TO leave Selby for York, one must needs cross the Ouse bridge, one of thee few places where tolls still survive. Foot-passengers and cyclists are on an equality, paying one penny each. Level-crossings again have their wicked will of the road, and are indeed its principal features, through Barlby and Riccall. We need some modern Rebeccaites for the abolition of these unpaid-for easements granted to the Railway Companies by an indulgent legislature, composed largely of Railway Directors, for the mingled danger and waste of public time caused by level-crossings over public roads constitute a scandal urgently in need of being removed. Yorkshire people might be recommended to see to it, as their forefathers saw to the abolition of turnpikes, collecting in armed and disguised bands and wrecking and burning the obnoxious gates for great distances. In May 1753 they assembled at Selby at the summons of the public crier’s bell, and proceeded at midnight to demolish all the gates in that neighbourhood. The military were called out to quell these Hampdens. They did not succeed in saving the gates, but shot and captured a number of the “rioters,” who were sent for trial to York Castle. Riccall, near the confluence of the Ouse and the Derwent, looks an unlikely seaport in these times, now that those rivers and the confluent Foss, a mile or so nearer York, flow soberly in their channels and cease from spreading over the land. Eight hundred years ago, however, things were very different—as indeed they well might be in that tremendous space of time. So different, in fact, that when the invasion of the North, under Tostig and Harald Hardrada, took place in 1066, before that greater invasion in the South by William “the Conqueror,” whose success has overshadowed these operations, the invaders’ fleet sailed up the Humber and the Ouse and blockaded the waterways by anchoring at Riccall. From this base they advanced, defeating Earl Morcar at the battle of Fulford, and seized York; retiring on the approach of English Harold to what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls “Staenfordesbryege,” on Derwent, east of the city. In this we find the original spelling of Stamford Bridge, where the great battle which ended in the utter defeat of the invaders was fought and their leaders, Tostig and the gigantic Norwegian king, both slain. A fortnight later, and the Duke of Normandy had landed at Pevensey, the battle of Hastings had been lost and won, and the victor of Stamford Bridge himself lay dead.