84 SIR WILLIAM CAVENDISH- 



-1557- 



gift or let at a moderate rent to some responsible layman in 

 the county. Thomas Cromwell's advice to King Henry was, 

 " Divide the monastic lands as much as possible amongst the 

 gentry of each shire, and then it will be more difficult to recover 

 them again." And so Queen Mary found it when she came to 

 the throne and desired to restore the monasteries. She found 

 that those even who had remained steadfast to the Roman faith 

 and obedience clung steadily to the lands they had received. 



In the Record Office there is a book of accounts of Sir Wm. 

 Cavendish and of his sale of the goods of eleven abbeys. He 

 rode on horseback from abbey to abbey, taking with him a small 

 army of masons and carpenters to unroof the abbey church and 

 the dormitories and other buildings, that the monks might find 

 no resting-place there, according to the orders delivered to him 

 and the other Commissioners. He appears to have carried out 

 his orders m a very merciful spirit, and very differently from the 

 savage manner in which Sir John Russell, who became the first 

 Earl of Bedford, acted towards the Mitred Abbot of Glastonbury, 

 and a Lord of Parliament, whom he caused to be hung up in 

 sight of his own abbey, and afterwards his body to be taken 

 down and quartered and sent to four neighbouring towns and 

 hung up on the walls to strike terror in the hearts of lesser men. 



The book is headed : — 



A booke of Accompts of Sre Wyllm Cavendyshe, Kt touching hys 

 accompts for ye goods of Monasteries. 



He was at 



Merivale, 15th October, 30 Henry VHI. 

 Brewood, i6th October. 

 Lylleshall, Salop, 17th October. 

 St. Thoma.s, nigh Stafford, i8th October. 

 Delacres, co. Stafford, 21st October. 

 Darley, near Derby, 24th October. 

 Dale, CO. Derby, 24th October. 

 Repton, CO. Derby, 26th October. 

 Grace Dieu, co. Leicester, 28th October. 

 Pypwell, CO. Northampton, 6th November. 

 Barnewell, co. Cambridge, 7th November. 



