therefore the actual economic power of any
one foundation might always be higher, and often was very considerably
higher, than the nominal revenue, the dead income, which passed to the
spoliators of the sixteenth century. When a town is sacked the army
gets a considerable loot, but nothing like what the value was of the
city as it flourished before the siege.

At any rate, whether Osney owed its magnificence to internal industry,
to a wise expenditure, or to a severity of life which left a large
surplus for ornament and extension, it was for 400 years the principal
building upon the upper river, catching the eye from miles away up by
Eynsham meadows and forming a noble gate to the University town for
those who approached it from the west by the packway, of which traces
still remain, and over the bridges which the Conqueror had built. So
deep was the impress of Osney upon the locality, and even upon the
national Government, that Henry proposed, as in the case of
Westminster, to make of the building one of his new cathedrals, and to
establish there his new See of Oxford. The determination, however,
lasted but for a very short time. In a few years the financial
pressure was too much for him; he transferred the see to the old
Church of St Frideswides, where it still remains, and gave up Osney to
loot. It was looted very thoroughly.

The smaller monasteries need hardly a mention. At the head of them
comes Eynsham, worth more than half as much as Osney, and a very
considerable place. Founded as a colony or adjunct to Stow, in
Lincolnshire, it outlived the importance of the parent house, and was
at the height of its prosperity immediately before the Dissolution.

Eynsham affords a very good instance of the way in which the fabric in
these superb temples disappeared. As late as the early eighteenth
century there was still standing the whole of the west front; the two
high towers, the splendid west window, and the sculptured doorways
were complete, though they remained but as a fragment of a ruined
building. A century and a half passed and the whole had disappeared,
carted away to build walls and stables for the local squires, or sold
by the local squires for rubble.

Of the little priory at Lechlade very little is known, save that it
was founded in the thirteenth century and had disappeared long before
the Reformation, while of that at Cricklade we know even less, save
that it humbly survived and was counted in the "bag" a