The town of Faversham, formerly a Saxon centre of some importance, and situated on the river Swale, south of the Isle of Thanet, contains some scanty ruins of an abbey, in the precincts of which were buried its founder, King Stephen, as also his Queen and son. Faversham was known in Saxon times as “Favresfield,” and there, in 930, King Athelstan held a Wittenagemot, or council of wise men. The town sheltered a succession of royal and distinguished visitors in the 16th and 17th centuries--amongst others, Mary, Queen of France, King Henry VIII., with Catherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey and Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. Queen Elizabeth “lay two nights” there. Nor was the place less favoured by the succeeding house of Stuart, for Charles II. dined with the Mayor of Faversham in 1660 at an expense to the town of £56, 0s. 6d. In the year 1688 James II. was arrested at Faversham whilst making his first attempt to leave England after the landing of the Prince of Orange. At the time of the Dissolution of the monasteries, the site of this Cluniac monastic house and its adjoining lands came into the possession of Sir Thomas Cheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and by him they were afterwards alienated to Thomas Ardern, the hero of probably the most notable domestic tragedy ever dramatised in this country. There are three old editions of the drama, and at least one popular ballad on the subject. Thomas Ardern came from the neighbourhood of Canterbury to Faversham at the age of 56, with a wife 30 years his junior--who became so blindly infatuated with one Mosbie that “with callous depravity and cruelty she engaged hirelings to despatch her husband during the fair of St Valentine.” It says little for the morality of Faversham and its neighbourhood that no less than ten persons of decent social position were found ready to lend themselves to the murderous undertaking. Eight of these were in the long run actually executed. “Ardern of Faversham” (1592) is a drama of very slight pretension to literary art, and the republication of 1887 adds further errors to those of the original carelessly printed drama. BATTLE (_Benedictine_) 1067, Built and endowed by William the Conqueror--Rebuilt in the time of the Plantagenets in the form of a large quadrangle, one side of which was, after the Dissolution, converted into a private house by Sir Anthony Browne. Annual revenue £880, 14s. 7d.--1857, Sir Harry Fane restores the abbey and converts it into a mansion.