"There was also a nun, a prioress, That of her smiling was full simple and coy; Her greatest oath was but by Saint Eloy; And she was cleped Madame Eglantine. Full well she sang the service divine, Entuned in her nose full sweetley; And French she spake full fair and fetisly, After the school of Stratford-atte-Bow." From their own windows they would see many a gay cavalcade of barons, knights, and ladies issue from the portals of the Tower to follow the sport of hawking in the fields, or play at some martial or other game, and many a brilliant procession going forth to tournament in Smithfield, or coronation in Westminster. They would behold the coronation pageants and feasts in the Tower of Richard II., the marriage of the rival Roses in the persons of Henry VII. and the Princess Elizabeth, and that of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Arragon, when a splendid tournament was held hard by. Their soft hearts would also often be awakened to compassion at hearing of the bloody deeds perpetrated in their neighbourhood, the murder of the young princes by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester, and the decapitation of Lord Cobham, Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More, Queen Anne Boleyn, and many another noble and distinguished personage. From their lattices, too, they would look upon the riding forth of the barons of the realm through Aldgate to attend the Parliament of Edward I., 1299, held at the mansion of Lord Mayor Wallis, at Stepney; the Wat Tyler mob rushing along, "with shouts and cries as if all the devils of hell had come in their company," to ransack the Tower, chop off the heads of the Lord Chancellor and Treasurer, and rudely kiss the King's mother, the "Fair Maid of Kent," and Princess of Wales, in 1381; and again in 1450, that of the Jack Cade insurgents, when they took Lord Say and Sele from the Tower and beheaded him in Cheapside. After the dissolution, the Priory became the residence of John Clerke, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1523-41, Master of the Rolls, and Diplomatist, who was poisoned in Germany, when sent on an Embassy to the Duke of Cleves, to explain to him why Henry VIII. had divorced his sister; after whom it was inhabited by some officials of the Tower, and in 1552 was granted to Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, by King Edward VI. Afterwards it became a storehouse for arms, and workshops for the fabrication of implements of warfare, but does not seem to have been of high repute, as Dryden says, "a comic writer who does not cause laughter, or a serious dramatist who does not excite emotion, is no more a good poet than is a Minories gunsmith a good workman." The Abbey of St. Mary of Graces, or East Minster.