YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY Gift of
Dr. William C. Minor

THE RUINED ABBEYS

OF YORKSHIRE

BY

r^

W;W CHAMBERS LEFROY

WITH ETCHINGS AND VIGNETTES
BY A. BRUNET-DEBAINES AND H TOUSSAINT

SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54 FLEET STREET
LONDON. MDCCCLXXXIII

TO
HEYWOOD SUMNER,
THIS SKETCH
IS INAPPROPRIATELY, BUT AFFECTIONATELY,
INSCRIBED.

PREFACE.

THE history of monasticism planned by Southey yet remains to be written.
To that much-needed work Northumbria will supply a long and most
important chapter, which I am far from claiming to have anticipated.
These chapters first appeared in an artistic periodical, and for such a purpose
monasticism is to its buildings somewhat as the cultus of the Virgin to Florentine art.
We cannot get from this glorious group of ruins the best and deepest enjoyment, or
reveal to others the secret of their charm, without a certain familiarity, and at least
an imaginative sympathy with the spirit which wrought in and still lingers near them.
The architect, the antiquary, the artist, are not or should not be distinct; and he
who has not in him something of the three is scarcely worthy to travel in regions
so lovely and so eloquent. Nor must we be impatient of a certain sadness in our
subject — ' He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend,' and sober colouring is
not always gloom. For me, the unfruitfulness of my earliest visits to monastic ruins,
and the pleasant memory of all I owe to the companions of my latest, bid me hope
that these pages may be to some few the key of an unsuspected door, tempting
them to sojourn and search where they were only wont to 'glance, and note, and
bustle by.' The frequent allusion to the plans and notes of Messrs. J. Henry
Middleton and J. T. Mickleth waite, Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, are to
some extent an acknowledgment of the help I have derived from them, but not
of the generous sympathy and congenial intercourse, in which lies all the charm
and half the value of such aid.
Many of the scenes faithfully depicted here by Mr. Brunet-Debaines are associated
with personal experiences of Yorkshire hospitality, which have softened, if they could
not banish, regretful thoughts of the guest-house of the monks. And yet, because
the unremembered past, like the dim future, stirs within us, we long to lodge for
one night with a Benedictine host — seeing the old world and the forsaken ways.
Kensington, December, 1882.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE
i. St. Mary's, York . . . . . . . i
II. Rievaulx . . . ... 7
hi. Byland . . . ... . . -H
iv. Fountains . .  19
v. Fountains (continued) .  25
vi. Kirkstall . . . . . ... 31
vu. Kirkstall and Roche . . . . 36
viii. Jervaulx . . .... ... 42
ix. Mount Grace Priory . . .... 48
x. Easby and Eggleston . . .... ... 53
xi. Bolton, Guisborough, and Kirkham  60
xn. Whitby  66

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

ETCHINGS.
Fountains Abbey, the Chapel of Nine Altars. By A. Brunet- Debaims
St. Mary's, York. By A. Brunet-Debaines
RlEVAULX Abbey. By A. Brunet-Debaines
Byland Abbey. By A. Brunet-Debaines
Fountains Abbey. By A. Brunet-Debaines
Kirkstall Abbey. By A. Brunet-Debaines
Kirkstall Abbey from the South-east.
JERVAULX ABBEY. By A. Brunet-Debaines
Mount Grace Priory. By H. Toussaint
Easby Abbey. By A. Brunet-Debaines .
Bolton Priory. By A. Brunet-Debaines
Whitby Abbey. By A. Brunet-Debaines

By H. Toussaint

Frontispiece . PAGE 4
io
20
32
36
44
48 56
60
6S

VIGNETTES.

BOOTHAM BAR, YORK 
PLAN OF THE BENEDICTINE ABBEY, WESTMINSTER
AMBULATORY OF ST. LEONARD'S HOSPITAL AND
ROMAN MULTANGULAR TOWER, YORK
RlEVAULX ABBEY. THE CHOIR, LOOKING SOUTH
RlEVAULX ABBEY. THE CHOIR, LOOKING NORTH
RlEVAULX ABBEY. THE TRANSEPT .
HELMSLEY CASTLE ... . .
BYLAND ABBEY. WEST END
BYLAND ABBEY. EAST END ....
FOUNTAINS ABBEY. FROM THE SOUTH .
FOUNTAINS ABBEY. THE NAVE OF THE CHURCH
THE REFECTORY, FOUNTAINS ABBEY .
THE CELLARIUM, FOUNTAINS ABBEY .
KIRKSTALL ABBEY. INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH
KIRKSTALL ABBEY. WESTERN FACADE OF THE
CHURCH 
PLAN OF THE CISTERCIAN ABBEY OF KIRKSTALL,
AS IT WAS IN THE I2TH CENTURY .
ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPTER-HOUSE, KIRKSTALL
ABBEY 

PAGE 2

9
1 1
121617
21
23
27 293335
37
33

KIRKSTALL ABBEY, ABOUT 1 794. FROM A SKETCH
BY THOMAS GIRTIN
ROCHE ABBEY
JERVAULX ABBEY
PART OF THE RUINS OF JERVAULX ABBEY
HOUSE, PARTLY 17TH CENTURY, AT THE EN
TRANCE TO MOUNT GRACE PRIORY .
CARTHUSIAN MONASTERY OF MOUNT GRACE.
GROUND-PLAN OF ONE OF THE MONKS'
HOUSES 
DOOR LEADING FROM THE OUTER COURT TO THE
INNER CLOISTER AT MOUNT GRACE PRIORY
RICHMOND CASTLE 
THE REFECTORY, EASBY ABBEY .
TOWER OF THE GREY FRIARS, RICHMOND
GUISBOROUGH PRIORY ...
KIRKHAM PRIORY
BOLTON PRIORY .
WHITBY ABBEY, THE CHOIR
WHITBY ABBEY, LOOKING EAST .
WHITBY CHURCH, FROM A WINDOW OF THE ABBEY

39
4i4345
48

49 505457
S3
6i
63646667 69

THE RUINED ABBEYS OF YORKSHIRE.

i.

Sf. Marys, York.

SOME years ago a countryman put to a
traveller in the neighbourhood of Furness
Abbey the following question : ' About those monks,
sir — I sometimes wonder, and perhaps you can tell
me — were they really black men ?'
"^ From this perfectly true story we may learn that
there are depths of ignorance on the subject of
monasticism beneath even our own or our neigh
bour's. We may reflect too, if we please, on the
fleeting nature of fame and the slender trace that so
much power, and wealth, and zeal have left behind.
Only let us, at the same time, be careful to seem,
at least, to know that, though English monasteries
were not inhabited by black men, they were, in
many cases, by black monks — so narrow is the
boundary between truth and error — and that these
dusky antediluvians were called Benedictines.
How man}' of us learn abroad to interest our
selves in that which we have ignored a hundred limes
at home. In the Vatican, the Pitti Palace, the Brera,
the Louvre, Ave are familiar, for instance, with a figure,
draped now in white and now in black, sometimes
bearded and sometimes beardless, here with pastoral
staff in hand and mitred head, there rolling, emaciated,
in a bed of thorns, but testifying, by this very variety
of treatment, to the manifold and dramatic interest
which, to the eye of faith, centred in the name of
St. Benedict. And yet long ago at York, it may be,
or at Whitby, in the outskirts of Leeds or of Ripon,
or in the quiet dales of the Ure and the Rye,
we have been face to face with this remarkable
man in the intimate expression of his mind and
the immediate outcome of his life. For without
St. Benedict there had been no St. Mary- of York,
and without St. Mary of York there had been no
St. Mary of Fountains.
Yes; this saint, this mystic, this superstitious
monk, who seems so much at home in the pictures
of far-off popish ages and the galleries of far-off
popish lands, did actually find foothold in Yorkshire,
making what is now a land of moors and mills a land
of moors and monasteries, and leaving among the

sportsmen and manufacturers of to-day a mark
hitherto indelible.
Of nearly twenty monastic ruins of which York
shire has reason to be proud, or ashamed, seven only
— those, viz., of Bolton, Kirkham, Easby, Eggleston,
Guisborough, Mount Grace, and Coverham — belong
to non-Benedictine orders. York and Selby, the only
two mitred abbeys in the county, and Fountains, so rich
in its prosperity and so lovely in its decay, were Bene
dictine; Whitby, 'the Westminster ofthe Northumbrian
kings,' revived from two hundred years of spoliation
and neglect at the touch of Benedictine hands.
The monastic ruins of England are the witnesses
to an historic fact which is too apt to be forgotten or
neglected. We all know there was monasticism in
England before the Reformation ; for were there not
monasteries to be suppressed by the providential
rapacity of Henry VIII. ? But we are inclined to
relegate their history to the regions of ecclesiology
and others equally dusty and obscure ; forgetting, if
we ever knew, that they were interwoven with the
fibre of our national life — bone of our bone and flesh
of our flesh. And yet our hotels, our workhouses, our
refuges, and probably a dozen other familiar modern
institutions, have been hiorally, and too often materi
ally, built out of their ruins.* In them our parliaments
met, our annals were composed, our classics copied
* ' The leasehold tenants of abbey lands were, in fact, the
most enviable members of the agricultural class in the Middle
Ages, and the monks set an example of agricultural improve
ment to all other landlords. Hospitality and charity were
practised on a vast scale, and some historians regard the
regular distribution of alms at the convent door, or the dinner
open to all comers in the refectory, as the mediaeval substitute
for the poor-law system. Considering how unequally the
monasteries were scattered over the face of the country, such
direct relief can only have been accessible to a small proportion
of the rural poor, even where it was not capriciously bestowed ;
but the civilising influences of monasteries doubtless extended
far more widely, and were especially valuable in the north of
England, where private estates were of enormous size, and
where resident landowners were therefore few and far between.
When merchants, with a shrewd eye to business, and often
living in London or other towns, succeeded the benevolent
monks, as they were succeeding the free-handed nobles and
knights, it must have fared ill at first with the weaker members

//"

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

and preserved ; and, what is even more important, in
them the very humanity which we inherit once found
fit utterance for its superhuman aspirations, and, how
blindly and wrongly soever, poured out its soul
through hundreds of dark and troubled years — con
fessing and leaving on record that after all it had a
soul and sought a country.
But here in St. Mary's Abbey — 371 feet long and 60
broad — or there at Jervaulx, where, with scarcely one
stone ofthe church still left upon another, the very do-

wooded hills and by quiet streams, that these ruins are
worth visiting. As long as there is the merest ground-
plan to be traced, their human interest appeals to men
and women of every creed, but that of sheer stupidity.
In York, where the very names of streets are
monuments of antiquity, and the relics of Roman,
Saxon, and Dane, arc gathered under the shadow of
one of the finest cathedrals in the world, it is a little
hard to turn aside into a trim garden and fix our
attention upon the ruins of an abbey. Bootham, the

A

44/f^

ru^i-^e'cr

UOOTHAM liAR, YORK.

mestic buildings strike and impress us with their mass
and grand proportions, it is impossible quite to shut
one's eyes to all this. It is not only because they illus
trate a chapter or two in the history of architecture, still
less because most of them stand under picturesquely
of the labouring class. The dissolution of monasteries thus be
came a secondary cause of the great agrarian revolution which
marked the sixteenth century and which laid the foundation of
the present English land-system. The north of England where
the monasteries had been almost the only centres of culture and
improvement, appears to have suffered most by their dissolution,
as the south gained most by the growth of London and the
extension of intercourse with the Continent.'--' English Land
and English Landlords,' by the Hon. George C. Brodrick.
Cf. Hallam. Middle Ages. 12th Edition. Vol. iii., p. 360.

subject of our illustration, is one among a hundred
points of interest, and even when we hear of ' Mary-
gate ' and ' Monk-bar,' we are more struck by their
last syllables than their first. There is an instant
and pleasurable surprise in finding ourselves in a
place where a bar means a gate and a gate means
something quite different ; but it is not till abbey
after abbey with endless similarity and endless
variety has brought home to us the solemn beauty
and deep significance of monastic ruins, that we can
contentedly give them the attention they deserve.
And who, meanwhile, was St. Benedict? It is
soon told ; but the ' historical imagination ' must

St. Marys, York.

wing its flight over more than thirteen centuries to
listen. The date of his birth was near the end of the
fifth century ; the place was Nursia, in the Duchy of
Spoleto. At an early age Benedict was sent by his
parents to study at Rome ; but the story of his flight
from thence, at the age of fourteen, agrees with the
description afterwards given of him by St. Gregory
the Great, as ' scienter nesciens et sapienter indoctus.'
Escaping, not without difficulty, from the faithful
nurse who had accompanied him to Rome, this pre
cocious ascetic concealed himself on the then desolate
shore of Subiaco. Here he quickly became famous;
and from hence, after only three years, he was sum
moned to preside as Abbot over a neighbouring
monastery. Once more he withdrew to solitude and
an even greater severity of life. As time went on
he was followed into his seclusion by a motley crowd
of disciples. From the old world Roman nobles sent
their sons to be rescued from the ' deep weariness
and sated lust,' which to themselves ' made human
life a hell ;' from the new the wild Goth came to
learn the first elements of civilisation.
Taking with him a few followers, Benedict now
founded a monastery on Monte Cassino, the destined
scene of his bold rebuke to Totila, the Gothic king.
Already no less than twelve religious houses, each with
its own superior, bore witness to his influence ; and in
515 he composed the famous ' Regula Monachorum.'
In obedience to that rule the stones of a hundred
ruined abbeys lie to-day in English fields — the silent
witnesses and unanswerable arguments of the past.
On such more personal matters as the devotion to
St. Benedict of Scolastica, his sister, and of Maurus,
Placidus, and Flavia, his friends, this is not the place
to dwell. Art, which delights to gild in retrospect
the path which the saint has trod, ' not without dust
and heat,' lingers tenderly over their loves. Let us
remember their names, at least, when we read of
Chaucer's degenerate fourteenth-century Benedictine:
' The rule of St. Maure and of St. Benait,
Because that it was old and somedeal strait,
This ilke monk let olde thinges pace,
And held after the newe world the trace.'
Twice in the 'Regula' of St. Benedict there occurs
an expression which, because it is certainly picturesque
and probably characteristic, seems to justify quotation.
It is required of him who aspires to dwell in ' the
tabernacle of God's kingdom,' that he be one who,
' turning away the eyes of his heart from the wicked
devil who tempts him, hath taken the young thoughts
which he hath bred and dashed them to pieces on
Christ.' They are words which, with the final ex
hortation 'never to despair of the mercy of God,' may
not unfitly be remembered in the scenes we are about
to visit, recording as they do the uncompromising
austerity from which monasticism repeatedly declined,

and the hope which it dared to proclaim amid the
blackness of the world's eclipse.
Between the Benedictine order (reformed and un-
reformed) and the various branches ofthe Augustinian,
the monks, as distinguished from friars, may be said to
have been divided, for all the 'religious' who did not
conform to the rule of St. Benedict were gathered at a
subsequent period into at least a nominal unity under
the name and patronage ofthe famous Bishop of Hippo.
From quite primitive times there had been lonely
hermits who ' Hurried torn with inward strife
The wilderness to seek,'
and there had long since begun to group themselves
into such semblance of ccenobite monasticism as we
are familiar with in Kingsley's ' Hypatia.' But this
development had been checked by the storm that
ushered in the night of the dark ages, and it was left
to St. Benedict to systematize, in harmony with the
requirements of his day, the traditions and forces of
asceticism. Working to some extent upon the lines of SS.
Pachomius and Basil, he gave to his order a unifor
mity never before attained and enjoined upon its
members the unaccustomed discipline of manual
labour. So strongly was the former point insisted
on, that many existing monasteries were deliberately
destroyed by the early Benedictines in order to raise
upon their sites buildings suited to the requirements
of the new rule.
Within the walls of a Benedictine precinct was to
be included all that its inmates might lawfully desire*
Running water, mill, bake-house, stable, cow-shed,
workshops, must be there. A short description of
the ordinary plan of such a monastery will be useful
and should not be without interest. We cannot do
better than borrow largely, though with certain ne
cessary modifications, from Professor Willis's account
of the Conventual Buildings of Canterbury. We
will take the cloister-court as our nucleus. To the
north rises the nave of the great church, to the east
the south transept, chapter-house and ' calefactorium,'
or common day-room of the monks. On the south
are the refectory, kitchen, buttery, &c, and on the
west probably cellars and a ' parlatorium ' where
visitors may be interviewed. Over the calefactorium
and vestibule of the chapter-house, and communi
cating by a staircase with the south transept of the
church, we may expect to find the dormitory. North
of the church is the 'outer cemetery,' the burial-ground
of the laity, and east of this, the ' inner cemetery ' for
the monks. Outside the cloister are halls and chambers
for purposes of hospitality. Southwards lies a large
* For the accompanying plan of the conventual buildings
of Westminster, as well as for much other invaluable help, the
author of these pages is indebted to his friends, Mr. J. Henry
Middleton and Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite.

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

entrance court, which separates the strictly monastic
buildings from the workshops and offices and the
dwelling of the lay brothers. South - west of this
court is a great hall known as the Aula Nova, and
supposed to have been the hospitium (guest-house)
of the paupers. Beyond this again, and in fact out
side the precinct, is the almonry for relief of the poor.

PLAN OF THE BENEDICTINE
ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER

•
•

ABBEY GARDEN

trr

I I M

Cloister Garth

E

L

\

u

a.o

2

>

a>

o

2
L. U
t< Site or
CHEN
Space now occupied
by westminster schcql,
tion had to put up with humbler quarters. Stranger
monks are allowed to eat in the refectory, and there
fore only require a sitting-room and dormitory.
If we remember that the word ' frater,' which has
sometimes been wrongly translated 'common-room,'
is only another name for the refectory, we shall now
be in a position to understand the description given
in ' Pierse, the Plowman's Creed,'
of a monastery of another order
— that of 'Preaching Friars.'
' Than cam I to that cloystre, and gaped
abouten
Whough it was pilered and peynt and
portreyd well clene,
Al tyled with leed, lowe to the stones,
And ypaved with poyntll, ich poynt
after other,
With cundites of clen tyn closed al
aboute
With lavoures of lattin, loveliche ygrei-
thed. —
— Thane was the chapitre house
wrought as a great chirch
Corven and covered, ant queytelehe
entayled
With semliche selure yset on lofte
As a parlement house ypeynted aboute.
Thanne ferd I into fray toure, and fond
there a nother
An halle for an hygh kynge, an house
hold to holden,
With brod bordes abouten, ybenched
wel clene,
With wyndoves of glass, wrought as a
chirche.
Then walkede I ferrer, and went all
abouten,
And seigh hailes full heygh, and houses
full noble,
Chambers with chymneys, and chapels
gaye,
And kychenes for an high kynge, in
castels to holden,
And her dortoure* ydight, with dores
full stronge,
Fermeryet and fraitur with fele mo
houses,
And al strong ston wal sterne upon
heithe
With gaye garites and grete, and iche
hole glased.'
At Canterbury the cloister-court is on the north side
of the church, and the cemetery on the south ; but
the above is the more usual arrangement.
The cloister, or at least its north wall, is often
glazed and supplied with seats for study. A passage
under the dormitory leads to the smaller cloister —
that of the infirmary. Here are a separate hall and
chapel. The guest-house for strangers of rank includes
a dining-hall, bed -rooms (each containing several
beds), stables, servants' rooms, kitchen, bake-house,
brew-house, and store-room. Visitors of less distinc-
Yorkshire, or rather Northumbria, is said to have
been thickly strewn with monasteries in the early
days of St. Cuthbert, the missionary of the seventh
centuiy. We may certainly trace in various writers
the names of something like a dozen, of which no
other remains are to be found. Most of these, how
ever, seem like the original foundation of St. Hild at
Whitby, to have belonged to an earlier and less per
fect system than the Benedictine. It was the bishops
* Dormitory.
t Infirmary.
St. Marys, York.

5

and monks of Scotland who, after the conversion of
the Saxons, did for Northumbria what St. Augustine
had done for Kent ; and Burton (Monast. Ebor.)
mentions that ten monasteries were founded by them
in Yorkshire before the Danish invasion of 832. Of
these, Lastingham, founded in 648, and Whitby about
eleven years later, were the first. The early founda
tions were troubled now by the attacks of the Danes,
and now by the support given by Saxon kings to the
secular party in the church. While the prayer for
deliverance ' a furore Northmannorum ' is yet upon
the lips of the monks, comes the rough hand of
an Eadwig to disturb them. For, as William of
Malmesbury records, ' et Malmesburiense coenobium,
plusquam ducentis septuaginta annis a monachis
inhabitatum, clericorum stabulum fecit.'*
But the Danes, after all, were their worst enemies.
Burton tells ust that after the devastation of Nor
thumbria by Inguar and Hubba — -a hundred years
before Eadwig, by the by — ' there were few remains
of monasteries left, and those generally were possessed
by married clergy — clericorum stabula I ' And
another old authority goes so far as to say that
' Christianity was almost extinct, very few churches
(and those only built with hurdles and straw) were
re-built. But no monasteries were re-founded for
almost two hundred years. The country people never
heard of the name of a monk, and were frightened at
the very habit.' But if monasticism seemed to be
rooted out of Northumbria, this was by no means
the case in other parts of England. Dunstan gave
it new life and reality at Glastonbury, and intro
duced, in fact, the Benedictine system with something
of Cluniac strictness. At last, in 1073, there came
from Evesham three missionary monks, and guided,
as they believed, by a divine impulse, established
themselves on the Tyne, where the memory of the
Venerable Bede still clung about the ruins of Jarrow.
From thence after a time, they went their ways,
Aldwin to Durham, Remifried (or Reinfred) to Strea-
neschalch, the modern Whitby ; and Elfwin to York,
to restore a monastery dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
It is remarkable, however, that Stephen, the first
Abbot of St. Mary's, who has left us a very circum
stantial account of the foundation, makes no mention
at all of Elfwin or of any earlier building, except
the church of St. Olave's. He simply relates how,
being harassed at Whitby by pirates on the one hand,
and the caprice of William de Perci on the other, he
moved first to Lastingham and then to York, where
Alan, Earl of Richmond, gave him and his monks the
church of St. Olave and four acres of ground.

* ' He made the monastery of Malmesbury, which had been
occupied by monks for more than 270 years, into a stable of
secular clergy.'— See Preface to Sir Henry Taylor's ' Edwin
the Fair.'
t Monast. Ebor.

St. Olaf, the martyred king of the Northumbrians,
had, as Mr. Freeman* points out, become, by the
middle of the nth century, 'a favourite object of
reverence, especially among men of Scandinavian
descent. In his honour Earl Siward had reared a
church in a suburb of his capital, called "Galmanho"
— a church which, after the Norman Conquest, grew
into that great abbey of St. Mary whose ruins form
the most truly beautiful ornament of the Northern
metropolis.' ' In his own church of Galmanho Siward
the Strong, the true relic of old Scandinavian times,
was buried with all honour.' Sometimes we find
the monastery of St, Mary called 'Galmanho;' and
Leland tells us it was built outside the walls of York
at or near the place where the dirt of the city was
deposited and criminals executed. In explanation
of the name it has been suggested that ' galman ' is
derived from Saxon 'galga' — a gallows, t
The first great event in the history of St. Mary's
was the secession of thirteen monks, who desired to
adopt the Cistercian reform of the Benedictine rule.
Of this we shall have more to say in another place.
In the time of Abbot Severinus, the second quarter
of the twelfth century, St. Mary's is said to have been
burnt ; but it seems unlikely that it should have been
left in ruins till 1258, when under Abbot Simon de
Warwick, we have the first indications of a renewal
of building operations.
The monastery, meanwhile, had been much
troubled by the machinations of one Thomas de
Warthill, who, wishing to get possession of a slice of
the abbey lands, brought a false accusation against the
Abbot and his house respecting a certain charter, and
induced the king to fine them heavily. The monks
were dispersed, and the ' church and offices exposed to
great danger and ruin.' But with Simon de Warwick
good times returned, while a just heaven ' monocula-
verat ' the offending Warthill, of whom it is said that
' a monachis Sanctse Mariae Eboraci ccenobialis siccis
occulis meruit deplorari.' — (' from the monks of St.
Mary he deserved a dry-eyed lamentation.') — The
Abbey of St. Mary's had diverse immunities and
privileges which seem to have roused the jealousy
and wrath of the citizens of York. Frequent col
lisions, of the nature apparently of aggravated ' town
and gown rows,' occurred ; and the citizens having
lately destroyed the earthen rampart by which the
precinct was guarded, it was one of the glories of
Abbot Simon to build the stone wall and towers,
the remains of which are still to be seen. Yet even
he was obliged to absent himself from York for a
whole year, on an occasion described by Leland,
* Freeman's ' Norman Conquest.' 3rd Edition. Vol. ii.,
p. 374, and Vol. iv., p. 666; and cf Cott. Tiber, B. i. ('Abingdon
Chronicle') and Cott. Tiber, B. iv. (' Worcester Chronicle')-
t See a Paper by Mr. Wellbeloved in the fifth vol. of the
' Vetusta Monumenta' ofthe Society of Antiquaries. C

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

when 'in the year 1262 an attack was made by the
citizens of York on the Monastery of St. Mary,
which resulted in much loss of life and injury to
property.' At this time Simon also paid 100/. to
the citizens as a peace-offering.
Selby and York were, as has been said, the only two
mitred abbeys in the county; and when we find that at
the dissolution there were fifty monks in the latter, we
may perhaps accept the computation that in an estab
lishment of so much dignity and importance there
would not be less than one hundred and fifty servants.*
The revenue has been variously stated at 1550.?.
and 2085/. a-year. It is certain that the Abbot of
St. Mary's had two country-seats near York, and a
house in London not far from Paul's Wharf, where
he lived while attending in his place in Parliament.
The close
of St. Mary's,
commonly cal
led St. Mary's
Shore, con
tained fifteen
acres. On the
outskirts of a
city like York
this was doubt
less, even then,
a considerable
extent, but we
shall find at
Fountains a
precinct six
times as large,
while Jervaulx
reached one
hundred acres.
The Abbots of
St. Mary's owned a second enclosure on the other
side of ' Marygate,' where the name of ' Almonry
Garth 'f still lingers, and the traces of the Abbot's
fish-ponds may be seen.
Though this monastery did not pass at the disso
lution into private hands, but was retained by the
Crown, it has suffered from the erection on a part of
its site of a palace for the lords president of the
north ; and the royal grants of stone from the ruins
for building the county gaol in 1701, and repairing
St. Olave's church and Beverley Minster in 1705 and
17 17, respectively, have left little or nothing but the
nave of the church and the vestibule of the chapter
house. The former ranks with Tintern as an example
* Pugin (Gothic Arch.) mentions that the household of the
Abbot of Glastonbury numbered three hundred, and sometimes
as many as five hundred guests were entertained.
t It should be remembered .that the Almonry of a Bene
dictine monastery was often much more than an office for
doling out alms to beggars. There were permanent almshouses
and also schools or 'homes' for children.

AMBULATORY OF ST. LEONARD S HOSPITAL AND ROMAN MULTANGULAR TOWER, YORK.

of the last stage of the transition from Early English
to Decorated ; the latter, with Byland, as a fine speci
men of ' that early variety of the Early Pointed (or
Early English) of which the characteristic is the
square abacus.' Sir Gilbert Scott, in his lectures on
Mediaeval Architecture, from which I quote these
last words, refers several times to this vestibule,
always in terms of the highest praise, and gives
' restored views ' from two positions.*
The eight north windows ofthe nave of St. Mary's
are among the chief glories of English Gothic. They
exhibit a remarkable alternation of two designs, viz.,
first a single mullion dividing two trefoil-headed
lights, with a sexfoil in the head of the arch, and then
three trefoil-headed lights divided by two mullions
and surmounted by three quatrefoils. Of these
eight windows,
the three nearest
the transept are
distinguished by
filleted mould
ings. The gar
dens of the
Yorkshire Philo
sophical Society
enclose, besides
the nave and
chapter house
of St. Mary's,
two remarkable
ruins, which
help to redeem
the common
place trimness of
the scene. These
are the celebrat
ed Roman 'mul
tangular tower,' and some fragments of the hospital of
St. Leonard. The latter includes a thirteenth-century
chapel of great beauty, which is almost certainly the
work of John Romanus, the treasurer of the Minster
and builder of its northern transept, lt is difficult
now to picture what must have been the general effect
of this chapel with its adjoining dormitory, and many-
aisled substructure of cloister or ambulatorv.t The
present picturesque condition of the ruin is shown in
the accompanying sketch.
For architects and antiquaries, even more than
for artists, York is indeed a very paradise, and yet the
wild cliff at Whitby, and the stillness of Byland, recall
with stronger spell that Benedictine spirit which once
swayed the Christian World.
* A fragment of a palace built by Archbishop Rogers (11 54
to 1 181) on the north side ofthe Minster should be compared.
t It is clear, that, as in the normal Benedictine Infirmary,
the patients slept in a room directly communicating with their
oratory. An analogous arrangement may be seen in Lord
Beauchamp's Almshouse at Newland, near Malvern.

II.

Rievaulx.

