CHAPTER V.

“Gooid brade, botter, and cheese,Is gooid Yorkshire, and gooid Friese.”

The farmers talked about horses, and, to my surprise, they ate but daintily of the good things, the beef, ham, mutton, brawn, and other substantial fare that literally burdened the table. Not one played the part of a good trencherman, but trifled as if the victim of dinners fashionably late; and still more to my surprise, when the conversation took a turn, they all spoke disdainfully of walking. That sort of exercise was not at all to their liking. “I ha’n’t walked four mile I don’t know when,” said one; and his fellows avowed themselves similarly lazy. My intention to walk along the coast to the mouth of the Tees appeared to them a weakminded project.

Beverley has a staid, respectable aspect, as if aware of its claims to consideration. Many of the houses have an old-world look, and among them a searching eye will discover unmistakable bits of antiquity. A small columnar building in the market-place is called the market-cross; beyond it stands a rare old specimen of architecture, St. Mary’s church, the scene of the accident recorded by the ancient rhymer:—

“At Beverley a sudden chaunce did falle,The parish chirche stepille it fellAt evynsonge tyme, the chaunce was thralle,Ffourscore folke ther was slayn thay telle.”

Beyond the church, one of the old town gates, a heavy stone arch, bestrides the street. At the other end of the town, screened by an ancient brick wall, you may see the house of the Black Friars—more venerable than picturesque—besides little glimpses of the middle ages on your straggling saunter thither. Among these are not a few of that sort of endowments which give occasion for abuses, and perpetuate helplessness. And of noticeable peculiarities you will perhaps think that one might be beneficially imitated in other towns.A Constable Lives Hereis a notification which you may read on sundry little boards, topped by a royal crown, nailed here and there over the doors.

But the minster is the great attraction, rich in historical associations and architectural beauty. The edifice, as it now appears, has all been built since the destruction by fire, in 1138, of an older church that stood on the same spot. The style is diverse, a not uncommon characteristic of ancient churches: Early English at the east end, Decorated in the nave, and Perpendicular in the west front and some minor portions. This western front is considered the master-work, for not one of its features is out of harmony with the others—a specimen of the Perpendicular, so Rickman signifies, not less admirable than the west front of York Minster of the Decorated. The effect, indeed, is singularly striking as you approach it from a quiet back street. I found a seat in a favourable point of view, and sat till my eye was satisfied with the sight of graceful forms, multiplied carvings, the tracery and ornament from base to roof, and upwards, where the towers, two hundred feet in height, rise grandly against the bright blue sky.

However much you may admire yellow ochre on door-steps, door-posts, and in the passages and on the stairs of dwelling-houses, you will think it out of place when used to hide the natural colour of the masonry in a noble church. For me, the effect of the interior was marred by the yellow mask of the great pillars. The eye expects repose and harmony, and finds itself cheated. Apart from this, the lofty proportions, the perspective of the aisles, the soaring arches, the streaming lights and tinted shadows, fail not in their power to charm. Your architect is a mighty magician. All the windows, as is believed, were once filled with stained glass, for the large east window was glazed in 1733 with the numerous fragments thatremained after the destroyers of ecclesiastical art had perpetrated their mischief. The colours show the true old tone; and the effect, after all, is not unpleasing.

The Percy shrine on the north side of the choir is one of the monuments to which, after viewing the carved stalls and the altar screen, the sexton will call your special attention. It is a canopied tomb of exquisite workmanship, enriched with various carvings, figures of knights and angels, crockets and finials; marking the resting-place, as is supposed, of the Lady Idonea Clifford, wife of the second Lord Percy of Alnwick. The Percys played a conspicuous part in Yorkshire history. Another of the family, grandson of Hotspur, reposes, as is said, under a tomb in the north transept. He was not a warrior, but a prebend of Beverley. Then, at the east end, the Percy chapel, which has lost its beauty through mutilation, commemorates Henry, the fourth Earl of Northumberland, who was massacred at his seat, Maiden Bower, near Topcliffe, in 1489. Authorized by Henry VII. to answer the appeal of the leading men of his neighbourhood against a tax which levied one-tenth of their property, by a declaration that not one penny would be abated, he delivered his message in terms so haughty and imperious, that the chiefs losing patience, brought up their retainers, sacked the house and murdered the earl. The corpse was buried here in the minster; and the funeral, which cost a sum equivalent to 10,000l.present value, is described as of surpassing magnificence. Among the numerous items set down in the bill of charges is twopence a piece for fourteen thousand “pore folk” at the burial.

In the south aisle of the nave stands another canopied tomb, an altar tomb of elegant form, covered by a slab of Purbeck marble, which appears never to have had a word of inscription to tell in whose memory it was erected. Neither trace nor record: nothing but tradition, and Venerable Bede. St. John of Beverley had only to send a cruse of water into which he had dipped his finger to a sick person to effect a cure. He once restored the wife of Earl Puch, who lived at Bishop Burton, a few miles distant. The lady drank a draught of holy water, and recovered forthwith from a grievous sickness. She had two daughters who, overawed by the miracle, entered the nunnery at Beverley, where they won a reputation for holiness and good works. It was they who gave the two pastures on which freemen of the town still graze their cattle.The rest of their story is told in the ballad: it was Christmas-eve, says the rhymer, the customary service had been performed in the chapel; the abbess and her nuns slowly retired to pursue their devotions apart in their cells, all save two, who lingered and went forth hand in hand after the others. Whither went they? On the morrow they were missing; and

“The snow did melt, the Winter fledBefore the gladsome Spring,And flowers did bud, the cuckoo piped,And merry birds did sing:“And Spring danced by, and crowned with boughsCame lusty Summer on:And the bells ring out, for ’tis the eve,The eve of blessed St. John.“But where bide they, the sisters twain?Have the holy sisters fled?And the abbess and all her nuns bewail’dThe sisters twain for dead.“Then walk they forth in the eventide,In the cool and dusky hour;And the abbess goes up the stair of stoneHigh on the belfry tower,“Now Christ thee save! thou sweet ladye,For on the roof-tree there,Like as in blessed trance y-rapt,She sees the sisters fair.“Whence come ye, daughters? long astray:’Tis but an hour, they tell,Since we did chant the vesper hymn,And list the vesper bell.“Nay, daughters, nay! ’tis months agone:Sweet mother, an hour we ween;But we have been in heaven each one,And holy angels seen.”

“The snow did melt, the Winter fledBefore the gladsome Spring,And flowers did bud, the cuckoo piped,And merry birds did sing:

“And Spring danced by, and crowned with boughsCame lusty Summer on:And the bells ring out, for ’tis the eve,The eve of blessed St. John.

