gate the night before she was to have been married to another man, and though her friends were at first highly indignant, his tact and winning manners soon brought them round. In 1745 he joined a company raised at Knaresborough for the defence of the kingdom against the Jacobites, and was with it at Newcastle, Carlisle, Falkirk, and Edinburgh, going through many extraordinary adventures. On returning to Knaresborough he embarked in business as a merchant of Scotch goods, and also in contraband trade, and it may be mentioned as a proof of his wonderful activity that he once, in answer to a pressing business letter, set out on horseback from Knaresborough at three in the morning and rode into Newcastle the same afternoon. In addition to these occupations he also engaged in the stage-coach business, bought and sold horses, and made money wherever he heard of a chance. It was not until 1754 that Metcalfe entered upon the most serious business of his life—the making of highways and roads. That a blind man could execute such difficult engineering work seems incredible—that he did it with marvellous skill and success is an assured fact, as any one may see by inspecting the roads which he made. His first work was the construction of three miles of highway between Minskip and Ferrensby, on the Harrogate and Boroughbridge road, and he was so successful in this that other contracts speedily followed. Some of the principal were as follows: Five miles of road between Harrogate and Harewood, £1200; a mile and a half from Chapeltown to Leeds, £400; four miles over Rombald's Moor, £1350; nine miles near Wakefield, £1200; the roads from Wakefield to Pontefract, Doncaster, and Halifax, £6400; twentyone miles of road between Wakefield and the Lancashire border, £4500; a road between Blackburn and Bury, £3500. He also became famous as a bridge-builder, having a plan of his own as to foundations, and it is said that it worked so well that none of his work ever fell. The extraordinary fashion in which he worked out his calculations, made his measurements, and the sure way in which he recognised and overcame a difficulty would have been astonishing in a man in full possession of his sight-that a blind man could accomplish such matters is nothing short of marvellous. He appears to have possessed a wonderful gift of calculation and a decided bent for mathematics, but it is characteristic of him that he had rules of his own for everything and made all his computations in a fashion peculiar to himself. During the last thirty years of his life he speculated a good deal in hay, and would accurately measure the weight of a stack by stretching its length and width with his arms. He remained in full possession of his faculties until the time of his death, April 27, 1810. He died at Spofforth, and was interred in the churchyard there. His wife had predeceased him by thirty-two years, but he left behind him four children, twenty grandchildren, and ninety great and great-great-grandchildren. VI If Knaresborough can boast of associations such as those which centre round Eugene Aram, Blind Jack, Mother Shipton, and the Shock-Headed Boy, it can also point to the possession of some old-world matters and objects not less interesting than its castle or church. It is emphatically an antique place-no town in Yorkshire has more of the old and the curious about it. The traveller might spend some days here in exhausting the sights of the town and then leave much unseen that is well worth seeing. The old houses, ancient ruins, quaint yards and alleys all contain some feature of interest. There is an old house in the High Street wherein Oliver Cromwell lodged when he came to superintend the siege of Knaresborough Castle. It was then occupied by a man named Ellis, one of whose daughters, Eleanor, lived to a great age, and gave the following account of the great man's visit, which is extracted from an article in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1791: "When Cromwell came to lodge at our house at Knaresborough, I was then but a young girl. Having heard much talk about the man, I looked at him with wonder; being ordered to take a pan of coals, and aire his bed, I could not, during the operation, forbear peeping over my shoulder several times to observe this extraordinary person, who was seated at the far side of the room untying his garters. Having aired the bed, I went out, and, shutting the door after me, stooped and peeped through the keyhole, when I saw him rise from his seat, advance to the bed, and fall on his knees, in which attitude I left him for some time; when returning again, I found him still at prayer; and this was his custom every night so long as he stayed at our house; from which I concluded he must be a good man; and this opinion I always maintained afterwards, though I heard him very much blamed and exceedingly abused." The bedstead at which Eleanor Ellis saw the great Parliamentary general kneel to say his prayers is still preserved at the Manor House, and is a plain four-poster of oak, with curtains. There is a very fine apartment in the same house entirely panelled with oak and containing a carved oak fireplace of the Stuart period. Amongst the quaint houses which abound in the market-place of Knaresborough there is one which is remarkable for the curious character of its architecture and for its old-fashioned, square-paned windows, which project over the pavement. It is said to be the oldest chemist's shop in England, and has been occupied by chemists and druggists continually since 1720. It possesses numerous professional relics in the shape of old herbals, bottles, mortars, and phials which are handed down from one proprietorthere have only been six since 1720-to another as sacred heirlooms. Under this house there is a very curious cellar which is of such proportions and arrangements that it seems quite probable that it was once used as a KNARESBOROUGH IN MODERN TIMES 237 dungeon. Another house in the High Street is famous as being the birthplace of the present Bishop of Oxford, whose father was a solicitor in the town. Dr. Stubbs was born here in 1825, and received his first education at the Grammar School, from whence he proceeded to Giggleswick School and thence to Oxford. He was successively Canon of St. Paul's, Bishop of Chester, and Bishop of Oxford, to which see he was translated in 1889, and has long been celebrated as a historian. A schoolfellow of his at Knaresborough, William Kaye, also a native of the town, was afterwards with him at Oxford, where they were both scholars of Lincoln College. Kaye, who died in 1892, achieved great distinction as a scholar and linguist, and was at one time head of Bishop's College, Calcutta. It was something more than a happy combination of