BUT the stirring history of the Minster itself was not yet completed, for the final chapter in a long record of events was not enacted until the early years of the nineteenth century. The roads in the neighbourhood of York on February 2, 1829, were thronged with excited crowds hurrying to the city. Dashing through them came the fire-engines of Leeds, and others from Escrick Park. Far ahead, a great column of smoke hovered in the cold February sky. York Minster was on fire. It was no accident that had caused this conflagration, but the wild imaginings of one Jonathan Martin, which had prompted him to become the incendiary of that stately pile. A singular character, compacted of the unlovely characteristics of Mawworm and the demented prophet, Solomon Eagle, this was the crowning act of a life distinguished by religious mania. Jonathan Martin was born at Hexham in 1782, and apprenticed to a tanner. His parents were poor, and he had only the slightest kind of education. At the expiration of his apprenticeship he found himself in London, and was speedily entrapped by the press-gang and sent to serve his Majesty as an able seaman. It seems to have been at this period that the unbalanced state of his mind first became noticeable. He was with the fleet at many places, and often in action, from Copenhagen to the Nile. At times he would exhibit cowardice, and at others either indifference to danger or actual bravery. He would be religious, dissolute, industrious, idle, sulky, or cheerful by turns: a pretended dreamer of dreams and communicant with angels. “Parson Saxe,” his shipmates named him; “but,” said one, years afterwards, “I always thought him more rogue than fool.”