themselves. Only a few years before this Clement Lichfield had devoted
much labour and money to the decoration of the great church, and his
last work was the building of the tower which stands to this day. We
can never know whether the architectural additions which he made to
the parish churches were suggested by the suspicion that they might
survive that glorious edifice under whose shadow they reposed; but in
his later years of retirement surely we may believe that he
experienced a sorrowful gratification at the thought that some of his
work would remain for the admiration of future ages, and that his
mortal remains would lie in peace within the chapel which, in his
youth, he had planned and adorned.

While Thomas Cromwell and his agents were engaged in their grim work
of destruction we can fancy how Rumour first made herself busy; how
the people talked of royal commissions and inquiries; tales would
reach them of priories and convents which were seized, and of monks
and nuns thrown upon the world. Messengers were seen to come and go,
and the great gatehouse of the Abbey was eagerly watched by the
curious and anxious townspeople. They talked from door to door, and in
clusters in the market-place, and on Merstow Green, from which the
precincts were entered. At last the blow fell! One by one the monks
filed out of their historic home in solemn procession, their heads
bent beneath a weight of misery they were hardly able to bear, though
not yet capable of realising the full meaning of the calamity which
had befallen them. It is true they were not sent into the world
entirely without means of subsistence; some who were in holy orders
had been appointed to livings by the Abbot and convent; to others
pensions were allowed, but what would this avail in their time of
sorrow!