THE KING’S MANOR, YORK. 
53 
might safely be pronounced Jacobaean, even if the two doorways, 
on which the Royal initials I. R. are conspicuous, did not clearly 
show in what King’s reign it was constructed. 
The last President of the North was Thomas, Viscount Went¬ 
worth, better known as the great Earl of Strafford, whose com¬ 
mission bears date 15th December, 1628. An important addition 
to the Manor was made by him in the erection of a Banqueting 
Hall, over the door of which the Royal arms were placed, Plate V.(a) y 
and also a Gallery and a Chapel. Over the doorway on the west 
side of the Quadrangle Lord Wentworth placed his own armorial 
bearings, and, Plate V. (b ), at his trial, was charged with unbecoming 
arrogance in putting his own arms in one of the King’s palaces. 
Not many days before the execution of Lord Strafford in 1641 
the Court of the Great Council of the North was abolished, and 
the King’s Manor, which had been for so many years the seat of 
arbitrary power, was committed to the charge of a single officer 
who was styled “ the Keeper of the House within the site of the 
late Monastery of the Blessed Mary, near the walls of the City of 
York, otherwise called the Pallas, or Manor House, or the Mannor 
Place.” • 
At the siege of York in 1644, the Manor was converted into a 
Royalist garrison. When the Parliamentarians blew up St. Mary’s 
Tower, and gained an entrance into the Abbey grounds, the 
Royalist commander sent a body of his men out by the Water 
Gate. These troops marched up Marygate, and following the 
Parliamentarians through the breached tower, succeeded in 
getting them between two fires, A sharp skirmish ensued, and 
the precincts of the Manor, it is said, were strewn with the bodies 
of the slain. 
Upon the accession of James II., the King’s Manor had a 
narrow escape from being converted into a Roman Catholic 
College. It was leased for thirty-one years at the annual rent of 
ten shillings to a Yorkshire family, whose head at that time was 
Sir John Lawson, of Brough ; and Lather Lawson, a member of 
this family, entered into possession. A large room in the Manor 
was fitted up and used as a Chapel where Mass was openly 
celebrated.^ Shortly afterwards the grant of King James became 
void, and in 1692 a lease of the whole domain was granted to 
Robert Waller, of York, attorney-at-law, for thirty-one years at an 
annual rental of ten shillings. 
Waller soon began to make a profit by his bargain, by convert¬ 
ing the Manor buildings into separate dwelling houses and letting 
