Aside from the remarkable keep, the castle is really a ruin. Its walls, which originally enclosed a triangularspace of five acres, have crumbled away, but enough remains to identify various halls, chapels, dungeons, and underground passages.
The castle was seized by Richard Coeur-de-Lion and held by him and his successor King John for several years. For five centuries thereafter it passed from royalty to nobility and back again, time after time, as a reward for services or the spoils of war, until in 1674 it was granted by Charles II to the ancestor of the present Duke of Richmond.
Torquilstone is described as 'a fortress of no great size, consisting of a donjon, or large and high square tower, surrounded by buildings of inferior height, which were encircled by an inner courtyard.' It had 'towers upon the outward wall so as to flank it at every angle.' It would appear from this that the castle of Front-de-Boeuf might have been a miniature copy of Richmond Castle.
South of Richmond and about three miles from Middleham are the ruins of Jorvaulx Abbey, the seat of the Prior Aymer, 'a free and jovial priest, who loves the wine-cup and the bugle-horn better than bell and book.' The monks of Jorvaulx were famous for their love of feasting and the excellence of their wines. The Abbey church was originally an extensive structure, two hundred and seventy feet long, with transepts one hundred and thirteen feet wide. It was roughly treated and nearly demolished during the Reformation and neglected in the succeeding years until about a century ago, when the accumulated rubbish was cleared away. It now presents a picturesque appearance because of the ivy, moss, and shrubbery with which nature has softenedthe aspect of its rudely broken walls and the fragments of stone which once were heavy columns supporting a lofty nave.
Still farther south are the imposing ruins of Fountains Abbey, which must not be overlooked in any survey of the scenery of 'Ivanhoe,' for here was the alleged abode of that delightful character, the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst, Friar Tuck, whose all-night carousal with King Richard in the forest 'Chapel of St. Dunstan' will be ever memorable as one of Scott's choicest bits of humour. This celebrated 'churchman' was the type of a class of so-called 'hedge-priests' who flourished in the period preceding the Reformation, when every great house maintained a confessor to say masses and grant absolution. The bands of outlaws, with equal superstition, felt the need of the same services, and maintained their own priests accordingly. Many of these performed their holy offices in ragged and dirty attire and with improper forms of ritual, for the benefit of thieves and murderers in out-of-the-way ruins and other hiding places, thereby incurring the wrath of the dignitaries of the Church. Not infrequently, no doubt, their uncanonical performances were no better than those of Friar Tuck.
Fountains Abbey is, next to Melrose, the most beautiful ruin of the kind in Great Britain—at least so far as I have been able to observe. In beauty of situation, it far surpasses Melrose. The latter is in the midst of a town with nothing to make a picturesque setting except its own churchyard and the garden of an adjoining estate. Fountains is reached by walking nearly a mile through the beautiful park of Studley Royal, first by theside of a canal, bordered by trees of luxuriant foliage, through which, at intervals, are various 'peeps,' revealing carefully studied scenes, with temples, statuary, rustic bridges, towers, lakes, and woods; then by a path of more natural beauty, beside the little rivulet called the Skell, until the extensive ruins are reached. The foundation of Fountains Abbey has been traced to the year 1132, according to the narrative of a monk which was committed to writing in 1205. In the winter of 1132-33, a small company of Benedictine monks from St. Mary's Abbey at York, becoming dissatisfied with the laxity of discipline there, felt impelled to withdraw. They retired to a wild and uncultivated valley, covered with stones and briars, and better suited for wild beasts and reptiles than for humanity, and built a monastery beside the brook Skell. From this humble beginning, Fountains Abbey grew until the establishment became one of the richest in England, comprising sixty-four thousand acres of valuable lands and its buildings, covering an area of twelve acres, were among the most magnificent. In 1539, King Henry VIII confiscated the entire property, and rendered the monastery unfit for further use.
INTERIOR OF FOUNTAINS ABBEYINTERIOR OF FOUNTAINS ABBEY
The ruins are more complete than those of any other similar structure, and give an excellent idea of the extent and arrangement of an important monastery. From the Chapel of the Nine Altars to the west doorway, which was the chief entrance, is a distance of three hundred and sixty-nine feet. It is an impressive architectural vista, the eye sweeping over the choir and transepts and down through the narrow nave, where the walls are supported by eleven obtuse pointed arches, springingfrom massive columns, each sixteen feet in circumference and twenty-three feet high. The Chapel of the Nine Altars, considered to have been the most magnificent architectural feature of the structure, is divided into three parts by a series of very high pointed arches, supported by slender octagonal pillars scarcely two feet in diameter. A great east window, sixty feet high and twenty-three feet wide, completed the dignity and beauty of the chapel. From the exterior, the most striking feature is the tower, rising one hundred and sixty-eight feet high, with walls nearly thirty feet square, and projecting buttresses, adding an effect of great solidity.
The connection of Friar Tuck with this fine abbey is derived from the ancient ballad of 'Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar.' The outlaws were indulging in an exhibition of their wonderful archery when an unusually fine shot caused Robin Hood to exclaim:—
I would ride my horse an hundred milesTo finde one could match with thee.
This brought a laugh from Will Scarlet, who declared:—
There lives a curtal frier in Fountains AbbyWill beat both him and thee.
Robin Hood could not rest until he found the friar, walking by the waterside near the abbey. A conflict followed in which the friar threw Robin into the stream. After Robin had shot all his arrows at the friar without effect,—
They took their swords and steel bucklersAnd fought with might and maine;
From ten oth' clock that day,Till four ith' afternoon.
Then Robin blew three blasts of his horn and called half a hundred yeomen. The friar whistled with fist in his mouth and half a hundred ban-dogs answered. The end of the battle proved the stout friar well qualified to join the band of merry men.
This curtal frier had kept Fountains DaleSeven long years or more;There was neither knight, lord, nor earlCould make him yield before.
An arched recess, of stone, well covered with foliage, by the side of the path along the river, marks the traditional site of this famous combat, and is known as 'Robin Hood's Well.' The following lines were written by Sir Walter while a guest at Studley Royal, and the manuscript is now in the possession of the Marquess of Ripon:—
Beside this crystal font of old,Cooled his flushed brow an outlaw bold,His bow was slackened while he drank,His quiver rested on the bank,Giving brief pause of doubt and fearTo feudal lords and forest deer.
Long runs the tale, but village siresStill sing his feats by Christmas fires;And still old England's free-born bloodStirs at the name of Robin Hood.
After the fall of Torquilstone and the almost miraculous deliverance of all the prisoners, Cedric and his company journeyed to the Castle of Coningsburgh, the seat of Athelstane, to perform the funeral rites of that noble warrior, who had fallen a victim to the Templar's battle-axe. Athelstane interrupts the proceedings, somewhatunnecessarily it would seem, by coming to life again. A visit to this castle takes us back to the valley of the Don, where the story began. Conisborough, as the village is now called, is situated about midway between Rotherham and Doncaster. There is nothing fanciful in Scott's description here. He introduced the castle because it interested him, and made it the seat of Athelstane for convenience. In a letter to his friend Morritt in 1811 Scott inquires, 'Do you know anything of a striking ancient castle ... called Coningsburgh? ... I once flew past it in a mail-coach when its round tower and flying buttresses had a most romantic effect in the morning dawn.'
