During his last year at Coxwold, when his rollicking, boisterous spirits were much subdued, Sterne completed his ‘Sentimental Journey.’ He also relished more than before the country delights of the village, describing it in one of his letters as ‘a land of plenty.’ Every day he drove out in his chaise, drawn by two long-tailed horses, until one day his postilion met with an accident from one of his master’s pistols, which went off in his hand. ‘He instantly fell on his knees,’ wrote Sterne, ‘and said “Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name”--at which, like a good Christian, he stopped, not remembering any more of it. The affair was not so bad as he had at first thought, for it has only bursten two of his fingers (he says).’ In a letter to his daughter Lydia, who was in Paris acquiring a little French vanity, he writes: ‘My pleasures are few in compass. My poor cat sits purring beside me. Your lively French dog shall have his place on the other side of my fire; but if he is as devilish as when I first saw him, I must tutor him, for _I will not have my cat abused_. In short, I will have nothing devilish about me.’ The beautiful Hambleton Hills begin to rise up steeply about two miles north of Coxwold, and there we come upon the ruins of Byland Abbey. Their chief feature is the west end of the church, with its one turret pointing a finger to the heavens, and the lower portion of a huge circular window, without any sign of tracery. This fine example of Early English work is illustrated here. The whole building appears to be the original structure built soon after 1177, for it shows everywhere the transition from Norman to Early English which was taking place at the close of the twelfth century. The founders were twelve monks and an abbot, named Gerald, who left Furness Abbey in 1134, and after some vicissitudes came to the notice of Gundreda, the mother of Roger de Mowbray, either by recommendation or by accident. One account pictures the holy men on their way to Archbishop Thurstan at York, with all their belongings in one wagon drawn by eight oxen, and describes how they chanced to meet Gundreda’s steward as they journeyed near Thirsk. Through Gundreda the monks went to Hode, and after four years received land at Old Byland, where they wished to build an abbey. This position was found to be too close to Rievaulx, whose bells could be too plainly heard, so that five years later the restless community obtained a fresh grant of land from De Mowbray, at a place called Stocking, where they remained until they came to Byland.