“The knell that tolled at Islip’s death was really a knell for the Convent itself.” The appointment of his successor was long delayed and it is probable that intrigue was rife in the matter. John Fulwell, then Monk-Bailiff, was evidently strong enough to assume considerable authority in the monastery and it may well be that he looked to be appointed himself. On October 16th, 1532, he wrote to Cromwell reporting that “all things in the sanctuary as well within the monastery as without are in due order, according to the advertisement you gave me when I was last with you in London. At your return I trust you shall not hear but that we shall deserve the King’s most gracious favour in our suit.” Whatever may have been Fulwell’s hopes they were destined to be disappointed as was an effort made three years later by his friends to bribe Cromwell into giving him the Priorship of Worcester. The year drew to a close without any appointment to the vacancy, and not until May in the following year is there any certain news of its being filled. On the twelfth of that month William Boston, a monk of Peterborough, took the oath in the Chancery Court to observe the conditions of the foundation of Henry VII. For three hundred years some son of the house had been chosen to rule over it. Boston was a stranger and it is doubtful if he obtained his office in a manner honourable to himself or to those who procured it for him. Three of the abbatial manors were mortgaged by him until he should have paid five hundred pounds to Cromwell and Sir William Paulet who was Controller of the royal household. It is perhaps unfair to blame him for the exchanges of land with the King by which the Abbey lost the manors of Hyde, Neyt and Eye, together with Covent Garden, but it is the fact which is most remembered against him. It was in his time and in his own Chapter House that the famous thrill of horror ran through the assembled Commons at the reading of the _Comperta_ or findings of the Commissioners employed to make a case against the monastic houses of England. How much credit may be given to the findings of men who were themselves of a not too high standard of morality and honesty we shall not attempt to determine. It must be sufficient to say that no breath of scandal touched Westminster. It was a city set upon an hill which could not be hid, and its fall came for none of those grosser sins alleged against some other houses.