hunger, having abandoned their country. Between York and Durham not a house was inhabited: all was a lonely wilderness, the retreat of wild beasts and robbers, and the terror of travellers." This melancholy relation is fully confirmed by the other historians of those times: nay, Odoricus Vitalis, a Norman monk, who wrote in the reign of Henry the First, stated that above an hundred thousand human beings perished in William's desolation of Yorkshire; adding with solemnity, "I have no doubt in asserting, that so horid a butchery is a crime that cannot pass unpunished; for an Omnipotent judge, and most rigorous avenger, will strictly scrutinize the actions, and punish the guilt, of the highest as well as of the lowest delinquent."+-Such was one of the vengeful acts of that Norman Duke, in reward for the endeavours of the English to retrieve their liberties, whose establishment upon the throne of England as a direct consequence of those acts, and of his previous triumph over Harold, has been ridiculously denied to constitute a Conquest. William, in the year following this dreadful visitation, elevated his chaplain and treasurer, Thomas of Bayeux, to the archbishopric; when that prelate found his cathedral a heap * Sim. Dunelm. p. 199, &c. + Odor. Vital. lib. IV. p. 514. of ruins. He resolved therefore to rebuild it on a larger and nobler plan; and under his auspices it arose ere long with an increase of splendour. But before the lapse of half a century, it was again almost totally destroyed by an accidental conflagration, which involved the greater part of the city in its fate. For nearly forty years following, it appeared condemned to sink under this last calamity; till at length, in 1171, Archbishop Roger commenced the rebuilding of the choir, and witnessed the completion of that part of the edifice before his death. His structure was in all probability as magnificent as the taste and genius of that age would allow. But the Norman style of the twelth century constituted but a very trifling improvement upon what is commonly, though not very properly, designated as pure Saxon; since this latter might with equal propriety itself be called the Norman, having been found to have existed under as decided peculiarities in Normandy prior to the Conquest, as it had among the Saxons of this island. The arches, in this improved style, were for the most part still circular; the pillars single, and massive, with plain capitals: no canopied niches, no statues, no escutcheons, broke the dull uniformity of the wall: within, the vaulting of the roof was unadorned with the rich tracery of a later period; without, nor spire nor pinnacle raised its tall point, or its fantastic wreath, towards heaven. No trace, however, of the characteristic architecture of the period alluded to, exists in the present cathedral: that was begun to be erected at the epoch of which we are now immediately to speak. About the year 1228, in the reign of Henry the Third, Archbishop Walter de Grey erected the oldest existing part of the present edifice, namely, the south transept, which affords a beautiful and complete specimen of the style of architecture which had then begun to prevail. The massive pillar had given place to a cluster of slender and elegant columns: instead of plain capitals, the upper parts of those columns were decorated with luxuriant foliage: the windows were high, narrow, and pointed: and the interior of the roof was over-run with tracery. The north transept, having been built only about thirty years afterwards, is naturally marked with all the features of the same style: a steeple, considered handsome at that era, arose at the junction of these two parts of the building. After another lapse of thirty years, which conducts us to the twentieth of Edward the First, the first stone of the nave was laid by Archbishop John le Romain; but this part of the building was not finished till about 1330, the fourth of Edward the Third, and in the prelacy of William de Melton, who completed the west end, with its noble uniform towers, as they remain to this day. Had the nave been completed by its founder, it would doubtless have borne a strong resemblance to the transepts; as architecture in the time of Edward the First was so nearly the same as in that of his Father Henry the Third, as to render it difficult to point out the marks of distinction. But by De Melton it was finished in the manner that had begun to prevail in the reign of the Second Edward: the characteristics of which were, that the vaulting was more highly decorated: the small pillars, or shafts, that had formerly been detached from the body of the column, were become of the number of its constituent parts: the windows were greatly enlarged, especially the grand eastern or western ones of the nave or choir, which were carried nearly to the vaulting; and, being divided into several lights by stone mullions running into various ramifications above, and decorated besides with painted or stained glass, containing portraits of kings and saints, or historical representations, produced a truly magnificent effect. For a nave upon so elegant a plan, the old choir of Archbishop Roger was found to be but a mean accompaniment; and a new one was commen ced by Archbishop John de Thoresby in 1361. The steeple at the union of the transepts seeming to bear the same inadequate character, it was taken down in 1370, and the present grand lantern steeple erected in its place within. the ten years following. It is evident that the choir was not the work of De Thoresby alone; as the arms of several of his successors appear in parts of the structure, particularly those of Scrope and Bowet, the latter of whom did not ascend the archiepiscopal chair till the year 1405, the seventh of Henry the Fourth. In the revolution of about two centuries, therefore, the superb cathedral of York, as it now stands, was completed; affording one of the most interesting specimens of the progressive improvement of Norman architecture of which the enquirer in antiquities can avail himself, not less than exhibiting to the eye of taste one of the grandest ecclesiastical piles in Christendom. In tracing the architectural rise and progress of this edifice to its close, we have designedly omitted all the intervening events in the general history of York; one of which, however, was so remarkable, that its narration cannot fail to prove acceptable. At the commencement of the reign of Richard the First, the annals of this city were disgraced by a transaction, which, all the circumstances considered, has |