I + 

Of the Land I Live In + 

It may be thought by some, who from prejudice or ignorance are not in a position to judge properly of the matter, that there is nothing in this part of England which is worth writing of or describing, so strange are the views held by outsiders of us Yorkshiremen, so peculiar the ideas which many people have respecting our land, people, and manners. There is an impression beyond our borders that we are never so happy as when engaged in a horse-dealing transaction, and it is quite true that we are fond of trade in that direction, and bad to overreach when it comes to a question of hard bargaining. Nevertheless, it is not true that we think of nothing else but horse-dealing, any more than that our county⁠—or, at least, some parts of it⁠—is not to be compared for natural beauties with other shires which have achieved more fame in that way. I have heard travelled men discourse of the fine scenery and beautiful landscapes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and of the grandeur of Devon and Cornwall, not to speak of Derbyshire and some parts of Wales, comparing divers districts of these to the country in Switzerland and Italy, which is, I understand, as fair as anything this earth can show; but, in spite of that, it has always seemed to me that our own three Ridings can exhibit as many pleasing prospects as man need wish for; so that a Yorkshireman casting his eyes upon them must needs thank God that he has been placed to live his life amongst such delectable spots. For we have hill and valley, and broad tracts of luscious meadow-land where you may feed a thousand head of cattle and never hurt the luxuriance of the grass, and our rivers are comparable for quiet beauty with Trent or Severn, and our rocky defiles are oftentimes as wild as anything that you will meet in Scotland or Cumberland. Then, again, our seaboard is such as few countries can show the like of, consisting as it does of rough promontory and rocky headland, joined with long stretches of brown sand, across which the North Sea’s waves come tumbling cold and icy from Norroway. Nay, when I begin to think in good earnest of the matter, and to remember what I have seen in other days⁠—for I have travelled somewhat myself⁠—I am certain that for diversity of scenery you may roam the wide world over and never find a country so fair, so rich in Nature’s gifts, so pleasing to the eye, as my native Yorkshire. + 

And of all parts of this broad-acred land there is none which I so much love or admire as that in which the greater portion of my life hath been spent, though I indeed have seen the whole of the three Ridings, from Cronkley Fell to Featherbed Moss, and from Flamborough Head to Bowland Forest. There is a fine beauty about the dales of the North Riding, and I have seen sights upon the lonely wolds of Cleveland and Ryedale which did inspire me with feelings of awe and great wonder. And I have heard artists who understood these matters say that amongst those dales and hills there are scenes which not all the world can show the equal of. Howbeit I am no artist, though loving a good picture, but only a simple yeoman born and bred on the land, and never so happy as when breathing in the fresh air of a spring morning as it steals to your nostrils over the breadth of a new-ploughed field; and so, when it comes to a question of comparison between these districts, I give the palm to the broad meadow-lands and deep woods and gentle undulations of that corner of the West Riding where first I saw the light, where I have passed the greater part of my life to this present time, where, please God, I shall die and lie at peace. + 

If you will take your chart of Yorkshire and draw with your pen a straight line from Doncaster to Wakefield, from Wakefield to Wetherby, from Wetherby to York, from York to Goole, and from Goole to Doncaster again, you will have enclosed the tract of land of which I have spoken. I question if you can find throughout the length and breadth of England a similar piece of country more rich in historical associations, more odorous of national life, more beautiful in its own quiet way. Here we have no great mountains, no rushing rivers, no awesome valleys, but the land rolls along in richness of wood and stream, thorpe and hamlet, the gray spires and towers of village churches rising heavenward here and there, the red roofs of farmsteads, the tall gables of manors and halls peeping from the great groves of elm and beech and chestnut which stud the land everywhere in prodigal luxuriance. Right through this land runs the Great North Road like a silver streak, straight and direct, so that as I stand at my door o’ nights I can hear the carriers’ wagons rumbling north and south, and the quick gallop of horses hurried on by postboys fearful of highwayman and footpad, of whom in this year of grace, 1686, there are still many left amongst us. Branching from this noble highway go roads right and left, making communications between our villages and market-towns easy, and being in a general way of speaking well kept. Right merry market-towns, too, are they of which I speak, and not to be put down by any of their fellows in England. For there is merrie Wakefield, with its bridge and chapel, where battles have been fought, and a king’s son foully slain, and where in old times bows were made of right good Yorkshire ash or willow; and there is Pontefract with its great castle, now falling into ruins, and its mighty Church of All Saints, and half a score of ancient religious houses; and there is Selby, with its glorious Abbey, whose towers and pinnacles you may see for many a square mile round about; and there is Wetherby, and Snaith, and Sherburn, and Thorne, each a fair market-town; and there is Goole, whence along the Ouse and Humber go ships even to the ports of Holland; and at the southern point there is Doncaster, breathing the air and spirit of English freedom; and at the northern there is York, the proud and beautiful city, whose great Minster looks forth across the embattled walls upon the broad lands beyond, like a fair mother watching her children. And between these market-towns, fenced in by wood and stream and meadow, and embowered in leafy hedgerows, stands many a smiling village and hamlet, with its old church and great manor or castle standing in the midst of broad parks and pleasaunces. Here and there, too, you may come across some homestead standing alone in its meadows and closes, and yet never so far from a village that its occupants are entirely neighbourless. A fair land and a rich it is, and dear to me, as I have already said, because it bore and nursed me, and has smiled upon me, year in, year out, when human eyes did not smile, comforting me by its very beauty when life seemed dark and inexplicable. + 

