GREAT ANTIQUITY OP BEVEBLEY. 9 



treated with signal reverence by William the Conqueror. 

 King Athelstan in 930 had greatly enlarged the church 

 and consecrated it for a sanctuary where whoso, fleeing 

 from his creditors or even suspected of a capital crime, 

 could reach the " freed-stool," was safe from that moment. 

 He also made Beverley the Caput or shire town of the East 

 Riding. All this to propitiate the favor of heaven, when 

 he was setting off to fight the Scots. The Abbot of Bev- 

 erley, in July, 1478, christened, in this old minster, by 

 the name of "Ursula Southiel," the famous Mother Ship- 

 ton, and to him, in the fourth year of Henry VII, she 

 confided one of her most startling predictions. And the 

 nursery tale, which under the name of the "Babes in the 

 Wood" has curdled the blood of infant innocency all these 

 years, grew out of facts occurring in the family of an Es- 

 quire Somers at Beverley in 1703. So the old borough is 

 not lacking either in history, mythology, tradition or pres- 

 ent interest and importance. 



This Yorkshire Beverley is one of the oldest settlements 

 in England. The lately accepted derivation of the name, 

 in any of its various forms, from the word Beaver will be 

 seen to be of extremely doubtful authority, to say the least 

 of it. In fact the place seems to have been designated by 

 names which could have no reference to that creature, and 

 which might well enough be variations of the word Bev- 

 erley, for at least five centuries before any people using the 

 word Beaver as the name of the King of Rodents inhabited 

 the region of the Humber. A little detail will perhaps be 

 pardonable in making this appear. 



We first know the British Isles peopled with a rude, 

 warlike, druidical, Celtic stock of which the Irishman, the 

 Welshman and the Scottish Highlander are the lingering 

 remnants. Of their early language we know little, but nat- 

 urally assimilate it in our conjectures with that of these 



ESSBX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XX. 1* 



