Part 3
James V. was much attached to Linlithgow, and added to the Palace both the Chapel and Parliament Hall, the last of which is peculiarly striking. So that when he brought his bride Mary of Guise there, amid the festivities which accompanied their wedding, she might have more reasons than mere complaisance for highly commending the edifice, and saying that she never saw a more princely palace. It was long her residence, and that of her royal husband, at Linlithgow. Mary was born there in an apartment still shown; and the ill-fated father dying within a few days of that event, left the ominous diadem which he wore to the still more unfortunate infant.
It is remarkable that during this reign there was acted at Linlithgow, in presence of the King, Queen, and whole court, and, so far as appears, with great applause, a play, or theatrical presentation, by Sir David Lindsay, called the _Satire of the Three Estates_, in which much coarse and indelicate farce and buffoonery is intermixed with the most pointed censure upon the affairs both of church and state. The comic mummery was undoubtedly thrown in with the purpose of Rabelais, to mitigate the edge of the satire, by representing the whole as matter of idle and extravagant mirth. But when the serious and direct tenor of the piece is considered, no one can doubt that the Prince before whom it was acted, and by whom it seems to have been well received, meditated reforms both in church and state, however diverted from them by the arts of the churchmen.
In the subsequent reign of Queen Mary, Linlithgow was the scene of several remarkable events; the most interesting of which was the assassination of the Regent Murray by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. This James VI. loved the royal residence of Linlithgow, and completed the original plan of the Palace, closing the great square by a stately range of apartments of great architectural beauty. He also made a magnificent fountain in the Palace-yard, now ruinous, as are all the buildings around. Another grotesque Gothic fountain adorns the street of the town, which, with the number of fine springs, leads to the popular rhyme:
_Linlithgow for wells, Stirling for bells._
Among the attendants of James the Sixth was a distinguished personage of a class which may be found in most places of public resort. This was the celebrated Rob Gibb, the king’s fool or jester. Fool as he was, Rob Gibb seems to have understood his own interest. Upon one occasion it pleased his sapient Majesty King Jamie to instal Rob in his own royal chair, the sport being to see how he would demean himself as sovereign. The courtiers entered into the king’s humour, overwhelming Rob Gibb with petitions for places, pensions, and benefices, not sorry perhaps to have an opportunity of hinting, in the presence of the real sovereign, secret hopes and wishes, which they might have no other opportunity of expressing. But Rob Gibb sternly repelled the whole supplicants together, as a set of unmercifully greedy sycophants, who followed their worthy king only to see what they could make of him. “Get ye hence, ye covetous selfish loons,” he exclaimed, “and bring to me my own dear and trusty servant, Rob Gibb, that I may honour the only one of my court who serves me for stark love and kindness.” It would not have been unlike King Jamie to have answered, “that he was but a fool, and knew no better.”
Rob’s presence of mind did not go unrewarded; for either on this or some future occasion, he was in such “good foolery” as to get a grant of a small estate in the vicinity of the burgh.
When the sceptre passed from Scotland, oblivion sat down in the halls of Linlithgow; but her absolute desolation was reserved for the memorable era of 1745–6 About the middle of January in that year, General Hawley marched at the head of a strong army to raise the siege of Stirling, then pressed by the Highland insurgents under the adventurous Charles Edward. The English general had expressed considerable contempt of his enemy, who, he affirmed, would not stand a charge of cavalry. On the night of the 17th he returned to Linlithgow, with all the marks of defeat, having burned his tents, and left his artillery and baggage. His disordered troops were quartered in the Palace, and began to make such great fires on the hearth as to endanger the safety of the edifice. A lady of the Livingston family who had apartments there, remonstrated with General Hawley, who treated her fears with contempt. “I can run away from fire as fast as you can, General,” answered the high-spirited dame, and with this sarcasm took horse for Edinburgh. Very soon after her departure her apprehensions were realized; the Palace of Linlithgow caught fire, and was burned to the ground. The ruins alone remain to show its former splendour.
The situation of Linlithgow Palace is eminently beautiful. It stands on a promontory of some elevation, which advances almost into the midst of the lake. The form is that of a square court, composed of buildings of four stories high, with towers at the angles. The fronts within the square, and the windows, are highly ornamented, and the size of the rooms, as well as the width and character of the staircases, are upon a magnificent scale. One banquet-room is ninety-four feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty-three feet high, with a gallery for music. The King’s wardrobe, or dressing-room, looking to the west, projects over the walls so as to have a delicious prospect on three sides, and is one of the most enviable boudoirs we have ever seen.
There were two main entrances to Linlithgow Palace. That from the south ascends rather steeply from the town, and passes through a striking Gothic archway, flanked by two round towers. The portal has been richly adorned by sculpture, in which can be traced the arms of Scotland with the collars of the Thistle, the Garter, and Saint Michael. This was the work of James V., and is in a most beautiful character.