“But where bide they, the sisters twain?Have the holy sisters fled?And the abbess and all her nuns bewail’dThe sisters twain for dead.

“Then walk they forth in the eventide,In the cool and dusky hour;And the abbess goes up the stair of stoneHigh on the belfry tower,

“Now Christ thee save! thou sweet ladye,For on the roof-tree there,Like as in blessed trance y-rapt,She sees the sisters fair.

“Whence come ye, daughters? long astray:’Tis but an hour, they tell,Since we did chant the vesper hymn,And list the vesper bell.

“Nay, daughters, nay! ’tis months agone:Sweet mother, an hour we ween;But we have been in heaven each one,And holy angels seen.”

A miracle! cries the rhymer; and he goes on to tell how that the nuns repair to the chapel and chant a hymn of praise, after which the two sisters, kneeling, entreat the abbess for her blessing, and no sooner has she pronouncedVade in pace, than drooping like two fair lilies, two pale corpses sink to the floor. Then the bells break into a chime wondrously sweet, rung by no earthly hand; and when the sisters arelaid in the tomb, they suffer no decay. Years passed away, and still no change touched those lovely forms and angelic features:

“And pilgrims came from all the land,And eke from oversea,To pray at the shrine of the sisters twain,And St. John of Beverley.”

Another noteworthy object is King Athelstan’sFridstool, or chair of peace; the centre of a sanctuary which extended a mile from the minster in all directions. Any fugitive who could once sit therein was safe, whatever his crime. When Richard II. encamped at Beverley, on his way to Scotland, his half-brother, Sir John Holland, having aided in the atrocious murder of Lord Ralph Stafford, fled to theFridstool, nor would he leave it until assured of the king’s pardon. “The Countess of Warwick is now out of Beverley sanctuary,” says Sir John Paston, writing to his brother in June, 1473—the days of Edward IV. The chair, hewn from a single block of stone, is very primitive in form and appearance; and as devoid of beauty as some of the seats in the Soulages collection. Athelstan was a great benefactor to the church. You may see his effigy, and that of St. John, at the entrance to the choir and over a door in the south transept, where he is represented as handing a charter to the holy man, of which one of the privileges is recorded in old English characters:

Als Fre make I TheAs hert may thynke or Egh may see.

Such a generous giver deserved to be held in honour, especially if the eye were to see from the height of the tower, to the top of which I now mounted by the narrow winding-stair. While stopping to take breath in the belfry, you will perhaps be amused by a table of ringer’s laws, and a record of marvellous peals, the same in purport as those exhibited at Hull. You can take your time in the ascent, for sextons eschew climbing, at least in all the churches I visited in Yorkshire.

A Scotchman’s Observations—The Prospect—The Anatomy of Beverley—Historical Associations—The Brigantes—The Druids—Austin’s Stone—The Saxons—Coifi and Paulinus—Down with Paganism—A Great Baptism—St. John of Beverley—Athelstan and Brunanburgh—The Sanctuary—The Conqueror—Archbishop Thurstan’s Privileges—The Sacrilegious Mayor—Battle of the Standard—St. John’s Miracles—Brigand Burgesses—Annual Football—Surrounding Sites—Watton and Meaux—Etymologies—King Athelstan’s Charter.

“On my first coming to England I landed at Hull, whose scenery enraptured me. The extended flatness of surface—the tall trees loaded with foliage—the large fat cattle wading to the knees in rich pasture—all had the appearance of fairy-land fertility. I hastened to the top of the first steeple—thence to the summit of Beverley Minster, and wondered over the plain of verdure and rank luxury, without a heathy hill or barren rock, which lay before me. When, after being duly sated into dulness by the constant sight of this miserably flat country, I saw my old bare mountains again, my ravished mind struggled as if it would break through the prison of the body, and soar with the eagle to the summit of the Grampians. The Pentland, Lomond, and Ochil hills seemed to have grown to an amazing size in my absence, and I remarked several peculiarities about them which I had never observed before.”

This passage occurs in the writings of the late James Gilchrist, an author to whom I am indebted for some part of my mental culture. I quote it as an example of the different mood of mind in which the view from the top of the tower may be regarded. To one fresh from a town it is delightful. As you step on the leads and gaze around on what was once called “the Lowths,” you are surprised by the apparently boundless expanse—a great champaign of verdure, far as eye can reach,except where, in the north-west, the wolds begin to upheave their purple undulations. The distance is forest-like: nearer the woods stand out as groves, belts, and clumps, with park-like openings between, and everywhere fields and hedgerows innumerable. How your eye feasts on the uninterrupted greenness, and follows the gleaming lines of road running off in all directions, and comes back at last to survey the town at the foot of the tower!

Few towns will bear inspection from above so well as Beverley. It is well built, and is as clean in the rear of the houses as in the streets. Looking from such a height, the yards and gardens appear diminished, and the trim flower-beds, and leafy arbours, and pebbled paths, and angular plots, and a prevailing neatness reveal much in favour of the domestic virtues of the inhabitants. And the effect is heightened by the green spaces among the bright red roofs, and woods which straggle in patches into the town, whereby it retains somewhat of the sylvan aspect for which it was in former times especially remarkable.

Apart from its natural features, the region is rich in associations. The history of Beverley, an epitome of that of the whole county, tempts one to linger, if but for half an hour. It will not be time thrown away, for a glimpse of the past may beneficially influence our further wanderings.

Here the territory of the Brigantes, which even the Romans did not conquer till more than a hundred years after their landing in Kent, stretched across the island from sea to sea. Here, deep in the great forest, the Druids had one of their sacred groves, a temple of living oaks, for their mysterious worship and ruthless sacrifices. Hundreds of tumuli scattered over the country, entombing kysts, coffins, fragments of skeletons, and rude pottery, and not less the names of streets and places, supply interesting testimony of their existence. Drewton, a neighbouring village, marks, as is said, the site of Druid’s-town, where a stone about twelve feet in height yet standing was so much venerated by the natives, that Augustine stood upon it to preach, and erected a cross thereupon that the worshipper might learn to associate it with a purer faith. It is still known as Austin’s Stone.

