In the old Norse account of the life of Harold Hardrada it is stated that after the battle of Stamford Bridge Olaf, the King’s son, ‘led the fleet from England, setting sail from Hrafnseyri.’ This is the earliest mention that we have of the bank of sand and shingle which is known to-day as Spurn Point, and the name of the place—‘Hrafn’s gravel-bank’—is evidence of both its general appearance and its ownership in the year 1066.

For two centuries after this we have no mention of it, but in the meanwhile there had grown up two settlements to each of which the name Ravenser was attached. Ald Ravenser—that is, Old Ravenser—was ‘inland, distant both from the sea and the Humber’; while Ravenserodd, or as we should write it, Ravenser Point, lay ‘between the waters of the sea and those of the Humber,’ and was ‘distant from the main land a space of one mile and more.’ Connecting the two was a sandy road ‘covered with round and yellow stones, thrown up in a little time by the height of the floods, having a breadth which an archer can scarcely shoot across, and wonderfully maintained by the tides of the sea on its east side, and the ebb and flow of the Humber on its west side.’

Of the birth of the former of these towns we know nothing, but the birth of the latter was described by one of the jurors in a lawsuit brought in the year 1290 by the men of Grimsby against the men of Ravenserodd. Several years before a ship had stranded on a sand bank, and the wreck had been taken possession of by an enterprising fellow who used it as a store for meat and drink which he sold to sailors and merchants. Then others came to dwell on the sand-bank, and in 1235 or thereabouts the Earl of Albemarl, Lord of Holderness, began there the building of a town.

The growth of this town must have been rapid; for in 1251 the King granted to the Earl of Albemarl the right to hold in Ravenserodd a weekly market and a fair lasting sixteen days. Then trouble began between the men of the town and the men of Grimsby, and the latter complained that

the men of the said town of Ravenserodd go out with their boats into the high sea, where there are ships carrying merchandise, and intending to come to Grimsby with their merchandise. The said men hinder those ships from coming to Grimsby, and lead them to Ravenser by force when they cannot amicably persuade them to go thither.

So we see that ‘peaceful picketing’ was not altogether unknown in these parts six hundred years ago.

At intervals during the reigns of Edward II. and Edward III. the men of Ravenser were called upon to provide a ship for the King’s wars against Scotland. In each case the ship was to be furnished with from thirty to a hundred of ‘the stoutest and strongest men of the town, with armour, victuals, and other necessaries.’ In 1332, also, an expedition of five hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers set sail from Ravenser for Scotland, having on board Edward Baliol, Lord Beaumont, Lord de Wake, and others who wished to see Baliol crowned as King of Scotland. Their wishes were fulfilled, for the expedition was successful and Baliol was crowned at Scone.

From about this time the fortunes of Ravenser began to decline. Probably the superior privileges granted by King Edward to his Kyngstown-svper-Hvll provided very largely the cause of the decline. The climax of its misfortunes came with a succession of extremely high tides about the year 1356—tides which ‘sometimes exceeding beyond measure the height of the town, and surrounding it like a wall on every side,’ caused its absolute destruction. In 1400 Ravenserodd was recorded to be ‘altogether consumed,’ while nothing remained of Ald Ravenser but a single manor-house.

Such was the condition of the once prosperous port when in the month of June, 1399, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and grandson of King Edward the Third, landed on its site with sixty followers. As Henry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, he had in 1398 been banished by King Richard II. for a term of six years, in order that a duel between him and the Duke of Norfolk might be prevented. As Henry, Duke of Lancaster, he now returned to claim the estates of his father, John of Gaunt, which estates Richard had confiscated on their holder’s death.

When Henry of Lancaster landed at Ravenserespourne, he found its sole occupant to be a hermit, by name Matthew Danthorpe. This hermit was engaged in building a chapel on the desolate bank of shingle; and great must have been his surprise when a ship carrying a company of well-armed men bore down upon his hermitage instead of passing up the river, as ships were accustomed to do.

Still greater must his surprise have been when he found that the ship belonged to a royal Duke, and that its arrival was shortly followed by arrivals from inland of the great Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and the Earl of Westmorland. His surprise was, probably, not unmixed with fear. For he was building his chapel without having obtained a license from the King, and rumours were soon flying about that Henry of Lancaster had come to claim something more than the estates which were his by right of descent.

