support of it. 'I do not remember,' says Dr. Guest, 'anything on the subject in Gildas, or Bede, or Nennius, or the Chronicle, or Ethelwerd, or Florence, or even Huntingdon.' March 20, 1886.

CARISBROOKE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, FROM THE OGLANDER MSS.

I.

EVERY ONE who observes with any attention the internal arrangements or outside appearance of Carisbrooke Church will see that at one time it possessed a chancel, or to speak more correctly a choir, or place where in monastic churches (which Carisbrooke Church originally was) the brethren assembled to say Mass. The question arises: At what period did the demolition take place? The eminent historian, Mr. Freeman, who has made church architecture, no less than the Norman Conquest, one of his many varied studies, writing on Carisbrooke, says of the church: The remains are worth studying as an example of monastic arrangements on the smallest scale. The church is purely parochial in its type, with a double nave, after a pattern common in the Island. The choir was single, projecting from the northern body. It is said to have been pulled down by the famous Walsingham in Elizabeth's time. It will be noticed in this extract from Mr. Freeman's published account of Carisbrooke that with his usual accuracy and caution he only asserts that 'it is said to have been pulled down by Walsingham. Indeed, I know from what Mr. Freeman said when staying at the Vicarage and from subsequent conversations and letters which I had from him that he thinks the choir may have been taken down when the Alien Priories were suppressed by Henry V.

The question as to the time of its demolition cannot be easily answered, though the guide-books, following one Ff

VOL. II.

another like sheep jumping over a ditch, have no hesitation in ascribing the destruction of this portion of Carisbrooke Church to Elizabeth's famous Secretary of State. Worsley may be cited as a better authority than the guide-books, His language (History I. W. p. 258) is as follows: Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, having the lease of the Priory by his marriage with the widow of Captain Richard Worsley, and being thereby bound to repair the chancel, persuaded the parishioners that the body of the church would be large enough for them, and gave them an hundred marks to suffer it to be taken down, which was accordingly done.' What, it may be asked, can be set against this explicit statement of Worsley's? The reply is, that documentary evidence is needed to substantiate Worsley's statement. The church books and registers make no mention of the demolition of the chancel. The burden of repairing the chancel in a vicarage, which Carisbrooke is, rests, as Worsley correctly states, with the impropriator, who was Walsingham, but the impropriator cannot, simply with the consent of the parishioners, pull down this portion of the church's fabric unless he also have a licence or faculty from the Ordinary, who was in this case the Bishop of Winchester. I therefore asked Bishop Wilberforce whether search might be made for any entry in the Bishop's registers of such licence. being given. His lordship's answer was characteristic: 'I know that if I had been Bishop of Winchester at the time I should not have allowed it, and I have not time to look at the registers, but write to Archdeacon Jacob, and he will tell you.' I did so, but the Archdeacon could give me no information. I then made application to Canon Venables, the scholarly author of perhaps the best guide-book of the Isle of Wight, as to the authority on which he had repeated Worsley's statement. His answer was, that he thought he had found it in the Oglander MSS. The Canon's memory did not play him false, for in the Oglander Memoirs, published by Mr. Long, p. 108, will be found the following entry: The decaye of Caresbroke wase ye sale of ye Island, and ye puttinge down of ye Priorye in Henry ye 6th time, as belonginge to Lyra in Normandy, to ye greate abby theyre; moost of ye muonks were ffrenchmen, and there were many monu

mentes of them in ye chawncel, which wase taken down anno domi 1590. Sir Francis Walsinghame, which had ye lease of ye Pryorye [of Carisbrooke] by maryadge of Rychard Woorseley's wife, rathor than he woold be at ye chardge of repayre of ye chawncel, agreed with ye p'risch to take itt down, and for theyr approbation and good will gave them 100 markes.'

Although it may be argued that Sir John Oglander, writing at the interval of about half-a-century after the transaction, is a trustworthy authority, his own account of it does not quite satisfactorily settle the point at issue. His error in saying that the Priory was dissolved by Henry VI, though it may be passed over as trifling, shows that his accuracy is liable to be impeached; but the difficulty in accepting his testimony lies in the date he assigns for the taking down of the chancel -1590. Sir Francis Walsingham died April 6, 1590. Walsingham, a man of the utmost integrity and disinterestedness, was for many years Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, though he was not a favourite with his Royal mistress because he inclined to Puritanism. His morality was strict, and in his latter days so lifted him above the intrigues and selfish cares of the world around him that, unlike his patron Burleigh, he died a poor man. For some time before his death he retired from all State affairs and seems to have spent his time with little or no society at his house at Barn Elms. Here he died on the date already mentioned. Camden says 'that he had brought himself so far in debt, that he was buried privately at night, in St. Paul's Church, without any manner of funeral solemnity.' It is hardly probable that such a man with one foot in the grave should be driving an unfair bargain with the parishioners of Carisbrooke for the sake of what would have been the very small expense of keeping up the chancel; since he was only a lease-holder of the Priory lands in right of his wife, who was in reality the lessee as widow of her first husband, Richard Worsley.

