Although Ash’s list was not especially long or rich, there
can have been little joy, or for that matter surprise, when a commission
was issued in January of the following year aimed at the seisure of all
church goods no longer needed. The church may or may not have lost further
of its treasures in consequence; the doubt arises because, by that time,
Edward VI had less than six months to live.
Wyels himself was now approaching the end of his days, but he
lived long enough to see the death of the young King, the reign in sad
miniature of Lady Jane Grey, the accession of Mary Tudor and. the rising
under Sir Thomas Wyatt, whose army passed not far from Ash on its
ill-fated march to London. In April 1555, |
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he made his will, asking that he should be buried in
the chancel of the church of Ash on the north side of ‘Sir Richard
Gallant’, sometime parson there, and that on the day of his burial there
should be five masses, ‘a masse of the Holy Goost, a masse of the fyue
wounds, Ih'us masse, a masse of the Trinitye, and a masse of Requiem’.8
These his last wishes suggest that in the religious controversies of
the time, his true sympathies lay rather with the old order than the new.
If so, his conscience had been taxed enough; he was not to see the new
order come into its own again. The burial on 25 April of ‘Mr. Wyells P’son
of Ash’ was recorded in the register that he himself had opened. |