THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

VOL. 20. No. 561.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1832. [PRICE 2d.

* * * * *



BURNHAM ABBEY


[Illustration: BURNHAM ABBEY, From a Sketch, by a Correspondent.]

Burnham is a village of some consideration, in Buckinghamshire, and
gives name to a deanery and hundred. Its prosperity has been also
augmented by the privilege of holding three fairs annually. It is
situate in the picturesque vicinity of Windsor, about five miles from
that town, and three miles N.E. of Maidenhead. It was anciently a place
of much importance. One of the few relics of its greatness is the
ivy-mantled ruin represented in the above Engraving. So late as the
fourteenth century, Burnham could also boast of a royal palace within
its boundary: but, alas! the wand of Prospero has long since touched its
gorgeousness, so as to "leave not a rack behind."

The ruin stands about one mile south of the village, and is part of an
Augustine nunnery, built in the year 1228, by Richard, Earl of Cornwall,
and brother of Henry the Third. He was a vexatious thorn in the crown of
Henry, whose long and confused reign, "were it not that for the first
time it exhibits the elements of the English constitution in a state of
disorderly fermentation, would scarcely deserve the consideration of the