was laid beside her, and in 1154 Stephen, the King, was also buried here.  The abbey was, as I have said, dedicated to Our Saviour, and this because it possessed a famous relic of the True Cross which had been the gift of Eustace of Boulogne; the abbey was thus founded “In worship of the Croys,” and one might have expected some such dedication as “Holy Cross.”  As founder, the King, for he and his Queen had been equally concerned in the foundation, claimed after the death of the abbot certain toll such as the abbot’s ring, drinking cup, horse and hound.  The abbot was a very great noble, held his house “in chief” and sat in Parliament.  At the Suppression Henry VIII. granted the place to Sir Thomas Cheynay.  Now mark the almost inevitable end.  The Cheynays were living on Church property obtained by theft; at the least they were receivers of stolen goods.  Do you think they could endure?  They presently sold to a certain Thomas Arden, sometime Mayor of Faversham.  Upon Sunday, 15 February 1551, this man was foully murdered in the abbey house he called his own, by a certain Thomas Mosby, a London tailor, the lover of Alice Arden, Thomas Arden’s wife.  This tragic affair so touched the imagination of the time that not only did Holinshed relate it in detail, but some unknown writer who, by not a few, has been taken for Shakespeare himself, used the story as the plot for a play.  Arden of Faversham, according to the dramatist, was a noble character, modest, forgiving, and affectionate.  His wife Alecia in her sleep by chance reveals to him her adulterous love for Mosby; but Arden forgives her on her promising never again to see her seducer.  From that moment she plots with her lover to murder her husband, and succeeds at last, after many failures, by killing him in the abbey house by the hands of two hired assassins, while he is playing a game of draughts with Mosby.  All concerned in the affair were brought to justice, but the abbey of Faversham was no longer coveted as a place of abode.

Almost every stone has disappeared of the abbey church in which lay Stephen, his Queen, and their son.  It stood on the northern side of the town, where indeed the Abbey Farm still remains.  It is to the parish church of Our Lady of Charity that we must turn for any memory of the conventual house where many a pilgrim must often have knelt to venerate the relic of the Holy Cross.

The great church which remains to us is said to have been used by the monks, and if not part of the abbey itself which would seem to have stood at some distance from it, more than one thing that remains in it would seem to endorse such a theory.  To begin with, the church is very spacious, and cruciform in plan, though the tower is at the west end.  This, however, is a very ugly affair, dating from 1797.  In the main the great church, which has been tampered with at very various times, if not rebuilt, must have been Early English in style.  As we see it we have a building divided into three aisles, in nave, chancel