traced, and some grassy mounds indicate the place where once a garden smiled.' Amid all the changes of Border topography, the mind rests with satisfaction upon an object so tangible as this. Wattlesborough Castle symbolizes certain broad features of a remote æra, and serves to attest the permanency of landed property in successive generations. It reminds us that 'ancient dignity was territorial rather than personal, the whole system was rooted in the land, and it has carried along with it some of that sentiment attached to the lordship of it, as surely as its earth has the fresh smell which it gives when upturned by the husbandman.””1

Ludlow is the noblest of the Border castles. It is said to have been founded by Roger de Montgomery, but the building was probably done by Walter de Lacy, and it was enlarged by Joce de Dinan, who built the circular chapel. The castle was the stronghold of the barons Mortimer, who added to its buildings, but it received its principal embellishment from Sir Henry Sidney. Here it was that the young Princes of Wales of the Tudor line dwelt in regal state, here the Lords Presidents of the Marches held their court, here Milton's Comus was first acted, and here also Butler wrote a part of Hudibras. Its picturesque situation, its massive architecture, and its interesting associations, lend a charm to Ludlow which no other castle in Shropshire can boast. The noble church of St. Lawrence, whose stately tower was built after the battle of Towton, is the finest ecclesiastical building in Shropshire, and richly deserves the careful restoration so happily completed on the 3rd of August last. Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, the eldest son of Roger de Montgomery, erected the castle of Bridgnorth, which, on his rebellion, was forfeited to the crown. It was held by successive sovereigns, and for the king in the Civil War, when it was reduced to the leaning tower which forms so conspicuous an object in every view of the

town.

The ruined castle of Whittington still bears the shield of the great house of FitzWarin, and Clun Castle, built by William Fitz-Alan, confers the dignity of baron on his descendant the Duke of Norfolk. Acton Burnell Castle remains to attest the holding of a parliament in Shropshire. Of all the embattled residences which adorn this county, Stokesay, which Lawrence de Ludlow obtained leave to crenellate in 1291, retains most of its original character. Moreton Corbet is still stately in ruins, but many mansions retaining their ancient names have been replaced by modern structures. Some fine old half-timbered houses, of which Park and Pitchford are good examples, remain in the original state. Mr. Francis Smith, of Warwick, who flourished during the Georgian æra, erected some brick mansions, of which Cound, Mawley, Buntingsdale, Davenport, and Kinlet are the chief. Many Italian edifices, such as Willey, Hawkstone, and Longford, Quarterly Review, January 1858, p. 31.

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as well as Gothic buildings, such as Apley Park, Lilleshall, Otely, and Sundorne, are seen amid their tall ancestral trees all o'er the pleasant land.

Wenlock was the oldest and most privileged, perhaps the wealthiest and most magnificent, of the religious houses of Shropshire. William of Malmesbury tells us that Saint Milburg, the granddaughter of Penda, king of Mercia, lived in a nunnery at Wenlock, and was buried there; others add that she founded the church, and became the first abbess of her own foundation. The destruction of this church is attributed to the Danes, on their conquest of Mercia in 874. Whatever was the nature of this first foundation at Wenlock, the lapse of two centuries left little of it remaining beyond the sanctity of St. Milburg's name, the veneration attaching to her place of burial, and, it may be, some tradition as to the identity of such lands as she had devoted to her holy purposes.1 It was the sanctity of this spot which probably determined Leofric, Earl of Mercia, to rebuild the church, and to appropriate it to a college of secular clergy, combining more or less of the monastic element, between the years 1017 and 1035.

This monument of the pious munificence of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, hardly endured for sixty years. It was the wise policy of the Normans in dealing with the Saxon colleges, not to confiscate their possessions, but to divert them to ecclesiastical purposes, more or less cognate with the original design. Accordingly we find in 1080 that the first Norman Earl of Shrewsbury restored the church of St. Milburg, and endowed the new abbey with the possessions of the old college. The new foundation was appropriated to the order of Clugny, a branch of the Benedictines, whose black habit its members retained. The translation of the relics of St. Milburg in 1101, threw a fresh odour of sanctity on the place of her interment; and the extraordinary franchises which the prior of Wenlock enjoyed, rendered each tenant of his house a privileged man, each acre of his domain acquired a two-fold value. Wenlock became in 1291 a richer foundation than Shrewsbury, and its steady and quiet aggrandisement was perhaps in some degree attributable to the sobriety and prudence which, Giraldus tells us, were characteristic of the Clugniac order.

