Many stories are related of the doings and misdoings of the brotherhood at Whalley in those far-off days; but the legend that they disturbed the peace of the fair anchorites who had their habitation in the hermitage close by the great gate of the abbey must surely be a fable, though tradition affirms that the lady hermits were not always spotless in their lives, and a more trustworthy authority records that one of them, Isold de Heton, a fair widow, who, in the first transports of her grief, had vowed herself to Heaven, led a disorderly life there, to the scandal of the abbey and the prejudice of the morals of the fraternity. Here is the story of the profane doings of this dissolute votaress, as set forth in the representation made to that paragon of virtue, King Henry the Eighth, of blessed memory:— Be it remembered that the please and habitacion of the said recluse is within place halowed and nere to the gate of the seyd monastre, and that the weemen that have been attendynge to the seyd recluse have recorse dailly into the seyd monastre for the levere of brede, ale, kychin and other things; the whych is not accordyng to be had withyn such religyous plases: and how that dyvers that been anchores in the seyd plase have broken owte and departed: and in especyal how that now Isold of Heton is broken owte, and so levying at her owne liberte by this two yere and mor, like as she had never been professyd; and that dyvers of the wymen that have been servants there, have been misgovernyd and gotten with chyld within the seyd plase halowyd, to the great displeasuance of hurt and disclander of the abbey aforeseyd, &c. On this report the pious Henry, as in duty bound, suppressed the little hermitage, and cast its inmates upon the world. The Calder still flows on bright and clear as it did of yore; but the glories of the abbey of Whalley have for ever passed away, and the roofless ruined walls serve only to remind us of the days of the old Catholicism; whilst across the valley, crowning a thickly-wooded eminence that rises from the slopes of Longridge Fell, we can see the tall towers of Stonyhurst, which may be said to typify the new—for the monasticism which Henry so ruthlessly rooted out has been revived in a new form in the stately mansion which once formed the home of the Sherburns. To that seminary of learning, the college of the fathers of the Society of Jesus, and the _alma mater_ of so many of the Catholic gentry of England, let us now bend our steps, taking in the way the little hamlet of Mitton, and its ancient church, in which so many of the former lords of Stonyhurst repose.