Dissolution 1536-7 suffered by Brother Ambrose, of Beeleigh Abbey, temp. Henry VIII

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niSSOLUTION

1536-7

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Suffered by Brother Ambrose, of Beeleigh
Abbey, Temp» Henry VIIL

COMPILED FROM ANCIENT RECORDS

BY

A. E. a.

TEMP. GEORGE V.

Price: ONE SHILLING

London :

THE EASTERN PRESS, LIMITED

3 Chancery Lane, W.C. 2

J9J7

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

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T)ISSOLUTION

a^

Suffered by Brother Ambrose^ of Beeleigh
Abbey^ Temp* Henry VIIL

COMPILED FROM ANCIENT RECORDS

BY

TEMP. GEORGE V.

Price: ONE SHILLING

London :

THE EASTERN PRESS, LIMITED

3 Chancery Lane, "W.C. 2

J9J7

PRINTED BY

THE EASTERN PRESS, LIMITED

LONDON AND READING

3J6895

■■«

They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy
their business in great waters, these men see the works
of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.

Dissolution

1536-7.

inlSSOLUTION— dissolution— dissolution.
^ One had talked of it before, often — every day — but
vaguely as one speaks of death from behind a wall of
unused years.

Now it was here, merciless, absolute, proclaimed on
open market-place, declared the new law of the realm.
And the law must be obeyed.

Square in crimson and brown fur the Mayor was
present.

And the Sheriff and the hangman.

And a crowd inquisitive, indifferent.

Let the white Canons be made homeless.

Much good land would be set free, much revenue
enrich the Crown. True they were the friends of the
afflicted.

For centuries charity had flowed forth from the
cloistered walls. Learning too. But only the old
learning of authority, of faith, laboriously compiled in
rare and precious manuscripts.

And it was the new learning that men wanted, the
new learning of inquiry and research, printed on light
paper, indefinitely multiplied, which pennies were
enough to buy.

6 DISSOLUTION

Why should the Monasteries retain their wealth ?

Let it give strength to the new learning, food to
the King. Then perhaps taxation would diminish. It
weighed heavy on the town.

Wherefore as the sharp words of the royal statute
cut the air the Mayor square in crimson and brown fur
licked his lips slowly, and a grin went broadening over
the faces of the crowd, a purr as of a hunger soon to be
appeased.

Brother Ambrose heard it ; turned away lest he
should forget he and that crowd were of one flesh.

Of one flesh ?

In the moment of his greatest trouble all he heard
was that purr as of a hunger soon to be appeased,
and the eyes which followed him held nothing but
triumphant scorn.

He felt it clinging to his cowl, to his rosary, to his
sandals, robbing them of all their meaning, making
them a masquerade, fit only to be flung away. Yet
with what joy he had clothed himself in them, that
luminous first day when he gathered all his years, his
young years and his ripe years and his old years, into
one great sheaf and laid it down upon the altar of
the Church.

For always.

But there is no always.

A hand touched his, shaky, old, and a worn voice
from the cobbles :

" The Saints protect us, Brother Ambrose — ill times,
ill times."

" Yea, Mother Janet, ill indeed."

DISSOLUTION 7

" The King has evil counsellors. What will become
of us when the Abbey is destroyed? Who will take
care of poor Mother Janet when the monks are gone
away ? The King ? "

" God."

But the worn voice quavered still :

'* 111 times, ill times."

She knew the Canons. They were near. Loaves
abundant at their door.

God was far. Would God give loaves ?

True they said He had created her. But then He
had created hunger also.

" 111 times, ill times."

And the rheumy eyes strained a long while after the
white figure moving away from her, back to the ancient
Abbey, the King's counsellors had doomed.

Ill times.

'91 WAY in the past when the thirteenth century began
^ to show in morning skies and a choir of domes
and towers rose up out of the earth to greet the wonder
of that dawn with fretted stones and gilded crosses
and sonorous chiming of great bells, a white brother-
hood from France came into England : where growing
fast they needed ever more space for their three great
vows :

8 DISSOLUTION

Vows of poverty, because Christ had blessed the
poor;

Of chastity, because the will grows strong in the
hardest discipline ;

Of humility, because man was little and God
almighty and most hard to understand.

In Essex in a green hollow by a tidal stream they
built another Abbey.

And the tide of that eastward-flowing stream ran
deep and strong, filled the inland Monastery with salt
and savour of the sea. Brought dove-grey marble for
the pillars, ivory for reliquaries and crucifix, silks for
altar cloths and vestments, parchment for illuminated
missals, stained windows that the very hues of Heaven
should kindle on the Chapel floor.

A bounteous tide. Now to be wholly drained away.

And it would be ebb-time always, and the slime of
ebb-time would be everywhere, creep in through the
masonry, spread green contagion from arch to arch,
from wall to wall, loosening, decomposing. The evil-
smelling ooze would grow and gape hideous like an
ulcerous wound, would suck down the foundations of
the Abbey, would close over its last fragments and
absorb them with a purr as of a hunger now at last
appeased.

DISSOLUTION 9

^UNGER. Brother Ambrose felt its cruel eyes gleam
at him from every corner, from the pity of the
woman on the cobbles, from the derision of the crowd,
from the black mud of the stream.

And there was hunger in him also — hunger for justice,
the eternal hunger of the oppressed, before they clamour
for revenge.

This dissolution was so wrong, so unbearable a
wrong.

When the King's Commissioners sent to inspect the
Monasteries first came, the white Canons welcomed
them as men welcome a physician when a plague
infects the land.

