The Abbot was absent at a country house a mile and a half distant. They followed him, informed him of the cause of their coming, and asked him a few questions. His answers were 'nothing to the purpose;' that is to say, he confessed nothing to the visitors' purpose. He was taken back to the abbey; his private apartments were searched, and a book of arguments was found there against the King's divorce, pardons, copies of bulls, and a Life of Thomas à Becket—nothing particularly criminal, though all indicating the Abbot's tendencies. The visitors considered their discoveries 'a great matter.' The Abbot was again questioned; and this time his answers appeared to them 'cankered and traitorous.' He was placed in charge of a guard, and sent to London to the Tower, to be examined by Cromwell himself, when it was discovered that both he and the Abbot of Reading had supplied the northern insurgents with money.[1] The occasion of his absence was taken for the dissolution of the house; and, as the first preliminary, an inventory was made of the plate, the furniture, and the money in the treasury. Glastonbury was one of the wealthiest of the religious houses. A
- ↑ 'For the holy religious abbots of Reading and Glastonbury had conjured the said Cardinal Pole's elder brother, named the Marquis Montague, with the other Marquis of Exeter; and so far was the matter gone from hand to hand, that some of the King's most familiar friends, and of his Majesty's privy chamber, and of his council; were corrupted with that malicious person. Yea, and moreover, it passed conspiracy to come to effect. For part of these rebels, to the number of 800, in the second insurrection in the North, were paid with money sent them from those abbots out of the South. How say you now? Was it time, trow you, for the King to look about him?'—Pilgrim, p. 65.
