Yorkshire Part 11

Malton is the only town on the Derwent, and it is made up of three separate places--Old Malton, a picturesque village; New Malton, a pleasant and oldfas.h.i.+oned town; and Norton, a curiously extensive suburb. The last has a Norman font in its modern church, and there its attractions begin and end. New Malton has a fortunate position on a slope well above the lush gra.s.s by the river, and in this way arranges the backs of its houses with unconscious charm. The two churches, although both containing Norman pillars and arches, have been so extensively rebuilt that their antiquarian interest is slight.

On account of its undoubted signs of Roman occupation in the form of two rectangular camps, and its situation at the meeting-place of some three or four Roman roads, New Malton has been with great probability identified with the _Delgovitia_ of the Antonine Itinerary.

Old Malton is a cheerful and well-kept village, with antique cottages here and there, roofed with mossy thatch. It makes a pretty picture as you come along the level road from Pickering, with a group of trees on the left and the tower of the Priory Church appearing sedately above the humble roofs. A Gilbertine monastery was founded here about the middle of the twelfth century, during the lifetime of St. Gilbert of Sempringham in Lincolns.h.i.+re, who during the last year of his long life sent a letter to the Canons of Malton, addressing them as 'My dear sons.' Little remains of Malton Priory with the exception of the church, built at the very beginning of the Early English period. Of the two western towers, the southern one only survives, and both aisles, two bays of the nave, and everything else to the east has gone. The abbreviated nave now serves as a parish church.

Between Malton and the Vale of York there lies that stretch of hilly country we saw from the edge of the Wolds, for some time past known as the Howardian Hills, from Castle Howard which stands in their midst.

The many interests that this singularly remote neighbourhood contains can be realized by making such a peregrination as we made through the Wolds.

There is no need to avoid the main road south of Malton. It has a park-like appearance, with its large trees and well-kept gra.s.s on each side, and the glimpses of the wooded valley of the Derwent on the left are most beautiful. On the right we look across the nearer gra.s.slands into the great park of Castle Howard, and catch glimpses between the distant ma.s.ses of trees of Lord Carlisle's stately home. The old castle of the Howards having been burnt down, Vanbrugh, the greatest architect of early Georgian times, designed the enormous building now standing.

In 1772 Horace Walpole compressed the glories of the place into a few sentences. '... I can say with exact truth,' he writes to George Selwyn,' that I never was so agreeably astonished in my days as with the first vision of the whole place. I had heard of Vanburgh, and how Sir Thomas Robinson and he stood spitting and swearing at one another; nay, I had heard of glorious woods, and Lord Strafford alone had told me that I should see one of the finest places in Yorks.h.i.+re; but n.o.body ...

had informed me that should at one view see a palace, a town, a fortified city; temples on high places, woods worthy of being each metropolis of the Druids, vales connected to hills by other woods, the n.o.blest lawn in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive; in short, I have seen gigantic places before, but never a sublime one.'

The style is that of the Corinthian renaissance, and Walpole's description applies as much to-day as when he wrote. The pictures include some of the masterpieces of Reynolds, Lely, Vandyck, Rubens, Tintoretto, Ca.n.a.letto, Giovanni Bellini Domenichino and Annibale Caracci.

Two or three miles to the south, the road finds itself close to the deep valley of the Derwent. A short turning embowered with tall trees whose dense foliage only allows a soft green light to filter through, goes steeply down to the river. We cross the deep and placid river by a stone bridge, and come to the Priory gateway. It is a stately ruin partially mantled with ivy, and it preserves in a most remarkable fas.h.i.+on the detail of its outward face.

The mossy steps of the cross just outside the gateway are, according to a tradition in one of the Cottonian ma.n.u.scripts, a.s.sociated with the event which led to the founding of the Abbey by Walter Espec, lord of Helmsley. He had, we are told, an only son, also named Walter, who was fond of riding with exceeding swiftness.

One day when galloping at a great pace his horse stumbled near a small stone, and young Espec was brought violently to the ground, breaking his neck and leaving his father childless. The grief-stricken parent is said to have found consolation in the founding of three abbeys, one of them being at Kirkham, where the fatal accident took place.

