The Church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out;
But above all the heart
Must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in every corner sing
My God and King!
The old church of Chirbury belonged to the Herberts, and was noted for its heavy circular pillars supporting the roof, which, with the walls, were so much bent outwards that they gave one the impression that they would fall over; but nearly all the walls in old churches bend that way more or less, a fact which we always attributed to the weight of the heavy roof pressing on them. At one village on our travels, however, we noticed, hanging on one of the pillars in the church, a printed tablet, which cleared up the mystery by informing us that the walls and pillars were built in that way originally to remind us that "Jesus on the cross His head inclined"; and we noticed that even the porches at the entrance to ancient churches were built in the same way, each side leaning outwards.
A great treat was in store for us this morning, for we had to pass through Wilton, with its fine park surrounding Wilton House, the magnificent seat of the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. Our first impression was that Wilton was one of the pleasantest places we had visited. Wiltshire took its name from the river Wylye, which here joins the Nadder, so that Wilton had been an important place in ancient times, being the third oldest borough in England. Egbert, the Wessex King, had his palace here, and in the great contest with Mercia defeated Beornwulf in 821 at Ellendune. A religious house existed here in very early times. In the reign of Edward I it was recorded that Osborn de Giffard, a relative of the abbess, carried off two of the nuns, and was sentenced for that offence to be stripped naked and to be whipped in the churches of Wilton and Shaftesbury, and as an additional punishment to serve three years in Palestine. In the time of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn wished to give the post of abbess to a friend, but King Henry had scruples on the subject, for the proposed abbess had a somewhat shady reputation; he wrote, "I would not for all the gold in the world clog your conscience nor mine to make her a ruler of a house, which is of so ungodly a demeanour, nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so bestain mine honour or conscience." This we thought to be rather good for such a stern moralist as Henry VIII, but perhaps in his younger days he was a better man than we had been taught to believe.
Wilton suffered along with Old Sarum, as the loss of a road was a serious matter in those days, and Bishop Bingham, who appeared to have been a crafty man, and not at all favourable to the Castellans at Old Sarum, built a bridge over the river in 1244, diverting the main road of Icknield Way so as to make it pass through Salisbury. As Leland wrote, "The changing of this way was the total cause of the ruine of Old Saresbyri and Wiltown, for afore Wiltown had 12 paroche churches or more, and was the head of Wilesher." The town of Wilton was very pleasant and old-fashioned. The chief industry was carpet-making, which originally had been introduced there by French and Flemish weavers driven by persecution from their own country. When we passed through the town the carpet industry was very quiet, but afterwards, besides Wilton carpets, "Axminster" and "Brussels" carpets were manufactured there, water and wool, the essentials, being very plentiful. Its fairs for sheep, horses, and cattle, too, were famous, as many as 100,000 sheep having been known to change owners at one fair.
