"May it please your honourable Lordship to be advertised, that by the report of Thomas Cusacke and others repaired lately out of the realm of England into this land, it hath been openly bruited the King's grace's pleasure to be, that all the monasteries within this land should be suppressed, none to stand. Amongst which, for the common weal of this land, if it might stand with King's most gracious pleasure by your good Lordship's advertisement, in our opinion it were right expedient that six houses should stand and continue, changing their habit and rule into such sort as the King's grace shall will them: which are namely, St. Mary's Abbey, adjoining Dublin, a house of white monks (Cistercians); Christ Church, a house of canons situated in the middle of the City of Dublin; Grace Dieu Nunnery, in the County Dublin; Connell, in the County Kildare; Kenlys or Kells, and Jerpoint (this latter Cistercian also), in the County Kilkenny. _For in these commonly, and in others such like_, in default of common inns, which are not in this island the King's Deputy and all others his Grace's Council and Officers, also Irishmen and others resorting to the King's Deputy in these quarters is and hath been most commonly lodged at the cost of the said houses. _Also, in them, young men and children, both gentlemen's children and others, both of man kind and woman kind be brought up in virtue and in the Englishe tongue and behaviour to the great charge of the said houses_; that is to say, the woman kind of the whole Englishie of this land, for the most part, in the said nunnery, and the man kind in the other houses." And the Abbot of St. Mary's, petitioning soon after for exemption from the general suppression, pleads in a letter to the same Cromwell: "Verily we be but stewards and purveyors to other men's uses for the King's honour, keeping hospitality, and many poor men, scholars and orphans." All petitions are unavailing; the King is inexorable; and St. Mary's and Mellifont, and the others included in the original list must go down before the despot's unholy will, untried, unheard, but with the nation's regret, those alone excepted, who thirsted for and shared the sacrilegious booty. Before the lamp of piety and learning be extinguished for ever in Mellifont, let us take a parting glance at it, so that the contrast may be the more marked as we note its vicissitudes later on.