THE MONKS OF MARMOUTIER. 
58 
Priories, Friaries, Hospitals and Maisons Dieu—there was the 
surprising total of 53 Religious Houses and 65 Churches. A 
very interesting pictorial representation of York in the 14 th 
century is to be found in a MS. of Geoffrey of Monmouth now 
preserved in the British Museum, and recently reproduced by 
the Rev. Caesar Caine in his “ Analecta EboracensiaA The 
most magnificent of all the Religious Houses, was, of course, 
S. Mary’s Abbey, one of the few in the country having a mitred 
Abbot. S. Mary's was a Benedictine House, and in the city 
were two others following the same rule—S. Clement's 
Nunnery and the Priory of the Holy Trinity in Micklegate. 
It is of the latter that I have been asked to give some account 
in this paper. 
But before coming to the history of the Benedictine Priory, 
I should like to say something about its predecessor of the 
days before the Conquest. That there was a Saxon Church is 
absolutely certain, for it is several times mentioned in Domes¬ 
day Book, sometimes being called Holy Trinity, and sometimes 
Christ’s Church ; and that these were different names for one 
and the same Church there is not the shadow of a doubt. 
Equally certain is it that this Church stood on the site of the 
present Church of Holy Trinity. 
Domesday Book gives us no idea of the kind of Church that 
the Holy Trinity of those days was, but an important document 
dated 3 years later has come down to us which shows that it 
was not an ordinary Parish Church, but one that was “ formerly 
adorned with Canons and rents of farms and ecclesiastical 
ornaments”; that is to say, the Saxon Church was a richly 
endowed and highly ornamented House of Secular Canons. 
That is not conjecture but fact, the evidence being the famous 
Charter of 1089 . 
Now although Domesday gives us no information about the 
edifice of Holy Trinity, there is distinct evidence in that Book 
of its importance. At the time of the Survey there was a 
Saxon land-owner holding considerable possessions in and 
around York, called Richard Fitz-Erfast. The Domesday 
enumeration of his lands is very important in connection with 
the subject now under consideration. They were these : 
