As the years passed, lands and legacies made the monastery rich. And so at last this splendid fabric rose—a triumph of the spirit over circumstances, a monument to those long-buried monks whose toils and sufferings are built into the mighty nave, though surely they never dreamed of such power and wealth as we are forced to dream of as we stand amid this mass of broken walls, now green with moss and weeds, but once the heart of a huge organism. It is a monument, too, to many who came after the brave thirteen: to Abbot Huby, who built the tower and is said to be buried near it; to John of Kent, who gave us the bewildering beauty of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, one of the most exquisite things ever wrought in stone: so spiritual, so aspiring, that it seems to be a prayer made visible, or even—with its slender arrowy columns rising into the air till, like fountains, they break into curves—to be the embodiment of the abbey motto: Benedicite Fontes Domino.
And while we are remembering those who laboured for Fountains, do not let us forget the man who died for it at Tyburn—William Thirsk. This abbot was rash enough to resist the messengers of Privy Seal, and was accused by them of many things. He had, they wrote, "gretly dilapidate his howse" by theft and sacrilege, had sold the plate and jewels of the abbey, and had not even secured a proper price for them. To those who were themselves bent upon theft and sacrilege on a large scale this last offence seemed worst of all. He had actually, they declared contemptuously, been persuaded by a jeweller that a valuable ruby was a mere garnet; "for the trewith ys he is a varra fole and a miserable ideote." He joined in that desperate protest the Pilgrimage of Grace, and so was hanged.
Fortunately for posterity as well as for himself, Thirsk's successor, Brodelay, who was a creature of Thomas Cromwell and chosen with a view to future events, was not a "varra fole," and yielded meekly when his abbey was demanded of him, saving it from the fate of Jervaulx. As it is, too much of it is gone—much that might have been preserved. The cloisters have vanished though the garth is there, with the long flight of steps and the great stone basin in the grass and the yew-tree beside it; and gone, too, is the magnificent infirmary, deliberately destroyed in the days of James I. by the vandal who owned it and was in want of some building material.
FOUNTAINS HALL.
One thing, however, still stands, which is, perhaps, the last relic of the monks of Fountains that we should expect to find, and is certainly the most touching relic possible—actually linking us with those far-off days when the patient thirteen were left here in the wilderness by Archbishop Thurstan to keep their vow of poverty with such terrible literalness. Over there, beside the wall, is one of the yew-trees whose boughs, covered with thatch, formed the first monastery of Fountains.
Close to the western entrance is Fountains Hall. Surely we must forgive that wicked man who pulled down the infirmary, since the place he built with the stones is this lovely Jacobean house, a thing as beautiful in its own domestic way as time-worn stone and bays and mullions can make it. A balustrade, a sundial, an old-fashioned garden and ancient yew-hedge make the picture and our pleasure complete.
There is a comfortable hotel at Ripon, and as we have a great deal to see before reaching any other desirable shelter, we shall find it best, I think, to spend a night there either before or after visiting Fountains. From the windows of the Unicorn, on market-day, the paved square is a gay and pleasant sight, with its crowded stalls and bright awnings, and stores of fruit and flowers and basket-work; and here on a summer's night the horn-blower may be dimly seen at nine o'clock in his three-cornered hat and laced coat, doing the bidding of Alfred the Great.
From Ripon there are three ways of reaching Richmond, without taking into account the direct route, which would show us nothing of the dales we came out to see. In either case we must go by Jervaulx and Middleham and Wensley.