The Newby Hall of to-day, the seat of R. C. De Grey Vyner, Esquire, is a grand structure, having been designed by Sir Christopher Wren about the year 1705. In the Park is the beautiful Memorial Church, built by the late Lady Mary Vyner, in memory of her son, Frederick George Vyner, who was slain by Greek brigands in the year 1870.[B]
[B] The late Dr. Stanley delivered, in Westminster Abbey, one of his beautiful and pathetic “Laments,” after the sorrowful tidings reached England that this fine young Englishman, by a deed of violence, had passed into the world of the “Unseen Perfectness.”
One mile from Newby is Mulwith.[A] It is reached by what evidently has been an avenue in days of yore, connecting the two manor-houses.
[A] R. C. De Grey Vyner, Esquire (brother-in-law to the Most Honourable the Marquis of Ripon, K.G., of Studley Royal, Lord Lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire), to-day owns Givendale, Newby, and Mulwith. They are within about five miles of Ripon, and can be also reached from Boroughbridge.
The old hall of Mulwith was most probably a castellated mansion, quadrangular in shape, with a Gothic chapel, gateway, drawbridge, and moat, pretty much like Markenfield Hall, near Ripon, at the present day. There was a fire at Mulwith in the year 1593, we know from the “Life of Mary Ward.” And it may be, that the hall was then razed to the ground and never afterwards rebuilt.[B]
[B] Mary Ward was born at Mulwith, in 1585 (see ante, p. [59]). Among her devoted scholars, who crossed the seas either with her or to her, were Susanna Rookwood, Helena Catesby, and Elizabeth Keyes, each respectively related, closely related, to the conspirators bearing those names. — See “Life of Mary Ward,” vols. i. and ii.
To-day Mulwith is a pleasant farmstead, built of brick with slated roof. It is a two-storied, six-windowed dwelling, with homestead, gardens, and orchards all adjoining.[C]
[C] My friend Mr. Renfric Oates, of Maidenhead, Berks., kindly made me, when in Harrogate (in May, 1901), a sketch of Mulwith, which I value highly. Since then a relative of his has bestowed upon me a portrait of Mary Ward herself. So I am fortunate indeed. In the “Life of Mary Ward,” by M. Mary Salome (Burns & Oates), the lady who so generously gifted me with a picture I can scarcely prize enough, there is a copy from the first of that remarkable series of paintings known as the Painted Life of Mary Ward, which represents Mary (then a little maiden betwixt two and three years old) toddling across the room, attired, as to her head, in a tiny close-fitting cap. This picture bears the following note in ancient German: — “‘Jesus’ was the first word of the infant, Mary, after which she did not speak for many months.” Another of the famous pictures in the Painted Life is one representing Mary, at the age of thirteen, making her first Communion, at Harewell Hall, Dacre, Nidderdale. (I visited Harewell Hall, which is still owned by the Inglebies, of Ripley, as in the days of Mary Ward, on Wednesday, the 10th April, 1901, being courteously shown round the Hall by Miss Simpson, the tenant. The River Nidd flows at the foot of this ancient, picturesque dwelling.)
In front of Mulwith still flows, as in the ancient days, the historic waters of the Ure.[A] On almost every side the eye is gladdened with woodland patches embroidering the horizon with that “sylvan scenery which never palls.”[B]
[A] Near Newby, in February, 1869, Sir Charles Slingsby, Bart., of Scriven, when a-hunting was, with some other gentlemen, drowned in the act of crossing in a boat the River Ure, then swollen high through February floods. The event cast a profound gloom over Yorkshire for many a long day. (The writer was eight years of age when this melancholy catastrophe took place, and well does he remember the grief depicted on the faces of the good citizens of York on the morrow of that sad disaster.)