ts visitor. He writes to Cromwell on June 9, 1536:--

To the right honourable Master Secretary to the King.

Pleaseth your mastership I received your letters of the vij^th day
of this present month, and hath endeavoured myself to accomplish the
contents of them, and have sent your mastership the true extent,
value, and account of our said monastery. Beseeching your good
mastership, for the love of Christ's passion, to help to the
preservation of this poor monastery, that we your beadsmen may
remain in the service of God, with the meanest living that any poor
men may live with, in this world. So to continue in the service of
Almighty Jesus, and to pray for the estate of our prince and your
mastership. In no vain hope I write this to your mastership, for as
much you put me in such boldness full gently, when I was in suit to
you the last year at Winchester, saying, 'Repair to me for such
business as ye shall have from time to time.' Therefore, instantly
praying you, and my poor brethren with weeping yes!--desire you to
help them; in this world no creatures in more trouble. And so we
remain depending upon the comfort that shall come to us from
you--serving God daily at Waverley. From thence the ix^th day of
June, 1536.

WILLIAM, the poor Abbot there, your chaplain to command.

[Illustration: _Crooksbury Hill and Frensham Little Pond, from Frensham
Common._]

The comfort that came to the White Monks was the dissolution of the
Abbey in the month following. After the dissolution the buildings fell
gradually to pieces, generously helped by builders of other houses. When
Sir William More was giving Loseley near Guildford the shape we see
to-day he carted waggon-load after waggon-load of stone from the ruined
church, and Sir William More was perhaps not the first and certainly not
the last of the spoilers. The neighbourhood quarried from the ruins
until only a few years ago. When Aubrey saw the Abbey in 1672 he found
the walls of a church, cloisters, a chapel used as a stable, and part of
the house with its window-glass intact, and paintings of St. Dunstan and
the devil, pincers, crucibles and all. To-day most of the ruins have
fallen flat. There is some beautiful vaulting left, and massive heaps of
stone show the corners and boundaries of the church and other buildings.
Ivy-stems, coils of green gigantic pythons, climb about the walls and
broken