Sir John Lawson, a distinguished naval officer, was the son of a poor man of this town; and died fighting for his country on the 3rd of June, 1665. The historians of Hull assign the birth-place of that inflexible patriot, Andrew Marvel, to that town; but, as at the time of his birth his father was Rector of Winestead, in Holderness, and as the baptism of his son is entered in the parish register of that place, on the last day of March, 1621, in his father's handwriting, the claim of Hull to that honour is at least disputable. Those writers state that his father was master of the Grammar School at Hull in 1620, as well as Rector of Winestead, and that the son was born here, and baptised there. On the 16th of April, 1614, the Rev. Andrew Marvel, father of the subject of this notice (who was a native of Cambridgeshire), was instituted to the Rectory of Winestead, and on the 8th of December, 1624, in consequence of his resignation of the benefice, his successor was inducted. On the 30th of September, 1624, he was appointed Lecturer of the Holy Trinity Church, in Hull, an office then usually held by the master of the Grammar School, and it would appear that he then resigned the living of Winestead. Tickell calls him "the facetious Calvinistical minister of this town;" so it seems that he, later in life, seceded from the Established Church; and Poulson tells us, that in 1640, when in crossing the Humber in a small boat, he was unfortunately drowned. Whether he, who became "the ornament and example of his age," drew his first breath in Hull or in Holderness, it is pretty certain that he received the rudiments of his education under his father in the Grammar School of Hull, and that at the age of fifteen he was admitted a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. He afterwards made a tour of Europe, and was secretary to the embassy at Constantinople in the time of the Commonwealth. In 1657 he was appointed assistant to the celebrated poet, John Milton, at that time secretary to the no less celebrated usurper, Oliver Cromwell. In 1658, two years before the Restoration, the burghers of Hull elected him as their representative in Parliament, and during a period of twenty years, which he continued to be member for this borough, he maintained the character of an honest man, a true patriot, and an incorruptible senator. "His integrity," says a recent writer, "rendered him obnoxious to a corrupt court, which spared no pains to seduce him from his fidelity, and to obtain the powerful influence of his name and character for their measures; and many instances are adduced of his heroic firmness in resisting the alluring offers made to win him over to the court party." He is recorded as the last member of Parliament who received the wages anciently paid to members by their constituents. Mr. Marvel was eminent as a wit and poet, as well as a senator, and his satires

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against the vices of the age, which did not spare Majesty itself, are very well known. His death, which took place on the 16th of August, 1678, was sudden and unexpected; and the Corporation of Hull, in gratitude for his services, voted the sum of £50. to defray the expenses of his funeral, and contributed a sum of money to erect a monument over his remains in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London, where he was interred; but the minister of that church forbad the monument to be erected. At the southeast corner of High Street and Salthouse Lane is an ancient structure, since modernised, which is traditionally said to have been the residence of Mr. Marvel, when he resided at Hull.

William Wilberforce, Esq., the senator and philanthropist, was born at Hull in 1759, in the house in High Street in which Sir John Lister entertained King Charles I., in 1639. (See page 49.) The family name was Wilberfoss, and they had an ancient seat in the parish of that name, near Pocklington; but Alderman Wilberforce, of Hull, who, in 1771, resigned his gown, having held it nearly fifty years, and who was grandfather to the subject of this notice, changed it to Wilberforce. Mr. Wilberforce was returned to Parliament for Hull when only just of age; and in 1784 he was elected for the county of York, which he represented in several successive Parliaments. He distinguished himself during the course of his long and useful life, by his exertions in the cause of the negro; and at length succeeded in procuring the abolition of the infamous slave trade. He died on the 29th of July, 1833, and was interred in Westminster Abbey; and the handsome Doric column in Hull, already noticed, was erected to his memory, as well as to commemorate the passing of the Slavery Abolition Bill. His three sons entered the church, and one became a Bishop (the present Bishop of Oxford), and the two others Archdeacons. The latter two, however, have seceded from the Establishment, and joined the Church of Rome. Mason, the poet, is said to have been born at the Hull Vicarage.

