SCARBOROUGH AND WHITBY.
SCARBOROUGH SPA AND ESPLANADE.
The coast of Yorkshire affords the boldest and grandest scenery on the eastern shore of England. A great protruding backbone of chalk rocks projects far into the North Sea at Flamborough Head, and makes one of the most prominent landmarks on all that rugged, iron-bound coast. This is the Ocellum Promontorium of Ptolemy, and its lighthouse is three hundred and thirty feet above the sea, while far away over the waters the view is superb. From Flamborough Head northward beyond Whitby the coast-line is a succession of abrupt white cliffs and bold headlands, presenting magnificent scenery. About twenty-three miles north of Flamborough is the "Queen of Northern Watering-places," as Scarborough is pleased to be called, where a bold headland three hundred feet high juts out into the North Sea for a mile, having on each side semicircular bays, each about a mile and a quarter wide. At the extreme point of the lozenge-shaped promontory stands the ruined castle which named the town Scar-burgh, with the sea washing the rocky base of its foundations on three sides. Steep cliffs run precipitously down to the narrow beach that fringes these bays around, and on the cliffs is the town of Scarborough, while myriads of fishing-vessels cluster about the breakwater-piers that have been constructed to make a harbor of refuge. It would be difficult to find a finer situation, and art has improved it to the utmost, especially as mineral springs add the attractions of a spa to the sea air and bathing. The old castle, battered by war and the elements, is a striking ruin, the precipitous rock on which it stands being a natural fortress. The Northmen when they first invaded Britain made its site their stronghold, but the present castle was not built until the reign of King Stephen, when its builder, William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle, was so powerful in this part of Yorkshire that it was said he was "in Stephen's days the more real king." But Henry II. compelled the proud earl to submit to his authority, though "with much searching of heart and choler," and Scarborough afterwards became one of the royal castles, Edward I. in his earlier years keeping court there. It was there that Edward II. was besieged and his favorite Gaveston starved into surrender, and then beheaded on Blacklow Hill in violation of the terms of his capitulation. Scarborough was repeatedly attacked by the Scotch, but it subsequently enjoyed an interval of peace until the Reformation. In Wyatt's rebellion his friends secured possession of the castle by stratagem. A number of his men, disguised as peasants, on market-day strolled one by one into the castle, and then at a given signal overpowered the sentinels and admitted the rest of their band. The castle, however, was soon recaptured from the rebels, and Thomas Stafford, the leader in this enterprise, was beheaded. From this event is derived the proverb of a "Scarborough warning"—a word and a blow, but the blow first. In Elizabeth's reign Scarborough was little else but a fishing-village, and so unfortunate that it appealed to the queen for aid. In the Civil War the castle was held by the Royalists, and was besieged for six months. While the guns could not reduce it, starvation did, and the Parliamentary army took possession. Three years later the governor declared for the king, and the castle again stood a five months' siege, finally surrendering. Since then it has fallen into decay, but it was a prison-house for George Fox the Quaker, who was treated with severity there. A little way down the hill are the ruins of the ancient church of St. Mary, which has been restored.
SCARBOROUGH FROM THE SEA.
The cliffs on the bay to the south of Castle Hill have been converted into a beautifully-terraced garden and promenade. Here, amid flowers and summer houses and terraced walks, is the fashionable resort, the footpaths winding up and down the face of the cliffs or broadening into the gardens, where music is provided and there are nightly illuminations. Millions of money have been expended in beautifying the front of the cliffs adjoining the Spa, which is on the seashore, and to which Scarborough owed its original fame as a watering-place. The springs were discovered in 1620, and by the middle of the last century had become fashionable, but the present ornamental Spa was erected only about forty years ago. There is a broad esplanade in front. There are two springs, one containing more salt, lime, and magnesia sulphates than the other. In the season, this esplanade—in fact, the entire front of the cliffs—is full of visitors, while before it are rows of little boxes on wheels, the bathing-houses that are drawn into the water. The surf is usually rather gentle, however, though the North Sea can knock things about at a lively rate in a storm.
North of Scarborough the coast extends, a grand escarpment of cliffs and headlands, past Robin Hood's Bay, with its rocky barriers, the North Cheek and the South Cheek, to the little harbor of another watering-place, Whitby. The cliffs here are more precipitous and the situation even more picturesque than at Scarborough. The river Esk has carved a deep glen in the Yorkshire moorland, and in this the town nestles, climbing the steep banks on either side of the river. The ruins of Whitby Abbey are located high up on the side of the ravine opposite to the main part of the town, and they still present a noble if dilapidated pile. The nave fell after a storm in the last century, and a similar cause threw down the central tower in 1830. The choir and northern transept are still standing, extremely beautiful Early English work: only fragments of other portions of the abbey remain. This was in olden times the Westminster of Northumbria, containing the tombs of Eadwine and of Oswy, with kings and nobles grouped around them. It has been over twelve hundred years since a religious house was founded at Whitby, at first known as the White Homestead, an outgrowth of the abbey, which was founded by Oswy and presided over by the sainted Hilda, who chose the spot upon the lonely crags by the sea. The fame of Whitby as a place of learning soon spread, and here lived the cowherd Cædmon, the first English poet. The Danes sacked and burned it but after the Norman Conquest, under the patronage of the Percies, the abbey grew in wealth and fame. Fragments of the monastery yet remain, and on the hill a little lower down is the parish church, with a long flight of steps leading up to it from the harbor along which the people go, and when there is a funeral the coffin has to be slung in order to be carried up the steps. Whitby is famous for its jet, which is worked into numerous ornaments: this is a variety of fossil wood, capable of being cut and taking a high polish. It is also celebrated for its production of iron-ore, which indeed is a product of all this part of Yorkshire; while at night, along the valley of the Tees, not far north of Whitby, the blaze of the myriads of furnaces light up the heavens like the fire of Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. Among the tales of the abbey is that which
"Whitby's nuns exulting told,
How to their house three barons bold
Must menial service do."
WHITBY ABBEY.
It appears that three gentlemen—De Bruce, De Percy, and Allaston—were hunting boars on the abbey-lands in 1159, and roused a fine one, which their dogs pressed hard and chased to the hermitage, where it ran into the chapel and dropped dead. The hermit closed the door against the hounds, and the hunters, coming up, were enraged to find the dogs baulked of their prey, and on the hermit's opening the door they attacked him with their boar-spears and mortally wounded him. It was not long before they found that this was dangerous sport, and they took sanctuary at Scarborough. The Church, however, did not protect those who had insulted it, and they were given up to the abbot of Whitby, who was about to make an example of them when the dying hermit summoned the abbot and the prisoners to his bedside and granted them their lives and lands. But it was done upon a peculiar tenure: upon Ascension Day at sunrise they were to come to the wood on Eskdale-side, and the abbot's officer was to deliver to each "ten stakes, eleven stout stowers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by you, or some of you, with a knife of one penny price;" these they were to take on their backs to Whitby before nine o'clock in the morning. Then said the hermit, "If it be full sea your labor and service shall cease; and if low water, each of you shall set your stakes to the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them on each side with your yethers, and so stake on each side with your stout stowers, that they may stand three tides without removing by the force thereof. You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most cruelly slay me, and that you may the better call to God for mercy, repent unfeignedly of your sins, and do good works. The officer of Eskdale-side shall blow, 'Out on you, out on you, out on you for this heinous crime!'" Failure of this strange service was to forfeit their lands to the abbot of Whitby.