I

N the reign of Henry I. flourished St. Barnard,
Abbot of Clareval, a man full of devotion, and
chief of many monks, some of whom he sent into
England about 1 128, who were honourably received
by both king and kingdom ; and particularly by
Walter L'Espec, who, about 1131, allotted to some of
them a solitary place in Blakemore, near Hamelac,
now Helmesley, surrounded by steep hills and covered
with wood and ling, near the angles of the three
different vales, with each a rivulet running through
them ; that passing by where the Abbey was
built being called Rie, whence this vale took its
name, and that religious house was thence called
Rie-val.' A great event and a great name are
these which the author of the Yorkshire ' Monas-
ticon' recounts so quietly — St. Bernard of Clair-
vaux and the coming of the Cistercians. The name
at least our readers know.
' There have been other men,' says the Archbishop of
Dublin, 'Augustine and Luther for instance, who by their
words and writings have ploughed deeper and more lasting
furrows in the great field of the Church, but probably no
man during his lifetime ever exercised a personal influence
in Christendom equal to his ; who was the stayer of popular
commotions, the queller of heresies, the umpire between
princes and kings, the counsellor of popes, the founder
— for so he may be esteemed — of an important religious
order, the author of a crusade.'
And Mr. Freeman ('Norman Conquest,' v. 231)
calls him ' the holy Bernard, the last of the Fathers,
the counsellor of popes and kings.' The event, it is
perhaps just possible, they never heard of. The
Cistercians were a strict order of reformed Benedic
tines. If we had never travelled in Yorkshire we
might be inclined to dismiss them with the remark
that they allowed no lofty towers to their churches
and no grease to their vegetables. But when one has
seen Rievaulx and Byland, Fountains and Kirkstall,
Jervaulx and Roche, one begins to suspect there is
more to be said.
Our next half-dozen papers will be concerned with
the work of these Cistercians, and we can hardly fail
to gather, as we go, some knowledge of the men ; it
will be well therefore in this place briefly to explain
their origin. Towards the close of the eleventh
century one Robert was Abbot of Molesme, in

Burgundy. The monks of Molesme, like many other
Benedictines of their day, were lax in their dis
cipline ; and Robert, after trying in vain to revive
among them in its literal strictness the rule of their
founder, retired with a small following to Citeaux
— then a wilderness of thorns. Here he founded a
monastery in which were contained the germs of the
great Cistercian order. Already the English Stephen
Harding* was there — the future framer of the Cister
cian system, and the destined master and instructor
of that very ' Barnard, Abbot of Clareval,' whose
brilliant and winning personal qualities were to be
the special means of its diffusion. Hugh, Archbishop
of Lyons, and papal legate, sanctioned the movement
in a letter which has been preserved. He solemnly
notifies that Robert and certain of his sons — brethren
of the monastery {ccenobium) of Molesme — had
come before him and declared themselves anxious
to keep more closely and perfectly the rule of the
most blessed Benedict, which they had held in luke
warm and careless fashion ; that, for many reasons,
this was not possible without their removal, and that
he, studying the welfare of both parties, advised the
departure of the reformers to such new dwelling as
the heavenly bounty should provide, and bade them
persevere in their intention. In St. Stephen Harding
we recognise, after 500 years, something of St. Bene
dict's knowledge of men and power of organization.
But the latter, as has been truly said, ' organized for a
monastery,' the former ' for an order.' In the ideal of
St. Benedict each monastery was a kingdom under
its Abbot. It is true the bishops were recognised as
official visitors, but their jurisdiction was wholly in
adequate to correct abuses or maintain discipline.
And so it came to pass that in some monasteries ' lay
abbots might be found quietly established with their
wives and children,' and ' the tramp of soldiers, the
neighing of horses, and baying of hounds, made the
cloister more like a knight's castle than a place dedi
cated to God's service.'t The attempt of St. Odo of
Cluny, to remedy this state of things, was doomed
to ultimate failure, because he still left everything
* ' Harding,' says Mr. Freeman, 'was doubtless his baptismal
name, and Stephen the name which he took on entering religion.'
t ' The Cistercian Saints of England ; ' Edited by J. H. N.

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

dependent on the individual Abbots. Stephen's idea
was to create an order which should be self-regulating
and self-reforming. With this view he instituted a
system of reciprocal visitation among the Cistercian
houses and subordinated them all to the parent house

where, is one of the results of that body of
statutes, the ' Carta Caritatis,' as it was called,
which Stephen Harding the Englishman presented
to ' his assembled abbots in 1119. And to this
uniformity is attributed, with much probability,

¦•^'\ > Cv-

RIEVAULX ABBEY. THE CHOIR, LOOKING SOUTH.

of Citeaux. Here every year, on Holy Cross Day
(14th September), a general chapter was to be held
under the presidency of the ' Pater Universalis
Ordinis ' — the Abbot of Citeaux.
The uniformity which enables us, in passing from
one Cistercian ruin to another, to predict with cer
tainty what buildings we shall find or trace, and

the remarkably rapid spread of the pointed arch
after its first appearance in England. Two other
peculiarities, the one a characteristic quality, the
other a noticeable feature, of Cistercian architecture,
owe their origin and significance to the founders
of the order.
The first is their simplicity. All original Cister-

Rievaulx.

cian work is plain and good. A severe self-restraint
everywhere forces the loving ardour of these wifeless
and childless builders to flow in narrow channels.
The zeal of the sacred house is eating them up, but
they have to hold their eager hands from lofty tower

choir was without aisles, though the usual chapels
east of the transepts were permitted and adopted.
In the domestic arrangements the same simplicity
prevailed. In place of the lordly dwelling of the
Benedictine Abbot, the Cistercian had probably but

RIEVAULX ABBEY. THE CHOIR, LOOKING NORTH.

and lavish decoration, and spend themselves upon
the perfect utterance of lowly thoughts.
Robert, Alberic, Stephen, and Bernard, were
monastic Puritans. Not only their churches and the
dresses and diet oftheir monks were plain and humble,
but their very eucharistic vessels and priestly vest
ments were rigidly reformed. The typical Cistercian

a single private room, and a bed in the common
' dorter ' of the monks.
The Benedictines, whose original garb had been
simply the usual clothing of the peasants, had learnt
to be curious in party-coloured silks, in which they
paraded upon costly mules ; but the ' white monk,'
rejecting all raiment not prescribed by St. Benedict,
D

IO

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

confined his wardrobe to the tunic, the scanty sleeve
less scapular, and the pointed cowl. When he was 'in
choir' it is true he threw a cuculla, or large mantle,
over his working dress, and when, in permitted boots
and spurs he rode abroad, this garment would be black
or grey. The second note of a Cistercian house to
which we have referred — the accommodation provided
for the conversi or lay brethren — is so much more
conspicuous at Fountains than at Rievaulx that its
explanation will be best and most intelligibly given
when the former is under discussion.
Rievaulx, founded in 1 131, was the first Cistercian
house in Yorkshire, and its abbot was head of the
order in England.
Walter L'Espec, the brave soldier and skilful
leader, who fought in the battle of the Standard, and
founded the castle of Hamlake or Helmsley, was also
the founder of three abbeys. These were Kirkham
(on the Derwent), Wardon in Bedfordshire, and Rie
vaulx on the Rie.
' An old man and full of days, quick-witted, prudent in
counsel, moderate in peace, circumspect in war, a true
friend, and a loyal subject. His stature was passing tall,
his limbs all of such size as not to exceed their just pro
portions, and yet to be well matched with his great height.
His hair was still black, his beard long and flowing, his
forehead wide and noble, his eyes large and bright, his face
broad but well - featured, his voice like the sound of a
trumpet, setting off his natural eloquence of speech with a
certain majesty of sound.'
Such is the portrait left to us by Aelred, Abbot of
Rievaulx, of Walter L'Espec, its founder. Such was
the man who eventually became a monk in his own
abbey, and whose grave may still be seen at the
entrance of the chapter-house.
Poor soldier-monk ! For more than thirty years
he bore about with him the grief that had sought
comfort in the founding of religious houses. In 1121
Walter L'Espec and his wife Adeline built and
endowed Kirkham in memory of the recent loss of
their only son ; in 1 1 5 1 the old man crept alone into
Rievaulx cloister, and two years later came the message
that he might go from his castles and abbeys to those he
loved — the young Walter, the splendid reckless horse
man, killed there at Frithby in the old happy days,
and Adeline, the faithful wife and fellow-mourner.
St. Bernard himself, having left Citeaux to rule his
own monastery of Clairvaux, sent from thence a body
of monks to that Northumbrian land which has been
well called ' the true English home of the Cistercian
order.' To his friend Archbishop Thurstan of York
he commended the mission, and by Thurstan's advice
L'Espec settled them on the banks of the Rie. As
we look down from Lord Faversham's broad gallery
of turf upon the roofs of the quiet village and the
roofless walls of the abbey, it is difficult to realise the
wild thicket—the locus vastce solitudinis et horroris,

where William and Waltheof, both personal friends of
St. Bernard — prayed and fasted and built. But Rie
vaulx was, indeed, the ideal site for a Cistercian house.
To be near a town was forbidden, and would have
been alien to the Cistercian spirit.*
' The fragrant clouds of dewy steam,
By which deep drove and tangled stream
Pay for soft rains, in season given,
Their tribute to the genial heaven — '
were everywhere the chosen portion of these silent
workers. There, as beneath the dark yews by the
Skell, or the grim rock near Maltby, they ' wrought in
a sad sincerity,' and, in accordance- with their rule,
dedicated their work to ' St. Mary, the Queen of
Heaven and Earth.' Beautiful, indeed, in its decay is
the abbey which now nestles in the heart of the valley.
The Church, like the wooded hills and distant purple
moor, seems to have been always there.
1 O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends with kindred eye ;
For out of thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat'
And yet this is not, after all, the church of Walter
L'Espec and of William and Waltheof. If we look
closer we shall see that there is more ornament than
is consistent with Cistercian simplicity. This noble
triforium, so like the work of the unreformed Bene
dictines at Whitby, these stately choir-aisles — it is
admirable, but it is hardly what we expected. The
explanation is not far to seek. The church has
obviously been altered and enlarged within the period
of the first pointed style. On this, and the further
fact that its ' orientation ' is almost north and south
instead of east and west, a wild theory was long ago
set up that ' the body of the old church was made to
serve as the transept of the new.' It is hardly neces
sary to say that the arrangement of the cloister and
conventual buildings would alone make such a change
of plan practically impossible.
The ritual and architectural east end must always
have been, as now, at the south, and the zvestem
entrance at the north end of the nave. . It is perfectly
true that the transept contains all the original round
arched work of L'Espec which now remains above
ground, but there is no reason for supposing that
the nave either required or received ahy subsequent
addition. It was by no means uncommon for the
ritual choir to extend over the transept opening and

•'In civitatibus in castellis aut villis, nulla nostra con-
struenda sunt ccenobia, sed in locis a conversatione hominum
semotis.'— Instituta Capit. Gen. Ordinis Cisterc. a.d. 1134.
Quoted by E. Sharpe, Part I. of his Cist. Architecture. Cf. also
' Oppida Franciscus— magnas Ignatius urbes,
Bernardus valles — montes Benedictus amabat.'

.• ;

Rievaulx.

1 1

several bays of the architectural nave, and this was,
in all probability, the case at Rievaulx.
The normal eastern arm of Cistercian churches
was originally short, 'the choir being placed in and
west of the crossing.'* Rievaulx has been altered
and enlarged, but it has not been turned round. Its
architectural choir, or eastern limb, probably owes its
extent and beauty to the emulation excited in the
minds of the monks by the ambitious and successful
work of their neighbours of Byland. At one time it
seemed as if the
wanderings of
that Ulysses of
abbeys were to
end on the banks
of the Rie at a
point nearly op
posite Rievaulx ;
and though the
disturbing influ
ence of the bells
and chanted ori
sons of Byland
ceased with its
removal to its
next resting -
place, an eager
rivalry in build
ing and adorn
ment remained to
testify to the his
torical fact of its
former proximity.
It has been truly
said that ' The
Cistercian Ab
beys in York
shire, which are
the earliest pure
Gothic works in
this country, seem
to have been the
works of the
monks them
selves.' t This fact, which has a special bearing
upon our present subject, is, for many reasons, well
worth remembering. In these abbeys design and
execution were constantly and throughout personal,
religious, monastic. Theirs is thus ' a beauty wrought
out from within.' It has in it something of the
nature of a growth, something of the mysterious

.li f Wu, *j -/, \
<^YYYl

RIEVAULX ABBEY. THE TRANSEPT.

charm and unappraisable value of a spontaneous
development. 'Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast ?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell ?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves now myriads ?
Such and so grew these holy piles
Whilst loye and terror laid the tiles.' But to ' love
and terror ' at
Rievaulx was
added the less
solemn but scar
cely less ' potent
motive of emula
tion. For what
do we find there
and what are
the facts ? We
find a ruined
church consisting
entirely of a
choir and tran
septs. Where the
nave should be
are grass - grown
heaps which cry
aloud, and not,
it is hoped, in
vain, for excava
tion.* The lower
part of the tran
sept is clearly
Norman, and so,
it will probably
be found, was
the nave. These
were part of the
older and more
truly Cistercian
design. But the
upper part of the
transepts and the whole of the choir are early English.
Some idea of what the old choir of Rievaulx must
have been like may be gathered from the ruins of
Kirkstall, where no addition to the original eastern
arm was ever made. The new choir at Rievaulx
has no less than seven bays of rather more than
twenty feet each, while the whole church, including

* See an admirable paper on ' The Cistercian Plan ' by Mr.
J. T. Micklethwaite, F.S.A., in the Journal of the Yorkshire
Archaeological and Topographical Association for December
1881. t Stevenson's ' House Architecture.'

* The present owner of Duncombe Park is said to have
lately given his consent to the proposal of the Yorkshire
Archaeological Association to open up this precious mine.
Many besides architects and antiquaries will honour him for
this wise and timely concession.

12

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

transept and nave as well as choir, was not more
than 343 feet long. In a word, the Latin Cross of
the normal Cistercian ground-plan has been entirely
lost sight of. No doubt the desire for refinements
of ritual which soon showed itself even among the
Cistercians, pre-disposed the monk-builders to such
architectural innovations. Probably, also, they were
inspired by the fine proportions of the unreformed
Benedictine churches, and urged on by the masonic
instinct and impulse. All these motives we shall
see at work
at Fountains,
though with cu
riously different
results. But we
can hardly doubt
that the tempt
ation which first
proved too strong
for their traditions
of Cistercian Pu
ritanism was the
desire to equal
or surpass the
glorious work of
their neighbours
and rivals. The
poor homeless
and churchless
wanderers who,
some twelve
years after the
foundation of
Rievaulx, had
found a tem -
porary resting -
place at Old
Byland, removed
after four or
five years to
Stocking, and
thence to the
spot where the

HELMSLEY CASTLE.

ruins of Byland
Abbey are still visible. Even here they were only
five or six miles from Rievaulx, and their noble
church arose almost under the eyes of their old
neighbours. Now, Byland is the largest original Cistercian
Church in England. It is 328 feet long, and boasts
a noble choir with aisles. It was founded in 1177,
and probably completed by the end of the twelfth
century. Sometime in the first half of the thirteenth
century— -Mr. Edmund Sharpe thought not earlier
than 1240 — the new choir at Rievaulx was com
pleted. Longer than that of Byland, and equally
guilty of aisles and a triforium, it is now the great

architectural and artistic attraction of a ruin which
is perhaps only second in beauty to that of Fountains.
Our illustrations show this choir in various points
of view, and recall the peculiar charm of its situation
and surroundings— less trim and artificial than those
at Studley, less striking, perhaps, than those of Bolton,
but combining a foreground of wooded hill with dis
tant heights of russet and purple moor into a picture
which need fear comparison with neither. Of the
choirs of Rievaulx and Fountains it has been said
that ' it would
be difficult to
find two ex
amples which
more character
istically represent
the purity and
elegance of the
best work of the
English lancet
period,' though
' the effect in
both cases is
due to richness
and delicacy of
-moulded work
and excellence
of proportion in
main features,'
for ' of carved
work there is
little, and of
sculpture none.'*
We have re
marked that the
triforium in the
choir of Rievaulx
bears a striking
resemblance to
that at Whitby.
In the latter,
however, a cir
cular dripstone
moulding sur
mounts each pair of pointed arches, whereas the
former has nothing between the pointed arches and
the string - course of the clerestory. A special
characteristic of Rievaulx is the arrangement of
lancets in couples, and this idea is carried out in
the clerestory, whereas at Whitby we have groups of
five, the centre only being pierced. The triforium at
Whitby is also more lofty than that at Rievaulx,
which again is not of the same design in the transept
as in the choir.
Of the domestic buildings, the most conspicuous

'Architecture ofthe Cistercians.' Edmund Sharpe.

Rievaulx.

and interesting is the refectory. Its peculiarity in
being supported on a vaulted undercroft is clearly
due to the abrupt declivity of the ground, but in con
nexion with this undercroft a question arises which
is of considerable interest to antiquaries. The pulpit
from which one of the monks must always read to his
brethren during dinner is approached, as usual, by a
straight staircase inside the refectory, but any one
who will take the trouble to mount the broken and
ivy-covered steps will find the remains of a second
flight winding downwards to the vault below. This
arrangement is by no means usual, but it is found in
at least one other Cistercian refectory — namely, that
of Beaulieu Abbey, in Hampshire. In neither case is
it possible to say with certainty whither this second
staircase led or what was its purpose ; but at Rievaulx
there are indications of its having finally turned in
wards to the undercroft. ' A dim light,' says Mr. J. T.
Micklethwaite, 'is thrown on this curious arrangement
by a direction in Consuetudines Eec. Off. (cvi.) which
orders that after the reader has ceased and put back
his book into its place — discedat ubi a conventu non
videatur — he should go away out of sight of the rest.'
In accordance with the invariable Cistercian
plan, the refectory at Rievaulx is at right angles
with the cloister, and not parallel, as was the
Benedictine custom (see plan p. 4). It has been
suggested that this difference may be accounted for

by the fact that the Cistercian monks were their
own cooks, taking the duty week by week in turn.
It was thus almost a necessity that the kitchen
as well as buttery should have direct communi
cation with the cloister — the ordinary living-room
of the monks. However this may be, the position
of the refectory is a very useful guide, by which
we may at a glance distinguish a monastery of the
reformed from one of the unreformed order. In
some respects the refectory at Rievaulx is not
unlike that at Fountains, but as it is not longi
tudinally divided by pillars, as is the case with the
latter, it must have been covered by a wooden roof
in one span.
Of the many thoughts and facts which crowd
about the memory of Rievaulx Abbey, we must con
tent ourselves with two of special interest. Here, in
these blank and broken lancets, is said to have glowed
in the twelfth century some of the earliest English
stained glass ; and hence, in the days of Ailred, went
forth the colony which founded the first Cistercian
Abbey in Scotland. To Walter L'Espec, as well as
to King David, are art and poetry indebted for
Melrose; and 'when distant Tweed is heard to rave,'
as well as when the gentler murmur of the Rie is in
our ears, we may recall the image of the ' old man
full of days, whose stature was passing tall and his
voice like the sound' of a trumpet.'

14

III.

Byland.

ABOUT half way on its northward course to
Darlington, the York, Newcastle, and Berwick
Railway passes within a mile of the market town of
Thirsk. It is a sufficiently picturesque little place on the
banks of the Colbeck (or Caldbeck), a tributary of the
Swale, but its attraction now consists chiefly in its
convenient nearness to the Hambledon Hills and
its fine perpendicular church.
The traditions that this church was built with
the ruins of the ancient castle of the Mowbrays,
and that its carved oak altar came from Byland
Abbey, are about equally improbable; but the con
nexion of Thirsk with the Mowbrays and of Byland
Abbey with both are historical facts.
It was in the reign of Stephen, and probably the
year of the battle of the Standard, that a wagon drawn
by eight slow-paced oxen lumbered and creaked along
the street of Thirsk. As in the familiar scene of
Goethe's ' Herman and Dorothea,' the wagon con
veyed the whole store and possessions of a party of
outcast wanderers. But here the resemblance ceases.
There were no women, no children, no relics of a
home — indeed all things domestic were conspicuously
absent. The party consisted of an abbot and twelve
monks, the wagon was laden with books and scanty
changes of raiment.
The seneschal of the Castle of 'Thresk ' took pity,
so runs the story, on the weary travellers, and invited
them within the gates. Now at this time Roger de
Mowbray — the future Crusader and hero — was a minor
under the guardianship of his mother, Gundreda. So
the seneschal came to his lady and told her what he
had done. 'And when the said lady, in a certain
upper chamber, had peeped secretly through a certain
window and seen their poverty, for very piety and
pity she melted into tears. Yet was she glad at their
coming, and edified by their simple aspect and bearing,
so she made them all stay with her and ministered to
them abundantly in all things needful, forbidding them
to depart.' From the chronicle of Philip, third abbot of
Byland, we learn that these monks went forth in
1 1 34 from Furness Abbey and settled, with one
Gerald for their abbot, at Calder. Here they stayed

several years, and were about to begin building
when they were driven out by an incursion of the
Scots. They fled to Furness, but, finding the gates
of the mother abbey ruthlessly closed against them,
determined to apply to Thurstan, archbishop of York,
of whose share in the founding of Fountains Abbey,
some five years earlier, they had doubtless heard. To
York accordingly they were now making the best of
their way.
Gundreda and her son arranged at first that the
monks should receive for their support a tithe of all
things which came into the castle larder, but the
practical drawbacks to this plan were soon found to
be intolerable. George, the steward or head cook —
or whatever may be the best equivalent of the original
'dapifer' — became hopelessly confused between the
tithe due to the monks and the claims of his master's
guests, and was often obliged, in sudden emergencies,
to borrow the former's share to supply the necessities
of the latter. It became necessary to assign to Gerald
and his fellows a more distinct and convenient re
venue, and Roger de Mowbray, at his mother's
request, granted them his cow pasture at Cambe
with other lands ; and eventually the Lady Gundreda
gave out of her own dower the Vill of Byland on the
Moor, afterwards known as ' Old Byland.'
Though this estate contained, according to 'Domes
day Book,' about seven hundred acres, the actual site
available for the monastic buildings was inconveni
ently small. So when Roger de Mowbray saw that
' many had come together to serve God ' in a place
which for this reason, and also on account of its
proximity to Rievaulx, was altogether unsuitable, he
gave his favourites in 1147 'two carucates' of waste
ground under the hill of Blackhow, near Coxwold.
The name of the new site was Stocking, and here the
monks remained thirty years and built themselves a
small stone church and cloister.* At last, on the eve
of the festival of All Saints, in the year 1 177, the final
move was made to the place which, in memory of their

* It is clear, however, that the monastery at Old Byland was
not yet entirely deserted, for, as Walbran has pointed out, the
monks who in 1 1 50 went out to found Jervaulx Abbey proceeded
from Old Byland, ' habita>ite Abbate Roge?v cum suis monachis
apud Stochyug.'

1

Byland.

first settlement on the banks of the Rie, they called
Bellalanda or Byland. The former, it may be re
marked, is just one of those translations from work-a-
day Saxon into devout dog-Latin in which the monks
delighted. From the date of this final settlement to that
of the surrender of the Abbey in 1540 into the
hands of the King's agents, history has little fo
say of the monks of Byland. Roger de Mowbray
we know, like Walter L'Espec, became an inmate
of the monastery he had founded, but whether or
not he was buried in the Chapter-house is a point
on which the chroniclers are not of one mind.
' This Roger,' says one, ' having been signed with the
Cross, went into the Holy Land, and was captured there
in a great battle by the Saracens. He was redeemed by
the Knights of the Temple, and, worn out with military
service, he returned to England. On his journey he found
a dragon fighting with a lion in a valley called Saranel,
whereupon he slew the dragon and the lion followed him
to England and to his Castle of Hood. After this he
lived fifteen years and died in a good old age, and was
buried at Byland under a certain arch in the south wall
of the Chapter-house.'
' He died,' says another, ' in the Holy Land, and
was buried in Syria.'
Equally doubtful is another claim to historical
interest which has been put forward on behalf of
Byland. On the' 14th of October, 1322, the Scots
under Douglas swept down from the moors,
routed the English, took the Earl of Richmond
prisoner, and would have captured King Edward
himself if he had not hastily fled, under the guid
ance, it is said, of two monks, in the direction
of York. Was the King at Rievaulx, as the Chronicler of
Lanercost alleges, or in the middle of his dinner at
Byland, as Knighton circumstantially relates ? An
historian of the latter abbey would say at once, and
doubtless prove conclusively, that this interrupted
meal at Byland was as clear as daylight, or the
virtues of Mary, Queen of Scots, but the impartial
critic must leave the public to judge between the
conflicting authorities.
No one has yet challenged the claim of our
monastery to have been soon after its foundation
¦the penitentiary of that fierce old lion Wymund,
the soldier-bishop of Man and the Isles.
' For some time,' as has been quaintly said, ' he success
fully led his flock on marauding expeditions against the isles
and coast of Scotland, and baffled all the efforts of David,
king of that country, to take him. He was at length, how
ever, defeated by a brother bishop, taken prisoner, and had
his eyes put out.'
I am not sure on what authority this last state
ment rests. It has been more generally believed that
Wymund, whom King David had attempted to bribe

to good behaviour by a grant of the lordship of
Furness, made himself so hateful to his vassals that
they seized him, put out his eyes, and sent him to end
his days at Byland. It is admitted that this remarkable
ecclesiastic began his career as a monk at Furness, and
the story of his last gloomy years at Byland is vouched
for by William of Newburgh, who both saw him and
heard his reiterated boast, that by God alone had he
been defeated, and ' if he had but so much as a
sparrow's eye he would make his enemies repent.'
Such, let it be remembered, were the men and
manners with which mediaeval monasticism had to do.
But it is time to speak of the visible and tangible
remains which have come down to us from these dim,
remorseful days.
There is something very striking in the abrupt
descent from the lonely plateau of moor south of
Duncombe Park to the sequestered valley of Byland.
' Its little hoof-crossed becks and cottage doors ;
Tired grandames gazing o'er the shadowy sills,
And children basking by the streamlet's shores ;
And glass-green waters broad and full and still,
Rich with the twinklings of ten thousand leaves ;
And grey forsaken ruins, bare and chill.'
But undoubtedly the most picturesque view of the
abbey is obtained from the low ground to the south,
whence the broken outline of the ruin is seen against
the leafy background of the rising hill.
Time and decay have treated Byland and its
greater offspring of Jervaulx with a strange uncon
scious irony. As we approach the latter we see, indeed,
huge and imposing masses of ruin, high moss-grown
walls, pillars and pointed windows, but we wonder,
perhaps, what gives them so confused and disorganized
an air, till it strikes us that the great central object,
the beginning and end, the cause at once and crown
of all, is missing, and we ask, ' Where is the church ?'
The answer to that question belongs to another time
and place ; but at Byland, meanwhile, our eye rests
indeed upon the ruins of a noble church, but seeks
in vain for the domestic buildings of a monastery.
Grassy mounds and low-lying, moss-grown stones
are there, but the wise and fruitful zeal which has dis
closed at Jervaulx the whole ground - plan of the
missing building, has not yet explored the found
ations which undoubtedly exist in the precinct of
the older monastery.
As it is, however, the normal Cistercian plan
may with tolerable certainty be traced, and even
the somewhat exceptional passage between the
western cloister and the cellarium* can be iden-

* The cellarium ' is the long range of buildings extending
from the church along the west side of the cloister and con
siderably beyond it' 'At Kirkstall there is an appearance
as if part had been used for a smith's shop, and perhaps one
of the uses of the lane or passage which we find between the

The Rtiined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

tified and compared with the parallel instances at
Kirkstall and Beaulieu.
The Abbey Church of St. Mary at Byland is a very
noble and instructive example of the earliest English
Gothic. From the point of view of scientific architec
ture its design is highly esteemed by specialists, and
the intrinsic beauty of the ruins and ofthe majestic
vision which they suggest appeals, in our day, to a
much wider class.
In the first place, it is evident that this was the
largest original Cistercian church in England. Rie
vaulx, we have
seen, eventually
surpassed it, and
so did Fountains,
but they were not
built at once and
from one design,
and before the
extension of their
choirs they were
both shorter than
Byland. Tliis
pre - eminence- in
size was attained
without sacrificing
the proportions of
the Latin cross —
the design so dear
to the early Cis
tercian builders.
The great length
of the nave was
the first conspicu
ous feature which
contributed to
this result, the
second was still
more noteworthy.
'Byland,' wrote
Mr. Edmund
Sharpe, 'was the
first and only
church of the order in which the piers and arches
of the ground story were carried round the whole
structure.' In other words, whereas most Cistercian
churches had north and south aisles to the nave,
eastern aisles only to the transept, and originally no
aisles at all to the presbytery, Byland had, as it were,
a continuous aisle, running west as well as east of the
transept, and east as well as north and south of the
choir. This transverse eastern choir aisle may very

BYLAND ABBEY. WEST END.

cloister and the passage there, and at Beaulieu, and also at
Citeaux and Clairvaulx, may have been to cut off the sound
of noisy trades from the cloister.'— J. T. Micklethwaite. Of
this cellarium, miscalled the 'domus conversorum,' it will be
necessary to say more in a subsequent chapter.

probably have been intended, like the eastern chapel
or transept at Fountains, to supply sites for additional
altars. At the western end there was, as at Fountains,
a narthex or galilee, and the corbels of the ' lean-to '
roof may still be seen. As late as 1426 one William
Tirplady directed by his will that his remains should
be buried ' in the galilee of S. Mary's Abbey at
Byland.'* From the existing west end, north wall of
nave and portions of north transept and choir, we are
to conjure up, then, a singularly perfect transitional
and early English abbey church of rather more
elaborate design
than the normal
Cistercian type.
For, besides the
peculiarities al
ready mentioned,
there is a trifo
rium at Byland,
whereas other
great churches of
the same order,
such as Kirkstall
and Fountains,
have no such fea
ture. The arches
of this triforium
are pointed, and
so, presumably,
were those of the
clerestory. The
Abbey, in fact, is
remarkable as the
first Cistercian
example of the
use of the pointed
arch for decorative
as distinguished
from constructive
purposes. The
lower windows
were round, but
the three great
lancets at the west are pointed, and, what is more
remarkable, so are two of the three western doorways.
Even in the choir, which may be supposed to have
been built before the nave, we do not find, as from
the analogy of Ripon we might have expected, any
lingering preference for the round arch.
Now it has been pointed out by Mr. Micklethwaite
that ' the period during which the Cistercians were
building their abbeys all over Europe was exactly
that in which the Gothic style grew from its Roman
esque infancy to the full manhood of the thirteenth

* Vide an Appendix in Walbran's ' Fountains Abbey,' Vol. II.
(Surtees Society.)

Byland.