The Saxon followed, and finding the territory hollow between the cliffs of the coast and the wolds, named it Höll-deira-ness, whence the present Holderness. It was in theforest of Deira that the conference was held in presence of Edwin and Ethelburga, between the missionary Paulinus and Coifi, the high-priest of Odin, on the contending claims of Christianity and Paganism. The right prevailed; and Coifi, convinced by the arguments he had heard, seized a spear, and hurrying on horseback to the temple at Godmanham, cursed his deity, and hurled the spear at the image with such fury that it remained quivering in the wall of the sacred edifice. The multitude looked on in amazement, waiting for some sign of high displeasure at so outrageous a desecration. But no sign was given, and veering suddenly from dread to derision, they tore down the temple, and destroyed the sacred emblems. Edwin’s timorous convictions were strengthened by the result, and so great was the throng of converts to the new faith, that, as is recorded, Paulinus baptized more than ten thousand in one day in the Swale. According to tradition, the present church at Godmanham, nine miles distant, a very ancient edifice, was built from the ruins of the Pagan temple.

St. John of Beverley was born at Harpham, a village near Driffield—Deirafeld—in 640. Diligent in his calling, and eminently learned and conscientious, he became Archbishop of York. In 700 he founded here an establishment of monks, canons, and nuns, and rebuilt or beautified the church, which had been erected in the second century; and when, after thirty-three years of godly rule over his diocese, he laid aside the burden of authority, it was to the peaceful cloisters of Beverley that he retired. “He was educated,” says Fuller, “under Theodorus the Grecian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, yet was he not so famous for his teacher as for his scholar, Venerable Bede, who wrote this John’s life, which he hath so spiced with miracles, that it is of the hottest for a discreet man to digest into his belief.” He died in 721, and was buried in his favourite church, with a reputation for sanctity which eventually secured him a place in the calendar.

Was it not to St. John of Beverley that Athelstan owed the victory at Brunanburgh, which made him sole monarch of Northumbria? The fame of the “great battle” remains, while all knowledge of the site of Brunanburgh has utterly perished, unless, as is argued in the Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society of Liverpool, it was fought near Burnley, in Lancashire. It was celebrated alike in Anglo-Saxon song and history. Greater carnage of people slain by the edgeof the sword, says the ancient chronicle, had never been seen in this island, since Angles and Saxons, mighty war-smiths, crossed the broad seas to Britain. Athelstan, in fulfilment of his vow, laid up his sword at the shrine of St. John, and added largely to the revenues and privileges of the church. A stone cross, erected on each of the four roads, a mile from the minster, marked the limits of the sanctuary which he conferred. One of these yet remains, but in a sadly mutilated condition.

When the Conqueror came and laid the country waste from Humber to Tees, trampling it into a “horrible wilderness,” he spared Beverley and the surrounding lands, yielding, as was believed, to the miraculous influence of the patron saint. One of his soldiers, who entered the town with hostile intent, became suddenly paralysed, and smitten with incurable disease; and a captain falling, by accident, as it seemed, from his horse, his head was turned completely round by the shock. These were warnings not to be disregarded; and Beverley remained a scene of fertile beauty amid the desolation.

One of John’s successors, Archbishop Thurstan, took pleasure also in fondling Beverley. He cut the canal, a mile in length, from the river Hull to the town: he gave to the inhabitants a charter of incorporation conferring similar privileges to those enjoyed by the citizens of York, whereby they were free from all fines and dues in England and Normandy; had the right to pontage—that is, a toll on all the barges and boats that passed under a bridge, as well as on the vehicles over it; and to worry debtors as rigorously as they chose, without fear of retaliation. In these anti-church-rate days it is surprising enough to read of the power exercised by an archbishop in the twelfth century. Thurstan had rule over the baronies of Beverley and five other places, with power to try and execute criminals, and punish thieves without appeal. In all the baronies the prisons were his; to him belonged the gibbet, pillory, and cucking-stool in the towns; the assize of bread and beer; waifs and wrecks of the sea; the right to ‘prises’ in the river Hull, diligently enforced by his watchful coroners; besides park and free warren, and all his land released from suit and service.

That taking of prises, by the way, was a standing cause of quarrel between the burghers of Hull and Beverley. The right to seize two casks of wine from every vessel of more thantwenty tons burthen that entered the river, one before, the other behind the mast, was a grievance too much akin to robbery to be borne with patience. The merchants, wise in their generation, tried to save their casks by discharging the cargoes into smaller vessels before entering the port; but the coroners detected the evasion, and took their prises all the same. Hence bitter quarrels; in which the Beverley ships, dropping down the stream to pursue their voyage, were many times barred out of the Humber by the men of Hull. Once, when the archbishop appeared at the port to defend his right, the mayor, losing temper, snatched the crosier from the dignitary’s hand, and, using it as a weapon, actually spilt blood with the sacred instrument.

Never was the saint’s influence more triumphantly felt than when Thurstan’s fiery eloquence roused the citizens of York to march against David of Scotland. The Scottish king, to support Maud’s claim against Stephen, ravaged Northumbria with such ferocious devastation, that it seemed but a repetition of the Norman havoc, and provoked the Saxon part of the population to join in repelling the invader. After threatening York, David moved northwards, followed by the Yorkshire army, which had rendezvoused at the castle of Thirsk. To inspire their patriotism, a great pole, topped by a crucifix, and hung with the standards of St. John of Beverley, St. Peter of York, and St. Wilfred of Ripon, was mounted on wheels, and placed where every eye could behold it. The Scottish army was overtaken three miles beyond Northallerton, on the 22nd of August, 1138. The king, seeing the threefold standard from afar, inquires of a deserter what it means; whereupon he replies, in the words of the ballad:

“A mast of a ship it is so high,All bedeck’d with gold so gay;And on its top is a Holy Cross,That shines as bright as day.“Around it hang the holy bannersOf many a blessed saint:St Peter, and John of Beverley,And St. Wilfrid there they paint.”

“A mast of a ship it is so high,All bedeck’d with gold so gay;And on its top is a Holy Cross,That shines as bright as day.

“Around it hang the holy bannersOf many a blessed saint:St Peter, and John of Beverley,And St. Wilfrid there they paint.”

The king begins to have misgivings, and rejoins:

“Oh! had I but yon Holy RoodThat there so bright doth show,I would not care for yon English host,Nor the worst that they could do.”

But in vain: the Yorkshire blood was up, no quarter was given, and ten thousand Scotchmen bit the dust. So complete was the victory, that the oppressed Saxons boasted of it as an indemnity for their former sufferings; and the Battle of the Standard remains memorable among the greatest battles of Yorkshire, and the Standard Hill among her historical places.

Was it not the same St. John who afterwards appeared in full pontificals to Stephen, and warned him to stay his purpose of building a castle at Beverley? and was it not again his banner, saved from the fire when the town and minster were burnt in 1186, which rendered Edward I. victorious in his invasion of Scotland? Did not his tomb sweat blood on that famous day of Agincourt, and the rumour thereof bring Henry V. and his lovely Kate hither on a pilgrimage?

