Part 3
On the northern side is the octagonal chapter house with its five-light windows between angle buttresses. A parapet surrounds the pyramidical roof; a gargoyle depicts a bishop, in a boat, giving his benediction. The vestibule was built after the chapter house, to connect it with the church. The whole of the northern elevation is well seen from the Deanery Gardens. It is difficult to realize that the whole was in ruins in the first half of the last century. The choir was fired by a lunatic in 1829, and the nave was destroyed by fire in 1840 owing to the carelessness of a workman. The central tower, fortunately, proved a barrier to the flames on both occasions by preventing their spreading to the other part of the building.
The Minster is generally entered by the south transept. Spaciousness is the leading feature within. The great dimensions of the transepts with the lofty lantern in the centre and the “Five Sisters” at the northern end, filled in with ancient brownish-green glass, combine to make this the finest internal view. The resemblance of the glass to tapestry has given rise to a tradition that five maiden sisters worked the design in tapestry. This pretty legend forms the subject of a story related by Dickens in _Nicholas Nickleby_.
The view westward along the nave is a fine one. The eight bays are emphasized by the vaulting shafts which rise directly from the floor, whilst the end is filled with arcading in which is set the entrance and thereover an eight-light window with beautiful flowing tracery. The beauty of the nave owes much to the fourteenth-century glass which fills the aisle and clerestory windows. A most brilliant scene is produced when the sun shines through these windows. The view from the western end embraces the whole length of the Minster: in the centre the tower arches support the lantern and beyond stretches the long vaulted roof over the organ and altar-screen to the east end with its large magnificent window. The view in the choir looking eastward with the canopied stalls, the open traceried altar-screen, backed by the great window, which rises to the lofty vaulting, is one of striking beauty.
The chapter house is octagonal and without a single column to support the vaulting. Each bay, excepting the entrance, consists of six canopied stalls under a lofty window. The glass in the tracery is adorned with shields bearing the arms of King Edward I and of members of his Court. The windows have alternately diapered and subject panels. The subjects are taken from the Bible or from the lives of saints. The carving on the stalls is exquisite and consists of figures, heads, and foliage. The latter is treated “naturally”, as is the diaper on the glass. The ironwork on the doors consists of scrolls cut into leafage and flowers and finished at the top in zoomorphic figures. A Latin verse painted on the wall testifies “As the rose is the flower of flowers, so is this the house of houses”.
There are thirty canons, each having a seat in the choir and chapter house. The dignitaries are the dean, precentor, sub-dean, chancellor, succentor, and the four residentiary canons. Collectively they are known as “The Dean and Chapter of York”. Formerly each canon was provided with an assistant priest, termed a vicar-choral. The original number of thirty-six vicars-choral has been reduced to five. There was also a large number of chantry priests.
The choir entrance is set in the screen, amidst figures of the kings of England from William I to Henry VI. The western end of the choir is occupied by canopied stalls, terminated on the north side by the pulpit, and on the south side by the _cathedra_ of the Archbishop. The high altar formerly stood a bay westward from the glazed screen, being set between the choir transept windows, which depict events in the lives of the two great northern saints, Cuthbert and William. Behind the high altar was a large painted and gilded reredos, with a door at each side, opening to the sacristy, where the bones of St. William were preserved in a portable shrine. The head of the saint was kept in a reliquary of silver gilt covered with jewels.
The Lady Chapel consists of the four eastern bays. Over the altar is the great window--the largest one in the world containing its original glazing. The contract for the glazing is dated 10 December, 1405, and is made between the Dean and Chapter and John Thornton of Coventry, who undertook to portray with his own hand the histories, images, and other things to be painted on it, and to provide glass, lead, and workmen at the expense of the Chapter and to finish it within three years. Thornton was to receive for every week wherein he should work in his art four shillings and each year five pounds, and after the work was completed ten pounds as a reward. The window depicts scenes from the Creation to the death of Absalom and from the Revelation of St. John.
The tomb of Archbishop Scrope is on the north side of the altar in the Lady Chapel. This Archbishop joined the insurrection against Henry IV, and was beheaded in a field on Bishopthorpe Road. Four of the vicars-choral conveyed the body to the Minster and buried it in the chapel of St. Stephen. Scrope was generally regarded as a martyr.
In the vestry is the Horn of Ulphus, formed from an elephant’s tusk, the mouth of which is encircled by a carved band of oriental design. Shortly before the Norman Conquest, Ulph, son of Thorold, lord of a great part of eastern Yorkshire, laid this horn on the altar in token that he bestowed certain lands on the Minster. There are also an ancient coronation chair, the mazer bowl of Archbishop Scrope inscribed: “+Recharde arche beschope Scrope grantis on to alle that drinkis of this cope XLti dayis to pardune”, a silver pastoral staff bearing the arms of Catherine of Braganza, taken by the Earl of Danby from James Smith, Bishop of Callipolis, whilst walking in procession to the Minster to assume the office of vicar-apostolic of the Northern District, to which he had been appointed by the Pope. Adjoining the vestry is the chapel of Archbishop Zouche, which contains a picturesque mediaeval well. Near the entrance to the crypt are two fine quadrant cope chests covered with gracefully curved ironwork.
