pray for an absent husband or wife, son or daughter, or other dear ones, or possibly to abandon, it may be to expiate, some past sin, which had cast a shadow on their life?

But if I am to give a correct idea of the present aspect of the Abbey of Walsingham, I must pass from the pilgrim of the fifteenth to one of the nineteenth century, and return to my own companionship. I walk on along gravel paths between the trimmest of green turf and the darkest of evergreens, bending a little to my right, in which direction I see the ruined arch of a tall window rising high above the foliage of the surrounding trees. This arch, from which all the tracery of the window has departed, is sixty feet in height, and is supposed to have been erected in the time of Henry VII.: it clearly formed the east end of the Abbey church. The buttresses on either side comprise three stages of niches rising one above the other, somewhat like the stone-panelled fronts of St. Osyth's Priory gateway, Essex, and St. John's gateway at Colchester. Above the arch the rose window remains perfect, but is tenanted by pigeons. Near this arch, though still farther to my right, is a group of stone buildings dovetailed into a modern mansion and made to form part of it. This is now Walsingham Abbey, the residence of the Lee-Warners, the lords of the manor, and indeed of nearly all the property round, including most of the broad acres which once called the Prior of Walsingham master. A stone wall, a mile in length, runs round the home part of the estate, crossing the little river twice, and giving an air of seclusion to the mansion, which is still called "the Abbey." I am at once struck by the similarity of the tall window to the eastern end of Glastonbury, where the ruins rise also out of the green turf of a modern gentleman's residence, though built on a larger scale, and carrying one back to an earlier century in their style.

"The remains of this once celebrated place," observes Mr. J. H. Parker in 1847, "are now very small. Of the Chapel of our Lady we have only part of a fine Perpendicular east front, containing two staircases covered with panelling of flint and stone, and rich niches, and fine buttressess connected by the arch and gable over the east window; but the window itself is destroyed. In the gable is a small round window with flowing tracery, set in the middle of a very thick wall." Mr. Parker has followed former writers in calling this a part of the Chapel of our Lady, whereas in reality it belonged to the priory church. The ruins were more extensive when a view of them was published in the "Vetusta Monumenta," in 1720. Some part of the mansion is made out of the old refectory: it consists of a range of four Early Decorated windows, with the staircase to a

pulpit in the wall. There is also a doorway and vault of another compartment.

It would seem that the ancient manor of Walsingham belonged in early times to King Harold, and that it derived its name from or gave it to a family of Walsingham, from whom descent was claimed by Sir Francis Walsingham, the well-known Secretary of State under Elizabeth; but it is not known when that house and the manor parted company. The following brief account of its history I gleaned from Dugdale and from Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk.

After the Conquest, if we may trust these authorities, the chief manors around Walsingham fell to the lot of Rainald, the son of Ivo, one of the companions in arms of the Conqueror; but how long this tenure lasted we are not informed. However, we know that the real owner was Walter Giffard, Earl of Bucks, and that his sister carried it in marriage to Richard, Earl of Clare, who in the reign of Henry III. gave a charter for holding a weekly market. The historians tell us that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloster (temp. Edward I.), had here "assize of bread and beer, a gallows, and other royal privileges." These rights and privileges came to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, whose daughter Philippa married Mortimer, Earl of March; and three or four generations subsequently they reverted to Richard, Duke of York, and to his son Edward IV., whose daughter Elizabeth carried the manor to her husband, Henry VII.

At the Restoration, King Edward VI. granted the manor to Thomas Gresham, Esq.; and Queen Mary in the first year of her reign confirmed it, with other neighbouring lordships, to that family. Sir Thomas Gresham possessed it in the reign of Elizabeth; and his crest, a grasshopper, is still to be seen on a document by which he grants out of it an annuity to Edward Flowerdew in consideration of sundry faithful services.

Passing to his coheirs, George Lord Berkeley, Sir William Withipole, and the Earl of Desmond, in all probability the manor was soon afterwards alienated; for in 1637, Blomefield tells us, it was conveyed to Dr. John Warner, Bishop of Rochester, "a prelate famous for his noble acts of charity." On the bishop's death without issue male, the manor passed to his nephew, John Lee-Warner, archdeacon and prebendary of Rochester-a member of the family of Lee, of Lee Hall, Shropshire-as son of the bishop's sister and heiress, from whom the present owner is directly descended.

We now pass to the history of the Priory of Walsingham, the foundation of which dates from before the Conquest; for it was in or about the year of grace 1061 that the widow of Ricold or Richard

de Faverches, who lived in Little Walsingham, in compliance with a warning which she received in a dream, was led to found there a chapel in honour of the Blessed Virgin, "in all respects like to the Santa Casa at Nazareth," which was so miraculously transported from Palestine to Loretto.

Her son, Sir Geoffrey, soon after the Conquest, endowed the chapel, and granted it to his clerk, Edwin, along with eight acres of land and other possessions, agreeing also to make up twenty shillings of rent out of his manor, in case the yearly offerings to our Lady should not exceed five marks ! He also founded a priory close beside it; and the two religious houses ere very long became one— two blossoms on a single stalk. His widow, or possibly his son's widow, appears to have married into the family of Houghton, more than one of whom became a friend of the little chapel and of the priory also.

The Kens, Flitchams, de Beaufoes, the Earls of Warrenne, Clare, and Salisbury (de Longspée), figure in the list of benefactors; as also do the Hales, Felton, Reynham, and Gourney families. The de Clares granted to the brethren of the priory the liberty and right of holding a fair yearly. The prior had from every parishioner in Walsingham a mortuary fee of the second best animal that he possessed, or, if he owned only one, then of that. In 1291 the income of the Abbey is set down as £157 yearly.

