[CHAPTER VI.]
THE LIGHTNING STRIKES AGAIN.
THE old man was right. With the spring came rumors of renewed attacks upon the religious foundations all over the country. We heard before of the execution of the Bishop of Rochester, who laid down his gray head upon the block because he would not acknowledge the king to be pope—for that is what it amounted to. (Nothing can be more absurd than to call Henry the Eighth a Protestant.) Our own prioress might be said to have died in the same cause.
Nobody had appeared to administer the oath to our present head, however, and we had begun to think that we were to be let alone. I do not believe that the reverend mother had any such hopes. Our foundation was a wealthy one, and our church was well-known to be unusually rich in gold and silver. There was abundance of shrines, reliquaries and boxes, as valuable for their splendid workmanship as for the precious metals of which they were made, and the jewels with which they were incrusted. Then there were missals set with precious stones, beautiful hangings and vestments, and vessels, and candlesticks, and the like. These articles were all displayed upon feast days, and when our great altar was lighted up at the festival of our Patroness, it was a spectacle almost too bright for mortal eyes.
Such a prey was not likely very long to escape the teeth and claws of my Lord Cromwell, and his master. Bishop Gardiner himself was very forward in promoting the king's designs upon the religious houses (for as devout as he afterward professed himself). He was our visitor, as I have said, and when the very shepherd is in league with the wolves, the silly sheep have little chance of escape.
It was on a beautiful morning in May that destruction overtook us. We had just come out of chapel for our recreation, when we heard a thundering knocking at the great gate, and the portress going to open it, found a couple of gentlemen, and our old friend, or enemy, the bishop's chaplain, with letters from my Lord Cromwell and Bishop Gardiner for the prioress and community.
We were all in the garden, huddled together and watching afar off, when the mother assistant called us to come into the ante-room of the choir, where we were wont to put on the long mantles which we wore in church. We were bid to array ourselves as quickly as possible and get ourselves into the usual order of our procession. This being done, and preceded by the cross-bearers, as was the way in our grand processionals, the singers passed into the choir, singing as usual, I being at the organ, which I was accustomed to play for all church services. The youngest sisters came first and the prioress last.
Father Austin stood near the altar, his head bowed down with grief, yet commanding himself like a man. The bishop's chaplain and the two other visitors stood beside him, and the latter were passing their remarks freely enough upon all they saw, and even on the figures and faces of the sisters. Standing upon the chancel steps they could look directly into the choir, which no one in the body of the church could see at all. I must do our ladies the justice to say that they seemed, one and all, totally unconscious of the presence of these strange men. Even Sister Perpetua was awed into decent behavior.
When all were in their places, the chaplain announced his errand. He had come, by the authority of the king and his minister, my Lord Cromwell, to demand the surrender of the charter of that house to his majesty, with all treasures of every sort, and all superstitious relics, whereof my lord was well informed we possessed a great number. All members of the family were to be at liberty to depart whither they would, being furnished, by the king's liberality, with a suit of secular clothing. As to the house and its contents, they were to be at the absolute disposition of the king, and no one was to presume, on pain of felony, to secrete, carry off, or make away with any article whatever, though by the king's special grace and favor toward the bishop, the sisters might take any books or other property of their own, not above the value of three marks. * The visitors had brought down articles of surrender for the prioress to sign, and two of the commissioners would remain to take an inventory of our goods, and see such as were of value packed for removal.
* See many such surrenders in the Camden Miscellany and in Fuller's Church History.