Note 307 — The Drawing Room.

Among the visitors appointed to carry into execution the examination of the monasteries, was a Dr. London; who "was afterwards not only a persecutor of Protestants, but a suborner of false witnesses against them, and was now zealous even to officiousness in suppressing the monasteries. He also studied to frighten the abbess of Godstow into a resignation. She was particularly in Cromwell's favour:" &c. Burnet: Hist. of the Reformation, vol. iii., p. 132. Among Burnet's "Collection of Records," is the letter of this said abbess, in which she tells Cromwell that "Doctor London was suddenly cummyd unto her, with a great rout with him; and there did threaten her and her sisters, saying that he had the king's commission to suppress the house, spite of her teeth. And when he saw that she was content that he should do all things according to his commission, and shewed him plain that she would never surrender to his band, being her ancient enemy—then he began to entreat her and to inveigle her sisters, one by one, otherwise than ever she heard tell that any of the king's subjects had been handel'd;" vol. iii., p. 130. "Collection." It is not very improbable that this treatment of Godstow nunnery formed a specimen of many similar visitations. As to London himself, he ended his days in the Fleet, after he had been adjudged to ride with his face to the horse's tail, at Windsor and Oakingham. Fox in his Book of Martyrs, has given us a print of this transaction; sufficiently amusing. Dod, in his Church History, vol. i., p. 220, has of course not spared Dr. London. But see, in particular, Fuller's shrewd remarks upon the character of these visitors, or "emissaries;" Church History, b. vi., pp. 313, 314.