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because it was, like its sister Dublin, a colony of Norwegian 
or Danish lithsmen. “At first,” says Professor Morley, 
“ every man of genius seems to have been a North-country- 
man, and it is in Yorkshire that we find the birth-place of 
our literature. . . . It is the region also of invention 
and commercial enterprise, that made us traders with the 
world.” In all that relates to progress, socially, commer- 
cially, politically, we yet hold our own ; and in the senate 
and the cabinet the North country element fills no mean 
position. I press these points upon you — -you will never 
read the history of your country aright, never solve many a 
social puzzle in legislation, unless you bear in mind that this 
England of ours contains different races, that centuries have 
not welded them into one ; that if our lot is cast amongst the 
Southrons, it is as dwellers in a strange land, our ways are 
not their ways, our manners not their manners, our modes of 
thought not their modes of thought. 
At the period I have just mentioned, when the men of the 
North proclaimed themselves “ free born and free educated,” 
Wessex was subject to the grinding tyranny of the Dane, 
and Godwinsons were paramount at Edward’s court. 
Well, I am about to speak of pre-Norman times, of those 
great events which took place in this Southern part of North 
Humberland, in that eventful year which succeeded the death 
of Edward the Confessor, and before the Conqueror had 
made good his footing in our land. 
Before I enter upon my subject, there are some points 
which it is necessary to bring before you, to enable you to 
comprehend more fully the subject of my lecture. 
Firstly. Disabuse yourself of the idea that we in the North 
are Saxons. The predominant race amongst us is Scandi- 
navian : it may be either Danish or Norwegian, but the 
leaders and majority of settlers were either one or the other. 
As the Danish or Norse faction predominated, so their party 
