in the abbey house he called his own, by a certain Thomas Mosby, a
London tailor, the lover of Alice Arden, Thomas Arden's wife. This
tragic affair so touched the imagination of the time that not only
did Holinshed relate it in detail, but some unknown writer who, by not
a few, has been taken for Shakespeare himself, used the story as the
plot for a play. Arden of Faversham, according to the dramatist, was a
noble character, modest, forgiving, and affectionate. His wife Alecia
in her sleep by chance reveals to him her adulterous love for Mosby;
but Arden forgives her on her promising never again to see her
seducer. From that moment she plots with her lover to murder her
husband, and succeeds at last, after many failures, by killing him in
the abbey house by the hands of two hired assassins, while he is
playing a game of draughts with Mosby. All concerned in the affair
were brought to justice, but the abbey of Faversham was no longer
coveted as a place of abode.

Almost every stone has disappeared of the abbey church in which lay
Stephen, his Queen, and their son. It stood on the northern side of
the town, where indeed the Abbey Farm still remains. It is to the
parish church of Our Lady of Charity that we must turn for any memory
of the conventual house where many a pilgrim must often have knelt to
venerate the relic of the Holy Cross.

The great church which remains to us is said to have been used by the
monks, and if not part of the abbey itself which would seem to have
stood at some distance from it, more than one thing that remains in it
would seem to endorse such a theory. To begin with, the church is
very spacious, and cruciform in plan, though the tower is at the west
end. This, however, is a very ugly affair, dating from 1797. In the
main the great church, which has been tampered with at very various