Dr. Legh and his fellows, who had been deputed by Cromwell to visit the monasteries, had too frequent occasion to deplore the frowardness of religious households in opposing the King’s will in the matter of their dissolution. Among many such reports I need only cite the case of the Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, mentioned in a letter to Cromwell from one of his agents, Christopher Leyghton.[2] He tells Cromwell that in an inventory exhibited by the Prior to Dr. Leyghton, the King’s visitor, the Prior had “wilfullye left owte a remembraunce of certayne parcells of silver, gold and stone to the value of thowsandys of poundys”; that it was not to be doubted that he would “eloyne owt of the same howse into the handys of his secret fryndys thowsandes of poundes, which is well knowne he hathe, to hys comfort hereafter”; and that it was common report in the monastery that any monk who should open the matter to the King’s advisers “shalbe poysenyde or murtheryde, as he hath murthredde diverse others.” Far different from the truculent attitude of this murderous Prior was the conduct on the like occasion of Prior John Badcoke. Dr. Legh reported him to be “honest and conformable.” He furnished an exact inventory of the possessions of his house, and quietly retired on the pittance allowed to him by the King. He prevailed upon the other canons to shew the same submission to the royal will, and they peaceably dispersed, some to country incumbencies, others to resume in the Colleges the studies commenced in earlier life. John Badcoke settled in Jesus College. The Bursar’s Rental of 1538-39 shows that his residence there began in the autumn of the earlier year, immediately after the surrender of the monastery. Divorced from the Priory he was still attached to Barnwell, and took up the duties of Vicar of the small parish church of St. Andrew, which stood close to the Priory gate. So long as Henry VIII. lived, and the rites of the old religion were tolerated, he seems to have ministered faithfully to the spiritual needs of his parishioners, unsuspected and unmolested. More than twelve months elapsed before the demolition of the canons’ house was taken in hand, and, for so long, in the empty church the Prior still offered mass on ceremonial days for the repose of the souls of the Peverels and Peches who had built and endowed the house in long bygone days, and were buried beside the High Altar. In the porter’s lodge remained the only occupant of the monastery--a former servant of the house, who, from the circumstance that in his secular profession he was a mason, had the name of Adam Waller. Occasional intruders on the solitude of the cloister or the monastic garden sometimes lighted on the ex-Prior pacing the grass-grown walks, as of old, and generally in company with a younger priest. [Illustration: Oriel Window of Hall & Entrance to ‘K’ Staircase]