A glance over the city to-day from the Walls or the top of a church tower emphasises the dominance of the cathedral over the whole city. The castle keep (Clifford's Tower) is still an important feature in the view. There were as rivals neither factories nor great commercial offices in the fifteenth-century city.
St. Clement's Nunnery and six churches, of which three were not far from Walmgate Bar and one was near Monk Bar, were actually outside the city walls.
Without the city and the cultivated land near by most of the country consisted of great stretches of forest, [1] i.e. wood, marsh, moor, waste-land. This surrounding forest-land was crossed by the few high-roads leading to and from the city, which they entered through the Bars. The country was not all wild and tenantless, for here and there, scattered about, were baronial castles and estates, and monastic houses and lands, all of which had their farming. In the forests there were villages each consisting of a few houses grouped together for common security, where lived minor officials and men working in the forest. The great Forest of Galtres, to the north of York, was a royal domain.
In the fifteenth century the population of York, the greatest city of the north, was about 14,000. Newcastle was the next greatest, being one of the ten or twelve leading cities of mediæval England which had a total population of about 2½ millions. The inhabitants of York registered in 1911 numbered 83,802.
Within the city there was a number of sub-entities, each self-contained and definitely marked off, often by enclosing, embattled walls. Such was the Minster, which stood within its close. The Liberty of the Minster of St. Peter included the parts of the city immediately round the Minster, the Archbishop's Palace, and the Bedern (a small district in the city where some of the Minster clergy lived collegiately), and groups of houses and odd dwellings scattered throughout other parts of the city and the county and elsewhere. Individual monasteries formed further such sub-entities; for instance St. Mary's Abbey, which was actually outside the city walls, but within its own defensive walls; the Franciscan Friary near the Castle; Holy Trinity Priory; the royal Hospital of St. Leonard. The Castle, which obviously had to be enclosed and capable of maintaining and enduring isolation, was independent of the city. Each of these ecclesiastical institutions enjoyed a large measure of freedom from the rule of the municipal authorities. The city was also subdivided into parishes, which, of course, were not enclosed by walls. The parish boundaries, although less well defined than those of the areas above mentioned, were none the less distinctly marked.
B. Streets [ToC]
Streets, as we use the word to-day, were quite few in number. They were usually called gates and were mostly continuations of the great high-roads that came into and through the city, after crossing the wild country that covered most of northern England, a desert in which a city was an oasis and a sanctuary. In the lofty and graceful open lantern-tower of All Saints, Pavement, a lamp was hung to guide belated travellers to the safety and hospitality that obtained within the city walls. For the same purpose a bell was rung at St. Michael's, Ouse Bridge.
There were a few buildings along the high-roads just outside the great entrances, the Bars. Besides the few hovels and huts there were hospitals for travellers. There were four hospitals for lepers, the most wretched of all the sufferers from mediæval lack of cleanliness.
Most of the streets were mere alleys, passages between houses and groups of buildings. They were very narrow and often the sky could hardly be seen from them because of the overhanging upper storeys of the buildings along each side. Goods in the Middle Ages and right down to the nineteenth century were carried in towns by hand. Carriages and waggons and carts were not very numerous and would have no need to proceed beyond the main streets and the open squares. If men must journey off their own feet, they rode horses. Pack-horses were used regularly to carry goods, where nowadays a horse or, more probably, a steam or motor engine would easily pull the goods conveniently placed on a cart or lorry.
The paving of rough cobbles and ample mud was distinctly poor. There was no adequate drainage; in fact there was very little attempt at any beyond the provision of gutters down the middle or at the sides of the streets. There were no regular street lights, and pavements, when they existed, were too meagre to be of much use to pedestrians.