Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/69

 in a linen sack in the same chest, were placed by themselves. Fifty years afterwards Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, erected a shrine of gold and silver, richly adorned with jewels, in which he inclosed the relics of Venerable Bede and other saints, and caused this inscription to be placed over it:

In the reign of Henry the Eighth this beautiful shrine was demolished, and the relics of the saints treated with every indignity by an insane mob, urged on by its Puritanical leaders to destroy the monuments of the piety of their ancestors. The only memorial now remaining in the cathedral of Durham, of its once having been the resting-place of the remains of Bede, is a long inscription to his memory concluding with the well-known monkish rhymes: