mulated from a leisurely sojourn among the sights and sounds of unsophisticated nature will translate itself on our return to human society into works of beneficence

... little nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.

Cheerfulness then being the goal of the holiday-maker, he is the wise man who chooses for the scene of his experiment a place which will yield activity to his interests as well as to his limbs. The careless person, if he has escaped the awful fate of the mere sea-side tripper, or that tripper as recently modified into a pilgrim of the golf links, is apt to confuse the pursuit of an interest with mere sight-seeing; whereas a sight, whether of art or nature, unless it makes some peculiar appeal to us, remains a sight and nothing more. We drive, perhaps, ten miles to see a rock or a heath or a waterfall; 'we glance and nod and bustle by,' and have gained nothing except the right to say we have seen it. We might more properly, as Dr. Johnson suggested, 'sit at home and conceive rocks, heaths, and waterfalls.' And the same simple truth holds good of the curiosities of art. Why should we turn aside to see a picture gallery because it is in the neighbourhood we are visiting, if we have no knowledge of painting; or spend half an hour inspecting a monastic ruin if we are indifferent to architecture? Let us holiday-makers, to quote the great moralist again, clear our minds of cant,' and go where we go riding our own hobbies.

Wensleydale is fortunate in the variety of the entertainment it affords to man and his hobby. The historian can pore over the traces of the successive invasions-Roman, Saxon, Viking, Norman, Scottish-to which the dale lay only too openly exposed, or read the fortunes of the long strife between king and baron, or king and parliament, in the ruined castles that still frown over the neighbouring hamlet; the ecclesiologer, starting from the only two churches chronicled in Domesday, Spennithorne and Thornton Steward, will trace the gradual unfolding of the Gothic flower under the peculiar conditions of the place; the lavish flora will appeal to the florist, the fauna to the faunist-Middleham Moor, for example, has a fine breed of race-horses-while the simple child of nature who restricts his interest and his curiosity, like the old gentleman in the Terentian play, to human affairs need not spend an idle moment. My own foible, I confess, is generalisaVOL. XVII.-NO. 102, N.S.

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tion; but the population being sparse, I cannot pretend to have made any general observations of an important character, unless it were that the inhabitants are well to do, and do not seem disposed to let their wealth go out of the clan. I was struck also by the clearness of articulation in all classes. Everybody seemed to have leisure to say all the letters of a word, and said them, with the result that only half the number of ideas was required for an hour's conversation that we need in the south. But then the aesthetic satisfaction was enormously enhanced. I noticed, too, that whereas in the south we speak to each other through a very small slit, as though we were in fear of taking the plague, people in Wensleydale opened their mouths in a full oval. As a consequence most people could sing, and liked doing so. A reflection of a more philosophical character that occurred to me more than once in the dale was that rubbish, even in England where we have so much of it, may be serving a providential purpose, as well as at Oxyrhynchus. I noticed while inspecting Middleham Castle that the outer shell of sandstone was perfect to a height of about five feet from the ground, was then peeled off, leaving the core of rubble exposed for about ten feet more, and above that was perfect again. The explanation of the mysterious phenomenon was really quite simple. When the castle was dismantled after the Civil War it was first used, by the reverence of the villagers, as a dust heap; then, at a later time, when the level of the ground had been raised by the accumulation of refuse, as a quarry. In the present enlightened era, when the rubbish has been removed, the lower part of the walls is again exposed, and the castle, though sadly dilapidated, has a more decent appearance, and perhaps stands more securely on its basis than if it had been peeled to the real level of the soil. At Jervaulx Abbey the silent accumulations of nature through a longer period have had the same beneficent effect as the dust and ashes of the Middleham villagers; so that though most of the material structure of the abbey has been gradually removed for building purposes, and carved stones cry out of the walls of neighbouring pigsties, yet by the time the local Vandals had reached the foundations a few courses of stone were successfully covered, and now at last being laid bare, have enabled Mr. St. John Hope to make a complete ground plan of the abbey buildings, so that the curious enquirer has the satisfaction of learning how the old monks lived, and can see for himself that the church was larger than the refectory, a fact which may somewhat surprise him, if

his ideas of the monastic life are borrowed from the familiar print of Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time.'

But I must not let myself be drawn into the age-long debate between the seculars' and the 'religious.' Each kind of life, no doubt, had its purpose and its merit; but the 'religious' became too much at ease in Zion, and their candlestick was removed. It is interesting as one goes from church to church in the dale to notice the spoils that the secular churches secured at the dissolution of their envied brethren, and how three centuries later these beautiful objects have still the air of spoils, looking déplacés and uncomfortable. At Aysgarth they have the magnificent rood screen from Jervaulx; but the rood is gone, not being any longer a Christian emblem, and the screen is not placed between nave and chancel, but on the south side of the choir, where it serves no purpose. In Middleham Church is an incised stone which once covered the tomb of an abbot named Thornton. It is fixed against the tower wall as a curiosity, and no longer covers the poor abbot's bones. But the most striking instance of misused gains is at Wensley. The parclose of a Scrope chantry at Easby Abbey was brought at the dissolution to a Scrope chantry at Wensley. It is appropriately inscribed with the names and shields of the long and famous line of the Scropes of Bolton. At present it forms three sides of what appears to be an opera box, with a front painted to look like white marble. As I was not in Wensley on a Sunday I did not see to what purpose this quaint contrivance was put in divine service. Wensley Church is extraordinarily rich in precious relics of its own; it has the finest brass of any parish church in England,' carved stalls of singular beauty, Early English sedilia, a couple of Saxon crosses, a 'Perpendicular alms box,' and other treasures; but it carries its secularity' so far that it has more the air of a museum than a church. The officiating minister does not sit in his stall, but in a modern reading-pew outside the chancel; and he cannot, if he would, sit in the sedilia, because the altar rail runs into them.

