The fine high-road that skirts the eastern moors, the road on which we have been travelling since we left Scarborough, comes to an end, in a sense, at Helmsley; for here it splits up into two roads, each of which we must follow for a time. Helmsley itself has its attractions. Among them are an open market square and an ancient cross, pretty houses and an inn covered with flowers, a tiny stream running through the town from end to end, and a castle-keep upon the hill. This is that castle which was "once proud Buckingham's delight," and now stands within the park whose name is borrowed from Duncombe the banker. Helmsley has passed through many hands, of which some helped in the making of history, and some were not over clean. The first name we hear of in connection with the place is no less a one than William the Conqueror, for he, having given Helmsley to one of his followers, chose it on one occasion for his own resting-place, after a heavy march and much hard work of the destructive kind he affected. His host, Earl Morton, lost these lands in the losing cause of Robert Curthose, and they fell to the famous Walter of Espec, one of the leaders in that strange semi-religious victory, the Battle of the Standard, whose heroes were summoned by an archbishop, absolved upon the field by a bishop, and actually overshadowed through the fight by the consecrated Host and the banners of three saints. Just such a mixture as this, of religion and bloodshed, was Walter himself, with his splendid presence, his gigantic height, his bright eyes and noble forehead, his voice "like the sound of a trumpet," his life as a warrior, and his death as a monk. Walter's sister Adeline married Peter de Ros, and it was their great-grandson, Robert de Ros, who built this much dilapidated tower of Helmsley Castle. After long centuries of ownership by unimportant Williams and Roberts and Georges the place came into the fair hands of Katherine, the daughter of the Earl of Rutland, and the wholly undeserved wife of the first Duke of Buckingham. Lady Katherine Manners was not, as is sometimes said, the granddaughter of Sir Philip Sidney, for it was her Uncle Roger, not her father, who married Sidney's daughter. The Duchess of Buckingham inherited all the wealth of her father's house, for her two little half-brothers died "by wicked practice and sorcery": so Helmsley came to Steenie, whose angel-face brought him so much beside his nickname. All his honours and his riches were won, says Clarendon, "upon no other advantage or recommendation than of the beauty and gracefulness and becomingness of his person." Yet something more truly lovable than this, we may be sure, was needed to win his Kate and her broad lands; and indeed the romance that gives this castle of Helmsley its chief interest remained romantic to the end, even though the duchess lived to write: "I pray God never woman may love a man as I have done you."
James I.'s slave-dog, as he called himself, was too busy in court and camp to visit Helmsley much, if ever, but it must have been a fine sight when it was his. The keep, not then a crumbling fragment, rose high above walls and many towers. Here are still the two moats that surrounded them, and the two gateways that once made a double defence. How strong the defences were we may gather from the trouble they gave to Sir Thomas Fairfax when he besieged the castle in the time of the second Duke of Buckingham, and won it at last, not only for the Parliament, but for himself. His grateful country gave him the lands of Helmsley, but at the same time took the precaution of reducing the castle to ruins, so that this shattered keep and gatehouse should never again defend royalist or rebel. The Buckinghams were ever humorists, and the second duke, pondering how he might regain some of his lost possessions, bethought him of marrying Mary Fairfax. After he had been embroiled in many plots and suffered many imprisonments he settled down here within sight of the tower that his father-in-law had reduced to so sad a state.
DOUBLE ENTRANCE TO HELMSLEY CASTLE.
There, beyond the lawn-tennis court, is the house he lived in. Some of it seems to be older than his day, but he probably was obliged to repair it rather thoroughly after the siege. We may climb those steps, if we will, and enter.
These are haunted rooms. They are not haunted by a very worthy ghost, I fear—not even by Steenie of the dainty leg and the lovely complexion, the gallant adventurer whom many loved much and whom we all love a little—but only by his handsome, vicious son, the son who was born to the sound of all the joy-bells of Westminster, and died in the humble little bed at Kirbymoorside. These rooms were once proud Buckingham's delight; now they tear at one's heart. It is a thing to be glad of, no doubt, that Lord Mayor Duncombe found Buckingham's home too small to hold his vaulting ambitions and so built the palace in the park, leaving us this pitiful relic of departed glory. Yet one marvels that any man should have allowed so much beauty to go to wrack. These great oak panels with their rare design, this splendid moulded ceiling wrought so elaborately with Tudor roses, that frieze of shields and fleurs-de-lys, of mermaids and winged dragons, once made an appropriate setting for the man whom a contemporary called the "finest gentleman of person and wit" he ever saw. Now, in their decayed grandeur, they are appropriate still; a dramatic—almost a melodramatic—symbol of his fate. Half the panelling is gone; shred by shred the plaster of the ceiling is falling on the uneven floor; bare laths and gaping holes disfigure the Tudor roses over our heads; of the mermaids and winged dragons only a few are left. Lumber is piled upon the floor where "all mankind's epitome" was wont to walk; cobwebs and dust deface the windows. Such is the symbol of proud Buckingham, than whom "no man was ever handsomer," yet who was, in the last year of his life, "worn to a thread"; and up there in the park is the symbol of the city knight who bought his property with money not always well-gained, and flourished like a green bay-tree. We see the unromantic, prosperous house of the thrifty Duncombe as we drive away to Rievaulx.
Motorists will find it their best plan to visit the terrace of Rievaulx before seeing the abbey itself. The way lies through a gate on the left at the top of an extremely steep hill; a winding lane leads among trees to a second gate, and here the car may safely be left. A few steps bring us to the famous terrace cut on the hillside by a Duncombe of the eighteenth century. For half a mile the wide and level turf is stretched between the woods that overshadow it on the left, and the woods that fall steeply away from it on the right to the foot of the hill. Beyond the valley another wooded hill rises; to the south are moors. If we stand at the brink of the terrace and look down through a gap in the trees we see, far below us, the pointed arches of Rievaulx Abbey.
At each end of the terrace is a classical temple. At the north end, where we are standing, is the one described in the local guide-book as "a beautiful temple with an Ionic portico." At first sight it gives one a shock. Eighteenth-century buildings so often do give one a shock.