through successive generations, and to his influence the town of Beverley is greatly indebted for many of its chartered privileges, and to the same cause its ultimate prosperity may be solely ascribed.

Athelstane, when marching northward in 934 against Constantine of Scotland and the Northumbrian rebels, spent a night in Beverley, prostrate before the altar of St. John, praying, with unassumed earnestness, for his favour and protection. He left his dagger on the altar as a pledge, vowing that if he returned victorious he would redeem it with princely gifts. Then taking with him a consecrated banner from the church, he marched in full confidence against his enemies. He came up with them at a village near Dunbar, and, on the eve of the battle, had a vision of St. John, who promised him victory. The next day he completely routed his foes, returned to Beverley in triumph, and deposited the standard in its former situation. To redeem his pledge, he founded and richly endowed a college for secular canons, and granted a charter of privileges and immunities to the church and town. He also named the village near which the battle was fought "St. John's Town."

When William the Conqueror ravaged the north with a numerous army, he gave strict orders that the town and church of Beverley should be spared from any spoliation, on account of the great veneration he had for St. John of Beverley.

The sacred banner of our saint was also carried along with those of St. Peter of York and St. Wilfrid

C

of Ripon, attached to the mast or standard fixed in a waggon at the battle of the Standard;* whence its name. It was also carried by Edward I. in his Scottish wars, and "St. John became the usual battle cry of the English in those wars.

On the day on which the battle of Agincourt was fought and won, the tomb of St. John is reported to have sweated blood, and Henry V. attributed that glorious victory to his intercession. In 1416 the Synod of London directed that the 7th of May, the day of the saint's death, and the 25th of October, the feast of his translation, should be annually kept holy throughout England as a perpetual memorial of our prelate's peculiar sanctity. On those occasions his relics were carried with reverential ceremony through the streets of Beverley, followed in procession by the principal burghers, barefooted and fasting. In 1421, after the coronation of Catherine of France at Westminster, Henry and his Queen made a pilgrimage to Beverley in gratitude for the aid he had rendered at the famous battle of Agincourt.

On the 13th September, 1664, the sexton, in opening a grave, discovered a vault of freestone, in which was a box of lead containing several pieces of bone, with some dust yielding a sweet smell. There was a Latin inscription, which may be thus rendered into English:

"In the year from the Incarnation of our Lord, 1188, this church was destroyed by fire in the night following the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle; and *See page 20.

in the year 1197, on the 6th of the Ides of March, there was an inquisition made for the relics of the blessed John, and these bones were found in the eastern part of his sepulchre, and here deposited; and dust, mixed with mortar, was in the same place found and re-interred." Subsequently these relics were again taken up and deposited in an arched vault prepared for their reception beneath the second rose in the groining of the roof at the east end of the nave. The following inscription was added to the former one:-"The same relics, having been taken up and replaced in the same situation, were honoured with an arched vault of brickwork, the 25th of March, 1726, when the tesselated pavement of this church was first laid."

Over the door of the South transept of the Minster hangs an ancient tablet with a picture representing Athelstan in the act of presenting a charter to the Church of St. John, personified in the figure of the saint himself. Fuller says that a picture of the saint was to be seen in his time (1660) in the window of the library at Salisbury, with an inscription under it. In the reign of Henry VI. his portrait was placed in one of the windows of the University College, Oxford. He is usually represented in painting and sculpture in archiepiscopal robes, holding a crozier in his left hand, whilst his right hand is uplifted in the act of bestowing a benediction. The Church of Whitton, in Nottinghamshire, and the Catholic Churches at Beverley, and

Haydon Bridge, in Northumberland, are dedicated to St. John of Beverley.

By the way side, near the churchyard at Harpham, is St. John's Well, a representation of which appears in Hone's Table Book, vol. II., page 546. William of Malmesbury says that the most ferocious bull, when brought before it, became as docile as a lamb.

The following works are ascribed by Bale to St. John of Beverley :

Pro Leuca exponendo lib I ad Bedam sæpe quidem tuæ sancte frater.

Homilias Evangeliorum lib I.

Ad Hildam Abbatissam Epis pleures.

Ad Herebaldum discip Ep I.

Ad Audænum et Bertinum Ep I.

In the fourteenth century there lived a JOHN DE BEVERLEY, a Carmelite monk. He was a doctor and professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, and wrote:

1. Questiones in Magistrum Sententiarum.
2. Disputationes Ordinaris.

THURSTAN, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK.

OB. 1143.

EVERLEY has at all times been especially rich in great ecclesiastics, but never more so than in Pre-Reformation times. In this volume we have sketched the lives of many eminent

churchmen who have left their "footprints on the sands of time," and it would be difficult indeed to find any more brilliant examples of disinterested piety, united to great talents and a love of learning, than we find in them. The subject of our present sketch is one who, though he may yield to such men as Alcock and Fisher in the estimation of Englishmen in general, ought to be held in grateful remembrance by the inhabitants of Beverley on account of the great benefits which he conferred upon the town-we refer to Thurstan, Archbishop of York. This prelate, whose name figures so conspicuously in our annals, was a canon of St. Paul's, and chaplain to King Henry I. In 1109 he was made provost of Beverley. This appointment, says Oliver (upon whom we have drawn largely in compiling this memoir), proved of essential service to the town. "During his residence here his comprehensive mind beheld the capabilities which promised to raise the town to eminence, and he resolved