It is worthy of note, that the Chertsey monastery sheltered, for a time, the remains of the pious, but unfortunate, Henry VI.
"Poor key-cold figure of a Holy King,
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster."
And the reader of Shakespeare will recall the scene in which Richard meets the Lady Anne on her way to Chertsey with her husband's body. This poor king's remains had a claim to be well received by the monks of Chertsey Abbey, for he had granted to the abbot the privilege of holding a fair on St. Anne's-hill, then called Mount Eldebury, on the feast of St. Anne's (the 26th of July): the fair has changed its time and quarters as well as its patron, and is held in the town on the 6th of August, and called Black Cherry Fair. Manning, in his history of Surrey, says, that the tolls of this fair were taken by the abbot, and are now taken by the owner of the site of the Abbey House; thus the memory of King Henry VI. is commemorated in the town of Chertsey to this day, by the sale of black cherries in the harvest month of August!
"THE NUN'S WELL."
Centuries passed over those magnificent abbeys, whose ruins in many places add so much beauty to our fertile landscapes; they grew and grew, and added acre to acre, and stone to stone, and knowledge to knowledge; but most they cherished the knowledge which blazed like a lamp under a bushel, and kept all but themselves in darkness; they preached no freedom in Christ to the Christian world, they abolished no serfdom, they taught no liberty, they enslaved even those who in their turn enslaved their "born thralls," and saw no evil in it. Oh, rare old times! Better it is for us that the site of Chertsey Abbey should be scarcely traceable now-a-days than that it should be as it was, with its proud pageants and pent-up learning!—Yet we have neither sympathy no respect for that foul king, who, to serve his own carnal purposes, overthrew the very faith which had hallowed his throne. But he did not attack and storm the Abbey of Chertsey, as he did other religious houses. He came to them, this Eighth[pg 148] Harry, with a fair show of kindness, saying that "to the honor of God, and for the health of his soul, he proposed and most nobly intended to refound the late Monastery, Priory, or Abbey of Bisham in Berks, and to incorporate and establish the Abbot and Convent of Chertsey, as Abbot and Convent of Bisham, and to endow them with all the Manors late belonging to Bisham." How the then Abbot John Cordrey, and his brethren, must have shivered at the conditions; how they must have grieved at quitting their cherished home, their stews and fish-ponds, their rich meadows of Thorpe, overlooked by the woods of Eldebury hill, their nursing ground where their calves and young lambs were stowed in luxurious safety in the pleasant farm of Simple Marsh at Addlestone!
But their star was setting, and they were forced to "give, sell, grant and confirm, to the king their house and all manors belonging to them."
The total destruction of the Abbey must have amazed the whole country. An earthquake could hardly have obliterated it more entirely. Aubrey, writing in the year 1673, says "of this great Abbey, scarce any thing of the old building remains, except the out walls about it. Out of this ruin, is built a 'fair house,' which is now in possession of Sir Nicholas Carew, master of the Buckhounds." Dr. Stukeley alludes to this house, in a letter written in 1752; he speaks of the inveterate destruction, and of "the gardener" carrying him through a "court" where he saw the remains of the church of the Abbey. He says the "east end reached up to an artificial mount along the garden wall; that mount and all the terraces of the pleasure garden, to the back front of the house, are entirely made up of the sacred rudera or rubbish of continual devastations. Bones of abbots, monks, and great personages, who were buried in large numbers in the church and cloisters which lay on the south side of the church, were spread thick all over the garden, so that one may pick up whole handsfull of them every where amongst the garden stuff." Brayley mentions in his pleasant History of Surrey, that this artificial mount was levelled in 1810, and its materials employed to fill up a pond. Many human skulls and bones were found intermixed with the chalk and mortar of which it had been formed. Fragments of old tiles were also frequently found, and are still sometimes turned up. No trace even of the "Abbey house" is left; it was purchased in 1809 by a stock-broker, who in the following year sold the materials—and so ends the great monastic history of Chertsey. Where are now its spiritualities in Surrey?—its temporalities in Berkshire and Hampshire?—its revenues of Stanwell, and rents of assize?—its spiritualities in Cardiganshire? Alas! they have left no sign, except on the yellow parchment—of rare value to the antiquary.
Those who desire, like ourselves, to investigate what tradition has sanctified, will do well to turn down a lane beyond Chertsey Church, which leads directly to the Abbey[pg 149] bridge, and there, amid tangled hedge rows and orchards, stands the fragment of an arch, partly built up, and so to say, disfigured by brick-work, and an old wall, both evidently portions of the Abbey. In the wall are a great number of what the people call "black stones," a geological formation, making them seem fused by fire. Layers of tiles were also inserted in this wall, and where the cement has dropped away they can be distinctly traced; there is also an ivy, very aged indeed; it is so knotted and thick that it seems to grow through the stones, the soil has so evidently encroached on the wall that it is most probably rooted at the foundation. The pleasant market garden of Mr. Roake covers the actual ground on which the Abbey stood. The workmen frequently turn up broken tiles and human bones, and there is no doubt that by digging deeper much would be discovered that might elucidate the history of the past. At the farther end of the market garden a vault has been discovered which is of considerable length and breadth; but the water rises so high in it (except after a long continuance of dry weather has sealed the land springs) that it is impossible to get to the end without wading. An enormous quantity of richly-colored and decorated encaustic tiles have been found here; some are preserved in our local museum. But the most interesting remains in this place are the "stews," or fish-ponds, which run parallel to each other like the bars of a gridiron; these ponds do not communicate one with the other, nor has the water any outlet: a little care and attention might make them valuable for their old purposes; but they are deplorably neglected. Occasionally you see the fin of some huge fish, whose slow movement partakes of the character of the stagnant water he has inhabited for years;—who can tall how many?