Ptolemy, the Alexandrian geographer of the 2nd century, writes also of Eburacum as a Roman station, making special mention of its prosperity in trade. The old Brigantine town offered every facility for commerce, the river Ouse affording easy navigation to the principal towns in the north. The military position was practically impregnable in those days of hand-to-hand warfare, so we read that a very short time after their arrival the energetic Romans began to build fortifications, traces of which can still be seen in the shape of towers and walls. Hadrian visited York in 78 A.D. as did also Severus in 280. About this time the name Eburacum was changed by Greek influence to Eboracum. Until the withdrawal of Cæsar’s legions in the 5th century, York assumed all the magnificence and beauty of a Roman city, and attained to the very height of its prosperity. After the departure of the Romans comes an obscure and misty period in the history of the city. It was taken possession of by the English, and in 627, during the reign of Edwin, king of Northumbria, the building of the Minster was begun.
York at this time was known as Eoferwic. Edwin was baptized into the Christian faith through the influence of his wife Ethelburga, daughter of the Christian king of Kent, and of Paulinus, who had accompanied Ethelburga to the North.
“But, to remote Northumbria’s royal hall,
Where thoughtful Edwin, tutored in the school
Of sorrow still maintains a heathen rule,
Who comes with functions apostolical?
Mark him, of shoulders curved, and stature tall,
Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek,
His prominent features like an eagle’s beak;
A man whose aspect doth at once appal,
And strike with reverence. The monarch leans
Towards the truth this delegate propounds,
Repeatedly his own deep mind he sounds
With careful hesitation—then convenes
A synod of his councillors;—give ear,
And what a pensive sage doth utter hear!
‘Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty king!
That, stealing in while by the fire you sit
Housed with rejoicing friends, is seen to flit
Safe from the storm, in comfort tarrying.
Here did it enter—there, on hasty wing
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such that transient thing,
The human soul; not utterly unknown
While in the body lodged her warm abode;
But from what world she came, what woe or weal
On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;
This mystery if the stranger can reveal
His be a welcome cordially bestowed!’
Prompt transformation works the novel lore;
The council closed, the priest in full career
Rides forth, an armoured man, and hurls a spear
To desecrate the fane which heretofore
He served in folly,—Woden falls and Thor
Is overturned; the mace in battle heaved
(So might they dream) till victory was achieved,
Drops, and the God himself is seen no more.
Temple and altars sink, to hide their shame
Amid oblivious weeds? O ‘come to me,
Ye heavy laden!’ such the inviting voice
Heard near fresh streams,—and thousands, who rejoice
In the new rite—a pledge of sanctity,
Shall, by regenerate life, the promise claim.”
Wordsworth.
Edwin was dispossessed of his kingdom by Penda, King of the Mercians, but the cause of Christianity was furthered by Penda’s successor, Oswy, with whose sanction Albert, Archbishop of York, rebuilt the Minster in the highest Saxon style (767-81). Between the times of the Angle and Norman invasions, York was a scene more or less of bloodshed and warfare. Immediately after the Norman invasion, the city was captured by the Danes, who changed the name once more to Jorvik. William the Conqueror, hearing of the invasion, swore terrible vengeance on the North, and after buying off the Danes swept the country with ruin and havoc—his soldiers leaving scarcely a house standing between York and the Tees. In the Doomsday book the city is written Euerwic, from which comes the modern name York.
During the reigns of King William II. and Henry I. St Leonard’s Hospital, founded some centuries before, was granted many privileges and endowments. This institution assumed greater proportions in the following reign, eventually becoming an important religious house in the North. At the time of the Dissolution it had an annual revenue of over £1600.
When the dread fiat went forth for the destruction of monastic houses, there were in York alone 128 ecclesiastical establishments, including forty-one parish churches and nine religious houses. York seemed destined to be a centre of strife, for not only in the times of the Plantagenets, Tudors, Lancastrians and Yorkists, but also in that of the Stuarts, the city was doomed to suffer perpetual strivings within its walls. A staunch Royalist stronghold during the Civil War, and though captured by Fairfax and the parliamentary troops after the battle of Marston Moor, York was able to join the national rejoicings when Charles II. came to his own again. After the Stuarts the city enjoyed comparative peace under William and Mary and the Hanoverians.
Thanks to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, who in 1827 bought the land in which the ruins of the Abbey stand, many precious fragments of the beautiful building have been unearthed and collected from all parts of York. Stones belonging to it have been found in every part of the city, and of greater interest to many than classical remains are the many valuable shards of the mediæval past preserved together with Roman tombs and heathen altars in the hospitium—a building of peculiar appearance supposed to have been occupied by casual visitors to the abbey. Among many statues is that most exquisite fragment of Our Lady and the Holy Child. There are also carved bosses, caps, Anglo-Norman doors and lintels belonging to the ancient chapter-house, and many other perfect specimens of a fully developed art. When we realise that in the undercroft of the hospitium, amongst coal dust from the adjacent railway, lie, piled up in hopeless chaos, types of the best English architectural work, we are reminded again of the irretrievable loss to the nation from the overwhelming destruction that came upon England, and York in particular, in the ruin of the most beautiful church in the county—one boasting the highest work accomplished by Christian workmen. It has been noticed that many of the pieces of exquisite sculpture were carefully laid by the spoilers’ hands in places where they would be least likely to suffer from exposure. For this we must indeed be grateful to those men who were compelled to obey the dread mandates of Henry VIII., and who deserve all honour for their evident heartfelt appreciation of the beauty that they were forced to destroy.