Scotland. The biographer styles him “Mr. Murry.” Perhaps during the Protectorate he had not assumed his title of nobility. I am unable to identify the lovely young gentlewoman his niece.
page 80 note b Bevill Rawdon was the third son of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon. Ha was brad a merchant.
page 81 note a The account of Lady Temple given in the memoir leaves little doubt as to her identity. She was a rich lady, yet either unable or unwilling to discharge the debt she had incurred to Lady Jaques. She was a Roman Catholic, and her man of business was a Mr. Swinburne; and at the time of her rencontre with Mr. Rawdon she was travelling from York, or the neighbourhood. All these circumstances favour the supposition that she was the widow of Sir Peter Temple of Stowe, and the mother of Sir Richard Temple who is mentioned in a subsequent page of the biography.
Sir Peter Temple, baronet, of Stowe, married for his second wife Christian Leveson, daughter of Sir John Leveson, and one of the sisters and coheirs of Sir Richard Leveson of Trentham. This lady was, it may be presumed, a wealthy heiress, yet it is obvious that she and her husband had been in some pecuniary difficulties. In Whitelock's Memorials it is noticed that in May, 1649, petitions were presented to Parliament from Sir Peter Temple and his wife and their creditors, which were referred to a committee. About the same period Whitelock speaks of Lady Temple as a busy woman and a great politician, and accuses her of having acted as the agent and messenger of the infamous Lord Saville. (Memorials, pp. 157, 404.) She must have become a widow previously to 1654, for in that year her son was returned to Parliament for Warwick Sir Richard Temple, baronet. Lady Temple's travelling companion was, most probably Mr. Tobie Swinburne, who, it was said, was converted to the Roman Catholic faith by the eccentric Sir Tobie Matthews. He was the son of Dr. Henry Swinburne, the celebrated ecclesiastical lawyer, author of the Treatise on Wills, first published in 1590, and Judge of the Archbishop's Court at York, who, up to the time of his death in 1624, lived in that city, in a house in Petergate, afterwards the residence of Sir Thomas Herbert, baronet. Lady Temple's visits into Yorkshire may be readily accounted for. Her sister Frances Leveson was the wife of Sir Thomas Gower, baronet, of Stittenham, a town in the North Riding, ten or twelve miles distant from York. Sir Thomas Gower (lineal ancestor of the Duke of Sutherland) was high sheriff of Yorkshire when the troubles began in 1642. He was a zealous royalist, and several of his kinsmen were recusants.
That Lady Temple was not a very scrupulous person appears from a letter written in August, 1660, to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which she is spoken of as Sir Richard Temple's mother, and charged with having stolen from the Queen's closet one of the pictures belonging to a collection of the late King, which had been purchased by the Earl of Sussex, and was then at Howley Hall, in Yorkshire. (Cal. State Papers, 1600–61, p. 200.)
Another Lady Temple, living at this period, but not a widow, nor had she any connection with Yorkshire, was Elianor, the daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrell, knight, of Oakley in Buckinghamshire, and the wife of Sir Peter Temple, knight, of Stanton Bury, in the same county, who was the author of “Man's Master-Piece, or the best Improvement of the worst Condition in the Exercise of Christian Duty. By P. T., knt.” 12mo., London, 1658. The little volume is dedicated by Sir Peter to his wife, the Lady Elianor Temple, “the most perfect pattern and patronesse of vertuo and piety.” It is illustrated with portraits of the author and his wife, engraved by Gaywood. A shield of arms at the side of each portrait fixes the identity of the persons represented. Sir Peter's armorial bearings are, Quarterly, 1st and 4th, Or, an eagle displayed sable,—the coat armour assumed by the Temples as descendants of Leofrio Earl of Leicester; 2nd and 3rd, Argent, a fess between three crescents sable, for Lee; impaling Argent, within a bordure engrailed gules two chevrons azure, for Tyrell. The achievement on the lady's portrait is Temple, without a quartering, impaling Tyrell.
It is obvious that there were two Sir Peter Temples, the uncle and the nephew, living at the same time. The uncle was Sir Peter Temple, knight and baronet, of Stowe, the ancestor of the Dukes of Buckingham of modern creation. The nephew was Sir Peter Temple, knight, the son of the baronet's younger brother, Sir John Temple, knight, by Dorothy, the daughter and co-heir of Edmund Lee, esq. of Stanton Bury. His widow, the Lady Elianor Temple, became the second wife of Richard Grenville, esq. of Wotton, whose eldest son Richard married Elianor Temple, the only issue of her first marriage. In the next generation Richard Grenville, the grandson of Sir Peter and Lady Elianor Temple, married Hester Temple, who was the sister and heir of Richard Temple first Lord Cobham, and the granddaughter of the baronet of Stowe and his second wife, the Lady Temple of Mr. Rawdon's biography. This double alliance of the Temples and the Grenvilles contributed to the vast accumulation of wealth that centred in the first Earl Temple, only to be dissipated by his ducal descendants.
The regicides Peter Temple, esq. and James Temple, esq. were, doubtless, kinsmen of the two Sir Peter Temples. The former was committed to the Tower at the Restoration, and died a prisoner there on the 20th Dec. 1663. (Cal. State Papers, 1663–4, p. 383.) For interesting notices of the Temples, see Notes and Queries, vol. xxiv.
page 85 note a “Mrs. Fax.”
page 85 note b “To save Mrs. Fax.”
page 85 note c Richard Fowler, esquire, of the Grange, near Shrewsbury, married Margaret, daughter of Richard Lord Newport, and had five sons and several daughters. Francis Leveson Fowler, the eldest son, had one child, Frances, who married Theophilus seventh Earl of Huntingdon, and was the mother of the Lady Betty Hastings, of whose well-known pious and liberal bequests Yorkshire is yet enjoying the benefits. The second son, Sir William Fowler, was made a baronet by Queen Anne. Mr. John Fowler, the “beloved friend and fellow, traveller” of Mr. Rawdon, must have been one of the younger sons of Squire Fowler of the Grange.
page 86 note a There is some inaccuracy in this account of Sir Thomas Kemish and his lady. Sir Charles Kemyes, baronet, of Kevan-Mably in Glamorganshire, married Margaret daughter of Sir George Whitmore of Balmes in the parish of Hackney, knight, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1631–2. (Courthope's Ext. Baronetage, p. 112.) Sir George Whitmore died 12 December, 1654. (R. Smith's Obituary, Camd. Soc. p. 49.)
page 87 note a “Aug. 31, 1644. The King sent two messengers of our troope with a letter to Sir Fr. Dorington, who hath 1,000 horse in Devon, to stop their [the enemy's] march.” (Symonds's Diary, p. 62.) Sir Francis Dodington (often spelt Dorington) of Dodington in Somersetshire, was sheriff of that county in 1641. He was an active royalist, and after the destruction of his party retired to France. His eldest son and heir, John Dodington, was secretary to Thurloe, Cromwell's secretary of state. He married Hester, one of the daughters of Sir Peter Temple of Stowe, and his wife the Lady Temple previously mentioned, and died in 1663 in the lifetime of his father, who, after the Restoration, returned to England, and married the widow of John Sydenham, esquire. (Nichols's Topog. and Geneal. vol. iii. p. 570.)
page 88 note a It is not improbable that Sir Richard Temple, during the Protectorate, was “a great creature of Oliver's.” His father, Sir Peter, it is said, was a zealous parliamentarian, and went all lengths with his party; and in the Convention parliament, which was opened by the Lord Protector in person, on the 4th Sept. 1654, Sir Richard was member for the county of Warwick. After the Restoration he became a distinguished royalist. He sat for the town of Buckingham in the first parliament summoned by Charles II., and was selected to be one of the Knights of the Bath, specially created to attend the coronation of the restored monarch in April, 1661.
page 88 note b Such was the hospitality of the York citizens. In the middle of August venison is in high season; and venison pasty, or red deer pie, was the most attractive luxury that could be provided for the table. “Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner,” was the inducement offered by Page to his friends to cease their bickerings. (Merry Wives, act i. so. 1.) When Howel was secretary to Lord Scrope, the President of the Council of the North, and was living in his official apartments in the King's Manor at York, he sent to a friend in London a present of a couple of red deer pies. “The one (he says) Sir Arthur Ingram gave me, the other my Lord President's cook. In your next let me know which is the best seasoned. If you please to send me a barrel or two of oysters, which we want here, I promise you they shall be well eaten with a cup of the best clarret and the best sherry, to which wine this town is altogether addicted, shall not be wanting.” (Familiar Letters, ed. 1678, p. 183.) A civic banquet was not complete without a pasty:—
“Or if you'd fright an alderman and mayor,
Within a pasty lodge a living hare;
Then midst their gravest furs shall mirth arise,
And all the guild pursue with joyful cries.”
Down to modern times the cooks of York have been famous for their skill in the construction of the Pasty, whether it were composed of summer venison, autumnal game, or Christmas geese and turkeys. A contemporary receipt for making a venison pasty tells us what were the ingredients of the dainty dish in which our ancestors delighted ;—
“To bake red deer.—Parboyl it, and then sauce it in vinegar; then lard it very thick, and season it with pepper, ginger, and nutmegs; put it into a deep pye, the coffin made of the best paste, with good store of sweet butter, and let it bake. When it is baked take a pint of hippocras, half a pound of sweet butter, two or three nutmegs, a little vinegar, and pou're it into the pye in the oven, and let it stand and soake an hour, then take it out, and when it is cold stop the vent-hole.”—The Queen's Closet Opened, 12mo. London, 1655; Markham's English Housewife, London, 1649.
page 89 note a Sir Walter Vavasour, baronet, of Hazlewood near Tadcaster in Yorkshire, a zealous royalist. His wife was a daughter of the first Viscount Fauconberg.
page 89 note b Alderman James Brooke was Lord Mayor of York in the years 1651 and 1661. His eldest son, “the compleate gentleman,” Mr. John Brooke, was one of “the eminent and ingenious persons of the 17th century,” who were correspondents of Abraham Hill, esquire, well known as a founder and an early treasurer and secretary of the Royal Society. Several of Mr. Brooke's letters to Mr. Hill, dated at York in the year 1663, are printed in the volume of “Familiar Letters,” which passed between Abraham Hill, esquire, and his friends, published in 1767. In the year 1676, a few months after the death of the alderman his father, Mr. John Brooke was created a baronet. In Wotton's Baronetage (1741, vol. iii. p. 196), it is stated that this family of Brooke descended from the Brookes of Norton in Cheshire, and that Alderman James Brooke, before he settled at York, fined for sheriff of the City of London. However this may be, there is no doubt that in the year 1614 James Brooke, grocer, was admitted to the freedom of the City of York by patrimony, as the son of John Brooke, mercer, and that seventeen years afterwards he served the office of sheriff of York, and in 1644 was made an alderman, and that for nearly forty years of his life he was an active member of the corporation. He had a country house at Ellinthorpe in the parish of Aldborough, about sixteen miles from York, and died there on the 1st of December, 1675. Sir John Brooke died in 1691. The baronetcy became extinct upon the death of his grandson Sir Job Brooke in 1770.
page 90 note a Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, and wife of Edmund Forster, esquire, one of the colonels of the London militia.
page 90 note b Jane, daughter of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, and wife of Henry Crew of Bristol, Surveyor of the Customs.
page 90 note c The medicinal virtues of the springs near Tunbridge, discovered in the early part of the seventeenth century, were in great repute at this time. In 1652, Evelyn's wife, and her mother Lady Browne, having a desire to drink the Tunbridge waters, he took them thither, and they stayed in a very sweet place, a little cottage by the wells. (Diary, vol. i. p. 279.) The town now called Tunbridge Wells was not built until towards the close of the reign of Charles II. A comedy entitled “Tunbridge Wells, or a Day's Courtship,” was published in 1678.
page 91 note a When Mr. Rawdon visited the gallant seat of the Earl of Leicester, “celebrated by that illustrious person Sir Philip Sidney, who there composed divers of his pieces, and once famous for its gardens and excellent fruit,” (Evelyn's Diary, Aug. 1652,) “the later Sidney ” was living there in retirement, employed in composing his celebrated “Discourses on Government.” After the death of Josceline Earl of Leicester in 1743, the princely mansion of Penshurst was allowed to fall into decay. (Amsinck's Tunbridge Wells and its Vicinity, p. 135.) Half a century ago the house was surrounded by a perfect wilderness, instead of the famous gardens admired by the author of Sylva, and so graphically described by the poet:
“Thou hast thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the ayre, and new as are the hours;
The early cherry with the later plum,
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls that every child may reach.”
Under the care of the late Lord De Lisle and Dudley, and his son the present noble owner, Penshurst has resumed its pristine magnificence.
page 91 note b Eridge Castle, two miles from Tunbridge Wells, the seat of the Nevilles Lords Abergavenny. In 1659, when Mr. Rawdon was at Tunbridge, it was the same splendid mansion in which Queen Elizabeth was entertained by Lord Abergavenny for a whole week in the year 1573 ; but it was soon afterwards deserted by its owners and gradually demolished. Henry, second Earl of Abergavenny, the father of the late and present earls, rebuilt Eridge Castle, which is said to be worthy of their extensive domains and the illustrious family they represent.
page 91 note c Buckhurst, the ancient seat of the Sackvilles Earl of Dorset, was in the parish of Withyham in Sussex, a few miles from Tunbridge. In 1659 the church of Withyham had a lady-aisle or lady-chapel, which was the accustomed place of interment of the Sackvilles. The old church was destroyed by lightning in 1663, and the fine monuments alluded to by Mr. Rawdon perished; but some drawings of them are preserved on the great pedigree at Knole, and two are engraved in Collins's English Baronage, 1727. 4to. See the Collectanea Topog. et Geneal. iii. 295.
page 92 note a Lord Rutherford was appointed Governor of Dunkirk in the place of Sir Edward Harley, in May, 1661. He was not advanced to the dignity of Earl of Tiviot until the year 1663. “By the surrender of Dunkirk the Lord Rutherford wanting employment, his Majesty was pleased to honour him both with the government of Tangier and the Earldom of Tiviot, and he repaired to his charge in May, 1663.” He was killed by the Moors on the 3rd of May, 1664, when marching into a wood near Tangier with five hundred men and the principal officers of the garrison, who were all destroyed. See “An Account of Tangier. By Sir Hugh Cholmley, Bart.” Privately printed, 1787.
page 93 note a In the year 1663 the eminent naturalists, Francis Willughby and John Ray, accompanied by Mr., afterwards Sir Philip, Skippon, and Mr. Nathaniel Bacon, made a tour through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France, of which an account, written by Mr. Ray, was originally published in 1673. In Holland and the Netherlands they passed over nearly the same ground that had been traversed by Mr. Rawdon and his kinsman in the preceding summer. Mr. Ray thus describes the citadel of Dunkirk, which a short time after Mr. Rawdon's visit had been sold to the French king : “We went in a boat to a fort lately built by the English ; but it is on the sand, which by some winds is so driven that you may walk over the walls. The English made two firm bulwarks which command the sea, and under them is a broad platform, and then a thick wall (not yet finished), and within the wall is a passage for the soldiers to stand in and shoot through ; a trench round besides ; beyond the fort towards the sea, is another sand.”
page 94 note a Captain Delaval was most probably a member of the ancient Northumberland family of that name ; perhaps he was the Sir Ralph Delaval created a baronet by King Charles II. in 1660, “who has left a curious monument of his enterprising character at his little port of Seaton Delaval, where he built piers and sluice and flood-gates to deepen the burn which there flows into the sea.” (Gibson's Historical Memoir of Northumberland, p. 82.) The engineering operations of Lord Rutherford at Dunkirk might have imbued Captain Delaval with a taste for similar works.
page 95 note a Fumes.
page 95 note b Bruges.
page 95 note c Probably the church of Damme, three miles from Bruges, remarkable for the beautifully carved tombstones that form the pavement of the nave.
page 96 note a “Built by one Merklier, who travelled thither three times about three hundred years ago, to take a true survey of all particulars.” (Ray's Travels in 1663.)
