THe UNIYGRSITY Of CALlfORNlfl LIBRARY €3C LIBRIS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/bygoneyorkshireOOandrrich BYGONE YORKSHIRE, ^-:^--'- _-.^^i^;^4y^ MICKLEOATE BAR, YORK. BYGONE YORKSHIRE. EDITED BY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S. AUTHOR OF "OLD CHURCH LORE," "CURIOSITIES OF THE CHURCH, "OLD-TIME PUNISHMENTS," EIC, ETC. HULL AND YORK : A. BROWN & SONS. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kenp, & Co., Limiied. 18(^2 <\ O ^^ • • • •• I « • • •••• «•» • • • C < f. preface. T T gives me pleasure to once more be the ^ means of making another addition to the hterature of the county I love so much. In the pages of this work will, I believe, be found welcome contributions to our local history. In preparing the work I had the good fortune to obtain the friendly co-operation of writers deeply interested in the subjects about which they have written. I offer to my contributors my warm thanks. William Andrews. Hull Literary Club, 30th Awfmt, 1892. 396051 Conteute* \\\( Laki: l)\vi:i.LiX(^;s ok Yorkshire. By T. Tinclall Wildrid'i'c 1 Ax AxciENT Monolith. By W. H. Thompson ... ... .39 Relics AND Remnants. By John Nicholson 40 Yorkshire Castles : Some of their Historic Associations. • By Edward Lamplough ... 64 York Castle. By Sidney W. Clarke .. 74 Castles and Castle Builders : Bolton Castle and the SCROPES 82 Ramparts, Walls, and Bars of York. By W. Camidge... 98 The Ivanhoe Country. By the Rev. Ceo, S. Tyack, b.a. ... 115 Kniohts Templars. By J. J. Sheahan ... 124 St. Mary's Abbey, Y'ork. By George Benson 145 Byland Abbey : Its Histqrical Associ.vtions. By Edward Lamplough ... ... ... ... .. ... ... 154 Robin Hood in Yorkshire. By Charles A. Federer, l.c.p. 164 The Pilgrimage of Gr.\ce. By W. H. Thompson 174 The Hlstory, Traditions, and Curious Customs of Y^:>rk /'r^ Minster. By George Benson (l^^ A Story of the Gunpowder Plot. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a 204 The Spinning-Wheel. By I. W. Dickinson, b.a 213 RjpoN AND its Minster. By George Parker 221 RiPON Spurs. By T. C. Heslington 240 Captain Cook, the Circumnavigator. By W. H. Burnett 244 Farnley Hall. By .1 . A. Clapham 255 Index 265 BYGONE YORKSHIRE. CU Xaftc«^2)weUinG6 of IPorftebirc.^ By T. Tindall Wildridge. THE researches and conclusions of science lead us to the acceptance of the general theory that at a period far remote from our day, though by no means at any early stage of the world's existence, the present arrangement of its crust, by a gradual alteration of the mundane equilibrium, took the place of a disposition of land and water differing totally from that now familiar to us. Our continents, it is proved, have taken the place of other continents whose slow submersion occasioned the vast oceanic expanses of the southern hemisphere. Geological facts can be read in the Hght of this theory ; but the strongest direct evidence, as so strongly adduced by Professor Huxley, is found in the considera- tion of the present state of the living organic 2 BYGONE YORKSHIRE. world ; that is in the geographical distribution of animals and plants. The innumerable coincid- ence (astounding in the face of any other theory) among the branches of the African, Papuan, and Australasian races are clear testimony of their being surviv^als of old-world types ; either in their continuance upon the fragments left of their ancient continents or in the new countries which rose to meet their footsteps as they hastily or insensibly retired before the rising waters. The fauna, other than the human animal, and the flora of those accidental remnants of the early continents, are also alone sufficient to warrant the assumptions to the acceptance of which the survivals of old human customs and folk matter have led. How often this awful oscillation—silent and slow in itself for the most part, though perhaps culminating towards crises, and almost necessarily catastrophic in its effects at one stage or another —has occurred, or to what extent present life is influenced by alternations of equilibria other than the last great reversal, are questions which nor conjecture nor science can yet touch ; they are closed doors, awaiting keys which geology may yet furnish. LAKE-DWELLINGS OF YORKSHIRE. 