Following the death of Abbot Robert
Burley,
Fountains was thrown into turmoil over the appointment of a successor.
The office was at first assumed by Roger Frank, a monk of Fountains,
but his abbacy was short-lived and after considerable discord and
expense was annulled by the pope. According to the fifteenth-century ‘President’s
Book’ of Fountains, Frank ‘seized the office.’ (1)