A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



same results. Deportation, not destruction, was the keynote of his invasion, for his own country 

 was so sparsely populated that a prisoner was too valuable an asset to be killed unless dangerous. 



Few districts of England needed the pioneer's axe more than Yorkshire, none waited longer 

 for it. The two Roman roads, the one going in a gentle curve from Castleford through Tadcaster 

 to Aldborough, the other passing in a typically straight line from Market Weighton to Malton, 

 inclosing as they do the Vale of York and the fertile levels of Howdenshire, included the only 

 cultivated part of the county, for Holderness was only rendered fertile by extensive drainage undertaken 

 after the Norman Conquest. To the west of this district stretched the Forest of Elmet, a region so 

 impenetrable that the invading Angles quailed before it. Still farther west the mountainous range 

 that divides Lancashire from Yorkshire, in the caves of which the last of the Britons sought shelter, 

 gave birth to the Swale, the Ure, the Wharfe, the Aire, and the Calder, the stored-up power of 

 whose streams was in the course of centuries to change the dreary wastes into the greatest industrial 

 centre in the world. To the north, the very name of Cleveland probably bears testimony to the 

 inhospitable nature of the region bordering on the Tees ; while a wedge of lonely and desolate 

 moorland, covered with ling and furze, broken by the Forest of Pickering and continued by the 

 Forest of Galtres, stretched from Whitby to the very gates of York. Even the flat country that 

 lay between the continuation of Ermine Street and the North Sea was rendered difficult of access 

 by the undulating chalk hills which form the northern wolds. 



Nor was the approach from the south-east easy ; the northern moorlands, the western mountains 

 and forests were hardly more formidable than the fens and marshes that stretched from the Don to 

 the Trent ; a desolate, lonely land where herds of wild deer continued to roam unmolested, until, 

 in the 17th century, alien genius and enterprise turned the treacherous morass into fertile fields. 



The history of the conversion of this Yorkshire of forest, fen, moorland and mountain, roadless 

 and uninhabited, into the Yorkshire of to-day, intersected with canals, tramways, and railroad, with 

 an underground population in Cleveland alone much greater than the total population in the 

 1 2th century,' is industrial and economic rather than political. The change is of course greatest 

 in the industrial districts. Until comparatively lately few districts of England remained so little 

 changed since the Norman Conquest as the East Riding. 



To what extent aliens influenced the economic development of Yorkshire in the two centuries 

 following the Conquest is a mere matter of conjecture, for though tradition is ample and 

 speculation endless, authentic documentary evidence is meagre. The most that the historian can 

 do is to show that some of the assertions made on this matter can be easily disposed of by 

 unimpeachable historical evidence, while others, on account of their inherent probability, deserve 

 attention, even though historical confirmation is lacking. To the first class belongs the entirely 

 erroneous statement that during the mediaeval period Yorkshire was destitute of any weaving 

 industry, and that weaving as a trade was not introduced into the county until Edward III brought 

 over weavers from Flanders in the 14th century. To the second class belongs the statement, 

 cautiously and tentatively advanced, that the industry was introduced by the Flemings during the 

 period immediately following the Conquest. 



The Wakefield Court Rolls,* the Hundred Rolls,' and the York Freemen's Roll' prove 

 conclusively that weaving was carried on in all the three Ridings at a period long anterior to the 

 Edwardian alien settlement, not only as a domestic occupation but as a distinct trade. Beverley 

 was noted for its cloth as early as the reign of John,^ and York, Beverley, Hedon, Selby, and 

 Whitby are alluded to by name as centres of an organized weaving industry in the Hundred 

 Rolls of Edward I.^ 



The fact being proved that, during the period intervening between the arrival of the Normans 

 and the 14th-century Flemish immigration, the industry flourished in Yorkshire, interest concen- 

 trates itself on the question as to whether its introduction and development was due to native or 

 imported enterprise. In the midst of much that must of necessity be more or less supposititious, 

 one salient feet bearing on the argument stands clearly out. When the Domesday Survey was 

 made in 1086, Yorkshire, especially the West Riding, was to a great extent waste.' Information 

 as to the manner in which the district was re-peopled is so scanty and unsatisfactory that it is 

 equally difficult to find either proof or disproof of the very interesting, though tentative, suggestion 

 of Dr. Cunningham that the West Riding was partially populated during the i2th century by 

 Flemish immigrants. Still it is clear that the country being waste must have been re-populated by 

 immigration either from other parts of England or from the Continent, for when, little more 

 than a century after the compilation of Domesday Book, the county emerges again into the 



' Cleveland Iron Miners, Feb. 191 1, 8201 ; Bd. of Trade Labour Gazette, 52. 



* Ct. R. of the Manor of Wakefield (Yorb. Arch. Joum. Rec. Ser. xiix), 112. 



' Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 128. ' Freemen of York (Surt. Soc), i, 3, 4, 6, 7 et seq. 



' Madox, Hut. Exch. i, 468. « Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 13 1-2 



' Domesday Map of West Riding, loc cit. 



436 



