so much beauty to our fertile landscapes; they grew and grew, and
added acre to acre, and stone to stone, and knowledge to knowledge; but
most they cherished the knowledge which blazed like a lamp under a bushel,
and kept all but themselves in darkness; they preached no freedom in
Christ to the Christian world, they abolished no serfdom, they taught no
liberty, they enslaved even those who in their turn enslaved their "born
thralls," and saw no evil in it. Oh, rare old times! Better it is for us
that the site of Chertsey Abbey should be scarcely traceable now-a-days
than that it should be as it was, with its proud pageants and pent-up
learning!--Yet we have neither sympathy no respect for that foul king, who,
to serve his own carnal purposes, overthrew the very faith which had
hallowed his throne. But he did not attack and storm the Abbey of
Chertsey, as he did other religious houses. He came to them, this Eighth
Harry, with a fair show of kindness, saying that "to the honor of God, and
for the health of his soul, he proposed and most nobly intended to refound
the late Monastery, Priory, or Abbey of Bisham in Berks, and to
incorporate and establish the Abbot and Convent of Chertsey, as Abbot and
Convent of Bisham, and to endow them with all the Manors late belonging to
Bisham." How the then Abbot John Cordrey, and his brethren, must have
shivered at the conditions; how they must have grieved at quitting their
cherished home, their stews and fish-ponds, their rich meadows of Thorpe,
overlooked by the woods of Eldebury hill, their nursing ground where their
calves and young lambs were stowed in luxurious safety in the pleasant
farm of Simple Marsh at Addlestone!

But their star was setting, and they were forced to "give, sell, grant and
confirm, to the king their house and all manors belonging to them."

The total destruction of the Abbey must have amazed the whole country. An
earthquake could hardly have obliterated it more entirely. Aubrey, writing
in the year 1673, says "of this great Abbey, scarce any thing of the old
building remains, except the out walls about it. Out of this ruin, is
built a 'fair house,' which is now in possession of Sir Nicholas Carew,
master of the Buckhounds." Dr. Stukeley alludes to this house, in a letter
written in 1752; he speaks of the inveterate destruction, and of "the
gardener" carrying him through a "court" where he saw the remains of the
church of the Abbey. He says the "east end reac