Two thousand years ago, what is now the East Riding of Yorkshire was chiefly forest land, with the exception of the Wold uplands, which were pastures, almost destitute of trees, having some semblance to the swelling and rolling waves of the ocean, where the Brigantes fed their flocks and herds, where they dwelt in scattered hamlets, and where they now sleep in their multitudinous tumuli. In the lowlands at the foot, the forest was very dense, and was the home of wolves, boars, deer, and other wild animals, which were hunted by the natives, who fed upon their flesh and clothed themselves with their skins. This was called the forest of Deira, and in one spot by the river Hull, a few miles distant from the Humber, was a cleared space, with an eminence in the midst, and at its foot, extending westward, a pool of water, afterwards a marsh or moor, and since drained, forming now a portion of the town of Beverley, its former condition being indicated by two parallel streets—Minster-moorgate, the place of the moor by the Minster; and Keldgate, the place of springs. This was a Druidical open air temple, where the mystical rites of Druidism were performed.

When the primitive Christian religion was introduced into Britain, it is presumed that a Christian church was established here, on the rising ground by the lake, as the early Christians built their churches, where practicable, on spots held sacred by the people, which supposition seems to be confirmed by the express statement that St. John rebuilt, not built, the church in Deira Wood. This early church, doubtless a very rude affair of timber and thatch, was destroyed or allowed to fall into ruin when the Saxons and Angles overspread the land and replaced the religion of Christ by that of Odin. It might possibly be repaired during the short period after the second introduction of Christianity by Paulinus and the conversion of King Eadwine, but, if so, would be again destroyed a few years after, under the desolating hands of Penda of Mercia, and Cadwalla, as it lay in ruins until the beginning of the eighth century, when it was restored on a grander scale by John, Archbishop of York.

St. John, the learned and pious prelate, one of the brightest luminaries of the Saxon Church, was a member of a noble Saxon family, a native of Harpham on the Wolds. He was born in the year 640, studied in the famous Theological School of St. Hilda at Streoneshalh, and became successively Bishop of Hagulstat (Hexham) and Archbishop of York, which latter see he held, with unblemished reputation and great usefulness, for a period of more than thirty-three years.

He was almost incessantly employed in going about his vast diocese, rectifying abuses, regulating disordered affairs, exhorting the lax, and commending the faithful. In one of these visitations he came to the place in the forest of Deira which had been, half a millennium previously, the Llyn-yr-Avanc of the Celts, and, according to some antiquaries, the Peturia of the Romans, a conjecture which is supported by the discovery of a tesselated pavement and other Roman remains, where he found the ruins of the old primeval British Church. The beauty and seclusion of the spot struck him as being eminently fitted for the establishment of a monastery, and probably the thought flashed across his mind that hither he would like to retire, in his declining years, to finish his life, after the cares and anxieties of his prelateship, in the calm of cloistered existence and in the company of a pious brotherhood.

He did not allow the idea to pass away from his thoughts, but soon after made arrangements for carrying it out. He rebuilt the choir of the old church, founded a monastery of Black Monks, of the order of St. Columba, and an oratory for nuns, south of the church, which afterwards was converted into the parish church of St. Martin; erected the church of St. Nicholas, in the manor of Riding; placed seven secular priests and other ministers of the altar in the head church, and appointed Brithunus the first Abbot of the monastery, with superintendence over the other establishments. In 717, he resigned his see, being then feeble and oppressed by the infirmities of age, and retired to his monastery, where he died in 721, and was buried in the porch at the eastern end of the church.

After St. John, the next greatest benefactor to the church and town of Beverley was Athelstan the Great, King of Saxon England. Indeed, he may be considered the founder of the secular, as St. John was of the ecclesiastical, town. The town and church had been destroyed by the Danes in 867, but a few years after the dispersed canons and monks returned, and repaired, as far as they could, their ruined buildings, so as to be able to continue the celebration of the services; but they remained in a dilapidated state for nearly half a century, when Athelstan laid the foundations of the future grandeur of the church, and of the commercial importance of the town. He had heard of the sanctity of St. John, and the wonderful series of miracles he had performed, both during his life and after his death, and having occasion to chastise Constantine, King of Scotland, for abetting the Danish Anlaf of Northumbria in an invasion of that portion of his dominions—for he had by conquest added northern England to his government, and was in truth the first King of England, rather than Egbert—he visited Beverley on his march to Scotland, and implored the aid of the Saint, leaving his dagger on the altar as a pledge that, if successful, he would bestow princely benefactions on the church and town. By the assistance of St. John, who appeared to him in a vision, he was the victor in the decisive battle of Brunnanburgh, and nobly he kept his word. He made the church a college of secular canons; endowed it with four thraves of corn from every plough in the East Riding; and made it a place of sanctuary, as a refuge for criminals, with a stone frid-stool, still in the Minster. He granted a charter to the town, constituting it the capital of the East Riding, with many privileges and extraordinary rights; in consequence of which opulent merchants flocked to the town, and it soon began to flourish mightily, and became one of the wealthiest and most important of the trading towns of the realm. He also assigned the manor to the Archbishops of York, who built a palace there on the south of the church; vied with each other in their patronage of the town, and in adding to and endowing the collegiate church.

