34 Malmesbury. 



of Bromham was the chief seneschal or steward ; Sir Thomas 

 Arundell head receiver. The Abbey was also charged with pensions 

 called "corodies," which the Crown had a right to fix upon it. 

 All these various charges amounted to about a tenth part of the 

 revenue of the monks. 



In the case of many of the dissolved Monasteries it was not 

 enough to have driven away the birds: they must needs destroy 

 the beautiful nests. But with respect to Malmesbury Abbey, it is 

 only fair to say that though the Monastery may have been soon 

 demolished, the Abbey Church had already suffered great injury, 

 and not by the hand of man. Leland was here in 1540, a year 

 after the Dissolution. This eye-witness tells us that the high spire 

 that once stood at the cross of the transept had fallen down within 

 the memory of man, and had not been rebuilt. The phrase " withm 

 the memory of man," implies so far back that one can't exactly say 

 what year, but only that there are some old folks in the parish who 

 do mind it. It must therefore have been many years before the Disso- 

 lution that the central spire had fallen. By its fall the Eastern 

 part also of the Church was probably so much injured as to become 

 useless : and may accordingly have been taken down. If this were 

 the case, then the reproach of wilful destruction no longer rests with 

 the purchaser of the Abbey Church. And that this is the true 

 account of the matter seems likely : for in the License granted by 

 Archbishop Cranmer (20th August, 1541,) to convert the Nave 

 into a Parish-church, there is no allusion to any other part as being 

 then in existence. In the central steeple had been 10 bells ; one 

 a remarkably fine one, called St. Aldhelm's, which they used to 

 ring sometimes during storms in order to scare away the thunder 

 and lighting. An anonymous Tourist who visited Malmesbury in 

 1634, and whose "Topographical Excursion" is printed in "Bray- 

 ley's Graphic and Historical Illustrator," p. 411, says that at that 

 time, the central tower was "much decayed and ruinated; and the 

 Angle there cleane decayed." In the wretched plate of the Abbey 

 Church given in the old edition of Dugdale's Monasticon, the four 

 arches of the central tower appear to have been still standing 

 about 1660. John Aubrey mentions that at the rejoicings for King 