It was within four miles of the ancient and historic market-town of Pontefract, where kings have been imprisoned and done to death, that I, William Dale, yeoman, was born in the year of grace 1621. The house wherein I first drew breath is that in which I now live; I trust in God it may shelter me to the end, and my children and grandchildren after me, for a right good house of stone it is, and was new tiled the year I came to man’s estate, by Geoffrey Scholes, the mason, of Campsall, who did good and honest work in whatsoever he undertook. As for situation, it lieth somewhat lonely, but at a good altitude, and the air round about it is exceedingly clear and pleasant to breathe. It stands on the left-hand side of the highway as you go from Doncaster to Ferrybridge, and is distant exactly one and a half miles from the crossroads at Darrington and about three-quarters of a mile from Wentbridge. There is no house stands near it⁠—save one or two cottages that I builded for convenience’ sake, it being somewhat of a long way for the men to walk from the neighbouring villages, and the road nothing like safe o’ dark nights⁠—nevertheless, we have never felt afraid of harm, albeit we were visited more than once in the troublous times by robbers, who thought to take advantage of our lonely position. However, they were but ill-requited for their pains, two of the rascals carrying away nothing better than a charge of lead in their persons, and the third being shot stone dead by my cowherd, Jacob Trusty, as he was striving to make forcible entry into the pantry window. Yet lonely indeed is the situation of Dale’s Field, and some more used to company might fear the long winter evenings which we spend here. No feeling of this sort ever came over myself, who knew that all around me lay my own good land, nigh four hundred acres of it, grass and arable, of which my fathers had reaped the harvest for many a generation. Dales of Dale’s Field there have always been since William the Conqueror came over; God knows whether there always will be, for I have seen ancient families dwindle away and vanish root and branch, so that even my own good old stock may possibly in time die out, and our homestead vanish from the face of the earth, and our acres, for which we have more than once stood much hard contest, even to blood-shedding, be swallowed up in the estates around them. + 

I have said that Dale’s Field stands at a good altitude, which is indeed a grateful truth. For standing at my door of a clear evening, and looking east and northeast, I can behold the two great hills rising up near Selby, the one called Hambleton Haugh, the other Brayton Barugh, and beyond them the long nave and high tower of Selby Abbey itself. Between me and them stretches a wide country of wood and meadow, which I am never tired of gazing upon in the summer evenings when I sit in my window with pipe and glass. For it seems to smile and smile and smile, and the green of the woods blends with the brown of the soil, and the clear blue overhead looks down on both with a smile of benediction. Somewhat of a flat land it is, that country due east, but none the less fair, seeing that it holdeth many a fair village, whose spires shoot upwards out of the green and stand clearly defined against the sky. To the northward, too, we can see a fair distance, where the high ground rises beyond Ferrybridge and Brotherton, over whose slopes the road climbs on its way to York. A prospect of this sort is always most grateful to us who are born on the soil, and more to be preferred, because of its peaceful character and gentle undulations, than the bolder scenery which you will find in our northern dales. Nevertheless, if I am minded to look upon more diversified prospects, I am not far removed from such, for across my home meadows lies the Vale of Went, than which I never saw aught more picturesque in all our land. A beautiful valley and a charming it is, as you would say did you but enter it at Church Smeaton, or even further east, and follow it to the hamlet of Wentbridge, where it widens and spreads itself out in the broad meadow-lands that stretch at the foot of the long rise of ground called Went Hill. Along this valley is much diversity of scenery, for sometimes the sides slope gently towards each other, and sometimes they are dark and rocky and frown with beetling masses of gray crag, and here and there are wild and barren, and in other places they are covered with luxuriant woods and groves of fir and pine. Nought fairer than Went Vale have I ever seen, especially as it presents itself in the early days of June, when all the trees are in leaf and the birds sing, sing, sing from morning till night, and the little stream of Went runs babbling along to join the Don some twenty miles away. Many a twist and turn does Went make as it flows through the valley. Now it is straight and placid, as between the millhouse and the bridge, and anon it winds in and out in capricious fashion, so that there is one spot where I have often stood and hurled a stone that crossed the stream five times in the one throw. Wealth, too, it hath of birds’-nests, and many a time have I tumbled down its rough and gnarly crags or from the yielding branches of its trees when hunting for the haunts of magpie and jackdaw, thrush and blackbird. + 

