TOR ABBEY. 51 



fair gateways were standing. One gateway remains. 

 The arms of the Bruers, Mohuns, Spekes, and of 

 the Abbey, appear in the Arch. 



King Henry VIII. by letters patent, dated 20th 

 Jan., 34th year of his reign, granted to John St. Led- 

 ger, Esq. the dissolved monastery of Tor. From 

 this impropriator, it was conveyed, through a suc- 

 cession of purchasers, to Sir George Gary ; who be- 

 came possessed of it in 1662. It is still the proper- 

 ty of his respectable descendants ; whose devotional 

 predilections for the ancient form of worship, animated 

 by the charm of music, and enriched by pomp of ce- 

 remony, are cherished and prolonged with fervours 

 ever new, by the reverential circumstances of this 

 nursery of religious homage, and of ancestral parti- 

 ality. 



To the lovers of freedom, this spot is consecrated 

 by the event of the first landing of William of Orange 

 at Torbay in 1688. His auspicious aid had been so- 

 licited by the unanimous choice of independent pa- 

 triots ; and his welcome arrival was hailed with en- 

 thusiastic rapture of national confidence and hope, 

 reposed in his tried wisdom and moderation, in times 

 of critical peril, and alarm. Probably, his well- 

 known qualifications as a ruler and commander of 

 the people rendered him the most eligible object of 

 of their representatives' choice, as an avenger of their 

 wrongs and an assertor of their rights, to encounter 

 the emergency, at that period of the fate of Great 

 Britain and its dependencies. 



The abbey church was richly furnished with cloth 

 of gold, with copes, and other ecclesiastical orna- 

 ments, as appears from Bishop Grandison's letter in 

 Vol. I. of his register. Simon Rede was the last of 

 its abbots, and he surrendered his monastery, with 

 fifteen of his religious in 1539. To indemnify this 

 destitute fraternity in some measure after the abbey 

 had been dismantled, Henry VIII. granted them each 

 a pension from the royal exchequer. Depriving the 

 swarm of the honey, lodged by the bees in their hive 



