vows of poverty, uttered when worldly possessions were wanting, were forgotten, and towards the close of the thirteenth century the monks longed for a translation to a more congenial site. The inconveniences of the locality began to be perceived, and if the chronicle of St. Werburgh be correct, the monks met with some well-timed misfortunes. In 1279, the sea broke in upon Stanlawe, did the greatest damage, interrupted the highway, and washed down the bridge towards Chester. In 1287 the great tower of the church was blown down; and two years after, not only did the greatest part of the abbey perish in a conflagration, but the sea a second time inundated the abbey, and stood in the outhouses to the depth of three or four feet.

The bounty of Earl Henry was opportune; and under this accumulation of misfortunes the monks petitioned Pope Nicholas IV. to grant them permission to remove to Whalley. He acceded to their request; and, in 1289, a bull was issued authorising their translation, and empowering them to appropriate the revenues of the church and its dependencies, on the condition of endowing a sufficient vicarage, whenever the opportunity of removal should be afforded by the resignation or death of the then incumbent. This bull was revoked by Boniface VIII., but it was afterwards confirmed, and the desired privileges granted, by the same supreme pontiff.

The event, so anxiously looked for by the monks at Stanlawe, took place on the feast of St. Fabian and St. Sebastian, in the year 1294, when Peter de Cestria, the last secular

rector of Whalley, died. But the translation was delayed by the want of an appropriation, and a ratification by the founder. These were obtained in 1295; and on the 4th April, 1296, Gregory de Northbury, the then abbot, and his monks, took possession of Whalley; the former abbot, Robert de Haworth, preferring to remain at Stanlawe.

But Haworth had most probably arrived at that time when "those that look out of the windows be darkened," for it is perhaps difficult to imagine a stronger contrast than must have been afforded by the two sites of Stanlawe and Whalley. Mr. Ormerod says: "Even at the present day it is difficult to select in Cheshire a scene of more comfortless desolation than this cheerless marsh; barely fenced from the waters by embankments on the north; shut out by naked knolls from the fairer country which spreads along the feet of the forest hills on the south-east; and approached by one miserable trackway of mud; whilst every road that leads to the haunts of men seems to diverge in its course as it approaches the Locus Benedictus of Stanlawe." While the words of Dr. Whitaker, in describing the situation of Whalley, are tinted with a Claude-like warmth: "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, were features in the face of nature which the earlier Cistercians courted with instinctive fondness."

In this favoured situation the monks of Stanlawe fixed their habitation. The foundation of their new abbey was

laid by Earl Henry in person, and in 1306 the greater part of the abbey was consecrated. But difficulties beset them; and ten years after the consecration the monks are found dissatisfied with their new situation, complaining of the deficiency of wood for the construction of the monastery, and prevailing on their patron, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, to grant them a new site for their monastery. This was done in 1316, and Toxstath was assigned to them for the new establishment. But the design was abandoned, if ever seriously entertained. The building was proceeded with; but the last finish was not put to the work until the abbacy of Eccles, who succeeded in 1434. From the translation until the dissolution, a period of nearly two centuries and a half, the monks resided at Whalley, "a point of refuge for all who needed succour, counsel, and protection; a body of individuals with wisdom to guide the inexperienced, with wealth to relieve the suffering, and often with power to relieve the distressed."

But the causes which received their full development in the sixteenth century were silently at work at the beginning of the fourteenth; and the Coucher Book is nearly silent during this period. Few are the records of grants to the abbey of Whalley found within its pages. They may almost, indeed, be summed up by enumerating some additions to the possessions of the abbey in Whitworth and Spotland, and the grants of the mediety of Bilyngton and of Toxstath by Earl Thomas. But the principal part of the new additions in Whitworth were from the priory of Hanepoole, and the

b

grant of Toxstath appears to have been resumed by Earl Thomas on the abandonment of the idea of removing thither from Whalley. It is stated by Mr. Baines that in 1346 the park was let to the Molyneux family; that in 22 Edward III. Sir Thomas Stanley was parker of the park; and that Henry, duke of Lancaster, in the tenth year of his duchy, appointed a keeper for life. And it may fairly be deduced that no other donations were conferred on the abbey of Whalley; for if either the computus of the abbey, made in the year 1521,* or the record of the possessions of the monastery at its dissolution, published in the appendix, be consulted, it will be seen that the property enumerated in both those documents may be identified as having been granted to the abbey of Stanlawe.

The dissolution of the house took place in 1539. The zeal of Abbot Paslew, the last abbot, had driven him into the ranks of the rash and ill-advised pilgrimage of grace; he was tried and attainted for high treason at the Lancaster spring assizes in 1536-7, and, with a refinement of cruelty, he was brought to Whalley, and executed on the 12th of March in that year, within sight of the monastery over which he had presided for thirty years. The possessions of the monastery were confiscated; and, on the 12th April, 1539, the bailiwick of the demesnes was granted to John Braddyll; and he, with Richard Assheton, afterwards purchased from the crown the whole manor of Whalley, with the site of the dissolved

* See Whitaker's Whalley.

monastery. A partition took place immediately afterwards, by which Assheton obtained exclusive possession of the house.

This descended to his representative in the female line, the Hon. Richard Penn Assheton Curzon, the second and present Earl Howe, and by that descent his lordship became possessed of the subject of this work. The original deeds from which it was compiled were scattered about at the dissolution. Part of them are still to be found amongst the Harleian MSS.; others were delivered to the spoliators of the abbey possessions; some were preserved at the abbey; but most probably the majority are now irretrievably lost.

The Coucher Book is a thick octavo volume of seven hundred and forty-nine pages, closely written on vellum, and divided into twenty chapters or titles; each title containing a transcript of the grants and evidences relating to a separate parish or township, the possessions of the abbey, but copied without much attention to a proper arrangement. The handwriting is beautifully distinct; few parts are obliterated or illegible; and though there is sufficient to show that more than one transcriber has been employed, yet the character of the body of the work is so identical, that, if we have the original transcript before us, a high opinion must be formed of the power of the scriptorium of Whalley in forming the hand of the brethren.

The date of the work must be assigned to the abbacy of Abbot Lyndeley. Independently of the direct evidence contained in the first page of the volume, the book itself