DIEULACRES ABBEY

W

HEN I began to write books the knowledge of bits of history and topography that had been gotten in an active life through years. of wanderings in and beyond Cheshire on business, sport, or pleasure, the legendary lore or folklore had to be confirmed and added to by "book-larnin' as the unlettered term it. Ormerod's history I read right through, some parts of it many times. There are also other histories, and in my early readings I was often puzzled with the mention of Dieulacres Abbey, which apparently was a Cheshire abbey, but which I had never heard of and could not find. This once rich abbey was founded by an all-powerful Earl of Chester, had great estates in the county, including the church revenues of Sandbach, Leek, and Rudyard, but was in wild lands outside the county boundary, and even a hundred years ago was said to be buried, grass-grown, and utterly forgotten.

The name of Dieulacres Abbey is spelt all sorts of ways. I find four different spellings on one page of old records. The site is close to the town of Leek, where Hugh Cyveliok died. It seems probable to me that he may have been killed or had some accident when hunting that history has not recorded, for here his son transferred a colony of white monks from Pulton on the Dee. The monks were taken from the fury of the Welsh, but they may have looked back longingly on that pleasant land when they found themselves in those bleak, barren, wind-swept moors, where even the place-names reminded them of wolves, or boars, or stones.

Randle Blondevill (or white town, from the place of his birth), Earl of Chester, was a remarkable man, perhaps the most powerful man in England, a Prince of Wales, had five earldoms, two or three wives but no children, was a Crusader, did "great atchievements,"

and wrote a book! He married a prince's widow, Constance in name. They were divorced, and each married again, she dying of leprosy in a year, and he marrying another widow, when he ought to have been ware of any more. He locked the French king up in Lincoln Cathedral with his followers, and made him swear on the gospels on the altar that he would never lay claim to England, but hasten off out of the realm at once. Then he brought the youth Henry the Third from a cowshed

EARL RANDLE

223 and set him on the altar, and caused all the nobles to swear fealty to him. He was in the wars in France, and went on a crusade. where, on the return journey, a great storm arose, and when the ship was nearly lost he told the sailors that if they could only keep it going to midnight they would be all right and safe, for then his

monks would be praying for him. All which turned out as he prophesied, and the storm assuaged at once; at least the monks said so. Something that we may still see did come to pass from this crusade, for he built Beeston Castle, with its towers copied from Byzantium or Constantinople, and some of them remain to this day.

He must have had great ideas and grand chances as

to property speculations, for he bought all the land between the Ribble and the Mersey for forty marks of silver. That is, nearly all Lancashire, for what I have elsewhere calculated would probably be the equivalent of a hundred sacks of flour. At to-day's value of silver

in the centre of any of

it would not buy a yard of land the big towns. There were no rates in those days, and yet we are often being told that as the rates go up the value of the land must go down. The bargain certainly shows that Lancashire then was little better than a barren wilderness, costing as much to keep as it was worth, and probably to help it he gave a charter to our neighbouring borough of Salford.

This earl also gave to the Duttons of Dutton the right to license all the minstrels and lechers of Cheshire, a right which was confirmed to them by Queen Elizabeth, when even wandering fiddlers had to get a licence from them. I am rather wandering from the legend of the abbey, and had better tell it in my own way. The original is in Latin, with some Norman or French words, and though several historians quote them, none of them explain the joke.

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The earl, it appears, had had a bad night and been. dreaming. Perhaps he had eaten too many black puddings, for Cheshire folk were always fond of them, or perhaps it was because he had once refused to pay tithes to the Pope. He woke his wife, and said, 'Clemence, my dear, I must build a monastery.' She replied in French, "Deux encres," and he, pleased at the words, said, "That shall be its name, Deulacres." Then, when he laid the foundation-stone of the abbey, he cried in French "Deux encres," and all the people answered, "Amen," and so the place was called "Deulacres" as the name of God was invoked upon it. Her words literally translated would be "two inks" (double it and let us have it in writing), but they probably meant "The gods increase it," or "God's cross." No one tells