Leaving the shadowy realm of legend and romance, and confining ourselves to the prosaic facts of history, we find that in 1188, when the pious Pembroke endowed the religious house at Cartmel, he directed that it should be free and released from all subjection to any other house. With the view of preventing its ever being transformed into an abbey he further directed that from time to time, on the death of a prior, the canons should select two of their number and present them to him as the patron, or his heirs, and from them should be chosen the one that should serve as prior in succession, and who should have the name and office of prior only, and that an abbey should never be made of the Priory, the charter of foundation concluding in these words:--"This house have I founded for the increase of holy religion, giving and conceding to it every kind of liberty that the mouth can utter or the heart of man conceive: whosoever, therefore, shall cause loss or injury to the said house or its immunities, may he incur the curse of God, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the other saints of God, besides my particular malediction." How far the invoked curses of the Blessed Virgin or the "particular malediction" of William Earl of Pembroke tended to the protection of the Priory of Cartmel we shall hereafter see. William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, the founder of the Priory of Cartmel, was a notable personage, and filled a large space in the history of his generation. His first wife was a daughter of the redoubtable Strongbow, the real conqueror of Ireland, and the one who in the reign of Henry II. first brought that country under the dominion of the English Crown. After her death, he married for his second wife a daughter of that faithless tyrant King John, a fortunate circumstance for both King and country, for the Earl became the trusted adviser of the sovereign, and by his tact and judgment won from him the great charter of English liberties, and in so doing enabled the recreant monarch to retain his crown.