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HASLEWOOD, TADCASTER, YORK AND BEVERLEY
In Edwardian times the story was -
I do not know that any topographer need desire a nobler subject than is thrust in the way of those who wander round the Ainstie of York. The Ainstie, a name of which I do not see that any one can give a wholly satisfactory explanation, is the district lying between three rivers, the Aire, the Ouse, and the Nidd, and extending westwards as far as Otley, a region both fertile and picturesque, and including the domains of as many families of note as would provide lively material for more than one stout volume were their deeds and the romance of their exploits but adequately told. And to me who love the greatness of the past somewhat more than the achievements of our own day, and dwell with higher pleasure on the story of a Knight of Malta than on that of a successful mill proprietor, it is a genuine embarrassment to find myself dragged by a sense of duty at high speed through this treasure-chamber of romance, where I would fain linger till I have despoiled it all. Would that I might loiter slowly by the banks of Wharfe ! But how then should I see the coast and mountains of this vast province?
From Beverley, from Flamborough, from Richmond, Barnard Castle and the Dales, there come voices which call me on; but some leaves I will snatch from the laurels of this great district as I go by, if only to show how rich a harvest of stories, grave and gay, is to be reaped and garnered in the Ainstie. When I stood upon the Field of Towton, I was no more than a short three miles from Haslewood, an ancient house where the great family of Vavasour have been settled since the Conquest. For many centuries no name stood higher than that of Vavasour in all the north country, and the little chapel which stands beside the house is a perpetual monument of this esteem, since it is said to have been the only one to which, in the days when the worship of Roman Catholics was proscribed, the privilege of celebrating mass was granted, and has been held without any interruption to the present day. The house stands nobly on a lofty ridge, a plain, squared building, having two shallow wings; and being left a little lonely and deserted, serves the better as a stimulant to the imagination, recalling a dozen stories of the noble family which owns it. But I will have none but merry ones today, for, indeed, the tales of slaughter which I have been telling, weigh a little heavily upon my mind, and therefore I set aside the baronial grandeur of this family, and take down from the shelves a certain cheerful publication over which the readers of three centuries ago were wont to laugh until they were both stiff and sore. Why should we not laugh where they did, for all the extra wisdom we have gained?
The book is called "The Hundred Mery Talys" and among them is one of Mr Justice Vavasour. "There was a Justice but late in the reame of England, callyd Master Vavasour, a very homely man and rude of condycions, and lovyd never to spend mych money. Thys Master Vavasour rode on a time in his circuite in the northe countreye, where he had agreede with the Sheriff for a certain some of money for hys charges thorowe the Shyre, so that at every inn and lodgynge this Master Vavasour payd for hys own costes. It fortuned so that when he came to a certayn lodgynge, he commanded one Turpyn, hys servant, to se that he used good hosbondry, and to save such things as were left and to cary it wyth hym to serve at the next baytynge. Thys Turpin doynge by his Maystre's commaundement, toke the broken bred, broken mete, and all such thing that was left, and put it in the clothe sake. The wyf of the house perceiving that he toke all such fragments and vytayle with him that was left and put it in the clothe sake, she broughte up the podage that was left in the pot, and when Turpyn had turned hys bake a lytyl asyde, she pouryd the podage in the clothe sake, whych ran upon his robe of skarlet and other of his garmentys, and rayed them very evyll, that they were much hurt therwith. Thys Turpin sodeynly turnyng hym and seeing it, revyled the wyfe therfore, and ran to hys mayster and told hym what she had done; wherfore Mayster Vavasour incontinent callyd the wyf and seyd to her thus : * Thou drab,' quod he, ' what hast thou don ? Why hast thou poured the podage into my clothe sake, and marred my raiment and gere ? ' ' Oh, syr,' quod the wyfe, ' I know wel ye are a judge of the reame, and I perceive by yon your mind is to right and to have that is your owne; and your mynd is to have all thing with you that ye have paid for, both broken mete and other thynges that is left, and so it is reson that ye have, and therfore because your servant hath taken the broken mete and put it in your clothe sake, I have therein put the podage that he left, because ye have wel and truely payd for them.'" To this elaborately " Mery Tale," the moral is What ? One would never guess it, it is so recondite : " Here ye may se that he that playeth the niggarde over mych, som tyme it torneth hym to hys owne losse." With which smug piece of mediaeval wisdom stored up safely in our minds, we lay aside this mediaeval jest book, and stop laughing with our ancestors.
