The busy hum of men has long ceased from the spot where stand the fraternal yew-trees. Ages have passed away since the illuminator sat intent on his pleasant labours in the ruin hard by—since he put aside his liquid gold and Tyrian purple, and laid him down to rest in the burying-place beside the abbey. The copier of manuscripts closed his book there, more than five hundred years ago; he, too, is gone, and with him all those who lived while he was living. The abbot, who presided in regal state; the brotherhood, in their cowls and gowns; learned men, who studied in their quiet cells, and the busy comers and goers, who worked either in the abbey-fields, or performed such menial labours as the condition of the place required—not a trace of them remains: even the stately monastery is in ruins, but the yew-trees still cast the shadow of their noble branches on the grassless floor of red-brown hue. Their history is inseparably connected with that of the ruined abbey, for they stood in their present site, and afforded a shelter to its founders, long before one stone was laid upon another of the stately building. Those who passed in the days of the Saxon king, Ethelbald, through the Wolds of Yorkshire, near Skelldale, in their way to Ripon, might see a company of men assembled in a wild and romantic spot, watered by a rivulet, and surrounded with rocks and woods. These men were monks, who, desiring to imitate the extraordinary sanctity of the Cistercian abbey of Rieval, had withdrawn from their own monastery of St Mary’s at York, and being sanctioned in their preference by the archbishop, they retired to this desolate and uncultivated spot. They had no house to shelter them, nor certainty of provisions to subsist on; but, in the depth of the lone valley, stood an aged elm, among the ample branches of which they erected a straw roof, and this was their only shelter for some time. But at length the rain fell fast, and the wind rose high, and they were constrained to quit the shelter of the elm for that of seven stately yew-trees, which grew on the south side of the valley, where a splendid abbey afterwards arose. These trees were of extraordinary size, for the trunk of one of them measured twenty-six feet in circumference, at the height of three feet above the root. Neither history nor tradition have preserved the knowledge of that period when they first arose from out the ground. Ages may have passed since, and countries rose and waned. The yew-trees of Skelldale may have continued growing even from the brilliant periods of Thebes and Memphis, when Phoenician barks traded to the Isle of Tin, and all around them was one wild impenetrable forest. But the yew-trees were now in their prime, and beneath them the monks took shelter by night and by day, from the rain and snow, and the cold east wind, that swept moaning through the valley. Thus they lived, drinking at the stream when thirsty, and allaying their hunger with the bread which their archbishop sent them from time to time. When the snow melted from the branches of the sheltering trees, and the cold east wind was still—when the delicate yellow blossoms of the yew varied its dark funereal branches, and bees came humming to gather in the pollen, they cleared a small spot of ground to serve them as a garden, and built a wooden chapel. Thus they passed the first winter, and their piety was noised abroad. Many repaired to them from distant parts, some for instruction, others to join the fraternity; and as their numbers increased, their privations increased also. They were often reduced to the necessity of eating the leaves of trees and wild herbs; but their fortitude did not fail them, and one day when their stock of provisions consisted of merely two loaves and a half, a passing stranger asked for a morsel of bread. “Give him a loaf,” said the abbot; “the Lord will provide.” The hope thus piously expressed, was soon fulfilled, and a cart piled with bread was seen coming down the rocky pathway, a present from Eustace Fitz-John, owner of the neighbouring castle of Knaresborough.

Time passed on, and none who witnessed the privations which the monks of Skelldale endured, could have pictured to themselves the future greatness of their monastery. Meanwhile, the garden flourished, and fields were added to those which they began to cultivate, till at length, wrote one of the secluses, “We have bread and cheese, butter and ale, and in time we shall have beef and mutton.” He lamented that the soil was too poor for the growth of vines; but he added, “that the garden was well supplied with pot-herbs.” Of these he gave no particular description, but we may presume that they consisted of colewort and onions, of peas and beans, of spinach, and radishes with a vegetable called feret, most probably carrot, or perhaps beet, and a variety of sweet-herbs, for such were in use among the Saxons. At length the privations of the monks of Skelldale ceased, as also the necessity for labour. Hugh, Dean of York, bequeathed to them his wealth, and benefactions having poured in successively, from different quarters, the abbey became exceedingly rich in land and cattle, with plate and costly vestments. A wild and beautiful spot was also bestowed on Fountains Abbey by the Percy family; this was Walham Cove, situated among the hilly and mountainous tracts of the West-Riding of Yorkshire. It was included in lands belonging to the manor of Walham, and possessed a valuable right of fishing in the ample stream that flowed from out an immense and perpendicular crag of limestone, more than three hundred feet in height, that stretched across the valley like a magnificent screen. Thither the monks of Fountains Abbey used to repair; thither, too, many of those recluses, who wearied with fights and forage in foreign lands, sought for rest within the abbey walls, loved to muse and moralize upon the passing waters. But they learned not wisdom from them, nor read in things inanimate, lessons that might have taught them to retain the habits of their predecessors. Most of those devoted men, who had sought to worship their Creator in privacy and stillness, were laid down to rest. They had laboured with their hands while living, and thankfully saw the blessings which they sought, spring from out the earth they cultivated; those who filled their places were not actuated by the same necessity, and hence the passer-by no longer beheld a humble cloister, with its garden and low fence, but instead of this a stately building, the Abbey of the Fountain, as it was called in reference to the stream that flowed beside it, fresh and untroubled as when the monks of St. Mary’s first sought the precincts of the dale. There were many in after years who desired that their mortal remains might be deposited beneath the abbey walls, and for this purpose they devised large sums of money:—some who had been in the deathful career of storm and siege, and those, the flowers of chivalry, who had won the prize at tilts and tournaments; when armed knight met knight, and high-born ladies gazed on and awarded the victor’s meed. Rest they had not found on earth, amid the stunning tide of crime and human care, and they wished that bells might toll for them, and prayers be said for them, beside the rushing waters of the Skill. The mental eye, back glancing, through the vista of long ages, sees at intervals successive funerals slowly proceeding through the abbey gates. Warriors of the noble house of Percy borne there. Lord Rieland, one of the twenty guardians of the Magna Charta, he who sustained the shock of arms and cheered on his vassals in the Barons’ wars. He too, Lord Henry de Percy, another member of that ancient race, who followed in after years the banner of King Edward into Scotland, was borne by his tall yeomen to that still and narrow bed which receives alike the prince and peasant. Others also followed, great in their day, and filled while living with busy schemes, but of whom, as years were added, scarcely a trace remained.—Where knees bent in prayer, and the white-robed priest chanted the high requiem, a broken stone figure, recumbent on a lichen-dotted stone, points out a warrior’s resting-place; and perchance a mound thrown up, with broken slabs of richly-sculptured marble, indicate that some one who had figured greatly in past ages lay there; again, a broken crosier, or a pilgrim’s staff, tell of years spent in wanderings, and in prayer.

HOWE SELE’S OAK