by sending to them, with a letter full of joyous welcome and hearty sympathy, his friend and confidant, Godfrey, to instruct them in the Cistercian rule. They had now been joined by ten more brethren. But the elm-tree was still their only shelter, and their means of subsistence were as slender as at the first. Presently there came a famine in the land; they were reduced to eke out their scanty store of bread with leaves and stewed herbs. When they had just given away their two last loaves--one to the workmen engaged on the building, the other to a passing pilgrim--this supreme act of charity and faith was rewarded with a supply sent them by the lord of Knaresborough, Eustace Fitz-John. At last, after struggling on bravely for two years, they found it impossible to continue where they were, with numbers constantly increasing and means at a standstill; so the abbot went to Clairvaux and begged that some place might be assigned to them there. S. Bernard granted the request; but when Abbot Richard came back to fetch the rest of the brotherhood he found that all was changed. Hugh, dean of York, had just made over himself and all his property to Fountains. It was the turn of the tide; other donations began to flow in; soon they poured. Five years after its own rise the “Fountain” sent out a rivulet to Newminster; after that her descendants speedily covered the land. Justly did the brotherhood cherish their beloved elm-tree as a witness to the lowly beginnings whence had sprung the mightiest Cistercian house in England. It bore a yet more touching witness four centuries later, when it still stood in its green old age, the one remnant of the glory of Fountains which the sacrilegious spoiler had not thought it worth his while to touch.[196] [192] Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. pp. 237, 241. [193] _Ib._ pp. 274, 280, 281. [194] _Ib._ pp. 265, 267, 270. [195] So says the historian of Fountains. How this can have been, in Yorkshire and at Christmas-time, I cannot pretend to explain. [196] The story of Fountains is in the _Narratio_ of Hugh of Kirkstall, in _Memorials of Fountains_ (Walbran, Surtees Soc.), and Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. pp. 292 _et seq._ See also Will. Newb., l. i. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 50). The elm was standing in Leland’s day.