Vale Royal reminds us of the great Plantagenet king, whose motto was 'Keep Troth' and who for thirty-five years did all he could to win the love of his people. Before Edward became king he went on Crusade to the Holy Land, where he distinguished himself by recovering the holy city of Nazareth from the Saracens. On his return he narrowly escaped shipwreck. In his peril he invoked the aid of the Virgin Mary, and vowed that if he were saved he would build a monastery in her honour on his return to his own country. The Chronicle tells us that 'the vessel straightway righted itself and was miraculously brought safe into port; the sailors disembarked, the Prince landing last of all, and immediately the vessel broke in pieces, and every fragment of the wreck vanished under the water'. Edward 'kept his troth' and built a home for one hundred monks of the Cistercian Order at Darnhall. Four years later he laid the foundation stone of a stately Abbey at Vale Royal, in the very heart of Cheshire. Queen Eleanor and a great company of nobles accompanied him. We may not now hear the Angelus tolling its summons to evening prayer, nor see jolly monks fishing the streams of the Weaver, but in the last few months the foundations of the Abbey church where they chanted the mass have been discovered. The abbey took more than fifty years to build, and it was not until the reign of the third Edward that the monks were able to move from their temporary lodgings to the new and spacious building. The abbey received valuable lands in the neighbourhood of Over, Darnhall, and Weaverham, of which villages the abbot became lord. By the ancient 'customs' of the manor of Darnhall the villagers were required to attend at the manorial, now the abbot's court; the abbot had power of life and death over all his tenants, who had also to grind all their corn at the abbot's mill; at the death of any native the abbot took all his horses, cattle, and pigs, and half of his standing and gathered corn. Cheshire saw a good deal of Edward the First in the earlier half of his reign. In the year after the ceremonies at Vale Royal we find him at Macclesfield, when he began to build the parish church of S. Michael. He was the first English king to take in hand the conquest of Wales seriously. In the reign of Henry the Third the Welsh had taken advantage of the king's troubles with his barons, and waged a murderous warfare on the Cheshire border. They advanced as far as Nantwich, and James de Audley, who owned a large part of the barony of Nantwich, saw his castles burnt, woods felled, and cattle destroyed. Preparations were made for a big expedition into Wales, and Prince Edward summoned the knights and barons of Cheshire to Shotwick Castle on the banks of the Dee. A grassy knoll, where once stood the castle keep, is all that is left of the scene of the gathering. [Illustration: CHESTER WALL. Roman below; Edwardian above]