In point of revenue, Netley Abbey was one of the smaller monasteries. At the time of its dissolution in 1538, the community consisted of an abbot and twelve monks; and their possessions produced, according to Dugdale, £100 1_s._ 8_d._, or, according to Speed, £160 2_s._ 9-1/4_d._ The site was granted to Sir William Paulet, subsequently created Marquis of Winchester, and one of the most remarkable statesmen of his time. It was he who built the magnificent house at Basing, celebrated for the obstinate siege which it sustained in the civil wars of the seventeenth century. This nobleman died in 1572, at the great age of ninety-seven years; and is said to have seen, before his death, a hundred and three persons descended from him. He probably sold Netley to the Earl of Hertford, in whose possession we find it in the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. There is a tradition, that this nobleman turned the ruined abbey into a dwelling-house: and it is said that a part of the church was converted into a kitchen. There are, however, at present, no traces about the buildings to support this story. We might be led to suppose that the house inhabited occasionally by the Earl of Hertford, and then known by the name of Netley Castle, was rather the old fort below the abbey, of which the rains still remain. In 1560, the Earl of Hertford was here honoured by a visit from his sovereign, Queen Elizabeth. According to the register of St. Michael’s parish, Southampton, “the queen’s majesty’s grace came from the Castle of Netley to Southampton, on the thirteenth day of August.” It is not improbable that, at this time, many parts of the abbey were in a sufficient state of repair to be fitted up for the reception of the queen’s attendants. If, at a later period, the abbey was really used as a dwelling-house for the Hertford family, they probably occupied the buildings, of which the ruins are still considerable, on the west and south sides of the great court. It is pretended that the church was then used as the family chapel: and George Keate, the poet, informs us that he had seen, in an interleaved almanack of the year 1665, which had belonged to a lady of the same family, an entry stating, that the lady of Francis, Lord Seymour--a younger branch of the Hertford family--lay in there of Charles, Lord Seymour, second Baron of Troubridge, who was baptized in the chapel. This part of the history of Netley Abbey is, however, very obscure. It is said to have passed in the latter part of the seventeenth century to the Earl of Huntingdon, who also resided there (according to the tradition). In 1700 it belonged to Sir Bartlet Lucy, who sold the materials of the church to a Mr. Taylor of Southampton; and from that period it appears that we are to date the commencement of the destruction of this once noble edifice.