whole space within the walls. The stair leading to this was much more commodious than the others; and in cases of danger and necessity, the great warlike engines then in use could be set up in the hall[133], for the immediate protection of its inmates.

The chimneys were semicircular, very capacious, and projected considerably into the rooms, and rested upon small pillars. The smoke was carried off from each fireplace by means of a perforation in the wall behind. The sinks were so contrived in an oblique direction that no weapon could be sent up them.[134] All the interior arches, doorways, and windows, are ornamented with the same carved mouldings as those already mentioned.

With respect to the Chapel in Rochester Castle, no precise account has been given; and even its place in the fortress is still a subject of conjecture. But that an oratory once existed here, as in all other strongholds of the same class, there can be no doubt; and in the upper story, next the battlements, are the remains of semicircular arches[135] in the wall, which, perhaps, mark the spot under which stood the altar of the garrison Chapel[136]. Other appearances in the same floor seem to strengthen the conjecture. At Arundel Castle, the Oratory, as described in a first portion of this work, occupied the highest story of the Keep; and it seems by no means improbable that in Rochester Castle[137] the Chapel may have occupied a similar position. But if not here, there is no other part of the Castle with which any oratory or chapel can be so properly identified.

About midway in the ascent to the next or highest floor, there is a narrow arched passage or gallery in the main wall, quite round the Tower. In the Upper Floor, the apartments appear to have been sixteen feet high. The roof, as above mentioned, was long since removed, and from top to bottom nothing is left but the naked walls. The stone gutters which carried off the rain are still entire. From this upper portion, the stair rises about ten feet higher to the top of the Great Tower, which is about one hundred and four feet from the ground, and surrounded with battlements and embrasures seven feet high. At each of the four angles is a turret, about twelve feet square, with floor and battlement above it. From this elevation the panoramic view of the country is highly interesting. The neighbouring heights, bristling with military forts and covered with standards; the Medway studded with ships, and seen as far as its confluence with the Thames; Brompton—Chatham Lines—the Dockyard—Upnor Castle—the wooded heights opposite; the bridge, once the most elegant in England—Strood, Rochester, Chatham, and numerous other scenes and objects with which the historical deeds of the past are closely associated—all awaken so deep and lasting an interest in the spectator’s mind, that it would be difficult to select any point in the kingdom which embraces a landscape so various and so striking in its character.

A very accurate investigator of the antiquities of Rochester, and who resided in the neighbourhood and made repeated researches on the subject, was of opinion, that a wall must have extended originally from the tower in the east wall to that in the west. The ground to the north of this partition-wall would answer to what in other Norman castles is often called the inner ballium, bayle, or court-yard. Several towers were stationed in the angles and sides of the Castle-walls, to give more scope to the besieged in the distribution of their forces; and, in particular, there was a large tower at the north angle, for the security of the

bridge. Near this tower is a long opening in the wall from top to bottom, which is supposed to have been used for the secret conveyance of stores and necessaries, from boats in the river, into the Castle. In the south angle of the walls, there was another tower; and from the number of loop-holes, it must have been designed to annoy an enemy who had succeeded in any attack on the south gate of the city. At a small distance from this tower are steps descending to Bully or Boley Hill[138]; and while the Castle was in force, there might be here a postern gate to this part of the outworks.

In a survey of this gigantic fortress and its now deserted walls the imagination is powerfully awakened. It speaks audibly of generations long since swept away; when the life of a chieftain, as Mr. Dallaway observes, appears to have been passed in building castles, and in defending them when not actively employed in destroying those of others. Although constructed as if to last for ages, the long reign of Henry the Third, spent in a ceaseless contest between the King and his revolting Barons, affords numerous instances of fortresses which were scarcely finished before the outworks, at least, were levelled with the ground. They more frequently escaped utter ruin after a long and obstinate siege. This demolition was effected by means of vast military engines, such as the catapulta and battering-ram, the use of which had been retained, and applied according to the Roman system of war[139]. These observations belong likewise to the Barons’ wars in the reign of the second Edward. We cannot, indeed, in the words of the same authority, fairly account for the total subversion of so many castles as the Chronicles have asserted, but by concluding that after a castle was taken, the whole soldiery engaged as victors did not leave until the entire demolition was effected, agreeably to the sentence—“funditus demoliendum[140]!” The Castle of Rochester is one of the few that have survived the effects of time and revolutions; and in the almost entire state of its Keep and other subordinate compartments, distinctly points out the living manners of the people, and their warlike operations during the turbulent periods of the national history.

