we have byn moost pryncipally practysed and misse-lyd in tymes past; but the very tru waye to please God, and to live a tru Christian man, wythe owte all ypocrasie and fayned dissimulacion, is sinceerly declaryd unto us by owre master Christe, his evangelists and apostoles:" wherefore they declared their determination thenceforth to "conform our selffes unto the will and pleasure of owr Supreme Hed undre God, in erthe, the King's Majestie, and not to follow the supersticious tradicions of ony foryncicall potentate or peere."
The terms of this surrender might be thought to have been dictated to the friars[1] by the King's ministers, were they not perfectly in accordance with a letter written by the warden to lord Cromwell, in which he begs for "a dispensation of our papistical slanderous apparel, the which I think it pleaseth God that we shall no more wear,"[2] and "to change all customs, usages, and manners, the living and apparel that hath been offensive to God's people."
After the surrender, the house of the Grey Friars was not given up to immediate destruction. It appears to have remained unoccupied, in the King's hands, until the year 1544, when, together with the houses of the late Austin and Black Friars, it became a receptacle for the merchandise captured at sea from the French. We are told in our Chronicle[3] that every part of the Grey Friars' church was on this occasion filled with wine; but, except the injury it might sustain by such rough usage, it had not hitherto been
- ↑ It is, however, to be remarked that the surrenders of the Franciscans of Coventry and of Stamford contain precisely the same expressions; see Fuller's History of Abbeys, p. 319, Stevens's Monasticon, i. 139, 157, or the new Monasticon, vi. 1514, 1534. It may, therefore, be concluded that they were generally adopted through the fraternity.
- ↑ See this letter in Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii. p. 330; and, with the deed of surrender, in Trollope's History of Christ's Hospital.
- ↑ P. 48.