Then the chronicler tells us that one while the provost and burgesses, resolving to enlarge and beautify the minster, brought together the best workmen from all parts of England; and later, that the corporation repaired the edifice with stones taken from the neighbouring abbey of Watton. And so bitter became the quarrels between Hull and Beverley, that some of the chief men encouraged the insurrectionary movements known as theRising of the Northand thePilgrimage of Grace, with no other purpose than to damage their rivals. The burgesses of Beverley, not having the fear of the marshal before their eyes, were accused of unfair trading: of keeping two yard measures and two bushels: unlawfully long and big to buy with—unlawfully short and small to sell with. And when in process of time the trade of the town decayed, evil-minded persons looked on the change as a judgment. At present there is little of manufacture within it besides that of the implements which have made the name of Crosskill familiar to farmers.

Some old customs lingered here obstinately. The cucking-stool was not abolished until 1750, which some think was a hundred years too soon. Ducking-stool-lane preserves its memory. And down to 1825, an annual match at football was played on the Sunday before the races, to which there gathered all the rabble of the town and adjacent villages, who for some years successfully resisted the putting down of what had become a nuisance. Instead of abolishing the game, it would have been better to change the day, and hold weekly football matches on the race-course.

From the tower-top the eye takes in the site of Leckonfield, where the Percys had a castle; of Watton Abbey, where an English Abelard and Heloise mourned and suffered; of the scanty remains of Meaux Abbey, founded about 1140, by William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle. Concerning this nobleman, we read that he had vowed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but grew so fat as to be detained at home against his will. Feeling remorse, he consulted his confessor, who advised him to establish a convent of Cistercians. A monk from Fountains, eminent alike for piety and skill in architecture, was invited to choose a site. He selected a park-like tract commanding a view of the Humber. The earl, loving the place, bade him reconsider his choice; but the monk, striking his staff into the ground, replied, “This place shall in future be called the door of life, the vineyard of heaven, and shall for ever be consecrated to religion and the service of God.” The abbey was built and tenanted by cowls from Fountains, and flourished until floods and high tides wasted the lands, and the Reformation destroyed the house.

But though one man may write a poem while “waiting on the bridge at Coventry,” another may hardly, without presumption, write a long chapter on the top of a tower. Let me end, therefore, while descending, with a scrap of etymology. Beaver lake, that is, the lake of floating islands, sacred to the Druids, is said by one learned scribe to be the origin of the name Beverley. Another finds it in the beavers that colonized the river Hull, with lea for a suffix, and point to an ancient seal, which represents St. John seated, resting his feet on a beaver. Did not the wise men of Camelford set up the figure of a camel on the top of their steeple, as a weathercock, because their river winds very much, and camel is the aboriginal British word for crooked? Other scholars trace Beverley through Bevorlac, back toPedwarllech—the four stones.

And here, by way of finish, are a few lines from Athelstan’s charter:

“Yat witen all yat ever beenYat yis charter heren and seenYat I ye King AthelstanHas yaten and given to St. JohnOf Beverlike yat sai youTol and theam yat wit ye nowSok and sake over al yat landYat is given into his hand.”

The Great Drain—The Carrs—Submerged Forest—River Hull—Tickton—Routh—Tippling Rustics—A Cooler for Combatants—The Blind Fiddler—The Improvised Song—The Donkey Races—Specimens of Yorkshiremen—Good Wages—A Peep at Cottage Life—Ways and Means—A Paragraph for Bachelors—Hornsea Mere—The Abbots’ Duel—Hornsea Church—The Marine Hotel.

About a mile from the town on the road to Hornsea, you cross one of the great Holderness drains, broad and deep enough for a canal, which, traversing the levels, falls into the sea at Barmston. It crosses the hollow lands known as ‘the Carrs,’ once an insalubrious region of swamp and water covering the remains of an ancient forest. So deep was the water, that boats went from Beverley to Frothingham, and some of the farmers found more profit in navigating to and fro with smuggled merchandise concealed under loads of hay and barley than in cultivating their farms. For years a large swannery existed among the islands, and the “king’s swanner” used to come down and hold his periodical courts. The number of submerged trees was almost incredible: pines sixty feet in length, intermingled with yew, alder, and other kinds, some standing as they grew, but the most leaning in all directions, or lying flat. Six hundred trees were taken from one field, and the labourers made good wages in digging them out at twopence a piece. Some of the wood was so sound that a speculator cut it up into walking sticks. Generally, the upper layer consists of about two feet of peat, and beneath this the trees were found densely packed to a depth of twenty feet, and below these traces were met with in places of a former surface: the bottom of the hollow formed by the slope from the coast on one side, from the wolds on the other, to which Holderness owes its name. The completion of thedrainage works in 1835 produced a surprising change in the landscape; green fields succeeded to stagnant water; and the islands are now only discoverable by the ‘holm’ which terminates the name of some of the farms.

A little farther, and there is the river Hull, flowing clean and cheerful to the muddy Humber. Then comes Tickton, where, looking back from the swell in the road, you see a good sylvan picture—the towers of the minster rising grand and massy from what appears to be a great wood, backed by the dark undulations of the wolds.

In the public-house at Routh, where I stayed to dine on bread-and-cheese, the only fare procurable, I found a dozen rustics anticipating their tippling hours with noisy revelry. The one next whom I sat became immediately communicative and confidential, and, telling me they had had to turn out a quarrelsome companion, asked what was the best cure “for a lad as couldn’t get a sup o’ ale without wanting to fight.” I replied, that a pail of cold water poured down the back was a certain remedy; which so tickled his fancy that he rose and made it known to the others, with uproarious applause. For his own part he burst every minute into a wild laugh, repeating, with a chuckle, “A bucket o’ water!”

There was one, however, of thoughtful and somewhat melancholy countenance, who only smiled quietly, and sat looking apparently on the floor. “What’s the matter, Massey?” cried my neighbour.

“Nought. He’s a fool that’s no melancholy yance a day,” came the reply, in the words of a Yorkshire proverb.

“That’s you, Tom! Play us a tune, and I’ll dance.”

“Some folk never get the cradle straws off their breech,” came the ready retort with another proverb.

