Page:Fountains Abbey.djvu/44

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it to the monks, adding to it the forest of Warsall. Also Serlo de Pembroke, a young courtier—juvenis quidam de domo regis—lying at the point of death, gave them his country-seat at Cayton, and when he died was buried in the monks' graveyard, inter sanctos. This was probably the first interment in the little cemetery which awaited the brethren to the east of the rising church. About the same time, the abbot got a farm at Aldbrough—grangiam fertilem—in a place which even from Roman times had been a fruitful region.

Presently, in 1135, King Stephen being at York, the monastery was exempted by him from payment of "taxes, danegelds, assises, pleas and scutages." Also, a little later, in 1141, Pope Innocent exempted the monastery from payment of tithes.

From that day, says Serlo the narrator, who had now become a member of the monastic household, the Lord bles-

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