[Illustration:  “Beneath whose peaceful shades great warriors rest.”]

Before long the monks prospered:  Hugh, the Dean of York, left them his fortune, and in 1203 they began to build the abbey.  Other helpers came forward, and in course of time Fountains became one of the richest monasteries in Yorkshire.  The seven yew trees were long remembered as the “Seven Sisters,” but only one of them now remains.  Many great warriors were buried beneath the peaceful shade of Fountains Abbey, and many members of the Percy family, including Lord Henry de Percy, who, after deeds of daring and valour on many a hard-fought field as he followed the banner of King Edward I all through the wilds of Scotland, prayed that his body might find a resting-place within the walls of Fountains Abbey.  Lands were given to the abbey, until there were 60,000 acres attached to it and enclosed in a ring fence.  One of the monks from Fountains went to live as a hermit in a secluded spot adjoining the River Nidd, a short distance from Knaresborough, where he became known as St. Robert the Hermit.  He lived in a cave hewn out of the rock on one side of the river, where the banks were precipitous and covered with trees.  One day the lord of the forest was hunting, and saw smoke rising above the trees.  On making inquiries, he was told it came from the cave of St. Robert.  His lordship was angry, and, as he did not know who the hermit was, ordered him to be sent away and his dwelling destroyed.  These orders were in process of being carried out, and the front part of the cave, which was only a small one, had in fact been broken down, when his lordship heard what a good man St. Robert the Hermit was.  He ordered him to be reinstated, and his cave reformed, and he gave him some land.  When the saint died, the monks of Fountains Abbey—­anxious, like most of their order, to possess the remains of any saint likely to be popular among the religious-minded—­came for his body, so that they might bury it in their own monastery, and would have taken it away had not a number of armed men arrived from Knaresborough Castle.  So St. Robert was buried in the church at Knaresborough.

[Illustration:  THE BOUNDARY STONE KNARESBOROUGH FOREST.]

St. Robert the Hermit was born in 1160, and died in 1218, so that he lived and died in the days of the Crusades to the Holy Land.  Although his name was still kept in remembrance, his Cave and Chapel had long been deserted and overgrown with bushes and weeds, while the overhanging trees hid it completely from view.  But after a lapse of hundreds of years St. Robert’s Cave was destined to come into greater prominence than ever, because of the sensational discovery of the remains of the victim of Eugene Aram, which was accidentally brought to light after long years, when the crime had been almost forgotten and the murderer had vanished from the scene of his awful deed.