the building of Beaulieu, to be followed by other even
more generous offerings. Nor was Henry III. neglectful
of the place, so that in 1227 upon the vigil of the
Assumption, the monks were able to use their church,
though it was not till nineteen years later that the
monastery was completed, and dedicated in the presence
of the King and Queen, Prince Edward and a vast concourse
of bishops, nobles, and common folk, by the Bishop
of Winchester. Upon that occasion, Prince Edward
was seized with illness, and, strange as it may seem,
we are told that the Queen remained in the abbey,
to nurse him, for three weeks. But the house
was always under the royal protection. Edward
I. constantly stayed there, and the abbots were continually
employed upon diplomatic business. From 1260
to 1341, when he asked to be freed from the duty,
the abbot of Beaulieu sat in Parliament, and in 1368
Edward III. granted the monks a weekly market within
the precincts. One other privilege, unique in
southern England, Beaulieu had, the right to perpetual
sanctuary granted by Innocent III., and this seems
to have been used to the full in the Wars of the Roses,
at least we find Richard III. inquiring into the matter
in 1463. There it seems Perkin Warbeck had found
safety, as had Lady Warwick after Barnet, and at the
time of the Suppression there were thirty men in sanctuary
in the “Great Close of Beaulieu,” which
seems to have included all the original grant of land
made to the abbey by King John. Beaulieu evidently
very greatly increased in honour, for in 1509 its abbot
was made Bishop of Bangor but continued to hold the
abbey, and when he died the abbot of Waverley, the
oldest house of the Order in England, succeeded him,
the post being greatly sought after. The Act of
1526 suppressing the lesser monasteries, in which
so many Cistercian houses perished, did not touch
Beaulieu, but Netley fell early in the following year,
and the monks were sent to Beaulieu. Many then
looked for the spoil of the great abbey, among them
Lord Lisle who besought Thomas Cromwell for it, but
he was denied. Indeed there seems to have been
no idea of suppressing the house at that time.
But the Abbot Stevens was a traitor. In 1538
he eagerly signed the surrender demanded by the infamous
Layton and Petre, and the site was granted to Thomas
Wriothesley, afterwards Earl of Southampton, from whose
family it came in the time of William III. to Lord
Montagu, and so to the Dukes of Buccleuch, who still
hold it.
Nothing can exceed the beauty of the remains of the
house there by the river, in perhaps the loveliest
corner of southern England. The great abbey church
has gone, destroyed at the Suppression, but not a little
of the monastery remains. The great Gate House
called the abbot’s lodging and now the Palace
House, the seat of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, a fine
Decorated building with a beautiful entrance hall,
may sometimes be seen. From this one passes across
the grass to the old Refectory, now fitted up as the
parish church, a noble work of the Early English style
of the thirteenth century, as is the fine pulpit with
its arcade in the thickness of the wall. Here
of old the monk read aloud while his brethren took
their meagre repast.