LINSTOCK, AND LINSTOCK CASTLE.
INSTOCK is a small straggling village, about two miles east of Carlisle, on the north side of the Eden, and closely contiguous to the site of Severus’ Wall, one road to it following the direct route of the wall nearly all the way. It has nothing notable about it but its castle; but, leaving Carlisle one beautiful April afternoon, and proceeding thither through Rickerby Holmes, we found a thousand new inspiring charms in the homely irregular beauty of its quiet rural unambitious seclusion, for it really is a very secluded place—no public road, no railway, no noisy works flushing its dreamy nooks with the clash and clatter of earthly care and confusion. The “march of intellect” has certainly left no outward or visible sign of its many-footed train at Linstock, if it has ever been there. It is an old, old place, its cottages and farm-houses following, like antiquated country people, the fashions of very remote and uncouth times, and its gardens and fences generally, too, seem soundly conservative; the pretty simple flowers, which are both eye-salve and heart-salve to meditative loiterers, growing in promiscuous prolixity under a busliy bearding of hedge, over which shears surely have never come. Still it has its own wild beauty—a beauty self-assertative and scornful of scorn, the ever-charming green of heartsome nature, which here in common clothing beguiles the varied hour with the common, yet holy joys of morns, and eves, and glowing noons, from which, as from painted pictures, shine all the luminous or shadowy shapes of village life and labour; their noble background the sweeping fields, and fells and river, fringed with all the graceful greenery of a many-aged and many-familied population of trees. There is, in fact, plenty even at Linstock to interest an observing eye and meditative mind for a sunny summer afternoon very often, its castle crowning all its commonplace rusticities with the reverential majesty of memories of princes, and prelates, and noble knights, who once, with all their turbulent tide of attendants, made its quiet corners ring with martial music or loyal cheers. This castle stands at the far end of the village, and is now occupied as a farm-house by Mr. Martindale, who very kindly allowed us to see all, both within and without, that was likely to interest us in it. At present its height is the only thing which makes it observable or conspicuous from the other buildings of the village, as its castellated top has been—very improperly we should say—removed some time since, and replaced by a common tiling, which “improvement,” though not ill-suited to its square dimensions, has utterly destroyed any architectural beauty or antique effect it may have had. It is, as we found on coming up to it, beautifully situated for a quiet retreat or secure dwelling, being built on a slight eminence within a very short distance of the Eden, and commanding from its strong sides on its third floor very extensive views of all the country round; Carlisle and the Scotland and Newcastle roads lying like an open map under its ancient brows, and on the south side, field and fell lie naked and open to it for miles, while it is so shut in by trees that it is unseen till nearly reached. There is also a large stretch of very fertile country lying all round it, finely fit for raising all sorts of cereal and vegetable productions for the use of such a home, and girdling it round at the same time with leafy lawns, and bowery paths, and pleasant gardens, where thought of pious or philosophic mood might pursue its radiant ruminations in supremest peace; those “gentle dwellers of the lea,” the cowslip, violet, and primrose, and thousands more of countless forms and dyes, glowing gladness, pure, bright, and affinitive, on its mystic visage.
Beyond this quiet, pensive beauty of field and stream, lying all around it, the castle in itself has little to boast. It is a plain, square-built, massive structure of red sandstone; a Gothic door or two, and its height alone, distinguishing its antiquity from the outside. Inside, the immense thickness of the walls is the most interesting point. They are eight or nine feet thick in many places, a stone staircase having been cut in the south side, from the second to the third story through the breadth of the wall, leaving still a breadth on both sides equal or more than equal to the thickest modern walls, a fact pregnant with history—a stony tome, from which we may gather the perils, and prescience, and laborious endeavours of a brave, persistent, deed-living, deed-loving race, now but too inadequately represented. The part of the castle now converted into a dairy seems to have undergone the least change. It is entered by one of the above-named Gothic doors, and is on a level with the ground; nevertheless, it seems formerly to have been a cell. It has an arched roof, and at each end there is a long loophole, now glazed, by which, through the thick walls, the shadowy light reaches its interior. There is also, on the right-hand side of the entrance, the form of a door, now built up, which probably in some remote times led to a staircase, or was the opening of a staircase in the wall, by which it communicated with the upper stories. Standing on this floor, reflections of the stormy past come thickly and fast to the mind. Who, in anguish or despair, had trod that narrow space in the older days of the castle? Who, in the mediæval centuries of its existence, had passed and repassed its sombre threshold, waking its weird silence with their piercing prayers or ghostly groans? What fair ladies, and sweet babes, and pleasant homes had been dreamt of at night or thought of by day in that place? What young hearts had wished then that it never were summer, as the golden radiance of June, streaming from afar on the just visible tree-tops, mocked their misery, and brought back blessed but maddening memories?
