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 shall 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 the Catholics; Catholic abbots
could not manage the Protestants; indifferent abbots
could not manage either the one or the other. It would
have been well for the Abbot of Woburn--or well as far
as this world is concerned--if he, like one of these, had
acknowledged his incapacity, and had fled from his
charge.

His name was Robert Hobbes. Of his age and
family, history is silent. We know only that he held his
place when the storm rose against the Pope; that, like
the rest of the clergy, he bent before the blast, taking
the oath to the King, and submitting to the royal
supremacy, but swearing under protest, as the phrase went,
with the outward, and not with the inward man--in fact,
perjuring himself. Though infirm, so far, however, he
was too honest to be a successful counterfeit, and from
the jealous eyes of the Neologians of the abbey he could
not conceal his tendencies. We have significant evidence
of the espionage which was established, over all
suspected quarters, in the conversations and trifling
details of conduct on the part of the abbot, which were
reported to the Government.

In the summer of 1534, orders came that the Pope's
na