A Northern English School? Patterns of production and collection of manuscripts in the Augustinian Houses of Yorkshire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

Argument continues concerning the condition of Yorkshire in the decades following the Harrying of the North, but Domesday Book does seem to make one thing clear: the absence of any significant degree of monastic settlement. In 1086 St German’s, Selby, was still establishing itself, having been founded under the patronage of the Conqueror himself, apparently during his harrying of Yorkshire, in 1069–70; and even St Mary’s, York, later to become one of the wealthiest houses in the North, was apparently still a small community based at St Olav’s church (royal patronage and further lands came in 1088). Thus, for some decades after the Conquest, as in the late Saxon period, the only ecclesiastical lords with Yorkshire landholdings of significant size were the archbishop of York and the bishop of Durham. These estates were not, apparently, much diminished in size by the Conquest, but were considerably reduced in value. The lands of the archbishop were estimated at about half their pre-Conquest value.