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my soul in the midst of all my sorrows, like unto that which made Powle and Silas worship and sing praises unto God in their prison at midnight..

And even upon this spiritual liberation, came my temporal freedom; for the king's visiters did at length sell the site of Walsingham Abbey, with its churchyard, orchards, and gardens, unto one Thomas Sydney for £90. This was done in November, 1539, whereupon they left our ruined house, albeit I was still immured within my cell; where, indeed, it is like that I should have died. had it not been for a wondrous and all unlookedfor Providence. I have already recounted that when Henry came unto Walsingham, the abbey was not perfectly edified, and, therefore, certain masons and builders were long employed thereon; the oversight of whom was assigned unto me, because of my former knowledge and practice of their art. The chief of these was one Master Bartholomew Stonehewer, of Norwich, a most skilful and ancient person, whom I had known at Westminster, what time I aided father Austin of Ely in building Henry Tudor's chapel there, wherefrom he did still keep me in lively remembrance and favour. It so chanced, that he was engaged by the new possessor of the destroyed abbey, to build him a fair manor-house on the site thereof, with the stones of the ruins; and, learning of mine imprisonment, he did at length contrive mine escape in the night, in the habit of one of his own workmen, with much hazard unto himself; spreading abroad the report, that in taking down one of the cells, they had found the remains of my lifeless body.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CLOSE AND MORAL OF AN OLD MAN'S
STORY.

-Having now my journey done,

Just at the setting of the sun;

Here I have found a chamber fit,

God and good friends be thank'd for it!

-No! I would not live again

The morning hours of life;
I would not be again

HERRICK

The slave of hope and fear;
I would not learn again

The wisdom by experience hardly taught.
To me the past presents

No object for regret;
To me the present gives

All cause for full content.

The future,-it is now the cheerful noon,
And on the sunny-smiling fields I gaze
With eyes alive to joy;
When the dark night descends,
I willingly shall close my weary lids,
Secure to wake again.

SOUTHEY

I WEEN that full little is now remaining to be said of my poor history, for it skills not here to repeat the straits whereunto I was reduced, when I was thus drifted forth again upon the stormy sea of the wide world, or the loneliness of heart which

I felt therein. The few dear friends whom I had once known or might have claimed, were either long since dispersed or dead; and had all fallen around me, and left me desolate and destitute, like a rock when the tide hath left it dry and bare, or as the Autumn blast that shaketh the tree and scattereth the leaves therereof, whilst the trunk standeth naked and alone amidst all the tempests of the coming winter. Howbeit, even in my most forlorn estate, was my mind more hopeful and tranquil, than it had been whilst the Holy Scriptures and the pure simplicity of a Christian life were unknown to me; and especially did I draw this consolation from the early decease of my friends, that I had so many ties less unto earth, and so many more allurements unto heaven, those supporters being taken from me that I might put my trust in God only.

Yet had Master Stonehewer given unto me somewhat more than liberty, for knowing mine acquaintance with his own art, he commended me unto one of the same craft for entertainment; and I did once more practise it in lowly and cautious disguise, to baffle the purposes of those who would have sought my life. The payment of my daily toil, mean as it was, provided me with bread; the blessed hope of Christ was in mine heart, and more I sought not: yet did I sometimes sorrow for the unquiet state of the church of this realm, for the fickle and boisterous rule and the fierce persecutions of Henry, touching the Christian faith, and for the hapless lot of the many brethren expelled from the late dissolved monasteries who could neither dig nor beg; but for my

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self I mourned not, since I was but subjected unto the common lot of man,—to labour until I should return unto the ground.

And now, the tale of my life draweth unto a close; the which, they who may haply scan the same in after-years, shall find it to be, as I have afore declared, all inglorious and full of sorrow. That, indeed, it ended not in direful disaster, instead of my present most tranquil retreat from the world, I cannot attribute unto mine own caution or goodness, but chiefest must I laud the wise and merciful governance of God; which led the unsteady steps of my youth, if not into the ways of pleasantness, at least sometimes into the paths of peace, and did ever keep me from wandering into dangerous error. And, moreover, I may thank Him for having raised up unto me the friend and patron of mine old age, the noble Sir Thomas Moyle, for whom this little tome hath been written to record the passages of my former life; and, such as it is found, may he receive it with favour! Here, then, might I well finish mine history and my labours; for it availeth little that I should recount unto him, how he first took note of the aged Richard Plantagenet, or how large were his efforts or his bounty to give solace unto the closing days of my pilgrimage. But to the end that his noble charity may never be forgotten. and that others who shall read this my story may know the fate of my latter days, I will give a brief relation thereof; shunning, as I best may, the very shadow of flattery, although, natheless, it is not casily avoided, when the pensioner recounteth his

story unto the very patron who hath snatched him from want and sorrow.

It was then, I think, about the year 1543, that Sir Thomas Moyle bought the late Sir Christopher Hales' fair manor of Eastwell, in Kent; he being at that time Speaker of the Commons House of Parliament, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentation, in high favour with Henry VIII., and possessed of great wealth. He next determined to build him a stately mansion in the said manor, and thereupon he reared the noble palace of Eastwell, carrying down certain masons for the same, with whom were myself and he who entertained me. Albeit my fortunes were now indeed sunken full low, yet, even at this time, did I remember so much of my gentle birth and of the learning of my younger days, as to keep me apart from the baser sort of my fellow-workmen, and still to look upon some notable author at all my moments of leisure; though, as that which I read was full often in the Latin tongue, I was ever fain to hide it from my companions or any who approached, lest it should but provoke blame or derision. The book wherein I read whilst I wrought at Eastwell, was that most choice colloquy of Marcus Tullius Cicero upon old age, which I found to be somewhat of divine solace unto me now that I had reached the same condition of life and which made me not only resigned and hopeful for the future, but even content with the past, stormy as in truth it had been. And methought his Cato did herein breathe out somewhat almost holy and Christian, in that place wherein he wondrously entreateth of his past days, which

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