For a period of three hundred years both library and cathedral flourished. Then, in 1060, they were destroyed by fire-the Normans who were defending York Castle against the Danes, fearful that the houses near the castle should be an assistance to the enemy, setting fire to them, and thus starting the conflagration. To this circumstance and the strong wind then raging, which quickly drove the fire from house to house, the loss of the cathedral was due. Aldred was at this time Archbishop of York.

On his death William appointed Thomas the Elder, a canon of Bayonne, to fill the vacancy; but he in after years, sorrowful at the approach of the Danes, besought God that He would be pleased to take him out of the ensuing miseries and not suffer him to see the utter ruin of his country. And it is recorded that, in answer to his prayer, he fell sick and died eight or nine days after the landing of the Danes.

This is the more remarkable as it was this very Thomas who only a little before had shown such a striking aptitude for a warfare of words. He it was who, on his appointment, struggled so with Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the supremacy. The matter, as is well known, on being ultimately referred to the pope, was referred again by him to the king and bishops of England, who, in a council held in 1072 at Windsor, decided that the church of York should be subject to that of Canterbury.

Pending this dispute, however, Thomas had not been idle. In 1070 he had lain the foundation-stone of the new cathedral. He had also been mindful of the dignitaries of the Church, for he divided the church lands into prebends, and gave to every canon his due proportion-a consideration not altogether overlooked by the canons, who till then had

lived upon the common revenues of the Church, all at one table. He also found for the cathedral a dean, a treasurer, and a charter.

In the reign of Stephen fire once more put an end to York Minster, the fate of which was shared by the entire city and surrounding neighbourhood, including thirty-nine parish churches, St. Trinity in the suburbs, St. Clement's Hospital, and St. Mary's Abbey. For thirty-one years the cathedral lay in ruins; then, in 1171, Roger, the archbishop, commenced the work of rebuilding. Five years after this, in March, 1176, the king called a convocation of the clergy at London, at which the Pope's legate took the chair, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the Primate of England, sat on the legate's right hand. It is amusing to hear Stone's account of the conduct of the Archbishop of York at this meeting. He writes that the archbishop disdaining to sit on the legate's left, "came and sate him down to his right, thrusting his tayle between the legate and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who being loathe to move, he of York set his buttocks in his lappe; but he had but set downe when the bishops, the clergy, the laity stept to him, pulled him, threwe him to the grounde, and began to lay on him with fists and battes, so that he of Canterbury was fayne to defend the Archbishop of Yorke, who with his rent cope got up and away straighte to the kinge, with a great complaint. But when the truethe of the matter was knowne, he was well laughed at for his remedye."

From the days of this notorious archbishop to the present time for a period of more than 700 years-York Minster has been preserved from the effects of war, of fire, and the destructive hand of time; although on one occasion the

cathedral suffered considerably from the attempted arson

I

of the lunatic, who by this act inscribed for posterity his name upon the page of history which tells of those whose deeds have awarded them an undesirable fame.

ST. MARY'S ABBEY.

CHAPTER IX.

N 1088 William Rufus founded and endowed St. Mary's Abbey; and Stephen de Whitby became the first Abbot. In Drake's "Eboracum" can be seen a list of the succeeding Abbots-from Richard, Stephen's immediate successor, to William Thornton, or William de Ornt, who was Abbot at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, in the reign of Henry VIII., and who, on surrendering the Abbey, obtained from the king a pension of 400 marks a year for life. It is said that at this time there were only forty-nine proposed monks, including the Abbot, in the house, and that the revenue was of a value equal to £2,085 Is. 5d. The building was destroyed by fire, as previously stated, in Stephen's reign, and was subsequently rebuilt.

At one period the monks of the Abbey were the privileged hangmen; but so quarrelsome were they with the citizens of York that one of the earliest records of York relates to a meeting of the bailiffs of the city and county,

at which the mayor presided, to consider the propriety of erecting a gallows. It was as a result of this meeting that the gallows on what is now known as the racecourse made its first appearance.

Near this spot are the ruins of the crypt of the hospital of St. Leonard, founded by William the Conqueror. Its revenue at the time of the dissolution was valued at £500 11s. Id. In connection with the crypt of St. Leonard the peculiar story of the Monk Jucundus is told. The story finds date in the fifteenth century, when the Abbey of St. Mary and that of St. Leonard's Priory were so close one to the other that their walls abutted.

About this time, Jucundus, who had assisted at the installation of a new Lord Mayor, and partaken of as many good things as he could conveniently partake, while in a state of despondency, consequent on the sumptuous repast in which he had shared, vowed that thenceforth he would eat only vegetables and bread, would drink only very small beer, and would sleep only six hours in the twenty-four. Thus he came to be a monk at St. Leonard's.

Time passed on, and the merry and well-proportioned man grew dispirited and thin. Again he made a vow-one debauch in the year, and then twelve months of beans and cabbage, of fasting and misery.

To York fair he accordingly resolved to go-to the shows, the dancing dogs, the spice stalls, the drinking booths. So, while his brothers were asleep, Jucundus marched off, with the porter's keys and a crown he had taken from his money box. And had he but known to terminate his pleasures all might have gone well; but he prolonged his "jollities" till his brothers had arisen and found him in