The beginning of city and abbey is an oft-told tale, but, as I shall try to show, a tale never truly and properly told. Antiquaries, or rather historians who have to depend on antiquaries, are apt to follow each other blindly. Thus, we are informed by everyone who has treated of this beginning, that the place on which Westminster Abbey stands was chosen deliberately as a fitting place for a monastic foundation, because of its seclusion, silence, and remoteness. “This spot,” writes the most illustrious among all the historians of the Abbey, when he has described the position of Thorney, “thus intrenched, marsh within marsh, forest within forest, was indeed _locus terribilis_--the terrible place, as it was called, in the first notices of its existence; yet, even thus early, it presented several points of attraction to the founder of whatever was the original building which was to redeem it from the wilderness. It had the advantages of a Thebaid as contrasted with the stir and tumult of the neighboring forest of London.”[1] And the same theory is adopted by Freeman, when he speaks of the site as “so near to the great city, and yet removed from its immediate throng and turmoil.” There is no doubt as to the meaning of both writers. The idea in their minds was of a place deliberately chosen by the founders of the first abbey, and adopted by Edward the Confessor as a wild, deserted, secluded place, difficult of access, remote from the ways of men, where in silence and peace the holy men might work and meditate. Let us examine into this assumption. The result, I venture to think, will upset many cherished opinions. In the examination of ancient sites there are five principal things to ascertain before any conclusion is attempted--that is to say, before we attempt to restore the place as it was, or to identify it. The method which I began to learn twenty years ago, while following day by day Major Conder’s Survey of Palestine, and studying day by day his plans and drawings, his arguments and identifications, of a land which is one great field of ruins, I propose to apply to Thorney Island and the site of Westminster Abbey. These five points are: (1) the evidence of situation; (2) the evidence of excavation; (3) the evidence of ancient monuments, ruins, foundations, fragments; (4) the evidence of tradition; and (5) the evidence of history. Let us take these several points in order. 1. _Evidence of Situation._