Of the church and conventual buildings only a few fragments remain to tell us that this secluded spot by the Derwent must have possessed one of the most stately monasteries in Yorks.h.i.+re. One tall lancet is all that has been left of the church; and of the other buildings a few walls, a beautiful Decorated lavatory, and a Norman doorway alone survive.

Stamford Bridge, which is reached by no direct road from Kirkham Abbey, is so historically fascinating that we must leave the hills for a time to see the site of that momentous battle between Harold, the English King, and the Norwegian army, under Harold Hardrada and Harold's brother Tostig. The English host made their sudden attack from the right bank of the river, and the Northmen on that side, being partially armed, were driven back across a narrow wooden bridge. One Northman, it appears, played the part of Horatius in keeping the English at bay for a time. When he fell, the Norwegians had formed up their s.h.i.+eld-wall on the left bank of the river, no doubt on the rising ground just above the village. That the final and decisive phase of the battle took place there Freeman has no doubt.

Stamford Bridge being, as already mentioned, the most probable site of the Roman _Derventio_, it was natural that some village should have grown up at such an important crossing of the river.

An unfrequented road through a belt of picturesque woodland goes from Stamford Bridge past Sand Hutton to the highway from York to Malton. If we take the branch-road to Flaxton, we soon see, over the distant trees, the lofty towers of Sheriff Hutton Castle, and before long reach a silent village standing near the imposing ruin. The great rectangular s.p.a.ce, enclosed by huge corner-towers and half-destroyed curtain walls, is now utilized as the stackyard of a farm, and the effect as we approach by a footpath is most remarkable. It seems scarcely possible that this is the castle Leland described with so much enthusiasm. 'I saw no House in the North so like a Princely Logginges,' he says, and also describes 'the stately Staire up to the Haul' as being very magnificent.

We come to the north-west tower, and look beyond its ragged outline to the distant country lying to the west, gra.s.s and arable land with trees appearing to grow so closely together at a short distance, that we have no difficulty in realizing that this was the ancient Forest of Galtres, which reached from Sheriff Hutton and Easingwold to the very gates of York.

In the complete loneliness of the ruins, with the silence only intensified by the sounds of fluttering wings in the tops of the towers, we in imagination sweep away the haystacks and reinstate the former grandeur of the fortress in the days of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmorland. It was he who rebuilt the Norman castle of Bertram de Bulmer, Sheriff of Yorks.h.i.+re, on a grander scale. Upon the death of Warwick, the Kingmaker, in 1471, Edward IV gave the castle and manor of Sheriff Hutton to his brother Richard, afterwards Richard III, and it was he who kept Edward IV's eldest child Elizabeth a prisoner within these ma.s.sive walls. The unfortunate Edward, Earl of Warwick, the eldest son of George, Duke of Clarence, when only eight years old, was also incarcerated here for about three years. Richard III, the usurper, when he lost his only son, had thought of making this boy his heir, but the unfortunate child was pa.s.sed over in favour of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, and remained in close confinement at Sheriff Hutton until August, 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth placed Henry VII on the throne. Sir Robert Willoughby soon afterwards arrived at the castle, and took the little Earl to London. Princess Elizabeth was also sent for at the same time, but whether both the Royal prisoners travelled together does not appear to be recorded. The terrible pathos of this simultaneous removal from the castle lay in the fact that Edward was to play the part of Pharaoh's chief baker, and Elizabeth that of the chief butler; for, after fourteen years in the Tower of London, the Earl of Warwick was beheaded, while the King, after five months, raised up Elizabeth to be his Queen. Even in those callous times the fate of the Prince was considered cruel, for it was pointed out after his execution, that, as he had been kept in imprisonment since he was eight years old, and had no knowledge or experience of the world, he could hardly have been accused of any malicious purpose. So cut off from all the common sights of everyday life was the miserable boy that it was said 'that he could not discern a goose from a capon.'

