CAWOOD.
Selby, further down the stream on the same side, is a thriving market town. It has the advantage not only of the navigable waters of the Ouse, but of canal communication with the Aire. Its Abbey church has many noteworthy features, not the least of which is its length (296 feet). The building has a double dedication—to SS. Mary and Germanus. The foundation is traced to Benedict, a French monk. That monk, while in the Convent at Auxerre, was, according to the legend, commissioned in a vision by Germanus to go to England, and find there a similar spot to one revealed in the vision, and there he was to halt, set up the Cross and preach. Benedict is said to have been so impressed by the mandate that he started at once, and continued his travels until, sailing up the Ouse, he found on the curve of the river at Selby a district corresponding exactly to what had been revealed to him in the vision. Here he set up a Cross, and constructed a hut for himself by the riverside. The year 1068 has been assigned as the date of this undertaking. There was then, says the old chronicle, “not a single monk to be found throughout all Yorkshire, owing to the devastations of the Northmen by the Conqueror.” Benedict found favour in the eyes of the Norman Sheriff, and acting on the suggestion of this functionary, he waited on the King, and succeeded in obtaining a grant of that portion of the manor on which he had settled. A monastery of wood was then erected, and Benedict became first abbot. He held the position for twenty-seven years, when he died. The second abbot was a member of the De Lacy family, and was wealthy enough to begin a permanent building of stone, portions of which may be traced in the existing fabric, which from the time of James I. (1618) has been the parochial church of Selby. Pope Alexander II. made Selby a mitred Abbey, the only other English establishment north of the Trent enjoying this distinction being St. Mary’s at York.
SELBY
Selby was a place of strategic importance in the wars of the Commonwealth. It changed hands two or three times, but was eventually secured for the Parliament by the Fairfaxes, after a battle in which Lord Bellasis, the Governor of York, and 1,600 men were made prisoners, with much baggage and a useful supply of guns and horses. The victory at Selby, to quote Markham, was “the immediate cause of the battle of Marston Moor, and the destruction of the Royalist power in the North; and the two Houses marked their sense of its importance by ordering a public thanksgiving for the same.” There is a tradition that Selby was the birthplace of Henry I., the youngest son of the Conqueror, and Freeman suggests that “William may have brought his wife into Northumbria, as Edward brought his wife into Wales, in order that the expected Atheling might be not only an Englishman born, but a native of that part of England which had cost his father most pains to win.”
Some three miles below Selby is Hemingborough, where there is a fine church with a lofty spire (180 ft.), and between here and Barmby-on-the-Marsh, the Derwent, after a long, winding course from the high moorland south of Whitby, unites with the Ouse. The Derwent passes Malton, the Roman Derventio, the site of which is still traceable. Here there is an interesting Gilbertine Priory. The river also passes Kirkham, where there are remains, notably an exquisite Early English gateway, of an Augustinian Priory; and on its northern bank at this point is Castle Howard, the Yorkshire seat of the Earl of Carlisle. Many smaller rivers are absorbed by the Derwent, particularly the Rye, on whose banks are the ruins of Rievaulx, the earliest of the Yorkshire Cistercian houses; the Costa, which runs past Pickering Castle, where Richard II. was held a prisoner just before his tragic death at Pontefract; and the Bran, which runs close to the celebrated Kirkdale Cave.
Two miles further down, on the west side, the Ouse receives another important feeder in the Aire. Turbid enough is the Aire at this point, after its contact with Leeds and other West Riding manufacturing towns; but no river has a more romantic beginning. Rising mysteriously from its underground source at the foot of Malham Cove, “by giants scooped from out the rocky ground,” it flows onward through a scene of surpassing grandeur; and very beautiful still is its course through Airedale proper, from beyond Skipton on to Kirkstall Abbey. The Aire is joined at Leeds by the Liverpool Canal; at Castleford by the Calder; and at Birkin by the Selby Canal; and after a run of about seventy miles it passes into the Ouse at Arnim, opposite the village of Booth.
Howden lies a short distance to the north-east of Booth. It possesses a fine old church, dedicated to St. Peter, and is the site of a famous horse fair. Howden boasts also of several celebrities, beginning with Roger de Hoveden, the chronicler, and coming down to the stable boy who became Baron Ward, and was Minister to the Duke of Parma. The church at Howden was handed over by the Conqueror to the Prior and Convent of Durham, and was made collegiate in 1267. The choir and chapter-house are in a ruinous state, and of the former, which was erected in place of an earlier structure about 1300, only the aisle walls and the eastern front remain. The chapter-house, even in decay, is an exceptionally fine example of Early Perpendicular work, with elaborate tracing and arcading. An archæological authority (Hutchinson) writes enthusiastically of “its exquisite and exact proportions,” and speaks of it as the most perfect example of its kind in the country. After the dissolution of the collegiate establishment the church at Howden began to be neglected. It suffered much more from natural wear and tear than from vandalism, and much of it was easily restored. The portions in use include the nave, the transept, with eastern chantries, and a central tower. Over a graceful west front rises a central gable, finely crocketed, and flanked with hexagonal turrets. A head carved over the south porch, supposed to be that of Edward II., but also claimed for Henry III., gives some indication of the date of the erection of this part of the building. The tower, lighted by tall and handsome windows, rises 130 feet, and from its summit a commanding view is obtained. Its chambers are of unusual size, and are said to have been constructed to serve as a place of refuge to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood in the event of inundation, the country here having been originally marsh land and subject to floods. The Bishops of Durham took a lively interest in their collegiate church at Howden. Here they had a palace, and here several of them died.
From the point where it receives the Aire, the Ouse flows eastwards and southwards, and at the end of the bend thus formed touches Goole—a place which was a quiet village some seventy years ago, but is now a busy commercial centre, and, moreover, a town which, although well inland, lays claim to the position of a seaport. Goole has the advantage of the Don as well as of the Ouse. The former stream comes into it along a straight, artificial channel, known locally as the Dutch river, after its constructor, Vermuyden the engineer. The Don rises in Cheshire, and has branches running out of Derbyshire. It passes Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham, and other towns, on its way to the Ouse, and is the last of the streams to fall into the great Yorkshire waterway; the Ouse, after a short run eastward from Goole, uniting with the Trent to form the Humber.
W. S. Cameron.