38 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF YORK AND DISTRICT 



superseded by one upon the opposite bank in the strong position formed 

 by the meeting of the Ouse and the Foss. 



The extent of medieval York is still clearly visible in the walls by which 

 the city is encircled. The original settlement and the Roman city had been 

 upon the left bank of the Ouse, but by the time of the Norman Conquest 

 the city had already spread across the river, and the present walls, follow- 

 ing the Roman lines of defence in their north-east portion, surround this 

 wider area and gradually took the place of the wooden stockade, which 

 was its first defence. Communication between the two parts of the city 

 was furnished by Ouse Bridge at the east end of Micklegate. The four 

 gateways or bars of the city gave access to main roads. Through Micklegate 

 Bar passed the western road to Tadcaster, from which branched the north- 

 western road to Boroughbridge and Catterick. Bootham Bar, the north 

 gate, led to the roads through the forest of Galtres to Easingwold and 

 Helmsley. On the east side, the road to Malton and Scarborough passed 

 through Monk Bar, and through Walmgate Bar, on the south, the road to 

 Market Weighton and Beverley. Standing at the junction of these 

 main thoroughfares, York was the centre of communication for all parts 

 of the county and permanently maintained the importance which it had 

 acquired in Roman times. 



Throughout the Middle Ages, York formed the main barrier against 

 the constant inroads of the Scots east of the Pennines and was the base of 

 the English offensive for the Scottish campaigns of the fourteenth century. 

 Not only was it upon the direct way from London to the Scottish border 

 at Berwick ; it also was on the route to Carlisle and the Solway by the 

 road which, branching westward from the road to the north beyond 

 Catterick, crosses Stainmore to the valley of the Eden. Modern roads 

 and railways have made light of the mountainous regions of north-western 

 England, which the mediaeval traveller avoided and through whose passes 

 Scottish forays into Craven and the dales of Yorkshire met with little or 

 no opposition ; and, in our changed conditions, the former importance of 

 York as the key to the whole line of the border may easily be overlooked. 

 Scottish warfare was of a desultory kind, and the raids which were its 

 habitual method were conducted upon no strategic plan. The vales of 

 York and Mowbray were from time to time the scene of battles, of which 

 the most famous was the battle of the Standard, fought in 1138 some miles 

 north of Northallerton, on the rising ground between the vale of Mowbray 

 and the basin of the Tees. None of the later battles fought on the soil 

 of Yorkshire against the Scots were more than skirmishes, such as the rout 

 suffered at Myton-on-Swale in 13 19 by the levies hastily armed by 

 Archbishop Melton, and the affair near Byland Abbey in 1322, in which 

 Edward II narrowly escaped capture. Although in the first of these the 

 English defeat was severe and attended by considerable slaughter, it was 

 not followed up by an attack on York, which lay in safety behind the 

 fighting-line, screened by its outer belt of forest-land. If the open 

 country-side suffered from the depredations of the Scots, it was equally 

 exposed to plunder from the defenders, who retaliated upon them from 

 the base at York ; and the English army, which won the battle of Neville's 

 Cross, near Durham, in 1346, and was billeted in the North Riding, 



