This had such an effect, that they cut down the drawbridge, and shut the gates against Wyat, as he arrived in Southwark; he therefore marched up the river, crossed the Thames at Kingston, and proceeded through Westminster to Ludgate; but not being admitted by his friends in the city, as he expected, he generously surrendered himself, to prevent bloodshed, and was soon after beheaded on Tower hill. The rest of this reign exhibited a dreadful scene of religious bigotry, by a most cruel persecution of the Protestants; for the principal instance she gave of her tender maternal love to the citizens, was, her causing many of them to be burnt in Smithfield, in order to put a stop to the reformation begun by her father, and continued by her brother: but Providence soon interposed; her reign was short; and the fires which were then kindled for the holy martyrs, who sealed their faith with their blood, were the last effort, under the sanction of law, made by religious tyranny in this kingdom to overthrow the reformation. Happy would it have been for the Protestants, if this cruel spirit had never prevailed amongst them; if, upon this change, universal benevolence had taken place, and every Briton would have allowed his neighbour the same liberty of enquiry, which he claimed for himself! but though both the national church and the dissenters from it, have disclaimed the pretended infallibility they so justly censured in the church of Rome, and have even constantly owned that they themselves are fallible, yet, contrary to the mild, the humane spirit of the Gospel, they have absurdly persecuted those who would not allow them to be infallible, and have presumed to differ from the unerring standard of their judgment! We are now come to the period when our streets were no longer to be crouded with monks and friars of various orders, and in very different and uncouth habits, walking with their heads shaven and bare, with long beards, and a rosary hanging at their girdles; when our nobility and gentry were to be no longer affronted in the streets by Cardinals, attended by a great retinue of servants: by the lordly Knights of religious orders, or the wealthy Priors of convents: when our streets were no longer to be adorned with crosses and the images of the saints, the objects of much superstition; and when many of our largest, most conspicuous, and stately buildings, were no longer to consist of priories, friaries, nunneries, and guilds of religious fraternities. Thus the appearance of the city, with respect to its buildings, ornaments, and inhabitants, received a considerable alteration from the abolition of popery in these kingdoms; and the reader will probably be pleased at seeing, at one view, a list of these religious houses, which will the better enable him to form an idea of the difference between London at that time and the present. The priories then were, that of St. John of Jerusalem, near Clerkenwell.