SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC 



HISTORY 



No one can question the importance of the physical configuration of a county in 

 determining its economic development. The diflficulty that confronts the writer 

 deah'ng with the economic history of Yorkshire is the diversified nature of its 

 physical characteristics. A description of the West Riding, with each clause 

 reversed, would give a fairly accurate picture of the East Riding, while the North 

 Riding has traits in common with both. 



Although the interdependence of physical contour and economic expansion is never denied, 

 there is a tendency to overlook the part played by ethnology in determining the lines along which 

 a county should advance. In some counties the racial question can be dismissed, but in Yorkshire 

 it is a factor of the utmost importance. The geological strata have not made the Yorkshireman the 

 hard-headed, strenuous, energetic man he is ; but the composite races from which he sprang, the 

 struggles through which his ancestors passed in overcoming stubborn nature, the ceaseless dangers in 

 the midst of which his forbears grew up, must have engendered qualities which fitted him in a 

 peculiar sense for the part he had to play in the world's history. It is a curious and not uninteresting 

 coincidence that the West Riding, which is often spoken of as the workshop of the world, corre- 

 sponds roughly with the British kingdom of Elmet, which for more than a century defied the English 

 invaders and only yielded to the arms of the victorious Eadwine.^ The English invaders had in 

 their turn to yield to Scandinavian supremacy and to Norman conquerors. 



The details of Yorkshire's harrying by William the Conqueror are scanty ; the pitiless story 

 IS summed up with dramatic brevity in the reiterated ' waste ' written against the entries of the 

 Domesday Record. In the North Riding the whole of Upper Teesdale was laid waste ; the 

 disappearance of 217 sokemen from Northallerton and Walsgrave, manors belonging to the 

 rebellious earls, Edwin and Tosti, moved even the stoical officials to pity. The East Riding 

 sufiFered still more severely, though Beverley was spared. The same tale of remorseless vengeance 

 is repeated in the West Riding.^ Many holdings were alluded to in the upper reaches of the Ure, 

 the Nidd, the Wharfe, the Calder, and the Don, but with few exceptions they remained deserted, 

 tenantless, gradually lapsing back to the waste from which they had been wrested before the 

 coming of the Conqueror. A straight line drawn from the confluence of the Ure and Nidd to 

 Leeds, from Leeds to Sheffield with the West Riding boundary to the east and south, incloses 

 with few exceptions the whole of the West Riding known to be inhabited at the time of the 

 Survey. Even in this restricted district it is difficult to know to what extent the native inhabitants 

 had escaped, for the majority of the holdings were in foreign hands. Still, much information can be 

 gleaned from the Record : there were twice as many owners in capite in the West as in the 

 North Riding, but only two fewer in the East than in the West. 



The king's thegns, Anglian and Scandinavian, numbered in the West Riding, where Anglians 

 predominated, 30 ; in the East Riding 17 ; in the North 8. The facts adduced from the list of 

 mesne tenants show similar results ; approximately the West Riding had twice as many English 

 tenants as the North, five times as many as the East. The West Riding furnished 91 burghers, 

 the East only 19. The sokemen had almost disappeared from the North Riding, only 55 remained 

 as against 285 in the West, 130 in the East. There is not such a striking disparity in the list of 

 villeins, the West and East being almost equal, but the bordars number 912 in the West Riding, 

 422 in the East, 145 in the North. The total population of Yorkshire, following Dr. Beddoe's 

 calculations, is 3,143 for the West Riding, 2,300 for the East Riding, and 1,311 for the North 

 Riding. But the Conqueror was not answerable for the whole of Yorkshire's depopulation 

 Malcolm Canmore, who followed closely on his heels, though his methods differed, achieved the 



' J. R. Green, Making of England, 8. 



' The invaluable Domesday Map compiled by Dr. Beddoe shows in the most graphic way the conditions 

 of the Riding in 1086; Torks. Arch. Joum. xix (2), 1906. 



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