Page:Fountains Abbey.djvu/166

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where. The bells were taken down and carried off; one to be hung, tradition says, in the cathedral tower at Ripon. Finally, the roofs were pulled off, and the lead brought into the dismantled church; and there between the great pillars, betwixt the broken altars of St. Mary and St. Bernard, in a fire whose fuel was the carved work of the choir stalls, it was melted into convenient shape for the market.

An eye-witness has left a description of the spoiling of the dependent house of Roche Abbey. "The sudden spoil fell," he says, "the same day of their departure from the house. . . .The church was the first thing that was put to the spoil, then the abbot's lodging, dorter and frater [i.e., dormitory and refectory] with the cloister and all the buildings thereabout within the abbey walls. . . . The persons that cast the lead into fodders plucked up all the seats in the choir where the monks sat when they said ser-

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