—are the very last one would think of applying to this Order of Debauchery. Great mystery was observed; the workmen who prepared the building were brought down from London, secluded as far as possible from any communication with the people of the neighbourhood, and then conveyed back as mysteriously as they had come. Very few servants were kept in the “abbey,” and these were not allowed to wander beyond the monastic precincts, or to hold any intercourse with the neighbouring villagers. Still, though there were no penny papers or “own correspondents” in those days, though “interviewers” and “special commissioners” had not been invented, some rumours got abroad as to the sayings and doings of the new fraternity. It is to be hoped that they were exaggerated, that the author of “Chrysal” has over-coloured the picture; but that these Franciscans carried out to the full the Rabelaisian motto, “Fay ce que voudras,” inscribed over their portal, there can be little doubt. Their rites and ceremonies appear to have been profane parodies of those of their predecessors, their lives in keeping with their religion. Among the band were numbered the Earl of Sandwich, Bubb Dodington, Wilkes, and Churchill. Society seems to have been rather scandalised, but we do not read that the Franciscans suffered any social penalty. Happily, after a time the Order was dissolved, under what circumstances it is not exactly known. One version, perhaps legendary, is that a disappointed member secreted a large monkey in a chest in the hall prior to one of their great festivals. At a particular stage of the ceremonies there was an invocation to the Evil One. At this moment the treacherous monk pulled a string and lifted the lid; Pug sprang upon the table, and then leaped through the open window. The revellers, mistaking their kinsman for their master, thought matters were getting serious, and so held no more merry meetings.
MEDMENHAM ABBEY.
BELOW MEDMENHAM.
The house is at present a pleasantly situated inn, with farm buildings attached; ivy mantles picturesquely some of the old walls, and the tower, an “antique” of the last century, looks well when not too closely examined. Fine aged trees add greatly to the beauty of the place. The village lies back from the river at the foot of the bluffs, and is reached by a lane, bordered by some of the old-fashioned free-growing hedges which, though not much favoured by modern farmers, are such a delight to the wayfarer. Of the many sequestered spots in the Valley of the Thames, Medmenham village is by no means the least attractive. A wooded slope rises steeply at its back, the little church is half buried among trees, its cottage gardens are bright with flowers, and more than one of the buildings is ancient and picturesque. A farmhouse on the upland above is said to be the successor of one which occupied the site some eight centuries since, and there is an old-world air about the whole place, as though generation after generation of its simple inhabitants had lived and died, apart from the turmoil of the outer world; hearing of stirring events, of battles, of changes of government, even of the dethronement of kings, and of civil strife, as of things which altered but little the even tenor of their lives, and only came home to them when, like bad seasons, they raised prices or lowered wages. In such places generation follows generation with little note of change. The son grows up to manhood, and lives as his father did before him; takes his place on the farm when the old man retires, first to his easy-chair by the fireside in winter, and at the cottage door in summer, and then to his long resting-place in the churchyard; the young man, in his turn, becomes the father of sturdy boys, begins to stoop a little, and to show the signs of advancing years, till at last he too sinks down into the “lean and slippered pantaloon,” and then follows his forefathers to the silent land. These quiet days now seem nearly ended for our country—machinery, steam, electricity, have so quickened the pulse in all the great centres of national life that there is a responsive thrilling of the nerves even in the most remote extremities. The old order has changed, yielding place to new. We have gained much, but we have lost something, and can appreciate, from their increasing rarity, the calm of these little nooks and corners of England, where the scream of the steam-whistle, or the bellow of the “siren,” does not scarify the ears; where the voice of the costermonger is not heard in the land, and no excursion train disgorges a crowd of noisy revellers; where factory chimneys do not blacken the air, nor heaps of chemical refuse disseminate their fetid odours.
Below Medmenham some more islands vary the course of the Thames, and on the high ground upon the left bank is Danesfield. Woods surround the house and clothe the slope. Here flourish holly, box, and yew—trees, it is believed, of indigenous growth; descendants, very probably, of those which covered all the uplands, when men were few in England, and many a mile of unbroken forest separated the scattered settlements. A curious relic is said to be preserved in the house—a withered human hand, which was discovered among the ruins of Reading Abbey. This is believed to be identical with the supposed hand of St. James the Apostle, presented to that establishment by Henry I.