57 
ANCIENT BATTLEFIELDS IN THE SOUTHERN PORTION OF 
NORTH HUMBERLAND; SHOWING HOW PONTEFRACT OB- 
TAINED ITS PRESENT NAME. BY REV. SCOTT F. SURTEES, 
RECTOR OF SPROTBROUGH. 
In tliQ days wlien we elder ones were educated, we were 
taught "to live and learn;" but since then so much has 
been altered, the England of our youth is so changed, — its 
schools and school histories ahnost as much as its means of 
locomotion. Well ! those of us who have profited most by 
what is passing around us have taken as our motto, and 
found its value, "live and unlearn." If this is needful in 
things political and social, much more so is it in researches 
historical and archaeological ; there are so many intelligent 
minds occupied upon these subjects, they who are seeking 
after truth for truth's sake, determined to foUow it wherever 
it may lead, have such great advantages, there is such an 
interest generally aroused in the country upon such subjects 
as those we are met to discuss this day, that it is no wonder 
as old opinions are brought face to face with the day, and 
the new light — from the publications of original documents, 
and the difierent readings of ancient MSS. as collated one 
with another — turns its "bull's eye" of truthful earnest 
investigation on many a dark corner of so-called history, 
that the historian who has parrot -like repeated by rote 
what he found written afore, finds that statements which he 
fondly hoped would never have been investigated or looked 
into, are suddenly ruthlessly questioned and brought to an 
ordeal which he little recked of. We live in an age when 
shams go down fast, and when the heresies of a few years 
back are received as orthodox truths, and darkness which 
might be felt is exchanged for the full blaze of the light of 
the nineteenth century. 
