Wensleydale

“ RIPON AND FOUNTAINS ABBEY We have come out of Wensleydale past the ruins of the great Cistercian abbey of Jervaulx, which Conan, Earl of Richmond, moved from Askrigg to a kindlier climate, and we have passed through the quiet little town of Masham, famous for its fair in September, when sometimes as many as 70,000 sheep, including great numbers of the fine Wensleydale breed, are sold, and now we are at Ripon. ”

“ There is a scanty growth of ling upon the top of this height, but the hills that lie about on every side are browny-green or of an ochre colour, and there is little of the purple one sees in the Cleveland Hills.
The cultivated level of Wensleydale is quite hidden from view, so that we look over a vast panorama of mountains extending in the west as far as the blue fells of Lakeland. I have painted the westward view from this very summit, so that any written description is hardly needed ”

“ A tall maypole stands on the green, the only one I remember to have seen in Yorkshire. It is a memorial of the sports and pastimes for which Wensleydale was famous. The annual feasts and fairs would attract visitors from twenty miles around. Here, at Aysgarth, not the least popular part of the amusements were the races, run by men stark naked, as people not more than forty years old can well remember. But times are changed; and throughout the dale drunkenness and revelry are giving way to teetotalism, lectures, tea-gatherings, and other moral recreations. ”

“ PARKE, Sir JAMES, Baron Wensleydale (1782–1868) , judge, son of Thomas Parke, merchant, of Liverpool, by his wife Anne, daughter of William Preston, was born at Highfield, near Liverpool, on 22 March 1782. He was educated at Macclesfield grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge. His college career was brilliant. ”

“ Each of the dales of the North Riding had its strong castle. In Wensleydale was Middleham, south of the Ure. Richmond, from its cliff at the mouth of Swaledale, commanded a vast tract of country, reaching to the Hambleton hills and the forest of Galtres, north of York. Barnard Castle stood in a strong position on the Durham bank of the Tees. The castles of the eastern part of the North Riding were Skelton and Castleton, both in Cleveland, and belonging to the house of Bruce. Helmsley stood at the entrance of Ryedale; Pickering and Malton were on the Derwent, and Scarborough guarded the coast. ”

“ The small estate he held as early as 1312 in Coverdale, south of Wensleydale, he augmented before 1318 by the acquisition of the manor of Clifton on Ure at the entrance of the latter dale, where he obtained a license to build a castle in that year. ”

“ Middleham Castle, in Wensleydale, became his chief residence. Westmorland's grandson by his first wife, Margaret, daughter of Hugh, earl of Stafford, and successor in the earldom, had for some years been vainly endeavouring to prevent the diversion of these lands to the younger branch. The two families had made open war upon each other in the north, Westmorland being supported by his brothers Sir John, afterwards Lord Neville, and Sir Thomas Neville, and the Dowager Countess by Salisbury and his younger brother, George Neville, lord Latimer of Danby, in Cleveland ”

“ When Macaulay was created a baron, it was practically a life peerage, as he was unmarried and unlikely to marry, Punch had some verses congratulating him on the event, and referring to Mr. Baron Parke, who, in 1856, had been raised to the peerage as Lord Wensleydale, with the usual succession to his heirs male, who did not exist, and never came into being. ”

“ He now (about 1393) set aside an annual rent of 100l. to provide twelve additional canons to pray for himself and his family. The fine late decorated refectory is said to have been his work (Testamenta Eboracensia, i. 274) . He got the church of Wensley made collegiate, and furnished the chapels of St. Anne and St. Oswald at Bolton with a priest apiece (Dugdale, i. 655) . His castle of Bolton, placed on the north side of Wensleydale five miles west of Wensley, was now rapidly approaching completion. ”

