Yorkshire Painted And Described - Gordon Home
CHAPTER XI
RICHMOND
For the purposes of this book we may consider Richmond as the gateway
of the dale country. There are other gates and approaches, some of
which may have advocates who claim their superiority over Richmond as
starting-places for an exploration of this description, but for my
part, I can find no spot on any side of the mountainous region so
entirely satisfactory. If we were to commence at Bedale or Leyburn,
there is no exact point where the open country ceases and the dale
begins; but here at Richmond there is not the very smallest doubt, for
on reaching the foot of the mass of rock dominated by the castle and
the town, Swaledale commences in the form of a narrow ravine, and from
that point westwards the valley never ceases to be shut in by steep
sides, which become narrower and grander with every mile.
The railway that keeps Richmond in touch with the world does its work
in a most inoffensive manner, and by running to the bottom of the hill
on which the town stands, and by there stopping short, we seem to have
a strong hint that we have been brought to the edge of a new element in
which railways have no rights whatever. This is as it should be, and we
can congratulate the North-Eastern Company for its discretion and its
sense of fitness. Even the station is built of solid stonework, with a
strong flavour of medievalism in its design, and its attractiveness is
enhanced by the complete absence of other modern buildings. We are thus
welcomed to the charms of Richmond at once. The rich sloping meadows by
the river, crowned with dense woodlands, surround us and form a
beautiful setting of green for the town, which has come down from the
fantastic days of the Norman Conquest without any drastic or unseemly
changes, and thus has still the compactness and the romantic outline of
feudal times.
From whatever side you approach it, Richmond has always some fine
combination of towers overlooking a confusion of old red roofs and of
rocky heights crowned with ivy-mantled walls, all set in the most
sumptuous surroundings of silvery river and wooded hills, such as the
artists of the age of steel-engraving loved to depict. Every one of
these views has in it one dominating feature in the magnificent Norman
keep of the castle. It overlooks church towers and everything else with
precisely the same aloofness of manner it must have assumed as soon as
the builders of nearly eight hundred years ago had put the last stone
in place. Externally, at least, it is as complete to-day as it was
then, and as there is no ivy upon it, I cannot help thinking that the
Bretons who built it in that long distant time would swell with pride
were they able to see how their ambitious work has come down the
centuries unharmed.
We can go across the modern bridge, with its castellated parapets, and
climb up the steep ascent on the further side, passing on the way the
parish church, standing on the steep ground outside the circumscribed
limits of the wall which used to enclose the town in early times.
Turning towards the castle, we go breathlessly up the cobbled street
that climbs resolutely to the market-place in a foolishly direct
fashion, which might be understood if it were a Roman road. There is a
sleepy quietness about this way up from the station, which is quite a
short distance, and we look for much movement and human activity in the
wide space we have reached; but here, too, on this warm and sunny
afternoon, the few folks who are about seem to find ample time for
conversation and loitering.
On one side of us is the King's Head, whose steep tiled roof and square
front has just that air of respectable importance that one expects to
find in an old established English hotel. It looks across the cobbled
space to the curious block of buildings that seems to have been
intended for a church but has relapsed into shops. The shouldering of
secular buildings against the walls of churches is a sight so familiar
in parts of France that this market place has an almost Continental
flavour, in keeping with the fact that Richmond grew up under the
protection of the formidable castle built by that Alan Rufus of
Brittany who was the Conqueror's second cousin. The town ceased to be a
possession of the Dukes of Brittany in the reign of Richard II., but
there had evidently been sufficient time to allow French ideals to
percolate into the minds of the men of Richmond, for how otherwise can
we account for this strange familiarity of shops with a sacred building
which is unheard of in any other English town? Where else can one find
a pork-butcher's shop inserted between the tower and the nave, or a
tobacconist doing business in the aisle of a church? Even the lower
parts of the tower have been given up to secular uses, so that one only
realizes the existence of the church by keeping far enough away to see
the sturdy pinnacled tower that rises above the desecrated lower
portions of the building. In this tower hangs the curfew-bell, which is
rung at 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., a custom, according to one writer, 'that has
continued ever since the time of William the Conqueror.'
