325 CHAPTER XII. Hedsor.-Cookham.-The River Wick.-Great Marlow.The Poet Shelley at the Groves of Bisham.-The Rakes of Medmenham Abbey. - Lady Place, Hurley. - Lord Lovelace and the Revolution of 1688.-Hambleton.-Fawley Court.-Ancient and Modern Antiques.-Henley.Pan and Lodona.-The River Loddon.-Sunning Hill.Reading. DJOINING the estate of Cliefden is Hedsor Lodge, the seat of Lord Boston, commanding picturesque views in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Proceeding upwards to Cookham, we pass two considerable aits or islands, formed by the division of the stream. On the largest, comprising about fifty-four acres, the late Sir George Young erected a commodious villa in the year 1790, which he called Formosa Place. Cookham is a small but pleasant village, and was formerly a market town. At a short distance beyond it, on the opposite bank of the river, the little rivulet, the Wick, which rises near, and gives name to High Wycombe, mingles its waters with the Thames. Having passed this, we arrive in sight of the town of Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, with its neat suspension bridge over the river. The scenery hereabouts is pleasing and rural, and the tiny waterfall of the stream caused by the obstruction of Marlow weir, increases the beauty of the view. Shelley resided in this town during the greater part of the year 1817, as we learn from his accomplished and true-hearted editress, and the town at that time being inhabited by a very poor population, he left for awhile his lonely reveries on the perfectibility of man, and devoted some hours to the alleviation of the actual poverty and misery that surrounded him. He had a severe attack of ophthalmia in the winter, caught while visiting a distressed family in their squalid cottage. But when the fit of poetry was upon him, he delighted to glide along in his boat upon the Thames, among the sedges and water lilies, under the beechen groves of Bisham, that overhang the stream. There he composed "The Revolt of Islam," and part of "Rosalind and Helen,” and ever as he sailed his mind was full Of love and wisdom, which would overflow Bisham Abbey, on the opposite bank, stands close to the water's edge, and was formerly occupied by, and is still the property of Lord Bexley. This abbey was one of those suppressed by Henry VIII, who retained it for a time for his own residence. One of the rooms in it goes by the name of Queen Elizabeth's Council Chamber, from the supposition that she occasionally resided here after her accession. The truth is, however, that in her time Bisham Abbey was no longer royal property, having been granted by Edward VI. to the Hoby family. It is curious to note, how fond the populace are of connecting the name of some great personage with the spots they themselves inhabit. Many of these traditions set probability at defiance, yet will they linger in the popular mind, and no refutation can eradicate them. Thus the people of Bisham believe to this day that Queen Elizabeth resided among them, and insist, notwithstanding the opinion of all the world to the contrary, that she died no maid. They point out in their church a small monument with the sculptured figures of two children, which they assert was erected by that princess, in memory of twins, of which she was delivered in that village. Of course they are but the old women of both sexes who believe this story; but it has been current for nearly two centuries and a half. Passing Temple lock and weir, we arrive at another abbey, on the Buckingham shore, associated with another piece of slander, which, however, has more truth in it than the slander of Bisham. Medmenham Abbey, in the middle of the last century, belonged to a noble peer, a notorious Mohock of his day, who established here a mock monastery under the title of the Abbey of the Monks of St. Francis, in which he and his rakish companions celebrated many impure orgies. The motto of the fraternity was " Fay ce que voudras," or "let each man do as he likes," which still exists, inscribed over the entrance. The abbey was then a scene of unrestrained debauchery, of which the anonymous author of Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea, strives to give his readers an account in those volumes. They are doubtless exaggerated. It is hard to imagine that men, who, whatever were their vices, were not deficient in common sense, would have been scared almost to death by so palpable a hoax as that alleged to have been played off upon them by a fellow member, who introduced a baboon among them, which they all, says he, actually mistook for the devil. In the year 1791, according to Samuel Ireland, the abbey was occupied by a poor family, who increased their scanty means by showing the curious visiter the sole remaining relic of these debauchees, an immense cradle, in which it was customary to rock the full-grown friars of the order, in some of the ceremonies of their installation. The abbey was founded in the reign of King John, and was a cell to the Cistercian Monks of Woburn. At the time of the dissolution it was of very small importance. The return made by Thomas Cromwell, and the commissioners appointed by Henry VIII, purported that it had only two monks, who had servants none, woods none, debts none; that the house was wholly in ruins, and the value of the moveable goods only one pound three shillings and eightpence, besides the bells, which might be worth two pounds one shilling and eightpence. On the opposite shore of Berks is the village of Hurley, remarkable for its beautiful scenery, and the remains of its ancient monastery, called Lady Place. It was founded in the reign of William the Conqueror, by Geoffry de Mandeville, and included a cell for the Benedictine monks of West |