Roger de Pont l’Évêque (1154-1181) rebuilt the choir.
About this time York acquired its patron saint, William Fitzherbert, great-grandson of the Conqueror, who became Bishop of York in 1143. Expelled from office in 1147, he was restored in 1153. On his return he performed a miracle and died almost immediately afterwards, so suddenly, in fact, that he was thought to have been poisoned out of the holy chalice. The monks buried him in the Cathedral. His tomb attracted pilgrims because of the marvellous cures. St. William was canonised in 1284; and in that year his relics were translated from the nave to the choir. Edward I. and Queen Eleanor were present and gave jewels to the shrine, which was placed at the eastern end of the nave under a huge canopy. St. William’s head was preserved in a silver reliquary.
There is now no Norman work visible in York Minster except in the crypt and in parts of the nave and tower. In 1200, however, the nave, choir, towers, and transepts were Norman. About 1230 it was decided to rebuild the transepts on a big scale. Walter de Grey (1216-1265) began the south transept (Early English); and he lies there under an arch, in a splendid tomb. John Romeyn, treasurer of York, built the north transept and also an Early English tower to replace the Early Norman tower. His son, John Romeyn, also archbishop from 1286 to 1296, began the new nave.
John of Thorsby (1352-1373) began the present choir in 1361. The work was started at the extreme east end. Thorsby was a Yorkshireman, who
“had the further development of the glories of the Minster thoroughly at heart. At once he sacrificed his palace at Sherburn to provide materials for an appropriate Lady-Chapel, gave successive munificent donations of £100 at each of the great festivals of the Christian year, and called on clergy and laity alike to submit cheerfully to stringent self-denial to supply the funds.
“During his tenure of office of twenty-three years the Lady-Chapel was completed, a chaste and dignified specimen of early Perpendicular style, into which the Decorated gradually blended after the year 1360, and unique in its glorious east window, seventy-eight feet high and thirty-three feet wide, still the largest painted window in the world, enriched with its double mullions, which give such strength and lightness to its graceful proportions, and with its elaborate glass executed by Thornton of Coventry, at the beginning of the following century. But Roger’s choir, which was still standing, must now have looked sadly dwarfed between the lofty Lady-Chapel and the tower and transepts.”—(P.-C.)
Edward I. made York his capital during the war with Scotland, to the expense of which the archbishop and clergy gave one-fifth of their income. Parliament assembled there in 1318. The archbishops were great politicians and intriguers, now plotting against the king and now supporting him; great military leaders, sometimes defeated, like Melton at Myton-on-Swale, where he led 10,000 men against the Scots, or victorious, like William La Zouche (1342-1352) at Neville’s Cross near Durham; and nearly always great builders and benefactors of the Cathedral. Richard Scrope’s rebellion is famous. Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Lichfield before he became Bishop of York in 1398, Scrope was advanced by Richard II. In 1405 he headed a rebellion and was captured. The Chief Justice refused to try him. He was taken to his own palace at Bishopthorpe, condemned to death and beheaded near York in 1405. Buried in the Minster, thousands flocked to his tomb in the north-choir-aisle. Naturally enough the king who had murdered him tried to check the stream of offerings; but Scrope’s tomb became more popular than that of St. William. Scrope was a Yorkshireman, the son of Lord Scrope, of Masham, and the Scropes had a chantry in the chapel of St. Stephen, now destroyed.
The great central tower was erected in 1400-1423 and the church was re-consecrated on July 3, 1472; and so, at the close of the Fifteenth Century, York Minster existed as we see it: save for two fires (1829 and 1840) and a judicious repairing and restoration in 1871, the great Minster has not been changed.
When Henry VIII. disestablished the monasteries there were many outbreaks in York, and the famous “Pilgrimage of Grace” (1536) was much excited by the seizure of St. William’s head, still a beloved relic of the Cathedral. Lee, then archbishop, was taken by the rebels and forced to support them. Before this, however, Thomas Wolsey had been arrested at Cawood. Though Archbishop (1514-1530), it is said that he was never at York.
When York was besieged by the Parliamentarians in 1644, Fairfax restrained his soldiers to some degree, which explains why so much of the ancient glass is left. Thomas Mace’s description of the siege, however, shows how little respect the army really had for the Minster: