s,
glides calmly to a tranquil mere, where grey herons perch like birds of
stone on the boughs of the island trees. In front of an older entrance
to the house stretches a grass-grown avenue, by which is the
"Wilderness" of Elizabethan days. There lie the remains of famous
racehorses, reared on the estate. The park itself has not been submitted
to the attentions of the landscape gardener: it is natural and unspoiled
as in monkish times.

Of the original Cistercian abbey, built in 1148 and peopled with monks
brought from Rievaulx in Yorkshire, little remains save a groined and
pillared chamber, supposed to have been the refectory, and used nowadays
as a servants' hall. There is a singular hooded fireplace with a fine
old dog-grate, and against the end wall stands a long oaken table--a
relic of ancient feasting.

Rufford Abbey owed its existence to the filial piety of a collateral
descendant of William the Conqueror. The sixteenth-century translation
of the Foundation reads thus:--

"Gilbert Gaunte Earle of Lincolne to all his men and all the
Children of our Holy Mother the church sends greeting willing you to
know that I have given and granted in pure alms to the monks of
Ryvalls for my Father's and Mother's souls And for ye remission of
my sinns the Manor of the town of Rughfforde And all that I have
there in demesne to build an Abbey of the order of Cistercians in
the honour of St. Mary the Virgin--Therefore I will and Command that
they freely and quietly from all secular service and all customes
shall hold the said land with All that to the dominion of the said
Town doth belong in woods plains meadowes pastures mylnes waters
ways and paths."

A striking contrast may be found in the Domestic State Papers of 10
December, 1533:--

"Thomas Legh to Cromwell. On St. Nicholas Day the quondam Abbot of
Rufforth was installed at Ryvax, and the late abbot of Ryvax sang
_Te deum_ at his installation, and exhibited his resignation the
same day. The assignation of his pension is left to my Lord of
Rutland, in which I moved him to follow your advice. Though pity is
always good, it is most necessary in time of need. I would,
therefore, that he had an honest living, though he has not deserved
it, either to my lord or me."

After the Dissolution, Henry the Eighth leased the estate for twenty-one
years to Sir John Markham, and afterwards exchanged it for