vanced this consideration with the intent of reconciling him to the change. "I am an old man," said he, "and in age we dislike all change as naturally, and, therefore, no doubt, as fitly as in youth we desire it. The youthful generation in their ardour for improvement and their love of novelty, strive to demolish what ought religiously to be preserved; the elders in their caution and their fear endeavour to uphold what has become useless, and even injurious. Thus in the order of Providence we have both the necessary impulse and the needful check.

"But I miss the old cross from its old place. More than fifty years had I known it there; and if fifty years acquaintance did not give us some regard even for stocks and stones, we must be stocks and stones ourselves."

CHAPTER XLIV. P. I.

HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER-THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER-EDWARD IV.-ASKE'S INSURRECTION -ILLUSTRIOUS VISITERS-JAMES

CHURCH LIBRARY.

I.-BARNABEE-CHARLES I.

They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in nowise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure.-HOOKER.

NOTHING more than the scanty notices which have already been mentioned is recorded concerning the history of Doncaster, till King John ordered it "to be enclosed with hertstone and pale, according as the ditch required; and that a light brecost or barbican should be made upon the bridge, to defend the town if need should be." The bridge was then of wood; in the following reign the townsmen " gave aid to make a stone bridge there" in that reign a hospital for sick and leprous people was built there, the priories of St. James and St. Nicholas founded a Dominican convent, and a Franciscan one. Henry VIII. slept there on his way to York. In the twenty-third year of Edward I., the borough was first summoned to send members to parliament, from which burden, as it was then considered, it was relieved in the ensuing year.

In 1321, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, held a council here with other discontented barons against Edward II.; in its results it brought many of them to an untimely death, and Lancaster himself suffered by the axe at Pomfret, as much in revenge for Gaveston as for this rebellion.

"In this

sort," says an old chronicler, "came the mighty Earl of Lancaster to his end, being the greatest peer in this realm, and one of the mightiest earls in christendom: for when he began to levy war against the king, he was possessed of five earldoms, Lancaster, Lincoln, Salisbury, Leicester, and Derby, besides other seigniories, lands, and possessions, great to his advancement in honour and puissance. But all this was limited within prescription of time, which being expired both honour and puissances were cut off with dishonour and death; for (oh miserable state!)

"Invida fatorum series, summisque negatum
Stare diu."

But now touching the aforesaid Earl of Lancaster, great strife rose afterward among the people, whether he ought to be reputed for a saint, or no. Some held that he ought to be no less esteemed, for that he did many alms deeds in his lifetime, honoured men of religion, and maintained a true quarrel til his life's end. Also his enemies continued not long after, but came to evil ends. Others conceived another opinion of him, alleging that he favoured not his wife, but lived in spouse-breach, defiling a great number of damsels and gentlewomen. If any offended him, he slew him shortly after in his wrathful mood. Apostates and other evil doers he maintained, and would not suffer them to be punished by due order of law. All his doings he used to commit to one of his secretaries, and took no heed himself thereof; and as for the manner of his death, he fled shamefully in the fight, and was taken and put to death against his will; yet by reason of certain miracles which were said to be done near the place both where he suffered and where he was buried, caused many to think he was a saint. Howbeit, at length by the king's commandment the church doors of the priory. where he was buried were shut and closed, so that no man might be suffered to come to the tomb to bring any offerings, or to do any other kind of devotion to the same. Also the hill where he suffered was kept by certain Gascoigners appointed by the Lord Hugh Spenser his son, then lying at Pomfret, to the end that no people should come and make their prayers there in worship of the said earl, whom they took verily for a martyr."

The next confederacy at Doncaster was more successful, though it led eventually to bloodier consequences. Bolingbroke, after landing at Ravensburg, was met here by Northumberland, Hotspur, Westmoreland, and others, who engaged with him there, some of them probably not knowing how far his ambitious views extended, and who afterward became the victims of their own turbulent policy. The dragon's teeth which were then sown produced a plentiful

harvest threescore years afterward, when more than six-andthirty thousand Englishmen fell by each other's hands at Towton, between this town and York. Edward IV. beheaded Sir Robert Willis and Sir Ralph Grey here, whom he had taken in the rout of Lose-coat field; and when he mustered his people here to march against Warwick and Clarence, whose intentions began then to be discovered, “it was said that never was seen in England so many goodly men and so well arranged in a field." Afterward he passed through Doncaster when he returned from exile on the way to his crowning victory at Barnet.

Richard III. also passed through this place on his way to York, where he was crowned. In Henry VIII.'s reign it became the actual seat of war, and a battle would have been fought there, if the Don had not, by its sudden rising, twice, -prevented Aske and his army of insurgents from attacking the Duke of Norfolk, with so superior a force that success would have been almost certain, and the triumph of the popish party a probable result. Here Norfolk, profiting by that delay, treated with the insurgents, and finally, by offering them a free pardon, and engaging that a free parliament should be held in the North, induced them to disperse.

In 1538, John Grigge, the mayor, lost a thumb in an affray at Marshgate, and next year the Prior of Doncaster was hanged for treason. In 1551 the town was visited by the plague in that of 1582, 908 persons died here.