page 96 note b The precious relic, with its richly jewelled and enamelled shrine, is still exhibited in La Chapelle du Sang de Dieu. Mr. Rawdon must have been capable of appreciating the fine arts, and it is surprising that he should have left unnoticed the exquisite works of Van Eyck and Hemling, which were in his time, as they are at present, among the glories of Bruges:—
“The spirit of antiquity—enshrined
In sumptuous buildings, vocal in sweet song,
In picture, speaking with heroic tongue,
And with devout solemnities entwined—
Strikes to the seat of grace within the mind.”
page 96 note c At the English Jesuits' College [at Gant], a mean building, we discoursed with one Green, a father; the rector's name is Bennet.—We visited the English nuns of the Benedictine order, and through a grate in their parlour freely discoursed with Madame Fortescue, the prioress. Madame Knatchbull, Sir Norton Knatchbull's sister, is the abbess.” (Ray's Travels in 1663.)
page 97 note a It has since been pulled down.
page 97 note b Dr. Edward Brown, an English traveller, who visited the Low Countries in 1668, gives a fuller description of the curiosities of the Brussels armoury : “There remains the armour of Charles V., of Duke Albert, of the Prince of Parma, Ernestus, and of the Duke of Alva, and of the Duke Albert's horse, who, being shot, saved his master, and died the same day twelvemonth; the armour of Cardinal Infante, and of an Indian king; a Polish musket which carries six hundred paces; Charles the Fifth's sword for making Knights of the Golden Fleece, and Henry the Fourth's sword sent to declare war.” (Travels in divers Parts of Europe. By Edward Brown, M.D. Folio. London, 1685, p. 110.)
page 97 note c The palace of the Dukes of Arschot was about half a mile from Louvain. The sepulchral monuments of the Lords of Croy, Dukes of Arschot, were in the church of the adjacent convent of Celestines. Many of them were erected by Charles Duke of Croy about the years 1605 and 1606. (Ray's Travels in 1663.)
page 97 note d This eminent critic and scholar was professor of history and eloquence in the University of Louvain, and died there in 1606.
page 98 note a Perhaps Mr. Rawdon hesitated to call him “the great magician,” which he was reputed to be.
page 98 note b The Imperial Court of Mechlin was of such dignity and importance that Charles V. and Philip II. presided over it in person.
page 98 note c In the seventeenth century Holborn was one of the few streets in London that had the advantage of being paved. Our travellers might well be charmed with the comfort and convenience afforded by the spacious, clean, and well-paved streets of Antwerp and other towns of the Netherlands. Mr. Cunningham tells us, that down to 1762 the streets of our metropolis were obstructed with projections of various kinds, and each inhabitant paved before his own door, in such manner and with such materials as pride, poverty, or caprice might suggest. (Hand-Book, vol. i. p. xxxv.) After the Restoration Evelyn describes the road from St. James's Palace north, now St. James's Street, as being a quagmire. (Diary, vol. i. p. 365.)
page 99 note a The church of San Carlo Borromeo, or of the Jesuits, with many fine pictures which adorned it, was destroyed by fire in 1718. Dr. Brown is quite as enthusiastic as Mr. Rawdon in his admiration of the churches of Antwerp. “The Jesuits’ church (he says) goes far beyond any of that bigness that I have seen out of Italy. The front is noble, with the statua of Ignatius Loyola on the top. A great part of the inside of the roof was painted by Rubens, and some of it by Van Dyke. There be many excellent peices of flowers done by Stegers, a Jesuite; the carving and gilding of all the works is exquisite.—Onser Lieven Vrowen Kerck, or the Church of Our Blessed Lady, is the greatest in the city, and the steeple one of the fairest in the world.” (Brown's Journey from Norwich to Colen in 1668, p. 108.) Few persons who have looked at the cathedral of Antwerp whilst crossing the Scheldt on a bright summer's day, will be disposed to deny that “its steeple is one of the fairest in the world.”
page 99 note b “Antwerp is a noble city, both for her cittadel and fortifications, which are so vast that two coaches may go abrest upon the walls.” (Howel's Londinopolis. Fol. London, 1657, p. 388.)
page 99 note c Mr. Rawdon had an agreeable recollection of the beauties of Gray's Inn Walks, which in his time were the most fashionable promenade in London. The gardens and terraces then commanded an uninterrupted view towards Highgate and Hampstead. (Cunningham's Hand-Book.)
page 99 note d “But there was nothing about this city [Antwerp] which more ravished me than those delicious shades and walks of stately trees which render the fortified works of the town one of the sweetest places in Europe.” (Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 5, 1641.)
page 99 note e The gentleman of whose hospitality Mr. Rawdon speaks so highly, was Thomas Hartopp, esquire, a younger son of George Hartopp, esquire, of Little Dalby in Leicestershire, whose brother Sir Edward Hartopp was the first baronet of that family. He was very remarkable for his strength and courage. It is related of him, that on one occasion at Antwerp he distinguished himself so much by his personal bravery that a lady of quality and fortune offered him her hand, which he accepted, and, settling at Antwerp, he served the King of Spain in his armies. (Burke's Commoners, vol. iii. p. 403.) When Dr. Brown was at Antwerp he had the good fortune to receive attention from Mr. Hartopp : “One (he says) very well known in all those parts, and of high esteem for his personal strength and valour : a gentleman, also, so courteous that he makes it his business to oblige strangers.” (Brown's Travels, pp. 108, 191.)
page 100 note a “Amsterdam is built, as it were, in a bog or quag; for in their fabriques they are forced to dig so deep for a firm foundation by ramming in huge piles of wood, that the basis of a house doth often times cost more then the superstructure.” (Howel's Londinopolis, p. 389.)
page 100 note b The Stadt-huis, or Town-house, was in progress when Evelyn visited Amsterdam, in August, 1641. “If the design be perfected,” he observes, “it will be one of the most costly and magnificent in Europe.” (Diary, vol. i. p. 22.) The burghers of Amsterdam had no Exchange or Town-house before this was built. “The merchants in summer meet upon the bridge, and in winter they meet in the new church in very great number, where they walk in two rankes by couples, one ranke going up and another going downe.” (Fynes Moryson's Itinerary. Pol. London, 1617, p. 44.)
page 101 note a The burghers of Amsterdam were remarkable for their charitable institutions as early as in the reign of our Queen Elizabeth. Fynes Moryson, who travelled in Holland in 1593, tells us that “they had then two almeshouses (called Grast-hausen, that is, houses for strangers) which were of old monasteries. One of these houses built round was a cloyster for nunnes, wherein sixty beds at this time were made for poore weomen diseased; and in another chamber thereof were fifty-two beds made for the auxiliary souldiers of England, being hurt or sicke; and in the third roome were eighty-one beds made for the hurt and sicke souldiers of other nations: to which souldiers and sick weomen they give cleane sheetes, a good diet, and necessary clothes, with great cleanlinesse, and allow them physitians and surgions to cure them.” (Itinerary, p. 44). At the time of the Restoration and long afterwards the only establishments in London for the relief of the impotent and diseased poor were Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, which was supported by the State, and Saint Thomas's Hospital, which the citizens of London for a while maintained, and towards the close of the seventeenth century suffered to fall into decay. A bedlam or hospital for lunatics originally stood without Bishopsgate. After the great fire of 1666 “it was magnificently built and most sweetly placed in Moorfields.” (Evelyn's Diary, vol. ii. p. 119.) The Westminster Hospital, the first that was founded and supported by public contributions, was not built until 1719. (Cunningham's Hand-Book, vol. i. p. 84.) Our travellers naturally viewed with surprise and admiration the superiority of the Dutch over their own countrymen in the extent and excellence of their institutions for benevolent and useful purposes.
page 101 note b “This citie makes great store of linnen clothes, and hath some five hundred spinsters in it.” (Moryson's Itin. p. 45.) “We visited at Haarlem the weavers of holland, tiffany, camlet, damask, (at the damask weaver's we saw a very rich table-cloth, having the English arms, and many curious figures in it; it hath been three years making for the Prince of Orange,) diaper, silk damask, tape, velvet, and saw the pressing of stuffs, &c, whereby a gloss is given.” (Ray's Travels in 1663.)
page 102 note a The great water, or noted lake, called Haerlem Meere, is about twenty miles in length. (Brown, p. 95.) It is now drained and the area cultivated.
page 102 note b Mr. Rawdon and his companion appear to have taken an especial interest in the many curious objects they saw at the University of Leyden. They were most probably acquainted with the “Museum Tradeseantianum,” the first collection of curiosities of nature and art that had been formed in England. In 1656 a catalogue of the rarities collected by his father was published by the younger Tradescant, and the museum at South Lambeth had then become a favourite resort of the literary and scientific world. (Evelyn's Diary, June, 1657.) The Leyden collection had probably not been formed much earlier than that of the Tradescants. Fynes Moryson, who passed some time at Leyden in 1592, does not allude to it. (Itin. p. 46.) He speaks of “the famous university in that city,” and had the museum then existed it would scarcely have escaped the notice of so intelligent a traveller. Nor does Howel, who visited Leyden in 1619, appear to have been aware of any such collection. (Fam. Letters, ed. 1655, p. 13.) But when Evelyn was there in 1641, “amongst all the rarities of the place (he says), I was much pleased with a sight of the anatomy school, theatre, and repository adjoining, which is well furnished with natural curiosities.” (Diary, vol. i. p. 26.) The “Museum Tradeseantianum,” it is well known, passed into the possession of Elias Ashmole, by whom it was given to the University of Oxford. It has recently been transferred to the splendid building which the munificence of that university has erected for the reception of an assemblage of objects which will soon become one of the finest collections in the world. To the present accomplished Professor of Geology, to whom the University has entrusted the care of its museum, I am indebted for many of the explanations given in the subsequent notes. I will venture to quote his remarks upon this part of the Rawdon MS : “The list of the Leyden rariora is very curious, and, if placed beside the catalogue of that noble museum as it stands at present, might fitly shadow forth an ancient Batavian's domestic discomforts, in comparison with the riches of a modern burgomaster's palace. It is not so good a series of things on the whole as our Ashmole, following the Tradescants, placed as the foundation of the Oxford Museum in 1684; but in regard to the objects obtained from far countries it contains a good man; oddities.” (Professor Phillips to the Editor, Sept. 1862.)
page 103 note a Hickory, Carica alba.
page 103 note b Probably, Pteropus.
page 103 note c Pristis.
page 103 note d Probably Tridacna or clam for one, and Triton for the other.
page 103 note e Peccary.
page 103 note f Marsouin Porpesse, Delphinus phoœna.
page 103 note g Horned screamer, Palamedea cornuta.
page 103 note h Petromyzon.
page 103 note i Venus dione or Spondylus, or probably Echinus.
page 103 note k One of the chiefest rarities noticed by Evelyn in the Tradescant collection was “a feather from the phenix' wing.” (Diary, vol. i. p. 322.)
page 103 note l Castor, a beaver. The star of this name and his brother Pollux are like a meteor for the sailors.
page 103 note m Pine-apple—ananassa sativa.
page 104 note a Whence, hammock.
page 104 note b Boa, or Python.
page 104 note c Casuarius.
page 104 note d Pelecanus. Evelyn describes the Onocrotalus, or pelican, which he saw in St. James's Park in 1665, as a melancholy waterfowl, between a stork and a swan, brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador.
page 104 note e Asbestos.
page 104 note f Passiftora.
page 104 note g Fish of the genus Raia ?
page 104 note h The ant-eater, Myrmecophaga jubata.
page 104 note i Porcupine.
page 104 note k Rattle-snake, Crotalus horridus.
page 104 note l Struthio, ostrich. The eggs of crocodiles and estridges were in the Tradescant Museum.
page 105 note a Dolphin, delphinus.
page 105 note b Lapis bezoardicus. Many marvellous stories are told about the production of the bezoar-stone, and its efficacy against poison. “It is engendered in the inner part of the beast that is commonly called a goate of the mountaine. This beast is of the greatness of a harte; he hath onely twoo broade homes, with the pointes sharpe turned, and falling much backwards. The bezaar-stone being given to him that hath been bytten of a venomous beast and being applied to the place, he shall be healed and delivered therof, by the help of God.” (Joyful Newes out of the New-found Worlde. 4to. London, 1596, p.121.) Dr. Primrose's Treatise on Popular Errors in Physick (translated into English by Dr. Robert Wittie, London, 1651), contains a chapter, “Of the Errours about the Bezaar-Stone.”
page 105 note c Testudo indica.
page 105 note d Perhaps the spiral tusk of a narwhal; or the bone of a cetacean.
page 105 note e The bernacle, or barnacle goose of old Gesner.
page 105 note f Feather-grass, stipa pennata.
page 105 note g The Zabucaya nut (Lecythis ollaria) of Brazil.
page 106 note a Mr. Ray and his fellow-travellers were at Leyden in May 1663. “We saw (he sajs) the anatomy theatre, which is not so handsome as that at London, but furnished with a great many curious things.” The account he gives of these curiosities is less copious and exact than might have been expected from so ardent a cultivator of natural science. Sir John Reresby, a Yorkshireman, who travelled in the Low Countries a few years earlier, is content with a still more perfunctory notice of Leyden : “This is the chief university in Holland; a handsome town, the college or schools large and well contrived, as also the anatomy room, where you see several dried dissections of most sorts of creatures—amongst others, of an entire whale, whole mummies, and other physical curiosities.” (The Travels of Sir John Reresby, Bart., late Governor of York. 8vo. ed. 1813, p. 145.)
page 106 note b William Prince of Orange, afterwards King William III. of England. He was born at the Hague, November 4th, 1650.
page 106 note c Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, daughter of King James I., who had passed the greater part of her life at the Hague, left Holland in May 1661, and died in England in the month of February following. The Countess of Levinstein, whom our travellers saw at the Hague in the summer of 1662, and who had been, as they inform us, for many years one of the ladies-in-waiting of the widowed queen, is a somewhat mysterious personage. Two of her letters are printed in the Fairfax Correspondence, (vol. i. p. 821, vol. ii. p. 196.) Both were written at the Hague; One in November 1637, the other in May 1641, to Ferdinando Lord Fairfax, whom she addresses as “my lord and dear father,” subscribing herself” your humble and faithful daughter and servant.” In each of her letters she alludes to Charles Fairfax, a younger son of Lord Fairfax, who was then an officer in the service of the States, and occasionally visited the Hague. Her styling Lord Fairfax her father, and not speaking of his son as her brother, induces the editor of the Fairfax Letters to think it “more than probable ” that she was his illegitimate child.
