chronicles. Her son, when he became of age, claimed the inheritance of the earldom; but the king refused it, by the advice of his judges, and according to the principles of feudal law. The objection probably was, that the earldom was then vested in his mother. Thus Ela's entrance into the profession of a recluse may possibly have partaken of a worldly motive, as being likely to facilitate her son's admission to his hereditary dignity; but if so, it was still unsuccessful. In consequence of her protracted life, the earldom of Salisbury continued dormant; and as she survived both her son and grandson, it was never revived in the house of Longspé

Ela was permitted to exercise in person the office of Sheriff of Wiltshire, and Castellane of Old Sarum. Her great seal, an elegant work of art, is extant, and represents her noble and dignified deportment, and her gracefully simple costume: 'her right hand is on her breast; on her left stands a hawk, the usual symbol of nobility; on her head is a singularly small cap, probably the precursor of the coronet; her long hair flows negligently upon her neck on each side; and the royal lions of Salisbury appear to gaze upon her like the lion in Spenser on the desolate Una!' We at length reach the time of the foundation of Lacock Abbey. When,' says the Book of Lacock, Ela had survived her husband for seven (six ?) years in widowhood, and had frequently promised to found monasteries pleasing to God, for the salvation of her soul and that of her husband, and those of all their ancestors, she was directed in visions

(per revelationes) that she should build a monastery in honour of St. Mary and St. Bernard in the meadow called Snail's Mead, near Lacock.' This she did on April 16, 1232, although the requisite charters bear prior dates.

Among the earliest coadjutors with the pious Ela was Constance de Legh, who assisted by giving her whole manor.' Ela had likewise founded a monastery of Carthusian monks at Hinton, in Gloucestershire, in which, as also at Lacock, she is supposed to have fulfilled the intentions of her husband; indeed, the profits of his wardship of the heiress of Richard de Camville were assigned to the foundation at Hinton by the Earl's last will.

The first canoness veiled at Lacock was Alicia Garinges, from a small nunnery in Oxfordshire, which was governed under the Augustine rule, the discipline to be adopted at Lacock. In the transcripts from the Book of Lacock another person is mentioned, either as abbess or canoness, during the eight years which elapsed after the foundation, and before Ela herself took the veil as abbess of her own establishment, in the year 1238, in the fifty-first year of her age; she 'having, in all her actions and doings, been constantly dependent on the counsel and aid of St. Edmund, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other discreet men.'

The records of Ela's abbacy are neither copious nor numerous. Among them is a charter, dated 1237, in which the king grants to the Prioress of Lacock, and the nuns there serving God,' a fair to last for three days,-namely, on the eve, feast, and morrow of St. Thomas the Martyr. In

the year 1241 Ela obtained two other charters from the king; one to hold a weekly market. A beautiful cross stood in the market-place at Lacock until about the year 1825, when its light and elegant shaft was destroyed to furnish stone for building the village school-room. By the second. charter the king gave the abbess the privilege of having, every week, one cart to traverse the forest of Melksham, and collect 'dead wood' for fuel, without injury to the forest, during the royal pleasure.

Five years before her death, Ela retired from the peaceful rule of her monastic society, and appointed in her place an abbess named Beatrice, of Kent. Yet Ela obtained several more benefits for the abbey from the king. At length, in the seventy-fourth year of her age, August 24, 1261, yielding up her soul in peace, Ela rested in the Lord, and was most honourably buried in the choir of the monastery. Aubrey has this strange entry in his Natural History of Wiltshire: 'Ela Countess of Salisbury, daughter to Longspé, was foundress of Lacock Abbey, where she ended her days, being above a hundred years old: she outlived her understanding. This I found in an old мs. called Chronicon de Lacock in Bibliotheca Cottoniana.' Now, the chronicle referred to was burnt in 1731, and the extracts preserved from it do not confirm Aubrey's statement, but place Ela's death in her seventy-fourth year.

Ela had been deprived by death of her son and grandson, and her daughter Isabella, Lady Vesey; and in the last year of her life she was preceded to the tomb by her

and Lady Jane, 396-401; Lines by Lady Jane, 401, 402; Burial of Lady Jane, 401, note; Prison in the Tower, 404; Lines on Bradgate, 405.

ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS BY LORD

STOURTON.

Stourton, in Wiltshire, 407; The Hartgills of Kilmington, 407; Lady Elizabeth Stourton, 407; Affray in Kilmington Church, 408, 409; Lord Stourton committed to the Fleet, 409; The Hartgills attacked by Lord Stourton's Men, 410; Star Chamber business, 411; Affray in the Church, 412; The Murder, 413, 414; Trial of Lord Stourton and four of his Servants, 415; Execution at Salisbury, 416; The Stourton Family, 416.

THE RED AND WHITE ROSES.

Dispute in the Temple Garden, 418; Badges of York, 418; Rose Tenure, 419; Clifford Castle, 419, 420.

APPENDIX.

Peerages per saltum, 421; 'Bell the Cat,' 423.

ANCESTRAL STORIES.

LACOCK ABBEY, AND ELA COUNTESS OF
SALISBURY.

A

BOUT thirteen miles east of Bath, and nearly half-way between the towns of Chippenham

and Melksham, in a spacious and level meadow, surrounded by elms, and watered by the Avon, rise the walls and tall spiral chimneys, and arches hung with ivy, of the ancient Nunnery of Lacock. The site, it may be supposed, was originally a solitary glade, adjoining the village or town of Lacock. The name is derived from Lea and Lay, a meadow, and Oche, water; and here, in the Avon, Aubrey found large round pebbles, the like of which he had not seen elsewhere.' Lacock was, in the Saxon times, of greater importance than at present; for in an ancient record, quoted by Leland, we read that Dunvallo founded three cities, with three castles, Malmesbury, Tetronberg (? Troubridge), and Lacock. We need scarcely remark, that what might have been then called.

A