And cursed bee the master-cook,
Oh cursed may he bee!
I proffer'd him my own heart's blood,
From death to set her free.
Then all in blacke this lord did mourne,
And, for his daughter's sake,
He judged her cruell stepmother
To be burnt at a stake.
Likewise he judged the master-cook
In boiling lead to stand;
And made the simple scullion-boye
The heire of all his land.
[Illustration: WHALLEY ABBEY.
_Drawn by G. Pickering. Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]
THE ABBOT OF WHALLEY
"Earl Percy there his ancyent spred,
The half moone shining all soe faire;
The Norton's ancyent had the crosse,
And the five wounds our Lord did beare."
--_The Rising in the North_.
The Cistercian Abbey of Whalley was founded by Henry Lacy, Earl of
Lincoln, who, having given the advowson of the parish to the abbey of
Stanlaw in Cheshire, the monks procured an appropriation, and removed
hither in 1296, increasing their number to sixty. The parish church is
nearly coeval with the introduction of Christianity into the north of
England. This foundation now became the nucleus of a flourishing
establishment, "continuing," as Dr Whitaker informs us, "for two
centuries and a half, to exercise unbounded charity and hospitality; to
adorn the site thus chosen with a succession of magnificent buildings;
to protect the tenants of its ample domains in the enjoyment of
independence and plenty; to educate and provide for their children; to
employ, clothe, feed, and pay many labourers, herdsmen, and shepherds;
to exercise the arts and cultivate the learning of the times; yet
unfortunately at the expense of the secular incumbents, whose endowments
they had swallowed up, and whose functions they had degraded into those
of pensionary vicars or mendicant chaplains.
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