abbot designate repaid him in his life-time by accusing his enemy, Stephen of Canterbury, before the Pope, for treason, and causing him to be suspended.[1]
John died, and Henry III. not only confirmed the privileges, but granted several more in consideration of the great expense of the building, and Innocent III., gave it the right of a sanctuary. So the work proceeded. The stone was quarried principally from the opposite limestone-beds in the Isle of Wight; and was brought over, says tradition, curiously illustrating the vague notions of ancient geography, which we have seen in Diodorus Siculus,[2] in carts. Not, however, till 1249, some forty-five years after its foundation, was the monastery finished. Henry himself, and his Queen, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and a long train of nobles and prelates, came to its dedication on the feast of St. John; Hugh, the first abbot, spending no less than five hundred marks on the entertainment.[3]
So, at last, the good work was accomplished, and men came here and lived, taking for their pattern the holy St. Benedict, and finding the problem of life solved by daily prayer to heaven and labour on earth.[4]
- ↑ Roger of Wendover, English Historical Society. Ed. Coxe, vol. iii. p. 344.
- ↑ See the previous chapter, pp. 57, 58, foot-note.
- ↑ Curiously enough, as Warner remarks (vol. i. 267), Matthew Paris gives two dates for the dedication, the first 1246 (Hist. Angl., tom. i. p. 710, Ed. Wats., London, 1640); and the second (p. 770) 1249; not, however, 1250, as Warner says, and who, followed by all later writers, totally misunderstands the passage, which means that, although the abbot spent so large a sum, yet the King would not remit him the fines he had incurred by trespass in the Forest,—"Nec tamen idcirco aliquatenus pepercit rex, quin maximum censum solveret illi pro transgressione quam dicebatur regi fecisse in occupatione Forestæ."
- ↑ See Matthew Paris, in praise of the Cistercian Order. Same edition as before, tom. i. p. 916.
