WHY SEDGWICK MAY HAVE CHOSEN BEVERLY. 21 



But if Sedgwick reiilly did set himself to tlie task of se- 

 lecting a name for tlie embryo town, reasons are not want- 

 ing wliich may have inclined him to the name of Beverly. 

 The Scdgwicks are of a very old Yorkshire stock, and 

 had once intermarried with the Percys, amongst whose 

 family titles was that of Earl of Beverley. Before 1584, 

 Barbara, daughter of Robert Percy of Scotton, the lifth 

 Robert in a line of descent from John, had intermarried 

 with "Robert Sedgwicke, Gent," who may well have been 

 the grandfather of our Major Genl. Robert, his namesake. 

 Not only was the Borough of Beverley with its market and 

 its minster a very conspicuous centre in Yorkshire, — in 

 fact, so strong a place as to have allbrded refuge to Charles 

 I, in the waning fortunes of his struggle with the Parlia- 

 mentary forces, — but there is also atPateley Bridge across 

 the River Nidd, near Ripley in the West Riding of York- 

 shire, — a locality in which the Sedgwick family as well as 

 the Percy family seems to have been most numerous, — a 

 Bewerley or Baverley Hall and Manor, bought in 1675 by 

 Lady Mary, consort of Sir John Yorke, which has remained 

 ever since in the Yorke connection. It is easy to imagine 

 associations with this fine old place which might have 

 prompted a well-bred Englishman, brought up within ear- 

 shot of its hunting horns, although his grandmother were 

 not a Percy, to recall with interest the name of Beverley ; 

 and so of Beverley Park under the shadow of the Cathe- 

 dral of Canterbury, near which also it is thought that 

 there were Sedgwicks living, and so again of Beverley 

 Bridge near Cambridge, to which the University crews 

 take their evening "pull" in boating practice. 



But a truce to speculations in philology. Perhaps we 

 shall never know how Beverly came to be Beverly, but 

 there is certainly reason to suspect, from comparing the 

 lists of townsmen and the names on Conant's remonstrance, 

 that the parties for and against the name "Beverly" were 



