Troublesome times afterwards arose in England, and on the Yorkshire side, Briton and Saxon, and Pict and Scot, were mixed up in endless fights and struggles for existence.  It was about this period that Vortigern, the British King, invited Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon Princes, to lend their assistance against the Picts and the Scots, which they did for a time; and when Hengist asked for a residence in his country, the King gave him Conan’s Burgh, which was then vacant.  Conan was never again seen in England, but in 489 his great-grandson Aurelius Ambrosius became King of the Britons.  In the meantime the Saxons had so increased in numbers that they determined to fight for the possession of the country, and, headed by Hengist, who had turned traitor, fought a great battle, in the course of which Eldol, Duke of Gloucester, encountered Hengist in single combat, and, seizing him by the helmet, dragged him into the British ranks shouting that God had given his side the victory.  The Saxons were dismayed, and fled in all directions, and Hengist was imprisoned in his own fortress of Conisborough, where a council of war was held to decide what should be his fate.  Some were against his being executed, but Eldol’s brother Eldad, Bishop of Gloucester, “a man of great wisdom and piety,” compared him to King Agag, whom the prophet “hewed to pieces,” and so Hengist was led through the postern gate of the castle to a neighbouring hill, and beheaded.  Here Aurelius commanded him to be buried and a heap of earth to be raised over him, because “he was so good a knight.”  A lady generally appeared in these old histories as the cause of the mischief, and it was said that one reason why King Vortigern was so friendly with Hengist was that Hengist had a very pretty daughter named Rowena, whom the King greatly admired:  a road in Conisborough still bears her name.

Aurelius then went to Wales, but found that Vortigern had shut himself up in a castle into which Aurelius was unable to force an entrance, so he burnt the castle and the King together; and in a wild place on the rocky coast of Carnarvonshire, Vortigern’s Valley can still be seen.  Sir Walter Scott, who was an adept in selecting old ruins for the materials of his novels, has immortalised Conisborough in his novel of Ivanhoe as the residence, about the year 1198, of the noble Athelstane or Athelstone, who frightened his servants out of their wits by demanding his supper when he was supposed to be dead.

Yorkshire feasts were famous, and corresponded to the “wakes” in Lancashire and Cheshire.  There was a record of a feast at Conisborough on the “Morrow of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,” September 15th, 1320, in the “14th year of King Edward, son of King Edward,” which was carried out by Sir Ralph de Beeston, one of our Cheshire knights, and Sir Simon de Baldiston (Stewards of the Earl of Lancaster), to which the following verse applied: 

  They ate as though for many a day
    They had not ate before. 
  And eke as though they all should fear
    That they should eat no more. 
  And when the decks were fairly cleared
    And not a remnant nigh,
  They drank as if their mighty thirst
    Would drain the ocean dry.