Amongst the members of the literati of the present day, connected with the town and neighbourhood, are the following:---Charles Frost, Esq., F.S.A., author of "Notices relative to the Early History of the Town and Port of Hull," published in 1827, and some tracts on legal subjects; Thomas Thompson, F.S.A., author of a "History of Swine," "Ocellum Promontorium, or Short Observations on the Ancient State of Holderness," and tracts on the Poor Laws; A. H. Haworth, Esq., F.L.S., author of "Lepidoptera Britannica;" William Spence, Esq., F.L.S., author of tracts on Political Economy, and an "Introduction to Entomology;" and P. W. Watson, Esq., the author of "Dendrologia Britannica."

Borough of Beverley.

THE division of the county of York, at present constituting the EastRiding, and of which Beverley is considered the capital, was termed by the aboriginal Britons Duyvaur or Deifyr,* in allusion to the universal deluge, a tradition of which was preserved by the Druids; for the name given by that order to Noah, the great father of antiquity, was Dwyvawr. We have already seen that the whole county of York was included in the kingdom denominated by the Saxons Deira; and that people called the site of Beverley, and the neighbouring parishes, Deirwalde, or Deirwold, implying the forest of Deira; from the extensive woods with which it was then covered. The Rev. George Oliver, in his History of Beverley, published in 1829, tells us, that from circumstances of vital importance to the religion of the primitive inhabitants, this place, which was situated in the deep recesses of the wood, acquired the local appellation of Llyn yr Avanc, the Beaver Lake. This learned and ingenious writer, after considerable industry and research, submits some very original reasons for supposing that the original designation of the site of Beverley had reference to the Druidical rites of the ancient Britons.

The primitive name of the district, Deifyr or Dwyvawr, he thinks is a sufficient testimony that it was occupied by the Aborigines. The most important religious stations of this people were always placed under the protection of a petty Prince or Chieftain, to guard their hallowed rites from vulgar profanation. It is clearly certain that an ancient Druid temple existed at Godmanham, about ten miles north west of Beverley, which contained an oracle, and attached to which was a regular establishment of Druids, Bards, and Eubates, who resided on the spot, or in the neighbouring wood of Deira. "The rites of insular sanctuary," says Mr. Oliver, "were performed periodically by the Druids, at some convenient distance from the temple, and in situations which possessed natural advantages of a river or lake in the centre of a grove of trees. And on the spot where Beverley now stands, these priests found everything prepared by nature for their purpose. Here were lakes and pools of water in the midst of open spaces in the wood; hills, a rivulet, and every convenience for the performance of their rites; a situation which they would appropriate to themselves with eager avidity, as in this part of the country no other place presented equal facilities for these mysterious celebrations. Near this spot, then, the petty chieftain would throw up his

• Welsh Triad, in Jones's Ancient Relics, p. 11.

embankments, and fix his residence, as the monarch of his tribe. Асcordingly, traces of an ancient road, supposed to be British, and certainly used by the Romans, have been discovered leading from Godmanham, by Beverley, to Patrington or Spurn."