The history of Walsingham becoming the possessor of this property is worth relating. When in 1414 the Alien Priories were dissolved, by Act of Parliament, with the sanction of those stanch churchmen, King Henry V and Archbishop Chicheley, the small community of Benedictines at Carisbrooke

attached to the famous Abbey of Lire in Normandy was broken up with the rest of these foreign houses. It shared their fate not because of any abuses, such as were alleged in the time of the later dissolution of the English monasteries, under Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, during what Mr. Green, in his History of the English People, calls the 'Terror.' Carisbrooke Priory was, in the language of modern days, 'disestablished,' because, when our kings were at war with France, they could not put up with this little settlement of what Oglander calls 'French monks' in an island which was so near the land of their enemies. The Priory was not however disendowed, except in this sense, that the endowments were transferred to the Carthusian house of forty monks which Henry of Monmouth founded at Shene, which afterwards took the name of Richmond. Probably some truth lies in Oglander's opinion, that the decay of Carisbrooke was partially owing to the 'putting down the Priory.' The French monks, aliens as they were, were missed when they had gone. The existence of the Priory had a certain social and civilizing influence upon the place. But whether it really strengthened the wholesome and spiritual purposes for which it had been founded may be doubted. The monks and the secular or parochial clergy were usually at strife whenever they met one another. So it was at Carisbrooke, where, as Worsley says (Hist. I. W. p. 169), it appears from the register of William of Wykeham that great prelate had to interfere in behalf of the vicar. Any religious ministrations and functions which the monks had undertaken were replaced by those of the secular priest or vicar, who, as a born Englishman and a parochial clergyman, would be more in touch with the general body of the parishioners. The fabric of the church certainly sustained no loss by the departure of the monks, for the massive stately tower, which gives so much grandeur to the church, and the great structural change in the south aisle, belong to the very end of the fifteenth or probably at the beginning of the sixteenth century, long after the departure of the monks.

In the year 1505 we learn from a curious document, quoted by Worsley, Appendix xxxiv, that the Carthusians had leased the great tithes and lands belonging to the Priory

(the small tithes were appropriated to the vicar, whose patron was the Crown) to Sir John Leigh for a certain sum of money, much in the same way that bishops and deans and chapters did, and as colleges at Oxford and Cambridge still do, as the most easy way of obtaining an income from their estates. Sir John Leigh's only daughter, Anne, was in 1512 married to Sir James Worsley, and carried with her the lease of the Priory of Carisbrooke into the Worsley family. Richard, son and heir of Sir James Worsley and Anne his wife, took possession of the lease of the Priory, which, along with the tithes of Godshill and of Freshwater, had been renewed to Sir James Worsley at the annual rent of 200 marks. Worsley, writing in 1781, Appendix xlix, gives a list of all such rents, pensions, and tithes appertaining to the Priory of Carisbrooke, as were appointed by Richard Worsley, Esq., deceased, to his son George, A. D. 1565. This son George with his brother John was unfortunately blown up in the porter's lodge at Appuldurcombe, A. D. 1567. Richard's widow, Ursula, second daughter of Henry St. Barbe, Esq., married Sir Francis Walsingham. By her second husband Ursula had a daughter, Frances, who was successively the wife of Sir Philip Sidney, fair as he was brave, the darling of the Court and camp-soldier and poet; then of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, whose head fell on the scaffold after his mad struggle with the Queen's Government; and lastly of Richard de Burgh, Earl of Clanricarde, who in 1628 was advanced to the earldom of St. Albans.

'John, the second son of Sir James Worsley, succeeding to his nephews, had a long contest with Sir Francis Walsingham for the chattel estates (that is, for the estates not freehold), but, Walsingham prevailing, enjoyed by right of his wife the lease of the Priory of Carisbrooke.'

Queen Elizabeth, who found granting easy leases of church lands a cheap way of paying her statesmen for their services, appears to have favoured Sir Francis Walsingham, although he did not share in the mercenary and rapacious spirit which leavened her political advisers, in this matter of the lease of Carisbrooke Priory. Mr. Long, in a note (Oglander Memoirs, p. 154), states on the authority of the State Papers, Domestic,