Although no serious charges could be substantiated against the inmates of the Abbey before the King's minions who were sent as "visitors" to report upon its internal condition, at the Dissolution of religious houses Walsingham "fell" with the rest in the 30th year of Henry VIII. It was then valued, according to Dugdale, at £391, or, according to Speed, at £446. After the Dissolution the site of the priory was sold by Henry VIII. for the great sum of £90 to one Thomas Sydney, Gentleman, of Little Walsingham, apparently Governor of the Spital, or Spittle, in the town, who, it seems, was employed by his neighbours to buy it for their use, though he cunningly converted it to his own. One of his descendants, a generation or two later, sold or gave the property to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, and from that family it passed to the Rokewoods, from whom it ultimately came to its present owners.

The priory church in the days of its splendour must have been a grand and magnificent edifice. Blomefield gives-from William of Worcester-the length of the naye from the west entrance to the central tower as seventy paces, its breadth as sixteen paces. The choir was fifty paces more-in length; and beyond it, he says, was another

building-probably a Lady Chapel, sixteen yards in length and ten in

breadth.

But the greatest beauty and glory of the priory was the adjoining Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, which nestled under its shadow; not on account of its size, for it is said to have been only eight yards long by nearly five in width. Though its walls were built only of wood, yet its interior was brilliantly coloured, and a shrine which stood within it was as bright as gold, silver, and jewels could make it. Erasmus tells us that it was constantly lit up with waxen tapers, and that the scent of precious odours within it was almost divine.

It is needless to add that this chapel and shrine were constantly enriched with gifts by "the faithful." Thus, for instance, Isabel Countess of Warwick in 1439 bequeathed her "tablet" with an image of our Lady, which had a glass over it, to the church at Walsingham; also to the Lady there "her gown of alyz cloth of gold with wide sleeves and a tabernacle of silver, like in the timbre to that of our Lady of Caversham." King Henry VII., too, mentions in his will that he has ordered an image of silver and gilt to be made and offered up and set before the Lady of Walsingham.

Erasmus-who, as I have already observed, came here twice as a pilgrim, though not a very earnest or devout one-tells us that the chapel was a separate building from the priory church, and that it was not quite finished in his time. "In this building," he writes, "there is a small chapel, all of wood, on each side of which is a little narrow door, where those are admitted who come with their offerings and pay their devotions. They had no light but from the wax candles, the odour of which was delightful; and it glittered with jewels and gold and silver, insomuch that it seemed to be the seat of the gods." According to the same writer, there was a resident priest, the keeper of the chapel, who took care of all the offerings of the faithful, and who showed the other treasures; the chief being a glass phial containing some of the milk of the Blessed Virgin, brought from Constantinople to Paris, and thence to Walsingham, and a finger of gigantic size said to have belonged to the Apostle Peter.

The two wells, full to the brink, which are mentioned by Erasmus, and which are said to have bubbled out of the earth at the bidding of our Lady, are still perfect. I saw them the other day. They are lined with ashlar stone, and near them is what appears to have been a square bath, though its date is uncertain. The wells are now

called "The Wishing Wells," the guide-book story running to the effect that in the old days of "superstition" whatever the pilgrims

wished or prayed for at their brink was sure to be granted. For myself I venture to doubt, at all events, this part of the story.

Mr. J. H. Parker, in some notes prepared for the Archæological Institute in 1847, speaks of these wells as "quite plain, round, and uncovered, having on one side of them a square bath, on the other a small Early English doorway." They are still in exactly the same condition. It appears that in early times a roughly-built timber house, its rafters lined with a bearskin, overshadowed these wells. Erasmus saw it in situ, and tells us that it was a part of a copy of "the house of Loretto.

So great was the fame of the image of the Lady of Walsingham that not only Englishmen but foreigners of all nations came on pilgrimage to her shrine, and the town of Walsingham owed its chief support and maintenance to that cause.

As proof of the wealth of the place it may be mentioned that Roger Ascham, when he visited Cologne in 1550, observes: "The Three Kings be not so rich, I believe, as was the Lady of Walsingham."

On March 24 (the eve of our Lady's Day), in his 26th year, Henry III. appears to have made a pilgrimage hither before going on his expedition against Gascoigne. King Edward I. came here, in like manner, in the 9th and 25th years of his reign, on the feast of the Purification; and so did Edward II. in his 9th year, in October. In the 35th year of Edward III. the Dukes of Bretagne and of Anjou, in France, had licences to visit the shrine; and three years later David Bruce, King of Scotland, travelled hither en pèlerin with a retinue of thirty horsemen.

Spelman tells us that it was commonly reported that Henry VIII., when quite a youth, walked barefoot hither as a pilgrim from the adjoining village of Barsham, and on reaching the chapel presented our Lady with a necklace of very great value. He came once more thither, certainly again as a pilgrim, in the second year of his reign, shortly after Christmas, for he made an offering at the shrine, the order for which he signed with his own hand. Queen Catharine too, his wife, during her husband's absence in France, came hither en pèlerin, and offered up her thanks for the victory of Flodden Field.

So credulous were the good Catholics of the Eastern Counties, that they believed the Milky Way was appointed by Providence as the particular part of the heavens where the Blessed Virgin resided, or, at all events, that it was placed in the heavens specially in order to guide pilgrims in the night-watches on the road to this sacred spot;