TEWKESBURY.]

[Illustration: TEWKESBURY ABBEY.]

The history of Tewkesbury Abbey comes from misty antiquity, and it is
thought by some to have been named "Dukes-borough" from two ancient
Britons, Dukes Odda and Dudda, but others say it commemorates a
missionary monk named Theoe, who founded a little church there in the
seventh century. Brictric, King of Wessex, was buried within its walls
in the ninth century, and, like Gloucester, it suffered afterwards from
the ravages of the Danes. But it flourished subsequently, and in the
days of William Rufus the manor was conferred upon Fitz-Hamon, an
influential nobleman, under whose auspices the present abbey was built.
Nothing remains of any prior building. The church was begun in 1100, but
the builder was killed in battle before it was completed. It is in the
form of a cross with short transepts, and a tower rising from the
centre. The choir was originally terminated by apses, which can still be
traced, and there were other apses on the eastern side of each transept.
While the outlines of most of the abbey are Norman, the choir is almost
all of later date. The western front has the singular feature of being
almost all occupied by an enormous and deeply-recessed Norman arch, into
which a doorway and tracery were inserted about two hundred years ago,
replacing one blown down by a storm in 1661. This abbey church was
dedicated in 1123, and the services were almost the last diocesan act of
Theulf, bishop of Worcester. One of the dedication ceremonies was
quaint. As the bishop came to the middle of the nave, we are told that
he found part of the pavement spread with white wood-ashes, upon which
he wrote the alphabet twice with his pastoral staff--first the Greek
alphabet from north-east to south-west, and then the Latin, from
south-east to north-west, thus placing them in the form of a cross. He
signified by this ceremony that all divine revelation was conveyed by
the letters of the alphabet, and that the gospel comprehended under the
shadow of the cross men of all races and all languages. The time had
been when at such consecrations three alphabets were written--the
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin--as the title on the cross had been written in
these three tongues, but the Hebrew was early discontinued, "probably,"
writes Blunt, the historian of Tewkesbury Abbey, "because even bishops
might not always be able to manage their Alpha Beta in that character."
The best views of the abbey are