In Bromley's Collection of Royal Letters, p. 271, is introduced an anonymous and undated document, headed “Recit fidele et véritable des faits, gestes, et prouesses de la Cointesse de Levenstein, prélendue Ambassadrice de sa Majesté, durant son séjour à Breda.” The narrative gives an amusing but by no means flattering account of the lady's eccentric deportment during her stay at Breda. The Court refused to treat her as an ambassadress, having discovered that the Queen, her mistress, had permitted, but not authorised, her visit. Mr. Rawdon's former acquaintance with the Countess of Levinstein increases the probability that she was connected with Yorkshire. Possibly she was the singular gentlewoman whom he encountered twice in his travels in England; once at Exeter in 1655, and again as he was on his way from York to London in October 1657. Two or three pencil notes in the MS. indicate that this lady was called “Mrs. Fax.” (See notes a and b, p. 85, supra.) Lord Fairfax had a house at Bilbrough, a few miles from York.
page 107 note a Fynes Moryson describes the monument of the Prince of Orange in the new church at Delft as “the poorest he ever saw for such a person, being only of rough stones and mortar, with posts of wood coloured over with black, and very little erected from the ground.” (Itinerary, p. 47.) It must have been entirely renovated previously to 1641, when Evelyn visited the church. “The monument (he says) of Prince William of Nassau—the first of the Williams and saviour of their liberty—is a piece of rare art, consisting of several figures, as big as the life, in copper. There is in the same place a magnificent tomb of his son and successor Maurice.” (Diary, vol. i. p. 21.)
page 107 note b Van Tromp died in August 1653. His tomb is in the old church at Delft.
page 107 note c “Nigh this church [St. Lawrence at Rotterdam] is a little house where Erasmus was born; the upper part of the house is a school, and a grocer's shop is underneath. In a large area or market-place stands his brass statue turning over the leaf of a book.” (Ray's Travels in 1663.) In 1593 the statue of Erasmus in the market-place of Rotterdam was made of wood, “for the Spaniards brake downe that which was made of stone, and the inscription thereof witnesseth that hee was borne at Rotersdame the twenty-eight of October, in the yeere 1467, and died at Bazel the twelfth of July, in the yeere 1531.” (Moryson's Itin. p. 48.)
page 108 note a Dort “is reckoned the first and chief town of South Holland in respect of its antiquity, and also in respect of its privileges in having the mint here, and being the staple for Rhenish wine and English cloth.” (Brown's Journey from Norwich to Colen, in 1668, p. 106.)
page 109 note a Veere, or Ter-vfere. Evelyn calls this place De Vere, “whence (he says) the most antient and illustrious earls of Oxford derive their name.” (Diary, vol. i. p. 17.)
page 109 note b At Ter-Vere, “where there is a good haven and harbour for ships, the Scotch have had a factory for above 200 years.” (Brown's Journey, p. 177.) Camphire in Zeeland is mentioned by Fynes Moryson as one of the four places with which the Scots had their chief traffic, “whither they carry salt, the skinnes of weathers, ottera, badgers, and martens, and bring from thence come.” The other three places were Bordeaux, the Baltic, and England. (Description of Scotland, Itinerary, p. 155.)
page 109 note c Middleburg “is the chiefe place of trafficke in Zeeland. It is the staple of all merchandize excepting Rhenish wine, for which-by old privilege Dorte is the staple. Therefore French and Spanish wines are here sold much more cheap than other where.” (Moryson's Itin. p. 50.)
page 109 note d Flushing “was one of the first towns which the Low Country-men took from the Spaniards in 1572, and was made cautionary to Queen Elizabeth, together with Rammakins and the Briel, in 1585; the renowned Sir Philip Sidney being the first governor of it, and surrendered by King James to the United States in 1616.” (Brown's Journey, p. 107.)
page 110 note a The island of Walcheren.
page 110 note b The sea-thieves of Flushing were of the same class as the pirates of Dunkirk, of whose depredations the English merchants were incessantly complaining during the former half of the seventeenth century. (See Younge's Diary, Camd. Soc. p. 79. Court and Times of James I. and Charles I. passim.)
page 110 note c The most memorable siege recorded in modern history. It began on the 5th July, 1601, and ended on the 22nd September, 1604.
Small vestige there of that old siege appears,
And little of remembrance would be found
When for the space of three long painful years
The persevering Spaniard girt it round,
And gallant youths of many a realm from far
Went students to that busy seat of war.
page 112 note a Sir Philip Matthews of Grobions in Essex was created a baronet 15th June, 1662. His mother is said to have been the heiress of a citizen with a considerable fortune. (Burke's Extinct Baronetage.)
page 112 note b We have here, what is of more value than an “old printed royalist lampoon,” the testimony of a contemporary that Cromwell at one period of his life carried on the business of a brewer at Huntingdon. Mr. Rawdon, visiting the town five or six years after the Protector's death, saw the brewhouse, which was yet standing, in which Cromwell “played the brewer for some years.” Much ingenuity has been exercised in attempting to disprove this fact. Mr. Carlyle intentionally leaves the question of the brewing “in a very unilluminated state.” He is loth to soil the social rank of the Cromwells, father and son, by acknowledging their connection with profitable trade. He admits that the brook of Hinchin, running through their premises at Huntingdon, offered clear convenience for malting or brewing; in regard to which, and also to the assiduous management of the same by the wife of Robert Cromwell, he is very willing to believe tradition, but, he remarks, the essential trade of Oliver's father was that of managing his lands in the vicinity of the town. (See Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle, vol. i. p. 36.) A later writer manifests still greater anxiety to rescue the Protector's memory from the supposition of his having been connected with the trade of a brewer. He labours to throw “very considerable doubt on the notorious story that Oliver's father or mother was engaged in the business of brewing,” and he propounds his opinion “that to engage in a trade in the immediate vicinity of the seat of his family would have been by them considered, in those times, so great a blot on their honour as to have necessarily caused a rupture with Robert Cromwell, even if he, himself, had been utterly regardless of the degradation. But surely, brought up as he had been, such an idea would not easily have entered his head. The distinction between the man engaged in business, such as brewing, and the landed gentleman, was then considerable.” (Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion. By John L. Sanford. 8vo. Lond. 1858, p. 182.) Not a few examples may be found in the present volume of the landed gentleman of the seventeenth century having thought it no blot upon his honour to be nearly connected with persons engaged in trade.
page 113 note a The church of St. John at Huntingdon, in which Cromwell was baptized, is said to have been pulled down in 1652 by a townsman, whose family, as a just judgment, were soon reduced to poverty. (Sanford, p. 180, note.) Probably the steeple remained when Mr. Rawdon was at Huntingdon, as he observes that there were then four steeples and three churches.
page 114 note a Thorpe, or Longthorpe, near Peterborough, an elegant mansion, built under the direction of Webb, nephew and pupil of Inigo Jones, was the seat of Oliver St.John, appointed Solicitor-General in 1641, and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1648. Evelyn visited Peterborough in September 1654, “passing (he notes in his Diary) a stately palace (Thorpe) of St. John's (one deep in the blood of our good king), built out of the ruins of the bishop's palace and cloister.” The statue of Livia, “of colossal proportions,” and several other fine antique statues of marble which were placed in the garden at Thorpe, and suffered more from the weather than from age, are said to have originally belonged to the Arundel collection. Mr. Rawdon, or his biographer, is again at fault in his classical allusions. Livia was the wife of Augustus. It was not Livia, but Julia the daughter of Augustus, for whom Ovid was banished.
page 114 note b Crowland, or Croyland, is an ancient town within that division of Lincolnshire which is called Holland. It is described as one of the inlands in the tract of East Marshlands, which, rising from the centre of the kingdom and running about a hundred miles, fall into the sea with their weight of waters augmented by many rivers.
page 114 note c The triangular bridge at Crowland is said to be a structure of the thirteenth century. Gough describes it as “an object of the greatest curiosity in Britain, if not in Europe.” But its curiosity depends more upon the singularity of its form than upon any difficulty in its construction or beauty in its architecture. (Britton's Archit. Antiq. vol. iv.)
page 115 note a Guthlac, who flourished in the early part of the eighth century, was the patron saint of the abbey of Crowland.
page 115 note b The Benedictine priory of Spalding was demolished at the Reformation, and the materials of its buildings used in the construction of private mansions. Scarcely any vestiges of the monastery and conventual church are now remaining.
page 115 note c The height of the celebrated tower of the church of Saint Botolph at Boston is 300 feet.
page 115 note d At Littleburgh “was a famous passage over Trent, and near it have been found some old pieces of Roman antiquities, coins, or the like, as I have heard, which I suppose determined this place to be the Agelocum, or Segelocum, of Antonine.” (Thoroton's Nottinghamshire. Fol. London, 1677, p. 414.)
page 115 note e In the seventeenth century Bawtry was one of the principal depots or wharfs for heavy goods brought down thither from the adjacent counties, such as lead, millstones, and grindstones from Derbyshire, and wrought-iron and edged tools from Hallamshire.
page 116 note a Donoaster, “about the year of our Lord 759, was so burnt with fire from heaven, and laie so buried under its owne ruines, that it could scarce breath againe.” (Camden's Britannia, by Holland; ed. 1610, p. 690. Rog. de Hoveden, Annal. sub anno 764.) Mr. Rawdon has obviously derived many of his early historical facts from Holland's translation of Camden's great work. That Doncaster was famous in the seventeenth century for “the knitting of stockings, waistcoats, and women's petticoats,” is a circumstance not noticed by Mr. Hunter in his history of the town. (South Yorkshire, vol. i. p. 28.) Evelyn adds another peculiarity: “Doncaster is famous for great wax lights and good stockings.” (Diary, 1654.)
page 116 note b The central arch of the old bridge across the Ouse at York was usually compared, for width of span and beauty of form, to that of the Rialto at Venice. The curve was originally designed to be segmental, but by a gradual displacement of the masonry of the piers, occasioned either by the premature removal of the temporary framework or by a fault of the workmanship, the arch had gradually, and probably with imperceptible slowness, assumed the catenarian form which caused it to be the object of so much admiration. Half a century ago, this interesting and most picturesque structure was demolished to make room for the present bridge.
page 116 note c Clifford's Tower, an antient keep or citadel built upon a high and still more antient mound of artificial earth, within the enceinte of the castle of York. It is a fine example of the military architecture of the twelfth century. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the corporation had the good taste to resist an attempt to destroy this noble structure, and in their memorial upon the subject, addressed to the Lord Treasurer, they described it as “one of the fairest and highest buildings for shewe and beautifying of this city that is within or nigh unto the same, and doth most grace, beautify, and set forth the shewe thereof, York Minster only excepted.” Clifford's Tower was garrisoned during the civil war, and was not dismantled until long after the Restoration. Thanks to the liberality of the gentry of Yorkshire, its remains are preserved with great care, and continue to form one of the fairest ornaments of our venerable city.
page 117 note a At the town of Knaresbrough there are no medicinal waters. Knaresbrough Spaw was the name usually given in Mr. Rawdon's time to the mineral springs on Knaresbrough Forest, which have since conferred celebrity upon the fashionable watering-place of Harrogate, then scarcely in existence as a town. Mr. Ray is one of the few writers of the seventeenth century who used the name of Harrogate. In August 1661, he notes in one of his diaries, “we went to the Spaw at Herrigate and drunk of the water. It is not unpleasant to the taste, somewhat acid and vitriolick. Then we visited the suphur well, whose water, though it be pellucid enough, yet stinks noisomely, like rotten eggs, or sulphur auratum diaphoreticum.” (Memorials of John Ray, ed. Ray Society, 8vo. p. 142.)
page 117 note b Dr. Deane's “small treatise “was not the earliest work in which Knaresbrough Spaw was mentioned. The medical writer by whom the mineral springs upon Knaresbrough Forest were first noticed, and who gave to them the name of the English Spaw, was Timothy Bright, Doctor of Phisicke, the author of “A Treatise of Melancholie.” 12mo. London, 1586. His therapeutical essays were published between the years 1583 and 1589, and it seems probable that the “two wells called the Sulphurous Spaw ” were the only springs known upon Knaresbrough Forest when Dr. Bright wrote. The discovery of the “Sweet Spaw,” described by Mr. Rawdon, “in taste like the waters of Epsom and Tunbridge ” (now known as the Tewit Well), is ascribed to Sir William Slingsby, an uncle of the Sir Henry Slingsby who was beheaded during the Protectorate. The little tract entitled “Spadacrene Anglica, the English Spaw Fountaine, being a brief treatise of the Fountaine in the forest of Knaresborow,” by Edmund Deane, M.D. was published in London in 1626. The author was a contemporary and neighbour of Mr. Rawdon's father, and practised for many years as a physician at York. He died there in 1640, and was buried in the church of St. Crux. A 12mo. edition of his treatise issued from the York press in 1654. Another chalybeate spring or sweet spa upon Knaresbrough Forest was brought into notice by Dr. Michael Stanhope, the York physician, who has been previously mentioned, (p. 2, supra.) His tract, “advertising the public of his discovery,” was entitled “Cures without a Care, or a Summons to all such as find little or no help by the use of Physick to repair to the Northern Spa.” 4to. London, 1632.
“Of Saintt Robertt, that heremytte,
Was approved here perfytte,
Besyde Knaresburgh in a skerre [scar,]
In a creves [crevasse] closed hym ferre,
And full devoutely he lay
In contemplacion nyght and day.”
(The Metrical Life of Saint Robert of Knaresbrough, Roxburghe Club book, 1824.) St. Robert's Chapel has since become famous as the spot where the murderer Eugene Aram buried the body of his victim Daniel Clarke in 1745.
page 118 note b Sir Henry Slingsby was attainted of high treason, and beheaded on Tower Hill on the 8th June, 1658. Lord Fauconberg, who married the Protector's daughter Mary Cromwell, was Sir Henry Slingsby's nephew.
page 118 note c This well was at Copgrove, a village near the road from Knaresbrough to Boroughbridge. In 1661 Mr. Ray went to “St. Mongus his well at Copgrave;” “whither (he tells us) a great number of poor people resort to bathe themselves; they put on their shirts wetted in the water and let them dry on their backs.” (Memorials, p. 142.) Dr. Wittie describes “St. Mugnus’ Well ” as a quick spring, “of great repute for curing the rickets in children, whom they dip into it naked, and hold them in a little while, but they must observe to dip five, seven, or nine times, more or less, according to custom, or some think it will not do.” (Scarbrough Spaw, by Robert Wittie, Dr. in Physick. 12mo. York, 1667.) At the time of Mr. Rawdon's visit, Copgrave was the seat of Sir Thomas Harrison, knight, who was the owner of the spring. His father, Robert Harrison, was an alderman of York, and Lord Mayor in 1607.
page 119 note a Ripon “is remarkable for affording the best and most curious spurs in England, whose rowels might afford a passage through a piece of silver, and sooner break than bend. Whence came that proverbial saying, to express a man of intrepidity, honesty, and fidelity, That such a person is as true as Rippon Spurs.” (Gent's History of the Loyal Town of Rippon. York, 1733.)
Ad forensem Rippon tendo,
Equi si sint cari, vendo,
Si minore pretio dempti,
Equi à me erunt empti.
