The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede . judicedagainst the old order of things, speaks patheticallyof the ruthless destruction of the priory (so closelyconnected with our Saint), and her children. * Shewas bent down to the ground, he says, like asecond Niobe bereft of her offspring. Her daughtercells of Holy Island, Fame, Jarrow, Wearmouth,Finchale, Lythum, and Stamford, and her collegein Oxford, had all been annihilated by the Act27th Henry viii., 1536. She had, like a full-grownoak upon the summit of a hill, seen the axe ofinnovation la
The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede . judicedagainst the old order of things, speaks patheticallyof the ruthless destruction of the priory (so closelyconnected with our Saint), and her children. * Shewas bent down to the ground, he says, like asecond Niobe bereft of her offspring. Her daughtercells of Holy Island, Fame, Jarrow, Wearmouth,Finchale, Lythum, and Stamford, and her collegein Oxford, had all been annihilated by the Act27th Henry viii., 1536. She had, like a full-grownoak upon the summit of a hill, seen the axe ofinnovation lay flat one green tree after anotherbeneath her with an uninjured edge, and and hourly have anticipated the levelling ofthat same unblunted axe against her oWn dry had endured five hundred years, and if eightstately trees (densissima silva) which grew underher protecting shade had been cut away, she, themother, standing as she was, unimpaired and stretch-ing out her branches from side to side, must haveknown she was to fall at no distant period. ^ Her *0/. ciL 172, ^:;:|!|;iiiiillliliS3IKil!feffi^ Details of St. Cuthrerhts Coffin. [Vo/. 111., facing p. 94. DEFACEMENT OF CUTHBERHTS MONUMENT 95 fate, indeed, came four years later, with that unspar-ing hurricane by which : Green leaves, with yellow mixed, were torn away,And goodly fruitage with the mother spray. It was not the shrine only which was largelydestroyed, but the other memorials of the Saintalso. Nor was it till about three centuries had passedaway that the grave of the Saint was again was on 27th May 1827, when many of themore interesting remains were removed to thelibrary at Durham, where they are now kept. When the cover of Frosterly marble, 8 feet10 inches by 4 feet 3 inches, which had beenplaced there in 1542, was then removed, it dis-closed a stone grave made of freestone. At thebottom of this was a large high coffin of oak ingreat decay, not shaped, as usual, with project
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