l-chosen favourite with the great
Seigniory of Holderness.

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.

The scenery of the Mere is quietly beautiful. Where the road to
Beverley skirts its margin there are glimpses of the shimmering surface
seen through gaps in the trees that grow almost in the water, many of
them having lost their balance and subsided into the lake, being
supported in a horizontal position by their branches. The islands and
the swampy margins form secure breeding-places for the countless
water-fowl, and the lake abounds with pike, perch, eel, and roach.

It was the excellent supply of fish yielded by Hornsea Mere that led to
a hot discussion between the neighbouring Abbey of Meaux and St.
Mary's Abbey at York. In the year 1260 William, eleventh Abbot of
Meaux, laid claim to fishing rights in the southern half of the lake,
only to find his brother Abbot of York determined to resist the claim.
The cloisters of the two abbeys must have buzzed with excitement over
the _impasse_ and relations became so strained that the only
method of determining the issue was by each side agreeing to submit to
the result of a judicial combat between champions selected by the two
monasteries. Where the fight took place I do not know, and the number
of champions is not mentioned in the record. It is stated that a horse
was first swum across the lake, and stakes fixed to mark the limits of
the claim. On the day appointed the combatants chosen by each abbot
appeared properly accoutred, and they fought from morning until
evening, when, at last, the men representing Meaux were beaten to the
ground, and the York abbot retained the whole fishing rights of the
Mere.

Hornsea has a pretty church with a picturesque tower built in between
the western ends of the aisles. An eighteenth-century parish clerk
utilized the crypt for storing smuggled goods, and was busily at work
there on a storm