Barnaboe Itinerarium.
page 119 note c This is a slight and inaccurate notice of the crypt beneath the nave of Ripon minster, called “Saint Wilfrid's needle,” which is said to be “one of the most undoubted and singular specimens of Anglo-Saxon architecture in the kingdom.” (See “Observations on the Saxon Crypt under the cathedral church of Ripon, commonly called St. Wilfrid's Needle.” By J. R. Walbran, esq. Proceedings of the Arch. Inst. at York, 1846.)
page 119 note d The great monoliths at Boroughbridge, called the Devil's Arrows, have been a puzzle for antiquaries from Leland's time to the present. The dimensions of them given, by Mr. Rawdon are tolerably accurate. It may be truly said that how or why such rude blocks of stone were placed where they are no one knows. Leland took them “to be trophæa à Romania posita on the side of Watheling Street, as in a place most occupied in journeying, and so most in sighte.” (Itin. vol. i. fol. 102.) Camden did not venture upon any different hypothesis, but he observes that many learned men thought they were not made of natural stone, but compounded of pure sand, lime, vitriol, and some unctuous matter. (Britannia, ed. Holland, p. 701.) Even to Ray and his scientific friends they seemed to be factitious stones, but yet (he remarks) they endured the weather exceeding well, and might in probability stand there till domesday. (Memorials, p. 143.) There is no doubt, however, that the stones were extracted from the great rocks of Brimham or Plumpton, two ancient quarries in that district of Yorkshire. (Prof. Phillips's Rivers, Mountains, and Sea-coast of Yorkshire. 8vo. Lond. 1855, p. 65.)
page 120 note a For many centuries the municipal authorities of the city of York had jurisdiction over the wapentake of the Ainsty, a rural district that extended from the suburbs of the oity in a southerly direction as far as the middle of the river Wharfe at Tadcaster. Modern reform has incorporated the wapentake of the Ainsty with the West Riding of the county of York.
page 120 note b The church of St. John the Evangelist, in Upper-Head Row, was the earliest of the now numerous places of worship provided for the religious wants of the populous town of Leeds, in addition to the old parish church. It was begun in 1631, and consecrated in 1634. The building of a church by an individual, at his sole cost, was an unusual occurrence in those days. Ray and his friend Willughby were at Leeds in 1661, and saw the new church. He says of the pious and benevolent founder, that “from a poor boy he came to great estate, the most whereof he bestowed in building this church, and almshouses for thirty poor persons which are near the church.” (Memorials, p. 140.) The historian of Leeds, proud of his fellow-townsman, speaks of him as “the chief glory ” of the populous town of which he was a native, whose inhabitants, when he founded, finished, and liberally endowed this noble and stately structure, were grown so numerous that the old church, though very great, could not contain them. (Thoresby's Due. Leodiensis, p. 27.) Mr. Harrison died on the 29th October, 1656, in the 77th year of his age, and was buried in the church his munificence had raised. In his epitaph, written by Dr. Lake, then vicar of Leeds, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, and one of the famous seven, he is called “The wonder of his own, and pattern of succeeding ages.”
page 121 note a The part of Kirkstall Abbey which is now standing forms one of the finest monastic ruins in Yorkshire. By a charter without date Michael de Rawdon gave to God and the monks of St. Mary of Kirkstall all the land which Hugo de Pranceis held of him in the town of Rawdon. I do not find upon record any other benefaction to Kirkstall by a Rawdon.
page 121 note b The biographer speaks of Leeds, Halifax, and Wakefield, as “rich towns of clothing,” and there is no doubt that all these places were the prosperous seats of manufacturing industry long before Mr. Rawdon visited them. But the rise and early progress of the important manufacture for which Bradford is now eminent are involved in some obscurity. The author of “The History of the Worsted Manufacture in England,” (8vo. London, 1857), states that, “Singularly enough, the parish of Bradford, afterwards destined to be the chief, the supreme centre of this mighty manufacture, is the first place in Yorkshire in which traces of it have been found. There are extant documents in the latter portion of the seventeenth century in which persons residing in the parish are described as shalloon manufacturers.” (p. 200.) The writer was not aware that at York we had shalloonmakers, then called ehaloners, as early as in the fourteenth century. Mr. Rawdon's notice of Bradford as “a great town and wealthy,” soon after the Restoration, and then “having a great trade in making of Turkie-worke stooles, chaires, and carpitts,” may throw some light upon the history of its manufactures in the seventeenth century.
page 121 note c Throughout the forest of Hardwick, an extensive district or liberty of the West Riding of Yorkshire which includes the town of Halifax, a remarkable custom had immemorially existed, known as the Halifax Gibbet Law. It is upon record in this form: If a felon be taken within the liberty, with goods stolen without or within the precincts of the forest, either hand-habend, back-berand, or confessand, being cloth or any other commodity of the value of 13½d., and after three markets or meeting days within the town of Halifax next after such apprehension being condemned, he shall be taken to the gibbet and there have his head cut off from his body. “The engine wherewith the execution is done is a square blocke of wood of the length of foure foote and an halfe, which doeth ryde up and downe in a slot, rabet, or regall, betweene two peeces of timber that were framed and set upright of five yardes in height. In the nether ende of the slyding blocke is an axe keyed or fastened wyth iron into the wood, which being drawne up to the top of the frame is there fastened with a woodden pinne (the one eude set on a piece of woodde which goeth crosse over the two rabets, and the other ende being let into the blocke, holding the axe with a notche made into the same after the manner of a Sampson's post), unto the middle of which pinne there is a long rope fastened that commeth downe among the people, so that, when the offendour hath made his confession and hath layde his neck over the neathermost blocke, every man there present doth eyther take hold of the rope (or putteth foorth his arme, so neere to the same as he can get, in token that he is willing to see true justice executed), and, pulling out the pinne in this maner, the head blocke wherin the axe is fastened doth fall downe wyth such a violence, that, yf the necke of the transgressour were so bigge as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a strocke, and roll from the bodie by an huge distaunce.” (Harrison's Description of Britaine, p. 107. Holinshed's Chron. fol. Lond. 1571.) This was the famous Halifax Maiden, the prototype of the not less famous guillotine. The last execution by the maiden at Halifax took place in the year 1650. (Watson's History and Antiq. of Halifax. 4to. London, 1775, p. 231.)
page 122 note a Thoresby alludes to “the hill at Halifax, upon which the famous Johannes de Sacro Bosco lay on his back to observe the motion of the stars, when he writ his celebrated book de Sphara.” (Due. Leod. p. 194.) Dr. Watson, the historian of Halifax, doubts the nativity of the astronomer at that town. It is said that he took his surname from the abbey of Holy wood in Dumfries-shire, where he was probably educated, and that he ultimately became a professor of mathematics in the university of Paris, and died there in 1256. An edition of his Sphsera was printed at Venice in 1478.
page 122 note b The battle of Wakefield was fought on “the plains near Sandal Castle “on the 31st December, 1460.
page 123 note a When the three military gentlemen of Norwich (whose MS. account of their travels in the year 1634 is preserved in the Lansdowne collection, Brit. Mus. No. 213) visited Pontefract Castle, they were shown the very post round which King Richard II. was enforced to flee till his barbarous butchers inhumanly deprived him of life. “Upon that poste the cruell hackings and fierce blowes doe still remaine.” (Brayley's Graphic and Historical Illustrator, p. 94.) Notwithstanding these evidences, the result of modern investigation goes far to prove that the deposed king died at the castle of Stirling in the year 14] 9. (See “Chronicque de la Traison et Mort de Richart Deux, Roy d'Engleterre.” By Benjamin Williams, F.S.A. p. liii.)
page 123 note b New-Hall, the once fair seat of the Pierrepoints, is now dilapidated, and occupied as a farm-house. During the civil war it was the residence of Francis Pierrepoint, esquire, an active parliamentarian. He was associated with Wilfred Lawson, esquire, and Sir Henry Cholmley, as one of the parliamentary commissioners to whom Pontefract Castle was surrendered by the royalists, after the second siege, in July 1645. In 1648, when Colonel Morice and his little band of royalists had regained possession of the castle, and it was besieged, for the third time, by Sir Edward Rhodes and Sir Henry Cholmley with 5000 men of regular troops, the besieged “kept a gate open on the south side of the castle, which was covered by a small garrison they placed in an house called New-Hall, belonging to the family of Pierrepoint, being about a musket-shot or two from the castle.” (Account of the Sieges of Pontefract Castle, Miscell. Vol. Surtees Soc. pp. 82, 92.)
page 123 note c It is a well-known incident of family history that in the reign of King James I., by the marriage of the royal favourite Buckingham to Katherine, sole daughter and heiress of the Earl of Rutland, one of the finest domains in Yorkshire passed from the ancient baronial house of Roos of Hamlake (now called Helmsley) to the then recently ennobled name of Villiers. In the year 1664, when Mr. Rawdon had a warrant to kill a fat buck in Helmsley Park, the vast estates which had descended to his mother were in the possession of the second George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; but Helmsley Castle, where his maternal ancestors had for many centuries lived in princely state, had been ruined and dismantled by the siege it sustained during the civil war, and was wholly unfit for the permanent residence of its gay and voluptuous owner. His marriage, a few years before the Restoration, to Mary Fairfax, the only surviving child of Thomas Lord Fairfax, brought him frequently into Yorkshire. The nuptials were performed at Nun-Appleton, the country seat of Lord Fairfax, eight or nine miles distant from York. The family mansion of the Fairfaxes in York appears to have been part of the fortune which the young lady brought to her husband, for not long after the Restoration the Duke speaks of it as his own. This mansion was a stately edifice built by the first Lord Fairfax in the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in a secluded district of the city called Bishophill. It was placed in the midst of gardens and pleasure-grounds, occupying a large area, extending from the street of Skeldergate near the river Ouse to the south-western rampart of the city walls.
About the time of Mr. Rawdon's visit, the duke was desirous of adding to the convenience of his York mansion, by the purchase of a piece of ground adjoining to it which belonged to the corporation. In the year 1663 he was in friendly correspondence upon this subject with Sir Henry Thompson (afterwards of Escricke), who was at that time Lord Mayor. Two or three of the duke's letters to Sir Henry are, oddly enough, introduced into the collection of his works published in 1715. (London, 2 vols. 8vo.) The negotiation was concluded and the ground conveyed by the corporation to the duke in 1665. In the month of January following the duke addressed to the Lord Mayor the following letter:—
“Newmarket, Jan. 2.
“My Lorde.—Though I have received too many testimonies of kindnesse from your Lordship and the citty of Yorke to bee surprisd at your continuing mee still in your esteeme and good opinion, yett I doe assure you that you could not have fownd out any way of giving mee a more agreeable evidence of it then by the order you have made in my behalfe which I received in your last letter, since it will be a meanes of accomodating mee to live amongst you, which is a thing I am very desirous of, both in order to my owne satisfaction and the giving me frequent oportunities of letting you see how entirely and cordially I am the citties and
“Your Lordships
“Most affectionat friend and servant,
“BUCKINGHAM.
“For the Lorde Maior of the citty of Yorke.”
I transcribe the duke's’ holograph, vcrlalim el literatim, to show that some of the of the uncouth orthography of the Rawdon MS. were in use by contemporaries of the highest rank and literary distinction.
When sated with the pleasures of the Court, or driven from it by party strife, this versatile nobleman often during the subsequent twenty years of his life sought a change of scene and occupation at York, where in the luxurious saloons of his mansion upon Bishophill he dispensed his hospitalities to the citizens and aristocracy of the northern metropolis, and presided at many a gay and festive scene. It was one of the splendid entertainments given by the duke during the season of Christmas 167
, at which the young lady was a guest who was the cause of that fatal duel between Mr. George Aislaby and Mr. Jonathan Jennings, which “created a greater sensation in Yorkshire than any other affray in the seventeenth century.” The true history of this lamentable occurrence has been given to the world by my esteemed friend the Rev. James Raine, in the highly interesting volume he has recently edited for the Surtees Society : “Depositions from the Castle of York relating to Offences committed in the Northern Counties in the Seventeenth Century.”
The skeleton only of the Fairfax mansion was standing in Drake's time. (Eborac. p. 269.) That has since been demolished, and within the last three or four years a street of small houses, dignified by the name of Buckingham Street, has been built upon its site. Drake speaks of an outshot from the mansion, which, he was told, was built for the duke's laboratory; and tradition yet points out a small house of Elizabethan aspect, now standing in Skeldergate, as that in which chymical experiments were carried on by him
Who, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
Of the lines which are said to have conferred immortality upon “the great Villiers,” it is not easy to determine whether the delineation of his character by one poet, or the description of his death by the other, is the more inaccurate.
page 125 note a See note b. p. 77, supra.
page 125 note b Charles Allanson, esquire, of Crake Castle, married to Mr. Rawdon's niece, Grace, the youngest daughter of Sir Roger Jaques, was the eldest surviving son of Sir William Allanson, knight, a citizen and alderman of York, who acquired some notoriety in the time of the Commonwealth. As he was nearly connected with several persons whose names appear in Mr. Rawdon's biography, a brief sketch of his career may not be inappropriate.
Sir William Allanson was the second son of Christopher Allanson, a respectable yeoman at Ampleforth in the North Riding of Yorkshire, who died in 1612, leaving a widow and a numerous family. A short time before his father's death he had settled in York as a draper or cloth-merchant. His first introduction into the corporation was in 1617, when he was made one of the city chamberlains. On the 12th June. 1621, at the parish church of Saint Crux at York, he married his first wife, Lucy, the daughter of Alexander Orracke, by whom he had several daughters and one son, who died in infancy. Being now a thriving tradesman, he was deemed a proper person to fill the higher municipal offices, and in September, 1622, he was elected one of the sheriffs of the city, having for his colleague Leonard Weddell, a merchant then residing at York, who was the ancestor of the Weddells of Earswick, from whom the late Thomas Philip Weddell Robinson, Earl de Grey, derived one of his names, and a considerable part of his estates. In April, 1632, upon the death of Mr. Leonard Weddell, the future Sir William Allanson was elected to succeed him in the office of alderman. Having become a widower in September, 1631, he took for his second wife Anne the daughter of Charles Tankard, esquire, of Whixley in the West Riding, by Barbara daughter of William Wyvill of Osgodby in the East Riding of Yorkshire. By this marriage he became connected with several of the oldest families in the county. His elevation to the civic chair quickly followed his second marriage. In February, 1633, he was sworn into the office of Lord Mayor, and a few weeks afterwards the Lady Mayoress presented him with a son and heir, the future Charles Allanson, esquire, of Crake Castle. On Friday, the 24th of May in the same year, King Charles I. visited York on his way to Scotland to be crowned, and on the Sunday following the Lord Mayor had the honour of entertaining his Majesty at dinner. A sumptuous repast was prepared at the Lord Mayor's house in the Pavement, where the King dined alone. After dinner, the King ordered the attendance of the noblemen and others of his suite, who had dined at the house of Sir Roger Jaques on the opposite side of the street, and in their presence called for the city sword, and with it conferred the honour of knighthood upon the Lord Mayor, and William Belt, esquire, the Recorder. We learn from Mr. Rawdon's biography, that whilst the King was in York his Majesty condescended to be the sponsor of Sir William Allanson's infant son, who was baptized by the royal name of Charles.
In the reception of Charles I. at York upon this occasion, and during a similar visit a few years later, there was no lack of the outward demonstrations of loyalty on the part of the citizens; yet a strong undercurrent of discontent was rapidly gaining ground among the higher class of the inhabitants. This feeling was aggravated by the arbitrary proceedings of the great Court of the Council of the North, of which Lord Wentworth (the future Earl of Strafford) was president. Previously to his being appointed to the vice-regal government of Ireland, he passed much of his time at York in the discharge of his duties as Lord President, and by many acts of petty tyranny, in matters both civil and religious, and especially by attempts to interfere with the citizens in the exercise of their municipal privileges, he excited great public dissatisfaction and created many personal enemies. The principles of Puritanism, or Presbyterianism, were favoured to a considerable extent among the commercial classes, as well as by many of higher rank resident in the city and the neighbourhood. Of those who held the chief offices in the corporation a large proportion were zealous Puritans, and of that party Sir William Allanson was one of the leaders. Another prominent man on the same side was Alderman Thomas Hoyle, whom Sir William Allanson succeeded in the mayoralty, and who was afterwards his colleague in the House of Commons. In the short parliament which sat in the spring of 1640, York was represented by Sir Edward Osborne, a nominee of Strafford, and Sir Roger Jaques, a Royalist alderman. But at the election in the following autumn the citizens threw off the trammels of the court, and returned their two Puritan aldermen, Sir William Allanson and Thomas Hoyle, both, as Mr. Drake styles them, “stiff fanatics.” They were thus launched at once upon the stormy sea of politics, and became distinguished as active and zealous Parliamentarians. They did not, however, belong to the Andrew Marvel school of patriots. They were not unwilling to share the benefits reaped by some of those who took the popular side. Sir William Allanson was made Clerk of the Hanaper, a place said to be worth 1,0001. a year. Hoyle succeeded Sir Peter Osburn in the office of Treasurer's Remembrancer in the Exchequer, valued at 1,200?. a year. The unhappy fate of Alderman Hoyle is well known. On the first anniversary of the King's execution, he was found dead, by his own hand, in his lodgings at Westminster. Drake has reprinted the doggrel lines in which the royalist versifiers displayed their exultation upon this event, and he dilates upon it with all the bitterness of party spirit. (See Eborac. p. 172. Rump Songs, ed. 1662, p. 288.) It is not imputed to the members for York that either of them took any part in the King's trial, although Sir William Allanson's name appears in the Act constituting the High Court of Commission.
After the establishment of the Commonwealth, the profits of his place enabled Sir William Allanson to be a purchaser of church estates. He became the proprietor of the castle and rich manor of Crake, part of the vast possessions of the see of Durham. In the account of the sale of bishops’ lands between the years 1647 and 1651 (see Collectanea Topographica, vol. i. pp. 3, &c.) Crake is stated to have been sold for l,163l. 8s. 2½d., and to have been conveyed on the 7th March, 164
, to Sir Thomas Widdrington and Thomas Coghill. There is no doubt that these persons were merely trustees, and that Sir William Allanson was the actual purchaser. And thus Crake, “which had regularly belonged to the see of Saint Cuthbert from his time to the present day” (Raine's St. Cuthbert, p. 27, note), passed to a draper and a city knight. Sir William Allanson was also the purchaser of the manor of Ouseflete in Howdenshire, another part of the possessions of the bishops of Durham. Besides these acquisitions, we find him to have been at the time of his death, not only the owner, but the actual occupier, of the ancient mansion of the Deans of York within the close of the cathedral, usually called the Deanery. At what time or upon what terms he made this purchase I am unable to discover.
