Chapter XII. THE DAY OF SURRENDER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 90, 16 January 1875, Page 13

Chapter XII. THE DAY OF SURRENDER.

It was one of the gloomiest of all days, a wet day in summer. The sky was a leaden hue, the rain pattered down, not heavily but without ceasing, a blue haze rose from the ground, and hung like a veil over the valley of Beckansgill j not a tree in the green woods that did not droop its boughs, from each leaf of which streamed the slow continuous ooze of the rain. The great bell of the abbey had tolled, tolled since the grey dawn — tolled in minute strokes as for a parted soul. It was a soul dismissed rudely from its earthly habitation — the soul, the spirit of religion, was banished from its stately dwelling at St. Mary's of Furness. The noble church was already stripped of its ornaments : the plate and the jewels had been torn from the altar, and had been .sent off to London. The altar was bare ; the censers of silver and 1 gold no longer threw up the vapory wreath of the incense ; the m lamps and tapers were extinguished ; the solemn tones of the organ 7 floated not through the lofty aisles ; but prostrate on the cold pavement of their despoiled church, the abbot and his monks chanted the doleful Be Profundis. Verily, verily, Be Profundis ! Out of the depths of her affliction, was the church in whitecliffed Albion, ever to be revived more ! " Alas, alas ! " as Prior Briand had said to the abbot, " the spirit may indeed be -willing, but the flesh is weak." Faint and weak, indeed, in heart and spirit, was the cornniunity at Fumess on that day of desolation* when Nature itself put on dim hues of penitence, and seemed to weep the spoliation of that glorious fane. Harassed, browbeaten, insulted, and plundered ; betrayed by their own menials — by those who had eaten the abundant bread of their charity — the Cistercians of Furness had yielded to the hand of tyranny, and " suicidally," as was said by the great lawyer Blackstone, agreed to surrender their abbey. How poor were the pretexts against them, we may judge by the terms which were used by Henry's myrmidon Sussex, in his letter to the king, wherein he says "that though he had sent three of the monks to Lancaster Castle he really could not devise any

means to get rid of them, but offering pensions to the heads of the community. This pension consisted, in the case of Roper the last abbot of Furness, of bestowing on him the rectory of Dalton, worth about one hundred and forty pounds per year of our money.' Shall we blame the weakness of those who thus surrendered ? Let us read of what befell the nun who dared resist the tyrant Henry, and pause ere we censure those who shuddered to encounter the burning pile, the halter, and the rack ! The Abbot of Furness had admitted the treason of his monk, Henry Salley, who had said, "No secular knave should preach in that church!" But then the abbot himself had been charged by his own base dependent, the bailiff of Dalton, with bidding his monks be of good cheer, for that he was sure both of the king and Commons ! " The prior Ganor, too, had summoned tenants of the abbey, on All Hallows Eve, and said, "the king should make no abbots there, for they would choose for themselves ? " " These were the treasons of the great Cistercian community ai Furness. And now the day, the fatal day of surrender, had arrived ! Not only from the deprived monks arose the chaunt of lamentation. Such base wretches as the bailiff of»Dalton were rare. The people of Furness knew, too, that the ruin of the abbey was their own ruin. ' From far and near, on that wet and doleful morning, came the tenants of the abbey to bid adieu to their kind lords — to pray for the last time in their spoilated church. Oh! how heart-rendering were the sights and sounds that awaited them. Ere the wretched community had concluded their doleful chant, rude artizans, who had accompanied the commissioners from London, busied themselves in removing the stained glass from the windows, in knocking to pieces the statues and. tombs, in tearing up the sepulcliral brasses, even in removing the lead from the roof, not only for its saleable worth, but that the monastic buildings might the sooner fall into ruins. In the abbey courts, before the great doors of the church even, were carts and waggons, filled with the furniture from the abbot's lodgings, from the monks' cells, 'with portable articles from the church itself. It approached the hour of noon. The clouds had not lifted from the grey sky, nor the rain ceased to fall; but the wind and rain had swept with a hollow sound athwart the vale of the Nightshade. The last doleful echo of the song of penitence had ceased to roll along the roof of the church. In the heaviness of that hour, perhaps the despoiled Cistercians feared that the chaunt of religion would never be raised in that desecrated hall again. Long, indeed, has the silence of desolation reigned there ; but 10, though three hundred years have fled, the voice of prayer has again pealed sweetly under the shattered roof of St Mary's Abbey at Furness ! No cheeiing thought of such a far future, however, had the dispossessed monks or their poor tenants, to cheer them on that woful day. They knew, those poor peasants, those artificers, those military vassals, those herdsmen and fishermen, that the ruin of the monks would be shared by themselves. How they pressed round the various members of the community, those poor people. How.they struggled for a word with this father or that, who had pronounced over them the nuptial blessing, baptised their children, administered the last rites of the church to their dying parents. The poor fathers in vain endeavoured to release themselves. The abbot himself was in tears, and giving them his pastoral blessing, implored them to retire, for the commissioners would soon arrive to break the great seal of the abbey,' and dismiss its occupants.