These flying rumours soon became certainties. Other lords and barons rallied round the standard of Henry, and before long his sixty followers had become as many thousands. At the time of his landing King Richard was in Ireland; and when, after being long delayed by contrary winds, he landed on the coast of Wales, he soon fell into the hands of Henry and was taken a prisoner to the Tower of London. On the 30th of September Henry, addressing the Members of Parliament, spoke as follows:

‘In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England ... as I am descended by right line of the blood coming from the good lord King Henry the Third.’

Then Parliament declared the abdication of King Richard the Second and the accession of King Henry the Fourth.

And what meanwhile of the hermit of Ravenserespourne? Had Henry forgotten him? On the last day of September Henry was proclaimed King, on the first day of October he signed at Westminster a royal license making known that:

Of our special grace we have pardoned and remitted to the said Matthew all manner of trespasses and mistakes committed by him in this matter....

And moreover, of our more abundant grace, we have given and granted to the said Matthew the aforesaid place, to hold to his successors, the hermits of the aforesaid place, together with the chapel aforesaid, when it shall be built and finished, and also the wreck of the sea, and waifs, and all other profits and commodities contingent to the sands for two leagues round the same place, for ever.

The landing of King Henry IV. at Ravenser Spurn was commemorated by the erection of a cross at the place of landing. Was it a grateful Matthew Danthorpe who erected it? Very possibly. At any rate it was erected within fourteen years of Henry’s landing. Many years afterwards it was removed to Kilnsea; later still it was removed to Burton Constable, and finally to Hedon, where it stands to-day in the garden of Holyrood House.

The reign of Henry IV. was followed by that of his son and that of his grandson. Then came in 1471 one of the most curious parallels in history that it is possible to imagine. The ‘Wars of the Roses’ had been discomforting the land for sixteen years. Henry VI. had been deposed in 1461, and Edward IV. had been elected in his place. But in 1470 Henry had once more been placed upon the throne and Edward had fled to Holland. A year later the latter returned, and landed on the same spot where Henry Bolingbroke had landed seventy-two years earlier.

The parallel, however, does not end with his landing. As Henry of Lancaster proclaimed that he had come merely to claim his ancestral lands, so Edward of York proclaimed that he had returned for this same purpose only. As a Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was the chief supporter of Henry of Lancaster, so a Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, came to the support of Edward of York. And as Henry of Lancaster was fated to depose and put to death King Richard II., so Edward of York was fated to overthrow and cause to be murdered King Henry VI.

It had been Edward’s intention to land on the coast of Norfolk. But finding a landing there impossible because of the guard kept by the Earls of Warwick and Oxford, he had headed his four large and fourteen small ships for the mouth of the Humber. The following is part of the account of his landing given by Ralph Holinshed, a chronicler living in the reign of Queen Elizabeth:—

The same night following, a great storme of winds and weather rose, sore troubling the seas, and continued till the fourteenth day of that moneth being thursday, on the which day with greater danger, by reason of the tempestuous rage and torment of the troubled seas, he arriued at the head of Humber, where the other ships were scattered from him, each one seuered from other; so that of necessitie they were driuen to land in sunder where they best might, for doubt to be cast awaie in that perillous tempest. The king with the lord Hastings his chamberleine, and other to the number of fiue hundred men being in one ship, landed within Humber on Holdernesse side, at a place called Rauenspurgh, euen in the same place where Henrie erle of Derbie, after called king Henrie the fourth landed, when he came to depriue king Richard the second of the crowne, and to vsurpe it to himselfe.

Richard, duke of Glocester, and three hundred men in his companie, tooke land in another place foure miles distant from thence, where his brother king Edward did land. The earle Riuers, and with him two hundred men, landed at a place called Pole, fourteene miles from the hauen where the king came on land. The residue of his people landed some here, some there, in place where for their suerties they thought best. On the morrow, being the fifteenth of March, now that the tempest ceased, and euerie man being got to land, they drew from euerie of their landing places towards the king, who for the first night was lodged in a poore village, two miles from the place where he first set foot on land.