longing to it extended to four miles in length and two in breadth, wherein the King had feeding for two thousand swine-a material item in the schedule of a landholder of those days, when the hog was quite as important a personage amongst the wealthy and noble as he now is to the poor Irish cotter.

But waving all such discussion as foreign to the matter in hand, I proceed to the origin of Stoneleigh Abbey :

Once upon a time, as the fairy-tales usually set out, two pious hermits, severally ycleped Clement and Hervete, obtained from King Stephen the grant of a certain desert, called Redmore, lying in the forest Canok, in Staffordshire. Here by the devout bounty of the Empress Maude they were enabled to build a monastery, upon condition however that they should conform to the Cistercian rule, to which she was herself much attached, and which was becoming very popular in England. To these terms they agreed after due deliberation, and being little acquainted with the Cistercian discipline they invited two monks from the Abbey of Bordesley, in Worcestershire, to give them the necessary instruction. But the good monks were not long allowed to follow these holy studies in quiet. They found the foresters of the neighbourhood not only troublesome, but by their frequent visits a burthen upon the monastery, and in consequence were fain to solicit the good offices of the Empress Maude with her son, Henry II., in obtaining for them a removal to the royal manor of Stoneleigh. With such a mediator their petition was soon granted, and they first settled themselves where the grange of Cryfield now stands; but this proving too near the public high-way they made choice of another place, a little below the confluence of the Sow and Avon, having the dense wood of Echels on the north, and being almost surrounded by water. The King however did not entirely abandon his interest in Stoneleigh to the monks; some manorial rights he still reserved to himself when making the grant, and this in after time led to much dispute and trouble, the foresters and other royal officers alleging that all belonged to the Sovereign, in defiance of the grants which had long before been made to them. Seeing there was no chance of obtaining quiet in any other way, the then abbot repaired to the King, and for two hundred marks and two white palfreys got a confirmation of their charter, with all the usual oppressive rights and privileges of feudalism, such as "free warren, infangthef and outfangthef, weyts, streys, goods of felons and fugitives, tumbrell, pillory, sok, sak, toll, theam, amerciaments for murder, assize of bread and beer, with a mercate and faire at Stoneley." If such infringements upon individual rights were to be granted at all, they certainly could not be placed in better hands than those of the monks, who in general proved much more indulgent landlords than the military nobles. This might no doubt be attributable in some measure to their having less temptation to accumulate from the want of legitimate heirs;

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The general meaning of this legal gibberish is sufficiently clear, but it might be a difficult matter to explain each individual term-such for instance as toll and theam; or, as we find it in a charter of Henry I. to S. Benedict Rames and S. Ivo, cum saka et soca, et cum toll et them, et cum infra capto fure." The infangthef is the "infra capto fure" of the charter, and means the manorial lord's right to try a thief caught upon his own lands; the outfangthef probably means a more extended jurisdiction—the right, that is, of adjudging any plunderer upon the lord's ground, although he should not have been caught there. Of the tumbril we are told that it is "an engine of punishment which ought to be in every liberty that has view of frankpledge" (the surety

had they saved it must have been for strangers, or had they earned a bad name by extorting from their tenantry they wanted the means and opportunity of squandering such ill-got wealth; but allowing all this, it surely is no very great excess of liberality to suppose that religion and a better acquaintance with that learning, which "emollit mores nec sinit esse feros" may also have had its influence in producing this result. Not that the good monks escaped scandal any more than their neighbours; on the contrary, they came in for their share, and more than their share, of calumny, and as mud is always the most conspicuous on the whitest gar ments, so it will always be found that scandal is the more glaring in proportion to the fairness of the character that it soils. Thus for instance, we are told by Dugdale, that "William de Gyldeford, the ninth abbot, being a man of singular wisdom and made penitentiary to Panduph (Pandulf) the pope's legate, was afterwards sent with legatine authority into Wales; which occasioned many superior abbots and others to malign him ; so that because he countenanced a shepherd belonging to the monastery to fight a duel, and to hang a thief that had privately stole away some cattell of theirs, such advantage was taken against him, as that being prosecuted for it he was deprived in anno 1235."

It is difficult to understand this deprivation of the abbot when the monastery, as we have already seen, possessed the right of jurisdiction, which unquestionably was exercised by many of the lay nobles to a much later period than the reign of Henry III. But the fact being stated upon such good authority, we can only suppose that some limitation of the original grant had taken place, although we possess no record of it.

