The irregularly built market town of Chertsey in Surrey is situated on the banks of the Thames, and is connected with Middlesex by the seven-arched stone bridge which spans the river. Here lived and died Abraham Cowley, a poet of great celebrity in his day, who, after being ejected from Cambridge as a Royalist in 1643, engaged actively in the royal cause and obtained at the Restoration the lease of a farm at Chertsey which he held under the Queen. In the old church of Chertsey the curfew is regularly tolled upon a bell which was used for generations in the abbey. READING (_Mitred Benedictine_) 1126, Built and endowed by Henry I.--Dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St John the Baptist--1121-1467, Parliaments held here--15--, Dissolved. Henry Farringdon, last abbot of Reading, executed at Tyburn. “Hugh, Abbot of Reading, and his convent, reciting by their deed that King Henry I. had erected that abbey for the maintenance of monks then devoutly and religiously serving God, for the receipt of Strangers and Travellers, but chiefly Christ’s poor people, they therefore did erect an Hospital without the gate of the abbey there to maintain 26 poor people; and to the maintenance of Strangers passing that way they gave the profits of their mill at Leominstre. Also Aucherius, Abbot of Reading, built near this abbey a house for lepers that was called St Mary Magdelene’s, allotting for their sustenance sufficient of all things as well in diet as other matters.” The foregoing extract from Dugdale’s _Monasticon_ indicates the pious and generous motives which inspired the endowment of the once important mitred abbey of Reading. The abbots of Reading ranked next to those of Glastonbury and St Albans, their influence extending far beyond the precincts of the monastery.