important royal centre for the Northumbrian kings, for it was here that Paulinus of York (later St Paulinus) came to set up his wooden church, the precursor of York Minster, and it was here that King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised in 627. The first Minster is believed to have been built in 627, although the location of the early Minster is a matter of dispute. Throughout the succeeding centuries, York remained an important royal and ecclesiastical centre, the seat of a bishop, and later, from 735, of an archbishop. Very little about Anglian York is known and few documents survive. It is known that the building and rebuilding of the Minster was carried out, along with the construction of a thirty-altar church dedicated to Alma Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which may have been on the same site. York became a centre of learning under Northumbrian rule, with the establishment of the library and of the Minster school. Alcuin, later adviser to Charlemagne, was its most distinguished pupil and then master. Of this great royal and ecclesiastical centre, little is yet known archaeologically. Excavations on the Roman fortress walls have shown that they may have survived more or less intact for much of their circuit, and the Anglian Tower, a small square tower built to fill a gap in the Roman way, may be a repair of the Anglian period. The survival of the walls and gates shows that the Roman street pattern survived, at least in part, inside the fortress. Certainly excavations beneath York Minster have shown that the great hall of the Roman headquarters building still stood and was used until the 9th century. By the 8th century York was an active commercial centre with established trading links to other areas of England, northern France, the Low Countries and the Rhineland. Excavations near the junction of the River Foss and River Ouse in Fishergate found buildings dating from the 7th and 9th century. These were located away from the Roman centre of the city may form a trading settlement that served the royal and ecclesiastical century. This and other discoveries indicate an occupation pattern during the 7th to 9th century that followed the line of the rivers, creating a long linear settlement along the River Ouse and extending along some of the River Foss. Viking Jórvík In November 866 AD a large army of Danish Vikings, called the "Great