The ruined abbeys of Yorkshire . ingof Whitby have been carefully collected and comparedby the Rev. J. C. Atkinson. There is the narrativeknown as the Memorial of Benefactions, preserved atWhitby, and locally called the Abbots Book, theRecord of Symeon of Durham, the story of thefounding of St. Marys Abbey at York, purporting tobe written by Stephen of Whitby, the Dugdale nar-rative derived from the Dodsworth MSS., besides theDomesday notices and references in charters anddocuments. But none of these help us to bridge overthe century and a half of ominous silence which suc-ceeded the coming of
The ruined abbeys of Yorkshire . ingof Whitby have been carefully collected and comparedby the Rev. J. C. Atkinson. There is the narrativeknown as the Memorial of Benefactions, preserved atWhitby, and locally called the Abbots Book, theRecord of Symeon of Durham, the story of thefounding of St. Marys Abbey at York, purporting tobe written by Stephen of Whitby, the Dugdale nar-rative derived from the Dodsworth MSS., besides theDomesday notices and references in charters anddocuments. But none of these help us to bridge overthe century and a half of ominous silence which suc-ceeded the coming of Inguar and Hubba. Streones-halch lay desolate for two hundred and seven years,says one historian, and the Memorial of Benefac-tions tells us that at the time of the refounding, there were in the said will, as ancient countrymenhave delivered to us, about forty cells or oratories,only the walls of which, however, together with thedisused and shelterless altars, remained. For all that,we can now see the Saxon, the Norman, and the. Whitby. 69 Early English buildings arc connected only byidentity of site and continuity of tradition, andit is from such precious fragments as the dark-crypt of St. Wilfrid at Ripon, that we must learnhow men built in Hildas time. History, in thiscase more lasting than its monuments, has preservedfor us the name and fame of that old group ofroyal warriors and saints, to whom henceforth mustsucceed a rough soldier from the Conquerors army,— miles strenuissimus in obsequio domini sui Wil-helmi Nothi, Regis Anglorum. Regenfrith, or,as the charterscall him, Rein-frid, must havebeen a man ofstrong convic-tions and stead-fast purpose. Inthe course of amarch, or journey,in the service ofthe • Conquerorhe turned asideto visit Streone-shalch as we nowvisit the ruins ofthe later Whitby,but with thisdifference, he was pricked to theheart by thetokens of ruinand desolation,and afterwardsbecame a monkat , after tenyears of discip-line, he emergedb
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