irds of
that which Westminster enjoyed. Recent in its origin (it had existed
for only just over 100 years when Henry VIII. attacked it), not
without that foreign flavour which, rightly or wrongly, was ascribed
in this island to the Carthusian Order, rigid in doctrine, and of a
magnificent temper in the defence of religion, these Carthusians, like
their brethren in London, formed a very natural target for the King's
attack. I include them only because notes upon the mediaeval
foundations, would be quite imperfect were there no mention of Sheen,
late as the origin of the community was, and little as it had to do
with the historic development of the valley.

This completes the list of the greater foundations; with the lesser
ones it would only be possible to deal in pages devoted to the
Monastic Institution alone. The very numerous communities of friars,
and the hospitals in the towns upon the Thames, cannot be mentioned,
the little nunneries of Ankerwick, Burnham, and Little Marlow, the
communities, early and late, of Medmenham and Cholsey, the priories of
Lechlade and of Cricklade (which might have occupied a larger space
than was available), must be passed over. Even Godstow, famous as it
is from the early legend of Rosamond, and considerable as was its
function both of education and of retreat, cannot be included in the
list of those principal foundations which alone take rank as
originators of the prosperity of the valley.

Several of these smaller houses went in the dissolution to swell the
revenues of Bisham, the new community which Henry, as he said,
intended to take the place of much that he had destroyed; and Bisham
would be very well worth a considerable attention from the reader had
it survived. But it did not survive. Hardly was it founded when Henry
himself immediately destroyed it, and, as we shall see later, Bisham
affords one of the most curious and instructive examples of the way in
which that large monastic revenue, which it was certainly intended to
keep in the hands of the Crown, and which, had it been so kept, would
have given to England the strongest Central Government in Europe,
drifted into the hands of the squires, multiplied perhaps by ten the
wealth of their class, and transformed the Government of England into
that oligarchy which was completed in the seventeenth century, and
which, though permeated and transformed by Jewish finance, is standing
in a precarious strength to this day.

Westmi