Bertram de Verdun, lord of Alton, occupied a middle position between the old feudal aristocracy and the new men who were becoming their rivals. He married Earl Ferrers’ niece, and by his father’s marriage was connected with Geoffrey de Clinton, Henry I’s Chamberlain. He himself was one of Henry II’s most trusted and trustworthy officials. On a visit to his relative, the Constable of Normandy, he was taken to see the Cistercian house which the Constable’s step-father had founded. De Verdun was so impressed that he determined to found a similar house in Staffordshire, where the growth of law and order gave opportunity for developing his lands. He requested the Abbot of Aunay to send some of his monks to the site he offered near Alton. Two years later (1180) they removed to a more suitable spot a few miles distant, where the beautiful ruins of Croxden Abbey still stand. They well illustrate the simplicity which characterised Cistercian architecture, though the church was almost unique among houses of the order in England in having a semi-circular apse with five radiating chapels, instead of the usual plain square end.[6] This was copied from the parent house at Aunay, and it emphasises the peculiarity that Croxden, unlike most of the Cistercian abbeys in England, was the offshoot of a foreign house. Farther northwards the Cistercians could not yet penetrate. But the Earls of Chester were meanwhile engaged in developing the estates they held there, and early in the thirteenth century Ralf Blundeville, who played an independent and honourable part in the difficult and dishonourable times of King John’s reign, was strong enough to take definite steps. He established a market at Leek in 1208. In 1214, the very year when the Papal Legate received at Burton Abbey Archbishop Langton’s spirited protest against his intrusion into the affairs of the State and Church of England, Ralf Blundeville founded the abbey at Dieulacres. The site was a little north of Leek. He gave it to the Cistercians, the skilful farmers and agriculturists, bestowing upon them wide lands and extensive privileges. They were to be his agents for the civilisation of the Moorlands, and well they performed their work. Soon afterwards a third Cistercian house was founded at Hulton by Henry de Audley, constable of the neighbouring castle of Newcastle-under-Lyme, who had for some time been engaged in building up an estate there. Hulton Abbey had, later, a pottery where tiles and other articles were made. There were nunneries at Brewood, on the western border of the county, and at Fairwell, near the road between Lichfield and Rugeley. Both were Benedictine. The friars reached Staffordshire in the reign of Henry III. There were Grey Friars at Lichfield and Stafford and Black Friars at Newcastle-under-Lyme. At Radford, near Stafford, a house of Lepers, with a master and friars of the Holy Sepulchre, stood for some time. The house of the Austin