Connected with this legend is the founding of Bolton Abbey, situated in the meadow land close to the river some distance below. It is said that the falconer hastened back to the Lady Alice, the mother of the boy, and broke the sad news with the significant question, “What is good for a bootless bene?” Wordsworth scarcely varies from the story as it is still told in the locality:—
“‘What is good for a bootless bene?’
The Falconer to the Lady said;
And she made answer, ‘Endless sorrow!’
For she knew that her son was dead;
She knew it by the Falconer’s words,
And from the look of the Falconer’s eye,
And from the love that was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly.”
The story goes that when the Lady Alice fully realised what had happened she vowed, now all hope was gone from her, that many a poor man’s son should be her heir. According to the legend, she selected a site for a priory, as near to the scene of the accident as she could find one, and when “the pious structure fair to see” rose up, she transferred it to the Monks of Embsay, in the bleak hilly region beyond. The charter and the romance do not, however, agree. The conveyance of the ground at Bolton to the monks appears to have been made before the accident at the Strid, as the son is named in the document as a party to the transaction, and the reading indicates that the land had been given over in a prosaic fashion by way of exchange. It has been surmised by believers in the story that after the drowning the monks came to the bereaved lady and induced her to build a priory on what was now their property on the Wharfe, as a memorial to her son. Her mother, Cecily, the wife of William de Meschines, and heiress of William de Romilly, had joined with her husband in 1120 in founding the Embsay Priory for Augustinian Canons, the site being two miles east of Skipton. The Embsay endowment, handsome enough to begin with, was increased by the gift of the village and mill at Kildwick and lands at Stratton, the deed setting forth that this was done by the heiress of the Romillys “for the health of her soul and that of her parents.” It is stated in the charter that the conveyance in this instance was made by the Lady Cecily, mother of Alice, and William, her son-in-law, placing a knife on the altar of the conventual church. This William, a nephew of David, King of Scotland, was married to Alice, who in her turn became heiress of the estates, and adopted her mother’s name. She bore her husband two sons and three daughters. The younger son, “the Boy of Egremond”—so named after one of the baronies of the family—survived his brother until, according to the legend, the sad incident at the Strid put an end to the bright promise of his life, and left his mother in “endless sorrow.”