advice of his fada al toring to the procĝes d
fental law. The objection probably was dit dhe en
dom was then vested in his mother

into the profession of a reclase may possibly have pari ke-
of a worldly motive, as being likely to helline her son's
admission to his hereditary ny; but so it was sl
unsuccessful. In consequence of her protracted like the
earldom of Salisbury continued domant; and as she sur-
vived both her son and grandson, it was never revived i
the house of Longspe

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 Ms. called Chronicon 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 grandson, and her daughter Isabella, Lady Vesey; and in the year of her life she was preceded to the tomb by her

last

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

abbey common seal, which is of the same age as the foundation, and represents the Virgin and Child, with the lady abbess in a niche below, kneeling in prayer. To the last abbess was assigned a pension of £40; and the prioress. and 15 other nuns had proportionate provisions. The yearly value of the abbey and its estates, at the surrender, was £171, 198. 3d. Among the payments are those for observances in memory of the foundress and others, in candles about their tombs, and doles to the poor: there were maintained three priests for the daily celebration of divine services, and the general confessor to the convent.' Some of the principal gentry in the neighbourhood, as well as the abbess' own kinsmen, are also named as holding honourable offices in the service of the abbey.

Lacock has preserved, from the Dissolution to this day, its most perfect form: the cloisters and cells of the nunsits ancient walls and ivied chimneys almost entire. But the church was wholly destroyed, and not a vestige 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 Sir William Sherington in 1544 for £783, 12s. 1d. Thirty years subsequently Lacock was visited by Queen Elizabeth, who was also this year at Longleat and Wilton; and, most