8 BEVERLET MINSTER, THE TOMB OF THE PERCYS. 



and very well built, attractive and substantial. It is not 

 lacking in life and spirit to-day. It has large manufactories 

 of agricultural machinery and fire-arms, and its iron-works 

 are amongst the most extensive in England. Tanning is, 

 however, its greatest industry, and this with its breweries 

 and malt kilns, its dealings in grain, lumber and coal, and 

 other branches mentioned, keep its people busy and thriv- 

 ing. It paid no tax nor toll to any town in England. Cam- 

 den, in 1586, mentions bone-lace amongst its industries. 

 But the monumental glory of the ancient borough is 

 Beverley Minster. Here is its one majestic feature, a struc- 

 ture of romantic age, of grand proportions, of historic 

 interest and of quite exceptional beauty. Here lie buried 

 the Percys, for centuries the proudest family in England, 

 Dukes of Northumberland, Earls of Beverley, under a 

 marble mausoleum, one of the most magnificent in Europe. 

 The great Percy had a burial here which cost a quarter of 

 a million dollars and was attended by no less than fourteen 

 thousand retainers. This Percy shrine dates from 1365. 

 In 1188 the Minster was burned and restored. In 1323 it 

 was ransacked with great plunder by Robert Bruce. It is 

 three hundred and forty-four feet long and has a tower one 

 hundred and ninety-eight feet high. It is in the finest per- 

 pendicular manner, and Sir Christopher Wren is reputed 

 to have taken suggestions from it for the western front of 

 Westminster Abbey. John, Archbishop of York, an in- 

 structor of the Venerable Bede, whose virtues and schol- 

 arship made him worthy to have so distinguished a pupil 

 for his biographer, founded this church at Beverley, in 685, 

 and died there in his own monastery, having renounced 

 his bishopric and the world, in 721. Its greater rival, 

 York Minster, is much more modern. Three centuries 

 afterwards, in 1031, he was canonized by the Church of 

 Rome as St. John de Beverley and had miracles in plenty 

 attributed to him, and his remains and memory were later 



