The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 354, January 31, 1829

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN

There is no district in England which abounds in more beautiful and romantic scenery than the remote and rarely visited district of Craven, in Yorkshire. Its long ridge of low and irregular hills, terminating at last in the enormous masses of Pennygent and Ingleborough,—its deep and secluded valleys, containing within their hoary ramparts of gray limestone fertile fields and pleasant pasturages,—its wide-spreading moors, covered with the different species of moss and ling, and fern and bent-grass, which variegate the brown livery of the heath, and break its sombre uniformity,—its crystal streams of unwearied rapidity, now winding a silent course "in infant pride" through the willows and sedges which fringe their banks, and now bounding with impetuous rage over the broken ledges of rock, which seek in vain to impede their progress from the mountains,—its indigenous woods of yew, and beech, and ash, and alder, which have waved in the winds of centuries, and which still flourish in green old age on the sides and summits of the smaller declivities,—its projecting crags, which fling additional gloom over the melancholy tarns that repose in dismal grandeur at their feet,—its hamlets, and towns, and ivy-mantled churches, which remind the visiter of their antiquity by the rudeness, and convince him of their durability by the massiveness of their construction,—these are all features in the landscape which require to be seen only once, to be impressed upon the recollection for ever. But it is not merely for the lovers of the wild, and beautiful, and picturesque, that the localities of Craven possess a powerful charm. The antiquarian, the novelist, and the poet, may all find rich store of employment in the traditions which are handed down from father to son respecting the ancient lords and inhabitants of the district. It is indeed the region of romance, and I have often felt surprise, that the interesting materials with which it abounds have so seldom been incorporated into the works of fiction which are now issuing with such thoughtless haste from the press of the metropolis. In Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven—which in spite of his extravagant prejudices in favour of gentle blood, and in derogation of commercial opulence, is still an excellent model for all future writers of local history—there is a ground-work laid for at least a dozen ordinary novels. To say nothing of the legendary tales, which the peasantry relate of the minor families of the district, of the Bracewells, the Tempests, the Lysters, the Romilies, and the Nortons,—whose White Doe, however, has been immortalized by the poetry of Wordsworth,—can any thing be more pregnant with romantic adventure than the fortunes of the successive chieftains of the lordly line of Clifford? Their first introduction to the North, owing to a love-match made by a poor knight of Herefordshire with the wealthy heiress of the Viponts and the Vesys! Their rising greatness, to the merited disgrace and death of Piers de Gavestone and his profligate minions! and their final exaltation to the highest honours of the British peerage, which they have now enjoyed for five hundred years, to the strong hand and unblenching heart with which they have always welcomed the assaults of their most powerful enemies! Of the first ten lords of Skipton castle, four died in the field and one upon the scaffold! The "black-faced Clifford," who sullied the glory which he acquired by his gallantry at the battle of Sandal, by murdering his youthful prisoner the Earl of Rutland, in cold blood, at the termination of it, has gained a passport to an odious immortality from the soaring genius of the bard of Avon. But his real fate is far more striking, both in a moral and in a poetical point of view, than that assigned to him by our great dramatist. On the evening before the battle of Towton Field, and after the termination of the skirmish which preceded it, an unknown archer shot him in the throat, as he was putting off his gorget, and so avenged the wretched victims, whose blood he had shed like water upon Wakefield Bridge. The vengeance of the Yorkists was not, however, satiated by the death of the Butcher, as Leland informs us that they called him:—for they attainted him, in the first year of the reign of Edward the Fourth, and granted his estates, a few years afterwards, to the Duke of Gloucester, who retained them in his iron grasp till he lost them with his crown and life at the battle of Bosworth. The history of his son is a romance ready made. His relations, fearing lest the partisans of the house of York should avenge the death of the young Earl of Rutland on the young Lord Clifford, then a mere infant, concealed him for the next twenty-five years of his life in the Fells of Cumberland, where he grew up as hardy as the heath on which he vegetated, and as ignorant as the rude herds which bounded over it. One of the first acts of Henry the Seventh, after his accession to the throne, was to reverse the attainder which had been passed against his father; and immediately afterwards the young lord emerged from the hiding place, where he had been brought up in ignorance of his rank, and with the manners and education of a mere shepherd. Finding himself more illiterate than was usual even in an illiterate age, he retired to a tower, which he built in the beautiful forest of Barden, and there, under the direction of the monks of Bolton Abbey, gave himself up to the forbidden studies of alchemy and astrology. His son, who was the first Earl of Cumberland, embittered the conclusion of his life, by embarking in a series of adventures, which, in spite of their profligacy, or rather in consequence of it, possess a very strong romantic interest. Finding that his father was either unwilling or unable to furnish him with funds to maintain his inordinate riot and luxury, he became the leader of a band of outlaws, and, by their agency, levied aids and benevolences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, which, by the by, is not the letter of an illiterate man, is still extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scapegrace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one of them, Henry Popely, who ventured to disobey him, so severely with his own hand, that he lay for a long time in peril of death. He spoiled his father's houses, &c. "feloniously took away his proper goods," as the old lord quaintly observes, "apparelling himself and his horse, all the time, in cloth of gold and goldsmith's work, more like a duke than a poor baron's son." He likewise took a particular aversion to the religious orders, "shamefully beating their tenants and servants, in such wise as some whole towns were fain to keep the churches both night and day, and durst not come at their own houses."—Whilst engaged in these ignoble practices, less dissonant, however, to the manners of his age than to those of our's, he wooed, and won, and married, a daughter of the Percy of Northumberland; and it is conjectured, upon very plausible grounds, that his courtship and marriage with a lady of the highest rank under such disadvantages on his part, gave rise to the beautiful old ballad of the Nutbrown Maid. The lady, becoming very unexpectedly the heiress of her family, added to the inheritance of the Cliffords the extensive fee which the Percies held in Yorkshire; and by that transfer of property, and by the grant of Bolton Abbey, which he obtained from Henry the Eighth, on the dissolution of the monasteries, her husband became possessor of nearly all the district which stretches between the castles of Skipton on the south, and of Brougham, or as the Cliffords, to whom it belonged, always wrote it, Bromeham, on the north. The second Earl of Cumberland, who was as fond of alchemy and astrology as his grandfather, was succeeded by his son George, who distinguished himself abroad by the daring intrepidity with which he conducted several buccaneering expeditions in the West Indies against the Spaniards, and at home, by the very extensive scale on which he propagated his own and his Maker's image in the dales of Craven. Among the numerous children of whom he was the father, the most celebrated was the Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, whose long life of virtuous exertion renders her well qualified to figure as the heroine of a tale of chivalry. The anecdotes which are told of this high-spirited lady in the three counties of York, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, are almost innumerable, and relate to circumstances in her life, which, though some are impossible, and others improbable, are still all full of heroic interest and adventure. Her defence of Bromeham Castle against the intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland,—her riding cross-legged to meet the judges of assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as High Sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland,—her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the great rebellion, are characteristics of the woman, so striking in themselves, that they would require little adventitious ornament from the writer, who should take them as incidents for poem or romance. Her courage and liberality in public life were only to be equalled by her order, economy, and devotion in private. "She was," says Dr. Whitaker, "the oldest and most independent courtier in the kingdom," at the time of her death.—"She had known and admired queen Elizabeth;– she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of king James," though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset;– "She rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second." A woman of such dauntless spirit and conduct would be a fitting subject, even for the pencil of the mighty magician of Abbotsford. A journal of her life in her own hand-writing is still in existence at Appleby Castle. I have heard, that it descends to the minutest details about her habits and feelings, and that it is that cause alone, which prevents its publication.

Blackwood's Magazine.