OLD CLEEVE ABBEY. 19 
both lay and clerical, suffered at the hands of these Norman 
tyrants in the reign of Stephen; nor does their state appear 
to have materially improved till the troublous times of 
Henry Ill. rendered it necessary for the leaders of both 
parties, more or less, to court popular favour. It was 
towards the close of this miserable period, about the 
year 1188, that William de Romare, youngest son, or, 
perhaps, nephew of the Earl of Lincoln, being religiously 
inclined, “ for the health of the soul of King Richard, Henry 
his father, their ancestors and successors, as well as for 
the health of his own soul and the soul of Phillipa his 
wife, and for the souls of alltheir progenitors and posterity, 
founded in this, his manor of Cleeve, to the honour of the 
blessed Virgin Mary, a Monastery of Cistercian Monks, 
and bestowed thereon all his lands in Cleeve in pure and 
perpetuable alms, with all liberties, immunities, customs, 
and other appurtenances.” 
These Cistereian Mönks, a branch of the great Bene- 
dietine order, who took their name from Cisteaux, or 
Cistereium, in the Bishopriec of Chalons,in Burgundy, did not 
take up their abode in England till the year 1128, only 60 
years before the foundation of Cleeve, and therefore pro- 
bably had a larger proportion of foreigners among them 
than those orders which had taken root in this island at 
an earlier period. Hence they were more likely to exert a 
beneficial influence upon the Norman nobility than the 
parochial elergy, who had neither wealth nor power to give 
them weight with their military neighbours, or than a body 
of monks of Saxon descent, whose origin would have been 
enough to expose them to oppression and plunder from the 
hands of their foreign conquerors. Indeed when we find 
the name of Richard de Bret, no doubt a member of the 
neighbouring baronial house of Breto (notorious as having 
