204 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



harried and then colonised the district. From this glimpse of 

 it lit up with flames and red with blood darkness closes round 

 Ravendale until its name emerges in Domesday Book as form- 

 ing part of the enormous possessions of Count Alan of Brittany. 

 In King John's reign, 1202, one of his descendants, also an 

 Alan, together with his wife Petronilla, became Founders of a 

 Praemonstratensian Abbey at Beau Port in Brittany, itself now 

 a similar, only more majestic ruin than its Lincolnshire 

 daughter. To this abbey Alan gave " in pure and perpetual 

 alms-gift for the salvation of my soul and the souls of my 

 father, and mother, and wife Petronilla, all my churches in the 

 Soke of Waltham, together with all my vill of West Ravendale 

 for the clothing of its canons." His churches in the Soke of 

 Waltham (a village three miles from Ravendale) were those 

 belonging to some seven or eight villages of this district, in- 

 cluding Beelsby, Hatcliffe, and Barnoldby. The alien Priory 

 of Ravendale was founded by the Abbot of Beau Port in order 

 to look after the English property of his abbey. The next that 

 is heard of it gives us a curious glimpse into the manners of 

 the period. In 1333 William, the Prior of Ravendale, is found 

 coursing a hare in the warren of one Edmund Bacon at Beseby 

 (four miles away), which, however, escaped from his greyhounds. 

 He was summoned for the trespass and fined 10, showing that 

 there was a healthy spirit of litigation abroad in those days.* 

 With few vicissitudes this arrangement continued until 1439, 

 when Henry VI. granted Ravendale, with all its appurtenances, 

 and the advowsons of its churches to the Chapter of the 

 Collegiate Church of Southwell. The Ecclesiastical Commis- 

 sioners, forty years ago, unhappily dissolved that corporation, 

 and vesting the revenues of Southwell Church in themselves 



* Compare Chaucer's Monk (Canterbury Tales ; Prologue] : 

 " Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight, 

 Of pricking and of hunting for the hare 

 Was all his lust ; for no cost wolde he spare." 