“ Anthony. O come, sir! but your time cannot be said to be over.
Austin. Menteith, you hear?
Menteith. Yes, Mr. George.
Anthony. The Colonel told me that you liked to shake an elbow. Your big main, sir, with Lord Wensleydale, is often talked about. I hope I may have the occasion to sit down with you. I shall count it an honour, I assure you.
Austin. But would your aunt, my very good friend, approve?
Anthony. Why, sir, you do not suppose I am in leading-strings?
Austin. You forget, child: a family must hang together. When I was young—in my time—I was alone ”

“ It commands a vast view of Wensleydale from the southern side, in much the same manner as Bolton does from the north; but the castle buildings are entirely different, for Middleham consists of a square Norman keep, very massive and lofty, surrounded at a short distance by a strong wall and other buildings, also of considerable height, built in the Decorated period, when the Nevilles were in possession of the stronghold. The Norman keep dates from the year 1190, when Robert Fitz Randolph, grandson of Ribald, a brother of the Earl of Richmond, began to build the Castle. ”

“ Further up the valley, where the woods began, you could see the chimneys of the White House where Squire Chelwood lived, and about three miles further on still was Dorminster, a good-sized market-town. But in Wensdale itself there was only a handful of thatched cottages scattered about here and there round the vicarage. Life was so regular and quiet there that you might almost tell the time without looking at the clock. When you heard cling, clang, from the blacksmith’s forge, and quack, quack, from the army of ducks waddling down to the river, it was five o’clock. ”

“ Wensdale was a small place, but there were not wanting unwise people in it, who imagined that their nods and winks and whispers of admiration were unnoticed by the child. A great mistake. No one could be quicker than Mary to see them, to give her little neck a prouder turn, and to toss back her glittering hair self-consciously. So she knew by the time she was nine years old that she had beautiful hair and lovely eyes, and a skin like milk—that she walked gracefully, and that her feet and hands were smaller and prettier than Agatha Chelwood’s. ”

“ John Wesley was as much among wild beasts at Wednesbury, as ever Daniel was in the den of lions, for when men's passions are roused they are no better than the beasts. But the arm that was raised to [119] strike, gently stroked his hair; the blow that was meant to kill, fell upon an invisible head; the leaders of all that was cruel and wicked, were struck tender and quiet, and became personal protectors. ”

“ The Westons soon became favourites with both the officers and cabin passengers of the Surat Castle. Mr Weston himself was a well-bred, well-informed man of pleasing address and manners; in person tall and powerfully built (old Weatherhelm was the only one on board who approached him in height) , with a handsome but rather sad countenance, and dark curly hair just slightly grizzled.
George Weston, though he had not had the advantage of a public-school education, was as nice a lad as anyone could wish to meet; well-behaved and intelligent, quiet and studiously inclined. ”

“ Then that is extremely wrong of you, Westenra. They are all envying you downstairs. As to poor Miss Armstrong, she would give her eyes to go. They are every one of them in the drawing-room, and dressed in their showiest, and it has leaked out that you won't be there, nor Mrs. Wickham, nor—nor Mr. Randolph, and that I'll be the only one to keep the place in order to-night. I do trust those attic boarders won't get the better of me, for I have a spice of temper in me when I am roused, and those attics do rouse me sometimes almost beyond endurance. ”

“ Ennerdale, wild and primitive, its Pillar Rock rising like a pulpit in the midst; Wastdale, plain to the verge of ugliness, even as an unfurnished room is plain, yet full of the sense of the great heights that wall it round; the solitude of upper Eskdale, with its mighty waterfalls and mountain pools; the more sociable Duddon, and the pastoral greenery of Langdale. Surely nowhere else in Great Britain can we stand on a hill-top with seven such valleys at our feet! ”

“ Inasmuch as Bentley Hall lies within the confines of Willenhall, this place must always be associated with the rise and early history of Wesleyanism. The episode of John Wesley being haled by the Wednesbury rioters before Justice Lane at Bentley Hall (1743) belongs to the general history of the denomination, and there is no need to repeat the story here.
The reader may be referred to “The History of Methodism in the Wednesbury Circuit,” by the Rev. W. J. Wilkinson, published by J. M. Price, Darlaston, 1895; and for ampler detail to “Religious Wednesbury,” by the present writer, 1900. ”

