him, Gregory selected Paulinus as likely to be a useful coadjutor to him in the evangelisation of Kent.

Subsequent events, perhaps unexpectedly, favoured this plan, for Edwin, the legitimate heir to the throne of Northumbria, being driven away by his brother-in-law, Ethelfrith, who had usurped the crown, sought for security and protection in other kingdoms, and, in his wanderings, came to the court of Ethelbert, where he became fascinated by Ethelburga, his daughter, and sought her for his wife. Assent was given on condition that she, being a Christian, should be allowed Christian worship, and that he would consider the faith. This he promised to do, and Redwald, King of East Anglia, having slain Ethelfrith in a battle near the sluggish waters of the river Idle, Edwin was restored to his inheritance, and proceeded to take possession of his kingdom accompanied not only by his wife but by Paulinus as her chaplain, who had been consecrated Bishop of the Northumbrians by Justus on July 21st, 625. For two years Edwin remained uninfluenced alike by the entreaties of his wife and the arguments of the bishop, but at length gave way, and on Easter day, April 12th, 627, he was baptized in a little church or chapel of wood, hastily constructed at his bidding, and dedicated to St. Peter, right in front of the great heathen temple in the centre of his capital, Eburacum.

Nothing is left of this primitive structure, but the well is still pointed out from which the water used at the ceremony was drawn, and a little beyond is a flight of stone stairs ending in a square stone slab which tradition says were the steps and altar of the temple.

There are still traces, however, of the stone church which Archbishop Albert built in its place (741), when it had been greatly injured by fire. Part of the herring-bone walls is still to be seen, and after the great fire in 1829, Brown, the antiquary, successfully traced out the foundations, which, however, are now concealed. However, it remained uninjured, in spite of incursions of Picts and Scots, until the Conquest, when it shared in the universal destruction meted out by the Conqueror to York and the surrounding country; and Thomas, the first Norman archbishop, found little left but a few tottering roofless walls which had survived the flames. He re-roofed and restored the church as well as he could, rebuilt the refectory and dormitory, and in other respects set in order the affairs of the establishment. And so it remained until Roger de Pont l'Evêque succeeded to the archiepiscopate in 1154.

Langfranc, on his accession to the See of Canterbury in 1073, had found the cathedral of Christ Church, of which Eadmer has left a curious record, almost consumed by fire; but in seven years he succeeded in rebuilding the whole church from the foundation on the plan and dimensions of St. Stephen's at Caen, the abbacy of which he had quitted to become archbishop. A detailed and singularly precise account by Gervase, the monk, is still extant. On the death of Lanfranc, 1089, the see was bestowed on Anselm, who as soon as possible took down the short choir and replaced it with one extending magnificently eastward, provided with a crypt, an apsidal aisle, a processional path with flanking towers, called St. Anselm's and St. Andrew's towers, and radiating chapels, as well as with eastern transepts, all which was, in fact, an imitation of the great Abbey of Cluny, entrusting the superintendence of the work to the priors Ernulph and Conrad, eventually his successor, who, in 1114, completed the choir with so much magnificence that it was denominated “the glorious choir of Conrad.” All this, however, was destroyed by fire in 1174, which Gervase himself witnessed, but in four years was restored and even improved by the great French architect William of Sens.

In 1154, when Archbishop Fitzherbert died at York, this fair building must have been in the zenith of its beauty, and we can well imagine the anxiety of Robert the Dean and Osbert the Archdeacon to secure the election by the Chapter of Roger, who had been Archdeacon of Canterbury from 1148, and who had no doubt already given promise of that architectural ability and liberality of character which eventually made him the most munificent ruler that ever presided over the See of York. Becket succeeded him in the archdeaconry until 1162, when, elevated to the See of Canterbury, the two quondam archdeacons of Canterbury were at the very helm of the Church of England.

Norman Piers in Crypt

Roger seems at once to have commenced the reproduction at York of this great work, by substituting for the short simple chancel of the Minster a complex eastern building which, making due allowance for its want of equal dimensions with Canterbury choir, was yet evidently planned on the same system, with the aisles square ended instead of apsidal, and the flanking towers made to perform the part of eastern transepts. Of this choir, portions only of the crypt still survive. The base of the beautiful western entrance doorway to the north aisle can still be seen by adventurous explorers. The ordinary visitor can still admire the substantial and elaborately incised columns, which once supported the floor of the choir above, and see the arches, with the bold zigzag mouldings, which once rested on them, but which were removed in the days of Edward I. to support a stone platform behind the high altar, on which was erected the shrine of William Fitzherbert, then canonised as “St. William of York,” to provide for the northern province a counter-attraction to St. Thomas of Canterbury. If the arches were replaced on the piers the pavement of the choir would be 15½ feet above the pavement of the crypt, within 6 inches of that of Canterbury, and if the present nave floor were reduced 4 feet to its original level, the respective levels of the nave, crypt, and choir at York and Canterbury would be the same. No doubt the arrangement of the different flights of steps from the nave to the choir and to the crypt, broken in the centre aisle with a broad landing which still remains at Canterbury, was followed at York. But all this has passed away, and the feature of the “glorious choir” of Roger can now only be realised from the conjectures of the archæologist or the dreams of the antiquary.

But there were munificent laymen as well as ecclesiastics in those days, for Lord William de Percy gave the church of Topcliffe, with all things pertaining, to the church of St. Peter at York, as a perpetual alms for the repairing and building thereof, a gift which still remains in the possession of the Dean and Chapter; and he and his successors continued to assist the development of the Cathedral with munificent contributions of wood until the completion of the nave, when his statue was placed, to commemorate his liberality, above the west door, on the right hand of Archbishop Melton, the Metropolitan at that time. On his left stands another figure commemorating equally liberal benefactors: Mauger le Vavasour, who gave a grant of free way for the stone