CONCLUSION
Life in York in the fifteenth century was active. Trade, home and
continental, was flourishing. Building operations were in hand; work
was always proceeding at the Minster or at one or other of the
religious houses and churches. There were so many social elements
established in and visiting York that something of interest was always
taking place. Entertainments were plentiful and pageants were as well
produced in York as anywhere in the kingdom. The city enjoyed a
particularly large measure of local government. Its reputation was
great. According to contemporary standards it was a fine prosperous
city, one that contained resplendent ecclesiastical buildings that
were second to none. In short, it was a "full nobill cite."
Although the present city looks, in parts, more typically mediæval
than modern, York to-day forms a very great contrast with the
fifteenth-century city. We are separated from the fifteenth century by
the Renaissance, the Reformation, and Tudor England, by the Civil War
and the Restoration, by the "age of prose and reason," the keen-minded
and rough-mannered eighteenth century, by the Industrial Revolution,
and by that second Renaissance, the Victorian Age, during which the
amenities of daily life were revolutionised. Radical changes are to be
seen, for example, in the style of architecture, the mode of
transmission of news, the methods of transport, the form of municipal
government, the maintenance of the public peace, and in social
relationships, more particularly with regard to industry and commerce
and the parts played by employer and employed. The number of
inhabitants to-day is about six times that of the mediæval city. The
contrast, which is so great in most ways as to be quite obvious, is an
interesting and profitable study, but it might have been founded on
more precise data, for, great as is the amount of valuable material
that York can supply concerning its history, investigation shows how
much greater that amount would have been had the city and its rulers
during the last century or two realised the value of the accumulated
original historical riches that it contained.
Whereas the moderns obliterated practically all they came against,
fortunately the earlier people were content to make no change beyond
what was immediately necessary. Hence the survival of material most
valuable to the historian and archæologist. York, as it is to-day, is
a city marvellously rich in survivals of past ages. It is also, as a
result especially of the nineteenth century, a city of destruction.
While we may regret but not repine at the disappearance of much of
interest and value as the result of progress, yet wanton, ruthless
destruction, such as has taken place within the last century, deserves
the sternest denunciation. In spite of its being, in consequence, a
"city of destruction," York is a store-house of original material for
the history of England. Its records are in earth, stone, brick, wood,
plaster, bone, and coin-metal; on parchment, paper, and glass; above
the ground and below it--everywhere and in every form. This wealth of
historical material, connected with practically every period of our
national history, is a priceless possession and one that is not yet
exhausted.
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