XII
At Northallerton we reach the junction of the alternative route, which, branching from the Selby and York itinerary, goes over difficult, but much more beautiful, country by way of Wetherby and Boroughbridge. The ways diverge at the northern extremity of Doncaster, and as both can equally claim to be an integral part of the Great North Road, it is necessary to go back these sixty-three miles to that town and explore the route. Beginning at a left-hand fork by the flat meadows that border the river Don, it comes in a mile to York Bar, a name recalling the existence of a turnpike-gate, whose disappearance so recently as 1879 seems to bring us strangely near old coaching days. The toll-house still stands, and with the little inn beyond, backed and surrounded by tall trees, forms a pleasant peep down the long flat road. “Red House,” nearly three miles onward, is plainly indicated by its flaring red-painted walls. Now a farmhouse, it was once a small coaching-inn principally concerned with the traffic along the Wakefield road, which branches off here to the left.
Passing this, we come in two miles to Robin Hood’s Well, a group of houses by Skelbrooke Park, where at the “New Inn” and the “Robin Hood” many coaches changed horses daily, the passengers taking the opportunity of drinking from Robin Hood’s Well, a spring connected with that probably mythical outlaw, who is said to have met the Bishop of Hereford travelling along the road at this spot, and to have not only held him to heavy ransom, but to have compelled him to dance an undignified jig round an oak in Skelbrooke Park, on a spot still called (now the tree itself has disappeared) “Bishop’s Tree Root.” Among famous travellers who have sipped of the crystal spring of Robin Hood’s Well is Evelyn, who journeyed this way in 1654. “Near it,” he says, “is a stone chaire; and an iron ladle to drink out of, chained to the seat.”
Some fifty years later, the very ugly building that now covers the spring was erected by Vanbrugh for the Earl of Carlisle. It cannot be said to add much to the romantic associations of the place, but the efforts of the wayfarers, who in two centuries have carved every available inch of its surface with their names, render it a curious sight.
Here the road begins a long climb up to the spot where five ways meet, the broad left-hand road conducting into Leeds. This is, or was, Barnsdale Bar, where some of the local Leeds coaches branched from the Great North Road, the chief ones between London and Leeds continuing along this route as far as Peckfield Turnpike, five miles to the other side of Ferrybridge. Barnsdale Bar is, like all the other toll-bars, a thing of the past, but the old toll-house still hides among the trees by the roadside. Beyond it the way lies along an exposed road high up on the hill-tops; a lonely stretch of country where it is a peculiarly ill mischance to be caught in a storm. Thence it plunges suddenly into the deep gorge of Went Bridge, where the little river Went goes with infantile fury among rocks and mossy boulders along a winding course thickly overhung with trees. The wooded sides of this narrow valley are picturesque in the highest degree, but were probably not highly appreciated by timid coach-passengers who, having been driven down the precipitous road at one side at the peril of their lives, were turned out by the guard to ease the toiling horses by walking up the corresponding ascent at the other. This is the prettiest spot in all “merry Barnsdale,” and anciently one of those most affected by Robin Hood. His very degenerate successors, the poachers and cut-throats of James the First’s time, found it a welcome harbourage and foregathered at the predecessor of the Old Blue Bell Inn, which was accordingly deprived of its license for some time. The old sign, bearing the date of 1633, when business was probably resumed, is still kept within the house, as the rhymed inscription on the modern one outside informs the passer-by:—
The Blae Bell on Wentbridge Hill,
The old sign is existing still
Inside the house.
An old posting-inn, the “Bay Horse,” has long since reverted to the condition of a private house.
The road rising out of Went Bridge runs between the jagged rocks of a cutting made in the last years of the coaching age to lighten the pull up, but still it is a formidable climb. This is followed by a hollow where a few outlying houses of Darrington village are seen, and then the bleak high tableland is reached that has to be traversed before the road drops down into the valley of the Aire at Ferrybridge, that now dull and grimy town which bears no appearance of having had an historic past. Yet Ferrybridge was the scene of the skirmish that heralded the battle of Towton, and stands in the midst of that mediæval cockpit of England, wherein for centuries so many rival factions contended together. Near by is Pontefract, in whose castle Richard the Second met a mysterious death, and not far off lies Wakefield. Towton Field itself lies along the Tadcaster route to York. In every direction blood has been shed, for White Rose or Red, for King or Parliament; but Ferrybridge is anything but romantic to the eye, however greatly its associations may appeal to the well-stored mind. Coal-mining and quarrying industries overlie these things. The place-name explains the situation of the townlet sufficiently well, and refers to the first building of a bridge over the old-time ferry by which wayfarers crossed the Aire to Brotherton, on the opposite bank. It is quite unknown when the first bridge was built, but one existed here in 1461, the year when Towton fight was fought. This was succeeded by a wooden structure, itself replaced by the present substantial stone bridge, built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This was always a troublesome part of the road to keep in repair, as we may judge from old records. A forty days’ indulgence was granted by the Bishop of Durham early in the fourteenth century to the faithful who would contribute to the repair of the road between Ferrybridge and Brotherton, in these words:—“Persuaded that the minds of the faithful are more ready to attach themselves to pious works when they have received the salutary encouragement of fuller indulgences, trusting in the mercy of God Almighty and the merits and prayers of the glorious Virgin his Mother, of St. Peter, St. Paul, and of the most holy confessor Cuthbert, our patron, and of all saints, we remit forty days of the penances imposed on all our parishioners and others, sincerely contrite and confessed of their sins, who shall help by their charitable gifts, or by their bodily labour, in the building or in the maintenance of the causeway between Brotherton and Ferrybridge, where a great many people pass by.”
