England, Picturesque and Descriptive: A Reminiscence of Foreign TravelCook, Joel
History
England, Picturesque and Descriptive: A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel
Cook, Joel
England -- Description and travel
The coast of Yorkshire affords the boldest and grandest scenery on the
eastern shore of England. A great protruding backbone of chalk rocks
projects far into the North Sea at Flamborough Head, and makes one of
the most prominent landmarks on all that rugged, iron-bound coast. This
is the Ocellum Promontorium of Ptolemy, and its lighthouse is three
hundred and thirty feet above the sea, while far away over the waters
the view is superb. From Flamborough Head northward beyond Whitby the
coast-line is a succession of abrupt white cliffs and bold headlands,
presenting magnificent scenery. About twenty-three miles north of
Flamborough is the "Queen of Northern Watering-places," as Scarborough
is pleased to be called, where a bold headland three hundred feet high
juts out into the North Sea for a mile, having on each side semicircular
bays, each about a mile and a quarter wide. At the extreme point of the
lozenge-shaped promontory stands the ruined castle which named the town
Scar-burgh, with the sea washing the rocky base of its foundations on
three sides. Steep cliffs run precipitously down to the narrow beach
that fringes these bays around, and on the cliffs is the town of
Scarborough, while myriads of fishing-vessels cluster about the
breakwater-piers that have been constructed to make a harbor of refuge.
It would be difficult to find a finer situation, and art has improved it
to the utmost, especially as mineral springs add the attractions of a
spa to the sea air and bathing. The old castle, battered by war and the
elements, is a striking ruin, the precipitous rock on which it stands
being a natural fortress. The Northmen when they first invaded Britain
made its site their stronghold, but the present castle was not built
until the reign of King Stephen, when its builder, William le Gros, Earl
of Albemarle, was so powerful in this part of Yorkshire that it was said
he was "in Stephen's days the more real king." But Henry II. compelled
the proud earl to submit to his authority, though "with much searching
of heart and choler," and Scarborough afterwards became one of the royal
castles, Edward I. in his earlier years keeping court there. It was
there that Edward II. was besieged and his favorite Gaveston starved
into surrender, and then beheaded on Blacklow Hill in violation of the
terms of his capitulation. Scarborough was repeatedly attacked by the
Scotch, but it subsequently enjoyed an interval of peace until the
Reformation. In Wyatt's rebellion his friends secured possession of the
castle by stratagem. A number of his men, disguised as peasants, on
market-day strolled one by one into the castle, and then at a given
signal overpowered the sentinels and admitted the rest of their band.
The castle, however, was soon recaptured from the rebels, and Thomas
Stafford, the leader in this enterprise, was beheaded. From this event
is derived the proverb of a "Scarborough warning"--a word and a blow,
but the blow first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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