King Canute, it was stated, died here in 1035; and in
1313 Elizabeth, the wife of Robert Bruce of Scotland, was brought to the
Abbey as a prisoner. The building was demolished in the time of Henry
VIII, all that remained of it being what is known as the old Abbey wall.
Most of the old churches had disappeared too, but under St. Peter's
there was a wine-cellar belonging to a public-house displaying the
strange sign of the "Sun and Moon." The proximity of inns to churches
we had often noted on our journey, but thought _this_ intrusion had been
carried rather too far, although the age of the church proclaimed it to
be a relic of great antiquity. We must not forget to record that between
Wilton and Shaftesbury we saw a large quantity of pheasants feeding
under some oak trees. We counted more than twenty of them, and had never
seen so many gathered together before. Among them we noted three that
were white, the only white pheasants we had ever seen.
Leaving Shaftesbury, we crossed over one section of the Blackmoor Vale,
or what we might describe as the Stour country, for there were many
place-names in which the word Stour occurred. The place where the River
Stour rises is known as Stourhead; and we had seen a monument, rather a
fine one, in Salisbury Cathedral, to the murderer, Lord Charles
Stourton.
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