Rufford Abbey, which is within easy walking distance of Ollerton, surpasses in interest and beauty the other great houses of the neighbourhood. The view from the pelican-crowned gateway, with its avenue of limes (some of which are considered the finest in all England) and beeches and elms, terminating in a glimpse of the faÇade of reddish stone, reminds one of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the days before briers and brambles barred the way. Separated from this avenue by a gravelled space, where in summer great hydrangeas blossom in green tubs, a fine staircase leads to the main entrance.

The house, which is not open to the public, and which for several centuries has been a favourite resting-place of kings, possesses a singular atmosphere of beauty and charm. The walls are hung with priceless old tapestry and marvellous portraits by the great English masters. There is much wonderful needlework—an eighteenth-century lady of the Savile family was as devoted to her embroidery frame as Mary Stuart herself. On screens and quaint chairs are seen her masterly copies of Hogarth's pictures.

No brief description could do justice to the wonders of a house so rich in objects connected with our history. The whole is remarkable and strange: in no place have I felt so deeply the influence left by the famous dead. Weird legends are connected with certain rooms: if the history of Rufford were written in full it would be remarkable beyond imagination. One of the most fascinating places is the chapel, erected in the time of Charles the Second, and surely the most comfortable sanctuary in any nobleman's house. At the west end is a gallery, its walls lined with ancient embossed leather, its Prayer Books dating from the Restoration, its faded and antique chairs suggesting all manner of pleasant reveries during service.

The state rooms are admirable in so far as restfulness and quiet beauty take the place of excessive pomp. Each piece of furniture is storied and of great value. Nothing startles the eye; the colouring is always subdued and pleasing; in short, Rufford combines in perfection the palace and the home.

The outward appearance suggests harmony without extravagance. The pleasure grounds, although not on as large a scale as those of the other houses, are exceedingly beautiful—the Japanese Garden being a wonderful pleasaunce in miniature, with paved walks and toy lake and waterfall. Not far away the River Maun, with rich flowers and shrubs on its banks, glides calmly to a tranquil mere, where grey herons perch like birds of stone on the boughs of the island trees. In front of an older entrance to the house stretches a grass-grown avenue, by which is the "Wilderness" of Elizabethan days. There lie the remains of famous racehorses, reared on the estate. The park itself has not been submitted to the attentions of the landscape gardener: it is natural and unspoiled as in monkish times.

Of the original Cistercian abbey, built in 1148 and peopled with monks brought from Rievaulx in Yorkshire, little remains save a groined and pillared chamber, supposed to have been the refectory, and used nowadays as a servants' hall. There is a singular hooded fireplace with a fine old dog-grate, and against the end wall stands a long oaken table—a relic of ancient feasting.

Rufford Abbey owed its existence to the filial piety of a collateral descendant of William the Conqueror. The sixteenth-century translation of the Foundation reads thus:—

A striking contrast may be found in the Domestic State Papers of 10 December, 1533:—

After the Dissolution, Henry the Eighth leased the estate for twenty-one years to Sir John Markham, and afterwards exchanged it for some Irish property belonging to George, Earl of Shrewsbury. Bess of Hardwick was here often, and it was at Rufford that, in 1575, she arranged the marriage of her daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish, with Darnley's brother, from which union issued the ill-fated Arabella Stuart. Queen Elizabeth was greatly offended by what she justly regarded as an encroachment upon royal prerogative, and both mothers-in-law were sent for a time to the Tower. The Earl of Shrewsbury wrote in explanation to Lord Burghley:—

Then, giving a slight hint of his countess's ambitions, he adds:—

Arabella Stuart was born at Chatsworth, and thenceforth all Lady Shrewsbury's pride was fixed upon this granddaughter who might possibly become a queen. At Rufford there are two curiously touching portraits of this dreamy child, in whose sad little face one reads the promise of untoward fortunes. In 1576 the Earl of Lennox died, and two years later Queen Elizabeth took "oure lyttl Arbella" under her protection. When she was seven years old, this "very proper child" sent a specimen of her handwriting to her royal kinswoman, desiring the bearer to present her "humble duty to her Majesty, with daily prayers for her". The Queen of Scots in the following year maliciously informs her sister of England that "nothing has alienated the Countess of Shrewsbury from me but the vain hope, which she has conceived, of setting the crown of England on the head of her little girl, Arabella, and this by marrying her to a son of the Earl of Leicester. These children are also educated in this idea; and their portraits have been sent to each other."

Bess of Hardwick died in 1608, and in her will, which must have been made many years before, left £200 to purchase a golden cup for the Queen, "as a remembrance from her that has always been a dutiful and faithful heart to her highness". She craves, moreover, that Elizabeth may have compassion upon and be gracious to her poor grandchild Arabella Stuart. After the old lady's death, Arabella's connection with Rufford soon ceased.

Mary, Bess of Hardwick's daughter, who had married Earl Gilbert, lived at Rufford in her widowhood. This lady inherited a considerable share of her mother's ambition and lack of scruple. In a quarrel with Sir Thomas Stanhope, a Nottinghamshire knight from whom are descended three earldoms, she dispatched a servant with the following unpleasing message:—

From this beginning ensued one of the most noted and romantic feuds of the seventeenth century.

After the death of this outspoken lady—her husband's father had accused the great Bess of occasionally using the language of Billingsgate—the Rufford estate passed to the Savile family, her sister-in-law, Lady Mary Talbot, having married a Lincolnshire baronet of that name. Later, one of the Savile ladies, wife of Sir William, and daughter of Thomas, Lord Keeper Coventry, earned lasting fame by her bravery at the siege of Sheffield Castle. The Saviles were Royalists: in the Bodleian Library may be seen a letter to Cromwell from a certain unknown person who had been instructed to take into custody young Sir George and such friends as might be found at Rufford:—

This Sir George was created Earl and finally Marquis of Halifax by Charles the Second, and became one of the leading statesmen of the seventeenth century. One of his grandsons was the witty Earl of Chesterfield; another descendant was Henry Carey, the writer and composer of "Sally in our Alley". On the death of the second marquis, without male issue, the title became extinct, and the estate with the Savile baronetcy passed to a somewhat distant kinsman, whose collateral descendant is present owner of this fine estate, the traditions of which are almost without parallel in the matter of interest and romantic colouring.

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