For many houses of religion were sick with world-
liness and wealth. Their blood flowed sluggish in
congested veins, made the heart in them beat lifeless,
faint.

But the white Canons of the Abbey by the tidal
stream had kept their three great vows untarnished
through the centuries ; their valiant light shone bright
as though it had been lit that very day.

The King's Commissioners took note ; asked many
questions, some from the Monks, most from neighbours
coveting the Abbey lands ; and they could find nothing,
nothing but those three unbroken vows and the gratitude
of the homeless and the sick.

Wherefore the white Canons had no fear. Was not
the King the Defender of the Faith ? The dissolution
he decreed would be wisdom, justice, a lopping off of
rotten branches that the healthy ones might gain in
strength.

lO DISSOLUTION

But it had come otherwise.

All were to go — false and faithful, sound and sick,
heaped together in one ruin.

And the three great vows were to be broken by the
order of the King.

^.URELY not of the King, only of his evil coun-
sellors.

Mother Janet must be right.

The King had evil counsellors.

Was it because the good ones stood aloof ?

Were they afraid ?

But it was wrong to be afraid.

Then Brother Ambrose suddenly thought he under-
stood why God had not burnt with lightning the wicked
hands snatching at the possessions of His Church.

God was not indifferent.

It was His will that Brother Ambrose should set
forth to seek the King, and singly, like the prophet sent
to David, hold the truth up to his face.

And the King would listen.

For to be a King was to hate evil.

To be a King was to do justice.

To be a King was at all costs to fight the battles of
the unrighteously oppressed.

Yes, he. Brother Ambrose, was the chosen one by God
to seek the ear of the King.

DISSOLUTION II

^ILENCE had fallen on the Abbot from that ill day
the dissolution was proclaimed.

Not the silence of repose.

A hundred anxious questions quivered through it,
roosted a little at its edges, then flitted round again and
round and never knocked against an answer.

It was as if his soul had suddenly grown blind and
sought for guidance in a voice, and the voice were far
away.

He spent much time in the Scriptorium. With
hands that always trembled now he took book after
book from off the shelves, and always put them back
again. There was no answer in the books.

And he would kneel before the Altar, kneel and
kneel.

But he could feel the silence tower above him more
and more, rise above the sculptured arches, rise into the
very sky, crush him like a dome of lead.

And the most fervent prayer that he said was but a
fluttering of fear fainting back unto the floor.

igLEAD with the King?

^ Persuade the King to rescind the cruel law ?

That was the answer Brother Ambrose found.

The true answer ?

Let him try.

'T were so good to be allowed to die in one's own
cell, to have one's knell tolled by the brothers' hands.

12 DISSOLUTION

And o'er the deep-dug Abbot's tomb the masses and
the incense fume would leave no room for troubled
thought.

Let Brother Ambrose seek the Court.

^ ROT HER Ambrose had knelt before the Abbot a
long while.

The Abbot had spoken to him about his journey,
given him a long letter to the King, sealed it with his
own hands, listened to him a little, and then he had
forgotten him.

He was waiting for the voice he could not hear.

And Brother Ambrose noticed that the writing
quavered on the letter, that the impress of the arms
and legend of the Abbey was but a blurr on the green
wax as though it had lost faith- in its own self.

The cellarer brought in wine, in chiselled silver,
amber-brown.

As one feeds the very helpless he gave the Abbot
some to sip, and the Abbot's soul, which had spread and
scattered among its many yesterdays, gathered itself
again, fell back heavily into to-day.

" Brother Ambrose waits thy blessing."

So there still was some one wanting to be blessed by
him, blessed with the old sweet symbol of surrender, of
self-sacrifice. He recalled the years when crowds had
clamoured for his blessing, thrown themselves across his

DISSOLUTION 13

path — the pathway of the great processions, broidered
vestments, painted banners, big with winds of festival.
And the Gregorian chants, the golden flecks of burning
tapers, trailed ribbons of sheer light and music along
roads white between Easter blossoming of trees.

Now only a few asked for his blessing, furtively,
when they knew that their neighbours could not see.

He would not bless them any more.

All his power of benediction should rest on the head
of Brother Ambrose, who went forth like the dove out of
the ark in that flood of irreligion which was drowning
the whole land.

He would control the trembling, as he raised his
hands slowly, solemnly to Heaven.

And his hands had the colour of the ivory of the
crucifix, and all the sorrow of the crucifix flowed into
his suppliant voice.

" God be with thee, son.

" God protect thee, brother."

And there were more words of help and comfort
which he wished to utter, but suddenly it had grown
late, time to rest.

Brother Ambrose kissed the hem of the white robe.

He had the Abbot's letter and the Abbot's blessing.

And as he closed the door he saw the cellarer hold
the brown wine in the chiselled silver to an old man's
mouth, and a bloodless tongue cautiously lap up the
drops, the amber drops which still held life.

14 DISSOLUTION

il^AY. Sunshine flooding the whole world down to
its deepest, bitterest roots. Everything hard and
cold and separating, broken, dissolved in one great bath
of warmth and gold.

Old age was dead, sickness ended, every ugliness
ashamed, injustice hidden out of sight.

Life was from everlasting and God's dayspring
from on high.

Was not that the song the larks were singing — the
larks who had been suffered to worship God in the
same way from the day of their creation ?

Surely the Monks would be allowed to do the same.

Dissolution was not a reality, only a threat to test
them, the fiery furnace that alone could separate the
dross from gold.

Let it be welcome then.

