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MARGARET CLEMENT.

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John Clement, and her numerous family, the religious freedom which was denied her in England. After remaining for a short time at Bruges, the Clements removed to Mechlin, where they edified all who knew them by their piety and charity. Their house was, like the devout Jane Dormer's, a harbour for persecuted priests, who found there both relief in their needs and consolation in their troubles.

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"But the time now being come," says a manuscript published by Father John Morris, S.J., " that God had appointed to reward His handmaid for her aforesaid good works done unto the Fathers of the Charterhouse, He visited her with an ague which held her nine or ten days, and having brought her very low and in danger, she received all the Sacraments with great devotion, and being desirous to give her last blessing to all her children, who were all present excepting her religious daughters and one more that remained at Bruges with her husband, she caused her to be sent for in all haste; but being not able to come so speedily, Wednesday being now come, which was the day before she died, and asking if her daughter were come, and being told no, but that they looked for her every hour, she made answer that she would stay no longer for her, and calling her husband, she told him that the time of her departing was now come, and she might stay no longer, for that there were standing about her bed Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 1st series, pp. 30, 31.

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the reverend Fathers, monks of the Charterhouse, whom she had relieved in prison in England, and did call upon her to come away with them, and that therefore she could stay no longer, because they did expect her, which seemed a strange talk unto him. Doubting she might speak idly by reason of her sickness, he called for her ghostly Father, a reverend Father of the Franciscans then living at Mechlin, to examine and talk with her, to whom she constantly made answer that she was no way beside herself, but declared that she had still the sight of the Charterhouse monks before her, standing about her bedside, and inviting her to come away with them, as she had told her husband. At the which all were

astonished.

"The next day being Thursday, in the morning she called for her son Thomas, and willed him that he should take care that all her apparel should be made ready, for by God's grace she would not fail that day to go to Corpus Christi anthem; which he taking to be spoken of distraction, and comforting her as best he could to put this out of her head, she replied that by God's grace she would not fail in her purpose, and therefore all things should be in readiness. And so it fell out, that she from that moment drawing more and more to her end, as soon as the bell of St. Rumold's began to toll for the anthem of Corpus Christi, she gave up her happy soul into the hands of God, thereby showing to have

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NINE YEARS AT BRUGES.

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foretold the hour of her death, and that she departed with that blessed company to heaven, who had so long expected her to be partaker of their glory, as no doubt but she is. Her body was buried in the cathedral church of St. Rumold, behind the high altar, before the memory of our Blessed Saviour lying in His grave, where also her husband was laid by her within two years after.

"Now to return to my purpose, for this was but to relate that these holy martyrs whom she had so carefully assisted, would come to fetch her at her last end. The which so happened, for at her very departure she did see all those Carthusians in their habit perfectly appear before her, which with a smiling countenance she so expressed to those that were about her that it was admirable to the beholders."

The English Carthusians lived in St. Clare's Street, Bruges, for over nine years, following their holy Rule in peace and tranquillity. In 1572 Chauncy published his edition of Dom Peter Sutor's treatise, De Vita Cartusiana. The only other events of this period were the decease of some members of the community and the reception of a few novices. The old country, and the speedy re-establishment of the Carthusian Order there, were always present to the minds of the exiled monks, and these matters provided them with matter for conversation as well as for prayer. This may be illustrated by an extract from the

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