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At the eastern end of the nave we can still look upon the ponderous arches of the Benedictine Abbey Church, founded by William the Conqueror in 1069 as a mark of his gratitude for the success of his arms in the north of England, even as Battle Abbey was founded in the south. Going to the west as far as Pontefract, we come to the actual borders of the coal-mine and factory-bestrewn country.
* John Sherman, then Secretary of Treasury, had a large share in giving final form to the bill, which he favored only for fear of a still more objectionable measure. See Sherman's Recollections, pp. 1069, 1188.
In truth, however, the year which was coming on, 1069, was another year of crisis in the history of the Conquest. The danger which had been threatening William from the beginning was this year to descend upon him, and to prove as unreal as all those he had faced since the great battle with Harold.
Vanished, too, is the building that was standing when, in 1069, the Danes sacked and plundered York, leaving the Minster and city in ruins, so that the great church as we see it belongs almost entirely to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the towers being still later.
And though Durham was still untouched, and though William had assuredly no present purpose of attacking Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with all favour a nominal submission brought from the King of Scots by the hands of the Bishop of Durham. If William's policy ever seems less prudent than usual, it was at the beginning of the next year, 1069. The extreme North still stood out.
Rarely had a spring occurred so dry as that of 1069. With the beginning of March dry winds set in from the east, no rain fell, and the watercourses shrank to summer proportions. All that winter Hugo de Malville had mourned in hopeless grief the loss of his boy his only child; but at length grief deepened into one bitter thirst a thirst for revenge.
On the whole, therefore, it is perhaps most probable that the church referred to by Flaccus Albinus was the minster. If that is so, this church remained until it was ruined by the Danes in 1069. Then it was certainly either wholly or partially burnt down. Thomas, the first Norman archbishop, appointed in 1070, found the minster, the city, and the diocese, all waste and desolate.
It remained a see, however, but only one of secondary importance. It would be difficult to state how many cathedral churches the city possessed previous to the eleventh century. In 1069 the first on record was built; in 1120 another; a third in the thirteenth century, and finally the fourth and present building in 1471.
The tyranny of Odo of Bayeux and William Fitzosbern, which provoked attempts at rebellion in 1067; the stand made by the house of Godwin in Devonshire in 1068; the attempts of Mercia and Northumbria to shake off the Normans in 1069 and 1070; the last struggle for independence in 1071, in which Edwin and Morcar finally fell; the conspiracy of the Norman earls in 1074, in consequence of which Waltheof perished all tended to the same result.
It was the year 1069. A more evil year for England than even the year of Hastings. The rebellion was crushed in a few months.
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