[Illustration:
The early font in the Chapel of Ease at Levisham, that was serving only
recently as a cattle trough in a farmyard.
The BROKEN CROSS by the ruins of WYKEHAM ABBEY. Scarcely any traces of
carving are visible.
A carved cross built into the wall of the tower (interior) of
Middleton Church. The head is hidden in the angle of the wall.
]
The founding of a monastery at Lastingham is described by Bede, and with
the particulars he gives we can place the date between the years 653 and
655. Bishop Cedd was requested by King Oidilward, who held rule in the
parts of Deira, "to accept some possession of land of him to build a
monastery to which the king himself [AEthelwald] also might frequently come
to pray to the Lord, and to hear the Word, and in which he might be buried
when he died." Further on we are told that Cedd "assenting to the king's
wishes, chose for himself a place to build a monastery among lofty and
remote mountains, in which there appeared to have been more lurking places
of robbers and dens of wild beasts than habitations of men." This account
is of extreme interest, being the only contemporary description of this
part of Yorkshire known to us. "Moreover," says Bede, "the man of God,
studying first by prayers and fastings to purge the place he had received
for a monastery from its former filth of crimes, and so to lay in it the
foundations of the monastery, requested of the king that he would give him
during the whole ensuing time of Lent leave and licence to abide there for
the sake of prayer; on all which days, with the exception of Sunday,
protracting his fast to evening according to custom, he did not even then
take anything except a very little bread and one hen's egg, with a little
milk and water.
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