Amongst the monuments in the Minster is an effigy of Prince William of Hatfield, the second son of Edward III. The others are principally of archbishops. The tomb of Walter de Gray consists of a bearded effigy on a slab under a solid canopy supported by shafts. That of William Greenfield is a table tomb bearing a brass on which he is depicted. Above is a roofed canopy surmounted by a figure of the archbishop. On a table tomb is a recumbent effigy of Archbishop Savage under a panelled, arched canopy. Henry Bowet was buried in a tomb surmounted by a lofty canopy. That of John Dolben, who bore the Royalist standard at Marston Moor, is figured in white marble. The effigy reclines on a high base. Treasurer Haxey’s memorial represents a wasted corpse in a winding sheet, worked in stone; an iron trellis surrounds it, supporting a black marble slab on which minster dues used to be paid. In the north transept is a memorial window to Sir Frank Lockwood, M.P. for York. The inscription below is by Lord Rosebery. In the south transept is a beautiful monument to the late Dean Duncombe. The monument to the wife of Archbishop Matthews records she was first married to a son of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury.
“She was a woman of exemplary wisdom, gravity, piety, bounty, and indeed in other virtues not only above her sex, but the times. One excellent act of her, first derived upon this church, and through it flowing upon the country, deserves to live as long as the church itself. The library of the deceased archbishop, consisting of above three thousand books, she gave it entirely to the public use of this church. A rare example that so great care to advance learning should lodge in a woman’s breast! but it was the less wonder in her because she was kin to so much learning.”
She was the daughter of a bishop, and one of four sisters all of whom married bishops.
The Minster Close is bounded on two sides by the city walls. At Westminster on 18 May, 1285, Edward I granted a
“License for the Dean and Chapter of St. Peter’s, York, to enclose the churchyard and precinct of their church with a stone wall twelve feet high all round, for the prevention of nocturnal incursions of thieves in the streets and lanes in the said precinct,
and of night wanderers committing homicides and other evil there: the said wall to be provided with competent gates and posterns, which are to be left open from dawn till night.”
These walls and three gateways have been destroyed. On the northern side of the close stood the Archbishop’s palace, of which a portion of the fine late Norman arcade exists. The Archbishop’s chapel was built in the early part of the thirteenth century, and has examples both of the round and pointed arch. The chapel and its undercroft are now used as the Minster Library. The prebendal house of Stillington occupied the site of the present Deanery. Eastward is the Treasurer’s house, which Mr. Frank Green has restored for use as his residence. The Prince and Princess of Wales (King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) and Princess Victoria occupied the Treasurer’s house during their visit to York in 1897. Southwards stood other prebendal houses and the old Deanery. The house which the Prior of Hexham held in virtue of his prebend of Salton afterwards became the home of the chantry priests and was known as St. William’s College. The buildings surround a courtyard, the lower story is of stone, and the upper a projecting half-timbered one. When King Charles fled from London to his beloved city of York, he stayed in Sir Arthur Ingram’s house, formerly the palace, and the King’s son on his arrival was created Duke of York as a compliment to the city. On St. George’s Day, 1642, a meeting of the Knights of the Garter was held in the chapter house. The royal press was established in St. William’s College. The college has been restored, and is now used for the meetings of the Houses of Convocation of the Northern Province.
THE ABBEY GROUNDS
The charming abbey grounds contain within their precincts historic monuments and relics of the greatest interest. An angle-tower, with a portion of the wall that surrounded Roman York, recalls the struggle of the Brigantes with the armour-clad legionaries. Tacitus recounts how Caractacus, the gallant Silurian chief, after his defeat, sought the protection of Cartismandua, the Queen of the Brigantes, and how basely she betrayed him. The Romans, after their conquest of York, garrisoned the city with the Ninth Legion, and subsequently built a walled-in rectangular fort with angle towers and central gateways. The Emperor Hadrian sent over the Sixth Legion to replace the Ninth at York, and afterwards he came over in person to superintend the building of a wall from the Tyne to the Solway Firth. Ninety years later the Emperor Septimius Severus, with his sons Caracalla and Geta, came to York on his way to repel the Caledonians, who had broken through the Wall. The campaign lasted two years, during which period the Imperial court was placed at York, where Papinianus the great jurist administered the Roman law. The Emperor died at York and his remains were cremated on a hill, thenceforth known as Severus Hill. His ashes were placed in an urn and conveyed by his sons to Rome. About a century later the Emperor Constantius Chlorus came over to quell a rising in the north. He died at York, and his son Constantine was proclaimed his successor. The latter soon afterwards left York to enter on that famous career which has earned him the title of the Great.
