by them in Yorkshire before the Danish invasion of 832. Of these, Lastingham, founded in 648, and Whitby, about eleven years later, were the first. The early foundations were troubled now by the attacks of the Danes, and now by the support given by Saxon kings to the secular party in the Church. While the prayer for deliverance "a furore Northmannorum is yet upon the lips of the monks, comes the rough hand of an Eadwig to disturb them. For, as William of Malmesbury records, "et Malmesburiense cœnobium, plusquam ducentis septuaginta annis a monachis inhabitatum, clericorum stabulum fecit." 1

But the Danes, after all, were their worst enemies. Burton tells us 2 that after the devastation of Northumbria by Inguar and Hubba-a hundred years before Eadwig, by the bye—“there were few remains of monasteries left, and those generally were possessed by married clergy—clericorum stabula!" And another old authority goes so far as to say that "Christianity was almost extinct, very few churches (and those only built with hurdles and straw) were rebuilt. But no monasteries were refounded for almost two hundred years. The country people never

1 "He made the monastery of Malmesbury, which had been occupied by monks for more than 270 years, into a stable of secular clergy."-See Preface to Sir Henry Taylor's Edwin the Fair.

2 Monast. Ebor.

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heard of the name of a monk, and were frightened at the very habit." But if monasticism seemed to be rooted out of Northumbria, this was by no means the case in other parts of England. Dunstan gave it new life and reality at Glastonbury, and introduced, in fact, the Benedictine system with something of Cluniac strictness. At last, in 1073, there came from Evesham three missionary monks, and guided, as they believed, by a divine impulse, established themselves on the Tyne, where the memory of the Venerable Bede still clung about the ruins of Jarrow. From thence after a time, they went their ways, Aldwin to Durham; Remefried (or Reinfred) to Streaneschalch, the modern Whitby; and Elfwin to York, to restore a monastery dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

It is remarkable, however, that Stephen, the first Abbot of St. Mary's, who has left us a very circumstantial account of the foundation, makes no mention at all of Elfwin or of any earlier building, except the Church of St. Olave's. He simply relates how, being harassed at Whitby by pirates on the one hand, and the caprice of William de Perci on the other, he moved first to Lastingham and then to York, where Alan, Earl of Richmond, gave him and his monks the Church of St. Olave's and four acres of ground.