Beaulieu Abbey was founded in 1204, when King John made a gift of land to the Cistercian Order of Monks. According to legend, King John was driven to this act, his only ever religious foundation, by a nightmare in which he was beaten by a group of monks angered at his oppression of their community. The land he made over to the Cistercians was the site of a royal hunting lodge and had the name ' Bellus Locus Regis ', meaning ' the beautiful place of the King '. The monks, who came from France, rechristened it in their own language as Beaulieu, pronounced Bu-lee as it is today.

The Cistercian order was founded at Citeaux in France in 1098 by St Robert. Its members were required to take vows of poverty, chastity and silence; any food or clothing was to be the product of their own labour. The choir monk's life was one of discipline and routine, his time being divided between work, private prayer, study, meal times and sleep, with each day's pattern determined firstly, by the sequence of services and secondly, by the hours of daylight.