Tadcaster
What am I to say of Tadcaster, that old dull town with its many breweries and its lack of modern interest? I know it was a Roman station; but I cannot stay here to talk of camps and legions where there is scarce one relic to be seen, while at York, no more than nine miles away, every detail of the life of those old days lies realised and palpable before our eyes. I care naught for Calcaria when Eboracum is so near, and prefer to hasten onwards with what speed I may. But as I run out upon the high road, once so smooth and good, but now neglected to a degree not creditable to the local rulers, a few miles of jolting surface bring me in sight of an old grey building standing back across two fields upon the right, by which I cannot go without remark, not upon the building, interesting though it be, but on the family which built it and dwelt there for many a generation. Indeed it is not possible to go through the Ainstie without thinking of the family of Fairfax, whose great capacity and restless energy twined themselves so tightly in the history not of England only, but of other and more distant lands.
Not many years after Towton Field the first stones of that old house were laid by Sir Guy Fairfax, who supported the White Rose strenuously, and profited by his valour, laying the foundations of this branch family of Steeton, to whose fame his brother Nicholas contributed even more than he. For in those days when the English nobles, worn out and spent with fighting and proscriptions, settled down to a peace of utter lassitude and exhaustion, Nicholas Fairfax cast his eyes about to see in what quarter of the world he might find adventure, and saw his opportunity in the ceaseless hostilities of the Knights of Rhodes with the Grand Turk, who, scarce a generation earlier, had established himself at Constantinople, where he lingers yet, to the eternal shame of Christendom. There is no more gallant story in all history than that of the great deeds of the Knights of Rhodes. While all Europe dallied and applauded idly a courage which they dared not imitate, this handful of brave men held the outpost of Christianity, and grew grey in fighting manfully against crushing odds, till at length the Sultan Solyman attacked the island with a resistless force. While his countrymen were preparing for the final assault, Fra Niccolo Fairfax was sent to cut his way through the Turkish fleet in a small galley and bring back succour from Candia. It was a daring feat, but Fra Niccolo accomplished it and brought back reliefs. His skill and bravery could not change the final issue, for the small band of knights was overwhelmed at last, and retired to Candia in two great, ships, of which Fairfax commanded one. Ah, valiant Fra Niccolo ! had only ten thousand more been found in all Europe with thy spirit and thy passionate contempt for Moslems, how many penalties we should have been spared which we have now to pay for the cowardice of our ancestors and our own ! Well, Fra Niccolo's deeds must be read in Bosio; I cannot
transcribe them here. Another Fairfax of this great family was with the Constable Bourbon at the sack of Rome in 1527, and could have told us of George Frundsberg and the motley gang of Lanzknechts who followed him in that bold dash across the Alps, and whether it was indeed the fact that Bourbon was slain by Benvenuto Cellini, as the cunning goldsmith boasts in his incomparable memoirs, and how much more which comes rushing on the mind at the mere mention of that awful disaster to Rome and Christendom. Wherever hard fighting was going on in those ages you will find the traces of a Fairfax; and if there be indeed records of all that members of that family wrought and saw, the world will some day receive a book such as it has rarely gloated over for its enjoyment.
