280 



Stanley Alley. 



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 of a portion of the sum of £1200, for which 

 was sold to Sir Edward Baynton, " part of the lands belonging to 

 the late 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 ; oalm 



