[Illustration: THE MULTANGULAR TOWER AND ST. MARY'S ABBEY.]
From the high hills in the neighborhood of Fountains Dale there is a
magnificent view over the plain of York, and we will now proceed down
the valley of the Ouse to the venerable city that the Romans called
Eboracum, and which is the capital of a county exceeding in extent many
kingdoms and principalities of Europe. This ancient British stronghold
has given its name to the metropolis of the New World, but the modern
Babylon on the Hudson has far outstripped the little city on the equally
diminutive Ouse. It was Ebrane, the king of the Brigantes, who is said
to have founded York, but so long ago that he is believed a myth.
Whatever its origin, a settlement was there before the Christian era,
but nothing certain is known of it beyond the fact that it existed when
the Romans invaded Britain and captured York, with other strongholds, in
the first century of the Christian era. Eboracum was made the
head-quarters of their fifth legion, and soon became the chief city of a
district now rich in the relics of the Roman occupation, their dead
being still found thickly buried around the town. Portions of the walls
of Eboracum remain, among them being that remarkable relic, the tower,
polygonal in plan, which is known as the Multangular Tower, and which
marks the south-western angle of the ancient Roman city. Not far away
are the dilapidated ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, once one of the
wealthiest and proudest religious houses in the North of England, but
with little now left but portions of the foundations, a gateway, and the
north and west walls of the nave. This abbey was founded in the eleventh
century, and it was from here that the exiled monks who built Fountains
Abbey were driven out. This ruin has been in its present condition for
nearly two hundred and fifty years.
For over three centuries Eboracum was a great Roman city. Here came the
emperor Severus and died in 211, his body being cremated and the ashes
conveyed to Rome. When the empire was divided, Britain fell to the share
of Constantius Chlorus, and he made Eboracum his home, dying there in
305. Constantine the Great, his son, was first proclaimed emperor at
Eboracum. When the Romans departed evil days fell upon York; the
barbarians destroyed it, and it was not till 627 that it reappeared in
history, when Eadwine, King of Northumbria, was baptized there by St.
Paulinus on Easter Day, a little wooden church being built for the
purpose. Then began its ecclesiastical eminence, for Paulinus was the
first Archbishop of York, beginning a line of prelates that has
continued unbroken since. In the eighth century the Northmen began their
incursions, and from spoilers ultimately became settlers. York
prospered, being thronged with Danish merchants, and in the tenth
century had thirty thousand population. In King Harold's reign the
Northmen attacked and captured the town, when Harold surprised and
defeated them, killing their leader Tostig, but no sooner had he won the
victory than he had to hasten southward to meet William the Norman, and
be in turn vanquished and slain. York resisted William, but he
ultimately conquered the city and built a castle there, but being
rebellious the people attacked the castle. He returned and chastised
them and built a second castle on the Ouse; but the discontent deepened,
and a Danish fleet appearing in the Humber there was another rebellion,
and the Norman garrison firing the houses around the castle to clear the
ground for its better defence, the greater part of the city was
consumed. While this was going on the Danes arrived, attacked and
captured both castles, slaughtered their entire garrisons of three
thousand men, and were practically unopposed by the discontented people.
Then it was that the stalwart Norman William swore "by the splendor of
God" to avenge himself on Northumbria, and, keeping his pledge, he
devastated the entire country north of the Humber.
York continued to exist without making much history for several
centuries, till the Wars of the Roses came between the rival houses of
York and Lancaster. In this York bore its full part, but it was at first
the Lancastrian king who was most frequently found at York, and not the
duke who bore the title. But after Towton Field, on Palm Sunday, March
29, 1461, the most sanguinary battle ever fought in England, one hundred
thousand men being engaged, the news of their defeat was brought to the
Lancastrian king Henry and Queen Margaret at York, and they soon became
fugitives, and their youthful adversary, the Duke of York, was crowned
Edward IV. in York Minster. In the Civil War it was in York that Charles
I. took refuge, and from that city issued his first declaration of war
against the Parliament. For two years York was loyal to the king, and
then the fierce siege took place in which the Parliamentary forces
ruined St. Mary's Abbey by undermining and destroying its tower. Prince
Rupert raised this siege, but the respite was not long. Marston Moor saw
the king defeated, Rupert's troopers being, as the historian tells us,
made as "stubble to the swords of Cromwell's Ironsides." The king's
shattered army retreated to York, was pursued, and in a fortnight York
surrendered to the Parliamentary forces. The city languished afterwards,
losing its trade, and developing vast pride, but equal poverty. Since
the days of railways, however, it has become a very important junction,
and has thus somewhat revived its activity.
[Illustration: MICKLEGATE BAR--THE RED TOWER]
[Illustration: YORK MINSTER.]
The walls of York are almost as complete as those of Chester, while its
ancient gateways are in much better preservation. The gateways, called
"bars," are among the marked features of the city, and the streets
leading to them are called "gates." The chief of these is Micklegate,
the highroad leading to the south, the most important street in York,
and Micklegate Bar is the most graceful in design of all, coming down
from Tudor days, with turrets and battlements pierced with cross-shaped
loopholes and surmounted by small stone figures of warriors. It was on
this bar that the head of the Duke of York was exposed, and the ghastly
spectacle greeted his son, Edward IV., as he rode into the town after
Towton Field. It did not take long to strike off the heads of several
distinguished prisoners and put them in his place as an expiatory
offering. Here also whitened the heads of traitors down to as late as
the last Jacobite rebellion. One of the buttresses of the walls of York
is the Red Tower, so called from the red brick of which it is built.
These walls and gates are full of interesting relics of the olden time,
and they are still preserved to show the line of circumvallation of the
ancient walled city. But the chief glory of York is its famous minster,
on which the hand of time has been lightly laid. When King Eadwine was
baptized in the little wooden church hastily erected for the purpose, he
began building at the same place, at the suggestion of Paulinus, a large
and more noble basilica of stone, wherein the little church was to be
included. But before it was completed the king was slain, and his head
was brought to York and buried in the portico of the basilica. This
church fell into decay, and was burned in the eighth century. On its
site was built a much larger minster, which was consumed in William the
Conqueror's time, when the greater part of York was burned. From its
ashes rose the present magnificent minster, portions of which were
building from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, it being completed
as we now see it in 1470, and reconsecrated as the cathedral of St.
Peter with great pomp in 1472. Its chief treasure, was the shrine of St.
William, the nephew of King Stephen, a holy man of singularly gentle
character. When he came into York it is said the pressure of the crowd
was so great that it caused the fall of a bridge over the Ouse, but the
saint by a miracle saved all their lives. The shrine was destroyed at
the Reformation, and the relics buried in the nave, where they were
found in the last century. York Minster remained almost unchanged until
1829, when a lunatic named Martin concealed himself one night in the
cathedral and set fire to the woodwork of the choir, afterwards escaping
through a transept-window. The fire destroyed the timber roofs of the
choir and nave and the great organ. Martin was arrested, and confined in
an asylum until he died. The restoration cost $350,000, and had not long
been completed when some workmen accidentally set fire to the
south-western tower, which gutted it, destroyed the bells, and burned
the roof of the nave. This mischief cost $125,000 to repair, and the
southern transept, which was considered unsafe, has since been partially
rebuilt.
[Illustration: CHOIR OF 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.
[Illustration: TOMB OF ARCHBISHOP WALTER DE GREY, YORK MINSTER.]
[Illustration: CLIFFORD'S TOWER.]
[Illustration: THE SHAMBLES.]
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.