In process of time, several improvements, both in respect to military strength and commodious habitation, were adopted in these Norman fortresses. The second ballium was protected by smaller towers; and those of the barbican and gate of entrance admitted of spacious rooms. In these the feudal Baron resided with his family, who only made use of the Keep during a siege, or when driven to it as a place of security[141] under any sudden danger or alarm.

In Rochester Castle there was this peculiarity among others, the passage or narrow gallery which was lighted from the interior and by a small loophole. This passage did not run horizontally, but rose unequally, and without were steep steps leading to a false portal. This served as a military stratagem, by means of which in the most desperare circumstances the conflict might be kept up by the besieged even after the Keep itself had been forcibly entered. Each successive rise in the gallery was a point which could be defended by the inmates, who, when driven back, could take up a second position in the same passage, which, by its elevation, would give them a similar command over their assailants, while only a few of their own body were exposed at once. These and similar contrivances and decoys evince great ingenuity on the part of the architects.

Another peculiarity in Rochester Castle is the absence of the lofty artificial mound on which so many of the ancient castles are built, and of which that of Arundel, already described, is an instance. But Gundulph, the architect who enjoyed “the greatest celebrity in the reigns immediately succeeding the Conquest, appears to have considered the artificial mound, originally of Danish usage, as unnecessary.” His castles are distinguished from all others of that period by their stately dimensions, and the genius displayed in their design—by the military contrivances already mentioned, and by the solidity and skilful execution of the workmanship. His central towers are so lofty as to contain four distinct floors: in the basement was the dungeon, without light; while the portal, or grand entrance, was many feet above the ground, so that the necessity for an artificial mound was greatly obviated. But his greatest merit consisted in various architectural contrivances, by means of which as much security was afforded to his Keeps, as by their elevation and real strength.[142] Bishop Gundulph died at the commencement of the twelfth century, but having completed the Tower of London and the Castle of Rochester, he may be considered as having invented and left models of that description of castle architecture, which, in the opinion of all competent judges, bear ample testimony to his abilities as an architect. He was consecrated bishop of Rochester by his illustrious patron the archbishop Lanfranc, in March, 1077, and lived thirty years in possession of the see. He is said to have been “the first who introduced the architectural ornaments of the Norman style both within side and without.” Of this, the interior of the state apartments affords abundant evidence; and whoever takes a view of these from the West Gallery leading round the inside of the court, cannot fail to be struck with the beauty of the chevron mouldings by which the principal arches of the doors and windows are all elaborately adorned. In many instances these mouldings appear quite sharp, as if fresh from the sculptor’s chisel.

In the Castle of Rochester there is another portion in the basement story which is well deserving of attention. Over the present entrance is a temporary scaffolding of wood, supported by props of the same material inserted into the masonry beneath. On the left is a small arch with an inner doorway; and immediately under the platform is one of larger span, showing the thickness of the wall. Within the latter, which is of strong compact workmanship faced with small blocks of stone, is a staircase, consisting of a flight of Caen stone steps which lead to the inner gallery, and thence to all the apartments. From this the light penetrates the enclosure underneath, streaming down the steps, but in such a manner as to increase rather than diminish the effect produced by a survey of this melancholy receptacle. It was through this passage that, in feudal times, the prisoners and military captives were introduced to that destination which awaited them at the hands of the feudal lord. Standing in this dreary vestibule, with the door of the prison on the left, and the archway and main staircase that communicated with the Baron’s Hall on the right, it requires but little force of imagination to conjure up one of the many scenes of mingled triumph and despair which must have often met and exchanged glances under that very arch. The same victory which awoke the sounds of festive mirth in the Hall, and summoned the Baron and his warlike knights to the feast, consigned his prisoners to the dungeon, where the bitterness of their fate was increased by their conscious vicinity to the Banquet Hall. Odo, it may be presumed, made much use of this gloomy appendix to his Castle; for the vast treasures which he collected during his occupation of the fortress were not secured without the frequent imprisonment and oppression of his vassals, and of those wealthier individuals in the

