The great Perpendicular east window was considered by Pugin to be one of the most beautiful of its type in England, and the risk it ran of being entirely destroyed during the fire was very great. The design of the glass illustrates the ancestry of Christ from Jesse, and a considerable portion of it is original. Of the grave-slabs of the abbots of Selby, the earliest is that of Alexander, who held the office from 1214 to 1221. In the floor of the north aisle of the choir is a very much mutilated alabaster slab to that abbot--John de Shireburn--who, it will be remembered, was one of the chief witnesses in the great law-suit in the fourteenth century between Lord Scrope of Bolton Castle in Wensleydale and Sir Robert Grosvenor, as to the right to bear the arms ‘_azure_, a bend _or_.’ Shireburn stated that those arms were in the porch of the infirmary of Selby Abbey, and that they were always attributed to the Scropes, in whose favour the case was decided. William Pygot, who was the next abbot, succeeded in 1407; John Cave followed him in 1429, and both are buried near Abbot Shireburn. A terribly mutilated effigy of a knight in chain-armour is also preserved in the choir. Head, arms, and legs are missing, but the arms on the surcoat are those of Saltmarshe, and the figure no doubt represented one of the members of that ancient family. Although it cannot be denied that Selby Abbey suffered severely in the great conflagration of two years ago, yet its greatest association with history, the Norman nave, is still intact. At the eastern end of the nave we can still look upon the ponderous arches of the Benedictine Abbey Church, founded by William the Conqueror in 1069 as a mark of his gratitude for the success of his arms in the north of England, even as Battle Abbey was founded in the south. Going to the west as far as Pontefract, we come to the actual borders of the coal-mine and factory-bestrewn country. Although the history of Pontefract is so detailed and so rich, it has long ago been robbed of nearly every building associated with the great events of its past, and its present appearance is intensely disappointing. The town stands on a hill, and has a wide and cheerful market-place possessing an eighteenth-century ‘cross’ on big open arches. It is a plain, classic structure, ‘erected by Mrs. Elisabeth Dupier Relict of Solomon Dupier, Gent, in a cheerful and generous Compliance with his benevolent Intention Anº Dom’ 1734.’