Thus we find that in these early days mankind teemed in this part of Yorkshire.  From all points around the shallow lake the smoke of fires ascended into the sky, patches of cultivation appeared among the trees, and villages, consisting of collections of primitive wooden huts, probably surrounded by a stockade, would have been discernible.

A closer examination of one of these early British villages would have discovered the people clothed in woven materials, for an example of cloth of the period was discovered by Canon Greenwell in this locality and is now to be seen in the British Museum.  The grinding of corn in the stone querns, so frequently found near Pickering, would have been in progress; fair-haired children with blue eyes would be helping the older folk in preparing food, dressing skins, making bows and arrows, and the innumerable employments that the advancing civilisation demanded.

[Illustration:  A Quern, now in the Pickering Museum.]

It is at this period that we reach the confines of history, records of an extremely unreliable character it is true, but strangely enough there are references by very early writers to the founding of Pickering.  That the place should be mentioned at all in these fabulous writings is an interesting fact and gives Pickering an importance in those distant centuries which is surprising.  John Stow in his “Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles,” published in 1565, gives the following fanciful story of the father of the founder of Pickering.

“Morindus, the bastard son of Danius, began to reigne in Britain:  he (as our Chronicles saye) fought with a kynge, who came out of Germanye, and arrived here, and slew hym with all his power.  Moreover (as they write) of the Irishe seas in his tyme, came foorthe a wonderfull monster:  whiche destroyed muche people.  Wherof the king hearyng would of his valiaunt courage, needes fyght with it:  by wh[=o] he was cleane devoured, wh[=e] he had reigned viii. yeres.”

[Sidenote:  B.C. 311]

His two youngest sons were Vigenius and Peredurus, and of them Stow writes:  —­

“Vigenius and Peredurus, after the takyng of their brother [Elidurus, the former King] reigned together, vii. yeres.  Vigenius th[=a] died, and Peredurus reygned after alone, ii. yeares.  He buylded the towne of Pyckeryng after the opinion of divers writers.”

[Sidenote:  B.C. 270]

Raphael Holinshed, who was a contemporary of Stow and used many of his sources of information, gives the following account of the same period[1]:—­

[Footnote 1:  Holinshed, Raphael; “Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland,” p. 461.]

“Vigenius and Peredurus, the yoongest sonnes of Morindus, and brethren to Elidurus, began to reigne jointlie as kings of Britaine, in the year of the world 3701, after the building of Rome 485....  These two brethren in the English chronicles are named Higanius and Petitur, who (as Gal.  Mon. [Geoffrey of Monmouth] testifieth) divided the realme betwixt them, so that all the land from Humber westward fell to Vigenius or Higanius, the other part beyond Humber northward Peredure held.  But other affirme, that Peredurus onelie reigned, and held his brother Elidurus in prison by his owne consent, for somuch as he was not willing to governe.