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To keep strongly the unity of
a nation which had,
as has been the case with most States of the world,
arisen out of the co-mingling of various races, with
various race traditions, predilections, and proclivities,
a common national designation is scarcely less of
importance than one central Government: One flag, a common State language
permitting of the continuance of sectional languages older than itself,
common laws, and as much sameness of standards of
faith and morals as full religious liberty will permit.
The Romans knew the two
islands which form our
United Kingdom as Britannia Major and Britannia
Minor the Greater Britain and the Lesser Britain.
On the coins is put the inscription, King or Queen
"of the Britains." But, unfortunately, the documentary and legislative formula is King or Queen
"of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland." This want of a common designation has
accentuated the sea severance and all the other
causes by which Irish discontent and feelings of
alienation, carefully fostered by professional agitators
and disloyal conspirators, have so long been kept in
active operation. The laudable suggestion of the
inscription on the coins has proved abortive, be-
cause effect has not been given to it in the two
Treaties of Union. The kingdom of the British
Isles was the common designation it suggested.
The Irish, I believe, never recognised the Roman
title of the Lesser Britain as a proper one for their
country, but they would certainly have been less
offended by the irrepressible arrogance of the "predominant partner" if that style of co-partnership
had been adopted, and more heard of the British
Government, the British Parliament, the British
Army, the British Navy, and less, of the English
Government, the English Parliament, the English
Army, and the English Navy. Even Lord Palmerston, in the great speech in
which he so splendidly defended his conduct of foreign affairs, boasted that
he was "the Minister of England." As for the late Lord Salisbury, he was on
this matter a constant offender, who did not see that he was giving offence
to Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen, who had in war and peace done somewhat
more than their proportionate share in building up the British Empire.
The project of an
incorporating union between
England and Scotland was entertained and discussed
for a hundred years before it was accomplished.
One name had to be found for the united countries,
and choice lay between reviving the old name of
Albion or adopting that of Great Britain. The
Romans had made the name of Britain familiar to
literature and the whole civilised world of their own
and after- times. Albion was only kept in memory
by the Picts of Galloway and the people, their race
relations, north of the Friths of Forth and Clyde,
whom the Romans had never conquered. At the
Northallerton Battle of the Standard, which King
David of Scotland fought for his niece, Matilda, and
her son, Henry Plantagenet a battle which he
disastrously lost the Gallowegians rushed fiercely
at their foes shouting "Albannaich! Albannaich!"
Their compatriots north of the friths called their
country Alba, or Albyn, and that is the only name
which Gaelic-speaking people have yet for all
Scotland. Like England, Scotland received its
present name in a curiously-indirect way. The
Welsh retained the name of Britain, and so did the
Britons of Strathclyde, who called their capital on
the cliff of the Clyde, Dun Breatunn (Dumbarton)
the Britain stronghold.
In all the Celtic tongues of
these islands, and, I
think, in the Breton language also, the Angles are
put aside, and only the Saxons and Norse are
recognised. England is named Saxonland, the
English people are Sasunnaich or Saxons, and their
language is called Beurla, which is a word of doubtful character. Now, when one comes to think of it,
the Celtic words agree with the actual facts, and it
does seem curious that England and English are
words which disagree with these facts. What had
the East Anglicans to do with the work of consolidation? Was it not by the West Saxon kings and
people that the Heptarchy was swept into a united
Saxon kingdom? The adoption by the West
Saxons of the Anglican names for themselves, their
language, the kingdom they had formed out of the
unruly Heptarchy, is indeed passing strange. Perhaps the Church founded by St Augustine, which
had its head-quarters in Kent, and its second seat
of power and influence at York, had something to
do with the self-abnegation of the West Saxons.
The legend ran, and it bears every mark of being a
perfectly true one, that good Pope Gregory the
Great, when a young man and as yet only a deacon,
saw one day in the market place of Rome youths of
fair hair, fair skin, and blue eyes, bound as captives,
to be sold into slavery, and that, struck by their
beauty, he asked who they were and from what
country they had come, and was told they were Angli, or Angles, and had come from a part of
Britain than called Deira. On hearing this he
remarked they should not be called Angles but
Angels, and plucked from the wrath of God by faith
in Christ. We do not hear that he succeeded in
rescuing the captives and converting them, but,
when Pope, he remembered the fair Angli, who
should be angels, and, in 596, sent St Augustine
and holy monks to convert the pagans of the newly
formed Saxon kingdom.
