[Illustration: 
  The early font in the Chapel of Ease at Levisham, that was serving only
    recently as a cattle trough in a farmyard. 
  The BROKEN CROSS by the ruins of WYKEHAM ABBEY.  Scarcely any traces of
    carving are visible. 
  A carved cross built into the wall of the tower (interior) of
    Middleton Church.  The head is hidden in the angle of the wall.
]

The founding of a monastery at Lastingham is described by Bede, and with the particulars he gives we can place the date between the years 653 and 655.  Bishop Cedd was requested by King Oidilward, who held rule in the parts of Deira, “to accept some possession of land of him to build a monastery to which the king himself [AEthelwald] also might frequently come to pray to the Lord, and to hear the Word, and in which he might be buried when he died.”  Further on we are told that Cedd “assenting to the king’s wishes, chose for himself a place to build a monastery among lofty and remote mountains, in which there appeared to have been more lurking places of robbers and dens of wild beasts than habitations of men.”  This account is of extreme interest, being the only contemporary description of this part of Yorkshire known to us.  “Moreover,” says Bede, “the man of God, studying first by prayers and fastings to purge the place he had received for a monastery from its former filth of crimes, and so to lay in it the foundations of the monastery, requested of the king that he would give him during the whole ensuing time of Lent leave and licence to abide there for the sake of prayer; on all which days, with the exception of Sunday, protracting his fast to evening according to custom, he did not even then take anything except a very little bread and one hen’s egg, with a little milk and water.  For he said this was the custom of those of whom he had learnt the rule of regular discipline, first to consecrate to the Lord by prayers and fastings the places newly received for building a monastery or a church.  And when ten days of the quadragesimal fast were yet remaining, there came one to summon him to the king.  But he, in order that the religious work might not be intermitted on account of the king’s affairs, desired his presbyter Cynibill, who was also his brother, to complete the pious undertaking.  The latter willingly assented; and the duty of fasting and prayer having been fulfilled, he built there a monastery which is now called Laestingaeu [Lastingham], and instituted rules there, according to the customs of the monks of Lindisfarne, where he had been educated.  And when for many years he [Cedd] had administered the episcopate in the aforesaid province, and also had taken charge of this monastery, over which he set superiors, it happened that coming to this same monastery at a time of mortality, he was attacked by bodily infirmity and died.  At first, indeed, he was buried outside, but in process of time a church was built of stone in the same monastery, in honour of the blessed mother of God, and in that church his body was laid on the right side of the altar.”  Cedd’s death took place in 664, and Ceadda or Chad, one of his brothers, succeeded him as he had desired.