the Duke's execution, and by his successor Gilbert Bourne in the days of Queen Mary.[46] It is not easy for us to conceive that there was a time when the palace had ceased to be the house of the Bishop, and had become the dwelling of a lay nobleman. And when we remember that that lay nobleman, besides receiving endless estates elsewhere, was also the grantee and the destroyer of the Abbey of Glastonbury, we get a good specimen of the way in which the property of the Church was squandered away, not for the public good in any shape, but for the private enrichment of greedy courtiers. Of the other foundations in Wells, the Priory of Saint John had fallen in 1541. This, I should explain, though its chief officer bore the title of Prior, was not a monastery, but a hospital.[47] The college of Chantry-priests fell by the Act of 1547;[48] the plunderers then fell upon the property of the Chapter and of its individual members. The estates of the Deanery were swallowed up, and, in order to patch up a new endowment for the Dean, an Act was passed for the suppression of the offices of Provost and Sub-Chanter, the estates of which formed a new corps for the Deanery.[49] But as with the lands of the Bishoprick, so with those of the Deanery, a great part was recovered in the days of Queen Mary; so that, as the provostship and sub-chantership were never restored, I suspect that the Deans in the end gained by their spoliation. Some of the common possessions of the Chapter were also lost, and were partly recovered by Bishop Bourne, as also were the lands of the Archdeaconry; but the Archdeacon's house of which I have already spoken has remained alienated to this day.[50]