MEDMENHAM ABBEY.
On descending the river Thames, from Henley, after passing Culham Court and Hambledon Lock, the adjacent country become exceedingly beautiful, varied by alternate mills, islands, meadows, and hills, with every now and then ornamental forest trees hanging over the stream, and giving pleasant shade to the current on its downward flow. The wood of Medmenham soon comes in sight; the ruined Abbey is seen among the trees, and close beside it is a pretty ferry, with the pleasant wayside inn of Mrs. Bitmead—a domicile well known to artists, her frequent guests, one of whom, who has since become famous, painted a sign-board which hangs over the door, and is of so good a quality that it might grace the exhibition of the Royal Academy. The Abbey has been pictured a hundred times, and is a capital subject seen from any point of view; the river runs close beside it; there is a hill adjacent—Dane's Hill; dark woods and green meadows are at hand; gay boats and traffic barges are continually passing; the ferry is always picturesque, and the artist is constantly supplied on the spot with themes for pictures; especially he has before him the venerable ruin—"venerable," at least, as far as the eye is concerned. Time has touched it leniently; some of its best "bits" are as they were a century ago, except that the lichens have given to them that rich clothing of grey and gold which the painter ever loves, and added to it, here and there, a green drapery of ivy.
The manor of Medmenham was, in the reign of King Stephen, given by its lord, Walter de Bolebec, to the Abbey of Cistercian Monks he had founded at Woburn in Bedfordshire; and in 1204 the monks placed some of their society here, on this pleasant bank of the Thames. Here arose a small monastery, being rather—as the writers of the order express themselves—"a daughter than a cell to Woburn." In 1536 it was annexed to Bisham. At the Dissolution, according to returns made by the commissioners, "the clear value of this religious house was 20l. 6s.; it had two monks designing to go to houses of religion; servants, none; woods, none; debts, none; its bells worth 2l. 1s. 8d.; the value of its moveable goods 1l. 3s. 8d.; and the house wholly in ruin." It must have undergone considerable repair early in the sixteenth century, and probably very little of the original structure now exists, although relics of antiquity may be traced in many of its remains. That portion which fronts the Thames is kept in proper repair, and a large room is used for the convenience of pleasure parties. The property belongs to the Scots of Danesfield, a mansion that crowns a neighbouring hill. Medmenham derives notoriety from events of more recent date than the occupation of its monks, without goods and without debt. Here, about the middle of the last century, was established, a society of men of wit and fashion, who assumed the title of the Monks of St. Francis, and wore the habit of the Franciscan order. Although it is said that the statements contained in a now forgotten but once popular novel—"Chrysal; or the Adventures of a Guinea,"—were exaggerated, the character which the assumed monks bore in the open world was sufficiently notorious to justify the worst suspicions of their acts in this comparative solitude. Their principal members were Sir Francis Dashwood (afterwards Lord Le Despencer), the Earl of Sandwich, John Wilks, Bubb Doddington, Churchill, and Paul Whitehead, the poet. The motto—"Fay ce que voudras," indicative of the principle on which the society was founded—still remains over the doorway of the Abbey House. Tradition yet preserves some anecdotes illustrative of the habits of the "order," and there can be little doubt that this now lonely and quiet spot was the scene of orgies that were infamous.
PERSECUTION.
Grotius, an historian celebrated for moderation and caution, has computed that in the several persecutions promoted by Charles V., no less than a hundred thousand persons perished by the hands of the executioner. In the Netherlands alone, from the time that his edict against the reformers was promulgated, he states that there had been fifty thousand persons hanged, beheaded, buried alive, or burned, on account of their religion. Indeed, during the reign of Philip the Second, the Duke of Alva boasted that in the space of nine years he had destroyed, in the Low Countries, 36,000 persons by the hands of the executioner alone. At the massacre of Paris, on the feast of St. Bartholomew, King Charles the Ninth of France assisted in person, and boasted that he had sacrificed in one night 10,000 of his subjects; for that massacre the Pope had "Te Deum" sung in the chapel of the Vatican and issued a bull for a jubilee to be celebrated throughout France on the 7th December, 1512, in commemoration of what he termed the happy success of the king against his heretic subjects, and concluded by writing with his own hand a letter to Charles the Ninth, exhorting him to pursue this salutary and blessed enterprise. In the short reign of Queen Mary, there were in this realm burned at the stake one archbishop, four bishops, twenty-one ministers, and nearly three hundred persons of all classes, of whom fifty-five were women, and four were children, one of whom sprang from its mother's womb while she was consuming, and was flung into the flames by the spectators. In 1640 the same spirit of papal bigotry occasioned in Ireland the butchery of 40,000 Protestants, under circumstances of aggravated atrocity which a Christian will shudder to peruse. Lewis XIV., the most Christian king and eldest son of the church, starved a million Huguenots at home, and sent another million grazing in foreign countries.
INNKEEPER'S BILL IN 1762.
The following innkeeper's bill was sent in to the Duke de Nivernois, who supped and breakfasted at an inn in Canterbury, in 1762; and considering the value of money at that time, must be deemed extremely moderate:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tea, coffee, and chocolate | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Supper for self and servant | 15 | 10 | 0 |
| Bread and beer | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Fruit | 2 | 15 | 0 |
| Wine and punch | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| Wax candles and charcoal | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Broken glass and china | 2 | 10 | 0 |
| Lodging | 1 | 7 | 0 |
| Tea, coffee, and chocolate | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Chaise and horse, for next stage | 2 | 16 | 0 |