King Stephen and Maud, his queen. It
was a splendid abbey, standing high in rank and power, its income in the
reign of Edward I. being $90,000 a year, an enormous sum for that early
day. The ruins are in fine preservation, and effigies of Stephen and
Maud are on each side of the great east window. For twelve reigns the
charters of sovereigns and bulls of popes confirmed the abbots of
Furness in their extraordinary powers, which extended over the district
of Furness, while the situation of the abbey made them military
chieftains, and they erected a watch-tower on a high hill, from which
signals alarmed the coast on the approach of an enemy. The church is
three hundred and four feet long, and from the centre rose a tower,
three of the massive supporting pillars of which remain, but the tower
has fallen and lies a mass of rubbish; the stained glass from the great
east window having been removed to Bowness Church, in Westmorelandshire.
The abbey enclosure, covering eighty-five acres, was surrounded by a
wall, the ruins of which are now covered with thick foliage. This
renowned abbey was surrendered and dismantled in Henry VIII.'s reign;
the present hotel near the ruins was formerly the abbot's residence.

The river Ribble, which flows into the Irish Sea through a wide estuary,
drains the western slopes of the Pennine Hills, which divide Lancashire
from Yorkshire. Up in the north-western portion of Lancashire, near the
bases of these hills, is a moist region known as the parish of Mitton,
where, as the poet tells us,

"The Hodder, the Calder, Ribble, and rain
All meet together in Mitton domain."

In Mitton parish, amid the woods along the Hodder and on the north side
of the valley of the Ribble, stands the splendid domed towers of the
baronial edifice of Stonyhurst, now the famous Jesuit College of
England, where the sons of the Catholic nobility and gentry are
educated. The present building is about three hundred years old, and
quaint gardens adjoin it, while quite an extensive park surrounds the
college. Not far away are Clytheroe Castle and the beautiful ruins of
Whalley Abbey. The Stonyhurst gardens are said to remain substantially
as their designer, Sir Nicholas Sherburne, left them. A capacious
water-basin is located in the centre, with the leaden statue of Regulus
in chains standing in the midst of the water. Summer-houses with tall
pointed roofs are at each lower extremity of the garden, while an
observatory i