From Mr. Oliver's explanation of the Druidical rites, we learn that the celebrations of the insular sanctuary, which were performed at a lake or pond in a woody situation, were founded on a tradition of the general deluge; that they constructed certain islands or rafts on the lake, for the purpose of performing the rites of their religion in the presence of the people; that small floating islands were mystically termed Beavers, and considered to bear a striking reference to the Ark of Noah, in whose capacious womb the hero-gods were entombed during the prevalence of the diluvian waters; that every consecrated grove was a copy of paradise; and that every sanctified mountain or high place was a local transcript of Mount Ararat.* The Druidical legend of the great deluge, he tells us, on the authority of Strabo, Pliny, Bryant, and others, is as follows: In the time of the great God Hu, who is the same as Noah, mankind were involved in profligacy. A communication was therefore made from heaven that the world should be purified by fire and water, and that from the bursting of the lake Llion an overwhelming flood of water should deluge the earth and destroy its impure inhabitants. In consequence of this revelation, a large vessel was constructed, without sails, in which were preserved a male and female of every species of animals, and also a man and a woman named Dwyvaur and Dwyvach. When these were safely enclosed in the vessel, a pestilential wind arose, replete with poisonous ingredients, which spread devastation and death throughout the world. Then followed a fiery deluge; and after this the Lake Llion burst forth, and destroyed the whole creation of man and animals, except the favoured few who were saved in the sacred vessel. When the destruction of the world was complete, the Avanc or Beaver, a symbol of the floating ark, was drawn out of the lake by the oxen of Hu, and an assurance was given to the favoured pair, by whom the world was destined to be repeopled, that the lake should burst no more. Hence Mr. Oliver concludes that this spot was the consecrated scene of the diluvian celebrations terminating invariably in the actual ceremony of drawing the floating Ark or Beaver out of the lake, whereby it acquired the distinguishing appellation of Llyn yr Avanc or the Beaver Lake. "Here then," says our ingenious author, "we have the undoubted origin of

• Hist. Bev., pp. 5, 10, 11; Apud Phil. Trans., vol. xliv., p. 355; Dav. Druid. p. 190; Welsh Archæol., vol. ii., p. 59; Dav. Celt. Research, p. 157; Mythol. Druid., pp. 142, 159; Faber Pag. Idol., b. v., c. 7.

the name Beverlac. It referred to the indispensable religious ceremony of drawing the shrine or emblematical Beaver out of the lake, and placing it in security on an eminence in sight of the assembled multitude."

The residence of the Druids he thinks was at Drewton (Druid's Town), near the holy Beaver lake, and near to which is a remarkable vestige of the religious worship of that priesthood, consisting of a gigantic upright stone, which doubtless served as an object of devotion to the native Britons. Their place of initiation, according to him, was within the shady groves of Llecenfylliad (Leckonfield), and their cemetery at Beorh or Bur (Burton), where many vestiges of the fact still remain. Such is Mr. Oliver's derivation of the name of Beverlac, but most writers tell us that the immediate neighbourhood of the town was low and marshy, and at an early period formed a lake in the forest of Deira; and that it and the river Hull abounded with Beavers, and hence was called Beverlega, and subsequently Beverlac, from which its present name is deduced.

We have seen in the early pages of this history, that before the Roman invasion the district now known as the counties of Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, together with Lancashire and the greater part of Yorkshire, was inhabited by the Brigantes, one of the most powerful of the British tribes, who had not entirely submitted to Roman power until the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, about the year 70; and it has like wise been observed that the Parisi were the aboriginal inhabitants of a great part of the district now termed the East-Riding of Yorkshire. Hors ley conjectures that the Parisi were separated from the proper Brigantes, by a line drawn from the Ouse or Humber to one of the bays on the sea coast north of those rivers. The best authorities are of opinion that the portion of the district in the occupation of this people, is that known at the present day by the name of Holderness. But few remains of the ancient Britons have been discovered in the East-Riding of Yorkshire. Among them we may here mention, the road from Godmanham, through Beverley, already noticed; the tumuli near Bishop Burton, and those on the Wolds towards Market Weighton and Malton, which undoubtedly owe their origin to the conflicts between the Romanized Britons and their Saxon or Danish invaders. The remarkable stones at Drewton and Rudston; the circular pits or holes and other indications of the site of a British village, on the downs west of Kirk-Ella; together with an ancient trackway, in the same neighbourhood, to the passage of the Humber at Ferriby. At Brough, on the Humber, in 1719, a bushel of celts was found, each enclosed in a mould or case of metal; and in a bank, forming part of some extensive earthworks at Skirlaugh, a large