Ancient_and_modern_York_a_guide

96 ANCIENT AND
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If thou would'st view fair Mary's aright,
Go view it by the pale moon light ;
(For the gay beams of lightsome day.
Gild but to flout the ruins gray.)
When the broken arches are black in night
And each shafted oriel glimmers white ;
When buttress and buttress alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory,
When silver edges the imagery ;
Then go—but go alone the while—
Then view St, Mary's ruined pile.
The ruins of St. Mary's Abbey,—one of the most signal
and powerful monastic institutions in England before the
Reformation, form an object of peculiar interest. They
are situated on the manor shore, and are now included
within the beautiful grounds of the Yorkshire Philo
sophical Society, the especially constituted guardians of
these venerable remains. The abbey appears to have been
founded in the time of King William the Conqueror. Ste
phen, the first abbot of St. Mary's gives a detail, of which
the following is an outline. He states that in 1078, he
became a monk of Whitby, under Remfrid ; that William
de Perey, a Norman baron, by whom the fraternity had
been at first patronized, finally drove them away by force ;
that they fled to Lestingham, from which place also, they
were driven by the same Percy's interest with the king ;
that in this afflicting state their condition was commiser
ated by Alan, earl of Bretagne, who gave them a church
near the city of York, dedicated to St. Olave, with four
acres of land adjoining to build offices upon. And having
obtained a license from the king, he persuaded the monks
to leave Lestingham, and make this the seat of their
abbey. Thomas, archbishop of York, in a suit against Earl
Alan, claimed the four acres of land above mentioned ;
whereupon King William I., to compose the difference,