Of what was originally a Preceptory of the Knights Templars, and then an Augustine Priory, and finally a Benedictine Abbey, nothing is left but the Prior’s lodgings, now the mansion of the Vansittart-Neales, called “the Abbey.” The parish church stands finely by the waterside, encircled by the trees of the park, and there remains a monastic barn. Such are the few relics of the proud home of monks and priors, enriched during hundreds of years by the benefactions of the wicked, endeavouring by means of such gifts to atone sufficiently for their evil lives, and so escape the damnation that surely awaited them.
Such complete destruction is melancholy indeed, when we consider the great historic personages who were buried here: among them the great Nevill, “Warwick the Kingmaker,” slain at last in the course of his tortuous ambitions, in the Battle of Barnet, fought on Easter Day, 1471, and laid at Bisham, hard by his own manor of Marlow.
When the Abbey was finally dissolved, it was granted by Henry the Eighth to Anne of Cleves, his divorced fourth wife, who exchanged it with the Hoby family for a property of theirs in Kent. Here the Princess Elizabeth was resident for three years, during the reign of her half-sister, Mary, really under surveillance; and to that period the greater part of the “Abbey,” as we see it now, is to be referred.
BISHAM ABBEY.
“TOP O’ THE TOWN,” GREAT MARLOW.