Whether such sad reflections might not have been true, we will leave our readers to judge from the following facts of the history of this place:—“This castle was the palace of the Bishop of Carlisle till the the 13th January 1229; and about the year 1293, the famous Bishop Hilton is said to have entertained here for a considerable time Johannes Romanus, Archbishop of York, with his train, which amounted to above 300 persons. This prelate was also employed to settle the claims of the pretenders to the Scottish crown, and was present when sentence was given against Robert Bruce, and when John Baliol did homage for the kingdom of Scotland ‘to his sovereign lord the King of England.’ He was commissioned by the Pope to collect tenths in all the dioceses of Scotland; and in 1302 was Governor of Carlisle Castle, and had charge of all the Scottish hostages and prisoners of note, many of whom, as appears from his papers, died in durance. By the orders of Pope Clement V., he, conjointly with the Archbishop of York, in 1305, excommunicated ‘by bell, book, and candle,’ Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick, and all his adherents, for the murder of John Comyn in the church of Dumfries. He was present at the Parliament held at Carlisle in 1307, and in the same year was summoned to the coronation of Edward II. He was also in Carlisle in 1314, when that city was blockaded by Edward Bruce. In 1318, Edward II., with the sanction of the Pope, appropriated the church of Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, to the use of Bishop Hilton, as a recompense for his great services, and that he and his successors might have a place of refuge from the Scots. This Bishop was one of the plenipotentiaries in a treaty of peace with Robert de Brus in 1320, but he died in 1324, having held the see thirty-two years.”
From this it may be conjectured very fairly that this castle must have been in those past dim times the scene of many stirring events. Bishops were then different in many things from what they are now. They could don the steel corslet as easily as they could say an Ave or a Paternoster, and hang or excommunicate, according to the needs of the hour; and this stalwart John Hilton, the owner of Linstock Castle while the fiery Edward I. was at Carlisle, and finished his life and wars on Drumburgh Marsh, a short distance thence, was one of the most martial men of the times. There is little about this castle now to tell of all this; but there must have been other buildings, which were formerly parts of it, right down to the river, for we were told that large stones like old foundations are found by the men employed in weiring the river. There is also a trace of an ancient moat which once ran round its northern side.
We left its peaceful precincts with many thoughts of the far past, its occupants, their lives, their deeds, and how, through the lapsing centuries, all had changed—changed, but still in some palpable manner remaining much the same—the old familiar skies now, as then, shutting down over a beauteous nature—cool breezes, green trees, tender flowers, and the grand gloomy fells. How full of instruction is the past! how full of reverence!—the great need of our times! Well would it be if our masses could better understand these sermons in stones!
Since writing the above we have revisited this “old castle,” and find that there are even more points of interest about it than we had at first observed. On the east side more especially there are a great many lights and loopholes now closed up, which formerly did their stint of service to the old place which on that side has not been encumbered with modern additions. These the curious visitor will note for himself, not forgetting a very aged pear tree on the right of the road he enters by. It is an immense specimen of its kind, seeming a very banyan by the space it covers, and probably in its younger days had the honour of contributing to the general list of good things with which the old bishops so largely supplied their tables. Be this as it may, it is well worth looking at, as it is still healthy and bears, though its huge trunk is all split and torn. It was laden with fruit when we saw it, and a fair haired young urchin, who acted as our guide, all other hands being busy, told us it had produced “a gay few cars full” the year before.