The other entrance is from the eastward. The gateway is at some height from the foundation of the wall, and there are opposite to it the remains of a _perron_, or ramp of mason-work, which those who desired to enter must have ascended by steps. A drawbridge, which could be raised at pleasure, united, when it was lowered, the ramp with the threshold of the gateway, and when raised, left a gap between them, which answered the purpose of a moat. On the inside of the eastern gateway is a figure, much mutilated, said to have been that of Pope Julius II., the same Pontiff who sent to James IV. the beautiful sword which makes part of the Regalia.
“To what base offices we may return!” In the course of the last war, those beautiful remains, so full of ancient remembrances, very narrowly escaped being defaced and dishonoured, by an attempt to convert them into barracks for French prisoners of war. The late President Blair, as zealous a patriot as he was an excellent lawyer, had the merit of averting this insult upon one of the most striking objects of antiquity which Scotland yet affords. I am happy to add, that of late years the Court of the Exchequer have, in this and similar cases, shown much zeal to preserve our national antiquities, and stop the dilapidations which were fast consuming them.
In coming to Linlithgow by the Edinburgh road, the first view of the town, with its beautiful steeple, surmounted with a royal crown, and the ruinous towers of the Palace arising out of a canopy of trees, forms a most impressive object. All that is wanting is something of more elevated dignity to the margin of the lake. But it is not easy to satisfy the inconsistent wishes of amateurs.
We may in taking leave of this subject, use once more the words of old Sir David of the Mount, in his Complaint of the Papingo:--
_Farewell Linlithgow, whose Palace of pleasaunce Might be a pattern in Portugal or France._
ARUNDEL CASTLE
ALICE MEYNELL
Even pastoral England, which has a character of its own so different from that of pastoral districts elsewhere--so much richer in its details is it, and so much blunter and rounder in its forms, than the pasture-lands and cornlands of Italy, or France, or Spain, or Greece--even this distinctive and separated country has variations within itself. The heart of England--the country of George Eliot and the tract which lies within near or distant sight of the Malvern Hills--has a drier, crisper beauty about its green fields and rich woods. The great peaceful plain is broken by undulations, which are lost from a distant view, and nowhere, not even by the brimming waters of the Severn, are there such perfectly flat fields, pasture, marsh, and cornfield lying together, even and low, as those into which the gently raised tablelands of England subside between the downs of the South Coast. Such lands lie about the feet of the Arundel hills, open to a boundless sky, invested in light night mists, full of cattle, watered by a little river and its streams which scarcely creep towards the sea where it lies level with the land, or in some places level with the hedgerows.
[Illustration: ARUNDEL CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
The aspect of things here is Tennysonian. Looking along the fields towards Arundel where it curves into the arm of its hill, and from a distance sufficient to lend enchantment to the mean details which mar any English town upon a close sight, the place looks like the “dim rich city” in Elaine. There might be a warder looking out from the castle keep, a knight might be riding up to the walls in the twilight. Not many years ago owls did hoot about that tower, but they died and were stuffed. The peacefulness of the flat lowlands too, the richness of the level pastures, in which the dark brown cattle stand knee-deep, the softening haze of lowland mist, and the general prosperity of things, all have something of the flavour of the same poetry. It is otherwise when the hills are climbed, and the free breezy uplands of the park, with the moory, dry, gay country towards Petworth, opens out. There we have a beauty which suggests a less mild and meditative muse.
Arundel dates back to the most respectable antiquity, for King Alfred bequeathed the Castle in his will, with the neighbouring lordships to his nephew Athelm. It afterwards passed into the hands of the great Earl Godwin and to his son, King Harold. And when William the Conqueror was minded to reward his Normans for their services in his wars, the Earldoms of Shrewsbury and of Arundel fell to the share of one Roger de Montgomery, who rebuilt and enlarged the fortalice of Arundel. The fair stronghold then went on changing hands, passing now to the kings of England, and now forming the marriage dower of a princess. Among its towers the Empress Maud found refuge from her enemy Stephen, and was besieged; but as she was the guest of Adeliza, widow of Henry I., he courteously permitted her at last to depart in peace, for the love of hospitality. The place was now the permanent property of Adeliza’s second husband and of his heirs, and so, roughly speaking, it has remained, the fifth in succession from him being the first who bore the name of Fitzalan. The only interruptions of their tenure were temporary ones, and consisted of two short forfeitures to the Crown, besides a seizure by the capacious and rapacious hands of good Queen Bess, who kept it until her death, when her successor restored it to its rightful lord.