It was characteristic of Scott, not only that every old ruined castle appealed to his imagination, but that his curiosity, once aroused, usually had to be satisfied by a personal inspection. It was so with Coningsburgh. He went to the village and spent two nights at the Sprotbrough Boathouse, a near-by inn, that he might have leisure to examine the ruins of the castle. The result of his study and the further reading of such antiquarian authorities as were available, convinced him that the round tower was an ancient Saxon castle. He found satisfaction in comparing it with the rude towers, or burghs, built by the Saxons or Northmen, of which one of the most striking examples is the Castle of Mousa[2] in the Shetland Islands. These were built of rough stone, without cement. They were roofless, and had small apartments constructed within the circular walls themselves. In this last respect Coningsburgh somewhat resembles these ancient burghs, and Scott conceivedthat the former was an evolution from the latter, and therefore Saxon. He says, 'the outer walls have probably been added by the Normans, but the inner keep bears token of very great antiquity.' He also says: 'When Coeur-de-Lion and his retinue approached this rude yet stately building, it was not, as at present, surrounded by external fortifications. The Saxon architect had exhausted his art in rendering the main keep defensible, and there was no other circumvallation than a rude barrier of palisades.'
The facts, as indicated by more recent investigation, seem to be that the Saxons selected the hill of hard limestone as a suitable place for a stronghold, excavated a ditch around it and erected some outworks. There is no doubt that Harold, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, either purchased or inherited the property, and there is mention of a certain 'lord of Coningesboro,' who possessed part of the domain as early as the year 1000 A.D.
William the Conqueror, shortly after his accession to the English throne, granted the estate to an adherent, William de Warrenne, who was created Earl of Surrey. A great-granddaughter of this earl married Hameline Plantagenet, a half-brother of Henry II, and he was one of the soldiers and faithful attendants of Richard I. It is this earl who is supposed to have built the tower, or keep, at least a century after his Norman predecessors had erected the outer walls of the castle. This, it will be noted, is exactly the reverse of Scott's supposition.
CONINGSBURGH CASTLECONINGSBURGH CASTLE
The Saxon founders selected a steep hill, or knoll, rising one hundred and seventy-five feet above the river—an ideal site for a fortress in those days.
Earl Warren, who came into possession about 1068, found the place already well fortified. His son and grandson were the ones who, it is supposed, constructed the outer walls, with their various buildings for domestic purposes, comprising a hall, kitchen, chapel, etc. These cover a large area, but present no features of extraordinary interest. The inner tower, or keep, however, is one of the most remarkable structures in England. It is a huge cylindrical tower built of grey limestone on a base of solid natural rock. It formerly rose to a height of one hundred and twenty feet, and is now about ninety feet high. It is sixty-six feet in diameter at the base, and is supported by six massive buttresses, each fifteen and one half feet broad and extending outward about nine feet. The walls themselves are nearly fifteen feet in thickness. The only entrance is a door, twenty feet above the ground, originally reached by an outside stair connecting with a small drawbridge.
The rooms beneath the main floor were used for the storage of provisions and in the centre was a well, said to have been one hundred and five feet deep. There was then ample provision to resist a siege, lack of food and water being the only danger to be feared, inasmuch as the catapults and other engines of war of that period would be powerless against the massiveness of such a castle. The upper rooms are built within the walls and reached by narrow stairways. The main floor was probably used by the lord of the castle with his family and guests; the rooms above were occupied by the ladies of the household, and on the same floor was a small oratory or chapel, hexagonal in shape and about eight feet wide. The top floor contained the kitchen and thesleeping-rooms of the garrison. The six buttresses projected above the level of the parapet, forming turrets, convenient for defence. These have now disappeared. The parapet floor is still accessible, and from it a fine view is obtained of the surrounding country.
The Castle of York, where Prince John is supposed to have feasted the nobles and leaders after the exciting scenes of Torquilstone, and where De Bracy announced to him that Richard was really in England, was the Norman fortress built by William the Conqueror in 1068, some portions of which are now incorporated in the building known as Clifford's Tower. A substantial rectangular structure stands between two ancient and ruined turrets, which lean outward, looking as though the stronger building were trying to usurp the hill on which they stand and push his feebler brethren out of the way. This castle was the scene in 1190 of a terrible massacre of the Jews. Two rich Jewish bankers, Joses and Benedict, attended the coronation of Richard I. In a general attack upon the Jews, Benedict was killed, but Joses got back to York. The house of Benedict in York was plundered and his wife and children murdered. Joses rallied the other Jews, who took refuge, with their property, in the castle. The governor ordered an assault, and the Jews, finding themselves unable to hold the citadel, set fire to the buildings, put to death all their relatives, and killed themselves, over five hundred lives being sacrificed. This incident throws some light upon the state of mind of the wealthy Isaac, who was a resident of the city of York.
'Ivanhoe' closes with the wedding of Wilfred and Rowena, 'celebrated in the most august of temples, thenoble minster of York.' The cathedral as it stands to-day is, indeed, noble. Perhaps it cannot properly be called the largest in England; Winchester Cathedral is longer, and Lincoln's towers are higher; but in the length of its choir and nave, the breadth of its transepts, the height of the great pointed arches supporting the roof, and the massive grandeur and dignity of the whole, whether viewed from the exterior or the interior, it is unsurpassed by any other cathedral in England and by few on the continent.
It was not in this magnificent temple, however, that the wedding took place, and perhaps if we could see a picture of the old Norman church which stood on the site in 1194, we might not think of it as 'a noble minster.' The church of that period was the structure built by the first Norman Archbishop of York, with the addition of the choir, erected a century later. In the crypt of the present cathedral some bits of the walls of these early buildings are still preserved. They replaced the first stone church, built about 633, which had superseded the original wooden church, built by Eadwine, King of Northumbria, then the most powerful monarch in England. The minster was, therefore, more than five centuries old even in the period of 'Ivanhoe.'
Of the characters in the novel, King Richard and his brother John were of course historical. Cedric and Athelstane were types of the Saxon nobles who still resented the intrusion of the Normans. Front-de-Boeuf represents a class of Norman noblemen who did not hesitate at any deed of villainy to accomplish their selfish purposes. Brian de Bois-Guilbert typifies the chivalry which professed great zeal for the Christianreligion, but used it as a cloak to cover motives of vengeance or other base purposes. Prior Aymer stands for the wealthy churchman and Isaac of York for the Jewish banker, upon whom all classes, kings, barons, and churchmen, were obliged to depend for the accomplishment of their various plans. Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, and the men in Lincoln Green were borrowed from the ballad poetry of the Middle Ages. All of these were introduced to perfect the picture of the conditions of social and political life in the reign of King Richard.
One character only found a place in the novel for another reason. The story of Rebecca reveals an interesting incident in the life of Washington Irving. When the American author visited Sir Walter at Abbotsford a feeling of mutual respect and admiration quickly sprang up between them and developed into a friendly intimacy. In the course of their conversations, Irving told Sir Walter something of the character of Rebecca Gratz, a young woman of Jewish family, living in the city of Philadelphia. One of this lady's brothers was a warm personal friend of Irving's, who was always a welcome guest at their home. One of Rebecca's dearest friends was Matilda Hoffman, Irving's first and only love. This estimable young woman died at the early age of eighteen, tenderly nursed to the end by her friend Rebecca, in whose arms she expired.
