The long corridor ended at the door of the infirmary. This was a noble group of buildings, now ruined almost to the ground. There was a great hall, one of the finest in the kingdom, with two rows of stately pillars. It had a fire-place at each end, and the aisles were divided by partitions into small rooms, some having fire-places of their own. Back of it, to the east, reached by broad stone steps, eight of which remain, stood a two-storied structure, with vaulted basement probably for domestic stores, and with upper apartments which may have served for the entertainment of guests of unusual distinction. Up these stairs, then, attended by officers of the Abbey, went the Nevilles, the Marmions, the Mauleverers, on their visits to the monastery. In the chamber above slept the abbot of Clairvaux, when he came on his round of inspection of the Cistercian houses. Adjoining this lodging, on the south, was the chapel, into which a flight of narrow stairs descended from this guest-room. The base of the altar is still in situ. Next the chapel, with a yard between, was the spacious kitchen, whose great round ovens are still in place. Here, was cooked the food for the infirmary, for the misericord, and for the occupants of the lodging. A staircase beside the chapel-door seems to have led from the kitchen to the guest-room, over the arch of the entrance.
Here, in the infirmary, were gathered the old men, who had been monks for fifty years. Here the sick were cared for. Here regularly, in groups, a fourth part of the brethren at a time, came all the monks in succession for the periodical minutio, or letting of blood, according to the medical discipline of the time. In this comfortable seclusion they regained their strength. The doors of the infirmary were shut against the harsher regulations of the monastic life. Fires blazed on the hearth and roared up the great chimneys, and there were good things on the table at dinner time. The place was both a hospital and an old men’s home. The buildings extended over the river, which flowed in four tunnels beneath. To the north, beside the chapel of the nine altars, lay the cemetery. In this quiet place, remote from even the peaceful stir of the cloister, the monks expected to end their days. Their longest journey out of this blessed haven was when they crept along the corridor, and the nine-altars chapel, and the presbytery aisle, to their place on the stout oak bench against the back of the rood screen, to hear mass on some high festival. They awaited only one longer journey, when they should be carried out of the infirmary chapel to the green cemetery.
When the time for that last journey drew near, the abbot came to administer the sacrament, with all the brethren assembled. Then a cross of ashes was traced upon the floor, with a merciful covering of straw upon it and a quilt on that; there the sick man was laid. When the brother’s breath grew faint and difficult, and it was plain that the moment of his departure was at hand, a board in the cloister was struck repeated blows with a mallet, and all the monks hastened to their brother’s side. Thus he closed his eyes, amidst the prayers of his friends, and passed from the peace of the monastery to the rest of paradise.
This quiet end of life was continually symbolised in the quiet ending of the monastic day. Late in the afternoon, the office of vespers was said in the church, somewhat elaborately, with much singing and organ-playing. After vespers, in the twilight, the monks sat in the cloister, about the refectory door, and somebody read aloud from a good book, preferably the Collations of Cassian. On Saturday afternoons during the reading, the brothers by turns sat in a row on the stone benches which were over the lavatory troughs on either side of the refectory door, and had their feet washed in the running water by the cooks of that week and of the week to come. Then the compline prayers were said, in the summer about seven o’clock, in the winter about eight. And at the end of the service, every monk pulled his cowl over his head and went to bed.
CHAPTER IV
THE SUPPRESSION
For two hundred and fifty years—from the time of Abbot John of Kent, whose day ended in 1247, to the time of Abbot John, called Darnton, whose day began in 1479—no notable additions were made to the fabric of the Abbey. The energies of the brethren were directed to the diligent living of their daily life.
In Craven, the Abbey owned a hundred square miles within a ring fence; in the neighbourhood of Ripon, their lands ran in one direction for thirty uninterrupted miles. The monks of the daughter house of Kirkstead had farms in Lincolnshire, forty thousand acres of pasture land in Wildmore Fen, and property in Boston, Lincoln and London. They had tithes of the deer in Kirkstead Chase and the swans on Witham river. They sold wool in Flanders. They maintained several large mills and an iron works. And Fountains was much richer than Kirkstead. These possessions brought heavy responsibilities, and made a great demand on the monks’ time. There were tenants and title-deeds to be looked after, collections to be made, markets to be considered, with buying and selling, and the care of sheep and cattle.
In addition to these cares, the abbot was the official visitor of eleven other abbeys—the eight daughter houses, with three which had grown out of the first—and went about among them on journeys of inspection and encouragement and counsel. Also, as late as the fourteenth century, he had a seat in Parliament, where he wore his mitre and discussed the affairs of the wide world. Early in the fifteenth century he attended the Council of Constance, where he heard Wyclif condemned and saw Hus burned. Late in the same century, when Henry VII., the last of the mediæval kings, kept St. George’s Day in state at York, it was the Abbot of Fountains who read the epistle at high mass in the Minster.
This abbot was John Darnton, who resumed again the old enthusiasm for making the Abbey beautiful. He put new windows in the place of the plain old ones, in the west end of the nave, and in the chapel of the nine altars, east and north and south. After him, on the very eve of the Suppression, looking forward to centuries more of prosperity and peace. Abbot Marmaduke Huby built the noble tower.
About this time the Abbey bought a map—“a paper map of the world”—for which the bursar paid eight pence. There it hung upon the parlour wall, that all the monks might see what sort of place they lived in—a small world, whose centre was at the altar of St. Peter’s Church in Rome. But while the new glass was being put in the big new windows the tidings came that a new world had been found across the sea; and to this expansion it soon became necessary to readjust the horizons both of maps and of ideas. In the process of this readjustment the Abbey came to an end.