thy saints unto the beasts of the field.  Their blood have they shed like water on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them.  We are become an open scorn unto our enemies, a very scorn and derision unto them that are round about us.  Oh, remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, and that soon, for we are come to great misery.  Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name.  Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy name’s sake.  Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?” Ye shall say this Psalm,’ repeated the abbot, ’every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge.’  And so,” continues Salford, significantly, “the convent did say this aforesaid Psalm until there were certain that did murmur at the saying of it, and so it was left.”

The abbot, it seems, either stood alone, or found but languid support; even his own familiar friends whom he trusted, those with whom he had walked in the house of God, had turned against him; the harsh air of the dawn of a new world choked him; what was there for him but to die.  But his conscience still haunted him:  while he lived he must fight on, and so, if possible, find pardon for his perjury.  The blows in those years fell upon the Church thick and fast.  In February, 1536, the Bill passed for the dissolution of the smaller monasteries; and now we find the sub-prior with the whole fraternity united to accuse him, so that the abbot had no one friend remaining.

“He did again call us together,” says the next deposition, “and lamentably mourning for the dissolving the said houses, he enjoined us to sing ’Salvator mundi, salva nos omnes,’ every day after lauds; and we murmured at it, and were not content to sing it for such cause; and so we did omit it divers days, for which the abbot came unto the chapter, and did in manner rebuke us, and said we were bound to obey his commandment by our profession, and so did command us to sing it again with the versicle ’Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.  Let them also that hate him flee before him.’  Also he enjoined us at every mass that every priest did sing, to say the collect, ’Oh God, who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart.’  And he said if we did this with good and true devotion, God would so handle the matter, that it should be to the comfort of all England, and so show us mercy as he showed unto the children of Israel.  And surely, brethren, there will come to us a good man that will rectify these monasteries again that be now supprest, because ’God can of these stones raise up children to Abraham.’”

“Of these stones,” perhaps, but less easily of the stonyhearted monks, who with pitiless smiles watched the abbot’s sorrow, which should soon bring him to his ruin.