for all who laboured under any infirmity were healed." I find however no mention made of these miracles in the Saxon chronicle, which is probably a contemporary record, Such tales seem the exaggerations, if not the inventions, of a later age. The cures, attributed to the virtue of King Edward's bones, might perhaps more truly be ascribed to the medical skill and good nursing of the pious and gentle sisters. William of Malmesbury writing in the reign of King Stephen, about A.D. 1140, thus speaks of them. "At Shaftesbury......there is a numerous choir of women dedicated to God......enlightening those parts with the blaze of their religion. There reside sacred virgins, there continent widows, ignorant of a second flame,... ...in all whose manners, graceful modesty is so blended with chastened elegance, that nothing can exceed it. Indeed it is matter of doubt which to applaud most, their assiduity in the service of God, or their affability in the converse of men." On the translation of the body of Edward the Martyr to the Abbey Church, his name was added to that of the blessed Virgin, and henceforth the church was known, as the church of S. Mary the Virgin and S. Edward the Martyr; and the town was often called "Burgus Sancti Edwardi," and "Edwardstow." The Saxon chronicle records the death of Herelufu, Abbess of Shaftesbury, A.D. 982. King Ethelred,1 by charter dated 1001, gave to the church of S. Edward, the monastery and vill of Bradford, to be always subject to the Abbey of Shaftesbury, "that the nuns of Bradford might have a safe refuge against the Danes, and on the restoring of peace return to their former place."

King Canute died at Shaftesbury, November 12th 1035; his body was however removed to Winchester for burial.

I know of no other important mention of Shaftesbury till the Domesday Survey, in which reference is made to its condition in the reigns of Edward the Confessor and of William I, both probably periods of depression. The royal favour in which it had basked during the reigns of Alfred and some of his successors, had declined. Harold had robbed the Abbey of several of its possessions,

1 Dugdale.

and no rumours of the miraculous virtue of the bones of St. Edward had probably yet been heard. In the Domesday Survey however, the borough was assessed at "2 marks of silver, for 20 hides of land.” This I imagine proves it to have been a place of considerable importance. Salisbury, then a very important town, was assessed at 50 hides, but Dorchester only at 10, and Exeter and Bridport only at 5 each. Towns which had little or no arable land, paid geld in proportion to a certain number of hides, assessed according to their value and wealth; we may therefore, I think, conclude that Shaftesbury was at this period twice as rich and important a place as Dorchester, and four times as rich and important as Exeter or Bridport.

Besides the Abbey and its offices, which, I infer, were reckoned separately, there were in Edward the Confessor's time, 262 houses within the borough. I take it the cottages of the peasantry were not enumerated, but only the houses of the burghers. In the 20th year of William, or rather in the year the survey was actually taken, 85 of these houses had been destroyed or ruined. As signs of former greatness three moniers still remained paying "one mark of silver and twenty shillings to the King, on each new coinage." The possessions of the Abbey were considerable. In confirming Kingston in Corfe to the Abbey, King William I. retained a hide of land, or rather 20 acres valued at one hide, on which stood the old Castle of Wareham, which he desired to hold and rebuild. He gave to the Abbey in exchange the Church and advowson of Gillingham and also restored the lands which Harold had seized in Mapperton, Stoke-Wake, Cheselbourne, Stour, and Piddle. Suc-. cessive kings and others continued to enrich the Abbey with grants of manors, lands, tithes or advowsons. Henry I. granted Donhead Manor for providing the Nuns with vestments. King John gave two hides of land in Ferne, one in Ashgrove and one mill in Donhead, and one in Ludwell. Edward I. granted the Abbess a free warren in her manor of Donhead. We at length find the Abbey with possessions in the borough of Shaftesbury, and with the advowsons of all the livings within the borough, also with the advowsons of Cann S. Rumbold, of S. John and S. James juxta

Shaston and the advowsons and in some cases the manors of Iwerne, Hinton S. Mary, Henley, Gussage, Fontmell, Compton Abbas, Melbury Abbas, Fifehead Kingston, and others in Dorset. In Wiltshire the Abbey held advowsons, manors, or lands at Bradford, Fovant, Tisbury, the Donheads, Sedgehill, Berwick S. Leonard's, Kynell (Keevil) ad Edington, Salisbury and other places. In Somersetshire, Combe Porter, and lands at Bristol; other possessions are also mentioned in Hampshire and Essex. Indeed this list might be greatly extended, but enough has been said to show the large and wide possessions of the house. Fuller records an old saying that, "If the Abbess of Shaftesbury might wed the Abbot of Glastonbury their heir would have more land than the king of England." The Abbess was one of the four, who held of the king by an entire barony, the others being those of Barking, Wilton, and Winchester. The manor of Shaston was from ancient times divided into two moieties, one held by the King, the other by the lady Abbess. In 1302 Edward I. granted "the pleas and perquisites of court yet belonging to the crown in this vill, value £12, to Queen Margaret, in part dower." In the year 1313, the Abbey of Shaftesbury again became the prison of a captive princess. By a warrant dated at Windsor October 13th, 1313, directed to the sheriffs and bailiffs, &c., they are commanded to aid in conducting Elizabeth, wife of Robert Bruce (king of Scotland) from Carrick to Shaston. Another record dated February 12th, 1314, states that the king (Edward II.) allows twenty shillings a week for the maintenance of Robert Bruce's wife and her family while at Shaftesbury. The Bishop of Salisbury was visitor of the Abbey, instituted the Abbess, appointed her confessors, and exercised episcopal control over the house and its inmates. In 1326, Bishop Mortival certified that there was an excessive multitude of Nuns in the Abbey; and two years later declared the revenues equal only to the maintenance of one hundred and twenty Nuns, and ordered no more to be admitted. Bishop Wyvil, May 12th, 1368, granted a dispensation to the Abbess "to go out of the monastery to one of her manors to take the air and divert herself." The king on coming to the throne had a right to nominate a Nun; and the Bishop on

