ract. It has the appearance of a battery designed to command the pass. Note VII. Where from high Whitby's cloistered pile, Bound to St. Cuthbert's Holy Isle.-P. 57. The Abbey of Whitby, in the Archdeaconry of Cleaveland, on the coast of Yorkshire, was founded A. D. 657, in consequence of a vow of Oswy, King of Northumberland. It contained both monks and nuns of the Benedictine order; but, contrary to what was usual in such establishments, the abbess was superior to the abbot. The monastery was afterwards ruined by the Danes, and rebuilded by William Percy in the reign of the Conqueror. There were no nuns there in Henry the Eighth's time, nor long before it. The ruins of Whitby Abbey are very magnificent. Lindisfarne, an isle on the coast of Northumberland, was called Holy Island, from the sanctity of its ancient monastery, and from its having been the episcopal seat of the see of Durham during the early ages of British Christianity. A succession of holy men held that office; but their merits were swallowed up in the superior fame of St. Cuthbert, who was sixth bishop of Durham, and who bestowed the name of his " patrimony" upon the extensive property of the see. The ruins of the monastery upon Holy Island betoken great antiquity. The arches are, in general, strictly Saxon; and the pillars which support them, short, strong, and massy. In some places, how ever, there are pointed windows, which indicate that the building has been repaired at a period long subsequent to the original foundation. The exterior ornaments of the building being of a light sandy stone, have been wasted, as described in the text. Lindisfarne is not properly an island, but rather, as the venerable Bede has termed it, a semi-isle; for, although surrounded by the sea at full tide, the ebb leaves the sands dry between it and the opposite coast of Northumberland, from which it is about two miles distant. Note VIII. Then Whitby's nuns, exulting, told, Must menial service do.-P. 66. The popular account of this curious service, which was pro bably considerably exaggerated, is thus given in "A True Account," printed and circulated at Whitby: "In the fifth year of the reign of Henry II., after the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy, the lord of Uglebarnby, then called William de Bruce; the lord of Smeaton, called Ralph de Percy: with a gentleman and freeholder called Allatson, did, on the 16th of October, 1159, appoint to meet and hunt the wild boar, in a certain wood, or desert place, belonging to the abbot of Whitby: the place's name was Eskdale-side, and the abbot's name was Sedman. Then, these young gentlemen being met, with their hounds and boar-staves, in the place before mentioned, and there having found a great wild boar, the hounds ran him well near about the chapel and hermitage of Eskdale-side, where was a monk of Whitby; who was a hermit. The boar, being very sorely pursued, and dead-run, took in at the chapel door, there laid him down, and presently died. The hermit shut the hounds out of the chapel, and kept himself within at his meditations and prayers, the hounds standing at bay without. The gentlemen, in the thick of the wood, being put behind their game, followed the cry of their hounds, and so came to the hermitage, calling on the hermit, who opened the door, and came forth; and within they found the boar lying dead: for which, the gentlemen, in a very great fury, because the hounds were put from their game, did most violently and cruelly run at the hermit with their boar-staves, whereby he soon after died. Thereupon the gentlemen perceiving and knowing that they were in peril of death, took sanctuary at Scarborough; but at that time the abbot being in very great favour with the king, removed them out of the sanctuary; whereby they came in danger of the law, and not to be privileged, but likely to have the severity of the law, which was death for death. But the hermit being a holy and devout man, and at the point of death, sent for the ab bot, and desired him to send for the gentlemen who had wounded him. The abbot so doing, the gentlemen came; and the hermit being very sick and weak, said unto them, 'I am sure to die of those wounds you have given me.' The abbot answered, They shall as surely die for the same.' But the hermit answered, Not so, for I will freely forgive them my death, if they will be content to be enjoined the penance I shall lay on them for the safeguard of their souls.' The gentlemen being present, bade him save their lives. Then said the hermit: You and yours shall hold your lands of the abbot of Whitby, and his successors, in this manner: That, upon Ascension-day, you, or some of you, shall come to the wood of the Stray-heads, which is in Eskdale-side, the same day at sun-rising, and there shall the abbot's officer blow his horn, to the intent that you may know where to find him; and he shall deliver unto you, William de Bruce, ten stakes, eleven strout stowers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by