17

century. It was the period during which men learned
to value and use the pointed arch.' And Mr. Sharpe
has said that, dating the corruption and decadence of
the Cistercian order from the end of the thirteenth
century, there was a period of about 200 years during
which 1200 Cistercian abbeys were founded, and he
does not know one of these the general plan of which
is not in accordance with that of all the rest, nor a
single church which does not bear in its details the
impress of its Cistercian origin. Some of these
characteristics may have been, as he suggests, the
result of rule, some of habit, but at least it is ab-

for itself and its dependencies. From that moment
Byland was a Cistercian monastery. In 1 142 our
abbot Gerald had attended a chapter at Savigny,
and successfully claimed exemption from filial duty
to Furness, which had been to him, as we have seen,
so unnatural a parent. But, in 1150, the abbots of
Calder and Furness again renewed their claim, and
this time it was Aldred, abbot of Rieval, who, by
appointment of the abbot of Savigny, acted. as judge,
and decided finally in favour of Byland. One result
of this organization, overriding as it did all distinc
tions of nation and tongue, was certainly to infuse

BYLAND ABBEY. EAST END.

solutely indispensable to any fruitful study of English
monastic architecture that we should constantly re
member the ' vast and wide-spread organization, with
the great St. Bernard for its leading spirit,' in which
those 1200 religious houses were linked and subor
dinated with almost feudal elaboration. Each house,
like an ancient Greek colony, owed obedience to the
parent home from which it had been sent forth, and
at the head of all was Citeaux— the mother in whose
memory every church of the order in all the world
was ' founded and dedicated in the name of the same
saint, Mary the Queen of Heaven and Earth.'
The history of Byland brings out this system with
especial distinctness. Savigny, the parent house of
Furness and Calder, adopted the rule of St. Bernard,
or, more correctly speaking, of St. Stephen Harding,

into English architecture a Continental element.
Mr. Street (in a paper in 'The Church and the World,'
first series) has not failed to notice the evidences
of foreign influence in English monastic architecture.
But, taking Fountains as his example, he has sought
to explain this by the personal relations of its abbots
with Clairvaux. He points out, for instance, that
Murdac, abbot of Fountains, was first a monk at
Clairvaux, then abbot of Vauclair, and was finally
sent by St. Bernard to Fountains, while his successor
had also been previously abbot of Vauclair, and
accordingly he says, ' We see features of detail which«
would be perfectly consistent with the architecture
which these abbots saw everywhere around them
when they were at Clairvaux or Citeaux, but which
were new and strange to English art.' Mr. Street's
F

iS

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

opinion on the purely architectural point may, I
suppose, be taken as conclusive ; but if so, the fact
thus established illustrates, not an accidental feature
in the history of one abbey, but a chapter in the
archaeology of monasticism, which inseparably links
it with the study of English art.
The remaining features of special interest at
Byland are — besides the almost abnormal size of its
cloister court — the majestic proportions of its round-
headed windows and its remarkable western facade.
This part of the church was certainly the last to be
erected ; and it is even possible, as has been suggested
by Mr. Walbran, that it formed no part of the original
design. The centre includes a trefoiled door sur
mounted by three pointed windows, and above these
again the remains of a large wheel window, said to be
twenty-six feet in diameter. The west door of the
south aisle is round-arched, with plain capitals, that
of the north aisle pointed, with mouldings of the same
date as those of the central entrance ; and it is notice
able that the capitals of the shafts of the latter are
plain on the south side and sculptured on the north.
These three western doors were for the use respect
ively of the conversi, or lay brothers, the guests, and
probably the familiares. The last were honorary asso
ciates, such as patrons and founders' kin.
Within two miles of Byland is a scene which
calls up memories and visions as alien from those
of mediaeval monasticism as any that be conceived.
In the pretty village of Coxwold are three cottages
which occupy the site of Shandy Hall, where ' The
Sentimental Journey ' was written and ' Tristam
Shandy ' finished. Here, while a third -century of
neglect and decay was completing the desolate record
of the failure of asceticism, Laurence Sterne was day
by day sitting down ' alone to venison, fish, and wild
fowl, or a couple of fowls or ducks, with curds, straw
berries, and cream, and all the' simple plenty which
a rich valley under Hambledon Hills can produce,'
while ' not a parishioner catches a hare or a rabbit,
or a trout, but he brings it as an offering to me.' *
* As regards asceticism, at least, Sterne faithfully practised
what he preached, for, in a sermon on Eccles. vii. 2, 3, we find
him saying, ' " Sorrow is better than laughter " — for a crack-
brained order of Carthusian monks I grant, but not for men of
the world!

' See here, Sterne's roadside home. As day expires,
Within that panneled room behold him sit,
With long churchwarden pipe and scribbled quires,
Himself scarce smiling at his light-born wit,
Or, where the tears should flow, and cheek grow pale,
Turning to shift his wig, or froth his ale.'*
Compared with the ' Canterbury Tales,' ' The
Sentimental Journey' may be called refined ; but
when Chaucer, turning from the portraiture of the
dissolute monks, painted in simple words his ideal
ecclesiastic, he soared into an atmosphere too pure
for men like Sterne to breathe.
'A good man was ther of religioun,
And was a poure Persoun of a toun ;
But riche he was of holy thought and werk.

He cowde in litel thing han suffisaunce.
Wyd was his parische, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne lafte not for reyne ne thonder,
In siknesse nor in meschief to visite
The ferreste in his parrische, moche and lite,
Uppon his feet, and in his hond a staf.
This noble ensample to his scheep he yof
That first he wroughte, and afterward he taughte.'
It is true that Chaucer had been in Italy, and
his mind and art were tinged with the morning
light of the Renaissance, but he was still cen
turies behind that blessed day, so enlightened at
once and so picturesque, in which Gothic archi
tecture was consigned to the same limbo with
monasticism, and ' Mr. Spectator' himself sought,
in the following words, to educate the national
taste : —
' Let anyone reflect on the disposition of mind he
finds in himself at his first entrance into the Pantheon
at Rome, and how the imagination is filled with some
thing great and amazing; and at the same time consider
how little, in proportion, he is affected with the inside
of a Gothic cathedral, though it be five times larger
than the other ; which can arise from nothing else but the
greatness of the manner in the one, and the meanness
in the other. 'f

* Lines on 'Coxwold near Thirsk,' from ' In Doors and Out,'
by E. Wordsworth.
t 'Spectator,' Vol. vi. No. 415.

'9

IV.

Fountains.

WE have not lost all while we have the build
ings of our forefathers.' With some such
thought as this in our minds we come to Fountains
Abbey, the crown and glory of all that monasticism
has left to us in England. The tiny seed from which
century after century this inimitable beauty grew to
perfection, was the same holy discontent, the same
' incurable distaste for all that is not God,' in which
we have traced at Molesme the germ of the Cistercian
order. From the cry which arose among a few monks
at York, for a more faithful observance of the Bene
dictine rule, to the moment when the scaffolding was
removed from the great Tudor tower of Fountains,
this aspiration was working out its record.
But as with Italian art, so was it with monastic
architecture, — while the language became more ex
quisite the message was forgotten, and when the form
reached perfection the spirit fled for ever.
Slowly, but surely, as the wilderness became a
garden and isolation gave place to fame, the Cister
cian discontent was transformed into complacency ;
and when the abbot and his monks beheld with satis
faction their completed work, the feet of those who
should drive them out were already at the door. And
now the jovial holiday-makers from Harrogate and
the cultivated strangers from London or New York
come and go with other words on their lips than,
' The pity of it, lago ! O lago, the pity of it!' for
they are too busy to learn, or too thoughtless to
remember, that- nothing comes of nothing, and
' Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought,
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle ;
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old ;
The litanies of nations came.
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below, —
The canticles of love and woe.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
Wrought in a sad sincerity :
Himself from God he could not free,
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.'

Yet in this fact — for fact it is none the less for being
poetry — lies the real charm and wonder of Fountains
Abbey. ' Could any men whatever, did they but will
it, build what our forefathers built ? Is a cathedral
the offspring of a random thought ?' Here is the
idea of Mr. Emerson's verse expressed in Cardinal
Newman's prose.
The classical gardens and temples at Studley are
admirable in their way, but the best that their self-
conscious art can do is to emphasise by sharp and
sudden contrast the awful sincerity of the Gothic
church. To describe at length this, best-known of all the
Yorkshire abbeys, would be to follow in the steps of
quite a little army of writers, of whom one, the late
Mr^V^albran4> has treated the subject more or less
exhaustively in three distinct works. The near neigh
bourhood of Ripon, with its interesting cathedral, and
of Harrogate, with its less pensive but apparently
not less potent charm, make Fountains an easy and
familiar goal for tourists, picnickers, lovers, and idlers.
Nature and the monks have indeed done much for
the scene, and the Aislabies and the landscape-
gardening of the eighteenth century have failed to
spoil it. In fact, they have, as has been said, produced
a contrast which is very impressive. The situation of
Fountains Abbey at once challenges comparison with
that of Bolton, — a narrow valley, a winding stream, and
wooded banks, are the natural elements in both. But
the Wharfe is essentially a more picturesque stream
than the Skell, and the winding walks and simple
rustic benches of the Duke of Devonshire's grounds
are certainly in better taste than Anne Boleyn's Seat,
the moon and crescent Ponds, and the Temples of
Piety and Fame. At Fountains we hasten through
carefully planted groves, by glades, lakes, terraces,
and statues, till a turn in the valley and a cutting in
the trees reveal to us in startling perfection a ruin, of
dates and styles varying from the first half of the
twelfth century to the first half of the sixteenth.
Whatever disappointment we may feel in the opening
of the valley is forgotten in the beauty that haunts
its deep recess. At Bolton all is reversed. The ruin
comes first and probably disappoints us, but we soon
feel the enchantment of the rocky banks and the

/

J

20

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

unfathomed Strid ; and at last the distant view of
Barden Tower, among the trees, completes the spell.
To those who do not care for Gothic architec
ture, Fountains must remain a picturesque group of
ruins in a fine situation, and nothing more. That
is a matter of taste. But to say that an Abbey is
beautiful and impressive, and that, after all, it is
the outcome of deliberate imposture and conscious
hypocrisy, is to contradict all history and all philo
sophy. The lies that have obtained a hearing in
the world have left no such record as this. Error
there doubtless was, but it was the error of the
higher and more spiritual natures ; it was error
such as that into which Christian fell in his journey
towards the Heavenly City, and from which his
friends and neighbours at home enjoyed an ignoble
immunity. Superstition, too, was close at hand,
but it was the superstition that haunts the strongest
faith, as the shadow haunts the substance, rather
than that which as surely dogs the steps of
unbelief. Happily it is as unnecessary, as in these pages
it would be inopportune, to discuss at length the
theological, ethical, and philosophical aspects of
Monasticism. But there can be no fruitful study of
Art — still less of an avowedly religious art — without
some attempt to look below the surface. Painting,
indeed, and sculpture, and, in a greater degree,
literature, have their growth in history and their
roots in philosophy, but the most historic of all arts
is architecture, and the slow upraising of a great
building reveals to us the action of time and cir
cumstance upon creative thought.
The history of Fountains Abbey opens with a
strange chapter of conflict and disunion.
There is a sense in which every Christian Church
is a temple of concord ; for the central fact of
Christianity is an atonement, and its central doctrine
a reconciliation. And yet we are reminded again
and again that its Founder came not to bring peace,
but a sword.
Reconciliation, in fact, is not toleration, and
atonement is not compromise.
The blackness of evil and the wickedness of the
enemy were felt in the twelfth century as wc hardly
feel them in these gentler days. The need and
desire to come out of the brutal and degraded
world and be separate was real then, but with us
heaven and saintliness are apt to be secretly re
garded as Quixotic excesses bordering on fanaticism,
while the goal of human progress in morals is placed
somewhere nearer the ' mean ' of respectability. The
wholesome and manly powers of hatred and contempt
for what is base and bad are blunted in us, and in
our bondage to ' the common,' which we mistake
for freedom, we are not unlike those old Bohemian
heretics who spoke of the Prince of Darkness as

' he who has been wronged.' Not so the founders
of this Abbey.
Some time in the second quarter of the thirteenth
century, at the request of John, abbot of Fountains,
Hugh, a monk of Kirkstall, wrote, from the dicta
tion of the venerable Serlo, a narrative of the
founding and early fortunes of Fountains. The
buildings are thus not left to speak for themselves ;
and if we miss the dreamy luxury of a solemn music
without words, we gain a precise and detailed ac
count which throws light upon the whole subject
of English Monasticism.
The story transports us at once to the subject
of our first chapter, — the Benedictine Monastery of
St. Mary at York.
It is early in the twelfth century, and scarcely
fifty years since the great revival of Monasticism in
the north. Alas for the good Elwin of Evesham !
already his work is perishing, already the new life,
with its burning lamp and girded loins, is sinking
into lethargic fatness and dim contentment.
But the life-work of men like Elfwin does not
wholly perish. There is yet hope of St. Mary's, for
side by side with degeneracy there is discontent. In
the fast-drying Benedictine soil there is a root which
already thirsts for the water-springs. ' There are
those,' says the chronicle, ' whom God has chosen to
himself for a seed.' Richard, the Sacrist of St. Mary's,
and Ralph, Gamel, Gregory, Hamo, Thomas, and
Waltheof, were men of troublesome and punctilious
conscience. Like Luther, they felt imperfection as
less sensitive men feel positive sin. ' They are
ashamed to settle down on the hither side of perfec
tion, to have tarried so long in the borders of Moab
and put up with an heritage beyond Jordan. They
are weary of the turmoil of the world and the din of
cities ; their whole heart pants for the desert, for
manual labour, and prophet's fare.' In vain they try
to conceal their searchings of heart from the prior,
he knows and shares them all.
When the number of these holy malcontents had
grown to thirteen — the prescribed minimum for a
new foundation — they began to consider what
decisive step they should take. ' It was not poverty
that they feared, nor the severity of winter ; their
only thought was how their purpose could be carried
out, and at the same time peace preserved among
the brethren, and scandal avoided.' Soon, however,
their project began to be talked about. They were
accused of levity, contumacy, innovation. Almost
everyone made his voice heard, and there was much
noise in the monastery. The matter was referred
to Abbot Geoffrey, a worn-out old man. He was
aghast at the novelty of the thing, and bade them
give up the attempt at once. But all his exhortations
and arguments were in vain ; their resolve only
gathered strength.

Mr

¦jY,Y-Y:--,
&Y-ym\

J.

Fountains.

21

Now at that time Thurstan, of pious memory, was
Archbishop of York, and Prior Richard, being his
private friend, watched his opportunity to discover
to him the holy purpose. The Archbishop at once
signified his approval, promised to help the re
formers, and proposed a visitation of the Abbey.
But the venerable Geoffrey was not to be caught
asleep. He collected learned men from many
English monasteries, and a great concourse of monks
came together. 'On the appointed day the holy
prelate appeared in the spirit of gentleness and
peace, having in his company, as became him, men

taking with them none of the goods of the monastery
but the mere clothes they wore. At first Thurstan
housed and fed them at York, and hearing that
Abbot Geoffrey had sent messengers to complain to
the King himself, as well as to many bishops and
abbots, he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who was also Papal legate. Meanwhile, Geoffrey
made strenuous efforts to induce the seceders to
return ; and two of them, Gervase and Radolph, or
Ralph, yielded to temptation and returned to the
comparative luxury of St. Mary's. Of these, Gervase
once more repented and threw in his lot, at last, with

FOUNTAINS ABBEY. FROM THE SOUTH.

of gravity and discretion, secular clergy, canons, and
many other religious persons.' The Abbot hastened
to meet him at the door of the chapter-house with a
mob of monks, and forbade his entrance. He must
not come with so large a following ; and, besides, no
secular ought to be let into the secrets of the chapter.
Let him come alone if come he must. The Arch
bishop declined to dismiss his supporters ; and the
natural hostility of monks and seculars soon produced
an open quarrel, and a disgraceful riot ensued in the
cloister. At last the Archbishop commanded silence,
and thundered out his interdict, and then he and his
party withdrew into the church — 'even,' says the
chronicler, ' as the fat is separated from the flesh.'
After this, thirteen monks, viz. twelve priests and
one layman, left St. Mary's with the Archbishop,

his outcast brothers ; but Ralph ' made a covenant
with his flesh, and his belly clave to the earth.'
' Safety lies in a mean, be contented with your
former mediocrity,' — such, if we may trust our
chronicler, was the devil's whisper to the apostates.
' This is indeed the finger of God,' wrote St. Bernard
not long afterwards ; ' for it is more rare for the good
to press on to perfection than for the bad to become
good — would that I might come over and see this
great sight.'*
* ' Digitus Dei est iste, subtiliter operans, salubriter immu-
tans, non quidem ex malis bonos, sed ex bonis faciens meliores.
Quis dabit mihi ut transeam et visionem videam hanc
maximam — facilius reperies multos seculares converti ad
bonum quam quempiam e religiosis transire ad melius.' —
Epistola Sancti Bemardi ad Abbatem Ricardum Fonianensem
et socios ejus. G

22

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

Now Thurstan, the friend of St. Bernard and of
Prior Richard, had an estate at Ripon, with a palace
and park, and here, in this year 1132, he determined
to keep Christmas. By this time, Robert of Whitby
must have replaced the backsliding Ralph, for on the
26th of December we find Thurstan taking with him
towards the valley of the Skell the full complement of
thirteen monks. Then and there did the Archbishop
assign to these homeless fugitives a place not for rest
but for labour. They had desired loneliness and
hard living, and they were taken at their word.
The Temple of Piety, or even Anne Boleyn's
Seat, would have been a luxurious dwelling to these
wanderers ; but, alas ! they had arrived six hundred
years too soon. We spend a summer day among
Lord Ripon's terraces and well-kept walks, but these
men faced the winter nights among the rocks. ' It
was a place,' says Serlo, ' which had never been
inhabited, overgrown with thorns, a hollow in the
hills between projecting rocks ; fitter, to all appear
ance, to be a lair of wild beasts than a home for
men.' Here Thurstan left the monks, and here they
remained. At first the rocks were literally their only
shelter, but soon they chose a great elm in the
middle of the valley, and thatched a sort of hut
around its trunk.*
In the presence of the Archbishop they solemnly
elected Prior Richard as their Abbot. ' He had no
shelter from the rain, and it was winter,' but still ' he
casts his care upon God, and girds himself against
the stress of poverty with abundance of faith.' And
so they began the life they had longed for. From
time to time Thurstan sent them bread, and they
drank the water of the stream.
As yet. these poor monks can hardly have seen in
the gritstone of the sheltering rock the ' promise and
presage ' of an architectural masterpiece. At pre
sent their daily labour is the making of mats and the
cutting of faggots for a wattled oratory, while a few
of the more skilful take to gardening. ' There is no
sadness, not a murmur is heard, but with all cheerful
ness they bless the Lord, poor indeed in worldly
goods, but strong in faith.'

* So says the chronicle. Local tradition points to some an
cient yews on the bank as the first shelter of the monks. ' On
the south side are five or six yew-trees, all yet (1757) growing
except the largest, which was blown down a few years ago.
They are of an incredible size, the circumference of the trunk of
one of them is at least 14 feet about a yard from the ground, and
the branches in proportion to the trunk ; they are all nearly of
the same bulk, and are so nigh together as to make an excellent
cover, almost equal to that of a thatched roof. Under these
trees, we are told by tradition, the monks resided till they built
the monastery ; which seems to me to be very probable if we
consider how little a yew-tree increases in a year and to what a
bulk these are grown. And as the hill-side was covered with
wood, which is now almost all cut down except these trees, it
seems as if they were left standing to perpetuate the memory of
the monks' habitation there during the first winter of their resi
dence.'— Burton, Monasticon Eborac.

When winter was over, Abbot Richard and his
monks began to consider under what rule they should
live, for hitherto they had only tried to conform,
after a fashion of their own, to that of St. Benedict.
By this time the Cistercian house of Rievaulx had
begun to make its influence felt, and moreover it
cannot be doubted that Thurstan had told his friends
how a work after their own hearts was being carried
on at Clairvaux. To St. Bernard, then, as might
have been expected, they sent certain of their nurnber
with an intimation that they had chosen him for
their spiritual father. Clairvaux thus became the
mother house of Fountains, and St. Bernard sent one
of his monks, Geoffrey by name, to teach the new
rule and direct the building operations in the valley
of the Skell. It must not, however, be forgotten that
, as Fountains was a daughter of Clairvaux, so was
>/ Clairvaux itself of Citeaux, and the system which
Geoffrey introduced at Fountains was in reality that
of Robert of Molesme and Stephen Harding the
Englishman. For two years the new monastery, increasing in
numbers but not in wealth, endured great hardships ;
and when at last, in spite of Thurstan's generosity,
they were reduced to a diet of boiled leaves and salt,
their resolution gave way, and the Abbot himself
went to beg St. Bernard to remove them to one of
the granges, or small dependencies, of Clairvaux.
The request was granted, but meanwhile the tide had
turned. The wealth, which was to be more fatal to
Fountains than all its privations, had begun to flow in.
Hugh, Dean of York, had joined the brotherhood,
and brought with him both money in abundance and
a fine collection of books of the Holy Scriptures, and
Serlo (not the chronicler) and Tosti, canons of the
same Cathedral, soon followed his example.
Then came gifts and conveyances of land from
neighbouring lords ; and when King Stephen was at
York, in 1135, he confirmed the monks in their
possessions, and exempted them from all aids, taxes,
danegelds, assesses, pleas, and scutages, as well as
from all customs and land service due to superior
lords. The monastery of our Lady of Fountains had
now fairly taken root. Three years of zeal and devo
tion had worked their oft-repeated miracle. Hence
forth the founding of fresh abbeys and the building
of their own were to be the signs of life and visrjur
among the once persecuted seceders from York ; the
gifts and bequests of those whose only motives were
superstition and selfish fear were to be the seeds of
its decay and omens of its fall. It is only positive
and vital impulses that can create, and vivify, and
mould. The terror that haunts the rich man's death
bed may rob his heirs, but it can raise no lasting
memorial of itself.
The first colony from Fountains was Newminster.
In less than two years followed Kirkstead and

Fountains.

23

Haverholme (afterwards removed to the neighbour
hood of Louth). The latter house was established
under Gervase as its first abbot. Thus the 'back
slider' becomes once more visible to us as we gaze
into the beryl-stone of history, and we can think
of him among the many to whom, for our com
fort, victory has been given in spite, as it were, of
themselves. In 1145 Abbot Murdac supplied monks
for De Bolbec, the founder of Woburn ; and the next
year a visit from Sigward, bishop of Bergen, led to
the settlement of thirteen monks from Fountains at
Lysa, in Norway. From Fountains, too, went Serlo,

not, however, till the time of the before-mentioned
John de Cancia (1 220-1 249) that this vision was
: fully realised. We can thus trace the growth of
,i our abbey through the late Norman and tran
sition styles to the definite Early English, to
which, undoubtedly, the work of ' Kentish John'
belongs. But the architectural and antiquarian
features of Fountains Abbey are a wide and im
portant subject, and for the purpose of even a
slight and hasty discussion of them it will be
necessary, and it is hoped not altogether tiresome,
to devote a separate chapter to their consideration.

FOUNTAINS ABBEY. THE NAVE OF THE CHURCH.

the chronicler, and eleven others, under Alexander
the prior, to Bernoldswic, and eventually to Kirkstall,
while only five days later Bytham (afterwards Vaudey)
was added to the list. Finally, in 1150, the Earl of
Albemarle founded Meaux Abbey, with Adam, one
of the original seceders from York, as its abbot.
Thus within twenty years Fountains became the
mother of seven monasteries.
John de Cancia — Kentish John — was pre-emi
nently the builder-abbot of Fountains. After the
partial destruction by fire in 1146 ofthe then existing
conventual buildings and oratory, the work went on,
we must conclude, unceasingly for the remainder of
the century; but in 1203 the church was not large
enough for the multitude of monks, and the Abbot
bethought him of building a great choir. It was

At present we may connect with Mr. Brunet-
Debaines' drawing of the nave the thought of those
earlier years in the history of the foundation during
which the severe and lofty Cistercian spirit had its
most perfect work, and ' the monks sought their
daily bread by the sweat of their brows, planting
with their life-blood the vineyard of the Lord of
Hosts.'* But the etching of the exterior, in which
the great tower is prominent, speaks chiefly of
a day of ominous departure from Cistercian sim
plicity. In the latter part of the thirteenth century came
* This passage from the Chronicler of Meaux, describing the
monastic life there under Adam — once a monk at Fountains —
is borrowed from an interesting pamphlet, entitled, ' Charters
of Roche Abbey,' by Sidney Oldall Addy, M.A.

24

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

a period of depression. John le Romaine, Archbishop
of York, writing in 1294 to the monks who had been
sent from Clairvaux as visitors of the Cistercian
houses in England, mentions the necessitous state of
Fountains, and attributes it, in part at least, to mis
conduct and extravagance.
Burton {Monasticon Eborac, p. 143) tells us the
Archbishop roundly asserted that the monks of
Fountains were become a laughing-stock to the
kingdom, and he does not wonder at it. But with
this exception, they enjoyed a high reputation, and
consequent steady increase in their revenues and
territory, till at last, in 1535, their estates were certi
fied by the Commissioners to be worth close upon
1000/. a-year. This income — which it is needless to
say must not be estimated by our present standard —
was produced mainly by a vast extent of landed
property, including, amongst other items, an estate of

60,000 acres in a ring-fence in Craven. The account
of the possessions of the monastery in flocks and
herds is, perhaps, even more impressive, — 1976 head
of cattle, 1 106 sheep, 86 horses, and 79 s^vine, were
found at the dissolution, besides 117 quarters of
wheat, 13 of rye, 134 of oats, and 192 loads of hay in
the more distant granges, and 160 loads of hay and
128 quarters of corn in the park and granaries of the
Abbey.* For his interest in all these, Marmaduke
Bradley, thirty-third and last abbot, the nominee of
Layton and Legh, received an annuity of 100/. a-year.
Was it for this, we are tempted to ask, that Prior
Richard and his brethren had left all and braved the
winter in the wilderness ?

* There was also much valuable plate, which, including
chalices, crosses, &c, amounted to 708/. s,s. <)\d. Amongst the
domestic part were twenty silver-gilt spoons (16 and 4), besides
many of ungilt silver.

-'0

V.

Fountains {continued).

'Yr

#

?

