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] should devote themselves to a life of industry, and of active service to the public; but that the case was often very different with women, who, failing of suitable marriages, or having lost their husbands and relatives, especially women of condition, find these retreats both desirable and honourable; being incapable of supporting themselves in the great struggle of the world, or being especially drawn to religious retirement and pious devotion.



But the king would hear of nothing but that all should be swept away together; and the better to prepare the public mind for so complete a revolution in social life, every means was employed to represent these establishments as abodes of infamy, and to expose the relics preserved in their shrines to ridicule, as impostures which deluded the ignorant people. There was much witty comment on the parings of St. Edward's toe-nails; of the coals that roasted St. Lawrence; the girdle of the Virgin, shown in eleven different places; two or three heads of St. Ursula; the felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster, an infallible cure for the headache; part of the shirt of St. Thomas of Canterbury, said to possess singular virtues; some relics, powerful to prevent rain, and others equally potent in preventing weeds in corn. That there were plenty of these we are quite satisfied, because they abound in Roman Catholic countries at the present day, and especially such machinery as the following; which may still be witnessed at Naples, in Austria, and in many other places.

At Hales, in the county of Gloucester, was shown what was asserted to be the blood of Christ, brought from