The question of precedence between York and Canterbury arose as early as the days of St. Augustine. Gregory the Great instructed the latter to appoint twelve bishops, one of whom was to be the Bishop of York, who was to ordain other bishops in the north of England. He was to be subordinate to Augustine; but subsequently precedence should be determined by priority of consecration. This occasioned dissensions for centuries, culminating in the murder of Thomas à Becket (see page 2), which Roger de Pont l’Évêque is said to have instigated. It was this Archbishop of York who, refusing to take a lower seat at the Council of Westminster in 1176, sat himself in the lap of Becket’s successor only to be pulled off and soundly beaten. The question was not finally settled until the time of John of Thorsby (1352-1373), when Innocent VI. determined that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be styled Primate of All England and the Archbishop of York, Primate of England. The first archbishop was Paulinus, Bishop of Rochester (see page 33), who accompanied Ethelburga, daughter of the King of Kent, when she went to Northumbria to marry King Edwin. Edwin embraced Christianity and was baptised in 627, by Paulinus, in a temporary wooden church on the site of the present glorious York Minster. Immediately afterwards Edwin began to build a stone church in this same place, which he dedicated to St. Peter. This church was repaired by the next archbishop--the great Wilfrid--about 669. When Thomas of Bayeux, the first Norman archbishop, arrived in 1070, he found the Cathedral in ruins, owing to the Danish invasion and to the wars of the Conqueror; and, if William of Malmsbury may be believed, Thomas began the church from its foundations and also finished it. Roger de Pont l’Évêque (1154-1181) rebuilt the choir. About this time York acquired its patron saint, William Fitzherbert, great-grandson of the Conqueror, who became Bishop of York in 1143. Expelled from office in 1147, he was restored in 1153. On his return he performed a miracle and died almost immediately afterwards, so suddenly, in fact, that he was thought to have been poisoned out of the holy chalice. The monks buried him in the Cathedral. His tomb attracted pilgrims because of the marvellous cures. St. William was canonised in 1284; and in that year his relics were translated from the nave to the choir. Edward I. and Queen Eleanor were present and gave jewels to the shrine, which was placed at the eastern end of the nave under a huge canopy. St. William’s head was preserved in a silver reliquary.