circumstances that when Dr. Stubbs was consecrated Bishop of Chester in York Minster his old schoolfellow should be called upon to preach the sermon. There is an account of William Kaye's life and work in the late Dean Burgon's book, "Twelve Good Men and True," which contains its scholarly author's appreciation of several gifted men of the middle part of the present century, many of whom were practically lost to the world in the seclusion of country parsonages. The house in which Dr. Stubbs was born is that standing over Lambert Passage. Many another house in the town has a history of its own, and if some of the old inns could speak they could tell rare tales of the old coaching-days, when the Royal Pilot, the Harrogate Highflyer, and the Tally-Ho used to rattle over the cobble-paved streets to their doors. The cottage wherein Eugene Aram lived in White Horse Yard was pulled down long years ago, but a grim memorial of him exists in a roof-beam in the inn called the "Brewer's Arms," which is credibly reported to be neither more nor less than one of the posts of the gibbet from which his body hung in chains. That another inn should be named after him is not strange. Whether it is because Lord Lytton made him the hero of a sentimental romance, and Tom Hood the subject of his finest ballad, the name of Eugene Aram invariably conjures up an atmosphere of romance which is nowhere so strongly felt as in the little town by the Nidd with which his name must be for ever connected, and where it is to this day much better known and more talked of than the names of worthier men. CHAPTER XXXVII Harrogate: Old and New HARROGATE IN THE OLD DAYS-EXPERIENCES OF EARLY VISITORS-CHARACTER OF THE MEDICINAL WATERS-HARROGATE AS A FASHIONABLE RESORT-MODERN HARROGATE-ENVIRONS OF HARROGATE-BILTON -CONYNGHAM HALL-ASSOCIATIONS OF THE WOODD FAMILY WITH CHARLES I. I HE famous inland watering-place of Harrogate, situate about three miles to the south-west of Knaresborough, is one of those towns which spring into active existence and importance within a very short space of time. A hundred years ago it was very little known, and visitors who came to it were perforce obliged to put up with accommodation which was somewhat rough and scanty compared to that afforded by the hotels and lodging-houses of the Harrogate of to-day. "In Knaresborough parish," says Cooke in his topographical description of Yorkshire, published in 1812, "about three miles west from the town, on a large and dreary moor, anciently part of Knaresborough Forest, are the villages of Upper and Lower Harrogate, a mile from which are the three medicinal springs so much celebrated for their different virtues. . . . The season for visiting Harrogate is from May to Michaelmas, and the company assemble and lodge in five or six large houses or inns on the moor, a mile from the villages; each house having every accommodation for their entertainment." There appears, however, to have been some difference of opinion on this point, for some of the earliest visitors to Harrogate have left their impressions of the place on record, and they are not always complimentary to the budding fashionable resort. "Harrogate," said Smollett, after a visit there about the middle of the last century, "is a wild common, bare, bleak, without tree or shrub, or the least sign of cultivation." Sydney Smith, who visited Harrogate many years later, seems to have formed no better opinion of it. "Harrogate," he remarks, "is the most heaven-forsaken country under the sun. When I saw it there were only nine mangy fir HARROGATE 239 trees there, and even they all leaned away from it." But the author of the "Memoirs of John Buncle," writing of Harrogate as he found it in 1731, says that of all the watering-places he knew, it was the most charming. The same author gives some account of how he was lodged during his visit to Harrogate. "My apartment," he says, "is about ten feet square, and when the folding bed is down there is just room sufficient to pass between it and the fire. One might expect there would be no occasion for a fire at midsummer, but the climate is so backward that an ash-tree before my window is just beginning to put forth its leaves; and I am fain to have my bed warmed every night." A much earlier visitor, Thomas Baskerville the antiquary, who stayed at Harrogate during the reign of Charles II., speaks very complainingly of the way in which the women of the place pestered the water-drinkers with their attentions. He represents them as squabbling amongst themselves as to which of them should fill the visitor's glass with the medicinal water, and as being so persistent in their endeavours to turn a penny, as to force their way into private apartments early in the morning carrying pots of water in their hands. Also he remarks that these too-eager vendors of Harrogate water were accustomed to urge their own beauty upon visitors, and adds that they fell far short of any fairness, for their complexion had long been spoiled by the foulness of the sulphur water. All this elementary beginning of subsequent greatness has long since passed away: Harrogate is nowadays a handsome, well-built, well-appointed town, and has long been one of the most fashionable watering-places in Europe. The situation of Harrogate is extremely advantageous. It stands on a plateau of wide extent, and its highest parts are 400 feet above sea-level. Though some of the earlier writers describe it as being bleak, bare, and cold, it possesses a very fine atmosphere, and cannot be surpassed for the purity and invigorating character of its air. Originally a part of the great forest of Knaresborough, wherein kings and nobles had many a long day's hunting, Harrogate seems to have been nothing more than a mere hamlet until one William Slingsby-a member of the family of Slingsby of Scriven-discovered the first medicinal spring in 1576. The water of this spring seems to have been much patronised during the remaining years of the sixteenth century, and the well from which it flows was named the English Spaw by one Dr. Bright in 1596. About the beginning of the seventeenth century a Dr. Stanhope of York discovered another spring of strong chalybeate water at Harrogate, and published a pamphlet upon its virtues entitled "Cures without Care," in which he advised all folk who found no benefit from the use of physic to repair to the northern Spa and drink its waters. Other springs were discovered in 1656, 1783, 1822, and 1849. The medical faculty was not slow in making known the great virtues of the waters of Harrogate. Dr. Bright seems to have written the first treatise upon them soon after Slingsby's discovery, and his work was followed by those of Dean, 1626, Stanhope, 1631, French, 1651, Neale, 1656, Simpson, |