All the while we have been lingering in the market-place the great
keep has been looking at us over some old red roofs, and urging us to
go on at once to the finest sight that Richmond can offer, and,
resisting the appeal no longer, we make our way down a narrow little
street leading out to a walk that goes right round the castle cliffs at
the base of the ivy-draped walls.
From down below comes the sound of the river, ceaselessly chafing its
rocky bottom and the big boulders that lie in the way. You can
distinguish the hollow sound of the waters as they fall over ledges
into deep pools, and you can watch the silvery gleams of broken water
between the old stone bridge and the dark shade of the woods. The
masses of trees clothing the side of the gorge add a note of mystery to
the picture by swallowing up the river in their heavy shade, for, owing
to its sinuous course among the cliffs, one can see only a short piece
of water beyond the bridge.
The old corner of the town at the foot of Bargate appears over the edge
of the rocky slope, but on the opposite side of the Swale there is
little to be seen beside the green meadows and shady coppices that
cover the heights above the river.
There is a fascination in this view in its capacity for change. It
responds to every mood of the weather, and every sunset that glows
across the sombre woods has some freshness, some feature that is quite
unlike any other. Autumn, too, is a memorable time for those who can
watch the face of Nature from this spot, for when one of those opulent
evenings of the fall of the year turns the sky into a golden sea of
glory, studded with strange purple islands, there is unutterable beauty
in the flaming woods and the pale river.
On the way back to the market-place we pass a decayed arch that was
probably a postern in the walls of the town. There can be no doubt
whatever of the existence of these walls, for Leland begins his
description of the town with the words '_Richemont_ Towne is
waullid,' and in another place he says: 'Waullid it was, but the waul
is now decayid. The Names and Partes of 4 or 5 Gates yet remaine.' We
cannot help wondering why Richmond could not have preserved her gates
as York has done, or why she did not even make the effort sufficient to
retain a single one, as Bridlington and Beverley did. The two
posterns--one we have just mentioned, and the other in Friar's Wynd, on
the north side of the market-place, with a piece of wall 6 feet thick
adjoining--are interesting, but we would have preferred something much
finer than these mere arches; and while we are grumbling over what
Richmond has lost, we may also measure the disaster which befell the
market-place in 1771, when the old cross was destroyed. Before that
year there stood on the site of the present obelisk a very fine cross
which Clarkson, who wrote about a century ago, mentions as being the
greatest beauty of the town to an antiquary. A high flight of steps led
up to a square platform, which was enclosed by a richly ornamented wall
about 6 feet high, having buttresses at the corners, each surmounted
with a dog seated on its hind-legs. Within the wall rose the cross,
with its shaft made from one piece of stone. There were 'many curious
compartments' in the wall, says Clarkson, and 'a door that opened into
the middle of the square,' but this may have been merely an arched
opening. The enrichments, either of the cross itself or the wall,
included four shields bearing the arms of the great families of
Fitz-Hugh, Scrope (quartering Tibetot), Conyers, and Neville. From the
description there is little doubt that this cross was a very beautiful
example of Perpendicular or perhaps Decorated Gothic, in place of which
we have a crude and bulging obelisk bearing the inscription: 'Rebuilt
(!) A.D. 1771, Christopher Wayne, Esq., Mayor'; it should surely have
read: 'Perpetrated during the Mayoralty of Christopher Wayne Goth.'
Although, as we have seen, Leland, who wrote in 1538, mentions
Frenchgate and Finkel Street Gate as 'down,' yet they must have been
only partially destroyed, or were rebuilt afterwards, for Whitaker,
writing in 1823, mentions that they were pulled down 'not many years
ago' to allow the passage of broad and high-laden waggons. There can be
little doubt, therefore, that, swollen with success after the
demolition of the cross, the Mayor and Corporation proceeded to attack
the remaining gateways, so that now not the smallest suggestion of
either remains. But even here we have not completed the list of
barbarisms that took place about this time. The Barley Cross, which
stood near the larger one, must have been quite an interesting feature.
It consisted of a lofty pillar with a cross at the top, and rings were
fastened either on the shaft or to the steps upon which it stood, so
that the cross might answer the purpose of a whipping-post. The pillory
stood not far away, and the May-pole is also mentioned.