Rebecca Gratz is described as a very beautiful girl. 'Her eyes were of exquisite shape, large, black, and lustrous; her figure was graceful and her carriage was marked by a quiet dignity,—attractions which were heightened by elegant and winning manners. Gentle, benevolent, with instinctive refinement and innatepurity, she inspired affection among all who met her.'[3] Although a Jewess, Rebecca Gratz found many companions among the Christians by whom she was held in high esteem. She was interested in all kinds of benevolent work, founded an orphan asylum and a mission Sabbath-School for Hebrew children, and contributed to many charities.
A Christian gentleman of wealth and high social position fell in love with her and his feelings were reciprocated. But Rebecca conceived that duty demanded loyalty to her religion, and her lofty conscientiousness and remarkable moral courage enabled her to maintain her resolution. She refused to marry, in spite of the pain to herself and the bitter disappointment to her lover which the self-denial involved. Her life was devoted to 'a long chain of golden deeds,' until the end came at the good old age of eighty-eight.
Such a story could not fail to capture the sympathetic heart of Sir Walter, and as usual when anything appealed strongly to him, he wove it into a novel at the earliest opportunity, later writing to Irving, 'How do you like your Rebecca? Does the picture I have painted compare well with the pattern given?'
'Ivanhoe' marks the high-tide of Scott's literary success. The book instantly caught the attention of thousands to whom the Scottish romances had not appealed. It sold better than its predecessors, and from the day of its publication has been easily the most popular of the Waverley Novels. Lockhart, who, in common with most Scotchmen, could not helppreferring the tales of his native land and thought 'Waverley,' 'Guy Mannering,' and 'The Heart of Midlothian' superior as 'works of genius,' nevertheless gave 'Ivanhoe' the first place among all Scott's writings, whether in prose or verse, as a 'work of art.' Its historical value is perhaps greater than that of any of the others, and certainly no other author has ever given a picture, so graphic and yet so comprehensible, of 'merrie England' in the days of chivalry.
[1] Part iii, act iv, scene v.
[2] See Chapter xxi, 'The Pirate,' p. 300.
[3] From an article by Grata van Rensselaer, in theCentury Magazine, September, 1882.
Scott had some strange ways of seeking relaxation from the strain of his work. On Christmas Day, 1814, he wrote Constable that he was 'setting out for Abbotsford to refresh the machine.' During the year he had written his first great novel, 'Waverley'; one of his longer poems, 'The Lord of the Isles'; nearly the whole of his 'Life of Swift'; two essays for an encyclopædia; a two-volume family memoir for a friend; and kept up a voluminous personal correspondence,—an amount of industry which is best described by Dominie Sampson's word,prodigious. Surely the 'machine' needed 'refreshment,' and it consisted in producing, in six weeks' time, another great novel, 'Guy Mannering'! In the same way, while dictating 'Ivanhoe,' in spite of severe bodily pain which prevented the use of his pen, he sought refreshment by starting another novel, 'The Monastery.' 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the scenery most familiar to me with the strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination.'
'The Monastery' was the first of Scott's novels in which the scenery is confined to the immediate vicinity of his own home. It is all within walking distance of Abbotsford and much of it had been familiar to the author from childhood. Melrose, or Kennaquhair, is only about two miles away. This little village is as ancient as the abbey from which it takes its name, andthat splendid ruin dates from 1136, when the pious Scottish king, known as St. David, founded the monastery and granted extensive lands to the Cistercian Order of Monks for its maintenance. The village has followed the fortunes of the abbey—prospering when the monks prospered, and suffering the blight of war whenever the English kings descended upon it. Its present prosperity, so far as it has any, is the gift of Sir Walter Scott. Hawthorne, who rambled through the country in 1856, noted in his journal that 'Scotland—cold, cloudy, barren little bit of earth that it is—owes all the interest that the world feels in it to him.' I cannot endorse this view of Scotland, for it left quite the opposite impression upon my mind, but the last part of the remark is certainly true of Melrose. It bears about the same relation to Scotland that Stratford does to England. Thousands go there every year to see the work of art, glorious even in ruins, which represents the highest development of the Gothic architecture and to marvel at the rich carvings in stone which, after the lapse of nearly six hundred years, still remain as a monument to the patience, skill, and devotion of the monks of St. Mary's. But they go because the great Wizard of the North has thrown the glamour of his genius over the whole of the Border country, of which Melrose is the natural centre. And when they arrive, they find the abbey interpreted in the words of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' which the custodians of the ruin, for fourscore years, have never tired of quoting.
In the novel, no attempt is made to describe the beauty of the ruin. The poem had already done that to perfection. But the monks spring into life again, thevenerable ruin is transformed into a church, the monastic buildings resume their former shape, and the palace of their ruler is refurnished in all its original magnificence. A fire of glowing logs gives warmth to the apartments. An oaken stand, with a roasted capon and 'a goodly stoup of Bourdeaux of excellent flavour,' suggests the truth of the old rhyme:—
The monks of Melrose made fat kailOn Fridays when they fasted,Nor wanted they gude beef and aleSo lang's their neighbours' lasted.
In a richly carved chair before the fire sits a portly abbot, with round face, rosy cheeks, and good-natured, laughing eyes, the product of a long life of good feeding and indolent ease. By his side stands the sub-prior, a cadaverous, sharp-faced little man, with piercing grey eyes bespeaking a high order of intellect, his emaciated features testifying to rigid fastings and relentless self-abasement. The abuse of the monastic privileges, common enough at the time, is thus contrasted with the conscientious observance of all the rules of the order. In and out of the cloisters, the refectory, and the palace, monks in black gowns and white scapularies are continually passing. The old ruin has been restored by the genius of the novelist to the life and activity of the sixteenth century.
The earliest date referred to in the story is 1547, the year of the battle of Pinkie, when the Scottish forces met with a disaster exceeded only by Flodden Field. In this battle Simon Glendinning, a soldier fighting for the 'Halidome' of St. Mary's, met his death. His son Halbert was then nine or ten years old. The story comesto a close when he is nineteen, which would be 1557. The hostility of Henry VIII had caused great anxiety to the abbots of Melrose long before this time and the persecution reached a climax in 1545. Sir Ralph Ewers and Sir Brian Latoun systematically ravaged the Scottish Border, burning hundreds of towns, castles, and churches, slaughtering and imprisoning the people by the thousands and driving off their cattle and horses. In the course of their raids, they reached Melrose with a force of five thousand men and vented their spite on the beautiful old abbey. The Scots took prompt vengeance. They quickly raised an army, and under the leadership of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, met the English and defeated them with heavy losses. Both Ewers and Latoun were among the slain, and the monks of Melrose buried them in the abbey with great satisfaction. 'The Monastery' does not refer to this event, but its graphic picture of the unsettled state of the country and the consequent anxiety of the monks constitutes its chief value.