Welcome too the wide wind of the long white road,
welcome the space heaped up around it luring it to
wondrous depths. Brother Ambrose stretched his arms
out wide as if to seize whole sheaves of air, of boundless
space, strain them against the heaving of his breast.

There were no roofs, no walls, to fritter distances
to little crumbs a child could hold.

Space was again the earliest, greatest mystery,
gigantic, scarcely held in leash by the blue line of vast
horizons merging into ever richer, deeper blue.

And the mystery was a thing to be pursued, and
conquered and possessed. For generations men had
hurled themselves against it, fallen back defeated. But
the conquerors would come at last, men so strong they
would stand upright on their subdued desires, without

DISSOLUTION 15

the help of prayers and vows, and work God's will
beyond the shelter of a Church.

Conquerors ! Oh, to be one of them or the ancestor of
one of them !

A seafarer spoke to Brother Ambrose on the road.
Spoke of space that was nothing but salt water for such
endless months, to man's endurance they seemed years.
Infinite space of winds and waters, angry because they
had no shore but their own foam, no limit but the
scowling of their clouds.

And he spoke of space so cold the drifting ice froze
into mountains ; of space so hot the paint flaked ofE
in blisters from the scorched sides of the ship. And
Brother Ambrose saw that the seafarer's eyes still held
the marvel of those far horizons — that they had measured
distances by stars which never burnt in English skies.

Only once before had he seen such eyes, in a picture
— and it was the picture of a martyr and a saint.

■^ND strolling players walked along the road, pedlars,
their backs bent low beneath a load of books and
pamphlets printed in type dazzlingly black.

Market-women, merchantmen ; monks — not many.

Yet the monks first made that road.

Now the new ideas moved along it, not like the old,
with folded hands, eyes bent humbly to the ground or
lifted up to Heaven.

l6 DISSOLUTION

The new ideas were young, inquisitive, peering every-
where, eager to discern and seize, and their hands were
the hot impatient hands of children who tear the
flowers which they pick.

But they wore colours rich with future, bright with
hope. In their hair played the wide wind of the road.

Why not trust them ? Become friends ?

If one held the Monastery doors open to them very
wide they would run in, and the sculptured stones, the
lofty arches, the music there would teach them that it is
greater to adapt the old to the uses of the new than to
destroy it and make war and waste of ruins where there
had been wealth and peace.

He would tell this to the King.

And he saw himself kneeling at the royal feet on the
gold steps of the throne in a palace all of gold.

Heard the King summoning his evil counsellors into
his presence, upbraiding them in righteous anger, de-
claring the dissolution of the Abbey to be a thing of
wickedness which he never would allow.

Only good seemed possible.

It was May, and sunshine steeped the world down to
its deepest, bitterest roots.

DISSOLUTION 17

glg^AS it still May ? Or had London crushed it,
buried it beneath the cobbles of its streets ?

Roofs again and walls — tall thin walls with jealous
windows hating each other across dark lanes.

Space crumbled up in a tangled maze of arteries ;
the blue horizon sliced into ribbons frayed at the edge
with smoke and fumes.

Wearily the wide wind of the road fell into openings
of garrets ; listless the sunshine trailed in rusty gutters.
All the foulness the houses spewed into the street tried
to climb up to the roof-tops, up to the sunshine and the
wind that it might lose itself in them. But they
shook it down again and it tumbled back through doors
and windows, through every chink of those thin walls,
poisoning all who dwelt therein.

The town was sick, sick in its bowels and its heart.

The new ideas and the old fought imprisoned in its
blood.

And its rulers deemed blood-letting the only cure.

Wherefore fears went about and scares and treasons,
rumours of strange happenings at the Court — in
whispers — it was not safe to speak aloud.

l8 DISSOLUTION

I^ROTHER Ambrose slept ill that night in the Priory
which gave him shelter.

With wintry stones and rusty bars it cowered in the
shadow of the houses, merchant guilds ihad built around
it.

And the houses took great windowfuls of air and
light, and Brother Ambrose saw that they were high and
narrow, that they hungered for more space.

He had to knock often at the door to be let in. When
it opened, it did so grudgingly, stingily, like one long
disaccustomed from opening itself to friends.

There was no welcome on the closed face of the
porter, no welcome in the chilly cloisters where the
damp of many autumns had been suffered to accumulate
and was eating all the strength out of the stones.

From the street ribald songs and the clatter of armed
men.

" Spying," growled the porter.

And the Sub-prior said :

" Gold makes us poor. Our sacristy contains much
treasure. They fear we might smuggle it away. So we
are spied on, watched and persecuted, deprived of our
head, locked in the Tower. Greed and injustice every-
where."

" But the King — " urged Brother Ambrose.

"The King ! He finds May weather bright at
Hampton Court. Royal pleasures cannot be bought
except for many ducats."

Suddenly he put out the light.

" ' Tis late ; they must not think we are still awake
to prate."

DISSOLUTION 19

And left without good-night.

His mind was troubled with the gold, and the new
ideas and the old stirred strange fevers in his blood.

Brother Ambrose stood alone in the dark guest-room,
and could not sleep.

Space and May seemed far away.

From the street oaths and the clatter of spurred feet.
Spying, swearing, the armed servants of the King.

gjga'HAT was happening?

Something great surely.

The crowd was so big. And they all looked one
wa5% as if they only had one eye.

" There ! There ! " some one said, and pointed.
Women tried to stand on tiptoe, but were swept up,
forced on to where the finger pointed — a scaffold black
above the zigzag of low walls.

