sea which separates Sheppey from the mainland.

The Swale there served the road and made of Faversham a port, but the
road did not cross it and therefore the Swale, unlike the Medway, was
never an obstacle or a defence. Thus Faversham never became a great
fortress like Rochester; it was a port, and as it happened a Royal
Villa, where so long ago as 930 Athelstan held his witan. Its fate,
however, after the Conquest, was to be more glorious. In 1147 Stephen
and his wife, Matilda, founded an abbey of Benedictine monks here at
Faversham in honour of Our Lord, and known as St Saviours, upon land
she had obtained from William of Ypres, Stephen's favourite captain,
in exchange for her manor of Littlechurch in this county. At the end
of April 1152 she fell sick at Hedingham Castle in Essex, and dying
there three days later, was buried in the abbey church at Faversham.
In August of the following year her eldest son, Eustace, was laid
beside her, and in 1154 Stephen, the King, was also buried here. The
abbey was, as I have said, dedicated to Our Saviour, and this because
it possessed a famous relic of the True Cross which had been the gift
of Eustace of Boulogne; the abbey was thus founded "In worship of the
Croys," and one might have expected some such dedication as "Holy
Cross." As founder, the King, for he and his Queen had been equally
concerned in the foundation, claimed after the death of the abbot
certain toll such as the abbot's ring, drinking cup, horse and hound.
The abbot was a very great noble, held his house "in chief" and sat in
Parliament. At the Suppression Henry VIII. granted the place to Sir
Thomas Cheynay. Now mark the almost inevitable end. The Cheynays were
living on Church property obtained by theft; at the least they were
receivers of stolen goods. Do you think they could endure? They
presently sold to a certain Thomas Arden, sometime Mayor of
Faversham. Upon Sunday, 15 February 1551, this man was foully murdered