tion of them while they were yet the homes of the Archbishops of York, and as all domestic connection with the prelates was severed not later than the period of the great civil war, I have terminated my story at that date. I have often regretted my inability to describe more thoroughly the manner and to define the several eras in which great alterations in the archiepiscopal palaces took place, but I have had no means of so doing, although the subject has had my diligent attention.

It will be seen in the last chapter that I have gathered some details respecting a few of the most worthy families which have sprung from or have settled in the parishes. For the information respecting the academic career of Archbishop Mountaign, I have stated my indebtedness to Messrs. C. H. and T. Cooper, of Cambridge; and it now only remains for me to state that the account of Dr. Burbank is extracted from their very valuable work, the Athena Cantabrigiensis. To the Fasti Eboracenses of the Rev. J. Raine, M.A., my pages owe many extracts, and it is only to be regretted that the second volume of his work has not yet made its appearance.

The two illustrations are by my friend J. Storey, Esq., an artist whose high reputation is too well known to require any eulogium from me. It is only to be regretted that I could not avail myself of his offer to provide me with copies of the plans and sections of Sherburn church he made for A. Salvin, Esq., the architect who restored the church, and which are now in his possession. They are very valuable, inasmuch as they give the exact lineal dimensions of every part of the church, and every architectural feature, and the hope still remains to me that I shall be able to give them to the public at some not far distant day.

W. W.

Leeds, August 31st, 1865.

THE HISTORY OF SHERBURN.

T a distance of 15 miles S.W. by S. from York, 184 N.N.W. from London, and in latitude 53° 48' North, and longitude 1° 14'.4 West, lies the town of Sherburn-in-Elmete, or, as it is more commonly called, Sherburn.

Rejoicing in the possession of a singularly fertile soil, the township demands the respect of the jam-loving portion of the community, as being the native home of that delicious plum now familiar to all under the name of winesour. Its national importance is not, however, based upon a foundation so equivocal as this. In the ancient records of the parish, the antiquary and historical student find themes worthy of their consideration; while to the admirer of the picturesque, the parish affords scenes of sylvan beauty not often surpassed and very rarely equalled. Its quaint old church perched on the top of a hill, and overlooking the rich vale of the sluggish Ouse from the time it leaves the stately towers of York, to the flat and uninteresting lands where the Humber swells out into a noble and majestic stream-its dear old thatched cottages, whose 'white-washed walls are wholly unpolluted by the smoke and soot so disagreeably plentiful in the large manufacturing towns-its gently undulating lands, bearing on their fertile bosom an abundance of those fruits of the earth given to man for his support by a wise and beneficent God-its noble old woods, clad in an almost perpetual verdure, are the charms which have rendered its landscape attractive; but its historical incidents rise superior even

to them. Its winding streets had resounded to the tramp of the invincible Roman legions, and its thick oak groves witnessed the mystical rites of the fanatical Druid, long before the spirit of Christianity had taught men to forsake those fierce priests, and retire with disgust from their impious orgies.

Without entering into dull and stupid conjectures respecting the size and grandeur of the town during the Roman domination, or the more remote period when the Ancient Britons congregated to witness the sacrifices so often practised by their terrible priesthood, we will pass at once to the period when undoubted history compels us to repose confidence in the facts she relates.

Thanks to the military genius of the Roman people and the enduring qualities of their performances, throughout the whole length of the parish there is still discernible a Roman military road leading to the modern Tadcaster, the Calcaria of their day. That road, a portion of the great Ermine Street, now forms the western boundary of the parish, and at the extreme north-western corner there are the remains of a small entrenchment, probably one of the night camps formed by the Roman soldiers, as a protection against the natives then hostile and unsubdued.