Then the crowd grew savage with the lust to see,
flung and flattened itself against the stones, one fierce
wedge fighting its way right through the gates, over-
flowing the halberdiers who vainly tried to guard them.

" She comes ! "

" Who ? "

Five women moved out of the darkness of an inner
passage into the light of the small square ; stumbled up
the steps — freely — no one pushed them ; like the crowd

20 DISSOLUTION

urged by a shuddering curiosity ; wondering about this
new experience — Death upon a scaffold.

Yet all the blood had fled out of their faces, was
throbbing mad with fear within the tight walls of their
hearts.

" That is her, Anne Boleyn."

"Which one?" Brother Ambrose asked. But ere
anyone had answered him, he knew.

She stood more firmly than the others, held her head
up with more pride. One felt her lips had once been red
and sweet with smiles.

Now they had almost faded from her face.

But her eyes were left, lustrous, black.

In their hard glitter all her thirst of life, her unslaked
passion for revenge crouched together before their final
leap out of time into eternity.

Her eyes were left and her white neck, dazzling
beautiful in the warm frolic of May morning-light.

But every now and then the beautiful white neck
would turn and jerk. It knew that there, behind, in the
comer of the scaffold, something brighter than itself and
stronger waited, watched ; something round which the
May light also frolicked, plucking jets of brilliant
sparkles from its edges, splashing them into the round
eyes of the crowd.

She stepped forward, spoke of pardon, of forgive-
ness.

But she was not listening to her words.

She was listening for the swinging of the sword.

Slowly from off her hair she raised her velvet head-
dress stiff with pearls ; carefully, as if she were to put it

DISSOLUTION 21

on again to-morrow, she handed it to one of the trembling
waiting- women.

Two others knelt on the scaffold, somewhere — tried
to pray.

The fourth placed a silken kerchief across the black,
the lustrous eyes.

The condemned one knelt, and for two stupendous
seconds Anne Boleyn was imprisoned in the dark, alone
with all her past, with all her passions, all her power of
hating and of suffering.

" God have mercy on my soul."

The beautiful white neck bowed low. A little curl
laughed in the May light.

" God—"

But that other brighter thing leaped out.

The brilliant sparkles splashed into the round eyes of
the crowd — and something else, sticky, red — something
that trickled off the scaffold, that lay in puddles on the
ground, emptied away out of the head, welled up from
where the neck had been and where now an angry gash
screamed against the day. It flowed and flowed as if it
streamed from the very source of life, and behold it was
the blood of a Mother and a Queen.

22 DISSOLUTION

'^l LL the long way to Hampton Court it rained red
before the eyes of Brother Ambrose : red on the
glossy waters of the river, red on the green reeds of the
bank.

He would have prayed for that murdered woman's
spirit, flung from the scaffold into the boundlessness of
death, but that more urgent prayers lifted their wings
within his soul. They flew a little, then fell back —
unhappily.

The old way to the peaceful God of Monasteries ran
red and angry too with that downpour from the block.

True, Anne Boleyn had been slain by the order of the
King, the King whom the Pope had called the Defender
of the Faith, and who called himself the Supreme Head
of the Church.

Which Faith?

Which Church?

And the prayers beat their wings in fear as little
birds do when the thunder rides up wildly on the gale.

Then he knew it was not prayer that was needed
most, but strength — the strength pulsating in the thrust
of some new life which rushes towards fulfilment.

But what he carried in the worn folds of his cassock
were the trembling lines and the blurred seal of a letter
written by an old and broken man.

Darkly he began to wonder : Is right alone enough
to win. ?

DISSOLUTION 23

'^T last towers, buildings, battlements — the Palace.
Banners flinging their crimson and their royal
blue joyously into the day.

In the road outside the entrance, crowds, held back
by the glitter of bright spears, straining their eagerness
to see long-necked towards the courtyard.

Blare of trumpets.

Somewhere above the green a peal of bells.

Out of the shadow of the gateway colour, display —
a cavalcade richly caparisoned of courtiers, men full of
blood and appetites, high-bosomed women dazzling the
air with perfumed damask, gleaming teeth ; soldiers,
jesters, councillors.

The King —

*' Long live the King ! "

Mountainous on massive charger, a blaze of gems and
cloth of gold, with mighty neck, swift eyes, and feline
lips, the man who knew no master but the minute's
pleasure, who from a multitude of gratified desires
emerged jocund, clamorous for more.

" The King ! God save the King ! "

And he laughed back at the people, laughed to the
white woman by his side, shook his bejewelled reins that
they splashed radiance into the round eyes of the crowd.

And it seemed the same crowd that had stood about
the scaffold asking nothing from its King but some
great display, brilliant or black— no matter — if only the
round eyes got filled.

In a whirl of pomp and colours the cavalcade rode
on, rode over a small dog, who howled among the hoofs
and perished.

24 DISSOLUTION

Blare of trumpets, peal of bells.
" God save the King ! "

Strength, thought Brother Ambrose — here was
strength.

'J[ ND once again he saw the King.

^ He had waited a long while near the place where

he should land ; a long while watched the royal barge

glide down the stream, down the glittering ripples of

the sunset which the dipping oars sprayed into strings of

diamonds.

It was an evening of gold.

The whole fragrance of a cloudless May breathed
o'er the earth like some immense forgiveness.

The royal barge gleamed like a jewel.

The sound of lutes and singing rose from the golden
boat, rang across the golden waters like a voice of
perfect joy from the very heart of life.

Brother Ambrose stood and waited, troubled —
dark — outside the splendour.

The music ended.

