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a lofty Norman arch in the West facade, filled in, very incon- 
gruously, with a Perpendicular window in 1656. 
At the dissolution of the Monastery, 1539, the revenues were 
valued at £1,595 17s. 6d., and vast quantities of plate, the 
sacristy alone containing 1,421 ounces. For surrendering all this 
comfortably to the King, the last Abbot, John Wakeman, was 
created by Henry VIII. first Bishop of Gloucester, and the 
ghastly tomb which he had prepared for himself in the Abbey 
with an emaciated body lying at full length, with worms and 
other devouring creatures crawling over it, remained for ever 
uninhabited, 
After the Lady Chapel, Chapter House and Cloisters had been 
destroyed by fire, the inhabitants purchased the Abbey Church 
proper from the King for £453, and it became the parish church, 
which by munificent gifts and careful restorations is now one of 
the most magnificent as well as instructive ecclesiastical edifices 
in the kingdom. This town of Tewkesbury is subject to heavy 
floods at times, being situated on four rivers, Severn, Avon, 
Carron, and Swilgate. A fine iron bridge, by Telford, was 
erected over the first in 1824. It is of 176 feet span and cost 
£35,000. 
There are as many theories as to the origin of the name of the 
town as there are syllables in it. Domesday Book calls it 
Teodeschesberie. A Saxon inscription was found in the Church 
of Leominster which calls it Deotisbyrig, which rather strongly 
goes for the theory that the name of the town is derived from a 
holy recluse named Theoc who is said to have settled here at the 
end of the 7th century. 
William of Malmesbury, however, assumed far higher origin 
for the name, ‘‘Theotocos,” the Mother of God, merely because 
the Abbey was dedicated to the B.V.M. Baxter puts aside all 
these theories and maintains that the town was the Roman 
Etocessa, which was merely a Latinized form of the British ‘‘Etoc 
iscue,” the swallow of the waters. All these theories were suffi- 