his consecration, a poor woman to the monastery, and in the latter case to appoint a Nun to instruct her in religion. The Abbey appears to have maintained to the last the high reputation it bore in the time of William of Malmesbury, but the good order of the house and the exemplary conduct and usefulness of the Nuns, were in this, as in other similar cases, of no avail for its preservation. The monastery was dissolved March 23rd, 1539, in the 30th year of King Henry VIII. Pensions were assigned out of the revenues to fifty-six Nuns, including the lady Abbess, Elizabeth Zouch, the Prioress and Sub-Prioress, amounting altogether to £431 per annum. The revenue at this time is rated by Dugdale at £1166 8s. 9d. per annum; and by Speed at £1329 1s. 3d. per annum. On the dissolution the work of destruction seems immediately to have commenced. Leland, who visited Shaftesbury about a year after, says "The Abbey stood by of the town," which implies that it had been already demolished. A confirmation of the early destruction of the Abbeys, chantries, hospitals and other religious houses of this and other towns, and the decline and decay of these towns consequent thereon, is found in an Act of Parliament passed just afterwards 32 Henry VIII., c. 18, 19, "Whereas there hath been in times past many beautiful houses within the walls and liberties of" (58 cities and towns are here named and among them) "Shaston, which houses are now fallen down decayed, and at this time remain un-re-edified, as desolate and vacant grounds; many of them nigh adjoining to the high streets, replenished with much uncleanness and filth, with pits, cellars and vaults, lying open and uncovered to the great peril of the king's subjects; and other houses are in danger of falling: now if the owners of the waste grounds on which houses have stood within twenty-five years back, and of the decaying houses, do not in three years, &c., then the lords of whom the ground is held, may re-enter and seize the same, &c."

By an Act passed 26 Henry VIII. this town was made the seat of a suffragan Bishop. John Bradley S.T.B., Abbot of Milton, and William Pelles were presented to the King for his nomination. He nominated Bradley, who was consecrated under a commission issued by Archbishop Cranmer dated Feb. 23rd, 1558. This Act,

repealed in the reign of Mary, was re-enacted in that of Elizabeth, and is still in force. Now that an increase in the episcopate is undoubtedly needed, and the difficulties in the way of fresh legislation on this subject are so many, it would perhaps be wise for our rulers in church and state to act on the powers they already possess. Under this act 26 suffragan bishops could be at once appointed. Shaftesbury, as already stated, is termed a borough in Domesday Book, and was so by prescription. Allusions are made to it as a borough 37 Henry III. and in Richard the II. Alan de Wyke was Mayor 7 Edward II. The first known charter of Incorporation however, was granted by Queen Elizabeth. James I. granted another, and Charles II. a third. This charter granted power within the borough limits to "hold pleas of all trespasses &c., and of all debts not exceeding £10,"-a court in fact for the recovery of small debts equivalent to our present county court. The borough possesses two maces, to be carried before the Mayor on all occasions of public solemnity. One of these, (see Plate), mentioned so early as 14 Edward 4th, has on the broad ends a shield of three compartments. In the first the Arms of France and England. In the second those of the Abbey, Azure, in chief 2 roses, a cross flory between four martlets Or. In the third, one of the Town coats, a Lion pawing against a tree on which a large bird is seated. The colours are not marked. The more modern mace is dated 1604 and has the arms and initials of James I. The Town seal is of the date of Elizabeth's charter 1570. It is of silver having on one end the Town coat above-mentioned, with the letters B.S. at the sides: and on the other end, quarterly, Argent and Azure, a cross quarterly counterchanged, in the 1st and 4th a fleur-de-lis of the 2nd; in the 2nd and 3rd a lion's or leopard's head of the 1st. The former seal was anciently used for warrants for the court of requests and small debts before-mentioned. The latter is still the official seal of the corporation. The Church plate consists of a chalice inscribed "This chalice belongeth to the holy Trinity of Shaston 1670." Another of older workmanship, chased with a plain Elizabethan pattern. A large paten with the inscription "Ex dono Thome Hockny 1714." A flagon and paten inscribed "The gift