county over whom his judicial authority extended. During the time he exercised an almost unlimited power as Earl of Kent, and kept his court in this Castle, most of the old writers agree in representing him as an avaricious tyrant, whom the desire of riches impelled to the commission of every crime, and from whose prison nothing could ransom the captive but his gold. His grand object in accumulating so much wealth was to facilitate his advancement to the Papal crown, to which he ardently aspired. But his ambition was happily defeated by the measures already mentioned. The haughty prelate was himself thrown into prison; while the unhappy victims who filled the cells of Rochester Castle saw the prison doors burst suddenly open, and under that very arch, perhaps, met the welcome of those who had long regarded it as the living tomb of all their earthly hopes.

Environs.—The principal object in the immediate vicinity of the Castle is the Cathedral; but as that will be made the subject of a future article, the next prominent feature in the landscape is the Bridge. The first historical mention of a bridge at Rochester occurs in the various accounts of the siege, to which we have already adverted. “Now am I come to the bridge over the Medway,” says Lambard, “not that alone which we presentlie behold, but another, also more ancient in time though less beautiful in work, which neither stoode in the self same place where this is, neither yet verie farre off; for that crossed the water over against Stroud Hospital, and this latter is pitched some distance from thence towards the south.”[143] “That old worke being of timber building, was fyred by Symon, the Earl of Leycester, in the time of Henry the Third; and not full twentie yeares after, it was borne away with the ice in the reign of King Edward, his sonne.” Kilburne, in addition to the above, says, that “Fitzwalter put out the fyre and saved it.” This, however, appears contrary to the fact; for in his attempt to co-operate with Albini, Fitzwalter marched no “further than Dartford, and then marched back again.” It was not till two years after that Leicester set fire to it in the manner described, when the wooden tower and arches were burnt down.

Dr. Thorpe, in his Antiquities, was of opinion that the first bridge over the Medway at this point, namely between Rochester and Stroud, was built in the reign of Edgar the Peaceable.[144] It is certain, however, that there was a bridge here before the Conquest, and that on divers tracts of land an annual tax was imposed for keeping it in repair. This is proved by several very ancient MSS., one of which, in the Saxon language, marks with exactness such portions of the work as were to be executed by the respective landlords. The bridge was then of wood, and placed in the line of the principal streets of Rochester and Stroud; it was four hundred and thirty feet in length, nearly the present breadth of the river at this place, and consisted of nine piers with eight spaces or arches. But the depth of water, its constant rapidity, the occasional roughness of the tides, and the shocks of large bodies of ice at the breaking up of winter, occasioned such frequent and severe damage, that the repairs became a heavy burden to the owners of the contributory lands.[145]

In a petition presented to Parliament at the end of the fourteenth century, the landholders who were taxed for the repairs of the bridge were represented as having been nearly reduced to ruin in consequence, and that the bridge at the same time was very unsafe for passengers. Under these circumstances, Sir Robert Knowles and Sir John de Cobham built at their joint expense the present bridge, thereby relieving private individuals from an oppressive tax, and conferring a lasting benefit on the public. In the reign of Richard II. a patent was obtained from the crown, which was afterwards confirmed by the Parliament, for constituting the proprietors a body corporate, under the title of Wardens and Commonalty, and a license granted enabling them to receive, and hold in mortmain, lands and tenements to the amount of two hundred pounds per annum. Sir John Cobham was the first and greatest benefactor, and his example was followed by such liberal donations from others that the estates usually termed proper, became in process of time justly adequate to the repairs of the bridge, without levying any assessment on the contributory lands.[146]

