History of York
During the English Civil War, the city was regarded as a Royalist stronghold and was besieged and eventually captured by Parliamentary forces under Lord Fairfax in 1644.
Every year, thousands of tourists come to see the surviving medieval buildings, interspersed with Roman and Viking remains and Georgian architecture.
Few other finds from this period have been found in York itself, but evidence of a late Iron Age farmstead has been uncovered at Lingcroft Farm 3 miles (4.8 km) away at Naburn.
The earliest known mention of Eburacum by name is from a wooden stylus tablet from the Roman fortress of Vindolanda along Hadrian's Wall, dated to c. 95–104 AD, where it is called Eburaci.
Constantius I died during his stay in York, and his son Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor by the troops based in the fortress.
[5] Economically the military presence was important with workshops growing up to supply the needs of the 5,000 troops garrisoned there and in its early stages York operated a command economy.
New trading opportunities led local people to create a permanent civilian settlement on the south-west bank of the River Ouse opposite the fortress.
[13] Some scholars have suggested that York remained a significant regional centre for the Britons, based largely on literary evidence.
Several manuscripts of the Historia Brittonum, written c. 830, contain a list of 28 or 33 "civitates", originally used to describe British tribal centres under Roman rule but here translated as Old Welsh cair (caer) and probably indicating "fortified cities".
Christopher Allen Snyder makes note of the evidence for Eboracum continuing to function, perhaps as a military outpost or the seat of a minor kingdom based on some old territory of the Brigantes.
Snyder cites historian and archaeologist Nick Higham in saying that the settlement had declined so much by the end of the Roman period that it was unlikely to have been a significant post-Roman regional centre.
[16] Scholar Peter Field suggests that the City of Legions (urbs legionum) mentioned by Gildas in his 6th-century De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is a reference to York, rather than Caerleon; if this were the case it could provide some contemporary information about Ebrauc.
What later became parts of the North Riding and City of York were conquered by a Bythonic to early Angle version of Deira, Based around the Derwent.
After Angle settlement of Northern England, York was the Anglo-capital of Deira and one of the capitals when the kingdom united with Bernicia, later known as Northumbria.
It is known that the building and rebuilding of the Minster was carried out, along with the construction of a thirty-altar church dedicated to Alma Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which may have been on the same site.
Certainly excavations beneath York Minster have shown that the great hall of the Roman headquarters building still stood and was used until the 9th century.
By the 8th century York was an active commercial centre with established trading links to other areas of England, northern France, the Low Countries and the Rhineland.
[26][27] In York the Old Norse placename Konungsgurtha, Kings Court, recorded in the late 14th century in relation to an area immediately outside the site of the porta principalis sinistra, the west gatehouse of the Roman encampment, perpetuated today as King's Square, perhaps indicates a Viking royal palace site based on the remains of the east gate of the Roman fortress.
Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, York was substantially damaged by the punitive harrying of the north (1069) launched by William the Conqueror in response to regional revolt.
Several religious houses were founded following the Conquest, including St Mary's Abbey and Holy Trinity Priory.
On 16 March 1190 a mob of townsfolk forced the Jews in York to flee into the castle keep (later replaced by Clifford's Tower), which was under the control of the sheriff.
The construction of the city's new Guildhall around the middle of the century can be seen as an attempt to project civic confidence in the face of growing uncertainty.
Despite the English Reformation making the practice of Roman Catholicism illegal, a Catholic Christian community remained in York although this was mainly in secret.
Its members included St. Margaret Clitherow who was executed in 1586 for harbouring a priest[35] and Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
Subsequently, during the English Civil War, the city was regarded as a Royalist stronghold and was besieged and eventually captured by Parliamentary forces under Lord Fairfax in 1644.
On 22 March 1739 the highwayman Dick Turpin was convicted at the York Grand Jury House of horse-stealing, and was hanged at the Knavesmire on 7 April 1739.
[40] On 29 April 1942, York was bombed as part of the retaliatory Baedeker Blitz by the German Luftwaffe; 92 people were killed and hundreds injured.
[41] Buildings damaged in the raid included the Railway Station, Rowntree's Factory, St Martin-le-Grand Church, the Bar Convent and the Guildhall which was completely gutted and not restored until 1960.
