21 



COMMUNICATIONS 



TO TH£ 



MONTHLY MEETINGS, 



1858. 



March 2. — Mr. T. S. Noble read a paper on the great solar 

 eclipse predicted for the 15th, pointing out its course and amount, 

 and the phsenomena which might be expected to accompany it. 



April 6. — Robert Davies, Esq., read a paper on "The King's 

 Manor and King's Palace at York." The object of the paper was to 

 show that these were not, as Drake and others following him had sup- 

 posed, the same building. The King's Manor was originally the house 

 of the Abbot of St. Mary's, and was appropriated to the use of the 

 Lord President of the North and his Council, within a year after the 

 dissolution of the Abbey. The King's Palace, if it were ever assigned 

 as a residence to the Lords President of the North, which may be 

 doubted, was deserted and demolished within a few years after the 

 death of the monarch who had ordered it to be erected. It stood on 

 that part of the grounds of the Abbey on which the Museum of the 

 Yorkshire Philosophical Society stands; and it was the erection of 

 the palace which chiefly contributed to the speedy and almost total 

 overthrow of the church and offices of the Monastery. The terraces, 

 sloping towards the river, which existed before the Society began its 

 excavations, formed the ornamental grounds of the palace. A small 

 part of an exterior wall and one angle of the east front of the palace, 

 yet visible in the court behind the Wilberforce School for the Blind, 

 are the only remains of it above ground ; but in the spacious vaults, 

 popularly called " The King's Cellars," we have a highly interesting 

 portion of the basement story of the palace still existing in an almost 

 perfect state. They were no part of the monastic buildings, but were 

 built on the site of the Chapterhouse and other apartments belonging 

 to the Abbey, of the wreck of which they were composed. The 