North of the abbey and across the Tweed is a green hillside, at the base of which is a weir or dam. This is the place where the sacristan of St. Mary's was pitched out of his saddle into the stream by the 'White Lady of Avenel,' who dipped him in the water two or three times to make sure that 'every part of him had its share of wetting.'
The old bridge, which the sacristan was prevented from crossing by the perversity of old Peter, the bridge-tender, was about a mile and a half up the stream. Such a bridge once existed, though now there are no traces visible. Scott used to see the foundationsoccasionally when drifting down the river at night in pursuit of one of his favourite pastimes, spearing salmon by torchlight. There were three towers in the water. A keeper lived in the middle one and controlled the traffic by raising or lowering the draws at his pleasure. Those who refused to pay his price, or whom he did not wish to accommodate, might ford the stream, but at some stages of the water this was a perilous operation.
The river Allan flows into the Tweed near the site of this bridge. It is a little mountain brook that flows, in serpentine course, through the valley of Glendearg. A mile or so up the rivulet there is a picturesque and shady glen called Fairy Dean. After a flood, little pieces of curious stones, in fantastic shapes, are often found, the play of the waters having transformed the fragments of rock into fairy cups and saucers, guns, boats, cradles, or whatever a childish imagination might suggest. This was the abode of the fairies where the little elfin folk held their nightly carnivals, and who knows but Queen Titania herself might have held her moonlight revels upon this very spot? At any rate, the neighbouring people, for centuries, by common consent, recognized the feudal rights of the fairy race to this little dell, and left them undisturbed. It must have been the abode of the White Lady, and no doubt stood in the author's mind for the secluded glen which he calls, in Celtic,Corrie nan Shian, meaning 'Hollow of the Fairies,' where Halbert Glendinning found the huge rock, the wild holly tree, and the spring beneath its branches. Here, doubtless, for no more appropriate spot can be found, Halbert summoned the mystic maiden with the words:—
Thrice to the holly brake—Thrice to the well:—I bid thee awake,White Maid of Avenel!
Noon gleams in the Lake—Noon glows on the Fell—Wake thee, O wake,White Maid of Avenel!
At the head of the glen there are three ruined peel-houses or Border towers, known as Hillslap, Colmslie, and Langshaw. The first of these may fairly stand for the original of Glendearg, the home of the Glendinnings. This old tower has a sculptured date on the lintel of the entrance which seems to indicate that it was built in 1585—a little too late for the story, to be sure, but trifles like that never worried Sir Walter. He wanted to place the Widow Glendinning and her two children in a tower suited to the ancient family connexions of her husband who might have been able to defend his secluded retreat against all comers for many years, had not the necessities of the time required his service in the wars for the defence of his country. Hillslap offered an excellent type of such a Border fortalice, and its situation at the head of the glen, well protected by the surrounding mountains and isolated by its remoteness from the ordinary lines of travel, made it suitable for the purposes of the tale.
Referring to the castle of Julian Avenel, Scott, in a footnote, remarks that it is vain to search near Melrose for any such castle, but adds that in Yetholm Loch, a small sheet of water southeast of Kelso, there is a small castle on an island, connected with the mainland by acauseway, but it is much smaller than Avenel. Of course we must take the author's word for this, and yet, whether he did it with conscious purpose or not, he succeeded in putting into his description some features which irresistibly suggest a castle only seven miles from Melrose, the tower of Smailholm, associated with the dearest memories of his childhood.
Smailholm is one of the most perfect examples of the old feudal keeps to be found in Scotland. A very small pool lies on one side of the tower, but it is suggestive of the loch which once surrounded the entire castle, making it a retreat of great security. 'The surprise of the spectator was chiefly excited by finding a piece of water situated in that high and mountainous region, and the landscape around had features which might rather be termed wild, than either romantic or sublime.' It was a surprise to me to find even a small pool of water in such a locality, and I cannot help thinking that at least some recollections of the peculiar situation of Smailholm may have been in the author's mind when he wrote this description.
Scott has himself mentioned a prototype of the vulgar, brutal, and licentious Julian Avenel in the person of the Laird of Black Ormiston, a friend and confidant of Bothwell and one of the agents in the murder of Darnley.
The concluding scene of the novel represents a sorrowful procession of monks, in long black gowns and cowls, marching solemnly to the market-place of the town, where they formed a circle around 'an ancient cross of curious workmanship, the gift of some former monarch of Scotland.' This old Mercat Cross still standsin the centre of the market-place of Melrose. It is about twenty feet high and is surmounted by the figure of the unicorn and the arms of Scotland. It requires a vivid imagination to identify the unicorn, however, the ravages of time giving it more the aspect of a walrus, rampant.
'The Monastery,' following so soon after Scott's greatest success, suffers severely by comparison with 'Ivanhoe,' and, perhaps for this reason, was considered something of a failure. The cause, generally assigned by the critics, was twofold, or rather, may be attributed to two characters, which did not appeal to the public as Scott had expected. One of these was the 'White Lady of Avenel' and the other, Sir Piercie Shafton.
Scott had always manifested a fondness for ghosts, goblins, witches, and the supernatural. The goblin-page made a nuisance of himself in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' and came near spoiling the poem; Marmion had to fight a phantom knight, and so did Bertram Risingham, but in both cases a rational explanation dispelled the mystery; the Baron of Triermain visited a phantom castle in the Valley of St. John; Bruce landed on the shores of Carrick, guided by a weird supernatural light; Fergus MacIvor was dismayed by the Bodach Glas, a cheerful sort of family ghost which always appeared when disaster was impending; the guest of the Antiquary was compelled to sleep in a haunted chamber; a mysterious fountain had a fatal influence upon the life of the Bride of Lammermoor; and so throughout the pages of Scott's poems and novels we find these strange incidents and phantom appearances. The real orthodox ghost only peeps in at you occasionally and quickly vanishes.Although you may be frightened a little, you delight, nevertheless, in the mystery. But there is something too substantial about a female ghost who climbs up behind a man on horseback, guides him into a stream of deep water, and ducks him three times, meanwhile reciting long stanzas of poetry. And when the same ghost appears again and again, as though the whole plot depended upon her personal exertions, the constant exposure to the limelight causes the illusion to melt away. This, I fancy, is the reason the Maid of Avenel failed to appeal to Scott's readers.
Sir Piercie Shafton, the Euphuist, seems in like manner to have been overdone. A suggestion of the foppery and absurdities of the coxcombs of Queen Elizabeth's court might have been interesting, but Sir Piercie remains on the stage too long and becomes a bore. The pedantic Baron of Bradwardine in 'Waverley' is a bore, but we like him. The garrulous Dalgetty is tiresome, but we could not do without him. Sir Piercie, on the contrary, has no redeeming traits.
Aside from the failure of these two characters to please the public, the novel lacks the interest that attaches to all its predecessors. There is no Dandie Dinmont, nor Meg Merrilies, nor Dominie Sampson; no Jonathan Oldbuck nor Edie Ochiltree; no historical personage of interest like Rob Roy or King Richard; no Jeanie Deans; no Flora MacIvor; no Die Vernon; no Rebecca.