Until the erection of that at Westminster, Rochester Bridge was justly considered the second in the kingdom; and even now, after the splendid structures which have sprung up in recent times, it is still an object of great elegance and beauty. Its original length was four hundred and sixty feet by fifteen in breadth. It consisted of eleven arches, the largest of which had a space of forty feet, and the others above thirty. At one of these spaces between the piers was formerly a drawbridge, by means of which the castellan who held command of the fortress could break off all communication with the opposite banks of the river. The greatest water-way is three hundred and forty feet. Joneval,[147] in his Travels, makes a mistake in supposing that this bridge “is founded on a rock;” the piers rest on wooden piles, and to have laid the foundation of so massive a fabric in a river where the flux and reflux of the tide are so strong, must have been an arduous undertaking. Unfortunately the name of the architect has not descended to posterity, but the bridge is a lasting monument to his genius.[148]

At the east end of the bridge was formerly a chapel, founded by Sir John Cobham, with an endowment of eighteen pounds a year, payable out of the bridge lands, for the support of three priests. According to the rules established by the founder, three masses were to be said daily; the first between five and six in the morning, the second between eight and nine, and the third between eleven and twelve o’clock, so that travellers might have an opportunity of being present at the sacred offices. But at each mass there was to be a special collect for all the benefactors to the bridge, living or dead, and for the souls of Sir John Cobham and others, whose names were to be recited. There was another chapel at the west end of this bridge, but its exact site is not known.

Memorabilia.—When the Emperor Charles the Fifth made his second visit to England, in the summer of 1522, he arrived at Rochester on the second of June, where he was received by Henry the Eighth, and set out on the following day for London, or rather the royal palace of Greenwich. It was at Rochester, also, that King Henry had his first interview with Anne of Cleves, whose reception at Blackheath has been already described. Her picture, it is said, had been drawn in so flattering a manner by Holbein, that the amorous monarch, impatient to see the original, set out incognito for Rochester on the morning of her expected arrival in that city, and in the evening was among the first to bid her welcome. The painter, however, was detected in having practised a great deception: Anne was not the divinity represented on the canvas; Henry was disappointed, and is recorded to have vented his chagrin in terms far from complimentary to the Lady Anne, or the minister who had negotiated the alliance. This, however, he disguised; and before taking leave presented her with a “suit of sables, as a new year’s gift.”

In April, 1556, Rochester was the theatre of one of those horrid scenes which disgraced the reign of Queen Mary. John Harpole, of St. Nicholas parish, and Joan Beach, of Tunbridge, were burnt alive as heretics, according to the sentence of Maurice Gryffith, bishop of the see, for denying the authority of the Church, and the transubstantiation of the sacramental elements.—See History of Rochester, with biographical notices of the bishops.

Queen Elizabeth, who took great pride in superintending the naval department, in which she foresaw the only sure bulwark of her empire, made it her custom to visit, among many other places in Kent, Chatham Dock-yard. On one occasion she spent four days at the Crown Inn of Rochester; but on the fifth accepted the hospitality of one of her loyal subjects, Mr. Watts, at his house at Boley Hill, near the Castle; to which, according to tradition, she gave the title of Satis as expressive of her satisfaction with her entertainment.

On the return of King Charles the Second to England, he was received at Rochester with demonstrations of loyalty, and conferred the honour of knighthood on two gentlemen of the place, named Clarke and Swan. The Mayor and Corporation at the same time presented his Majesty with a silver basin and ewer, which were “graciously accepted.” Here, also, James the Second arrived after his abdication, and continued for a week under the protection of a Dutch garrison; but, apprehensive of his personal safety, he went privately on board a tender, set sail, and, with the Duke of Berwick and others of his suite, landed at Ambleteuse in Picardy.

