The Destruction of The Shrine
In the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace, whose leader, Robert Aske had stayed with the Carmelites at Doncaster, the priory and Shrine were doomed. The priory was handed over to the king's commissioners on November 13, 1538, the surrender was made by Stubbis and seven other friars. It was taken by the Commissioners, Hugh Wirral and Teshe, who made an inventory of the friary property at the same time. But Our Lady of Doncaster's statue had already been removed under Archbishop Lee's orders.
According to Wriothesley, Windsor Herald, who wrote the informative Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors: - "It was the month of July, the images of Our Lady of Walsingham and Ipswich were brought up to London with all the jewels that hung around them, at the King's commandment, and divers other images, both in England and Wales, that were used for common pilgrimage . . . and they were burnt at Chelsea by my Lord Privy Seal". Two other chroniclers, Hall and Speed, suggest that the actual burning did not take place until September. The fate of the image of Our Lady of Doncaster is not stated, and beyond the Archbishop's action in seizing it we have no means of knowing what did happen to the statue. A famous letter from Bishop Latimer to Cromwell mentions the image by name, referring firstly to the image of Our Lady of Worcester he says:
"She hath been the Devil's instrument, I fear, to bring many to eternal fire; now she herself with her older sister of Walsingham, her younger sister of Ipswich, and their two sisters of Doncaster and Penrhys will make a jolly muster in Smithfield. They would not be all day in burning".
Read more about this topic: Our Lady Of Doncaster
Famous quotes containing the words destruction and/or shrine:
“When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)