heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE VAVASOURS. 323
Percy gave a special grant of free passage by water from Tadcaster to
York, with permission to load or haul from his land on their passage
down the Wharfe, thereby implying that the stone was no longer his,
though he still retained the right of the river; and also that, in 1302,
the Dean and Chapter of York recorded their acknowledgment of the
liberality of Sir William Vavasour, Kt., in having- given stone from his
quarry in Thievesdale, for the repair of the house in which the precentor
of the church lived.*
And as they now had the power, so they seem to have inherited
the will, for both the grant of free gift of stone by Percy,
and of free
carriage by Vavasour, were, as far as I know, continued by the Vavasours,
and never withdrawn. There are no actual documents to prove it, that
I am aware of, but there is reason to believe that the large proportion
of the stone of York Minster, used in its grand development from 1070 to
1470, which is of the same quality, viz., magnesian limestone, came from
the same quarry at Thievesdale. And I suppose that the Percies in like
manner continued their grant of timber, and that in each successive
increase of the building the forest of Bolton Percy was free for all wood
required. And thus we can understand why Percy and Vavasour should
stand side by side over the west door, with Archbishop Melton's hand
raised over them in blessing (not, indeed, the present modern figures, but
the figures which they have replaced), the former bearing a log of wood,
the latter an ashlar of stone emblematical of their special gifts.
"Arcades ambo," no longer lord and vavasour landlord and tenant
but equal in social rank, and equal in the commendable purpose of
devoting their goods, which God had given them, to His glory and the
development and beauty of His sanctuary. But the work was not finished
then, for the glories of the grand perpendicular choir, only commenced in
his successor's time, were then still in the quarry
forest
of Bolton Percy.
of Thievesdale and the
From this period, however, the gift seems to have been supplemented,
from time to time, both by offerings and purchase. When Thoresby was
about to
commence the building of the Ladye Chapel, he gave, July 2oth,
1361, the materials of "a certain Hall with a chamber adjoining," which
seems all that remained of an archiepiscopal manor house, at Sherburn,
originally provided for the see by Archbishop Walter Gray, but which,
says Archbishop Thoresby, " had been suffered to go to ruin in the time
" of his predecessor, to be applied to the more speedy finishing, through
" God's favour, of the same."t The site can still be traced at a spot
called " Manor Garth," in a large meadow known as Rest Park, between
Sherburn and Cawood. The outer and inner moats still remain. It
* Drake's History of York, pp. 111-115. t Brown's History, page 149.