Y* ANTIENT BOROUGH OF BEVERLIE. 7 



is another equally hard one. Upon the town seal, as in- 

 deed upon that used to-day by the "Ancient Corporation 

 of the Borough of Beverley" in Yorkshire, England, ap- 

 pears the ef^gy of that industrious and sagacious rodent, 

 the beaver, in approved recognition of his having given 

 his name to both these places. But of this there is very 

 considerable doul)t. Indeed there is no pretence that any 

 beavers are to be found near Yorkshire Beverley, to-day, 

 nor does anybody fix a date when there were any there, 

 and it is not a little significant that, in Queen Elizabeth's 

 time, the municipal seal of the borough bore no beaver 

 but, Yorkshire being a famous hunting country, a fox. 



If our Essex County Beverly owes its name to the shire 

 town and market borough of Yorkshire East-Riding in 

 England, it is by no means an obligation to be ashamed of. 

 It was the fortune of the writer, himself a native of Bev- 

 erly, to teach the town school, a generation ago, in a busy 

 manufacturing village of New England, and the magnate 

 whom he met there, in the relation of "prudential com- 

 mittee man," proved to be a former "burgess of the antient 

 borough of Beverley," — a thrifty English weaver who had 

 established in this section the manufacture of stockings. 

 Some of the results of researches thus set on foot are here 

 recorded. 



Beverley in Yorkshire has a population of ten or twelve 

 thousand souls, with an ancient market-place, a famous 

 cattle market covering four acres. It is built mainly on 

 a single street, more than a mile in length and terminating 

 on the north in a very ancient gateway. It is connected by 

 a canal for boats and barges, called Beverley Beck, with 

 the river Hull a mile away, which, a few miles farther on, 

 flows into the Hnmber. It was one of the "rotten bor- 

 oughs" disfranchised by the act of 1870, before which date 

 it claimed two seats in the House of Commons. But while 

 part of the town is ruinously ancient, another part is new 



