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event so memorable that it is the main point that our English 
historians dwell on. It was within sight of that " Greave 
yard where the bones whitened years after, as Orderic tells 
us, that Ilbert de Lacy reared his castle, and as travellers 
passed along that old highway over the ford, alongside that 
broken bridge, they shuddered as they saw in heaps the 
bones of those who died that day (Orderic Yitalis.) That 
castle that kept ward over that plain and bridge was not 
unlikely to obtain that name ; still more so if, as is far from 
improbable, the De Lacys were of northern lineage, and 
could boast at least that on that day of death the Norsemen, 
not taken at a disadvantage, could and did hold their own. 
Tedious I may have been, but interest — and that deep — I 
feel I have excited. It has been difficult to compress the 
numerous details of such a battle, and to work into a popular 
form, a Paper suited for such a meeting. The pains I have 
had to take, the authors I have had to consult, histories — 
ancient and modern, English and foreign — I have had to wade 
through and make extracts from, have been legion. No one 
but they who have tried it can tell what labour and thought 
it takes to re- write a page of history. I prove a negative, at 
any rate, by the impossibility of the distances of either RicaU 
or Tadcaster suiting in any way the fabled battle of Stamford 
Bridge^ beyond York ; and I strengthen my case by refusing 
to fall in with the historian of the Norman Conquest in his 
quiet statement that all authorities of any weight are in 
this particular instance to be overlooked, and treated as 
" mythical,'* because, if he is right, they must be wrong ! 
I say that sort of writing may do for a periodical, but is 
unworthy of serious history. I, on the other hand, am 
accustomed to treat authorities with reverence and respect, 
and to ask myself whether it may not be that they are more 
likely to be right than myself, and to seek for a solution of 
the difficulty, not by stating their story is "mythical," but 
