runs a brook through meadows, is the stark ruin of the old Nunnery that
was subservient to the proud Abbey on the hill, some of it now roofed in
with galvanised iron sheets and used as cow-sheds.

It is of this Abbey and this Nunnery and of those who dwelt around them
in a day bygone, and especially of that fair and persecuted woman who
came to be known as the Lady of Blossholme, that our story has to tell.



It was dead winter in the year 1535--the 31st of December, indeed. Old
Sir John Foterell, a white-bearded, red-faced man of about sixty years
of age, was seated before the log fire in the dining-hall of his great
house at Shefton, spelling through a letter which had just been brought
to him from Blossholme Abbey. He mastered it at length, and when it was
done any one who had been there to look might have seen a knight and
gentleman of large estate in a rage remarkable even for the time of the
eighth Henry. He dashed the document to the ground; he drank three cups
of strong ale, of which he had already had enough, in quick succession;
he swore a number of the best oaths of the period, and finally, in
the most expressive language, he consigned the body of the Abbot of
Blossholme to the gallows and his soul to hell.

"He claims my lands, does he?" he exclaimed, shaking his fist in the
direction of Blossholme. "What does the rogue say? That the abbot
who went before him parted with them to my grandfather for no good
consideration, but under fear and threats. Now, writes he, this
Secretary Cromwell, whom they call Vicar-General, has declared that the
said transfer was without the law, and that I must hand over the said
lands to the Abbey of Blossholme on or before Candlemas! What was