Identifier: wessex00hollrich (find matches)
Title: Wessex
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Holland, Clive, 1866- Tyndale, Walter, 1855-1943
Subjects: Dorset (England) -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : Adam & Charles Black
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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the head of the convent, many of thedaughters of the noble families in Wessex were soonfound within its walls. The chief buildings stood on the southern edgeof the hill, and enjoyed a magnificent prospect ofvale and uplands stretching southward and westwardtowards the distant coast. But of the beautiful andromantic abbey little now remains except some of thebuttresses on the hillside which uphold the retaining walls. The town is certainly one of the oldest in Wessex,for, though its history is so traditional, Geoffrey ofMonmouth claims as its founder Hudibras, grandfatherof King Lear, at a date nearly a thousand years beforeChrist, and reports the quaint idea that a royal bird,the eagle, spoke whilst the wall of the town was beingbuilt. Other historians, however, Brampton amongthe number, are in favour of the tradition that Shaftes-bury owed its origin to Cassivelaunus in the middle ofthe first century of the Christian era. 120 BLACKMORE VALE FROM SHAFTESBURYA scene in Jude the Obscure
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Ancient Shaftesbury The history of Shaftesbury has been marked bymuch of import not only to the town itself but toWessex at large, and very early in it tragedy playsa part. It was to this place that the body of KingEdward the Martyr was brought in 901 from Ware-ham by Elphere, Earl of Mercia, and laid to rest with great pomp and much sorrowing after thetreacherous murder by Elgiva at Corfe Castle, inthe presence of Archbishop Dunstan, Alfwold, Bishopof Sherborne, and Wulfrith, Abbess of Milton, and hernuns. And it was to the abbey that for many yearspilgrims resorted, owing to the miraculous cures saidto be wrought at the saints tomb, from all partsto touch or see the famous relic, till the religiousfoundation became one of the richest and most mag-nificent in the kingdom. For some considerable time,indeed, both the town and abbey were known, inconsequence of its being the burial-place of Edward,as Edwardstow. A few years after the burial ofEdward the Martyr, Edward the Elder confined

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