In the beginning of the eleventh century Archbishop Puttock added a chancellor, a precentor, and a sacrist to the establishment, and erected a costly shrine for the relics of St. John, to which they were translated with great pomp in 1037. Archbishop Kinsius erected a western tower to the church, and Aldred, who held the see at the time of the Conquest, rebuilt the choir, and ornamented it with paintings and other decorative work, completed the refectory and dormitory of the monastery, and increased the number of canons from seven to eight, changing them at the same time from canons to prebendaries.

At this time—the period of the Conquest and of the legend—we may assume from the usual characteristics of the church architecture of the time, that the church was an oblong building of two stories, divided into a nave and chancel, with a low tower at the western end. There would probably be a lower and an upper range of circular-headed windows, with doorways of the same character, decorated with zigzag mouldings, and in the interior would be a double row of massive stunted columns, supporting semi-circular arches, and at the eastern end, in the chancel, the superb shrine of St. John, which was attracting pilgrims from all parts, and was beginning to be encrusted with the silver and the gold and the gems, bestowed for that purpose by the pilgrims in grateful remembrance of wonderful cures effected upon them by the miracle working of the saint. Such would most probably be the church in which occurred the incidents narrated in our legend.

When the Norman Duke William had won the battle of Hastings, and subdued southern and mid England, and had been crowned King in the place of the slain Harold, he discovered that he was not really King of England, but of a part only—that portion north of the Humber, forming the old Saxon kingdom of Northumbria of the Heptarchy, and one of the Vice-Royal Earldoms of Saxon England, continuing to maintain its independence with stubborn tenacity; and it was not until after much bloodshed that he overcame the sturdy Northumbrians of a mixed Anglian and Danish race, and garrisoned York, the capital, with a Norman garrison to keep the province in subjection. No sooner, however, was his back turned than the people, under Gospatric, Waltheof, and other Danish and Saxon leaders, broke out afresh in insurrection, massacred the Norman garrison at York, and vowed to drive that people and their Duke, the usurper of Harold's throne, from Northumbria at least, if not from England altogether. It was after one of the most formidable risings that the Conqueror swore that "by the splendour of God" he would utterly destroy and exterminate the Northumbrians, so that no more rebellions should rise to trouble him in that quarter of his dominions; and with this view he marched northwards, crossed the Humber—probably at Brough—and encamped at a spot some seven miles westward of Beverley, purposing to proceed henceward to York on the morrow.

On his road from the Humber to his encampment he had burnt the villages and crops, and slain the villagers who came in his way, but the majority, taking the alarm, fled to Beverley, hoping to find safety within the limits of the League of Sanctuary, thinking that even so merciless a soldier as Duke William would respect its hallowed precincts. But he, godly in a sense, and superstitious as he was, entertained no such scruples, and he had no sooner seen his army encamped than he despatched Thurstinus, one of the captains, with a body of Norman soldiers to ravage and plunder the town.

The people of Beverley and the fugitives who had fled thither deemed themselves safe under the protection of their patron saint; nevertheless they felt some alarm when the news was brought that the ruthless Conqueror lay so near them, and still more when they heard that a detachment was marching upon the town with hostile intentions. The church was filled with devotees, who prostrated themselves before the saint's shrine, imploring him not to abandon his church and town in this extremity. The day had been gloomy and downcast, but when they were thus supplicating the holy saint the sun came shining through one of the windows directly upon the shrine, and lighted it up with a brilliance that seemed supernatural, which was looked upon as a favourable response to the prayers of the supplicants.

Thurstinus and his followers had by this time entered the town, but had, so far, done no injury to either person or property. As they approached the church, they perceived before them a venerable figure, clad in canonical raiment, with gold bracelets on his arms, moving across the churchyard, towards the western porch. The sight of the golden bracelets excited the cupidity of one of the subalterns of the corps, who darted after him, sword in hand, and overtook him just as he was passing through the portal. The soldier had but placed his foot within the church, when the aged man turned towards him and exclaimed, "Vain and presumptuous man! darest thou enter my church, the sacred temple of Christ, sword in hand, with bloodthirsty intent? This shall be the last time that thine hand shall draw the sword," and instantly the sword fell from his grasp, and he sank down on the ground, stricken by a deadly paralysis. Thurstinus, not witting what had happened to his officer, came riding up, with drawn sword, with the intent of passing into the church to despoil it of its valuables; but on entering the doorway he was confronted by the aged man with the bracelets, who stretched forth his arm, and said to him, "No further, sacrilegious man; wouldst thou desolate my church? Know that it is guarded by superhuman power, and thou must pay the penalty of thy impious temerity!" and immediately he fell from his horse to the pavement with a broken neck, his face turned backward, and his feet and hands distorted "like a misshapen monster." At this manifest interposition of Heaven the Normans fled back to the encampment with terror-stricken countenances, and the people in the church looked round for their deliverer, but he had vanished, and they then knew that it was St. John himself, who had come down from heaven to protect his town and church from the insult and ravages of Norman ferocity.

