uld seem to argue
that the Abbey was surrounded by thick woods, and was particularly
lonely, even for those times. Sable, a crozier in pale, argent, the
crook or, surmounted by a buck's head, caboshed of the second, horned
gules, were the ancient arms of the Abbey, as they are still, though now
impaled with the Clifford arms, by permission of Lord Clifford.

The second colony of monks here were Cistercians, and the monastery
became very prosperous and the richest house of that order in the
county. King John deposited some of his jewels, gold and silver in their
keeping, and in 1297 Edward I visited the Abbey. The Cistercians were
great wool-traders, and did much for both trade and agriculture in the
districts near them. It has been supposed that the sunken track called
the Abbot's Way was used in carrying the wool from the moorland farms
belonging to the monastery towards Plymouth and Tavistock. In the
thirteenth century the monks showed their interest in trading by
joining the 'Gild Merchant' of Totnes. A memorandum on the back of one
of the 'membership rolls' in 1236 records an agreement between the
burgesses of Totnes and the abbot and convent of Buckfast; that the
monks might be able 'to make all their purchases in like manner with the
burgesses, the abbot and monks agree to pay twenty-two pence on the
Saturday before Christmas day.'[4]

[Footnote 4: Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1873.]

The buildings at the time of the Dissolution were very large, and there
was a fine church, but of these only a Perpendicular tower adjoining the
cloisters, and a large tithe-barn, are in a state of good preservation
at the present day. A modern house was built on the western side of the
vanished cloisters, but in 1882 the Abbey was bought for a colony of
Benedictine monks from Pierrequivire in Burgundy, who have partly
rebuilt the monastery on its ancient lines, and are restoring the Abbey
church.

A few miles away to the south-west is Dean Prior, and the living that
Herrick held when he poured out his grumbles and complaints about 'dull
Devonshire.' Herrick was a true Cockney, and the earliest part of his
life was spent in a house in Cheapside. When he grew up, he had the good
luck to come into the brilliant and witty company that gathered round
Ben Jonson, so it must be allowed that he had an excuse for sometimes
thinking that life in an obscure hamlet, two hundred miles from London,
was a dreary exile. But, as M