Shortly before ten o'clock a numerous cortège, consisting of a troop of
horse in their full equipments, a band of archers with their bows over
their shoulders, and a long train of barefoot monks, who had been
permitted to attend, set out from the abbey. Behind them came a varlet
with a paper mitre on his head, and a lathen crosier in his hand,
covered with a surcoat, on which was emblazoned, but torn and reversed,
the arms of Paslew; argent, a fess between three mullets, sable, pierced
of the field, a crescent for difference. After him came another varlet
bearing a banner, on which was painted a grotesque figure in a
half-military, half-monastic garb, representing the "Earl of Poverty,"
with this distich beneath it:--

Priest and warrior--rich and poor,
He shall be hanged at his own door.

Next followed a tumbrel, drawn by two horses, in which sat the abbot
alone, the two other prisoners being kept back for the present. Then
came Demdike, in a leathern jerkin and blood-red hose, fitting closely
to his sinewy limbs, and wrapped in a houppeland of the same colour as
the hose, with a coil of rope round his neck. He walked between two
ill-favoured personages habited in black, whom he had chosen as
assistants. A band of halberdiers brought up the rear. The procession
moved slowly along,--the passing-bell tolling each minute, and a muffled
drum sounding hollowly at intervals.

Shortly before the procession started the rain ceased, but the air felt
damp and chill, and the roads were inundated. Passing out at the
north-eastern gateway, the gloomy train skirted the south side of the
convent church, and went on in the direction of the village of Whalley.
When near the east end of the holy edifice, the abbot beheld two coffins