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The
Last Abbot of Glastonbury.
A Tale of the Dissolution of the
Monasteries.
By the
REV. A. D. CRAKE, B.A.,
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Vicar of
Havenstreet, I.W.;
Author of
Fairleigh Hall, The Chronicles of Æscendune, The Camp on the
Severn, etc., etc.
Oxford and London:
A. R. MOWBRAY & CO.
HISTORICAL PREFACE.
The Author humbly ventures to offer the ninth of hisseries of original tales, illustrating Church History,to the public; encouraged by the favourable receptionthe previous volumes have found.
In the tales, “Æmilius,” “Evanus,” and “The Camp onthe Severn,” he has endeavoured to describe the epoch ofthe Pagan persecutions, under the Roman Empire; in the“Three Chronicles of Æscendune,” successive epochs ofEarly English history; in the “Andredsweald,” the NormanConquest; in “Fairleigh Hall,” the Great Rebellion; andin the present volume, one of the earliest of the series ofevents ordinarily grouped under the general phrase “TheReformation,” the destruction of the Monasteries.
It is many years since the writer was first attracted andyet saddened by the tragical story of the fate of the lastAbbot of Glastonbury, and amongst the tales by which hewas wont to enliven the Sunday evenings in a large School,this narrative found a foremost place, and excited verygeneral interest.
A generation ago, few English Churchmen cared to say agood word for the unhappy monks, who suffered so cruel apersecution at the hands of Henry the Eighth and his vicar-general,Thomas Cromwell. Many, indeed, confessed asentimental regret when they visited the ruins of suchglorious fanes as Tintern, Reading, or Furness, and reflectedthat but for the vandalism of the period, such buildingsmight yet vie with the cathedrals, with which they werecoeval, and if not retained for their original uses, might yetbe devoted to the service of religion and humanity, in[ii]various ways; but the fear of being supposed to betray aleaning to the doctrines once taught within these ruinedwalls, has prevented