Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/183

 Protestant Revolt in Switzerland and England 145 both within doors and without ; for all such beasts, horses, sheep, and such cattle as were abroad in pasture or grange places, the visitors caused to be brought into their presence, and when they had done so, turned the abbot with all his convent and household forth of the doors. Which thing was not a little grief to the convent, and all the servants of the house departing one from another, and especially such as with their conscience could not break their profession ; for it would have made a heart of flint to have melted and wept to have seen the breaking up of these houses and their sorrowful departing, and the sudden spoil that fell the same day of their departure from the house. And every person had everything good cheap, except the poor monks, friars, and nuns, that had no money to bestow on anything. . . . Such persons as afterward bought their corn and hay, or such like, found all the doors either open, the locks and shackles plucked away, or the door itself taken away, went in and took what they found, — filched it away. Some took the service books that lied in the church, and laid them upon their waine coppes to piece the same. Some took windows of the hayleith and hid them in their hay ; and likewise they did of many other things, for some pulled forth the iron hooks out of the walls that bought none, when the yeomen and gentlemen of the country had bought the timber of the church. For the church was the first thing that was put to the spoil ; and then the abbott's lodging, dorter, and frater, with the cloister and all the buildings thereabout within the abbey walls. ... It would have pitied any heart to see what tearing up of lead there was and plucking up of boards and throwing down of the spars ; when the lead was torn off and cast down into the church and the tombs in the church all broken (for in most abbeys were divers noble men and women, — yea, and in some abbeys, kings, whose tombs were regarded no more than the tombs of all other inferior persons; for to what end should they stand when the church over them was not spared for their cause!), and all things of Christ either spoiled, carped away, or defaced to the uttermost.