I may very well talk about the Fairfaxes upon this road, which truth to tell, owes any attraction it may possess to its associations, its surface being of the vilest possible, and, as every story, if it does not reach the end, should at least begin at the beginning, I will turn back to what was a very good beginning for Fairfax of Steeton, the day, that is to say, on which he carried off Isabel Thwaites from the clutches of the Abbess of Nun Appleton, which had closed on her with the peculiar grip which Mother Church reserved for heiresses. Had Isabel been no better than an heiress, Mother Church might possibly have maintained her hold. But she was beautiful to boot, and when one is seventeen, and beautiful, and it is spring time and the sap is rising, how can one not listen to the devil ? The devil was William Fairfax. He likewise was not old, and he had hot blood which called to Isabel and bade her heed him rather than the nuns. He came from Steeton, as I say, and Nun Appleton, where Lady Anne Langton, the Abbess, sat guard over Isabel the heiress, is scarce four miles away down over the hill near the banks of Wharfe. It is lamentably spoilt. One need not go to see it now. Four miles is not much; and moreover, Isabel was allowed to go out hunting. Fairfax hunted too, and was besides, a gentleman of birth and property. What more natural than that he should visit at the nunnery, where even the Cistercian rule permitted some intercourse with pupils who were rich ? I dare say no harm was meant to Mother Church. Very likely half-a-dozen hot words spoken stealthily in the nuns' old garden did the mischief; the stubble was on fire in an instant; the Abbess raged, the maiden wept, and as for the hot-headed stripling who had caused the trouble, he tried fair words, but they failed; resorted to the law, but that failed, as it did very often when levelled at the Church; and then turned his hot head to what never fails, namely force, and came and carried off his bride. That must have been a pretty scene. Isabel was shut up in the church. I don't know how Fairfax got her out, but history tells us that no great while afterwards they were married at Bolton Percy, and there was scarce any end to the riches which this stolen bride showered down upon the happy thief. No wonder that the lady Abbess fumed. It is long odds that she never had such a chance of wealth again. But it would have come to just the same thing in the end, and it is that which makes the story so instructive. For this Abbess lived to see the Dissolution, and to whom was the nunnery granted ? Why, to the Fairfaxes, and it was to the son of William and Isabel that the old Abbess handed over all her keys. What a lesson on the folly of opposing fate ! It was from this marriage that those Fairfaxes sprang who were so great and terrible in the civil wars. I would there were more like them in these days, for England has need of servants "who are not only faithful, but strong as well, and few there are who can put both qualities to the work which she has waiting for them. I know another story about Nun Appleton the tale of one Sister Hilda, who was no better than she should be, who accordingly became a spectre, incurred the humiliation of being conjured by an archbishop, and disappeared at last in a crash of thunder together with an erring friar and a strong smell of sulphur, while the candles went out on the altar, and everybody was alarmed.
York
But I really cannot stay to rake up these old scandals; for see, a turn of the road has brought in sight two noble towers standing side by side some three miles away, while at their base lies a crowd of buildings which can be no other than York. The first sight of that noble city drives out of my mind both erring nuns and their hot-headed lovers; and I hurry on my way scarce noting the pleasant houses of the suburb, or the green turf of the race-course, till I enter York itself beneath the massive arch of Micklegate, and stand in the narrow streets which still retain the aspect borne by them when the city was a fortress. For York has never yet been modernised; our dull life has touched but not absorbed it. There are still the winding streets of ancient timbered houses nodding each towards the other, the old crumbling churches thrust out into the roadway and splitting it into two narrow lanes by which the traffic must filter onwards as it may. The small, quaint alleys winding to the river have not been improved away; the beacons in the north, or watched some jaded rider spurring towards the city from Berwick or Carlisle.
These walls, once so formidable, are very quiet now; and you may pace up and down in solitude nearly all day long, while the sun flickers through the trees and gardens of the Deanery, while the swallows wheel and skim around the Minster towers, and the sound of chanting reaches you across the sweet, keen, northern air. You will walk onwards and note the great height which the walls have had. You will mark the towers and bastions which strengthened them; and going further you will see the blackened keep of the ancient castle standing by the river's bank, grim and strong, a clear witness even yet to the fact that those who fortified York anticipated no child's play, but feared assaults against which the best defences they could rear were not a whit too much. So, gradually, the modern peaceful aspect of the city falls away, and one sees York as it was, the ancient military centre of all England, the bulwark of the realm against the constant peril of the north.
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Large portions of this page are based upon the book “Highways and Byways in Yorkshire” by Arthur H Norway; 1899
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