If you will look at your chart again you will find that my farmstead of Dale’s Field is removed but little space from the head of Went Hill. How many times have I stood there in the early morning, when the valley beneath was full of mist, the long banks of which dispersed as the sun rose and shone upon the land! A fair prospect it is from Went Hill top, for in the wide valley beneath lie villages and hamlets and manors that relieve the eye from the long stretches of brown and green. Across the vale rises Upton Beacon, where they lighted the great bonfire when the Spanish Armada came to attack us. Beneath it lies the hamlet of Thorpe, and a mile away the square tower of Badsworth Church rises from the thick woods that shut that village in. Further away, in the direction of Wakefield, lie Nostell and Wragby and Hemsworth, and many another fair village, and nearer at hand, to the northward, stand Ackworth and East Hardwick. Right at the head of the valley, and just peeping round the corner of the hill, is the village of Carleton, where for a brief season slept Oliver Cromwell and General Fairfax during the time of the siege of Pontefract Castle. And beyond Carleton, situate on high ground that shuts in the head of the valley like an amphitheatre, is Pontefract itself, its Church of St. Giles, in the marketplace, standing out bold and distinct against the sky. + 

Now, to stand upon the summit of Went Hill and behold the prospect from thence is always a pleasant matter, for there is the land to look upon, and the villages, and the meadows are full of grazing cattle, and the sheep are feeding busily adown the hillside, and there is a manner of thanksgiving in the air which did always affect my heart mightily, though why it should do so I know not, having never in my life been given to rhyming or reading of rhymes, save only Mr. William Shakespeare’s folio of plays which my father did buy in York when I was but a lad. But of a Sunday evening when, the light lasting till a late hour, they did use to sing Evensong in the parish churches at six instead of three, as in winter and autumn, I have often stood there with bowed and bared head listening reverently to the bells which sounded from all sides of me. Far across the valley were the bells of Pontefract and Ackworth and Badsworth, ringing out their peal with regular swing, and the bells of Darrington sounded over the hilltop, and those of Womersley sent their sound across the level land, and sometimes in the deep silence that followed when these were still, I caught the last faint tinkle of the bells of Smeaton making music across the woods and meadows. A beautiful and a holy sound it was, and raised in me a solemn feeling which not all the exhortations of Master Drumbleforth, our parson, could ever produce, though he indeed at one time did talk much and long to me of my soul’s health, when it seemed as if my condition needed it. + 

It is amidst these scenes that my life hath been spent, and it is from them that what I have to tell must gain interest, if interest there can be in a plain chronicle of the doings of a simple farmer, whose lot it has been to live in somewhat troublous times and be dragged into the concerns thereof sorely against his will. It would best have suited me, as it suited my fathers before me, to have lived my life on the land undisturbed, to have had no greater matters to think of than the ploughing of the twelve-acre or the sowing of early wheat, to have taken no further journey than to York or Doncaster, and to have been free from affairs of State and difficulties of lawyers’ making. Howbeit, Providence, which hath many things to provide for, ordained that my life for awhile was to be neither quiet nor ordinary, and did hustle and bustle me hither and thither like one of my own haycocks in a gale of wind. For in my earlier days I saw what no honest Englishman cares to see, namely, the country divided against itself, Englishman fighting with Englishman, Parliament against the Monarchy, so that oftentimes father fought against son, and brother with brother, and the land was alive with Roundheads and Cavaliers, and peaceable citizens knew not what to make of things, and battles were fought, and the throne pulled down, and they laid siege to Pontefract Castle and dismantled it, and cut off the king’s head before his own palace of Whitehall, at which sad business I, William Dale, was present, and have to this day a memento of, to wit, a kerchief steeped in his Majesty’s blood. And in these declining years of my life⁠—though I am, thank God, as hale and hearty a man as you will find in the three Ridings⁠—I am minded, chiefly through the persuasions of my daughter Dorothy, who is fond of her book, to write down with such small skill as I have or she can lend me, somewhat concerning my adventures in those evil days that came upon us in the middle of this present century. + 