On the other hand, it has some fine pictures of the sturdy Scotch character, it gives a glimpse of monastic life in the sixteenth century, and has an historical value in its presentation of the conflict of cross-currents ofthought and feeling, as they affected the people who lived amid the furious contentions of the Reformation. Father Eustace is a fine type of the able, intelligent, and devoted Catholic priest, and Henry Warden of the brave, unflinching, determined apostle of the reformed doctrines.
Scott was quick to realize the mistake in 'The Monastery,' and promptly redeemed his popularity by the bold stroke of writing a sequel. The White Maiden was banished along with Sir Piercie, and in their place came a train of new characters, well calculated to win the sympathetic approval of the public. Mary Queen of Scots was the chief of these, and the novelist's skilful portrayal of her character made a success of 'The Abbot.' Roland Graeme, who proved to be one of the best of Scott's heroes, and Catherine Seyton, a young woman of charming vivacity, added not a little to the popularity of the novel.
The scenery, at first, remains the same. The story opens at the Castle of Avenel, of which Sir Halbert Glendinning is now the knight and Mary Avenel the lady. Henry Warden is established there as chaplain. The monks are still permitted to linger in the cloisters of St. Mary's, and among them is Edward Glendinning, known as Father Ambrose, who, later, becomes the abbot.
The beautiful abbey is pictured at the beginning of its decay. The niches have been stripped of their sculptured images, on the inside as well as the outside of the building. The tombs of warriors and of princes have been demolished. The church is strewn with confused heaps of broken stone, the remnants of beautifullycarved statues of saints and angels, with lances and swords torn from above the tombs of famous knights of earlier days, and sacred relics brought by pious pilgrims. The disheartened monks are seen conducting their ceremonials in the midst of all the rubbish, scarcely daring to clear it away. In keeping with this picture of decay and ruin is the vivid presentation of the invasion of the sacred abbey by the irreverent mob of masqueraders in grotesque costumes, led by 'the venerable Father Howleglas, the learned Monk of Misrule and the Right Reverend Abbot of Unreason.'
The tale now leads to Edinburgh, where young Roland Graeme is struck with surprise as he comes, for the first time, into the Canongate. 'The extreme height of the houses, and the variety of Gothic gables, and battlements, and balconies' are still surprising. Graeme gets involved in a street scrimmage, common enough in the Edinburgh of those days, and, without knowing it, renders service to Lord Seyton, one of the most faithful adherents of Queen Mary. A few minutes later he catches sight of Catherine Seyton as that pretty damsel is about to 'dive under one of the arched passages which afforded an outlet to the Canongate from the houses beneath.' Many of these arched passages may still be seen in the Canongate. The house of Lord Seyton into which Roland followed the maiden was about opposite Queensbury House, near the eastern end of the street.
Holyrood Palace comes into the story as the place where Roland was presented to the Regent Murray, an introduction into which Scott is believed to have woven some recollections of his own presentation to the Dukeof Wellington. Although the palace has stood for many centuries and has been the abode of many kings, its real interest centres about the fortunes of Mary Queen of Scots. Visitors are shown the audience chamber in which the Queen received John Knox, and found that the great Reformer, unlike other men, was proof against the loveliness of her countenance, the charm of her manner, and the softness of her speech. Knox found, too, that Mary was proof against the bitterness of his arraignment and the violence of his denunciation. Opening out of the audience chamber is Queen Mary's bedroom, where a bed, said to be Mary's own, is carefully preserved, its dingy and tattered hangings conveying little suggestion of the former richness of the crimson damask, with its fringe and tassels of green. A narrow door leads to a small dressing-closet, and another to the supper-room, where Mary sat with David Rizzio and other friends on the fatal night of February 13, 1565. Darnley, in a state of intoxication, burst into the room with a party of brutal conspirators, put his arms around Mary in seeming endearment, while the others dragged Rizzio into the audience chamber and stabbed him to death with their daggers.
The introduction of Loch Leven Castle gives a new scene to the novel and one of great beauty and interest. It was partly Scott's association with the Blair Adam Club that led to the use of this scene and the historical incident associated with it. A visit of Scott and his life-long friends, William Clerk and Adam Ferguson, to the Right Honourable William Adam, in 1816, led to the formation of the Blair Adam Club, at the meetings of which Scott was a constant attendant for fifteen years.Mr. Adam, who held the distinguished office of Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland, was, says Lockhart, 'the only man I ever knew that rivalled Sir Walter Scott in uniform graciousness of bonhomie and gentleness of humour.' In a book privately printed for the benefit of his own family and friends, the judge says:—
The Castle of Loch Leven is seen at every turn from the northern side of Blair Adam. This castle, renowned and attractive above all others in my neighbourhood, became an object of much increased attention and a theme of constant conversation, after the author of 'Waverley' had, by his inimitable power of delineating character, by his creative poetic fancy in representing scenes of varied interest, and by the splendour of his romantic descriptions, infused a more diversified and a deeper tone of feeling into the history of Queen Mary's captivity and escape.
Many little allusions to localities on the estate of Blair Adam and references to the virtues and manners of its occupants, were woven into the story, which, while they escape the attention of the casual reader, did not fail to please the genial owner.
The castle stands on an island in Loch Leven, a pretty sheet of water, about three or four miles long, on the western border of which lies the town of Kinross. Two sturdy fishermen rowed us out to the island where we found the ruin of a square building. The tower is in good repair, but the remaining walls are quite ruinous. In one corner the room where Queen Mary was imprisoned was pointed out by the guides. It is very small, but has windows overlooking the lake, and there is room on the island for a pleasant garden. Except forthe loss of her liberty, Queen Mary might have found the castle a pleasant abode.
Loch Leven Castle was the property of Sir William Douglas, whose wife was the mother of the Earl of Murray, the illegitimate son of James V. The Lady Douglas could be supposed to have little sympathy for the legitimate daughter of the king to whom she pretended to have been married. In placing Mary in the hands of such a custodian, the lords who opposed her felt reasonably secure.
Scott gives a wonderfully dramatic picture of the visit of Lord Lindsay, Lord Ruthven, and Sir Robert Melville to the castle, and the method by which they extorted Mary's signature to deeds abdicating the throne in favour of her infant son and creating the Earl of Murray regent, and although the scene is purely fictitious, the facts of history are not distorted. Roland Graeme is represented as unsheathing his sword and discovering a hidden parchment rolled around the blade. It proved to be a secret message from Lord Seyton, advising Mary to yield to the necessity of the situation. The incident is based upon the fact that Sir Robert Melville was sent to accompany the ruffianly Lindsay, and his no less harsh associate Ruthven, to prevent violence to the Queen, and to carry, concealed in the scabbard of his sword, a message from her friends advising submission and carrying the assurance that deeds signed under such compulsion would not be legally binding when she regained her liberty.
The escape of the Queen is told in substantial accordance with the facts, though with a variation of details which the license of the novelist would easily permit.George Douglas, a younger brother of the lord of Loch Leven, was much impressed by the beauty of the Queen, and captivated by her pleasant manners and fair promises. He devised a plan of escape, but this was discovered and George was expelled from the castle by his brother. Another attempt was more successful. An inmate of the castle, called 'the Little Douglas,' had also felt a sympathy for the Queen. He was a lad of seventeen or eighteen and really played the part which Scott assigned to Roland Graeme. He stole the keys and set the prisoner at liberty in the night. Placing her in a boat, he paused long enough to lock the iron gates of the tower from the outside so that pursuit would be impossible, then, throwing the keys into the lake, rowed his passenger ashore. George Douglas, Lord Seyton, and other friends were waiting to receive her and conveyed her in triumph to Hamilton.
