Although, as we have seen, Leland, who wrote in 1538, mentions
Frenchgate and Finkel Street Gate as 'down,' yet they must have been
only partially destroyed, or were rebuilt afterwards, for Whitaker,
writing in 1823, mentions that they were pulled down 'not many years
ago' to allow the passage of broad and high-laden waggons. There can be
little doubt, therefore, that, swollen with success after the
demolition of the cross, the Mayor and Corporation proceeded to attack
the remaining gateways, so that now not the smallest suggestion of
either remains. But even here we have not completed the list of
barbarisms that took place about this time. The Barley Cross, which
stood near the larger one, must have been quite an interesting feature.
It consisted of a lofty pillar with a cross at the top, and rings were
fastened either on the shaft or to the steps upon which it stood, so
that the cross might answer the purpose of a whipping-post. The pillory
stood not far away, and the May-pole is also mentioned.
But despite all this squandering of the treasures that it should have
been the business of the town authorities to preserve, the tower of the
Grey Friars has survived, and, next to the castle, it is one of the
chief ornaments of the town. Some other portions of the monastery are
incorporated in the buildings which now form the Grammar School. The
Grey Friars is on the north side of the town, outside the narrow limits
of the walls, and was probably only finished in time to witness the
dispersal of the friars who had built it. It is even possible that it
was part of a new church that was still incomplete when the Dissolution
of the Monasteries made the work of no account except as building
materials for the townsfolk. The actual day of the surrender was
January 19, 1538, and we wonder if Robert Sanderson, the Prior, and the
fourteen brethren under him, suffered much from the privations that
must have attended them at that coldest period of the year. At one time
the friars, being of a mendicant order, and inured to hard living and
scanty fare, might have made light of such a disaster, but in these
later times they had expanded somewhat from their austere ways of
living, and the dispersal must have cost them much suffering.
Going back to the reign of Henry VII. or there-abouts, we come across
the curious ballad of 'The Felon Sow of Rokeby and the Freres of
Richmond' quoted from an old manuscript by Sir Walter Scott in
'Rokeby.' It may have been as a practical joke, or merely as a good way
of getting rid of such a terrible beast, that
'Ralph of Rokeby, with goodwill,
The fryers of Richmond gave her till.'
Friar Middleton, who with two lusty men was sent to fetch the sow from
Rokeby, could scarcely have known that she was
'The grisliest beast that ere might be,
Her head was great and gray:
She was bred in Rokeby Wood;
There were few that thither goed,
That came on live [= alive] away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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