Not only at the Dissolution, but far later, this monastery was horribly ill-treated. Its stones have built a palace and a prison; they have been used for mending, and have been made into quicklime. The palace they built has to a great extent vanished, but the Tudor house that stands near Bootham Bar—the red house with the arms of James I. over the door—is either actually a part of it or was rebuilt from its ruins. It was in that house that Strafford lived when he was President of the Council of the North; both James I. and Charles I. stayed in it when they came to York; and it was probably there that Henrietta Maria lived for three months when she brought materials of war to the city.
There are other stones of St. Mary's still to be seen, by which we may partly guess the glory that has departed. There are countless numbers of them in this garden; every flower-bed is bordered with them, and the lower part of the guesthouse, down there across the grass, is literally stacked with statues and mouldings and bosses of wonderful richness. This Hospitium is used as a museum. It is a little bewildering, with its mingled associations of mediæval monks and Roman matrons. Here are all the things that we are accustomed to see in collections of Roman relics—pottery, tiles, jewellery, everything from a tesselated pavement to a circus ticket. One thing there is, however, to which we are not accustomed; a thing whose interest is rather painful, if not morbid; a coil of a woman's hair, as bright and brown as if it had been laid in its stone coffin only yesterday. The hair of poor Flavia or Placida would be better buried, I think.
BOOTHAM BAR, YORK.
The prison that was built from the stones of St. Mary's Abbey is on the site of William the Conqueror's castle. It is still called the Castle, but there is nothing left of the fortress except one round grey tower, standing alone on a little hill. Its walls have been concerned with many great deeds; much valour has defended it and much besieged it; much English History has been made in the shadow of it. Yet Clifford's Tower is generally remembered chiefly in connection with the wild scene of horror that took place here at the time of Richard I.'s coronation, when the Jews of York rushed to the castle for shelter, with their ducats and their daughters, and were besieged by the mob. Here, where the steps wind up between the tidy laurels, the mad crowd yelled and battered on the walls, while the White Friar who led them shrieked: "Down with the enemies of Christ!" Here within the tower, where the grass is strewn with exquisite fragments of Gothic ornament—probably from St. Mary's—the starving Jews were huddled with their families till they grew desperate. They killed their wives and children, and then they killed themselves. A few surrendered, begging for baptism, converted by these strange methods; but they were allowed no baptism but that of blood.
As we drive slowly through the streets of York, peering now at some carved archway, now at some time-worn coat-of-arms, passing here under the overhanging eaves of St. William's College, or there under the lantern tower of St. Helen's, we feel that the life of the past is still existing in this city, in some strange astral way, hidden within the life of the present. The past is not merely a picturesque memory here. Even if we had never heard the magic name of York, I think we should feel that her streets were crowded with figures we could not see.
STREET IN YORK.