re 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 Archbishops of York, and such a poet as
Caedmon. 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 Oswiu 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 most probably the town also; but the
invaders gradually started new settlements, or 'bys,' and Whitby must
certainly have grown into a place of some size by the time of Edward
the Confessor, for just previous to the Norman invasion it was assessed
for Danegeld to the extent of a sum equivalent to L3,500 at the present
time.

After the Conquest a monk