The Benedictine abbey of Shrewsbury was founded by Roger de Montgomery, first Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1083, on a spot where, in the olden times, a Saxon church had previously stood. The new church, like the old, was dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, and in the adjacent monastery the earl himself assumed the habit of a monk. The establishment thus founded soon received large accessions of property, and in the reign of Stephen acquired additional sanctity from the body of Saint Winefred, which was translated to this church from the place of her interment, Gwytherin, in Denbighshire.

1 See The Legends of Saint Milburga, in Eyton's Antiq., iv, 6.

The Benedictines, in common with the other monastic orders, delighted in the sequestered gloom of low verdant meadows, adjacent to running streams, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," and, provided the soil was fertile, preferred such to more airy and cheerful, though not always more beautiful situations. On such a site as this, at the confluence of the Severn and the Rea, the great mass of irregular but stately conventual buildings, with their embattled walls and turreted gates, dominated by the abbey church, resembling in form, but surpassing in size, many of our cathedrals, must have presented a majestic group of architecture to the traveller as he approached the ancient capital of Shropshire. The abbey must have had an equally fine effect when viewed from the south-eastern ramparts of the adjacent town; for then the whole of the noble church would be seen almost from its base, crowned with its two towers, and presenting almost as varied an outline to the sky. Great must have been the dismay of the inhabitants of the Abbey Foregate when, on the 24th of January, 1539-40, the royal commissioners arrived at the abbey and demanded its surrender. The abbot and his monks, entering their chapter house for the last time, in obeyance to the stern mandate, would then have seen the seal of their house broken, as usual in such cases, and heard the commissioners declare the convent dissolved, almost four centuries and a half after its foundation. The site of the abbey, comprising about ten acres, now displays a confused mixture of the ancient walls, patched with almost every style that succeeded its dissolution, scattered about in irregular masses of ruin, relieved only by the reader's pulpit of the refectory, the sole memorial of its ancient state. The western tower of the abbey church, retaining only its nave, side aisles and porch, which have been adapted to the uses of the parochial church of the Holy Cross, still adorns the eastern suburb which retains its name. The gardens of the monastery, which lay on the banks of the river, are now traversed by the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway, thereby affording the passing traveller a good view of all that remains of the abbey church.

Haughmond Abbey, originally a priory, was founded by the first William Fitz-Alan between 1130 and 1138. It became an abbey in or before 1155, its benefactors being the Empress Matilda, king Henry II, Walchelin Maminot, William Peverel of Dover, Ranulph de Gernons, Earl of Chester, Walter Durdent, Bishop of Chester, and several of the founder's tenants. The foundation of Haughmond was therefore associated with a distinct political creed, for those whom I have named espoused the cause of legitimacy, which was at issue during the twenty years that followed the death of Henry I. Thus, out of calamities such as Shropshire has never since experienced, were elicited two beneficial results, the increase of its religious establishments and the triumph of hereditary right.1 Of the Augustine abbey of Haughmond, the church, dedicated to Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. vii, pp. 282-303.

St. John, is in ruins, but the chapter-house is entire. Its ruins now serve to embellish the grounds of Sundorne, at the foot of the hill which bears its name.

Buildwas Abbey was founded by Roger de Clinton, Bishop of Chester, in 1135, and, enriched by subsequent endowments, was enlarged about the year 1220. It was one of the earliest foundations of the Cistercian order, a branch of the Benedictine, which first arose in 1098, when its first house was founded at Citeaux, in Burgundy. It adopted a white habit, in contradistinction to the dress of the original Benedictines. It affected other reforms of usage, chiefly revivals of a more ancient rule. Buildwas was affiliated to the Norman house of Savigny, as the Welsh Abbey of Basingwerk, and the Irish Abbey of St. Mary, Dublin, were to Buildwas. The Cistercians particularly affected solitary and wild valleys, selected with due regard to beautiful scenery, and other local and more substantial advantages. Such a site they found at Buildwas, where still the ruined monastery stands by "Sabrina's silver flood."

