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

every week, one can to traverse the forot a lide and colect· Gend wood" for fe

forest during the royal pleasure.

Five years before her death. Fla renred from the peace of rile of her monastic society, and appointed in her place an abbess named Beatrice, of Kent. Yet Fa obtained several more benefits for the abbey from the king. At length, in the seventy-fourth year of her age, August 24, 1201, 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 Naaral History of Wiskeres Ela Countess of Salisbury, daughter to Longspe, was foundress of Lacock Abbey, where she ended her days, being above a hundred years old: she outlived her under standing. This I found in an old ms, called Chroman de Lacock in Bibliotheca Cottoniana. Now, the chronicle re ferred 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 grand son, and her daughter Isabella, Lady Vesey; and in the of her life she was preceded to the tomb by her

last

year

son Stephen; so that, of all her family, she left only two sons and three daughters surviving, one of whom died in the following year. Ela's son William Longspé the second, having joined the expedition of St. Louis to the Holy Land, perished at the assault of Mensoura. His mother, according to the monkish legend, seated in her abbatial stall in the church at Lacock, saw, at the same moment, the mailed form of her child admitted into heaven, surrounded by a radius of glory. His son William Longspé III. was killed in a tournament near Salisbury.

The annals of the abbey after the death of Ela are by no means complete. In 1291 we first collect a view of its yearly revenue, £191, 12s. 4d. Among the possessions here included is a manor in the Isle of Wight, which had been given to the abbey by Amicia Countess of Devon, and 'Lady of the Isle,' together with her heart. The obit of the Countess was yearly celebrated in the church of Lacock Abbey, on the feast of St. Andrew (November 30), when four bushels of corn were distributed to the poor; and on the eve and day of that feast, three poor persons were fed with bread, drink, and meat, to the value of 2d. each. Another instance of pious affection in 1297, is the bequest of the heart of the aged Nicholas Longspé, Bishop of Salisbury, the last surviving son of the foundress.

The last abbess was Joanna Temys. Lacock was one of the thirty monasteries which the king spared in 1536; but it was surrendered in 1539, and the fatal document is still preserved in the Augmentation Office. It is ratified by the

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Lacock has preserved, from the Posoler on to this day, its most perfect form: the cloisters and cells of the mers its ancient walls and ivied chimneys almost enure. Bude church was wholly destroyed, and not a vest go can be traced of its ancient altars. The bones of the honoured foundress and her family were alike disregarded. One single mark of respectful remembrance has been paid to the Countess Ela: her epitaph is still preserved on a stone within those cloisters which echoed once to her footsteps, and resounded the Ave Marias of the nuns.

After the Dissolution we find that Lacock was sold to Si William Sherington in 1544 for £783, 128, 14d. Thirty years subsequently Lacock was visited by Queen Elizabeth, who was also this year at Longleat and Wilton; and, most