descended before the
procession of the convent, thinking that the fire had been put out by
his workmen. They, however, came down quickly after him, without having
completely extinguished the fire; and the fire among the charcoal
revived, and partly from the heat of the iron, and partly from the
sparks of the charcoal, the fire spread itself to the wood and other
combustibles beneath. After the fire was thus commenced, the lead
melted, and the joists upon the beams ignited; and then the fire
increased prodigiously, and consumed everything.' Hemingburgh concludes
by saying that all that they could get from the culprits was the
exclamation, 'Quid potui ego?' Shortly after this disaster the Prior
and convent wrote to Edward II., excusing themselves from granting a
corrody owing to their great losses through the burning of the
monastery, as well as the destruction of their property by the Scots.
But Guisborough, next to Fountains, was almost the richest
establishment in Yorkshire, and thus in a few years' time there arose
from the Norman foundations a stately church and convent built in the
Early Decorated style.

One of the most interesting relics of the great priory is the
altar-tomb, believed to be that of Robert de Brus of Annandale. The
stone slabs are now built into the walls on each side of the porch of
Guisborough Church. They may have been removed there from the abbey for
safety at the time of the dissolution. Hemingburgh, in his chronicle
for the year 1294, says: 'Robert de Brus the fourth died on the eve of
Good Friday; who disputed with John de Balliol, before the King of
England, about the succession to the kingdom of Scotland. And, as he
ordered when alive, he was buried in the priory of Gysburn with great
honour, beside his own father.' A great number of other famous people
were buried here in accordance with their wills. Guisborough has even
been claimed as the resting place of Robert Bruce, the champion of
Scottish freedom, but there is ample evidence for believing that his
heart was buried at Melrose Abbey and his body in Dunfermline Abbey.

The central portion of the town of Guisborough, by the market-cross and
the two chief inns, is quaint and fairly picturesque, but the long
street as it goes westward deteriorates into rows of new cottages,
inevitable in a mining country.

Mining operations have been carried on around Guisborough since the
time of Queen Elizabeth, for the discovery of alum dates from