The King was helped unto the shore.

Brother Ambrose lay beseeching at his feet.

He felt that he was kneeling before power clothed in
flesh and velvet, before something too hard to feel
another's pain.

DISSOLUTION 25

Yet he pleaded — pleaded for the three great vows
kept untarnished throughout time, for the Abbot who
would surely die, for the friendless ones, the sick, the
poor.

But the King :

" By God there'll be no poor in England when the
Abbey lands are parcelled out."

And angrily :

" *Tis you and your base kind have made the poor."

Then tapped the suppliant head contemptuously
with the silver ferrule of his stick.

" Fool monk, grow some hair on thy bald pate, then
come again," laughed to the white woman at his side,
strode on.

Imploringly Brother Ambrose held out the letter.

A courtier seized it, mocked at the shaky hand-
writing, the quavering seal ; old Father Abbot had been
drunk !

A jester tapped the tonsured head with the jingle of
his bells, echoing his master's voice :

" Fool monk, grow some hair on thy bald pate — the
ladies like it auburn."

And laughter.

Shouts : " The King ! Long live the King."

Tramp of spurred feet, resounding crash of the closing
of great gates.

He had pleaded, and in vain.

He had failed utterly.

He was the dog who howled among the hoofs and
perished.

And God ?

26 DISSOLUTION

The waters of the Thames aglow with sunset lapped
golden against the gold barge of the King.

The whole fragrance of a cloudless May breathed o'er
the earth tenderly like some immense forgiveness.

God was not angry with the King.

With Brother Ambrose ? With the Monks ?

Had they sinned ?

And a new sorrow fell heavily into his heart.

^NCE more the road — dusty, dreary. All the distance
heaped around it narrowing to the doorway of an
Abbey that was doomed.

Dissolution, dissolution ! What could hinder, stay
it now ?

Only a miracle.

Whose eyes had seen a miracle ?

The eyes of Brother Ambrose had beheld the mer-
chant houses tall and hungry for more space, had been
burnt by the horror of the block, dazzled by the splendour
of the Court.

And behind all these they had perceived as some-
thing infinitely precious the new Vision of that far
stretch of unknown space which the seafarer could not
forget.

The unknown space. The earliest mystery to be
pursued and conquered and possessed. And what could
conquer space but motion ? Ceaseless motion in un-
ending space.

DISSOLUTION 27

In a manner time too was motion, time and life.

But the monks who dreamed they already held
eternity had taught him it was holy to be motionless.

They had loaded God with creeds, weighted His
hands with granite slabs, riveted litanies unto His feet,
lest moving once He should be lost to them for ever.

He had been so hard to find.

It was comforting to dream of Him as absolute, fixed
in eternity far out of time, for ever void of motion.

But now, now was He not moving, altering ?

He was not angry with the King who wanted to
destroy His monks, not wroth with the new learning.

Perhaps He was a lovely woman who wearies of
always being worshipped the same way.

Or perhaps that was the only miracle He never tired
of repeating— change, change which was not a mere sum
in addition or subtraction of the immeasurable past,
but a new birth, a fresh creation, a new pathway for
His feet.

And the new birth — was it not always unjust and
bitter to the old ?

Men's souls were still so weak, so little. It was
beyond their strength to hold them both.

And Brother Ambrose, walking silent in the grey
dust of the road, knew now which was the birth that
had to go.

28 DISSOLUTION

^AYLIGHT was worn down into dew and gloaming
^"-^ when he saw his Abbey darken towards him from
out the hollow by the tidal stream.

Mist drifted heavy from the marshes.

In a little it would rise higher than the roof-top,
higher than the Chapel tower, higher than the cross
upon the tower, and till daybreak the whole Abbey
would be a thing submerged and lost.

A sound of bells — Vespers —

And it seemed a voice out of the past, too frail to
reach into to-morrow.

(^HE rainy summer wept itself away into autumn,
winter.

Swollen rivers poured muddy floods over meadows,
roads, low- lying houses. Landmarks were swept away.

Bridges dissolved into sheer water. Men got drowned,
and cattle.

Sea-storms hurled angrily inland, flung bitter tides
over the banks already choked with too much wet.

Seagulls fled screeching unto higher ground, where in
obliterated furrows seeds lay scattered rotting.

Then the wind found the green hollow by the tidal
stream, beat against the Abbey walls, and died there in
its anger, unforgiving.

DISSOLUTION 29

^ONE else came.

The Abbey lay as though forgotten, cut off from
the outer world. Yet not at peace. It knew the world
was only waiting ; that when the roads were dry again,
the King's agents not employed elsewhere, it would
spring upon its neck, drive hungry talons greedily into
its flesh and blood.

The Abbot's hands trembled so much now that they
spilt all the food over his breast. But he resisted being
fed. So his clothes got worn from too much washing.

His mind too found it ever harder still to hold
things stedfastly.

Names dropped out and faces.

Even the great happenings of his own experience fell
off as though from over-ripeness.

But in every twitching nerve he felt the sorrow of
his Abbey, a sorrow none could speak about, because
the darkest words were still too bright.

d|\NCE news dropped in, quivering, like withered
leaves, brought by travellers more courageous than
the others or driven by more urgent needs.

News of how in Lincolnshire the dissolution of a
.Nunnery, the rapacity of royal agents, had torn the
common folk from lazy guilt of acquiescence.

How up north through blackness of November nights,
beacon fires, fanned by gales, flashed far and wide the

30 DISSOLUTION

call to arms. How great gatherings of men and clash
of spears rent the rotten peace in twain.

