61 



Jmkednaj Utottssterg. 



By tlie Rev. Canon Jackson, F.S.A. 



HIS paper does not in any way refer to the original 

 monastery of Monks or Friars, on the Hill of Ambrius or 

 Ambrosius, which in the historical account of the erection of 

 Stonehenge in the 5th century is mentioned as the burial-place of 

 the massacred British chieftains : but to a later House of Nuns 

 which stood upon the flat ground near the river Avon, close to the 

 existing church of Ambresbury. 



This House of Nuns had been founded about A.D. 980, by 

 Elfrida, Queen Dowager of King Edgar, in atonement for the 

 murder of her son-in-law Edward the Martyr at Corfe Castle. It 

 was of the Benedictine Order, and under the patronage of St. 

 Mary, and of Melorus a Cornish saint whose relics were preserved 

 here, but of whose title to a place in the calendar more was known 

 then than now. 



From the time of its foundation it continued an independent 

 house till the reign of Henry II., when (A.D. 1177) irregularities 

 brought down the King's displeasure, and the community of Nuns 

 was dissolved. The house was then reformed, and made a cell, or 

 house subordinate to the foreign Abbey of Font Evrault in Anjou, 

 from which a fresh Prioress and twenty four Nuns were introduced 

 into Wiltshire. The French Abbess, Johanna de Gennes, was in- 

 ducted by Richard Archbishop of Canterbury in the presence of 

 the King, of Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter, and others. 1 From that 

 time it became one of the most select retreats for Ladies in the 

 higher ranks of life. Among royal or noble ladies connected 

 with Ambresbury we find the following : — 



1 From an old French, letter printed in New Monasticon (Amesbury, ~No. x.) 

 it appears that there were also some " Brethren," probably a staff of chaplains, 

 &c, attached to the Monastery who as well as the sister-hood were placed under 

 the new Abbess's controul. 