Happily for Sir William Allanson, he did not live to witness the Restoration. His death took place in 1656, the year after he had served, for the second time, the office of Lord Mayor of York. By his will, dated the 11th June, 1656, he bequeathed to his wife the manor of Ouseflete and his house called the Deanery, in the Minster-yard of York, wherein he then dwelt, and other houses in Peter-gate and Grape-lane. The manor of Crake, which he purchased of the Commonwealth, and the mansion-house of Crake Caatle, he bequeathed to his son Charles. He remembered the poor of Ampleford, where he was born, with a legacy of ten pounds. He was buried in the church of Saint Michael le Belfrey in York on the 7th December, 1656. Lady Allanson survived her husband nearly twenty years. A few years after his death she became the second wife of Sir Solomon Swale of Stainley, who for his distinguished loyalty was rewarded with a baronetcy immediately after the Restoration.
As Mr. Allanson retained possession of Crake so late as the year 1665, he must have made some arrangement with the commissioners who were appointed in October, 1660, “t o inquire into the pretended sales and purchases of crown and church lands.”
The last of the elder branch of the lineal male descendants of Sir William Allanson was Charles Allanson, esquire, of Sion, in the county of Middlesex, who died without issue in 1775. His estates passed to his sister's grandson, George Winn, esquire (whose father was a younger son of Sir Rowland Winn, baronet, of Nostel Priory), and he then took the surname of Allanson, in addition to that of Winn. In 1776 he was made a baronet, and in 1797 he was raised to the Irish peerage with the title of Lord Headley, Baron Allanson and Wiun, of Aghadoe, county Kerry. By his great-nephew, Charles Allanson Winn, the present Lord Headley, the name and blood of the Puritan York alderman of the seventeenth century are now represented.
The arms now borne by his descendants were granted to Sir William Allanson by William Le Neve, Norroy, soon after the honour of knighthood was conferred upon him: Paly wavy of six or and azure, on a chief gules a lion passant gardant of the first. Crest: Upon a mount proper a demi-lion rampant gardant or, holding a cross gules.
“Veni Allerton, ubi oves,
Tauri, vaccæ, vituli, boves,
Aliaqae eampi pecora
Oppidana erant decora:
Forum fuit jumentorum.”
Barnabæ Itin. 1648–50.
“Where may we find this nectar, I thee pray?
The boon good fellow answer'd, I can tell;
North Allerton in Yorkshire doth excell
All England, nay all Europe, for strong ale.
If thither we adjourn, we shall not fail
To taste such humming stuff, as, I dare say,
Your highness never tasted to this day.”
The Praise of Yorkshire Ale; a poem, by George Merilon. York, 1685.
page 129 note a A traveller in 1658 saw the Bishop's palace “demolished with age and the ruins of time, and serving as a receptacle for bats and buzzards, owls and jackdaws.” (Northern Memoirs. By Richard Franck. London. 8vo. 1694, p. 223.) Not one stone upon another is now remaining of either the feudal castle of Northallerton or of that which Leland describes as “the strong and well moted “palace of the Bishops of Durham.
page 129 note b Drayton thus sings of the river Swale :
“A wondrous holy flood (which name she ever hath),
For, when the Saxons first receav'd the Christian faith,
Paulinus, of old Yorke the zealous bishop then,
In Swale's abundant streame christned ten thousand men,
With women and their babes, a number more beside,
Upon one happy day, whereof shee boasts with pride.”
Poly-Olbion, 28th Song, p. 144, ed. 1613.
page 129 note c Darlington.
page 129 note d Isaac Basire, D.D. archdeacon of Northumberland and a prebendary of Durham in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. He was born at Rouen in 1607, the son of a Protestant of the lowest order of French noblesse; educated at the university of Leyden, and ordained in 1629 by Thomas Morton, then Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. When Morton became Bishop of Durham he made Basire his domestic chaplain. In the civil war Dr. Basire was deprived of all his preferments, and, having no means of subsistence for himself and his family, he went abroad. From 1647 to 1661 he was travelling in various parts of Europe and Asia. Evelyn, in his Diary, speaks of Dr. Basire, “the great traveller, or rather French apostle, who had been planting the Church of England in divers parts of the Levant and Asia,” and whom he heard preach at the Abbey in July 1661. Dr. Basire's correspondence, with a memoir by W. N. Darnell, B.D. was published in 1831.
page 130 note a Ralph Neville, the first Earl of Westmoreland, was of the King's party in the rebellion of the Percies against Henry IV. The chapel of the Nevilles in Durham Cathedral does not contain his remains. He had contemplated Durham as the place of his sepulture, but was eventually buried at Staindrop. See “A brief account of Durham Cathedral. 12mo. Newcastle, 1833.” The late Dr. James Raine was the author of this little work, which is a guide-book of a very superior class.
page 130 note b Lumley Castle in the county of Durham is one of the finest of the baronial strong holds of the North. It yet stands, almost as perfect in outward form as when it was rebuilt and castellated by Ralph Lord Lumley in the reign of Richard II. The Lumleys are among the very few English families who can boast of a well-authenticated genealogy from a period antecedent to the Conquest. The Earls of Scarborough, the lineal male representatives of this ancient race, have had the good taste to maintain Lumley Castle, although it is no longer their residence, in the same state of preservation as when it was seen and admired by Mr. Rawdon. (See Surtees’ Hist, of Durham, vol. ii. p. 156.)
page 131 note a The present exchange and town-court, of beautiful architecture, were built between the years 1655 and 1658. Robert Trollop of York, mason, was the architect. (Brand's Hist, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 4to. 1789, vol. i. p. 29.)
page 131 note b Perhaps Mr. Rawdon remembered that St. Peter's school at York had no chimney, and was surprised to find the luxury of a fire-place at Morpeth. The free grammar-school of that town was founded by King Edward VI. Not many years after Mr. Rawdon saw the school-house, Charles Howard, third Earl of Carlisle, and William, fourth Lord Widdrington, were upon the roll of its scholars, and doubtless would have to contribute their annual horse-loads of coals like the rest.
page 132 note a Myndus, a city of Caria in Asia Minor, near to Halicarnassus; a small town with large gates.
page 132 note b Alnwick Castle had long ceased to be the residence of the Earls of Northumberland. The contemporaries of Mr. Rawdon were Algernon Percy, the tenth earl, and his son Josceline, who succeeded him in 1668 and died in 1670. These were the last of the Percys of the male line. Preferring the more genial climate of the South of England, they lived chiefly at Petworth. In the seventeenth century Alnwick was neglected and had fallen into decay.
page 132 note c The chroniclers place this event two years earlier. The story is told by William of Newburgh (lib. ii. cap. 33). “Our forefathers” were Robert de Stutevilla, Kanulph de Glanvilla, Bernard de Baliol, William de Vesci then Lord of Alnwick, and their retainers.
page 132 note d The mean lodging which Mr. Rawdon had at Belford was much superior to that described by a traveller in 1639 when Charles I. was in the North with his army, “Belfort, nothing like the name either in strength or beauty, is the most miserable beggarly sodden town, or town of sods, that ever was made in an afternoon of loam and sticks.” “In all the town not a loaf of bread, nor a quart of beer, nor a lock of hay, nor a peck of oats, and little shelter for horse or man.” (Court and Times of Cha, I. vol. ii, p. 285.)
page 133 note a The fair tomb mentioned by Mr. Rawdon was a splendid marble monument to the memory of Sir George Hume, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, whom James I., soon after his accession to the throne of England, created Lord Hume of Berwick and Earl of Dunbar. He died in 1611.
page 133 note b Anne, Duchess of Monmouth, and her mother the Countess Dowager of Buccleuch. The young duchess, esteemed the greatest fortune and the finest lady in the three kingdoms, was married to the Duke of Monmouth in the preceding year, but was not more than thirteen years of age at the time of Mr. Rawdon's visit to Dunbar, her husband being two or three years older.
page 133 note c “I did never see or heare that they have any publike innes with signes hanging out; but the better sort of citizens brew ale, their usuall drinke, which will distemper a strangers bodie, and the same citizens will entertains passengers upon acquaintance or entreaty.” (Moryson's Description of Scotland, p. 1S6.)
page 134 note a In old times the people of Edinburgh were great lovers of oysters:
When big as burns the gutters rin,
If ye hae catched a drowkit skin,
To Luckie Middlemist's loup in,
And sit fu’ snug,
Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,
Or haddock lug.
Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, vol. ii. p. 270.
page 134 note b It was not so in the preceding century, when the court was at Holyrood. Camden describes it as “a park stored with game.” (Scotia, p. 24.) “Over the king's palace, in a parke of hares, conies, and deare, an high mountain hangs, called the chair of Arthur.” (Moryson's Account of Edinburgh in 1598, p. 273.)
page 135 note a Mr. Rawdon's description of the streets of Edinburgh and the sluttish habits of the people is not exaggerated. In the preamble of an Act of their own privy council made in 1619, the condition of the town is set forth with amusing ingenuousness :
“Forasmickle as the burgh of Edinburgh, quhilk is the chief and principall burgh of the kingdome, quhair the soverane and heieh courtes of parliament, his Majesties Previe Couusall and Colledge of Justice, and the Courtis of Justiciarie and Admiralitie ar or. dinarlie haldin and keipt, and quhairunto the best pairt of the subiectis of this kingdome, of all degreis, rankis, and qualities, hes a commoun and frequent resorte and repair,—is now become so filthie and uncleine, and the streittis, venallis, wyndis, and cloissis thairoff so overlayd and coverit with middingis, as the noblemen, counsellouris, servitouris, and uthers his Majesties subiectis, quha ar ludjeit within the said burgh, can not have ane cleine and frie passage and entrie to thair ludjeingis; quhairthrow thair ludgeingis ar becum so lothsume unto thame, as they ar resolved rather to mak choice of ludgeiugis in the Cannongate and Leyth, or some utheris pairtis about the towne, nor to abyde the sycht of this schamefull uncleanes and filthiness; quhilk is so universall and in such abundance throuch all the pairtis of this burgh, as in the heitt of somer it corruptis the air, and gives greit oecasioun of seikness: and forder, this scbamefull and beistlie filthines is most detestable and odious in the sicht of strangeris, quho, beholding the same, are constrayned with reassonn to gif oute mony disgracefull speiches againis this burgh, calling it a most filthie pudle of filth and vncleannes, the lyk quhairof is not to be seine in no pairt of the world.”
page 135 note b The cathedral church “is large and lightsome, but little stately for the building, and nothing at all for the beauty and ornament. The king's seat is built some few staires high of wood, and leaning upon the pillar next to the pulpit; and opposite to the same is another seat very like it, in which the incontinent use to stand and doe pennance.” (Moryson's Account of Edinburgh, p. 273.)
page 136 note a Begun in 1632 and completed in 1640.
page 136 note b Mr. Rawdon saw the “very faire outside” of the noble hospital founded by “Jingling Geordie “in all the freshness of its beauty. The building was commenced in 1628, but, its progress being interrupted by the civil wars, it was not completed till 1660. George Heriot died in 1624.
page 136 note c It is a still greater pity that this, the fairest of the palaces “built for the royal dwelling,” should have been reduced to an empty and blackened ruin by the English dragoons after the rebellion of '45.
page 136 note d The drum and bagpipe of the waites of Linlithgow would bring to our traveller's recollection the superior minstrelsy of his native city. The corporation of York had five or six waits, skilful musicians, who, clad in scarlet liveries and adorned with silver chains and badges, patrolled the streets at Christmas, and roused the midnight echoes with the enlivening strains of the sackbut, the shalm, the trumpet, and other kinds of music.
page 137 note a Dr. Alexander Burnett was translated from the see of Aberdeen to the archiepiscopate of Glasgow in 1663. The archbishop would recognise in Mr. Jtawdon a former acquaintance, as they had most probably met at Dunkirk in July, 1662, when Dr. Burnett was chaplain to Lord Rutherford, the governor of that town, and had an English congregation there. He was advanced from Glasgow to St. Andrew's in 1679, and died in 1684. (Keith's Scottish Bishops, by Russell. London, 1824, pp. 42, 265.)
page 137 note b Mr. Rawdon's English prejudices are here apparent. There are few nobler ecclesiastical structures than the cathedral of Glasgow. “The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than elegant, style of Gothic architecture; but its peculiar character is so strongly preserved and so well suited with the accompaniments that surround it, that the impression of the first view “was awful and solemn in the extreme.” This was the feeling of him whose genius has illumined the low-browed vaults of the church of Saint Mungo.
page 138 note a The rock upon which Dumbarton Castle stands springs suddenly from the point of junction of the Leven and Clyde to the height of 560 feet. The extreme altitude of the steeple of Old Saint Paul's was 520 feet. (Howel's Londinopolis. Fol. 1657, p. 313.)
page 138 note b Loch Lomond “is well stored with variety of fish; but most especially with a peculiar fish that is to be found no where else (they call it pollac), as also with islands concerning which many fables have been forged and those rife among the common people.” (Camden, Scotia, p. 24.) A later traveller says, “The lake abounds with fish of several sorts, particularly a sort called poans, and by some pollacks, peculiar to it, a kind of eel, very delicious to eat. This gave occasion to the mistake of authors who said this lake had fish without fins.” (Defoe's Tour through Scotland. 8vo. 1714.) Neither the finless fish nor the floating island is mentioned in modern accounts of Loch Lomond. Several species of a fish, called pollack in Scotland, are described by Yarrell in his history of British Fishes, but none resemble the eel, nor is the Scotch lake their habitat.
page 139 note a “From a pretty little flower-garden upon one of the bastions on the north side of the castle we had a most agreeable prospect over the valley and of the meanders, turnings, or reaches of the river Forth, which are extremely beautiful. Here are three double reaches, which make six returns together, and each of them above three Scots miles in length, and, as the bows are almost equal for breadth as the reaches are for length, it makes the figure complete. The form, of this winding may be conceived by the length of the way, for it is twenty-four miles from Stirling to Alloa by water, and hardly four miles by land.” (Defoe's Tonr.)
page 140 note a This adds one more to the numerous miracles ascrihed to the great Northumbrian saint. None of his biographers mention the supposed Sunday tide at Lindisfarne. In Dr. Raine's comprehensive account of the medieval traditions relating to Saint Cuthbert, I find no allusion to this exercise of his supernatural power. The only incident having any resemblance to it is said to have happened in 1069 as the priests of Durham were removing his body to Lindisfarne. When they reached the strand opposite the island,” as it happened to be full tide, they found the passage across hid under the waves, and, in addition to this sad mishap, the night was dark and stormy, and no shelter was at hand. Those who were advanced in years began to tremble at the prospect before them, when on a sudden the sea opened its breast and laid bare the track upon which they were anxious to tread.” (Saint Cuthbert. By James Raine, M.A. 4to. Durham, 1828, p. 63.) We should hardly have expected our shrewd and intelligent travellers to have accepted with so much complacency from the rude inhabitants of Lindisfarne so gross a delusion as the marvellous story of the Sunday tide.
page 141 note a Upon Holy Island stood the first Christian church that was erected between the Tees and the Frith of Forth. Of this church not a vestige now remains, and a second structure reared upon its foundations is now level with the ground. The church of the Priory of Holy Island, which Mr. Rawdon calls the Abbey Church of Saint Cuthbert, was built towards the close of the eleventh century under the auspices of Carileph and Lambard successively Bishops of Durham. Considerable remains of this church are yet standing, and are of a highly interesting character. The carved work of the pillars and arches, noticed by Mr. Rawdon, presents the peculiar variety of decoration that distinguishes the ecclesiastical architecture of that early period. The parish church of Lindisfarne, which stands half a stone's throw from the church of the priory, was erected half a century later, and is of the early-English style. It is now undergoing the process of restoration. (See Hist, and Antiq. of North Durham. By the Rev. James Raine. Folio. Lond. 1852, p. 137.)
page 142 note a There was at Holy Island a valuable rabbit warren belonging to the see of Durham, which was under the superintendence of a keeper specially appointed by the bishop. In 1528, Wolsey, then Bishop of Durham, granted a lease of the warren at the yearly rent of 4l. (Raine's Hist, and Antiq. of North Durham, p. 156.)