How Abbeys, towns, and villages pulled at their
bells till every steeple pealed into the suffering land :

Revolt !

CT'HE white Canons and their Abbot sat together in
the Chapter house, close — doors well locked.

Revolt !

Was it not just, a holy war ? Did not those in-
surgents march behind the gleam of crosses, priests and
abbots in their midst, on their banner the five great
bleeding wounds of Christ ?

The country too was wounded, bleeding, its wealth,
its freedom and its faith bitten into, nigh devoured by
monstrous tyranny of upstart blood.

The King had evil counsellors. It was not rebellious,
it was loyal, to free him from their baneful yoke.

DISSOLUTION 31

*' l|f*IS counsellors are of his choosing," said Brother
^ Ambrose. Then let them fall together. Were
they themselves so feeble ? Would not every monk in
England join them — all who clung to the old Faith,
the poor ?

" The poor are the poor of heart. Pick up crumbs at
any door."

But they would spread a hideous terror if they rose
up in their rags.

Further, were it not base cowardice to let the
northern brethren fight alone ? Why had their sudden
fires kindled, their anguished belfries pealed : Arise ! —
but that the people screamed for justice, had suffered
more than they could bear, would tolerate no further
crimes in the ruthless ones who ruled ? v

Revolt ! Revolt !

And eager hands, weary of appealing against dissolu-
tion on the beads of rosaries, thrust themselves up in the
thin light of a winter day, acclaimed : Revolt !

The Abbot's hands from the beginning had played
aimlessly with the carved arms of his chair.

What were the brethren saying ?

Why did their eyes flash out like swords ?

Why did they hold their hands up so ?

Brother Ambrose spoke gently to the fading mind :

Counties had risen against dissolution, were up in
arms against injustice. The Canons here longed to join
them, to march behind the flowing of their banner
whereon were painted the five great bleeding wounds of
Christ.

*' Of Christ ? "

32 DISSOLUTION

The hands still trembled aimlessly.

But the blind soul began to kindle with a great, a
wondrous light : the voice it had waited for so long was
speaking — audibly through his own mouth.

" But I say unto ye, resist not evil, and if one smite
thee on thy right cheek, offer him thy left cheek also."

So the news of the revolt against oppression fell idle
— dead leaves that were swept away.

And it was winter — endlessly.

ITH sickness, Brother Ambrose fell ill too.
He could not tell how long his sickness lasted.

In the infirmary there was no morning and no evening,
only a change from worn-out back to aching side.

Bits of forgetfulness so heavy the narrow pallet
seemed a grave, and a weary stretch of watchful pain, a
wilderness where nightmares grew and every fever of the
brain.

They said the cold had struck him from too long
a vigil on the stones beneath the silver lamp before the
Altar. But he knew it was because the God he had been
taught in childhood had vanished for him from that
Altar, because none had told him yet where he would see
the God of manhood, a God so great one could forgive
His cruelty.

DISSOLUTION 33

glga^ITH the first gusts of March fresh news blew in,
fresh news and ill.

Revolt had failed. From gibbets, blocks, and smoking
faggots tidings came smiling to the King :

" The northern counties are at peace."

Heads cut off, goods confiscated, an abbot hanged in
chains and quartered before the gate of his own chapel,
nuns driven forth, monks dragged to prison —

How would they fare, the white Canons by the tidal
stream ?

OTHE trembling hands wrote, wrote all day — humbly
to give no hold to royal wrath, asking for nothing
for themselves, only that those entrusted to their charge
should be spared starvation.

And there was much careful trimming of the graves
of the Brothers whom one still remembered, much special
tenderness towards the animals whom one had reared,
much lingering in the sunny corners one loved most —

The beginning of farewell.

34 DISSOLUTION

CT'HEY had come, they were there, the Commissioners-
of the King.

Domineering in the Guest-house, loud in the Refectory,
broad in Chapter-house and Church — overflowing every-
where— the masters.

Scornfully they nosed into the intimate and humble.

Greedily they ransacked stores. Impiously they
emptied aumbries, dim with incense, full of jewelled
chasubles and copes.

Illuminated manuscripts they tore to pieces, defaced
statues, besmirched sacred paintings on the walls. Then
sat down, made lists and lists of all time and piety had
brought into the holy building, and against each thing,
testing, weighing, valuing, they wrote its worth in
money.

Item an alabaster table by the high altar praised at
13 shillings 4 pence.

Item a hanging for the same of green and russet
praised at 10.

Item a cross of copper gilt with the gilt unto the
same and the cloth 5 shillings.

Item a censer of silver gilt : shillings 71 and 6 pence.

Item a pyx inlaid with gems — lb 12, 9 shillings
4 pence.

The pyx — which never had been touched before,
except by hands of solemnly anointed priests, the golden
pyx wherein the sacring bell ringing above bowed heads
of worshippers had proclaimed the Real Presence — now
glibly identified with common coins — money.

Had the pyx become so worthless ?

Or had money swollen to almightiness ?

DISSOLUTION 35

Money — these royal agents, these new men, spoke of
no other value.

And Brother Ambrose hearing them wondered if
perhaps that were the God so great, men could forgive
His cruelty.

<^OURS of crude arithmetic, days of turmoil, anger.

So much unrest among the living, one wondered
how it was the dead could sleep.

At last the inventory was closed, the inventory, and
the surrender.

The trembling hands pressed the Abbey-seal into
the green wax — firmly, for they still were proud.

The Commissioners swept all away into their pockets,
even the seal — it was never to be used again.

