Note (return) — BURNHAM ABBEY

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 presumed to have erected the above nunnery. Of this system of pious plunder we have many proud architectural memorials; though to rob with one hand, and found religious houses with the other, reminds one of the trade of a waterman—to look one way and row the other.