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The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, a canon regular of the Augustinian Guisborough Priory, Yorkshire, formerly known as The Chronicle of Walter of Hemingburgh, describes the period from 1066 to 1346. Before 1274 the Chronicle is based on other works. Thereafter, the Chronicle is original, and a remarkable source for the events of the time. This book provides a translation of the Chronicle from that date. The Latin source for our translation is the 1849 work edited by Hans Claude Hamilton. Hamilton, in his preface, says: "In the present work we behold perhaps one of the finest samples of our early chronicles, both as regards the value of the events recorded, and the correctness with which they are detailed; Nor will the pleasing style of composition be lightly passed over by those capable of seeing reflected from it the tokens of a vigorous and cultivated mind, and a favourable specimen of the learning and taste of the age in which it was framed." Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.
Reliquiæ Isurianæ is in Victorian Books.
Commencing our Illustrations with the Druidical remains, the Devil's Arrows [Map] (so called) claim a primary notice. These remarkable Obelisks appear to belong to that class of Celtic or Druidical monuments termed Meanhirs, Peulvans, or Pillar Stones, the earliest known memorials1 of the primitive inhabitants of Western Europe. They have been the source of unceasing misapprehension to antiquaries for the last three hundred years. Leland, Camden, Drake, and others supposed them to be of Roman origin, notwithstanding the absence of ornament or the least vestige of an inscription, which in Roman workmanship we certainly should expect, from universal analogy. Camden2 states it to be the opinion of many "learned men," but who would appear to have resisted the evidence of their own senses, that these colossal objects were artificial, and composed of fine sand, lime, vitriol, and small pebbles! —instancing, in corroboration of this idea, the compact artificial stone of the Romans described by Pliny. Dr. Gale, suspecting their having been designed for the reception of Roman mercuries, to indicate the way, four roads meeting here, could not be convinced to the contrary, till, by personal inspection, a sense of the practical impossibility of such a purpose was forced upon him3. Ackerman4 classifies them, with good reason, among Druidical remains, but erroneously states them (in 1847) to be four in number, and as not unlikely to have formed part of a circle (or temple); whereas these monoliths have for a long period been but three in number, and their line is so slightly curved, that, if part of a circle, the latter must have had a radius above half a mile in length, and would for the greater part of its course have extended along low ground! Their original natural forms appear to us to have been but little altered by art5; they taper upwards, where also the artificial grooves or flutings (long supposed to be rain-worn channels!) are more noticeable than nearer the surface of the ground, but below it they clearly demonstrate the operation of the celt, or some analogous instrument. The stone is the coarse rag or millstone-grit of the North of England, than which probably none other could be selected more calculated for weathering all time. No such stone, however, is to be met with in the immediate vicinity; but at Plumpton, ten miles distant, it occurs in large detached masses, and whence it may safely be considered these Obelisks were procured, though not without incalculable labour and trouble, in the rude and early age that witnessed their erection. They surpass in magnitude the average of the stones of the temple at Stonehenge, which, it may be remembered, were conveyed a distance of fifteen miles. They all lean somewhat to the southward, and occupy a rather elevated position, as the ground slightly declines on all sides; yet their site is not sufficiently commanding to warrant the belief of its use for beacons.
Note 1. "Of more ancient date than Druidism itself." Grose's Antiquities, 1777.
Note 2. Bishop Gibson's, vol. ii., p. 96.
Note 3. Drake's York, p. 25.
Note 4. Archæological Index, pp. 16—18. i
Note 5. In the opinion of Dr. Stukeley and others, they were hewn square Obelisks; but a careful examination of them, and a visit to the site of their probable production, will, we think, dispel the notion.
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The missing stone, having been displaced, from the expectation of buried treasure, was for some time used as a foot-bridge, and subsequently served as material for the foundation of a new bridge over the river Tut (named probably from Tutela or Tutelina, the Roman tutelary genius and protectress of shipping), but the upper end has been obtained by the Lord of the Manor, to whom those standing in situ also belong. Between the northern and central stones the space is 198ft., and that between the central and southern one is 320ft. On this farther side of the central stone the fourth seems to have stood; the two are stated by Camden to have "almost touched1."
Note 1. Bishop Gibson's fourth and last edition, 1772. Leland, however, says these were six or eight feet asunder. Drake (p. 27) states them to have been nearly equidistant, a stone's cast from one another, and in his Plate 28 illustrates by four: smooth square Obelisks! From the relative distance of the remaining three it will be seen that this supposition is wholly . untenable.:
"In 1709 the Rev. E. Morris," then Vicar of Aldborough, and a correspondent of Bishop Gibson, "caused the ground about the middlemost of these Obelisks to be opened nine feet wide. At first a good soil was found about a foot deep, and then a course of stones, rough, and of several kinds, but most were large cobbles, laid in a bed of coarse grit and clay, and so for four or five courses underneath one another, round about the pyramid, in all probability to keep it upright; nevertheless they all seem to incline a little to the south or south-east. Under the stone was a very strong clay, so hard that the spade could not affect it. This was near two yards deep from the surface of the earth, and a little lower was the bottom of the stone, resting upon the clay, and was flat. As much of the stone as was within the ground is a little thicker than what appears above, and has the marks of a first dressing upon it; that it has been taxata non perdolata ferro."1 The excavators on this occasion appear to have deposited underneath the colossal object of their curiosity some halfpence of Queen Anne and William III, which act Stukeley says he could not commend; but surely no future antiquary would in anywise be imposed upon by their discovery!
Note 1. Hearne's notes on Leland's Itinerary.
Of the design of these Obelisks, Dr. Stukeley, that ingenious and enthusiastic theorist, but withal clever and persevering antiquary, to whom we are vastly indebted as an indefatigable pioneer, thus records his opinion of them:—"Here was in the British times the great panegyre of the Druids, the Midsummer meeting of all the country round, to celebrate the great quarterly sacrifice, accompanied with sports, games, races, and all kinds of exercises, with universal festivity. This was like the Panathenwa, Olympian, Isthmian, and Nemæan meetings and games among the Grecians. These Obelisks were as the metæ of the races, the remains of which may be traced in the present great fair held at Boroughbridge on St. Barnabas's Day."
Other antiquaries have regarded these stones as deities, arguing from analogous erections of the Phenicians, Egyptians, and Greeks, viz., the Tyrian Baal, which, like our subjects, was of a conical form, to symbolise the nature of fire1; the Obelisks and Pyramids of Egypt, as typical of human life2; Bacchus and Mercury, with other gods of olden Greece, who, previously to the age of Dædalus, were worshipped in the form of squared stones; and Jupiter himself may have fared no better, if we may so infer from one of his surnames, Lapis3; and Venus Paphia4 (Astarte). i ~The islands of the Pacific have also afforded several illustrations in point.
Note 1. Herodian.
Note 2. Herodotus.
Note 3. Cowley, in notes on "Davideis."
Note 4. Tacitus.
Again: such from earliest times have been upreared for monuments, as our invaluable and earliest antiquarian record, the Old Testament, in numerous instances, fully testifies. Grose, the antiquary, says such were also raised as marks of execration and as magical talismans.
The especial purpose, however, for which these stones were originally erected, whether for landmarks, mete of games, monuments of victorious war, passive instruments of sanguinary sacrifice, or as actual deities, history and tradition being silent,—still remains to be determined; and the question is commended to the best judgment of the enlightened modern antiquary.