8 
IlEPOET. 
plan for occupying the magnificent and spacious Site, which 
offered itself upon the platform of the Manor Shore. But the 
only prospect of obtaining so valuable an acquisition, lay in the 
hope of finding a disinterested desire, on the part both of the 
Crown and of its Lessee, to promote an object of public utility. 
The Society’s request having been considered in that light by 
Lord Grantham, the Council experienced- no diflBiculty in 
obtaining from his Lordship, a resignation of his interest in 
this ancient tenure of his family ; and the Treasury also 
immediately took into its most favourable consideration the 
petition of the Society, for a grant of the Ruins of St. Mary’s 
Abbey, and three acres of land on the Manor Shore. 
The legal impediments which, in 1826, prevented the 
Crown from complying with the prayer of that petition, 
were stated in the last Report; but the attention of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer ^ having been called to the 
subject, he was of opinion that they were impediments 
which ought not to subsist; and directions were given for 
drawing up a Bill, to extend to -the Country at large the 
provisions of the Act, which empowered the Crown to make 
grants of land to Institutions within the Metropolis. The 
political circumstances which interrupted the proceedings 
of Parliament, during the spring of 1827, barely allowed 
time, in the ensuing session, for transacting the public 
business : nevertheless this Bill, rapidly forwarded by the 
exertions of the friends to the Society, passed into a law, 
which has not only enabled the Crown to comply with the 
^ Vbcount Godericti. 