Portions of the Augustinian Priory are built into the house called Newburgh Priory, and these include the walls of the kitchen and some curious carvings showing on the exterior. William of Newburgh, the historian, whose writings end abruptly in 1198--probably the year of his death--was a canon of the Priory, and spent practically his whole life there. In his preface he denounced the inaccuracies and fictions of the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth. At the Dissolution Newburgh was given by Henry VIII to Anthony Belasyse, the punning motto of whose family was _Bonne et belle a.s.sez_. One of his descendants was created Lord Fauconberg by Charles I, and the peerage became extinct in 1815, on the death of the seventh to bear the t.i.tle. The last owner--Sir George Wombwell, Bart.--inherited the property from his grandmother, who was a daughter of the last Lord Fauconberg. Sir George was one of the three surviving officers who took part in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava on October 25, 1854.

The late Duke of Cambridge paid several visits to Newburgh, occupying what is generally called 'the Duke's Room.' Rear-Admiral Lord Adolphus Fitz-Clarence, whose father was George IV, died in 1856 in the bed still kept in this room. In a gla.s.s case, at the end of a long gallery crowded with interest, are kept the uniform and accoutrements Sir George wore at Balaclava.

The second Lord Fauconberg, who was raised from Viscount to the rank of Earl in 1689, was warmly attached to the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, and took as his second wife Cromwell's third daughter, Mary.

This close connexion with the Protector explains the inscription upon a vault immediately over one of the entrances to the Priory. On a small metal plate is written:

'In this vault are Cromwell's bones, brought here, it is believed, by his daughter Mary, Countess of Fauconberg, at the Restoration, when his remains were disinterred from Westminster Abbey.'

The letters 'R.I.P.' below are only just visible, an attempt having been made to erase them. No one seems to have succeeded in finally clearing up the mystery of the last resting-place of Cromwell's remains. The body was exhumed from its tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, and hung on the gallows at Tyburn on January 30, 1661--the twelfth anniversary of the execution of Charles I--and the head was placed upon a pole raised above St. Stephen's Hall, and had a separate history, which is known. Lord Fauconberg is said to have become a Royalist at the Restoration, and if this were true, he would perhaps have been able to secure the decapitated remains of his father-in-law, after their burial at the foot of the gallows at Tyburn. It has often been stated that a sword, bridle, and other articles belonging to Cromwell are preserved at Newburgh Priory, but this has been conclusively shown to be a mistake, the objects having been traced to one of the Belasyses.

c.o.xwold has that air of neatness and well-preserved antiquity which is so often to be found in England where the ancient owners of the land still spend a large proportion of their time in the great house of the village. There is a very wide street, with picturesque old houses on each side, which rises gently towards the church. A great tree with twisted branches--whether oak or elm, I cannot remember--stands at the top of the street opposite the churchyard, and adds much charm to the village. The inn has recently lost its thatch, but is still a quaint little house with the typical Yorks.h.i.+re gable, finished with a stone ball. On the great sign fixed to the wall are the arms and motto of the Fauconbergs, and the interior is full of old-fas.h.i.+oned comfort and cleanliness. Nearly opposite stand the almshouses, dated 1662.

The church is chiefly Perpendicular, with a rather unusual octagonal tower. In the eighteenth century the chancel was rebuilt, but the Fauconberg monuments in it were replaced. Sir William Belasyse, who received the Newburgh property from his uncle, the first owner, died in 1603, and his fine Jacobean tomb, painted in red, black and gold, shows him with a beard and ruff. His portrait hangs in one of the drawing-rooms of the Priory. The later monuments, adorned with great carved figures, are all interesting. They encroach so much on the s.p.a.ce in the narrow chancel that a most curious method for lengthening the communion-rail has been resorted to--that of bringing forward from the centre a long narrow s.p.a.ce enclosed with the rails. From the pulpit Laurence Sterne preached when he was inc.u.mbent here for the last eight years of his life. He came to c.o.xwold in 1760, and took up his abode in the charming old house he quaintly called 'Shandy Hall.' It is on the opposite side of the road to the church, and has a stone roof and one of those enormous chimneys so often to be found in the older farmsteads of the north of England. Sterne's study was the very small room on the right-hand side of the entrance doorway; it now contains nothing a.s.sociated with him, and there is more pleasure in viewing the outside of the house than is gained by obtaining permission to enter.

During his last year at c.o.xwold, when his rollicking, boisterous spirits were much subdued, Sterne completed his 'Sentimental Journey.'