Sometimes it would seem as if the monks really deserved a part at least of the censures so liberally bestowed upon them. In the time of the same monarch we find that "divers of the monks grew so exorbitant that they fell to wandering; insomuch as the King sent forth his precepts to all sheriff's and other his officers to apprehend and deliver them to the abbot for chastisement according to their demerits, and as their rule required.”

More questionable is the charge brought against another abbot, "that he granted estates to divers persons for lives, of several farmes and lands, without reserving any rent to be paid, to the great prejudice of the monastery; and this was alledged to be for the support of one Isabelle Beushale, and his children by her, which were more in number, as the record says, than the monks then in the convent. And it was then also alledged that, were it not for these leases, twenty might very well have been maintayned therein. How he acquitted himself of this scandalous charge I know not; but certain it is that the man was

given by freemen of every district for each other) for the correction and couring of scolds. Weyts are waifs, goods, that is, dropt by a thief who has stolen them and which are seized to the lord's use unless the owner come with fresh suit after the felon, and sue an appeal within a year and a day, or give in evidence against him upon his arraign ment, and he be attainted. But it is sometimes applied to goods not stolen. Strey, stray, or estray, signifies any beast, that is not wild, found within any lordship, and not owned by any man, in which case if it be cried according to law in the next markettown, and it be not claimed by the owner within a year and a day it is the lords of the soils. Soka is sok or socage, the right that is of holding a court so called, which I must say is no very satisfactory information. Free-waren, or free-warren is a "franchise or place privileged either by prescription or a grant from the King to keep beasts and fowls of waren, which are hares and conies, partridges and pheasants. If any person offend on such free-waren he is punishable for the same by the common law and by statute.-21 ED. 3.

a person of notable parts, and deserved very well of the house; for he composed that excellent leiger-book, being the transcript of their evidences, wherein are all things historically entered that concern this monastery; and very many particulars relating to the general story of the kingdom, especially of these parts which are not elsewhere to be met with."

Upon the violent dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., that rapacious and despotic monarch bestowed Stoneleigh upon his favourite, Charles Brandon, the chivalric Duke of Suffolk. Of his Grace's residence there we have no account, but it is a singular fact in genealogical history that the present Lord Leigh derives in a direct line from this very Charles Brandon, being eleventh in descent from the marriage of the Duke with the Princess Mary Tudor. In course of time Stoneleigh passed to Sir Thomas Leigh (a descendant of the old Cheshire family of Leigh), who increased the original estate by extensive purchases in the neighbourhood, and in the fourth year of Elizabeth obtained a patent of confirmation for the whole, together with the manor of Stoneleigh. This Sir Thomas died in 1571, and lies buried in Mercer's Chapel, London, with this quaint inscription to his memory :—

Sir Thomas Leigh bi civil life,

All offices did beare,

Which in this city worshipfull
Or honourable were.

Whom as God blessed with great wealth,

So losses did he feele;

Yet never changed he constant minde,

Tho' fortune turn'd her wheele.

Learning he lov'd and helpt the poore,
To them that knew him deere;

For whom his lady and loving wife
This tomb hath builded here.

"His lady and loving wife" continued to reside at Stoneleigh to a very advanced age, having seen her children's children to the fourth generation. She departed this life A.D. 1603, and was buried in Stoneleigh Church. Her eldest son, Rowland, who was largely provided for at Longborough, in Gloucestershire, by Sir Rowland Hill, his godfather, was direct ancestor of the present head of the family-Chandos, Lord Leigh, while the second son Thomas, who succeeded to Stoneleigh, founded the ennobled branch there seated; his grandson, Sir Thomas Leigh, was created a baron of the realm, under the title of Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh, by Charles I. in the nineteenth year of his reign, and proved an unflinching adherent to the monarch in all his troubles. On one occasion Charles finding an unwelcome reception at Coventry sought refuge at Stoneleigh, where he was entertained with dutiful affection. The spirit of loyalty thus kindled towards the Stuarts burnt with unabated fire through the whole succession of the lords of Stoneleigh. To such an extent was this feeling carried that it may be almost termed fantastic, far exceeding even the loyalty of Sir Harry Lee of Ditchley, so beautifully imagined by Walter Scott; they steadily refused bearing any part in a world that had rejected the race of their attachment; nor would they ever take their place in parliament, but lived at Stoneleigh, amidst the portraits of the Stuarts, secluded from busy life, and amusing themselves with rural sports as if they had been a new kind of lay hermits.

