144 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



three hundred years the good monks served God and 

 man in peace, looking after their rich estate, meditating 

 amid their beautiful surroundings, and succouring the 

 sick and needy in the villages around. But at the 

 time of the dissolution of the monasteries the priory 

 shared the fate of similar establishments, and was 

 granted by Henry VIII. , together with one hundred 

 other manors in the neighbourhood, to Robert Rich, 

 at that time his Solicitor-General, and afterwards 

 Lord Chancellor of England. 



Of Lord Chancellor Rich, old Fuller quaintly says, 

 " he was a lesser hammer under Cromwell to knock 

 down abbeys; most of the grants of which going 

 through his hands, no wonder if some stuck to his 

 fingers." But whatever his character and career as a 

 politician, he will be gratefully remembered in Essex 

 as the founder of Felstead School and of the Rich 

 almshouses ; while the Tudor mansion which he built 

 on the site of the Augustine priory must have been one 

 of the most magnificent in the county. But a more 

 interesting figure than that of the great Lord Chan- 

 cellor, whose stately tomb in the south aisle of Felstead 

 Church has been a familiar object to successive gene- 

 rations of Felstead boys, is associated with the pic- 

 turesque ruin of the once splendid home. We refer 

 to Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, wife of Charles 

 Rich, fifth baron of that name. 



The father of Mary Rich was the celebrated 

 "gentleman adventurer," Richard Boyle, who made 

 a huge fortune in Ireland, was created Earl of Cork 

 by James I., and lived to see no fewer than four of 

 his sons made peers. For Mary, "the great earl" 

 designed, as for his other daughters, a brilliant match, 

 but the Mr. Hamilton selected, only son of Lord 