Those who go to the West
Riding expecting to
find most of the people there proving Saxon descent
by bearing in their personal appearance the description of the Germans given by Tacitus in his
Germania, the Pope Gregory story, and the statements of many later writers, will be, as I was myself,
surprised to find that the predominant type is that
of medium-sized, well-built, energetic, dark or
brown-haired, and dark-blue or brown-eyed people.
Those with milk-white skins, light-blue eyes, and
fair hair, or the hair tinged with red, which, when
touched with the sun's rays, flashes into gold, can be
found indeed, but are comparatively few in number,
and do not always belong to the native stock. On
the eastern seaboard and in the southern counties,
the modern representatives of the Germans of
Tacitus, and of Pope Gregory's angel-like Angles
from Deira, are, however, far more numerous.
Mercia, the latest-founded of the Heptarchy kingdoms, had plenty of internal troubles, but, being
inland, was less frequently visited and ravaged by
invaders from the sea than the regions to the east
and south of it. Being hilly and presumably in
former days much-wooded, its inhabitants could
better defend themselves and escape being killed,
or captured to be enslaved, or forced to flee away
from their native district to seek asylum elsewhere.
The district called Elmet appears to have retained a
sort of independence during the Heptarchy period,
and after England had been united under the West
Saxon monarchy. Elmet included Leeds, Bradford,
Halifax, and probably extended at times far up
Craven. Loidis in Elmet was its chief town, and
those who speak the ancestral dialect call Leeds
Loids to the present day.
Whether Elmet was finally
conquered by force of
arms, or absorbed by infiltration and necessities of
common defence against outside invaders, is not
clearly known, but the fact is undoubted that long
before the turmoils at the end of the tenth and in
the early part of the eleventh century the Saxons
had imposed their ruling supremacy and their
language, laws, and institutions up in Elmet as on
all the rest of Mercia, and that the whole population
of this great internal region had laid aside past
inter-racial hostilities, and learned to think of them-
selves as Englishmen and to act together as one
people. By the co-mingling of Saxons, Ancient
Britons, and Romans, a blend was produced which
accounts for the characteristics, physical and mental,
of the natives of the West Hiding as a whole, and of
those of the Elmet district especially. They combine the best qualities of all the races from which
they have sprung.
William the Conqueror,
burdened with many
other cares and heavy undertakings, would gladly
have left the North of England for a while alone if
Edwin and Morkere, the Saxon Earls of Mercia, had
not made an untimely revolt. Their outbreak caused
him to march north through the middle of England
with an army composed of both Normans and
Englishmen. The rebels yielded, but a second
outbreak led to the occupation of York and the
thorough subjection of Mercia and Northumbria.
William's son, Rufus, conquered Cumberland, and
before the Conqueror's youngest son Henry's reign
ended, the West Riding, like most of the rest of
England, was placed under Norman barons. Ilbert
de Lacy, Lord of Pontefract, had Bradford and its
district, which stretched along the hills as far as
Haworth. Another Norman baron built a castle at
Bingley, and ruled over that neighbourhood. Robert
de Romeli or Romily ruled Craven and Upper
Wharfedale from his rock stronghold at Skipton.
They had their day, these Norman barons, who were
good war captains, capable organisers, but rapacious
local despots, who, in a singular manner, joined
refinement with cruelty, while each of them made
himself as much as he could a despot king in his
own domain. All of them were ever seeking, as a
ruling clan, to extort more and more of feudal right
from their sovereigns. So it required all the exceptional talents of the Conqueror, the ferocity of Rufus,
and the statesmanship of Henry to keep them in
order. If the best that can truly be said of Rufus
is that he was a strong beast of a ruler, whose
beastly forcibleness overawed the rebellious, rapacious
and, on their own domains, the brutally despotic
Norman barons, who had to be rewarded out of the
spoils of England, and never were satisfied with
what they had got, it cannot be disputed that
William the Conqueror and his youngest son, Henry
I., were far-seeing statesmen', who wanted to establish orderly national and local institutions upon a
perfected feudal system, which would bind rulers by
mutual responsibilities upon graded classification
and fixed law. Out of the conflicts between the
Norman baronage and their sovereigns English
liberty slowly evolved, and the English people again
raised their heads, after having learned much from
their Norman masters and much profited by what
they had learned, and likewise unlearned, in the
school of adversity.
