A good-tempered

and English Saint
SOME years ago I was being shown round the vastness of York Minster at the completion of its restoration. My guide was a learned canon, and one of the things he showed me was a massive stone sarcophagus tucked into a low, deep, gothic niche almost as if it were a train emerging from a tunnel. But it looked far too heavy ever to he moved on anything but primitive rollers and by slaves.
This contained the remains of St William of York, a man of
Archbishop there in 1154. For some reason I was asked not to write about him and his tomb.
There were plans. I think, to co-operate with the Catholics in the establishment of a shrine there, and we were not then quite so sure how ecumenical we were. So I left it there massive, almost Egyptian. and curiously awesome.
Now I have been scooped by Bishop William Gordon Wheeler of Leeds. He has written a charming little life of St William for the Catholic Truth Society and has said Mass rather privately, it is true in the crypt chapel where the great coffin loon
I have a suspicion he was keeping the whole story for himself. But I cannot delate him to the Press Council. To take your spiritual superiors before any sort of tribunal is to be excommunicate. And, anyway, he has done me some kindness.
The thing about St William who was a Fitzherbert and therefore a collateral ancestor of almost all the noble Catholics in England, was that he had close family connections with that useless and bloody-minded ninny. King Stephen. He became treasurer of York. He was generous.
He was elected Archbishop, but a few of the chapter dissented and that intolerable, bully-mouthed busybody, St Bernard of Clairvaux, got the Pope to declare the election uncanonical. No monk than Bernard ever ticked off more holy men in history. I nourish a personal dislike for this charmless and fanatical Cistercian.
Abbatial stab in the back
Anyway, after this abbatial stab in the back. William completely withdrew. He made no canonical fuss. But when St Bernard and the Pope and the Archbishop, who had been the Abbot of Fountains, were all dead, he was elected again unanimously. He only lasted a month as Archbishop.
Murdoch was the Abbot of Fountains, and some of the faithful supporters of William took the trouble to knock his Cistercian abbey about a hit when Murdoch opposed William's election. This is what involved Bernard in the fracas in which William played no part. It is recorded that William repaired Fountains and confirmed all Murdoch's decisions. It is said that when he made his triumphal entry into York, the wooden bridge over the Ouse collapsed. Bit no one was drowned. A miracle!
The story is complicated. When he was first elected, his pallium got lost on the way from Rome. So he had to go
there to get another one He was accused of buying the job and using the Royal influence and paying his travel expenses out of Minster funds.
So he retired to Winchester and kept quiet, recollected and obedient: until he was recalled to York, broke the bridge and died.
Come the Reformation and I was brought up, years ago, to call it the "so-called Reformation" his bones were not scattered as were those of Becket but removed from their shrine and buried in a lead coffin in the floor of the nave. Manners have always been better in the North.
This was opened in 1732. They found a box of bones wrapped in cloth with a leaden cross. During the restoration of the Minster, they moved the hones down into the Eastern Crypt and set them in this old stone crate.
William seems to have been one of those English saints. like Ached of Rievaulx, who were notable for courtesy and gentleness rather than for ferocious orthodoxy. the cultivation of grievances of for a self-righteous indignation for those who did not take their sides.
Nothing ostentatious, mind you: a miracle that can only come decently under the Public Works Department, and municipal at that. A bit forgotten because love and gentleness blow no public trumpets in England. Well connected, it is true, but that does no harm here, Generous as an aristo is expected to he. Rather obscure as are the gentlemen of England. Loved in his time if forgotten in ours. He sounds a useful and relevant sort of saint to me for i our ecclesiastically ill tempered and bad-mannered
times.
An odd place for the Papal Arms
THERE is another strange thing to be seen in York Minster. This is the tomb of one of its Archbishops. Richard Scrope, who reigned there in the fourteenth century.
He joined the Pereys in armed rebellion against the usurper
King Henry IV. As a result he received an extraordinary veneration locally and the great West Window stained glass is crowded with little references to him.
During the restoration of the Minster, they did up his tomb
regardless. It is an "altar" and stands proud and black on the left side of the Lady Altar, as you face it.
It has suitable armorial carvings on its side. One of these is of the Papal Arms. There it is Tiara over the Crossed Keys. Quite astonishing and quite correct.
These were once the arms of the Minster, which is dedicated to St Peter. At the Reformation. they changed the Crown Royal for the Triple Crown. The tomb is small and gentlemanly and is one of the forest bits of restoration I've
seen in this country.