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Updated: June 19, 2025
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.
In October they suddenly swooped down on the king, when he was staying at Byland abbey. Some troops which accompanied him were encamped on a hill between Byland and Rievaux. They were attacked by the Scots and defeated; their leader, John of Brittany, was taken prisoner, and Edward only avoided capture by a precipitate flight from Byland to Bridlington.
Four miles from Byland is Coxwold, once the residence of the celebrated Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, &c. It is a beautiful and romantic retreat, excelling the "laughing vine-clad hills of France," which attracted the spirit of our English Rabelais to luxuriate amidst them.
'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 beautiful Hambleton Hills begin to rise up steeply about two miles north of Coxwold, and there we come upon the ruins of Byland Abbey.
He retired hither after being perplexed and fatigued with useless crusades, and suffering the deprivation of nearly all his property by Henry II. Martin Stapylton, Esq. the present proprietor of Byland, discovered from some ancient manuscripts the precise situation in the ruin, where were deposited the bones of the illustrious chieftain; and after removing these relics of mortality which had been hid for six hundred years, he conveyed them in his carriage to Myton, and interred them in the church-yard.
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