The wall enclosing the York fort, built by Roman masons, is four and a half feet thick, consisting of lime-concrete faced on both sides with narrow courses of small ashlar limestone, and having a band of red tiles about the middle of its height. The angle-tower is ten-sided and from the number of its angles is known as the Multangular Tower. The preservation of the wall and tower is owing to the fact that the mediaeval architects adopted the same line for their walls. On the northern side of the tower, however, the mediaeval wall is placed some five feet beyond the Roman one.
Within the Roman tower and wall are the remains of St. Leonard’s, formerly St. Peter’s, Hospital. The hospital was founded by King Athelstan on his return to York from the glorious victory he had achieved at Brunnanburh. He met in the Minster a number of religious people called Coli Dei or Culdees, devoted
to works of charity. The value of their work being greatly hindered for want of funds, Athelstan granted to God, St. Peter, and the Culdees, a piece of crown land on which they might erect a hospital, and for its endowment he granted a thrave of corn from every plough going in the province of York. The land given to the hospital is that on which the Theatre Royal now stands. The hospital belonged to the Minster, and was rebuilt by the first Norman Archbishop, who induced the Conqueror to confirm the gift of thraves of corn, and also to add more land. The cloister or undercroft of the hospital was divided into aisles by short columns and covered with groined vaulting. King Stephen built a church for the hospital on that part of their close adjoining the king’s street. The church was dedicated to St. Leonard, and he also changed the name of the hospital from St. Peter’s to St. Leonard’s. From this time, under royal patronage, the hospital became independent of the Minster. On the banks of the river was a staith appropriated to the hospital.
New buildings arose. All that remains of these are a long vaulted gateway having on the north cloisters of the same length, now three aisles but formerly five, two of which are provided with a large fireplace, which has the back formed of thin tiles arranged herring-bonewise. Above were the wards of the infirmary, opening at the east end to the chapel, under which is a vaulted chamber.
The occupants in 1280 numbered nearly 400. In the infirmary were 229 men and women with 2 washerwomen and 7 servants, in the orphanage 23 boys with a woman caretaker. There were 8 chaplains, 11 lay brethren, 3 secular chaplains, and a sub-deacon, 17 sisters, 19 choir boys, and a master of the song school, a schoolmaster, and 67 servants. There was a large distribution of alms at the gate of this king’s almshouse of St. Leonard, and a dinner was given every Sunday for each prisoner in the castle.
The hospital was independent of the Archbishop, and only subject to the king or his deputies. The great Walter Langton, when master in 1294, ordered each chaplain a seat and desk in the cloister. In 1344 there were, amongst others, in the hospital a clerk of the church, a cooper, 3 bakers, 2 brewers, 2 smiths, 3 carters, a miller, a swineherd, 12 boatmen, a ferrywoman, 2 valets, a groom, a cellarer, a clerk of the exchequer, an auditor, and a seneschal. There was plenty of work for all in such a large establishment. There were the master, brethren, and sisters to wait on, the sick and needy to attend to, the destitute to relieve at the gates, whilst a few in their own homes had a corrody in the shape of food or money. The inmates were well provided for; the king’s almsmen received the same fare as the chaplains, namely, a loaf of white bread and a gallon of ale of the better quality, flesh and fish for dinner and supper, also a loaf and a gallon of ale of the second quality. During the year, 565 stones of cheese and 60 stones of butter were consumed. In the year 1469 there were in the hospital the master, 13 brethren, 4 secular priests, 8 sisters, 30 choristers, 2 schoolmasters, 6 servitors, and 206 beadmen. Seventy years later this useful hospital was dissolved, Dr. Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon and a member of the Privy Council being then master. He became parson of Sessay Church where he died eleven years later. He is commemorated by a fine brass engraved with his effigy.
A story tells how once a miracle was wrought in St. Leonard’s Hospital. The hero of the tale, so far from being a saint was very much a sinner. After a not too reputable secular career, he was persuaded to become a religious. The change in his life was more apparent than real, for, it seems, when fair-time came round, he made up his mind to join, as on many a previous occasion, in the festivities of the season. Taking advantage of the after-dinner sleepiness of the porter, and seizing the latter worthy’s keys, Brother Jucundus, for that is the hero’s name, made his exit, contemptuous of discipline.
Whether it was the unusually severe life he had lately been leading, is not known, but it appears that by the evening the brother’s ideas were, as a result of his unwisely frequent potations, in quite a nebulous state.
Meanwhile, attention having been directed to the absence of Jucundus from the monastery, two brothers were deputed with orders to discover his whereabouts and to rescue him. Eventually they conveyed their erring comrade home in a wheelbarrow.