WE have seen by this time something of what
the realities of contrition and adoration can
effect. They cannot save men from error, they cannot
bestow the modern Englishman's cherished attribute
of common-sense ; but at least they are genuine and
unmistakable, and the angels as they gaze are not
perplexed. The pale shadows of these somewhat
unmanageable graces, the feeling for a feeling and
thought about a thought, are compatible with easy
postures in accustomed armchairs, but they them
selves are goads and scourges, to be prayed for,
if at all, with judicious faintness. It remains to ex
amine, in as much detail as our space permits, the
buildings whose history we have sketched. Though
the original Cistercian churches conformed with
exactness to certain well-known limitations, and were
/built without exception on one recognisable plan, it
is remarkable that, in Yorkshire at least, the perfect
type is nowhere to be found. We know the idea, and
can everywhere trace its influence, — but where is its
full embodiment ? ' Perhaps,' as Plato would say, ' it
is stored up in heaven.' Wherever it may be, we can,
assert with confidence that it is in the form of a Latin!
cross, severe in detail and sparing of ornament, with
a short and aisleless presbytery, and at most a
humble and unobtrusive central tower, rising just one
square above the crossing of the nave and transept/
It is, in fact, just such an abbey as we are all familiar
with, and yet most likely have never seen. For it is
not at Rievaulx, where the choir is long ; it is not at
Byland, where it is aisled ; it is not at Roche, where
there are such scanty remains of the church ; it is not
at Jervaulx, where there are practically none ; it is
not even at Kirkstall, where a normal church is sur
mounted by the ruins of a lofty tower ; and least of
all is it at Fountains. The world, 'lest one good
custom should corrupt ' it, made haste to corrupt the
good custom of Cistercian puritanism, — and it must
be confessed that the 'nine altars' and the great tower
•of Fountains are but the glorious disguises of decay.
It is pretty certain that building operations were
not begun at Fountains till very near the middle of
the twelfth century* The outlines of the modest
* So say Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr. Walbran, but others have
thought the early part was built before the fire of 1140. Vide
Parker's 'Introduction to Gothic Architecture.'

choir which was then erected are still preserved, in
instructive contrast with the work of John of Kent,
and the nave and transept are mainly ofthe same early
date. At the west end, however, the original Norman
lights, surmounted, perhaps, by a^rircle, have been re
placed, late in the fifteenth century, by a large Per
pendicular window, while the attempt of Abbot Huby,
some hundred years later, to prop the central tower is
attested by the unsightly presence of a huge internal
buttress against the south-east pier of the transept.
The distinctive national variety of Romanesque
architecture which we owe to the Normans passed
gradually, as did the early styles of Continental
countries, into the first pure Gothic. From the
nave of Durham or the transepts of Winchester
to Salisbury is a transition which was not effected
at a bound. To illustrate the intermediate steps
' Sir Gilbert Scott has chosen three examples. They
are the Abbeys of Fountains and Kirkstall and the
' Galilee ' of Durham itself. The first of these repre
sents a style essentially Romanesque, but adopting
to a considerable extent the Pointed arch. The
second, still Romanesque, is perceptibly more ad
vanced ; while the third, in spite of its simple semi
circular arches, is of the very latest character that can
be called Norman. It would be easy to accumulate
examples and illustrations, but one in particular will
suggest itself to those who have read the previous
chapters of this series. Byland is very nearly con
temporary with the Durham ' Galilee,' but the two are
strikingly unlike. The lower windows, for example,
of the fqrmer are round-headed, but the upper are
pointed, as are the arches ; while the mouldings are
Early English rather than Norman.
We have thus the round-arched work at Durham
going on side by side with the partially pointed at By-
land, and distinctly later than that at Fountains. In
fact, the pointed arch happens often to occur in trans
ition work, and is, of course, invariably found in even
the earliest pure Gothic, but it is by no means rare in
the most undisputed Norman, and does not spread in
proportion to the development of the transition.
The particular combination of the two construc
tions at Fountains is worth noticing. The eleven, or
rather twenty-two, pointed arches of the nave rest
on columns, 23 feet high and 16 feet in circum-

</

26

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

ference, and the transverse vaulting of the aisles is
pointed ; but the bays are divided by semicircular
arches, and the windows are round-headed and with
out shafts or mouldings.
The absence of a triforium seems in character
with the solemn simplicity of this part of the church,
while the warm colour of the stone and the soft turf
under foot redeem its chill, unroofed severity. But
the fine unbroken vista which we now admire had no
existence for those who kept the sacred hours day
and night within these walls.
'The whole church,' says Mr. Micklethwaite, 'was
divided into parts in a manner which is, I believe, quite
peculiar to the Cistercians. The aisles were cut off from
the nave by solid stone walls, built flush with the pillars on
4 the nave side. The transepts and choir aisles, where there
were any, were also cut off by stone screens ; but they were
lower and not so thick as those to the nave, and may possibly

/

necessitated numerous entrances, as each was ac
cessible from the outside.
Fountains Abbey, like Durham Cathedral, had
both an eastern and a western annex. Not long, it
would seem, after the completion of the west front, a
narthex or galilee, 15 feet wide, was added. This
was in effect a porch, with open arcade extending the
whole width of the western front, and used, though
with what restrictions is not clear, as a burial-place.
Through the thirteenth-century choir, begun by
Abbot John of York, and continued and completed
by his successors and namesakes, John Pherd and
John of Kent, we pass to the beautiful and striking
eastern transept — the Lady Chapel or Chapel of Nine
Altars. This was mainly, if not altogether, the work of
the indefatigable John ofTCent. Its fagade, 1 5oTee>
in length, is the first part of the church to become
visible when the more distant glimpses of the tower

have been pierced. The transverse divisions seem to have
resembled those of Benedictine and collegiate churches,
but I have found full evidence of them only at Fountains.
There was a upulpitum " of stone taking up the space of one
bay at the entrance of the choir ; a bay west of it was the
rood screen, with its central altar and two doors ; and one
bay west again was a wood screen forming the fence of the
rood altar. All these screens were continued across the
aisles, and accommodation for minor altars seems to have
been found against them. At Fountains, also, two bays of
the south aisle were screened off to form a chapel.' *
The inmates of the infirmary, including old and
feeble monks as well as the sick, had a special place
allotted to them, called the retro-chorus, usually in
the south transept. Another part of the church was J
assigned to the conversi, or lay brothers, a third to the
' 'familiar -es,' or honorary associates, a fourth to the
mercenarii, or hired servants, and yet another to
guests from the hospitium. All these subdivisions

* See a paper, ' Of the Cistercian Plan,' by J. T. Mickle
thwaite, F.S.A Reprinted from the ' Yorkshire Archaeological
Journal."

have been lost in the winding approaches of the
valley. The great east window, 60 feet by 23 feet! .
4 inches, is obviously a late fifteenth-century additionJ
The nine lights and elaborate tracery of this window
seem to have replaced three original lancets, such as
may still be seen in the corresponding position at
Durham. With the exception of this and two other windows
of the same date in the gables, the Chapel of Nine
Altars is pure Early English, and may be compared
with the work of Bishop Poore at Salisbury, as well
as with the Nine Altars at Durham.
John Darnton, abbot of Fountains, from 1479 to
1494, has not left us in doubt as to the date and
authorship of the later parts of the work. On the
keystone of one of the original lancets has been
carved the bust of an angel holding a tun and bear
ing on his breast the word ' Dern.' Above is an
eagle, and a scroll with the words 'b'n'd'fontes
DNO' {Benedicite fontes Domino), and on the inside of
the same stone an angel holding a blank shield, a
mitred head, and a figure of St. John of Compostella,
standing on two fishes. There is also on the key-

Fountains.

27

4 4

stone of another Early English window, at the north
east of the chapel, a human head entwined with leaves,
and on the inside an arigcl with a scroll on which is
the date ' Anno Domini 1483.' The lower walls of
this chapel, as well as of the choir, are adorned with a
beautiful trifoliated arcading, the design of which is
said to have been repeated in the reredos of the high

present, indeed, the choir is at best but a seemly
anti-chamber to the glories of the Lady-chapel, but
in justice to Abbot John de Cancia we should re
member that such was neither the intention nor the
original effect of his design.
At the end of the north transept, rising to a height
of nearly 170 'feet, is Abbot Huby's tower. In the

Wm''''; '"'""
my

THE REFECTORY, FOUNTAINS ABBEY.

altar. Of the upper walls of the choir aisle I cannot
speak with equal admiration. The lancets are here
placed each under an arcade of one pointed arch be
tween two round-headed ones. The latter rest on
one side on single columns from which spring the
pointed arches over the lancet windows, while on the
other they descend much lower to meet the clustered
shafts which carried the vaulting ribs. It is perhaps
difficult in the present state of the building to judge
of the original effect of this arrangement, but it must
surely have been more striking than beautiful. At

inscriptions above and below its belfry windows, this
majestic structure seems to plead humbly for its own
right to existence : — 'To the King eternal, immortal,
invisible,'—' to God alone be honour and glory for
ever and ever. Amen.' ' Only to the praise of God,
and not for any pride or extravagance of men,' it
seems to say, 'was the old Puritanism forgotten.
Times have changed, and what was seemly in the
twelfth century and suitable to the poverty of a new
order is unworthy now of the greatness and prosperity
of this famous Cistercian house.' What St. Bernard

>s

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

would have said to this ' doctrine of development '
may be open to question, but there can be little
doubt that Abbot Huby's best apology is not in the
humility of his inscription, but in the triumphant
beauty of his work. He must indeed be an uncom
promising hater of perpendicular architecture who
can resist the simple charm of such perfect pro
portion. As we, not seldom, wear the semblance of our
own past selves, and preserve in a look or turn of
speech some grace long lost out of our lives, so the
old tradition seems to have lurked and lingered
among these innovators, the old severity to have
haunted and subdued their thoughts.
It is time to say a few words about the domestic
buildings which at Fountains are so well preserved
and so interesting. Instead of attempting a general
description, it will be best to confine ourselves mainly
to that which is here most distinctive.
In speaking of Rievaulx Abbey, I referred to the
Cistercian refectory, or ' frater,' and its pulpit ; and
I shall therefore only mention here that the great
size of the refectory at Fountains, viz.<jQ9 jge't by 46,
prevented its being roofed in a single span, and it
was consequently vaulted on a row of four marble
columns, of which, however, little or nothing now
remains. The hall is a fine specimen of Early English
domestic architecture, but it is in fact less remarkable
than the kitchen. In accordance with the invariable
Cistercian plan, the latter is placed immediately on
the east side of the refectory, and, with its yard or
garth, corresponds to the buttery and buttery-garth
to the west*
The kitchen at Fountains belongs to the twelfth
century. Its vaulting rested upon a single pillar, and
it contains two noble chimneys, each between sixteen
and seventeen feet wide and over six feet deep. The
' heads ' of these ' are straight, and formed of huge
stones dovetailed together on the principle of an
arch.' On the infirmary alone, which it has been the
fashion to call the Abbot's house, a chapter might be
written, but we must reserve this subject till we can
compare the ruins at Kirkstall with those now before
us. Meanwhile it is time to pass to that huge, mys
terious building west of the cloisters, to which Mr.
Sharpe has given the name of Domus Conversorum.'
It is with regret, and even with trepidation, that one
rejects this august misnomer. ' Who,' it must be
asked, ' were the " Conversi?" '
At Sherborne in Dorsetshire, where the influence
of Dunstan had anticipated by 150 years the Cister
cian revival, was passed the boyhood of him who, as
Stephen Harding, abbot of Citeaux, was to promul-

* Under the refectory and through, or close by, both these
yards, may usually be traced the main drain of the monastery.

eate the reformed Benedictine rule. To him and to
Alberic is due the development, though not the in
vention, of lay-brotherhood. Manual labour, the half-
forgotten command of St. Benedict, was' made an
important part of the monastic discipline of the re
formers. The monks must till the ground with their
own hands, but they must also be in their places in
choir at the canonical hours. These duties were soon
found to be incompatible, for even the command of
his abbot could not enable a monk to be in two
places at once. But it had long been the custom to
admit to Benedictine monasteries humble, illiterate,
and needy applicants in the capacity of lay brethren.
Life was not made smooth for these men within the
sacred enclosure ; but then, neither had the outer
world been too gracious to them. They had no turn
for mystic contemplation, no voice for service in the
choir, no skill in copying or illumination, but in
offering their labour in exchange for a safe and un
varying subsistence, they had doubtless a dim comfort
and uplifting from the thought that they were giving
to God the little with which He had provided them.
In the modern labour- yard and casual ward such
fancies do not harbour, — there is more cleanliness, but
perhaps less self-respect. The result of the multipli
cation of the conversi was that in every Cistercian
abbey, as has been well pointed out, there were two
monasteries, — one, viz. of ' lay brethren,' and one of
' choir brethren.'
The rules for the former were very strict, and,
according to our notions, somewhat vexatious. No
' conversus ' is to possess a book, or learn anything
but his ' Pater Noster,' his 'Credo,' and his 'Miserere,'
and ' Ave Maria,' &c, which he is to know by heart.
If a conversus is disobedient to such overseer
or master of the works as may from time to time
be set over him, he is to be flogged in the chapter
house, and to eat his food for three days seated
on the floor in the presence of the other conversi
and without a tablecloth. Wherever the monks ob
served silence there the conversi must also be speech
less, and they are to go nowhere without leave.
In their own dormitory and refectory they are
to observe perpetual silence, and indeed everywhere
else ; unless the abbot or prior, or, in cases where
he is entrusted with this authority, the cellarer,
happens to have ordered them to speak. The
same rule applies to all the craftsmen of the mon
astery — the weavers, the millers, the tanners. Only
the smiths are permitted to speak, 'because they
can hardly labour in silence without detriment to
their work.' The shepherds and ploughmen may
speak to their underlings (juniorcs), and vice versa",
while at work. They are to return the salutations
of strangers ; and if a traveller asks the way, they
are to tell him without unnecessary words. If, how
ever, he addresses them on other subjects, they, arc

Fountains.

29

to answer that they may not continue the conver
sation. A short service of responses is prescribed
for their grace before meat in the refectory. ' And
then the Prior, making the sign (of the cross) with
his hand, shall say, "In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," the rest
answering "Amen." And so let them sit down to
table in order and eat.' But if any one should
miss his response three times, his due portion of
wine is to be taken from him and he is to begin
eating after all the others.
Then, when ' refection ' is over, the Prior rises
and begins the ' Miserere,' which is recited by him

When archaeologists became aware of these facts,
and remembered the large two-storied buildings, so
especially conspicuous at Jervaulx and at Fountains,
which had hitherto for sheer want of a better name
been called ' ambulatories,' they not unnaturally con
nected them with the 'conversi! The connexion is
real ; but the name, ' Domus Conversorum', erro
neously assumes that the whole range was given
up to the conversi. It is also said by those best
conversant with monastic terminology to lack autho
rity. This building, which we shall most safely call
the ' cellarmm,' was in fact not one, but two.
It is to the hand of Time, or perhaps of some

THE CELLARIUM, FOUNTAINS ABBEY.

and the conversi verse by verse antiphonally ; and
so, passing into the church, they there say softly
to themselves the ' Pater noster,' and the Prior
having made the sign of the Cross, they too sign
themselves and bow and go their ways. But those
whose turn it is to wait at table finish their re
sponse in the refectory, and altogether omit the
final ' Pater noster.' By these and many more such
minute regulations was the life, and work, and wor
ship, of the lay-brothers fenced about.
It is said that in St. Bernard's own church at Clair-
vaulx, stalls were provided for 177 monks and 351
conversi; and it is at least certain that a Cistercian
monastery had to provide places for the eating,
sleeping, and working, as well as for the worship,
of a very large proportion of laymen, in addition
to the accommodation required for the clerics.

bold admirer oi the picturesque, that we owe the
impressive vista which Mr. Brunet-Debaines has
sketched. Here, as in the church, the monks had
other and more practical notions. At Beaulieu
Abbey, in Hampshire, the distinction between the
two ranges of the cellarium is very marked ; and
at Fountains, the place where they were divided is
sufficiently obvious. There is little doubt that the
half next the church belonged to the conversi;
serving them for workshops, if not also for a re
fectory. Above was their 'dorter,' or dormitory,
communicating — in the instances of Fountains and
Beaulieu at least — by a private staircase with the
church. The southern half seems to have been a
guest-house ; and ' at Fountains the guests came
down their own stair into a pentise, which ran
along the west side of the cellarium, and so into
I

,o

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

the church by a different door from that by wliich
the conversi entered.'*
Strange, indeed, and, as it were, prophetic, must
have been the dumbness of the busy fields and
workshops by the Skell. The sound of distant
voices from peopled valleys comes to us upon the
hillside, with an unthought-of thrill of sympathy and
consciousness of kind ; but in the lonely chapel on
' Michael-How ' only the bells of the parent church
broke the stillness, while at that sound shepherds
would kneel among their sheep, and ploughmen by
their resting oxen, to join in spirit with their brethren
chanting the Office in the abbey choir.
With a last and very different thought we must
turn from this memory-haunted scene. On the
south side of the stream is a well that still bears
the name of Robin Hood, in memory, it is said, of
the outlaw's famous fight with ' the curtail friar of
Fountains.'f ' Robin he took a solemn oath —
It was by Mary free —
That he would neither eat nor drink
Till that friar he did see.'
* J. T. Micklethwaite, F.S.A. Of the Cistercian Plan.
t ' Tradition,' says Mr. Walbran, ' points to the figures of a
large bow and arrow and hound, graven on the north-east angle
of the Lady Chapel, as a record of this dire affray. They bear
no affinity to the symbols used by the masons ; but have, I
fancy, induced the report, mentioned by Ritson, that Robin's
bow and arrow were preserved at Fountains Abbey.'

So Robin and the friar met and fought, till at
last the friar had the best of it, and threw Robin
into the Skell. Then Robin wound his horn,
and brought fifty of his followers to his aid ;
and, in his turn,
' The fryar he sit his fist to his mouth,
And whuted him whutes three ;
Half a hundred good bay dogs
Came running over the lea.'
So that if ' Little John ' had not ' shot with might
and main,' it would still have gone hard with
Robin. Mr. Walbran tells us that when Sir Walter
Scott visited Fountains, he was much struck
with this legend ; and not only induced Mrs.
Lawrence, the then owner of the Abbey, to build
an arch over the spring, but also presented her
with the following 'Inscription for Robin Hood's
Well : '—
' Beside this crystal font of old
Cooled his flushed brow an outlaw bold.
His bow was slackened while he drank,
His quiver rested on the bank,
Giving brief pause of doubt and fear
To feudal lords and forest deer.
Long since the date — but village sires
Still sing his feats by Christmas fires,
And still Old England's free-born mood
Stirs at the name of Robin Hood.'

VI.

Kirkstall.

IN the middle of the twelfth century a small town
in Airedale was struggling into importance.
The devastations of the Danes, which had almost
swept away the ' Loidis ' of Bede, had long been for
gotten, and the losses and miseries of the Norman
conquest were fast sinking into oblivion. But the
Conqueror's feudal system still had its grip relentlessly
upon the country, and the vills and towns were
working out their own deliverance by humble steps,
thankful the while for mercies which to modern
Leeds would sound but small. Half a century or so
before Ilbert di Laci had granted his vill of Leeds —
a mere drop in the ocean of his vast estates — to
Ralph Paganal, and the Paganals had since built
themselves a castle and made the park which sur
vives only in the names of Park Place, Park Row,
Park Square, and Park Lane. To the protection of
this castle and the comparative security enjoyed by
burgesses in times of turbulence and rapine the town
of Leeds is thought to have owed its early prosperity.
Already there is evidence .of the exportation of grain
and other commodities, and the Aire must have been
navigable, at least for small vessels, and under
favourable circumstances. And so, when in 1207
Maurice Paganel granted a charter to his burgage
tenants at Leeds, creating a local court of justice,
and conferring other valuable privileges and immu
nities, the town had evidently attained considerable
importance, and the Domesday estimate of some
thing under 1000 for the number of its inhabitants,
and about 115/. for its total value, must have been
left far behind. Yet in this charter we are still face
to face with serfdom and even slavery, for women
sold into slavery are exempted from paying custom
in the borough ; and though Yorkshire wool was
now being sent from Leeds to Flanders, to return
to England in the form of cloth, there is still the
Paganel oven, in which the burgesses aforesaid 'shall
continue to bake as they have been accustomed,'
and the king's mill at which they must grind their
corn. Meanwhile the De Lacys had granted their
neighbouring manor of Newsham to the Templars
and founded and built the monastery of Kirkstall.
For the oven and the mill, and even for the
Templars, we may search Airedale in vain, but the

solid masonry of the Cistercians still survives —
a huge and not unwelcome anachronism by the
darkened and polluted stream.
' Since the day when Henry de Lacy brought the Cis
tercians to this sweet retreat, how changed are the scenes
which the river looks upon. Then from the high rocks of
Malham and the pastures of Craven, to Loidis in Elmete,
the deer, wild boar, and white bull, were wandering in
unfrequented woods, or wading in untainted waters, or
roaming over boundless heaths. Now, hundreds of thou
sands of men of many races have extirpated the wood, dyed
the waters with tints derived from other lands, turned the
heaths into fertile fields, and filled the valley with mills
and looms, water-wheels, and engine chimneys.' *
Like the sound of brave words or fine music in
dreary scenes and moments of depression is the
sight of Kirkstall Abbey in the purlieus of dim,
laborious Leeds. We are absorbed in business and
harassed with care, our concern is with the practical
needs of a work-a-day world, competition and pro
gress — the present and the future — demand and
exhaust our energies, we feel, and delight to feel,
within and about us, the ceaseless vibration of the
great industrial world. And yet —
' And yet as angels in some brighter dreams
Speak to the soul while man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes
And into glory peep.'
And so we welcome the words or the music to the
making of which have gone such high desire and
prescient assurance of triumph ; and even for us who,
it may be, 'lack time to mourn,' there is a charm in
the record of that strange mood of asceticism which
enshrined its self-abasement in so much majesty.
It must, however, be confessed at the outset, that
the early history of Kirkstall does not so well accord
with our notions of saintliness as that of the parent
house of Fountains. The very origin of the former
has in it an ignoble element. The founding of
Rievaulx was due to the effect of bereavement upon
a brave and manly heart, that of Byland to the
spontaneous piety of the Mowbrays, that of Foun-
* Phillips's ' Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Coast of York
shire,' p. 94.

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

tains to the reforming zeal of the monks of York ;
but Kirkstall was generated in the terror and
despondency of De Lacy's sick-room. It is true
his purpose held and gathered strength with time ;
it is not less true that his monastery outlived its
early faults and grew to ripeness before it fell into
decay. When De Lacy was sufficiently recovered to set
about performing his vow he consulted the Abbot
of Fountains, and, by his advice, decided to found
a Cistercian Monastery at Bernoldswic in Craven.
The land and money were to be the offering of
the feudal lord ; the Abbot was to find the men and
direct the work.
On the 19th May, 1147, Alexander, Prior of
Fountains, with twelve monks and ten lay brethren,
took possession of the buildings which had been
provided for them, and the Monastery of Mount
St. Mary came into existence. Little can the new
colony have imagined that, five years later, the anni
versary of the Festival of St. Potentiana would find
them forsaking the vill of Bernoldswic and the very
name of Mount St. Mary. Whether the woody
slope in Airedale which so took the fancy of Abbot
Alexander was, as the legend runs,* already known
by the prophetic name of Kirkstall, or whether we
are to believe the statement of the chronicler that it
was first so named by the Abbot himself, must, for
all the light I can throw on the question, remain a
mystery. For the leading facts of the migration
there is sufficient evidence, the details may be taken
or left as the reader is minded.
Alexander and his brethren lost no time in
converting the vill of Bernoldswic into a hornets'
nest. From Serlo we only learn that they suffered
much from cold and hunger, both because of the
climate, and because, in the disturbed state of the
kingdom, their goods were repeatedly plundered by
robbers ; and that at last, wearied out with these
losses and privations, they obtained the consent of
their founder to turn Mount St. Mary into a grange
and remove to Kirkstall. But the venerable monk
seems to have omitted from his narrative a somewhat
important incident.
There was at Bernoldswic an ancient and perhaps
dilapidated parish church — antiqua nimis et ab olim
fundata — to which were attached five parochial
vills, viz. Bernoldswic, the two Mertons, Bracewell,
and Stoke. From Bernoldswic, and its appurtenant
members of Elwinsthorp and Brodene, the inhabitants
were removed to make room for the monks. This
departure from the Cistercian custom of appropriat
ing solitary and uncultivated tracts, and becoming
the pioneers of agriculture as well as centres of

* The legend is from an MS. in the Bodleian G.
fol. 129a.

religion, proved most disastrous. The parishioners
assembled as of old to celebrate the feasts of the
Church ; and as they were of course accompanied
by their priest and his secular clergy, we are not sur
prised to learn that 'they were troublesome to the
monastery and to the monks who abode in the same.'
Abbot Alexander was no mere dreamer. With
a view to securing peace and quietness for his monks,
he promptly levelled the church with the ground,
amid the loud remonstrances of clergy and people.
Even in the twelfth century such a high-handed
proceeding could not pass unchallenged. One of
the secular clergy, who was rector and parson {rector
et persona ecclesice), cited the Abbot and monks before
the Metropolitan ; but, eventually, the case went up
to the supreme court — the ' sedes apostolica ' — where
the parson and parishioners of a Yorkshire parish
had but little chance against the great Cistercian
order. The monks, in short, prevailed, and their
opponents were not only defeated but put to silence.
' For it seemed holy and laudable that a church should
fall, if so an abbey might be built ; that of two goods the
less should give place to the greater, and that the party
which was most rich in fruits of devotion should prevail.
And so, peace being restored, and the controversy set at
rest, the brethren proceeded to promote by gentler measures
the objects of their foundation.'
For five or six years the monastery of St. Mary's
continued its troubled and unprofitable existence ;
but at last the Abbot, travelling on the business of
the house, found, as it were by chance, the solution
of his difficulties. In the deep shadow of a wooded
vale, he came upon certain men in a quasi-religious
habit, and he soon found that they were living as
devout men might have lived before the days of
St. Benedict ; a fraternity of hermits, if the expres
sion may be tolerated, without organization and
without rule. The beauty of the place charmed the
Abbot, and he turned aside to converse with the
recluses. The story told by their spokesman, Seleth,
was as follows . —
He had come from the south of England, alone,
and guided only by a heavenly voice. 'Arise,
Seleth,' it had seemed to say, ' and go into the
province of York, and seek diligently in the valley
which is called Airedale for a place known as
Kirkstall, for there shalt thou prepare for a brother
hood a home where they may serve my Son.'
' And who,' he asked, ' is thy Son whom we must
serve ?'
' I am Mary,' was the answer ; ' and my Son is
called Jesus of Nazareth, the Saviour of the world.'
So Seleth woke ; and having pondered the vision,
set his hope on the Lord, and without delay left his
hearth and home. The place was easily found, and
when he had lived there alone for some days, eating

Kirkstall.

OJ

only roots and herbs, he was joined by others, and
they adopted the way of life of the brethren of
Serath, having all things in common and supporting
themselves by their toil.
As the Abbot listened, he considered the attrac
tions and advantages of the valley — its flowing river
and abundant timber for workshops. It seemed to
him an altogether desirable place, and he accoidingly
began to gently admonish the brethren. Had they
no fears for the safety and sanctification of their souls,
poor masterless disciples and priestless laymen as
they were ? He set before them a more perfect way

ings. ' Kirkstall Abbey,' says Whitaker, ' is a monu
ment of the skill, the taste, and the perseverance of
a single man.' Mr. Walbran discovered, from an
instrument of Archbishop Murdac in the treasury
of the Dean and Chapter of York, that, at the
request of Abbot Alexander and the monks of
Kirkstall, the two chapels of Bracewell and Marton
were raised by the Archbishop to their present
dignity of mother churches, each with its own
parish.* This instrument is unfortunately not dated,
but we may hope it is the record of a really generous
and disinterested reparation, made when the good

KIRKSTALL ABBEY. INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH.

and a higher type ofthe religious life, and so departed
to his patron.
De Lacy approved the plan, and persuaded
William de Poictou to grant the lands in Airedale
to the monks in perpetuity at the rent of five marks
annually. Then the Abbot, having made sure of a
more suitable place for his monastery, built a church
in honour of the ever Virgin Mother of God, and such
humble offices as were needful, and adopted for his
monastery the name of Kirkstall from that day*
forward. For thirty-five years did the abbacy of
this most practical ascetic, last, and in that time he
began and finished the church and monastic build-
' 19th May, 1 152.

will of their old neighbours was no longer necessary
to the peace and comfort of the monks.
Alexander was succeeded by Ralph Hageth, of
Fountains, a good monk but bad manager, in whose
time the valuable Grange of Micklethwaite was lost
to Kirkstall. The monastery seems to have sought
to enforce its appeal to King Henry by actually, for
a time, breaking up and dispersing ; and the Abbot
hoped to soften the royal heart by gifts of a golden
chalice and a copy of the Gospels. But all was in
vain ; and there was nothing for it but to return to
Kirkstall and practise economy. Alexander, ' true
* ' Statuimus quod duas capellae de Braycewell et Marton
sint de cetero matres ecclesias, quaslibet cum sua parochia.'
K

54

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

abbot in deed as well as in name,' though he was,
will hardly compare in saintliness either with the un
practical Hageth or with one or two of his successors,
of whom brief mention must now be made. The
fourth abbot, for instance, Turgesius by name, was
an ascetic of the true mediaeval type. Not only did
he abjure shoes in the bitterest weather, and clothe
himself continually in hair-cloth, but, with that rare
logic of the emotions which is so unanswerable in
theory and so self-refuting in practice, he wept
continually for his own and other men's sins and
miseries, and refused to be comforted. ' Through
levity of heart and small care for our failings,' says
the author of the ' Imitatio,' 'we become insensible
of the real sorrows of our souls ; and so oftentimes
we vainly laugh when we have just cause to weep.'
Into this error Turgesius was not likely to fall. ' In
common conversation he could scarcely refrain from
weeping. At the altar, he never celebrated without
such a profusion of tears, that his eyes might be said
rather to rain than to weep, and scarcely ahy other
person could use the sacerdotal vestments after him.'
He was thus an early example of the class of
Christians, who will not or cannot realise that
goodness is, after all, on the winning side ; and who
miss the strain of subdued triumph which sounds
through all the Bible, till it breaks into the rapture
of the Apocalypse, the dim but not uncertain herald-
light of dawn, which, falling upon saintly brows,
reveals them to us ' as sorrowful yet alway rejoicing.'
For nine years Turgesius governed Kirkstall, and
then retired to weep away his remaining years at
Fountains. Two of his successors, Helias (1209) and Grim-
stone (1284), seem to have revived the business-like
traditions of Alexander ; and there remains an
excellent letter written by Grimstone from St. Sever
in Gascony, whither he had gone to beg the inter
vention of King Edward I. between the monastery
and its hungry creditors. Unfortunately the letter,
which has been translated by Dr. Whitaker in his
' History of Craven,' is too long for insertion in this
place; and for the same reason 'we must content
ourselves with a few brief extracts from that which
Grimstone's successor, John de Bridsall, addressed to
the convent while engaged on a similar mission.
The latter savours less of the bursar and more of
the priest, and in its wisdom and devout tone there
is certainly nothing to remind us that we are close
upon the date of ' Piers Plowman's Vision ; and the
' Canterbury Tales.'
' Beloved,' he begins, ' we have written this letter in
haste from Canterbury, knowing that an account of the
success of our journey will be pleasing to you. In the
first place, our dear brother who was present will inform
you, that on the morrow of St. Lawrence we were met by
letters from the King in a very threatening style, that we

were apprised of robbers who laid wait for us in the woods,
under a rock, and that we were bound, under penalty of
forfeiting all our goods, to abide the King's pleasure.
However, having been at length dismissed from his
presence with honour, we proceeded on our way ; and,
notwithstanding the delay in London, arrived at Canterbury
on Monday evening, ourselves, our servants and horses,
being all well. We are not without hope, therefore, that
our feeble beginnings may be followed by better fortune,'
&c. ' For the time we commend you, dear brethren, to
God, and our bodily safety to your prayers. But especially
pray for the salvation of our soul, for we are not greatly
solicitous if this earthly part of us be delivered into the
hand of the wicked one, so that the spirit be saved in the
day of the Lord, which we hope for through your inter
cession ; yet we should wish, if it be the will of God, to be
committed to the earth by your hands, wherever you shall
dispose. But know assuredly that if we return, whoever
appears to have been most humble in conversation and
active in business during our absence, shall receive an
ample measure of grace and recompense from God, and
shall every hour be most affectionately regarded by us.
' Ye know, dearly beloved, that worldly occupations
such as we have long been entangled in for your sakes, are
not without danger to the soul. But we derive great hopes
from your compassion, seeing that we aim at no earthly
advantage, nor consume the revenues of the monastery
without cause. We commend you again to God and the
Blessed Virgin.'
John Ripeley, twenty - seventh and last Abbot
of Kirkstall, to whom fell, in November 1540,
the detested task of surrendering his monastery to
the Crown, is said to have been unable to tear
himself from the scene, and to have lingered out
his remaining days in the Gatehouse. The room in
which, according to this tradition, his last moments
must have been spent, now forms part of a private
house, and the arches of the actual gateway have
been closed, that its vaulted roof and massive walls
may be available for the purposes of an entrance-hall
and dining-room.
On the whole, however, we may be thankful that
the church and monastic buildings -of- Kirkstall have
been left to' the gentle iconoclasm of time and the
natural beauty of decay. Wych elms and ashes, self-
sown, and sheltered by the mouldering walls, now
soften and vary the general effect. Inside the church
itself, and the so-called Abbot's house, they rise
unbidden and unreproved ; but above their tops and
between their branches — east, west, and south — are
seen the chimneys and smoke-wreaths of Leeds, and
the air about them is darkened and tainted with
strange fumes. To the north rises the hill, and
across its face winds the old approach to the Abbey,
now intersected at right angles by a hard and
straight new road. The names of Vesper Gate and
Vespers Lane are still remembered ; but in the
trains which shriek and roar on both sides of the
river no traveller needs to ask his way, or draw from
old inhabitants the fading traditions of the place.