Let us hope that the pious, thus incited to the commission of good works, responded. It was a more serious matter, however, in later ages, when a great many more people passed by, and when road-surveyors, unable to dispense these ghostly favours, repaired the roads only at the pecuniary expense of the ratepayers. These Yorkshire streams, the Aire, the Wharfe, and many others, descending from the high moorlands, develop an extraordinary force in times of flood, and have often destroyed half the communications of these districts. Such was the havoc wrought in 1795 that many of the bridges were washed away and great holes made in the roads. Three bridges on this road between Doncaster and Ferrybridge disappeared. With such perils threatened, travellers deserved to be comfortably housed when they lay by for the night. And comfort was the especial feature of these inns.
The most luxurious inn and posting-house in the north of England was held to be the “Swan” at Ferrybridge; “in 1737 and since the best inn upon the great northern road,” according to Scott. However that may have been, certainly the “Angel” at Ferry-bridge was the largest. Both, however, have long since been given up. The many scattered buildings of the “Angel” have become private houses, and the “Swan,” empty for many years past, is falling into a roofless ruin by the riverside. Innkeeping was no mean trade in those times, especially when allied with the proprietorship of horses and coaches. Thus, in the flower of the coaching age, the “Angel” was in the hands of a medical man, a certain Dr. Alderson, the son of a local clergyman, who actually found time to attend properly to his practice and to conduct the business of a licensed victualler and coach-proprietor. He thought it not derogatory to his social position to be “mine host,” and he certainly made many friends by his enterprise. Ferrybridge, as the branching-off place of yet another Great North Road route—the Tadcaster route to York—was a very busy coaching centre, and besides the two inns mentioned there were the “Greyhound” and the “Golden Lion.” The last-named was especially the drovers’ house. Drovers were a great feature of the road in these old days, and their flocks and herds an unmitigated nuisance to all other travellers. Uncouth creatures from Scotland, they footed it all the way to London with their beasts, making their twenty miles a day; their sheep and cattle often numerous enough to occupy a whole mile of road, and raising dust-clouds dense enough to choke a whole district. It was, at the pace they went, a three weeks’ journey from the far north to London and the fat cattle that started on the four hundred miles walk must, with these efforts, have become the leanest of kine on arrival at Smithfield.
The “Old Fox” inn, which still stands on the other side of the river at Brotherton, was also a drovers’ place of call. It stands at the actual fork of the roads, eleven miles from Tadcaster, and twenty from York. The Edinburgh mail originally ran this way, finally changing to the Selby route, while the “Highflyer” and “Wellington,” London and Edinburgh and London and Newcastle, coaches kept on it until the end in 1840; but it was chiefly crowded with the cross-country coach traffic, which was a very heavy one.
The places are few and uninteresting on these twenty miles into York; Sherburn and Tadcaster—that town of ales—the chief of them; while the tiny godless village of Towton, without a church, on the way, is disappointing to the pilgrim, eager to see it for the sake of its association with the great battle. The road skirts the eastern side of that tragic field, after passing the hamlet of Barkston Ash.
XIII
The battle of Towton, March 29, 1461, was the bloodiest ever fought on English ground, the slain on both sides in that desperate fight and in the skirmishes at Ferrybridge and Dintingdale amounting to more than 30,000 men. The events that had preceded it were alternately cheering and depressing to the hopes of the Yorkists, who had been defeated with great slaughter at Wakefield on the last day but one of the previous December, had gained the important victory of Mortimer’s Cross on the 2nd of February, and had been defeated again at the second battle of St. Albans on the 17th of the same month; and although on March 4th the young Duke of York had entered London and assumed the crown as Edward the Fourth, the Lancastrians still held the Midlands and, lying at York, interposed a bold front against an advance. It was a singular position. The Lancastrians had their headquarters at the city from which their opponents took their title, and two kings of England, equally matched in power, animated their respective adherents with the utmost loyalty.
