when we consider that these houses were the great nurseries of superstition, bigotry, and ignorance; the stews of sloth, stupidity, and perhaps intemperance; when we consider that the education received in them had not the least tincture of useful learning, good manners, or true religion, but tended rather to vilify and disgrace the human mind; when we consider that the pilgrims and strangers who resorted thither, were idle vagabonds, who got nothing abroad that was equivalent to the occupations they left at home: and when we consider, lastly, that indiscriminate alms giving is not real charity, but an avocation from labour and industry, checking every idea of exertion, and filling the mind with abject notions, we are led to acquiesce in the fate of these foundations, and view their ruins, not only with a picturesque eye, but with moral and religious satisfaction."*

Gilpin's Observations on the Western Parts of England, pp. 138, 139.

The site of Netley abbey was granted by Henry VIII, in 1537, to Sir William Paulet; who stood high in his favour, and who is said to have been a man of learning and talents.

Under this king, he was successively comptroller and treasurer of the household, and master of the wards. In the twenty-fifth year of his reign, he was sent, with the duke of Norfolk, to attend Francis I. of France, in his intended interview with the Pope, at Marseilles. In the thirtieth, he was advanced to the dignity of a baron, by the title of lord St. John of Basing. Five years after, he was elected a knight companion of the order of the garter. In 1544, he accompanied Henry at the taking of Boulogne.

He was appointed one of the king's executors, and one of the council to Edward VI; in the third year of whose reign he was created earl of Wiltshire; in the fourth, made lord high treasurer of England; and, in the fifth, advanced to the title of marquis of Winchester.

On the first of December, 1551, he sat as lord high steward, on the trial of the good duke of Somerset.

He appears to have been a principal instrument in defeating the duke of Northumberland's design for setting Lady Jane Grey on the throne. For this service, both Mary and Elizabeth continued him in the office of lord high treasurer; which, notwithstanding the changeful times, he held during thirty years. Being asked how he had contrived to keep his situation through so many alterations in the government, he replied,-"By being a willow and not an oak." The times in which he lived, no doubt, furnished many similar instances of political pliancy. The marquis of Winchester and the vicar of Bray were contemporaries. Peace to their memory! They well understood the doctrine of expediency, and it led them to the attainment of all that they de sired.

This nobleman died in 1572, at the advanced age of ninety-seven, at his seat of

Basing, in this county; which he had built. Before his death, he saw one hundred and three persons descended from him.*

Netley appears afterwards to have been one of the appendages to the earldom of Hertford, or barony of Beauchamp; to which it probably belonged by purchase.† Edward Seymour, heir to this title, and son of the illustrious duke of Somerset, (who was beheaded in the reign of Edward VI,) was, however deprived of it, while a minor, through the contrivance of

* Camden's History of Elizabeth.- Collins's Peerage, vol. i, pp. 235, 236.- -Godwin's Annals of Queen Mary.

+"At such a distance of time," observes Mr. Keate, "it is become impossible, with any degree of certainty, to account for the means by which estates so often changed their possessors; as many of the smaller channels, through which succession naturally devolved, or was by force diverted, are closed by time. Under such disadvantages, could the search be revived, we should remember, the task must be more often undertaken in obedience to the caprice of fruitless curiosity, than executed to the satisfaction of rational inquiry."

But

his enemies, by an act passed in the sixth year of Edward VI; by which his title was forfeited, and lands of great yearly value were given to the crown. when Elizabeth came to the throne, in the first year of her reign, immediately before her coronation, she restored to him these possessions, with the titles of earl of Hertford and baron Beauchamp.*

About two years after, in the month of August, 1560, queen Elizabeth visited this mansion, then the residence of the earl of Hertford; its name being altered to Netley castle. That nobleman, no doubt, used every endeavour to entertain

Camden's Annals of Elizabeth-Collins's Peerage, vol. i, p. 186.

+ By an entry in the register of St. Michael's parish, Southampton, it appears, that "the Queen's Majesty's Grace came from the castle of Netley to Southampton, on the thirteenth day of August; and she went from thence to the city of Winchester, on the sixteenth day, 1560 This particular was communicated by an intelligent friend, to whom it had occurred in inspecting the register.