“ No man was more of a law to himself, but at these times he fell back on the views of others. What would Woosenham say of it? How would he hold up his hands? And Chirbury—whose peerage he respected, since it was as old as his own family, if he thought little of the man? And Uvedale and Cludde? Ay, and Acherley, who, rotten fellow as he was, was still Acherley of Acherley? They had held the fort so stoutly in Aldshire, they had repelled the moneyed upstarts so proudly, they had turned so cold a shoulder on Manchester and Birmingham! ”

“ It was in the churchyard of Winchelsea that John Wesley, who was almost always travelling about the country, preached his last open-air sermon, in 1790, under the shelter39 of the great tree on the western side, “to many folk,” we are told, “some few of which were converted so that tears ran a-down their cheeks.”
And thus the greatness of Winchelsea, stranded as it is from the lapping of the channel surges, though the boom of them when angry can be heard, is of the past. ”

“ Lord Evandale was one of those thoroughly irreproachable young noblemen whom the upper classes of Britain give to civilisation. He bore everywhere with him the disdainful sense of security which comes from great hereditary wealth, a historic name inscribed in the "Peerage and Baronetage"—a book second only to the Bible in England—and a beauty against which nothing could be urged, save that it was too great for a man. ”

“ Wesley heard how his followers were being treated in Wednesbury, he went off at once to their help. Though he was only a little man, he was as brave as a lion; he knew he had God at his back, and like David before Goliath, like Daniel before Darius, and like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego before Nebuchadnezzar, he did not fear what man could do unto him. ”

“ In the controversy between Wesley and Toplady on Predestination, etc., a controversy marked by the worst features of the time, the fiery Welshman was put forward to take the leading part on the Arminian side. Nothing could exceed the severity of Toplady’s remarks and the fierceness of his attacks, both on the character and teaching of the veteran preacher, John Wesley, whom all the world now agrees to honor as one of the most devout, unselfish, and useful men who have adorned the Christian Church in any age. ”

“ Wenzel was the son of a small innkeeper at Grodno, but after his father's decease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story, when he was still a robust, though gray-haired man. ”

“ For to belong to poor people would have seemed dreadful to Mary’s proud spirit. As it could not, however, she remained in ignorance of her real condition, and even in her dreams no remembrance of her real mother, or of the gypsies and her playfellows Bennie and Mossy, ever came to visit her.
Things at Wensdale had not altered much since Mary had been left there as a child of two years old. The roses still flourished in the vicarage garden under Mr Vallance’s loving care, and he still thought them much finer than Chelwood’s. ”

“ A couple of slaves scurried out on their missions--evidently their Emir was accustomed to have her orders carried out with promptness--and for long enough Wenlock stood wordless in front of the divan, far more like a criminal than a prospective bridegroom. The lady, with the tube of the water-pipe between her lips, puffed smoke and made no further speech. She had stated her will: the result would follow in due course.
But at last Wenlock, as though wrenching himself into wakefulness out of some horrid dream, turned wildly to Kettle, and in a torrent of words implored for rescue. ”

“ Wesley did not remain at Bristol; several times he went up to London, and wherever he went crowds came to hear him. One day when he was preaching at Newgate, a prison in London, and was telling the people what would become of them if they did not give up their wicked ways, a woman whom he had known for many years as a very bad character, burst into tears and begged Mr. Wesley to pray for her. Many of the other prisoners did the same, and numbers believed in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, and became Christian men and we men. ”

“ Weston had organized his larger expedition, and it was already on the sea, having sailed from London about the 1st of April. Thus Thomas Weston played a very prominent part in the early settlement of Weymouth, as he had already done in that of Plymouth. He was always called a merchant, but in fact he was a pure sixteenth century adventurer of the Smith and Raleigh stamp,—a man whose brain teemed with schemes for the deriving of sudden gain from the settlement of the new continent. ”