After their victory at St. Albans the Lancastrians, exhausted, had retired to York, the south being as dangerous to a Lancastrian army as the north, loyal to the Red Rose, was to the Yorkists. The Yorkists, on their part, eager to enter London, did not pursue their rivals. Both sides required breathing time, for events had marched too rapidly in the past two months for the pace to be maintained. Still, the Yorkists were in force, three weeks later, at Pontefract, and threatening to cross the Aire at Ferrybridge, a strategic point on their contemplated line of advance to the city of York. It was here, early in the morning of the 28th, that the bloody prelude to the battle opened, in a sudden Lancastrian attack on the Yorkist outpost. Lord Fitzwalter, the Yorkist commander, lay asleep in bed at the time. Seizing a pole-axe at his sudden awakening, he was slain almost instantly, but his force, succeeding in driving the enemy across the river, took up a position at Brotherton, the Lancastrians falling back in disorder to Dintingdale, near Barkston Ash, where, later in the day, the Lancastrian, Lord Clifford, was slain by an arrow.
The advance-guard of the Lancastrian army now fell back upon the main body, which took up a well-chosen position between the villages of Saxton and Towton, lying across a rising road which led out of the former place, and having on its right the steeply falling meadows leading down into the deep depression of Towton Dale, where the Cock Beck still wanders in far-flung loops in the flat lands below. On their left the ground stretched away for some distance and then fell gently towards the flats of Church Fenton.
At their rear the road descended steeply again into Towton, while Tadcaster lay three miles and York eleven miles beyond. It was a position of great strength and one that could only possibly be turned from the left. The fatal defect of it lay in the chance, in the case of defeat, of the beaten army being disorganised by a retreat down so steep a road, leading as it did to the crossing of a stream swollen with winter rains.
In visiting this spot, we must bear in mind that the broad road from Ferrybridge to Tadcaster and York was not then in existence. The way lay across the elevated land which, rising from Barkston Ash towards Saxton, reaches to a considerable height between that village and Towton. From this commanding spot the valleys of the Wharfe and Ouse lie plainly unfolded, and the towers of York itself may be seen on the skyline, on the verge of this wide expanse of meadows and woodlands.
The hedgerows on the way to the battle-field are remarkable for the profusion of briar roses that grow here in place of the more usual blackberry brambles and thorns, and Bloody Meadow, the spot where the thickest of the fight took place, was until quite recently thickly overgrown with the red and white roses with which Nature had from time immemorial planted this scene of strife. Latterly they have all been grubbed up by farmers, keener on the purity of their grasslands than on historic associations.
The main body of the Yorkists, advancing to Saxton, opened the attack on the Lancastrians early in the morning of Palm Sunday, the 29th. The centre of the fight was in the meadow on the left hand of the road leading towards Towton, a short distance beyond Towton Dale quarry. The Lancastrians numbered 60,000 men, the Yorkists 48,600. For ten hours the furious encounter raged, “sore fought, for hope of life was set aside on every part.” Six years’ warfare, from 1455, when the first battle of St. Albans had been fought, had rendered the enemies implacable. Almost every combatant had already lost kinsfolk, and intense hatred caused the order on both sides that no quarter was to be given and no prisoners taken. The day was bitterly cold, and snowstorms swept the upland, driving in the faces of the Lancastrians with such blinding fury that their arrows, shot in reply to the Yorkist volleys, could not be properly aimed, and so missed their mark. A hand-to-hand encounter with swords and battle-axes then followed, obstinately fought, but resulting practically in the butchery of the Lancastrians, for nearly the half of their whole force were slain or met their death either in Towton Dale or at the crossing of the stream down the road past Towton Hall. The rest fled to Tadcaster and on to York, where Henry the Sixth, the Queen, and the young Prince of Wales were waiting the result of the fight. They left immediately, and the victorious Duke of York entered the ancient city.
Many proud nobles fell that day with the men-at-arms; among others, Lord Dacre, fighting for the Red Rose, shot by a boy concealed in what the country people call a “bur-tree,” that is to say, an elder. He lies buried in the churchyard of Saxton, on the north side of the church, under a much-mutilated altar-tomb, whose inscription refers to him as “verus miles”—a true knight. Tradition yet tells of his death, in the local rhyme:—
The Lord of Dacres
Was slain in the North Acres,
fields still known by that name. Many grave mounds remain in Bloody Meadow, where a rude cross leans, half hidden under a tangled hedge; and in 1848, during some excavations in Saxton churchyard, a stratum of bones, four feet in thickness, was exposed, the poor relics of those who fell in the great fight. Others still are said to have been buried in the little chapel of Lead, a mile away, by the banks of the Cock, whose stream ran red that day. A few stones at the back of Towton Hall mark the place where a votive chapel was erected, where prayers might be said for the souls of the dead, whose numbers on both sides are said by one authority to have reached 36,776.
Relics have been found on the battle-field. Many years ago a wandering antiquary found a farmer’s wife breaking sugar with a battle-axe discovered in the river. She did not know what it was, but he did, and secured it. It is now at Alnwick Castle. In 1785 was found a gold ring which had belonged to the Earl of Northumberland, who was carried mortally wounded from the field. It weighs an ounce, and bears the Percy Lion, with inscription, “Now ys thus.” Another interesting and pathetic find was a spur, engraved with “En loial amour, tout mon coer,” the relic of some unknown knight.