On a rock by Lindisfarne
Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame
The sea-born beads that bear his name.
Saint Cuthbert's beads (entrochites, or encrinites), are single joints of the stem of the fossil lily. They are round, and have always a marginal milling, and sometimes a radiation over the face. (See Phillips's Geology of Yorkshire, vol. ii.) They still occur in abundance at Lindisfarne, and are found in other localities. In Scotland they are known as “Witch Beads,” and on the shores of Germany as “the Beads of Saint Boniface.” (Hist. Mem. of Northumberland. By W. S. Gibson, Esq. London, 1862, p. 6.)
page 142 note c The fact of either of these regicides having being imprisoned in Holy Island is not mentioned by Noble. He states, that, after three or four removes, Martin was confined in Chepstow Castle, where he died in great destitution and misery in the year 1681. (Mem. of the Regicides, vol. ii. p. 58.) A more cruel punishment cannot be imagined for the gay and witty and somewhat dissolute Harry Martin, than to be immured in the desolate fortress of Lindisfarne, a tall circular tower perched upon the lofty summit of a rocky pinnacle at the most remote extremity of the island, exposed on every side to the bitter winds and storms of the Northern sea.
Of the fate of Alderman Tichborne a touching story is disclosed by the State Papers. Two years’ confinement in the wretched castle of Holy Island had ruined his health. In January, 1663, he waa so lame and infirm that his wife petitioned the king for leave to send a servant to him, and her request was complied with. In March following she again petitioned the King. Her husband was weak and ill, and she not able to administer the help necessary for the preservation of his life. She prayed that he might be removed to some other place. More than six months passed and nothing was done. The anxious wife, dreading the approach of winter, wrote to Bennet, Secretary of State, to propitiate his favour, and to urge that her petition might be granted. Her husband was weak and ill, and another winter would endanger his life. Her pleading prevailed. In the following March we find Tichborne a prisoner in Dover Castle, and his wife again a suitor to the King. In her petition she expresses her thanks for her husband's removal from Holy Island, whereby his condition was much bettered, and asks permission for herself, two children, and a maid-servant to remain with him in the castle. In May the royal clemency was extended to her, a warrant was issued to Captain John Strode, Lieutenant of Dover Castle, “to permit Ann Tichborne with her two children and maid-servant to see her husband, Robert Tichborne, and, if she pleased, remain shut up with him in prison.” (Cal. State Papers, 1662–3–4.)
page 143 note a The first source of any great emolument to South Shields seems to have been the manufacture of salt. Salinæ de ferro pro sale tulliend. are mentioned in documents of the fifteenth century. In the reign of Charles I. the salt-pans attracted settlers to South Shields. In 1667 there were 121 salt-pans in use, and in 1696, when the salt trade had reached its height, the number of pans amounted to 143. The trade has since gradually decreased, and half a century ago only five salt-pans remained. (Surtees’ Hist, of Durham, vol. ii. p. 94.) The salt-pans used at Shields were the largest used anywhere in Great Britain. (Dr. Brownrigg on the Art of making Common Salt. 8vo. London, 1748, p. 52.)
page 144 note a A more cruel and atrocious murder waa never committed. Anthony Ascham was the author of a treatise published in 1648, entitled “Of the Confusions and Revolutions of Government,” which gave offence to the King's party. In 1650 he was sent by the Parliament to be the English envoy at the Court of Spain. Soon after his arrival at Madrid, he and his interpreter John Baptista Riva were assassinated, in the house where they lodged, by six exiled royalists. Captain John Gruillim, whom Mr. Rawdon coolly designates a worthy gentleman, was at the head of the murderers. His confederates were William Spark, Valentine Progers, John Halsall, William Arnett, and Henry Progers. They were tried at Madrid and condemned to die; but after a short imprisonment had an opportunity given them to make their escape, which was successfully accomplished by all except one, who happened to. be a Protestant, and he was sent back to prison and beheaded. (See Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 564. Harl. Miscell. vol. iv. p. 280 )
page 144 note b The person whom Mr. Rawdon calls “one Colonel Moyer “was Captain Lawrence Moyer of Low Leighton in Essex, Warden of the Trinity House. Soon after the Restoration he was charged with disaffection to the government, and his house was searched for concealed arms. In February, 1661, information was given to the Secretary of State that Captain Moyer, three years before, had declared the murder of the late King to be a piece of heroic justice, and Bradshaw the best patriot that ever lived. (Cal. State Papers, 1660–61, p. 517.) In January, 1664, we find him a prisoner in the Tower, and ordered to be sent to Tynemouth. (Ib. 1663–4, p. 461.)
page 144 note e Dr. John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, 1660 to 1671. “Among the many liberal and high-minded prelates who had held the see of Durham, the name of Cosin stands eminently distinguished for munificence and public spirit.” (Surtees, vol. i. p. cix.)
Veni Malton, artem laudo,
Vendens equum sine cauda,
Morbidum, mancum, claudum, coecum,
Forte si maneret mecum,
Probo, vendo, pretium datur;
Quid si statirn moriatur ?
Barnabæ Itiner.
page 145 note b The Gilbertine Priory at Old Malton, founded in the twelfth century.
page 145 note c This house was built upon the site of the ancient castle of Malton by Ralph third Lord Eure, who succeeded to the title upon the death of his father in 1594. The two coheirs who were in possession when Mr. Rawdon was at Malton in 1664 shortly afterwards quarrelled respecting the partition of the estates, and in 1674 the house was pulled down, and the materials divided between them. The lodge still remains to attest the magnificence of the mansion that thus fell a sacrifice to a family feud.
page 146 note a Ray notices the clear white pebbles found on the shores about Scarborough, “which (he says) by jewellers are polished and cut in the manner of diamonds and placed in rings.” (Diary, August, 1661.) Beautiful agates, heliotropes, and jaspers are yet to be gathered on the sands at Scarborough after the wintry storms have caused the fall of some portions of the diluvial cliffs.
page 146 note b The miracle performed by Saint Hilda was a favourite medieval legend. It is one of the stories that “Whitby's nuns exulting told” to while away the night they passed at Lindisfarne:
And how, of thousand snakes, each one
Was changed into a coil of stone
When holy Hilda prayed;
Themselves, within their holy bound,
Their stony folds had often found.
page 147 note a In the year 1664, when Mr. Rawdon visited Whitby Abbey, the title and estates of this branch of the family of Cholmley had devolved upon a minor, Sir Hugh Cholmley, baronet, who died in his infancy shortly afterwards. He was the grandson of Sir Hugh Cholmley of civil war notoriety, whose autobiography was privately printed in 1787. A correspondent of Thomas Gent, the old York printer, thus describes the ruin as it stood in the early part of the last century : “Forlorn and roofless appears the edifice, which is so far demolished that it is very perilous for any person to enter therein. To prevent which danger the lord of the manor, Hugh Cholmley, esquire, has inclosed it with a high wall adorned with a pair of iron gates.” (Gent's Hist, of Hull—Addenda.) The Cholmleys have been for more than three centuries negligent guardians of the fine remains of the church of the Benedictine Abbey of Whitby, a church that was hardly surpassed in architectural magnificence by that of any other English monastery. “It is a matter of deep regret that the great tower and other conspicuous parts should have fallen within our own memory.” (Phillips's Yorkshire, p. 140.)
page 147 note b “All along in the cliffs and on the shore [at Whitby] are found in great plenty the serpent-stones, called by naturalists in Latin cornua ammonis. We found also plenty of the lapides belemnites, or thunder-stones.” (Ray's Itin. August, 1661. Memorials, p. 147.) A friend informs me that the name of “thunderbolts ” is given in Shetland to the early stone knives. The lightning, as the people think, cannot strike the house in which one of them is kept.
page 147 note c Lady Thompson was the wife of Sir Henry Thompson, knight, of Middlethorpe near York, an alderman of that city and Lord Mayor in 1672. She was one of the daughters of William Dobson, merchant and alderman of Hull, and twice mayor of that town. This Sir Henry Thompson founded an hospital for old men in his native parish of Saint Mary Castlegate at York. He died in 1692. He was of a different family from the Thompsons mentioned in note e, p, 75, ante.
page 148 note a Ray, who saw this curiosity in 1661, says, “The Groenlander has on his forehead a thing like a trencher which serves as a bonne-gréce to fence his eyes from the sun, and it may be too from the dashing of the water.” (Memorials, p. 135.) Gent tells us that Captain Andrew Barker took the Groenlander upon the sea (in his boat, with all these implements still preserved, except the natural body, for which the effigy is substituted) in the year 1613. But so ill did this seeming son of Neptune brook his captivity, that, refusing to eat what was offered him, he died in three days’ time. (Annales Regioduni Hulliui. By Thomas Geut. 8vo. York, 1735, p. 38.)
page 149 note a Mr. Rawdon, in his account of Beverley, closely follows Camden. (See Britannia. Holland's transl. p. 711.)
page 149 note b The founder of the Yorkshire families of Cholmley was Sir Roger Cholmley, knight of the body to King Henry VIII., who sprang from a younger branch of the antient house of the Cholmondeleys of Cheshire. Having married a daughter of Sir Marmaduke Constable, knight, of Flamborough, Sir Roger settled himself at Roxby near Pickering in the North Riding. He died in 1538, and was succeeded by his eldest son Sir Richard Cholmley, knight, of Roxby, who was the purchaser of Whitby and other estates in that neighbourhood. Sir Richard made two illustrious marriages. His first wife was a daughter of William Lord Conyers ; his second was a daughter of Henry Clifford, first Earl of Cumberland. The Cholmeleya of Brandsby, of whom, in Mr. Rawdon's time, Marmaduke Cholmeley, esquire, was the head, descended from the first marriage. The Roxby and Whitby estates passed to the descendants of Sir Richard by his second wife.
Brandsby and Stearsby (the birth-place of Lawrence Rawdon and his brothers) were held as one manor by Mr. Marmaduke Cholmeley, as they had been by Cnut before the Conquest. The Christian name of Marmaduke was, doubtless, adopted by the Rawdons of Stearsby as a mark of respect for their chief feudal lord.
page 150 note a South Stainley Hall, the residence of Sir Solomon Swale, baronet, stood in a pic. turesque and fertile part of Yorkshire, near the valley of the Nidd, half way between Ripon and Harrogate. The house was demolished in the early part of the last century, but some indications still remain of its having been “a gallant seat.” In 1717, or 1718, the materials of the hall were purchased by “Chancellor Aislabie,” the owner of Studley, and used in building a tower which now crowns a conspicuous eminence called How-hill, above the ruins of Fountains Abbey. The baronetcy became extinot upon the death, without male issue, of the fourth possessor of the title, Sir Sebastian Fabian Enrique Swale, whose father had settled as a merchant at Malaga.
page 150 note b In the seventeenth century, “when the party rose from the dinner-table, they proceeded to what was then called the banquet, which was held in another apartment, and often in the garden-house. At the banquet the choice wines were brought forth, and the table was covered with pastry and sweetmeats, of which our forefathers were extremely fond.” (Wright's Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages, p. 467.) At an earlier period the rere-supper (arrière souper) was called the banquet in France. (Ibid. p. 387.)
page 151 note a Fresh from the convivialities of Stainley Hall, the admiration of Mr. Rawdon and his friends was more excited by what they supposed to have been a stupendous wine-cellar than by any other part of the magnificent remains of the abbey of Fountains, which was one of the noblest monastic foundations in the kingdom. The greater portion of that which they mistook for the cellar was the greàt cloister or ambulatory, vaulted, and divided into two aisles by pillars. A large octagonal stone basin standing in the east aisle had originally been a lavatory.
page 151 note b Raskelfe, a village near Easingwold, where Sir Roger Jaques held a mansion-house and land under a lease for lives granted by the Bishop of Chester in 1640. (Gill's Vallis Eboracensis, p. 119.) In the “Catalogue of the Lords, Knights, and Gentlemen that have compounded for their Estates (London, 1655,)” this entry appears:—“Sir Roger Jaques of York, knight, with 8l. p. an. settled, 258l.” Mr. Henry Jaques was Sir Roger's second son.
page 152 note a The grammar-school at Coxwold was founded in 1603 by Sir John Harte, knight, citizen and grocer, Sheriff of London 1579, and Lord Mayor 1589.
page 152 note b Wasse is a small village in the upper part of the secluded valley which is now adorned by the magnificent ruins of the Cistercian monastery and church of Byland, planted there by the Mowbrays in the twelfth century. It is a curious fact that the process of bleaching webs of linen cloth should have been carried on in this obscure spot to so great an extent two centuries ago. Probably at that period the manufacture of linen still flourished in the neighbouring towns of Thirsk, Kirbymoorside, and Malton. As early as in the reign of Henry II. the weavers of those towns were of sufficient importance to be specially named in a charter by which that monarch confirmed the privileges of the weavers’ guild of York.
page 153 note a In the seventh century, Lestingham, situated in a remote part of the wild and desolate moors of the North Riding, was chosen for the site of a Benedictine monastery by Cedde, a monk of Lindisfarne, afterwards bishop of the East Saxons. The “very antient fashioned church ” admired by Mr. Rawdon is yet standing. The crypt or underchurch, which he compares to Saint Faith's under Paul's (see Stow's Survey of London, by Thorns, p. 123) exhibits manifest proofs of the most early antiquity. “The large square pedestal, the short circular column, the rudely-sculptured capital, and the absence of ribbed groining, indicate that the church of Lestingham, if not the original building of Cedde, is at least the most antient ecclesiastical structure in the kingdom. (Raine's Hist, and Antiq. of North Durham, p. 55.)
page 153 note b Ralph Trattle, esquire, of Greenwich, married Jane Rawdon, one of the daughters of Sir Marmaduke. In the earlier half of the seventeenth century a family of this name was living at Appleton-le-Street, in Rydale, not far distant from Lestingham. (Dugd. Visit. Surtees Vol. p. 368.)
page 153 note c William Cavendish, first Marquis and Duke of Newcastle, distinguished for his loyalty in the civil war. Slingsby Castle, now in ruins, was re-edified by his brother Sir Charles Cavendish who died in 1653.
page 153 note d The massive fragments that still remain of this antient stronghold of the great baronial families of Bulmer and Neville indicate its former extent and magnificence. In the year 1624 a survey of the manor of Sheriff Hutton, which then belonged to the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Charles I., was made by John Norden the elder and John Norden the younger, by virtue of a royal commission. It contains this statement:— “The bowels of this worthy pyle and defensive house are rent and torn, and the naked carcase lately, as is affirmed, by his Majesty aliened in fee, among other things, to one Lumsden, or Lindsdon.” (See Speculi Britannié Pars. By John Norden, 1594, Camden Soc. Vol. p. xxix. Castellum Huttonicum. By George Todd. 8vo. York, 1824, p. 36.)
page 154 note a In the diary of the eminent Puritan minister, Oliver Heywood, it is noted that in May, 1666, he visited Rawden, where a very old Mr. Rawden resided, at whose house he preached to a large auditory; and in the spring of the following year he spent a Sunday at Mr. Rawden's at Rawden, and conducted a service, which he concluded the earlier because Dr. Hitch, the Dean of York and Rector of Guiseley, in which parish Mr. Rawdon lived, was “to pay that antient. gentleman a visit that day, which he did.” Mr. Rawdon died on the 25th April, 1668, nearly 86 years of age. (The Life of Oliver Heywood. By the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.S.A. London, 1842, pp. 176, 191, 209.)
page 155 note a Mr. Henry Akeroyd, a York merchant, younger son of Henry Akeroyd, esquire, of Foggathorpe, in the East Riding. The family became connected with York by the marriage of a sister of the elder Henry Akeroyd to Christopher Herbert, the father of Sir Thomas Herbert, baronet.
page 155 note b Great part of the stone used in the building of York minster was got from a quarry originally belonging to the Percys, in a place called Thevesdale, a few miles south of Tadeaster. It was brought from thence to the river Wharfe at Tadcaster and there shipped for York. “Anno 1400. In cariagio xxxiiij damlad lapidum a quarera de Thevedale per carectas usque Tadcastre per Ricardum de Stutton 6l. 6s. 8d. In cariagio xliij damlad eorumdem lapidum per navem de Tadcastre usque Ebor. per eundem Ricardum, 8l. 12s.” (The Fabric Rolls of York Minster. By the Rev. James Raine. Surtees Soc. Vol. p. 29.) Similar entries are of frequent occurrence in the Rolls.
page 155 note c In the topographical dictionaries of the latter part of the seventeenth century Sherburne is said to be noted for its pins and cherries, and Aberford, a neighbouring town, to be famous only for making of pins. No pins are now made at either place, and, instead of cherries, Sherburne has long been famous far producing in great abundance a species of plum called winesour. This delicious fruit is peculiar to Yorkshire, and attains the highest perfection where magnesian limestone is the substratum of the soil.
