It may have been this general danger, and the comparative immunity of Fountains in the midst of it, which at this time greatly increased the monastic household. There were now so many brethren that the choir was too small for them, and there were not altars enough. Abbot John, accordingly, conceived the idea of rebuilding and vastly enlarging the east end of the church. To him is commonly ascribed the plan of the new chancel, and of the chapel of the nine altars. He had already laid the foundations of these splendid structures, to the amazement of his contemporaries, and had raised certain columns, when in the midst of his work he died—feliciter migravit ad Dominum.
The second John (1211-1220) took up the great task and carried it forward. The chronicle has now come to an end, and we know nothing from its pleasant pages about this John or his successors. There is, however, a letter in existence which was written to him nine days after Magna Charta, by King John himself, in which the king directs that certain treasures hidden by him for safe keeping at the Abbey—vasa, pocalia, aurea et argenta—be now immediately and privately sent back. King John, in anticipation of trouble, had trusted the monks of Fountains. Now, expecting peace, he takes his valuables into his own house. Abbot John soon came into relation with the other great actor in the Magna Charta matter, for in 1220 he was made bishop by Stephen Langton. Thus he removed from Fountains to Ely, where he died five years after, and was buried in the choir of his cathedral, wearing his episcopal ring, clad in his robes, and having beside him his stout pastoral staff.
John of Kent (1220-1247) succeeded John of Ely. He splendidly completed (gloriose consummavit) the great beginnings of his predecessors. The chapel of the nine altars and the great infirmary were finished in his time. So were the new choir, and a reconstruction of the cloister, and a guest-house—or the improvement of the existing guest-houses—and a new paving of the church floor in tiles of a geometrical design. This abbot built also the bakehouse, and the bridge. Leland, in 1541, speaks of many shafts of black marble in the chapel of the nine altars, in the chapter-house and in the refectory; and Mr Walbran traces the stone to the Abbey lands at the upper end of Nidderdale, and to the hand of a prosperous stone-worker of that neighbourhood, Thomas Marmorius de Sallay.
Thus the completed Abbey stood in splendour, the work of a whole century: part of it done while Henry and Stephen and Henry Plantagenet were ruling England, while Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury; part of it done in the reigns of John and the third Henry, in the time of Stephen Langton.
CHAPTER III
THE DAILY LIFE OF THE MONKS
The completed monastery had a stout stone wall about it, for security and peace. It enclosed an area of about four hundred yards in width, and more than twice that space in length. The longer reaches of the wall ran through high fields and woods on either side of the valley. At each end it crossed the river: at the west end was the main gate.
Beside this gate stood the gate-house. Abbot Huby, in the sixteenth century, built a house here and established in it Robert Dawson and Ellen his wife; Robert to be porter and Ellen to be laundress. Robert was to keep the gate; and Ellen was to wash or cause to be washed (lavabit vel lavari faciet) the linen sheets (linthiamina) of the abbot and abbey guests, and to do it without unnecessary tearing—congrue et honeste sine lesione voluntaria vel ruptura eorumdem. The fact, however, that at Citeaux there was an outer as well as an inner gate-house, suggests that Abbot Huby was but erecting a new lodge in the place of an old one. Here, at the outer gate, long before Robert Dawson’s day, the almoner dispensed his daily alms. Here the porter, at the sound of a knock, rose up crying, Deo gratias, an expression of joy at an opportunity to be hospitable; met the guest, blessing him with a Benedicite, and hastened to inform the abbot of his arrival.
The abbot led the visitor along the road, having the river on his right and the high bank on his left, until they came to the little chapel, built in the twelfth century, a part of whose west wall remains, with a round-headed window. There they said a prayer, after which the hospitaller took the guest in charge. The stables and barns were probably hereabouts. The mill is still standing, across the river, being now used as a dairy-house; but most of the present structure belongs to the thirteenth century. The bakehouse and the malthouse, a hundred yards to the east, supplied the brethren with bread and beer; their ovens and vats may be traced amidst the ruins.
Through the great gate, the visitor passed into the presence of the Abbey itself. There, across a wide expanse of green, stood the buildings of the cloister group: on the left, the church; then the long range of the cellarium; and on the right, the guest-houses.