280 Stanley Abbey. 
But the time allowed for this paper is now fast running out—we 
must hurry on to the last fatal document, the receipt dated 14th 
February in the twenty-eighth of Henry VIII. (1537), acknow- 
ledging the payment ofa portion of the sum of £1200, for which 
was sold to Sir Edward Baynton, “ part of the lands belonging to 
the ate Monastery of Stanley, in the county of Wiltshire.” This 
instrument is signed by Thomas Pope, there called “ the Treasurer 
of the Augmentations of the revenue of the King’s Crown”: who, 
having amassed a vast fortune by the opportunities which he had of 
obtaining abbey lands, devoted a considerable part of it to nobler 
uses than did many of those who, in his day, by like means became 
rapidly enriched, by founding in 1554 Trinity College in Oxford. 
Thus I have traced out some portions of the story of the rise and 
fall of the once fair Abbey of Stanley. Everything now has gone. 
The Church, the buildings, stained glass and bells and rich vestments; 
chalices and altar plate, illuminated manuscripts, the tombs of the 
dead, all have disappeared. Imagination may try to recall to the 
silent mounds by the river’s bank the voices of the past ; may fancy - 
it hears the chant of the monks at their service, or the measured 
tread of some brother in meditation passing up and down the cloister ; 
or the sudden bustle occasioned by the arrival of some royal visitor 
and his noisy cavalcade: but there is nothing left to help the fancy 
—all is gone. 
To say anything of the iniquities attending the dissolution of the 
monasteries would be out of place now. No doubt, as times and 
manners, needs and requirements change, so may institutions call 
for adaptation and revision; and we can well imagine that the 
founders of abbeys would have willingly seen altered some of the 
details of the rules of their splendid benefactions to meet the altered 
requirements and changed conditions of later times. But destruction 
is not reformation. And, not to speak of other things, when we 
consider how many pressing wants of the past and present might 
have been supplied by the wise husbanding of the bountiful provision 
made by these noble foundations, such as hospitals and dispensaries 
of medicine and nursing for towns and for villages; convalescent 
homes; Church schools of every grade, and training colleges; calm 
