Few monastic ruins are equally interesting with that of Netley Abbey; yet we know of no monastery of the same importance of which the history is so imperfectly known. Its position in a secluded spot, where the ground it occupies might be spared from other purposes, and accidental circumstances of different kinds, have so far preserved its walls from destruction, that we may here still trace with accuracy the arrangement and internal economy of those great religious establishments which, in former ages, were to be seen in every part of our island. The modern name of <g>Netley</g> appears itself to be only a corruption of the more ancient one of <g>Letley</g>, <g>Lettely</g>, or <g>Latelie</g>, under which the place is mentioned in Domesday Book, as being held by Richard Pungiant. We learn from the same important document, that previously to the Norman Conquest it had been held of King Edward by Alward, “who could go where he would.”[227] It was probably from the circumstance of its having been a manor belonging to Edward the Confessor, that it afterwards took the name of “the Place of St. Edward,” or <g>Edwardestowe</g>. The derivation of the name Letley is very uncertain; it was probably the remarkable taste for punning on proper names, so characteristic of the writers and scholars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which led them to call it in Latin <g>De Laeto Loco</g>, or “the joyful place.” The Abbey of Netley, or Letley, can boast of no great antiquity. It appears certain that it was founded by King Henry III. in the year 1239; although it has been supposed, on very weak grounds, that a religious house of some kind had previously occupied its site. Henry’s original charter is not preserved; but in a subsequent brief charter of confirmation--dated [Illustration]