Off for a day of driving through the northwest [of the North Riding of Yorkshire] tracking various Boynton connections. Over to the M1 from York, up the M1 to Scotch Corner. From Scotch Corner down this little road, then down this little road, etc. until finally we were in Ravensworth.

She was Isabel Lumley, the Lumley heir. She married Henry Boynton of Sedbury at the end of the century [the 15th century] and brought Ravensworth to the Boynton family fortune when her father died. She and Henry had a daughter, Elizabeth, who will live forever in song and verse and stories for small Boyntons written by Anne Boynton. Ravensworth was both the farthest northern point for this day and the first of our stops.

Ravensworth is a small village, as it was 500 years ago, but now with a new industry -- a nursery that supplies plants to the rest of England. They also have the ruins of a castle; the Ravensworth castle which was Lumley and then Boynton and became Gascoigne when Elizabeth married Henry Gascoigne and left it to her son William Gascoigne.

It was the ruins we were there to visit despite the windy, cold weather. We stopped to use the public telephone on the village green for a call home [to Silver Spring, Maryland], and we shivered while the telephoning was in progress. We could get no closer than the road, but it had probably been the castle road 500 years ago so it was close by. We could see the castle from the road without difficulty.

Castles disappear hard; bits and pieces remain forever -- or at least 500 years. 500 years later bits and pieces of Ravensworth castle remain in the field. Apparently no one thinks it worth the effort to take them down and no one thinks them worth promoting into something more than bits of stone in a field.

You can get a really good view of a castle tower still standing to its full height.  It is somewhat the worse for wear with missing walls and vegetation growing from various crevices. Close by the tower is a large arch that must have been the gate. And there are a couple of piles of stone that seem to be marking edges and corners that once were. There is a ditch that looks like it was probably protecting the castle -- it certainly has the right shape and location. We got as close as we could. We walked back and forth looking from every angle we could create by moving. That is about the extent of the view except to wonder that the pile of rocks we just saw was once the home of Isabel Lumley Boynton -- 500 years ago.

We headed south for Gilling West. It is a village less than 10 miles away, and probably closer if you were on a horse. Henry and Isabel lived at Sedbury [as did Christopher, father, and Christopher, son, before them]. Sedbury was the primary manor of the Sedbury Boyntons, and is about 3 miles from Gilling West. It is now a 20th century wholly re-built house, privately owned, and a few hundred yards from the Sedbury lay by -- a popular place to get off the highway for a stroll.

Gilling West was Henry and Isabel's church. They set up a chantry there -- soon lost to Henry VIII. And they left a large effigy of themselves on the wall of the church where it remains today. It is about the same age as the effigy of Thomas in Roxby. Perhaps that was the age of effigies. Parts of the church are very old. The effigy is very old. And there is a stained glass window that is a shield divided into 24 sections tracing the parentage of William Gascoigne. It includes the Boynton and Lumley shields because they were his grandparents. There is one final bit of Boynton on the floor of the north aisle. One of the stones in the floor has a carving for Henry Boynton.

Just outside the church is a map of Gilling West and the surrounding area. It becomes easy to understand the marriage of Elizabeth and Henry Gascoigne. The Gascoignes and Boyntons were neighbors and were two of the three families with wealth in Gilling West. The Gascoignes are still there.

It was still morning and we were intent on lunching at Castle Bolton -- the home of Agnes Scrope before she became Agnes Boynton. Off we went over the moor. There were foot and mouth disease stay off the grass signs everywhere -- and sheep and rocks. The road was narrow -- even by England standards. It wound its way up and then down. The grass was thin, and the hillside was almost treeless. We were coming down when confronted with a series of cliffs on the left, and off in the distance to the right was the outline of the castle. Finally, we turned toward the castle on a road only one lane wide. We concluded that we were not entering through the front entrance. But we went out the same way so we do not know if there is a front entrance or what it is like.

We got there at British lunch time, which is 1:00 p.m. There was a small, grassy car park, and we pulled into it and headed for the castle tea room. The tea room had a very tall ceiling, a suit of armor, a cannon, and tapestries on the wall as well as about 10 tables. They had tea, they had water by the bottle, and food. Anna finessed the tea room fare with her constant companion -- a jar of peanut butter. I thought -- well, how bad can asparagus soup be? I found out. It was not one of the culinary high points of the trip -- though it was our only meal in a castle.

