Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/80

Rh court, who told him that God had been most merciful in thus simply chastising him in this world, and revealing the secrets of His will. He advised him at once to send for the abbots, whom he had so ill-treated, and to implore their pardon.

Some truth, doubtless, underlies this story. Certain it is that in the same year, or the next, John founded the Abbey at Beaulieu, then Bellus Locus, so called from its beauty, placing there thirty monks from St. Mary's, at Citeaux, endowing it with land in the New Forest, and manors, and villages, and churches in Berkshire; exempting it from various services and taxes and tolls; giving further, out of his own treasury, a hundred marks; and ordering all other Cistercian Houses to assist in the work. Not only did he do this, but he revoked his gift of the manor of Farendon, which, in the previous year, he had conditionally bestowed on some other Cistercian monks, and now transferred it to Beaulieu, making the House at Faringdon a mere offshoot from the larger building. And the 62