you, or some for you, with a knife of one penny price; and you, Ralph de Percy, shall take twenty-one of each sort, to be cut in the same manner; and you, Allatson, shall take nine of each sort, to be cut as aforesaid; and to be taken on your backs, and carried to the town of Whitby, and to be there before nine of the clock the same day before mentioned. At the same hour of nine of the clock, if it be full sea, your labour and service shall cease; and, if low water, each of you shall set your stakes to the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them on each side with your yethers; and so stake on each side with your strout stowers, that they may stand three tides, without removing by the force thereof. Each of you shall do, make, and execute, the said service, at that very hour, every year, except it be full sea at that hour; but when it shall so fall out, this service Shall cease. You shall faithfully do this, in remembrance that you did most cruelly slay me; and that you may the better call to God for mercy, repent unfeignedly of your sins, and do good works. The officer of Eskdale-side shall blow, Out on you! Out on you! Out on you! for this heinous crime. If you, or your successors, shall refuse this service, so long as it shall not be full sea at the aforesaid hour, you, or yours, shall forfeit your lands to the abbot of Whitby, or his successors. This I entreat, and earnestly beg, that you may have lives and goods preserved for this service; and I request of you to promise, by your parts in heaven, that it shall be done by you and your successors, as is aforesaid; and I will confirm it by the faith of an honest man.' Then the hermit said, 'My soul longeth for the Lord; and I do as freely forgive these men my death, as Christ forgave the thieves on the cross.' And, in the presence of the abbot and the rest, he said moreover these words, 'In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, a vinculis enim mortis redemptisti me, Domine veritatis. Amen.' -So he yielded up the ghost the eighth day of December, Anno Domini 1159, whose soul God have mercy upon. Amen. "This service," it is added, "still continues to be performed with the prescribed ceremonies, though not by the proprietors in person. Part of the lands charged therewith are now held by a gentleman of the name of Herbert." Note IX. The lovely Edelfled.-P. 66. She was the daughter of King Oswy, who, in gratitude to heaven for the great victory which he won in 655, against Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, dedicated Edelfleda, then but a year old, to the service of God in the monastery of Whitby, of which St. Hilda was then abbess. She afterwards adorned the place of her education with great magnificence. Note X. of thousand snakes, each one Was changed into a coil of stone, When holy Hilda prayed. how sea-fowls' pinions fail, As over Whitby's towers they sail.-P. 66. These two miracles are much insisted upon by all ancient writers, who have occasion to mention either Whitby, or St. Hilda. The reliques of the snakes which infested the precincts of the convent, and were, at the abbess's prayer, not only beheaded, but petrified, are still found about the rocks, and are termed by Protestant fossilists Ammonita. The other miracle is thus mentioned by Camden: "It is also ascribed to the power of her sanctity that these wild geese, which, in the winter, fly in great flocks to the lakes and rivers unfrozen in the southern parts, to the great amazement of every one, fall down suddenly upon the ground, when they are in their flight over certain neighbouring fields hereabouts: a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men. But those who are less inclined to heed superstition, attribute it to some occult quality in the ground, and to somewhat of antipathy between it and the geese, such as they say is between wolves and scylla-roots: For that such hidden tendencies and aversions, as we call sympathies, and antipathies, are implanted in many things by provident nature for the preservation of them, is a thing so evident, that every body grants it." The geese, it is almost unnecessary to add, have now forgot their obeisance to Saint Hilda, or their antipathy to the soil, and fly over Whitby with as little difficulty as any where else. Note XI. His body's resting-place, of old, How oft their patron changed, they told.-P. 66. St. Cuthbert was, in the choice of his sepulchre, one of the most mutable and unreasonable saints in the Calendar. He died A. D. 686, in a hermitage upon the Farne Islands, having resigned the bishopric of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, about two years before. His body was brought to Lindisfarne, where it remained until a descent of the Danes, about 763, when the monastery was nearly destroyed. The monks fled to Scotland, with what they deemed their chief treasure, the reliques of St. Cuthbert. The Saint was, however, a most capricious fellow traveller; which was the more intolerable, as, like Sinbad's |