Red and White: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses

by Emily Sarah Holt

"Aye, Madge. It will do," was the short but distinct decision of the old lady.

So Dorathie Marston became Dorathie Rotherham, and instead of departing to some strange place with her husband, he came to live with her.

The years went on, until the autumn leaves of 1537 were carpeting the green sward, and the wind was blowing keenly through the glades of Woodstock, and waving the willows that congregate round the Abbey of Godstow. The period was one which we look back upon as lively and tumultuous: yet to the few aged men and women who could look back further yet, to the terrible days of the Roses, it seemed very quiet. Matters had changed greatly since that time. The little printing-press set up by William Caxton the mercer in the Westminster Cloisters, had spread its wide wings over all the land: and the monk who, in his isolated courage, had posted his theses on the door of the church at Wittemburg, had spread his skirts over all the world. Men talked busily now on subjects which they had hardly thought about, fifty years before. Men, aye, and women too, dared to think for themselves. And one of the earliest results of these phenomena was the conclusion that the so-called religious houses had generally ceased to be houses of religion, and that the sooner they were done away with the better.

The state of many of these religious houses was of a kind that simply cannot be described. In them Satan and his angels reigned supreme. But there were a few—alas! they were very few—where the vows were really kept, where learning still had scope, and charity still held sway. And of female communities, the best of all these was the Abbey of Godstow.

The smaller houses, of the value of three hundred marks and under, were first suppressed. The larger, of which Godstow was one, followed later. Undoubtedly the motives for this proceeding were not pure and unmixed. Every person who joined in it was not actuated by exclusive regard for morality, nor was everybody quite innocent of some respect for those confiscated lands—not to speak of silver vases, gemmed reliquaries, and gold pieces—which, in the general up-breaking, might fall in his direction. Perhaps, when we have satisfied ourselves that our own motives are on all occasions absolutely unadulterated, we shall be in a more advantageous position to cast stones at the Reformers.

The suppression of the Abbey of Godstow was close at hand, and the nuns had made arrangements for the lives they meant to lead in future. Such of them as had relatives living commonly returned to them. A few of the elder ones, who had none, took refuge in the one or two convents of their Order which were, reasonably and charitably, allowed to remain until the death of the last surviving member. Those who married were very few, and were decidedly independent of public opinion.

On a small, but comfortable, pallet-bed in the infirmary of the Abbey lay one nun who needed to make no such provision for future life. She had received her invitation to the King's Palace, and she lay waiting for His messengers to bring His chariot for her. She had other invitations too: loving entreaties from the distant wolds of Yorkshire, where Dorathie Rotherham, Baroness Marnell of Lymington, herself an old woman of eighty years, was longing to cheer the last days of her aged and only sister; and scarcely less urgent pressure from far Devonshire, where the Lady Combe, of Combe Abbas, was affectionately desirous to minister to her husband's saintly and venerable aunt. But none of all these moved Mother Agnes, as she lay in the pallet-bed, waiting for the King's messengers. Life's fitful fever was over, and the eventide had come. For her there was a longer journey, to a better home.

Outside the infirmary two nuns, an old woman and a middle-aged one, were discussing some point which evidently disturbed their serenity.

"Well, it must be, I count," said the younger, who was the Abbess herself. "I am sore afeared it shall be diseaseful to Mother Agnes. Good lack, can they not do the King's gracious pleasure without poking into every corner, and counting the threads in every spider's web! Howbeit—Well! go, Sister Katherine, and say that my Lords the King's Commissioners can ascend now. But I would have thee say to the chief of them, whoso it be, that in the infirmary is a very aged and holy sister that is nigh to death, and that I pray them of their grace to tread in that chamber as quiet as may be."

Sister Katherine departed on her errand, and the Abbess went forward into the sick chamber. A few minutes later her messenger rejoined her.