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YORK.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
No diocese in England possesses so many august
traditions as the diocese of York. The great Mother
Church of the Northern Province rises in its stateliness
and beauty from the midst of a city which
was great and flourishing, whilst London was comparatively
insignificant and Canterbury as yet unknown.
Eboracum was the metropolis of Maxima
Ccesariensis, the central stronghold of the military
power of Rome and the focus of Roman civilization
in Britain. When the Roman legions were at last
withdrawn, and the Angles had vanquished the
Britons and driven them into the fastnesses of Wales
and the mountains of Caledonia, York was still a
place of primary importance and the capital of a
Saxon kingdom. " Our first glimpse of the city on
the Ouse, after it had changed from Roman Eboracum
into English Eoforwic, shows it to us as a city
not only royal, but more than royal, as the seat of a
supremacy acknowledged by all the Teutonic kingdoms
of the island, save Kent alone.''^ As regards
in Early Northumbrian History," by E. A. Freeman.
.("Macmillan's Magazine" for Sept., 1876.)