Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn wished to give the post of abbess to a friend, but King Henry had scruples on the subject, for the proposed abbess had a somewhat shady reputation; he wrote, “I would not for all the gold in the world clog your conscience nor mine to make her a ruler of a house, which is of so ungodly a demeanour, nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so bestain mine honour or conscience.”  This we thought to be rather good for such a stern moralist as Henry VIII, but perhaps in his younger days he was a better man than we had been taught to believe.

Wilton suffered along with Old Sarum, as the loss of a road was a serious matter in those days, and Bishop Bingham, who appeared to have been a crafty man, and not at all favourable to the Castellans at Old Sarum, built a bridge over the river in 1244, diverting the main road of Icknield Way so as to make it pass through Salisbury.  As Leland wrote, “The changing of this way was the total cause of the ruine of Old Saresbyri and Wiltown, for afore Wiltown had 12 paroche churches or more, and was the head of Wilesher.”  The town of Wilton was very pleasant and old-fashioned.  The chief industry was carpet-making, which originally had been introduced there by French and Flemish weavers driven by persecution from their own country.  When we passed through the town the carpet industry was very quiet, but afterwards, besides Wilton carpets, “Axminster” and “Brussels” carpets were manufactured there, water and wool, the essentials, being very plentiful.  Its fairs for sheep, horses, and cattle, too, were famous, as many as 100,000 sheep having been known to change owners at one fair.

[Illustration:  WILTON HOUSE FROM THE RIVER.]

We were quite astonished when we saw the magnificent church, on a terrace facing our road and approached by a very wide flight of steps.  It was quite modern, having been built in 1844 by Lord Herbert of Lea, and had three porches, the central one being magnificently ornamented, the pillars resting on lions sculptured in stone.  The tower, quite a hundred feet high, stood away from the church, but was connected with it by a fine cloister with double columns finely worked.  The interior of the church was really magnificent, and must have cost an immense sum of money.  It had a marble floor and some beautiful stained-glass windows; the pulpit being of Caen stone, supported by columns of black marble enriched with mosaic, which had once formed part of a thirteenth-century shrine at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, some of the stained glass also belonging to the same period.