This was the second Cistercian house established in England, which before long absorbed so much of the Island, that the Abbot of Quarr became a petty prince. “Happy was that gentleman that could get his son to attend upon him,” says Oglander: such offices as treasurer, steward, chief butler, and rent-gatherer of the abbey being sought by the cadets of the chief families. But after the Dissolution it soon fell into decay, monuments and all being sold; and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir John Oglander found that the very site of the church had already been forgotten by old men, even by one who remembered the days of its glory. At this time it had been bought for £3000 by Mr Fleming, descendant of the Dutch mason brought over from the Low Country by the founder to carry out the work. “Such,” moralises the knight, “is the inconstancy of Fortune, which, with the aid of her servant Time, pulleth down great things and setteth up poor things.” Since then, the outlines have been more carefully uncovered, or traced, including part of a wall with which, by license of Edward III., this abbey was fortified against the attacks of sea-rovers, and of the French invaders who often assailed the Island. Among the old monuments recorded by Oglander was one to a “great Monsieur of France” slain here in Richard II.’s reign. The structure, of which some interesting fragments remain, was in part adapted as farm buildings, the refectory turned into a barn. But Quarr has now been bought by the community of French Benedictines that some years ago crossed the Channel to Appuldurcombe on the southern downs of the Island; and it is understood that they propose to restore the abbey as a congenial home. A swarm of nuns of the same Order has lately settled at Ryde, after a temporary residence at Northwood, near Cowes. Carisbrooke houses other foreign _religieux_, who have also a school at Ventnor. Thus the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, heretic England giving sanctuary to the churchmen of Catholic France.