Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/122

102 oath, by her, and broke it; and the taper at once went out, and never could be kindled again. The visitors had no leisure for sentiment. The image was torn from its shrine. The taper was found to be a piece of painted wood, and on experiment was proved submissive to a last conflagration.

Kings are said to find the step a short one from deposition to the scaffold. The undeified images passed by a swift transition to the flames. The Lady of Worcester had been lately despoiled of her apparel. 'I trust,' wrote Latimer to the vicegerent, that 'your lordship will bestow our great sibyll to some good purpose—ut pereat memoria cum sonitu—she hath been the devil's instrument to bring many, I fear, to eternal fire. She herself, with her old sister of Walsingham, her younger sister of Ipswich, with their two other sisters of Doncaster and Penrice, would make a jolly muster in Smithfield. They would not be all day in burning.' The hard advice was taken. The objects of the passionate devotion of centuries were rolled in carts to London as huge dishonoured lumber; and the eyes of the citizens were gratified with a more innocent immolation than those with which the Church authorities had been in the habit of indulging them.

The fate of the rood of Boxley, again, was a famous incident of the time. At Boxley, in Kent, there stood an image, the eyes of which on fit occasions 'did stir