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During the Revolution Moise Piedefer bought up the nationalized land, pulled down abbeys and churches with all the zeal of his ancestors, oddly enough, and married a Catholic, the only daughter of a member of the Convention who had perished on the scaffold. This ambitious Piedefer died in 1819, leaving a little girl of remarkable beauty.
Besides these the architects and artisans who built the castles and fortresses, and the cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches, whose erection throughout the land was such a marked characteristic of the period, were immigrants from Normandy.
I was reminded of Gustave Dore's engravings of mediaeval pilgrims making their way to isolated abbeys perched on mountain heights. Tiny springs oozed out here and there and trickled across the red earth; between the trees we had momentary glimpses of beautiful and extensive vistas.
These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness.
He started first in the North, under show of inflicting punishment for the encouragement that the Religious had given to the late rebellions; and one by one the great abbeys were tottering. Furness and Sawley had already fallen, with Jervaulx and the other houses, and Holme Cultram was placed under the care of a superior who could be trusted to hand over his charge when called upon.
The supremacy of Rome, set up at the Council of Whitby, was fostered and sustained by the introduction of the Italian arts. Vast quantities of books were imported. Stately Abbeys were rising along the coast, and students were flocking to seek the fruits of the new learning in well-filled libraries and bustling schools.
The bold stand which the monastic orders had made against benevolences had never been forgiven, while the revenues of their foundations offered spoil vast enough to fill the royal treasury and secure a host of friends for the new reforms. It was acknowledged that about a third of the houses, including the bulk of the larger abbeys, were fairly and decently conducted.
The Monastery of La Trappe is one of the most ancient Abbeys of the order of Benedictins: it was established under the pontificate of Innocent the Second, during the reign of Louis VII. in the year 1140, by Rotrou, the second Count of Perche, and is said to have been built to accomplish a vow, made in the peril of shipwreck.
When Lanfranc had been sent to the Pope by William with a view to making some arrangement by which the King could retain his wife Matilda and at the same time the good offices of the Church, his side of the bargain consisted in undertaking to build two great abbeys at Caen, one for men and one for women.
If so we can motor over to Eastminster, where you can poke about in dust and dirt to your heart's content. Or is it something more learned abbeys and architecture? If so there are Castle Hill and the ruins of Bessmoor Priory. Or pictures at Longmead or scenery? Make your choice. The only things we can not supply are social functions.
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