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has decreed and determined otherwise than as your king and his Parliament have ordained; wherefore I am bound in conscience and am prepared, and am not confounded, to endure these and all other torments that can be inflicted, rather than go against the doctrine of the Church. Pray for me, and have pity on my brethren, of whom I am the unworthy Prior.’ And having said these things, he begged the executioner to wait until he had finished his prayer. Then on a sign given, the ladder was turned, and so he was hanged. Then one of the bystanders, before his holy soul left his body, cut the rope, and so falling to the ground, he began for a little space to throb and breathe. Then he was drawn to another adjoining place, where all his garments were violently torn off, and he was again extended naked on the hurdle, on whom immediately the bloody executioner laid his wicked hands. He cut open his belly, dragged out his bowels, his heart, and all else, and threw them into a fire, during which our most blessed Father not only did not cry out on account of the intolerable pain, but on the contrary, during all this time until his heart was torn out, prayed continually, and bore himself with more than human endurance, most patiently, meekly, and tranquilly, to the wonder not only of the presiding officer, but of all the people who witnessed it. Being at his last gasp, and nearly disembowelled, he cried out with a most sweet voice, ‘Most sweet Jesu, have pity on me in this hour!’ And, as trustworthy men have reported, he said to the tormentor, while in the act of tearing out his heart, ‘Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?’ and saying this he breathed his last. Lastly, his head was cut off, and the beheaded body was divided into four parts … our holy Father having been thus put to death the two other before-named venerable Fathers, Robert and Augustine, with another religious named Reynolds, of the Order of St Bridget, being subjected to the same most cruel death, were deprived of life, one after another; all of whose remains were thrown into cauldrons and parboiled, and afterwards put up at different places in the city.
    1535 The eighteenth of June, three Monks of the Charterhouse at London, named Thomas Exmew, Humfrey Middlemore, and Sebastian Nidigate [Newdigate] were drawen to Tiborne, and there hanged and quartered for denying the Kinges supremacie. 18
    1535–7 In 1535 was introduced the first Bill for the dissolution of the monasteries: only the smaller were now touched. The Bill was passed on Henry’s threat that he would have the Bill pass, or take off some of the Commons’ heads. Henry had tired of Anne Boleyn, Cranmer, always equal to the occasion, ‘having previously invoked the name of Christ, and having God alone before his eyes’, had declared that the marriage was void and had always been so. In 1536 broke out the first of the revolts caused by the dissolution. Henry had not yet discovered the secret of detaching from the cause of the people their natural leaders by sharing the plunder with them. The nobility and gentry had their grievances, and made common cause with the people. Henry was furious. He gave orders to ‘run upon the insurgents with your forces, and with all extremity destroy, burn, and kill man, woman and child, to the terrible example of all others’. The chief monks were to be hanged on long pieces of timber out of the steeples. Later, when the revolt had spread to Yorkshire, he wrote: ‘you must cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of the inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their heads and quarters in every town, as shall be a fearful warning’. In summing up these operations, Cromwell, with a pleasant wit, speaks of the execution of the rest at ‘Thyf bourne’. The story of the rest will follow. It may well be doubted whether in the history of civilised communities there is any record of a social cataclysm, not resulting from war or