detention of his children, and there is a touching story of one of them connected with the place.

After the death of Charles I., Carifbrooke became the place of confinement of two of his children, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and the princess Elizabeth. Charles and James were on the continent, as well as the infant princess Henrietta, who was with her mother in Paris. As if to add to the unhappiness of thefe children, they were on the execution of their father removed from London to Carisbrooke, the scene of his former imprisonment. Elizabeth was about thirteen years of age, Henry about eight. The parliament had talked of putting Elizabeth apprentice to a button-maker, and Henry to a shoemaker. Henry was not of an age to feel much their situation; but Elizabeth is defcribed by Père Gamache as a princess of a high and courageous spirit, poffeffing a proud consciousness of the grandeur of her birth and descent. Meditating in her folitude on the calamities of her father, and the fall of her house, fhe fank into a flow and fatal fever. When fhe found herself ill, the refused to take medicine. She expired alone, fitting in her apartments at Carifbrooke, her fair cheek refting on the Bible, the laft gift of her father, and which had been her only confolation during the concluding months of her life. She died on the eighth of September, 1650, in her fifteenth year and was obfcurely buried at Newport on the twentyfourth of the fame month. "All the royal family,” says Père Gamache, "confidering her great talents and charms of person, had reckoned on her as a means of forming fome high alliance, which would better their fortunes."

Rievaux Abbey.

N the old "Magna Britannia" the origin of the founding of this famous abbey is thus quaintly given. "A monaftery of Ciftercian monks was built at Rievaux by Walter Efpec, a great man in the court of Henry I., upon this occafion. In his youth he had married

a certain lady, named Adeline, and had by her a fon, named Walter, a comely perfon, and the joy of his heart. This his son took much delight in swift horses, which at a time spurring to run past his ftrength, occafioned him to ftumble and fall, whereby he broke his neck, to the great grief of his famous father. By this misfortune Walter, the father, who had acquired a great estate by his several public employments, namely, a general in war and a justice itinerant in peace,—was deprived of an heir, and was at some loss how to dispose of it, till by confultation with his uncle, William Efpec, then rector of Garton, he was advised to make Christ his heir of part of it at least; as he accordingly did, by building and endowing a monastery here, at Kirkham, as is before obferved, and at Waxdon, in Bedfordshire. The reft of his eftates he left to his three fisters, of whom Adeline, who married Peter de Ros, had the patronage of this house. This priory was furnished with monks at first sent by St. Bernard, Abbot of Clarevallis." Dugdale fays that Walter Efpec became a monk in his own

priory, and was buried in it in 1153. So alfo Peter de Ros, who married his fifter Adeline. Many were the benefactors to this monastery, and it received large estates and privileges. At the diffolution, Richard Blyton, lord abbot, and twentythree monks, furrendered the foundation to the commiffioners of Henry VIII., and had a hundred marks affigned him, per annum, for his life. The net resources of the house were valued at £278 10s. 2d.

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"Aelred, who was abbot in 1140," fays Dugdale, "was

if not the only, eminent perfon in his house for piety, learning, and all the virtues of a monaftic life:" which is not saying much for the piety and learning of Rievaux. Aelred, we are told, became fo famous for his abilities and good qualities, that David, king of Scotland, invited him to go there, but he refused all worldly honours, refused even to be made a bishop, and gave himself up to contemplation and preaching. "He imitated St. Bernard in all his actions, being mild, modeft, humble, pious, chaste and temperate, and wonderfully for peace." Yet he must have been tolerably industrious, for "he hath written many books of history, piety, and divinity, namely: The Lives of King Edward the Confeffor, and fome other kings of England, in verse and profe, of David, king, and Margaret, queen of Scotland, and St. Ninian, bishop; of miracles in general, and of those of the Church of St. Hagulstadt in particular, with the state of the fame; Chronicles from Aidan; and the Wars of the Standard; of the foundation of St. Margaret's of York, and of Fountains; feveral homilies and fermons."

Yet Dugdale, seeming to recollect himself, tells us that Walter Daniel, a monk of this houfe, was his difciple, and equalled him in fome things, and surpassed him in others. He, too, wrote many things, and on many subjects, as of the conception

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and virginity of St. Mary; of true friendship; of the burden of the Beast of the South; a hundred homilies; and many volumes on the words "HE WAS SENT," etc. All this valuable literature, and much more, we are told, was dispersed, if not wholly loft, at the diffolution.

Walter Espec, the founder of Rievaux, is described as a man of gigantic fize and of eminent bravery, and as one of the chief commanders in the battle of the Standard. He only lived about two years after retiring to this monastery. His gifts to the monks seem to have been moft lordly. His mansion at Kirkham he gave up, and it was converted into a priory. Probably he abandoned this noble mansion because it was near it, on the way to Frithly, that his fon was killed by his horse ftumbling near a ftone cross. The eftates given up there appear to have been large, according to the catalogue of them 1; and he endowed the priory with seven churches and their impropriations, three of them in Northumberland. On the contrary, this abbey of Rievaux, though it had extenfive lands, with pafturage for four thousand sheep and cattle, befides free warren and other privileges, did not possess one church or chapel befides the church of the abbey itself.

When the abbey was first established in the twelfth century, the country all around it was a wild wilderness of almoft unbroken woods, abounding with animals, but with very few men. One William came there with his little company of monks, and set about at once to erect a monastery, which probably was small and rude. These monks were of the Ciftercian order, and the abbey, like all their houses, was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The habit of this order was a white robe of the nature of a caflock, with a black scapular and a hood, and they had a girdle of woollen cord. In the choir they had a white cowl, and over it a hood, with a rochet

hanging down before to the waist, and in a point behind to the calf of the leg; and when they went abroad they wore a cowl and a hood, all black, which was also the choir habit. Their discipline was extremely severe, abounding in vigils day and night.

Any one standing on the fine terrace called Duncombeterrace, which looks down upon the abbey, may form an idea of the almost frightful folitude and savageness of the place in the early days of the establishment. Grainge, in his “Castles and Abbeys of Yorkshire," says :-" The ruins of the abbey are fituate in a deep, narrow valley, near the Rye, a rapid mountain-stream flowing from the picturesque valley of Bilsdale, and the bleak moors of Snilesworth. In the immediate neighbourhood of the ruins, half a dozen lateral valleys open out their fides, and pour their babbling brooks into the Rye, thus presenting great variety of scenery; and fuch are the windings of the main valley, that, looking from the abbey, it appears on all fides furrounded by hills clothed in wood, rifing to the level of the moors above; the central point of a magnificent natural amphitheatre: a grand framework of natural beauty enclosing a noble relic of ancient art."

But imagine this scene, not as now, when seven hundred years of cultivation have passed over it, but when enveloped in dense woods, this network of winding valleys choked with tangled brushwood and briars, with no cottage-smoke to cheer the dark glades, no little crofts or farms to break its monotony, and no voice but of the leaping waters refounding through its pathless glens. What a dreary hush! What a gloomy mantle of brooding obfcurity must have lain on this hidden ifolated house of perpetual faftings, watchings, and penances! We are told that in those days the only way to the abbey was by a fingle path, which wound here and there amid the labyrinth of