20240521 Tuesday May 21, 2024; A Full Day Exploring York and its History
The breakfast served at St. Raphael Guest House was top notch. They had a full spread of local jams (raspberry, strawberry, lemon custard, candied ginger and marmalade) and 3 different freshly baked artisan breads including a Roman Spelt flour, malted whole wheat, and a local multigrain. All 3 were good, but the Roman Spelt flour was especially yummy with a wonderful texture for toast that is hard to describe but it made our mouths happy. There was also local butter. There was also a wonderful fruit salad with fresh apples, grapes, melons and oranges and a selection of yogurts.
In addition to all the continental breakfast items, they also served us a full English hot breakfast. We had misunderstood the breakfast ordering process and had checked off everything including eggs Benedict, not realizing that the eggs Benedict wasn’t just poached eggs on muffins, but also English bacon, which is basically ham and hollandaise sauce, so we ended up with way too much food. We’ll know better not to over order for tomorrow’s breakfast. They also gave Janet a pot for her own Earl Grey tea and a French press for Ben’s coffee. The quality of the breakfast goes a long way towards making up for the tiny room and bed.
The proprietor gave us great local directions and recommendations on a walking tour route to see all the best that York has to offer. This took us initially through some beautiful museum gardens and along the top of the remaining parts of the city wall. It was interesting walking atop the city wall, which was basically a castle wall with parapets, a dry moat and defensive structures and also a great way to peer into the backyard of the York Minster and some exclusive properties.
We joined up with a “Free Tour” offered by the White Rose tour company lead by an Alan who has lived in England his whole life and has worked as a guide all over the UK. He did a great job leading us throughout the town basically following the route that our St. Raphael Guest House host had recommended, while adding a lot of history about the people and places. Henry VIII had visited in 1541 and had one of his wives executed for treason for being seen in a romantic tryst with one of Henry VIII’s officers during their stay in York.
A different Henry, Henry Aske, objected to Henry VIII’s banning of the Catholic Church when the Pope refused to grant him a divorce from his first wife. This lead to the creation of the Anglican Church with the Monarch himself as head of the church so he could grant himself a divorce. Catholics objected to his burning and destruction of Abbeys and anything else to do with the Pope, so they rose up under the leadership of Henry Aske. At some point, negotiations to end the violence were set up and Henry Aske was granted a guaranty of safe passage and audience with Henry VIII. He traveled to London and received promises of redress and safe passage. However, on his journey back to York, fighting broke out again, and he was arrested, convicted of high treason, and then locked in an Iron Maiden and hung from the Clifford Tower of the York Castle to suffer a slow death by starvation, dehydration and exposure. Then the birds, rats and insects got the better of him over the next year. It must have smelled pretty bad in that neighborhood for some time.
Guy Fawkes was born in York in 1570, and ultimately got caught trying to blow up Parliament with barrels of gunpowder. He had been sentenced to be dragged backwards by horses with his head close to the ground, then strangled on the gallows until “halfway between heaven and earth”, then revived so he could have his genitals cut off and burned before his eyes, and then be cut open alive and have his intestines pulled out and then have his heart cut out. Then he was to be decapitated so his head could be dipped in tar and then displayed on a spike for a year, while the rest of his body would be cut into four sections with each to be taken to the 4 corners of the kingdom where they would be ravaged by vultures and other animals. This didn’t all go to plan as he accidentally had his neck broken during the intended strangulation, so he didn’t survive to witness the rest of his grisly punishments. His conspirators weren’t so lucky. They were pretty serious about punishments back in those days.
Margaret Clitherow was convicted of hiding a Catholic priest in a hidden priest hole in her house. Of course any Catholic priests were murdered on the spot, but Margaret got special treatment. They laid her on a boulder on the ground with the door of her house laid atop of her. Then they began piling stones on the door to slowly crush her to death in public.
In 1776 Elizabeth Boardingham and her lover Thomas Aikney killed Elizabeth’s husband. Thomas was executed by hanging, but a woman who kills her husband is charged with petty treason. The penalty for petty treason is to be strangled, and then burned at the stake. She was the last woman to be executed in this manner as petty treason eventually was removed from the books and replaced with murder.
So York has a rich and long history of grisly ways to die.
Our tour wound through the city highlighting the ancient Roman city walls and encampment sites, and the later fortifications built after the Norman conquest. There was also an Abbey built just outside the walls of York when there were conflicts between the crown and church. Then, of course, there is the enormous York Minster, the cathedral in the center of the city. Next to that is a smaller church where Guy Fawkes was baptized and across the street from that, an Inn that brags that Guy Fawkes was born at that site. The building that currently sits on the site was not there when Guy Fawkes was born, but it’s possible he was born there in a structure that was subsequently replaced on the same site.
We then walked past a historical Merchant house that has been featured in many movies as a typical medieval half timbered public hall, and onto a neighborhood called the Shambles, which is said to have inspired Diagon Alley (along with other sites) for it’s very narrow and twisting nature. This as historically a meat and fish market. The buildings were arranged along a north/south axis with the buildings very close together so that sunlight would not spoil the meat and fish in the market stalls. There was also a ditch down the middle of the street that was an open sewer for fish guts and parts of butchered animals that flowed into a field below, where dogs and other animals would feed on the solids that washed down there. It was always a terrible mess so it is said that is where the context of the current use of the word shambles to describe something horribly run down and messy comes from.
We ended up the tour at the York Castle Museum, which is the site of the Clifford Tower, where Henry Aske met his grisly demise, and where Guy Fawkes and many others were imprisoned and subsequently executed. The York Castle was a complex of buildings which included a Men’s and Women’s prisons. The main exhibit building of the museum is where the Woman’s museum was. The Men’s museum became a courthouse at some point.
After completing the tour, we had High Tea at Betty’s Tea house in the middle of York, which was a very nice high tea with very fancy sandwiches cakes and treats.
This reinforced, we then headed back to the York Castle Museum where we spent the balance of the afternoon until closing. They have reproductions of a street in York in the Victorian era, as well as exhibits on WWI with life in the trenches, and the 1960’s in Great Britain. Then there as an entire section devoted to the prison era where many of the stories of some of the more famous inmates are retold by projected video actors in the cells where they had lived before their execution or eventual release .
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We then had dinner at the White Swan Pub near the Shambles. We have been testing the Steak and Ale pies and Haddock and Chips at the various pubs on our trip. The food at the White Swan as OK, but it was certainly better at the Guy Fawkes Inn. Perhaps we will try something different when we arrive in Scotland tomorrow.
We check out of the St Rapheal Guest house in the morning and then make the long drive to Edinburgh tomorrow. We will try to see some of Hadrian’s wall on the way. Our guide said there are close parallels between York in real life and Winterthur in the Game of Thrones, as there are parallels between Hadrian’s wall and Castle Black. We’ll see.
