] she forsook her trust and married the son of the Earl
of Flanders, and by him she had two daughters. Then came repentance;
she separated from her husband and returned to Romsey as a penitent.
The great religious house which had grown up thus with England,
continued its great career right through the Middle Ages, about forty
nuns serving there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though
this number had dwindled to twenty-three at the time of the Surrender
in 1539. How this surrender was made we do not know; but whether with
or without trouble the result was the same, the great convent was
utterly destroyed. Many of the lands passed to Sir Thomas Seymour, and
the people of Romsey, who had always had a right to the north aisle of
the church, which indeed they enlarged at their own expense in 1403,
bought the whole from the Crown, for one hundred pounds, in 1554.
I have said that there was undoubtedly a great Saxon church here, where
the Norman Abbey of Romsey now stands, and part of the foundations of
this great building were discovered in 1900. That building, founded by
Edward the Elder, rebuilt by Edgar and restored by Canute, stood till
the building of the present church in 1125.
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