“Just like ’n,” said the other to me. “He’s the wittiest man you ever see: always ready to answer, be ’t squire or t’ parson, as soon as look at ’n. He gave a taste to Sir Clifford hisself not long ago. He can make songs and sing ’em just whenever he likes. I shouldn’t wunner if he’s making one now. He’s blind, ye see, and that makes ’n witty. We calls ’n Massey, but his name’s Mercer—Tom Mercer. Sing us a song, Tom!”

True enough. Nature having denied sight to him of the melancholy visage, made it up with a rough and ready wit, and ability to improvise a song apt to the occasion. He tookhis fiddle from the bag and attempted to replace a broken string; but the knot having slipped two or three times, three or four of his companions offered their aid. The operation was, however, too delicate for clumsy fingers swollen with beer and rum, and as they all failed, I stepped forward, took the fiddle in hand, and soon gave it back to the minstrel, who, after a few preliminary flourishes, interrupted by cries of “Now for ’t!” struck up a song. With a voice not unmusical, rhythm good, and rhyme passable, he rattled out a lively ditty on the incidents of the hour, introducing all his acquaintances by name, and with stinging comments on their peculiarities and weaknesses. The effect was heightened by his own grave demeanour, and the fixed grim smile on his face, while the others were kicking up their heels, and rolling off their seats with frantic laughter.

“Didn’t I tell ye so!” broke in my neighbour, as he winced a little under a shaft unusually keen from the singer’s quiver.

I was quite ready to praise the song, which, indeed, was remarkable. The cleverest ‘Ethiopian minstrel’ could not chant his ditty more fluently than that blind fiddler caught up all the telling points of the hour. He touched upon the one who had been turned out, and on my hydropathic prescription, and sundry circumstances which could only be understood by one on the spot. Without pause or hesitation, he produced a dozen stanzas, of which the last two may serve as a specimen:

“Rebecca sits a shellin’ peas, ye all may hear ’em pop:She knows who’s comin’ with a cart: he won’t forget to stop:And Frank, and Jem, and lazy Mat, got past the time to think,With ginger-beer and rum have gone and muddled all their drink.With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!“Here’s a genelman fro’ Lunnon; ’tis well that he cam’ doun;If he’d no coom ye rantin’ lads would happen had no tune:Ye fumbled at the fiddle-strings; he screwed ’em tight and strong;Success to Lunnon then I say, and so here ends my song.With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!”

“Here’s a genelman fro’ Lunnon; ’tis well that he cam’ doun;If he’d no coom ye rantin’ lads would happen had no tune:Ye fumbled at the fiddle-strings; he screwed ’em tight and strong;Success to Lunnon then I say, and so here ends my song.With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!”

Lusty acclamations and a drink from every man’s jug rewarded the fiddler, and a vigorous cry was set up for “The Donkey Races,” another of his songs, which, as lazy Mat told me, “had been printed and sold by hundreds.” The blind man, nothing loth, rattled off a lively prelude, and sang his song with telling effect. The race was supposed to be run bydonkeys from all the towns and villages of the neighbourhood: from Patrington, Hedon, Hull, Driffield, Beverley, and others, each possessed of a certain local peculiarity, the mention of which threw the company into ecstacies of merriment. And when the “donkey from York” was introduced along with his “sire Gravelcart” and his “dam Work,” two of the guests flumped from their chairs to laugh more at ease on the floor. The fiddler seemed to enjoy the effect of his music; but his grim smile took no relief; the twinkle of the eye was wanting. He was now sure of his game, for the afternoon at least.

While looking round on the party, I had little difficulty in discerning among them the three principal varieties of Yorkshiremen. There was the tall, broad-shouldered rustic, whose stalwart limbs, light gray or blue eyes, yellowish hair, and open features indicate the Saxon; there was the Scandinavian, less tall and big, with eyes, hair, and complexion dark, and an intention in the expression not perceptible in the Saxon face; and last, the Celt, short, swarthy, and Irish looking. The first two appeared to me most numerous in the East and North Ridings, the last in the West.

On the question of wages they were all content. Here and there a man got eighteen shillings a week; but the general rate was fifteen shillings, or “nine shill’n’s a week and our meat” (diet), as one expressed it. Whatever folk might do in the south, Yorkshire lads didn’t mean to work for nothing, or to put up with scanty food. “We get beef and mutton to eat,” said lazy Mat, “and plenty of it.”

The road continues between fat fields and pastures, skirts a park bordered by noble trees, or tall plantations, in which the breeze lingers to play with the branches: here and there a few cottages, or a hamlet, clean in-doors, and pretty out of doors, with gay little flower-gardens. Frequent thunder-showers fell, and I was glad to shelter from the heaviest under a roof. Always the same cleanliness and signs of thrift, and manifest pleasure in a brief talk with the stranger. And always the same report about wages, and plenty of work for men and boys; but a slowness to believe that sending a boy to school would be better than keeping him at work for five shillings a week. I got but few examples of reading, and those far from promising, and could not help remembering how different my experiences had been the year before in Bohemia.

One of the cottages in which I took shelter stands lonely in a little wood. The tenant, a young labourer, who had just come home from work, “not a bit sorry,” as he said, “that ’twas Saturday afternoon,” entered willingly into conversation, and made no secret of his circumstances. His testimony was also favourable as regards wages. He earned fifteen shillings a week, and didn’t see any reason to complain of hard times, for he paid but three pounds a year for his cottage, which sum he recovered from his garden in vegetables and flowers, besides sundry little advantages which at times fall to the lot of rustics. He eat meat—beef or mutton—“pretty well every day,” and was fully persuaded that without enough of good food a man could not do a fair day’s work.

While we talked his wife was putting the finishing touch to the day’s cleaning by washing the brick floor, and without making herself unclean or untidy, as many do. Her husband had shown himself no bad judge of rustic beauty when he chose her as his helpmate, and her good looks were repeated in their little daughter, who ran playfully about the room. I suggested that the evening, when one wished to sit quiet and comfortable, was hardly the time to wet the floor. “I’d rather see it wet than mucky” (mooky, as he pronounced it), was the answer; and neither husband nor wife was ready to believe that the ill-health too plainly observable among many cottagers’ children arises from avoidable damp. To wash the floor in the morning, when no one had occasion to sit in the room, would be against all rule.

“Stay a bit longer,” said the young man, as I rose when the shower ceased; “I like to hear ye talk.”

And I liked to hear him talk, especially as he began to praise his wife. It was such a pleasure to come home when there was such a lass as that to make a man comfortable. Nobody could beat her at making a shirt or making bread, or cooking; and he opened the oven to show me how much room there was for the loaves. Scarcely a cottage but has a grate with iron oven attached, and in some places the overpowering heat reminded me of my friend’s house in Ulrichsthal. Then we had a little discourse about books. He liked reading, and had a Bible for Sundays, and a few odd volumes which he read in the evenings, but not without difficulty; it was so hard to keep awake after a day out of doors.

