tradition, which indeed is often the only external evidence we have for
the authorship of much more important things.

Now to return to the Nunappleton poetry.

In a poem of 776 lines Marvell tells the story and describes the charms
of the house which Lord Fairfax built for himself during the war, and to
which, as just narrated, he retired in the summer of 1650. The story is
only too familiar a one, being writ large over many a fine property.
Appleton House was Church loot. In the time of Henry, "the majestic lord
that burst the bonds of Rome," the old house at Nunappleton was a
Cistercian nunnery, a religious house. In 1542 the community was
suppressed and its property appropriated by the great-grandfather of the
Lord-General--one Sir Thomas Fairfax. The religious buildings were
pulled down and a new secular house rose in their place. In these bare
and sordid facts there is not much room for poetry, but there is a story
thrown in. Shortly before 1518 a Yorkshire heiress, bearing the
unromantic name of Isabella Thwaites, was living in the Cistercian
abbey, under the guardianship of the abbess, the Lady Anna Langton.
Property under the care of the Church is always supposed to be in
danger, and the Lady Anna was freely credited with the desire to make a
nun of her ward, and so keep her broad acres in Wharfedale and her
messuages in York for the use of Mother Church. None the less, the young
lady was allowed to go about and visit her neighbours, and whilst so
doing she fell in love with Sir William Fairfax, or he fell in love with
her or with her estates. Thereupon, so the story proceeds, the abbess
kept her ward a close prisoner within the nunnery walls. Legal
proceedings were taken, but in the end the privacy of the nunnery was
invaded, and Miss Thwaites was abducted and married to Sir William
Fairfax at the church of Bolton Percy. The lady abbess had to submit to