It was the misfortune of Fountains, at this critical time, to have an incompetent and unworthy abbot; though even a saint could not have saved the place from the hand of the spoiler. In 1530, the Earl of Northumberland appealed to Cardinal Wolsey, in behalf of the brethren of Fountains, to remove the abbot. Abbot Thirsk, he said, doth not endeavour himself like a discreet father towards the convent and the profit of the house, but hath, against the same, as well sold and wasted the great part or all of their store in cattle, as also their woods in divers countries, neither does he maintain the service of God like to the ancient custom there. The King’s commissioners, Layton and Legh, said worse things about him. They declared that he was defamed _a toto populo_. They complained that there was no truth in him, one day denying and the next confessing various sins laid to his charge. They were especially indignant because one night he took secretly out of the sacristy or treasure room a gold cross adorned with stones, and in company with a jeweller, who had come from London, whom he took into his lodgings, did abstract from the cross an emerald and a ruby, which the London jeweller bought of him, cheating the abbot badly. It is plain that the poor man was at his wit’s end, sorely badgered by these insistent visitors, seeing the ruin of his holy house, and trying, if possible, to save something out of it. Finally, he resigned his office into the hands of the commissioners, who assigned him a scanty pension. He took refuge in the Abbey of Jervaulx, where he became involved in the revolutionary proceedings of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and atoned for such misdeeds as he may have committed by being hanged at Tyburn. Abbot Thirsk’s successor, Marmaduke Bradley, was selected by the commissioners. They said that he was the wisest monk in England; and he showed that he was even as wise, as the Bible says, as a serpent, by doing what his masters bade him. In 1539, at their demand, he surrendered the Abbey to the King. The commissioners came down from London, late in the November of that year, and called a meeting, probably in the chapter house. There they assembled the abbot and the convent and the chief people of the neighbourhood, to whom they duly declared “the godly determination of the King’s majesty to alter and change that house, with many others, from an unchristian life to a trade of virtuous and honest living.” The thirty-two brethren were promised proper pensions. They were accordingly advised “to submit themselves to his Majesty’s clemency and goodness, and by way of surrender to yield up into his Grace’s hands their monastery, with all the lands, possessions, jewels, plate, ornaments, and other things belonging to the same.” The commissioners then took possession of the convent seal, with all the keys, and made an inventory. Thus politely, and even piously, was this royal robbery effected.