The story of the Monastery has now come to an end. In 1536 the lesser priories and monasteries were suppressed, and we can well imagine the tremor which this daring act of Henry must have sent through the religious world. We can be sure the blow was unexpected by the monks themselves. Only a few years before this Clement Lichfield had devoted much labour and money to the decoration of the great church, and his last work was the building of the tower which stands to this day. We can never know whether the architectural additions which he made to the parish churches were suggested by the suspicion that they might survive that glorious edifice under whose shadow they reposed; but in his later years of retirement surely we may believe that he experienced a sorrowful gratification at the thought that some of his work would remain for the admiration of future ages, and that his mortal remains would lie in peace within the chapel which, in his youth, he had planned and adorned.
While Thomas Cromwell and his agents were engaged in their grim work of destruction we can fancy how Rumour first made herself busy; how the people talked of royal commissions and inquiries; tales would reach them of priories and convents which were seized, and of monks and nuns thrown upon the world. Messengers were seen to come and go, and the great gatehouse of the Abbey was eagerly watched by the curious and anxious townspeople. They talked from door to door, and in clusters in the market-place, and on Merstow Green, from which the precincts were entered. At last the blow fell! One by one the monks filed out of their historic home in solemn procession, their heads bent beneath a weight of misery they were hardly able to bear, though not yet capable of realising the full meaning of the calamity which had befallen them. It is true they were not sent into the world entirely without means of subsistence; some who were in holy orders had been appointed to livings by the Abbot and convent; to others pensions were allowed, but what would this avail in their time of sorrow!
Then the grand pile of Gothic buildings was resigned to the King's agents, and a great cloud hung over the little town. In a short time the gorgeous shrines and altars were plundered and desecrated; the buildings were sold; and before the eyes of the astonished inhabitants tower and pinnacle, church and chapter-house, gatehouse and cloister, fell a prey to the hand of the destroyer!
CHAPTER IV
THE REMAINS OF THE ABBEY
"... work, that stood inviolate
When axe and hammer battered down the state
. . . . .
... the tall Belfry of the Abbey Gate
Yet stands majestic, pinnacled, elate,
And fills the Vale with music far and wide."
—HERBERT NEW.