the early twentieth century, F. W. Moorman, the first professor of English Language at Leeds University, claimed Yorkshire was not settled by Angles or Saxons following the end of Roman rule in Britain, but by a different Germanic tribe, the Geats. As a consequence, he claimed, it is possible the first work of English literature, Beowulf, believed to have been composed by Geats, was written in Yorkshire, and this distinctive ethnic and cultural origin is the root of the unique status of Yorkshire today. One of Moorman's students at Leeds University, Herbert Read, was greatly influenced by Moorman's ideas on Yorkshire identity, and claimed that until recent times Yorkshire was effectively an island, cut off from the rest of England by rivers, fens, moors and mountains. This distancing of Yorkshire from England led Read to question whether Yorkshire people were really English at all. Combined with the suggested ethnic difference from the rest of England, Read quoted Frederic Pearson, who wrote: During the premiership of William Pitt the Younger the hypothetical idea of Yorkshire becoming independent was raised in the British parliament in relation to the question whether Ireland should become part of the United Kingdom. This resulted in an anonymous pamphlet being published in London in 1799 arguing at length that Yorkshire could never be an independent state as it would always be reliant on the rest of the United Kingdom to provide it with essential resources. Although in the devolution debates in the House of Commons of the late 1960s, which paved the way for the 1979 referendums on the creation of a Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly, parallel devolution for Yorkshire was suggested, this was opposed by the Scottish National Party Member of Parliament for Hamilton, Winifred Ewing. Ewing argued that it was offensive to Scots to argue that an English region had the same status as an 'ancient nation' such as Scotland. The relationship between Yorkshire and Scottish devolution was again made in 1975 by Richard Wainwright, MP for Colne Valley, who claimed in a speech in the House of Commons: In more recent years, in 1998 the Campaign for Yorkshire was established to push for the creation of a Yorkshire regional assembly, sometimes dubbed the Yorkshire Parliament. In its defining statement, the Campaign for Yorkshire made reference to the historical notions that Yorkshire had a distinctive identity: The Campaign for Yorkshire was led by Jane