XXX11. 



The time was when all these buildings, in the height of their mature 

 beauty, were at best but as a curtain before a priceless picture, but now 

 the picture has disappeared, and we may still admire the texture of the 

 veil, but that alone is left, the glorious work of art that represented cen- 

 turies of human work and interest having entirely perished. The splendid 

 church, surpassing in size and dignity many cathedrals, has followed its 

 builders to the grave. One cannot help feeling it to be something of a 

 disgrace to the reputed enlightenment of the Reformation period that 

 this and so many other stately and monumental edifices should have 

 been suffered to disappear without an effort to save them ; but if we 

 accept DV. Jessop's statement of monastic philosophy and few can be 

 better qualified to form an opinion we see that the monks' self-centred 

 view of life, with their exclusive devotion to their own minster and to 

 their own order, had long been an anachronism. The time had been 

 when each Monastery was an isolated torch of religious life and morals ; 

 when the flickering flame of Christianity needed the shelter of monastic 

 walls ; but that time had long gone by, and when Pope Innocent III. 

 gave his approval to the new Franciscan Order of preaching friars, he 

 recognised the altered condition of society, and introduced a new factor 

 into religious life that soon proved to be actively antagonistic to the 

 older system. On the other hand these isolated unfructifying spores 

 were totally out of harmony with the now accepted idea of a national 

 commonwealth, and the rapid material dissolution that overtook these 

 noble buildings seems to show that in the minds of the people at large 

 they inspired neither veneration nor sympathy. Still we owe much to 

 these crumbling heaps of masonry, and their aspect of dignified decay has 

 elevated our conception of the once ignoble term " ruin " into a 

 suggestion of beauty and romance. 



The thanks of the Club having been offered to Captain Elwes he in- 

 troduced Mr. W. J. C. Moens, of Tweed, near Lymington, asking him to 

 give some further account of the Abbey, 



Mr. Moens said Captain Elwes had spoken to them on the general 

 historical features of monasticism in relation to the Abbey, and with 

 their permission he would address himself more particularly to the history 

 of the foundation of the Abbey, and the grants connected with it. He 

 first of all directed the attention of the members to the north and north- 

 west of the church, where the old northern wall of the Abbey was still 

 standing, and to the north where were to be seen the ruins of a barn and 

 the Abbey brewhouse or monk's winepress. The site of the Abbey 

 market place was still distinguishable in the village, and was known by 

 the name of Cheapside. Other interesting features were the three Early 



