The Coquet bears the palm for picturesqueness amongst Northumbrian valleys, and is about forty miles in length. From Alwinton, the first village after crossing the Cheviots, where the Alwine joins the Coquet—"a place of slumber and of dreams remote among the hills"—to Warkworth Castle, the stream carries history and romance in every league of its course. Here are such names as Biddlestone, the "Osbaldistone," of "Rob Roy" (there are other claimants such as Chillingham and Naworth); Harbottle, a hamlet of venerable antiquity; Holystone, mentioned already in connection with Paulinus; Hepple, with the remnant of a strong peel tower of the Ogles; and Rothbury, the capital of Upper Coquetdale, a snug township in the midst of an amphitheatre of the wild, stony Simonside hills. In the old days it was a reiving centre of notoriety. All this part of Northumberland, indeed, was a constant freebooting arena, neither Scots nor English being content without some fray on hand. There is not a village, or a town, or farmhouse even, but has some tale to tell of that uncanny period. Cragside, Lord Armstrong's palatial seat, reclaimed, like Abbotsford, from the barren mountain side, is within a mile of Rothbury. Then come Brinkburn Priory, "an ancient fabric awful in repose," founded by William de Bertram, lord of Mitford, in the reign of Henry I.; Felton, a neat little village, where Alexander of Scotland received the homage of the Northumbrian barons; and Warkworth, "proud of the Percy name," one of the quaintest and oldest towns in Northumberland, and teeming with historical and romantic associations. So near the sea, and with some of the rarest river scenery in the county close at hand, the place is in high favour as a holiday resort. A Saxon settlement, all interest centres around its dismantled Castle, believed to have been built by Roger Fitz-Richard, to whom Henry II. granted in 1158 the manor of Warkworth. Strengthened from time to time, it became a Percy possession, and was the chief residence of the family to the middle of the 15th century. At the height of its power it must have been well-nigh impregnable, encircled on three sides by the winding banks and overhanging woods of the Coquet, and on a commanding eminence above it; and though time and many devastating hands have long since riven its ancient walls, the pile still presents a splendid example of a baronial stronghold, second to few on the Borders.
Among Northumbrian towns, Alnwick (the county town) ranks next to Newcastle. But whilst the rise of the latter and its prosperity and colour have been each affected by the great industrial changes of the century, Alnwick's development has been very different. Lying peacefully amidst pastoral hills, by the side of a river unpolluted by modern commerce, this ancient Border town still presents the plain and austere aspect which it wore when the great stage-coaches passed through on their way from London to Edinburgh. In Newcastle, despite its numerous relics of antiquity, one's mind is ever dominated by the potent Present, whereas in Alnwick, it is ever under the spell of the dreamy Past. The quaint, irregular stone-built houses are touched with the sober hues of antiquity, and seem to take their character from the great baronial relic of feudal times. The history of the town is chiefly a record of
"Old unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago."
It was founded by the Saxons, who styled it Alainwick, "the town on the clear water." Like Carlisle, its history is largely one of attack and retaliation. The Scottish Sovereigns were peculiarly unfortunate at Alnwick. For here Malcolm Canmore was speared to death in 1093, and William the Lion made prisoner in 1174, and inside the castle of to-day with its gilded ceilings, luxurious upholstery, and majestic mantels of Italian workmanship and marbles, are still to be seen the dour dungeons in which many a Scot died miserably while the Percy and his retainers feasted above. King John burned Alnwick to the ground in 1216, David I. besieged and captured it. Each of the Edwards visited the place. It was again devastated by the Scots in 1427. In 1463, it was held for Edward IV., and in 1464 it fell into the hands of Queen Margaret. Royalists and Roundheads occupied Alnwick during the wars between Charles and his Parliament, but after 1700 it settled down to comparative quiet. The Castle, of course, dominates the place. There is what William Howitt calls "an air of solemn feudality" overhanging the whole town. Streets and buildings, and the general tone harmonize well with the prevailing conditions. Only one of its four gates survives—the gloomy, old, weather-beaten Bondgate, built by the haughty Hotspur about the year 1450. The Cross dates from the same period. The most interesting and venerable structure is the Church of St. Mary and St. Michael, founded about the beginning of the 14th century, Perpendicular in style, and abundant in Percy