2 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
mas here in 1315-16, and Edward ITI. granted a charter 
to the town of Nottingham, from Clipstone, in the first 
year of his reign. 
Three abbeys had their sites within the limits of the 
forest—viz., Welbeck, Newstead, and Rufford, and they 
were each selected by their founders with that exquisite 
taste which distinguished the “monks of old,” though 
the holy fathers paid more regard to the requirements 
of the kitchen in their selection, than to the mere beauty 
of the scenery that surrounded their abodes. 
The abbey of Welbeck was founded in the reign of 
Henry II. by Thomas de Cuckney for Premonstratensian 
canons, and the adjoining manor of Cuckney was settled 
upon it by John Hotham, Bishop of Ely, i in 1329. It 
was the head of all the houses of this order in England 
and Wales. 
Newstead was founded by Henry IL. for a colony of 
Augustine monks in 1170, and it was granted at the 
dissolution to Sir John Byron, who converted it into a 
residence. This Sir John was an ancestor of the poet, 
who thus in Don Juan described the building :— 
“The mansion’s self was vast and venerable, 
With more of the monastic than has been 
Elsewhere preserved; the cloisters still were stable, 
The cells too, and refectory I ween. 
An exquisite small chapel had been able, 
Still unimpaired to decorate the scene: 
The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk, 
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.” 
Rufford Abbey was inhabited by Cistercian monks, 
for whom it was founded in 1148 by the Ear! of Lincoln, 
and after the dissolution of monasteries it came by ex- 
change into the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury. In 
