The Lady Chapel, with the crypt beneath it, dates from about 1410, when also the central tower was probably rebuilt, and decorative additions were made to the Founder's tomb, in the shape of a canopy and panelling. In the first part of the next century Prior Bolton (1505-32) inserted the Oriel window on the southern side of the choir-triforium and the doorway in the south ambulatory, both of which bear his sculptured rebus--a _bolt_, or arrow, driven through a _tun_. In 1539 his successor, Robert Fuller, the last of the Augustinian Priors, surrendered the entire property to Henry VIII, in compliance with the Act of Dissolution, its value having been already ascertained in the twenty-sixth year of the King's reign. The exact figures are given by Dugdale as follows:
Summa totalis hujus monasterii. £773 0_s._ 1¾_d._ " " reprisarum £79 10_s._ 3½_d._ --------------------------- Et remanet clare £693 9_s._ 10¼_d._ ---------------------------
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHOIR _From a print of 1822_ _T. H. Shepherd del. Howlett sc._]
For many years before the dissolution of the monasteries the system on which they rested had been gradually undermined by the spread of the Reformation, accompanied by a growing conviction that the religious communities had not only outlived their usefulness, and to a great extent departed from the high standard of their founders, but that their enormous wealth had given them an influence far beyond that of any other institution, or combination of institutions, in the kingdom, and brought them into formidable rivalry with the State itself--the more dangerous in proportion to their devoted adherence to the Papacy, with which the State was in collision. By whatever unworthy motives Henry VIII may have been governed in aiming at the monastic property, he was therefore able to bring forward many political considerations, which coincided with those arising out of religious doctrines, to make his measures intelligible to his people, and consequently easy to himself. Among the various plausible reasons which were urged against the continued existence of the conventual houses, one of the most likely to appeal to the practical sense of the multitude was the misuse of the resources with which they had been endowed. While it was admitted that in their earlier days they had been extremely useful in mitigating distress among the poor, it was now argued that their indiscriminate charities were doing more harm than good, and that the changed economic conditions of the sixteenth century called for a corresponding change in the distribution of relief, to save the country from being overrun by undeserving mendicants, amongst whom some of the religious Orders were themselves to be reckoned. It does not appear that any part of this argument held good against the Augustinian Canons, or that the more serious moral charges brought against the smaller communities were at all applicable to their case, which was rather one of involvement in a common ruin than the result of any specific accusation. It is true there are instances of laxity at individual houses, showing a too easy discipline where they occurred, but there is nothing sufficiently extensive or important to compromise the Order as a whole, or materially damage its character in the eyes of the impartial modern student.[10]