He also relished more than before the country delights of the village, describing it in one of his letters as 'a land of plenty.' Every day he drove out in his chaise, drawn by two long-tailed horses, until one day his postilion met with an accident from one his master's pistols, which went off in his hand. 'He instantly fell on his knees,' wrote Sterne, 'and said "Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name"--at which, like a good Christian, he stopped, not remembering any more of it.'

The beautiful Hambleton Hills begin to rise up steeply about two miles north of c.o.xwold, and there we come upon the ruins of Byland Abbey.

Their chief feature is the west end of the church, with its one turret pointing a finger to the heavens, and the lower portion of a huge circular window, without any sign of tracery. This fine example of Early English work is ill.u.s.trated here. The whole building appears to be the original structure built soon after 1177, for it shows everywhere the transition from Norman to Early English which was taking place at the close of the twelfth century. The founders were twelve monks and an abbot, named Gerald, who left Furness Abbey in 1134, and after some vicissitudes came to the notice of Gundred, the mother of Roger de Mowbray, either by recommendation or by accident. One account pictures the holy men on their way to Archbishop Thurstan at York, with all their belongings in one wagon drawn by eight oxen, and describes how they chanced to meet Gundreda's steward as they journeyed near Thirsk. Through Gundreda the monks went to Hode, and after four years received land at Old Byland, where they wished to build an abbey. This position was found to be too close to Rievaulx, whose bells could be too plainly heard, so that five years later the restless community obtained a fresh grant of land from De Mowbray, at a place called Stocking, where they remained until they came to Byland.

Recent excavation and preservation operations carried out by H.M.

Office of Works have added many lost features to the ruins including the exposure of the whole of the floor level of the church hitherto buried under gra.s.sy mounds. Almost any of the roads to the east go through surprisingly attractive scenery. There are heathery commons, roads embowered with great spreading trees, or running along open hill-sides, and frequently lovely views of the Hambletons and more distant moors in the north.

In scenery of this character stands Gilling Castle, the seat of the Fairfaxes for some three centuries. It possesses one of the most beautiful Elizabethan dining-rooms to be found in this country. The walls are panelled to a considerable height, the remaining s.p.a.ce being filled with paintings of decorative trees, one for each wapentake of Yorks.h.i.+re. Each tree is covered with the coats of arms of the great families of that time in the wapentake. The brilliant colours against the dark green of the trees form a most suitable relief to the uniform brown of the panelling. In addition to the charm of the room itself, the view from the windows into a deep hollow clothed with dense foliage, with a distant glimpse of country beyond, is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXIV

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY OF YORK

Thoroughly to master the story of the city of York is to know practically the whole of English history. Its importance from the earliest times has made York the centre of all the chief events that have take place in the North of England; and right up to the time of the Civil War the great happenings of the country always affected York, and brought the northern capital into the vortex of affairs. And yet, despite the prominent part the city has played in ecclesiastical, military, and civil affairs through so many centuries of strife, it has contrived to retain a medieval character in many ways unequalled by any town in the kingdom. This is due, in a large measure, to the fortunate fact that York is well outside the area of coal and iron, and has never become a manufacturing centre, the few factories it now possesses being unable to rob the city of its romance and charm.

There could scarcely be a better approach to such a city than that furnished by the railway-station. Immediately outside the building, we are confronted with a sloping gra.s.sy bank, crowned with a battlemented wall, and we discover that only through its bars and posterns can we enter the city, and feast our eyes on the relics of the Middle Ages within. It is no dummy wall put up to please visitors, for right down to the siege of 1644, when the Parliamentary army battered Walmgate Bar with their artillery, it has withstood many a.s.saults and investments.

Repairs and restorations have been carried out at various times during the last century, and additional arches have been inserted by the bars and where openings have been made necessary, luckily without robbing the walls of their picturesqueness or interest. The bright, creamy colour of the stonework is a pleasant reminder of the purity of York's atmosphere, for should the smoke of the city ever increase to the extent of even the smaller manufacturing towns, the beauty and glamour of every view would gradually disappear.

Of the Roman legionary base called Eborac.u.m there still remain parts of the wall and the lower portion of a thirteen-sided angle bastion while embedded in the medieval earthen ramparts there is a great deal of Roman walling.