Another object of no little interest, on the opposite side of the river, is Upnor Castle, famous in history for the attack made upon it by Admiral Van Ruyter.[149] Having burnt the storehouses, and blown up the fortifications at Sheerness, Van Ruyter despatched the second Admiral, Van Ghent, up the Medway, which Monk, Duke of Albemarle, had secured as well as the circumstances of the case would allow. But a strong east wind and springtide bringing up the enemy with resistless force, a chain was immediately broken; three Dutch ships, taken in the war and stationed to guard the chain, were set fire to by Van Ghent to retrieve his country’s honour; and, pressing forward between the sinking ships, he brought six of his men-of-war and fire-ships in front of Upnor Castle. Major Scott, who had command of the fort, gave them as warm a reception as the condition of the place would permit, and was well seconded by Sir Edward Spragge, who had escaped from Sheerness, and now opened his guns upon the enemy from a battery at Cockham Wood.[150] The Dutch, however, seized the hull of the Royal Charles, and on their return burnt the Royal Oak, and much damaged two other ships of the line. Captain Douglas, who commanded the Royal Oak, was burnt in his ship, although he might easily have escaped. But “No!” said this intrepid commander, when he perceived the danger and was urged to strike, “No—it was never known that a Douglas left his post without orders;” and thus resolved, he perished in the flames.

Among the numerous tourists who have made Rochester and its Castle the subjects of remark, is the celebrated Hogarth, who, in company of four of his intimate friends, Tothall, Scott, Thornhill, and Forrest, made an excursion of four days to this part of the county in May, 1732, which is amusingly detailed in a short folio brochure, accompanied with ten illustrations and caricatures of their adventures, and published in 1781.

Classical Scenes.—To every reader of Shakspeare the names of Gadshill, Falstaff, and Prince Hal, will conjure up many ludicrous associations; and few travellers will enter Rochester from the west, without a short halt on this poetical ground,—the spot where Prince Henry and his dissolute associates robbed the Sandwich carriers, and the auditors who were carrying money to the royal exchequer. Theobold mentions that he had read an old play, in which the scene opens with Prince Henry’s robberies, and Gadshill is there named as one of the gang.[151] A comfortable inn, with a characteristic sign of Falstaff on one side, and Prince Hal on the other, invites him to alight for half an hour, and over a “cup of sack” peruse that mirth-moving scene in the first Part of “Henry the Fourth,” which has conferred immortality on the spot:—

But we must here close the quotation. The reader will readily imagine himself a spectator of the scene, where the thieves rob the true men, and where retaliation is made upon the thieves by “two of their own gang, in forcibly taking from them their rich booty;” and he will again enjoy the conceit of Falstaff with his cups of limed sack, telling “incomprehensible falsehoods,” in order to cover his own cowardice; his long rencounter with the two “rogues in buckram suits, growing up into eleven,” all of whom he peppered and payed till three misbegotten knaves in “Kendal green (“for it was so dark, Hal, thou couldst not see thy hand!”) came at his back and let drive at him!” Thus, on the stage, in the closet, on the road—as a local writer has well observed—Falstaff’s adventure at Gadshill is likely to be “not only an argument for a week, laughter for a month, but a good jest forever.”

THE ABBEY OF TEWKESBURY,

Gloucestershire.