The mention of the name of Scrope-a great name in Wensleydale-recalls the ancient controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, ancestor of the ducal family of Westminster, respecting the right to bear the arms azure, a bend or. There seems no doubt that the arms had been used in good faith by both families; they were borne also by the Carminows of Cornwall, with whom both Sir Richard Scrope and the guardian

of Sir Robert Grosvenor had disputed them. But a Scrope had not met a Grosvenor in any 'chivauchee' until the expedition to Scotland in 1385, when Sir Richard challenged Sir Robert, and the case was sent for trial to the Constable of England. All the great knights and abbots of Yorkshire appeared as witnesses for Scrope, and all the great knights and abbots of Cheshire for Grosvenor; but there is a significant difference in the concluding question put to one side and the other. The Scrope party, as a rule, say they had never heard tell of Sir Robert Grosvenor or his ancestors till the expedition to Scotland, while the Grosvenor faction content themselves with saying they have nothing to depose about the Scrope claim. Two of the most interesting of the witnesses on the Scrope side were the parson of Wensley Church and the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. As a good specimen of the sort of evidence a church could afford in matters of heraldry, and as a compliment to the memory of the old parson, Sir Simon, whose fine brass is still the most striking beauty of the church, I will transcribe part of his deposition, in the translation of Sir Harris Nicolas.

Sir Simon, parson of the church of Wynsselowe, of the age of sixty and upwards, said, certainly that the arms Azure, a bend Or, appertained to Sir Richard Scrope, for they were in his church of Wynsselowe in certain glass windows of that church, of which Sir Richard was patron; and on the west gable window of the said church were the entire arms of Sir Richard Scrope in a glas window, the setting up of which arms was beyond the memory of man. The said arms were also in divers other parts of the said church, and in his chance! in a glass window, and in the east gable also were the said arms placed amongst the arms of great lords, such as the King, the earl of Northumberland, the lord of Neville, the earl of Warren. He also said that there was a tomb in his cemetery of Simon Scrope, as might then be seen by the inscription on the tomb, who was buried in the ancient fashion in a stone chest, with the inscription Cy gist Simond le Scrope, without date. And after Simon Scrope lieth one Henry Scrope . . . and after him lieth William son of the said Henry Scrope who lieth in the manner aforesaid beneath the stone, and there is graven thereon Ycy gist William le Scrope, without date, for the bad weather, wind, snow, and rain, had so defaced it, that no man could make out the remainder of the writing, so old and defaced was it. . . . From William came Henry Scrope, knight, whe lieth in the Abbey of St. Agatha [i.e. at Easby], armed in the arms Azure, a bend Or, which Sir Henry was founder of the said Abbey; and Sir William Scrope, elder brother of Sir Richard that now is, lieth in the same abbey in the same arms depicted, but not painted. The said Sir Simon placed before the Commissioners an albe with flaps [apparels, pairuers] upon which were em broidered the arms of the Scropes entire, the making of which arms and the name of the donor were beyond the memory of man. patronage of his church of Wynsselowe had always been vested in Sir Richard of Scrope and his ancestors bearing the name of Scrope, beyond the memory man; and that the arms Azure, a bend Or, had always been reputed to belong to him and to his ancestors, and he never heard to the contrary; he had never

He added that the

heard that the arms had been challenged; or of Sir Richard Grosvenor or any of his ancestors.

The amusing thing about this evidence is that most of it is not to the point; the stone coffins, although they testified to the existence of two generations of the family, bore no shields of arms, the first appearance of arms on a tomb being on that of Sir Henry, who died 1336. The glass windows and the alb, the date of which was outre memoire de home, would not necessarily take one further back than the beginning of the fourteenth century—that is, to the same Sir Henry Scrope; who was the first member of the family to be heard of outside his own dale and to acquire wealth. He was a lawyer, a fact with which the Grosvenor party twitted his descendant, and rose to be Chief Justice of the King's Bench, making his fortune by grants of forfeited estates. Sir Simon politely calls him the founder of St. Agatha's Abbey; but, in fact, he bought that title with other Richmond property.

The evidence of Geffray Chaucere, Esquier, is as characteristic as Sir Simon's. After stating that he had seen Sir Richard Scrope bearing the contested arms in France before the town of Retters,' where he himself was taken prisoner, he was asked whether he had ever heard of any challenge made by Sir Robert Grosvenor or his ancestors. To which he replied no, but that he was once in Friday Street, London, and walking through the street he saw a new sign hanging out with these arms thereon, and enquired 'what inn that was that had hung out the arms of Scrope,' and one answered him, 'They are not hung out, sir, for the arms of Scrope, nor painted there for those arms, but they a e painted and put there by a knight of the county of Chester called Sir Robert Grovenor;' and that was the first time that he ever heard speak of Sir Robert Grovenor, or his ancestors, or of any one bearing the name of Grovenor.'

The trial began on October 20, 1385, and was adjourned from time to time till May 12, 1389, when Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, as Constable of England, gave judgment against Grosvenor, ordering him to bear the disputed arms with the difference of a 'plain bordure argent.' Grosvenor appealed, and Richard II., the following year, affirmed the Constable's decision, all but the assignment of the original coat with a difference, which had stuck in the good knight's throat. Grosvenor adopted instead a coat with the same tinctures but a different charge, the garbe or wheatsheaf, which the family still bear. But the whirligig of time brought