Went.

Followed the creaking of the waggons heavy with
what of treasure could be moved.

Wearily the porter closed the Abbey gates behind
them — not with blessing. They had done nothing but
destroy.

Wearily the brethren tried to piece together their old
life out of the fragments that remained. And could not.

The day was fixed when they must go.
It was the end — even of farewell.

36 DISSOLUTION

0t:VENING — the last. So dark it seemed to ooze out of
the pierced heart of the Abbey, rise through the floors,
pour from the windows, run over at the roof top, as if
the lead and rafters had fallen in already. And the
sunset flung fire into the great rose of the Church.

0tVENING, evening — the very last.

Boxes and bags, the few things one could carry with
one brought together in small heaps, stowed away :

Fresh soled shoes — for the journey might be long —
a loaf of bread, a breviary, a relic, a bunch of herbs out
of the garden — And there was dust and emptiness where
the daily life of three unbroken centuries had made a
well-filled world of use and order.

/JtVENING, evening — the very last.

It broke out in patches from dark corners of the
walls, hung in cobwebs from the corbels, fell like curtains
from the cross-bars of the windows.

It was a sigh in the dim cloisters, and a moan
amongst the crosses of the graves.

DISSOLUTION 37

One could not eat. There was too much evening in
the Refectory, and behind that evening too much night.

The bread clung sour between the teeth ; even the
wine stuck in the throat.

21 BROTHER read :

Let there be none to extend kindness unto him.

Neither let there be any to have pity on his fatherless
children.

Let his posterity be cut off : in the generation follow-
ing let their name be blotted out.

Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with
God : and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

Let them be before God continually : that He may
cut off the memory of them from the earth ;

Because he remembered not to show kindness : but
persecuted the poor and needy man and the broken in
heart to slay him.

And the words were as daggers slashing the gloom
with the glitter of revenge.

38 ' DISSOLUTION

XN the dorter anxious whispers :
" Where will you go ? "
" Home. My old mother will be glad."
But he who had read the Psalm at supper :
" Rome — the Pope needs men. I go to Rome."
And his eyes shone black with hunger — not for justice.
" And you, Father Ambrose ? "
Father Ambrose made a wide vague gesture of

despair.

" Somewhere — into the world."

And the world seemed just one long and dreary road ;

beside its ruts only a rushlight here and there, some huts,

a wayside tavern, where no one was allowed to stay

longer than a single night.

CT'HE call to Compline quavered faintly down the
shadows, and it seemed too small a bell to ring the
death-knell of a whole age of faith and thought.

The white Canons sat in their appointed places, knelt
on the wonted stones smooth from much bygone kneeling,
found voices for the accustomed words and prayers ; but
their thoughts were without prayer.

The many blessed yesterdays which never had been
yesterday till now were dying in them with too fierce an
agony ; the unknown horrible to-morrow was waiting
too close, too sure, behind the door.

Prayers could alter nothing now.

DISSOLUTION 39

CT'ILL the Abbot rose up in his seat with its canopy of
sculptured leaves, opened a book, began to read :

" In the Lord have I put my hopes — "

And the brethren answered : " Let us never be
confounded."

" Bow down Thine ear to me — "

" Hasten to deliver me."

The trembling hands gripped the cold edge of the
lectern — hard. It must be held down to the end the
anguish that was slaying him^ — But it was rising.

" Be thou unto me a God — "

The letters swam before his eyes.

"A protector—"

He could no longer see them.

He remembered :

" A house of refuge — out of this snare — which — "

He forgot —

" Into thy hands, O God of truth—"

His voice broke off. Anguish had risen up too
high.

Then he bowed his head down — deep down — that the
brethren should not see. But they felt his tears scorch
their eyes.

And Brother Ambrose at the organ gave voice to all
they dumbly suffered, drew the ache and bitterness out of
each man's heart and poured it out into the great heart
of the world, and widened it and sweetened it.

" The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away.

" Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Lingeringly the white Canons left their Church.

And they were ghosts already, shadows — past.

40 DISSOLUTION

A minor chord yearning for redemption vibrated down
the darkening aisles, a chord long-drawn like the deep
last sigh of one who knows that he must die, while
others sleep before the dawn. Then silence but for the
ever more receding sound of feet that part on ever
farther and more distant floors.

Silence — complete.

And the pierced heart of the Abbey beat no more.

ROTHER Ambrose stayed in the Church.
It had just only lived its last pale hour.

It was wrong to leave the dead before they had had
time to grow accustomed to their death. The unwonted
was less terrible when hands still warm with life were
spread out before it, disguising it a little.

A thousand vigils merged into his watching, for he
was big with sorrow, loneliness, and night.

Night had built her own walls around the dead walls
of the Church, black — a gigantic catafalque.

And dense, weighing on everything — not to be moved,
only a little more transparent where the silver lamp
before the altar shed the circle of its light.

Perhaps the watchful eye of God ? —

But it would be closed to-morrow.

DISSOLUTION 41

OTHROUGH the tracery of the windows other lamps
burned, white, trembling in a dark-blue black with

depth — the stars.

But night was bigger than the stars.

Then Brother Ambrose understood that God is night —
night which sets things free from the oppression of their
outlines, dissolves their hard identity, opens the way to
infinite communions where ideals are conceived strong
enough to breed fresh life.

That God is darkness — the fathomless around whose
edge moons swim, and stars, islands of radiance to guide
souls on their slow way towards Him.