An army of six thousand men was quickly assembled, the plan being to place the Queen safely in the fortress of Dumbarton, and then give battle to the Regent Murray. The latter was too quick for the allies, however. He was then at Glasgow and marched at once, though with an inferior force, to intercept the advancing army. They met at Langside, now a suburb of Glasgow, and after a fierce struggle the Queen's forces were scattered. Mary herself continued her flight, until she reached the Abbey of Dundrennan, in the County of Kirkcudbright, where she spent her last night in Scotland.
CATHCART CASTLECATHCART CASTLE
The novelist represents Queen Mary as viewing the battle from the Castle of Crookston, and the unfortunate lady dramatically exclaims, 'O, I must forget much ere I can look with steady eyes on these well-knownscenes! I must forget the days which I spent here as the bride of the lost—the murdered'—Here Mary Fleming interrupts to explain to the Abbot that in this castle 'the Queen held her first court after she was married to Darnley.'
Mary could not have witnessed the battle of Langside from Crookston, unless, indeed, she had had, in the language of Sam Weller, instead of eyes, 'a pair o' patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power,' for Langside is at least four miles away and the contour of the country would make such a view impossible. She really watched it from a knoll near the old Castle of Cathcart, which has since been known as Court Knowe. Scott admitted the error, but did not much regret it, as Crookston seemed the place best suited to the dramatic requirements of the tale, because of Mary's former association with the castle. Here again the facts are against him. Crookston was the property of the Earl of Lennox, Darnley's father, but Darnley himself never lived there, except possibly as a boy, before he went to France at the age of sixteen. It seems to be certain to those who have investigated the facts that after his return he had no opportunity of going there and that he and Queen Mary could not have visited the place together, either before or after their marriage.
Nevertheless, Scott was wise to let the incident remain as he wrote it, for 'The Abbot' is not a work of history, but a romance.
The successful introduction of Mary Queen of Scots as the central figure of 'The Abbot' resulted, not only in repairing the reputation which had been somewhat damaged by its predecessor, but in suggesting the theme of a new novel which was to achieve a popularity second only to 'Ivanhoe.' The desire to portray, in the form of romance, the great rival of Queen Mary, was perhaps irresistible, particularly in view of the fact that it meant a new opportunity to reach that English audience which had given to 'Ivanhoe' so cordial a reception. Constable, the publisher, was of course delighted to have a new English novel and particularly one in which Queen Elizabeth was to be an important figure. With characteristic presumptuousness he argued that it should be a story of the Armada. Scott, however, had been enchanted in his youth by a ballad of the Scotch poet, Mickle, entitled 'Cumnor Hall,' and particularly by its first stanza:—
The dews of summer night did fall;The moon, sweet regent of the sky,Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall,And many an oak that grew thereby.
He insisted, therefore, in spite of his adviser, upon taking the theme of the ballad for his subject and would even have called the novel 'Cumnor Hall.' In deference to Constable, however, he accepted the title, 'Kenilworth,'although John Ballantyne growled a little at a name which he thought suggested 'something worthy of a kennel.'
Here, then, were the determining points of the new novel, namely, a favourite poem concerning the marriage of the Earl of Leicester to a lady whom he kept concealed at Cumnor Hall, the desire to sketch, in a romantic way, the character of Queen Elizabeth, and the opportunity to secure a dramatic climax by confronting the Queen with the wife of her favourite courtier, in the splendid castle of the latter at Kenilworth.
Cumnor is one of those lovely little villages in the Midlands of England where Father Time employs his talents as an artist, softening the outlines of the stone walls and fences with graceful mantles of dark green ivy and imparting richer and deeper shades of brown to the old thatched roofs of the cottages.
We saw few evidences of activity on the part of the inhabitants, and reached the conclusion that Cumnor, in Walter Scott's time, and even in the days of the Earl of Leicester, could not have been very different from its present aspect.
We did not ruin our reputation as travellers by failing to 'wet a cup at the bonny Black Bear,' for that 'excellent inn of the old stamp,' if indeed it ever existed, has disappeared as effectually as its famous landlord, Giles Gosling. Its prototype, bearing the sign of the 'Bear and Ragged Staff,' formerly stood opposite the church, but its bar-room became objectionable to the vicar and, by what a local writer calls 'an impious act of vandalism,' the inn was destroyed.
Cumnor Place has likewise disappeared. The sitewhere it stood appears to be a comparatively small piece of land, near the street, but well covered with large trees. It was not an extensive park with formal walks and avenues, nor was the house itself so large or high as the structure described in the novel. It was a single-story building or series of buildings, forming an enclosure about seventy feet long and fifty feet wide. It was built about 1350 as a country residence for the Abbot of Abingdon and as a sanitarium for the monks. After two centuries its use by the monastery ceased and Cumnor Place passed into the hands of the Court physician, George Owen, who leased it to Anthony Foster. As the servant of Lord Robert Dudley, Foster received into his house the ill-fated Amy Robsart, whom that gentleman had married in 1550. The marriage was not secret, but was celebrated in the presence of the young King, Edward VI, and his Court. It had been arranged by Dudley's father, John, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, who seems to have had a fondness for match-making, of the kind which promised a profit. He managed to marry his fourth son, Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, a great-granddaughter of Henry VII. In the last two years of the reign of Edward VI, Northumberland was virtually the ruler of England. He induced the King to execute a will, disinheriting his two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, who were the legal heirs to the crown, and naming Lady Jane Grey as his successor. The reign of this unfortunate lady, who never desired the throne, lasted but nine days. The rightful Queen, Mary, was restored by the people, and Northumberland, like his father before him, was beheaded in the Tower. His son, Guildford, with JaneGrey, his wife, suffered the same penalty a year later, as the result of another revolt, in which the lady, at least, had no share.
LEICESTER'S BUILDINGS, KENILWORTHLEICESTER'S BUILDINGS, KENILWORTH
Robert Dudley came near falling a victim to the same fate as his father and grandfather. He took up arms against Queen Mary, was sent to the Tower and condemned to death. But the Queen pardoned him and made him Master of the Ordnance. On the accession of Elizabeth he became Master of the Horse, and thereafter rose rapidly in the royal favour. Elizabeth made him a Knight of the Garter, bestowed upon him the Castle of Kenilworth, the lordship of Denbigh and other rich lands in Warwickshire and Wales. In 1564 the Queen made him Earl of Leicester, and recommended him (perhaps not seriously) as a possible husband of Mary Queen of Scots. The University of Oxford made him their chancellor and the King of France conferred upon him the order of St. Michael. He reached the culmination of the high honours which Elizabeth and others crowded upon him, in the appointment as Lieutenant-General of the army mustered to meet the Spanish invasion, in the year of the great Armada, 1588.