Small Cock, a sullen brook, comes to her succour then,
Whose banks received the blood of many thousand men,
On sad Palme Sunday slaine, that Towton field we call,
Whose channel quite was chok'd with those that there did fall.—Poly-olhion p. 141.
page 156 note a The Roman way from London to the north, called the Ermyne Street, passed through Brig-Casterton, near Stamford.
page 156 note b In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Ware was purchased by Thomas Fanshawe, esquire, whose grandson, Henry Fanshawe, was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles I. In 1641 he took the King's side, to the great prejudice of his fortune, and at the Restoration he was rewarded with an Irish peerage. Lady Fanshawe, the wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, baronet, of Ware Park, a younger brother of Lord Fanshawe, relates in her memoirs, an incident which shows that the Rawdons of Hoddesdon were upon friendly terms with her family. In May, 1645, she was on her way from Oxford to join her husband at Bristol. “We were to ride all night,” she says, “for fear of the enemy surprising us as we passed, they quartering in the way. About nightfall, having travelled about twenty miles, we discovered a troop of horse coming towards us, which proved to be Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, a worthy commander, and my countryman; he told me, that, hearing I was to pass by his garrison, he was come out to conduct me, he hoped as far as was danger, which was about twelve miles; with many thanks we parted, and, having refreshed ourselves and horses, we set forth for Bristol.” (Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe. 8vo. Lond. 1830, p. 66.)
page 157 note a Hoddesdon, a town in Hertfordshire about seventeen miles distant from London, on the road to Ware. The Thatched-house at Hoddesdon is immortalised by “honest Izaak ” in the opening dialogue of his “Complete Angler.” Piscator.—“I have stretch'd my legs up Totnam-hill to overtake you, hoping your business may occasion you towards Ware, whither I am going this fine fresh May morning.” Venator.—“Sir, I shall almost answer your hopes; for my purpose is to drink my morning's draught at the Thatched-house in Hodsden.”
page 157 note b The possessor of Hoddesdon in Henry VII's time was Sir William Say, who had only two daughters, Elizabeth married to William Lord Montjoy, and Mary to Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, and upon them he settled the manor of Hoddesdon and other estates. King Henry VIII. by charter granted to the Earl of Essex and his lady a market on Thursdays at Hoddesdon. (Salmon's Hist, of Hertfordshire, Fol. 1728, p. 22.)
page 157 note c “Hoddesdon having no convenience of good water very near it, one of the ancestors of Mr. Rawdon laid pipes from a spring at some distance to serve his house where Mr. Rawdon now dwells. The waste water is of great use to the inhabitants hereabouts, being brought from his house into the middle of the street, and running all day from a conduit erected by that family.” (Ibid.)
page 159 note a Catherine, sister of Sir Henry St. Quintin, baronet, of Harpham in the East Riding, was first the wife of Michael, son of Sir George Wentworth, knight, of Woolley in the West Riding, and afterwards of Sir John Kaye, baronet, of Woodsome in the same Riding. Her third husband was Henry Sandes, esquire, of Downe in Kent. This sober discreet gentlewoman had, moreover, a fourth husband, Hugh, Earl of Eglinton. (Wotton's Baronetage, vol. ii. p. 276.) I am unable to identify the widow Stanhope.
page 159 note b According to Camden, Ralph Limsey, a nobleman, built at Hertford, in William the Conqueror's time, a cell for Saint Alban's monks. “The castle it hath upon the river Lea was built, as men think, by Edward the elder,” (Britannia, p. 407.
page 160 note a Simon de Saint Liz succeeded to the earldom of Northampton in 1153. (The Descent of the Earldom of Lincoln. By J. G. Nichols. Lincoln Vol. Arch. Inst. p. 267.)
page 160 note b “Near Northampton is the ancient royal house of Holmeby, which was formerly in great esteem, and by its situation is capable of being made a truly royal palace. But the melancholy reflection of the imprisonment of King Charles I. in this house, and his being violently taken hence again by the rebels, has cast a kind of disgrace upon the place, so that it has been forsaken.” (Defoe's Tour.)
page 161 note a “From Daventry we went a little out of the road to see a great camp called Burrow [Borough] Hill. They say this was a Danish camp, and everything hereabouts is attributed to the Danes, because of the neighbouring Daventry, which they suppose to have been built by them. The road hereabouts too being overgrown with Daneweed, they fancy it sprung from the blood of the Danes slain in battle, and that, if upon a certain day in the year you cut it, it bleeds. Originally it seems to have been Roman, but perhaps new modelled by the Danes.” (Defoe's Tour.) Camden ascribes the construction of this remarkable fortification to Ostorius. “Much deceived are they who will needs have it to be a work of the Danes, and that of them the town under it was named Dantrey.” (Britannia, p. 508.) Dane-weed, (Eryngium, campestre.) Watling-Street thistle is the more common local name of this rare plant, whose only known habitat is the old Roman road. (Baker's Northamptonshire Glossary, vol. i. p. 172.)
page 161 note b “Coventry, a large, fair, and walled city, and at this day it is the fairest city within land, whereof the chiefe trade of old was making round caps of wooll, but, the same being now very little used, the trade is decaied.” (Moryson's Itinerary. Folio. 1617. Part III. p. 141.)
page 161 note c The Coventry cross was erected in 1544 and wholly taken away in 1771. (Britton's Arch. Antiq. vol. i.)
page 162 note a The Norwich tourists in 1634 had the good fortune to visit the princely castle of Kenilworth before it lay “crushed under its own ruins, the monument of its owner's ambition.” “We were detayned one hour at that famous castle of Killingworth, where we were ushered up a fayre ascent into a large and stately hall, the roofe whereof is all of Irish wood neatly and handsomely fram'd. In it are five spacious chimneys answerable to so great a roome. We next viewed the great chamber for the guard, the chamber of presence, the privy chamber, fretted above richly with coats of arms, and all adorned with fayre and rich chimney peeces of alabaster and black marble, and of joyner's worke in curious carv'd wood; and all those fayre and rich roomes and lodgings in that spacious tower, not long since built and repayr'd at a great cost by that great favourite of late dayes, Robert Dudley, Earle of Leicester; the private plain retiring chamber wherein our renowned queen, of ever famous memory, ahvayes made choise to repose her selfe.”
page 163 note a For an admirable account of this “most sumptuous work of art,” see Description of the Church of St. Mary, Warwick, and of the Beauchamp Chapel. By John Gough Nichols, F.S.A. 4to. London, p. 14.
page 163 note b Camden thought that Warwick was the Presidium of the Romans, “as the site itself, in the very navel and mids almost of the whole province, doth imply.” (Britannia, p. 563.)
page 163 note c Nearly a century later this now fashionable watering-place was but little noted for the medicinal properties of its spring. “Leamington rises up about a stone throw from the river Leam in Warwickshire. It's very clear, purges and vomits strongly, being drunk by rustics from two quarts to three. It's noted for curing sore legs, breakings out, and mangey dogs. It tastes brackish. Dr. Guidot put abundance of nitre in it formerly, but, by some malevolent aspect of the planets, it's now all turned to marine salt, or a common weak brine spring.” (History of Mineral Waters. By Thomas Short, M.D. 4to. Sheffield, 1740, p. 87.)
page 163 note d Alcester.
page 164 note a “But the fame and reputation that it [Worcester] now hath, ariseth from the inhabitants, who are many in number, courteous, and wealthy by the trade of clothing, but most of all from the bishop's see which Sexwulph, bishop of the Mercians, erected there in the yere of Christ 680.” (Britannia, p. 576.)
page 164 note b “In a chapell is a monument of that noble Prince Arthur, eldest son to K. Hen. VIII., of blacke marble and jet.” (Norwich Tourists in 1634.)
page 164 note c A traveller in the former half of the eighteenth century says of Kidderminster, “it is very considerable for its woollen trade, particularly the weaving of what they call lindseywoolsey, in which the inhabitants are almost wholly employed.” The manufacture of carpets was of later introduction.
page 165 note a Bridgenorth was almost destroyed by fire in its defence against Sir Lewis Kirke, an officer in the Parliamentarian army. (Defoe's Tour.)
page 165 note b Francis, Viscount Newport, appointed governor of Shrewsbury Castle soon after the Restoration.
page 165 note c “About 700,000 yards of Welsh webbs, a coarse kind of woollen cloth, are brought here annually to the Thursday market, and bought up and dressed, that is, the wool is raised on one side by a set of people called Shearmen. At this time only forty are employed, but in the time of Queen Elizabeth the trade was so great that not fewer than 600 maintained themselves by this occupation.” (Pennant's Tour in Wales, 1778.)
page 165 note d Camden speaks of Shrewsbury “as a faire and goodly citie well frequented and traded, full of good merchandize, and, by reason of the citizens' painful diligence with cloth making and traffic with Welshmen, rich and wealthy.” He remarks that “in the school at Shrewsbury, there were more scholars than in any one school throughout all England.” (Britannia, p. 596.)
page 166 note a “Pitohford, a little village which our ancestors (for that they knew not pitch from bitumen) so called of a fountaine of bitumen there in a private man's yard, upon which riseth and swimmeth a kind of liquid bitumen daily, skumme it off never so diligently, even as it doth in the lake Asphaltites in Jewrie, in a standing water about Samosata, and in a spring by Agrigentum in Sicilie.” (Britannia, p. 592.)
page 166 note b “Trim Wricksam towne, a pearle of Denbighshiere.” (Churchyard's Worthines of Wales, 1587.)
But speake of church and steeple as I ought,
My pen too base so fayre a worke to touch:
Within and out, they are so finely wrought,
I cannot praise the workmanship too much.
But buylt of late not eight score yeeres agoe,
Not of long tyme, the date thereof doth shoe;
No common worke, but sure a worke most fine,
As though they had bin wrought by power divine.
Ibid.
page 167 note a “The houses are very faire built, and along the chiefe streets are galleries or walking places; they call them rowes, having shops on both sides, through which a man may walke dry from one end unto the other.” (Britannia, p. 605.)
page 167 note b The east gate (Pennant saysj continued till of late years; it was of Roman architecture, and consisted of two arches formed of vast stones. (Tour in Wales, 1778.)
page 167 note c In 1732 the river Dee was so choked up that vessels of burden could not come within some miles of it, and an Act of Parliament was passed to render it navigable.
Go to Flint Castle; there I'll pine away;
A king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey.
Richard II. act 3, s. 2.
page 168 note b The legend is, that Gwen-vrewi, or Winifred, a female saint of the seventh century, had her head struck off by a chieftain named Caradog, whilst she was escaping from his unchaste embraces; and that on the spot where the head fell a spring of water immediately gushed forth.
“But stained red
Still are the stones, where ravisht was her hed
From off her bodye, in a fountaine cleere,
Which at this cruell deede did first apeere.”
Iter Lancastrense. A poem written a.d. 1636, by the Rev. Richard James, B.D.
page 168 note d Camden mentions “the moss there growing of a most sweet and pleasant smell.” (Brit. p. 680.) But Pennant remarks that some eminent botanists of his acquaintance have reduced the sweet moss and the bloody stains to mere vegetable productions, far from being peculiar to this fountain. The first is jungermannia asplenioides. The second is byssus jolithus (Linn.), likewise odoriferous, which adheres to stones in form of fine velvet.
“They builde a structure, chappell, cloysters, rounde
Aboute the well; to put off clothes they founde
A joining roome: in seventh Harrye's time,
And in Queen Mary's, with such toys they chime
Much people in with coyne to buye no health,
But to encrease their Greenfield Abbye's wealth;
The smocks which now for bathing we doe hire,
Were then belike theis monks' rent and desire.”
Iter Lancastrense.
The monks of the neighbouring abbey of Greenfield, or Basingwerke, had the charge of Saint Winifred's well.
page 169 note b Hawarden, commonly called Harden Castle, originally the seat of the Barons de Mount-hault. It was afterwards transferred to the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, and continued in that family till the execution of the gallant James, Earl of Derby, in 1651.
page 169 note c Serjeant Glynne was made Chief Justice of England in 1655, and died in 1666. His son, Sir William Glynne, who was created a baronet in 1661, completed the dismantling of the castle which had been ordered by the parliament, but this was not done until after his father's death. (Pennant's Tour.)
page 170 note a “Forgetting that sovereignes must not be beholding to subjects, howsoever subjects fancy their owne good services.” (Brit. p. 677.)
page 170 note b In December, 1646, the parliament ordered that Holt, Flint, Harding, Rotheland, and Ruthen Castles should be slighted. (Whitelock, p. 231.)
The town doth stand most part upon a hill
Built well and fayre, with streates both large and wide;
The houses such, where straungers lodge at will,
As long as there the counsell lists abide.
Both fine and cleane the streates are all throughout,
With condits cleere and wholesome water springs:
And who that lists to walk the towne about,
Shall find therein some rare and pleasant things:
But chiefly there the ayre so sweete you have,
As in no place ye can no better crave.
The castle now 1 mynd here to set out,
It stands right well and pleasant to the vewe,
With sweete prospect, yea all the field about,
An aunciente seate, yet many buildings newe
Lord Presdent made, to give it greater fame:
But, if I must discourse of things as true,
There are great works, that now doth beare no name,
Which were of old, and yet may pleasure you
To see the same; for, loe, in elders’ daies
Was much bestow'd, that now is much to praise.
