CASTLE BOLTON, WENSLEYDALE, YORKSHIRE.
Bolton Castle, nevertheless, is better preserved than the majority of those which have been abandoned to ruin; the great entrance hall, some of the stairways, the room of state and many chambers are still intact. One may climb the winding stairs and from the towers look down upon the mass of ruined grandeur—sagging and broken roofs, vacant doorways and windows and towers whose floors have fallen away—the melancholy work of time and weather, for these have chiefly affected the castle since it was dismantled by its captors. One is relieved to turn from such a scene to the narrow green valley through which the river runs and out beyond it to the wide prospect of brown hills with gray villages and solitary cottages.
The history of Bolton Castle is long and varied—too long to tell in detail. It was built in the twelfth century by Richard, the first Lord Scrope, founder of the family, which figured so largely in the fierce struggles of the northern border. From that time to the death of the last representative of the family in 1630, Bolton Castle was almost continually the center of stirring scenes. The Archbishop of York in 1405 was a Scrope, and he preached a fiery sermon denouncing the reigning King Henry as an usurper. The bold churchman lost his head for his temerity, but his execution sowed the seed of the long and terrible wars of the Roses. Nor will the reader of “Marmion” forget Scott’s reference to “Lord Scrope of Bolton, stern and stout,” who with “all Wensleydale did wend” to join the English at Flodden Field. The closing scene came like the closing scene of many an English castle, when Col. Scrope, the last owner, was compelled to surrender to the forces of Parliament and the castle was dismantled. Since then it has stood stern and lonely in the Yorkshire hills, and nearly three centuries of decay have added to the ruin wrought by the captors.
But there is a roselight of romance that enwraps the shattered towers of Bolton, for does not the moorland ruin call up a thousand memories of Mary Stuart, yet in the flower of her youth, ere long years of imprisonment had stolen the color from her face and touched it with the shade of melancholy that seldom left it? Here was her first prison; she came as an unwilling guest after her ill-advised visit to Carlisle in 1568, and remained a charge of Lord Scrope for nearly two years. The room she occupied is large and gloomy, with but one small window looking westward over the hills—the same window, legend declares, by which she escaped from the castle, only to be shortly recaptured by Lord Scrope’s retainers. Her captivity at Bolton, while less rigorous than in later years, was none the less a captivity, and while she was allowed to go hawking, she was always under close surveillance. Very likely she did try to escape, for in such an escapade the unhappy queen never lacked for accomplices, even among her gaolers. But fate was ever unkind to Mary Stuart, and though many times her fortune seemed evenly balanced, some lack of judgment on part of herself or her followers thwarted the plans for regaining her liberty. They tell that in leaving Bolton in this attempt, her friends followed the river road to Leyburn when a dash over the moors to the north might have insured success. It all seems very real to one who stands in the gloomy apartment at twilight and looks from the window down the steep narrow road leading to the valley—no doubt the one Mary followed in her effort to get out of her arch-enemy’s clutches, which ended in such heart-breaking failure.
But it is waxing late and we will descend the same hill and follow the same road to Leyburn. Leyburn is gray and bleak in the falling night, with a wide bare market place paved with rough cobblestones, shorn, alas, a few decades ago, of its fine old market cross and town hall—in a spirit of “improvement!” The prospect for good cheer is far from flattering, but we must stop in Leyburn perforce. The Bolton Arms seems to promise the best, but it is full and the Golden Lion offers the only alternative. It is a typical second-class village inn, not overly clean. It appears more of an alehouse than hotel, for a crowd of villagers and farmers is tippling at the bar.
Directly across the river from Leyburn is Middleham, the old-time capital of Wensleydale and one of the quaintest and least modernized towns it was our good fortune to see. The drab-colored buildings straggle up the hill upon whose crest sits Middleham Castle, grim, vast and wholly ruinous. And after wandering through the maze of shattered walls and tottering towers, it seemed to us that here was the very ideal of ruined castles. We had seen many of them, but none more awe-inspiring, none more suggestive of the power of the cataclysm which left such fortresses, seemingly impregnable as the hills themselves, in shapeless wreck and ruin. Here and there the ivy and wall flower mantled the nakedness of the mouldering stone, and a stout sapling of several years’ growth had fastened its roots in the deep mould high on one of the towers. Truly, Cromwell did his work well at Middleham. Such a stronghold could be dealt with only by gunpowder mines, which were responsible for the cracked and sundered walls and the shapeless masses of stone and mortar which have never been cleared away.
