E-text prepared by sp1nd, Mary Meehan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/legendofreadinga00macf |
A LEGEND OF READING ABBEY.
By Charles MacFarlane
THE AUTHOR OF 'THE CAMP OF REFUGE.'
LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & Co., LUDGATE STREET.
1845.
A LEGEND OF READING ABBEY.
I.
It was in the year of Grace eleven hundred and thirty-seven (when thegrace of God appeared to be entirely departing from the sinful andunhappy land of England), and Stephen of Blois, nephew of the deceasedKing Henry Beauclerc, sat upon the throne, lawfully and honestly, assome men said, but most unlawfully, according to others. And the woe Ihave to relate arose from this divergency of opinion, but still morefrom the change-ableness of men's minds, which led our bishops, lords,and optimates to side now with one party and now with the other, and nowchange sides again, to the great perplexing of the understanding ofhonest and simple men, to the undoing of their fortunes, and well nighto the utter ruin of this realm, which that learned clerk and rightpolitic King Henricus Primus had left in so flourishing and peaceful acondition.
Our great religious house of Reading (may the hand of sacrilege and theflames of war never more reach it!), founded and endowed by theBeauclerc, had then been newly raised on that smiling, favoured spot ofearth which lies on the bank of the Kennet, hard by the juncture of thatclear and swift stream with our glorious river Thamesis; and in soothour noble house was not wholly finished and furnished at this time; foralbeit the first church, together with most of its chapels and shrines,was in a manner completed, and our great hall was roofed in, and flooredand lined with oak, the lord abbat's apartment, and the lodging of theprior, and the dormitory for the brethren, and the granary and thestables for my lord abbat's horses, were yet unfinished; and, except onSundays and the feast days of Mother Church, these parts of the abbeywere filled by artisans and well-skilled workmen who had been collectedfrom Windsor, Wallingford, Oxenford, Newbury, nay even from the rightroyal city of Winchester, which abounded with well-skilled masons andbuilders, and the capital city of London, where all the arts be mostcultivated. Moreover, sundry artists we had from beyond the seas, asmasons and hewers of stone, who had been sent unto us from Caen inNormandie by the defunct king, and some right skilful carvers in woodand in stone, who had been brought out of Italie by Father MichaelAngelo Torpietro, a member of our house, who had quitted the gloriousmonastery of Mons Casinium, which had been raised and occupied by thefounder of our order, the blessed Benedict himself, when he was in theflesh, in order to live among us and instruct us in humane letters andin all the rules and ordinances of o