1

St. Olaf, the martyred king of the Northumbrians, had, as Mr. Freeman points out, become, by the middle of the eleventh century, “a favourite object of reverence, especially among men of Scandinavian descent. In his honour Earl Siward had reared a church in a suburb of his capital, called 'Galmanho' -a church which, after the Norman Conquest, grew into that great Abbey of St. Mary whose ruins form the most truly beautiful ornament of the northern metropolis." "In his own church of Galmanho Siward the Strong, the true relic of old Scandinavian times, was buried with all honour." Sometimes we find the monastery of St. Mary called “Galmanho;" and Leland tells us it was built outside the walls of York at or near the place where the dirt of the city was deposited and criminals executed. In explanation of the name it has been suggested that "galman" is derived from Saxon "galga "-a gallows.2

The first great event in the history of St. Mary's was the secession of thirteen monks, who desired to adopt the Cistercian reform of the Benedictine rule. Of this we shall have more to say in another place.

1 Freeman's Norman Conquest, 3rd edition, vol. ii. p. 374, and vol. iv. p. 666; and cf. Cott. Tiber, B. i. (“Abingdon Chronicle") and Cott. Tiber, B. iv. ("Worcester Chronicle ").

2 See a paper by Mr. Well-beloved in the fifth volume of the Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of Antiquaries.

In the time of Abbot Severinus, the second quarter of the twelfth century, St. Mary's is said to have been burnt; but it seems unlikely that it should have been left in ruins till 1258, when, under Abbot Simon de Warwick, we have the first indications of a renewal of building operations.

The monastery, meanwhile, had been much troubled by the machinations of one Thomas de Warthill, who, wishing to get possession of a slice of the abbey lands, brought a false accusation against the Abbot and his house respecting a certain charter, and induced the king to fine them heavily. The monks were dispersed, and the "church and offices exposed to great danger and ruin." But with Simon de Warwick good times returned, while a just heaven "monoculaverat " the offending Warthill, of whom it is said that "a monachis Sanctæ Mariæ Eboraci cœnobialis siccis occulis meruit deplorari"-" from the monks of St. Mary he deserved a dry-eyed lamentation." The Abbey of St. Mary's had diverse immunities and privileges which seem to have roused the jealousy and wrath of the citizens of York. Frequent collisions, of the nature apparently of aggravated "town and gown rows," occurred; and the citizens having lately destroyed the earthen rampart by which the precinct was guarded, it was one of the glories of

Abbot Simon to build the stone wall and towers, Yet even

the remains of which are still to be seen. he was obliged to absent himself from York for a whole year, on an occasion described by Leland, when "in the year 1262 an attack was made by the citizens of York on the Monastery of St. Mary, which resulted in much loss of life and injury to property." At this time Simon also paid £100 to the citizens as a peace-offering.

Selby, York, and Fountains were, as has been said, the only mitred abbeys in the county; and when we find that at the dissolution there were fifty monks in the latter, we may perhaps accept the computation that in an establishment of so much dignity and importance there would not be less than one hundred and fifty servants.1

The revenue has been variously stated at £1550 and £2085 a year. It is certain that the Abbot of St. Mary's had two country seats near York, and a house in London not far from Paul's Wharf, where he lived while attending in his place in Parliament.

The Close of St. Mary's, commonly called St. Mary's Shore, contained fifteen acres. On the outskirts of a city like York this was doubtless, even

1 Pugin (Gothic Arch.) mentions that the household of the Abbot of Glastonbury numbered three hundred, and sometimes as many as five hundred guests were entertained.

then, a considerable extent, but we shall find at Fountains a precinct six times as large, while Jervaulx reached one hundred acres. The Abbots of St. Mary's owned a second enclosure on the other side of "Marygate," where the name of "Almonry Garth"1 still lingers, and the traces of the Abbot's fish-ponds may be seen.

Though this monastery did not pass at the dissolution into private hands, but was retained by the Crown, it has suffered from the erection on a part of its site of a palace for the lords president of the north; and the royal grants of stone from the ruins for building the county gaol in 1701, and repairing St. Olave's Church and Beverley Minster in 1705 and 1717 respectively, have left little or nothing but the nave of the church and the vestibule of the chapterhouse. The former ranks with Tintern as an example of the last stage of the transition from Early English to Decorated; the latter, with Byland, as a fine specimen of "that early variety of the Early Pointed (or Early English) of which the characteristic is the square abacus." Sir Gilbert Scott, in his lectures on Medieval Architecture, from which I quote these

1 It should be remembered that the almonry of a Benedictine monastery was often much more than an office for doling out alms to beggars. There were permanent almshouses and also schools or "homes" for children.