Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/267

1539.] in England. The Abbot of Glastonbury was tried and convicted of felony; his real offence was treason, as the word was interpreted by Cromwell. He was unpopular in the county, and among his dependents. 'There were many bills,' Lord Russell said, 'put up against the Abbot, by his tenants and others, for wrongs and injuries that he had done them.' He was sentenced to death, and the day following was fixed for the execution. He was taken with the two monks from Wells to Glastonbury; he was drawn through the town in the usual manner, and thence to the top of the conical hill which rises out of the level plain of Somersetshire, called Glastonbury Torre. To the last he was tormented with questions, 'but he would accuse no man but himself;' he only requested the visitors' servants who were present on the Torre to entreat their masters and Lord Russell 'to desire the King's Highness of his merciful goodness and in the way of charity to forgive him his great offences by him committed and done against his Grace.' The modern student, to whom the passions and the difficulties of the time are as a long- for gotten dream, who sees only the bleak hill-top on the dreary November day, the gallows, and an infirm old man guilty of nothing which he can understand to be a crime, shudders at the needless cruelty. Cromwell, for his share in this policy of death, was soon to receive as he had given; a few more months, and he too on Tower Hill would pass to his account.