Was it therefore He forsook the Church, because it
dragged Him out into too absolute a light, mutilated
Him with names, clogged the vastness of His freedom
with faith in narrow certainties, petrified the teeming
heat of His creative passion into a thing that could
be told?

Perhaps too with its arches, pinnacles, and angels
steep and winged it had rushed into the sky too swiftly,
not plunged deep enough into the darkness of the soil.

But it was there the fountains flowed together, the
hidden fires, the burrowings of fruitful roots.

What men loved most themselves of music, gold, and
adulation they brought into this Church, calling it the
house of God.

But God knew it was a prison ; laboured at the times
that would seek Him on a wider, harder way. Escaped.

42 DISSOLUTION

;|fJUT once He had dwelt there, while they were building,
while the Abbey rose more articulate day by day,
growing with the growth of a great tree.

His feet had walked amidst the swaying of the
scaffolds. He had hung His voice high in the belfry,
pressed His weight into the keystone of the arches that
much heaviness might rest thereon, had moulded the
impress of His hands upon the stones that for all time
beauty should be imaged there. For God loves beauty
which is a pause and a fulfilment, and life which is
desire, and endless building and becoming.

glg^'HAT would life build around the new ideas that
the many might find them and believe in them ?

Not Churches. Men did not pray for Churches now.

They had done once — prayed, prayed, through the
endless wet of weeks of rain — prayed for the Church
they were too poor to build themselves.

And behold one sunrise hour of dewy gold, above the
reeds in the green meadow where the flood had been,
a wooden Church, a well-made house to shelter their
belief in God.

But that was very long ago.

DISSOLUTION 43

HAT did men pray for now, or work for ? For they
still only prayed their fathers' prayers, not yet
their own.

And Brother Ambrose thought of the seafarer's eyes
vague with the light of new horizons, with the lure of
boundless space.

And he remembered what he witnessed as he stood
where the tidal stream grows broad and deep, feeling
the nearness of the sea. Riggings, masts, hulks fit to
wrestle with elemental winds and waves ; men straining
outwards, seawards, with eager speech of those who know
they will discover gold.

They still offered up some votive prayer in the Church
above the harbour, but quickly, hurriedly, that they
might not miss the tide. The tide which was to bear
them to a world of waters, rich in adventure and in fame,
where power waited to be snatched from fate, from the
greed of other men ; where space called boundless,
wondrous, unexplored, to be pursued, and conquered, and
possessed.

Seawards to give vent to the inner meaning of their
race, rein to their surest instinct ; outwards to slay the
fever in their blood with reckless draughts of dangers
and discoveries.

44 DISSOLUTION

-ffiOR such aims was it not ships one needed most ?

Life would build ships around the new ideas — ever
bigger, swifter ships.

And Brother Ambrose felt that when once these
could be judged even like this Church, as something
ended and completed in the calm, still balance of the
past, it would be found that with their sails so full of
light and air, their keels embedded in so much heaviness
and night, they had conquered in the flow of time
another pathway for the restless feet of God.

59ES, men would work for ships, for everything that
yielded further motion in yet more space. For
God had again become the distant and the unattained,
only in some flash of revelation the harbour where the
soul could rest.

And even as his vigil ended Brother Ambrose felt his
spirit lifted, absorbed into the depth of night, the
boundless blue where all was heaven, and the breath
went of a God so great one could forgive His cruelty.
And there his suffering self dissolved insignificant as
dust.

DISSOLUTION 45

UT space, through which his soul had broken, grew
near again, oppressive, narrow.

Out of gradually subsiding darkness things rose in
their familiar outlines, separate, closed.

Tier by tier night broke down its walls, drew back
behind the rising sun, lingered only in thin, light
shadows on the ground.

The catafalque that had hung silent and sumptuous
as black velvet round the Church, vanished within the
veil of day. The dead lay bare and piteous beneath
shrillness of awakening birds.

All his scattered suffering condensed again around
the lonely watcher's heart, and all the dread of living
through the coming hours of severance stole a leaden
poison through his veins.

Strength ! Strength !

He kissed the sorrow of the Crucifix, the cold stones
of the silent Altar, took from them what was left of the
great sheaf of his gathered years, his ripe years, and his
old years.

" Into Thy hands, O God of truth."

And it was day, the day of Dissolution.

46 DISSOLUTION

% GARISH day.

Knocking, ringing, impatient bursting of the gate.
The enemy.

Brutally the new owners took possession.

Allowed no respite even for early Mass.

The monks might say it in their hearts.

But those could hold nothing now but utmost
weariness of grief. They were ended, broken.

Too broken even to cling together.

They parted, scattered. They became of no account.

^([JROTHER Ambrose and another shielded the Abbot
^ with their love, listened when the blind soul heard
the voice.

Not long.

One day warm with ripening harvests, the trembling
hands twitched a little and lay still.

Tenderly Brother Ambrose closed the eyes which
dying took with them a whole age of faith and trust.

Then with the sound of harvest songs still in his ears
he found his way unto a ship, a ship that was to sail at
sunrise, gliding seawards with the tide.

DISSOLUTION 47

^EAWARDS, away from where they robbed and
slew the sacred past, seawards oyer unsailed waves
to unknown shores, distances to which the hunger of the
race began to suck its eager way. There was much
light and air in the tall rigging, much night and
heaviness around the keel. A star shone golden at the
mast. And beneath it, in the pearly twilight breathed
the wide wind of the road, full already of the night,
fresh from the splendour of the sea, the perilous track,
where the God of manhood beckoned, vast and manifold
and free.

The Eastern Press, Limited, London and Reading.

*> \.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

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