" The Northumbrians
from this time forward were at least a nominally Christian people, and the
seventh century certainly witnessed the destruction of many of the idols
and their shrines that had hitherto formed the centre for the religious
rites of the Anglo-Saxons. Woden or Odin, Thor and the other deities did
not lose their adherents in a day, and Bede records the relapses into
idolatry of Northumbria as well as the other parts of England. There can
be no doubt that fairies and elves entered largely into the mythology of
the Anglo-Saxons, and the firmness of the beliefs in beings of that nature
can be easily understood when we realise that it required no fewer than
twelve centuries of Christianity to finally destroy them among the people
of Yorkshire. In Chapter XI. we see something of the form the beliefs and
superstitions had assumed at the time of their disappearance.
[Footnote 1: Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,"
translated by Gidley, Rev. L., 1870, p. 152.]
In the seventh century most of the churches erected in Yorkshire were
probably of wood, but the example of King Edwin at York, who quickly
replaced the timber structure with a larger one of stone, must soon have
made itself felt in the country. Nothing, however, in the form of
buildings or inscribed stones for which we have any evidence for placing
at such an early date remains in the neighbourhood of Pickering, although
there are numerous crosses and traces of the masonry that may be termed
Saxon or Pre-Conquest.
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