The four chief gateways and the one or two posterns and towers have each a particular fascination, and when we begin to taste the joys of York, we cannot decide whether the Minster, the gateways, the narrow streets full of overhanging houses, or the churches, all of which we know from prints and pictures, call us most. In our uncertainty we reach a wide arch across the roadway, and on the inner side find a flight of stone steps leading to the top of the wall. We climb them, and find spread out before us our first notable view of the city. The battlemented stone parapet of the wall stops at a tower standing on the bank of the river, and on the further side rises another, while above the old houses, closely packed together beyond Lendal Bridge, appear the stately towers of the Minster.

On the plan of keeping the best wine until the last, we turn our backs to the Minster and go along the wall, trying to imagine the scene when open country came right up to encircling fortifications, and within were to be found only the picturesque houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many of them new in those days, and yet so admirably designed as to be beautiful without the additional charm of age. Then, suddenly, we find no need to imagine any longer, having reached the splendid twelfth-century structure of Micklegate Bar. Its bold turrets are pierced with arrow-slits, and above the battlements are three stone figures. The archway is a survival of the Norman city.

In gazing at this imposing gateway, which confronted all who approached York from the south, we seem to hear the clanking sound of the portcullis as it is raised and lowered to allow the entry of some Plantagenet sovereign and his armed retinue, and, remembering that above this gate were fixed the dripping heads of Richard, Duke of York, after his defeat at Wakefield; the Earl of Devon, after Towton, and a long list of others of n.o.ble birth, we realize that in those times of pageantry, when the most perfect artistry appeared in costume, in architecture, and in ornament of every description, there was a blood-thirstiness that makes us s.h.i.+ver.

The wall stops short at Skeldergate Bridge, where we cross the river and come to the castle. There is a frowning gateway that boasts no antiquity, and the courtyard within is surrounded by the eighteenth-century a.s.size courts, a military prison, and the governor's house. Hemmed in by these buildings and a ma.s.sive wall is the artificial mound surmounted by the tottering castle keep. It is called Clifford's Tower because Francis Clifford, Earl of c.u.mberland, restored the ruined wall in 1642. The Royal Arms and those of the Cliffords can still be seen above the doorway, but the structure as a whole dates from the twelfth century, and in 1190 was the scene of a horrible tragedy, when the people of York determined to ma.s.sacre the Jews. Those merchants who escaped from their houses with their families and were not killed in the streets fled to the castle, but finding that they were unable to defend the place, they burnt the buildings and destroyed themselves. A few exceptions consented to become Christians, but were afterwards killed by the infuriated townspeople.

On the opposite side of the Foss, a stream that joins the Ouse just outside the city, the walls recommence at the Fishergate Postern, a picturesque tower with a tiled roof. After this the line of fortifications turns to the north, and Walmgate Bar shows its battlemented turrets and its barbican, the only one which has survived.

The gateway itself, on the outside, is very similar in design to Micklegate and Monk Bars, and was built in the thirteenth century; inside, however, the stonework is hidden behind a quaint Elizabethan timber front supported on two pillars. This gate, as already mentioned, was much battered during the siege of 1644, which lasted six weeks. It was soon after the Royalists' defeat at Marston Moor that York capitulated, and fortunately Sir Thomas Fairfax gave the city excellent terms, and saved it from being plundered. Through him, too, the Minster suffered very little damage from the Parliamentary artillery, and the only disaster of the siege was the spoiling of the Marygate Tower, near St. Mary's Abbey, many of the records it contained being destroyed.

Numbers were saved through the rewards Fairfax offered to any soldier who rescued a doc.u.ment from the rubbish, and as the transcribing of all the records had just been completed by one Dodsworth, to whom Fairfax had paid a salary for some years, the loss was reduced to a minimum.

Walmgate leads straight to the bridge over the Foss, and just beyond we come to fine old Merchants' Hall, established in 1373 by John de Rowcliffe. The panelled rooms and the chapel, built early in the fifteenth century, and many interesting details, are beautiful survivals of the days when the trade guilds of the city flourished. On the left, a few yards further on, at the corner of the Pavement, is the interesting little church of All Saints, whose octagonal lantern was illuminated at night as a guiding light to travellers on their way to York. The north door has a sanctuary knocker.

