did beare."

--_The Rising in the North_.

The Cistercian Abbey of Whalley was founded by Henry Lacy, Earl of
Lincoln, who, having given the advowson of the parish to the abbey of
Stanlaw in Cheshire, the monks procured an appropriation, and removed
hither in 1296, increasing their number to sixty. The parish church is
nearly coeval with the introduction of Christianity into the north of
England. This foundation now became the nucleus of a flourishing
establishment, "continuing," as Dr Whitaker informs us, "for two
centuries and a half, to exercise unbounded charity and hospitality; to
adorn the site thus chosen with a succession of magnificent buildings;
to protect the tenants of its ample domains in the enjoyment of
independence and plenty; to educate and provide for their children; to
employ, clothe, feed, and pay many labourers, herdsmen, and shepherds;
to exercise the arts and cultivate the learning of the times; yet
unfortunately at the expense of the secular incumbents, whose endowments
they had swallowed up, and whose functions they had degraded into those
of pensionary vicars or mendicant chaplains."

The ruins of Whalley Abbey are situated in a beautifully-sequestered
spot on the banks of the Calder, presenting some of the most extensive
and picturesque remains of antiquity in the county; and the site
sufficiently exemplifies that peculiar instinct, if it may be so called,
which guided the monks in their choice of situations. "Though the
Cistercians affected to plant themselves in the solitude of woods, which
were to be gradually essarted by the labour of their own hands, and
though they obtained an exemption from the payment of tithes on that
specific plea, yet they were excellent judges of the quality of land,
however concealed, and never set about their laborious task without the
assurance of an ample recompense."

The following minute account of these ruins is from the pen of the
historian of Whalley:--"A copious stream to the south, a moderate
expanse of rich meadow and pasture around, and an amphitheatre of
sheltering hills, clad in the verdant covering of their native woods,
beyond; these were features in the face of Nature which the earlier
Cistercians courted with instinctive fondness. Where these combined, it
does not appear that they ever abandoned a situation which they had once
chosen; and where these were wanting, it is certain they never long or
willingly remained."

"We now proceed to a