road from Kirkham Abbey, is so historically fascinating that we must leave the hills for a time to see the site of that momentous battle between Harold, the English King, and the Norwegian army, under Harold Hardrada and Harold’s brother Tostig. The English host made their sudden attack from the right bank of the river, and the Northmen on that side, being partially armed, were driven back across a narrow wooden bridge. One Northman, it appears, played the part of Horatius in keeping the English at bay for a time. When he fell, the Norwegians had formed up their shield-wall on the left bank of the river, no doubt on the rising ground just above the village. That the final and decisive phase of the battle took place there Freeman has no doubt. The Saga of Snorro the Norwegian is full of detail in regard to the fight, which, however fascinating, must be considered to a very great extent mythical. Yet there are English chronicles giving certain broad facts, and with these Freeman allows us to picture something of the last victory of the English:
‘We may see how, step by step, inch by inch, dealing blow for blow even in falling back, Northman and Scot and Fleming give way before the irresistible charge of the renowned Thingmen. We may see the golden dragon, the ensign of Cuthred and Ælfred, glitter on high over this its latest field of triumph. We may hear the shouts of “Holy Rood” and “God Almighty” sound for the last time as an English host pressed on to victory. We may see two kingly forms towering high over either host.... We may see the banished Englishman [Tostig] defiant to the last, striking the last blow against the land which had reared him, and the brother who had striven to save him from his doom.... There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient sea-kings, yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many forms and in so many lands.’
The bridge of to-day is shown in the accompanying illustration, the site of its early predecessor being in the foreground of the picture, a fact plainly demonstrated by the roads on each side of the river pointing to this spot. There is a fair-sized village of low red-brick houses looking on to a green, with one side open to the river, and a water-mill, built on a natural rock foundation, rises to a great height by the weir. A sundial over the doorway is dated 1764, which is probably the year when the present mill was put up.
Stamford Bridge being, as already mentioned, the most probable site of the Roman Derventio, it was natural that some village should have grown up at such an important crossing of the river.
An unfrequented road through a belt of picturesque woodland goes from Stamford Bridge past Sand Hutton to the highway from York to Malton. If we take the branch-road to Flaxton, we soon see, over the distant trees, the lofty towers of Sheriff Hutton Castle, and before long reach a silent village standing near the imposing ruins. The great rectangular space, enclosed by huge corner-towers and half-destroyed curtain walls, is now utilized as the stackyard of a farm, and the effect as we approach by a footpath is most remarkable. It seems scarcely possible that this is the castle Leland described with so much enthusiasm. ‘I saw no House in the North so like a Princely Logginges,’ he says, and also describes ‘the stately Staire up to the Haul’ as being very magnificent; ‘and so,’ he continues, ‘is the Haul it self, and al the residew of the House.’ At the south-western angle is a tower in a fair state of preservation, whose lowest story is now used for cattle, the floor being deep in straw, and elsewhere farming implements are stored under the shattered walls that threaten to fall at any time.
We come to the north-west tower, and look beyond its ragged outline to the distant country lying to the west, grass and arable land with trees appearing to grow so closely together at a short distance, that we have no difficulty in realizing that this was the ancient Forest of Galtres, which reached from Sheriff Hutton and Easingwold to the very gates of York. The greater part of the forest, however, was, in Leland’s time, only low meadows and ‘morish ground ful of Carres,’ while in other places it was ‘reasonably woddid.’ Galtres remained a royal forest until 1670, when an Act was passed for its enclosure.
In the complete loneliness of the ruins, with the silence only intensified by the sounds of fluttering wings in the tops of the towers, we in imagination sweep away the haystacks and reinstate the former grandeur of the fortress in the days of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmorland. It was he who rebuilt the Norman castle of Bertram de Bulmer, Sheriff of Yorkshire, on a grander scale. Upon the death of Warwick, the Kingmaker, in 1471, Edward IV. gave the castle and manor of Sheriff Hutton to his brother Richard, afterwards Richard III., and it was he who kept Edward IV.’s eldest child Elizabeth a prisoner within these massive walls. The unfortunate Edward, Earl of Warwick, the eldest son of George, Duke of Clarence, when only eight years old, was also incarcerated here for about three years. Richard III., the usurper, when he lost his only son, had thought of making this boy his heir, but the unfortunate
SHERIFF HUTTON CASTLE