There are two floors down and three up, we were told as we started on the tour. We were going to see the castle of the Scropes where Agnes grew up. The Scropes were a very important family in Yorkshire in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Bolton Scropes and the Masham Scropes had extensive land holdings in the northwest of Yorkshire. They were important allies of Richard II until Henry IV returned from exile. Richard Scrope, who owed his appointment as archbishop of York to Richard II, played an important role in Henry IV's taking the throne. Then 5 years later he led an insurrection against Henry IV, which cost him and Henry de Boynton their heads. They were in and out of trouble with kings until Richard III of whom they were important supporters. If plotting was afoot the Scropes were likely to be there. Agnes was the daughter of Henry, the fourth Baron Scrope, and was the brother of John, the fifth Baron Scrope, who supported Richard III and then supported an uprising against Henry VII after he became king. She first married Christopher Boynton [the second Christopher] and Henry was her son. Christopher died in 1376 and she married Richard Ratcliffe who was among the closest of the inner circle of Richard III.

The castle was built over a 10 year period at the end of the 14th century. So it was practically new when Agnes was born there early in the 15th century. It was designed as a fortress. The family needed protection from the Scots challenging from the north and the king challenging from the south -- from time to time. Unlike the castle at Scarborough, at Richmond , and at Alnwick it was not designed with a large enough space [wall] to include a village. It was just a building designed to be a fort. What is most impressive about the castle is up and down -- two floors down and three up. Stairs were a very important part of the life of Agnes as she was growing up.

The intriguing of the Scropes often got them into trouble and several times their enemies destroyed parts of the castle -- a bit by Henry VIII and then substantially in the civil war. The Scropes just went on and on, for centuries, cooperating with and intriguing against central authority. So there was a lot of climbing about through ruins even though there were rooms that were still in good shape. The current owners are redeveloping the castle with the assistance of English Heritage.

We walked from the tea room to the shop where we purchased tickets. Then out of these closed spaces into the very large courtyard. The castle was itself the wall around this courtyard. The dominant feeling in the ruined part of the castle was looking up. It was as though all of the floors had collapsed and you could see from the ground to the sky through what had been floors of rooms. There were a number of round stairwells -- with no stairs -- that were like tunnels, but tunnels up to the sky.

Anna dashed about, noting everything. Here is the old dungeon, she called. Dungeons seemed particularly evil elements of castles. The standard form seemed to be holes in the ground with a grate over them -- dark, dank, impossible for human habitation. They give "tough on crime" a whole new frame of reference. Everything was there: rooms for holding court, kitchens, bakery, brewery, the armory for producing weapons, the room for grinding grain, a room for the children, many rooms for visitors, private rooms for the Scropes. Then up and up and up. You can still go from the two floors down to the top of the wall and the towers. The top is a very impressive sight. We have a picture of the valley below with a bird in flight. The bird is a tiny speck below us.

When Agnes grew up she married Christopher Boynton and moved to Sedbury, which is only about 20 miles north and east of the moor from Bolton Castle. Sedbury was a manor house rather than a castle, and was a building on a much more human scale. However, Sedbury was sufficiently rich with land holdings that Richard Ratcliffe was known as of Sedbury after he married Agnes.

From Bolton Castle we drove to Marrick Priory. It is also a Boynton place -- due to Agnes. We know that Agnes took the veil after Richard Ratcliffe died. She and Henry, her son, were members of the Corpus Christi Guild, which was one of the larger religious celebrations in Yorkshire. And she gave her copy of The Dream of the Pilgrimage of the Soul to Marrick Priory. The gift is inscribed by Isabel Lumley, who was Henry's wife and her daughter in law. Marrick priory is in the countryside. Marrick is the closest village, but it is a distance from one to the other. The priory is roughly half way between Sedbury and Bolton Castle. Given her religious commitments and the practices of the time it is likely that she spent time at the priory.

Like Ravensworth castle, little of the original priory remains. There is a tower, a couple of windows, an arch and a few piles of rock that were parts of the walls. Unlike Ravensworth castle, the owners of the former priory have found reasons to redevelop it. The tower and ancient windows are part of a larger building serving the current owners. The former priory is used as a conference center and camp for teenagers that focuses on rural life. Hence, the former priory is still a working farm with barns and other outbuildings.

Everything we could find describing the current use of the former priory said it was private property and they did not appreciate visitors. That is also what the sign said when we got there. So we drove up the driveway as far as we could go, looked as best we could, took our pictures, and then we were off. Climbing the hills again, as we drove away, was a reminder that the site had produced a secluded life -- whether you wanted one or not. It was distinctly out in the middle of nowhere.

And we were back to York -- after a nice long drive in the late afternoon.