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Yet even then there was another side to the picture; and Thorney, Ramsey, or Crowland would have seemed, for nine months every year, sad places enough to us comfortable folk of the nineteenth century.
Westminster was at first a large rural manor belonging to the Abbey before the erection of the Palace. A large part of Thorney Island is still only slightly above the level of high-tide. King Street was 5 feet 6 inches only above high-water mark. This was the foundation of Westminster.
It was in August, the year of our Lord 1253, at we took up our abode in Thorney Island, where the Palace of Westminster stands. It is a marshy place not over healthy, some folks say; but I never was ill while we dwelt there. And it was there, on Saint Katherine's Day" which is the 25th of November "that our little Lady was born. Her royal mother named her Katherine, after the blessed saint.
Whatever he knew to his proposed prisoner's disadvantage, there are niceties of honour in these matters little chivalries all should observe. The only evidence towards establishing the identity of the man who had disappeared was that of the stroke-oar, Simeon Rowe, the rescuer of his companion. This man's version of Ibbetson's exclamation was "Thorney Davenant! I know you, my man!"
"Those Romans were our masters in all things gallant and wise," said William; "and I predict that, some day or other, on that site, a King of England will re-erect palace and tower. And yon castle towards the west?" "Is the Tower Palatine, where our predecessors have lodged, and ourself sometimes; but the sweet loneliness of Thorney Isle pleaseth me more now."
In like humour, William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the twelfth century, speaks of Thorney Abbey and isle. 'It represents, he says, 'a very Paradise, for that in pleasure and delight it resembles heaven itself. These marshes abound in trees, whose length without a knot doth emulate the stars.
The sluggish and stagnant drains, cuts, and leams in far distant places, began actually to flow; and the sensation created was such, that at Thorney, near Peterborough, some fifteen miles from the sea, the intelligence penetrated even to the congregation then sitting in church for it was Sunday morning that "the waters were running!" when immediately the whole flocked out, parson and all, to see the great sight, and acknowledge the blessings of science.
"There," he told Tournier, "is said to be deposited the heart of William of Yaxley, a native of the place, who was Abbot of Thorney, near Peterborough, and who built, or enlarged this church. He was a true Yaxley man, and directed that his body should be buried in Thorney Abbey, and his heart in the wall of Yaxley Church.
Without the walls of the palace, through the whole city of London, the excitement was indescribable. All the river before the palace was crowded with boats; all the broad space on the Isle of Thorney itself, thronged with anxious groups. But a few days before the new-built Abbey had been solemnly consecrated; with the completion of that holy edifice, Edward's life itself seemed done.
At that time the Thames valley, where now stands Greater London, was a vast morass, sometimes flooded at high tide, everywhere low and swampy, studded with islands or bits of ground rising a few feet above the level such was Thorney Island, on which Westminster Abbey was built; such was the original site of Chelsea and Battersea.
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