This was the outward show, and it was brilliant enough; but the Earl was like a worm-eaten apple—fair enough to look upon, but rotten to the core—and his private life was thoroughly contemptible. The marriage to Amy Robsart in 1550 was not a happy one. She was never a countess, for Dudley did not become Earl of Leicester until four years after her death. After the favours of Elizabeth began to be showered upon him, Dudley had good reason for concealing this marriage, for the Queen soon began to show a longing to make himher royal husband. In 1560, two years after the accession of Elizabeth, the dead body of Amy was found at the foot of the stairs at Cumnor. All the servants had gone to a neighbouring fair and apparently Anthony Foster was the only person besides Amy at home on that day. It was given out that Amy had accidentally fallen downstairs and broken her neck. She was ostentatiously buried in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, though Lord Dudley was not present at the funeral nor did he again visit Cumnor.
More than twenty years later a pamphlet was published, anonymously, under the title 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' in which the Earl was bitterly attacked as an atheist and a traitor as well as a man of infamous character. He was openly accused of the murder of his wife, and there were not wanting many evidences seeming to corroborate this view. It was alleged that efforts to poison her were made, by direction of the Earl. That Leicester was not incapable of such an act is indicated by the circumstances of his own death. The tradition is that he gave his wife (the third one) a bottle of medicine to be used for faintness. The lady kept it, unused, and later, not knowing it to be poison, administered a dose to her husband, with a fatal result. This lady was the widow of Walter, Earl of Essex, with whom the Earl of Leicester was carrying on an intrigue before her husband's death. There was a quarrel and Essex died suddenly, under some suspicion of poison. Leicester's secret marriage with the widow led to serious accusations against him. According to the author of 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' when the Earl fell in love with Lady Douglas Sheffield (who became his second wife),her husband suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Leicester had in his employ an Italian physician who was a skilful compounder of poisons. It was said that his cunning and skill enabled him to cause a person to die with the symptoms of any disease he might choose, or to administer a poison so that the victim would expire at whatever hour he might appoint. These weird tales no doubt suggested something of the character of the fraudulent alchemist and astrologer, Alasco.
The stair at the foot of which Amy Robsart's body was found was a narrow winding flight, something like a corkscrew. It has been pointed out that Amy would have had considerable difficulty in hurling herself headlong around the twists and turns of such a staircase with enough force to break her neck. Without definite knowledge of the facts, the most reasonable supposition is that Lord Dudley, having a motive for the crime and being a man of unscrupulous character, would not hesitate to order it committed. His grandfather had been the agent of Henry VII in the infamous extortions which gave that sovereign an enormous fortune; his father had not hesitated to risk the lives of his son and an innocent lady to accomplish his own treasonable purposes, besides directly causing the death of the Duke of Somerset, and indirectly bringing about the execution of the Duke's brother, Lord Seymour. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the scion of this ambitious family, who was himself cherishing no less bold a project than his own marriage with the Queen, should willingly give orders to remove the one great obstacle in his path.
The great festivities at Kenilworth occurred in 1575. Amy Robsart had been dead fifteen years. The Earl ofLeicester was none the less entangled, however, for he was at the time married to Lady Sheffield, who strongly maintained the validity of the marriage, though it was denied by the Earl and concealed from the Queen. At the same time, also, the intrigue with the Countess of Essex was in progress. From this it will be seen that although Scott departed from the facts of history in bringing poor Amy to Kenilworth, he nevertheless gave a true picture of the Earl of Leicester's embarrassment in the presence of his Queen. Scott softens the black-hearted villainy of the Earl, by making him an unwilling victim of his own ambition, duped into deeds of infamy by the determination of the conscienceless Richard Varney. He admits that he preferred to make the Earl 'rather the dupe of villains than the unprincipled author of their atrocities,' because in the latter capacity, he would have been a character too disgustingly wicked for the purposes of fiction.
CÆSAR'S TOWER, KENILWORTHCÆSAR'S TOWER, KENILWORTH
According to Scott's account, the unfortunate Amy, after falling completely into the toils of Varney, was carried back to Cumnor Place, and lodged in a tower room at the top of the building. A gallery, arranged by a secret contrivance to be used as a drawbridge, which, when dropped, would cut off all access to the chamber, was the only means of entrance or exit. After Amy had entered the chamber, Varney and Foster withdrew the supports of the bridge in such manner that the slightest weight would cause it to fall. Varney then reached the consummation of his villainy by imitating the whistle of Leicester. Amy, deceived by the signal and eager to meet her Lord, rushed upon the bridge and fell to the deepest vault of the castle. The method of the realAmy's death is not definitely known, but it was probably by no such elaborate invention. She was doubtless strangled in her room and her body carried to the foot of the stairs to suggest an accidental death.
Anthony Foster lies buried in Cumnor Church, which stands on land adjoining the site of Cumnor Place, near the entrance to the village on the road from Oxford. It is one of those stone churches, with square, substantial towers and ivy-clad walls, which add to the charm of the landscape throughout the length and breadth of England, as though she intended thereby to express both the beauty and the solidity of her religion.
The Foster tomb is an elaborate monument of grey marble, within the altar rail, and is easily the most noteworthy feature of the interior of the church. Two engraved brass plates represent the family at prayers, and beneath is a long inscription in Latin, indicating that Anthony Foster was a distinguished gentleman of good birth, skilled in the arts of music and horticulture, a good linguist and renowned for charity, benevolence, and religious fidelity. Looking upon this elaborate memorial, one cannot escape the conviction that Tony Foster was either a greatly maligned saint or the parent of a family of hypocrites. If the intention of those who composed the inscription was to convince the world of his innocence, they could not have been expected to foresee that, for every person who should read and understand the epitaph, ten thousand would be led to a perception of Foster's real character through the pen of a Scottish novelist, but for whom few of us would ever have known the sad story of the Lady of Cumnor Hall.
As for the Earl of Leicester, a more truthful epitaph exists, not indeed carved upon stone, but preserved in the Collections of Drummond of Hawthornden. It reads:—
Here lies a valiant warrior,Who never drew a sword;Here lies a noble courtier,Who never kept his word;Here lies the Erle of Leister,Who govern'd the estates;Whom the earth could never living love,And the just Heaven now hates.
The escape of Amy Robsart from Cumnor Place was achieved through the aid of Wayland Smith, a blacksmith, pedler, and strolling juggler, who had picked up from a former master some knowledge of medicine which he employed to good advantage. There was a legend current in Berkshire of a mysterious smith, who lived among the rocks and replaced lost horseshoes for a fee of sixpence, feeling offended if more were offered. Scott used this tale as the basis of his story of Wayland Smith. The idea of having his smithy in a cave may have been suggested by just such a place in Gilmerton, a village on the outskirts of Edinburgh, with which Scott must have been familiar. I had no difficulty in finding it. It is an artificial cavern, with many ramifications, and as the light can enter only from the door at the head of a stone stairway, its farther corners are extremely dark. Near the entrance is a blacksmith's forge. In a small and dark alcove opposite is an oblong stone, evidently intended as a dining-table. A rough shelf or ledge, cut out of the stone partition, served as a bench at meal-times. Any of the dark corners could beused as sleeping-rooms. The cave was probably used by thieves or smugglers as a convenient hiding-place.