Kirkstall.

oo

¦We long, in vain, to be left alone with the ruin, if
only for a silent half-hour, and we picture to our
selves how at night, when commerce sleeps and the
pulse of industry beats feebly, the past must assert
itself once more, and Kirkstall be as real as Leeds.
Externally the Abbey is a singularly pure and
perfect specimen of genuine Cistercian, and also of
earl)? transitional architecture. The round arch pre-

nave and transepts ; but there is little beside the east
windows of the choir and chapels that may not well
have been the work of Abbot Alexander. In the
second bay of the nave — both north and south — are
late and somewhat elaborate windows inserted, doubt
less, for the purpose of throwing additional light upon
the altars placed against the ' pulpitum,' the position
of which they thus serve to mark ; and here at Kirk-

fi*f

yi

"S -

2^-^.--->-' jy

KIRKSTALL ABBEY, WESTERN FAJADE OF THE CHURCH.

vails throughout except where, as in the east window,
later work has been substituted ; the small aisleless
choir projects -but little beyond the. divided chapels
of the transepts ; and the very ruins of the too
ambitious tower, which fell a hundred years ago,
proclaim that the foundations of the massive central
pillars were never intended for so proud a burden.
Neither western porch nor eastern chapel disguise the
simple proportions of the original Latin cross, and
the lanterns and turrets are the only additions which
practically diminish the severity of the outline. On
entering we find, of course, pointed arches in the

stail, as in so many other churches, the roof has
obviously been lowered, partly for economy of lead,
and partly for the not unusual reason that when the
ends of the rafters became rotten there was. still
enough sound wood for a lower pitch.
The beautiful and remarkable western facade and
the north-west doorway are the remaining features of
special and obvious interest in the church, but there
are some points of exceptional importance in the
domestic buildings, particularly the chapter-house
and infirmary, on which it will hereafter be necessary
to make some remarks.

VII.

Kirkstall and Roche.

WALTER MAP, Archdeacon of Oxford, in
the time of Henry II. , was a wit, and,
like others of the secular clergy, a bitter enemy of
all regulars, and of the Cistercians in particular.
Both the wit and the bitterness may be seen in
the following story : —
' One day, after the King had slept in a Cistercian
house, the Abbot, in the morning, showed him all its
costly glories, Walter Map being in attendance. When
they came to the chapter:house, "Sire," said the Abbot,
"there is no place the devil hates so much as this. Here
souls are reconciled, here our penances are performed, our
offences punished." "No wonder,'' said Map, "that the
devil hates the place where so many of his friends are
whipped.'"* The capitulum, or chapter-house, of a Cistercian
monasteryj is a building communicating, usually by
three — but at Kirkstall only by two — arches, with
the east walk of the cloister. It was regarded almost
as a part of the church ; and therein were buried, in
early days, the abbots, patrons, and benefactors of
the monastery. Here, too, elections were held, and
processions begun ; and here, lastly, it is certain that
a very summary discipline was performed. ' I am
chalenged and chiden in chapter-house, as I a child
were ' — this, and worse than this, is the complaint of
Piers Plowman's Friar, and the monks were no better
off. ' After lauds we all came to receive discipline,'
says Jocelyn of Brakelond in his Chronicle.
The chapter-house of Kirkstall, though neither so
large nor so beautiful as that of Fountains, has a
strange and somewhat weird interest of its own. The
eastern half — including the whole projection beyond
the east walls of the sacristy, auditorium, &c. — is an
early fourteenth century addition to the original
work of Abbot Alexander. The difference in the
filling-in of the vaulting would alone suggest this to
* Professor Morley's ' English Writers before Chaucer.'
t The accompanying plan shows the Abbey buildings, not
as they are now, but as they were first laid out in conformity
with the unrelaxed Cistercian rule. The Refectory is shown
as it was before its enlargement, and the original Kitchen in
the usual position — east of the Refectory, and close against the
Cloister. The Infirmary, too, is indicated as it was originally
built, with aisles and open arcades, before the later division into
many small rooms.

the most careless observer, but the masonry of the
walls of the latter part is still more noteworthy.
These are literally built, to a great extent, of stone
coffins, some of which have been filled up, while
others are proved by various holes and fractures to
be hollow. It is by no means surprising to find here
and there in buildings of this period a sculptured
coffin-lid unceremoniously worked in, but this whole-
sale and unblushing confiscation of the property of
the dead is surely without parallel.
The present solid and windowless eastern wall is
an obviously late substitution for one pierced by two
apertures, but whether these were originally windows,
or, as is not improbable, arches open to the ground,
must still be matter of conjecture. Mr. Wardell,
however, quotes from Gent's ' History of Ripon ' a
suggestive passage, in which he speaks of the chapter
house at Kirkstall as ' an arched chamber leading to
the cemetery.'
The changes and additions which have meta
morphosed the refectory, or frater, are somewhat
more obscure. But it may be safely affirmed that
the original hall cannot, as has been sometimes
stated, have run east and west, because this would
have been an intolerable breach of Cistercian uni
formity. Neither can the calefactorium, or common-
room, have been west of the refectory — the obvious
situation for the buttery, and there seems no reason
why the large room at the south-east corner of the
cloister-court — sometimes called the ' Abbot's hall ' —
should not have been, as its situation at once
suggests, the calefactorium.* What has happened
to the frater is in reality this. Originally it was
perfectly normal, having its base abutting on, and its
length at right angles to, the south cloister. Then it
became necessary or desirable to enlarge it ; and this
was done by throwing down the wall between frater
and kitchen, and so producing an L-shaped room. The
new kitchen to the south of the open yard, or garth,
was the natural accompaniment of this alteration.
Between the cellarium and the west walk of the
cloister was a wide passage communicating directly
* East of the kitchen, too, is not the buttery but, surely, the
necessarium of the monks ; that of the conversi being plainly
the large western building miscalled the granary.

Kirkstall and Roche.

with the church, and used, no doubt, by the con
versi, whose intercourse with the outer world was
necessarily more frequent than that of the fratres
clerici. A similar passage exists at Beaulieu, and
may, it is thought, be traced at Byland. It seems
to have been adopted from the original houses of
Citeaux and Clairvaux.
But it is time to say a few words about the
Infirmary. This was the building which it was the
habit of the Cistercians to erect last of all ; and it
was also the one in respect of which their usage
underwent the most important change. The In
firmary was not only the temporary refuge of the
sick, but the permanent home of the old and feeble.

aisles,* and in both there seems to have been, not
earlier than the fifteenth century, an effort to make
things more comfortable by partitioning off these
aisles and dividing them into separate living rooms.
At Fountains, not only this hall, but the chapel and
kitchen to the east of it, can be clearly traced, as well
as a smaller hall communicating by a private stair
case with the chapel, and very probably inhabited
by the ' Pater Abbas,' on his visitations, when he is
known to have lodged in the Infirmary.
This system of visitation was, as has been ex
plained in a former chapter, a special feature of the
Cistercian ' Carta Caritatis,' promulgated by Stephen
Harding in 1119. Not the more, but perhaps all

I SACRISTY ANO STAIRS TO. PORTER..
X TRCA5UHV.
& A-JOITOUIVIH,
•*¦ STAIRS TO OORTCR.
1 5" FASfAGE TO INFIR.MAKY'.
6 LAVATJP.Y .

the Cistercian
Abbey of Kirkstall,
AS IT WAS IN THE XII™ CENTURY.

The Cistercians differed from the unreformed Bene
dictines in demanding that the infirm should, as long
as possible, continue to attend the services in the
church, and they naturally attached less importance
to the Infirmary Chapel ; but we should have ex
pected to find it, as in the Benedictine plan, under
the same roof, and in direct communication with the
main building, if only for the sake of those who were
absolutely disabled. This, however, was not the case,
and hence, probably, the failure of antiquaries, until
very lately, to identify the Infirmary at all. But at
Kirkstall, as well as at Fountains, there is evidence
of a process of change and development in the
building at the extreme east, so long known as the
Abbot's Hall, precisely analogous to that which is
known to have taken place in many Benedictine
infirmaries. In both cases we start with a large hall,
divided by columns into the semblance of a nave and

the less, on this account does it escape the pitiless
mockery of Walter Mapes. ' When the " Pater
Abbas," ' he says, in one of his poems, ' proposes to
visit his daughter (i.e. a daughter-house of the order),
he takes care to give ample notice, and then there
is a running to meet him with bread and wine and
fish. He is conducted into a building strewn with
rushes and flowers, the cloth is laid, and, having
washed his hands, he reclines at the table. It
is a day of no small expense. Then, to begin his
inspection he rides to the Abbey, he enters the
Infirmary, — that is the object of his first visit, and
there he partakes of food. As for the poverty of the
cloister, he neither experiences it nor troubles his
head about it.' Nay, ' the holy father, who has been
prescribing a rule of life for the brethren, shortly

* Vide plan.

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

proceeds to destroy with his own sharp teeth and
stomach the commandment as to not eating flesh
which he has enjoined.' *
The Abbeys of St. Mary at Kirkstall and St.
Mary of Roche (Sancta? Mariae de Rupe) mutually
illustrate each other; and, in fact, it is only by an
examination of the singularly perfect remains of the
first that we are enabled to eke out the slender
materials for an imaginary reconstruction of the last.
The resemblance in style between the two is very
obvious, and has been frequently noticed by architects
and antiquaries. Though the foundation-deeds of
Roche, unfortunately, bear no date, the tradition
which points to 1 147 is confirmed by internal evi
dence ; and the only difficulty is to account for the

and guarded from the common troubles of common
men' that the treasures of mediaeval architecture were
designed and ornamented, but ' sometimes, perhaps,
it was the monk, the ploughman's brother ; oftenest
his other brother, the village carpenter, smith, mason,
what not — a common fellow, whose common every
day labour fashioned works which are to-day the
wonder and despair of many a hard-working " culti
vated architect." ' ' So you see,' he adds, ' there was
much going on to make life endurable in those times.
Not every day, you may be sure, was a day of
slaughter and tumult, though the histories read
almost as if it were so ; but every day the hammer
chinked on the anvil, and the chisel played, about
the oak beam, and never without some beauty and

ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPTER-HOUSE, KIRKSTALL ABBEY.

close correspondence of the contemporary work at
Kirkstall without adopting the untenable hypothesis
of a common architect. It is certain, however, that the
Abbeys of the twelfth century were not built by archi
tects, in our sense of the word, at all. As Mr. William
Morris (Lectures on Art) has well said, it was not
by ' the great architect carefully kept for the purpose

* Vide' Poems of Walter Map
and ' MS. Arundel,' No. 139, fol.
' Venienti occurritur
cum pane, vino, piscibus ;
in domum introducitur
stratam juncis et floribus ;
mensali mensa tegitur,
discumbit lotis manibus ;
dies ista deducitur
non absque magnis sumptibus.
' Hinc facturus scrutiniam
ad abbatiam equitat ;
intrat infirmitorium,
illud in primis visitat ;

es,' Camden Society, pp. 185-6;
49, r°.
ibi sumit edulium
ibi libenter habitat ;
paupertatem claustraliuin
nee sentit nee recogitat.

' Pater sanctus qui fratribus
vivendi normam posuit,
mox legem quam de carnibus
non comedendis statuit
suis acutis dentibus
et suo ventre destruit.'

invention being born of it, and consequently some
human happiness.'
Now while Abbot Alexander and his monks were
busy at Kirkstall they can hardly have been at work
at Roche ; and since the separation of the head that
plans from the hand that executes was then unknown,
we can only find in these twin abbeys a remarkable
illustration of the uniformity of contemporary Cis
tercian work. No picturesque details of the found
ing of Roche Abbey have come down to us,
and it was not even known till comparatively lately
from what parent house it was colonised.* But
the thirteenth century chronicle of Hugh de Kirk
stall, already referred to in connexion with Foun
tains, must be considered to have settled this
question. * In Hunter's 'South Yorkshire' we are told that it is un
certain whether Roche was founded from Fountains, Rievaulx,
or the Continent.

Kirkstall and Roche.

39

Newminster, itself re-founded by a colony from
Fountains, 'rivalled the fruitfulness of its mother.
It conceived and brought forth three daughters,
Pipewell, Sawley, and Roche.'
From Newminster, then, came the men ; and the
dateless charters will tell us from whence came the
land for the monastery of St. Mary of the Rock.
From these we learn that Richard de Busli, lord of
Maltby, and Richard the son of Turgis, called also
Richard ele Wickersley, lord of Hooton, each gave
certain lands, agreeing to be called joint founders of
the monastery. The monks, with whom rested the
choice of a site, decided in favour of the Maltby side
of the stream, and there accordingly they settled.

monks of Roche. In the seventh year of Innocent VI.
(1361), complaints about the monks and 'conversi' of
Roche seem to have reached the ears of the Cardinal
Priest of St. Mark, and he instructs the Abbot that
if he shall find his brethren guilty of laying violent
hands on each other, or on the secular clergy; of
carrying arms; playing at dice and other unlawful
games; frequenting taverns, gardens, vineyards,
meadows, cornfields, and other forbidden and im
proper places ; leaving off their proper habit ; refusing
obedience to their superiors and conspiring against
them ; going out of the monastery and its precincts
without leave ; associating with the excommunicated
and celebrating the divine offices in their presence,

: -' ^ " "
_ —
-:¦'¦¦¦¦'. 

-'-?'-

-:^:^yM

• 4' yy^-- *YY-

- • -- .
:jjiwi -JJJJ.AJ - - . . f ,;;
:

vYj.~ -

KIRKSTALL ABBEY, ABOUT 1794- FROM A SKETCH BY THOMAS GIRTIN.

The history of the monastery was not eventful.
John de Busli, confirming the grants of Richard,
his father, reserves the aerie of sparrow-hawks — 'eria
sperueriorum ; ' and Hunter (South Yorkshire) points
out that the tenure of Bawtry was by the render of
a sparrow-hawk yearly, from the De Buslis to the
Fossards. At the same time, the monks obtain
liberty to make a ditch, bounding their fields between
the wood of Maltby and the fields of Sandbeck,
leaving, however, two roads, viz. Bolgate and the
road to Blithe.
In 1 3 19, the abbot and convent of 'St. Mary-at-
St. Edward's Place,' Netley,* of the Cistercian order,
sell all their rights in the manor of Laughton to the

* The double dedication of a Cistercian house, viz. to
St. Edward as well as to St. Mary, is noticeable.

&c, &c. ; he is to absolve them of all their crimes
except such as ought to be reported to the Apostolic
See. About the middle of the same century, the
number of monks at Roche had become so small
that John, earl of Warren, in granting to the
monastery the church of Hatfield, gives as his
reason that he could not but remark how few were
the monks compared with the magnificence of the
stonework of the Abbey. His gift is, therefore,
intended to support thirteen additional monks ' of
respectable life and competent literature.' When, on
June 23rd, 1539, Abbot Henry Cundel surrendered
the monastery to the emissaries of Henry VIII., he
was joined in the deed by seventeen monks, each of
whom afterwards received a pension of 61. a-year,
while one of 33/. 6s. id. was allotted to the Abbot.

40

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

Of the meaning and origin of the name Roche
Abbey there has never been any question. The
' compendium of the discoveries made by Dr. Legh
and Dr. Layton in the visitation of the Royal
Province of York, &c, in the time of Henry VIII.,'
specifies, under the head of ' Superstition,' that
' Pilgrimage is made hither to an image of the
crucifix, found (as it is believed) on a rock, and is
held in veneration.' No vestige of this curiosity can
now be traced in the face of the limestone, and it
may be assumed that the visitors, in accordance with
their general instructions, destroyed the dangerous
symbol. The rock, however, has enjoyed a per
manent if less exalted fame, as excellent building
material ; and the Roche Abbey quarries, besides
being honourably mentioned in the competitions
for St. Paul's Cathedral and the new Palace of
Westminster, have supplied stone for no small pro
portion of the Yorkshire churches.
History has no more important lesson to teach
us than its own continuity ; and the fact that the
present is the child of the past and the parent of
the future, has burst upon the minds of some modern
thinkers with the force of a religion. It is good,
indeed, for men and nations to sober the days of
sunshine and cheer the nights of gloom by the
powers of retrospect and forecast, and to recognise,
in much that to them is smooth and easy, and full
of rest and peace, the outcome of another's conflict
and reaping of his toil.
' So we inherit that sweet purity
For which they struggled, groaned, and agonised.'
Scanty as are the ruins which now nestle in the
green and flower-strewn valley at Roche, they still
plead the cause of the past and protest against
oblivion. ' The wayfarer from Sheffield,' says a recent writer,
' cannot fail to remark that, as he approaches the Abbey,
the face of the country is entirely changed. The red-tiled
cottages, the roses with which they are entwined, the rich
pastures and the marks of high cultivation which meet the
eye on every side, bear witness, not only to the excellence
of the soil and the care of a noble landlord, but also to the
work and taste of those untiring men who, in the early
periods of our history, were the pioneers of all the peaceful
arts, and who have left the impress of their refinement on
the places where they dwelt.'*
To destroy this continuity and obliterate this
record, was the special function of the landscape-
gardening of the eighteenth century.
The traveller of to-day will not expect to find the
' very fair builded house all of freestone, and every
house vaulted with freestone and covered with lead,'

* ' Charters of Roche Abbey.' By Sidney Oldall Addy, M.A.
Sheffield. 1878.

described by one Cuthbert Sherebrook ; but even
the ' venerable chasm and solemn thicket ' visited
by Walpole in 1772, and pronounced by him 'so
overgrown that when one finds the spot one can
scarce find the ruins,' must have been preferable to
the wholesale pulling down and covering up which,
under the auspices of ' Capability Brown,' almost
immediately followed.
It is plain that the rock was no mere excuse for
a name, but a feature of real importance in the site ;
for a little consideration will show that it must have
almost touched, and very considerably darkened, the
north transept of the church. Yet the winding
valley, with its gentler southern slopes, its woods
and running stream, was doubtless soon converted
into a pleasant seclusion ; and the natural features
of the scene are, in themselves, little inferior to those
of Fountains. But, alas ! for the antiquary who
dreams of finding here rich treasures of monastic
ruin. A gatehouse of comparatively late date, and
parts of the choir and transepts of the church, are
all, or nearly all, that remain, where once was a
church at least 200 ft. long by 100 ft. broad (at
the transepts), and a cloister-court, 180 ft. by
125 ft., surrounded with stately halls and buildings
of stone. Here, as at Kirkstall, the nave had eight bays ;
but the total length of the latter was greater by
twenty feet, and its width by eighteen at the transept ;
though in breadth of nave and aisles there is only a
difference of a few feet. The transepts at Roche
had each two eastern chapels in place of the three
which we have seen at Kirkstall ; but in one respect
it is probable that Roche was the more magnificent
of the two. Neither the nave nor, it is supposed,
the tower or transepts of Kirkstall were vaulted ;
but at Roche the tower and transepts were, and
the nave may well have been. On the south side
of the choir, which was only thirty-seven feet long,
are three sedilia under canopies of later date, and
on the north are the remains of a rich and lofty
decorated canopy. South of the choir, and east of
the south transept and its chapels, are the remains
of a wall, which is all the more unaccountable
because there is nothing on the north side, so far
as I have been able to discover, corresponding to
it. The windows of the choir were round, and on
the south side of the south chapel a round-arched
window still exists, and beneath it a piscina,
also round-arched ; but at the east of the chapels
larger windows were substituted in the fourteenth
century. The arches of the triforium were pointed, but
those of the clerestory round, according to the usage
of the Cistercian Transition. Whether the apportion
ment of round and pointed arches was strictly and
exclusively guided by structural considerations, or

Kirkstall and Roche.

4i

whether there was any theoretical objection to the
adoption, for external use, of the newer style,
seems to me a little uncertain. Perhaps, while the
builder's needs and instincts were driving the Cis
tercian to adopt, for vaulting and other internal
purposes, the more scientific construction, his con
servatism as an ecclesiastical architect made it hard
to shake himself
free from the
tradition of ex
ternal symmetry
and seemliness.
The monas
tic buildings at
Roche seem to
have crossed or
overhung the
stream at three
points at least,
and in this
respect, among
others, the situ
ation may be
compared to
that of Foun
tains. It is perhaps
worthy of re
mark that here,
as at Kirkstall,
are indications
of a building
south of the
kitchen - garth.
This is certainly
a departure from
Cistercian usage
be accounted for
far as can now

ROCHE ABBEY.

but at Roche it may possibly
by the fact that there was, so
be seen, no artificial canal for
drainage purposes, and the natural bend of the
stream does not bring it within the limits of the
courtyard. Thus, in order to obtain convenient
access to the stream for the disposal of kitchen
refuse, it was necessary that there should be a
southward extension of the buildings. It must be
confessed, however, that, apart from the analogy
of Kirkstall, there is nothing whatever to identify

this southern extension as a kitchen. Some dis
tance due east of the kitchen - garth the stream,
which here takes a north or north-east direc
tion, was apparently crossed by a long range of
buildings, of the end of which, commonly called
the mill, considerable remains still exist. Not,
however, till the 'covering up' of the landscape-
gardener is can
celled by the
spade of the
excavator, can
we hope fully
to repair, even
in imagination,
the ' pulling
down' for which,
alas ! no real
remedy is to be
found. Then,
and not till
then, may we
realise the work
that, thanks to
the monks of
Newminster and
the Lords of
Maltby and
Hooton, was
done in this
valley in the
'troublous times
of anguish and
rebuke,' and
dream that we
see beneath the
shadow of the
venerated rock the majestic neighbour with which for
centuries Maltby was familiar. Meanwhile, though
there is neither speech nor language, the past is not
silent, but along the ages, in a continuity that refuses
to be broken, one day telleth another and one night
certifyeth another, and even here, from the grave of
' lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular
names, and impossible loyalties,' there rises among
common things and modern men a presence as of
Lazarus, solemn with memories of death, and dazed
with glimpses of eternity.

M

42

VIII.

Jervaulx.

AT the head of Wensleydale, and eastward of
the little town of Hawes, rises the Yore. The
torrents from the neighbouring fells are the nursing-
mothers of the infant stream in whose breast is to
be mirrored so much of romance, of history, and of
religion. Changeful and petulant, — a rill in the
drought, a river after rain, — it passes from the broad-
based hills and quiet moors to a richer and a tamer
land, till at last it is mated with the Swale at Boro-
bridge, and in the dignified importance of the Ouse
we forget the wild wanderings of the unwedded Yore.
But meanwhile .many a lonely force has lashed and
swelled the stream, and many an unforgotten scene
has been enacted on its bank. At Bolton Castle the
tears of Mary Queen of Scots have fed it, and at
Middleham it has quenched the thirst of the King
maker. Below this ' middle ' dwelling, between Aysgarth
and Masham, there has come in from Coverdale the
little stream that gave its name to Coverham Abbey
and to Miles Coverdale, the forerunner of our modern
' Revisers.' And again, a little lower, at the point where
Wensleydale proper is said to end, the monks of
Jervaulx watered their famous horses at the Yore
and pastured them in the rich meadows at its side.
Thenceforth the valley widens and the hills subside,
but still the wooded banks of Clifton and the purple
of the more distant Swinton Moors lend fresh beauties
to its course, and far away beyond Masham, and
Tanfield, and Norton-Conyers, our interest is revived
by the ancient town and minster of Ripon.
To-day, however, it is neither at Bolton nor at
Ripon that we must pause, but at Jervaulx. There
we shall find yet one more of the Cistercian houses of
Yorkshire, — one more witness to the vast wealth, and
toil, and skill that Yorkshiremen once lavished on
efforts and ideals which even history has almost
learnt to forget.
There is a curious book, published at Dijon, under
the title of ' Les Monuments Primitifs de la Regie
Cistercienne.' These ' Monuments ' consist, in fact,
ofthe ' Regula ' of St. Benedict and the ' Carta Cari-
tatis,' ' Consuetudines,' and ' Kalendarium ' of the
Cistercian order. Like those other Monuments which,

with the help of Mr. Brunet-Debaines, we have been
considering, they have little meaning for the passing
stranger; but, like them, they hold the key to a
long-locked past, and will yield to seeing eyes and
hearing ears true glimpses and a living voice. In
book and building, in life and architecture, we shall be,
struck by the close linking of the domestic and the
ecclesiastical ; but here the resemblance ceases. The
religious life — so taught the monks — demands the
whole man and all his steps and phases to the grave
and beyond it. Of a common and daily eating and
drinking, and doing all to the glory of God ; . of a
religion of the body which can ennoble even the 'base
necessities' of flesh and blood, they could not con
ceive ; nor could they reach to the full meaning of a
labour which is prayer, and a suffering which is better
still ; but they knew that a jealous God would have
all or nothing, and they patiently made rules for
those incidents of mortality from which they could
not escape, minutely stamping with repression and
contempt so much of man as there was no room for
in_ their philosophy. In monastic architecture, on the
contrary, all is seemly and noble. The mingling of rules
for vigils, or for vespers, with those for cooking and
dining ; of instructions for periodical shaving and
blood-letting with orders for extreme unction and
masses for the dead, — all this has its counterpart in
the imperceptible transition from church and chapter
house to hall and lavatory, and the common use of
the cloister as at once the vestibule to the church and
the home of the monks. Between massive pillars and
through deep-splayed doors we catch glimpses of
stairs, of aumbreys, of the book-case, or ' armarium
commune,' — the signs and symbols of the life of man ;
and the solemn vaulting of aisle and cloister becomes
half domestic as it leads on the sight to passages and
nooks, and gleamings of a bold, intruding sun. But
the contrast vvhich is so marked in the book is alto
gether absent from the building. We do not pass
from vaulted aisles to sheds and hovels. In stone
halls, as seemly as the builders' art could make them,
were the poor, hungry bodies fed and the weary
limbs laid to sleep ; the very kitchens were massive
and picturesque, and wise design and honest work
were not thought out of place in even humbler offices.

fervaulx.

43

And this, which adds so greatly to the beauty
and interest of monastic ruins, might easily lead us
into hopelessly wrong imaginings of monkish life if
we had not other records to check and guide us.
From these we learn what coarse and humble fare
was served from the vast kitchen to the noble hall,
and what scanty and comfortless sleep was permitted
in the imposing length of the well-built dormitory.
Of the sleeping accommodation of the unreformed
Benedictines we have the following description in the
' Rites of Durham :' —

was a foursquare stone, wherein was a dozen cressets
wrought in either stone, being ever filled and supplied by
the cooke as they needed to give light to the moncks and
novices when they rose to their mattins at midnight and for
there other necessarye uses.'
But from this type the Cistercian dormitory must
in many respects have diverged. In the first place,
they were not a literary order, and the special ar
rangements for books and desk may well have been
dispensed with. But from number 72 of the ' Con-
suetudines ' other differences may with certainty be

TERVAULX ABBEY.

' A faire large house, where all the monnks and the
novices did lye, every monncke having a little chamber of
wainscott, verie close, severall by themselves, and the wyn-
dowes towardes the cloyster, every wyndowe serving for
one chambere, by reasonne the particion betwixt every
chamber was close wainscotted one from another, and in
every of there wyndowes a deske to supporte there bookes
for there studdie. In the west syde of the said dorter
was the like chambers, and in like sort placed with their
wyndowes and desks towards the Fermery and the water,
the chambers being all well boarded under foute. The
novices had theire chambers severall by himselfe in the
south end ofthe said dorter, adjoyningto the foresaid cham
bers, having eight chambers on either side, every novice
his chamber severall to himself, not so close nor so warme
as the other chambers, nor having any light but what came
in at the foreside of their chambers, being all close both
above and on either side. In either end of the said Dorter

inferred. The partitions of ' wainscott,' for instance,
cannot have existed, since it is ordered that, ' in
dressing and undressing, they are to be careful and
seemly, lest they should appear naked ;' and there is
a further curious direction as to the precise manner
in which they are to get into bed.*
As we stand thus among the ruins of Jervaulx,
with the Dijon book in our hands for reference and
comment, the abbot, prior, cellararius, portarius, sa-
crista, monks, lay brothers, hired servants, all become
real to us : the white procession forms in the chapter
house, or streams at night from the dimly-lighted
dormitory into the solemn church, or in the cloisters

* ' Nullus in lecto ascendat rectus ; sed de sponda divertat
pedes in ipsum lectum.'

