omnibus donationes quos mei antecessores vel barones eor’m dederunt,”) with additional grants from himself. Anselm, Abbot of Bec, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, regulated the new foundation and appointed Richard his chaplain the first abbot. Hugh Lupus, following the example of most of his predecessors, lived a life of the wildest luxury and rapine. At length, falling sick from the consequence of his excesses, and age and disease coming on, the old hardened soldier was struck with remorse; and—an expiation common enough in those days—the great Hugh Lupus took the cowl, retired in the last state of disease into the monastery, and in three days was no more. The Abbey was so richly endowed by the founder and his successors, that at the dissolution, its revenues amounted to no less a sum than £1,073 17s. 7d. per annum. Peter of Lichfield appears to have been the first Bishop who fixed his seat at Chester, having removed hither from Lichfield in 1075. But his successor, Robert de Lindsey, removed the seat of the see to Coventry in 1095, from whence it was brought back to Lichfield in the reign of Henry 1st. From this latter period until the dissolution, the Bishops of this diocese took their titles from Coventry, Lichfield, or Chester, according as they fixed their residences, those cities being then all included in the same bishoprick. In the year 1540, in the reign of Henry 8th, monasteries were suppressed, and that of St. Werburgh shared the fate of the others. An impartial examination into this eventful period of our history, gives a painful exhibition of the precipitate haste and questionable motive with which these measures were carried into execution, while at the same time we are fully alive to all the important advantages in which they resulted. “It is painful to read, or to imagine, the ruthless violence and wanton waste with which the measures of the Reformation were carried into effect; and we must long mourn for what we lost on that occasion, while we rejoice in what we gained. Recognizing to the largest extent the blessings of the Reformation, believing that it was the source of civil as well as of religious liberty, and that the present proud position of England arises from the effort then made by men to burst the bonds in which it had been held;—admitting all this, it is impossible to deny that the work of reformation was often urged forward by motives of a baser kind than the love of truth; and it is impossible not to regret the unsparing zeal and brutal violence with which it was carried on.” Before proceeding to describe the important changes which transpired under the reign of Henry the 8th, it may not be unsuitable or without interest, to introduce a biographical list of the lordly abbots who presided over this ancient institution:— _Richard_, 1st Abbot, had been monk of Bec, in Normandy, and chaplain to Anselm. He died April 26, 1117, and was buried in the east angle of the south cloister.