and can legitimately infer, is that peace was restored to the Convent, and it was enabled to persevere in the old tracks.

King Edward II, on his return from one of his expeditions into Scotland, and his nobility refreshed themselves at this Abbey, and while there news was brought that the Scots came after in great power and no less haste. "The King and his nobles, minding more their meat than the safety of their subjects or their own honour, neglected the message; but the Scots, pursuing eagerly their attempt, came suddenly within sight, and compelled to shameful flight the King and his men, which never ceased till they had recovered Yorke for their succour.'

In Pope Nicholas' Taxation the value of the temporalities of the Abbey amounted, in 1291, to £241 per ann. The valuation of the Monastery in 26 Henry VIII amounted to the gross income of £351:14:6. The clear revenue was £278: 10:2 per ann.

At the dissolution the site was granted, in exchange for other lands, in 30 Henry VIII (1538), to Thomas Earl of Rutland, a descendant (says Collins in his Peerage) of Walter Espec, the founder of the Abbey; and by Catherine, a daughter and heiress of Roger Earl of Rutland, became the property of her husband, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whose son (the second Duke of Buckingham) sold it to Sir Charles Duncombe, Knt. Thomas Duncombe, Esq., the grandson of Sir Charles, was the owner of the site in 1758. It now belongs to the Earl of Feversham, the head of the Duncombe family.

The pension-list shows that Rowlande Blyton, the last Abbot, received a pension of 100 marks, and the rest of the monks various sums amounting in the whole to £86 116.

There is an imperfect impression, on red wax, of the common seal of the Abbey, attached to a conventual lease temp. Henry VIII in the Augmentation Office.' It represents an abbot, with his crozier, standing between two figures, of whom little more remains than their feet. Scarcely any part of the legend remains. There is a

1 See Plate, fig. No. 4. The figs. 1, 2, 3, are described in Mr. W. de Gray Birch's Catalogue of Seals in the British Museum, vol. i, Nos. 3905-9.

1. A Counterseal, 12th century. "Impertita tego quæ sunt michi clausa revelo (?)" (Very doubtful if Rievaulx.)

2. " Signum Abbatis Rievallis", A. D. 1191 x 1222.

3. "Sigillum Abbatis de Rievalle", A.D. 1220.

4. "S'. Abbatis et Conventus Sancte Marie Rievallis", A.D. 1315.

counterseal, the subject of which is a man on horseback destroying a dragon; no doubt St. George and the Dragon. Dugdale says Peck has given a drawing from an impression of this seal in his volume, whence it appears that the form of the seal was oval. Above the abbot is the figure of the Virgin with Our Saviour in her arms, seated. The inscription is

s': ABBATIS ET CONVENTVS SANCTE : MARIE:

RIEVALLIS.

Peck's impression was appended to a deed of the 46th Edward III (1372).

A fairly perfect impression of this Abbey seal has recently been presented to the British Museum, and is in the Manuscript Department (xcv, 19a, b).

NOTES ON SPECIMENS OF INTERLACING

ORNAMENT

WHICH OCCUR AT KIRKSTALL ABBEY,
NEAR LEEDS, YORKSHIRE.

BY J. T. IRVINE, ESQ.

THE present age is remarkable, for the many attempts made to reproduce old fallacies, and the singular amount of useless labour expended in hopeless endeavours to give such "fads" a rickety existence. In this way architectural studies suffer equally with other branches of general knowledge. Hence a special "hobby", for the moment, with many is that of abandoning and ignoring all previous progress, together with the conclusions and deductions arrived at by Britton, Rickman, and a host of more recent authorities, on and in the study of preNorman art, and to class as of Saxon age, all specimens of interlacing ornament they come across. This quite irrespective of its position, and accompanying circumstances, which often force even the very assertors, to be under the sad necessity of "whitewashing" their difficulties, by the suggestion of such ornament being "reused materials"!

Saxon structures of stone, as might be expected, are neither numerous, nor, when found, often of very early date, but mostly of that period when the iron hand of Cnut ("Denmark's joy") had made the wilderness, his father produced, to blossom; and he had led, for the first time, a West Saxon fleet through Scandinavian tideways. Or of the unquiet quietness of the Confessor's reign, when the contests of that grandest of men, Magnus the Good, against Swend-Uulf's son, was exhausting the energy that else might have dangerously disturbed the Saxon kingdom in England.

Of the use of interlacing ornament, there were truly two periods. The first, simplest, and best, that of the Saxon age, ending in 1066; the best ornament formed of a double strap-line; but towards the close, when Norman