BY FREDERICK ROSS, F.R.H.S., AUTHOR OF "CELEBRITIES OF YORKSHIRE WOLDS," "PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION," ETC. HULL: WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRESS. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co., Limited. 1891....

N ORTHUMBRIA was at peace, after a long period of anarchy, bloodshed, battles, and murders. Christianity had been restored by St. Oswald, King and Martyr; York Cathedral, commenced by King Eadwine, had been completed; the great Abbey of Lindisfarne had become a centre of Christian light and civilisation; and several other churches and religious houses were growing up over the length and breadth of the land. Oswy, a wise, vigorous, and warlike King, one of the most illustrious of his line, ruled

T HE Vale of Mowbray is one of the many beautiful pieces of landscape scenery with which the county of Yorkshire abounds; a favourite sketching-ground for artists, and often seen, in detached portions, on the walls of the Royal Academy. An equal favourite, also, is it with the tourist and worshippers of natural beauty. If Dr. Syntax, when he mounted Grizzle to go in search of the picturesque, had come to the Vale of Mowbray, we may fancy that he would have considered his quest at an end, and his

A PIOUS and benevolent monk of Rome, passing one day through the slave market of that city, noticed a group of beautiful fair-haired boys and youths, who were exposed for sale. Compassionating their condition, he enquired whence they came. "They are Angles," was the reply. "They are beautiful enough to be angeli ," said the monk. "What part of Anglia come they from?" "Deira." "Then shall they be saved, de ira , from the wrath of God. Who is their King?" "Ælla." "Then," continued the monk, "shall

A CCORDING to a Scandinavian legend, a young Danish lady went wandering into a forest, where she suddenly, when turning out of one glade into another, came face to face with a bear, who seized her and forcibly violated her. The result was the birth of a child, with shaggy ears, to whom was given the name of Barn. He married, and had a son, Siward, who came on a piratical excursion to England, and became Viceroy Earl of Northumbria, and this identity of Siward, son of Barn, with Siward the Earl,

I N the year 1055, there was a funeral in the Church of St. Olaf, York. The corpse was conveyed through the streets of the city with great barbaric splendour and pomp. The procession, consisting of stalwart and bronzed warriors, was strikingly illustrative of the dead hero. Swords flashed in the sun; armour, pikes, and battle-axes glittered; and captured pennons, with other trophies of war, were borne along in triumph. Although all these warriors were mourners, the chief, and, indeed, the only o

I T was on a beautiful evening in June, when the thirteenth century was but a few years old, and when John wore the crown of England, that a girl of some twenty summers was seated in a vaulted room of a ruinous old Saxon castle, surrounded by her bower-maidens, chattering and laughing, and busily employed on some embroidery work. The castle stood on a slight eminence, some three or four miles from the sea-coast of Yorkshire, and commanding a glorious view of the uplands of Cleveland, the wide ex

T HE famous Yorkshire family of Le Scrope, or Scroop, is one of the most illustrious in the peerage roll of England; not, however, for the number and dignity of their titles, which only amounted to five of lesser rank, two of which are extinct, one dormant, and two in abeyance, but, for the many eminent and influential men sprung from the race, who have distinguished themselves in the State, at the King's Council table, in the Church, at the Bar, on the battlefield, and in the walks of literatur

T HOMAS , eighth Baron Clifford, is said by genealogists to have been born in 1414, and that he was forty years of age when he fell at St. Alban's; but he must have been nearer fifty than forty, as his son John, ninth Baron, was born in 1430, when he would be but sixteen years of age; but marriages were contracted early then. His daughter, Elizabeth, was married at six years of age to Sir William Plumpton, who, dying soon after, she was re-married to his brother, her father stipulating that "the

F OR ever memorable in the annals of England will be Palm Sunday in the year 1461, and equally so the little hamlet of Towton, by Tadcaster. There and then was fought, in a blinding snowstorm, what Camden calls "the English Pharsalia," the greatest battle hitherto fought on English soil, where Englishman met Englishman, and kinsman kinsman, in deadly conflict, and in which quarter was neither asked nor given. The conflict lasted ten hours, and the pursuit of the fugitives was continued until the

