TOMB OF ARCHBISHOP WALTER DE GREY, YORK MINSTER.
Few English cathedrals exceed York Minster in dignity and massive grandeur. It is the largest Gothic church in the kingdom, and contains one of the biggest bells. "Old Peter," weighing ten and three-quarter tons, and struck regularly every day at noon. The minster is five hundred and twenty-four feet long, two hundred and twenty-two feet wide, ninety-nine feet high in the nave, and its towers rise about two hundred feet, the central tower being two hundred and twelve feet high. Its great charms are its windows, most of them containing the original stained glass, some of it nearly six hundred years old. The east window is the largest stained-glass window in the world, seventy-seven by thirty-two feet, and of exquisite design, being made by John Thornton of Coventry in 1408, who was paid one dollar per week wages and got a present of fifty dollars when he finished it. At the end of one transept is the Five Sisters Window, designed by five nuns, each planning a tall, narrow sash; and a beautiful rose-window is at the end of the other transept. High up in the nave the statue of St. George stands on one side defying the dragon, who pokes out his head on the other. Its tombs are among the minster's greatest curiosities. The effigy of Archbishop Walter de Grey, nearly six hundred and fifty years old, is stretched out in an open coffin lying under a superb canopy, and the corpse instead of being in the ground is overhead in the canopy. All the walls are full of memorial tablets—a few modern ones to English soldiers, but most of them ancient. Strange tombs are also set in the walls, bearing effigies of the dead. Sir William Gee stands up with his two wives, one on each side, and his six children—all eight statues having their hands folded. Others sit up like Punch and Judy, the women dressed in hoops, farthingales, and ruffs, the highest fashions of their age. Here is buried Wentworth, second Earl of Strafford, and scores of archbishops. The body of the famous Hotspur is entombed in the wall beneath the great east window. Burke's friend Saville is buried here, that statesman having written his epitaph. The outside of the minster has all sorts of grotesque protuberances, which, according to the ancient style of church-building, represent the evil spirits that religion casts out. Adjoining the north transept, and approached through a beautiful vestibule, is the chapter-house, an octagonal building sixty-three feet in diameter and surmounted by a pyramidal roof. Seven of its sides are large stained-glass windows, and the ceiling is a magnificent work.
York Castle occupied a peninsula between the Ouse and a branch called the Foss. Of this Clifford's Tower is about all of the ancient work that remains. It rises on its mound high above the surrounding buildings, and was the keep of the ancient fortress, constructed according to a remarkable and unique plan, consisting of parts of four cylinders running into each other. It dates from Edward I., but the entrance was built by Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, its governor under Charles I. The interior of the tower was afterwards burned, and George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, who was imprisoned there, planted a walnut tree within the tower which is still growing. It was in the keep of the Norman castle, which this tower replaced, that the massacre of the Jews, which grew out of race-jealousy at their great wealth, occurred in 1190. On March 16th the house of Benet, the leading Jew in York, was sacked by a mob and his wife and children murdered. Five hundred of his countrymen then sought refuge in the castle, and those who remained outside were killed. The mob besieged the castle, led by a hermit from the neighborhood "famed for zeal and holiness," who was clothed in white robes, and each morning celebrated mass and inflamed the fury of the besiegers by his preaching. At last he ventured too near the walls, and was brained by a stone. Battering-rams were then brought up, and a night's carouse was indulged in before the work of knocking down the castle began. Within was a different scene: the Jews were without food or hope. An aged rabbi, who had come as a missionary from the East, and was venerated almost as a prophet, exhorted his brethren to render up freely their lives to God rather than await death at the enemy's hands. Nearly all decided to follow his counsel; they fired the castle, destroyed their property, killed their wives and children, and then turned their swords upon themselves. Day broke, and the small remnant who dared not die called from the walls of the blazing castle that they were anxious for baptism and "the faith and peace of Christ." They were promised everything, opened the gates, and were all massacred. In later years York Castle has enclosed some well-known prisoners, among them Eugene Aram, and Dick Turpin, who was hanged there. The York elections and mass-meetings are held in the courtyard.
Here Wilberforce, who long represented York in Parliament, spoke in 1784, when Boswell wrote of him: "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table, but as I listened he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale." The York streets are full of old houses, many with porches and overhanging fronts. One of the most curious rows is the Shambles, on a narrow street and dating from the fourteenth century. A little way out of town is the village of Holgate, which was the residence of Lindley Murray the grammarian. Guy Fawkes is said to have been a native of York, and this strange and antique old city, we are also credibly assured, was in 1632 the birthplace of Robinson Crusoe.