Meanwhile I made enticing signs to the merry little lassie,and at last she sat without fear on my knee, and listened with a happy smile and wondering eyes to my chant of the pastoral legend ofLittle Bopeep. Such good friends did we become, that when at length I said “good-bye,” and shook hands, there was a general expression of regret, and a hope that I would call again. I certainly will the next time I visit Holderness.

Often since has this incident recurred to my mind, and most often when the discussion was going on in the newspapers concerning the impropriety of marriage on three hundred a year. I wished that the writers, especially he who sneered at domestic life, could go down into Yorkshire, and see how much happiness may be had for less than fifty pounds a year. As if any selfish bachelor enjoyments, any of the talk of the clubs, were worth the prattle of infancy, the happy voices of childhood, the pleasures and duties that come with offspring! Sandeau deserved to be madeAcadémicien, if only for having said that “un berceau est plus éloquent qu’une chaire, et rien n’enseigne mieux à l’homme les côtés sérieux de sa destinée.”

A mile or two farther and water gleams through the trees on the right. It is Hornsea Mere, nearly two miles in length, and soon, when the road skirts the margin, you see reedy shallows, the resort of wild-fowl, and swans floating around the wooded islands; and at the upper end the belts and masses of trees under which the visitors to Hornsea find pleasant walks while sauntering out to the sylvan scenery of Wassand and Sigglesthorne. The lake, said a passing villager, averages ten feet in depth, with perhaps as much more of mud, and swarms with fish, chiefly pike and perch. He added something about the great people of the neighbourhood, who would not let a poor fellow fish in the mere, and ordered the keeper to duck even little boys poaching with stick and string. And he recited with a gruff chuckle a rhyming epitaph which one of his neighbours had composed to the memory of a clergyman who had made himself particularly obnoxious. It did not flatter the deceased.

In Henry the Third’s reign, as may be read in theLiber Melsæ, or Chronicle of the Abbey of Meaux, the Abbot of St. Mary’s at York quarrelled with him of Meaux, about the right to fish in the mere, and not being able to decide the quarrel by argument, the pious churchmen had recourse to arms.Each party hired combatants, who met on the appointed day, and after a horse had been swum across the mere, and stakes had been planted to mark the Abbot of St. Mary’s claim, they fought from morning until nightfall, and Meaux lost the battle, and with it his ancient right of fishery.

In Elizabeth’s reign, the Countess of Warwick granted to Marmaduke Constable the right to fish and fowl for “the some of fyftye and five pounds of lawful English money.” This Marmaduke, who thus testified his love of fin and feather, was an ancestor of Sir Clifford Constable, the present “Lord Paramount,” upon whom the blind fiddler exercised his wit.

Hornsea church stands on an eminence at the eastern end between the mere and the village. Its low square tower once bore a tall spire, on which, as is said, the builder had cut an inscription:—

Hornsea steeple, when I built thee,Thou was 10 miles off Burlington,Ten miles off Beverley, and 10 miles off sea;

but it fell during a gale in 1773. The edifice is a specimen of fifteenth-century architecture, with portions of an earlier date. The crypt under the chancel was at one time a receptacle for smuggled goods, and the clerk was down there doing unlawful work when the tempest smote the spire, and frightened him well-nigh to death. The memory of the last rector is preserved by an altar tomb of alabaster, and of William Day, gentleman, who “dyed” in 1616, by a curious epitaph:

If that man’s life be likened to a day,One here interr’d in youth did lose a dayBy death, and yet no loss to him at all,For he a threefold day gain’d by his fall;One day of rest in bliss celestial,Two days on earth by gifts terrestryall—Three pounds at Christmas, three at Easter Day,Given to the poure until the world’s last day.This was no cause to heaven; but, consequent,Who thither will, must tread the steps he went.For why? Faith, Hope, and Christian Charity,Perfect the house framed for eternity.

Hornsea village is a homely-looking place, with two or three inns, a post-office, and little shops and houses furbished up till they look expectant of customers and lodgers. Many a pair of eyes took an observation of me as I passed along thestreet, and away up the hill, seeking for quarters with an open prospect. Half a mile farther, the ground always rising, and you come to the edge of a clay cliff, and a row of modern houses, and theMarine Hotelin full view of the sea.

Even at the first glance you note the waste of the land. As at Kilnsea, so here. A few miles to the south, between us and Owthorne, stands the village of Aldborough, far to the rear of the site once occupied by its church. The sea washed it away. That church was built by Ulf, a mighty thane, in the reign of Canute. A stone, a relic of the former edifice, bearing an inscription in Anglo-Saxon, which he caused to be cut, is preserved in the wall of the present church. This stone, and Ulf’s horn, still to be seen in York Minster, are among the most venerable antiquities of the county.

Hornsea is a favourite resort of many Yorkshire folk who love quiet; hence a casual traveller is liable to be disappointed of a lodging on the shore. There was, however, a room to spare at the hotel—a top room, from which, later in the evening, I saw miles of ripples twinkling with moonlight, and heard their murmur on the sand through the open window till I fell asleep.

Coast Scenery—A waning Mere, and wasting Cliffs—The Rain and the Sea—Encroachment prevented—Economy of the Hotel—A Start on the Sands—Pleasure of Walking—Cure for a bad Conscience—Phenomena of the Shore—Curious Forms in the Cliffs—Fossil Remains—Strange Boulders—A Villager’s Etymology—Reminiscences of “Bonypart” and Paul Jones—The last House—Chalk and Clay—Bridlington—One of the Gipseys—Paul Jones again—The Sea-Fight—A Reminiscence of Montgomery.

I was out early the next morning for a stroll. The upper margin of the beach, covered only by the highest tides, is loose, heavy sand, strewn with hardened lumps of clay, fatiguing to walk upon; but grows firmer as you approach the water. The wheels of the bathing-machines have broad wooden tires to prevent their sinking. The cliffs are, as we saw near the Spurn, nothing but clay, very irregular in profile and elevation, resembling, for the most part, a great brown bank, varying in height from ten feet to forty. The hotel stands on a rise, which overtops the land on each side and juts out farther, commanding a view for miles, bounded on the north by that far-stretching promontory, Flamborough Head; and to the south by the pale line, where land and water meet the sky. The morning sun touching the many jutting points, while the intervals lay in thin, hazy shadow, imparted something picturesque to the scene, which vanished as the hours drew on, and the stronger light revealed the monotonous colour and unclothed surface of the cliffs. Towards evening the picturesque reappears with the lights falling in the opposite direction.

