lost no time in returning again to enjoy the good cheer of his own refectory. We can trace, but with uncertainty, the progress of destruction with which this noble building was visited after its <g>Dissolution</g>. Part of the church, with the offices and other parts of the Abbey, were probably demolished for the sake of the materials, the nave only being reserved to the people of Waltham to serve as a parish church. The commissioners were so unscrupulous in their plunder, that they even offered for sale the five bells in the steeple, which, however, were purchased by the parishioners. In the old books of the churchwardens, we find, under the date 1544, the item, “Received of Adam Tanner the overplus of the money which was gathered for the purchase of the bells, two pound four shillings and eleven-pence.” The ancient steeple stood in the middle of the church: it had been left in so dangerous a condition, that it was found necessary to take down the bells as soon as purchased, and to erect for them a wooden belfrey at the south-east end of the churchyard, where there stood formerly two yew-trees. A few years afterwards, in the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary, the steeple fell down: in 1556, there is an entry in the parish books, “For coles to undermine a piece of the steeple which stood after the first fall, two shillings.” The parishioners immediately began to build the present <g>Steeple</g>, at the west end of the church, at a very considerable expense, which was furnished from the money they had collected by the sale of the old church furniture, by subscriptions for the occasion, and by the sale of materials from the ruins of the Abbey; and, to finish it, they were at last obliged to sell the bells which they had before patriotically rescued from the fate that had absorbed so much of the rich plate and furniture of the Abbey. Several of the entries in the parish books at this time show us how the work of demolition was gradually proceeding. In 1558, at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, the sum of three shillings and two-pence was paid for taking down the rood-loft. In 1562, there was “paid for a bay nagge, given to Mr. Henry Denny for the Abbey wall, three pound seventeen shillings.” “Item, to labourers which did undermine the said wall, forty-nine shillings and nine-pence.” This Abbey wall was a building which extended eastward beyond the old steeple; and the churchwardens for some years afterwards carried on a great trade in the sale of lead, stone, and timber taken from it.[221] In 1563, “for the old timber in the little vestiary of St. George’s Chapel, fifteen shillings.” All memory of the site of this chapel appears to be long lost. In the same year, “for taking down the stairs in the Abbey, seven shillings eight-pence;” and “for taking down the lead from the charnel-house, and covering the steeple, eighteen shillings.”