Loveday's History by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

THE old man was right. With the spring came rumors of renewed attacks upon the religious foundations all over the country. We heard before of the execution of the Bishop of Rochester, who laid down his gray head upon the block because he would not acknowledge the king to be pope-for that is what it amounted to. (Nothing can be more absurd than to call Henry the Eighth a Protestant.) Our own prioress might be said to have died in the same cause.

Nobody had appeared to administer the oath to our present head, however, and we had begun to think that we were to be let alone. I do not believe that the reverend mother had any such hopes. Our foundation was a wealthy one, and our church was well-known to be unusually rich in gold and silver. There was abundance of shrines, reliquaries and boxes, as valuable for their splendid workmanship as for the precious metals of which they were made, and the jewels with which they were incrusted. Then there were missals set with precious stones, beautiful hangings and vestments, and vessels, and candlesticks, and the like. These articles were all displayed upon feast days, and when our great altar was lighted up at the festival of our Patroness, it was a spectacle almost too bright for mortal eyes.