The last of these lords bequeathed Stoneleigh to his sister, the late Hon. Mary Leigh, at whose decease, unmarried, the property passed to the Rev. Thomas Leigh of Adlestrop, Gloucestershire, and from bim to his nephew, James Henry Leigh, Esq. of Adlestrop and Longborough, whose father, James Leigh, Esq., of Adlestrop and Longborough, married Lady Caroline Brydges, eldest daughter of Henry, Duke of Chandos. He (James Henry Leigh) married the Hon. Julia Judith Twisleton, daughter of Thomas, Lord Saye and Sele, and was father of Chandos, present Lord Leigh.

No inconsiderable portion of the old conventual building still remains in excellent preservation, and especially a gatehouse erected by the sixteenth abbot, Robert de Hockhele, who also placed on the outer front a large escutcheon of stone, in memory of King Henry II., the founder of the abbey. He died in 1349. The estate surrounding this noble mansion contains many thousand acres of the most picturesque and diversified scenery-meadows, arable land, and woods, in which the oak is abundant, with gentle slopes-and undulations, although deficient in the bolder features that characterize a mountainous country. Nor must the river Avon be forgotten in this picture, its clear quiet waters adding not a little to the other attractions of the landscape, while about a mile from the house is a fine park, well stocked with deer.

To call such a property one's own, is, as Fergus Mac Ivor says of the Waverly lands, a pretty addition to the sum total" of the possessor's happiness. But even without such additions, it is something to have his lordship's poetical reputation, sanctioned as it has been, by the leading critics of the day, at a time too, when he had no lordly honours to recom mend him to a more favourable judgment. In this case, the fame of the poet may be thought by some to have ennobled the title; and certainly it has imparted that peculiar interest to Stoneleigh, which every place acquires when associated with illustrious names, or which, while yet unseen has been rendered familiar to us by the descriptions of a master spirit For myself, I must frankly confess, that this beautiful landscape wore the face of an old friend, from my strong recollection of what I had previously read about it with so much pleasure. Omitting the opening verses, descriptive of spring, how truly had the noble poet painted the scene before me, in his INVITATION TO THE BANKS OF THE AVON:

"The sun is shining on this lovely scene,

Gladd'ning with light the meadow's tender green;
Studding the water with its lustrous gems
More brilliant than ten thousand diadems.
Beautiful Avon! how can I pourtray

Thy varied charms where'er thou wind'st thy way?
Now through the sunny meads, now in the glade,

Thou sleep'st beneath the wood's o'erarching shade."

The

The sun was now beginning to decline, and the evening wind to blow somewhat coldly, whirling the yellow leaves around, and though the phrase is somewhat the worse for wear-sighing amidst the copses. darkness of the prospect made me think of the way homeward, and compelled me, with much regret, to bid farewell to the Avon, although not to its reminiscences. I shall spare the reader any account of the internal luxuries of Stoneleigh Abbey. On such a subject it will be quite enough

to say that all which refined taste and unlimited expenditure could supply will here be found united. Much more interesting to the genealogist will be the series of family portraits presenting the Lords Leigh, and the many painted heraldic windows exhibiting the various alliances of the house. There was however one "hiatus valdé deflendus." Amongst these armorial achievements I saw no allusion to the descent of the present lord from the Princess Mary Tudor, through the sister of Lady Jane Grey, although it is an honour of which few subjects can boast, and well deserved to be recorded. Now this is one of the points upon which a herald is apt to be no less sensitive and tenacious than Sir John Falstaff was of his knighthood and soldiership, when the attendant of my Lord Chief Justice besought him to lay them aside-" I lay aside that which grows to me! if thou get'st any leave of me, hang me." The series of arms without this important feature is manifestly as imperfect as the grand hall in Aladdin's flying palace when it wanted a single window; and greatly is it to be desired that his lordship may some day call up the slaves of the lamp, and cause them to supply what is wanting.

Here then my account of Stoneleigh Abbey must end, and if the reader has only found half the pleasure in this slight sketch that I did in my visit, my purpose in writing will have been fully answered.

J. B. B.