CHAPTER V.
A Scotchman’s Observations—The Prospect—The Anatomy of Beverley—Historical Associations—The Brigantes—The Druids—Austin’s Stone—The Saxons—Coifi and Paulinus—Down with Paganism—A Great Baptism—St. John of Beverley—Athelstan and Brunanburgh—The Sanctuary—The Conqueror—Archbishop Thurstan’s Privileges—The Sacrilegious Mayor—Battle of the Standard—St. John’s Miracles—Brigand Burgesses—Annual Football—Surrounding Sites—Watton and Meaux—Etymologies—King Athelstan’s Charter.
“On my first coming to England I landed at Hull, whose scenery enraptured me. The extended flatness of surface—the tall trees loaded with foliage—the large fat cattle wading to the knees in rich pasture—all had the appearance of fairy-land fertility. I hastened to the top of the first steeple—thence to the summit of Beverley Minster, and wondered over the plain of verdure and rank luxury, without a heathy hill or barren rock, which lay before me. When, after being duly sated into dulness by the constant sight of this miserably flat country, I saw my old bare mountains again, my ravished mind struggled as if it would break through the prison of the body, and soar with the eagle to the summit of the Grampians. The Pentland, Lomond, and Ochil hills seemed to have grown to an amazing size in my absence, and I remarked several peculiarities about them which I had never observed before.”
This passage occurs in the writings of the late James Gilchrist, an author to whom I am indebted for some part of my mental culture. I quote it as an example of the different mood of mind in which the view from the top of the tower may be regarded. To one fresh from a town it is delightful. As you step on the leads and gaze around on what was once called “the Lowths,” you are surprised by the apparently boundless expanse—a great champaign of verdure, far as eye can reach, except where, in the north-west, the wolds begin to upheave their purple undulations. The distance is forest-like: nearer the woods stand out as groves, belts, and clumps, with park-like openings between, and everywhere fields and hedgerows innumerable. How your eye feasts on the uninterrupted greenness, and follows the gleaming lines of road running off in all directions, and comes back at last to survey the town at the foot of the tower!
Few towns will bear inspection from above so well as Beverley. It is well built, and is as clean in the rear of the houses as in the streets. Looking from such a height, the yards and gardens appear diminished, and the trim flower-beds, and leafy arbours, and pebbled paths, and angular plots, and a prevailing neatness reveal much in favour of the domestic virtues of the inhabitants. And the effect is heightened by the green spaces among the bright red roofs, and woods which straggle in patches into the town, whereby it retains somewhat of the sylvan aspect for which it was in former times especially remarkable.
Apart from its natural features, the region is rich in associations. The history of Beverley, an epitome of that of the whole county, tempts one to linger, if but for half an hour. It will not be time thrown away, for a glimpse of the past may beneficially influence our further wanderings.
Here the territory of the Brigantes, which even the Romans did not conquer till more than a hundred years after their landing in Kent, stretched across the island from sea to sea. Here, deep in the great forest, the Druids had one of their sacred groves, a temple of living oaks, for their mysterious worship and ruthless sacrifices. Hundreds of tumuli scattered over the country, entombing kysts, coffins, fragments of skeletons, and rude pottery, and not less the names of streets and places, supply interesting testimony of their existence. Drewton, a neighbouring village, marks, as is said, the site of Druid’s-town, where a stone about twelve feet in height yet standing was so much venerated by the natives, that Augustine stood upon it to preach, and erected a cross thereupon that the worshipper might learn to associate it with a purer faith. It is still known as Austin’s Stone.
The Saxon followed, and finding the territory hollow between the cliffs of the coast and the wolds, named it Höll-deira-ness, whence the present Holderness. It was in the forest of Deira that the conference was held in presence of Edwin and Ethelburga, between the missionary Paulinus and Coifi, the high-priest of Odin, on the contending claims of Christianity and Paganism. The right prevailed; and Coifi, convinced by the arguments he had heard, seized a spear, and hurrying on horseback to the temple at Godmanham, cursed his deity, and hurled the spear at the image with such fury that it remained quivering in the wall of the sacred edifice. The multitude looked on in amazement, waiting for some sign of high displeasure at so outrageous a desecration. But no sign was given, and veering suddenly from dread to derision, they tore down the temple, and destroyed the sacred emblems. Edwin’s timorous convictions were strengthened by the result, and so great was the throng of converts to the new faith, that, as is recorded, Paulinus baptized more than ten thousand in one day in the Swale. According to tradition, the present church at Godmanham, nine miles distant, a very ancient edifice, was built from the ruins of the Pagan temple.
St. John of Beverley was born at Harpham, a village near Driffield—Deirafeld—in 640. Diligent in his calling, and eminently learned and conscientious, he became Archbishop of York. In 700 he founded here an establishment of monks, canons, and nuns, and rebuilt or beautified the church, which had been erected in the second century; and when, after thirty-three years of godly rule over his diocese, he laid aside the burden of authority, it was to the peaceful cloisters of Beverley that he retired. “He was educated,” says Fuller, “under Theodorus the Grecian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, yet was he not so famous for his teacher as for his scholar, Venerable Bede, who wrote this John’s life, which he hath so spiced with miracles, that it is of the hottest for a discreet man to digest into his belief.” He died in 721, and was buried in his favourite church, with a reputation for sanctity which eventually secured him a place in the calendar.