I do not think there were
many places in all England in which the oppressiveness of the Norman barons
was less heavy and less lasting than in the district between Low Moor and
the upper end of Craven, the district with which I am chiefly concerned in this part of my miscellaneous scribblings
The Norman lords of Pontefract do not appear to
have ever had a castle or residence of any sort in the
Bradford part of their possessions. As they were
absentees who had urgent need of all their foreign
retainers at Pontefract, the probability is that almost
from the beginning and all through they made
trusted natives their deputies in the Bradford
district. There are no persons bearing their name in
the district now. In fact as far as record evidence
goes, there were never, four centuries ago, any De
Lacy's there. The Bingley barons of two lines
Le Bruns and Paganels, if I rightly remember did
not add, as far as can be ascertained, people of their
name and lineage as a new element to the native
and permanent population. The line of Robert
Romily soon ended in a female heiress, Alice Homily,
who married the Scotchman, William Fitz-Duncan.
Rombold's Moor is called after Robert Romily.
In regard to place-names the Normans made no great
innovation. Domesday Book proves they took and
perpetuated the place-names as the Saxons had left
them, and only imposed Norman names on a few
castles, halls, and forests of their own making. The
Teutonic and, in a less degree, Scandinavian invaders
changed place-names wherever they went, took
possession, and established authority. This was no
doubt partly due to race-pride, but it seems to have
been more largely owing to invincible linguistic
conservatism. Even yet the English people are
behind other nations in learning foreign languages.
Their Saxon ancestors would use no language at all
but their own, excepting their scholars who learned
Latin. The Saxons effaced as far as they possibly
could the British and Roman place-names they
found in England, and when they could not wholly
deface an old name, they usually masked it beyond
easy recognition. Who can easily discern Eboracum
under its York mask? Gastra, the Roman camp or
great military centre, is more discernible in the
Chesters, with Saxon caps on their heads, such as
Manchester. In the district with which I am chiefly
concerned, there was a junction Roman station
where the great Roman road from the south by
Otley Chevin to York was joined by the cross-
country road from the west coast, but the old
Roman name of that station is not easily recognisable in the Ilkley to which
the Saxons degraded it. Of the many ancient British place-names which have
in this district been similarly maltreated, Craven has suffered the least
damage. Craven in Gaelic would be Craig-bhan or White-rock-land. It takes
its designation from the limestone rocks with which
it abounds. Penygherit and Penistone, while retaining the Celtic 'ben,' in Cymric 'pen' get spoiled tails.
Farther north the Pennine chain which separates
the waters which flow east from those which flow
west, mean a chain of hills with pointed or ben tops.
In Gaelic 'pen' would be 'beinn,' but in Cymric 'p' takes the place of 'b.'
It is a far cry from Westmoreland to the Alps, but the Pennine Alps and the
North of England Pennines have exactly the same
meaning. When a proper search is made into the
disguised and transformed place - names of the
Mercian hill districts, perhaps some good guess can
be made as to what was the language of the Brigantes, and whether they belonged to the Cymric
or Gaelic Celts, or were something between the two.
Their colony in Ireland, mapped by Ptolemy, became
Gaelic-speakers before St. Patrick's time, but as all
the Celtic races quickly caught up new languages,
that Gaelic-speaking in Ireland is no proof at all to
us of what division of the Celtic race the Brigantes
belonged, and what Celtic dialect was spoken in
Mercia. Although Norman French was for three
hundred years the language of their rulers, the
English people with characteristic, stolid, and
patriotic conservatism refused to learn it, and so
in the end made Englishmen of the descendants
of their former haughty foreign conquerors and
oppressors.
When David, King of Scotland,
invaded England
in 1138, with all his forces, to support his niece
Matilda's cause against King Stephen and his
supporters, his nephew, William Fitz-Duncan, and
his wife, Alice Homily, held Skipton Castle, and
had probably openly espoused Stephen's cause, since
David's host, on their inarch to meet defeat at
Northallerton, committed ravages and sacrileges in
Craven, which caused such remorse to pious David
that he afterwards sent a silver chalice to every
Craven church as a sign of his penitence and as an
expiation offering. William Fitz-Duncan was his
nephew, and had he chosen to assert his claim to the
throne of Scotland he might have been his formid-
able rival. William's father was that eldest son of
Malcolm-Ceannmor who as Duncan II. reigned over
Scotland for two years. The legitimacy of William's
birth was never challenged, but that of his father-
was. The children of Malcolm by his Saxon queen,
Margaret, and their descendants saw to it that
Duncan, in chronicles and documents written after
his death, should be called nothus or bastard.
Malcolm was seemingly a widower when he first
saw the Saxon princess who became his second wife,
and the mother of the three sons who were kings
afterwards. Malcolm's first wife was the widow, or
as some suppose the daughter, of his cousin, Thorfinn. According to our
present law the marriage was perfectly legal, and the issue of it, Duncan II., was
legitimate. But it seems that a flaw was found in
it by the new Margaretan clergy, which suited the
second wife's family, and the clergy too, by declaring the first marriage null and void, and setting
Malcolm's eldest son aside as one of illegitimate
birth. It was on "Tanistry" or eldest prince of the
blood ground something like the Turkish law
that Donald Ban claimed a right to succeed his
brother Malcolm. Duncan's claim was that of
legitimately born eldest son of Malcolm. William,
son of Duncan, had been married in Scotland, and
left children there before he went to England and
married the great Norman heiress, Alice Homily.