One Earl of Arundel lost his head for high treason against Richard II. During the Civil Wars the Castle was besieged and besieged, being first seized by the Parliamentarians in the absence of the owner, then captured by the Royalists after three days’ fighting, and subsequently retaken by the Parliamentarians under Waller, who laid siege on the 19th of December, 1643, and entered the Castle on the 6th of January, 1644. Upon this an order in Council commanded that the walls of the town of Arundel and those of Chichester should be destroyed. Since more peaceful times have reigned, within England at least, restoration has been at work somewhat busily, and several Royal visits have wakened “our loyal passion for our temperate Kings,” in the steep high-street and in the public-houses of the borough. A borough, alas! it is no longer. Having enjoyed, in the good old times, the luxury of a couple of members, it was reduced to a pittance of one by the first Reform Bill, and entirely disfranchised by the second.
The station lies in the valley at some little distance from the town; as you follow the road from the rail you have Arundel and the Castle before you, the principal object of the view being the great church of St. Philip Neri, built by the present Duke of Norfolk some years ago at a cost of £100,000. It is still new, inevitably new. That is a fault which time will cure; but in the meanwhile no little disharmony is created between the ancient ruddy colours of the old walls, of the Castle with its town and the somewhat harsh whiteness of the church. Its form, too, being upright, is not felicitous in its composition with the lower and longer lines of antique English masonry. It may not have been the Duke’s express purpose, when he built the “house of God,” to dwarf his own hereditary home and fortress, as we once heard a passenger in a railway-train passing the place declare; but if that symbolic and ascetic intention was ever entertained, it has been effectually fulfilled. The best consolation which we can offer to the lovers of the past for the intrusion of the modern Gothic church, is that the ruins which they admire were brand-new in the old times which they cherish--strong, sharp, neat, and finished, with no ivy anywhere, and no pleasing uncertainties of outline. As you draw near to the town you see the rich woods which clothe the hillside trending off to the right towards the Black Rabbit, where the winding lines of the lazy Arun pass inland. To the left stretch the fields towards a little place called Ford, and in front climbs the High-street. At the top of the High-street is the Castle, and then the road turns to the left towards this great dominating church of St. Philip.
The donjon is manifestly the most ancient part of the Castle. It dates from Saxon times, and is traditionally believed to have been part of the stronghold as it was in the days of Alfred the Great. It stands on an artificial eminence, and from its ramparts the view is wide and fair; westwards over the rich country, over the delicate distant spire of Chichester, to the farther downs of the Isle of Wight; southwards to the mouth of the little river Arun, and the port of Littlehampton lying with sea-side pastures around it, level with the sea; eastwards to the South Downs; and northwards over the home garden and the thick woods of the lower park to Burpham, where British antiquities of no small importance were at once discovered, amongst them a canoe with its anchor--the relic of a probably half-civilized and Christian people, compared to whom the invading English were savages of furious wildness. At the top of the keep bide those stuffed owls which some years ago flew about its battlements. The rest of the Castle is merely an antique fortress dwelling-place, much restored in a jumble of styles, but with a general picturesqueness of effect. The alterations which it is now undergoing will doubtless much modify its details, if not its mass.
A little higher, and at some distance from the fortalice of Arundel, is the parish church, a venerable fane, some parts of it dating five hundred years back. Old and new are confused together in the place, a Fourteenth Century font, some frescoes of approximately the same date, and other precious antiquities being side by side with brilliant windows of modern glass and in modern taste, and a number of energetic “restorations.” From the tower the Parliamentarians poured shot and bullet into the Royalist-guarded ramparts of the Castle. The “Fitzalan Chapel,” properly the chancel of this church, has been the subject of a sufficiently celebrated law-suit. Built in the Fourteenth Century by an Earl of Arundel, it was turned to secular uses--to uses indeed of the _most_ secular kind--at the time of the Reformation and thereafter, and is now, of course, a monument and no more. As, however, it contains the bones of their fathers, the Dukes of Norfolk have naturally maintained their proprietorship and their interest in the sometime sanctuary, and it was recently shut off from the body of the church by the bricking up of the connecting doorway. The Vicar thereupon committed the legal and formal trespass of removing a brick, in order that the proprietorship of the Fitzalan Chapel might come under the decision of the courts. That decision confirmed the Duke and his rights, therefore the division remains; but the church is complete and ample enough for all purposes as it now stands. The monuments in the Fitzalan Chapel are of great interest and beauty. The earliest of them are of the same period as the foundation; the most beautiful is the chantry of William Fitzalan, with its fine and elaborate tracery; and perhaps the most interesting is the tomb of John Fitzalan, which was for centuries believed to be a cenotaph. The hero to whose memory it was erected lost a leg at the battle of Gerberoy and died in France thirteen months later, in 1435. He was buried in the Church of the Grey Friars, at Beauvais, Normandy. Not very long ago a discovery was made, in the Prerogative Court at Canterbury, of the will of one Fooke Eiton, Esquire, which had been proved in 1454, and which stated that the testator had ransomed the body of the Earl “oute of the frenchemennys handes.” In 1857 search was made under the supposed cenotaph, and the bones of a human body which had lost one leg were discovered. How or when the pious and faithful “Fooke Eiton, Esquire,” had effected the reburial by means of which the brave Fitzalan slept with his fathers, there is no record to tell.
