The abbot betook himself to Ripon, where he held a prebendal stall. The prior and his thirty brethren were turned briskly out of doors to face the approaching winter. Despoiled of their own garments they were given suits of citizen’s clothes, and were set outside the gates of their fair paradise to make their way, as best they could, over the strange roads of the cold world. The gold and silver of the rich altars, with all things of value such as could be moved, were put in waggons and sent to the king. Distant though the Abbey was from any town, the rumour of these proceedings would attract a crowd. And the crowd stole what they could. The servants of the commissioners, who had a better chance, stole more, according to their opportunity. They rode about in those days, from the wreck of one abbey to the ruin of another, with rich copes for travelling cloaks and chasubles for saddle cloths. The master thief was abroad, and it was a pity if the little thieves could not have a share. Then the windows were taken out, so carefully that but a handful of the precious glass remained in all the ruins, and were disposed of, nobody knows how or where. The bells were taken down and carried off; one to be hung, tradition says, in the cathedral tower at Ripon. Finally, the roofs were pulled off, and the lead brought into the dismantled church; and there between the great pillars, betwixt the broken altars of St. Mary and St. Bernard, in a fire whose fuel was the carved work of the choir stalls, it was melted into convenient shape for the market. An eye-witness has left a description of the spoiling of the dependent house of Roche Abbey. “The sudden spoil fell,” he says, “the same day of their departure from the house.... The church was the first thing that was put to the spoil, then the abbot’s lodging, dorter and frater [_i.e._, dormitory and refectory] with the cloister and all the buildings thereabout within the abbey walls.... The persons that cast the lead into fodders plucked up all the seats in the choir where the monks sat when they said [Illustration: _Fountains Hall._ Photo. Frith. Art Repro. Co. ] service, which were like to seats in minsters, and burned them and melted the lead therewith, although there was wood plenty within a flight-shot of them, for the abbey stood among the woods.” Everybody was busy, he says, pilfering what he could and hiding it among the rocks, “so that it seemeth that every person bent himself to filch and spoil what he could.” At Fountains, the ashes of such fires remained until the last century, amidst the general wreck.