Foundation Documents from St Mary's Abbey, York, 1085-1137

Book excerpt: In the wake of the Conqueror's ravaging of the North in the course of the rebellion and Danish invasion of 1069-70 the devastated city of York had to be largely rebuilt. The Conqueror himself contributed a major new abbey built in the west of the city, no doubt in a spirit of penitence for the wasting of the city and county carried out by his troops. The community's origins were not straightforward. Around 1085 the community was adopted by the king and translated to the western quarter of York, to a site which had previously been the 'burh' of the earl of Northumbria. The Conqueror made a creative use of the new Norman elite of Yorkshire to endow and secure the new abbey, an enterprise adopted and extended by his son William II Rufus in 1088. This study uncovers in meticulous detail the manoeuvres of the king, the abbot and the aristocracy of Yorkshire as each looked to make spiritual and political capital out of the grand new royal foundation.