THE CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF LITTLE BLAKE STREET CHAPEL, NOW ST. WILFRID'S, YORK, 1771-1838 . CONTRIBUTED BY THE LATE JOSEPH S. HANSOM AND OTHERS.
The Mission of St. Wilfrid's, York, the Registers of which are here presented to the public, came into being upon the eve of the rising of 1745 to be exact in 1742 when Bishop Edward Dicconson , Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District, placed the Catholics of York under the care of the Rev. Thomas Daniel, with the obligation of continuing to serve Linton-on-Ouse, in the parish of Newton-on-Ouse, some ten miles north-west of the city. To provide the historical background to this revival of nearly two hundred years ago, we should do well to make a brief survey of Catholicity in York in the centuries preceding . is certain that there was a colony of Roman Christians of Eboracum, though no actual records survive, nor any established site, of a Christian church in Roman days . Definite history begins in early Saxon times with the building by King Edwin in 627 of a wooden church, on the site of the present Minster, for his baptism at the handsof St. Paulinus , the Bishop who ruled York and the surrounding district for eight years . Obliged to return to the south when Penda , King of Mercia , overthrew and slew King Edwin , Paulinus left the see desolate and it remained without a ruler for thirty years . A brighter period followed when St. Chad, a monk of Lastingham, and after him St. Wilfrid, shed the lustre of their sancity and zeal upon the diocese. This was almost equalled by the fame and miracles of St. Oswald , who, while required by St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury and Metropolitan of England, to retain his see of Worcester, was raised by him to the dignity and responsibility of the Archbishopric of York in 972 . For twenty years he upheld this double charge , and died in Worcester on February 29th, 992 , in the thirty-third year of his episcopate . Coming to the Norman period we find the city of York growing rapidlyinto the same position in the wealth and number of its ecclesiastical foundations as it came presently to hold in its civil institutions and its political importance as the capital of the north. First among its eight Religious Houses was the BenedictineAbbey of St. Mary ; then the Priory of the Holy Trinity, also Benedictine, in Micklegate; nuns of the same Order were in a priory hard by at Clemen-
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thorpe, and Austin Friars in the monastery of St. Augustine. There
were also communities of Franciscans , Dominicans, and Gilbertines, the latter in the Priory of St. Andrew. St. William's College, a noble residence for the Minster Clergy, still survives. The number of secular churches , headed by St. Peter's magnificent cathedral, was forty -five ; there were seventeen chapels, other than chantries; sixteen hospitals, some, if not most, of which had their own chapels ; not to speak of schools, the foremost being St. Peter's , dating from Saxon days , and rendered famous by the name of Alcuin . Simpson's Guide to York , p. 14 History and Antiquities of York , in 3 Vols. , A. Ward , York, 1785, Vol . 2, pp. 161-164. (Mostly drawn from Drake's Eboracum , E. H. W.) Simpson, op. cit., p. 37 .
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