T HE town of Ilkley, on the Wharfe, now so well known to tourists for the beauty of its situation and the grandeur of the natural scenery surrounding it, and to invalids for the invigorating and restorative qualities of its waters, is a place of very ancient date. It was built and fortified by the proprætor, Virius Lupus, in the time of the Emperor Severus, the fortress being situated on a precipitous bank of the Wharfe, and a cohort stationed there. Remains of the intrenchments are still to be

T HE crest of the Ingilbys of Ripley is "A boar's head couped and erect arg., tusked or," which was obtained by an early knight of the family, in a romantic fashion, and as the reward for a valiant achievement. In the reign of Edward the Confessor the manor of Ripley was held by Merlesweyn, a powerful Danish lord, and owner of many another manor and estate in the same district. He joined in the Gospatric insurrection against William the Conqueror, in favour of Edgar the Atheling, for which rebel

I N the reign of King Edward III., four gentlemen, the heads of four reputable county families, resided in their respective halls, within a short distance of each other, in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield. They were Sir John Eland, of Eland Hall; Sir Robert Beaumont, of Crosland Hall; Sir Hugh Quarmby, of Quarmby; and John Lockwood, of Lockwood. The family of Sir John Eland had been seated here for several generations, descended from Leisingus de Eland, from whom Lasingcroft derives its name.

T HE Plumpton family, of Plumpton, near Knaresborough, were established there from the period of the Domesday Book, when Edred de Plumpton held two carucates of land of William de Percy, the mesne lord. They had estates afterwards at other places—Idle, near Leeds, held of the Lacies; Steeton, near Tadcaster; Nesfield, near Otley, where they had a manor-house, and elsewhere. They were a family of considerable importance in Yorkshire, and were great benefactors to the Nunnery of Esholt, in Craven.

T HE prevailing blemish in the character of King Henry VII. was avarice, which led him, through his rapacious ministers, Empson and Dudley, to oppress the people with extortionate taxation. To save his exchequer he avoided foreign wars, and once only did he cross the sea with that object, in the cause of Anne of Bretagne, whose fief was claimed by the French King; but on arriving at Boulogne, King Charles, appealing to his master-passion, bought him off by means of a large bribe. For the purpose

C OTTINGHAM is a well-built, picturesque village, midway between Hull and Beverley, on the ancient road, but a quarter of a mile distant from the modern highway. It is a place of great antiquity, dating from the ancient British period, and deriving its name from Ket, a Celtic female deity, with the Saxon suffixes of ing and ham. In the days of Edward the Confessor, it belonged to one Gamel, who is supposed to have held a Thursday market there; and at the time of the Domesday Book, the manor, fou

N ESTLING in a lovely valley in the most romantic part of Cleveland lies the little town of Guisborough, with the mouldering ruins of its once famous Priory. At the time of the Conquest it consisted of three manors, which were given to the Earl of Moreton, and soon after, united into one manor, passed to Robert de Brus, Lord of Skelton, to hold in capite , by military service. In the year 1129 he founded the Priory of Canons of the Augustine order, and endowed it with a manor of twenty caracutes

O NE fine summer's morning, in the year of grace 1742, the little inn of the little town of Marblehead was in a state of great bustle, in anticipation of the visit of some Government officials from Boston to dine there. The landlady, rather vixenish in temper and tongue, was busily occupied in attending to the culinary department, and at intervals scolding a young girl of sixteen, who was scrubbing the floor, and was the maid-of-all-work in the establishment, working from early in the morning ti

A BOUT the middle of the seventeenth century, during the Civil War and the Restoration, there dwelt in Bristol one James Phipps, a gunsmith by trade. He was blessed with a numerous progeny; of him it might truly be said that "his quiver was full of them," for he had eventually twenty-six children, of whom twenty-one were boys. Having only his gunmaking trade to depend upon for a living, he found it difficult to provide means for feeding, clothing, and educating them, and often lay awake long at

O CTOBER the thirtieth, 1640, was a day of great bustle and excitement in the town of Beverley. All ordinary business seemed to be suspended, and the streets were filled with groups of people, in earnest discussion, and with persons hastening hither and thither as if on important business, whilst great crowds of burghers occupied the space in front of the old Hanse House or Guildhall, waiting for the opening of the doors. It was the day appointed for the election of representatives to Parliament