But despite all this squandering of the treasures that it should have
been the business of the town authorities to preserve, the tower of the
Grey Friars has survived, and, next to the castle, it is one of the
chief ornaments of the town. Some other portions of the monastery are
incorporated in the buildings which now form the Grammar School. The
Grey Friars is on the north side of the town, outside the narrow limits
of the walls, and was probably only finished in time to witness the
dispersal of the friars who had built it. It is even possible that it
was part of a new church that was still incomplete when the Dissolution
of the Monasteries made the work of no account except as building
materials for the townsfolk. The actual day of the surrender was
January 19, 1538, and we wonder if Robert Sanderson, the Prior, and the
fourteen brethren under him, suffered much from the privations that
must have attended them at that coldest period of the year. At one time
the friars, being of a mendicant order, and inured to hard living and
scanty fare, might have made light of such a disaster, but in these
later times they had expanded somewhat from their austere ways of
living, and the dispersal must have cost them much suffering.
Going back to the reign of Henry VII. or there-abouts, we come across
the curious ballad of 'The Felon Sow of Rokeby and the Freres of
Richmond' quoted from an old manuscript by Sir Walter Scott in
'Rokeby.' It may have been as a practical joke, or merely as a good way
of getting rid of such a terrible beast, that
'Ralph of Rokeby, with goodwill,
The fryers of Richmond gave her till.'
Friar Middleton, who with two lusty men was sent to fetch the sow from
Rokeby, could scarcely have known that she was
'The grisliest beast that ere might be,
Her head was great and gray:
She was bred in Rokeby Wood;
There were few that thither goed,
That came on live [= alive] away.
'She was so grisley for to meete,
She rave the earth up with her feete,
And bark came fro the tree;
When fryer Middleton her saugh,
Weet ye well he might not laugh,
Full earnestly look'd hee.'
To calm the terrible beast when they found it almost impossible to hold
her, the friar began to read 'in St. John his Gospell,' but
'The sow she would not Latin heare,
But rudely rushed at the frear,'
who, turning very white, dodged to the shelter of a tree, whence he saw
with horror that the sow had got clear of the other two men. At this
their courage evaporated, and all three fled for their lives along the
Watling Street. When they came to Richmond and told their tale of the
'feind of hell' in the garb of a sow, the warden decided to hire on the
next day two of the 'boldest men that ever were borne.' These two,
Gilbert Griffin and a 'bastard son of Spaine,' went to Rokeby clad in
armour and carrying their shields and swords of war, and even then they
only just overcame the grisly sow.
If we go across the river by the modern bridge, we can see the humble
remains of St. Martin's Priory standing in a meadow by the railway. The
ruins consist of part of a Perpendicular tower and a Norman doorway.
Perhaps the tower was built in order that the Grey Friars might not
eclipse the older foundation, for St. Martin's was a cell belonging to
St. Mary's Abbey at York and was founded by Wyman, steward or dapifer
to the Earl of Richmond, about the year 1100, whereas the Franciscans
in the town owed their establishment to Radulph Fitz-Ranulph, a lord of
Middleham in 1258. The doorway of St. Martin's, with its zigzag
mouldings must be part of Wyman's building, but no other traces of it
remain. Having come back so rapidly to the Norman age, we may well stay
there for a time while we make our way over the bridge again and up the
steep ascent of Frenchgate to the castle.
On entering the small outer barbican, which is reached by a lane from
the market-place, we come to the base of the Norman keep. Its great
height of nearly 100 feet is quite unbroken from foundations to summit,
and the flat buttresses are featureless. The recent pointing of the
masonry has also taken away any pronounced weathering, and has left the
tower with almost the same gaunt appearance that it had when Duke Conan
saw it completed. Passing through the arch in the wall abutting the
keep, we come into the grassy space of over two acres, that is enclosed
by the ramparts. It is not known by what stages the keep reached its
present form, though there is every reason to believe that Conan, the
fifth Earl of Richmond, left the tower externally as we see it to-day.
This puts the date of the completion of the keep between 1146 and 1171.
