The goodness of the brethren made a deep impression upon the community. Turbulent and cruel as were the times, there was, nevertheless, some attention paid to the voice of conscience. It is true that this voice commonly made itself heard after the event, and served rather to reproach men than to deter them; but it did speak, and men listened. The deeds which they did were incredibly bad, but after they had done them, and the fierce heat of passion had died down, they were both sorry and afraid. Then they remembered that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Doubting the value of their own prayers, they looked about for righteous men to make intercession for them. God sat on His throne, like the king, and had His court about Him, part of angels, part of saints in glory, and part of holy persons still in the flesh. The sinner’s hope of success in his petition lay in the securing of the kindly offices of some of these influential courtiers. And these were to be found most readily on earth in monasteries. Accordingly, these companies of praying men seemed, even to the sinners of the neighbourhood, to be engaged in an important and essential business. If the sinner had money enough, he engaged a group of them to pray for him in particular. He built a monastery, and established them in it for that necessary purpose. Thus Ralph de Merlay, chancing on his travels to spend a day at the Abbey, and there beholding the pious conversation of the brethren, made up his mind, from what he saw, that these were the kind of men to have influence with God; and being in need of friends at that court, he asked the abbot to let him have some of them, _pro redemptione animae suae_. This was the first colony which went out from Fountains. The year was 1137. The knight took the monks into his castle at Morpeth, in whose neighbourhood he presently built them a monastery, which they called Newminster. The abbot of this new brotherhood was the Robert who had come from Whitby to take the place of the inconstant Gervase after the flight from York: a good man, modest in his bearing, gentle in his conversation, bearing rule with mercy, and at last enrolled in the honourable list of the saints. The abbey, like the mother house, was built beside a little river; and its three daughters, Pipewell, Sawley and Roche, sat likewise, in the true Cistercian manner, on the banks of narrow streams.