Margaret, Westminster; but public opinion was too strong
against him, the parishioners rose and beat off his workmen, and he
was forced to desist, and content himself with violating and
plundering the precincts of St. Paul's. Moreover, the steeple and most
of the church of St. John of Jerusalem, Smithfield, were mined and
blown up with gunpowder that the materials might be utilized for the
ducal mansion in the Strand. He turned Glastonbury, with all its
associations dating from the earliest introduction of Christianity
into our island, into a worsted manufactory, managed by French
Protestants. Under his auspices the splendid college of St.
Martin-le-Grand in London was converted into a tavern, and St.
Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, served the scarcely less incongruous
purpose of a Parliament House. All this he did, and when his
well-earned fall came the Church fared no better under his successor,
John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and afterwards Duke of Northumberland.
[28] _History of the Church in England_, p. 401.
Another wretch was Robert, Earl of Sussex, to whom the King gave the
choir of Atleburgh, in Norfolk, because it belonged to a college.
"Being of a covetous disposition, he not only pulled down and spoiled
the chancel, but also pulled up many fair marble gravestones of his
ancestors with monuments of brass upon them, and other fair good
pavements, and carried them and laid them for his hall, kitchen, and
larder-house.
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