York Guides

Secure in the knowledge that their benefactions would now go to an enduring institution, and stimulated by the convent's growing reputation for strict religious observance, local lords and the great northern families of Mowbray, Percy, Komelli, and the earls of Richmond began to make extensive grants of land to the abbey, and this stream of benefactions continued for almost a century.

His unwilling successor as second abbot was his namesake Richard, prior of Fountains and once sacrist of York, an unworldly and retiring man who shrank from the administrative duties imposed on him by his office and who suffered from a nervous stammer when speaking in public. On his annual journeys to the General Chapter of the Order he repeatedly begged St. Bernard to release him from the abbacy, but his monks would not hear of this, prizing his intense religious conviction and his outstanding gift of resolving their spiritual problems.

It was the misfortune of this shy man to involve Fountains in a damaging public controversy over the succession to the see of York. Archbishop Thurstan died in 1140 and King Stephen procured the election of William Fitzherbert to the archbishopric. The Augustinians and Cistercians were strongly opposed to this and, with the aid of St. Bernard and on the strength of evidence given by Abbot Richard II in Rome, they managed to persuade the pope to withhold recognition of the election. In the midst of this controversy Abbot Richard II died when visiting Clairvaux. St. Bernard, having in mind that Fountains had now earned the enmity of the king and had lost its patron the archbishop and both the guiding spirits of the secession from York, intervened to provide the abbey with a strong head.

Henry Murdac, abbot of Vauclair, was sent to England ostensibly to advise the convent in the election of a new abbot, but actually to be elected abbot himself in 1144. A Yorkshireman and a friend of St. Bernard, he was a zealot forceful to the point of being overbearing. As the first abbot of Fountains to have been trained in continental Cistercian practice he set about reforming the abbey and rooting out the last remnants of Benedictine custom that lingered from the old days at York. Under his rule the convent continued to grow in numbers and reputation, and colonies were sent out to found new daughter-houses at Woburn in Bedfordshire, at Kirkstall in Yorkshire, at Vaudey in. Lincolnshire, and over the sea in Norway between 1145 and 1147.

Abbot Murdac threw himself into the attack on William Fitzherbert with energy, bringing accusations against him at the Council of Reims that led to the archbishop's deposition in 1147. Fitzherbert's supporters were not slow to retaliate. They marched on Fountains with the intention of killing the abbot and, failing to find him, sacked the buildings and set fire to them. Later that year Murdac was himself elected archbishop of York, but the king refused to invest him with the temporalities of the see and feeling in York ran so high against him that he took up residence in Ripon.

Circumstances compelled Archbishop Henry to remain at Ripon from 1147 to 1151, and throughout these years he continued to impose his will on Fountains, treating the abbots elected in his stead as no more than deputies. The first was Abbot Maurice, a scholar of repute who had been subprior of Durham before joining the Cistercian Order and becoming second abbot of Rievaulx and then abbot of Fountains.
In three months Abbot Maurice had decided that his position at Fountains was intolerable and had retired to Rievaulx, to be succeeded by Thorold, another learned monk of that abbey. Abbot Thorold ruled until 1150, but he was too independent for the domineering archbishop's liking and St. Bernard removed him from office. He retired to Rievaulx and eventually became abbot of Trois-Fontaines in Champagne.

Once again St. Bernard felt it necessary to intervene in order to provide Fountains with an abbot capable of handling the situation, and his choice was an astute one. Abbot Richard III, elected in 1150, was a native of York who had become a monk at Clairvaux and had been precentor there and abbot of Vauclair. He was a man of austere life who had been a personal friend of Archbishop Henry in France and who was tactful enough to keep the peace with him until the archbishop died in 1153. After this, a reconciliation was arranged between the abbey and the restored Archbishop William, ending the quarrel that had disturbed and weakened Fountains for thirteen years.

The disturbances had left their mark internally as well as externally. In his early years, Abbot Richard III was faced with dissension amongst his monks and had to go to the length of expelling those he took to be the ringleaders of the opposition. He ruled for twenty years, and by the time of his death Fountains, Byland, and Rievaulx had come to be regarded as the three 'shining lights' of the Order in England. In his time the abbey sent out a colony to found its eighth and last daughter-house at Meaux in East Yorkshire.

Robert, formerly abbot of Pipewell, succeeded in 1170, and showed himself to be a capable administrator who ruled firmly and well, leaving behind a name for hospitality to rich and poor alike. He was followed in 1180 by the last of the old school of zealots, Abbot William, who had left the Augustinians of Gisborough to join the Cistercians under St. Robert of Newminster and had risen to be abbot of that house. He came to Fountains already an old man wasted by continual austerities, and the brethren feared that he might not have the strength to carry out his duties. The fear proved groundless,for he governed well and vigorously through wisely chosen subordinates and when in 1190 he was laid to rest in the chapter house it was remembered of him that he had ruled with gentleness.

After this succession of energetic administrators, Fountains could afford an abbot distinguished more for his grasp of spiritual than temporal matters. Abbot Ralph Haget came of a good landed northern family and had been a soldier in his youth. He entered Fountains partly on the advice of his friend Sinnulph, a lay-brother of the abbey, and partly because of an experience in a village chapel where a voice from the Cross admonished him to change his way of life. He was elected abbot of Fountains after a rough passage of nine years as abbot of Kirkstall, where he showed no great talent for business. But the brethren loved and respected him for his spiritual gifts, his charm and his wit, and during the famine of 1194 he organized a refugee camp for the destitute and starving outside the abbey gates. Nor was his rule without material benefit, for both his father and his brother made important gifts of land to the abbey.