The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and
Instruction, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832

Author: Various

Release Date: March 24, 2004 [EBook #11695]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

VOL. 20. No. 561.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1832. [PRICE 2d.

* * * * *

BURNHAM ABBEY

[Illustration: BURNHAM ABBEY, From a Sketch, by a Correspondent.]

Burnham is a village of some consideration, in Buckinghamshire, and
gives name to a deanery and hundred. Its prosperity has been also
augmented by the privilege of holding three fairs annually. It is
situate in the picturesque vicinity of Windsor, about five miles from
that town, and three miles N.E. of Maidenhead. It was anciently a place
of much importance. One of the few relics of its greatness is the
ivy-mantled ruin represented in the above Engraving. So late as the
fourteenth century, Burnham could also boast of a royal palace within
its boundary: but, alas! the wand of Prospero has long since touched its
gorgeousness, so as to "leave not a rack behind."

The ruin stands about one mile south of the village, and is part of an
Augustine nunnery, built in the year 1228, by Richard, Earl of Cornwall,
and brother of Henry the Third. He was a vexatious thorn in the crown of
Henry, whose long and confused reign, "were it not that for the first
time it exhibits the elements of the English constitution in a state of
disorderly fermentation, would scarcely deserve the consideration of the
philosopher and the politician."[1] One of Richard's fraternal acts was
placing himself at the head of a formidable confederacy, to which Henry
was obliged to yield. The papal power was at this time at its greatest
height; Richard had been elected King of the Romans, and from the spoil
obtained by the monstrous exactions of his court, he may be pres