WALKS ABOUT WAKEFIELD.*
Tine excessive minuteness of detail into which Mr. Banks enters, and his constant habit of allusion to facts which cannot be generally known, will tend to confine his book to a local audience. Perhaps, however, these very characteristics may make the book more popular with that class of people, and all who find their own villages honoured with a careful inspection, their own parish registers analyzed, and their own names preserved as historical, may feel such stirrings of gratitude as will tempt therti to be pur- chasers. There are matters mentioned by Mr. Banks which have some general interest, and certain of the places he visits have memorable associations. Still, as a rule, the country immediately round Wakefield does not invite the tourist. The town itself has not that activity which marks the other manufacturing centres of the West Riding, and which attracts such inquiring travellers as Mr. Walter White to witness the processes of making broad cloth or shoddy, hammering out armour-plates, or pointing needles. The description of all these industries in Mr. White's Month hi Yorkshire makes us look with some curiosity even upon those straggling lines of mills and factories which go by the name of towns in the West Riding, and which, though thrown together without design, without a decent street, without a beginning or an end, are fast becoming corporate boroughs, are claiming or returning members of Parliament, and are sending out every day the owners of new fortunes.
If we go back a little time, we find Wakefield a far more important place than most of her modern rivals. Mr. Banks quotes several old accounts which must gratify his native enthu- siasm. In the reign of Henry VIII. we are told that Wakefield was by far the largest, the most populous, and the most flourishing town in the district, double the size of either Leeds or Bradford. According to Leland, who visited Wakefield about 1538, the town was then "a very quick market-town, and naeately large ; well served with flesh and fish both from the sea and by rivers, whereof divers be thereabout at hand, so that all victual is very good and cheap there. A right honest man shall fare well for twopence a meal.. The building of the town is meetly fair, most of timber, but some of stone. All the whole profit of the town standeth by coarse drapery. There be few towns in the inward part of Yorkshire that hath a fairer site or soil about it." The cheerfulness and prosperity to which this description bears witness may fairly be taken to have inspired the name "Merry Wakefield," about which there is some dis- cussion. One writer attributes the mirth of Wakefield to the abundance of malt made in the neighbourhood ; another to the miracle plays which used to be acted in the town, and some of which, still extant, are written in the Wakefield dialect. Mr. Banks dues not pretend that his native place still retains the character given it in olden times ; perhaps it is enough for him if it can subsist on earlier memories. The battle of Wakefield, at which Richard, Duke of York, was killed by the Lancastrians, is, of course, duly mentioned, and we have also a passing allusion to the famous Pinder of Wakefield, whose fight with Robin Hood survives in ballad poetry. But we can imagine that if Mr. Banks's book falls into the hands of either French or Germans they will sadly miss one historical chartseter, the courageous champion of monogamy, Dr. Primrose, sometime Vicar of Wakefield. In another part of Mr. Banks's book, where he speaks of the old ruined castle of that town, the name of which is spelt Pontefract, but pronounced Pomfret, we have an allusion to the controversy about the death of Richard IL The guide who took Mr. Banks over the castle was indignant at the scepticism which threatened to put an end to her occupation, and which, moreover, threw doubts on the authority of Shakespeare. She was fully persuaded that Richard II. came to a violent end in the castle she was showing, and ex- claimed indignantly, " Why, bless me, it is not so long since ! There's people living who remember things, but folks are always _getting up some controversancy about this." We think a little judicious pressure from Mr. Banks might have induced the good lady to name some of the people still living who remembered the death of Richard II., even if she would not go so far as to connect it with her own childhood.
Some of the most curious details given us by Mr. Banks have been gathered by him with much industry from parish registers and the accounts kept either by constables or churchwardens. in the Wakefield books we have an entry of the lay impropriator being indicted at the York assizes, for not repairing the chancel of the parish church, which we should have thought was an offence
* Walks in ]'orkshire: Wakefield and its Neighbourhood. By W. S. Banks. London: Longman. Wakefield: Allen. 1871. cognizable only in an ecclesiastical court. It may perhaps gratify the officials of the Treasury to know that the cost of an indictment in 1658 was only a shilling, and that for a presentment at the assizes the churchwarden had not to pay more than four shillings. Among the constables' accounts at Wakefield we find such entries as these : —" Bellman crying no throwing at cocks, 6d. ;" "Assistance at whiping 3 men, 35. ;" " Bellman crying to atop flying kites in streets, 6d. ;" "Crying mad dogs down on 2nd June, 1s. ;" "Ex- penses to Pontefract two days respecting Jeremiah Pollard's pro- secution, .£1 is. Expenses in pillering Jeremiah Pollard, 18s. 6d." In the parish registers of Ackworth, near Pontefract, we find a running series of comments on the morality of some of the women who came to be married, and when a birth followed too soon after a marriage this was set down with the most literal severity after the entry of baptism. The payments made by the churchwardens at Barnsley between the years 1622 and 1636 afford some singular matter. Titus we have '" William Roggers for goinge with six wanderers to Ardsley, ij.d. Mr. Garnett for makeinge them a peas, iiij.d. Richard White for whipeinge them according to law, ij.d." Further on we meet with " to a gent. that come from Boheamea wich could speak nothing but Layttin, xij.d." Another Barnsley curiosity is the inscription in the porch of the Friends' Meeting House, removed to that place from a burial-ground at the entrance of which it was put up in 1657. According to this inscription, a field is the proper place for burials, because Joshua "was neither Buried in A steeplehouse now called A Parish church, nor in A steeplehouse yeard, but he . was Buried in the border of his inheritance ;" and Eleazor, the son of Aaron, was interred in like manner. Mr. Banks has done some service to his neighbourhood by collecting these matters of local interest, which might well have escaped the aye of a stranger. In one or two places, however, we notice an omission. The account given Us of Walton Hall, the seat- of 1Vaterton, the naturalist, is very scanty, and this is all the more to be regretted, as there are many traditions respecting the late owner, whose quaint- ness, courage, and sagacity made him a memorable character. Again, in a village church which Mr. Banks mentions there is a collection of old German glass of the most singular description ; Mr. Banks dismisses it in a couple of lines, though the details would well bear a minute investigation. Such changes as these would make Mr. Banks's book more likely to travel beyond his own immediate circle, but it needs more enlargement of view to fit it for the general public.
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