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unexpected victory our knights and bowmen at Neville’s Cross ; 
and a few years later when the Northern Counties rose in the 
Pilgrimage of Grace to protest against the suppression of the 
monasteries, the same banner waved over their ranks, It is an 
interesting coincidence that the last popular rising in defence of 
the monks should have been made under the sacred emblem which 
Senhouse used as his device. 
Simon Senhouse died in 1520, the last of the Priors of Carlisle 
—the last at least who died Prior and was buried as such in his 
cathedral. Happily for himself he did not live to see the storm 
which was soon to break over his monastic home and to sweep 
away the order to which he belonged. I may but distantly allude 
to this subject. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss 
the suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII. But I 
may be pardoned for saying that by the most competent modern 
authorities another judgment than the old one is now being passed 
upon the monks, and one much more favourable to them. For 
the first time the original records of those days of terror are being 
thrown open to the public. Men are beginning to realise that the 
old accusations against the monasteries rest upon nothing better 
than the word of enemies and plunderers ; and as Edmund Burke 
has said of a similar subject, “It is not with much credulity that I 
listen to any when they speak ill of those whom they are going to 
plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned and exaggerated 
when profit is looked for in the punishment. An enemy is a bad 
witness ; a robber is a worse.” Few then will regret if they see at 
length lifted the cloud of calumny which has hung so long over 
these old monks ; few but will be glad to learn that Senhouse and 
his brethren were not the idle, dissolute men that they have been 
represented ; and that the’ life led by them in Carlisle Priory, as 
elsewhere, was an earnest, religious life—one spent in the worship 
of God and in faithful service of their neighbours. But whatever 
the varying verdict that may be passed upon it by the changing 
ages, the Order of which Prior Senhouse was a representative 
passed away. A few broken arches are all that is left of the 
cloisters which he often paced. But the halls which he built or 
