Then—tremendous discovery!—someone recognised him as the King. A momentary awe seized them, but they quickly recovered, and this poor trembling James they took, incoherently protesting, in custody across the Swale and into Faversham, there to be placed under surveillance.
This is why this corner of Sheppey is interesting. It witnessed one of the final scenes in the tragedy of the Stuarts.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
SOME OUTLYING INGOLDSBY LANDMARKS
NETLEY ABBEY
Three miles from Southampton, in the county of Hampshire—or, as official documents still have it, the county of Southampton—is Netley Abbey, one of the scattered Ingoldsby landmarks outside Kent. It is not evident from the context in the Legends when or on what occasion the author visited Netley, nor does it appear to be explained in the "Life" by his son. The ruined abbey stands almost on the shores of Southampton Water, divided from that beautiful land and seascape only by a road and the gardens of a narrow fringe of villas. The site is naturally lovely, but has been spoiled and vulgarised by the neighbourhood of the great military hospital and the draggle-tailed, unkempt, and sordid line of mean shops and public-houses which that institution has conjured up. So surely as Government buildings—be they hospitals, offices, barracks, or prisons—are erected on any spot, that spot is certain to be spoiled, and this is assuredly no exception. Stucco-fronted public-houses of the "Prince Albert" and "Hero of the Alma" type and period jostle the struggling, compendious greengrocer's shop that deals at one and the same time in greengrocery, half a hundred weight of coals, firewood, and linen drapery, and the picnicker comes in crowds to the spot on Southampton's early-closing days.
How different this from Horace Walpole's description of the place in 1755: "How shall I describe Netley to you? I can only by telling you it is the spot in the world which I and Mr. Chute wish. The ruins are vast, and retain fragments of beautiful fretted roof pendent in the air, with all variety of Gothic patterns of windows wrapped round and round with ivy. Many trees are sprouted up among the walls, and only want to be increased with cypresses. A hill rises above the abbey, encircled with wood. The fort, in which we would build a tower for habitation, remains, with two small platforms. This little castle is buried from the abbey in a wood, in the very centre, on the edge of the hill. On each side breaks in the view of the Southampton sea, deep blue, glistening with silver and vessels; on one side terminated by Southampton, on the other by Calshot Castle, and the Isle of Wight rising above the opposite hills. In short, they are not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise. Oh! the purple abbots! what a spot had they chosen to slumber in! The scene is so beautifully tranquil, yet so lively, that they seem only to have retired into the world."
There are various derivations of the name of Netley, but the true one is doubtless from the Anglo-Saxon "Natanleage," a wooded district. Other "Netleys" occur in the New Forest, and the name compares curiously with that of the little hamlet of "Nately Scures," near Basingstoke, where the suffix derives from the Anglo-Saxon "scora," a shaw or coppice. The abbey was a Cistercian house founded in the reign of, and perhaps by, Henry III., who dedicated it not only to the Virgin Mary, to whom Cistercian houses were always inscribed, but also to his patron saint, Edward the Confessor. The beautiful abbey church escaped the usual fate which befell religious houses at the Dissolution, and remained practically uninjured until so late as the year 1700. Up to that period it had passed through several hands, and although converted into a private residence, with the nave as a kitchen and the other hitherto sacred precincts turned into account for more or less domestic use, the successive owners had allowed no spoliation of its architectural features. But when in 1700 it became the property of Sir Berkeley Lucy, its doom was sealed. He sold the materials of the church to a certain Taylor, a Southampton builder, and Taylor made arrangements to pull the great building down. But Taylor, like Joseph, had a dream. He dreamt that, while engaged in taking down the church roof, the keystone of the vaulting near the great east window fell from its place and killed him. The dream probably had its origin in the warnings that had been given him by superstitious friends some days before, not to touch the abbey with the hands of a spoiler. They would not, they said, for riches untold "be concerned in the demolition of holy and consecrated places." Taylor was equally superstitious and the warning preyed upon his mind, and the dream was the result. The next day he hurried off to another friend, a Mr. Watts, schoolmaster in Southampton and the father of that celebrated divine Dr. Isaac Watts, author of "How doth the little busy bee" and other improving verse. Mr. Watts, schoolmaster, seems to have been an unworthy progenitor of that highly moral cleric, and gave the troubled Taylor the cynical advice "to have no personal concern in pulling down the building." This admirable, if somewhat forbiddingly rationalistic, counsel was, however, disregarded by the unhappy contractor, who, when actively engaged among his workmen was felled to the ground exactly in the manner he had dreamt. The falling keystone crushed his skull in, and the genius of the place was thus avenged. The workmen, who had heard the story of the dream and had laughed at it, then left off work in terror, and no one else was found bold enough to proceed with it. To this we owe the fact that the ruins are still in existence, but it seems a pity that the vengeful spirit could have found no method of getting his blow in before the abbey was almost wholly unroofed. Had Taylor been slain by the first stone wrenched from the groining the swiftness of the retribution would have rendered it even more dramatic, and would have resulted in the beautiful building being roofed to this day.