3 The abundant traces of that most recent re-adjustment of the globe —most recent, yet before all history—are corroborated by the hundred- tongued voice of tradition, and, moreover, a long rearguard of facts also remains yet in the misty region known as '' prehistoric times " to keep up a line of communication, in a more or less defined manner, between Now and the earliest period of the present condition of the earth. I venture to think we have in the lake dwellings of the world a unique and an almost universal relic of those early times, not necessarily in any one instance dating from the turn of that measureless tide, but at any rate so far in the past that men had either the necessity which must have compelled existence among watery wastes, or had not yet lost the habits which earlier necessity had made characteristic. We have to consider here the water-dwellino^s which belong to prehistoric times. Yet it is as well to mention that, just as in other directions we find all the arts of the ancients having their counterparts among savage races of to-day, so there are to be found in many parts of the world tribes 3^et living on lagoons and at mouths of rivers,—in water-dwellings which have a strong 4 . BYGONE YORKSHIRE. family likeness to what we call the prehistoric lake-dwellings. This, of course, according to many circumstances which would have to be considered, may or may not help the theoretical view with which this paper commences, but it may obviate objection to reflect that, until a certain point of civilization is reached, the tendency of man is to continue to rule his life and actions by the ancestral standard. Narrowing the limits of the subject it may be briefly stated that a series of discoveries, initiated by Dr. Keller in Switzerland in 1854, and more amply illustrated b}^ Dr. Munro in 1890, in a magnificent collection of statistics, have estab- lished the fact that a broad and indefinite belt of Europe—including, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, France, Holland, and the British Isles —contains an immense number of remains of ancient structures, which, built on piles or masses of sticks and brushwood on the beds of lakes, were the habitations, farm buildings (?), and strongholds of a people living through the Stone and Bronze ages, commencing in most primitive times and coming down by ''a gradual, quiet, and peaceable development," to a period of artistic skill and absolute culture, till—and it is here that Mr. 6 BYGONE YORKSHIRE. Franks and Dr. Munro correct previous conclu- sions—they were finally driven out by a fresh race, which, after impressing its own character on the lake-dwellings, abandoned them. To come to the British Isles, the lake-dwellings of Scotland and Ireland, thouofh includinof some early examples, are mostly of a date compara- tively late. Under the unmelodious name of Crannoges or Crannogs, they had been known for centuries, and have even taken part in the events of recorded mediaeval history ; though their archaeological import was not recognized till 1839, and not fully until the Swiss discoveries gave enlightened zest to inquiry. In these cases the late use of the structures as military fortresses seems to have obscured the consideration of their original purpose. In the lake-dwellings of the continent there have been found sufficient relics to afford a not altogether indistinct idea of the life and occupa- tion of the inhabitants, and it may be instructive to review some of the details, incorporating the conclusions to which they have given rise, before the Yorkshire examples are dealt with. The Lake-dwellers came into Europe as a pastoral people, provided with the cow^, sheep. LAKE-D WELLINGS OF YORKSHIRE. 7 pig, goat, and dog ; they were not wanderers, but settled in groups, consisting in some cases of hundreds of faraihes. The race did not Hve exclusively on the water, as there are remains of coeval hill-dwellings. They were likewise agriculturists. Their tillage is considered to have been extremely simple, but it was evidently systematic, and conjecture is given ample scope by Dr. Keller's remark to the effect that some of the products found are of a quality not excelled by the best growths of the present day. The chief crops appear to have been wheat, two-rowed barley, and flax. Their food was the flesh of the domestic animals, and of animals of the chase, fish, milk, corn-meal, rye, crab-apples, plums, pears, sloes, acorns, waterchestnuts, hazelnuts, cherries, rasp- berries, grapes, and blackberries. The broken state of the bones found is a peculiarity of remarkable uniformity of occurrence. Not only are all marrow bones found broken u^), but the hollow bones of the heads and jaws containing cellular tissue have been opened with a readiness which, by constant use, became almost art. Professor Rutmeyer adduced 8 BYGONE YORKSHIRE. from this that there was ''no superfluity," but it is quite as feasible to suppose that the palates and cookery of the lake-dwellers were capable of rendering these parts, not the "• miserable pittance " he describes, but a dainty. From finding the jaws of dogs similarly cracked, it has also been held that those animals were likewise eaten ; the fact, how^ever, of dogs being kept at all by the islanders, together with the finding of immense quantities of small bones which would, if the general conditions were those of scarcity, have been gnawed and eaten by the canines, points rather to plenty.