a-kings being driven back to their frozen land, King Edgar,
willing to serve God after the fashion of his times, refounded the Abbey
of Chertsey, dedicating it to St. Peter, and vying with Pope Alexander in
augmenting its privileges and its wealth.

Some of the abbots took great interest in home improvements, planting
woods, conducting streams, enlarging ponds--building, now a mill, now a
dove-cot, according to the wants of the abbey or their own fancies. Henry
I. granted them permission to keep dogs, that, according to the old
chronicle, they might take "hare, fox, and cats." King John, in the first
year of his reign, gave them ample confirmation of all their privileges,
which, it would seem, they had somewhat abused, for we find that the
sovereign seized their manors of Egham and "Torp" (Thorp) on account of a
servant of the abbot's having killed "Hagh de Torp." Oh, rare "old times!"
The abbot was mulcted in a heavy fine. Then, while Bartholomew de
Winchester was abbot, from 1272 until 1307, during the reign of our first
Edward, complaints were made to Pope Gregory X. that the possessions of
the abbey were alienated to civilians and laymen, whereupon the pope
issued a bull ordering such grants to be revoked.

It is worthy of note, that the Chertsey monastery sheltered, for a time,
the remains of the pious, but unfortunate, Henry VI.

"Poor key-cold figure of a Holy King,
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster."

And the reader of Shakespeare will recall the scene in which Richard meets
the Lady Anne on her way to Chertsey with her husband's body. This poor
king's remains had a claim to be well received by the monks of Chertsey
Abbey, for he had granted to the abbot the privilege of holding a fair on
St. Anne's-hill, then called Mount Eldebury, on the feast of St. Anne's
(the 26th of July): the fair has changed its time and quarters as well as
its patron, and is held in the town on the 6th of August, and called Black
Cherry Fair. Manning, in his history of Surrey, says, that the tolls of
this fair were taken by the abbot, and are now taken by the owner of the
site of the Abbey House; thus the memory of King Henry VI. is commemorated
in the town of Chertsey to this day, by the sale of black cherries in the
harvest month of August!

[Illustration: "THE NUN'S WELL."]

"THE NUN'S WELL."

Centuries passed over those magnificent abbeys, whose ruins in many places
add