21 
COMMUNICATIONS 
TO THE 
MONTHLY MEETINGS, 
1858. 
March 2. — Mr. T. S. Noble read a paper on the great solar 
eclipse predicted for the 15th, pointing out its course and amount, 
and the phenomena which might be expected to accompany it. 
April 6.— Robert Davies, Esq., read a paper on “The King’s 
Manor and King’s Palace at York.” The object of the paper was to 
show that these were not, as Drake and others following him had sup¬ 
posed, the same building. The King’s Manor was originally the house 
of the Abbot of St. Mary’s, and was appropriated to the use of the 
Lord President of the North and his Council, within a year after the 
dissolution of the Abbey. The King’s Palace, if it were ever assigned 
as a residence to the Lords President of the North, which may be 
doubted, was deserted and demolished within a few years after the 
death of the monarch who had ordered it to be erected. It stood on 
that part of the grounds of the Abbey on which the Museum of the 
Yorkshire Philosophical Society stands; and it was the erection of 
the palace which chiefly contributed to the speedy and almost total 
overthrow of the church and offices of the Monastery. The terraces, 
sloping towards the river, which existed before the Society began its 
excavations, formed the ornamental grounds of the palace. A small 
part of an exterior wall and one angle of the east front of the palace, 
yet visible in the court behind the Wilberforce School for the Blind, 
are the only remains of it above ground; but in the spacious vaults, 
popularly called The King’s Cellars,” we have a highly interesting 
portion of the basement story of the palace still existing in an almost 
perfect state. They were no part of the monastic buildings, but were 
built on the site of the Chapterhouse and other apartments belonging 
to the Abbey, of the wreck of which they were composed. The 
