t
taxed the ingenuity of the churchwardens, and resulted in the strange
interior existing to-day.

The early history of Whitby from the time of the landing of Roman
soldiers in Dunsley Bay seems to be very closely associated with the
abbey founded by Hilda about two years after the battle of Winwidfield,
fought on November 15, A.D. 654; but I will not venture to state an
opinion here as to whether there was any town at Streoneshalh before the
building of the abbey, or whether the place that has since become known
as Whitby grew on account of the presence of the abbey. Such matters as
these have been fought out by an expert in the archaeology of
Cleveland--the late Canon Atkinson, who seemed to take infinite pleasure
in demolishing the elaborately constructed theories of those painstaking
historians of the eighteenth century, Dr. Young and Mr. Lionel Charlton.

Many facts, however, which throw light on the early days of the abbey
are now unassailable. We see that Hilda must have been a most remarkable
woman for her times, instilling into those around her a passion for
learning as well as right-living, for despite the fact that they worked
and prayed in rude wooden buildings, with walls formed, most probably,
of split tree-trunks, after the fashion of the church at Greenstead in
Essex, we find the institution producing, among others, such men as Bosa
and John, both Bishops of York, and such a poet as Caadmon. The legend
of his inspiration, however, may be placed beside the story of how the
saintly Abbess turned the snakes into the fossil ammonites with which
the liassic shores of Whitby are strewn. Hilda, who probably died in the
year 680, was succeeded by Aelfleda, the daughter of King Oswin of
Northumbria, whom she had trained in the abbey, and there seems little
doubt that her pupil carried on successfully the beneficent work of the
foundress.

Aelfleda had the support of her mother's presence as well as the wise
counsels of Bishop Trumwine, who had taken refuge at Streoneshalh, after
having been driven from his own sphere of work by the depredations of
the Picts and Scots. We then learn that Aelfleda died at the age of
fifty-nine, but from that year--probably 713--a complete silence falls
upon the work of the abbey; for if any records were made during the next
century and a half, they have been totally lost. About the year 867 the
Danes reached this part of Yorkshire, and we know that they laid waste
the abbey, and