64 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



Here, to its sanctuary, in 1471, after she had landed at 

 Southampton on Easter Day, the very day of the battle of 

 Barnet, fled the Countess of Warwick, wife of the King-maker, 

 slain on that bloody field.* Here, too, in 1497, after having 

 raised the siege of Exeter, and deserted his troops at Taunton, 

 fled the worthless Perkin Warbeck, not only an impostor, but 

 a coward, closely pursued by Lord Daubeny and five hundred 

 men. Persuaded, however, by Henry VII. 's promises, he left 

 his shelter only to become a prisoner in the Tower, and finally 

 to expiate his deceit at Tyburn. 



So years passed at the Abbey, the monks happy in saying their 

 daily prayers, content to see the corn grow, and their vineyards 

 ripen, and their flocks increase, knowing little of the troubles 

 which raged in the outer world, save when some forlorn fugitive 

 arrived. But even what is best becomes the worst. Time 

 brought a change of spirit on all the monasteries. Long before 

 the middle of the sixteenth century the stern earnestness of a 

 former age had dwindled into effeminacy and sensuality. Piety 

 had sunk into gross idolatry ; and faith, amongst the laity, had 

 been corrupted into credulity, and, with the priests, into 

 hypocrisy. The greatest blessings had festered into curses. 

 It was so, we know, through all England. And Beaulieu 

 must suffer with the rest of the monasteries. 



* Not Margaret of Anjou, as the common accounts say, who, landing at 

 Weymouth, took refuge at Cerne Abbey. See Historic of the Arrival of 

 Edward IV. in England, pp. 22, 23, printed for the Camden Society, 1838; 

 and Hollinshed's Chronicles, vol. iii. p. 685 ; and Speed, B. ix. p. 866. 

 Hall, however (The Union of the Families of Lancaster and York, p. 219), 

 with Grafton, in his prose continuation of Hardyng (Ed. Eilis, 1812, p. 457), 

 says it was to Beaulieu that Margaret fled. But they are evidently mis- 

 taken, as Speed and Hollinshed, and the explicit and circumstantial narra- 

 tive of the author of the Historic, show. 