Churchvard's Worthines of Wales.
page 171 note a The Lord President of the Marches had an allowance to live in great state and grandeur and had a numerous household to attend him and the rest of his officers of the court. (Hist, of Ludlow and the Lords Marchers. 8vo. London, 1841, p. 16.)
page 171 note b Ethelbert.
page 172 note a “But a thing most admirable is that strange and unparalleled whispering place of 24 yards circular passage above the high altar, next to the Lady-chappell, the relation whereof I leave to such as have beene (like us) both spectators and auditors of that miraculous worke and artiflciall devise.” (Norwich Tourists at Gloucester in 1634.)
page 172 note b George Lord Berkley, advanced to the dignity of Earl of Berkley by King Charles II.
page 172 note c “There we saw a ruinated stately large old castle, where, over the gate-house, now the chiefe habitable place thereof, is engraven in free-stone letters thus:—The Castle Gate at Thornberry was begun 5th Hen. 7 by Edward, Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton.” (Norwich Tourists in 1634.)
page 173 note a The Duke of Buckingham was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 17th May, 1521.
page 173 note b The story is told at length by Camden. (Brit. p. 362.)
page 173 note c Bristol cathedral is among the smallest in England, but it has a certain singularity in its interior construction that produces considerable beauty and picturesque effect.
page 173 note d Mr. Rawdon's account of the people of Bristol in 1665 accords with the experience of a tourist half a century later:—” The greatest inconveniences of Bristol are its situation, its narrow streets, and the narrowness of its river: and we might mention also another narrow, that is, the minds of the generality of its people, for the merchants of Bristol, though very rich, are not like the merchants of London. The latter may be said to vie with the princes of the earth; whereas the former, being raised by good fortune and prizes taken in the wars, from masters of ships and blunt tars, have imbibed the manners of these rough gentlemen so strongly that they transmit it to their descendants, only with a little more of the sordid than is generally to be found among British sailors.” (Defoe's Tour.)
page 174 note a The castle was demolished in 1656 by order of the parliament, and now scarcely a vestige remains.
page 174 note b Saint Vincent's rock “is so full of diamants that a man may fill whole strikes or bushels of them. These are not so much set by, because they be so plenteous. For in bright and transparent colour they match the Indian, if they pass them not.” (Brit. p. 239.)
page 174 note c “But what appeared most stupendous to me was the rock of Saint Vincent, the precipice whereof is equal to anything of that nature I have seen in the most confragose cataracts of the Alps, the river gliding between them at an extraordinary depth.” (Evelyn's Diary in 1654.)
page 174 note d “It has always been the common tradition of Bristol, that it was built by Brennus and Belinus, the two kings whose figures sit in state on the south front of Saint John's Tower.” (Seyer's Hist, of Bristol, vol. i. p. 55.)
page 175 note a “Dominus Wilelmus Canynges, ditissimus et sapientissimus mercator villse Bristolliae, decanus ecclesiae Westbery, obiit 17 die Novembris anno Christi 1474, et exaltus fuit in ordine presbiteratua 7 annis, et quinquies major dictse villse fuit electus pro republioa dicta; villas.” (Itiner. Willelmi de Worcestre, ed. 1778 p. 83.)
page 175 note b “Per oeto annos exhibuit 800 homines in navibus oecupatos, et habuit operarios et carpentarios, masons, &c. omni die 100 homines.”—“Item ultra ista Edwardus rex quartus habuit de dicto Wilelmo iij. milia maroarum pro pace sua habenda.” (Ibid. p. 99.)
page 175 note c “In 1664, 65, 66, London was most grievously visited with the pestilence, the contagion whereof spread as far as Bristol.” (Seyer, vol. ii. p. 513.)
page 175 note d Camden's discriminating taste and just appreciation of the works of medieval art are nowhere more conspicuous than when he speaks of the magnificent church of Saint Mary Redcliffe and the exquisite statuary of the cathedral of Wells. Of the former he says : “But the most beautiful of all the parish churches is S. Maries of Radcliffe without the walls; so large withall—so finely and curiously wrought, with an arched roofe over head of 8tonef artificially embowed,—that all the parish churches in England which hitherto I have seen, in my judgment, it surpasseth many degrees.” (Britannia, p. 237.) He thus expresses his admiration of Wells :—” The church itself all thorowout is verie beautifull, but the frontispiece thereof, in the west end, is a most excellent and goodly peece of worke indeede, for it ariseth up still from the foot to the top, all of imagerie in curious and antike wise, wrought of stone carved and embowed right artificially; and the cloisters adjoyning very faire and spacious.” (Ibid. p. 255.)
page 177 note a Mr. Rawdon repeats without scruple the fabulous and romantic stories connected with Glastonbury, which were invented by some of the early monkish chroniclers. He probably derived them fr6m Fuller's Church History, which was published in 1655. But the quaint historian betrays less credulity. “We dare not (he says) wholly deny the substance of the story, though the leaven of monkery hath much swoln and puff'd up the circumstance thereof.”
page 177 note b This remarkable cavern of the Mendips was explored by William of Worcestre, the eminent topographer of the fifteenth century. His description varies little from that of Mr. Rawdon. “Woky-hole per dimidium miliaris a Wellys infra paroehiam est (juidam introitus strictus; populi portant, anglice, shevys de reede segge ad luminandam aulam.” (Itin. p. 288.)
page 177 note c “Est ita largus sieut Westminstre-halle, et ibi pendent pinnaeula in le voult archuata mirabiliter de petris; et le enterclose per quam vadit a porta ad aulam est longitudinh secundum estimacionem dimidium furlong : Et est qusedam lata aqua inter le tresance et aulam per spacium v. steppys lapidum, et quod steppys est latitudinis circa iv. pedes, et si homo vadit extra lez steppys cadit in aquam circumquaque per profunditatem circa quinque vel sex pedum.” (Ibid. p. 288.)
page 178 note a The kitchen described by Mr. Rawdon was, in the fifteenth century, called a parlour: “Et tune officium de le parlour sequitur, et est rotunda domus de magnis rupibua constructa latitudinis circa xx. gressuum. Et in boriali parte dictæ parlurse est quoddam anglice dictum unus holie hole, et in dicto puteo bene desuper archuata plena aquæ pulcherrimse, et nemo sit dicere quam profundius fuerit dicta aqua.” (Ibid. p. 289.)
page 178 note b “Item de dicto Wokynghole fluit magnum gurgitum, et currit usque le meere juxta Glaseoniam per spacium duoruro miliariorum; et octo molendina in……villa.” (Ibid.)
page 178 note c c In the upper lias shale and marlstone at Alderley the fossil conchifera are numerous and of many genera, as Ostrea, Pecten, Lima, Cardium, &c.
page 179 note a The Norwich travellers give an amusing account of what they saw here in 1634. “Upon our arrival we took a preparative to fit our jumbled weary corps to enter and take refreshment in those admired, unparralelled, medicinable, sulphurous hot bathes. There met wee all kinde of persons, of all shapes and formes, of all degrees, of all countryes, and of all diseases, of both sexes: for to see young and old, rich and poor, blind and lame, diseased and sound, English and French, men and women, boyes and girles, one with another peepe up in their caps and appeare so nakedly and fearefully in their uncouth naked postures, would a little astonish and put one in mind of the Resurrection.”
page 179 note b The old passage across the Severn from Aust to Beachley, near the mouth of the Wye, is said to have been ugly, dangerous, and very inconvenient. “When we came to Aust, the hither side of the passage, the sea was so broad, the fame of the bore of the tide so formidable, the wind also made the water so rough, and, which was worse, the boats to carry over man and horse appeared so very mean, so that, in short, none of us cared to venture; but came back, and resolved to keep on the road to Gloucester.” (Defoe's Tour.)
page 180 note a Beachley, antiently Betteslegh.
page 180 note b Buttington, antiently Buttingdune on Severn, is the disputed site of the settlement of Danish pirates, which received Hastings in his flight from Alfred in 894–5. (Archæologia, vol. xxix. p. 18.)
page 180 note c The lines supposed by some persons to be Offa's Dyke are by others thought to be merely an entrenchment thrown up in the civil war of the seventeenth century. (Ibid. p. 17.)
page 180 note d “Hard by Buttington, Corndon Hill mounted up to a very great height, in the top whereof are placed certain stones in a round circle like a coronet, whence it taketh that name, in memorial, it should seem, of some victory.” (Britannia, p. 650.) The stone in the middle of the descent, spoken of by Mr. Rawdon, was probably the detached mass of Offa's Dyke which is called Buttington Tump.
page 181 note a The seclusion of the lovely valley of the Wye at Tintern is yet disturbed by the iron foundries mentioned in the journal. Their appearance is thus described by a modern tourist:—” Immediately opposite to the room in which we were lodged stands a large iron forge, one amongst the many that are constantly worked night and day in the valley of Tintern. The wide folding doors were thrown open, and the interior part of the edifice, with its huge apparatus and the operations carried on in it, were displayed to our view. Here the dingy beings who melt the ore and prepare it for the bar-hammer were seen busied in their horrible employment, all the detail of which we clearly discovered by the assistance of the strong illumination cast on them from the flaming furnaces.” (Warner's Walk through Wales. 8vo. 1798, p. 232.)
page 181 note b “Monmouth glorieth also that Geffrey ap Arthur or Arthurius, Bishop of Asaph, the compiler of the British history, was borne and bred there; a man, to say the truth, well skilled in antiquities, but, as it seemeth, not of antique credit, so many toies and tales hee everywhere enterlaceth out of his owne braine, as hee was charged while hee lived in so much as now hee is ranged among those writers whom the Roman church hath censured to be forbidden.” (Britannia, p. 632.)
page 182 note a William Jones, born at Monmouth, was forced to quit his country for not being able to pay ten groats. Coming to London he became first a porter and then a factor; and, going over to Hamburgh, had such a vent for Welsh cottons that he gained a very considerable estate in a short time. He founded a fair school at Monmouth, besides a stately almshouse for twenty poor people, each of them having two rooms and a garden and half a crown a week; all which he left to the oversight of the company of haberdashers of London. (Williams's Hist, of Monmouthshire. App. p. 79.) This munificent citizen died about the year 1614, having left for these and other charitable uses 18,000l.(Herbert's Hist, of the London Livery Companies, vol. ii. p. 543.)
page 182 note b The brave and loyal Marquess of Worcester was one of the last to yield to the power of the parliamentary forces. In a letter from General Fairfax to his father, dated Ragland, August 10, 1646, he says, “I am now before Ragland. It is very strong, well manned, and victualled. I have offered the soldiers honourable conditions, and that the Earl should remain quiet in his house till the parliament be pleased to dispose otherwise of him.” (Memorials of the Civil War, vol. i. p. 316.) A week afterwards the garrison surrendered, and Fairfax took possession of the castle. Ragland Castle had three parks of considerable extent, and the fertility of the surrounding estate enabled its possessor to support in hospitable security a garrison of 800 men. Soon after its surrender the castle was demolished and the timber in the three parks cut down. (Williams's Monmouthshire, p. 311.)
page 183 note a Skyrryd-vawr, the highest and most picturesque hill in Monmouthshire.
“Upon a mighty hill
Langibby stands, a castle once of state.”
Sir Trevor Williams, a zealous supporter of Charles I., was made a baronet in 1642. He afterwards professed to change his politics, and in 1646 was appointed commander-in-chief of the parliament's forces in Monmouthshire. The sincerity of his conversion to the popular cause is questionable. Cromwell, when besieging Pembroke in June, 1648, writes, “Wee have plaine discoveries that Sir Trevor Williams of Langebie, about two miles from Uske, was very deepe in the plott of betrayinge Chepstowe Castle, soe that wee are out of doubt of his guiltynesse thereof. I doe hereby authorize you to seize him. Hee is a man (as I am informed) full of craft and subtiltye, very bold and resolute; hath a house at Langebie well stored with armes and very strong.” He subsequently compounded as a delinquent. (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, by Carlyle, vol. ii. p. 8.)
King Arthur sure was crowned there,
It was his royall seate;
And in this town did sceptre beare
With pompe and honor greate.
Worthines of Wales.
There are such vautes and hollow caves,
Such walls and condits deepe;
Made all like pypes of earthen pots,
Wherein a child may oreepe.
Ibid.
page 184 note a Britannia, p. 636. For a copious and highly interesting description of the numerous remains of Roman art and luxury discovered at Caerleon, see Isca Silurum, or An Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Antiquities at Caerleon: by John Edward Lee, F.S.A. 1842.
page 185 note b Out of the ruins of Caerleon, a little beneath, at the mouth of the Uske, grew up Newport.
A thing to note when sammon failes in Wye,
And season there goes out, as order is,
Then still of course in Oske doth sammons lye,
And of good fish in Oske you shall not miss.
And this seems straunge, as doth through Wales appeare,
In some one place are sammons all the yeere;
So fresh, so sweete, so red, so crimp with all,
That man might say, loe, sammon here at call.
Wortliines of Wales.
page 185 note a “As marvellous circumstances are blended with all British blessings, depositions of coal, by the tide, in the mud and sands of the shore, are here ascribed to a faculty bestowed on the river by Providence; and the people generally testify, that, while the lord of the manor imposed a duty, the river ceased to deposit coal, and when the duty was withdrawn it exercised its usual bounty. The poor collect the coal and apply it to their use, and the probable opinion is that a vein of it hath been laid open by the river.” (Williams's Monmouthshire, p. 147.)
page 185 note b Cardiff is evidently meant.
page 185 note c “Tredegar, among the present residences of Monmouthshire, is an object of the first consideration. Everything within and around it has an air of magnificence that pervades the house, the parks, the river, the woods, and even the vast level moor on the edge of which it is placed.—The parks are of great extent.” (Williams's Monmouthshire, p. 280.) Tredegar is now a title in the British peerage, worthily conferred upon the present representative of the house of Morgan, one of the most antient and important in the principality.
page 186 note a Dr. Hugh Lloyd, elected Bishop of Llandaff 17th Oct. 1660, died 7th June, 1667.
page 186 note b “The present fabric was built by Bishop Urban in 1120, and dedicated to St. Peter, St. Dubricius, St. Teileian, and St. Oudoceus. It hath of late fallen into great decay.” (Tanner's Notitia, ed. 1744, p. 712.)
page 186 note c Liber Landavensis—Llyfr Teilo—-or the Antient Register of the Cathedral Church of Llandaff. (See Hardy's Catalogue. British History, vol. i. part ii. p. 830.) In this MS. all the lands that were given to the church of Llandaff were registered.
page 187 note a Caradoc ap Ynyr, King of Gwent, in the early part of the sixth century gave certain lands at Caerwent to his wife's nephew Saint Tathay, who here founded a school and monastery. The identity of Caerwent, or Caergwent, with the Venta Silurum of Antonine, hag been uniformly admitted. See the interesting account of the Excavations within the Walls of Caerwent in the summer of 1855. By Octavius Morgan, Esq. M.P. F.S.A. Archæologia, vol. xxxvi. p. 418.
page 187 note b A stratum of Roman bricks may be observed in the walls, which is probably the authority for attributing the structure to Julius Cæsar. A better opinion is that these bricks were brought from the ruins of Caerwent. (Williams's Monmouthshire, p. 141.)
page 187 note c The bridge over the Usk at Newport and that over the Wye at Chepstow rested on wooden piles, and were floored with loose boards; the tides, rising sometimes to the height of sixty feet, would otherwise have blown up the bridges. (Ibid. p. 147.) In 1826 the old bridge at Chepstow gave place to a substantial iron one.
page 188 note a Keynsham, halfway between Bristol and Bath.
page 188 note b The blue lias at Keynsham was quarried in Leland's time. He says, “there be stones figured like serpents wound into circles found in the quarries of stone about Cainsham.” (Itin. vol. viii. fo. 76.) The ammonites are numerous, and some are of vast size, but few so large as twenty-one inches across. (Phillips's Guide to Geology, p. 150.)
page 188 note c Tetbury.
page 188 note d Corinium Pobunorum. See Illustrations of the Remains of Roman Art in Cirencester, the site of Antient Corininm. By Buckman and Newmarch. London, 1850.
page 189 note a Britannia, p. 366.
page 189 note b The only memorial of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon now remaining in the church of Faringdon is a large blue slab placed on the floor of the middle aisle near the pulpit, half covered by one of the pews, which conceals great part of the inscription. The parishregister is imperfect at this period, and contains no entry of his burial.
page 190 note a Abbandune, i.e. Abbatis oppidum. (Lei. Itin. vol. vii. fo. 64.)
page 190 note b “And certaine yard-lands were heere given by the king, with this condition, that the possesor or holder thereof (marke yee nice and dainty ones) should find litter for the king's bed when the king came thither.” (Britannia, p. 395.)
page 191 note a Britannia, p. 414. For an excellent contribution to county history, see Two Lectures on the History and Antiquities of Berkhamsted. By John Wolatenholme Cobb, M.A. 8vo. London. Nichols and Sons, 1855.
page 191 note b Britannia, pp. 410–419.
page 192 note a Britannia, p. 407.
page 192 note b The Wingates had a seat at Harlington, now belonging to their representative John Wingate Jennings, esquire. Edmund Wingate, the arithmetician, who was sent to France to teach the Princess Henrietta Maria (afterwards queen of Charles I.) English, was of this family. It is said that he resided at Harlington during the Protectorate, and died in 1656. (Lysons's Bedfordshire, p. 90.)