The history of Buildwas Abbey involves little more than an account of its various dependencies, and of its tranquil enjoyment of those privileges which were most congenial to the peaceful and even indolent genius of the Cistercians. This explains the comparative obscurity in which the internal affairs of Buildwas Abbey are buried. It met its fate in the seventh year of Henry VIII, 1535-6, and its extensive ruins exhibit in the older portions a good example of the architecture of the æra of its foundation. Here, if anywhere, we may be permitted to indulge the feeling which regards such shrines as sacred-sacred to departed genius and taste, sacred to the ever-living beauty of grandeur and repose, sacred, indeed, to yet higher and holier associations, of which nothing but a too narrow sectarianism would forbid the indulgence.1

Lilleshall Abbey was erected in honour of the Holy Virgin in the wood of Lilleshall, by Richard de Belmeis, Bishop of London, between the years 1144 and 1148.2 It was founded for Arroasian canons, who removed thither from Dorchester, having previously occupied houses at Donnington Weald and at Lizard Grange. These Regular canons were a branch of the great Augustine order, which professed an improvement on its fundamental ordinances, and derived their name from the city of Arras, near which their first house, dedicated to St. Nicholas, was situated. The charter of Lilleshall, granted by King Stephen, was confirmed by the Empress Matilda, and the foundation continued to increase in wealth and influence till its surrender in 1538. The ruins of the noble church present fine examples of Norman architecture, and its precinct is still surrounded by the fine woods which adorn the adjacent seat of the Duke of Sutherland. "If there be a place in Shropshire calculated alike to impress the moralist, instruct the antiquary, and interest the historian, that place is Tong. It was for centuries the

1 Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, vi, 317-335.

2 Ibid., viii, 210-227.

abode, or the heritage, of men, great either for their wisdom or their virtue, eminent either from their station or their misfortunes. The retrospect of their annals alternates between the palace and the feudal castle; between the halls of Westminster and the council chamber of princes; between the battlefield, the dungeon, and the grave. The history of the lords of the manor is in fact the biography of princes and prelates, earls and barons, statesmen, generals, and jurists. These are the great names and reminiscences with which the place is associated-the Saxon Earls of Mercia, brave, patient, and most unfortunate; victims of inexorable progress: then their three Norman successors, one wise and politic, another chivalrous and benevolent, the last madly ambitious and monstrously cruel then the majesty of England, represented by Henry the First, a prince, who, in ability for ruling, almost equalled his father, and has been surpassed by none of his successors: then the sumptuous and vice-regal pride of De Belmeis, bishop, general, statesman, and withal very priest; his collateral heirs, with their various and wide spread interests, dim in the distance of time, but traceable to a common origin; the adventurous genius and loyal faith of Brittany represented in La Zouche; tales of the oscillating favouritism and murderous treachery of King John; overweening ambition, and saddest misfortune, chronicled in the name of De Braose; a Harcourt miscalculating the signs of his time, and ruined by the error; a race of Pembruges, whose rapid succession tells of youth, and hope, and the early grave; then the open-handed and magnificent Vernons; lastly, Stanley, a name truly English, and ever honourable in English ears, yet for one1 of whom it was fated to add a last flower to their chaplet of ancestral memories, to cut short the associations which five centuries had grouped round their fair inheritance."2

Among other objects of interest may be noticed the ruined convent of Cistercian nuns, whose house, dedicated to St. Leonard, and still known as the White Ladies, was formerly within the boundary of the ancient Forest of Brewood. The chapel still retains some vestiges of its ancient state. It is parochially and manorially independent. Its ruined walls and consecrated precinct are still protected and venerated by members of the faith under which it was founded. Its history, like itself, consists but of fragments; for, however interesting to the antiquary, no chartulary of the house is known to exist; we have not even a definite legend as to its origin, no seal, nor earlier charter than that of king John.3 The Norman style of the building may refer it to the latter half of the twelfth century. It derives much of its present interest from its having been the burial place of her "whom the king called Dame Joane," the protectress of the afterwards