Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/72

52 King's title as of St Thomas's; forthwith he is hurried off under charge of heresy to the Tower; and, appealing to Cromwell, there follows a storm at the council table.

We are next at Worcester, at the Lady Chapel, on the eve of the Assumption. There is a famous image of the Virgin there, and to check the superstition of the people the gorgeous dress has been taken off by Cromwell's order. A citizen of Worcester approaches the figure: 'Ah, Lady,' he cries, 'art thou stripped now? I have seen the day that as clean men had been stripped at a pair of gallows as were they that stripped them.' Then he kisses the image, and turns to the people and says, 'Ye that be disposed to offer, the figure is no worse than it was before,' 'having a remorse unto her.'

The common treads close upon the serious. On a summer evening a group of villagers are sitting at the door of an alehouse on Windermere; a certain master Alexander, a wandering ballad-singer, is 'making merry with them.' A neighbour Isaac Dickson saunters up and joins the party.

'Then the said Isaac commanded the said minstrel to sing a song he had sung at one Fairbank's house in Crossthwaite, in the county of Westmoreland, in the time of the rebellion, which song was called