Note 308 — The Drawing Room.

"The yearly revenue of all the abbies suppressed is computed at £135,522l. 18s. 10d. Besides this, the money raised out of the stock of cattle and corn, out of the timber, lead, and bells; out of the furniture, plate, and church ornaments, amounted to a vast sum, as may be collected from what was brought off from the monastery of St. Edmonsbury. Hence, as appears from records, 5000 marks of gold and silver, besides several jewels of great value, were seized by the visitors." Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii., 165. See also Burnet's similar work, vol. i., p. 223. Collier specifies the valuation of certain monasteries, which were sufficiently wealthy; but he has not noticed that of St. Swithin's in Winchester—of which Strype has given so minute and interesting an inventory. A lover of old coins and relics may feed his imagination with a gorgeous picture of what might have been the "massive silver and golden crosses and shrines garnished with stones"—but a tender-hearted bibliomaniac will shed tears of agony on thinking of the fate of "a book of the four evangelists, written al with gold; and the utter side of plate of gold!" Life of Cranmer, Appendix, pp. 24-28.