THE MONKS OE MARMOUTIER. 
23rd April, in the year 741, a monastery was burnt down in 
York. Until Willis’ time this was thought to have been York 
Minster, but \\ illis showed that it could not possibly have 
been the Minster, and that, consequently, the rebuilding that 
took place of a magnificent Basilica by Alcuin and Egbert, 
must also have referred to some other Church, and not the 
Minster. He concluded that the Church was Christ’s Church, 
the House of Secular Canons. If that were so, and there 
seems to me to be everything in favour of the theory, then we 
know a great deal about the Church that gave its name to the 
Ainsty. In a wonderful Latin poem Alcuin gives a glowing 
description of the Church, showing it to have been one of the 
finest, probably the finest, Saxon Church ever erected : 
“ This lofty edifice,’’ says Alcuin, “supported on 
solid columns, from which curved arches spring, is 
resplendent within, with admirable ceilings and 
windows, and shines in its beauty surrounded by 
many porticoes, having numerous chambers under 
different roofs, which contain 30 altars with various 
ornaments." 
The first certain date, then, for the Church of Holy Trinity 
is Domesday, 1086 ; the first conjectural date, furnished by 
Professor Willis, is 741. When the Church which was then 
burnt down was erected, we have, of course, no means of 
knowing, but a tradition has come down through the centuries 
that the Church stands on Roman foundations, a tradition 
that has been given a place in the “ British Encyclopaedia,” and 
some weight surely is given to the conjecture by the fact that 
one of the finest Roman monuments of which this Society 
can boast, the “ Standard Bearer,” was found in the Priory 
gardens. 
We knowexactly the bounds of the monastic Close, stretching 
from Micklegate to Bishophill, a district which according to 
the late Canon Raine received its name in all probability from 
its having been the residence of the early Bishops of York. 
The first of these Bishops of whom we have any record was 
Eborius who went to the Council of Arles in 314, 3^ centuries 
before York Minster was dreamed of. That Bishop, I take it, 