Descendants of William MacWilliams as well as
descendants of Donald Ban, gave many and long-
continued troubles to the kings of the Queen
Margaret line. Succession to the Scotch and
English thrones had gone far off the straight lines
when David led the forces of Scotland into England
to support the cause of his Norman niece, Matilda,
against Stephen, and never mentioned the undisputable fact that on his uncle, Edgar Atheling's
death, he had himself become the sole legitimate
heir to Alfred's throne and dynasty. When his
West of Scotland levies, on the march to Northallerton, passed the rock of Skip ton, in the fortress on
the top of it dwelt his nephew, William, the son of
Duncan, who had, as far as can be now judged, a
better right than himself to the throne of Scotland.
As for the hilly route followed by the Scotch
western levies, it was the one which, no doubt, their
ancestors used for their invasions in Roman days,
whenever they had the opportunity, and it was the
one that their after race always used down to the
union of the crowns. It was a route on which they
could not be well attacked by mail-clad horsemen.
The Scots Were always defeated in heavy cavalry
and in mail-clad fighting. That deficiency was the
cause of their defeat in the battle at Northallerton.
William Fitz-Duncan and Alice Homily's only
child was the Boy of Egremont, who was called so
because he was born at Egremont, near Liverpool.
The Boy was his mother's darling, and the heir to
very extensive estates. Some contemporary writer,
quoted by Palgrave, hinted that there was an
obscure conspiracy among a party of the Norman
barons to nominate him as their candidate for the
throne during the struggle between Stephen and
Matilda. If so, the project was put an end to by his
early and tragic death. But as he had no hereditary
right, as far as is known, of any kind to the English
throne, the story is in the highest degree improbable.
The Augustiniau Canons, who as early as 1121 had
a monastic house at Embsay, were the Boy's teachers,
and he was accompanied by one or more of them
when he went one day with dogs on leash to hunt
in Barden Forest, and was drowned when jumping
the Strid. I easily jumped the Strid myself, both
back and forward, but would certainly have no dogs
on leash when doing so. The Strid is a narrow
channel with jagged edges, and with, at the lower
end, rock points and boulders, cut through the rock
bed of the river. When the Wharfe is moderately
low most of the water rushes foaming and madly
singing through this channel, which is very much
like a mill lead made by Nature's hand. The Boy
was drowned, and the monk who had to take the sad
news to his mother, according to tradition but it
is likely they both spoke in Norman French began
by asking the bereaved lady "What is good for a
bootless bene?" meaning a prayer which had not
been answered, and she, quickly realising the great
calamity which had fallen upon her, replied "Endless sorrow." This is truly a pathetic story of a
bright youth of great expectations suddenly cut off
in his teens, and of a poor mother, no longer young,
plunged by his death into endless sorrow. The
sorrowing mother turned to religion as her only
source of consolation, and built Bolton Priory, which
it has long been the local habit to erroneously
call Bolton Abbey, as the Boy's monument. So the
Augustinian Canons, keeping their house and lands
at Embsay, and getting much of new land, erected
the fine buildings and church on the fair Bolton field.
Although it was a priory and not an abbey, it had
territorial possessions large enough for any abbey.
The lordship of Skipton
having passed through
severe vicissitudes, reverted to the Crown, and
was given by Edward II. to his favourite, Piers
Gaveston, who was not long able to keep it. Then
the Cliffords got it, and although they now and then
lost it, always regained it, and kept it until the last
Earl of Cumberland died, and it passed to a female
heiress, the Countess of Pembroke, and afterwards
to the Earls of Thanet, the last of whom left his
own Kent property and the large Clifford estates in
Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Craven, to his
illegitimate son, Richard Charles Tufton, who was
created a baronet in 1857. As for the plunder of
the priory, it went by marriage with an heiress first
to an Irish nobleman, and then by a similar marriage
came to the Cavendish family, and is in possession
of the Duke of Devonshire to this day. The priory
church, which was a grand one, is partly in ruins
and partly in use as a parish church. The other
monastic buildings have all perished except the
gate-house, which, with additions, has been made
into a lodge for use by the Duke and his party in the
shooting season. What was the gateway with a
fine arch in the monk's time is now the central hall
of the transformed building. |
