A Yorkshire Almanac Comprising 365 Historical Extracts, Red-letter Days and Customs, and Astronomical and Meteorological Data
John Hobson. 1877. The Journal of Mr. John Hobson, Late of Dodworth Green. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Charles Jackson. Durham: Surtees Society. A (morbid) compendium of everyday England. It is sometimes unclear whether the date given is that of an occurrence or that on which news reached his capacious ears. Get it:
.[Editorial note] Wharncliffe Lodge, which stands at one limit of the magnificent tract of land known as Wharncliffe Chase, was built by Sir Thomas Wortley early in the reign of Henry VIII. It has been occasionally used as a residence by some members of the family, but is now discontinued as such. Lord Wharncliffe retains, however, a good upper room for his private accommodation, fitted up in antique style with carved oak beams and tapestried walls. Sir Thomas Wortley left a memorial of himself, perfectly unique in its kind, near his lodge. He found a part of the native rock which presented a flat surface, and without reducing the whole to any geometrical form, he caused to be inscribed upon it in a fine bold character the following inscription:
[Pray for the soul of Thomas Wortley, Knight of the King’s Body to Edward the Fourth, Richard the Third, Harry the Seventh, and Harry the Eighth. His soul God pardon. Which Thomas caused a hunting lodge to be made on this crag in the midst of Wharncliffe, for his pleasure to hear the harts bell, in the year of our Lord 1510.]
The inscription has suffered by its long exposure to the weather, from which, however, it is now protected, by being enclosed within the house.
WP, Wharncliffe Crags: “The present building dates from the 19th century and is the third lodge on the site, the original having been built in 1510. The lodge has strong associations with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who resided there for short periods in the early 18th century. The floor of one of the rooms bears the inscription of Henry VIII’s reign (1509–1547).”
Oliver Heywood says that the land was acquired through vexatious litigation (when?! by whom exactly?!):
Sir Francis Wortly’s great grandfather being a man of a great estate was owner of a town near unto him, only there were some freeholders in it, with whom he wrangled and sued until he had beggared them and cast them out of their inheritance, and so the town was wholly his, which he pulled quite down and laid the buildings and town-fields even as a common, wherein his main design was to keep deer, and made a lodge to which he came at the time of the year and lay there taking great delight to hear the deer bell, but it came to pass that before he died he belled like a deer and was distracted, some rubbish there may be seen of the town, it is upon a great moor betwixt Penistone and Sheffield in Yorkshire (Heywood 1883).
Horace Walpole to Richard Bentley on the lodge in August 1752(?):
Well! you have had enough of magnificence; you shall repose in a desert. – Old Wortley Montague lives on the very spot where the dragon of Wantley did – only I believe the latter was much better lodged. — You never saw such a wretched hovel, lean, unpainted, and half its nakedness barely shaded with harateen stretched till it cracks. Here the miser hoards health and money, his only two objects: he has chronicles in behalf of the air, and battens on Tokay, his single indulgence, as he has heard it is particularly salutary. But the savageness of the scene would charm your Alpine taste: it is tumbled with fragments of mountains, that look ready laid for building the world. One scrambles over a huge terrace, on which mountain ashes and various trees spring out of the very rocks; and at the brow is the den, but not spacious enough for such an inmate. However, I am persuaded it furnished Pope with this line, so exactly it answers to the picture:
On rifted rocks, the dragon’s late abodes.
I wanted to ask if Pope had not visited lady Mary Wortley here during their intimacy — but could one put that question to Avidien himself? There remains an ancient odd inscription here, which has such a whimsical mixture of devotion and romanticness that I must transcribe it:
Preye for the soul of sir Thomas Wortley, knight of the body to the kings Edward IV. Richard III. Henry VII. Henry VIII. whose faults God pardon. He caused a lodge to be built on this crag in the midst of Wharncliff to hear the harts bell, in the year of our Lord 1510.
It was a chase, and what he meant to hear was the noise of the stags.
(Walpole 1798)
Pope, at first a fervent admirer of Lady Mary, later had wrote of the couple:
Avidien or his wife, (no matter which,
For him you’ll call a dog, and her a bitch)
Sell their presented partridges, and fruits,
And humbly live on rabbits and on roots:
One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine,
And is at once their vinegar and wine.
But on some lucky day (as when they found
A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drowned)
At such a feast, old vinegar to spare,
Is what two souls so generous cannot bear:
Oil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart,
But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart.
(Pope 1869)
I don’t know why Pope compares the old man to Avitianus, third bishop of Rouen.
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[Editorial note] Wharncliffe Lodge, which stands at one limit of the magnificent tract of land known as Wharncliffe Chase, was built by Sir Thomas Wortley early in the reign of Henry VIII. It has been occasionally used as a residence by some members of the family, but is now discontinued as such. Lord Wharncliffe retains, however, a good upper room for his private accommodation, fitted up in antique style with carved oak beams and tapestried walls. Sir Thomas Wortley left a memorial of himself, perfectly unique in its kind, near his lodge. He found a part of the native rock which presented a flat surface, and without reducing the whole to any geometrical form, he caused to be inscribed upon it in a fine bold character the following inscription:
[Pray for the soul of Thomas Wortley, Knight of the King’s Body to Edward the Fourth, Richard the Third, Harry the Seventh, and Harry the Eighth. His soul God pardon. Which Thomas caused a hunting lodge to be made on this crag in the midst of Wharncliffe, for his pleasure to hear the harts bell, in the year of our Lord 1510.]
The inscription has suffered by its long exposure to the weather, from which, however, it is now protected, by being enclosed within the house.
221 words.
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