Amy's journey from Cumnor Village, four miles west of Oxford, to Kenilworth, in the centre of Warwickshire, was a ride of about fifty miles. Perhaps the Countess's mental condition would not permit her to enjoy it and doubtless the country then was wild and the roads rough; but the route to-day would be a delightful one, especially that part of it which passes through Warwickshire with its 'hedgerows of unmarketable beauty.'
As they approached the old town of Warwick, travelling by circuitous paths to avoid the crowds then journeying to witness the festivities at Kenilworth, Amy and her humble guide, the blacksmith, passed through some of the most beautiful country in England. But they were obliged to avoid what to-day forms the grand climax of interest to the tourist, the magnificent Castle of Warwick. This was the resting-place of Queen Elizabeth on the day preceding her triumphal progress to Kenilworth. In those days it was the seat of Ambrose Dudley, a brother to the Earl of Leicester and the third son of the notorious John Dudley.
There was never a time, say the local antiquaries, back as far as the reign of the celebrated King Arthur, when Warwick did not have its Earls. The most renowned of these was Guy, a great warrior supposed to stand nine feet high, among whose exploits were the killing of 'a Saracen giant, a wild boar, a dun cow, and a green dragon.' After a life devoted to these pleasant diversions, he retired to Guy's Cliffe, a retreat near Warwick, famed for its natural beauty, where he lived as a hermit until his death. The real building of thecastle began when the Normans took possession, William the Conqueror granting the vast estate, including the castle and the town, to Henry de Newburgh, the first Earl of Warwick. In the fifteenth century it came into the possession of Richard Neville, the famous 'King-Maker.' Since that time many improvements have been made, especially in the spacious grounds, which now make a splendid park, with well-kept lawns and paths, stately trees, formal gardens with yews fantastically trimmed, and a profusion of flowers.
ENTRANCE TO WARWICK CASTLEENTRANCE TO WARWICK CASTLE
The entrance road, cut through solid rock, looks as if carved out of soft moss, so thickly does the ivy cling to the walls. Trees of varied foliage overarch the path, and near the entrance the edges are bordered by narrow lines of flowers. At the end of this delightful avenue a sharp turn to the left brought us in front of the great Castle. On the right is Guy's Tower, rising one hundred and twenty-eight feet high and having walls ten feet thick. On the left is Cæsar's Tower, built by the Normans eight hundred years ago and still firm as the rock upon which it stands. The two are joined by an ivy-covered wall in the centre of which is a great gate between two towers. Passing through this gateway we entered the spacious court. Directly opposite is the mound, or keep, almost completely covered from base to summit with trees and shrubs, over the tops of which the towers and battlements peep out. On the right are two unfinished towers, one of them begun by Richard III, the whole side of the quadrangle forming a massive line of ramparts and embattled walls. On the left is the great mansion, occupied for centuries by the Earls of Warwick. The square formed by these huge stone buildingsis beautiful in its simplicity—a wide expanse of lawn, its rich velvet green broken only by the white gravel walks. To see the interior of the castle we were compelled to join a party of tourists, and march in solemn procession through the rooms of state, while our guide, an old soldier with a Cockney accent, loquaciously explained that his 'hobject' in telling us about the 'hearls' in this room was to prepare us to appreciate the 'hearls' in the next! This agony over, we departed by the road which leads across the Avon, where we were rewarded by a superb view of the castle from the bridge.
The next day we were at Kenilworth. It requires the exercise of a vivid imagination to walk among the ruins and trace the progress of Scott's story, but we found it a delightful study. We entered by the little wicket gate, next to the mansion known as the Gatehouse, erected by Dudley in 1570 as the chief entrance to the castle. Walking south, across the outer court, we came to the ancient entrance in the southeast angle known as Mortimer's Tower. From this point an embankment stretched to the southeast for about one hundred and fifty yards. It was eighteen yards wide and twenty feet high. Besides serving its original purpose of a dam, to hold back the waters of a great lake covering one hundred and eleven acres, this bank of earth made an admirable tilt-yard. At the extreme end of the embankment was the Gallery Tower, containing a spacious room from which the ladies could witness the tournaments. A wall eight feet high and eighty-five feet long is all that remains of this structure. It was built by Henry III in the thirteenth century and reconstructedby the Earl of Leicester in preparation for the great festivities.
Here Amy presented herself under strange circumstances. As the wife of the great Earl of Leicester, the magnificent castle was her own and all its army of servants, and the vast crowd of sight-seers, could they have recognized their countess, would have bowed in humble reverence and have delighted to execute her slightest wish. But she came unknown and unrespected, not as the honoured Countess, but as 'the bale of woman's gear' belonging to a blacksmith, disguised as a juggler. At the Gallery Tower the two strange companions were halted by a giant porter, and gained admission only by the intercession of the mischievous little imp called Flibbertigibbet. They traversed the length of the tilt-yard, and passing through Mortimer's Tower, came in front of the splendid buildings, all with doors and gates wide open as a sign of unlimited hospitality.
On their right stood the stately Cæsar's Tower, a fine specimen of the military architecture of the Normans, built about 1170 to 1180, and still the best-preserved portion of the ruins. On their left was the great 'Leicester's Building,' erected in honour of the occasion for the accommodation of the Queen. It reached a height of ninety-three feet and was ninety feet long and fifty feet wide. The walls are thin, however, and although the most recent in date of all the important parts of the castle, this structure has crumbled into ruins to such an extent that it can be preserved only by constant attention.
Between Cæsar's Tower and Leicester's Building, and joining the two, Amy and her guide saw a stately edifice,then known as King Henry VIII's Lodgings, because it was used by that monarch on the occasion of his visits to the castle. The portion on the left, immediately adjoining Leicester's Building, was called Dudley's Lobby. No vestige of these structures, which originally formed the eastern side of a magnificent quadrangle, can now be seen.
Passing through an open gateway between Cæsar's Tower and King Henry's Lodgings, the Countess entered the Inner Court. On the right, and in the rear of Cæsar's Tower, she could see the great kitchens, then a busy part of the establishment, but now showing little more than the remains of a huge fireplace and a thick wall from which project a broken arch or two. On the left were the White Hall, now entirely destroyed, and next to it the Presence Chamber, which had a fine oriel window looking into the court. Directly in front Amy could see the 'Great Hall' in which her princely husband had made lavish preparations to entertain the Queen with unprecedented extravagance. It was built in the fourteenth century by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, who took up his residence at the castle on the death of his father, and spent the remainder of his life in adding to its magnificence. The hall was ninety feet long and forty-five feet wide. The floor has disappeared, but the remains of the pillars and arches which once supported it may still be seen. The Great Hall was lighted by large and very high windows, set in deep recesses, the outlines of which are still well preserved. The remains of two large fireplaces, one on each side, may still be seen. At the southern end was a dais, upon which was the Throne of State, with crimson canopy ofrichly embroidered velvet. At the opposite end was a minstrel gallery for the musicians. From the centre of the roof hung a chandelier of brass, shaped like an eagle, its spreading wings supporting six human figures, each of which carried a pair of branches containing huge candles. The tables, chairs, cushions, carpets, and silken tapestries were all of the costliest workmanship. It is stated that the Earl of Leicester spent £60,000 upon this lavish entertainment, a sum which, to-day, would be better represented by half a million.