4+

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

wc see brother washing the feet of brother or shaving
his beard and tonsure,* or all together sit and wait
for the welcome knocking by which the prior or his
deputy summons them to the refectory.
And so beneath the veil of seeming uniformity
the human forms and individual hearts begin to
assert themselves ;' and one cowled figure is known as
a repentant libertine, another as an innocent and
childlike dreamer, and a third as a fierce old warrior
with battered body and bloodstained soul. Yet for
all there is one system, one garb, one standard, one
relentless round of discipline and prayer.
' It is good for us to be here,' said St. Bernard,
' for here a man lives more purely, falls more rarely,
rises more quickly, walks more heedfully, rests more
safely, dies more happily, is cleansed (in Purgatory)
more speedily, is rewarded more abundantly.' And
what St. Bernard said must surely be true, whether
for soldier, libertine, or saint.
But there came a time when the voice of the
' Doctor Mellifluus ' ceased to charm, and another
spirit had the mastery in England. On the Sth of
June, 1537, one Arthur Darcy wrote as follows : —
' Ytt shall like your honorable lordship to be advertysed,
ytt I was wt my lord lewtenant at ye suppression of Ger-
vaix; wch howse wtin the gate is covered holly wt leadds,
and her is one of the fayrest chyrches yt I have seen, fayre
medowe, and ye ryver running by ytt, and a great demayn.
The Kyng's hyenes is att great charge with his stoods of
mares at Thornbury and other places, whych are fyne
grounds, and I thinke yt at Gervaix and the graynges in
cident, with the help of ther gret hnrdy commons, ye
Kyn's hyenes, by good ouerseers, shold have ther the most
best race that shold be in England, hard and sownd of
kynd, for surely the breed of Gervaix for hors was the
trydd breed in the north. Ye stallyons and mares well
sortyd, I thinke in no realme shold be found the lyke to
them : for ther is hardy and good hye grownds for the
summer and in wynter woodes and lowe grownds to fire
them. My lord, by my lord lewtenant, I have restitutyon
off a grett part of my goods at Coverham. From Gervaix
I went to Sallay,' &c. &c.
It was in the 'hardy and hye grownds'. at Fors,
near Murbeck, that the monks of Jervaulx were first
established, and they had then no ' woodes and lowe

* This last office was not to be performed without special
invitation. The rule is so curious that I am tempted to quote
it. (Consuetudines, lxxxv. ' De Rasuris.') 'Infra sex dies ante
nativitatem domini, quinquagesimam, pascha, pentecosten, fes
tum beate marie magdalene, nativitatem sancte marie solemni-
tatem omnium sanctorum, tondendi et radendi sunt fratres.
Coci calefaciant et deferant aquam in claustrum. Pectines
forpices, rasoria et affilatorias custos eorum acuet et preparet.
Fratres tondeant quibus jusserit Abbas. Tonsi alterutrum
radant, et in claustro, praeter infirmos qui in infirmitorio sunt.
Rasura corone fiat non exigua tonsura per desuper aures.
Nullus nisi intntatus aliquem radere presumat, vel se vella
facere signet. Nullus vero invitatus audeat refutare. Signum
autem radendi alter alteri non faciat, nisi post tabulam pulsa-
tam.' *

grownds ' for the winter. The place was afterwards
known as the ' Dale Grange ' and ' The Grange ;' and
fhe historian of Richmondshire tells us that, some
recent alterations having been made in a barn, he
discovered ' one round-headed light, a genuine rem
nant of the original building,' and that there still
remained in the wall a single trefoil window, from
which he inferred that the monks of Jervaulx, out
of reverence to the place of their origin, maintained a
small cell on the site long after their removal to more
fertile and more sheltered scenes. How and whence
the monks arrived at Fors is recorded at somewhat
tedious length in the Byland Register. The story
is briefly as follows : —
In the reign of Stephen one Akar Fitz-Bardolph,
a feudatory of Alan, Count of Brittany and Earl of
Richmond, of whom he held vast estates in York
shire, gave to one Peter de Quincy, serving God as a
monk and being withal a skilful leech, and to cer
tain other monks from Savigny, a parcel of land in
Wandesleydale. Further back than this we cannot go. No one
seems to be able to tell us how Peter de Quincy and
his brethren came to be in England at all, or how
they became acquainted with Akar Fitz-Bardolph,
or whether the said Peter had earned the gratitude
of his patron, like a hero of the ' Arabian Nights,' by
his skill in medicine! At any rate, we first come
upon the monks as they are engaged in raising a
simple and unpretentious building, which they call
first the Fors Abbey, then Wandesleydale, then the
Abbey of Charity, and finally, • appropriately to the
running waters and the situation,' Joreval — the Abbey
of the Vale of Ure or Yore. Two things, however,
hampered and distressed the monks in their new
settlement. First, there was the difficulty of securing
for themselves a recognised status in the Cistercian
system, and, secondly, there were serious drawbacks
to the site.
' The situation,' says Whitaker, • was unpromising,
high in the valley, cold and exposed to fogs, and,
therefore, though not unfit for pasturage, ill adapted
to the ripening even of barley and oats, for wheat
was then rarely cultivated even in the low districts
north of the Trent.' This latter evil was ultimately
remedied by Alan, Count of Richmond, and his
son Conan, who, besides confirming the original
grants of Fitz-Bardolph, bestowed on the monks of
Jervaulx, first, 'a great pasture of Wandesleydale,'
and then a ' vast uncultivated tract' Both father
and son, in fact, took a warm interest in the
Monastery, and the former expressly commanded
brother Peter to let him know when he was about
to begin building operations, that he might himself
be there to see.
Accordingly, when all was ready, Peter made his
way to the Count, who, coming to the scene of action,

"Vifo* F
Fr'

h F

Jervaulx.

45

called by name upon four or five of the knights who
accompanied him, and said with a pleasant smile, as
one in sport, ' We have all wide lands and great pos
sessions ; now, therefore, let us with our own hands
be helpers and builders of this house in the name of
our Lord, and let each of us contribute land, or rent,
for the permanent endowment* and support of the
part which he has built.'
To which hint some of them responded well
enough, while others insisted upon terms and con
ditions. So it came to pass that the first wooden
makeshift and apology for a church was run up,
to wit, in the year 1145 ; of which, when Roger
de Mowbray, the devout founder of Byland, heard,
he could not be happy without a share in the
prayers and spiritual benefactions of these monks
of Savigny,
but, with ___- ; -
great devo- "I--"- - . -¦•'' ' .
tion and ge
nerosity, gave
the said bro
ther Peter,
by charter,
some land
belonging to
his domain
of Masham.' Not long
afterwards, Count Alan
went to visit
his estates
in Brittany,
and, coming
to Savigny,
told the Abbot how Peter and his companions
had started a monastery near his castle of Rich
mond in England. The Abbot of Savigny was far
from receiving this intelligence with unmixed satis
faction, and when the Count courteously made over
tb him the new foundation, he accepted it with
undisguised reluctance and a resolve, apparently, to
be rid of it at the earliest opportunity. But Peter's
heart was in the matter, and he wrote again and
again .to entreat the Abbot to send ' a convent '
from Savigny, with no better result, however, than
a snarp letter calling him a fool for his pains,
because he had begun an abbey without the
advice of the house of Savigny. For the ' Pater
Abbas' bethought him of the dangers, toils, and
failures, which had befallen his monks in different
parts of England, and how he was often urged to

* It is perhaps worth noticing that the word ' eleemosyna,'
which I have here rather freely translated ' endowment,' is
simply the original form of our English word 'alms.'

recall them ; and so he openly swore a great oath
that nothing should induce him to send a convent to
Jervaulx, and he wished he were well rid of Count
Alan's gift. This letter vexed and discouraged Peter
and his companions, but did not shake their holy
purpose. At last, in the tenth or twelfth year of
King Stephen — as some affirm — it happened that the
Abbot of Byland went to Savigny to attend a general
chapter. Peter, hearing of his intended journey,
begged him to be the bearer of a letter, and to inter
cede personally with the Abbot of Savigny on behalf
of the ' new plantation.' To make a long story short,
the result of this appeal was that the Abbot of
Quarera (or Quarr, in the Isle of Wight) was ordered
to visit Fors and ascertain whether the place was
really capable of supporting a monastery. If his report
was satis
factory, the
new found
ation was
to be made
overtoSavig-ny's 'younger
daughter ' of
Byland ; if
otherwise, Peter was to
hold it as a
sort of agent
or trustee for
the parent
house. When
Peter, in the
presence of
his friends,
brother Co
nan, and brother Himbert, and of Matthew, a monk
of Savigny, opened the sealed letter which the Abbot
of Quarera brought, and read these proposals, there
was a brief consultation. Matthew advised that the
estate was not sufficient for a monastery, and had
better be handed over to Savigny, but Peter and his
friends, after all they had gone through, would not
hear of this. So the end of it was that they all
came to the Abbots of Quarera and Byland in the
church, and Peter said, —
' Blessed be God, within a few years from our first estab
lishment we have now five carucates under the plough, forty
cows with their followers, sixteen mares with their foals, the
gift of Earl Conan, five sows with their litters, three hundred
sheep, about thirty hides in the tannery, wax and oil which
will supply our lights for two years ; and I am very certain
that we shall be able to raise a competent supply of ale,
cheese, bread, and butter, and to sustain a regular convent
out of such beginnings, until it shall please God to provide
better for them.'
Fuller remarks somewhere in his ' Church History,'
N

PART OF THE RUINS OF JERVAULX ABBEY.

46

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

that the Cistercians were rather farmers than monks.
The accusation is certainly too sweeping, but it is
plain that if Peter de Quincy had not been a thrifty
and practical man, Jervaulx Abbey would never have
existed. Though Peter and his two brethren and one
conversus at once ' made profession ' in the Church, it
was not till St. Bernard himself had interposed and
the decree of the Chapter of Savigny had been con
firmed by a council of the order at Citeaux that the
arrangement was absolutely and irrevocably clenched.
Roger Abbot of Byland did his part by summoning
a chapter, and, ' with a long and deep sigh,' nomi
nating John of Kinstan as abbot of the new house ;
whereupon the monks raised him in their arms and
carried him to the high altar, saying, ' Thou art Abbot
of Joreval.' Soon afterward, Abbot John, having been
solemnly blessed after the vigilim nocturnce, set forth
with twelve monks for Joreval.
Of the manner of his journey, and how he 'had
Christ Himself for a guide,' we have left ourselves but
little space to discourse. As the new abbot rested
the first night in a certain village, he had a dream.
He thought he was once more starting from Byland,
and as he left the cloister he saw in the midst of it a
very noble woman in seemly raiment. In her left
hand she led a beautiful boy, whose face shone like
the moonlight. And the boy gathered a fair branch
from a tree in the cloister, and so vanished with the
lady. By-and-by John and his monks found them
selves in a place where they were altogether shut
in with thorns and great rocks, and could neither go
forward nor back. Just as they were beginning to
despair, and each to call on the other for help, John
said, ' Let us repeat the Hours and the Gospel ;' and
as they finished, suddenly the lady and the boy
appeared to them. And John said, ' O fair lady,
tender and sweet, what do you with your son here
in the desert ? ' And, she answering that she was
often in desert places, after some further speech,
John begged her to be a guide to him and his
monks. But the lady, saying she must not then stay,
commended them to her son. So the boy guided
them cheerfully, having in his hand the branch he had
gathered at Byland ; and the monks followed him
through rough and toilsome ways, and felt it not.
And countless numbers of small white birds, no larger
than sparrows, hovered round the branch and sang,
over and over again, the hymn, ' O all ye works of
the Lord !' At last they came to a very rough and
neglected place, and the boy went into the midst, and,
planting there the branch round which the birds were
singing, said, ' Here, after a certain time, shall God be
worshipped and invoked.' And so he vanished.
And when Abbot John awoke, the monks went on
their way and passed at dawn through the midst of
another village. And as the people began to peer at
them from their lattices, John hid himself in the

shadow to listen to their talk. And one looked at
the moon and the stars, and the signs and aspects of
the heavens, and said : ' In a happy time do these
good men make their move, for in thirty or forty
years they shall be so established that they shall not
afterwards be shaken, but go on growing and in
creasing.' Thus, in the mirror of their dreams and beliefs,
may we trace some faint and shadowy reflections of
the men who built for a foredoomed system such
imperishable homes.
At Jervaulx, indeed, the church, the great central
thought and dominant feature of the whole, has been
levelled with the ground. As the children of those
who slew the prophets were forward to adorn their
tombs, so a later generation has come with flowers
to brighten and fences ¦ to surround the limbs and
remnants of a murdered art. The cloister-court of
Jervaulx is now a tennis-ground, and the precinct
to the north and west a garden, but the park which
spreads along the valley of the Ure still witnesses
to the silent toil which cleared and cultivated the
tangled wilderness. The ground-plan of the church
has been carefully excavated and well preserved,
and a single altar in the north transept and a fine
doorway at the south-west of the nave remain in
situ and fairly perfect. The south wall of the
cloister, clearly a modern substitution, has no signs
of lavatory or entrance to Frater and offices. The
hall has utterly vanished, the building wrongly
pointed out as the refectory being without doubt
the common-house. East of this, in a misleading
position, is a second kitchen, with two large fire
places. The other, with one fire-place, is south of
the yard, as at Kirkstall and Roche. There are in
dications of a large hospitium west of the cellarium,
and ample materials for study in the infirmary and
so-called Abbot's House, as well as in the chapter
house. In fact, a careful and accurate plan of this
Abbey, made in the full light of recent research, is
sorely needed.
From the dreamer, John of Kinstan (or de
Kyngeston), to Adam of Sedburgh, hanged in 1537
for complicity in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a long
array of abbots maintained, in uneventful succession,
the dignity of the house and the reputation of its
horses and its cheese. The wooden structures at
which Peter de Quincy laboured and Count Alan
jested with his friends gave way to the more solid
buildings which Abbot Roger of Byland planned
and set agoing between Christmas and the Purifi
cation, but thenceforth no great architect seems to
have arisen at Jervaulx.
The end of the twelfth or beginning of the thir
teenth century must have seen the completion of the
' fair church,' which Darcy so eagerly destroyed, and
the chapter-house with its pillars of grey marble from

Jervaulx.

47

Nidderdale. And here, too, ends that which may be
almost called the Cistercian episode in architecture.
' The Gothic architecture,' says Mr. Ruskin, ' arose
in massy and mountainous strength, axe-hewn and
iron-bound, block heaved upon block by the monk's
enthusiasm and the soldier's force ; and cramped and
stanchioned into such weight of grisly wall as might
bury the anchoret in darkness and beat back the
utmost storm of battle.' It is with this stage that we
are concerned rather than with that later one in

which ' gradually as that monkish enthusiasm became
more thoughtful, and as the sound of war became
more and more intermittent beyond the gates of the
convent or the keep, the stone pillar grew slender
and the vaulted roof grew light, till they had wreathed
themselves into the resemblance of the summer
woods at their fairest and of the dead field-flowers,
long trodden down in blood, sweet monumental
statues were set to bloom for ever beneath the porch
of the temple or the canopy of the tomb.'

48

IX.

Mount Grace Priory.

PROBABLY the least known, but certainly not
the least interesting, of the monastic ruins of
Yorkshire is the Carthusian Priory, which stands a
mile or so north of the ' Beck,' between the Hambleton

the fourteenth century testified to the devotion and
liberality of Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent. Three
hundred years had elapsed since Bruno promulgated
in the desert of the Chartreuse a monastic reform

HOUSE, PARTLY 17TH CENTURY, AT THE ENTRANCE TO MOUNT GRACE PRIORY.

and Cleveland Hills. ' The Priory of Mount Grace,'
says the local guide, ' is situated about eight miles
E.N.E. of Northallerton. The nearest railway stations
are Welbury and Trenholme Bar, which are respec
tively about four miles distant, but no conveyances
can be obtained at either.' At one time a sportsman,
at another a countrywoman, will come and go, but
the few tourists who make their way to the Priory
arrive mostly by road from Northallerton. Indeed,
these small stations on the wild moor seem to feel the
spell of older and more stagnant days, and perhaps
no one who has not waited at Pilmore for a train
has fully realised how powerless a railway, and even
a junction, may be to enliven such an utter desola
tion, or disturb so deep a peace. But far more strange
and impressive than the stillness which now reigns
beneath the shadow of 'Black Hambleton' must have
been the forced and painful silence of the peopled
cloister and the clustered cells which at the end of

more thorough and relentless even than that of
Robert, Bernard and Stephen Harding. The ex
treme austerity of the Carthusian rule had, we must
suppose, left the field to the more popular Cistercians,
and Witham and Henton, both in Somersetshire,
were long the only houses of the Order in England.
But between 1344 and 1414 no less than seven
Carthusian priories were founded, and among them,
in 1397, 'The House of Mount Grace of Ingleby,'
dedicated to St. Mary and St. Nicholas.
Thomas Holland was then Duke of Surrey, and
the favoured and trusted nephew of the King. But
when, only two years later, Richard II. was deposed,
the Duke became once more Earl of Kent, and the
rich and powerful patron of the Carthusians was
transformed into an impotent rebel, and finally suf
fered as a traitor. So the ' Monastery of the Assump
tion of Our Lady of Mount Grace,' as it seems to
have been mostly called; was left unfinished, and

Mount Grace Priory.

49

the monks uncertain as to their title to those far-off
midland and southern lands at Hinchley, Warham,
and Carisbrooke, which the deposed monarch had
granted to his favourite. At last, however, in 1440,
Henry VI. confirmed the original grants, and building
operations were resumed and soon completed.
' Sanctcs et singulares] — saintly and singular, in
deed, were the observances which had won the ad
miration ofthe luckless Duke of Surrey. Not in the
fast of eight months out of twelve, the refusal of meat
even to the sick, the substitution of flannel for linen
in bedding as well as clothes, lies the peculiar hard
ship of the Carthusian rule, but rather in that which
¦the ruins now before us so vividly, recall — the isolation
of each monk in his own little hut and walled garden,
the silence en
joined even on
the stated fes
tivals when the
common refect
ory was used, the
ingenuity of self-
torture which
turned at a sharp
angle the aper
ture in the wall
lest the hands
or face of the
bringer of the
daily pittance
should cheer the
solitary by touch
or look. Did not
even Elijah see
the ravens in his
' eremus ' ? Yet
it was for this
rule, in all its
stern integrity,
that the inmates of our London Charter-house were
ready to die. It is instructive to see how their
extirpation by Cromwell and his master strikes a
very modern historian.
' In the general relaxation ofthe religious life the charity
and devotion of the brethren of the Charterhouse had won
the reverence even of those who condemned monasticism.
After a stubborn resistance, they had acknowledged the
Royal Supremacy, and taken the oath of submission pre
scribed by the Act. But by an infamous construction of
the statute, which made the denial of the Supremacy treason,
the refusal of satisfactory answers to official questions as to
a conscientious belief in it was held to be equivalent to
open denial. The aim of the new measure was well known,
and the brethren prepared to die. In the agony of waiting,
enthusiasm brought its imaginative consolations : " When
the Host was lifted up there came, as it were, a whisper of
air which breathed upon our faces as we knelt ; and there
came a sweet, soft sound of music." They had not long,
however, to wait. Their refusal to answer was the signal

for their doom. Seven swung from the gallows ; the rest
were flung into Newgate, chained to posts in a noisome
dungeon, where, " tied and not able to stir," they were left
to perish of gaol-fever and starvation. In a fortnight five
were dead, and the rest at the point of death, " almost
dispatched," Cromwell's envoy wrote to him, " by the hand
of God, of which, considering their behaviour, I am not
sorry." ' *
So perished, without a thought of yielding, the
champions of English Carthusianism.
Let us see what these ruins can teach us of their
brethren in Cleveland. Leaving the road at right
angles, we make straight for the base of the wooded
hills, till our track brings us up short before a highly
picturesque, but rather desolate, farm-house, in the
construction of
which, though an
inscription over
the door gives
the date of 1654,
the fifteenth and
seventeenth cen
turies seem to
have gone shares.
Right and left
stretches a long
range of build
ings, through
which we pass
by a gate-house
into a large, ir
regular - shaped
garth with some
appearance of a
cloister - court.
On the north
are the ruins of
a by no means
imposing church,
and north of this again a doorway in a wall reveals
glimpses of an inner court.
This, indeed, is the normal Carthusian plan. A
church, simple and aisleless, with transepts, short
nave, and more considerable choir, and on either side
an enclosure ; the larger, and in this case the southern,
given up in part or altogether to the guest-houses and
more public offices and buildings of the monastery,
the smaller constituting the cloister of the monks,
and surrounded with tiny, two-storied houses and
gardens, in front of which is a continuous ' pentice.'
Turning to the left on entering the outer court,
and passing along the back of the range of buildings
already referred to as a farm-house, we find, in the
north-west corner, an unmistakable kitchen, beyond
which again are two massive buttresses against a
* Green's 'English People.'

5°

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

blank wall. Eastward, and beyond the doorway to
the inner cloister, we come to the nave of the church.
This is so short that it forms, with the transepts and
choir, a reversed Latin cross — the choir, instead of
the nave, being the long arm. Immediately east of
the transept are the remains of the tower, through
which, by a rather narrow passage under lofty arches,
the choir is reached. The entire absence of aisles is
significant of the simplicity of ritual which admitted
no processions. Only the north wall of the choir
remains, though there are sufficient indications of
masonry on the south. East and south of the church,

v, ¦',

DOOR LEADING FROM THE OUTER COURT TO THE INNER CLOISTER AT
MOUNT GRACE PRIORY.
at a short distance, there seem to be traces of cells
and gardens like those which surround the inner
cloister. They were apparently four in number, two
on the east, where the cells must have been, so to
speak, ' semi-detached,' and two on the south, where
the garden intervened in the more normal way. The
rest of the eastern side of the court was screened from
the stream and the rising hill by a wall and passage
communicating with the southern hospitium.
At the north-east corner of the church was,
perhaps, the chapter-house ; and abutting against
the north walls of the transept and nave are re
mains of what may, with more certainty, be called
the prior's house. But the most interesting part
of the monastery has yet to be noticed. On the

outer side of the north wall of the prior's house
is an undeniable lavatory, which, though not situ
ated like those of the Cistercians close to the
entrance of a refectory, does yet mark the fact
that we are now in the cloister of the monks — the
scene of their daily life and occasional ablutions.
Standing with our backs to this lavatory and
looking north, we shall have, right and left as well
as in front of us, the ruins of the fourteen separate
cells in each of which a monk, more eremite than
coenobite, once sought to train his soul to look only
towards heaven. The minuteness with which the
scheme of these remarkable dwellings can be dis
cerned is, after all, the feature of primary interest
in the ruin. With the help of a very careful
drawing, and some more than probable conjectures
of Mr. Middleton's, we may reconstruct, almost in
detail, the strange shell which the Carthusian law
formed around the individuals of its species. At
Burgos we may see the survivors of the race, at
Grenoble we may brood over its cradle ; but neither
Miraflores nor the Grande Chartreuse will wholly
supersede the study of this Yorkshire ruin, where
no later day has endeavoured with self-conscious
art to simulate or to embalm the past.
Let us take at random a single cell.
We shall find that the allowance of space to
each monk is tolerably liberal. The actual building
measures, on the outside, about 25 feet by 28 feet ;
and occupies, roughly speaking, a fourth part of an
enclosed square, the remainder of which is devoted
to garden, the house being in a corner with a
frontage to the cloister, and having the garden on
two sides of it in the shape of an L. Along the
remaining part of the cloister frontage there runs,
inside the high wall of the garden, a passage
covered with a pentice ; and a similar structure
connects a door at the back of the building with
an aperture in the corner of the garden wall —
away from the cloister and towards the stream.
This aperture was once wrongly supposed to be an
exit to the running water and the open country ;
but it is now clear that it was only a recess, con
nected by quite other relations with the drainage
of the stream.
In its two garden frontages the house has alto
gether four low windows, and a door communicates
with each of the above-mentioned covered passages,
and another — strictly closed — with the cloister. In
the corner between this last door and the return
wall of the house is the hatch through which the
recluse was fed. Starting in a straight line from
the outer (or cloister) wall, this ingenious aperture
shortly turns at right angles, and debouches in the
splay of the neighbouring doorway. Towards the
cloister it is still obviously rebated as for a shutter.
Immediately on the right, as you enter from

Mount Grace Priory.

5i

the cloister, are the newel and other indications
of a staircase ; but, unfortunately, nothing remains
to indicate the plan of the upper floor. To the
left was probably a passage leading to the front-
garden door and covered way. In the latter is a
niche, as if for a lamp. The inner part of the
house seems to have been divided, by wooden par
titions, into three rooms — perhaps bedroom,* day
room, and a sort of pantry. One only — the supposed
day room — contains a fire-place. This room also
communicates with the second covered passage and
the ' recess.'
Such, with but little variation, are the fifteen
cells and gardens which surround the monks' clois
ter at Mount Grace. The enclosure is by no means
rectangular, and not even an exact parallelogram.
The gardens consequently differ slightly in size
and shape ; that at the north-east corner, for in
stance, being long and having its outer angle acute.
The branches of the same stream which partially
surrounds the outer court, flow round three sides
of the inner ; and beyond the water, to the east,
rises the steep and thickly-wooded hill. It should
be observed for the benefit of genuine antiquaries
that on each side of the doors of the cells are, or
were, escutcheons, those on the east wall being
larger than those on the others. Among these
larger escutcheons are the arms of Gascoigne and
of Scroope, Archbishop of York. This Archbishop
was of the old type of political and warlike Church
men. Three years after the defeat and death of
Hotspur, he conspired with the elder Percy against
King Henry, and paid the penalty of unsuccessful
rebellion. It must not be supposed either that
the cells are all in equally good preservation, or
that any one of them is so perfect as to exhibit
every detail that has been described. It is with
them, as with the abbeys among which we have
been travelling — what is lacking in one must be
supplied from another. This, indeed, is the true
secret of the antiquary's joy, and the key to
his mystery. He is one of those ' sad friends of
truth' of whom Milton spoke, who, 'imitating the
careful search that Isis made for the mangled
body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up
limb by limb still as they could find them.' He
knows, too, that he ' has not found them all, nor
ever shall do ; ' but, because no living impulse
or creative thought can wholly die, he still strives
to register in the vast museum of human history

* I am told that the analogies of Pavia and S. Maria degli
Angeli at Rome are in favour of the upper floor being the
sleeping-room of the monks. There must, however, one would
think, have been more space than could be needed for this
purpose. At Miraflores Mr. Street speaks of two rooms up
stairs. Unless the lay-brothers acted as housemaids, these
monks must have found themselves rather over-housed.

that which has helped to mould and make us as
we are.
One curious attribute or accident of the Carthu
sian was his devotion to gardening. A recent
traveller in Spain sums up his impressions of Mira
flores, with somewhat contemptuous brevity, in these
words : ' Every monk has a cell, a bed-room, and a
garden, to himself, for silence and solitary confine
ment are the rule of the order, instead of sociability
and usefulness, to their fellow-creatures. " Mais il faut
cultiver son jardin."'* Yes, they were the first and
greatest gardeners, but they could produce great
architects and bishops too, for was not St. Hugh of
Lincoln a Carthusian ? And while we wonder at the
fruitless austerity of the cloister of the monks, it is
but fair to remember that larger cloister through which
we have so lately passed. Here, in the ample ac
commodation for the wayfarer, the poor, the fugitive,
the sick, is the great link between the two elements
of worship and service, which, from age to age in
varying proportions, have been and will remain essen
tial to religion. Still it is only too true that in the
original conception of the Carthusian rule there was
something of that morbid desire of isolation which
was the really grave blemish of mediaeval monas
ticism. In the early anchorites this tendency was
probably at its worst, in the Dominican and Francis
can ideal it was almost wholly absent. Between the
two comes the ordinary monasticism of which the
Benedictines are the type. But the Carthusians were
not Benedictines, though they are often spoken of as
if they were, and they have in them, as we have seen,
more of the hermit than of the coenobite. Thus the
salvation of their own souls was declared to be the
object of their retreat, and they seem to have at first
discouraged poor strangers ; spending their so-called
superfluities by preference on the needy of their own
neighbourhood. In the same spirit they recited the minor cano
nical hours each in his own cell at the sound of the
chapel bell, assembling only for matins and vespers,
except on feast-days, when all their services were
in the church.
All the more remarkable is the appearance in
politics and art of the one English Carthusian whose
name still lingers in the Calendar of our Church.
In that neglected and patiently protesting document
the name of Hugh Bishop of Lincoln stands, black-
lettered, against the 17th November, to be read
by those who never heard of Bruno or asked the
meaning of the Charter - house. From the midst
of these silent worshippers, with their one silver
chalice and silver tube for eucharistic wine, their
aisleless church and meagre ritual, comes forth the

' Holidays in Spain,' by F. R. M'Clintock.

52

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

great Gothic builder whose monument is Lincoln
Cathedral. From the midst of the petty and vexatious rules,
the weekly flagellations, the system of signs — 'rustic
and not facetious or wanton ' — in place of speech,
comes the opponent of King Richard I. on behalf of
the constitution and liberties of England. And the
same man who said to his monks, ' Eyes on your
plates, hands on the table, ears to the reader, and
heart to God,' said to Hubert, who demanded in the
King's name contributions for foreign wars, ' Within
the realm we of Lincoln will pay your soldiers, as we
are bound ; but without it, no.' Thus, as Mr. Free
man says, ' As Thomas of London had withstood the
demands of the father, Hugh of Avalon withstood
the demands of the son ;' and ' the Saint of Lincoln,
grown into an Englishman on English ground, spoke
up for the laws and rights of Englishmen, as Anselm
had done before him, and as Simon did after him.'
For, alas ! we cannot claim St. Hugh as an English
man by birth. It was 'the saint whom the Imperial
Burgundy gave to England ' who spoke out in this
manly English fashion, and who fixed for us the true
type of English Pointed architecture. His effigy
may still be seen in Westminster Abbey, with the
swan, the symbol of Carthusian loneliness* The
high opinion in which the Order was held by Church
men of the twelfth century may be gathered from a
letter of Peter, the Venerable Abbot of Cluny, to
Pope Eugenius.
' I thought,' he says, * and I do not believe I was wrong,
that theirs was the best of all the Latin systems, and that
they were not of those who strain at a gnat and swallow a
camel. For they do not consider the kingdom of God as
consisting principally in meats and drinks, in garments and
labours, and the like, though these, wisely managed, may do
that kingdom of God good service, but in that godliness of
which the Apostle says, " Bodily exercise is profitable to

* So says Mrs. Jameson, but there is little doubt he had a
real pet swan, as mentioned in the Latin Metrical Life of St.
Hugh.

little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having the
promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to
come." These holy men feast at the table of wisdom, they
are entertained at the banquet of the true Solomon, not in
superstitions, not in hypocrisy, not in the leaven of malice
and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity
and truth.'
To Mr. Matthew Arnold, whose noble poem of
the Grand Chartreuse has perhaps been often in the
reader's mind, it is all but one more misdirected effort,
one more blind aspiration, one more fruitless rebel
lion against ' the common.' Yet for him the silence,
which to many seems so monstrous and so morbid,
is full of solemn meaning and eloquent with pathetic
suggestion :
' Silent, while years engrave the brow ;
Silent — the best are silent now.'
The Carthusians were right, at least, he thinks, to
hold their peace. He sees in their isolation not the
fatal flaw, but the crowning excellence, of their sys
tem. It is with them, he would perhaps say, as
with the stars — ' self-poised they live, nor pine with
noting. All the fever of some different soul.' But
surely the more availing plea is that they were never
conscious traitors to their kind, but rather, in the
mysterious oneness of our race and the strange
fashion of its development, it was for us they tried
that dark and dreadful path of silence that we, whose
courage would perhaps have failed, might know, by
proof of their experience, that not so is reached the
land of our desire.
Who shall say that these men bore in vain all the
agonies of self-repression, and the maddening con
sciousness of powers unemployed ; or that without
them St. Vincent de Paul would have been able to
write to his sisterhood in after days, ' Let your mon
asteries be the homes of the sick, your cell a hired
chamber, your chapel the parish church, your cloister
the streets of the town and the wards of the hospitals,
your rule obedience, your grating the fear of God,
your veil a strict and holy modesty ? '

53

X.