FOUNDATION.—In his desire to do more especial honour to Tewkesbury, William of Malmesbury has fancifully traced its etymon to the Greek word Theotocos[152]—the Mother of God—because the monastery which was built here was dedicated to the Virgin Mother. It is certain, however, that the town occupied the ground long before the monastery was erected. The popular tradition is, that a religious recluse, named Theocus, had a Christian cell or chapel in this place about the end of the seventh century—“ubi quidam heremita manebat nomine Theokus, unde Theokusburia”—and that from him the “Curia Theoci” was in process of time modified into Tewkesbury. In Weever’s Funeral Monuments, however, there is an ancient Saxon inscription, discovered in the church of Leominster at the close of the sixteenth century, which states that, in the Saxon era, Tewkesbury was called [Image of word unavailable.], that is, Theotisbyrg, from which it would appear that Tewkesbury was the town, castle, or borough of Theot. Others, by conjectures equally vague or plausible, have laboured to prove that the name is derived from Dodo or Thodo, one of the first lords of the manor, and founder of the monastery, adducing as corroborative evidence that the Ð and Th are frequently substituted for each other in the Saxon language; wherefore, say they, from Thodo comes the Latin derivative Theodocus, and from that, Teodechesberie, as in Domesday Book. But further, it has been conjectured that Theocus and Dodo, or Thodo, were one and the same person; and those who are curious in the investigation of such questions will find the subject elaborately discussed in all the principal histories of the county[153] and abbey.

The foundation of this Abbey takes precedence of most others in the kingdom, and dates from the first fifteen years of the eighth century. In the reigns of Ethelred, Kenred, and Ethelbald, kings of Mercia, two brothers, with the euphonious names of Odo and Dodo, flourished in this beautiful district, and adorned their high station by the practice of many Christian virtues and pious examples. Of their zeal for the honour of God they were resolved to leave some permanent evidence to posterity, and with this view selected a suitable spot on their manor of Tewkesbury, and there erected[154] the monastery which in after times became famous throughout the land. They endowed the abbey with much landed property—Stanwey cum membris, sic dicta, Tadington Prestecote et Didcot[155]—which continued to form part of the abbey revenues till the Dissolution. The institution gradually extended its authority temporal and spiritual, and acquired a reputation for so much sanctity, that to obtain a grave in its sacred enclosure became an object of devout competition among the pious, and brought no little treasure to the prior’s exchequer.

The first personage of royal dignity who was buried in the Abbey was Brictric, king of the West Saxons, and son-in-law to King Offa. The next was Hugh, a Mercian noble, and patron of the abbey, who had procured for it the distinction of a royal mausoleum in St. Faith’s Chapel; to which his own remains were afterwards consigned, with all the monks attending in solemn procession, and chanting his requiem.

Towards the middle of the tenth century, Haylward Snew, descended from King Edward the Elder, founded a monastery on his own manor at Cranburne,[156] in Dorsetshire, and to this he subjected the priory of Tewkesbury, of which he was patron. Historians give him the credit of having possessed, in an eminent degree, the virtues of personal valour and earnest piety; and of the latter, no better proofs could be adduced than the fact of his having bestowed much of his substance upon the church. Algar, his eldest son and successor, did not long enjoy his inheritance; and to him succeeded his younger brother, Brictric, of whom the annexed adventure is recorded.[157]

When the Battle of Hastings had secured a vacant throne to William the Conqueror,[158] Brictric was among those patriotic chiefs who survived that decisive field, and afterwards retired to the banks of the Severn, to concert measures for the recovery of the Saxon throne, or to bury his vain regrets in the bosom of his faithful friends and retainers. By one of those strange accidents, however, which frustrate all preconcerted schemes, Brictric’s hopes of freedom were completely blasted. Great as the grief of Maud had been at his abruptly quitting her father’s court in Flanders, as stated in the preceding note, it was not of long duration; for the Duke of Normandy having shortly after solicited her hand, and as such a union offered her no distant prospect of avenging herself, she at once assented. The marriage was solemnized. She was carried in triumph to Normandy; and now, when the subjugation of England had been effected, she did not lose the opportunity thereby afforded of resenting the slight which the impolitic Brictric had offered to her beauty. He was accordingly denounced as an enemy to the new dynasty; and the strongest argument produced against him being that he was a brave man, with a broad tract of country which he called his own, the evidence in proof of his disaffection to the Conqueror was conclusive. Maud, the queen, too, was actively employed in expediting the measures instituted against him—

One night, therefore, while returning from vespers, Brictric was seized at the door of his own manor of Hanley, and sent under a Norman guard to Winchester, where he pined for some time, oppressed with the double weight of degradation and imprisonment, and at length died without issue. His estates, in the meantime, had been given to Queen Maud, who enjoyed their revenues till her death; after which they were incorporated with the other royal demesnes of King William.

