ecame Crown property. How such a condition of
affairs could have continued for so long is difficult to understand,
but the final severing came at last, when the unhappy Richard II. was
on the throne of England. The honour of Richmond then passed to Ralph
Neville, the first Earl of Westmoreland, but the title was given to
Edmund Tudor, whose mother was Queen Catherine, the widow of Henry V.
Edmund Tudor, as all know, married Margaret Beaufort, the heiress of
John of Gaunt, and died about two months before his wife--then scarcely
fourteen years old--gave birth to his only son, who succeeded to the
throne of England as Henry VII. He was Earl of Richmond from his birth,
and it was he who carried the name to the Thames by giving it to his
splendid palace which he built at Shene. Even the ballad of 'The Lass
of Richmond Hill' is said to come from Yorkshire, although it is
commonly considered a possession of Surrey.

Protected by the great castle, there came into existence the town of
Richmond, which grew and flourished. The houses must have been packed
closely together to provide the numerous people with quarters inside
the wall which was built to protect the place from the raiding Scots.
The area of the town was scarcely larger than the castle, and although
in this way the inhabitants gained security from one danger, they ran a
greater risk from a far more insidious foe, which took the form of
pestilences of a most virulent character. After one of these
visitations the town of Richmond would be left in a pitiable plight.
Many houses would be deserted, and fields became 'over-run with briars,
nettles, and other noxious weeds.'

Easby Abbey is so much a possession of Richmond that we cannot go
towards the mountains until we have seen something of its charms. The
ruins slumber in such unutterable peace by the riverside that the place
is well suited to our mood to go a-dreaming of the centuries which have
been so long dead that our imaginations are not cumbered with any of
the dull times that may have often set the canons of St. Agatha's
yawning. The walk along the steep shady bank above the river is
beautiful all the way, and the surroundings of the broken walls and
traceried windows are singularly rich. There is nothing, however, at
Easby that makes a striking picture, although there are many
architectural fragments that are full of beauty. Fountains, Rievaulx
and Tintern, all leave Easby far behind, but there are charms enou