Free Amanda Scott by Lady Escapade Page A

London-Bath Road. A mere thirty miles lay before them now, twenty-six to Bath and then four more along the Bristol Road before they would reach the abbey.
    Luckily the side-pocket of the chaise contained a traveling chess board, so after refreshing themselves and the horses at the Castle, they settled down to while away the slowly passing miles over several games of chess. As Simon had predicted, they reached Bath in time for supper at the York House, and less than an hour after they had finished their tasty repast, they arrived at the gates of Alderwood Abbey.
    The sun was setting almost directly behind the great house as they approached it along the broad, tree-lined avenue, throwing the shape of the magnificent building into bold relief against the reddened western sky. There was nothing churchlike about the outline.
    As Diana had learned during her first visit to the abbey many months before, Alderwood was indeed one of those remarkable country houses made out of the monastic buildings shut down by Henry the Eighth when he closed all the religious houses in England between 1536 and 1540; however, in the case of Alderwood, the actual church had been demolished. The present house had begun its life as a rather select and very influential convent, founded in 1232, which because of its influence was one of the last of the religious houses to be dissolved.
    In 1539 the church, convent, and surrounding lands had been sold for seven hundred thirty-eight pounds to Sir William Warrington, who had excellent connections at court. Warrington had immediately pulled down the church for fear of committing sacrilege. In its place he had built a magnificent courtyard and an elaborate hedge garden with meandering pathways that eventually led to the stableyard.
    Sir William had moved himself and his belongings into the upstairs rooms of the convent and had put the downstairs rooms, which had been the nuns’ main quarters, to more menial use. The calefactory or warming-room, which had originally contained the only fireplace accessible to the nuns, had been converted to a kitchen, and the series of vaulted rooms off the cloister were used for storage, the laundry, and for servants’ bedchambers. Succeeding Warringtons had made various changes in the main house, and Sir William’s hedges had grown tall and stately, but the cloister, roofed by an exquisitely graceful fan vault of the fifteenth-century, had remained untouched throughout the centuries of change. It was now considered to be one of the finest examples of its kind in England, and the Warrington family, as Diana knew well, were justifiably proud of it.
    Their pride in the interesting Sir William was another matter and not, in Diana’s opinion, quite so justifiable. Sir William, though he possessed exquisite taste, as could be seen in his many remaining contributions to the present-day abbey, had undeniably been a bit of a crook. As a result of his misdeeds, however, he seemed to be quite the Warrington’s favorite ancestor. Since, as they cheerfully explained to anyone who had not yet heard the tale, Sir William had earned his fortune as vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint by the simple expedient of clipping the coinage—that was to say that he actually clipped the edges off the coins and re-smelted the clippings while the remains of the original coins, which bore the mint’s impression, were returned to circulation.
    As if that were not enough, Sir William used the proceeds of these activities for various questionable enterprises, not the least of which seemed—from information still extant among the many documents in the abbey’s vast muniments room—to have been a plot against the crown. Warrington had actually been arrested for this interesting crime in 1549, but he had wisely turned king’s evidence, putting all the blame for their activities upon his cohorts, who were subsequently hanged. For such signal service to the crown in this matter, Warrington got off with his