ot's sorrow, which should soon
bring him to his ruin.

Time passed on, and as the world grew worse, so the abbot grew more
lonely. Desolate and unsupported, he was still unable to make up his
mind to the course which he knew to be right; but he slowly strengthened
himself for the trial, and as Lent came on, the season brought with it a
more special call to effort; he did not fail to recognise it. The
conduct of the fraternity sorely disturbed him. They preached against
all which he most loved and valued, in language purposely coarse; and
the mild sweetness of the rebukes which he administered, showed plainly
on which side lay, in the abbey of Woburn, the larger portion of the
spirit of Heaven. Now, when the passions of those times have died away,
and we can look back with more indifferent eyes, how touching is the
following scene. There was one Sir William, curate of Woburn Chapel,
whose tongue, it seems, was rough beyond the rest. The abbot met him one
day, and spoke to him. 'Sir William,' he said, 'I hear tell ye be a
great railer. I marvel that ye rail so. I pray you teach my cure the
Scripture of God, and that may be to edification. I pray you leave such
railing. Ye call the pope a bear and a bandog. Either he is a good man
or an ill. _Domino suo stat aut cadit._ The office of a bishop is
honourable. What edifying is this to rail? Let him alone.'

But they would not let him alone, nor would they let the abbot alone. He
grew 'somewhat acrased,' they said; vexed with feelings of which they
had no experience. He fell sick, sorrow and the Lent discipline weighing
upon him. The brethren went to see him in his room; one Brother Dan
Woburn came among the rest, and asked him how he did; the abbot
answered, 'I would that I had died with the good men that died for
holding with the pope. My conscience, my conscience doth grudge me every
day for it.' Life was fast losing its value for him. What was life to
him or any man when bought with a sin against his soul? 'If the abbot be
disposed to die, for that matter,' Brother Croxton observed, 'he may die
as soon as he will.'

All Lent he fasted and prayed, and his illness grew upon him; and at
length in Passion week he thought all was over, and that he was going
away. On Passion Sunday he called the brethren about him, and as they
stood round his bed, with their cold, hard eyes, 'he exhorted them all
to charity;' he implored them 'never to consent to go out of their
monastery; an