Riding to York

"Some vain attempts were made to take this notorious offender into custody; and among the rest, the huntsman of a gentleman in the neighbourhood went in search of him with blood-hounds.

Turpin perceiving them, and recollecting that King Charles II evaded his pursuers under covert of the friendly branches of the oak, mounted one of those trees under which the hounds passed, to his inexpressible terror, so that he determined to make a retreat into Yorkshire."

Newgate Calendar:

Or, Malefactor's Bloody Register

1760

I have been away in London since Friday, busy about the work of a very different man: a 14th century German Dominican teacher and preacher, known as Meister Eckhart.

Returning to York, and to Dick, is like entering a different world. Away with the Middle Ages! - and back to the 18th century - the Age of Reason, where the bright light of Scientific Enquiry sends the black beetles of superstition scurrying away...

Hmmm.

Except, of course, it didn't.

As a medievalist, I always considered the Enlightenment - such a smug name! - as my particular enemy. In a way the Rennaissance had not, it rang the death knell of the murky, passionate Middle Ages, which always seemed to me healthily carnal and visceral; somehow more in touch with the brevity of life, and all the more honest for it.

But for the past year now I have been up to my ears in Enlightenment, and found - of course - that nothing really changed. January 1, 1700 did not see the dawn of a brighter age, or at least not in any way that mattered to your average gin-soaked sop weaving his way through the dark streets of London. In the salons and lecture theatres of Europe's capitals, doubtless a new shiny life was being heralded.

Hogarth, and those he painted, did not see it.