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Thoughts of Freedom

Photo prompt curtsy of J Hardy Carroll
Photo prompt curtsy of J Hardy Carroll

A ray of sunlight flickers across my bench, how I wish that I might reach up and escape through the skylight. Instead I am incarcerated in this hovel of a prison. Who am I ?

I was once the Right Reverend John Paslew, now I am prisoner number 57492. Why was I defrocked ? Well I was accused of disrespect by an ungodly king. I am accused of turpitude, called vile, accused of concocting lies to desecrate. I am notorious for daring to speak out and joining the Pilgrimage of Grace. My abbey will be taken by the king!

Footnotes:
Abbot John Paslew was executed in the year 1537, he was the last abbot of a Cistercian Abbey at Whalley in Lancashire.
The Pilgrimage of Grace led to the gruesome executions of many nobles, abbots, monks and lay people,

Michael Humphris.

This Post Has 22 Comments
  1. What an interesting chapter from history.

    I loved the Henry VIII miniseries Wolf Hall with Damian Lewis but was unaware of this uprising. What a nasty trick, to allow the “pilgrimage” or rebellion safe passage, and then use a pretext to arrest them and execute many.

    This passage gives us a taste for how the personal conflict between allegiance to God (including to one’s unfavored religion)and allegiance to ones political leader that can arise, so to speak, when the head of both domains is one and the same. One cannot follow two masters!

    That man (Henry Viii)was definitely a piece of work!

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