Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/186

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104
CHERTSEY ABBEY.

had passed the requisite bill! And so speedy was its destruction, that in 1763, when Aubrey visited the spot, scarcely anything of the old buildings remained, except the out-walls about it. This destruction was hastened, or completed by the erection of a "fair house," out of the ruins, by Sir Nicholas Carew, master of the buckhounds to Charles II., which, after passing to various owners of motley hue, was pulled down about 1810, and the materials sold and dispersed.

The only historical incidents of any interest, connected with the abbey, that I have been able to trace, are the burial there of King Henry VI., of unhappy memory, after his murder in the Tower of London; and the subsequent removal of his remains to Windsor by Henry VII. On the former occasion the body was brought by water, with but small pomp, at an expense amounting to £24. 14s.d., for conveying and attending the body from the Tower to St. Paul's Cathedral, and thence to Chertsey, including wax, linen, spices, and other ordinary expenses; and £8. 12s. 3d. for obsequies and masses at London as well as at Chertsey aforesaid. Of his removal, Camden remarks that Henry VII. " was such an admirer of his (Henry VI.'s) religion and virtue, that he applied to Pope Julius to have him put in the calendar of saints. And this certainly had been done," he adds, "if the pope's avarice had not stood in the way; who demanded too large a sum for the king's apotheosis or canonization, which would have made it look as if that honour had not been paid so much to the sanctity of the prince as to the gold." He might have added that, Henry was as good a judge of the value of money, as the pious Pope Julius.

Of the exact position and arrangement of the conventual buildings, it is impossible to speak with any