ABINGDON.

THIS place is situated on the Berkshire bank of the Thames, between Oxford and Wallingford. It can boast a very remote antiquity :-Camden conjectures that synods were held here as early as the year 742: and an anonymous writer observes, "that it was in ancient times a famous city, goodly to behold, full of riches, encompassed with very fruitful fields, green meadows, spacious pastures, and flocks of cattle abounding with milk. Here the king kept his court, and hither the people resorted while consultations were depending about the greatest and most weighty affairs in the kingdom."

Ciss, a king of the West Saxons, built a spacious abbey here about the year 675, when the place assumed the name of Abandun, or the Abbey's Town. This religious house, however, was soon after destroyed by the Danes; but by the liberality of King Edgar and the activity of the Norman abbots, it recovered its magnificence, and rivalled in wealth and grandeur the first abbeys in the kingdom. William the Conqueror resided here for some time; and in this abbey his son Henry received his education. The abbey was a principal support of the town till the reign of Henry the Fifth, by whom a bridge was constructed over the Thames at Culham, and another at Burford across the river Ouse. From that time Abingdon acquired so much additional traffic as to rank among the first towns in the county. The building of these bridges in 1416 was evidently under the immediate order of the king, as appears from the following Latin distich, formerly inscribed on a window in the church of St. Helen, within the place:

Henricus Quintus, quarto fundaverat anno,

Rex, pontem Burford super undas atque Culhamford.