Yorkshire, the largest county in England, was bounded to the south by the Humber (which formed part of the ancient dividing line between northern and southern England), to the north by the Tees, and extends east–westwards from the North Sea into the Pennine hills, corresponding to lands settled by Halfdan's invading Danish army after 876. They divided it into three ridings (‘thridings’) for easier administration, the meeting-place for the North Riding being at the Yarles tree (probably near Thirsk), that for the East Riding at Craikhow (near Beverley), and possibly York for the West Riding; the subdivisions called wapentakes took their names from the meeting-places of their courts (Agbrigg from a bridge, Ewcross from a cross). The Danes were by no means the first European settlers: Eboracum (York) had been provincial capital of the Romans' Britannia Secunda, 6th-cent. Angles had formed the nucleus of the kingdom of Deira, and some Norse immigration had occurred in the west from Lancashire and Westmorland. After the Norman Conquest, William's ‘harrying of the north’ left devastation, reflected in the Domesday survey. The wolds became subject to forest law, but Cistercian settlement transformed much from desolation to sheep-run—Rievaulx abbey was founded 1131, Fountains 1132, Byland 1147—and the monks soon became famous for their wool production. Although the see had been raised to an archbishopric in 735, enhancing the area's national importance, it was not until 1070, when Thomas of Bayeux became archbishop of York, that the struggle for precedence between Canterbury and York began, not to be settled until the 14th cent. The might of the Norman barons was symbolized by their castles (Knaresborough, Richmond, Scarborough); although their families were allowed to consolidate power to counteract repeated threats of Scottish invasion, Yorkshire medieval nobility was decimated and humbled during the Wars of the Roses. Opposition to the closure of the lesser monasteries in 1536 and resentment of an increasingly centralized government in the south found outlet in Robert Aske's Pilgrimage of Grace, but this failed and monastic lands passed to loyal or opportunist families (Cholmley, Fairfax, Ramsden, Ingram), creating wide estates with substantial residences, though recusancy persisted despite the failure of the rising of the northern earls (1569). York and Beverley's decline in the Tudor wool trade was the West Riding's gain, and it became one of the three major regions of the English cloth industry; Sheffield's cutlery industry was well established, Hull became one of England's busiest outports, and Whitby a coaling port. Yorkshire's integration into national life steadily increased.

In 1642 Charles I abandoned London to set up court at York, but Hull, strategically vital, refused to admit him, and Scarborough (at this stage) was in parliamentary hands. The civil wars (when Sir Thomas Fairfax gained military prominence) saw confused street fighting and one major battle: the clothing towns changed hands repeatedly, but York's surrender after Marston Moor (1644) spelled the end of the royalist cause in the shire, leaving the county depressed and with a badly damaged wool trade; recovery was so slow that the Restoration was welcomed. In 1697 Celia Fiennes noted coal pits, sampled various springs in and around Harrogate, was impressed by Newby Hall but dismayed by York's mean appearance apart from the minster; Defoe found early Georgian Yorkshire endowed with thriving market towns (Doncaster, Ripon, Richmond), though he was more impressed by its horses and stone bridges than its spas. But the pace of industry was increasing, aided by improvements in the road network, canals to implement an already extensive river system (expanded to link with Lancashire counterparts, e.g. Leeds–Liverpool canal) and accelerated enclosure; the East and North Ridings remained predominantly agricultural or moorland, but the West Riding was transformed, since it sat at the northern edge of a huge coalfield that additionally contained iron. Inventiveness, initiative, and mechanization changed cottage industry into the harshness of ‘dark, satanic mills’; Leeds was hailed as the principal seat of woollen manufacture, Bradford the centre of the worsted trade, and Sheffield was the focal point of the iron and steel industry, all experiencing massive increases in population and associated social problems. The advent of the railway in the 19th cent. (including the heroic Settle–Carlisle line) opened up some once isolated places while York developed into an important railway centre. The First World War shifted industrial emphasis to arms manufacture and khaki cloth, and encouraged agriculture; the ensuing slump hit the county badly, but both industry and agriculture rose again to the demands of renewed warfare after 1939, this time including aircraft production (Sheffield). In subsequent decades traditional industries (textiles, coal, iron and steel) declined, but the strong sense of community barely wavered. In the local government reorganization of 1972, there were many changes. The county was divided into North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire, losing the east riding to Humberside, and Middlesbrough and Redcar to Cleveland. In a further reorganization in the 1990s, East Riding was reconstituted as a unitary authority, and South and West Yorkshire divided into nine unitary authorities. A separate country to many because of its intense local patriotism—cricketers born outside Yorkshire were long ineligible to play for the county—the blunt-spoken, thrifty inhabitants yet retain an identity that many other shires have lost.

A. S. Hargreaves