The ruined abbeys of Yorkshire . r have reached that fearful chasm,How tempting to bestride !For lordly Wharfe is there pent inWith rocks on either side. The striding-place is called The Strid,*—A name which it took of yore :A thousand years hath it borne that name,And shall a thousand more. The priory now at Bolton was founded first atEmbsay, by William de Meschines and Cecilia hiswife. In 1151, Alice de Romille, or Rumeli, theirdaughter, granted to the canons her manor of Boltonin exchange for those of Skipton and Stretton, andthe priory was at once removed. This grant ofBolton, and the cons
The ruined abbeys of Yorkshire . r have reached that fearful chasm,How tempting to bestride !For lordly Wharfe is there pent inWith rocks on either side. The striding-place is called The Strid,*—A name which it took of yore :A thousand years hath it borne that name,And shall a thousand more. The priory now at Bolton was founded first atEmbsay, by William de Meschines and Cecilia hiswife. In 1151, Alice de Romille, or Rumeli, theirdaughter, granted to the canons her manor of Boltonin exchange for those of Skipton and Stretton, andthe priory was at once removed. This grant ofBolton, and the consequent removal of the canons,is connected by the legend with the death of theboy of Egremont, but Dr. Whitaker ruthlessly an-nounced in his History of Craven, that the boywas himself a party to the Charter of those who cannot enjoy a tradition without adue admixture of truth, it may be some comfort toreflect that Cecilia de Rumeli, the mother of Alice,and original foundress of the priory at Embsay, -ss^g&SS*. KIRKHAM PRIORY. And hither is young Romilly come,And what may now forbidThat he, perhaps for the hundredth time,Shall bound across The Strid ? He sprang in glee,—for what cared he That the river was strong and the rocks were steep ? But the greyhound in the leash hung back, And checked him in his leap. The foresters bring the news to the boys mother,Alice de Romille, and she, after an interval ofspeechless sorrow, decrees the founding of a priory in Bolton, on the field of Wharfe. Neither thetradition, nor the poem founded on it, will be muchthe worse for being shown to conflict materiallywith ascertained facts. * Not however by way of derivation. We know better now-a-days, and talk of Anglo-Saxon stryth = tumult. may quite possibly have lost a son in the waydescribed by Wordsworth. A compotus of the priory, from 1290 to 1325,gives many graphic details of its condition and his-tory. Between 1316 and 1320 the invading Scotsappear in very grim reality, and
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