Quite near the grey and mouldering parish church, with its cemetery and its yews, rises the great modern Roman Catholic church of which we have already spoken. Close by is the park, to which we hasten, as the glory of the country side. A narrow embowered road, entered by a little gate, leads to the fair space of sward and tree, with its deep valleys and sudden hills, one of the grandest parks in England; lacking, of course, the charm and pathos, the nobility and humility, which the most beautiful nature may gain from the signs of labour, agriculture, and the poor; and yet not oppressive with too heavy verdure or any blank, damp, over-green spaces of melancholy grass and sponge-like trees. The soil of Arundel Park is composed chiefly of that great flower-bearer chalk. It is so thin that it does not nourish gigantically heavy trees, but lighter and gayer beeches. The ground is high and abruptly broken, and the whole aspect of things needs only some sign of the peasant’s life to be eminently paintable. Hill beyond hill rises in distance behind distance. Under a fine sky the scene is so grand that, though fresh from contemplating that panorama of the junction of the great Rhine and the little Moselle among the hills at Coblentz--the landscape which the late Lord Lytton pronounced the most beautiful in Europe--we were constrained to think Arundel Park lovelier as we drove to Petworth over its open hills. The orthodox deer are here, in pretty and vivacious herds which number considerably over a thousand. A charming little solitary lake, haunt of that shrill bird, the dab-chick, lies in a hollow to the right; thence rises a thick beech wood, and the path that curves round the base of the beech-hill leads to one of the local lions, the dairy. The “tiled temple of cleanliness” is fascinating enough to the lover of cream and curds, but it is hard to forgive the demolition of a very ancient mill which stood on the same site. The air about the dairy is heavy with the luxurious scent of the magnolias which glow upon its walls.
The road is leading us round again out of the park towards the town; and here is a relic of the past in the shape of a ruined Dominican priory, which was built in 1396, and which gave a home to twenty poor men living under the protection of a friar, until an end was put to the charity at the dissolution of monasteries; and at the time of Waller’s siege of the Castle, the priory was already in ruins. If instead of winding back into the lower town of Arundel, whence we started, we take the road away to the left, we shall reach the “Black Rabbit,” already mentioned, where the dark, rich woods crowd the hillside, the little Arun sauntering at its feet. The Castle looks well from this side, where trees and not houses surround it.
PALAZZO VECCHIO
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
Grand as was the idea I had formed in advance of the Palazzo Vecchio, I must confess that the realization was still grander. When I saw that mass of stone so strongly rooted in the ground, surmounted by its tower that threatens the heavens like the arm of a Titan, the whole of old Florence, with her Guelphs, her Ghibelines, her balie, her priors, her lords, her guilds, her _condottieri_, her turbulent mobs and her haughty aristocracy appeared to me as though I were about to take part in the exiling of Cosmo the Elder, or in the execution of Salviati. In fact, four centuries of history and art are there on the right, on the left, in front and behind, surrounding you on all sides and speaking at once with their stone, marble and bronze of Nicholas d’Uzzano, Orcagna, Rinaldo d’Albizzi, Donatello, Pazzi, Raphael, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Flaminius Vacca, Savonarola, John of Bologna, Cosmo I. and Michelangelo.
The whole world may be searched in vain for a spot that brings such names together, without counting those I have omitted! and some of the omissions include Baccio Bandinelli, Ammanato, and Benvenuto Cellini.
I should much like to reduce this magnificent chaos to some sort of order and chronologically classify the great men, the great works and the great memories, but that is impossible. When you arrive at this wonderful square, you must go where the eye carries you, or where instinct guides you.
What first engrosses the attention of the artist, the poet, or the archæologist, is the sombre Palazzo Vecchio, still blazoned with the ancient arms of the republic, amid which glitter on the azure, like stars in the sky, those innumerable fleurs-de-lys sown along the road to Naples by Charles of Anjou.
Florence was hardly free before she wanted to have a town hall as an abode for a chief magistrate and a belfry for calling the people together. When a community is constituted in the North, or a republic established in the South, the desire for a town-hall and a belfry is always the first operation of its will, and the satisfaction of that desire the first proof of its existence.