memorials. But the chief object of interest is the Castle with the Castle enclosure (some five acres in extent). The Castle itself is the most magnificent specimen of a feudal fortress in England, a verdict in which all who see it will agree. What an extraordinarily fascinating and profoundly impressive place, from the very stones of the courtyard to the defiant-looking warrior figures on the battlements of the barbican, and elsewhere. What an endless succession of towers and turrets (some of them with distinctive names, Hotspur and Bloody Gap) archways and corridors, walls and embrasures, and all the grim massive paraphernalia of the past, apparently as doggedly determined as ever. Perhaps, as one writer puts it, only a Percy could live quite at his ease as master of Alnwick Castle. One cannot imagine the average man making himself congenially at home here. But the inside comforts are an overflowing compensation for a somewhat forbidding exterior. We are told that even the towers at the angles of the encircling walls are museums of British and Egyptian antiquities, and game trophies, collected by members of the family. The fourth Duke has left much to show for the quarter of a million he lavished upon the building—exquisite wood carving, frescoes, marbles, and canvases. Mantovani, who restored the Raphael frescoes in the Vatican, was not too great a man to be hired by a Percy to adorn his Border castle. The walls of the grand staircase are panelled with beautiful marbles. There are unique paintings: the dining-room, a noble apartment, is pompous with Percys in fine frames, bewigged, robed and plain; the first Duke and his wife, who helped him to a dignity neither his money nor his courtly manners could have won for him, hang suitably in the place of honour above the hearth. Vandyck, Moroni, and Andrea del Sarto are worthily represented in the castle. Giorgione, who did so well the comparatively little he had time for, is here in his "Lady with the Lute." Raphael, Guido, and Titian are also within these swarthy outer walls, Titian's landscape contribution being specially notable, like Giovanni Bellini's "The Gods enjoying the Fruits of the Earth." One looks from it to the fair Northumberland country beyond the windows and then at the splendour and taste of the castle, and fancies, inevitably, that the Percys themselves have in these later days obtained quite their share of the privileges of Bellini's gods. Nothing that makes for domestic pleasure is lacking at Alnwick Castle. There is a stately library of some 15,000 books, with chairs for dreaming and chairs for study; and, not to slight meaner comforts, there is a kitchen that is a model of its baronial kind, about fifty yards distant from the dining-hall, with which it communicates by an underground passage. The first English possession acquired by the house of Percy north of the Tees was Dalton, afterwards called Dalton-Percy. Then came Alnwick, originally owned by the De Vescis, and purchased from them about 1309; Warkworth; Prudhoe-on-Tyne, one of the most picturesque of Northumbrian fortresses; Cockermouth; and Keeldar, in the Cheviots. And what of the Percys who ruled, and still rule, at Alnwick in their day of might? Very ancient is the name, numbering among its early patriarchs such grand old heroes as Manfred the Dane, and
"Brave Galfred, who to Normandy
With vent'rous Rollo came;
And from his Norman Castles won,
Assumed the Percy name."
The pedigree traces the descent of Angus de Perci up to Manfred, and that of Josceline de Louvain up from Gerberga, daughter and heiress of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, to Charlemagne, and in the male line to the ancient Dukes of Hainault. This same Josceline, who was brother-in-law to King Henry I., married in 1168, Agnes, the great Percy heiress, and assumed the name of his wife:
"Lord Percy's heir I was, whose noble name
By me survives unto his lasting fame;
Brabant's Duke's son I wed, who, for my sake,
Retained his arms, and Percy's name did take."
Their youngest son, Richard de Percy, then head of the family, was one of the chief barons who extorted Magna Charta from King John, and the ninth Lord, Henry, gave much aid to Edward I. in the subjugation of Scotland. It was he who purchased Alnwick. His son—another Henry—defeated David II. at Neville's Cross (1346); his grandson fought at Crécy; his great-grandson, the fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick, was marshal of England at the coronation of Richard II., and was created the same day Earl of Northumberland. By far the greater part of the romance of the Percys has centred round Harry Hotspur (eldest son of the preceding), whom the dead Douglas defeated at Otterburn, and who fell himself at Shrewsbury (1403) fighting against Henry IV. The soubriquet of Hotspur was given him because "in the silence of the night, when others were quietly sleeping, he laboured unwearied, as though his spur were hot."