A short distance south of the hotel, a stream runs from the mere to the sea. The land is low here, so low that unusually high tides have forced their way up the channel of the stream to the lake, and flooded the grounds on both sides; and the effect will be, as Professor Phillips says, the entire drainageof the mere, and production of phenomena similar to those which may be seen on the other parts of the coast of Holderness: a depression in the cliffs exposing a section of deposits such as are only formed under a large surface of standing water. The result is a mere question of time; and if it be true that Hornsea church once stood ten miles from the sea, within the historical period, the scant half-mile, which is now all that separates it from the hungry waves, has no very lengthened term of existence before it. More than a mile in breadth along the whole coast from Bridlington to Spurn has been devoured since the Battle of the Standard was fought.

An old man of eighty who lives in the village says there are no such high tides now as when he was a boy; and if he be not a romancer, the low ground from the sea to the mere must, at least once, have presented the appearance of a great lake. But the wasting process is carried on by other means than the sea. I saw threads of water running down the cliffs, produced by yesterday’s rain, and not without astonishment at the great quantities of mud they deposit at the base, forming in places a narrow viscous stream, creeping in a raised channel across the sand, or confused pasty heaps dotted with pools of liquid ochre. Mr. Coniton, the proprietor of the hotel, told me that he believed the rain had more influence than the sea in causing the waste of land, and he showed me the means he employed to protect his territory from one and the other. To prevent the loss by rain, which he estimates, where no precautions are taken, at a foot a year, he at first sloped his cliff at such an angle that the water runs easily down and with scarcely appreciable mischief. Then, to protect the base, he has driven rows of piles through the sand into the clay beneath, and these, checking the natural drift of the sand to the southward, preserve the under stratum. Where no such barrier exists, the waves in a winter storm sweep all the sand clean off, and lay bare the clay, and tumbling upon it with mighty shocks, sometimes wear it down a foot in the course of a tide. By this lowering of the base, the saturated soil above, deprived of support, topples over, leaving a huge gap, which only facilitates further encroachments; and in the course of a few tides the fallen mass is drifted away to enlarge the shoals in the estuary of the Humber.

Mr. Coniton entered into possession fifteen years ago, and in all that time, so effectual are the safeguards, has lost noneof his land. The edge, he says, has not receded, and, to show what might be, he points to his neighbour’s field, which has shrunk away some yards to the rear.

The space between the hotel and the edge of the cliff is laid out as a lawn, which, sheltered by a bank on the north, forms an agreeable outlook and lounging-place, while gravelled paths lead to an easy descent to the sands at each extremity of the premises. The house is well arranged; there is no noise, no slackness in the service; and families may live as privately as in a private residence. The charge for adults is four shillings a day; for young children, half a guinea a week, without stint as to the number of meals: to which must be added the cost of rooms and attendance. The charges to casual guests are as reasonable as could be desired, contrasting favourably in this particular with my experiences at Hull and in certain of the inland towns and villages. Ninepence a day for service and boots is charged in the bill; hence you can depart without being troubled to “remember” anybody. An omnibus arrives every day from Beverley during the season—May to November. The distance is thirteen miles.

The falling tide had left a breadth of comparatively firm sand by the time I was ready to start, and along that I took my way to Bridlington: another stage of thirteen miles. The morning was bounteous in elements of enjoyment: a bright sun, great white clouds sailing high across the blue, a south-westerly breeze, which made the sea playful and murmurous: all gratifying to the desire of a wayfarer’s heart. I could not help pitying those farmers at Beverley, who saw no pleasure in walking. No pleasure in the surest promotion of health and exercise! No pleasure in the steady progressive motion which satisfies our love of change without hindering observation! No pleasure in walking, that strengthens the limbs and invigorates the lungs! No pleasure in arming the sling against the giant! No pleasure in the occasion of cheerful thoughts and manifold suggestions which bring contentment to the heart! Walking is an exercise which in our days might replace, more commonly than it does, the rude out-door recreations of former times; and if but a few of the many hundreds who put on their Sunday clothes to lounge the hours away at the corner of a street, would but take a ten miles’ walk out to the country lanes or breezy moorlands, they would find benefit alike to their manhood and morals. If Iremember rightly, it is one of the old Greeks who says that walking will almost cure a bad conscience; and, for my part, I am never so ready to obey the precept of neighbourly love as when my sentiments are harmonized by walks of seven or eight leagues a day.

The sands are of varying consistency. In some places you leave deep footprints; and nowhere is the firmness equal to that we shall find farther north, except on the wet border from which the wave has just retired. Mile after mile it stretches before you, a broad slope of sand, sparely roughened here and there by pebble drifts. At times you see numerous rounded lumps lying about of many sizes, which at a distance resemble sleeping turtles, and on a nearer view prove to be nothing but masses of hardened clay, water-worn, and as full of pebbles as a canon’s pudding is of plums. These are portions of the bottoms of lakes overrun by the sea; stubborn vestiges, which yield but slowly. At times the shortest route takes you through watery flats, or broad shallow streams, where little rivers are well-nigh swallowed by the sand as they run across to the sea. A little farther and you come to a low bank, everywhere cut up by glistening ripple-marks, or to a bare patch of clay, which feels like india-rubber under your foot.

And the cliffs taken thus furlong by furlong offer a greater variety than appears at first sight. Here, the clay is cracked in such a way as to resemble nothing so much as a pile of huge brown loaves; now it falls away into a broken hollow patched with rough grass; now it juts again so full of perpendicular cracks that you liken it to a mass of starch; now it is grooved by a deep gully; now a buttress terminates in a crumbling pyramid—umber mottled with yellow; now it is a rude stair, six great steps only to the summit; now a point, of which you would say the extremity has been shaped by turf-cutters; now a wall of pebbles, hundreds of thousands of all sizes, the largest equal in bigness to a child’s head; now a shattered ruin fallen in a confused heap. Such are some of the appearances left by the waves in their never-ending aggressions.

In one hollow the disposition of the clay was so singular, and apparently artificial, and unlike anything which I had ever seen, that I could only imagine it to be a recess in which a party of Assyrian brickmakers had been at work and left great piles of their bricks in different degrees of finish. Itwas easier to imagine that than to believe such effects could be produced by the dash of the sea.

