John Spret, Gentilman.

Memorandum, that John Spret, of Barton upon Umber, in the Counte of Lyncoln, gentilman, com to Beverlay, the ferst day of October, the vij yer of the reen of Keing Herry the vij, and asked the lybertes of Saint John of Beverlay, for the dethe of John Welton, husbondman, of the same town, and knawleg[[37]] hymselff to be at the kyllyng of the saym John with a dagarth,[[38]] the xv day of August.

It is evident from these 469 entries that the Beverley Sanctuary must have been of special repute. For the criminals who asked the liberties of Saint John of Beverley came from parts of Britain as wide apart as Lowestoft, Honiton, Haverfordwest, Anglesey, and Durham. No fewer than thirty came from London, Beverley itself provided five, Preston in Holdernes three, and Kyngestone super Hull ten; while others came from Heydon, Hezell, Hoton Cransewik, Hogett super le Wolde, Otteryngham, Wetherwyk, and fifty other towns and villages in the East Riding.

All ranks and conditions of life are represented among these entries, from the armiger or knight, and generosus or person of noble birth, down to the common laborer. The goldsmyth, the surgyon, the grosiar—an alderman of London—the yoman, the chapman, the shepard, and the husbondman are there. So, sad to relate, is the capellanus, or chaplain; and among the tradesmen there are the berbrower, bocher, bowyer, brykemaker, capper, coke, flecher,[[39]] fysshemonger, payntour, pewterer, plommer, pursor, pynner, saddiler, salter, syngyngman, and tawlowchaunler.

XVII.
HOW TWO KINGS OF ENGLAND LANDED
AT SPURN.

In the old Norse account of the life of Harold Hardrada it is stated that after the battle of Stamford Bridge Olaf, the King’s son, ‘led the fleet from England, setting sail from Hrafnseyri.’ This is the earliest mention that we have of the bank of sand and shingle which is known to-day as Spurn Point, and the name of the place—‘Hrafn’s gravel-bank’—is evidence of both its general appearance and its ownership in the year 1066.

For two centuries after this we have no mention of it, but in the meanwhile there had grown up two settlements to each of which the name Ravenser was attached. Ald Ravenser—that is, Old Ravenser—was ‘inland, distant both from the sea and the Humber’; while Ravenserodd, or as we should write it, Ravenser Point, lay ‘between the waters of the sea and those of the Humber,’ and was ‘distant from the main land a space of one mile and more.’ Connecting the two was a sandy road ‘covered with round and yellow stones, thrown up in a little time by the height of the floods, having a breadth which an archer can scarcely shoot across, and wonderfully maintained by the tides of the sea on its east side, and the ebb and flow of the Humber on its west side.’

Of the birth of the former of these towns we know nothing, but the birth of the latter was described by one of the jurors in a lawsuit brought in the year 1290 by the men of Grimsby against the men of Ravenserodd. Several years before a ship had stranded on a sand bank, and the wreck had been taken possession of by an enterprising fellow who used it as a store for meat and drink which he sold to sailors and merchants. Then others came to dwell on the sand-bank, and in 1235 or thereabouts the Earl of Albemarl, Lord of Holderness, began there the building of a town.

The growth of this town must have been rapid; for in 1251 the King granted to the Earl of Albemarl the right to hold in Ravenserodd a weekly market and a fair lasting sixteen days. Then trouble began between the men of the town and the men of Grimsby, and the latter complained that