Motor tours in Yorkshire

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

CHAPTER HOUSE, HOWDEN.

After leaving Howden we have to pass, with what speed we may, over ten more miles of absolutely level, absolutely uninspiring country. Then we go through North Cave, where George Washington's ancestors used to live; and at last the road begins to rise over Kettlethorpe Hill. The flat land is laid out like a map below us; far away upon the horizon—which is level as the sea—rises "the huge tall steeple" of Howden; and between the plain of Yorkshire and the rising-ground of Lincolnshire are the sullen waters of that great river that has brought England so much of her prosperity. Not always, however, has the Humber brought prosperity. More than a thousand years ago the fleet of the avenging Danes, Hinguar and Hubba, swept up between these low banks, to lay this rich country waste. Right into the heart of the land they sailed, and ceased not to destroy till all the country of the fens was desolate. Now this calamity and much more besides—the destruction of Lindisfarne and Whitby, of Croyland and Ely and Peterborough, and the death of St. Edmund the King—was brought about by the jealousy of one obscure individual. For Lothbroc the Dane, being a guest at Edmund's Court, had showed so much skill in the trapping of birds and beasts that the King's head-keeper, as one may call him, was "inflamed with mortal envy." So he slew Lothbroc treacherously. Then the King sent the murderer to sea in a little boat, without sail or oars, and the boat drifted to the shores of Denmark. And the wicked keeper sought the sons of Lothbroc, whose names were Hinguar and Hubba, and told them that their father had been slain by order of King Edmund. So Hinguar and Hubba swore by "their almighty gods that they would not leave that murder unpunished"; and verily they fulfilled their oath.

Two hundred years later another Dane, Sweyn of the Forked Beard, "a cruel man, and ready for the shedding of blood," sailed up to conquer the north. Just beyond that island that lies close to the left bank, where we see the Ouse suddenly widen into the Humber, Sweyn turned into the river Trent. And "all England groaned like a bed of reeds shaken by the west wind."

At the top of the hill we pass through a wonderful avenue of beeches and sycamores; then run down a long and pleasant slope into Walkington; and soon the blue towers of Beverley appear.

The brief run across the common above Beverley will probably be the last of our memorable moments in Yorkshire: the last of those memories which we motorists—while the days are long and the winds are soft and the engine purrs contentedly hour after hour—hoard up to enjoy again and again, not only through the winter but through the years. This particular moment is a very short one; but it will be long, I think, before we forget the beauty of the town of Beverley as it lies in the blue dusk of a summer evening, with its matchless towers dominating it.

Yes, surely, they are matchless! See how the straight, clean lines of their tall buttresses—those parallel lines that are repeated again and again in the Perpendicular panels, and even in the deep shadows cast by the masonry—give the impression of slenderness and height. Not anywhere, not at Lincoln, not at York, are there towers of a design so complete and finished, of a simplicity so exquisite. Nowhere else does the accumulation of straight lines produce so rich a whole; nowhere else are the very shadows used to enhance the effect. There is much that is beautiful in Beverley Minster, but in the main it is these twin towers that are going to be our compensation for all those miles we have driven between flat fields, "enclosid," as Leland says, "with hegges."

The monastery of Beverley was founded, or at all events much frequented in the eighth century, by a certain Archbishop of York, who retired hither "out of a pious aversion to this world," and has been known ever since as St. John of Beverley. Bede's account of this saint is well worth reading. He was a man of many miracles, of much kindliness, of some sharpness of tongue. Never was there a saint of so much commonsense, mingled with the compelling power that works miracles in every age. There was a "dumb boy," for instance, who had also a sore head. The archbishop divined the nervous nature of the dumbness, and cured it so thoroughly that the youth talked incessantly for a day and a night, as long as he could keep awake. Then the archbishop "ordered the physician to take in hand the cure of his head." The shrewd saint recognised his own limitations. On another occasion he was brought to heal a dying nun. "What can I do to the girl," he asked tartly, "if she is like to die?"

BEVERLEY.