The greatest elevation occurs about Atwick and Skirlington, places interesting to the palæontologist, on account of fossils—an elephant’s tusk, and the head and horns of the great Irish elk—found in the cliffs. Farther on the cliff sinks to a mere bank, six feet in height, but, whether high or low, you need not fear a surprise by the rising tide, for you can scramble up anywhere out of reach of the water. Looking inland from these points you see always the same character of scenery, and where a path zigzags up you will notice large trays used for carrying up the heaps of pebbles there accumulated, for the construction of drains, fences, and walls. Among remarkable curiosities are two large boulders—one of a slaty rock, the other of granite half embedded in the sand. From what part of the country were they drifted to their present position?

Here and there I fell in with a villager taking a quiet walk on the beach, and leading two or three little children. One of them told me that the Stricklands, a well-known family in Holderness, derived their name from Strikeland; that is, they were the first tostrikethelandwhen they came over. Collectors of folk-lore will perhaps make a note of this rustic etymology. He remembered hearing his father talk of the alarm that prevailed all along the coast when there was talk of “Bonypart’s” invasion; and how that Paul Jones never sailed past without firing a ball at Rolleston Hall, that stood on a slope in sight of the sea, where dwelt Mr. Brough, who, as Marshal to the Court of Admiralty, had to direct the proceedings on the trial of Admiral Byng.

Here and there are parties of country lads bathing; or trying which can take the longest jump on the smooth sand; or squatting in soft places idly watching the waves, and exasperating their dogs into a fight.

After passing Skipsea, and the northern end of the Barmston drain, the lone house in the distance catches your eye; the last house of Auburn, a village devoured by the sea. The distance is deceptive along the level shore; but when at length you come to the spot, you see a poor weather-beaten cottage on the top of the cliff, and so close to the edge that the eastern wall forms but one perpendicular line with the cliff itself. You can hardly help fancying that it will fall at any moment, even while you are looking; but so it has stood for manyyears; a fact the more remarkable, as in this place the cliff projects as if in defiance of the ruthless waters. Look at the old maps, and you will read: “Here Auburn washed away by the sea;” and the lone house remains a melancholy yet suggestive monument of geological change.

Now Bridlington comes in sight, and immediately beyond you see a change in the aspect of the cliffs. The chalk formation which stretches across England from Hampshire to Yorkshire, makes its appearance here as a thin white band under the clay, becoming thicker and thicker, till at length the whole cliff is chalk from base to summit, and the great promontory, of snowy whiteness, gleams afar in the sunlight along the shores and across the sea. The chalk opposes a barrier, which, though far less stubborn than the volcanic rocks of Cornwall, is yet more enduring than the clay: hence the land rushes proudly out on the domain of ocean. Nearness, however, while it shows you the mouths of caverns and gullies, like dark shades in the chalk, markedly shortens the headland to the eye.

The last mile of cliff, as you approach Bridlington is diversified by a pale chalky stratum, about four feet thick along the top. It dips down in places basin-like, and contrasts strangely with the clay.

Bridlington Quay, as the seaward part of the town is named, though situated at the very rear of the Head, is, as I saw on turning the last point, not safe from the sap and shock of the breakers. The cliff, sunken in places, exhibits the effect of landslips in rough slopes and ugly heaps. Two legs of the seat fixed at the corner overhang the edge and rest upon nothing, and you see that the remainder are doomed to follow, notwithstanding the numerous piles driven in for protection.

The two arms of the pier enclose a small harbour, one of the few places of refuge for vessels caught by easterly gales on the Yorkshire coast—a coast deficient in good and easily-accessible harbours. A chalybeate spring bursts from the cliff on the northern side; and near the middle of the port an artesian well throws up a constant stream, varying with the rise and fall of the tide. The noisy brook which you cross, on entering the principal street, has its sources in those remarkable springs which, known as ‘the Gipseys,’ gush out from the foot of the wolds.

Bridlington attracts numbers of that class of visitors for whom Hornsea is too quiet and Scarborough too gay. In fine weather, steamers arrive with pleasure parties from Hull and Whitby, Flamborough Head being the great attraction. The boatmen ask fifteen shillings a day for a boat to sail round the Head, and give you opportunity to peer into caverns, or to shoot seafowl should your desire be for “sport.” And besides their pay, the tough old fellows like to have a voice in provisioning the boat, resolute to demonstrate how much your pleasure depends on “laying in plenty of bottled porter.”

The church, situate in the town about half a mile from the Quay, was at one time as large and handsome as the minster of Beverley; but of late years the visitor has only been able to see the remains of beauty through grievous dilapidations, in which the hand of man was more implicated than the weather. Paul Jones is still held responsible for some of the mischief. Now, however, the work of restoration is commenced, and ere long the admirable details and proportions of the edifice will reappear.

Here it was that, attended by a convoy of seven Dutch vessels of war, commanded by Van Tromp, Queen Henrietta Maria landed in 1643; and there are people yet living who remember the terror inspired by the redoubtable privateer aforementioned, while the North-American colonies were battling for their liberties. On the 20th of September, 1779, a messenger came in hot haste from Scarborough to Bridlington with news that an enemy had been espied off the coast, and in the evening of the same day the Yankee squadron was in sight from Flamborough Head. Preparations were at once made to send the women and children into the interior; money and valuables were hastily packed, and some of the inhabitants, panic-stricken, actually fled. The drum beat to arms; the Northumberland militia, then quartered in the neighbourhood, were called out; and all the coasting-vessels bore up for Bridlington Bay, and crowded for protection into the little harbour. Scarcely a town or village on the Yorkshire coast but has its story of alarms and unwelcome visitations from the American privateers.

On the 24th the timid population witnessed a sea-fight from the cliffs. Jones, with theBonhomme Richard, and thePallasandAlliancefrigates, intercepted theSerapis, of forty-four, andCountess of Scarbro’, of twenty-two guns, convoying afleet of merchant-vessels, and at once commenced action. The two largest ships grappled, and fired into each other for two hours, the two frigates meanwhile sailing round, and doing their best to cripple the Englishman. The American at length struck; but only as a feint, for when the crew of theSerapisboarded, they fell into an ambush prepared for them, and suffered so much loss, that theSerapishauled down her colours, and theCountess of Scarbro’was taken by thePallas. The victory, however, was dearly won: theBonhomme Richardlost three hundred men in killed and wounded, and was so grievously cut up in her hull, that the next day she went to the bottom. Captain Pearson, of theSerapis, in his despatch to the Admiralty announcing the capture of his ship, had good reason to write, “I flatter myself with the hopes that their lordships will be convinced that she has not been given away.”

The scene of three of Montgomery’s sonnets is laid at Bridlington. Turn to the volume and read them, before you go farther.

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