york00orns

3o6
YORK.
possessed by the church of York, and worn by those
who accompanied the Archbishop, in seemly order, in
those great processions.^ The same inventory contains
a Hst of the costly images and reliquaries which
adorned the various shrines and altars, and the rich
tapestry which hung around them. Even the coming
forth of the Dean from his house to officiate on a day
of high festival in the minster was marked by no little
pomp and circumstance. The antiquary, Dodsworth,^
tells us in his "Notes" that his grandfather had "scene
Dean Higden attended to the church on a Christmas
day by fifty gent, before him in tawney coates garded
with black velvet, and thirty yemen behind him in
like coates garded with saffron." ^
But the splendours of a day of high festival were
not always followed by that careful observance of
decency and order at the ordinary offices which the
rules of the Church imposed. Presentments were
made from time to time as to the negligent performance
of duty on the part of both canons and vicars.*
'
Cf. York "Fabric Rolls," pp. 212-35.
^ One of the most indefatigable of local antiquaries. He
was born in 1585, at West Newton Grange, in Ryedale, and
travelled over Yorkshire, making church notes, before the commencement
of the civil wars, when so much destruction of
stained glass, &c., was wrought by the hands
His vast collection of notes, extracts, and copies
secured by Lord Fairfax, and eventually given to the
Libraiy by Henry Fairfax, Dean of Norwich.
of the Puritans.
of MSS. were
Bodleian
^ MS. in Bibl. Bodl., vol. cxxv., fol. 1046. Higden was
Dean of York from 1 5 16 till his death, in 1539.
* Cf. Illustrative Documents appende