ansby, Dalby, Farmanby, Aislaby, Roxby, and Normanby. To the east near
Scarborough there are Osgodby, Killerby, Willerby, Flotmanby, and
Hunmanby, so that it would appear that the strong community of Anglo-Saxon
villages along the margin of the vale kept the Danish settlers at a
distance.

[Illustration: The Tower of Middleton Church near Pickering.

The lower portion, owing to the quoins which somewhat resemble the "long
and short" work of the Saxons, has been thought to be of pre-Norman date.
The blocked doorway appearing in the drawing has every appearance of Saxon
workmanship.]

Goathland, which was often spelt Gothland, has a most suggestive sound,
and the family names of Scoby and Scoresby seem to be of Danish origin.
The "gate" of the streets of Pickering is a modification of the Danish
"gade," meaning a "way," for the town was never walled. The influence of
the Danes on the speech of this part of Yorkshire seems to me apparent in
the slight sing-song modulation so similar to that of the present day
people of Denmark.

In A.D. 597 Augustine commenced his missionary work among the Saxons, and
King Ethelbert of Kent was baptised on June the 2nd of that year.
Twenty-seven years later Edwin, the powerful king of Northumbria, married
Ethelburga, daughter of Ethelbert. When she accompanied her husband to his
northern kingdom she took with her Paulinus, who was ordained bishop of
the Northumbrians. "King Aldwin, therefore," Bede tells us,[1] "together
with all the nobles of his nation, and very many of the common people,
received the faith and washing of sacred regeneration, in the eleventh
year of his reign, which is the year of the Lord's incarnation, 627, and
about the year 180 from the coming of the Angles into Britain. Moreover,
he was baptised at York, on the holy day of Easter, the day before the
Ides of April, in the church of the holy apostle Peter, which he himself
built of wood in that place with expeditious labour, while he was being
catechised and prepared in order to receive baptism." The Northumbrians
from this time forward were at least a nominally Christian people, and the
seventh century certainly witnessed the destruction of many of the idols
and their shrines that had hitherto formed the centre for the religious
rites of the Anglo-Saxons. Woden or Odin, Thor and the other deities did
not lose their adherents in a day, and Bede records the relapses into
idolatry of Northumbria as well as the other