traitor, every
representation of him was ordered to be destroyed, and his name was
erased from all service books, antiphones, collects and prayers under
pain of his Majesty's indignation, and imprisonment at his Grace's
pleasure. The saint indeed is said to have been cited to appear at
Westminster for treason, and there to have been tried and condemned.
That seems, too superstitiously insolent even for such a thing as
Henry. But we may believe Marillac, the French Ambassador, when he
tells us "St Thomas is declared a traitor _because_ his relics and
bones were adorned with gold and stones."

So perished the shrine and memory of St Thomas, and with it the
thousand year old religion of England to be replaced by one knows not
what.

With the destruction of religion went the destruction of the religious
houses. Of these the chief was the Benedictine monastery of Christ
Church which lay to the north of the Cathedral and whose monks from St
Augustine's time had always served it. Almost nothing remains of this,
save the Cloister and Chapter House and Treasury attached to the
Cathedral, the Castellum Aquae, now called the Baptistery, the Prior's
Chapel, now the Chapter Library, the Deanery, once part of the Prior's
lodging, the Porter's gate, the Norman staircase of the King's school
and the fragmentary ruins scattered about the precincts, including
the remains of the Archbishop's Palace in Palace Street.

Not less venerable than the Benedictine House of Christ Church was the
other Benedictine monastery, also founded by St Augustine in honour of
SS. Peter and Paul, to which dedication St Dunstan added the name of
St Augustine himself. This stood outside the city to the east. It is
said to have been founded by St Augustine outside the walls with a
view to his own interment there since it was not the Roman custom, as
we know, to bury the dead within the walls of a city. So honourable a
place in the Order did this great house hold that we are told the
abbot of St Augustine's Canterbury sat next to the abbot of Monte
Cassino, the mother house, in the councils of the Order, and none but
the archbishop himself consecrated the abbot of St Augustine's, and
that in the Abbey Church. This also Henry stole away, seizing it for
his own use. But by 1844 what was left of the place had become a
brewery, and to-day there remains scarcely more than a great
fourteenth century gateway and hall, the work of Abbot Fyndon in 1300.
Of the church