Such a breach of discipline was a most serious offence; indeed, Jucundus was sentenced to be walled up alive. This unpleasant process was actually carried out, and our friend thought that he had looked his last upon the sun.
Mured up thus unkindly, he was soon sobered, and beginning to kick against the walls, was surprised that the stones gave way under the pressure he applied to them. He soon had worked a big enough hole (not, of course, in the wall which Justice had just built in order to immure him) to allow his passage.
He now found himself in the adjoining Abbey of St. Mary, and his only hope of safety lay in his passing as one of the regular inmates of that establishment. He, too, therefore subjected himself to the Rule of Silence, and acquiring in a remarkably short space
the esteem of his new brothers, was appointed cellarer.
Alas! after a year, temptation was too much for him. He made an unworthy use of his office and underwent a second sentence for riotous misconduct. He was carried by the unsuspecting monks to the place where he had been before immured and was left to his fate. He was still under his drunken delusion singing merrily, to be heard by the reverend brothers of St. Leonard’s. The news of Jucundus’s continued existence was carried to his superior, who, recognizing his former subject’s voice, ordered the cell to be opened and knelt in awe before the revivified but still merry Jucundus.
Within and around St. Leonard’s gateway are collected a number of Roman stone coffins which have been found in York. One coffin in particular is of more than usual interest, for it is believed to be connected with a Christian burial. Evidences of Christianity during the Roman occupation of York are rare. A record exists that Eborius, Bishop of York, was present at the Council of Arles in 314. The discovery of this coffin tends to confirm this statement, by showing that there were Christians in York amongst its Roman inhabitants. In this Roman stone coffin were found a glass jug and a disk--which are considered to be the cruet and paten of the viaticum--and a bone tablet carved with a Latin inscription “SOROR AVE VIVAS IN DEO”, which is rendered in English, “Sister, hail, mayest thou live in God”.
After the departure of the Romans, the pagan Anglians drove the Christians out of the district to the westward, and when the Anglians in York had themselves embraced Christianity, they suffered the like from the Danish invaders. Subsequently the Danes embraced Christianity, and adjoining the abbey grounds is the church founded by the conqueror of Macbeth, Jarl Siward, to the Norwegian sainted King Olaf. Siward was Earl of Northumbria and a great warrior. On his deathbed he commanded his attendants to put on him his armour, and thus fully equipped, he died.
Soon after the Norman Conquest, the church of St. Olave, with four acres adjoining, was given by the Earl of Richmond to Stephen of Whitby to found a Benedictine monastery. The site, however, was church property, and the Archbishop only relinquished it when William II gave him an equivalent. King Rufus laid the foundation stone of the abbey church, which was dedicated to St. Mary. The foundations of the eastern part of this church have been laid bare and show the apsidal terminations.
The introduction into England of the Cistercian order, with their stricter rule of conduct, led some of the monks of St. Mary’s to attempt a raising of the standard of discipline in their own monastery. The other monks, however, resented their interference. The reformers, filled with admiration of the accounts they heard of the holy lives led by the inmates of the Cistercian house of Rievaulx, were now anxious to found a colony of that order and communicated their desire to the Abbot of St. Mary’s, who, however, refused to allow them to leave, as it would bring discredit on his abbey. The reformers included the prior, sub-prior, sacrist, almoner, and precentor. The prior consulted the Archbishop, who decided to hold a visitation at the abbey.
Archbishop Thurstan on the day appointed rode to the abbey gatehouse attended by the Archdeacon of York, the Minster Treasurer (afterwards St. William), the Prior of Guisborough, and the Master of St. Leonard’s Hospital. Leaving their horses at the gateway, they walked to the chapter house and were received by the abbot, who protested against anyone entering but the Archbishop and his clerks. The Archbishop remonstrated, but the monks who had filled the chapter house, considering it was a Cistercian attack on their own order, created an uproar by hooting and screaming and prevented the Archbishop being heard; he, however, in a lull shouted, “I place the Abbey under an interdict.” “Interdict it for a hundred years,” exclaimed one of the monks, and then arose the cry of “Catch them!” The Archbishop with his retinue and the thirteen reformers were alarmed and took refuge in the church, and after a time were permitted to leave the abbey.
The Archbishop befriended the outcasts and subsequently gave them a plot of ground, near his manor at Ripon, on which they founded the Cistercian Abbey of Fountains.
Simon of Warwick became Abbot of St. Mary’s in 1259, and placed it in greater security from the attacks by the citizens, between whom and the monks were often quarrels, owing to the privileges claimed by the abbey. The monastery, being just outside the city, was always in danger from raiding expeditions of the Scots, so in the year 1266 the abbot had licence from the king to wall in the abbey close.