1136, Founded by William de Gross, Earl of Albemarle and Lord of Holderness--1150, Colonised by monks from Fountains under Abbot Adam and dedicated to St Mary--1317, Richard de Otringham gives land and money to the monastery--1349, The community visited by plague and earthquake, and its numbers greatly reduced--1360, Many valuable tracts of land belonging to the monastery are lost through the inundations of the Humber and encroachments of the sea--15--, Dissolved. Annual revenue, £299, 6s. 4d. Meaux, three miles north of Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was called after a town of the same name in Normandy by those Normans, who, coming over with the all-victorious Conqueror, settled in this part of the country. William de Gross, founder of the abbey, was practically the lord of all Yorkshire. Having been prevented, owing to his many years, from fulfilling a vow made in his youth to journey to Jerusalem, he built and endowed this abbey of which only a fragment of a wall remains, although traces of the foundation of the church are discernible. Some interesting relics have been discovered on the site, including tomb slabs and tessellated pavements which are now preserved in an adjacent house. Meaux Abbey is fortunate in having a faithful and authentic record of its history from its establishment to the reign of Henry VI. This folio volume, written in Latin at the end of the 15th century, is preserved in the British Museum and records many marvellous events. Superstition or faith--who shall say which?--must have inspired narrations such as the following:--“About the first hour there appeared in the sky three circles and two suns; and a dragon of immense size was seen in St Osyth (Osey Island, Essex) sailing the air so close to the earth, that divers houses were burnt by the heat which proceeded from him.” This alarming manifestation is said to have occurred “in the tenth year of Henry II.,” while previously, in the reign of Stephen, “a certain soldier, by name Oswey, chanced to have obtained admission into St Patrick’s Purgatory; and upon his return he gave an account of the joys and pains which he had witnessed there.” The community at Meaux Abbey was severely stricken by the plague in 1349--only ten of the thirty-two monks being left. The same year, a great earthquake “threw the monks so violently from their stalls that they all laid prostrate on the ground.” About the year 1360 the monastery lost large tracts of land, owing to the encroachments of the sea. It would seem as if Meaux escaped the depredations and attacks of marauders and enemies only to fall prey to every possible form of the ravages of nature. [Illustration: FOUNTAINS.] CHAPTER IV YORKSHIRE (WEST RIDING) FOUNTAINS: BOLTON: KIRKSTALL FOUNTAINS (_Cistercian_)