NO. 8. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH BEFORE IT WAS RESTORED. See page [30]
It is hard to wait day by day for some dreadful thing which we know is surely coming to us, so these were sad days for the monks. Were they frightened, I wonder, when they heard what was going on in the world outside their walls, and knew that soon, very soon, they must tell the fierce King that for them the Pope was and must always be Head of the Church? What would happen to them? Did their prayers and solemn services strengthen and comfort them then? Yes, indeed they did. And their Prior, John Houghton, was a brave true man, as men have need to be in such times; and not only by his words, but by his deeds, he taught his monks to choose rather to die than to give up what they believed to be true; for in the spring of the next year he and two other Carthusian Priors told Thomas Cromwell, the King's great Minister, that they could not change their Faith. They were sent to the Tower, tried as traitors in Westminster Hall, and found guilty. Turn to [picture 6]; here you see Sir Thomas More, in this month of May himself a prisoner in the Tower for the same reason, watching the three Priors and another monk going away to die. As he watched, More said to his daughter, "Lo, dost thou see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerful going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriages?"
At Tyburn Tree, where the Marble Arch now stands, John Houghton laid down his life for his Faith.
Two sad years followed; then all but ten of the monks yielded to the King and promised to "forsake the Bishop of Rome." These ten were sent to Newgate Prison. There they would very soon have died, for in those days life in a prison was a dreadful thing, but they were helped by a brave woman, called Margaret Clement, whom Sir Thomas More had brought up with his own daughter Margaret. "Moved with a great compassion of those holy Fathers, she dealt with the gaoler ... and withal did win him with money that he was content to let her come into the prison to them, which she did, attiring and disguising herself as a milkmaid, with a great pail upon her head full of meat, wherewith she fed that blessed company, putting meat into their mouths, they being tied and not able to stir, nor to help themselves."
Soon orders came that the monks were to be kept very strictly, and the gaoler could not allow Margaret Clement to visit them; then, one after another, all but one died.
In 1538 the rest of the monks were turned out of the Charter House. Sorrowfully they passed out under its great archway, and went their different ways to places of safety.
And was the Charter House left empty to fall into ruins? No; it became the property of first one great lord and then of another. They altered it to meet their needs; the monks' cells disappeared; it became a grand mansion. Queen Elizabeth and James I. both stayed there.