At the death of the Conqueror, they passed to his son Rufus, who some time afterwards bestowed Brictric’s Honor of Gloucester upon Robert Fitz-Hamon, son of Hamon Dentatus, Lord of Corboile in Normandy, as a reward for many important services performed in defence of his father’s crown.[159]

This Robert Fitz-Hamon may be considered the second founder of Tewkesbury Abbey; for, at the instance of Sybil his wife, and Giraldus[160] Abbot of Cranburne, he rebuilt the church with all its appendages, and endowed it with many large possessions.[161] In confirmation of the elegance and liberality with which this was accomplished—“It cannot be easily reported,” says William of Malmesbury, on two several occasions, “how highly Robert Fitz-Hamon exalted this monastery, wherein the beauty of the buildings ravished the eies, and the charity of the holy brotherhood allured the hearts of all who repaired thither.”[162] This great and pious undertaking is stated to have been accomplished as an act of atonement and public satisfaction for the destruction of the church of Bayeux in Normandy, which King Henry had burnt in order to liberate him from prison; but which, struck with remorse at the sacrilege, he afterwards re-edified and restored.

Having rebuilt the Abbey of Tewkesbury in the manner stated, and finding that it became more and more an object of attraction among pilgrims and devotees, Fitz-Hamon changed the Abbey of Cranburne into a priory, and made it subject from that time forward to the “Blackfriars” of Tewkesbury[163]—so called from the black habit worn by monks of the Benedictine order.

But, to preserve the name of the founder in that sanctity to which his piety and good works had given him so just a title, a prior and two monks were left to minister in holy offices at Cranburne, so that the cause of true religion might suffer no detriment by the transfer thus effected. The situation of the New Abbey, in the centre of a fair and fertile country, variegated with beautiful landscapes, curtained almost round by green-wooded hills, and watered by noble rivers, presented all that could be desired for the advancement of those worldly objects in which men so spiritually-minded might be supposed to take any interest. With the completion of the New Abbey prosperity took up her abode under its immediate wing: habitations multiplied, trade was introduced, the produce of the adjoining vale increased with the demand, and the population was rapidly improved. In process of time the abbey was almost surrounded by a thriving town; while money, freely circulated by commerce, as well as by the better class of pilgrims, improved the general appearance of the habitations, and gave an air of cheerfulness and prosperity to the town and abbey.

Fitz-Hamon, who just lived long enough to witness the first prosperous days of the abbey, being general of the king’s army in France, repaired to the siege of Falaise,[164] in Normandy, where he received a wound on the temple, and died shortly after,[165] His remains were carefully brought home and deposited with great solemnity in the Chapter-house of the Abbey, of which the arcade mouldings, vaulted ceiling, pillars, buttresses, and pointed doorway, retain

much of their original beauty. It is now the grammar-school of the place. But in this part of the abbey, hereafter to be described, his relics were not permitted to rest more than a hundred and thirty-four years; they were then removed by Robert, the third abbot of that name, and interred in a plain tomb between two pillars on the right side of the Chancel, which, with the Chapter-house, will be noticed in a subsequent page.