Easby and Eggleston.

FROM a town of singular beauty, gathered round
the walls of a rock-hewn fortress that frowns
above a swift and shallow stream, we wander plea
santly through a mile or two of wood and meadow to
the ruins of a House of Premonstratensian Canons.
So much have Easby and Eggleston in common that
our description thus far may stand as well for one as
for the other. Yet the foundations, dedicated re
spectively to St. Agatha and SS. Mary and John
Baptist, are in reality quite unlike enough to be
instructive comments on each other, and even a hasty
and careless observer will find in them more of con
trast than of sameness.
Before entering into details it will be well to
attach some meaning to the words we have already
used. Briefly, very briefly, what are Premonstra
tensian Canons ? There is a rule enunciated by
a synod of about the year 1083 that no abbot
or monk shall recall, any one from the profession
of canon to that of monk as long as such canon
can find a church of his own order. And Pope
Urban II. — mandavit et universaliter interdixit —
made a general prohibitory order against the con
version of a canon, unless under certain circum
stances* into a monk.
Then were not Easby and Eggleston monasteries,
and inhabited by monks ? Certainly not. There is,
indeed, evidence that in quite early times the houses
of canons were sometimes spoken of as ' monasteria;'
but it was to them also that the monks applied the
strong language quoted in an earlier chapter — ' cleri
corum stabula' — the stalls of the secular clergy. Here,
however, it must be observed that, as among monks,
so among canons, there were manifold varieties, some
of which — as, notably, the Premonstrafensians — ap
proached very nearly to the monastic ideal. The
origin and development of the system seems to have
been pretty much as follows. Small and active
groups of missionaries lived together in monastic
simplicity, but without rule or vow. Such centres of
spiritual energy naturally became bishoprics, and
then the customs hardened into something like a
rule, and the ' canonici ' — distinguished thus, perhaps,
* Nisi publice lapsus fuerit.

from isolated parish priests — fell more and more into
the position of appendages of the see ; while, at the
same time, other like bodies were formed, which, in
the absence of a bishop, became, in the ecclesiastical
sense, collegiate rather than cathedral. There is no
doubt that the words ' canon,' and ' regular,' and
' secular,' were almost from the first used with some
degree of looseness, but the above is, I think, a fair
account of the earliest, the secular, variety of canon.
But this ' monster without a precedent,' this'' regular
irregular,' this ' canonless canon,' had not, for those
troublous times, the elements of stability. We are
accustomed, perhaps, to consider the monastic orders
as self-refuting failures, but it is certain that they
served their purpose better, and showed more vitality,
than the apparently rational system of secular
canons.* The attempted reform of Nicholas II. in
the Council of 1059 indicates the decay of the
canonical life. Official revenues, according to his
plan, were to be held in common, while rights of
private property were respected. The real regene
ration, however, came from within, and was already
begun. At the Church of 'St. Rufus, at Avignon, a
body of clergy, renouncing all separate property and
reviving the rule which they found in the 109th
Epistle of St. Augustine of Hippo, became in n 38
the first 'Regular' or 'Austin' canons. f We have
thus advanced one step further, to a point from
which we are able to understand that a ' Regular
Canon' is, in reality, a mere tautology. He is a
regular regular — a cleric bound by a rule milder, it
is true, than even that of the unreformed Benedictine
monks, but still strict enough for many, and for some
even too exacting.
To Guyot de Provins — a writer of the thirteenth
century who had rejected in turn the Cluniac, Cister
cian, and Carthusian orders— the Austin Canons seem

* From the days of Chrodegangus, bishop of Metz, in the
middle of the eighth century, there was clearly something not
very unlike a ' rule' for the canons ; and in 817 we find certain
changes introduced, especially in a curious point as to inherit
ance by canons of their bishop's ' movables.'
t At the Lateran Council, A.D. 11 39, Pope Innocent II.
ordained that all Regular Canons should submit to the rule of
St. Austin in his 109th Epistle. From this order afterwards
proceeded both Peter Martyr and Martin Luther.

54 The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.
to have been especially congenial. 'Among these,' Malmesbury seems to be conclusive in favour of
we find him saying, ' one is well shod, well clothed, this view.*
well fed.' The date and place of the introduction of I have alluded in the first paper of this series to
this order into England has been much disputed. the jealous antagonism which, even before the Con-

RICHMOND CASTLE.

The editor of the ' Monasticon ' inclines to Bishop
Tanner's theory that the first foundation of Regular
or Augustinian Canons was at Colchester, and gives
1 105 as the probable date. But Mr. Freeman and
Professor Stubbs tell us that Lanfranc introduced
the order at Canterbury ; and Lanfranc died in
1089. Mr. Freeman's quotation from William of

quest, existed between the monks and the secular
clergy. It may, therefore, be interesting to notice
that Lanfranc, the first to bring regular canons to
England, was at the same time the constant champion

* Stubbs, 'Const. Hist.,' Vol. I., p. 327 ; Freeman, 'Norman
Conquest,' Vol. IV., p. 363.

Easby and Eggtestpn:

55

of the monks against those who would • have handed'
over all our cathedrals to the seculars. The see of
Carlisle, founded by Hemy L; seems to, have been
the first, and indeed the only instance, of the esta
blishment in England of Regular Canons as a
cathedral body; though the Scotch, in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, set the example in not a few
instances. Meanwhile the war between monks and seculars
ended in a partition of territory — Canterbury, Win
chester, Durham, Coventry, Norwich, Rochester, Wor
cester, Ely, and Bath, falling to the monks; York,
London, Exeter, Lichfield, Wells, Hereford, Lincoln,
Salisbury, and Chichester, to the canons.*
It still remains to say a few words about the
Premonstratensians — the particular variety of Re
gular canons with which we are now more imme
diately concerned.
The order of Premonstratensians, or White Canons,
was the result of the reforming zeal of St. Norbert,
and it seems to have represented the utmost height
of self-mOrtification to which a non-monastic college
or cathedral could aspire. Thus there is evidence
that the Priory of Twinham, or Christchurch, in
Hampshire, was before and after the Norman Con
quest occupied by a dean and twenty-four secular
canons. Then, about i [ 50, the rule of St. Augustine
appears to have been adopted by them, and finally,
in the charter of 22 Edward I., this house is included
' in those of the Premonstratensian Order.
Norbert, born of noble family on the lower Rhine
towards the close of the eleventh century, was a man
not inclined to take too serious a view of life and its
responsibilities, till sudden conviction and conversion
fell upon him in the course of a violent thunderstorm.
Unable, like many another, to overcome the
jealousy and blindness of which it comes, that in his
own country none may be a prophet, St. Norbert
sold all he possessed, abandoned his benefices, and,
with two companions, set forth to preach the Gospel.
Resisting the offers of Pope Gelasius, refusing the
bishopric of Cambray, and all other preferment,
praying successfully for the gift of tongues, he
struggled on towards his' appointed but as yet un
known goal. At last Bartholomew, Bishop of Laon,
found for him a damp and lonesome hollow in the
forest of Coucy. He was to have his choice, it seems,
of temple or chapel, desert or garden, but had re
jected one after another as suitable enough for a
religious foundation but not intended by God for
him. Here, however, in a little chapel of St. John
the Baptist, Norbert betook him to prayer, and so

* It must be remembered that Oxford, Peterborough,
Chester, and Gloucester, were not erected into bishoprics till
Henry VIII. Westminster, which is Benedictine, was made
cathedral by Henry, and ' collegiate ' by Elizabeth.

continuing ' with Hugo, his comrade, • far 'into' the
night, was at last rewarded by a vision ofthe Blessed
Virgin herself, encircled by angels 'and radiant with
light. She told the future saint to fix his abode on
another part of that very hill, and at the same time
prescribed the distinguishing vesture for the new
order — the cloak and biretta were to be white, the
cassock alone black. And Norbert saw in the very
hands of the Virgin Mother the white woollen garb —
the Candida vestis—fcom which the name of 'White
Canons' was to be derived.
There, at Pr£fmontre\ or Prsmonstratum, he
gathered first thirteen, and then a larger company
of brethren, and founded a house which was to the
Premonstratensian Order what Citeaux was to the
Cistercians. Even the aristocratic element in the
constitution of the latter was reproduced by Norbert;
and the three houses next in dignity to Prdmontr6
emulated the dignity of the chief daughters of
Citeaux. At length the Archbishopric of Magde
burg was forced upon the acceptance of the saint, and
in 1 1 29 he resigned the headship of the now pros
perous order in favour of his old companion Hugh.
St. Norbert died in 1 134, and was canonised (1582) by
Gregory XIII. And so, in the womb of time, began
the potential existence of Easby, Eggleston, and
Coverham. The remains of the last-named are too scanty to
compete in the limits of these pages with the fame
and beauty of the others ; but, from the view given in
Ellis's Dugdale, it would seem that in the earlier part
of the century considerable parts of the choir, tran
septs, and perhaps even of the nave of the church,
were standing. And, still, as we descend from the
high ground behind Middleham .upon the garden and
outbuildings which now surround and mask its rem
nants, or as we gaze from the breezy height of
Witton Fell upon the windings of the Cover, we may
give a passing thought to Ranulph de Glanville, Jus
ticiary of Henry II., as well as to Miles Coverdale,
and note that this quiet nook produced at different
times the authors of the first digest of our laws and
the first revision of our Scriptures.
On the 5th of February we are, or might be, re
minded of the martyrdom of St. Agatha,' who suffered
A.D. 251, in the Decian persecution.
To the wretch who was sent by Quinctianus to
assail her virtue and her faith, she answered, ' My
mind is firmly settled and grounded in Christ ; your
words are winds, your promises are rains, your terrors
are floods, which however hardly they may beat upon
the foundation of my house, it cannot ever fall, for it
is founded upon a firm rock.'
It is much to be regretted that Roald of Richmond
and Lord Scrope did not lay these noble words to
heart when the former founded and the latter enlarged

56

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

St. Agatha's Abbey of White Canons on the banks of
the Swale. The roofless walls which now threaten
to slide into the river might then, perhaps, have been
more worthy monuments of the steadfastness of her
in whose name and memory they were raised. The
scanty remains of massive transition Norman, and the
contrasted grace of the later work, present, in this
wooded vale, a picture which we would gladly guard
against the hand of Time.
The relation of masonry to landscape, lost, alas ! as
an instinct, and not yet regained as an art, is the key
to the special charm of nearly every ruin. The gulf
between the finished and laborious product of human
skill and the lavished beauties of spontaneous nature,
is just perceptibly narrowed by the blurring of angles
and the clinging growth of ivy, and the memory of the
aching hands and bleeding feet, and the burden and
the heat of the long day, is blended with the fancied
presence of that spirit, whose song is said to be, —
' There is no effort on my brow ;
I do not strive, I do not weep.
I rush with the swift spheres, and glow
In joy; and when I will I sleep.
Yet that severe, that earnest air
I saw, I felt it once, but where ? '
Some parts of Easby, noticeably the ' Frater ' and
some interlaced arcading in a very puzzling position
further west, are of great intrinsic beauty, and the
early work done in the middle of the twelfth century
by Constable Roaldus is well represented by the
doorway in the western cloister, with its now half-
obliterated cats'-head mouldings. The Scropes, into
whose hands the possessions of Roald passed, almost
entirely rebuilt the Abbey on a more magnificent
scale, and the claim ofthe latter to the title of founder
having been ignored by Leland, has since been dis
puted. The abbots of St. Agatha were not, as far as
is known, very eminent men, and the only one, I be
lieve, who appears on the page of our national history,
is found in the scarcely congenial company of Geoffrey
Chaucer. These two, the ecclesiastic and the satirist
of ecclesiastics, were both sworn and examined as
witnesses on behalf of Richard le Scrope in the famous
fourteenth century case of Scrope and Grosvenor.
The suit was instituted by the Scropes in defence of
their right to the arms ' azure a bend or', against the
assumption of them by Sir Robert Grosvenor, and when
' Sir Simon Parson ' of Wensley had produced in court
an alb, the apparels to which were embroidered with
the Scrope arms ' azure a bend or ' of very ancient
work, the Abbot deposed that the same shield ap
peared in windows, in glass of the chambers and of
the refectory, and on altar frontals, vestments, and a
corporax case of silk belonging to the Abbey church,
of which the Scropes were recognised as founders.
The ground-plan of Easby, owing perhaps to the

bend of the river and the fall of the ground, is ex
ceedingly irregular ; the south-west angle of the
cloister was decidedly acute, and the eastward ten
dency of the buildings which should have run due
south from the west end of the church is fatal to right
angles elsewhere. The distribution of the various
buildings, especially those near the river, is an in
teresting and, at present, obscure question, and the
subject, even if ripe for discussion, would perhaps
hardly be appropriate to these pages.*
It may, however, be remarked that, like the Bene
dictines and unlike the Cistercians, the canons had
their ' Frater ' lengthwise to the south walk of the
cloister, and they seem to have preferred to raise it
on a vaulted undercroft, such as was rendered neces
sary, by the fall of the ground, in the exceptional
Cistercian instance of Rievaulx. The pillared and
vaulted room west of the Frater at Easby, and com
monly called the Kitchen, was most likely the guest-
hall. There are strong indications of the existence of
the real kitchen south of the western half of the
Frater, and the usual hatch or ' frater-hole ' may be
traced both in the undercroft and at a reasonable
elevation in the wall above. The mysterious iron
hooks on the north-, south, and east walls of the
Frater are, I am told, only the relics of a recent year,
when some sort of temporary floor and roof was
run up for the purpose of a ball or other entertain
ment. Of the church itself, the distinctive feature
is the Scrope chantry on the north of the aisle.
The absence of a south aisle is a well-known cha
racteristic of the churches of all regular canons, and
has an antiquarian and architectural significance
which will be discussed in the ensuing paper on
Bolton, Kirkham, and Guisborough. The Gate
house, with a large upper room, probably used as
the lodging of the lowest class of guests, is singularly
perfect. The usual double entrance, a larger and a
smaller side by side, may be seen within the vaulted
passage, and the whole space is spanned, by a pointed
arch, beneath which, more perhaps from wayward
fancy than for constructive reasons, is a single semi
circular order.
It is needless to say that local tradition clings
fondly and confidently to the myth of a secret pass
age. Such a tradition attaches to all monastic ruins
in Yorkshire, and probably elsewhere ; and it is at
once almost cruel and absolutely futile to insist on
the identity of this romantic cavern with the simple

* The peculiar nature of the ground had obviously suggested
the erection of a range of three-storey buildings on the low level
next the river, and I am at present inclined to think that the
dormitory of the canons, which was certainly not at the east
side of the cloister, was so contrived as to be in immediate jux-
tap6sition, though absolutely without communication with the
sleeping accommodation for middle-class guests. Several de
tails are in favour of this view.

Easby and Eggleston.

57

but efficacious arrangement for drainage which so
often affords a valuable clue to the whole ground-
plan of a monastic ruin. From Easby the mysterious
communication is said to have been with St. Martin's
Priory, at Richmond, once a cell of St. Mary's Abbey,
at York. The presence, within two miles of Easby, of this
desecrated remnant, as well as of the more important
remains of the Church of the Grey Friars, may serve
to remind us how many phases of the religious life
gathered at different times around the grim majesty
of the great Norman keep. It has been necessary

Richmond to Greta, to Brignall Bank, to Rokeby, and
to Eggleston. It is poetry that so lightly overleaps
the twelve or fourteen intervening miles, and it is not
the too-hackneyed ' Pegasus ' of Walter Scott, but a
genuine fifteenth-century ballad of ' The grizeliest
beast that ever mote be.' The fruitless efforts of the'
good Franciscans to bring this ' beest of pryce ' alive
to Richmond have been long familiar to readers of
Whitaker's famous History of Craven. ' Her walk,'
we are told, ' was endlang Greta side,' and in this,
while deprecating her invincible contumacy, and
shuddering at her insensibility to the best mediaeval

WF ^I'vF*
^SfIf^
mn^\^Y\ ¦>

mwFm...

THE REFECTORY, EASBY ABBEY.

in the present series of sketches to ignore the
new light which Dominic and Francis kindled at
the dying embers of monasticism, but the history
of neither system can be even fairly outlined with
out reference to the other as antecedent or as
sequel. Meanwhile, it is to be feared that there are
not a few here and there to whom the distinction
between a monk and a friar is as misty as it would
seem to have been to the compiler of the accepted
guide to a remote Cistercian abbey, who boldly states
that the main division of monks is into black and
white friars.
But the graceful perpendicular tower which Mr.
Brunet-Debaines has sketched is a really important
link between our two Premonstratensian houses. In
a moment it carries our thoughts from Easby and

Latin, we must now imitate the heroine of the ' Felon
sowe of Rokeby.'
Among the eleven water-colour drawings by
Turner which Messrs. Christie sold in July for Mr.
Ruskin was the sketch of Eggleston Abbey, engraved
by Higham for Whitaker's ' History of Richmond
shire.' In Mr. Ruskin's 1878 catalogue this sketch,
under the head of Fourth Group — Reality — England
at Rest, is described as ' one of the finest of the
series in its foliage ; notable also for intense truth
to the spot.' And he has spoken elsewhere of
' the quiet sincerity of transcript with which Turner's
younger spirit reverenced the streams of Greta and
Tees.' The colours are, as was even then pointed out,
a good deal faded, but, having seen the picture first
Q

58

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

and theii the place, I can at least testify that,
unlike some of the most beautiful of the master's
works, it is easily recognisable. My efforts to dis
cover the precise point of view, which must have
been somewhere in the bed of the stream, were not
successful,' but the engraving in 'Whitaker' will en
able anyone who is so disposed to renew the by
no means arduous attempt.
So much has been said and written about the ro
mantic beauty of the Tees and the country about
Barnard Castle, that it is something to be able to say
that the glamour is really there. The descriptions
with which 'Rokeby' abounds are not perhaps among
the highest efforts of the genius of Sir Walter Scott ;

--.-jS^^^^^FF 

y^FM

TOWER OF THE GREY FRIARS, RICHMOND.
but somehow, in the familiar ring oi Edmund of
Winston's song, it is all gathered as true poetry alone
can gather and preserve the very odour and aspect
of natural beauty.
'O, Brignal banks are wild and fair
And Greta woods are green ;
And you may gather garlands there
Would grace a summer queen.'
Eggleston Abbey stands higher than Easby, and
looks down upon the junction of the Thorsgill Beck
and the Tees. The remains of the sacristy, chapter
house, &c, and dormitory above, have been so much
disguised by conversion to other uses that they are
now more picturesque than instructive. Farm imple
ments lie* here artd there in the cloister court, and
from the chapter-house emerge, in place of white-

robed "canons, a riiild-eyed mare and foal. But the
church itself — up which dashed Bertram of Rising-
ham, on a somewhat different steed — has mudh
interest and not a little beauty. It was never a very
grand or elaborate building, but it grew in the usual
fashion. The north side of the very short nave (or
perhaps westward extension of the ritual choir) has
windows, round inside and widely splayed, but exter
nally pointed and narrow. Then comes an oddly
patched and altered west end, with one decorated
window high up and by no means in the centre; while
the south wall shows a row of four, also decorated and
very good.
The canons were evidently at one time dissatisfied
with the height of their church and the exterior effect
has been much interfered with by an extension above
the corbel-table of the original roof. The transept
windows — to which we next come — are more ela
borate than those of the nave, and the choir has
lancets grouped on the north side in three and two,
and on the south in twos only. There was no aisle,
even as a later addition, and the windows in the north
wall of the nave are high up so as to clear the level of
the cloister, which had a wooden pentice roof. The
east window is usually called Perpendicular, but its
details correspond with the lancets, and there is good
reason to consider it late Early English, though that
is not the period which we should expect to find
represented in this precise situation. The old door
to the ' Dorter ' is visible in the north transept,
and high above it is a window evidently so placed to
clear the roof of that apartment. The cloister has
extended further westward than the nave of the
church, by which means, in spite of its unusual
northern site, it may have caught some southern
warmth and light.
Eggleston must have been a humbler place than
Easby, and when we come in our next chapter to
trace the almost invariable addition of an aisle or
a part of an aisle to the churches of the canons, we
shall see how modest was the ambition which con
tented itself with raising the roof of this short and
aisleless nave. At the Cistercian Abbey of Sawley,
in Ribblesdale, there is a parallel instance of the
extension of the cloister westward of the church ;
but there the so-called nave is so minute as to
leave little doubt that no more of the church was
ever completed than was. needed for the purpose of
a choir. For it must never be forgotten that many
a ritual choir extended beyond the transept crossing
and far exceeded the dimensions of the architectural
presbytery. At the Premonstratensian Abbey of
Bayham in Sussex the position of the cloisters is
still more strange, for they begin at the extreme
west of a long nave, and do not extend far enough
eastwards to meet the transept. There, too, a se
parate passage, which does duty for a. north aisle.

Easby and Eggleston. 59
runs only part of the way from the transept towards one another in delightful succession. We see the
the west, and leaves the end of the nave in its warmish stone of the town and its roofs of slate and
original narrow simplicity. brightest tile, the glittering white of the distant farms
As we turn again towards Barnard Castle, though and cottages, the purple and russet of the moor, and,
the new and well-intentioned Bowes Museum haunts for foreground, the green and flowery meadows, and
and torments our sight, the views that inspired Sir the wooded rocks that half conceal the rush and
Walter Scott, and Creswick, and Turner, still follow sparkle of the Tees.

6o

XI.

Bolton, Guisborough, and Kirkham.

THE Priories of Bolton in the West Riding,
Kirkham in the East, and Guisborough in the
North, are grouped here in virtue of the fact that all
three are houses of ordinary Canons Regular of Saint
Augustine. They will each, therefore, help, if only a
little, to illustrate that connexion between religious
orders and religious architecture which has been the
central thought of the present series of papers.
The most important thing to remember in study
ing the remains of Augustinian houses, whether Pre
monstratensian or otherwise, is their close connexion
with parish churches. In other orders the same, or
an analogous connexion, was occasional, with the
canons alone it was normal.
The ordinary monastic church, which had no
connexion whatever with the church of a parish —
except where, as at Barnoldswick, it swallowed up
and superseded one already existing — was from the
first a large cruciform building with aisles ; and some
at least of the secular cathedrals adopted this type.
But where the canons were collegiate and their church
therefore not a cathedral, we always have one of two
alternatives, — either the college was founded in con
nexion with a previously existing parish church or
the new church was built for parish and canons to
share. Now our early parish churches have no aisles
and no western towers. They were sometimes cruci
form and sometimes not (the symbolism in the latter
case being preserved in the threefold division into
nave, chancel, and sanctuary) ; sometimes, too, there
was a tower, but if so it was always central.
And with the cruciform variety of this type the
original work in all canons' churches will be found to
conform. As time went on and ritual developed, the
canons became almost everywhere enamoured of
aisles, but meanwhile they had built their cloisters
against their naves, — here and there, as at Eggleston,
on the north, but more frequently on the south. How
was it possible under these circumstances to add
aisles ? The ground-plan of Bolton shows to what
extent and how this difficulty was overcome. The
canons built north aisles because on that side their
space was free, and they sometimes comforted them
selves for the defect on the south side by enlarging

and beautifying the windows of the nave. This is
precisely what has been done at Bolton. Here, as
elsewhere, the building began with the choir, in the
lower part of which is still to be found the oldest
work in the church. On and beyond this old work,
a practically new choir was afterwards erected ; but
even this preserved the original aisleless type. Pro
ceeding in order to the north and west of the
nave, the canons concluded with the south and the
cloister, where pointed arches and transition work
are visible. Hardly were these finished when the
fashion for aisles set in, and the north wall had
to be disturbed. At Ripon, where there was no
cloister, a south aisle, as well as a north, was
added. Bayham, which is rightly referred to as
a noticeable instance of the survival of the aisleless
type, has an arrangement of passages, which, though
not adapted for processions, must have considerably
modified the external effect of the unbroken length
of nave. It is remarkable that the choirs of Kirkham
and Guisborough, as well as of Bolton, show a very
high order of architectural beauty. The east end
of Guisborough, in fact, is as fine as anything
of the kind in England. Though the tracery of
the great centre window is gone, its majestic pro
portions and much of its rich moulding remain to
appeal to the unlearned, while the trained eye and
educated imagination of the architect can restore,
almost at a glance, the vast web of Early Decorated
work which once made it a chief glory of its date.
The return walls, alas! are gone, and the only remnant
of the church now visible above ground is the bare
and unsupported curtain of this glorious facade. In
its width of seventy feet were included two aisles,
each with a window of three lights. The mouldings
of these windows, as of the centre, are very rich, — oak-
leaves predominating in the former and vines in the
latter. The whole is supported- by four deep and
massive buttresses, of which the corner ones are
grouped each with two others in a cluster of three.
All the buttresses have crockets and finials ; but
whereas the one at the north is plain, that at the
south is elaborate with trefoil and quatrefoil pan-
nelling. Each of the intermediate buttresses has a

!y j
FjF I

!>

Bolton, Guisborough, and Kirkham.

