VIEW OF ALNWICK
CASTLE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(See pp. [38] , [49] , and [53] to [58] )
The first Earl was slain at Bramham Moor (1408). The second Earl fell fighting for Henry VI. at St. Albans in 1455. The third at Towton (1461), and it was his brother the fourth Earl who comforted himself as he lay bleeding to death on Hedgley Moor (1464) that he had "saved the bird in his bosom." The fifth Earl was murdered in 1489. The sixth Earl was the lover of Anne Boleyn, maid of honour to Queen Catherine, and had King Henry VIII. for his rival, who in great wrath commanded Cardinal Wolsey to break off the engagement between them. The seventh Earl for espousing the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded in 1572. The eighth Earl in 1585 was found dead in bed with three pistol shots through his breast, whether by suicide or murder. The ninth Earl was imprisoned for fifteen years in the Tower on a baseless suspicion of being privy to the Gunpowder Plot. The tenth Earl fought on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, and with the death of Josceline, the eleventh Earl, in 1670, the male line of the family came to an end. The eleventh Earl's only child—an heiress—married the Duke of Somerset, who was created in 1749 Baron Warkworth, and Earl of Northumberland, with remainder (having no male issue) to his son-in-law Sir Hugh Smithson, of Stanwick, a Yorkshire knight who in his youth had been an apothecary in Hatton Gardens. Sir Hugh succeeded to the Earldom in 1750, and was created in 1766 Earl Percy and Duke of Northumberland. The seventh Duke succeeded in 1899.
From Alnwick it is fourteen miles to Bamborough, "King Ida's castle, huge and square." No traveller along the great north road between Alnwick and Berwick can fail to be struck with an object so boldly prominent as Bamborough. Far and wide it meets the vision, and is the more conspicuous from the flat character of its surroundings and the very open coast. Its base is an almost perpendicular mass of basaltic rock overlooking the sea, at a height of 150 feet. Founded in 547, it suffered many a siege, most of all at the hands of the Danes in 933. In the years that followed it was being constantly rebuilt, and as constantly stormed and broken again. As the great bombards left it in the fourth Edward's reign, so it lay dismantled for centuries. In 1720, Lord Crewe, the philanthropic Bishop of Durham, purchased the Castle and bequeathed it for charitable purposes—the reception and care of the poor, etc. In 1894 it was acquired by the late Lord Armstrong, at a cost of a quarter of a million, and fitted up as a convalescent home. The charming village of Bamborough, nestling within easy distance, has some celebrity as a health resort. The church in which St. Aidan died is one of the oldest in the country, and the churchyard contains Grace Darling's tomb. The Farne Islands, the scene of her brave exploit, are easily visible from the shore. There are seventeen in all, forming three distinct groups, Longstone, the heroine's home, lying farthest out. It was from the lighthouse on this latter island that the noble maiden of barely twenty-two descried the wreck of the Forfarshire, the 7th September, 1838, and formed her resolve at rescue. "He that goes out and sees the savage and iron nature of the rocks will not avoid wondering at the desperate nature of the attempt," crowned by an almost superhuman triumph. On the great Farne, or House Island, his favourite place of retirement, St. Cuthbert died in 687. How his followers bore, from shrine to shrine, the uncorrupted body of their Bishop is a tradition well-known. "For the space of seven years," says Reginald of Durham, "Saint Cuthbert was carried to and fro on the shoulders of pious men through trackless and waterless places; when no house afforded him a hospitable roof, he remained under covering of tents." Further, we are told how the monks first carried their precious burden to the stone church at Norham; thence towed it up the river to Tillmouth; on to Melrose, the Saint's home-sanctuary by the Tweed; thence through the Lowland glens towards the English Border where, descending the head-waters of the Tyne, they came to Hexham; passing westward to Carlisle in Cumberland, and Dufton Fells in Westmoreland, and over into Lancashire; then once more eastward to the monastery at York; and finally northward again to a last resting place in Durham, when
"After many wanderings past,
He chose his lordly seat at last
Where his Cathedral, huge and vast,
Looks down upon the Wear."