But the eye of the “Malleus Monachorum,” the arch enemy of the monks, Thomas Cromwell, was upon him, and at last this vigilant enemy, equally cruel and unscrupulous, found the pretext he desired, for sending the Abbot of Glastonbury, as also the Abbots of Reading and Colchester to the gibbet and the quartering block. Most of the Abbots had been led to save themselves by a voluntary surrender of their house and estates; those who did not thus bend to the storm, had to be destroyed on one pretence or another.
It was the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, in the year of grace 1539.
The day was a bright day of early autumn, one of those sweet balmy days, when summer seems to put out all her parting beauties ere she yields her dominion to winter,—the air was laden with fragrance, and there was a dreamy haze upon the scenery around, which seemed typical of heavenly peace.
But there was a sad despondent feeling, which weighed like lead, upon the hearts of all the elders present at the High Mass on that day, in the great Abbey Church, whose majestic ruins yet strike the beholder with awe.
After the Creed, the Abbot ascended the pulpit and gazed round upon the congregation, as upon those to whom he was about to preach for the last time; he took for his text the parting words of S. Paul at Miletus,—“And now behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.”
As he uttered the words there was an audible expression of feeling on the part of the monks in the choir, the boys in the transepts, and the citizens in the spacious nave: was the text prophetical? One or two sobs might be heard.
Danger was at hand, and he knew it, and after a brief exordium he told it out plainly: the Royal Commissioners, with charge to bring him before the Council, were already on their way.
“Very sorry am I,” said he, “for you, my brethren, and especially my younger friends, of whom I see so many around. They will destroy this House of God, as they have so many others, they will spare you in the flesh, but if you are taken hence, and sent into a cold-hearted and wicked world, for which you are unfitted, having begun in the spirit, ye may be consumed in the flesh, and what shall I say, or what shall I do, if I cannot save those whom God has entrusted to my charge?”
Here a common utterance broke forth from the brethren which could not be suppressed.