A HISTORY OF 
decidedly in favour of the new learning, all 
for the king and the council, and two or three 
also* (including the sub-prior) who were with 
the abbot in holding to the old way. The 
rest had no strong opinions at all, and the dis- 
cussions in the shaving house and elsewhere, 
though free, were apparently not violent. At 
the death of More and Fisher, and again at 
the dissolution of the smaller monasteries, the 
abbot imposed certain penitential exercises? 
upon the whole convent, which were per- 
formed, though not with good will; when 
murmuring arose they ceased. 
Meanwhile the abbot was growing more 
and more troubled as he saw the course events 
were taking ; more and more conscience- 
stricken at his own cowardice in accepting 
the oath of supremacy, which better and 
braver men had refused. He did not hide his 
troubles from his brethren; but they were 
for the most part irresponsive to his appeals. 
He confided to the sub-prior that his conscience 
grudged him daily for taking the oath ; he 
said to more than one of his neighbours and 
friends that he felt it was their own shameful 
lives that were bringing so many troubles upon 
the religious.® In Lent he fell ill of the 
‘stranguilion,’ and in his extreme bodily pain 
he said that he wished he had died with More 
and Fisher and the other good men who 
would not take the oath. And when his 
mind wandered a little in his illness the words 
that came to his lips most naturally were 
quotations from the fathers which seemed to 
prove the pope’s supremacy.‘ Yet, charac- 
William Sherborne, and had advised Croxton to 
report the words of another monk to the visitors. 
1 Dan Laurence Blunham, Dan Richard Hop- 
worth. 
2 They were bidden to say the Psalm Deus vener- 
unt gentes, with the versicle Exurgat Deus, every 
Friday after the Litany, prostrate before the altar. 
Later they were to sing Salvator mundi, salva nos 
omnes at every mass. 
3 There is much in the abbot’s words and actions 
at this time that recalls the record of the last days 
of the London Charterhouse; and yet he could 
scarcely have heard that story in much detail. It 
is also significant—though indeed it is only what 
might have been expected—that the best of the 
religious at that time, those who were most faithful 
and devoted to their rule, were also the most ready 
to confess that it was their ‘ shameful lives’ which 
brought such trouble on the church. 
4 Tu quis es? Primatu Abel, gubernatione 
Noe, auctoritate Moyses, judicatu Samuel, potes- 
tate Petrus, unctione Christus. Alize ecclesie 
habent supra se pastores, tu pastor pastorum es.’ 
From a letter of St. Bernard to Pope Eugenius IIT. 
The sub-prior said the abbot was ‘somewhat 
acrazed’ at this time. 
BEDFORDSHIRE 
teristically, at Easter he put the sub-prior on 
his obedience ‘to bid the beads’ before the 
sermon for the king as supreme head of the 
Church. 
The death he desired was indeed nearer 
than he thought. It was during Lent 
that one of the assistant priests of Woburn 
chapel (which served as the parish church) 
came upon some bulls which had not been 
delivered up to Dr. Petre, and went straight 
up to London with them. This man 
had been engaged by the abbot in the pre- 
vious summer ® ; he was originally a friar,® 
who had been dispensed from his obed- 
ience by the pope, and was now a violent par- 
tisan of the new learning ; he had already 
been rebuked by the abbot for his railing 
against the pope, and against images. With 
the bulls he took a letter from Dan Robert 
Salford, one of the monks who shared his 
views. On his return he told the abbot what 
his errand had been, and was dismissed in 
consequence ; but the precaution came too 
late. Early in May Dr. Legh and John 
Williams arrived, bringing grave charges 
against the abbot and convent ; on the 8th 
the house was surrendered.’ John Williams, 
who had taken the deed of surrender up to 
London,® together with a letter from the 
abbot (in which he and his brethren pro- 
tested their innocence and cast themselves 
on the king’s mercy), returned again at once 
accompanied by Dr. Petre; and on 11 and 
12 May depositions were taken, and with 
articles of accusation appended were sub- 
mitted to the council.’° 
Four monks were examined besides the 
abbot and sub-prior ; also Sir John Mylward, 
warden of the hospital at Toddington, and 
8 From his own deposition. As to the bulls, the 
abbot said it was merely by an oversight of the 
bursar that they were not delivered up. This is 
probably true; as he was willing to confess every- 
thing else, there seems no reason why he should 
deny this. 
8 From the petition of the sub-prior (L. and P. 
Hen. VIII. x. 1239 [1536]. 
7 Ibid. xiii. pt. 1, 955. 
8 Ibid. 
® This letter is dated 1536 by Wright, Suppres- 
ston of Monasteries, p.145, but allusion init to Legh 
and Williams and the accusations of treason make 
it clear that its proper place is here, as it is placed 
in the L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. pt. 1, No. 956. 
10 The articles appended to the depositions by the 
commissioners included the names of Sir Francis 
Bryan, his ‘ doctor of physicke,’ Mylward of Tod- 
dington, and two doctors (one of Cambridge), 
besides the abbot, the bursar, and Dan Hop- 
worth. A very different selection was finally made. 
368 
