Our course, after leaving Wensley, depends on our further intentions. The course I recommend is this: to drive up Wensleydale on the lower road, past the cascades and village of Aysgarth—named by the Danes Asgard, the home of the gods—past Bainbridge and Hawes; to cross the river at Yorebridge, and return by Askrigg and Redmire, making a short digression to Bolton Castle; then, turning to the left beyond Redmire, to strike across the "moorish lands" to Richmond. These Yorkshire moors, which seemed so "ill-looking" to Defoe, are neither black nor frightful in our later eyes, but glorious with colour and light. The old road from Leyburn across Barden and Hipswell Moors has rather a bad surface, and a hill that is stiff enough to account for the making of the new road; but on a sunny summer's evening the view from the highest point is lovely beyond words. Beautiful it must be at all seasons and in all weathers, but it is only when the air is clear that the head of Swaledale may be seen on one side of the ridge and the far-away slopes of Wensleydale on the other, and it is only when the sun is sinking that those distant hills are washed with gold. The moors sweep round us far and near; a line of dark firs crosses them mid-way; patches of vivid green break through the heather; and down in the valley the Swale shows as a thin thread of twisted silver. Behind us, towards Middleham, the more level country is a dark blue streak beyond the crimson of the sunlit heather. The white road, straight and narrow, lies before us.
Those who choose this way will have little to regret, and will have one real advantage: they will approach Richmond by the road which gives the finest view of that fair town. They must remember, however, that there is a very steep downward gradient at one point between the moors and the river, and at the bottom of it a sharp turn over a bridge. The run up Swaledale may easily be achieved from Richmond, where there is a comfortable hotel.
The other alternative is to cross from Wensleydale to Swaledale by way of the Buttertubs Pass. Now, I do not wish to be too encouraging about this pass! It is a place for the well-equipped only, and for those who do not suffer too much when their tyres are suffering. Many cars, of course, have passed this way, and many more will do so; but none the less it is not a suitable road for motoring. It is precipitous in places, narrow everywhere, and the surface is almost entirely composed of loose stones. Moreover, a grassy slope, so steep as to be almost a precipice, drops away from the edge of it; and though I am assured the pass is perfectly safe, there are points in it where nothing but faith in one's driver can make it comfortable! The scenery is magnificent.
Starting from Wensley, we must take the upper of the two roads to Redmire marked on Bartholomew's map, for the lower one, apparently, runs through Lord Bolton's park. It occurs to one here, as in several other places in Yorkshire, that it would be a good plan if map-makers would adopt some distinctive way of marking private roads. The views from the high ground are lovely. All Wensleydale lies before us—green as an emerald in the valley, bare and grey on the hilltops, dimly blue in the distance. Over it all lies that haze of luminous gold that the sunshine gives to these dales. Far away, but clearly visible, Bolton Castle stands up on the hillside, massive and grey and relentless, a queen's prison. At Redmire Station we turn aside to see it.
"The castelle," says Leland, "as no great howse, is al compactid in 4 or 5 towers." Outwardly, it is probably much the same as in his day: a square of cold, grey stone with a tower at each corner, gloomy and forbidding, with no attempt at ornament, no break in the solid masonry except the tiny windows. To Leland it was simply the castle of the Scropes, the work of the famous Chancellor who fought at Créçy in his younger days, the fortress of a family that was perpetually distinguishing itself. So he looked at it and passed it by. It was "no great howse." But we see it with other eyes, because it has been touched by the charm that wins us in spite of our better judgment, just as it won men long ago in spite of theirs—the glamour of the Queen of Scots. The banquet hall where so many Scropes have feasted—bishops, statesmen, judges, Knights of the Garter—leaves us cold; we do not care to know there was a chantry here; even the cruel dungeon in the ground, with the hole through which the victim was lowered and the bolt to which he was fastened and the slab of stone that was fixed over the top, only calls for a passing shudder. To us the interest of Bolton Castle is centred in the whitewashed room upstairs.
BOLTON CASTLE.
It was a summer evening, "one hour after sunsetting," when Mary rode into that grass-grown court with Sir Francis Knollys and Sir George Bowes, and two companies of soldiers, and six ladies, and forty-three horses, and four cartloads of luggage. She was not yet very unhappy. "She hath been very quiet," wrote Knollys of the journey, "very tractable, and void of displeasant countenance." She was less tractable when the time came for her to leave Bolton: she had learnt much meanwhile. For the months spent at Bolton were the crisis of her misfortunes. In this upper room she sat "knitting of a work" in the deep recess of the window, or writing endless letters by the fire, or turning young Christopher Norton's head, while the Casket Letters were being read at Hampton Court, and her accusers were discussing her character at York, and her "dear cousin and sister" was pressing her to abdicate her throne. It was in this room that she wrote at last to her advisers: "I pray you do not speak to me again about abdication, for I am deliberately resolved rather to die than to resign my crown; and the last words that I shall utter in my life shall be the words of a Queen of Scotland."
She wrote a vast number of other letters here. Some were to the young Queen of Spain, her sister-in-law, who, as Elizabeth of France, had been her playmate at the Court of Henri II.; some were about the care of her infant son; and some, of a conciliatory kind, were to the Queen of England. "Toutesfoyes," she wrote, "sur votre parolle il n'est rien que je n'entreprisse, car je ne doutay jamays de votre honneur et royalle fidelitay."