Northumberland Yesterday and To-day

by Jean F. Terry

Alnwick Castle

Alnwick itself, with its quaint, uneven, narrow streets, and grey stone houses, looks the part of a Border town even in these days; and the grim old Hotspur tower, bestriding the main street like an ancient warrior still on guard, helps to give the illusion an air of reality. The tower, however, was not built by Hotspur, but by his son. The names of the streets, too, are redolent of the days when the only safety for the inhabitants of a town worth plundering lay in the strength of its walls and gateways. Bondgate, Bailiffgate, and Narrowgate, still speak of the days of siege and sortie, of fierce attack and stout defence.

The magnificent castle which dominates the town stands majestically at the top of a green slope above the Aln, its vast array of walls and towers far along the ridge, fronting the North as though still looking, albeit with a seemingly languid interest, for the coming of the Scots who were such inveterate foes of its successive lords. The principal entrance, however, the Barbican, faces southwards to the town, and here the massive gateway, with portcullis complete, and crowned by quaint life-size figures of warriors in various attitudes of defence, conveys the impression that the huge giant is still alert and on guard. The history of Alnwick is the history of the castle and its lords, from the days of Gilbert Tyson, variously known as Tison, Tisson, and De Tesson, one of the Conqueror’s standardbearers, upon whom this northern estate was bestowed, until the present time. After being held by the family of De Vesci (of which the modern rendering is Vasey—a name found all over south-east Northumberland) for over two hundred years, it passed into the hands of the house of Percy. The Percies, who hailed from the village of Perce in Normandy, had large estates in Yorkshire, bestowed by the Conqueror on the first of the name to arrive in England in his train. The family, however, was represented by an heiress only in the reign of Henry II., whose second wife, a daughter of the Duke of Brabant, thought this heiress, with her wide possessions, a suitable match for her own young half-brother Joceline of Louvain. The marriage took place; and thereafter followed the long line of Henry Percies (Henry being a favourite name of the Counts of Louvain) who played such a large part in the history of both England and Scotland; for, as nearly every Percy was a Warden of the Marches, Scottish doings concerned them more or less intimately—indeed, often more so than English affairs.

It was the third Henry Percy who purchased Alnwick in 1309 from Antony Bec, Bishop of Durham and guardian of the last De Vesci, and from that time the fortunes of the Percies, though they still held their Yorkshire estates, were linked permanently with the little town on the Aln, and the fortress which alike commanded and defended it. The fourth Henry Percy began to build the castle as we see it now; but to call him “the fourth” is a little confusing, as he was the second Henry Percy, Lord of Alnwick. On the whole, it will be clearer to begin the enumerations of the various Henry Percies from the time they became Lords of Alnwick. It was, then, Henry Percy the second, Lord of Alnwick, who began the re-building of the castle; he also was jointly responsible for the safety of the realm during the absence of Edward III. in the French wars, and in this official capacity, no less than in that of a Border baron whose delight it was to exchange lusty blows with an ever-ready foe, he helped to win the battle of Neville’s Cross. His son, Henry, married a sister of John of Gaunt, and their son, the next Henry Percy, was that friend who stood John Wycliffe in such good stead, when he was cited to appear before the Bishop of London. Henry Percy, who had been made Earl Marshal of England, and the Duke of Lancaster took their places one on each side of Wycliffe, and accompanied him to St. Paul’s, clearing a way for him through the crowd. It does not belong to this story to tell how their private quarrels with the Bishop prevented Wycliffe’s interrogation, and how he left the Cathedral without having uttered a word; we are concerned at the moment with his North-country friend, who, the same year, was created Earl of Northumberland, which title he was given after the coronation of Richard II. Nor was this all, for he was that Northumberland whose doings in the next reign fill so large a part of Shakespeare’s Henry IV., and he was the father of the most famous Percy of all, the gallant Henry Percy the fifth, better known as “Harry Hotspur.” Hotspur never became Earl of Northumberland, being slain at Shrewsbury in the lifetime of his father, whose estates were forfeited under attainder on account of the rebellion of himself and his son against King Henry IV.

King Henry V. restored Hotspur’s son, the second Earl, to his family honours, and the Percies were staunch Lancastrians during the Wars of the Roses which followed, the third Earl and three of his brothers losing their lives in the cause. The fifth Earl was a gorgeous person whose magnificence equalled, almost, that of royalty. Henry Percy, the sixth Earl of Northumberland, loved Ann Boleyn, and was her accepted suitor before King Henry VIII. unfortunately discovered the lady’s charm, and interfered in a highhanded “bluff King Has” fashion, and young Percy lost his prospective bride. He had no son, although married later to the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and his nephew, Thomas Percy, became the seventh Earl.

Thereafter, a succession of plots and counterplots—the Rising of the North, the plots to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and the Gunpowder Plot—each claimed a Percy among their adherents. On this account the eighth and ninth Earls spent many years in the Tower, but the tenth Earl, Algernon, fought for King Charles in the Civil War, the male line of the Percy-Louvain house ending with Josceline, the eleventh Earl. The heiress to the vast Percy estates married the Duke of Somerset; and her grand-daughter married a Yorkshire knight, Sir Hugh Smithson, who in 1766 was created the first Duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy, and it is their descendants who now represent the famous old house.

At various points in the town are memorials of the constant wars between Percies and Scots in which so many Percies spent the greater part of their lives. At the side of the broad shady road called Rotten Row, leading from the West Lodge to Bailiffgate, a tablet of stone marks the spot where William the Lion of Scotland was captured as we have already seen, in 1174, by Odinel de Umfraville and his friends; and there are many others of similar interest.

Within the park, approached by the gate at the foot of Canongate, is the fine gateway which is all that is left of Alnwick Abbey. No more peaceful spot could have been found than this, on the level greensward, surrounded by fine trees which shelter it on all sides save one, and near the brink of the little Aln, whose banks are thickly covered with wild flowers, while the steep slope on the opposite side of the river is overhung with shady woods. The extent of the parks may be judged from the fact that the enclosing wall is about five miles long. At the foot of Bailiffgate, on the edge of a steep ridge above the descent to Canongate and the banks of the river, the ancient parish church, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Michael stands in a commanding position. The present building dates from the fourteenth century, and occupies the site of an earlier one, whose few remaining stones have been built into the present structure. Two other reminders of long-past days are to be found in Alnwick; one is the large stone in the Market Place to which the bull ring used to be fixed in the days when bull-baiting and bear-baiting took place; and the other, a relic of days still further back in the distant years, is the sounding of the Curfew Bell, which is still rung here every evening at eight o’clock. Altogether there is the quaintest and most unexpected mingling of the ancient and modern in the little feudal town.

Between Alnwick and the sea, the Aln winds its way past Alnmouth Station, formerly known as Bilton Junction, and past Lesbury, a pretty little tree-shaded village, to the sandy flats by Alnmouth where it ends its journey in the North Sea.

The Till, by whose side we shall next wander, flows in the opposite direction, for that historic stream is a tributary of “Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep,” and curves from the Cheviots round to the North-west, where it enters the larger stream at Tillmouth. It begins life as the Breamish, tumbling down the slopes of Cushat Law within sight of all the giants of the Cheviot range. The Linhope Burn, a fellow traveller down these steep hillsides, forms in its course the Linhope Spout, one of the largest waterfalls to be found amongst the Cheviots, before it joins the Breamish, which then flows through a country of green slopes and grassy levels to Ingram. This village possesses an old church with massive square tower and windows which suggest the fortress rather than the church. The heights which stretch eastward from the Cheviots and bound the valley of the Till add not a little to the beauty and variety of the scenery in this district.