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Tuesday
Jul242007

Ravenspurgh in Shakespeare

From Shakespeare's Places, A Gazetteer and Topographical Guide to the Plays, an unpublished manuscipt by Patrick Thornhill (my maternal grandfather), dated 1983:

RAVENSPUR(GH), E. Yorkshire, was close to Spurn Head, but was long ago swept away by the current that makes southward along that clayey coastline.  It does not appear in Saxton's map of Yorkshire (1577), for by that time it had been succeeded by Kingston-upon-Hull, but in the Middle Ages it had been the gateway to the North, as Dover was to the South.  Here Bolingbroke landed from exile in 1399, to gain the support of the Percies of Northumberland and the Duke of York.  In Richard II, 2.2.296, Northumberland calls on two lords to "Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh".  At 2.2.50, Greene reports that "the banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself,/ and with uplifted arms is safe arriv'd/ at Ravenspurgh".  At 2.2.9, Bolingbroke and Northumberland are on the way from Ravenspurgh to Berkeley when they meet Harry Percy, 2.3.31, who reports that his uncle, Worcester, has  gone to Ravenspurgh and has told Percy to follow him there, via Berkeley (q.v.).  In Henry IV Part 1, 1.3.248, Harry Percy reminds his father of this, and at 3.2.95, Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, remembers "when I from France set foot in Ravenspurgh".  At 4.3.77 again, Hotspur remembers Henry's vow "upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh".  In Henry VI Part 3, a later king, Edward IV, likewise remembers when he "thus arriv'd, from Ravenspurgh haven before the gates of York".

Shakespeare's Ravenspurgh would appear to correspond to the Ravenser Spurn mentioned in Richard Hayton's article.

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