The History of Boxley Parish; The Abbey, Road of Grace, and Abbots the Clergy the Church, Monuments and Registers Including an Account of the Wiat Family, and of the Trial on Penenden Heath in 1076 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. BOXLEY ABBEY. THE traveller journeying over the range of hills known as the North Downs, which lie between Rochester and Maidstone, cannot fail to be struck with the sudden change in the general aspect of the country. Passing down the slope of Blue-bell Hill, and entering the parish of Boxley, he leaves behind him on his right the rude, prehistoric pile of massive blocks commonly called Kit's Cotty House, and the strange group of unhewn stones which crop up, without order and seemingly without number1, in the neighbouring field, and on his left the barren chalk hillside, when his eye is arrested by the abrupt transition from the scant herbage, and low brushwood, and stunted yews, to the rich pasture-land, with its array of goodly elms, spread out before him. He sees farm- buildings, and a mill with its shapely lake, telling of active and well-requited husbandry. He traces out broken lines of wall, which erst enclosed a range of monastic buildings; he sees in the midst of modern brickwork the piers of the old Abbey gateway, and a still substantial Granary, and his mind pictures to itself the day when all that spoliation and time have now left in ruin constituted the heart and homeof a once busy Cistercian monastery, with its daily round of prayer, and labour, and almsdeeds. 1 So irregularly do they stand that it is said that no one has been known to count them over twice with the same result. The description of an Abbey, especially of one that has such a history as this at Boxley, may well be prefaced by a short account of Monasteries generally. The Monastic system, be it remembered,?which had its rise in Egypt, that cradle of asceticism, though now commonly, and perhaps not unnaturally, associated with traditions of superstition and imposture, for which, ala...