Abstract
When Henry Viii Ordered the Ruin of the Abbeys and Religious Houses in England in 1536, York had more than a dozen abbeys and monasteries and several religious-order run hospitals and poor houses.1 In 1537, serious rioting broke out in Lincolnshire to protest the revolution in religious practices, and it eventually spread to Yorkshire. John Foxe blamed the seditious preaching of monks and priests for the people’s objection to these forced changes to their customary religious behavior: “A new insurrection in Yorkshire [followed] … through the instigation and lying tales of seditious persons, especially monks and priests; making them believe, that their silver chalices, crosses, jewels, and other ornaments, should be taken out of their churches. … The number of these rebels was nearly forty thousand. … This their devilish rebellion they termed by the name of a ‘Holy Pilgrimage.’”2
This discouragement from the publick does not in the least abate in me a value for local histories.
—Francis Drake, Eboracum
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Notes
See P. M. Tillott, ed., “The Sites and Remains of the Religious Houses,” in A History of Yorkshire: The City of York, in The Victoria History of the Counties of England, ed. R. P. Hugh (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 357–65.
John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 8 vols., ed. Rev. George Townsend and Rev. Stephen Reed Cattley (London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837–41) (hereafter cited in text as Foxe, followed by volume number, then page number), vol. 5, 146–47.
Journal of William Dowsing, 12–13. For information about the Earl of Manchester, see “Appendix 6,” 345–48; Julie Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm during the English Civil War. Studies in Modern British Religious History Series (Woodbridge, England: Boydell, 2003).
Mercurius Rusticus Or, The Countries Complaint ofthe Sacriledges, Prophanations, and Plunderings, Committed by Schismatiques on the Cathedrall Churches of this Kingdorne, collected by Bruno Ryves Oxford, 1647), 185, 183. For more on the Civil War destruction, see Stanford E. Lehmberg, Cathedrals Under Siege: Cathedrals and English Society, 1600–1700 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 25–56.
See Christopher Norton, “Richard II and York Minster,” in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Borthwick Studies in History 3 (1997): 56–87.
See David E. O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock, “The Stained and Painted Glass,” in A History of York Minster, ed. G. E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 313–93.
See Sarah Brown, “Our Magnifacent Fabrick, “York Minster: An Architectural History c.1220–1500 (Swindon, England: English Heritage, 2003), 1.
Brown, “Our Magnifacent Fabrick,” 11–220; Ann Willey, York Minster (London: Scala Books, 1998), 6 passim; John H. Harvey, “Architectural History from 1291–1558,” in History of York Minster, 149–92; see Thomas French and David O’Connor, York Minster, A Catalogue of Medieval Stained Glass: The West Windows of the Nave, in Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain Fasc. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Thomas French, York Minster: The Great East Window, in Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
See Nicholas Orme, English Schools in the MiddleAges (London: Methuen, 1973), 79–83.
For the story of his martyrdom, see James Raine, ed., “Miscellanea Relating to Archbishop Scrope,” in The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, Rolls Series 71 (London: Longmans, 1886), II:304–11. See also Sarah Rees Jones, “York’s Civic Administration, 1354–1464,” in Government of Medieval York, 108–40.
Francis Drake, Eboracum: Or the History and Antiquities of the City of York, from Its Original to the Present Times Together with the History of the Cathedral Church (London: William Bowyer, 1736) (hereafter cited in text as Eboracum).
See Stephen Porter, Destruction in the English Civil Wars (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1994), 15–40.
Sir Thomas Widdrington, Analecta Eboracensia: Or, some Remaynes of the Ancient City of York, ed. Caesar Caine (London: C. J. Clark, 1897), 120, 128; Porter, Destruction in the English Civil Wars, 85.
All the documents from the negotiations are printed in Drake, Eboracum; for a modern version of the whole story of the siege with documents, see Peter Wenham, The Great and Close Siege of York, 1644 (Kineton, England Roundwood, 1970).
Thomas Gent, The Antient and Modern History of the Famous City of York; and in a Particular Manner of its Magnificent Cathedral, Commonly Call’d York-Minster (London: Thomas Hammond, 1730) (hereafter cited in text as Gent).
See for a sampling, Gent, The Antient and Modern Histmy of the Famous City of York; Thomas Gent, The Most Delectable, Scriptural and Pious History of the Famous and Magniftcent Great Eastern Window (According to Beautiful Portraitures) in St. Peter’s Cathedral, York (York, 1762); Browne Willis, Survey ofthe Cathedralof York (York, 1727); Drake, Eboracum; Joseph Halfpenny, GothicOrnaments in the Cathedral Churchof York (York, 1795); William Hargrove, History and Description oftheAncient City of York (York, 1818); J. Hildyard, An Accurate Description and History ofthe Metropolitan and Cathedral Churches of Canterbury and York, From their first Foundation to the present Year (York, 1755); C. Wild, TwelvePerspective Views of the Metropolitical Church at York (London, 1809).
For a history of the reaction against Gothic from the “Renaissance” on, see Paul Frankl, “The Period of Reaction against Gothic,” The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), 235–414.
See Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Ptinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 240–88.
Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through England and Wales, 2 vols. (London: J. M. Dent, 1928) (hereafter cited in text as TEW).
See Tristram Hunt, Building jerusalem: The Rise and Fall ofthe Victorian City (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 4. undertake a correct elegant publication of our Cathedrals, and other Buildings called Gothic, before they totally fall to ruin, it would be of real service to the Arts of Design; preserve the remembrance of an extraordinary Style of Building, now sinking fast into Oblivion; and at the same time publish to the World the riches of Britain in the Splendor of her Ancient Structures” (Halfpenny, “Introduction,” in Gothic Ornaments).
John Browne, TheHistory of theMetropolitan Church of St.Peter,York (London: Longman, 1847), 320–21.
See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005; rept. 1992), 25–29.
S. A. Skinner, Tractarians and the “Condition of England”: The Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004).
A. W. N. Pugin, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853); Augustus Welby Pugin, Some Remarks on the Articles which have recently appeared in the Rambler relative to Ecclesiastical Architecture and Decoration (London: Charles Dolman, 1850).
George Ayliffe Poole and J. W. Hugall, An Historical and Descriptive Guide to York Cathedral and Its Antiquities (York: R. Sunter, 1850), 169.
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© 2008 Brenda Deen Schildgen
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Schildgen, B.D. (2008). York Minster: From Local to National Preservation. In: Heritage or Heresy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613157_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613157_6
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