When the soldiers reached the camp they reported to their superior officer the result of their expedition and the horrible death of their leader, which they could not attribute to anything less than supernatural power. The report in due course reached the King, who summoned the soldiers into his presence, and listened to their narrative with superstitious awe. "Truly," said he, "this John must be a potent saint, and it were well not to meddle with what appertains to him, lest worse evil befal us. He may possibly use his influence in thwarting our designs against the rebels of this barbarous northern region. Let not his town and the lands pertaining to his church be injured, or subject to the chastisement and just vengeance we intend against those who have dared to raise the standard of revolt against our divinely ordained authority; but rather let them be protected, for it were bootless and perilous to fight against Heaven. Onward then to York, and when we have, by such severity as the case warrants, effectually crushed the spirit of revolt, we will consider what further can be done to propitiate this saint, whom it were well to conciliate by gifts, so that he may be led in gratitude to recompense us by assisting in the consolidation of our power, which is not yet established on sufficiently firm foundations."

He found no difficulty in suppressing the insurrection when he reached York, putting to the sword those of the insurgents who remained there after their leaders had fled towards Scotland. In order to prevent any future rising, with any possible chance of success or gleam of hope, he then meditated and carried out a cold-blooded scheme, which might have been deemed a measure of policy, but which for ferocity equalled any act of cruelty perpetrated by the most atrocious tyrant of pagan ages. He sent forth his men with swords and torches, to the north, the west, and the east, and for an extent of sixty miles, from York to Durham, by several miles in breadth, laid the country desolate. Villages, churches, monasteries, and castles, with the granaries of corn and the standing crops, were all destroyed by fire, and every person, man, woman, child, or priest, met with was slaughtered without mercy; and when the work had been accomplished, this vast extent of country bore the aspect of a Western American prairie after it had been swept by fire, leaving only the charred stumps of the trees standing, with this difference, however, that there only the half-burnt bodies of animals, such as were not able to escape by flight, are found; whilst here, scattered profusely on the wood-side, and round their once cheerful and happy homesteads, lay the rotting and putrefying corpses of human beings, on which the wolves and birds of prey were battening and gorging themselves; and it took many and many a year before this region recovered itself and became again a country of farmsteads and villages, of crops and fruit trees, and of an industrious population. William of Malmesbury says that not less than 100,000 persons perished in this fearful act of vengeance; and Alured of Beverley, a monkish writer, and treasurer of St. John's Church, states that "The Conqueror destroyed men, women, and children, from York even to the western sea, except those who fled to the church of the glorious confessor, the most blessed John, Archbishop, at Beverley, as the only asylum." An indisputable proof of the desolation wrought on the lands appears in the Domesday Book, which in most places in Yorkshire is described as waste or partially waste, and which is represented as of no value or of much less value than in King Edward's time; whilst in Beverley and the lands of St. John there is scarcely any waste mentioned, and the value is given as the same or nearly the same as in the reign of the Confessor. Under Bevreli we read, "Value in King Edward's time, to the Archbishop 24 pounds, to the Canons 20 pounds, the same as at present."

The King not only exempted the town and demesne from devastation, but became a notable benefactor thereto. He added to the possession of the church certain lands at Sigglesthorne, and granted the following confirmatory charter:—"William the King greets friendly all my Thanes in Yorkshire, French and English. Know ye that I have given St. John at Beverley sac and soc over all the lands which were given in King Edward's days to St. John's Minster, and also over the lands which Ealdred, the Archbishop, hath since obtained in my days, whether in this Thorp or in Campland. It shall all be free from me and all other men, excepting the Bishop and the Minster priests; and no man shall slay deer, nor violate what I have given to Christ and St. John. And I will that there shall be, for ever, monastic life and canonical congregation so long as any man liveth. God's blessing be with all Christian men who assist at this holy worship. Amen."

And from this time the town flourished greatly, and grew rapidly in population and wealth. As to the church, it became more than ever the resort of pilgrims, who left rich presents on the shrine of St. John. In the year 1188 the old Saxon church was destroyed by fire, which may be deemed a fortunate occurrence, as men were stimulated at this, the best period of Gothic architecture, to erect over the relics of St. John a structure worthy of his eminence and fame; and the outcome of this impulse was the uprising of the existing magnificent church, which is now the great architectural glory of the East Riding.