Meanwhile, in the midst of all this building, Abbot Richard was called away to Rome. Bishop Alberic of Ostia, making a visitation of the country as papal legate, and meeting Richard, was so impressed by the abbot’s piety and sense that he made up his mind that the Pope had need of him. So he took him away from Fountains--whether for a temporary or a permanent absence is uncertain--and brought him down to the Papal Court. There, however, the good man fell ill of a fever, and presently died. This was in 1139. Richard, the sacrist, who succeeded him, was a man of great humility. He had been chosen, the narrative informs us, by the advice of St. Bernard, by the unanimous voice of the convent, and under the invocation of the Holy Ghost; but still he held back, diffident and honestly reluctant, from the honours of the abbacy--_Homo simplex et timens Deum, et totius religionis ardentissimus emulator_. Three times he went to Clairvaux hoping to be released, and finally St. Bernard heard him; but when he returned with this permission to retire, the whole assembly of the brethren rose up with such grief and remonstrance that he consented to continue. He died, however, at Clairvaux, where he was attending a meeting of the General Chapter, and was there buried by St. Bernard, in 1143. Bernard nominated as Richard’s successor a Yorkshireman who had for some years been abbot of Vauclair, and he was elected by the brethren. Henry Murdac was a strict disciplinarian. He proceeded at once to destroy such tares as he discovered in the field of the Lord. The second Richard had always insisted that he had no ability or even wish to play the part of Martha. It is likely that under his gentle rule some of the brethren demonstrated the fact that a change of names is not necessarily a change of natures. The Benedictine abbey of St. Mary of York had been forsaken for the Cistercian abbey of St. Mary of Fountains, but the new resolutions had not driven out of all minds a secret preference for a modicum of comfort. So Henry found occasion to amend the monastic ways. He was a great abbot--_magnifice administravit_. He added to the possessions of the house, and carried on the construction of the buildings.