The narrowest and most antique of the old streets of York are close to All Saints' Church, and the first we enter is the Shambles, where butchers' shops with slaughter-houses behind still line both sides of the way. On the left, as we go towards the Minster, one of the shops has a depressed ogee arch of oak, and great curved brackets across the pa.s.sage leading to the back. All the houses are timber-framed, and either plastered and coloured with warm ochre wash, or have the s.p.a.ces between the oak filled with dark red brick. In the Little Shambles, too, there are many curious details in the high gables, pargeting and oriel windows. Petergate is a charming old street, though not quite so rich in antique houses as Stonegate, ill.u.s.trated here. A large number of shops in Stonegate sell 'antiques,' and, as the pleasure of buying an old pair of silver candlesticks is greatly enhanced by the knowledge that the purchase will be a.s.sociated with the old-world streets of York, there is every reason for believing that these quaint houses are in no danger. In walking through these streets we are very little disturbed by traffic, and the atmosphere of centuries long dead seems to surround us. We constantly get peeps of the great central tower of the Minster or the Early English south transept, and there are so many charming glimpses down pa.s.sages and along narrow streets that it is hard to realize that we are not in some town in Normandy such as Lisieux or Falaise, and yet those towns have no walls, and Falaise, has only one gateway, and Lisieux none. It is surely justifiable to ask, in Kingsley's words, 'Why go gallivanting with the nations round' until you have at least seen what England can show at York and Chester?

Skirting the west end of the Minster, and having a close view of its two towers built in late Perpendicular times, which are not so beautiful as those at Beverley, we come to what is in many ways the most romantic of all the medieval survivals of York. There is an open s.p.a.ce faced by Bootham Bar, the chief gateway towards the north; behind are the weathered red roofs of many antique houses, and beyond them rises the stately ma.s.s of the Minster. The barbican was removed in 1831, and the interior has been much restored, without, however, destroying its fascination. We can still see the portcullis and look out of the narrow windows through which the watchmen have gazed in early times at approaching travellers. It was at this gateway that armed guides could be obtained to protect those who were journeying northwards through the Forest of Galtres, where wolves were to be feared in the Middle Ages.

Facing Bootham Bar is a modern public building judiciously screened by trees, and adjoining it to the south stands the beautiful old house where, before the Dissolution, the abbots of St. Mary's Abbey lived in stately fas.h.i.+on.

When Henry VIII paid his one visit to York it was after the Pilgrimage of Grace led by Robert Aske, who was hanged on one of the gates. The citizens who had welcomed the rebels pleaded pardon, which was granted three years afterwards; but Henry appointed a council, with the Duke of Norfolk as its president, which was held in the Abbots' house, and resulted in the Mayor and Corporation losing most of their powers. The beautiful fragments of St. Mary's Abbey are close to the river, and the site is now included in the museum grounds. In the museum building itself there is a wonderfully fine collection of Roman coffins, dug up when the new railway-station was being built. One inscription is particularly interesting in showing that the Romans set up altars in their palaces, thus explaining the reason for the Jews refusing to enter the praetorium at Jerusalem when Christ was made prisoner, because it was the Feast of the Pa.s.sover.

We can see the restored front of the Guildhall overlooking the river from Lendal Bridge, which adjoins the gates of the Abbey grounds, but to reach the entrance we must go along the street called Lendal and turn into a narrow pa.s.sage. The hall was put up in 1446, and is therefore in the Perpendicular style. A row of tall oak pillars on each side support the roof and form two aisles. The windows are filled with excellent modern stained gla.s.s representing several incidents in the history of the city, from the election of Constantine to be Roman Emperor, which took place at York in A.D. 306, down to the great dinner to the Prince Consort, held in the hall in 1850.

The Church of St. Michael Spurriergate, built at the same period as the Guildhall, is curiously similar in its interior, having only a nave and aisles. The stone pillars are so slight that they are scarcely of much greater diameter than the wooden ones in the civic structure, and some of them are perilously out of plumb. There is much old gla.s.s in the windows.

St. Margaret's Church has a splendid Norman doorway carved with the signs of the zodiac; St. Mary's Castlegate is an Early English or Transitional building transformed and patched in Perpendicular times; St. Mary's Bishophill Junior has a most interesting tower, containing Roman materials, and the list could be prolonged for many pages if there were s.p.a.ce.