Poulson, the historian of Holderness, states that Henry III. gave orders for the destruction of Skipsea Castle about 1220, the Earl of Albemarle, its owner at that time, having been in rebellion. When Edward II. ascended the throne, he recalled his profligate companion Piers Gaveston, and besides creating him Baron of Wallingford and Earl of Cornwall, he presented this ill-chosen favourite with the great Seigniory of Holderness. Owing to the distractions in England caused by Edward’s stubborn refusal to give up his favourite, Robert Bruce successfully drove the English out of Scotland. The need of men to resist the victorious Scots is shown by the levies raised in Holderness at this time, on all men between the ages of twenty and sixty, who were, according to their means, to act either as men-at-arms, on heavy horses, fully armed _cap-à-pie_, or as light cavalry for skirmishing and for harassing the enemy’s flanks. Going southwards from Skipsea, we pass through Atwick, with a cross on a large base in the centre of the village, and two miles further on come to Hornsea, an old-fashioned little town standing between the sea and the Mere. This beautiful sheet of fresh water comes as a surprise to the stranger, for no one but a geologist expects to discover a lake in a perfectly level country where only tidal creeks are usually to be found. Hornsea Mere may eventually be reached by the sea, and yet that day is likely to be put further off year by year on account of the growth of a new town on the shore, and the increased rateable value of the place when large sums of money are required for sea-defence. A verse, according to Poulson, inscribed on the old steeple of the church, which collapsed in 1733, gives a sensational impression of the encroachments of the ocean in the past: ‘Hornsea steeple, when I builded thee, Thou was ten miles off Burlington, Ten miles off Beverley, and ten miles off sea.’ But when we find that Hornsea Church is thirteen miles from Bridlington and twelve from Beverley as the crow flies, inductive reasoning would suggest that a similar freedom may have been taken with the third measurement, this time expanding the result liberally to round off the last line impressively. It may be remarked that ten miles out to sea from Hornsea Church is more than a mile outside the ten-fathoms line, and far beyond the outermost point of Flamborough Head. It has been calculated from the present rate of erosion that, since the Norman Conquest, a strip of land a mile in width has been washed away.