l were discussed; and the
possibilities of the future, as each party painted it in the colours of
his hopes. The brethren, we find, spoke their minds in plain language,
sometimes condescending to a joke.

Brother Sherborne deposes that the sub-prior, 'on Candlemas-day last
past (February 2, 1536), asked him whether he longed not to be at Rome
where all his bulls were?' Brother Sherborne answered that 'his bulls
had made so many calves, that he had burned them. Whereunto the
sub-prior said he thought there were more calves now than there were
then.'

Then there were long and furious quarrels about 'my Lord Privy Seal'
(Cromwell)--who was to one party, the incarnation of Satan; to the
other, the delivering angel.

Nor did matters mend when from the minister they passed to the master.

Dan John Croxton being in 'the shaving-house' one day with certain of
the brethren having their tonsures looked to, and gossiping, as men do
on such occasions, one 'Friar Lawrence did say that the king was dead.'
Then said Croxton, 'Thanks be to God, his Grace is in good health, and I
pray God so continue him;' and said further to the said Lawrence, 'I
advise thee to leave thy babbling.' Croxton, it seems, had been among
the suspected in earlier times. Lawrence said to him, 'Croxton, it
maketh no matter what thou sayest, for thou art one of the new world;'
whereupon hotter still the conversation proceeded. 'Thy babbling
tongue,' Croxton said, 'will turn us all to displeasure at length.'
'Then,' quoth Lawrence, 'neither thou nor yet any of us all shall do
well as long as we forsake our head of the Church, the Pope.' 'By the
mass!' quoth Croxton, 'I would thy Pope Roger were in thy belly, or thou
in his, for thou art a false perjured knave to thy prince.' Whereunto
the said Lawrence answered, saying, 'By the mass, thou liest! I was
never sworn to forsake the Pope to be our head, and never will be.'
'Then,' quoth Croxton, 'thou shalt be sworn spite of thine heart one
day, or I will know why nay.'

These and similar wranglings may be taken as specimens of the daily
conversation at Woburn, and we can perceive how an abbot with the best
intentions would have found it difficult to keep the peace. There are
instances of superiors in other houses throwing down their command in
the midst of the crisis in flat despair, protesting that their subject
brethren were no longer governable. Abbots who were inclined to the
Reformation could not manage th