54 
THE KING’S MANOR, YORK. 
them to respectable tenants. Other parts were let for workshops 
or warehouses, and other meaner purposes. In the year 1696 a 
mint for coining silver money was set up in one of the rooms, and 
carried on its operations for two or three years. 
Early in the eighteenth century a portion of the Manor was 
occupied as a ladies’ boarding school, and there are many evidences 
on the glass of windows still existing of the names and tastes of 
pupils who were at the school more than a hundred years later. 
The large Hall, once consecrated as a place of Roman Catholic 
worship, and now the Manor School for boys, was during this 
period converted into an assembly room for the nobility, gentry, 
and ladies at the races, and used as a common entertaining room 
for the High Sheriff's at the Assizes. 
Alderman Waller’s lease of the Manor expired in 1723, and a 
new lease was granted by the Crown to another York Alderman, 
Sir Tancred Robinson of Newby, Baronet, Lord Mayor in 1718 
and 1738. His younger brother, Thomas Robinson, created Lord 
Grantham in 1761, to whom the benefits of the lease afterwards 
passed, was an ancestor of the present Marquis of Ripon. 
In 1833, upon the death of William Wilberforce, who had 
represented the County of York in six successive Parliaments, 
during a period of 28 years, the Yorkshire School for the Blind 
was founded as the County Memorial of the great work in the 
cause of humanity of that eminent Christian philanthropist. For 
this purpose, the King’s Manor was leased from the Crown in 
1833, at an annual ground rent of £"115, (the Manor School enjoy¬ 
ing the freehold exempt from rent) and since that date the 
buildings have been devoted to the work of educating the boys of 
the City of York, and also of educating, training, employing, and 
in other ways caring for the Blind of the County of Yorkshire. 
The King’s Manor has been associated with many important 
historical events since the time of the Norman Conquest. Kings 
and Queens, Archbishops, Mitred Abbots, and Great Nobles of 
our land have lodged and lived within its walls ; and it is a cause 
for rejoicing that this interesting edifice, dignified as it is by so 
many stirring associations, has suffered but little in its external 
aspect from the many changes it has experienced, and that it is 
still devoted to public objects of the highest utility and beneficence. 
Note. —The foregoing account is largely taken from “ Historical Notices of 
the King’s Manor,” by Robert Davies, F.S.A., and "Monastic Establishments 
in York,” by Rev. J. Solloway, D.D. (Oxon.) 
