26 CHRONICLE OF DALE ABBEY. 
Not long afterwards there came to Depedale, as he had done 
before, the Abbot (already) spoken of, for the sake of visiting his 
brethren, wishing that all things should be right, and he found 
them enduring a very poor life, having few things in the granary, 
and fewer still for the bakehouse (and) brewery. Grieving for their 
necessities, the holy man said that it seemed painful and unjust 
that his brethren should be disordered by hunger and want in 
the desert, for whom he was able sufficiently to provide the 
necessary food and clothing at home, according to the rule and 
requirements of the Order. Therefore, after that he had returned 
to the Monastery . . . . . among the aforesaid 
brethren, he recalled the sotendial brethren tarrying at Depedale. 
Whilst these things were taking place, it happened that William 
Fitz-Ralph (of whom I have made mention above) purchased the 
village of Stanley from Nicholas, the brother of William Child, 
of Trowell, by rendering to him the service of the fourth part of 
a knight’s fee in current scutage. The same Nicholas held 
Trowell, Bocolscoute, Lamcotte, and Lynsay of the Lord of 
Caym, for one scutage in any of those towns for Honwys 
Leston and Stanford, of which things I have thonght it better 
to be silent at this time than to tell anything because they do 
not belong to the matter in hand. But the said William Fitz- 
Ralph had purposed to give the aforesaid town of Stanley to 
Geoffrey de Salicosa Mara, when he married Matilda his daughter. 
But Geoffrey himself and his wife, as they had made a vow to God, 
went to their lord, saying, ‘‘ Thou hast known well, master, that 
we have lived together in wedlock for seven years and more, and 
_God has deprived us of the fruit of the womb, leaving us without 
the solace of children ; and therefore with the greatest earnestness 
we pray, that with respect to the town of Stanley which you 
propose to give us, you be disposed to offer it to God, and con- 
fer it on the Abbot of the Praemonstratensian Order, to found a 
house of religion in your park of the same town, that the God the 
Highest Himself, the retributor of good deeds, beholding the . 
pious devotion of our humility, may give us the pleasure of 
wished-for offspring, and on account of such a transaction, to 