The floors are now a store for the uniforms and accoutrements of the
soldiers quartered at Richmond, so that there is little to be seen as
we climb a staircase in the walls 11 feet thick, and reach the
battlemented turrets. Looking downwards, we gaze right into the
chimneys of the nearest houses, and we see the old roofs of the town
packed closely together in the shelter of the mighty tower. A few tiny
people are moving about in the market-place, and there is a thin web of
drifting smoke between us and them. Everything is peaceful and remote;
even the sound of the river is lost in the wind that blows freely upon
us from the great moorland wastes stretching away to the western
horizon. It is a romantic country that lies around us, and though the
cultivated area must be infinitely greater than in the fighting days
when these battlements were finished, yet I suppose the Vale of Mowbray
which we gaze upon to the east must have been green, and to some extent
fertile, when that Conan who was Duke of Brittany and also Earl of
Richmond looked out over the innumerable manors that were his Yorkshire
possessions. I can imagine his eye glancing down on a far more
thrilling scene than the green three-sided courtyard enclosed by a
crumbling grey wall, though to him the buildings, the men, and every
detail that filled the great space, were no doubt quite prosaic. It did
not thrill him to see a man-at-arms cleaning weapons, when the man and
his clothes, and even the sword, were as modern and everyday as the
soldier's wife and child that we can see ourselves, but how much would
we not give for a half-an-hour of his vision, or even a part of a
second, with a good camera in our hands?
In the lower part of what is called Robin Hood's Tower is the Chapel of
St. Nicholas, with arcaded walls of early Norman date, and a long and
narrow slit forming the east window. More interesting than this is the
Norman hall at the south-east angle of the walls. It was possibly used
as the banqueting-room of the castle, and is remarkable as being one of
the best preserved of the Norman halls forming separate buildings that
are to be found in this country. The hall is roofless, but the corbels
remain in a perfect state, and the windows on each side are well
preserved. The builder was probably Earl Conan, for the keep has
details of much the same character. It is generally called Scolland's
Hall, after the Lord of Bedale of that name, who was a sewer or dapifer
to the first Earl Alan of Richmond. Scolland was one of the tenants of
the Earl, and under the feudal system of tenure he took part in the
regular guarding of the castle.
There is probably much Norman work in various parts of the crumbling
curtain walls, and at the south-west corner a Norman turret is still to
be seen.
Alan, who received from the Conqueror the vast possessions of Earl
Edwin, was no doubt the founder of Richmond. He probably received this
splendid reward for his services soon after the suppression of the
Saxon efforts for liberty under the northern Earls. William, having
crushed out the rebellion in the remorseless fashion which finally gave
him peace in his new possessions, distributed the devastated Saxon
lands among his supporters; thus a great part of the earldom of Mercia
fell to this Breton.
The site of Richmond was fixed as the new centre of power, and the
name, with its apparently obvious meaning, may date from that time,
unless the suggested Anglo-Saxon derivation which gives it as
Rice-munt--the hill of rule--is correct. After this Gilling must soon
have ceased to be of any account. There can be little doubt that the
castle was at once planned to occupy the whole area enclosed by the
walls as they exist to-day, although the full strength of the place was
not realized until the time of the fifth Earl, who, as we have seen,
was most probably the builder of the keep in its final form, as well as
other parts of the castle. Richmond must then have been considered
almost impregnable, and this may account for the fact that it appears
to have never been besieged. In 1174, when William the Lion of Scotland
was invading England, we are told in Jordan Fantosme's Chronicle that
Henry II., anxious for the safety of the honour of Richmond, and
perhaps of its custodian as well, asked: 'Randulf de Glanvile est-il en
Richemunt?' The King was in France, his possessions were threatened
from several quarters, and it would doubtless be a relief to him to
know that a stronghold of such importance was under the personal
command of so able a man as Glanville. In July of that year the danger
from the Scots was averted by a victory at Alnwick, in which fight
Glanville was one of the chief commanders of the English, and he
probably led the men of Richmondshire.
It is a strange thing that Richmond Castle, despite its great
pre-eminence, should have been allowed to become a ruin in the reign of
Edward III.--a time when castles had obviously lost none of the
advantages to the barons which they had possessed in Norman times. The
only explanation must have been the divided interests of the owners,
for, as Dukes of Brittany, as well as Earls of Richmond, their English
possessions were frequently endangered when France and England were at
war. And so it came about that when a Duke of Brittany gave his support
to the King of France in a quarrel with the English, his possessions
north of the Channel became Crown property. How such a condition of
affairs could have continued for so long is difficult to understand,
but the final severing came at last, when the unhappy Richard II. was
on the throne of England. The honour of Richmond then passed to Ralph
Neville, the first Earl of Westmoreland, but the title was given to
Edmund Tudor, whose mother was Queen Catherine, the widow of Henry V.
