( 243 ) 66 CHAPTER I. THE BETTER USE"-SIR EDWARD NORTH-THE DUKE OF NORTH UMBERLAND-ROYAL VISITS-HOWARD HOUSE. FOR three years and a half after the dispersion of the monks the Charterhouse remained in the king's hands. He seems to have used it simply as a storehouse for his tents and pavilions, allowing it at the same time to be shamefully abused by a number of persons who committed most disgraceful outrages within those hallowed walls. They cut up the pictures of the saints, and broke in pieces and trampled under foot even the representations of Our Lord upon the cross. The sacred altars, on which the Christian sacrifice had so often been offered up, now served as gaming-tables. The blasphemous oath, the ribald song, the lewd jest, and the drunken laugh took the place of the Lessons, Psalms, and Canticles which had formerly been the only sounds that re-echoed in the vaulted roof of the Charterhouse Church. Other crimes were committed within the precincts of the suppressed monastery-crimes which, says Chauncy, |