This was Abbot Richard, who had two predecessors with brief terms, Maurice and Thorold. Richard had a long and troubled rule. Our ancient enemy, the devil, disquieted by the peace of the holy house, tempted the brethren, who behaved so proudly towards the abbot that he had to expel some of them. After that, the Lord blessed him abundantly. So he died, in 1170, and was buried in the new chapter-house, the first of nineteen abbots who were to lie there under the monks’ feet. Robert of Pipewell was the next abbot. He was a strenuous person--_strenue administravit_, says the narrative; and again, _multa strenue gessit in administratione sua_. He is praised for many virtues, and among others for his zeal for building, but the particular additions which he made are not named. He beautified the church, and erected sumptuous buildings, probably the southern range of the cloister--the refectory side--and the western guest-house. The northern part of the west wall of the cellarium appears to have been made about this time. William of Newminster (1179-1190) and Ralph Haget of Kirkstall (1190-1203) carried on the Abbey into the thirteenth century; but without any notable, or, at least, discernible, erection of buildings. With William’s administration, old Serlo’s narrative stops. He praises William, but says that he may perhaps (_forsitan_) have been just a shade too strict. The acts of Ralph are described by Hugh of Kirkstall, who has written up to this point at Serlo’s dictation. Here, says Hugh, the old man made an end of speaking. You yourself, says Serlo, know well what to say about the holy Abbot Ralph. Hugh had become a monk while Ralph was Abbot of Kirkstall, and had lived under his rule for seven years. Happy would he have been, he says, could he have continued in that blessed state. Yet those were troubled years at Kirkstall--_adversa foras pugnas, intus timores, domesticorum insidias, rei familiaris inopiam, bonorum distractionem_. Everything went wrong; without were fightings, within were fears. There was famine, and spoiling of goods, and misconduct of bad brethren. And Abbot Ralph made but an ineffectual effort to cope with these distresses. He was no strenuous administrator. He was busy dreaming dreams, and seeing visions. Once, he told Hugh, he even had a revelation of the Blessed Trinity, in which he distinctly saw three Persons--_intribus personis apparentem_! But these celestial sights seem not to have made his terrestrial way plain. Nevertheless, on the death of William he was made Abbot of Fountains; and, curiously enough, he seems to have done fairly well in this larger place. He enforced the rule, both in the mother house and in the dependent monasteries. He was particularly kind to the poor, who, on the occasion of a famine and a fever, flocked to the Abbey gates and were lodged there by the abbot in huts made of branches of the neighbouring trees, where physicians and priests ministered unto them.