James I.'s slave-dog, as he called himself, was too busy in court and camp to visit Helmsley much, if ever, but it must have been a fine sight when it was his. The keep, not then a crumbling fragment, rose high above walls and many towers. Here are still the two moats that surrounded them, and the two gateways that once made a double defence. How strong the defences were we may gather from the trouble they gave to Sir Thomas Fairfax when he besieged the castle in the time of the second Duke of Buckingham, and won it at last, not only for the Parliament, but for himself. His grateful country gave him the lands of Helmsley, but at the same time took the precaution of reducing the castle to ruins, so that this shattered keep and gatehouse should never again defend royalist or rebel. The Buckinghams were ever humorists, and the second duke, pondering how he might regain some of his lost possessions, bethought him of marrying Mary Fairfax. After he had been embroiled in many plots and suffered many imprisonments he settled down here within sight of the tower that his father-in-law had reduced to so sad a state.
[Illustration: DOUBLE ENTRANCE TO HELMSLEY CASTLE.]
There, beyond the lawn-tennis court, is the house he lived in. Some of it seems to be older than his day, but he probably was obliged to repair it rather thoroughly after the siege. We may climb those steps, if we will, and enter.
These are haunted rooms. They are not haunted by a very worthy ghost, I fear--not even by Steenie of the dainty leg and the lovely complexion, the gallant adventurer whom many loved much and whom we all love a little--but only by his handsome, vicious son, the son who was born to the sound of all the joy-bells of Westminster, and died in the humble little bed at Kirbymoorside. These rooms were once proud Buckingham's delight; now they tear at one's heart. It is a thing to be glad of, no doubt, that Lord Mayor Duncombe found Buckingham's home too small to hold his vaulting ambitions and so built the palace in the park, leaving us this pitiful relic of departed glory. Yet one marvels that any man should have allowed so much beauty to go to wrack. These great oak panels with their rare design, this splendid moulded ceiling wrought so elaborately with Tudor roses, that frieze of shields and fleurs-de-lys, of mermaids and winged dragons, once made an appropriate setting for the man whom a contemporary called the "finest gentleman of person and wit" he ever saw. Now, in their decayed grandeur, they are appropriate still; a dramatic--almost a melodramatic--symbol of his fate. Half the panelling is gone; shred by shred the plaster of the ceiling is falling on the uneven floor; bare laths and gaping holes disfigure the Tudor roses over our heads; of the mermaids and winged dragons only a few are left. Lumber is piled upon the floor where "all mankind's epitome" was wont to walk; cobwebs and dust deface the windows. Such is the symbol of proud Buckingham, than whom "no man was ever handsomer," yet who was, in the last year of his life, "worn to a thread"; and up there in the park is the symbol of the city knight who bought his property with money not always well-gained, and flourished like a green bay-tree. We see the unromantic, prosperous house of the thrifty Duncombe as we drive away to Rievaulx.