61

now tenantless niche with crocketed canopy, the
bases being level with that of the great window.
Above each buttress there rises from the main wall a
crocketed octagonal spire. Over the centre window,
and also above the indications of the vaulting, is
another window of five lights, viz. one quatrefoil
headed with two trefoil on either side of it.
The west end of the church has been revealed by
digging, and in the well-kept garden there still re
mains a bit of the cellar under the ' Frater.' This,
however, probably did not, as was supposed, commu
nicate with the cloister. There is every indication
that the arch in that direction was merely a cupboard,
and a groove for a shelf is very apparent. Opposite
is a square-headed
opening which has
been blocked up in
later times. But
neither was this a
doorway, as a care
ful observation of
the chamfer will
show. There is
little doubt that it
was in reality a
' frater - hole,' or
hatch, for service
of provisions, and
a corresponding
one is visible a-
mong the ivy at a
higher elevation,
and related to it
much as the cor
responding aper
tures are related
at Easby. The
gateway and part
of the gate-house
remain, — they are
transition Norman. Parts of the Brus tomb, now
exhibited in slices in the porch of the parish church,
are interesting relics of the founder's family.
Though the town of Guisborough has of late
relinquished its claim to be considered beautiful, and
the high-flown compliment which Camden paid it
would, but for Murray's ' Guide,' be as clean for
gotten as ' ould Doctor Len of Yorke,' who ' usually
sent his patients to lye there to recover their health,'
yet the neighbourhood of Rhosbery Topping and the
vision of distant moors give it an advantage over the
tamer region where Kirkham nestles in the green
valley of the Derwent. Sometimes, indeed, on a day
of mist, and rain, and rare cold gleams, the town of
Guisborough— in spite of the new houses run up to
meet the needs of the iron-workers — has a picturesque
beauty worth the notice of an artist. In the fore-

GUISBOROUGH PRIORY.

ground, near the church, are stone houses with green
and dark-brown shutters and shop-fronts, contrasting
with cream-coloured neighbours.; while beyond, as
the hill slopes downward, bright red-tiled roofs come
into view, and here and there a patch of pale-green
grass in the disused width of the road. But Kirkham
Priory lies on the border of the great plain of York,
and has neither town nor moor for setting, but only
the green beauty of a woody vale and the pleasant
winding of a Yorkshire stream. It was founded in
1 121 by Walter L'Espec, of whom some account was
given in the chapter on Rievaulx Abbey. Frithby,
where the young Walter, his only son, was killed, is
not far off, and Kirkham was a manor of the L'Especs.
Lady Milton
and Mr. Foljambe
have set an excel
lent example by
sanctioning and
encouraging the
explorations of so
zealous and care
ful an antiquary
as Mr. W. H. St.
John Hope. Of
the church itself
there only remains
a fragment of an
east end, less per
fect and majestic,
but of scarcely less
exquisite design
and workmanship,
than Guisborough.
For the following
details of the di
mensions of the
church and the
disposition of the
other buildings, I
am indebted to Mr. Hope, whose excavations have
reached their most instructive stage since I haive
had an opportunity of personally inspecting them.
The choir was 120 feet long by 28 feet 6 inches
wide, and of Early English date. The central east
window was a triplet, while that of each aisle was a
single lancet. The transept was 125 feet across. Its
southern arm, which has been excavated, was of later
date than the choir, and shows two eastern chapels
measuring 1 1 feet by 8 feet. There are signs of the
existence of a central tower, westward of which we
find an aisleless nave not less than 120 feet long.
South ofthe nave were the cloisters, 95 feet by no,
communicating by doors with both nave and transept.
In the north-west corner is an unusual flight of stairs
leading down to a slype, and intruding awkwardly
into the cloister alley. Mr. Hope points out that both
R

62

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

the cellarium and frater were raised on an undercroft ;
and he has noted in the south-east angle of the
cloister a stair to the latter, close to which is a recess
or almery below the cloister level. The chapter
house was 74 feet by 30 feet 6 inches, and had arcaded
walls with twenty-six stalls on each side. The east
cloister seems to have been irregular from the setting
back of the chapter-house about the depth of one of
its own bays. South of the ' common house,' which
was normal, there ran a long cellar, or undercroft,
with an eastward inclination, the connexion of which
with the very large ' necessarium ' points to the ex
tension above it of the dormitory of the canons.
Eastward again, are remains of a large infirmary hall.
The frater (98 feet 6 inches long by 28 feet 6 inches
wide) was entered by a very beautiful late Norman
doorway, which has been engraved in Parker's ' Glos
sary of Architecture.' In the west cloister is a fine
geometrical lavatory, and the kitchen occupies a
position at the south-west corner of the frater. The
west door of the church was approached by a flight
of steps as wide as the nave ; and, indeed, the level, or
levels, of the ground must have been to a great ex
tent the cause of the peculiar form which the vague
Augustinian pattern here assumed. The rigid uni
formity of the Cistercians must not be looked for
among the canons, and hence there is little safety
in arguing from one house of the latter order to
another. But it is time to pass to a more famous and fre
quented scene, — a place so beautiful and so romantic
that the antiquary and the architect may well be
hushed into mute, unreasoning rapture. Dear to
Turner and to Girtin, to Wordsworth and to Charlotte
Bronte, the Valley of the Wharfe is haunted by the
spirits of painters and of poets, fain to meet at Bolton
the thronging shades of undistinguished priors and
the brave and quiet presence of that lover of obscurity
who gazed from Bard en Tower upon the stars —
Clifford, ' the Shepherd Lord.'
The very bridge from which we catch our first
glimpse of this enchanted realm has its associations ;
for the last work ever sent to the Academy by Girtin
was a view (in oils) of Bolton Bridge, Yorkshire*
But to most the predominating influence will be that
of Wordsworth. ' The White Doe of Rylstone ' per
haps invites, and has certainly encountered, com
parison with the narrative poems of Scott ; but the
interest of such comparison lies, not in the awarding
of preference to either, but in the realisation of the
vast chasm which separates the inspirations of the
two. Wordsworth has disclaimed all rivalry and as
serted for himself an independent sphere; but the

* In the Kensington Museum is an interesting water-colour
view of Rievaulx (1798) by this painter.

contrast as worked out, for instance, in Professor
Shairp's ' Aspects of Modern Poetry,' is by no means
uninstructive. Wordsworth's stern father, steadfast
son, and sweet, ill-fated maiden, are almost allegorical
personages, and the lovely vision of the snow-white
doe is hardly less human than they. For in Words
worth the action and the characters, which in Scott
would have been all in all, are but the vesture of a
thought, spell-bound by him among the Bolton woods.
The virtues of the preservers of ancient monu
ments and of open spaces for the people happily
meet in the Duke of Devonshire, who steadfastly
resists the temptation to let railways and villas con
vert into a mine of wealth what is now a treasury of
beauty and romance. Thousands of tourists in a
summer day may bring their share of sandwich-
papers and vulgarity, — for all men are hungry and
most are more or less vulgar, — but neither the ruins
nor the rocks are the worse for these visits, while
many busy lives are brightened, and a few — nay, who
can tell how many ? — spirits lifted up. For miles the
wood-walks wander beneath 'the oak, and the ash,
and the bonny ivy-tree,' where the tall fox-glove and
the blue campanula sprinkle the rich beds of moss, or
the countless blossoms of the earlier year border the
brown and dappled stream.
' Valle sub umbrosa. locus est aspergine multa
Uvidus ex alto desilientis aquae.
Tot fuerant illic quot habet natura colores
Pictaque dissimili fiore nitebat humus.'
Long ago and far away as these words were written
they are recalled to-day by the little glen which be
guiles us to stray into the so-called ' Valley of Deso
lation.' Following the stream which, with its abrupt de
scent, forms the chief feature of this glen, we rejoin
the Wharfe not far from the famous Strid, the deep
and narrow cleft in the rocks well known through
Wordsworth's smaller Wharfedale ballad of 'The
Force of Prayer.'
It may be observed, in passing, that the really
valuable Yorkshire ' Murray ' is a little misleading in
its suggestion that the scene here is especially impres
sive after rain. The headlong rush of the swollen
stream is doubtless good to see, but it entirely dis
guises the peculiar features of the place on which
poetry and local tradition have laid so firm a grasp.
The contrast is between the narrow cleft in the rocks,
over which not men alone, but even ladies, spring with
ease, and the hitherto unfathomed depth of the dark
and almost foamless water. In flood-time, both fea
tures are lost, — the famous rocks are covered and the
dark thread is merged in a wide swirl of eddying
foam. To this treacherous chasm tradition attributes the
untimely end of the young Romilly— the 'boy of

Bolton, Guisborough, and Kirkham.

Egremont,' and the founding of Bolton Priory. The
legend cannot be more briefly told than in Words
worth's well-known lines : —
' Young Romilly through Barden woods
Is ranging high and low,
And holds a greyhound in a leash,
To let slip upon buck or doe.
The pair have reached that fearful chasm,
How tempting to bestride !
For lordly Wharfe is there pent in
With rocks on either side.
The striding-place is called The Strid,* —
A name which it took of yore :
. A thousand years hath it borne that name,
And shall a thousand more.

The priory now at Bolton was founded first at
Embsay, by William de Meschines and Cecilia his
wife. In 1 151, Alice de Romille, or Rumeli, their
daughter, granted to the canons her manor of Bolton
in exchange for those of Skipton and Stretton, and
the priory was at once removed. This grant of
Bolton, and the consequent removal of the canons,
is connected by the legend with the death of the
boy of 'Egremont, but Dr. Whitaker ruthlessly an
nounced in his 'History of Craven,' that the 'boy'
was himself a party to the Charter of Translation.
To those who cannot enjoy a tradition without a
due admixture of truth, it may be some comfort to
reflect that Cecilia de Rumeli, the mother of Alice,
and original foundress of the priory at Embsay,

:.x^m&>

fj>3gY^y

f • J : ' * -
iv '/ , >*r;

KIRKHAM PRIORY.

And hither is young Romilly come,
And what may now forbid
That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,
Shall bound across The Strid ?
He sprang in glee, — for what cared he
That the river was strong and the rocks were steep ?
But the greyhound in the leash hung back,
And checked him in his leap.'
The foresters bring the news to the boy's mother,
Alice de Romille, and she, after an interval of
speechless sorrow, decrees the founding of a priory
'in Bolton, on the field of Wharfe.' Neither the
tradition, nor the poem founded on it, will be much
the worse for being shown to conflict materially
with ascertained facts.

* Not however by way of derivation. We know better now-
a-days, and talk of Anglo-Saxon ' stryth '—tumult.

may quite possibly have lost a son in the way
described by Wordsworth.
A'compotus' ofthe priory, from 1290 to 1325,
gives many graphic details of its condition and his
tory. Between 13 16 and 1320 the invading Scots
appear in very grim reality, and the accounts show
the damages which their inroads left to be repaired.
But meanwhile the prior is attending Parliament at
York, twice in one year and once in another, and
Bolton, in spite of everything, becomes an important
place, with ' armigeri,' or dependent gentlemen,
clothed, boarded, and lodged ; free servants, indoor
and out, — the former including master carpenter,
master cook and assistant ; brewer, baker, master
smith, ' hokarius,' ' fagotarius,' and ' ductor sacco-
rum ;' while John de Lambhird (Magister Bercarius),
and from seventy to one hundred and eight more,
worked out-of-doors on the farms and granges. Be
sides these, there were 'villeins' in gross who were

64

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

practically domestic slaves.* The prior has a sepa
rate lodging, chapel, and stables, built by one De
Land, who seems to have been a great dignitary,
and to have attended two sovereigns (Edward .1.
and II.), entertained two Metropolitans, and made
two journeys to Rome.
It is to be regretted that no really accurate ground-
plan of Bolton has yet been produced. The best is
that which was given in the ' Manual of the Yorkshire
Archaeological Association,' on the occasion of their
visit to the ruins in 1877. In this the dimensions
of the original
church are appro
ximately shown,
and the existing
foundations of
the octagonal
chapter house
and some of the
domestic build
ings clearly, if
somewhat has
tily, outlined. It
has been conjec
tured that the
central tower,
which certainly
formed part of
the original de
sign and as cer
tainly no longer
exists, may have
fallen with such
disastrous effects
as to necessitate
the rebuilding
of the choir and
transepts in the
fourteenth cen
tury. However
this may be, the
western tower
was begun in 1520, after the fashion so often
traceable in parish churches. That is to say, the
building of towers being a long process, the nave
was left intact meanwhile ; and as in this particular
case the work was never finished, we have the in
structive spectacle of a thirteenth-century west front
standing close to the tall arch of a sixteenth-century
tower, which rises only to the height of the nave.
The usual monastic arrangement of screens, which
seems to have been adopted by the canons, was es
pecially suitable when, as was so often the case, part
of the building was used as a parish church and part

BOLTON PRIORY.

* See, however, Wordsworth's
Part II., Sonnet IV.

' Ecclesiastical Sonnets ,'

as the chapel of the priory. The choir, it must be
remembered, was separated from the nave by two
very solid screens extending respectively across the
eastern and western arches of the tower. Of these
the eastern, called the ' pulpitum,' was capable of
supporting a broad gallery from which parts of the
service were sung, and which still survives as the
organ-loft in some of- our cathedrals. Westwards
was the rood-screen, equally solid, and having an
altar in the middle, with a small door on each side.
This, which was known as the ' Jesus Altar,' or
' Altar of St.
 . Cross,' served, in
such cases as the
one before us, for
the parish ; and
here, at Bolton,
where the nave
is still used as
a parish church,
the altar stands
precisely in this
position, and the
piscina may be
seen close at
hand in the
south wall. At
Marrick, a con
vent of Benedic
tine nuns near
Richmond, and
strangely near
the Cistercian
nunnery of El-
lerton, the nave
of the church is
still used by the
parish, while the
choir has fallen
into decay. It
may well have
been that here,
as at Bolton, the western arm was always the
parish church, and thus, at the dissolution, it was
easy to wall it off completely and leave the rest to
its fate*Happily the choir at Bolton has yielded but
slowly to decay, and some of the fourteenth-century
ornament and wall-arcading retains its beauty almost
unimpaired. The practical leaden roof which protects
the nave and shelters the Sunday worshippers, goes
far to spoil the picturesque effect of the church from
many points of view, but does not help us to forgive
the spoilers who unroofed the choir.
* Leland, however, has a curious theory that at Marrick the
parish originally occupied the eastern arm. If this is true, they
must have migrated westwards at the dissolution.

Bolton, Guisborough, and Kirkham.

F

Strange as it is to think of Clifford, the Shepherd
Lord,* frequenting the company of these cloistered
ecclesiastics, it is stranger to pass in imagination to
the wild, half-brutal, and yet sterling ' Protestant dis-
* Confided in infancy to shepherds who concealed him
among the Cumberland Fells, he was restored to his estates by
Henry VII. when he was twenty-five.
' Love had he seen in huts where poor men lie ;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky —
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.' — Wordsworth.

sentcrs ' who afterwards peopled the remote hamlets
and homesteads ; strangest perhaps of all, to recall
—and who can help recalling?- — Mrs. Gaskell's de
scription of another Wharfedale group, — the six little
Bronte children who ' used to walk out, hand in hand,
towards the glorious wild moors which in after days
they loved so passionately ; the elder ones taking
thoughtful care for the toddling, wee things.' Surely
somewhere on the misty moor they are wandering
now,— still six, still hand in hand.

66

XII.

Whitby.

IN our first chapter we turned away from the
busy streets of York, with all their crowd of
present interests and associations of the past, to

ence of a long-dead past ; for here, almost on the
edge of the dark laminated cliffs, rises the last but
not' least famous of our Yorkshire abbeys. Two

WHITBY ABBEY, THE CHOIR.

linger among the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey. Since
then, as we have wandered in desert places brooding
over an obscure but not unreal episode, in many a
bright pasture and solemn shade, our feet have
brushed the dew and our eyes and hearts found
rest, while even the half-scornful contemplation of
a purely spiritual conflict has soothed the fretfulness
of our souls. Not for to-day or to-morrow, but for
ever, did these monks design their buildings or
mould their dispositions, confiding, with deliberate
faith, to future generations the completing of the
one, and to God the perfecting of the other.
At Whitby we once more enter a thronged and
busy town, and once more only to turn our backs
upon its life. There is a climb, a sense of effort, a
freshening breeze, strange prelude to the stale
pedantry of archaeology, and the mouldering pres-

centuries of wasting and destruction divide the
history of this abbey as by a deluge ; we must cast
a glance on both sides of the flood.
About the middle of the seventh century, Penda,
the pagan King of Mercia, having successively
defeated and slain Edward the Converted, and
Oswald the sainted King of Northumbria, met his
match in Oswiu, the brother of the latter. It was
on the banks of the Aire, probably not more than
two or three miles from the modern Leeds, that the
decisive battle of Winwidfield was fought and won,
and the royal vow recorded which issued in the
founding of Streoneschalch or Whitby Abbey.
Oswiu had tlie guilt of Oswine's murder on his
soul, and he knew that his own life had reached a
crisis, so he swore to build a monastery, and con
secrate to the service of religion his infant daughter,

Whitby.

F

if the God of whom he had learnt in his exile among
the Picts and Scots would give him victory over his
heathen foe.
In that bloody fight King Penda fell, and the
little princess was sealed an innocent and uncon
scious thank-offering. It was to Hilda, the royal
saint, that Elfleda and the destinies of Whitby were
committed. Hilda was then at Hartlepool, but she
soon brought her new charge to Streoneschalch ; and
in or about the year 656 was begun the monastery,
described by William of Malmesbury as the largest
of those founded by Oswiu's bounty. If we cannot
believe all that we are told about Hilda, even on the
authority of the Venerable Bede, it by no means

many years, it pleased Him, who has made such
merciful provision for our salvation, to give her holy
soul the trial of a long sickness, to the end that,
according to the Apostle's example, her virtue might
be perfected in infirmity.'
For six long years, we are told, this sickness
lasted, and in the seventh, having received the
viaticum, she called together the servants of God
that were in the same monastery, and, while exhort
ing them to peace among themselves and universal
goodwill, ' passed from death to life.'
'That same night it pleased Almighty God, by a
manifest vision, to make known her death in another
monastery at a distance from hers, which she had built

*W\~— "-

WHITBY ABBEY, LOOKING EAST.

follows that the story of her life and death is
beneath our notice.
Hilda was thirty-three when she took the veil,
and exactly half her life was, in the technical sense,
' religious.' Guided and advised by the good Aidan,
she spent the first year at Cale with her sister
Heresuit, after which she became Abbess of the
recently founded convent of Heruteu or Hartlepool,
where the baby princess was committed to her care.
The foundation at Whitby was for monks as well as
nuns, and over both presided as Superior ' this
servant of Christ, Abbess Hilda, whom all that
knew her called " Mother " for her singular piety
and grace.' The story of her turning the snakes
into stones is too well known, through the reference
in ' Marmion,' to bear repeating. Bede's account of
Lady Hilda's death is perhaps less trite and not less
marvellous. 'When she had governed this monastery

that same year, and is called Hakenes.* There was in
that monastery a certain nun called Begu, who had served
God upwards of thirty years in monastic conversation.
This nun, being then in the dormitory of the sisters, on
a sudden heard the well-known sound of a bell in the
air, which used to awake and call them to prayers when
any one of them was taken out of this world, and opening
her eyes, as she thought, she saw the top of the house
open and a strong light pour in from above. Looking
earnestly upon that light, she saw the soul of the afore
said servant of God in that same light, attended and
conducted to heaven by angels.'
Rising in a great fright, the nun 'ran to the
Virgin who then presided in the monastery instead
of the Abbess, and whose name was Frigyth, and
with many tears and sighs told her that the Abbess
Hilda, mother of them all, had departed this life, and

* Beda, H. E., iv. 23.

6S

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

had in her sight ascended to eternal bliss.' Then
Frigyth awoke all the sisters, and called them to
the church to pray for Abbess Hilda, ' which they
did during the remainder of the night.' At day
break came brothers from Streoneschalch, with news
of Hilda's death, but the sisters told them they
already knew it. 'Thus it was by heaven happily
ordained, that when some saw her departure out of
this world, the others should be acquainted with her
admittance into the spiritual life which is eternal.'
' These monasteries,' adds the historian, ' are about
thirteen miles distant from each other.'
For those who care rather for what they them
selves are capable of believing than for the visions of
that past which has ' etched and moulded ' in the
mind and matter of to-day, there remain, at least,
from the life of St. Hilda two accepted and accredited
facts. To her, whether inspired "by heavenly vision or
prepared by unconscious cerebration, Caedmon, the
silent and uncouth, poured forth his poems of the Old
and New Testament.* ' The cowherd, from whose
lips flowed the first great English song,' may still be
pictured leaving the feast because the harp came
round, and going to the cattle-shed with humble con
sciousness that he was fit for that at least. Still may
we think of him, if we dare trust old Bede a little
further, as standing before the royal abbess — the
mother Hilda — in the morning and turning -passages
translated from Holy Writ into ' impromptu verse ;
and when we read that ' others after him strove to
compose religious poems, but none could vie with
him, for he learnt not the art of poetry from men,
nor of men, but from God,' we may remember that
even the nineteenth century has attributed to -poets
' a vision, and a faculty divine.' The other fact which
has hitherto resisted the solvents of historical criti
cism, is the celebrated Synod of Streoneschalch for
fixing the time of the Easter Festival. The scene in
all its picturesqueness has been borrowed by later
writers from the original of Bede. There, as presi
dent, sits King Oswiu, the man of action, the hard-
handed conqueror of Penda, there, to plead the cause
of Rome, is Wilfrith of York ; while Colman, who has
succeeded Aidan at Holy Island, stands forth for the
Celtic usage, the Irish Church, and the great name of
Columba. And among these warrior kings and
saintly bishops is Hilda, no diffident on-looker or
wavering partisan, but the strong and zealous sup
porter of Colman, striving to avert the sentence which
must drive the disciples of St. Aidan from Lindis-
farne to Iona. At last the same timid superstition,
the same grovelling fear which, hand in hand with
lust and greed, has marred in every age the purity of
the religion of love, speaks by the lips of Oswiu and

* Of course it has been said that he did nothing of the kind,
and that the poems ascribed to him are of manifestly later date.

espouses the side which can claim St. Peter for its
champion. ' I will rather obey the porter of heaven,
lest, when I reach its gates, he who has the keys in
his keeping turn his back on me and there be none to
open.' And so Hilda and Colman were defeated.
Whether they or Wilfrith were in the right we are
not called upon to decide, but we may at least be
sure that King Oswiu was wrong, and no heavenly
porter shall ever bid those gates roll back for the soul
that would bargain with the wrath of God.
After Hilda, the princess Elfleda, aided by Bishop
Trumwine (a fugitive from the Picts), and by her
mother, the widowed Queen Eanfleda, ruled well and
wisely at Whitby for more than thirty years. She
was a friend of St. Cuthbert, and sailed across to
Coquet Island to visit and consult him. Our last
glimpse of this old Whitby reveals it to us in great
dignity and importance. Hilda was not only a pious
lady of royal lineage, but also a moving spirit and
living force in Northumbria. The atmosphere of
Whitby became, and for some time remained favour
able to the growth of intellect and the deepening of
spiritual life. Aidan, Colman, and Cuthbert come
and go and make their influence felt within its walls ;
Caedmon, Bosa of York, and John of Beverley, call
the outside world to witness to the greatness of the
monastery. But the church and cloister on the
Northumbrian cliff stood out exposed against a
threatening sky, and in the next storm which sweeps
up from the north, we lose for ever the gleam which,
night by night, for two centuries had fallen through
Hilda's windows upon the darkness of the coast. In
867 the abbey was destroyed by Inguar and Hubba,
and Titus, abbot of the monks, fled with the relics of
St. Hilda to Glastonbury. It is on a new world that
the curtain rises, — new, and yet how old !
The authorities for the history of the refounding
of Whitby have been carefully collected and compared
by the Rev. J. C. Atkinson. There is the narrative
known as the ' Memorial of Benefactions,' preserved at
Whitby, and locally called the 'Abbot's Book,' the
Record of Symeon of Durham, the story of the
founding of St. Mary's Abbey at York, purporting to
be written by Stephen of Whitby, the Dugdale nar
rative derived from the Dodsworth MSS., besides the
Domesday notices and references in charters and
documents. But none of these help us to bridge over
the century and a half of ominous silence which suc
ceeded the coming of Inguar and Hubba. ' Streones-
halch lay desolate for two hundred and seven years,'
says one historian, and the ' Memorial of Benefac
tions ' tells us that at the time of the refounding,
'there were in the said will, as ancient countrymen
have delivered to us, about forty cells or oratories,
only the walls of which, however, together with the
disused and shelterless altars, remained.' For all that,
we can now see the Saxon, the Norman, and the

mmn

Whitby.

69

Early English buildings are connected only by
identity of site and continuity of tradition, and
it is from such precious fragments as the dark
crypt of St. Wilfrid at Ripon, that we must learn
how men built in Hilda's time. History, in this
case more lasting than its monuments, has preserved
for us the name and fame of that old group of
royal warriors and saints, to whom henceforth must
succeed a rough soldier from the Conqueror's army,
— ' miles strenuissimus in obsequio domini sui Wil-
helmi Nothi, Regis Anglorum.'
Regenfrith, or,
as the charters
call him, ' Rein-
frid,' must have
been a man of
strong convic
tions and stead
fast purpose. In
the course of a
march, or journey,
in the service of
the Conqueror
he turned aside
to visit Streone-
shalch as we now
visit the ruins of
the later Whitby,
but with this
difference, he was
' pricked to the
heart by the
tokens of ruin
and desolation,'
and afterwards
became a monk
at Evesham.
Thence, after ten
years of discip
line, he emerged
between 1076
and 1080, with
the vision of the
roofless cells and desecrated altars of Whitby still
before his eyes.
He was accompanied by Ealdwine, Prior of
Winchcumbe, and Oswin, a monk, and the three,
with their scanty possessions carried on an ass, set
manfully forth to restore monasticism in Northumbria.
Their first halt was at Monkchester, their second at
Jarrow. Here Oswin was left while Ealdwine and
Regenfrith continued their journey. At last they,
too, separated, and Regenfrith came alone to Streone-
shalch, "which is also named " Hwiteby." ' Before
long he had gathered round him, by the unfailing
magic of a genuine enthusiasm, a little company
caeer for the religious life. Then the great family

WHITBY CHURCH, FROM A WINDOW OF THE ABBEY,

of the Percies come upon the scene. It is William
de Percy who gives Regenfrith and his monks leave
and license to occupy the sacred places of Hilda and
Eanfleda, of Caedmon, Bosa and John of Beverley.
But for this patronage they expect their reward.
Serlo de Percy, brother of William, must succeed
Regenfrith as Prior, to the exclusion and bitter dis
appointment of Stephen, a monk with capacity, am
bition, and a party. This led to the secession of
Stephen and his friends to York, where he became
abbot, and wrote the record to which we have
more than once
referred. Mean
while the devo
tion of William
de Perci could
not rest till he
had raised his
Priory into a
rich and powerful
Abbey; and then,
for some reason,
Serlo was dis
placed, and a
younger William,
nephew of the
founder, was
made abbot.
The conduct
of the elder
William, the bro
ther of Serlo,
towards the mo
nastery has been
much discussed,
and • he has been
accused of ' vio
lence and injus
tice ' by some
historians, and
entirely acquitted
by others. His
sins, whatever
they were, did not impair an impetuous and,
perhaps, imperious piety, which eventually ended
his career by a Crusader's death.
When Whitby Priory became an Abbey the King
(Henry I.) granted to the monks the port, or haven,
with the wreck and all other appurtenances. To the
fifth year of Henry II. belongs the strange and pic
turesque, but somewhat lengthy, story of how William
de Bruce and Ralph de Perci, with a ' gentleman and
freeholder' called Allatson, did, on the 16th October,
so belabour with their boar-staves a pious hermit of
Eskdaleside — a ' wood or desert place belonging to
the Abbot of Whiteby' — that he shortly afterwards
died. But the point to be observed is the power of
T

70

The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire.

the Abbot, who, ' being in very great favour with King
Henry,' removed these great men from the sanctuary
at Scarborough, whither they had fled, and brought
them in such peril of their lives that they were glad
to accept the hermit's death- bed forgiveness, and
profit by his intercession. The conditions demanded
by him were, that they and theirs should hold their
lands of the Abbot of Whitby and his successors by
the strange service of annually, on Ascension evening,
themselves cutting with a knife of one penny price,
and carrying on their backs, and setting up, certain
' stakes, strutt-towers, and yethers,' as a fence against
the tide at the town of Whitby, while the ' officer ' of
Eskdale blew, 'Out on you! out on you!' for their
heinous crime.
The prosperity of the Abbey would henceforth
have been only too great,* and its wealth too rapidly
increased, if it had not been for repeated inroads of
robbers and pirates, and the invasion of the coast on
one occasion by the King of Norway himself. But,
in spite of all, the monks of Whitby, retiring now to
Hackness, and now again returning to build and adorn
their monastery, raised, by degrees, a church of great
size and remarkable beauty. Working, as usual, from
east to west, they have left us specimens of at least
two periods of Early English and one of Decorated
architecture. The choir, indeed, with its dog-tooth
mouldings, is an early example of the ' first pointed '
style, while the north transept, in which the mouldings
are adorned with lilies, is distinctly later. The western
part of the nave is decorated of a rich and rather un
common type. The very decided bend in this arm
of the cross is a feature which, like other irregularities
more or less similar, has led to the theory, that the
monk-builders deliberately signified thereby the in
clination of our Lord upon the Cross. It would be
exceedingly interesting to discover substantial proof
of this quaint and, perhaps, fanciful hypothesis. At
present, however, it must be received with caution.
The triforium, with its dual system of pointed arches,
has been referred to in the chapter on Rievaulx.
The north front of the transept differs from the
cast end of the choir in having a round window in
the gable ; but the remnants of the south transept,
as well as the south wall of the nave, lie in con
fused heaps of ruin. The tower, alas ! fell fifty
years ago.
From that tower, when Robin Hood and Little
John pleased the good monks by feats of archery,
men say their arrows flew three miles inland. The
strong sea-breeze that sped those fabled flights pre
vailed at last over the solid masonry, but not till the
national weapon had long been laid aside and the

* William Rufus was among its benefactors, giving the
Church of All Saints in Fishergate, York, on condition of
prayers for himself and his heirs.

national piety had flowed for centuries in other
channels. To-day, as we look down from low and ruinous
walls on Whitby— the old and the new, divided by the
harbour and encompassed by the hills, — two comments
among many haunt us most. ' What happy, peaceful
lives the good monks must have lived in those calm
retreats ! ' the kinder critics say. It may be true of
some. Yet before and above all else a monastery
was a refuge from despair. The fight against the
world's wickedness was lost, and there was nothing
left for it but either self-surrender to a reckless life or
flight to lonely forts and fastnesses of prayer. To
him who sees the deluge rise, and knows what waste
of waters heaves and swings above his home, the ark
is no place of mild contentment.
And, then, there is the worldly-wise man's angry
and contemptuous cry, ' To what purpose is this
waste ?' A great modern, careless even while he lived
to hide his thought, said, we are told, that of two
things mostly desired by men he felt no need : they
were Religion and Poetry ; in place of which he was
satisfied with intellectual activity and the domestic
affections. Those who crave and those who do not crave for a
spiritual — an unearthly life; those who look and those
who do not look to the hills from whence cometh
help, are always distinguishable. But in the Middle
Ages, the gross and unlovely aspect of godlessness,
and the comparative fewness of the third class
who keep their religion for times of sickness, loss
and fear, brought into strong relief the fact that a
remnant were still looking for and hasting unto the
coming of a deliverer — still felt the need of a religion.
The desires of men are only, in an indirect way, the
index of their needs. The miner, whose father and
father's father have laboured underground, needs sun
light and free air — he desires, it may be, only the
gin-shop. And even in one lifetime the ascetic may
cease to yearn towards the brother whom he hath
seen, the agnostic towards the God whom he hath
not. But to few, surely, is it granted or ordained to
stand always gazing up into heaven, or dwell continu
ally on the Mount of Transfiguration. Circumstances,
or a peculiar relation of the understanding to the
soul, mark out the Bernards and Teresas from the
crowd, and their halo, reflected in a thousand humble
lives, defies neglect and mockery. And yet, in spite
of its imperfect vision and mistaken premises, the
world in this is partly right. Monasticism, in
an evil time, both held and wrought much good,
but it can scarcely be denied that, measured even
by its success in promoting those ends to which
the world is so indifferent, it was a system involving
waste : — waste of bodily strength, and money, and
land and skill, with which God might have been
better served.

Whitby.

When He demands the precious ointment, let it
flow from the shattered casket and no word be said
of waste. But that is only now and then, while poor
humanity is always with us. Do not Dominic and
Francis teach us this ?
Perhaps the monks forgot the creature in the
Creator ; perhaps we are too apt to do the opposite.
Well, at least, the day is ours, and among the ruins of
their costly and laborious worship we can spend and
toil to serve. 'Percantatis laudibus' — 'praises having
been sung ' — such was Carlyie's ruthless rendering of
a passage in the Chronicle of Joscelyn of Brakeland.

Poor monks, misguided self-torturers, their 'lauds',
indeed, are sung and ended long ago, and the York
shire valleys resound no more with those Benedictine
chants which Palestrina wove, they say, into his
Masses. In that, at least, the country-side is poorer.
And yet if we, in our way, are living for their Master's
sake the life of self-renunciation, we shall not fail in
the hour, it may be, of our sorest need and faintest
hope, to hear amid the silence or the din of moor or
mill some strain of holy triumph, bidding us, in the
words of St. Benedict, ' Never to despair of the mercy
of God.'

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