FINE ARTS.
CROSSES.[6]
We resume the illustration of these curious structures with two specimens of interesting architectural character, and memorable association with our early history. The first is Neville's Cross, at Beaurepaire (or Bear Park, as it is now called), about two miles north-west from Durham. Here David II., King of Scots, encamped with his army before the celebrated battle of Red Hills, or Neville's Cross, as it was afterwards termed, from the above elegant stone cross, erected to record the victory by Lord Ralph Neville. The English sovereign, Edward III., had just achieved the glorious conquest of Crecy; and the Scottish king judged this a fit opportunity for his invasion. However, "the great northern barons of England, Percy and Neville, Musgrave, Scope, and Hastings, assembled their forces in numbers sufficient to show that, though the conqueror of Crecy, with his victorious army, was absent in France, there were Englishmen enough left at home to protect the frontiers of his kingdom from violation. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the prelates of Durham, Carlisle, and Lincoln, sent their retainers, and attended the rendezvous in person, to add religious enthusiasm to the patriotic zeal of the barons. Ten thousand soldiers, who had been sent over to Calais to reinforce Edward III.'s army, were countermanded in this exigency, and added to the northern army.[7]"
The battle, which was fought October 17, 1346, lasted only three hours, but was uncommonly destructive. The English archers, who were in front, were at first thrown into confusion, and driven back; but being reinforced by a body of horse, repulsed their opponents, and the engagement soon became general. The Scottish army was entirely defeated, and the king himself made prisoner; though previous to the fight he is said to have regarded the English with contempt, and as a raw and undisciplined host, by no means competent to resist the power of his more hardy veterans.
"Amid repeated charges, and the most dispiriting slaughter by the continuous discharge of the English arrows, David showed that he had the courage, though not the talents, of his father (Robert Bruce). He was twice severely wounded with arrows, but continued to encourage to the last the few of his peers and officers who were still fighting around him."[8] He scorned to ask quarter, and was taken alive with difficulty. Rymer says, "The Scotch king, though he had two spears hanging in his body, his leg desperately wounded, and being disarmed, his sword having been beaten out of his hand, disdained captivity, and provoked the English by opprobrious language to kill him. When John Copeland, who was governor of Roxborough Castle, advised him to yield, he struck him on the face with his gauntlet so fiercely, that he knocked out two of his teeth. Copeland conveyed him out of the field as his prisoner. Upon Copeland's refusing to deliver up his royal captive to the queen (Philippa), who stayed at Newcastle during the battle, the king sent for him to Calais, where he excused his refusal so handsomely, that the king sent him back with a reward of 500l. a year in lands, where he himself should choose it, near his own dwelling, and made him a knight banneret."[9]
Hume states Philippa to have assembled a body of little more than 12,000 men, and to have rode through the ranks of her army, exhorting every man to do his duty, and to take revenge on these barbarous ravagers. "Nor could she be persuaded to leave the field till the armies were on the point of engaging. The Scots have often been unfortunate in the great pitched battles which they have fought with the English: even though they commonly declined such engagements where the superiority of numbers was not on their side; but never did they receive a more fatal blow than the present. They were broken and chased off the field: fifteen thousand of them, some historians say twenty thousand, were slain; among whom were Edward Keith, Earl Mareschal, and Sir Thomas Charteris, Chancellor: and the king himself was taken prisoner, with the Earls of Sutherland, Fife, Monteith, Carrick, Lord Douglas, and many other noblemen." The captive king was conveyed to London, and afterwards in solemn procession to the Tower, attended by a guard of 20,000 men, and all the city companies in complete pageantry; while "Philippa crossed the sea at Dover, and was received in the English camp before Calais, with all the triumph due to her rank, her merit, and her success." These indeed were bright days of chivalry and gallantry.
"The ground whereon the battle was fought," say the topographers of the county,[10] "is about one mile west from Durham; it is hilly, and in some parts very steep, particularly towards the river. Near it, in a deep vale, is a small mount, or hillock, called the Maiden's Bower, on which the holy Corporex Cloth, wherewith St. Cuthbert covered the chalice when he used to say mass, was displayed on the point of a spear, by the monks of Durham, who, when the victory was obtained, gave notice by signal to their brethren stationed on the great tower of the Cathedral, who immediately proclaimed it to the inhabitants of the city, by singing Te Deum. From that period the victory was annually commemorated in a similar manner by the choristers, till the occurrence of the Civil Wars, when the custom was discontinued; but again revived on the Restoration," and observed till nearly the close of the last century.
The site of the Cross is by the road-side: it was defaced and broken down in the year 1589. Its pristine beauty is thus minutely described in Davis's Rights and Monuments: "On the west side of the city of Durham, where two roads pass each other, a most famous and elegant cross of stone work was erected to the honour of God, &c. at the sole cost of Ralph, Lord Neville, which cross had seven steps about it, every way squared to the socket wherein the stalk of the cross stood, which socket was fastened to a large square stone; the sole, or bottom stone being of a great thickness, viz. a yard and a half every way: this stone was the eighth step. The stalk of the cross was in length three yards and a half up to the boss, having eight sides all of one piece; from the socket it was fixed into the boss above, into which boss the stalk was deeply soldered with lead. In the midst of the stalk, in every second square, was the Neville's cross; a saltire in a scutcheon, being Lord Neville's arms, finely cut; and, at every corner of the socket, was a picture of one of the four Evangelists, finely set forth and carved. The boss at the top of the stalk was an octangular stone, finely cut and bordered, and most curiously wrought; and in every square of the nether side thereof was Neville's Cross, in one square, and the bull's head in the next, so in the same reciprocal order about the boss. On the top of the boss was a stalk of stone, (being a cross a little higher than the rest,) whereon was cut, on both sides of the stalk, the picture of our Saviour Christ, crucified; the picture of the Blessed Virgin on one side, and St. John the Evangelist on the other; both standing on the top of the boss. All which pictures were most artificially wrought together, and finely carved out of one entire stone; some parts thereof, though carved work, both on the east and west sides, with a cover of stone likewise over their heads, being all most finely and curiously wrought together out of the same hollow stone, which cover had a covering of lead."
The second specimen (see the Cut) stands by the side of the highway over Hedgeley Moor, in the adjoining county of Northumberland. This Cross is a record of the War of the Roses. Here, in one of the skirmishes preliminary to the celebrated victory at Hexham (May 12, 1464), Sir Ralph Percy was slain, by Lord Montacute, or Montague, brother to the Earl of Warwick, and warden of the east marches between Scotland and England. His dying words are stated to have been, "I have saved the bird in my breast:" meaning his faith to his party. The memorial is a square stone pillar, embossed with the arms of Percy and Lucy: they are nearly effaced by time, though the personal valour of the hero is written in the less perishable page of history.
The Nevilles are distinguished personages in the pages of the historians of the North. In Durham they have left a lasting memorial of their magnificence in Raby Castle, the principal founder of which was John de Neville, Earl of Westmoreland; who, in 1379, obtained a license to castellate his manor of Raby; though a part of the structure appears to have been of more ancient date. Leland speaks of it in his time as "the largest castle of lodgings in all the north country." It remains to this day the most perfect castellated mansion, or, more strictly, castle, in the kingdom, and its "hall" eclipses even the chivalrous splendour of Windsor: here 700 knights, who held of the Nevilles, are said to have been entertained at one time. The whole establishment is maintained with much of the hospitable glories of the olden time by the present distinguished possessor of Raby, the Marquess of Cleveland.