Edmund Tudor, as all know, married Margaret Beaufort, the heiress of
John of Gaunt, and died about two months before his wife--then scarcely
fourteen years old--gave birth to his only son, who succeeded to the
throne of England as Henry VII. He was Earl of Richmond from his birth,
and it was he who carried the name to the Thames by giving it to his
splendid palace which he built at Shene. Even the ballad of 'The Lass
of Richmond Hill' is said to come from Yorkshire, although it is
commonly considered a possession of Surrey.
Protected by the great castle, there came into existence the town of
Richmond, which grew and flourished. The houses must have been packed
closely together to provide the numerous people with quarters inside
the wall which was built to protect the place from the raiding Scots.
The area of the town was scarcely larger than the castle, and although
in this way the inhabitants gained security from one danger, they ran a
greater risk from a far more insidious foe, which took the form of
pestilences of a most virulent character. After one of these
visitations the town of Richmond would be left in a pitiable plight.
Many houses would be deserted, and fields became 'over-run with briars,
nettles, and other noxious weeds.'
Easby Abbey is so much a possession of Richmond that we cannot go
towards the mountains until we have seen something of its charms. The
ruins slumber in such unutterable peace by the riverside that the place
is well suited to our mood to go a-dreaming of the centuries which have
been so long dead that our imaginations are not cumbered with any of
the dull times that may have often set the canons of St. Agatha's
yawning. The walk along the steep shady bank above the river is
beautiful all the way, and the surroundings of the broken walls and
traceried windows are singularly rich. There is nothing, however, at
Easby that makes a striking picture, although there are many
architectural fragments that are full of beauty. Fountains, Rievaulx
and Tintern, all leave Easby far behind, but there are charms enough
here with which to be content, and it is, perhaps, a pleasant thought
to know that, although on this sunny afternoon these meadows by the
Swale seem to reach perfection, yet in the neighbourhood of Ripon there
is something still finer waiting for us. Of the abbey church scarcely
more than enough has survived for the preparation of a ground-plan, and
many of the evidences are now concealed by the grass. The range of
domestic buildings that surrounded the cloister garth are, therefore,
the chief interest, although these also are broken and roofless. We can
wander among the ivy-grown walls which, in the refectory, retain some
semblance of their original form, and we can see the picturesque
remains of the common-room, the guest-hall, the chapter-house, and the
sacristy. Beyond the ruins of the north transept, a corridor leads into
the infirmary, which, besides having an unusual position, is remarkable
as being one of the most complete groups of buildings set apart for
this object. A noticeable feature of the cloister garth is a Norman
arch belonging to a doorway that appears to be of later date. This is
probably the only survival of the first monastery founded, it is said,
by Roald, Constable of Richmond Castle, in 1152. Building of an
extensive character was, therefore, in progress at the same time in
these sloping meadows, as on the castle heights, and St. Martin's
Priory, close to the town, had not long been completed. Whoever may
have been the founder of the abbey, it is definitely known that the
great family of Scrope obtained the privileges that had been possessed
by the Constable, and they added so much to the property of the
monastery that in the reign of Henry VIII. the Scropes were considered
the original founders. Easby thus became the stately burying-place of
the family and the splendid tombs that appeared in the choir of their
church were a constant reminder to the canons of the greatness of the
lords of Bolton. Sir Henry le Scrope was buried beneath a great stone
effigy, bearing the arms--azure, a bend or--of his house. Near by lay
Sir William le Scrope's armed figure, and round about were many others
of the family buried beneath flat stones. We know this from the
statement of an Abbot of Easby in the fourteenth century; and but for
the record of his words there would be nothing to tell us anything of
these ponderous memorials, which have disappeared as completely as
though they had had no more permanence than the yellow leaves that are
just beginning to flutter from the trees. The splendid church, the
tombs, and even the very family of Scrope, have disappeared; but across
the hills, in the valley of the Ure, their castle still stands, and in
the little church of Wensley there can still be seen the parclose
screen of Perpendicular date that one of the Scropes must have rescued
when the monastery was being stripped and plundered.