By John Bird.

William de Meschines and Cecily de Romille his wife, founders of Embsay Priory, (says Dr. Whitaker,) were now dead, and had left a daughter, Alice, who adopted her mother's name, Romille, and was married to William Fitz-Duncan, nephew of David, king of Scotland. They had issue a son, commonly called the Boy of Egremond,[58] who, surviving an elder brother, became the last hope of the family.

In the deep solitude of the woods, betwixt Bolton and Barden, in Craven, four miles up the river, the Wharfe suddenly contracts itself to a rocky channel, little more than four feet wide, and pours through the tremendous fissure with a rapidity proportioned to its confinement. The place was then, as it is yet, called the Strid, from a feat often exercised by persons of more agility than prudence, who stride from brink to brink, regardless of the destruction which awaits a faltering step. Such was the fate of young Romille, who inconsiderately bounded over the chasm, with a greyhound in his leash, the animal hung back and drew his unfortunate master into the torrent. The misfortune is said to have occasioned the translation of the priory from Embsay to Bolton, which was the nearest eligible site to the place where it happened.

This priory existed upwards of four hundred years, when it was surrendered by Richard Moon, the prior, and fourteen of his brethren, on the 26th Jan. 1540. On the 3rd April, 1542, the site was granted to Henry Clifford, first earl of Cumberland, but nineteen days before his death, for the sum of 2,490l; from him it has descended to the present owner, the duke of Devonshire.