The death of the late tutor and friend of the prince was to be followed by a measure less cruel but far more general. The pope who treated kings so rudely should not be surprised if kings treated the monks severely. Henry knew—had indeed been a close witness of their lazy and often irregular lives. One day, when he was hunting in the forest of Windsor, he lost his way, perhaps intentionally, and about the dinner hour knocked at the gate of Reading Abbey. As he represented himself to be one of his Majesty's guards, the abbot said: 'You will dine with me;' and the king sat down to a table covered with abundant and delicate dishes. After examining everything carefully: 'I will stick to this sirloin,' said he, pointing to a piece of beef of which he eat heartily.[161] The abbot looked on with admiration. 'I would give a hundred pounds,' he exclaimed, 'to eat with as much appetite as you; but alas! my weak and qualmish stomach can hardly digest the wing of a chicken.'—'I know how to bring back your appetite,' thought the king. A few days later some soldiers appeared at the convent, took away the abbot, and shut him up in the Tower, where he was put upon bread and water. 'What have I done,' he kept asking, 'to incur his Majesty's displeasure to such a degree?' After a few weeks, Henry went to the state prison, and concealing himself in an ante-room whence he could see the abbot, ordered a sirloin of beef to be set before him. The famished monk in his turn fell upon the joint, and (according to tradition) eat it all. The king now showed himself: 'Sir abbot,' he said, 'I have cured you of your qualms; now pay me my wages. It is a hundred pounds, you know.' The abbot paid and returned to Reading; but Henry never after forgot the monks' kitchen. [Sidenote: STATE OF THE MONASTERIES.] The state of the monasteries was an occasion of scandal: for many centuries all religious life had died out in most of those establishments. The monks lived, generally, in idleness, gluttony, and licentiousness, and the convents which should have been houses of saints had become in many cases mere sties of lazy gormandizers and impure sensualists. 'The only law they recognize,' said Luther, speaking of these cloisters, 'is that of the seven deadly sins.' History encounters here a twofold danger: one is that of keeping back what is essential, the scandalous facts that justify the suppression of monasteries; the other is that of saying things that cannot be named. We must strive to steer between these two quicksands.