Page:Chronicle of the Grey friars of London.djvu/24

 In the autumn of the same year the Reformers instituted a more rigorous visitation of churches than any that had previously taken place. All images were at that time pulled down throughout England, and all churches new white-limed. At the same time all the altars in the church that was sometime the Grey Friars', with the walls and stalls of the choir, were removed and sold, and the whole reduced in length, in order to make it more consistent with the requirements of an ordinary parish church, the arrangements for which were shortly after completed, the neighbouring churches of Saint Nicholas and Saint Ewen being removed. All the tombs and large gravestones were at the same time taken away, and sold for the paltry sum of fifty pounds, or thereabouts. Amidst the general destruction of ancestral memorials which was accomplished in those days of heartless and impious spoliation, this act perhaps exceeded all others of the kind. The church of the Grey Friars had been the favourite place of sepulture with those of the aristocracy of England who had died in the metropolis. According to the reckoning of Weever the church had been honoured with the sepulture of