There was a certain Dame Eleanor Disney, who, to do honour to this strange kind of king, came, splendidly dressed, with her husband, Sir Henry, to one of the receptions. James’s eye lighted upon all this finery, and his frugal mind was shocked. “Wha,” he asked, “be that lady wi’ a lairdship to her bock?”
But the most stirring of Newark’s historic days were yet to come. Newark to the last was loyal to Charles the First. Three times was the town besieged by the Parliament, and never taken. All the inhabitants armed and did excellent service, making sorties and capturing troops of Parliamentary horse; and had not the royal cause failed elsewhere, Newark must have emerged, triumphant, at the end. But at last all that remained were some few outlying garrisons throughout the country. Newark was especially commanded by the king to discontinue a hopeless resistance, and accordingly the town laid down its arms in 1646. It was then that the castle was ruined.
It is a highly picturesque ruin to-day, and lacking nothing in itself of grandeur, only needs a more effective site. As it stands, only slightly elevated above the river and the surrounding levels, this historic castle has not the advantages that belong to fortresses like Ludlow and Harlech, perched on their rocky heights. But it has done its duty and still serves to give a note of dignity to Newark town, as one approaches it by the long straight levels of the road from the north. It looks much the same to-day as when Rowlandson made his sketch of it, with the coach dashing over the bridge, more than a hundred years ago; the projecting Tudor oriel windows still looking forth upon the sullen tide from the more ancient walls, their crumbling stones scarce more decayed than then. The old wooden bridge, however, that formerly spanned the Devon, was pulled down and rebuilt in 1775.
The great glory of Newark is its beautiful church, with that soaring spire which is visible for miles away, before the town itself is glimpsed. Not so tall as Grantham spire, it is as beautiful in its simpler style, and the church is better placed in the town than that of Grantham. Especially striking is the view across the great market-place, the grey Early English and Decorated spire, with its numerous belfry-lights, and the fine windows and bold arcading of the tower forming a splendidly effective contrast with the seventeenth and eighteenth century red-brick houses facing the square. Newark and Grantham spires are really the products of an old-time rivalry between the two towns. Either town is satisfied that it possesses the best, and so the peace is kept throughout the ages.
A relic of old times is found in the custom at Newark known as “Ringing for Gofer.” On six successive Sunday evenings, beginning twelve Sundays before Christmas, the old parish church bells are rung for one hour, complying with the terms of a bequest left by a merchant named Gofer, over two centuries ago. He had on one occasion lost his way at night in Sherwood Forest, then infested by robbers of no very chivalrous instincts, who required, not “your money or your life,” but both. Just as he had given up hope, he heard these bells of Newark, and by their sound he made his way to safety. In memory of his deliverance he left a sum of money for this bell-ringing.
The market-square has always been the centre of Newark’s life. It is singularly like the great market-square of Nottingham, on a smaller scale, and, like it, is partly surrounded by houses with a colonnaded piazza. An empty void now, save on the weekly market-day, that occasion finds its broad, cobble-stoned space thickly covered with stalls, while groups of farmers throng the pavements, and with their samples of corn displayed in the palms of their hands sell and buy in immense quantities. In the old times this vast empty square was peopled every day with arriving or departing coaches, and its pavements beset with passengers mounting or alighting, for the celebrated inns of Newark were mostly situated here, and the chief of them are here, even now, on the opposite side from the church, and adjoining one another. Newark is said to have once had no fewer than fifty inns. The classical Town Hall, built in 1773, on the west side of the square, stands on the site of two of them, and many others have been converted to different uses. Here on the south side are the “Clinton Arms,” so called in honour of the Duke of Newcastle’s family, powerful in these parts; the “Saracen’s Head,” with a bust of an alleged (but very pallid and mild-looking) Saracen on its frontage; and the “White Hart,” most ancient of all these existing hostelries. An inn of this name is spoken of as existing here in 1113. A “Saracen’s Head” stood here, certainly as far back as 1341, but unhappily the existing house only dates from 1721. This house is the one mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, who says, “The travellers who have visited Newark more lately will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor.”
Let us put on record the name of this remarkable person: William Thompson, landlord from 1784 to 1819. His “more rough predecessor” was perhaps the landlord who dispensed such open-handed and free hospitality to Jeanie Deans, when that somewhat priggish young woman stayed there, and on leaving asked for her “lawing.”
