The history of Tor Abbey, though interesting as reflecting the life of those far-off times, was comparatively uneventful. It was chiefly made up of the coming and going of travellers, occasional alarms of possible marauders, and the simple pleasures and events of life and death. It need not, therefore, detain the general chronicler. About 1540 the Abbey shared the fate of all other institutions of the kind, when King Henry VIII brought about the Dissolution of the religious houses, and it probably deserved its hard fate much less than many of its neighbours. The King promptly granted the fair lands--he had stripped the building of its possessions, sacramental vessels, and doubtless the much revered altar cloth made of the famous “cloth of gold”--to his favourite, John St Leger, from whose family it passed in time once more into that of the Mohuns. Finally, in 1653, it was sub-divided into two portions. The Abbey domain went to Sir John Stowell, by sale, who resold it to Sir George Cary in 1664, in the possession of whose family it remains. The Manor of Tormoham passed into the hands of the Earls of Donegal by marriage, but was sold a little more than a century later to Sir Robert Palk, an ancestor of Lord Haldon, whose family continued to own it until recently. [Illustration: TORQUAY HARBOUR. ENTRANCE] The Tor Abbey House of the present day owes its origin to one Ridgeway (a descendant of Lord Mohun, the original possessor), who had purchased the Tor Abbey estate granted by King Henry to John St Leger from the then owner. Though this building is severe, and devoid of any great artistic merit, in it are incorporated some interesting features of the ancient Abbey, remains of which in the form of the old church and chapter house, and the refectory (now used as a chapel) are so picturesque and interesting a feature of the Abbey grounds.