176 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



became the order of the day. For the abbey, with 

 all its revenues, was granted to Thomas Wriothesley, 

 Lord Chancellor of England, and, after the fall of 

 Cromwell, the chief minister of the realm. And 

 Wriothesley, Catholic though he was, began at once 

 to convert the monastic buildings into the " righte 

 statelie house " seen by Leland : even the sanctity of 

 the priory chapel was not respected, but seems to 

 have been turned either into the banqueting-hall, 

 or into the range of stables of which the ruins may 

 still be seen. 



But Thomas Wriothesley, now created Earl of 

 Southampton, was not destined long to enjoy the 

 spoils of the priory. On the accession of the Pro- 

 testant party to power under Edward VL he was 

 deprived of the chancellorship and imprisoned. On 

 his liberation he retired into obscurity, perhaps to 

 " Tytchfylde " ; and died soon afterwards of a broken 

 heart. His magnificent tomb stands in the south 

 chapel of the village church, where, carved in alabaster, 

 his life-size figure is represented in his robes of state 

 as Lord Chancellor of England, and with the collar 

 of the Order of the Garter about his neck, and with 

 hands uplifted across his breast in prayer. The 

 splendour of the Wriothesley altar tomb may in 

 some measure be gathered from the fact that a 

 sum equivalent to ;^ 12,000 of our money is said to 

 have been expended upon its erection. 



But the main interest of the tomb centres, not in its 

 costly magnificence, or in the exquisite workmanship 

 of its details, or even in the recumbent figure of the 

 Lord Chancellor who played so large a part in the 

 days of the Reformation, but in the fact that in the 

 spacious vault beneath repose the ashes of Henry the 



