od had willed man cannot alter. Amongst
those who thought so were the monks of the Charter House.

======================================================================

[Illustration: NO. 8. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH BEFORE IT WAS RESTORED.
_See page_ 30]

======================================================================

It is hard to wait day by day for some dreadful thing which we know is
surely coming to us, so these were sad days for the monks. Were they
frightened, I wonder, when they heard what was going on in the {26}
world outside their walls, and knew that soon, very soon, they must
tell the fierce King that for them the Pope was and must always be Head
of the Church? What would happen to them? Did their prayers and
solemn services strengthen and comfort them then? Yes, indeed they
did. And their Prior, John Houghton, was a brave true man, as men have
need to be in such times; and not only by his words, but by his deeds,
he taught his monks to choose rather to die than to give up what they
believed to be true; for in the spring of the next year he and two
other Carthusian Priors told Thomas Cromwell, the King's great
Minister, that they could not change their Faith. They were sent to
the Tower, tried as traitors in Westminster Hall, and found guilty.
Turn to picture 6; here you see Sir Thomas More, in this month of May
himself a prisoner in the Tower for the same reason, watching the three
Priors and another monk going away to die. As he watched, More said to
his daughter, "Lo, dost thou see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be
now as cheerful going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their
marriages?"

At Tyburn Tree, where the Marble Arch now stands, John Houghton laid
down his life for his Faith.

Two sad years followed; then all but ten of the monks yielded to the
King and promised to "forsake the Bishop of Rome." These ten were sent
to Newgate Prison. There they would very soon have died, for in those
days life in a prison was a dreadful thing, but they were helped by a
brave woman, called Margaret Clement, whom Sir Thomas More had brought
up with his own daughter Margaret. "Moved {27} with a great compassion
of those holy Fathers, she dealt with the gaoler ... and withal did win
him with money that he was content to let her come into the prison to
them, which she did, attiring and disguising herself as a milkmaid,
with a great pail upon her head full of meat, wherewith she fed that