Facts relating to the condition or political importance of Sherburn during the Roman occupation, I am unable to give, and these pages shall not be occupied by simple theories. When the Romans left this Island, and it fell into the hands of the German tribes who flocked to its shores, Bede tells us there remained, surrounded by the desert of Saxon paganism, a little kingdom of Elmete, which, despite the most furious efforts of the pagans, defied their military prowess, and preserved the literature, arts, and above all, the Christian doctrines, left to the British aborigines by their former conquerors and lords. It is, then, an historically authenticated and a universally admitted fact, that the kingdom of Elmete preserved its independence, and openly practiced its Christianity during Britain's second period of paganism; and, therefore, by shewing that Sherburn was a part of the ancient

kingdom of Elmete, we, in some measure, account for its early ecclesiastical notoriety. *

Independent of the peculiar orthography of its name— which is undoubtedly composed of the words shire and bourn, referring to the ditch dividing the shire or territory differently regulated as regards its political organization. In all old writings the town is invariably called Schyreburnin-Elmete; and even as late as 1577, old Lombard tells us that the "Terretory or Hundreth about Schyrburne in York is called Elmete." But this is not all, nor by any means the strongest proof that Sherburn was the extreme boundary, towards the east, of the ancient kingdom of Elmete. Half way between the hamlets of Newthorpe and Huddleston, in a wood called 'Huddleston old wood there are the remains of a large and ancient entrenchment, whose westerly face measures, in a direction nearly due north and south, 1600 feet; the southerly face, on an irregular convex curve, 1820 feet. Between the east end of the south side, and the north end of the west side, an irregular curved fence runs evidently on the track of the old parapet or embankment, now nearly obliterated. This entrenchment is divided into two portions by an internal embankment, irregularly curved towards the south, and running nearly parallel with the south side at a distance of 590 feet from it on the west, 350 feet in the centre, and 220 on the east. The area of the two entrenchments is about 50 acres, and as traces of works of a similar nature, but on a much larger scale, and running down to the very ditch or bourn are to be found in the neighbourhood, it is evident they have formed the salient points of some system of fortification erected by one people to arrest the invasion of another. At Barwick-in-Elmete is another series of earth-works of a somewhat similar formation. These are generally supposed to denote the site of a residence of Edric, King of Northumbria, one of the earliest acts of whose reign was the conquest of the kingdom of Elmete, which he achieved about 616, when Ceret.

*See a paper read before the Members of the Archæological Society at Leeds, in October, 1863, and since published in their Journal.

+ See Ordnance Map, six inch scale, sheet 220.

icus held the sovereignty of that state.

The fortifications at Sherburn have unquestionably been erected by the "Elmed Setna," to resist Edwin and his Saxons.

These facts then afford the strongest evidence that the little bourn, now meandering so pleasantly through the town, was once the cruel boundary which shut out the blessed light of Christianity from the foul and demoralizing obscurity inseparable from Paganism. In the earliest period of the Anglo-Saxon Church there were one or two ecclesiastical institutions whose loci have not been definitely fixed; as, a monastery founded in the year 655, is variously stated to have been erected at Tadcaster, NewtonKyme or Aberford. This was destroyed by the Danes in their invasions between the years 832 and 867, without any account been left sufficient to enable us to find the exact locality in which it stood. If, however, we recollect that at that time at least one part of Aberford formed a portion of the Saxon Parish of Sherburn, and that anterior to the conquest Sherburn was a place of considerable ecclesiastical celebrity, we are almost justified in inferring that Sherburn has been, from the very dawn of Christianity in these islands, the seat of a place of divine worship. Lappenberg tells us the great era for the erection of Parish Churches in the north, was during the Pontificate of Egbert (731-767); but these mean and insignificant edifices, generally built of mud, wattles, and reeds, were destroyed by the Danes when they made their terrible invasion in 867, when churches and monasteries alike were reduced to ashes, and Christianity was almost extinguished. The destruction of the primitive edifice at that period, may be looked upon as the cause of the erection of the present stone church, in an after age when Northumbria was again under Saxon domination, and religion once more triumphant. Saxon, and of a very early age, it undoubtedly is; although in the absence of records concerning the erection and foundation of early ecclesiastical edifices, we are unable to assign an exact date for its erection. There is a tradition, however, which gives us to understand that it was erected

* See Lappenberg's "England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings." vol. 1, p. 196.— Thorpe's translation.