1397. One hundred and fifty-six years later, Thomas Parker, the eighteenth abbot, caused the original tomb to be enclosed within a richly-carved chapel, “satis mirifice tabulatam,” and appointed a mass to be celebrated every day for the souls of Robert Fitz-Hamon, and Sybil his wife. By this lady he left issue four daughters, co-heiresses to vast possessions which, during his active services in places of the highest trust under government, had greatly accumulated during the last two reigns. But King Henry, who was averse to seeing the Honor of Gloucester thus subdivided, adopted such arbitrary measures as effectually prevented the execution of the testator’s will, and disposed of his daughters in the following manner:—Hawise he made Abbess of Chichester; Cecilia he appointed Abbess of Shaftesbury; Amicia he gave in marriage to his firm adherent, the Earl of Brittany; and to Robert, his natural son, by the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, Prince of Glamorgan, he united Mabilia, the eldest. Thus the four daughters of Fitz-Hamon were fairly settled by “royal authority,” and the estates concentrated upon his son, Earl Robert, and his descendants. But Mabilia, it appears, expressed some reluctance when this alliance was first proposed by the king, alleging that, as his son Robert had then no baronial title nor high military standing in the country, such a union was neither agreeable to her taste nor suitable to the rank and possessions bequeathed to her by so many illustrious ancestors. These objections, as stated by the monk[166] of Gloucester, were too reasonable and well grounded to be confuted by the mere art of logic; but the king found a much more speedy and effectual way of removing them, by creating his son Earl and Consul of Gloucester, and installing him in the various high offices therewith connected. Of this earl, as the reader may remember, we have already spoken in a previous division of this work, when adverting to the Empress Maud, daughter of King Henry. “He was unquestionably,” says Lyttleton, “the wisest man of those times; and his virtues were such that even those times could not corrupt it.” It is to Count Robert of Gloucester that William of Malmesbury dedicates his work, and speaks of him in these terms: “Nullum enim magis decet bonarum artium esse fautorem quam te; cui adhæsit magnanimitas avi, munificentia patrui, prudentia patris, &c.... Consentaneous ergo sibi mores experiuntur in te literati, quos citra intellectum ullius acrimoniæ benignus aspicis, jucundus admittis, munificus dimittis. Nihil plane in te mutavit fortunæ amplitudo nisi ut pene tantum benefacere posses, quantùm velles.”

But the trait of character which connects Earl Robert more immediately with our subject is, that every Sunday throughout the year he had the Abbot of Tewkesbury and twelve of the monks to dine with him, thereby keeping up a most friendly understanding with the Church, patronizing learning and all who excelled in the arts, and building various castles and priories. He founded the priory of St. James in Bristol, and made it subject to the Abbey of Tewkesbury. But although he patronized the latter in an eminent degree, he chose the priory for his last resting-place, and was there buried in the choir, under a tomb of green jasper.[167]

It was during the life of this earl, that Walleran de Beaumont, a younger son of the Earl of Leicester, and Count of Meulant, ransacked the town of Tewkesbury, which, judging by the quantity and value of plunder carried off, must have been, even at that early period, a town of no little opulence.[168] In this raid, however, the goods of the Abbey were respected; for to such men an interdict from the Church was more terrific than “an army with banners.”

William, son and heir to Earl Robert, and his wife Matilda, confirmed all the charters which had been granted by his ancestors to the Abbey of Tewkesbury, and certified his approbation by conferring upon it several fresh endowments. He died in 1283, when the estates of the earldom were again vested in three daughters. But the policy which had been adopted by King Henry was again employed by King Richard, who had bestowed the youngest of the three heiresses with the earldom and its domains upon his brother John—a name sufficiently notorious in these pages—but by whom she was divorced shortly after his accession to the throne. Mabel or Mabilia, the eldest daughter of Earl William, married the Count d’Evreux in Normandy, by whom she had a son, Almeric Montfort, who died about the year 1221, leaving no children by his marriage. But the second daughter, who had married Richard de Clare,[169] Earl of Hertford, had a son, Gilbert de Clare, who, on the failure of the previous branches, was admitted to the honours of Gloucester and Glamorgan, as his legal inheritance, and was the first who held conjointly the earldoms of Gloucester and Hertford. He resided at Holme Castle, a feudal residence which crowned an eminence in the near vicinity of Tewkesbury, and married Isabel, daughter of William Marshall,