61 
Ambreshury Alonastery. 
By the Rry. Canon Jackson, F.S.A. 
(@m=GHIS paper does not in any way refer to the original 
. ley monastery of Monks or Friars, on the Hill of Ambrius or 
Ambrosius, which in the historical account of the erection of 
Stonehenge in the 5th century is mentioned as the burial-place of 
the massacred British chieftains: but to a later House of Nuns 
which stood upon the flat ground near the river Avon, close to the 
existing church of Ambresbury. 
This House of Nuns had been founded about A.D. 980, by 
Elfrida, Queen Dowager of King Edgar, in atonement for the 
murder of her son-in-law Edward the Martyr at Corfe Castle. It 
was of the Benedictine Order, and under the patronage of St. 
Mary, and of Melorus a Cornish saint whose relics were preserved. 
here, but of whose title to a place in the calendar more was known 
then than now. 
From the time of its foundation it continued an independent 
house till the reign of Henry II., when (A.D. 1177) irregularities 
brought down the King’s displeasure, and the community of Nuns 
was dissolved. The house was then reformed, and made a cell, or 
house subordinate to the foreign Abbey of Font Evrault in Anjou, 
from which a fresh Prioress and twenty four Nuns were introduced 
into Wiltshire. The French Abbess, Johanna de Gennes, was in- 
ducted by Richard Archbishop of Canterbury in the presence of 
the King, of Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter, and others.! From that 
time it became one of the most select retreats for Ladies in the 
higher ranks of life. Among royal or noble ladies connected 
with Ambresbury we find the following :— 

1From an old French letter printed in New Monasticon (Amesbury, No. x.) 
it appears that there were also some ‘‘ Brethren,” probably a staff of chaplains, 
_ &c., attached to the Monastery who as well as the sister-hood were placed under 
_ the new Abbess’s controul. 