The next noticeable circumstance in the annals of Doncaster, is that James I. lodged there, at the sign of the Sun and Bear, on his way from Scotland to take possession of the crown of England.

The maypole in the market-place was taken down in 1634, and the market cross erected there in its place. But the removal of the maypole seems to have been no proof of any improved state of morals in the town; for Barnabee, the illustrious potator, saw there the most unbecoming sight that he met with in all his travels. On his second visit the frail Levite was dead; and I will not pick out a name from the succession of vicars which might suit the time of the poem, because though Doncaster was the scene it does not follow that the vicar was the actor; and whoever he may have been, his name can be no object of legitimate curiosity, though Barnabee's justly was, till it was with so much in genuity determined by Mr. Haslewood.

When the army which had been raised against the Scots was disbanded, Charles I. dined there at the house of Lady Carlingford, and a pear tree which he is said to have planted is now standing there in Mr. Maw's garden. Charles was there again in 1644, and attended service in the church. And from a house in the butter market it was that Morris with two companions attempted to carry off the parliaVOL. 1.-17

méntary commander Rainsborough at noonday, and failing in the attempt, killed him upon the spot.

A church library was founded here by the contributions of the clergy and gentry of the surrounding country in 1726. A chamber over the church porch was appropriated for the books, with the archbishop's license; and there was one curate of this town whose love of reading was so great, that he not only passed his days in this library, but had a bed fixed there, and spent his nights there also.

In 1731 all the streets were new paved, and the signpost taken down; and in 1739, Daniel Dove, in remembrance of whom these volumes are composed, came to reside in Doncaster.

CHAPTER XLV. P. I.

CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES OF DONCASTER OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN.

1

Vir bonus est quis?

TERENCE.

LET good old Fuller answer the well-known question which is conveyed in the motto to this chapter. "And here," he says, "be it remembered, that the same epithet in several places accepts sundry interpretations. He is called a good man in common discourse, who is not dignified with gentility: a good man upon the exchange, who hath a responsi ble estate; a good man in a camp, who is a tall man of his arms; a good man in the church, who is pious and devout in his conversation. Thus, whatever is fixed therein in other relations, that person is a good man in history, whose char. acter affords such matter as may please the palate of an ingenuous reader."

Two other significations may be added which Fuller has not pretermitted, because he could not include them, they being relatively to him, of posthumous birth. A good man upon state trials, or in certain committees which it might not be discreet to designate, is one who will give his verdict without any regard to his oath in the first case or to the evidence in both. And in the language of the pugilists it signifies one who can bear a great deal of beating: Hal Pierce, the Game Chicken and unrivalled glory of the ring, pronounced this eulogium upon Mr. Gully, the present honourable member for Pontefract, when he was asked for a candid opinion of his professional merits: "Sir, he was the very best man as ever I had."

Among the good men, in Fuller's acceptation of the term, who have been in any way connected with Doncaster, the first in renown as well as in point of time, is Robin Hood. Many men talk of him who never shot in his bow; but many think of him when they drink at his well, which is at Skelbroke by the wayside, about six miles from Doncaster on the York road. There is a small inn near with Robin Hood for its sign; this country has produced no other hero whose popularity has endured so long. The Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Marquis of Granby have flourished upon signposts, and have faded there; so have their compeers Prince Eugene and Prince Ferdinand. Rodney and Nelson are fading; and the time is not far distant when Wellington also will have had his day. But while England shall be England, Robin Hood will be a popular name.

Near Robin Hood's well, and nearer to Doncaster, the Hermit of Hampole resided, at the place from which he was so called, "where living he was honoured, and dead was buried and sainted." Richard Role, however, for that was his name, was no otherwise sainted than by common opinion in those parts. He died in 1349, and is the oldest of our known poets. His writings, both in verse and prose, which are of considerable extent, ought to be published at the expense of some national institution.

In the next generation, John Marse, who was born in a neighbouring village of that name, flourished in the Carmelite Convent at Doncaster, and obtained great celebrity in his time for writing against-a far greater than himself—John Wickliffe.

It is believed that Sir Martin Frobisher was born at Doncaster, and that his father was mayor of that place. "I note this the rather," says Fuller," because learned Mr. Carpenter, in his geography, recounts him among the famous men of Devonshire; but why should Devonshire, which hath a flock of worthies of her own, take a lamb from another country?" This brave seaman, when he left his property to a kinsman who was very likely to dissipate it, said, "It was gotten at sea, and would never thrive long at land."

Lord Molesworth, having purchased the estate at Edlington, four miles from Doncaster, formerly the property of Sir Edward Stanhope, resided there occasionally in the old mansion, during the latter part of his life. His Account of Denmark, is a book which may always be read with profit. The Danish ambassador complained of it to King William, and hinted that if one of his Danish majesty's subjects had taken such liberties with the King of England, his master would, upon complaint, have taken off the author's head. "That Í cannot do," replied William; "but if you please, I will tell him what you say, and he shall put it into the next edition of his book."