Old York's Old Mörk

I have come to York. In the past, I would have come to visit an aunt and some cousins, but they have all either died or moved out to posh-sounding villages with double-barrelled names. Instead, I met for tea one gentleman whom I used to teach who is a manager for a certain manufacturer of chocolate goods. I also met up with a couple who have sometimes worshipped at Salem Chapel but now work and study here. Regular readers will not swoon with surprise when I reveal that much of the time spent between my appointments was absorbed by inspecting old churches, of which there are a good number.

York is my kind of place; it reminds me somewhat of the Cities of London and Norwich in the sense of it being ‘cluttered’ with medieval churches which seem to occupy every corner with the boundaries of its ancient walls. The citizenry of York have witnessed things of a wider importance, however, than just their own city's survival and expansion. In May, 1660, for example, there was a peculiar demonstration on the street named Pavement, above. An effigy of Oliver Cromwell, the late puritan Lord Protector, was hanged and then burnt. This macabre affair was to mark the end of Puritan rule and celebrate the restoration of the Stuarts. Yet a good number would later agree that Charles II’s government was poor and sometimes vicious; there would be many a denizen of York who lamented the day that Oliver died and a Stuart sprang back.

1300 years or so previously, and not three stones' throw from Pavement, is the spot upon which Constantine I was proclaimed Roman Emperor in 306. Although he suspended the last vestiges of persecution of Christians, his reign marked a turn; the Christian ecclesia soon became the persecuting, power-hungry, Pope-led leviathan which we learned to call the Church of Rome. Constantine's reign may have seemed like a bright new dawn, but it was the beginning of a great darkness.

Truly, ill omens have begun in this city. And for those who like threes, does not old York portend New York, that great Babylon of vice and greed? (To be fair it was ranked only the 8th most wicked of US cities back in 2019). Civil government again appears to be darkening; ominous laws are being passed, a certain hostility to faithful, orthodox Christianity is now normal among those in power. Street preachers are arrested, prayer is banned on partricular streets, while blasphemy laws to protect the Islamic deity are being proposed. The banners of Gomorrah flap on street corners, shop windows and even buses. Let us pray that another post-Cromwellian or Constantinian dark age is not about to fall upon us. 

Come, Lord Jesus!